Comic Related: Bill Gladman's Life in Four Colors

Life In Four Colors: Spookarama Special
Local Artist Haunts Halloween Town U.S.A.

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale. A tale of a fateful trip….to a place where it’s Halloween 365 days a year!! Fairborn Ohio. Home of Bookery Fantasy, Absolute Music, Giovanni’s Restaurant, and of course Foy’s Costume Shops.

Basically…everything that’s cool under the sun all in one place.

I usually make my journey to the Bookery Fantasy to pick up my weekly bag of goodies on a Thursday night…but I made the trip a day early this week so I could catch local comic book artist Joel Robinson who was making a special appearance at the store.

I arrived at the scene of the crime just as Mr. Robinson was putting the finishing touches on a sign or two and a display of amazing artwork which he had for sale. I introduced myself…asked Joel if it would be okay to grab a few photos, and possibly conduct a short interview.

He was very receptive to the idea. So with no further adieu and with limited commercial interruptions….I give you Joel Robinson.

G-Man: “Here we are right outside of the Bookery, one of the very best comic stores in Ohio with illustrator Joel Robinson. He’s making a personal appearance at the store today promoting a book that he has done some artwork for called Vincent Price Presents #1 from Bluewater Comics. How are you doing Joel?”

Joel Robinson: “I’m doing wonderful. Thank you very much.”

GM: “Joel, you’re actually a Fairborn native? Is that correct?”

JR: “I was actually born in Dayton. Lived out in the rural part of Preble County. Then I moved to Columbus for a while and went to art school up there. Then I ended up moving back here and now I reside in Fairborn Ohio.”

GM: “That’s awesome. This is a nice town.”

JR: “It’s Halloween Town.”

GM: “Yeah. Halloween Town. Halloween all year round. And that’s a reference to Mike Foy’s Costume Shops up here. They have stuff all year long going on.”

JR: “Yeah. They sometimes call this town Foysburg.”

GM: “I can see why. I actually met you up here at the Bookery store a few years ago when you were first doing the covers for a very good series called Pistolfist.”

“I love that book and I’ve actually done a couple of stories about that it on the site already. How did you meet J. S. Earls and get involved with that project?”

JR: “Actually I answered…well to go back a little bit farther then Pistolfist and meeting J. S. Earls. I answered an ad over on Digital Webbing about doing a comic book for charity. For protect.org and it helped to get aid against child abuse. He corralled some people together and we had three short six page stories in this one book each done by a different artist and a different writer….and they all featured J.S. Earl’s character the Sorrow.”

“Then after that he starting doing some stuff with Pistolfist, started coming up with the ideas, kicking around the costume ideas, and I kind of got involved with that kind of from the ground floor. That developed into us getting signed by Alias and that’s when the covers began to start coming out. We had everything done and ready to go when we got that deal. It was going to be a four book mini-series. And Alias decided to go in a little of a different direction with their publishing…and they ended up folding before our second issue came out. So then we waited for a little bit and tried to get a new deal. We ended up saying….after about six to nine months…we decided to go ahead and self publish it. So….then we self published it and we got to the third book out of the four and we got signed by Bluewater.”

GM: “The book that you did for charity…The Sorrow…I’ve seen the cover of that book as a promo piece in the back of one of the Pistolfist books. Is that your art on the cover?”

JR: “No that’s not me. I did do a cover piece for it that was supposed to be used but over some time we had some publishing problems and it just kind of fell to the wayside.”

GM: “But the book did come out.”

JR: “Yeah…yeah…it did eventually come out. Yes.”

GM: “Does it have interior work by you?”

JR: “Yes it actually has six pages of sequential story work by me.”

Joel in front of some of his incredible “Halloween” flavored artwork….

…and taking the time to sign copies of Pistolfist #2 and #3 as well as
Vincent Price Presents #1. Cool as the other side of the pillow.

GM: “Is that the only sequential artwork that you’ve done? Because I’ve more familiar with the art you do for covers. Have you done more interior art?”

JR: “Ah…yes. Actually with the Vincent Price book I’m doing some interior work in that.”

GM: “So you’re doing interior work with that book as well as covers?”

JR: “Yes. Every month I’m be doing a cover. I’ll be doing the scenes with Vincent Price introducing the stories and exiting the story. Then I’m also be having a movie pin up piece at the end of each book.”

GM: “Fantastic. And speaking of Fantastic….you’re standing in front of a fantastic display of some very impressive art work. So some of these prints may actually end up as pin up in the Vincent Price book?”

JR: “That’s right. The “Mask of the Red Death” piece is in the back of issue # 1.”

GM: “I’m going to take a couple of pictures of this stuff if it’s okay with Joel so the people who read this piece can actually see some of this work. Linda Blair, Michael Myers, Vincent Price….good stuff.”

