The Last Two Bill & Ted Pages I Have Left, Signed by Inkers David Mazzucchelli, Marie Severin (nfs, btw) (Patreon)

Offhand I think I penciled something close to 300 pages for the Marvel Bill and Ted comic. Over 250. I could figure it out but what good would that do any of us? Exactly. None. 

Anyway.

I got a lot of that art back, besides my share of the interior pages, Marie Severin -- who inked the bulk of the series -- was kind enough to give me her remaining pages. She didn't have any use for them and told me to keep them or sell them. I wanted to keep everything back then, but soon found out that there's a reason so many comics creators sell their original pages. Especially if you don't see a ton of royalties. I will say, the full year I was working on Bill and Ted I qualified for health insurance through Marvel for earning enough. I don't know if they do that any longer, I didn't know they did it then, I just got a letter congratulating me and listing things and I doubt I even read it all the way through. Insurance? Who needs health insurance? Not me. I didn't need health insurance that year, I was young, and if not strapping, I was healthy enough to stay up 24 hours in a row drawing comics and then sleep fourteen hours and go get drunk and see Fishbone and slam into friends and strangers and dive off the stage and not get hurt too badly. Insurance! Pah!

I could use Marvel insurance now, though. 'Nuff said!

I sold a lot of the pages from the Bogus Journey adaptation pretty quickly (early on I was selling them for as low as $5-$15, because of my terrific sense of self-worth), and the covers went pretty fast (I remember selling a cover for $75 and feeling guilty, like I swindled someone). Then I held onto a lot of the pages because the 90's were treating me well between animation work and sales on the Milk & Cheese comics. Then the 90s went away, and so did the solid income, and my output putt-putted because I was having my first meltdown, and the pages started dribbling away as I made more available to customers,  Over the years when I needed some money I'd list a bunch more (along with all the Fight-Man pages and many other originals), until I was down to the stack of "keepers" from the run. Then the keepers were whittled down. I sold a few remaining pieces over the last few years. I only have these two pages left, I wanted to have at least one Marie Severin-inked page, and I'd be a goofus to get rid of something inked by David Mazzucchelli, let alone something I penciled inked by David Mazzucchelli. Many draw better than me, few can say they were inked by David. Yes, I am nerd-bragging. And heartily, at that. Ha!

I didn't know David when he inked this Bill and ted page from the second issue. I was friends with Stephen DeStefano who inked the first few issues, and David and he were friends. David was hanging out at Stephen's apartment while Stephen was inking the issue and David asked to ink a page. I guess he was bored or antsy or who the hell knows. But he inked the page and it wasn't credited until the SLG collections because I wanted to officially nerd-brag. David lettered the name of his "Rubber Blanket" project into a panel but marvel blacked it out in production, because...oh, who the fuck knows. They let me go nuts on band references and other shit. Whatever. Comics. 

I eventually met David and his wife/collaborator artist Richmond Lewis because they had a cat they were looking to adopt and Robbie Busch knew I wanted a cat so Robbie introduced me to Richmond at a NY hotel con and then I met David, which was so weird, because I was a huge fan and I'm standing there at a convention talking about adopting a cat and not Batman Year One. I didn't have a car at the time, so Robbie drove me out to Hoboken some time later and we hung out for a while with David and Richmond and then we took the cat home and I took him up to my apartment and I adopted him and I named him Mr Jinx. Even though he wasn't orange. 

I miss Mr. Jinx. 

Some quick backstory: Robbie was a friend I'd met in the early days (along with Greg Benton) before he was coloring Bill and Ted and I met Stephen through him and that's also how I met Kyle Baker and Mark Badger. And that's where Instant Piano came from. And David and Richmond and Bob Fingerman and Greg and some other folks and friends were in our circle. Good gosh. 

Those were the only days where I felt like I was actually part of the comics community, really. In many ways, the only time I felt part of things, I'm not kidding. Also when I was in Deadline. Those were the two times I really had any sense of community and belonging.. The only time I really socialized with a group of artists and talked about things and did any kind of collaborating within a group. I miss that, have missed that for quite some time.

I'm still sad that I sold off all the original B&T pages inked by Stephen, there's more than a few pages throughout the run I would have liked to keep and were hard to part with. I just saw one posted on twitter the other day (from issue #1). But that's life. I think I was unaware that I was selling off what was my last DeStefano page, which sucks. 

And I wish I had kept a cover. Or maybe not, seeing those in person again might change my mind, since I was a poor, scratchy, unfocused inker then. I inked all of the covers but the first issue  to save time in production and to make some extra money. Stephen inked the first cover, which is why it's the best-looking cover. Because it was inked by Stephen. I should have kept that one. 

Oh, before I forget, both pages were lettered by Kurt Hathaway. Kurt was the letterer on Pirate Corp$! for the Eternity run and the first issue or two of the SLG series. I was paying Kurt out of pocket on the SLG material and couldn't afford it after a while, even after he graciously gave me a break on his rate. I was glad to return the favor by asking Marvel to hire him on for Bill and Ted (and Fight-Man, iirc). 

Anyway, I'm on a bit of a nostalgia kick here, as I go through the art files looking for something that someone is interested in buying (I can't find it!). And nostalgia often kicks your own ass, unfortunately. I'm missing a lot of things tonight and feeling pretty down.

Still, these are good memories. Fun memories. 

I should relax and try to cherish them.