I thought I’d take another crack at drawing some of the characters I created as a kid. It’s been a very fun exercise, and this one was particularly enjoyable. Maybe because the drawing– of a team called THE OUTCASTS– isn’t of quite the advanced vintage of my previous entries. But at least the sense of design on the characters is a little more advanced (“advanced” being a relative term as far as crappy childhood superhero characters go…) as opposed to the previous examples done much earlier. This one was done in 1983, and I graduated high school in ’81– so I must have been around 18 years old. The drawing’s a bit better, but still not NEARLY as good as so many folks I see on the web and actually working in comics these days of the same age group. I guess I’ve always been a late bloomer.

THE OUTCASTS was my attempt at a multi-racial team like my absolute favorite of the time, X-MEN. I remember making many an attempt at emulating that comic that was so influential on so many of us wanting to draw comics back then. As you can see from the drawing, I wasn’t very practiced at placing figures in space. The Asian female character (I don’t remember any of the individual characters’ names, if they ever had any to begin with…) is on exactly the same plane as the much larger African American guy in (what’s supposed to be) the foreground. I had so much to learn…. (and still do). I see I was already signing my drawings as “‘Ringo”– but that comes from being nicknamed that early on by friends– just as my father was when he was in the Army.

Anyway, here are the two drawings– the first from my teens:

And the second one from today:

Mike