Sharing My Story

This was the year I started getting more interested in
comic collecting again. Two titles that spurred this
interest. The first was the New Teen Titans written
by Marv Wolfman and drawn by George Perez. This
was a great revamp of the older title that was popular
in the 1960s. The other was the All-Star Squadron
(came out in early 1981) written by Roy Thomas and
drawn by Richard Buckler. This was a retroactive
retelling of the Justice Society of America stories
from 1941-42 with a lot of other super hero characters
thrown in from other companies that DC had
since acquired the publishing rights.

On October 28, 1979 I had dinner with the newly weds
Terry and Ann (Clayton) Walsh. During that time with
Terry and Ann I talked somewhat about my interest
in Christian comics. Terry suggested that I pray for
and find others who shared a like interest in this type
of endeavor. I seems as if a light went on on hearing
his idea. Oh, yes why hadn't I thought of that?! This
was two years after I'd made my Antediluvia Comic
and premieres it at the San Diego Comic Convention
(1977). This is where I date the first step toward the
establishment of the Christian Comic Arts Society.

I started praying about this and almost two years later
on October 2, 1981 I had lunch with Paul Johnston,
a young CCC writer who was a ardent comics fan.
Paul had been around for a couple of years at that
point but we had just gotten to know each other at
that time. We had heard we had a mutual affection
for comics and we had a good chat. We later collaborated
on one of his characters a female who had a Protector
of her own. While I still have the artwork it is not very
good. I basically had to learn perspective all over again
(and I was in the very beginning stages of that). Also
Paul's scripting approach was novelistic (way too
many words). Effective comic book scripting for
adventure/super hero stories uses an economy of
words. The visuals are there to carry the story and
the words are vital supplements to the illustrations.
Both of us were definitely still learning the comics craft.
At that time there was very little "how to" books
(unlike today) about the mechanics of comic book
story creation.