Name that Toon
A local comic book creator makes heroes out of everyday people.
; "MODERN MARVEL \"<i>Spider-Man</i> with its beautiful, iconic cheesy over-the-top thing got me,\" says Stathis.")
MODERN MARVEL "Spider-Man with its beautiful, iconic cheesy over-the-top thing got me," says Stathis. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION) |
It's not surprising that comic book creator Pete Stathis draws wherever he goes — a movie, a party, a dinner. Along with maintaining several self-owned West Philly properties, the Powelton Village artist has a nationally distributed bimonthly to put out.
He has to draw on the run.
But when spied at the Ellen Powell Tiberino Museum's "Flicker" — a movie, party and dinner in one event — it's not the neo-realist, black-and-white quasi-autobiographical Evenfall he's sketching. Still, what he's drawn is no less fantastical.
The bearded 33-year-old in a Crow T-shirt, whose Evenfall is reminiscent of Neil Gaiman's forlorn Sandman, is creating a splashily colorful set of panels with superheroes in yellow capes and green masks. These characters have silly names, make math jokes and end sentences in exclamation points. All of them!
This comic isn't quietly about love and loss or fueled by death. This comic is loud, funny and splashy. This is YouComic. It's about you and whatever "you" want, whatever story you and yours want to tell, in whatever comic form you think of, as long as you pay $500.
"Toon yourself," says Stathis while finishing that same comic strip days later at his Kensington studio on the second floor of a bronze foundry. Stathis figures he's already made more money this way than he has in the four years he's put out Evenfall.
A hired-gun comic artist drawing real folk isn't rare. That's a "caricature" — sketches with exaggerated heads and abnormally small bodies sold on boardwalks. But what gives Stathis a rush is making comic-book-style portraits where words meet image; a narrative in five or six panels. "That's what connects what I do in Evenfall to YouComic — the story."
Stathis — whose face graced the cover of City Paper in 2003 — happened on the idea serendipitously two months ago when the search for a real estate lawyer led him to one in need of a cartoonist.
Howard Ford, Esquire ("like Harrison," says Stathis) went for barter rather than cash for services rendered, and asked for a family portrait. Stathis gathered photos from shots snapped during the Ford family's 2006 vacation in Ventnor as well as some personal information. Inspired by a book loaned to him by Raphael Tiberino (a painter whose done several of Evenfall's back covers) of Stan Lee's Spider-Man finest, Stathis went to work on the Ford YouComic. Images from the beach were exaggeratedly wedded into a story from Stathis' imagination.
"Spider-Man with its beautiful, iconic cheesy over-the-top thing got me," says Stathis. "The sound effects, the big lettering, the exclamation points."
Stathis never told the lawyer what the Ford family portrait would be: a story of a redheaded family with a seafarer son with a thought-bubble over his head ("the great sea pirate, Ben the Red, sets sail") and a daughter making sand castles while her pooch becomes a Lassie-like adventurer with a finale fraught with impending doom. "Howard thought I was doing a caricature," says Stathis.
But the overjoyed lawyer told two friends and they told two friends and so on and so on. And the next thing you know Stathis was sitting with teacher Katherine Rogers at Ten Stone Bar. And she wanted her family to be superheroes. So, inspired by Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four, Stathis dug into the family's background and unwound his wild story.
"The first thing you need to know if you have a superhero is who your supervillain is," says Stathis. Rogers offered up her brother, the math teacher. "He's super-smart — that's good," said Stathis, who conjured up a diabolical character named "Dr. Mindbender," who's out to destroy the imaginary city of "Megalopolis."
"This left the rest of the Rogers to become The Guardians," says Stathis. Katherine, known to her family as a rabble-rouser, was The Troublemaker with a giant T strung along the cleavage of her bustier. Sister Gwynne, who works for an eco-friendly corporation, became Gaia Girl with earth-mother-like powers. While dad — an iron foundry owner — became Foundry Man, mom — an editor and grammar freak — became Letterwoman who saves the day by distracting Dr. Mindbender at a crucial moment by correcting his punctuation.
Stathis, who's currently doing a Superman parody for one fam and Lichtenstein-style pop panels for University City Arts League classes, claims that along with $500 (for which you'll get four print copies of color art and a high-resolution computer disc of the image) all you need is yourself for your YouComic. "You just need to have a story and a style you want it told in" says Stathis. Pow!
Pete Stathis will be on Artists Alley at Wizard World ComicCon, June 15-17, $25 per day or $45 for three-day pass, Pennsylvania Convention Center Center, 12th and Arch streets., 800-991-7243, www.wizardworld.com, www.petestathis.com.
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