Camden's Comics Revisited

The inked cover of The Bolt #1

Remember when I wrote The Bolt #1?

College was a fun time. I transferred to Rutgers-Camden in 2008. I liked it there. I was a commuter so I’d ride the 413 or 409 to the Walter Rand Transportation Center and then walk the couple blocks to campus. I was also working part time at a job in manufacturing. Glass-to-metal seal connectors. Hermetics. Here’s the thing: I don’t much like working. That’s not to say I’m not a good worker. I have a strong work ethic, I take pride in my work but if it came down to sitting at campus or going to work, I’m gonna sit my butt in the cafeteria eating chicken tenders.

Which is what I did.

In college, you get to set your own schedule. So I’d pick an early 8 am class and a 2pm class with nothing schedule in the middle. I was using public transportation. I’m not gonna leave campus, go to work for an hour, then turn around and go back to school. No, man. I’ll just stay at school. (I was fortunate enough to have an employer flexible enough to allow this. I only got paid the hours I worked.)

It’s good work if you can get it.

The cafeteria at Rutgers-Camden is arranged into quadrants. That is to say, I arranged the cafeteria into quadrants. What’s the point of life if you can’t add a little whimsy to your day? So you had the Fishbowl, the Cave, the Asylum, and General Population. Please see my crude map below:

Now I could sit anywhere. Different zones gave different vibes. During Winter/Fall, I bought a portable DVD player and I’d watch movies in the Cave. I love movies and I remember I got really into Westerns. I was in a Clint Eastwood rabbit hole. (Red Dead Redemption had just come out.)

The other thing I loved to do during this time, was draw.

I’m an artist and I’m also a big proponent of drawing on the margins of your notes. Because lectures… well, it’s a lot of information, a lot of notes and again, why not add something fun into your day. So I’d doodle in the margins. I love doing that. I love being bored and drawing. School is great for this and I miss it.

As I say, I’ve always been drawing comics, ever since the 5th grade but they were always for me. I’d keep em in a drawer. If no one sees em, no one can judge em. But you know how it is. If someone knows you can draw, they instantly remember they have something that needs drawing. How many of you have had to draw a tattoo and/or a portrait for a friend/relative/coworker. Raise your hand. Yeah, that’s right. I see you.

At this time, Zuda Comics was a thing. They were DC’s answer to webcomics and they let people submit their work to em. Personally, I never read a Zuda comic in my life. But I had geek friends and so my friend “Rachel” had an idea to create a comic and submit it to Zuda. She’d write, I’d draw. Her comic was about a retired supervillain. Ok, great. I’d get to draw a supervillain with his death ray and his evil robots, right? No. The focus was on an aging man with a horrible past. No costumes, no lasers, no superhero fights. I sketched the first issue but nothing ever came from it. The passion was not there.

When my other friend “Jack” heard I was drawing a comic, he too decided to hire me to write his comic book. Fantastic! His book was about a billionaire building a giant robot. Fantastic! I did concept sketches to get that robot just right, looking like a jet fighter behemoth. Then it came time to write the script. A few weeks went by, when Jack comes back to me. The idea has changed. It’s actually more of an epic poem now, like Gilgamesh. No splash pages, no panels, no superhero fights.

To his credit, Jack did finish his poem. The concept sketches are still in my desk.

So there I was, having almost drawn 2 comics and raring to go. I decided to draw a comic on 9x12 paper during my long lunch breaks at Rutgers-Camden, where I would create THE BOLT.

A few things go into the creation of the Bolt.

1. I’ve always liked lightning. When I was in grade school, I went a week where I kept shocking people with static electricity. It could’ve been the carpets and some socks but my first thought was my latent superpowers were finally manifesting.

2. I’ve cosplayed as Captain America and as the Flash. Both times, I had zero pockets and using the bathroom was impossible. I promised myself I’d make the Bolt address both these issues… with cargo pants.

3. I had to volunteer at Coopers Poynt middle school in Camden. I have no issue talking to kids because we usually talk about superheroes. So I imagined how cool it would be to have a superhero in Camden. That would really make me cool with kids.

4. College is a fun time and you get invited to parties. I would never go to those parties because I’m an introvert. Spending time with people exhausts me. So I would say I’d go and never show up. I imagined the people at the party wondering where I was. Maybe I was actually fighting crime. (I wasn’t, I was home watching Godzilla but they didn’t know that.)

The first drawing of the Bolt I have is from my Social Deviance class in 2010. He’s in the margin holding a lightning bolt.

Issue 1 is short. It’s only 8 pages. Can you guess why? That’s right. Zuda submissions were 8 pages in length. I was planning on submitting to Zuda after my friend’s book fell apart.

The main goal of issue 1 was really just to establish the Bolt, what he does and what his powers are. Trashman appears at the end but at this time, he wasn’t the Trashman. I’ve always liked the idea of “mysterious villain in chair” a la Bolfeld from James Bond. So initially, Trashman was the big bad. He even smokes a cigar. Classic boss move.

The cover to Bolt #1 is obviously an homage to Batman: The Animated Series. I’ve said before that BTAS is the best Batman cartoon. The intro doesn’t even tell you it’s Batman. You just watch him apprehend some thugs and leave ‘em strung up for the cops. Then the camera pans up a building and we see the silhouette of the Dark Knight, suddenly illuminated for a moment by a lightning bolt. Just incredible. I grew up watching BTAS and it was great as a kid and even greater as an adult.

I completed the pencils for The Bolt #1 sometime in 2010. Then I put it in my desk drawer, satisfied that I had completed it, but with no intention to submit it anywhere. So it sat.

I graduated in May 2011 and was released into the “real world”. I started working full-time. I had a few interviews related to my degree but ultimately I was disappointed and adrift. Guys, I was big sad.

Sometime in 2013, my friend Hong told me he was starting a website for webcomics. A real entrepreneur, this guy. He asked if I’d be interested in submitting a comic. He’d had others lined up as well. I told him I might have something to post, but I’d need to ink and color it first, but sure I could help him out. Because that’s how I framed it. I was just doing a solid for a friend.

It took sometime to ink and color the book, learning curves being what they are, but it was finally ready in April 2013. On the day The Bolt #1 was released, I made sure to be somewhere else. I’d always heard the story about George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. In 1977, during the opening weekend of Star Wars, Lucas was so sure it would bomb, that both he and Spielberg flew to Hawaii to avoid the negative reviews. Of course it didn’t bomb. And how great was it to just have Star Wars change the world AND you’re in Hawaii. It’s also on this trip that the two begin creating Indiana Jones.

I was so nervous about my first comic coming out, I flew to Tampa to visit my then-girlfriend, now-wife Brenda. I also turned off my phone.

The Bolt #1 debuted April 10, 2013. Eventually when I turned my phone back on, I had a number of encouraging texts from people. The book hadn’t bombed and I felt motivated to make more.

Another side effect of completing my first comic, was that my ego inflated to the size of the Moon, but thankfully Brenda was there to bring me back down to Earth, as she’s done many times since then.

The Bolt #1 was intended to be just a webcomic, but my brother Chris surprised me with printed issues in May. I do prefer print and holding the issue in my hands started a fire within me. I was no longer interested in making webcomics. I needed to hold every issue I’d make.

I took those #1 issues with me to WizardWorld Philly in 2013. I sold them for $1 each. If you have one, you’ll know as there were only 100 made, with a badge “exclusively for WW Philly 2013”.

Looking back and recounting it all, there were a lot of factors and a lot of people that helped me find my way to become the comic book creator I am today. Thanks, everybody. I'm much happier doing what I was meant to do.

-Ryan