Author: beyondforward

The older I get, the more I lose old friends. It’s the hard reality of this life we’re all in, but every time it happens, it doesn’t get any easier. I wanted to devote some space here to write a little about one of my oldest friends, Dave Rawlins. I met Dave back in 1990, when I was fresh out of Art College and trying to find my way as a graphic artist and comic creator. At that time, I wasn’t having much success at either. Dave was also an artist and aspiring comic artist. He didn’t share my laser-focused determination to break into comics, but that was okay. He was always a reminder to me that part of making comics is the sheer fun of it, and existing in that ‘happy place’ of drawing. That’s a lesson I learned from Dave.

One of the many interesting things about Dave was that he wasn’t into the 90’s comic art trends or styles back when we first met. He was steeped in 1960’s era comics, a weird combination of Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, Al Feldstein and Robert Crumb. His subject matter leaned toward the absurd, from UFOs and comically grotesque monsters to equally comically grotesque people. Dave could have easily found success in comics by carving out his own niche in that market, because literally no one was doing what he was doing. That’s what makes his art special, because it has an uncompromising honesty to it, and his personality is expressed in every line. In the field of comics, that’s actually a pretty rare find. That’s the second lesson I learned from him.

I worked with Dave in the early days of my career, before I had a career. We collaborated on a comic called ‘Majestic 12’ and a few other small-scale efforts. None of it ever saw print. Dave went on to provide art and stories for small press publisher Blue Moon Comics in the late 1990’s, and had been actively and prolifically churning out caricatures and portrait art on his Facebook page for the last few years. Most recently, he provided a faux cover art for my comic Saga of a Doomed Universe, and you’ll get to see his work again in the sequel that I’m currently developing.

Dave was funny. He had a sometimes cynical world-view, but it wasn’t the typical bitter cynicism that we see so often in many others. Dave’s cynicism was funny, without a shred of mean-spiritedness. He had deep knowledge and respect for artists who were equally cynical/funny who were also not quite mainstream. From the writings of Philip K. Dick to the music of The Kinks, they tracked pretty closely to Dave’s own world-view, whether he saw that connection consciously or not.

There’s so much more to Dave than this brief write-up, of course. And much more than this small sampling of his incredible art. Just know that, in both cases, it was all good.

Scott

I’ve always been a huge fan of Wolverine and have periodically sketched or drawn the character over the years, either in private commissions or just for my myself. I’m sharing a collection of these efforts, which span from 1993 to present. The first image is a Frank Miller sketch that I inked and colored a couple of years ago, with the intent of keeping it a bit loose and sketchy. The last image is another Frank Miller piece, based on his controversial cover art from last year. I tried to give it the Lynn Varley color treatment, similar to what she did with Dark Knight Returns and her cover work on the Sin City books.

I cannot for the life of me find the name of the original colorist for this cover though. No offense intended to whoever colored the published cover. I have no idea what Marvel’s mandate may have been for the colorist or if there were other circumstances at play. I just saw what I saw and wanted to take a crack at it. I won’t post the original coloring here, but you can easily google it to see what Marvel ended up publishing.

Scott

In 1994, I was admittedly a much better inker than I was a penciler. But I was trying, and exploring those 90’s comic art styles in an effort to find my way. As a staff inker at Malibu Comics, I knew I didn’t have the chops yet to pitch myself as a penciler to any of the editors there, so I quietly toiled away drawing stuff like this, after work hours at my apartment.

In hindsight and looking at some of those old Malibu Comics now, maybe I wasn’t giving myself enough credit back then. I probably didn’t have the confidence to show any of my penciled work to anyone, but I’m also glad I didn’t go for it. I needed a lot more practice and study and would today cringe if any of this had been published as my first penciled gig for a major publisher. Regardless, I thought it would fun to share these, since they’ve been in deep storage for years.

Scott