Because of the work I do, I often get asked “Hey Larry, how come you didn’t go into the comics industry directly?” Whenever I am asked this I always tell the story I’m about to tell. It was in the mid 90’s. I was working at a small drugstore as a delivery person. I also ran the register when things got slow. This was in the Turtle Bay Area of Manhattan, a few blocks from the United Nations.
We had a bunch of famous clients that I would deliver to on a regular basis. Catherine Hepburn, Steven Sondhiem, Kurt Vonnegut (nice man), Sandy Becker (original host of Wonderama), etc. Our store was across the street from Lintas Communications and directly up the street was Grey Communications. Art directors would traps in all the time for snacks or to fill their prescriptions. As an Newley graduated artist course I was salivating and wanted work.
To gain notoriety with these people I began doing signs for the store featuring caricatures of the owners. They were all over the place and eventually these set directors began asking “who did the signs”. Eventually I would get my first professional storyboard job. Some gig for a mall somewhere in middle America. I was over the moon. I was finally a professional.
Anyway, one of our clients was a retired Carmine Infantino!!! He came into the store one day and of course I knew who he was. He asked who did the signs and of course I said I did. He asked to see my portfolio. He looked it over and then asked me what I wanted to do for a living. Back then I proudly said that I wanted to do comics for the big two. Marvel and DC.
He took one look at me and said “kid you have talent. Why don’t you go into something like advertising where you’ll actually make a living.” He was dumbfounded. This was the former publisher of DC comics that said this to me. He went on to explain the industry and how it worked and after I picked my face up, I thanked him… Sincerely. I really took what he said to heart. In fact a year later I went back to school and took night classes.
When I completed the night classes, I took my portfolio to the placement office and applied for a few jobs. As I as I was sitting there the placement person, a Mr. Peter Pop handed me a card that had a job description and some contact info on it. He said “I think you’ll really fit in here.” I contacted the company which was a small toy company called Happiness Express and to my surprise the art director hired me as the Head of Illustration!
I spent the next 4 years there and went on to work for a Manhattan design studio. The rest is history. I’d spent the next 25 years working in that industry. So, this was a roundabout way of explaining why I never went directly into comics! Now as the years went on my love for comics never disappeared. I continued to buy comics and even jot down ideas for comics.
So, years later the horrible Pandemic comes around. With nothing to do and being stuck in the house I began going through my old notebooks and found a particular idea. My family dog had just passed away after 17 years. In my grief one notion consistently kept going through my head. After my little friend died, what happened to him? Where was he? I often said to people “ I bet wherever he is, I bet he’s trying his damnedest to get back here to us.”
That was the idea that I had jotted down in one of my notebooks. I sat down and began writing a graphic novel script. After it was finished I began putting it online to make it easier for publishers to see it. Ive essentially created a password protected page with a complete presentation on it. You can see part of it here with the the screen capture above.
Currently, I’m working on the character designs and the sample pages for the pitch which I will post here and on my Patreon. I guess I’m biased but I think it’s pretty good. So follow along here and on Patreon as I get the pitch ready to shop to publishers. I hope someone picks it up but if they don’t I intend to publish it and put it out myself!
Well, I guess that’s it all for this time. Please join us for our next blogpost. I’ll see ya next time!
L
