Titanium

It must have been the summer of 1971 or 72. I was 15 or 16 and in love. It was the 4th of July and I went out with a church group to watch the fireworks at the local fairgrounds. One of the reasons I was so interested in the church group was Lynn; she was cute as a button and, at that time, the girl of my dreams. I would have gone almost anywhere and done almost anything to be with her, which is a great indication of how little power I had in the relationship. Anyway, I remember that the group parked in a mall parking lot near the fairgrounds to watch the excitement in the sky. To get a better vantage point from which to watch the fireworks we climbed on top of the van we had come in. As we did so the roof buckled a bit, making a krumpling noise. I thought, "Gee, how come in all those Marvel comics the heroes jump all over the cars and the roof never gets a dent?"

Ah, the tough questions of youth! Anyway, I went home sexually frustrated (the story of my many relationships with Lynn) and over the next few days drew three pages of a comic book featuring a character I was calling Titanium. It was my first superhero; a Six Million Dollar Man rip-off. Race car driver Dan Peterson, heir to the Petré Cosmetic fortune is critically injured in a accident during a race at Ontario Speedway. Not really an accident, his pit crew boss was skimming money off the top, out after Dan's girl, yada, yada, yada! Good help is so damn hard to find!

I finished the pencils for all three pages but only the first page was inked to completion (and some of the lettering has not survived over the years). My major influences at the time were Berni Wrightson, Rich Buckler, Al Williamson, Jim Steranko, and Neal Adams.


I was trying very much to give the strip a Southern California feel, since most comic books were published out of New York and either took place there or in pseudo-New York cities like Gotham or Metropolis. I was planning on going back later and putting palm trees on almost every page. Enough of this east coast monopoly on superheroes. The missing dialog in panels 7-8 read something like "Hey ya weirdo! Look watcha did to my cab!" "Sheesh! Don't tell me LA is stuck with one of those costumed freaks too!" Why was I putting a New York cab driver in LA? I haven't a clue.


As you can see, I was trying all kinds of techniques on these pages. Lots of zip-a-tone mixed in with my own pen scratching work. I think this influence was coming from Al Williamson and his great newspaper work on Secret Agent Corrigan. The guy could make black and white seem like all you needed.


My third and final page is almost all pencil. I know it's hard to read, but the art (such that it is) is still there. We start off with the cop from page 2 in awe of the speed of Titanium. He then wonders aloud who Titanium is. The balloon is used as a separator between the cop in 1976 and Ontario Speedway in 1974. An interviewer is asking Dan Peterson what he hopes to achieve in life. Dan says something like longevity, prosperity and to end his racing jinx with today's race. You then see the reporter on a TV screen, introducing Dan Peterson as the heir to the Petré Cosmetics fortune and back to Ray in the pits. The bottom half of the page is Dan getting ready to start the race. It introduces his pit boss and you learn from his thoughts that he has done something bad to the car. Dan gets in the car and the race begins.

What you see here is that I had real problems with layout, particularly on the bottom of the page. I start on the left with two panels that must be read together (and I use the continued balloon to span them) but I also need you to skip the big panel and move over to the small panel on the right. So I drop in this hokey arrow which seems to be telling you to skip the second panel on the left since it is pointing you from the first panel on the left to the panel on the right. What a mess! Oh well, I was a big racing fan at the time and wanted to draw the cars and stuff.

This is as far as it ever got. There never were any further adventures of Titanium, or even any more pages to this one. Hey, I was only 15 or 16. My attention had a tendency to wander at that time. Lynn had this cute, very tight butt and these perky little breasts that fit so nicely in my hands and her scent... oh God she smelled like a dream...