Well, I’ve seen some old friends sort-of die/or just turn into whatever must have been inside them/whatever we had once in common/we grew up, we left home/we don’t think that way no more/turn around/turn the volume down…
-Ben Folds, “Video”
I’ve written in various pieces before that when I was growing up, I wanted to be Spider-Man. Strictly speaking, that’s true. My first friend, Manza, who lived in the house behind my father’s house, used to trade his Spider-Man Big Wheel for my Hulk one, and as much as my father must have wanted me to, I never wanted to be Banner or the Hulk.
As I grew up, I felt more and more like Peter Parker. Up until the point that I abandoned science as an interest. I still dabble, but I wasn’t going to be a chemist or a physicist.
What I REALLY wanted to be, when I grew up, was Todd McFarlane.
Todd is famous now for his toy company, his having spent a small fortune on some baseballs, for his character Spawn who was a minor pop culture sensation. But when I was younger, starting in 1988, McFarlane drew Spider-Man. His third issue, in fact, was the creation of Venom, perhaps the most popular Spider-Man related character invented since the 1960s.
It’s funny, because I forget sometimes, but my printing– the way I scratch out the letters when I write, because cursive and ink pens and lefties doesn’t go so well– looks like McFarlane’s signatures did. My mom bought me an autographed poster of the cover of McFarlane’s Spider-Man #1 for my birthday (which is not his first Spidey but is probably his second coolest piece of art, the coolest being the cover of Hulk 340 which I also have a poster of in my office).
When I was in high school, I developed into a fairly good pencil artist. I wasn’t as good with ink– again, the lefty thing. I developed into a pretty good painter. I wanted to go to art school. I spent so much time hanging out with my art teacher and my artist/nerd friend Rod, painting things and drawing stuff and studying design principles and all that. This pre-dated most of my digital media work, but it informed so much of it.
One day, my art teacher pulled me aside. I was applying to colleges. He told me, point blank, I should devote myself to something more important than trying to draw comic books. I know it was meant to be good advice, and later I’d hear the same advice about wanting to write and study writing instead of pursing law school (joke’s on you, other mentors! I got into a top 10 Law School, moved there to start, and realized I didn’t want to be doing that with my life). I get that it was meant to be a powerful and positive mentoring moment, like when my other favorite teacher from high school told me I had to speak up or no one would ever notice me. That was good advice, even if I did get myself into quite a bit of trouble being the only liberal kid in a super-conservative high school as a direct result of his advice. But the art advice felt… different. It didn’t seem like the right recommendation, but I took it. For a reason other than it seeming like a good idea.
I looked up to that man. I think I still do, though I haven’t seen him in over 22 years. He’s still the guy who introduced me to the Cure, to the Talking Heads, to They Might Be Giants. He’s the guy who watched me in fascination as I tried to etch like Albrect Durer. He’s still the guy who taught me to paint, who taught me to draw. I still have a Polaroid of he and I, both much, much younger, kneeling in front of the Batman chalk art drawing I did on the Richmond Promenade (the promenade is gone now). He’s still the guy who let me hide in his classroom when I got myself into trouble, who let me basically take five art classes when I was out of anything else to take as a senior. He’s still the guy who first let me teach something, the one person at my high school who ever asked how I was and stopped to listen when I didn’t just say I was fine. He’s still the guy who listened to me talk about how bad it hurt when we got evicted from our home, when my mother and my step-dad separated. He was a good guy. I love him.
I never told him how much his telling me not to go to art school broke my heart.
I think he was probably right. Now I have a career as an academic, and I probably wasn’t going to ever get a job drawing Spider-Man. But the truth is I’ve never really tried that hard to draw since that day.
I make art all the time, digitally. But I haven’t done a full-on sketch in 23 years. I secured 4 degrees and never took a class in drawing.
And that’s why I never tell my students to abandon a dream, even if I can see that they’re going to have a better life or better career doing something else. That’s not to say I don’t encourage the development of the other skills, but I never tell someone not to follow their dream. Maybe to the detriment of my being a mentor? I don’t know. I just can’t bear the idea of stopping someone from doing something they love.
Funny thing is sometimes I still dream about being a comic book artist. Like literally. Sometimes when I’m asleep I see that life. I never once as an adult dreamed of being Spider-Man.
Weird, right?