Hello again. It's me! I'm back. Yeah... It's been awhile I know. I've been on an unplanned sabatical more or less for about 5 years give or take a few months. I think it was 2018 the last time I was here with a few brief visit along the way. My social media time I have cut down on inorder to focus more on my relationshsips and work including creative projects.
Allow me to re-introduce myself. My name is Mark Poe. There's no reason you should know that other than it beats referring to me in general terms like "that old guy on the CCAS site." So I assure you it's just a courtesy, not bragging or fanfare, as if I had anything to brag about. I have been around a few decades and some of the old timers, my age, may remember me. I've been involved with the CCAS since long before this website... or any website for that matter. I first heard of the Christian Comic Arts Society back in the early 1980's. I saw an ad in a fan publication, maybe The Comics Buyers Guide, I don't remember now, recruiting members for a comics APA called Alpha-Omega.
I was a young, still in college, amateur artist chaffing at the bit to get into drawing comic books which was my lifelong dream. I heard joining an APA was how a lot of talent, back in the day, got their start. So joining A-O seemed like my next logical step. So I got my start with the A-O issue 2 mailing. I got to include my own 'trib with the likes of guys like Don Ensign, Ralph Ellis Miley, John G. Pierce, Billy Leavell, Harry Miller and a lot of other guys with similar asperations. Most had already tried their hand at comics in one form or another. I was definately the new kid on the block. A lot has changed since then. Not jsut comics but the world is nearly unrecognizable to a lot of us who remember saner times. Comic books are down right crazy, and I don't mean that in a good way, for the most part. There are still a few exceptions, but DC and Marvel are a shell of what they once were. Politcal agendas and worse have taken prominence over producing good stories and art. The comic book industry is all but dead now. The characters and ideas we grew up with got a revival for a time in movies but those are not as hot as a few years ago for the same reasons the comics are lack luster. Now, I'm not and none of us are kids anymore and some have already moved on to their new address in Heaven.
I had my own time in creating comics during the Big Black & White Independent Boom of the 1980's. This came about due greatly to the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the most famous independent of the era. I was fortunate to get a penciling gig with Dimension Graphics which had made a splash riding the coattails of TMNT as collectors and speculators descended on Comic Shops all over the country looking for the next big thing like the Turtles. Dimension Graphics fit the bill with Marcus Lusk's Secret Doors, a really funny parody of Marvel's Secret Wars, which Marcus drew, wrote and published himself. I met Marcus at the Comics Shop we both got our monthly books from and he invited me to submit a few sketches for his next project. I did and we hit it off and became friends. We collaborated on Elf-Trek, a two issue parody series spoofing Star Trek, the original, and Elf Quest, the famous independent comic from Wendi and Richard Pini. Elf-Trek, with a back-up parody of the Uncanny X-Men just for kicks! The books did well sellling several thousand copies of both #1 and # 2. But not as well as Secret Doors which, if memory serves me correctly hit up around 10,000 copies in comic shops. Dimension went on to publish a couple more titles, one of special note was Happy Birthday Gnat Rat by Mark Martin. The Black & White Independent Boom was rapidly coming to a close. It only really lasted a couple years before interest faded. The Speculators lef the shops and interest began to shif back to the igger companies projects. But it was fun while it lasted and a few of us had gotten our foot in the door of the Comics Industry and were doing our best to rekindle the fire.
Freazie White, Jr. and I met as members of Alpha-Omega. Freazie joined shortly after I did and read one of my submissions of Living on the Razor’s Edge, which I was actually submitting to A-O in book form, one chapter at a time. Freazie loved it and called me up! We hit it off and began working together on Razor’s Edge. Freazie was penciling and rewriting it to fit the comic book format. I inked his work and we began submitting the pages to Alpha-Omega. These were fun days and we learned a lot. Freazie and I started doing some Small Press books and preparing for our jump to Independent comic statis. Don Ensign and Ralph Miley were leading a team to put out Valiant Efforts which was to be released as an Independent Comic. I got to ink some of Ralph Miley's Street Fury. I loved working over Ralph's detailed pencils. Ralph recently rebooted his Street Fury series with the help of several outstanding talents! He revamped the storyline keeping the orignal characters but bringing them into modern times confronting the problems of the 21st Century from a Christian point of view. All the characters are Christian and the book is very diverse in the true sense of the word. It's also a quality book riveling and surpassing anything on the market. I think the three issue graphic novel series is still available on Amazon. I highly reccomend it.
After getting comfortable doing Small Press books under the banner of Magi Graphics in the late '80's, Freazie and I partnered to form Legacy Comics and published the one shot Independent black and white comic Project: NewMan in 1991. It was moderately successful selling about half our 3,000 copy print run. We gave away the other half. We followed it up with The Humants in which we incorporated the Project: NewMan storyline into a double sized book. We only manged 2 issues of The Humants even though we had material for 6 issues. The Black & White Independent Boom was over and it seem nothing any one did could bring it back. Several of us tried to do CPR on it but it just wasn't happening. We all had to get real jobs and work for a living. Which we did.
In 2008 I built a web site to host those old Legacy Comics. I dubbed this imprint Mega Comics Group and published all the Legacy Comics material for Project: NewMan, 4 issues total and 5 issues of The Humants. I kept that going for a little more than 10 years. I wanted to keep it going and tried to get Freazie interested in contining and expanding the series but the interest was just not there. He had other projects and I finally closed the site but retained the domain.
Now I've been working on some totally new ideas for a couple years and I'm rebuilding the website. The old stuff we did in the '80's and '90's won't be there but there will be some new and old concepts to entertain you. It will be different! I'm not telling what it is just yet. I'll give you a little tease of things to come and hopefully prick your interest. I hope you'll check back soon for the details. Watch this space for updates as the new site and series progresses. Thanks for reading. See ya soon.
Best Regards - Mark
P.S. The uploaded art is one such project I hinted at. I know it's not much to go on but I can't give away too much... there are spies everywhere, you know!
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