Jack Titan, Version 4, 2020
In truth, I’m cheating this one a little. The first seven pages below were drawn in 2018–19, right after I finished the Webtoon work. The pages following those were drawn in 2020, after I’d finished The Dark Lunas, and after I’d finished all of my work on my design portfolio and had applied to a million jobs. If you’re jumping in here and want to know more about that, check out The Dark Lunas post.
As for these first seven pages, I genuinely dislike them. I really wanted to capture the energy from the Webtoon work, but without a dizzying deadline looming, I overworked these pages to death. But here they are, warts and all.
If you’ve been following these pages in chronological order—and if so, praise you—this is the point where I picked comics-making back up in January of 2020, after a few promising job leads and interviews. I was feeling a bit more confident, working on some freelance design work while my family was making the most out of a tough situation. Losing my job hadn’t killed us, and life goes on. But as always, the clock was ticking.
***
My wife encouraged me to take time to start drawing again, and her gentle encouragement was all I needed.
I had a good idea for a Jack Titan pitch, and I dove in. Why didn’t I finish The Dark Lunas instead and submit it, you ask? Truly, I don’t know. Probably self doubt, that ever-present killer. But there was also something comforting about Jack. He’s close to my heart in ways I don’t have the skill to articulate.
So I sketched out a story that would serve as the first Jack Titan issue.
Jack and Winslow are tracking a bounty—a young woman with ties to an intergalactic cult called Black Moon. The young woman, Kimmy, would join the Titan crew, of course. Linus would be there—as well as a host of other colorful characters I was cooking up. I was feeling great about this story, and it was coming together nicely.
Here it is.
This was as far as I got.
On March 11th, 2020, my wife suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. She spent the first 10 days in a coma after several brain surgeries, and we wouldn’t see each other again until late May of that year because of the lockdowns. All I will say here is that it was a time of great difficulty, of great blessing, and of great resilience from my wife, my sons, and our families.
Comics didn’t matter. Work didn’t matter. Things got real simple real quick.
With a lonely, heavy heart, I packed up my home, put all of my possessions into storage, and my youngest son and I moved in with my in-laws, where we were getting the house ready for my wife’s return home. My family was starting over and I wasn’t sure where things would lead, but we’d be together again soon, and that was all I cared about. We ended up living with my wife’s parents for over a year, and I will forever be grateful to them.
***
I love these pages and hate them all at the same time because they’re markers. I can look at most drawings I’ve made over the years and be transported immediately back to where I drew them, what I was thinking, what I was feeling. They’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a diary, thank goodness.
I reluctantly included a snippet of my family’s story here because it’s part of who I am as a creator, and as a man. And because my wife encouraged me to. If you know my wife and I, you know our friendship, our care for each other, and our commitment to the Lord.
And that she’s very, very difficult to argue with.