Brant was a fan of comics as a kid and it stuck with him into adulthood. These days he's also an aspiring comic creator. This column discusses his personal journey from fandom to the annals of the creative society that is the world of comics. Brant's current comic series is The Wannabez and this is his journey. (If it's you're first time joining him, you can visit the link at the bottom of the article to start the journey from the beginning.)
THE CHALLENGE IS SET
In the wake of Tony's death I was forced to grow up really fast. He died in October of 1992, a month before his 33rd birthday, and I was a sophomore in high school. Not long after that my principal came to me and told me that I could graduate that year. That I had done enough work the previous year to enable me to graduate.
To understand this you must understand that at this school we worked in booklets, which meant we worked at our own pace. We would even score them ourselves using a key, then as we completed a booklet we would take a test on them and the teachers would go through them and make sure we scored them correctly. So now you can see how it would be possible for one to be so far ahead. The odd thing about this was that I had been expelled for half the year in my freshman year. The school was a private school, meaning we had to pay tuition. And when we couldn't afford the tuition both me and my cousin got kicked to the curb for literally half or more of the school year. So imagine my surprise when my principal tells me I can graduate now!
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| Age 15 | Age 16 |
Another thing of interest at this time was that I had a growing spurt. According to my doctor at the time I had grown nearly two feet in a year, shooting me up to my current height of 6 feet. Because of that growth spurt all my weight distributed. I had been a short fat kid, but now I was this above average height thin kid at 170 pounds with good hair at the time. So confidence grew in me immensely at this stage. Add to that the turmoil I was feeling over my stepfather's death and the responsibility nagging at me to be there as a supporter and the man of the house for my family, and the prospect of graduating two years early greatly appealed to me.
I had not been the best student in the world prior to that year, notorious for missing anywhere from 30-40 days a year, many times due to faked illness. I hated school and was not an over achiever by any stretch of the imagination. But this pronouncement that I could do something so grand changed me profoundly. Or rather it awoke something I believe was laying dormant inside of me, which was a drive, determination and passion to succeed and become something more than I was; to better myself and constantly strive to be a better person. So graduating became my goal.
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Age 16 Graduation Night |
Because of that, I didn't have a lot of time for art or music. I sang in the choir at church still, and I would occasionally sketch or doodle, but nothing like I was doing before. Plus I had my little brother to spoil with love, so art just took a backseat for a while. I was doing all my schoolwork during the day, then I would take extra work home at night and stay up late doing as much as I could. A few months later my principal came back to me and said she had made a mistake and that there was no way I was going to graduate. I was briefly devastated, like this whole fire that had been lit under me had died and this new person I had become was a sham. But that lasted all of a minute. That's when I made up my mind to prove her wrong, and I told her as much. She wasn't going to take this away from me, not now. Not with everything I had been through and everything I gave up. Not with this new beaming confidence and drive within me. I couldn't quit now and go back to the way I was. I was changed at more than the surface level. This transformation had taken place at the core of me.
For the rest of the year I got about 2 hours of sleep a night at most. When I turned 16 in March I immediately got a job at Chuck E. Cheese's, and they worked me hard, three to four days a week from 4:30 pm to 1 am. So I was going to school four days a week (we had no school on Mondays), doing extra work all night when I didn't work, and after work when I did, and in any free time I had I took care of my brother while my mom worked. It was an extremely hard year, but I was determined to see it through. And I did. In my last week of school I took 80 tests. I failed many of them sadly, but they still let me walk and officially graduate. I tried to make the ones I failed up over the summer, but I had to end up going back to school for two months to finish those, but then I was done and out.
But before that, in June of that year, I found a new distraction that kept me from art and everything else: my first girlfriend.
~B
Past Columns - Start the Journey at the beginning! Click here to check out all the past Journey of a Wannabe columns.
Brant W. Fowler / Writer, Letter, Creator, Reviewer, Columnist and Comic Related PR Coordinator
Brant W. Fowler has been a professional comic book letterer and logo designer for three years, and has been a freelance editor for the past five years. He has also worked with graphic design, writing and many other area of skills for several years honing his talents. You can learn all about what he's up to by visiting Gonzogoose Services. Brant is also a member of the core opperations team at Comic Related.
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