Since this is my last blog before Halloween I thought it would be fun to take a jaunt down the old, haunted Memory Lane starting with an illustration I did of a baby Bela Lugosi for a project as a student at the Philadelphia College of Art.

Thirty years ago, when Bill Cucinotta and I were still hacking away with friends at our student newspaper, DUCKWORK, Matt Wagner had joined our little band of ducks. The DUCKWORK staff had that year, by proxy, become the Arts Council of the college and it became our job to coordinate the 1981 Annual PCA Halloween Ball.

Matt accepted the responsibility of designing the poster for the event which we screen printed with black ink on white paper and added a touch of red by hand. The original prints were roughly 14×18 inches and were posted around campus for all to see.

I came across the preliminary sketches that Matt had made in one of my sketchbooks, and since I am lucky enough to have the poster as well I thought it would be a nice Halloween treat to share.

The following October, DUCKWORK would be gone, but as Comico, Bill and I, along with partners Phil and Dennis LaSorda would publish our first comic book, Comico Primer #1. Matt Wagner would introduce his popular Grendel character in issue #2 and the rest is history.

Time sure flies when your making comics. Three decades later we’re still at it, bringing our readers great comics right here on the internet with CO2 Comics. We do sure miss the smell of paper though so stay tuned for another treat that will be announced sooooooooooooooooooon!

OH, and have a Happy Halloween!

Making Comics Because I Want To

Gerry Giovinco

Howard The Duck button

Waaaaagh!!! What can I say? Ever since I first laid eyes on a Howard the Duck comic book I was smitten with ducks. I’m not sure why, but I think that what Steve Gerber did with the character opened my eyes to what could be done with comics beyond superheroes. It helped a lot that some of my favorite artists had drawn the character. Val Mayerick, Frank Brunner, Gene Colan, Sal Buscema and Michael Golden always left me wanting more and the iconic image by Bernie Wrightson on that campaign pin just sealed the deal!

howard wearing pants

Later when Gerber launched his creator’s rights battle with Marvel and when Disney challenged Marvel over trademark infringement, causing Howard to be forced to wear pants so as not to look like Donald Duck, Howard the Duck and ducks in general became a symbol to me of some sort of rebellious, creative attitude.

When I was in high school at Bishop Kenrick where I first met Phil Lasorda and Vince Argondezzi, my original partners in Comico the Comic Company, it was tradition to use acronyms to represent our party when we ran for office. When I ran for school president, the name of my party was, of course, D.U.C.K., Demonstrating Unity in the Community of Kenrick. I copied that Wrightson pin and made it school colors of green and gold. I even had a  mascot that crashed a student assembly in a duck costume! I lost… but the power of the duck stuck with me.

My fancy for ducks followed me to the Philadelphia College of Art now called University of the Arts where it did not take me long to establish a group of rogue comic artists called Ducks that strove to publish a small newspaper called DUCKWORK.  The thinly veiled connection to the school was a central courtyard that had two Peking Ducks inhabiting it and a bag lady that “quacked” as she walked in the area by our school earning her the name Duck Lady.

I wrote about  DUCKWORK In a previous blog and in an effort not to be redundant I invite you to check it out for the full scoop here.

Duck SuspenseStories

It dawns on me now that those six issues of DUCKWORK probably have some redeeming collectible value for their role as a precursor to the founding and publishing of Comico comics , CO2 Comics and for representing some of the earliest published works of the widely acclaimed Matt Wagner which can be seen here shown for historical purposes, of course.

Duck Throat

Duck Wish

Raiders Of The Lost Duck

Rollerduck

This peek at the credits and a dedication to Wally Wood who had passed away just prior to that particular issues publication in 1981 shows our devotion comics and  to the comic legend.

Duckwork dedication to Wally Wood

It also offers evidence of our lousy typewriter and some Ducks that went pro, Myself, Bill Cucinotta former Comico Partner and partner here at CO2 Comics, Dave Johnson of ROBOTECH  fame, Matt Wagner, Joe Williams CO2 Comics contributor and missing, somehow, is another ROBOTECH  vet and ELEMENTALS penciller, Mike Leeke.

