The first one I remember creating probably would've been when I was 5 or 6. I recall clearly enough that it was during the summer months -- my family didn't have air-conditioning and cooling off generally meant staying in the basement. For whatever reason, my father had brought home a large pile of scrap paper that my brother and I were allowed to use. It was mostly extra worksheets and forms from his office that had only been used on one side. Occasionally, we'd have to remove a staple holding several sheets together and, even more occasionally, we'd have to set aside the rare sheet of colored paper for some special use beyond mere drawing.
I believe I was particularly inspired that summer by several books by Ed Emberley that we had gotten. In particular, his Make A World gave me all the tools I needed to draw cars and planes and animals and trees and all manner of people... including a superhero! I recally pretty vividly Emberley's superhero:
(That's my recreation, based wholly on memory. I haven't seen an actual Emberley book in person for probably 20 years.)
Clearly, it was his version of Superman and I took to the idea immediately. This was the perfect way to draw my own Superman comic! And so I duly went off to create my very own Superman comic on the backs of office forms, using my Crayola palette of eight markers. For whatever reason, I essentially lifted the story from Superman #274. Possibly the strong and unusual visuals? It must've been something like that because Superman spent most of the issue just standing around, literally motionless. I believe that I also edited the story by essentially ignoring any page that didn't have Superman on it, and I probably only copied the words and dialogue that I actually understood.Can you imagine how terrible my comic must have been? There's almost no way it could have been even remotely cohesive as a story, even if my crude drawings could convey the actions adequately.
But it was mine, and it made sense to me. It must have completely baffled my parents, but I'm sure they were supportive, as they generally were with those types of things. In fact, I know they saved it for at least a few years as "my child's art" -- but I don't know if it's survived to this day.
I don't recall making many other comics for whatever reason. My "big" one came a year or three later as part of a fourth grade story project -- now that one I did pretty well, and I believe it still sits on my parents' bookshelf. But how I made that is another story for another post...
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