JR: “Thanks, Bill. Thank you very much.”

Another shot of Joel’s “terrifying” artwork.

GM: “I had the opportunity to speak to Pistolfist writer J. S. Earls via e-mail a few months back about the evolution of the character Pistolfist and he had made mention a few future projects featuring the character. Are you involved with any of those future projects?”

JR: “Not at this point. Mainly because I’m so busy with the Vincent Price stuff. Hopefully I’ll be doing a cover in one of those series just for old time’s stake.”

GM: “That would be awesome. Do you see J. S. Earls often?”

JR: “I talk to him. We talk a lot….but you know he’s down in Florida. He’s a real good guy. He’s really helped me out. I kind of owe him a thank you of sorts. I definitely owe him for leading me to Bluewater and getting the Vincent Price gig…the first ongoing monthly book from Bluewater…so that’s really cool. He definitely pulled my name up with they were talking about the Vincent Price book…so J.S. Earls was the guy that brought that up and Darren Davis…he’s the president of the company and editor of the Vincent Price book…listened. He wanted me to do an audition piece and that’s what you see on the cover.”

GM: “J.S. is an incredible writer….”

JR: “Oh yeah.”

GM:”….and Andres Guinaldo…the guy that does the interior art for the book is nothing to sneeze at either. It’s very rare we get solid writing, great cover art, and killer interior work all in the same package nowadays.”

JR: “Thanks for the kind words.”

GM: “Thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to talk to me….I hope you have a very productive evening tonight.”

Joel and Lanny….the guy who haunts the Bookery almost every Thursday night.

Want more info about Joel or want to check out more of his art? We got you covered.

You know what to do.
www.artpusher.net

More about the Bookery:

www.bookeryfantasy.com

For more about Pistolfist including the e-mail conversation I had with writer J. S. Earls:

http://www.comicrelated.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2613

As I was heading to Fairborn Wednesday evening I had originally planned to hang around and take some pictures of the Halloween parade….but I was just too anxious to get home and start working on this column. But I did take the time to get some pictures as the locals were preparing for a day much like Christmas to all of them. Literally blocks of down town Fairborn Ohio is covered in webs, strobe lights, fog machines….well they say a picture is worth a thousand words…so enjoy the pictures along with less than a thousand words worth of commentary in what I like to consider the “special features disc” in this two disc Halloween Town Spookarama Special!

This poor guy looks bored to death. He was of course the exception to the rule.

The opening act to the live band scheduled to play during Fairborn’s Halloween Bash.

It appears that someone was just dying to get to the party tonight.

This guy was trying to get a bird’s eye view of the band as they were setting up for sound check.

This guy lost his head over how well this house was decorated for the Halloween season.

In the distance you can see the foreboding silhouette of the old Armstrong Feed Mill at the edge of town. I don’t really recall any stories about the place being haunted…but sometimes an old ghost hunter just gets a “gut feeling”.

These guys at least found a decent place to park.

Mike Foy, the official mayor of Foysburg. Mike was nice enough to stop what he was doing on one of the busiest nights in the year for him to pose for this picture and to give me a quick Halloween History lesson. Foy’s has been a part of Fairborn and its annual Halloween celebration for eighty years! Mike owns several different stores in the downtown Fairborn area…the first of which was opened by his grandparents way back in 1929.

Know when to say when…..or friends don’t let friends drink too much toxic green slime.

Some people never learn.

Nuff Said!

Three of the stores owned by Mike Foy ….with all the trappings.

The guys from the band Eighth Leading Thought. The band plays music from Green Day and some heavier stuff as well. They also have a few original tunes they mix into the set. I want to thank guitarist Kyle (second from the left) and vocalist/bass player, Garth…who was just singing Wednesday due to a banged up arm (second from the right) for taking the time to speak to me. I don’t get a chance to support local music talent as much as I used to…it really felt good talking to these guys. You can take the old man out of rock-n-roll, but you can’t take rock-n-roll out of this old man.

The guys don’t have a demo out yet but will soon be downloading some of their original music to their myspace page.

That winds up our tour of Halloween Town U.S.A. Hope you enjoyed the trip.

More info about Foy’s Costume Shops:

http://www.comicrelated.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2613

http://www.foyshalloweenstore.com/

More info about Eighth Leading Thought:

www.myspace.com/beautifullybroken013

Until next time………………Boo!!!

Bill Gladman - Bill is a writer and illustrator and currently working on several different projects including the first issue of an ongoing comic book series (Prodigy), an illustrated fantasy novel (The Book of Noheim), and the first of four illustrated science fiction/fantasy novels (Jack the Rabbit, Living Legend of the Purple Plains) as well as a light-hearted on going mini-comic (Three Wise Men). Bill also pens a column for Comic Related and will be doing a mix of regional convention coverage.