Some of my fondest memories of my father were of seeing him working in his art studio in our home. My father was an architect by trade but his passion laid in comic book art and cartooning. I remember seeing him come home from work and creating his own comic books based on Asian mythology. I remember how masterfully he told the story of the dragon that married an angel and had fifty boys and fifty girls that would eventually become mankind. The seamlessness of the storytelling was only matched by my father’s vibrant ink and water colored art on the 11x17 Bristol board.
Those sessions watching my father create entire worlds gave me many gifts. They gave me lifelong memories of my father that I hold onto dearly to this day even though I have lived more years with him gone than with him alive since he passed away when I was only six-years-old. It was through my father’s love of sequential art and graphic storytelling that I would fall in love with Marvel Comics in the 1980s. Most importantly, these sessions watching my father work also showed me that I too had the ability to create entire worlds with my own hands.
