Ed Savage is probably one of our more prolific creators that IF has had recently and I thank him for joining us (though he was a previous member back in the day).

Born: 8/13/48 Bakersfield, CA (a great place to be away from – as far as you can get).Drew from comics - like all of us, I’m sure. Stayed three years in a two-year school (studying fine art) and got drafted(1969). Beat the draft by joining the air force for 4 years. Still ended up in Viet Nam in August(70-71), 6 months after I got married at the end of February. Took several of my comics with me – mostly Neal Adams. Met a crazy guy by the name of Mike Grell. Took over the weekly cartoon he was drawing when he left for home. Spent the last two years of my hitch in Illinois. During a tdy in 1969 spent 4 weeks in Texas – met Larry Herndon and friends. Had purchased several of his Star Studded Comics..

Back in California (1973) – went back to school to train as a technical illustrator. Tried out unsuccessfully for the 70s DC apprentice program. Continued to make a living in graphics, production work, technical illustration – slipping in cartoons when I could.

Comic fandom wise, did edsavage’s 10 cent comics, two issues – issue 1 with a color cover ,did an issue of comic fandom’s Showcase. Did an experimental issue of a fanzine in Comic Buyers Guide in the Alan Light era. Bought enough consecutive pages so people could pull out the pages, fold them, and trim them and have a comic. Asked for fans to send in a small amount of money – and left off my address. Go figure. A couple of people actually hunted me down and sent a buck. Isn’t  comic fandom great. Did some work for various fanzine efforts. Contributed to the “God Creates a Superhero” thing for some obscure fan group,not very prolific really.

In 1985 I was introduced to Larry Shapiro who was looking for someone to work with him on a comic. Spent 6 months creating/designing, helping to plot part of, drawing, doing the production work for issue 1 of ShadowStar – part of that black-and-white, self-published wave caused by TMNT. Did issue 2 in 1986 – penciled by me, partial plotting, inked by Aikin and Garvy. Production work on issue 3. Paid for it all, included pencil pages of the whole of issue 4, which never was inked nor saw the light of day. Destroyed my copies of the art and sent the originals back to Ron Lim, who probably destroyed them based on his feelings about the quality of the work.

During this time I worked with Dan Vado while he was establishing Slave Labor Graphics. Mostly production, some design on the books, flyers for his conventions. Through his conventions I met several really nice people in the business. Bought some original art, most of which is long gone. My favorite person was Dick Giordano. A truly nice guy. Sat with him at the front of the room to act as his seeing ear dog (helping him field questions he didn’t quite hear). We had Mike  at the cons 2 or 3 times.

Also during this time I attended a few cons in the central valley of California – Tulare, Fresno. Almost got to sit on a panel with Stan Lee. Got knocked off it when a writer from ST/The Next Generation showed up unexpectedly. Met Phil Cable at these cons and started doing poster work for him along with some title work and loooowwww budget effects for his films. Still see him once in a while.

Most of my career was spent in slide/presentation production. Moved into computers in 1987. What finally got me interested was when a computer(Mac)/PostScript printer could do a good line – not some dot matrix piece of crap. We couldn’t sell slides or presentations done with dot matrix and needed to compete price-wise with the then new technology of  Genegraphics – slides made on a computer. So we streamlined our art production by using bladc-and-white computer art but still completed our slides photographically (animation camera). Because of this and a year spent with my own business doing slide work – I got various contract and freelance jobs doing presentations and illustrations for proposals.

In 1990 I started teaching part time and have taught part and full time since. Since I was teaching so much and had little extra time, my freelance/contract work slowly dribbled down to almost nothing. Avoided having to do too much web work. Too damn much work for very little return for my tastes. Besides, most of what I see heralded as great or cool design strikes me as way too busy. I come from a generation with more than a 15 second attention span. Don’t want to see 3 or 4 banners running under the newscaster, thank you.

Right now, since I am less about having a career or making a living and more about living and having some fun the next 30 years, I’m trying to get back into drawing. At Brooks College, my current teaching gig, I just finished 3 years of teaching life drawing. That was great fun. I am supposed to be working on illustrations for an e-book for someone – think I may have disenfranchised myself with this person though.

If you would like to see more of my work, including the pencils for almost all of the pages to ShadowStar #2, go to my site – edsavage.com. (currently under modification).

Life drawing

Movie Posters Vampriess (1997?) The actress was wearing a leather bikini (from a motorcycle shot). Had to lift her from the background and extend her belly where the leather was. Her eyes in the batwings. Fire was lifted from a piece of video. Comic Book Kid (mid90s?),

Hand drawn characters (b&w)