My Recurring Nightmare

This is the very first page in what I hope will be a large work in comics form about the effects of war on three people who’ve suffered through conflicts from WW II to the current war raging in Afghanistan.

It’s been a long journey for me to get this work to you. I have spent most of my life spellbound by the comics medium. I drew comics from early childhood, prolifically. Then I took a long, long hiatus from drawing, spending a great deal of my adult life perfecting my craft as a writer. It’s only been in the past few years that I’ve revisited drawing–though I have spent over a decade studying and teaching about art.

I was lucky enough to have Bob McLeod, the legendary inker, as my art teacher. Bob taught me everything I know about figure drawing, penciling, inking, and composition.

Picasso once said that “painting is not made in order to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of offensive and defensive war against the enemy.” Let the same be applied to comics. My personal enemy, my recurring nightmare, and the one from which I hope we all wake up someday, is war itself.