How did you decide on comics as your career?

Actually, it was never a first choice thing, but I met a couple people that were actually trying to get into it back in the day when I used to work at Showcase Cinemas.  I brought in some drawings that I had done and that’s where it all started. They started pumping me up talking about that I could do this for a living, and that’s where it went. I got hooked.

You left your previous job after 15 years to fully concentrate on working in comics.  What made you decide to do that and how has that decision worked for you?

When I was married (I was married for twelve years), any time that I would try to do anything artistic, I got shot down by the ex-wife. That’s why I never really approached any schools about any type of art. Once I was out of there and with my current fiancé, she won’t let me leave this table. So, basically, if I’m trying to work on something she’s always pushing me to do so. I met her at that job probably about thirteen years ago; this would be like the 14th year. 

I worked there for a while and I knew I did everything I was gonna do over there, and I also knew in order for me to pursue this in any kind of form I would have to make a sacrifice. I kinda just took the leap and went with it. Without the job, I have all my days off, basically. My second job, or the job I have now, I don’t start until evening so I have a lotta time to draw in between and actually work on the stuff I wanna work on. At first it was kinda scary, but now that I’m actually busting my ass to do this stuff… and I’m actually liking it.

What got you into comics?

Like I said, when I was working at Showcase Cinemas I met this guy that was trying to do the same thing. I don’t remember his last name but his first name was Desmond. [He] and his friends kinda pumped me up. I was nowhere near ready to do this stuff, but [he] and his friends felt there was no reason why I shouldn’t be out there doing this. One of his friends went so far as to say: “I can’t believe nobody’s picked you up yet.”  Which was way off the mark, but at the time was good enough for me to say I’m gonna try this.

[As for reading comics] I can’t really answer that. I don’t even remember the first time I picked up a comic, but I remember my all-time favorites were Spider-Man and Batman, as far as DC went. But for me to sit here and tell you “so-in-so brought me my first comic” and “this is the very first comic I had,” I couldn’t tell you that. 

Did you study art anywhere or did it just come naturally?

What I always tell people when they ask me that is that I’m a graduate of S.T.U., and they always ask me where that school is, and I tell them “Self-Taught University.”

What is your media of choice?

So far the stuff that I’ve taught myself or that I’ve learned through the Guild or a good friend of mine named Ven Yann. He’s also a member of CAG. I taught myself to do some colors and some inking. But my media of choice is definitely pencils. 

What’s your approach to doing a piece?

With pin-ups, I basically have what I want inside my head, and I just go with it. I use blue pencils a lot, you know, photogenic pencils. But I do a quick sketch with the blue pencils (for some reason I feel more comfortable with the blue pencil doing sketching than with a regular pencil) and then I go back and do the pencils on it. And that’s the way I go about doing any sketch or pin-up.

And then the pages, I do thumbnails. Some of the guys like Mr. Matt Ryan, and I’m gonna mention him ‘cause we always kinda goof on each other, he makes fun of me…well not makes fun of me but we joke around because my thumbnails are very detailed.  He tells me, “Man, just take your thumbnails and make those the pages… make your next comic out of that”.  Now I just try to keep my thumbnails real simple so I can work faster, because like I said I’m pretty much self-taught so a lotta times I do things the hard way. So I’ll do the thumbnails out and kinda work from that. I go to the big page and layout the page and go from there. 

The only thing I don’t use blue pencils on are the thumbnails themselves, but when it comes to the page and all that and the layouts I start out with a blue pencil and then I go from there.

What are some of your inspirations that guide you in your work?

The thing that really inspires me is that I grew up on comic books; I’m sure as many other aspiring artists have. The people who influence me are like Joe [Madureira] (Uncanny X-Men) and Dale Keown (Pitt, Hulk: The End). I like their styles a lot. But probably my all-time favorite, the artist who I call my god, my personal god, is Jim Lee (X-Men, All-Star Batman).

Do you have any favorite comic books or characters currently being put out?

Right now one of my favorites is [Marvel’s] Civil War; I’ve been following that and anything Spider-Man. Basically I enjoyed “The Other,” which was a Spider-Man story.  Basically the art that I see and think that’ll benefit me by inspiring me in any sort of way is what I collect. One of my other favorites is 7 Brothers from Virgin Comics. 7 Brothers is by John Woo. Woo actually created it. Anything I see that I think is pretty hot as far as the industry goes right now, I pick it up and if I like the story I stick with it. 

Talk about your latest project, Hell’s Blood.

