At the age of six or so, I became fascinated by "Buck Rogers" in the Sunday funnies (pre-dated Star Trek by thirty-five years); so fascinated that I couldn't wait for next Sunday's paper to see what was going to happen. I would take a pencil and a sheet of my father's typewriter paper and draw my own strip. I picked up the story where it left off and tried to anticipate the next episode. From this, it was a short step to making up my own stories. By age ten, instead of Buck Rogers, I was drawing my own characters, and I decided that when I grew up, I would be a comic strip artist like Milton Caniff, Alex Raymond, or Hal Foster.

As a kid, much of my time was spent at my desk in my bedroom or belly-flopped on the living room floor with the drawing board my Dad made for me (Dad was really supportive; he took me to an art supply store and bought me the stuff I figured I needed). On long sheets of drawing paper, with pencil, pen, and brush, I depicted space explorers having adventures on alien planets, costumed crime fighters foiling evil-doers, and a pilot (who bore an odd resemblance to a grown-up version of me) winning World War II practically single handed. I got pretty good. I could draw a B-25 Mitchell or a P-51 Mustang right down to the last rivet.

While drawing comic strips, I learned the hard way that I needed to have some idea of where the story was going. Otherwise, I could waste a lot of ink and paper by drawing my hero into a corner I couldn't get him out of. To preclude this, I began to write out the story ahead of time. I described the scene in each panel and wrote the dialogue for the speech balloons, much like writing a movie script. Soon I found myself writing the story many weeks in advance, and just not getting around to drawing the strips. Influenced by a lot of reading, and a creative writing class in high school, I turned my attention to just writing stories and let the drawing slide.

I sometimes wonder how I might have done had I stuck to drawing. I read somewhere that Bob Kane was only eighteen years old when his first "Batman" comic books appeared. My drawings at age fourteen were at least as good as Kane's first published stuff. Oh, well. . . .

I still whip out a sketch or two from time to time. Usually an irreverent cartoon of some kind.

Don Firth