The Inciting Incident

OFTEN ASKED, "HOW LONG HAVE you been drawing?"

I've been an illustrator as far back as I can remember. As a young boy I used to keep myself occupied during the Sunday mass in Exeter, Ontario by sketching with a ball point pen. My mother would give me her miniature 3 ringed vinyl notebook and I would illustrate the gospel as it was spoken from the lectern. Candle wax and slow moving promenades of alter boys is what I remember -- dirty running shoes and the earnest balancing of the long gold crucifix. My school was, "Precious Blood Catholic School" who's team shirt featured a Shultz drawing of Snoopy aboard his doghouse/Red Baron. The possibilities of this white line drawing on a blood red shirt with the words' "Precious Blood" in capitals were all too deep and lost on me. I'm 5 years old sitting among the curl of smoke and Brylcreem creating tiny Old Testament comics and trying to figure out how God could be at once all-loving and damning.

I'm sure the idea of comics was implanted there before I ever knew of Archie Andrews or Richie Rich. I had my own experiences of sequential art with the morbid and redemptive stations of the cross which lined the walls of this small town Ontario Catholic Church. These were carved from wood, 11 x 17 (standard drawing size for most comics) and followed the relentless downward spiral of the lamb of God as he carries his cross to Golgotha and is subsequently put to death. The images were gruesome tableaus and somewhere here I began to understand the power of the space in between the panels. I stared at the gaping misery and couldn't understand what we were all doing here when we could be out eating popsicles and wax pan flutes oozing with translucent saccharin gel.

Drawing has always been with me. More to come.

Best, Nick

Mary Mother of Jesus circa 1977 and . . .

. . . from my strange black & white effort, "The Cheese Heads" issue #3 circa 1991 - Tragedy Strikes Press. (50% Dan Clowes, 10% Dave Sim. The rest was me).