Well, Hell’s Blood has been since day one. It was my poor excuse at trying to write. It was just one character I made up and I called him Meltdown, and I needed a story for this character that everybody seemed to love, that everybody said, “Oh my God, that looks crazy.”  I tried to build a story around it and I looked for writers left and right before CAG. It was very difficult to find anyone who was even into writing comic books around. I had all these people who said, “Oh, I could write a story” and basically they all sucked. I decided I would attempt it myself. With my first two tries I was the same: I sucked. 

Then I remembered my mother back in the day, my mother had like a couple of statues of the saints, and that was all tied into Santeria, which a lotta people consider witchcraft and some people consider a religion. I just happened to be at Barnes & Noble one day with Ven, as a matter of fact, and we were trying to meet up with these guys that supposedly wanted to do an anthology type thing. So I was up there and I just happened to be walking by one of the book racks and saw a book that said, The Legends of Santeria, and I remembered that my mother used to be into that slightly. 

So I picked it up, and once I picked it the minute I opened the page it talked about a deity that was trying to impress a female deity with all that he could do.  Basically what he did was he created these opals with fire inside of them, so right from there it seemed to click. I said, “Well, I’ll try and rewrite the story.” I rewrote the story, and in my opinion it still was a little weak, but I started getting a lotta people to read it and a lotta people ended up liking the story. So I went with it.

After a couple attempts to put the story together either one thing or the other would get in the way like life, work, all that stuff. Ven, at the time, was trying to help me out but we basically moved away from it.  We ended up as members in the Guild, and eventually I pitched the story to Keith Murphey and he said, “Well, let’s do it then.”  That’s basically the way it went, but the story’s been around developing, at least in my head, for a good ten, twelve years.

How did you get involved with the Comicbook Artists Guild (CAG) and Guild Works Productions (GWP)?

Ven was cruising the Internet one day and he came across it, and he forwarded their webpage to me and asked me what I thought… if we should try joining. I was skeptical because I was thinking of all the groups that I had found and that he had found that went nowhere. Groups that we found out that none of them even had anything published. It was just people coming together and talking about things they wanted to do but never doing anything about it. So I said the hell with it, what’s one more [laughs]? He contacted Keith and we joined. At the time, there weren’t that many members. We came in pretty much in the early stages of it.  We were the first members from Massachusetts, so we ended up going out to Connecticut for a meeting and that’s how I ended up in the Guild.

And now you’re one of the Guild coordinators.

Yeah. I think that’s only because there were just two of us in Massachusetts so it was either me or Ven. [laughs]

What have you done with CAG?

I’ve done a couple pin-ups, I had a little story I attempted in [the CAG Anthology #1] that I called “Battle Arms.”  When my oldest son was really young and I was just kinda drawing to draw, right about the time Street Fighters were out, y’know, the games, he wanted me to do characters for a game like that.  I came up with these characters that transformed… the only thing that transformed were their arms into animal limbs. So I called them “Battle Arms.”  I had this little story I did because I didn’t wanna stick Hell’s Blood in an anthology; I just went with “Battle Arms” because that was my only other creation I had thought out.

I did that, and I also did a pin-up for Psychosis #1: it was the baby that kinda tore up the surgeon. That was mine. I also did pencil back-up for Keith Murphey and Scott Shaeffer on “Wastrel Island.” That’s about all I’ve done as far as GWP goes. 

Outside of your CAG work, have you had any other jobs in comics?

No, I’m still fresh and new. 

What advice would you have to give to people looking to break into the field?

Wow.  I guess it would be my own advice because I’m not in there yet [laughs]. I mean, I’ve done stuff with CAG and GWP, but the first thing I would say is its hard work.  A lot of people tell me you do B.S. work because all you’re doing is drawing. But it is hard work and you basically have to discipline yourself to do this, which is what I’m still learning to do myself. If I had to give anybody advice… no matter what happens; keep going. No matter what anyone says, don’t let anyone shoot you down, just keep working, keep going.

What would be your dream project if you had the opportunity to work on it?

I would have to say anything with some of the great writers. I mean, you got a lotta writers out there that are basically burning up everything they touch. But, like I said, Spider-Man’s always been my number 1 character out there, so if it has something to do with Spider-Man, despite the fact people say he’s a pain in the ass to draw, that would be my dream job right there.

If you were a superhero, your catch phrase would be:

That’s a tough question [laughs]. I would say stay in school, kids, because I don’t have anything else. That’d be about it.

Expanding Capitalism, one promo at a time:

Right now, I have Hell’s Blood, obviously.  You can find us on Hellsblood.net and on Myspace and the Yahoo Groups.  The only other project that I’m working on now is a little story for Psychosis #2 for Ken Gale.  Ken Gale wrote it and I’m gonna be penciling it with Keith Murphey helping me out.  And I’ll be at the expanded New York Comic Con during late February 2007.