BLAST FROM THE PAST #1
Invaders #41 from MARVEL COMICS released JUNE 19, 1979
WRITTEN BY Don Glut, penciled by Alan Kupperberg and inked by Chic Stone.
I was taking cartooning in the High School of Art & Design and doing pretty well with my grades and I got along with my teacher Mr. Ferguson who taught comic book storytelling- one of many art classes I took at the time. Mr. Ferguson was connected with a lot of the artists working in comics at the time and was always talking about them in class, using their work as examples on how to do things and so on. I would say it was about march when he asked me to stay after class and told me about a guy he knew looking for help background inking some actual comics and would I be interested in meeting the guy and showing him my work. I jumped at the chance and he handed me a piece of paper with the name CHIC STONE on it and an address in Queens, New York- about an hour train ride from my school. I was familiar with Chic because I saw his name a lot in comics inking Jack Kirby, most notably on one of my favorite books, The Fantastic Four. I later learned Chic himself graduated from the very school I was going to, so that was extra cool on so many levels.
I took the subway into Queens after school and tracked down the address to a house that looked almost exactly like the one Archie Bunker lived in on All in the Family… and there in the window was the man himself, working at his drawing board. I have to admit, I was a nervous wreck walking up those stairs. Nervous and at the same time excited that I was finally going to get a chance to show the world what I could do with my special gift. Chick greeted me, flipped through my portfolio and looked at me for a few seconds and then handed me a page or tight breakdowns of an Invaders page and told me to “Ink the backgrounds” and bring it back the next day. He told me of I was any good, he would give me more. He then mentioned that if it was good I would also get $10 bucks a page. He then walked me to the door and I was off, back to the subway on my way home to Brooklyn. As I rode the train I stared at the intimidating page before me. The bottom panels had a rough pencil sketch of a train yard that was making me nervous since it was just a bunch of boxes with wheel indications. I took the train to the last stop in Coney Island, way past my own stop, and was able to see the train yards there, live in person and I got to sketching them out. I worked on that for about 2 hours- making sure all the perspective points met, adding textures to the ground and wood and steel and so on… and then headed home. Once I got home and my mom fed me, I got to inking and worked till about 3 am on the page and continued the next day, then went to school, all day nervous if I did a good enough job, showing it to a couple of friends for advice, and after 3 pm, took the train out to Queens once again and delivered the job to the man himself.
Well, Chic looked at the page, made a grunt noise, pointed out the train yard looked too detailed, and told me it isn’t what he is looking for and I wasn’t the right guy for the job. He handed me $5 bucks for my trouble and wished me luck in my future. I walked out of his front door, head hung low and made my way home. To say I was disappointed was an understatement. I thought it looked good. Years later I looked at it with fresh eyes and I still feel it was okay for the breakdowns given to me. I can see where chic would think I overworked it a bit and was maybe too detailed for the simplicity of the figures. Well, that all said it was still an exciting time for me and I got to work on a real comic page…even if I did get fired. Oh, and when Chic looked at the page he said he would go back in and fix what I did, and guess what? He didn’t touch a thing. What you see with this piece is the finished page. I did learn early on that failure and disappointment are a big part of learning and it wasn’t long till I got another try.
In the end, Chic left behind a legacy of exceptional pencil and ink work in comics and I was super happy to have met him, even if I let him down. Sadly, Chic passed in 2000 but if you have any interest in seeing some of his work, check out the many issues of Fantastic Four, Batman, Thunder agents and even his later work on the A-TEAM comic for marvel.
Jimmy
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