Matt Ryan Rules! So too does Mark Mazz, but we’ll get there in a minute.

This past weekend, my good buddy and collaborator on Wülf Girlz, Matt Ryan handed me what was easily the coolest piece of comicbook art that I’ve ever received. Yep, cooler than than the Stan Goldberg con sketch of Jughead, cooler than the con sketch I have of Betty Anderson. Hey it is even cooler than the page of original art by John Constanza from my first published comic strip — which John drew.

(OK, OK, it still takes second place to the Gwen Stacey illustration that was drawn for me by John Romita, Sr. back when I was 17 or 18, but it is a close second.)

Matt, as I’ve said, illustrates Wülf Girlz, and does a beautiful job doing it, I might add. Well, Mark (another good buddy of mine as well as the creative director of Guild Works Productions) commissioned a piece of delightful art from Matt knowing that I would not only instantly love the art, but be inspired by it as well. (Today I penned a pair of story pitches to the Marvel Adventure line.)

Sure enough, I was both. and I’d love to show you that art now:



Is this the coolest picture or what?

Truthfully, I only have one small problem with it. I just can’t remember who that girl in the picture is with Spidey...

The Return of Video Victor

Back in the Mid ‘80s, I was the managing editor of a magazine called Videogaming Illustrated. I wrote some game reviews, articles, news items, and (for a couple of installments) I actually got to write an actual comicstrip. Sure, sure, the strip was only a one-page gag strip entitled Video Victor which combined bee jokes, videogaming, and pop culture references. (Commodore Computer used to produce a small computer named the Vic-20, hence the name “Video Victor” like a joke, only smaller).

Anyways, while I was writing it, the strip was drawn by John Constanza. It was my first published fiction work. It was fun, and I finally found a place to post the only two strips I ever got to write. Check ’em out, it might be kinda fun.

The reason I only wrote two installments is that the mag (VI) was canceled at that point. It would take me almost another three years to get my second work of fiction (Agent Unknown) into print, and then six more years for my third (a brief article in Marvel Year in Review 1993 that told the “Previous Untold” real origin of the Avengers. Now that I think of it, perhaps I should post that little bit of nonsense I penned with my writing partner John A. Wilcox as well.