Entry 75: Blast From The Past-Part 6

It's been a while since I've done one of these posts. This is part 6 in my "blast from the past" posts. I know, real original and creative name. It's a stupid name. It doesn't even make sense. It has the implication that you might remember this stuff. Like, "hey, everybody, remember this one? It's a real blast from the past. I'm having a blast just looking at it. Aren't you?"

Anyway, whatever.

If you're interested, here are links to the past entries. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5.

The idea is that I'm chronicling my journey from first deciding that I wanted to draw comics to actually becoming a comic book artist and then all the way up to the beginning of this live journal. Each post represents a time period and whatever step I was taking at that time to get closer to my dream. It's a lot of material to get through. So here we go, another post.

In 1998 I was sending samples out to every company I could think of. I was sending Hiro pages, and Morph-man pages (see Blast from the past Part 5) This is when I decided to draw something that might appeal to both Marvel and DC and combine my 2 favorite super heroes, Batman and Wolverine.

The sample was 4 pages long. It began with Wolverine waking from a Weapon X dream. (Don't you hate those, Weapon X dreams I mean) Anyway, He and Jubilee are in Gotham for some reason and Batman has been following them, investigating whatever it is they're doing. Then they have a confrontation.

From these sample pages, the Hiro pages, and the Morph-man pages I got a lot of form-letters of rejection. I didn't mind. I knew that it was part of the proses. In fact I remember the day that I got my first rejection letter. I was actually excited about it. The only letter I ever remember getting where someone had taken the time to respond to what I had sent came from Marvel. I can't remember who wrote it. All that I remember about it was that the guy pointed out to me a few places where my storytelling wasn't very clear. He was right, and so I went back to the drawing board.

These pages I believe where done in late 98 to 99. So I was 20 years old. I had reached a point where I felt that I really needed to work from a script. I searched the internet for sample scripts and found one I liked. It was from this nothing little independent comic company's web sight. The script was 8 pages, and by the time that I finished it the company I got it from no longer existed. But the reason I liked the script was because it was generic. I could send it to any companies I wanted.

Again, I sent these sample pages out to everybody I could think of, and, again, the only one to give me a proper response was Marvel.
I'll talk more about that in my next "Blast From the Past" entry. 

One little note about these pages: I actually left the last page in the copy machine at Kinko's. I went back for it but it was gone and the employ hadn't seen it. Maybe it's out there somewhere. Who knows. Ever sense then I check and recheck every copy machine or scanner I use to make sure I'm not leaving anything behind.