Back to the Drawing Board

Originally published June 19, 1992, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #970

(Historical Note: I had related the following story to Dave Sim, creator of Cerebus. Dave told me that I should run it in my column. For reasons that utterly elude me, I told him I would do so only if he wrote in and asked. To my surprise, he did.)

Ooooookay, Dave. But only because you asked so nicely, you fan boy, you.

My convention artwork story, for the benefit of Dave Sim. Not only was it the first time I really, truly understood the selling power of Wolverine, but it was also the only time I ever attended a convention and wound up doing illustrations…as best as my questionable memory can recall (it was quite a few years ago).

Long before I was doing anything connected with the creative side of comics, I was (as mentioned in other columns) Marvel Comics’ Assistant Manager (and later Manager) of Direct Sales. I attended numerous conventions in this capacity, although my presence rarely created any sort of stir. At one convention, for example, a kid came up to me at the Marvel display table and asked if I drew for Marvel. I said no. Write? No. Ink? Color? Letter? Edit? No.

“So what do you do?” he asked.

“I sell them. I’m in direct sales.”

He pondered that a moment, and then handed me a program book and said, “Oh, well…I guess I’ll get your autograph anyway.”

Which was the first time I ever signed an autograph in any capacity for Marvel.

But that’s not the story Dave was asking about. This incident took place at a smallish convention in Florida. I was attending as the direct sales rep; Marvel was to have a table set up there with stuff to display. And there was to be one, and only one, Marvel creator in attendance. But it was to be one of the big guns: John Byrne.

I arrived at the convention and was greeted by the news that John, due to illness (either himself or someone in his family, I don’t recall which) had been forced to cancel at the last minute.

Now there are certainly creators who agree to appearances and then routinely cancel out, but Byrne does not fall into that category. No one questioned that it was utterly legitimate.

This did not particularly mollify the fans, however.

The first hours of the convention were extremely dicey as fan after fan kept coming up to me, with increasing belligerence, demanding to know where John was, and why was I unable or unwilling to produce him… as if I had him tucked away in a box, or perhaps hidden in my sock.

Fans were not taking it well. They had come to the convention to meet and greet John and, even more, to get him to do a drawing. The most often mentioned were Wolverine and Storm. And when John wasn’t there to do the drawings, the fans did the logical thing.

They started asking me to sketches. They figured, “Well, he’s from Marvel; people from Marvel draw; therefore, he can draw.” Q.E.D.

Problem is… I can’t draw.

I have extremely good visual sense. I can write with an eye towards what will look good. I can imagine, when I write full script, what something will look like.

But I can’t draw. Stick figures, and perhaps little sketches of the “Peanuts” characters, is pretty much my limit.

So now I was getting to disappoint people twice; first, when I was unable to produce John Byrne, and second, when I was unable to produce drawings for them.

It could have been a lot worse, had not a local artist shown up.

(I tried to get in touch with him so that I could get his permission to use his name in this column, but couldn’t locate a current phone number for him. So we’ll just call him Dan.)

Dan showed up, introduced himself to me, and I eagerly invited him to hang out at the Marvel table with me. Now we had someone who could draw sketches and keep the fans happy. It took a lot of the pressure off me. And Dan, of course, had a chance to shine, because if John had been there then Dan would have been eclipsed (as would I, but I would have dearly welcomed some time in the shadows).

Then things got a little weird.

In between sketches, Dan decided to do a very detailed pencil rendering. What he produced was a gorgeous full pencil drawing, on 10 x 15 bristol board, of Alpha Flight… logical enough, since it seemed like something the Byrne fans would snap up. It was really nice work. And Dan tagged it at some relatively nominal price. I don’t remember what precisely. For the sake of argument, let’s say it was $10.

No one was buying it.

Dan seemed some annoyed. I was, frankly, dumbfounded. It was such a good piece, and the price was low. The only thing I could figure was that, since Alpha Flight was a John Byrne group, fans were only interested in the drawing if John had done it.

In the meantime, there was this one guy who still hadn’t quite grasped the fact that I wasn’t an artist. And he really wanted me to do a drawing of Storm. He’d keep swinging by and saying, “Draw Storm. Draw Storm.”

Finally, utterly sick of him, I said, “Okay, fine. Here!”

And I grabbed a piece of paper and inside of three seconds I produced the following:

And the guy stared at it for a moment, and then slid it back to me and said, “Do Nightcrawler.”

