WHERE IT ALL STARTED

Captain's Blog, Stardate Wed. 0510.19

My friends often call me by the nickname "Captain" as I share the name made famous by "the Shatner", so, Welcome to my first blog entry, this your Captain speaking.

For those of you who have known me, hello again, and for those who haven't, I'll give you a brief bio. I've loved super-heroes ever since the first time sitting down in front of the TV as a kid to watch MIGHTY MOUSE, UNDERDOG and BATMAN. I was thrilled as the original dynamic duo of Adam West and Burt Ward would race to their secret Bat-poles, re-emerging into their hidden Bat Cave as the colorfully costumed caped crusaders to fire-up their Batmobile and race to meet with commissioner Gordon at Police HQ for their next Bat-mission! POW! ZAP! BAM! I was hooked!

Later, I raced home from school every day to take in the next installment of Marvel Comics cartoons of Spider-man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron-man, Captain America, The Sub-Mariner, and the Mighty Thor! Then, came my love of the MUNSTERS, The Universal MONSTERS' monster movies and the King of Monsters, GODZILLA (and his giant monster friends shown on the afternoon Chiller Movie and on Godzilla week!). Soon, I was busy having fun building and painting Aurora model kits of all of my favorite super-heroes and monsters!

My love for these fantasy characters was so great that I would often pick-up a pencil and try to draw them myself. I can remember loving the 1976 King Kong film so much that I would draw the movie-poster image of Kong straddling the WTC towers, on every thing from posterboards to T-shirts!

Then, in the summer of 1977 I saw STAR WARS, and like everyone else was completely fascinated with it! Again, I had my pencils and markers busy drawing Darth Vader, C-3PO, Chewbacca, Stormtroopers and Tie-Fighters on any paper I could grab-up.

I was always getting my drawings taken from me by my school teachers for drawing them in class. One teacher was impressed by my drawings and encouraged me to draw posters for her class room bulletin boards. Within no time I had a Cylon Warrior riding his armored horse proudly hanging in class, entertaining all of my Battlestar Galactica-crazy friends. I loved the rock group KISS, and started drawing Gene, Ace, Peter and Paul posters and selling them to the kids at school!

Then, my grade school buddy, Billy G (who I used to watch Kolchak: The Night Stalker with on CBS late night) and I created our own comic book called WACKY WEIRDOS, featuring Looney Tunes style cartoon characters Buzy Buzzard, Barnyard Bear, in which I drew my very first super-hero, an inch-high, caped super powered Tom Thumb called MIDGET-MAN! We sold out all 50 Xeroxed copies for 25 cents a piece at lunchtime, and we took our earnings and blew it all on ALIEN bubble gum cards and the KISS solo albums! A second issue of WACKY WEIRDOS was in the works, but was never issued because the school Principal got wind of what we were doing and told us it was against school code to sell our comics at school.

My interest in comic books continued in high school and I had a great art teacher, Mr. Goshman, who let me turn in comic art instead of my regular assignments. At this time I was also a huge STAR TREK Trekkie and was reading every DOCTOR WHO novel I could pick up.

After graduation, I started to draw independent comic books such as Barbaric Tales, Tales from the Aniverse, Leatherface (the movie adaptation). Then I started sending my art samples to Marvel Comics, and in a case of mistaken-identity (the Marvel receptionist thought my tone of voice was that of Rob Liefeld when I would call, so she would put my call through to Bob Harras every time ) I got my first Marvel Assignment, "The Enemy Within" a cool little Wolverine vignette in the X-men Annual #15. I then drew a whole bunch of guest artist fill-in issues, annuals and a slew of trading cards for Skybox Marvel Universe cards (Series III and IV).

I moved over to DC comics to pencil Peter David's AQUAMAN: TIME & TIDE.

Soon after, I crossed over into the field of illustrating story books, with my favorite childhood hero SPIDER-MAN in the Little Golden Books MEET SPIDER-MAN and DANGEROUS DR. OCTOPUS!

I also worked on my other childhood favorite BATMAN, designing action figures at HASBRO toys for TOTAL JUSTICE, LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT and BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES toy lines.

Most recently, I have returned to comics to draw a comic book based on one of my all time favorite TV shows in KOLCHAK: TALES OF THE NIGHT STALKER.

Well, that should give you the idea of who I am and what my life is all about.
I'll post to update what I'm working on, conventions I'm attending, and when I have something cool to talk about--
or more than likely, just to talk about romancing my nostalgic passions for all things classic Sci-Fi, cheesy Monster movies, collecting comics, old toys and other cool stuff!

-Kirk out!