Some books are better from the inside

Only a couple of you know this, but in addition to being a comicbook geek I am also an actor specializing in medieval combat. Think your local renaissance Faire or medieval times restaurant, only I also do stage combat choreography for a local playhouse and a summer Shakespeare group. In fact I will be choreographing Othello later this week.

If you want to check it out, feel free: www.seattleknights.com or www.facebook.com/emiltheblack

One of the great coincidences in life is that there is in the universe someone else who is a comicbook geek (albeit for GA Tarzan books) who also enjoys jousting: Mike Grell. For those of you not immediately familiar with his work, he worked heavily for DC from about 73(?), mostly on Legion/Superboy, but also Green Lantern, and eventually on his own Green Arrow title, as well as creating The Warlord and handling the majority of that run too. Mike had a book he either wrote or drew or both published every month for the better part of thirty years, and falls in the category of greatly underappreciated contributors to our hobby.

I met Mike about twenty years ago through our shared hobby and as a reader and collector of his Green Arrow series was immediately star-struck, but he is such a down to earth human being that this soon passed. As a friend and a fellow artist, Mika allows me to hang in his studio while he is working, as long as he isn't in the beginning phases of his creation process, at that time even I am banned. There is little in the world that I find cooler than this - but the following is.

In 2003 Mike was working for Marvel on Iron Man (not the best fit, really) and he did an Iron Man in King Arthur's court kind of storyline entitled In Shining Armor in issues 59, 60, & 61. And in those issues he used my 'character' Emil and me as the physical and character model for the story's bad guy Emile. Mind you, I've never been the 6+ feet tall that he drew me, but there is no question that it is me. I capon even express how I feel about this even now, after the passage of ten years. I am so incredibly honored.

I have had Mike sign these books for me, but he signed them in his studio, so they shall forever remain unslabbed so that I might read my own adventures over and over again.

Thanks Mike.

Happy Hunting!

And Happy Reading.

Emil the Black

To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.