Career Tracks: The Final Nightmare

So there I was with the rest of the new Titans, facing off against their old enemy Deathstroke, when it hit me--I was no superhero. Instead I had merely brought home some trade paperbacks from work and was indulging in an old favorite pastime. And while I was enjoying Geoff Johns' stories and Mike McKone's art, I realized I had an epic of my own to finish.

Comics have definitely been the single greatest influence toward my decision to be a graphic artist. I set out with the intent of drawing Spider-man, and was just today telling one of my friends how the conductor on the train used to call me “Spider-man” back in high school, because I would always stop at the comic store before heading home and was always reading on the train. One year before my own college internship began, a friend of mine who was a year ahead was interning at Marvel. It was a dream come true when he recruited myself and two other comrades for a weekend freelance gig at 387 Park Avenue South. Marvel Zombie that I was, I was awestruck to be walking through those halls, each aisle adorned by street signs with names like “Yancy Street” taken from the comics they published. The office I work in now also has street names for our rows of cubicles, but names like “Pixel Pike” and “Layout Lane” just aren't the same.

The actual work we were doing there was basic Photoshop grunt work, silhouetting images of action figures for an upcoming toy catalog. For those not versed in photoshop, silhouetting involves drawing an outline called a clipping path around an image to cut it out of its background. Grunt work or no, to this day I'm glad to have my name listed among the credits of a Marvel publication.

A year later, I found myself in my own internship and after I graduated, that small design book publisher gave me a job. It didn't pay well, as I soon would realize, but in the four years I was there I gained a wealth of experience, both good and bad. As budget cuts made the already small operation even smaller, my duties extended beyond corrections, scanning and invitation designing. I was soon rating the quality of photographs and determining how large they could be used in a layout. I maintained a seven machine Macintosh network. I designed the company's bi-annual book catalogs. I hand-assembled 200+ page books from printer's proofs, so my supervisors had mock-ups to bring to trade shows. My X-acto and I were very glad the year they decided to print smaller samples of the books called blads. I made some new friends, even dated a copy-editor I'd met there for a good two years before a career opportunity took her to another state and eventually out of my life.

I began looking for work elsewhere, worried I would end up in my hometown forever in a low-paying job that wasn't exactly what I'd set out to do. It was a very good college friend, Rey, who pushed me to interview at a catalog company where he was employed designing Science Fiction catalogs. After meeting unsuccessfully with a headhunter I almost gave up, but nearly a year later he got me several interviews with people in the company, and before long my salary had doubled and my aspirations were renewed. I spent about three and a half years designing a catalog that featured a wide variety of books, from Steel to Grisham and many things in between. About a year and a half ago, my supervisor called me in and informed me that I was being reassigned to another club. My trepidation dissolved when she told me of an opening on the Science Fiction and Fantasy club.

I'm still not drawing Spider-man, but the tracks of one's career have as many surprise turns as a game of SIMS. As a plant-seller/ landscaper/musician/house-painter/gas station attendant/graphic artist/bartender/art director, I honestly can't fully predict where the road will take you and there are as many good surprises as bad ones. Right now I'm working with some famous illustrators, and with subject matter that appeals to me. Earlier this evening I was reading some of the very books we sell, so there certainly are fringe benefits. I'd like to thank anyone who's read this long entry in my five-part resumé, and apologize if I've rambled on overly long. Tomorrow look for something shorter and hopefully more(or less) meaningful. I think....

You can only plan so far ahead in life.