In second grade I think the very first comic book creation that I came up with was a character named Dog Man. And he started out — he’s a little different than he is now. When I was a kid, he was a dog who just kept getting struck by lightning at all the right times, and every time he got struck by lightning, he would gain super powers and he would grow a cape magically and he would save the day.
One of the things I loved about making comics was showing them off to my friends in school, and they were very receptive to them too. They always wanted to — they were always asking if they could take my comics home and read them to their brothers and sisters. And so it was a real feather in my cap being the classroom storyteller.
My parents were very, very supportive of my drawing — drawing and of my storytelling, and I’m very grateful to them because one thing they noticed is that my teacher was not real happy with the stories that I was telling and the drawings that I was doing and sometimes she would take them away and rip them up. And so my parents, they actually commissioned a series of comic books from me.
They asked me if I would draw a series of comics just for them. And so when I was in fourth grade, I made a series called Water Man, which was a guy who was made out of water. And I made 20 comic books for them and they saved them. That was one of the rules, I was not allowed to bring them to school, and they saved them. And when I was in my early twenties, they gave me all the comics back. So they’re some of the very few surviving comics from my childhood.
