In late 2014 I felt I had hit a wall with my comic book art. I had gone as far as I could with AC Comics Femforce series and it was time to move on. I had also worked on a number of projects that took years to be published, which was frustrating. I was inspired by people like Heather Antos, who I knew from Twitter. Heather wanted to be a professional comic book editor and she gathered a number of different artists ( myself included) and writers to create an anthology called Unlawful Good. Soon after UG was published, Heather was hired by Marvel Comics and worked on many titles including Star Wars. I wondered if I should work on something that was my own, but had no ideas. I was, after all an artist, not a writer. So I wasn't real sure what direction to go in.
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| Pencil art for Heather Antos' anthology Unlawful Good (2015) |
In an earlier post I mentioned learning about my ancestors from Sweden and visiting their graves Graceland Cemetery. When I had found where they were buried I discovered that they had no tombstones. After speaking to the staff in Graceland's administration office I was told that I could order markers for them but the only tombstone maker they use is a place called Gast Monuments.
Gast Monuments is Chicago's oldest monument company and has been run by the same family for six generations. Established in 1880, it has provided memorials for all the major cemeteries in the city, as well as supplying ornamental cut stone and statues to other places such as classic Chicago brownstones and churches throughout the area. I stopped by their office and we worked out details for my ancestor's gravestones. While there I had a long conversation with the youngest Gast family member and was given a tour of their workshop. She and I became Facebook friends.
Watching the Facebook feed of the Gast family member was instrumental to the development of Visitations. She posted a number of interesting cemetery memorial articles. One of which was titled 10 Unbelievably Creepy Tombstones and Memorials. Scrolling through this article I saw memorials of a man breaking out of a tomb, a face being held by a man lying down, a winged skeleton embracing a man, Inez Clarke in Graceland Cemetery, a tombstone of woman "killed by the Beast 666" and a rotting skull encased in glass.
These photos must have made an impression on me because a few weeks later I woke up after dreaming of someone running through a cemetery encountering a winged horse, a man holding another's head, and a man breaking out of a tomb. I realized immediately that this was the project I needed to work on. I did thumbnails and worked out what would be the first issue of Visitations. I decided that the story would be a multi-generational tale that folded in real history and events. It would span about 100 years. The characters would rotate in and out and would all be based on different cemetery memorial statues.
Thumbnails for Visitations 1
Once I had figured everything out I called up my friend Len Strazewski. Len had written for DC Comics and Malibu back in the 1990's and we had collaborated on a number of different projects, including a great Stormy Tempest story for AC Comics. When we got together I took him through the story. He asked a number of difficult questions like "What's this guys backstory?" My answer was always the same " I don't know, it came to me in a dream" Len then proceeded, on the spot, to create back stories for all the characters.
I then started working. The first image that I came up with, and advertised a couple of months later at C2E2 2015, showcased the character of Nellie McCullough.
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