Category: Comic Books

Denro took this photo on September 4, 2004. That was when I first met comic book creator Colleen Doran. Among the items I bought was the beautifully rendered pencil page of art she was holding.

I asked Colleen if she could ink it for me. She agreed and we would work out the delivery arrangements later. It turned out to be very much later!

Both of us sort of lost track of it. The commission request was forgotten by 2012, when I bought the cover painting for the third collected volume of Colleen’s trademark series, ‘A Distant Soil’.

Last year, at my first National Cartoonists Society event, Colleen told me she’d found the page and would make good on the commission. Which she did four weeks ago, at this year’s NCS event! We shared a laugh over the 22-year delay.

Colleen felt the paper wasn’t a good surface for inking, so she scanned the image and inked the copy. Now I have both the pencil original and the finished copy.

One of my favorite true stories is about the humor magazine HELP! Published by James Warren and edited by MAD Magazine’s creator Harvey Kurtzman, Harvey’s first editorial assistant was Gloria Steinem.

Gloria moved on and Terry Gilliam stepped in. Terry met John Cleese and put him in an issue of HELP! Before Terry left to follow Cleese to England, he arranged for Robert Crumb to be his replacement. Crumb arrived, only to be told the magazine was folding.

Gloria, Terry, and Robert each went on to bigger and greater things. Gloria is now gone.