Born in 1953 in Jacksonville, FL., Tom attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, graduating with a bachelor's degree in Advertising Design. Theere he met his wife, Susan Paris, whom he married upon graduation (literally - it was her graduation day).
Freelancing in advertising and design for several years, Tom soon found his ambitions aimed towards the comics industry. 1984 saw appointments with editors from Marvel resulting in one assignment, and in 1986, Tom landed his first regular assignment on SKYWOLF back-ups in AIRBOY. Two years later Tom broke in at DC drawing STARMAN for DC, getting in on the ground floor, designing the characters and drawing the first 25 issues. Work followed on the revolutionary set of ROBIN mini-series, as well as three issues of BATMAN and six issues of DETECTIVE COMICS.
Moving to Marvel, Tom found a dream come true, drawing SPIDER-MAN for two years. While at Marvel he also worked on the PUNISHER, wrote and drew a WARLOCK mini-series, and was artist on the X-MEN spin-off book, MUTANT X.
In 1996 Tom bought an ARRIFLEX SB 16mm camera, which leadhim to direct two short films, THE NOT-SO-GREAT ESCAPE and BUBBAS IN THE MIST, both comedies. His most recent project, DOUGIE'S ROOM, is a psychological thriller detailing the last day in prison for Douglas Hemmings. DOUGIE'S ROOM was accepted into the SILVER SPROCKET INTERNATIONAL FILM FEST for 2002.
Well, I left you last week with my advice/encouragement to follow your dreams no matter what other people say. I thought that to back that up I would share a story with you from when I was trying to break into comics.
First … hop in your “way-back machines” as you, me, Sherman and Mr. Peabody take a trip back to 1985, when I was still a struggling artist trying to break into comics. At that time, I was living in Baltimore, Maryland and making monthly trips into New York City to visit the offices of Marvel, DC and Continuity Comics (Neal Adams’ company). I would take new sample pages in each time and visit as many editors as I could. I always had at least one appointment with an editor as an inroad into each of the offices and then I would go door to door, asking the others if they had time to look at my samples.
In the first place, yes, it’s tough to hear all the different opinions about “what’s wrong” with your art. I learned early on, though, to keep your mouth shut, nod in agreement and then, when I got home later, try to sort through all the opinions (many that were conflicting) and find the truth in there of what I needed to work on.
Not an easy job.
That job gets even tougher when you have an encounter like I had this one day on a visit to Marvel’s offices. No one likes being told that they’re not good enough. No one. Still, I knew I had talent and that I could break in if I figured out what to get better at in my art – what to concentrate on. That belief was severely tested when one day … I walked into Larry Hama’s office. I asked my polite little, “Do you have time to look at my sample pages?” speech and he, surprisingly, said yes.
Shortly after entering his office, bright-eyed and bushy tailed and eager to please, the good feelings quickly left me. Larry flipped through the xeroxes of my pencil pages that I had with, what I considered, was a cursory glance and then handed them back to me. His response: “You should quit drawing.”
WHAT!?!?!?
Maybe I wasn’t Jack Kirby, but I knew I didn’t suck. So what’s the deal? Despite that comment, I had to keep my mouth shut. Defensive behavior does not endear you to people that you want to hire you. I looked at him and I said calmly, “I happen to disagree. Can you tell me why you say that?”
Larry then proceeded to show me a bunch of mistakes that I had made. Nothing major or earth-shattering, mistake-wise, but they were mistakes and I listened. And I learned. Not tons, but I learned some important stuff.
The important statement here is that I listened. It wasn’t easy. There was a little voice in the back of my head that was making buzzing noises the entire time that Larry was talking to me. (And, no, they weren’t telling me to kill him. They’re not THAT kind of voice.) Now, this sounds like I’m able to handle this kind of stuff with ease and that couldn’t be further from the truth.
My first reaction on leaving Larry Hama’s office was – I’m not wasting my time with HIM any more. Mature, eh? It was the best I could do.
But I had listened.
Now, I’m not saying that encounter with Larry was some great epiphany that got me past some pitfalls and made my career fall into place with ease from that point on or something. As a matter of fact, it took about another 6 months before I finally got regular comics work and it was with Eclipse Comics on Skywolf. No, but I am saying that I survived that day and a few others almost as bad.
I have since learned that, apparently, one of Larry’s things was to be really harsh with people trying to break into comics and that, if they survived him, they could make it in the industry. I understand that approach somewhat and there may be some validity to it, but I totally disagree with it.
Again, BUT, I did make it into the comics industry. Because I persisted. Because I tried. Because I listened. Because I didn’t give up. It took about a year of monthly trips before I did get work, though. It was late 1987, yet another year gone by, before I worked for one of the big two – Marvel or DC. I got Starman on a trip into the city. I was totally surprised by that one. Maybe I’ll tell you some about that one next week.
No news on the film front right now. I’m sending a script around right now and I’m working on trying to finish my first draft of the screenplay for BAD RAT. That is such a cool story. As I work on adapting his story, I see subtleties that Bryan Talbot put in there that I never consciously realized were there before. Very cool, stuff. Very well thought out. Not bad for comics.
