Mood:
a-okTopic: Comic Book Artists
Including David Okum! Earlier this week I blogged about the new novel by William Patrick Maynard titled "The Terror Of Fu Manchu". This was the first novel in twenty-two years for that series! In the blog itself, I mentioned that Marvel Comics had the comic book rights to the Fu Manchu series and the TV show 'Kung Fu'. Instead of using either of those directly for a comic book series, Marvel instead created a new main character, and used a few characters from the novel series. The title of the comic book series was 'Master Of Kung Fu', (MOKF). When I posted the blog to my Facebook Wall, I had several comments there about the comic book series from ten of my Facebook Friends! There is still that much interest in this series that was cancelled so many years ago! First was mentioned a few of the artists that had worked on the series: Paul Gulacy, Mike Zeck, and Gene Day. Then the writing of Doug Moench, who FB Friend Steven Thompson said... "The artists on MOKF were great but credit where credit's due, it was writer Doug Moench who took a potentially flash-in-the-pan, fad-based, politically incorrect even at the time concept and made it the best Bond-style comic ever published and arguably the best Marvel comic of its day. Because of that, Master of Kung-Fu would outlast the martial arts movie craze itself by nearly a decade!" Yet it was the comment by David Okum that got me to thinking about a possible blog post when he typed in the following: "This is the comic that got me reading comics back in the 70s. I always wanted to draw this comic as a kid, but I was afraid to draw the characters because I didn't want to infringe on any copyrights. I absolutely loved Gene Day's work on this comic. This is why I draw comics today". Not one to pass up such a great sounding story, I followed up with David and asked him if he wouldn't mind expanding on that comment of his. Here is David Okum's story on how artist Howard Eugene (Gene) Day, (1951 - 1982) was an inspiration for him: "Growing up in the 70s my favourite comics were the DC Tarzan and Gold Key Star Trek reprints. It was also a time of immense popularity of the Martial Arts and comics companies scrambled to adapt to a changing market. I remember reading Master of Kung Fu comics in oversized magazine format and then finding the comics in the spinner rack at the local corner store. I was immediately sucked into the stories of the son of Fu Manchu and the secret societies and spy action. It was great fun. Looking at Paul Gulacy’s art was like watching a James Bond movie and Mike Zeck introduced a real superhero feel to the comic. I noticed the art was getting progressively darker, more intense and realized that someone named Gene Day was inking the comic. Eventually he took over the art chores and I was stunned. Gene was able to capture likenesses of the characters that really defined them as people in my imagination. Everything was dramatic and mysterious, like a still from film noir movie with driving rain, blowing leaves and expressionistic angles. Gene Day was the real reason that I wanted to draw comics. I wanted to draw Master Of Kung Fu. I practiced in my sketchbook, but couldn’t quite get it right. I was also afraid of infringing copyrights so the work never saw the light of day. I tried to apply his aesthetics to the science fiction comics I drew. I had seen some of Gene’s illustrations in roleplaying books such as Call of Cthulhu, Runequest and Space Opera. I found his graphic novel Future Day and really looked forward to his work on the Marvel Star Wars comic. Harry Kremer told me of his death one day when I went in to buy some comics. He was far too young and had much more work in him. Harry gave me a stack of comics that day, maybe because he felt sorry for me or maybe because he was trying to get rid of them, but I felt a real sense of community in comics that I hadn’t felt before. From that point I knew my career would include art and definitely involve comics in some way. Reading about Gene later in life I was really impressed with his incredible work ethic, drawing every day. This quote was the inspiration for my drawing a day for 2009. Gene Day continues to be a strong influence on my work and freelance career."
Since David was kind enough to tell us who his inspiration was by writing the above story, I wanted to tell you a little bit about David here today: Artwork Biography
Educational Textbook - Writing and Illustration – 2005 Comic story on Cryptozoology in Canada – 2008 Educational Historical Graphic Novels –2006 Role Playing Game Writing and Illustration – 1999-2003 Mini Meks collectable papercraft miniature game - 2002 Contraption (Original Steampunk Comic) 1993-1999 Freelance writing and art 1984- present
Paper Miniatures for Penemue Press and a follow up for Mini Meks in late 2009. For even more on David Okum, you can check out his web site at: http://www.okumarts.com/cv.html For those of you that are new to our Blog today, we have an ongoing online 'Comic Con and Pop Culture Convention' here at "Make It So Marketing Inc.", what with our daily blog posts, and new listings of items for sale in our online Store! Thanks again to all of YOU reading our current and archived blog posts!
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