I haven’t kept a journal or a diary since about 1981 (and that one only lasted about four months), but my obsessive record-keeping sometimes fulfills the same function. I recently came across some “expense accounts” I kept in the 80s when I first went away to college. What they are is item-by-item lists of everything I bought while at school that I was hoping my dad would reimburse me for.
Geek
20 years later
Geek, LifeIn commemoration of my 20-year high school reunion, I thought I’d post this piece, verbatim from June 1985. I’m sure it’ll be of absolutely no interest to anyone out there other than man_size, eyehawk, comfortslut, thamesrhodes, larrondo, and al_monster… or any other graduates of Music & Art/LaGuardia from that era.
FOUR YEARS
elevator motor room
Geek
i visit my apartment building’s basement a fair amount. the laundry room’s down there, as is bicycle storage, and so is the building’s side exit, which i use a lot to go to the supermarket or the dry cleaner. plus, i’m friends with the super and that’s where he hangs out. anyway, the super (i assume) recently put a sign up on the elevator motor room — and boy, was it ugly! he used those gold shiny press-on letters and it looked really bad, so bad that it made me wince every time i walked by.
so, being the civic-minded guy i am, last wednesday i whipped up a replacement sign and taped it on the door over the old one. i just couldn’t stand walking by that eyesore any more and figured i would do everyone a favor. this was in the midst of a 10-hour day finishing up an illustration assignment, and putting together a 12-page booklet for CUNY, and getting ready to go out of town for a wedding, and deciding to go see Revenge of the Sith at the midnight premiere. no one can tell me i don’t have my priorities in order!
thing is, i’ve done stuff like this before, what i think of as good deeds but are really just my neurotic need for neatness and order. like whenever i end up borrowing someone’s computer and obsessively rearranging their desktop icons or their application folders — because it just makes more logical sense my way! it’s a bad habit to get into, but i can’t stop myself.
well, it’s almost a week later and my sign’s still there, so i guess i didn’t upset the natural order of things. but if the super asks you who did it, please don’t tell on me!
From Fanboys to Pros
Comics, GeekWhen I was a teenage cartoonist, my greatest ambition was to make it to the big time, as a penciler for Teen Titans or X-Men. The next best thing, though, was to get a fan letter printed in either of those books. Back then, the letter pages allowed fans to share their thoughts, not only about the comics but about their own lives. Much like today’s online forums, the lettercol were vibrant communities that made readers like myself feel more connected to the characters — and creators — we followed each month.
I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that many industry veterans — folks like Kurt Busiek, Todd McFarlane, Dave Sim; and even alt-comix names like Eric Reynolds and James Kochalka — got their start as “fanboys” too. Over the years, I’ve put together a sampling of real letters to comics’ mailbags from comics professionals during their amateur letterhack days. It’s a long page, and true to my obsessive tendencies, is both chronlogical and alphabetical. Look for your favorite (or most hated) creator, and click on their name to find the comment in question. The letters make for amusing/informative reading, especially given the work many of these later-to-be pro’s ended up doing themselves.
The letters are mostly culled from my own collection, as well as a few contributions from outside sources. So if you’ve got a letter I don’t have, feel free to email it to me and I’ll add it to the collection.
Check out “From Fanboys to Pros” here ->>
P.S. As I got older, I lost interest in crafting superhero tales, but I did have the satisfaction of getting a couple of letters printed, in “Titans Tower” — not that I had anything particularly insightful to say…
Fashion Backward, or a Lonely Li’l Baseball Fan
Geek
In honor of the upcoming baseball season, I thought it was time to dust this one off.
Seems when I was 13 or so, I felt compelled to draw the home & away uniforms of every MLB team, as well as alternate jerseys (an obscure practice in those days). I was obsessed with baseball, especially with the Giants — this was back when I lived in San Fran — and their distinctive orange & black. It was incredibly satisfying to get out the markers and fill the pages with all those colorful combinations of logos, stripes, and numerals.
1984 Letter to John Byrne
Comics, GeekIn 1984, when I was 16 years old, I wrote a letter to John Byrne, then writer/artist of Fantastic Four and Alpha Flight.
February 5, 1984
Dear Mr. Byrne,
I think you are doing a superb job on both Alpha Flight and the Fantastic Four. More and more, you are proving yourself as not only a great artist but a great writer too! Somehow, you are able to find the time to write, pencil and ink two comics while writing another. Not only that, but there is no sign of the strain on your artwork. Both Alpha Flight and the FF look terrific, and since issue 258 of the FF, the art has gotten better each issue (it seemed a little rushed in some of the issues previous to that).
