Greetings Loyal Airmen, as most of you know, last Fall, the Air Chief began teaching a night class on How To Write Comics & Graphic Novels at the Front Range Community College here in Fort Collins, CO. In that class we five talented young writers, all of who were a delight to work with. They were hard working and enthusiastic and made our first teaching experience so rewarding. But the end of that eight week course, we asked each of them to turn in a 5 pg script, then without them being aware at the time, we went and recruited five professional artists to draw their stories….and ultimately put together, with the help of local friends Todd Jones & James Gaubatz, a comic called FRONT RANGE TALES.  Last Sunday afternoon the Air Chief assembled four of those students together at Gryphon’s Games & Comics and gave them their copies of their first ever published comic work. Above is the cover done by Rob Davis and the four along with the Air Chief, they are Bransen Gage, Melisa Nguyen, the Air Chief, Jon Bonjour and Adam Bruns. The missing member was Aaron Powers, who met we us separately the following Monday after noon. So here are the contents of that very first comic.

Bransen’s story was a sci-fi comedy called FED UP and illustrated by our good pal Gary Kato.

Melisa’s tale was a fantasy short about magic woods and strange wolves called SPIRITED AWAY. The artist on the strip was Kevin Wiggins.

Ironically the youngest of my students, Jon Bonjour, a high school junior, was the most experienced in comics. He and his sister Jaime have been making comics together for a long time. She writes then and Jon draws them.  But this was the first time Jon saw one of his own strips drawn by another artist, in this case Richard Jun. And he was thrilled by the results. His story, which kicks off the book is called MILD MANNERED. It’s a little twist on the whole superhero genre.

Whereas Adam Bruns, the oldest in our class, is a college grad with a degree in Film Writing. He truly appreciated learning the subtle differences between screenplays and comic scripts and is one hell of a storyteller. His grit and gritty story is called JAIL BREAK and illustrated by Earl Geier of Chicago.

Finally, unable to meet with us on Sunday afternoon, the Air Chief went back on Monday to hook up with the fifth member of our class, Aaron Powers who has a real love of sci-fi and that was really evidence in his twisty TIMEWALKER as illustrated by the amazing Ted Slampyak of “Jazz Age Chronicles,” fame.

And there you have it Loyal Airmen, five truly awesome creators and their first steps into the wonderful world of comic creating. It was both a joy and privilege for the Air Chief to be their teacher. Trust us, you will be seeing lots more from these talented folks. You can count on it.

Speaking of students, the Air Chief spent Wed morning at the comic shop meeting students from the Polaris Expeditionary Learning School. You may recall the Air Chief had visited their classes a few weeks back. Well today they all were at the comic shop to show off the various comic projects they were working on and we, along with local artist and store employee, Nat, sat with each of them in twenty minute sessions to discuss those projects and offer up some hopefully helpful pieces of advice.

It was so much fun, these young people are so talented. For our humble efforts, Assistant Principal Starr Hill, who orchestrated the event, presented Nat and the Air Chief these wonderful little note book. Here’s hoping our little talks will spur these young creators to keep writing and drawing.

Finally the Air Chief has no real baby pictures of himself. Something Mom and Dad probably never considered being parents for the first time with my arrival and the beginning of their family. But one picture that has survived is the shot above of me at the walking stage, holding on to Mom and Dad. No idea where the pix was taken though a strong hunch it could have been in Sanford, Maine, at my grandparents home. We love this picture, Mom and Dad look so happy together. They truly were wonderful parents and for a little while, we did have them all to ourselves.

Ron – Over & Out!