Well, that was easy. I drew a little picture of an earthworm and labelled it “Nightcrawler.”

This created a mild sensation as a small group of fans, entranced by the silliness of it all, kept asking me to draw a variety of characters that I quickly dubbed the “Ex-Men.” The only one that gave me pause was a request for Professor X until I came up with this:

“How much?” people were asking me. “I dunno…a buck,” I said, and people actually started reaching for their wallets before I told them I was kidding, and here, take the stupid things.

Both Dan and I were incredulous, that people were snapping up these dumb sketches of mine (admittedly I was giving them away) and his Alpha Flight drawing remained.

So as I was sitting there knocking out a drawing of Kitty Pryde as Sprite (yeah, you can guess what I drew) one kid was asking me, “Why is it that Wolverine’s claws look different when different artists draw him?”

Now the kid didn’t realize that he had really answered his own question. Different artists have different styles. Some drew them with curves, while Frank Miller, for example, drew these funky razor blades. But I figured that any kid who had to ask that question would be disappointed with a straight answer.

He would doubtlessly prefer something that was a “real,” continuity-based answer.

“Well,” I said, “the fact is that Wolverine’s claws are detachable.”

“They are?” said the kid wonderingly.

“Oh yes,” I deadpanned. “He can put in different things to suit his mood. He can attach curved claws, or flat claws. He could attach a corkscrew. He could even substitute a knife, spoon and fork if he wanted to.”

And Dan, upon hearing this bit of malarkey, took the Alpha Flight sketch which wasn’t selling, flipped it over, and using a chisel-tip magic marker, produced a Feiffer-esque rendering of Wolverine in about thirty seconds flat. It was a parody of Issue #1, I believe, of the Wolverine limited series–the one with Wolverine facing the reader in a close shot, one hand raised, and his claws extended. Except instead of the claws, Dan drew a knife, spoon and fork sticking out of the back of Wolverine’s hand. And he slapped the finished drawing down on the table.

Within a minute, a fan was studying it. He picked it up and said, “How much?”

“Twenty bucks,” said Dan kiddingly.

Without a word the fan took out his wallet and pulled out two tens.

Dan and I looked at each other, stunned, as the fan picked up his newly purchased artwork and gazed at it adoringly.

“You know,” I said, “there’s a really nice drawing of Alpha Flight on the back.”

The fan flipped the Bristol board over, glanced momentarily at the Alpha Flight drawing, and then turned it back over so that he could relish his gen-u-ine Wolverine portrait. He walked away with it proudly, and I just know that this guy took it and put it up on his bedroom wall with this chicken-scratching Wolverine shot displayed, and no one ever saw Dan’s Alpha Flight portrait again.

But at least Dan made some money off the deal.

And that’s the convention story that Dave Sim likes so much.

Now if you’re all really good, someday I’ll tell you the great Dave Sim anecdote that even Dave doesn’t know.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, intends to do a fairly thorough write-up on “Alien 3” next week. The discussion of the film’s subtext will require talking about the ending, so I give a full week’s spoiler warning– if you intend to see the film but haven’t before next week’s CBG, you’ll probably want to pass up the next BID until you’ve had a chance to see “Alien 3.”)

Footnote from the BID book collection:

The downside of the above was related to me by retailer John Christensen of “Paper Heroes.” At the San Diego Comic-Con, I was signing books, and a kid came up to me with his sketchbook and insisted I draw him a picture. He didn’t know I wasn’t an artist and, despite my telling him, “I really can’t draw very well; I’m not an artist,” he couldn’t be dissuaded from his course. So I drew him one of the cockamamie “Storm” portraits. What I didn’t know was that the kid was devastated by this action, my earlier disclaimers apparently not having penetrated.

John came upon this kid a short time later. The boy was with his mother and grandmother, staring forlornly at his apparently now ruined sketchbook that some jerk had drawn a cloud in. John took one look, comprehended immediately what had happened, and said to the kid, “You got a sketch by Peter David? Wow!” The kid looked up at John in confusion, not comprehending why an adult was expressing enthusiasm for such a clearly amateurish drawing. “He’s one of the top writers in the industry!” said John (the kid having no real clue to my identity; he’d just seen a lot of people lined up and figured I was popular.) “He never does sketches! You’ve got something really rare there!” The kid was so brightened that he went away beaming.

Me, I’m never doing another sketch for anyone under 12.