Reply With QuoteThat was cool, thanks for sharing.
It's not well publicized about Ithaca, but it's actually crazy underground for awesome, retired hippy comics guys. I see Roger Stern about twice a year (he's pretty chill), Vertigo editor Will Dennis used to hang out at the local town comics club (they meet in the library twice a month and weirdly I've never gone the whole four years I've been here), Joe Edkin (friend and collaborator of John Ostrander) is always around at our cons. I find this out the more I try to make roots and break in - under your nose are just tons of mild-mannered guys who worked in the hay-day of some of comics' true golden ages, willing to offer advice and even just stories of general awesome-ness.
Anyway, I just met a guy named Warren Greenwood. He used to work in animation and writing during the 80s cartoon glut, as well as underground comics. He worked on just about every show I ever watched and loved as a kid - The Tick, Duck Tales, G.I. Joe, etc. During the glut, Warren did really well for himself in LA. As he put it: "We all got cars, houses, coke habits, y'know, middle class stuff".
Warren still looks like he's on coke , though I'm sure he quit nearly a decade ago. He's jittery and energetic and tremendously strange and cool. At first, I mistook him for just another creepy guy working quarter bins at our small con but he's really so much more. He's a treasure-trove of stories that would blow your mind. Warren lost it all when the animation bubble popped in the 90s and, as we all know, animation employment prospects have only been getting worse ever since. In addition to working on a million incredible shows (he knew everyone from Ben Edlund to Steven Spielberg), he used to do an insane strip called "Space Dog" for the underground "Cocaine Comix". The first strip of "Space Dog", is about the intrepid canine explorer hauling a shipment of coke across the galaxy with his naked girlfriend. It had nudity and a satiric/approving attitude toward drug use and it's everything underground comics were back then: dangerous and fun and just plain weird.
Anyway, I've only just scratched the surface of stories Warren has to tell but there's something that's had me thinking about him all today. You see, meeting Warren should probably depress me slightly - his life is a true rise and fall story and when he lost his house in Northern LA, he moved back here to Ithaca. Since then he's worked a few odd storyboarding jobs and stuff - he wrote for "Alien Racers" and did storyboarding for "TMNT" but I can't imagine he's happy about the way things went down. He's tremendously encouraging about the next generation of writers. He says Hollywood is tremendously age-ist, so we'll do fine for ourselves. The problem is - even with the more or less tragic end to his story (and if you could see Warren now, you'd know what I mean), meeting the guy really excited me. He lived his dreams and did everything he wanted to (for a while anyway). Tragic end or not, I just can't wait for that part of my life to begin.
Originally Posted by Ed Brubaker
That was cool, thanks for sharing.
damn, now i want to live in Ithica
This isn't a man. It's a broken kite
Read Shiver in the Dark
2.3 Million South Korean won translates to this much in US Dollars right now
Fuck the Patriots
I am theof the K-Men
I've never been to Ithica.
Click on AM/UK Banner for Rock n' Comix:
Yeah, he's probably the coolest man I have ever met in my life. What's sad, though, is that despite his extensive resume he did not have a table at this convention, but was selling comics out of long boxes for 5 for $1.
I did get some good ones though.
No, you really, really don't. Trust me on this.damn, now i want to live in Ithica
You met Sam Jackson, sweet
I was in Ithaca for a day. I saw a transvestite on a bicycle.
....and Eddie Murphy was chasing behind him.
Sounds about right.
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