When the World Wide Web was new and still waiting for broadband to appear; people connected on slow dial-up connections via services like America Online.
In those dark days of the internet, AOL hosted a message board in it's forums for comics (then one of the largest gathering places of comic fans on the web)buried inside the Independent Comics section there lurked a forum dedicated to my comic book character, Flagman. The forum was called "Flagman & The Creation Station". An AOL employee confused my website's name, "The Creation Station" with being part of a title involving the character Flagman. There was no connection other than they were both my creations but folks still found there way there so they could discuss the hero from the backwoods.
Several comic creators frequented the message board there and we cooked up the idea to do an art jam. It was the same thing as a group of musicians getting together and playing but instead of being together we worked online. Sure that sounds sort of strange as working online is an everyday thing now. Back then though it was not common for artist. Even though they are now common a comic jam was unheard of. And as far as we can tell,this was the first. For sure it was a fairly large scale endeavor for the then online comic book community.
This work was posted online and featured on the web for years but finally disappeared when geocities.com closed its hosting servers, the place where the Jam resided for all those years.
But now in a historic reprint exclusive, if you are in my friends list on facebook.com you can once again re-live this wonderful historic comic art jam!
Visit me there to see the works of many comic artist you know and love. The list includes the mysterious MMSketcher, an artist who feared to reveal his true identity in the early days of online communication. Dave Hartmann contributed three pages to the project leading the the pack in total work for this project. Followed by the previously mentioned MMSketcher with two pages and "Stanley The Mole" creator, Robert King who also turned in two pages plus the final full color splash page.
Also in the line up was another local comic artist Brian Steward who is the creator of Painstake and has worked on various projects from Troma Studios, "Toxic Avenger" comic which I inked a bit off to Kevin Eastman's version of Heavy Metal Magazine.
The first person I met online and later in person was Hawaiian artist, Michael Hraba. We managed to meet once at a portfolio review in a parking garage in Nashville, TN of all places.
Jonnie Allan, the creator of the popular, "Stickman" comics and who also collaborated with myself and Rusty Gilligan on a 'Golden Age' style comic project that was printed by M.A.I.N. Comics and Blue Orbit Press, also contributed to the Online Comics Jam.
Elfquest artist, Jeff Zugale who is also the creator of "Mystic For Hire" contributed a fun page while in the early days of his comic career.
I also did a page and included my character "Vex" who had been published by several comics publishers at that point in cameo appearances as a horror hostess type of character.
Kevin Atkinson, comic artist on New England Comics, "The Tick" was slated for a page as well as Rusty Gilligan a couple of other artist who worked with us at Quantum Comics but work deadlines caused delays and the project finally came to a halt.
It could resume at anytime though....hint hint.
Meanwhile to see the originals you have to be my friend on facebook.com or be patient as I will be making them public once again at some point but until then you gotta find me and the Online Comics Jam on facebook.com
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