Dope Rider: The Prologue

In 1973, I was 21 years old, living in New York City, attending the Cooper Union School of Art, and trying to break into the comic book business. To do so, I needed to create a sample story. Inspired by my love of Sergio Leone westerns and surrealistic imagery, I drew up a nine-page wordless story titled "Valley of Death," its style owing a lot to Jim Steranko. Not being confident in my inking talents, I left it in pencil. If you click on any of the scans below you can bring up a higher-resolution image, and double-click for an even larger one.

It contains some in-jokes: in the western town on page five, one store says "Ed Summer" on the sign, while another says "Calkins." Ed Summer is a well-known comic fan (and much more) who owned the Supersnipe Comic Art Emporium on New York's Upper East Side. Chuck Calkins ran a comic book store in the East Village where I worked part time. The name "Last Chance Saloon" is taken from the cowboy wallpaper I had in my room as a kid.

Some years later I inked a version of this story, wrote some copy, and sold it to Charlton Comics, where it appeared in Scary Tales no. 2, October 1975. As with everything Charlton printed, it looked like crap, so I prefer the original.

In my junior year at Cooper Union I was introduced to Larry Hama, who was then working as an assistant to Wally Wood. Larry took me to meet Neal Adams at Continuity Associates, the studio he and Dick Giordano kept at 9 East 48th Street. Neal must have liked my work, as he called Joe Orlando, then an editor at DC Comics, and got me some work. I penciled some horror stories for Tex Blaisdell to ink and assisted him on the "Little Orphan Annie" newspaper strip, which he had taken over after the death of Harold Gray. I also assisted Ralph Reese, who eventually got me a job assisting Wally Wood.