Legendary Woodsman

I know that I’m late in the game, the Influence Map meme circulated the interwebz ages ago. I figure it’s a decent ice-breaker for a new comic to see the influences “behind the curtain”.

Influences 1 & 2 go together: Garfield and my cousin, Albert.

On my sixth birthday, Albert, who is five years older than I am, taught me how to draw Garfield. It was my first official, established, recognizable drawing. I had drawn potato-people and funny faces before then but who knows what they were supposed to look like. Garfield was a frame of reference and I. could. draw. him.

I was so proud of my drawing that, in grade one, I showed my classmate my rendition of Garfield and was sent to the supply closet by my teacher for disrupting class.

Garfield Official Site

Influence 3: Bill Watterson with Calvin & Hobbes.

My parents would pick up the Sunday Sun for the TV schedule pull-out but I would go over to my aunt’s to dig through her Journal subscription to find the weekend colour comics pull-out. Why? For Calvin & Hobbes.

I was hooked on dinosaurs, fighter-jets, UFOs, and abominable snowmen. When I bought the collections, I was surprised to see how my perspective changed from reading only the Sunday strips to reading the dailies. Calvin & Hobbes made me want to draw comic strips.

Calvin and Hobbes on Go Comics.

Influence 4: Todd McFarlane

Todd is from Calgary, so a bit of the ‘local Albertan makes good’ aspect comes into play here. The other part is that Todd drew this fantastically dynamic Spider-man. The energy behind the body placement and the expressions had me drawing Spidey over-and-over again.

Spawn.com

Influence 5: Jim Lee

I was reading Uncanny X-Men during Marc Silvestri’s run and I was enjoying it and when the transition over to Jim Lee’s run happened, I hardly noticed. But when the team went to the Shi’ar home world in their original gold and blue, I noticed something: they weren’t wearing costumes, they were wearing uniforms. That was the thing that stood out to me the most. These heroes didn’t look like they were wearing spandex leotards, or pyjamas with underwear on the outside. They looked like they were wearing cool wetsuits or form-fitting body-armour. I wanted to draw the ‘realistic’ super-hero.

Jim Lee‘s Deviant Art site.

Whoa, this is running long. Part 2 to be posted tomorrow.

-tony