☞ The Musings of a 40 something aspiring comics colorist

My background

My first experiences with comic books were picking them up at the local gas station close to my parents’ house. I’d save up allowance money and go buy Spider-Man and West Coast Avengers. I still have them all even if their condition is less than ideal or rather they are in the proverbial parents’ attic. It’s cliche, I know and that’s honestly why I don’t do the individual issue collecting thing these days and stick to trades mostly. Trades are far easier to store on the shelf.

My first three jobs were in comic book shops: World Class Comics, Big Orange Comics and Cards, and Comics Inc. This encompassed from when I was 16 to about the time I was 21. As I developed and matured, my interests shifted from The X-Men to Hellblazer. On one fateful day, I was invited to work a Carmen concert. If you don’t know who that is he had a big boxing ring in the center of the arena where he punched out the devil, hence why nobody wanted to work it. The backstage life got into my blood and I created a career both on the road and as a house guy that lasted 15 plus years and comics kind of fell into the ether for awhile. Fast forward ( I mean you didn’t want my whole life’s history, right?) and I’m a middle aged artist, happily married, with a teenager. Life had settled down a bit and I started picking up graphic novels with greater frequency, relying largely on recommendations from our local shop in Tacoma, Washington (shout out to Atomic Comics.) Then there was the whole lupus thing. I got officially diagnosed in late 2020. Something had been greatly amiss physically for years now, it just didn’t have a name. Some days are good, some aren’t but now I have to hide from the sun. Lupus sucks by the way. While moving towards something ethereal called remission, I started devouring comics again which coincided with a need to occupy my brain with something other than what part of my body hurt on any given day. So, all this, the podcast and apparently writing and coloring comics, is my own form of therapy. I hope you tag along for the ride.