This is a really old piece done when I was in high school. As I have told elsewhere...
It must have been the summer of 1971 or 72. I was 15 or 16 and in love. It was the 4th of July and I went out with a church group to watch the fireworks at the local fairgrounds. One of the reasons I was so interested in the church group was Lynn; she was cute as a button and, at that time, the girl of my dreams. I would have gone almost anywhere and done almost anything to be with her, which is a great indication of how little power I had in the relationship. Anyway, I remember that the group parked in a mall parking lot near the fairgrounds to watch the excitement in the sky. To get a better vantage point from which to watch the fireworks we climbed on top of the van we had come in. As we did so the roof buckled a bit, making a krumpling noise. I thought, "Gee, how come in all those Marvel comics the heroes jump all over the cars and the roof never gets a dent?"
Ah, the tough questions of youth! Anyway, I went home sexually frustrated (the story of my many relationships with Lynn) and over the next few days drew three pages of a comic book featuring a character I think I was calling Titanium. It was my first superhero; a Six Million Dollar Man rip-off. Race car driver Dan Peterson, heir to the Petré Cosmetic fortune is critically injured in a accident during a race at Ontario Speedway. Not really an accident, his pit crew boss was skimming money off the top, out after Dan's girl, yada, yada, yada! Good help is so damn hard to find!
I finished the pencils for all three pages but only the first page was inked to completion. Anyway, this is my first attempt at a superhero strip. My major influences at the time were Berni Wrightson, Rich Buckler, Al Williamson, Jim Steranko, and Neal Adams. This is the first page, cleaned up recently with digital lettering; as I clean the other pages I will add them here. |