I’m sure you’ve heard all that before, so what I’m writing about is something that I’m not quite so pleased with. My complaint with AF and FF (not The Thing, because I don’t read that title) is your lack of blacks or minorities drawn in their pages. On most scenes of cities that you draw, not one black is shown, and when they are, they are portrayed badly. For instance, FF 256. You show a black man with a large radio held to his ear, and you have him using such words as, “Ain’tcha got no radio, momma?” and, “There’s some bad nastiness goin’ down.” If this is the way blacks appear to you, I think you should look again.
Also, when the FF traveled to the Negative Zone, how come any race of aliens that they came upon always were consistently colored; all the members were yellow, all the members where pink-skinned, etc. And why did the race that looked most human have Caucasian skin? Was that your choice or Glynis Wein’s (the colorist)? To continue, what about Alpha Flight? All the members in Alpha, Beta and Gamma Flights are white! I know you know that there are minorities in Canada; why not one in the comic? Besides Shaman, there is nary a one. How about an East Indian superhero? There are lots of them in Vancouver.
The reason I am writing this letter is that I like the two comics you do. I would like them to be the best they can possibly be, though, and one way to do that is to put in a little more of real life. The earth is multicolored! Thanks for listening and please reply.
— Josh Neufeld
In response, I received Byrne’s Marvel business card. On the flip side, he had scrawled “Best to Josh” and signed it.
High School Halloween
GeekMy high school, Music & Art, in New York City (no, not the ” Fame school”), was well-known for the imaginative Halloween costumes of its students. After all, this was a school full of artists and creative people! I found out about M&A’s Halloween spectacular soon after I started there in 9th grade and as the holiday got closer and closer, the pressure started to mount.
I don’t know how I got the idea, but I finally decided my costume would be a school late pass. Yes, one of those little slips of paper you’d get from the principal’s office and give to your teacher when you were late for class. It had a bunch of bureaucratic jargon at the top of the slip, a large title, “LATE PASS,” some lines where the reason for your lateness was filled in, and more official language at the bottom.
At home, I took a pass and sized it up to sandwich-board size, making sure to get all the proportions right, and imitating the typeset lettering as well as I could. This was all before computers, so I really had to be inventive, using my calculator and ruler to figure out the correct multiplier to keep the dimensions consistent. Once I had created my masterpiece, I punched a couple of holes in the top, ran some string through them, and wore the pass like a sandwich board. I was a huge hit at school! It was definitely a one-of-a-kind costume and the other kids (and teachers) were bemused at my idea — and execution of it.
After that, I decided I had to be some kind of school-related card for my costume every Halloween. My sophomore year I was a Delaney card, which was a tiny card used to track students’ contact information and attendance during the school year. Pretty weird, and once again quite popular with the other kids.
Junior year I was a subway pass. That was a fun one to do, as each month’s pass was color coded (October 1983 was grey), and there was a cool water-marked code, “R-1,” stamped on each card. Not to mention the logos of the Board of Ed and the MTA. By junior year I had developed a reputation as the kid with the school card costumes, and I remember posing for a lot of pictures that Halloween as we paraded around the street in front of the school.
My senior year we moved to a new building, down at Lincoln Center, and we merged with Performing Arts (yes, the “Fame school”) to become a new entity, LaGuardia High School. But the Halloween tradition continued, and that year I was a school ID, complete with bar code, my student ID number, and the new LaGuardia logo. When we showed up at school each day the card was fed into a card reader, and it had a bunch of cool little holes in it; I duplicated those as well. Altogether, it wasn’t a bad reproduction. And with that final success I ended my high school Halloween career.
“From the Asylum” Reaches the Croat Market
Geek, Work“From the Asylum,” a two-pager about my mania for lists and statistics, will be translated into Croatian for a comics festival in Zagreb. The annual festival is called Crtani romani sou (“Funny Comics Show” — and no, it has nothing to do with comics actually being funny or not). Dark Horse scribe Darko Macan kindly asked permission to translate the piece and I was thrilled to say yes. As far as I know, this is the first translation of any of my work, but ironically this is the second ex-Yugoslavian country to print “From the Asylum.” The story originally appeared in Stripburger’s Madburger anthology, published out of Slovenia in 2002. Obviously, the piece speaks to the Balkan soul. Check out “From the Asylum” here…
From Fanboys to Pros
Comics, GeekI love reading letter columns from old comics. You never know whose name might pop up. Check out “From Fanboys to Pros.”