Punk Duck 1

Ducks were infectious too. Not only did the DUCKWORK crew quickly assimilate to drawing the feathered fowl, I  recently discovered this incredible project by Martha Erlebacher, an anatomy teacher at PCA when we were students there.

Could it be remotely possible that our parodies of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus

Hatch of Venus

and Marcell Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase published in DUCKWORK somehow influenced one of our world class teachers? We may never know the answer to that but I think CO2 Comics contributer and another former ROBOTECH  vet, Reggie Buyers was tipping his hand when he sent me this fax of Jam Quacky in 1991.

Jam Quacky

Jam Quacky #1

Outside of DUCKWORK I had a propensity to parody superheroes as ducks and could often be found at comic conventions drawing Bat Duck, Spider-Duck, Silver Surf Duck, X-Ducks, Red Sonduck, you name it. The ducks were my gimmick, I guess, and littered my sketchbooks. They certainly helped me attract attention in those early days and develop lasting relationships with talented comic artists that helped to build Comico and CO2 Comics.

Bat Duck

Silver Surf Duck

Sonja Duck

I still love drawing those ducks so don’t be surprised if you start seeing them pop up here at CO2 Comics or on ebay. Hey, commissions aren’t out of the question either! If you have a passion to see your favorite character parodied as a duck just drop me a line at gerry@co2comics.com.

Making Comics Because I Want To  “QUACK!“

Gerry Giovinco

PCA now UARTS

My freshman year at the Philadelphia College of Art in 1979 was a bit of a surprise. It was the first time that I had experienced the artistic predjudice towards comics. The common notion expressed by my teachers was that I would be broken from my barbaric attraction to this bastard of a medium.

It became clear to me that I would have to develop my own curriculum to assist me in my goal of becoming a comics artist. Though my major was Illustration, I filled my electives with courses that would aid me in my quest. Animation, calligraphy, creative writing, graphics and photography rounded out my schedule.

My extracurricular activities proved to be an even greater asset as I explored publishing through the devlopment of a freshman yearbook and a student newspaper, both of which I had orchestrated to help the Arts Council strengthen the sense of community in the school. My commitment to the yearbook only survived one publication but the evolution of the newspaper into DUCKWORK, a publication that was very focused on comics, further whet my appetite for publishing comic books.

Duckwork #2 Cover by Gerry Giovinco inked by Bill Anderson

This would all transpire after my initial indoctrination to the world of art college a place that, given the quality of my work compared to my peers, I had no place being.

At PCA all freshman had to endure classes that were appropriately described as Foundation. The three classes were Drawing, 2-D Design, and 3-D Design each intended to establish a quality and understanding of fundamental skills necessary for successful mastery of the static arts. Knowing that my skills were inferior at the time became an asset. I was never one to second guess the teacher or to argue a scathing critique. I took it on the chin and learned the hard way.

Drawing was the class that I struggled with the most, especially when it came to figures. Everything I drew looked like bad comic book art. My teacher was a printmaking professor named Jerome Kaplan who did his best to teach me the finer skills of rendering. Maybe it was the extra attention I needed or the effort that he saw me put in to my work but somehow he began to relate to me on a more personal level and he learned about my desire to make comics.

Jerry Kaplan by Gerry Giovinco

Mr. Kaplan was well aware that an interest in comics was frowned upon in a prestigious school like PCA yet he had great sympathy for my desires because his brother-in-law was none other than Arnold Roth who had been a student at PCA in the late 1940′s then called the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. Mr. Kaplan would tell me stories of how Arnold had his own issues with the institution over his preoccupation with cartoons and jazz.

Arnold Roth

Arnold Roth of course is a prolific illustrator cartoonist that has a list of awards a mile long including a National Cartoonist Society run as the Best Illustrator Cartoonist that he won each year from 1978 till he withdrew from competition in 1990 so somebody else could have a chance!

One day Mr. Kaplan came to class with a new Arnold Roth story. At a family gathering he had a discussion with Arnold about an impressionable kid in his class that wanted to draw comics and the esteemed Mr. Roth pulled out a felt tip and sketched a gag on a piece of bond paper for the lucky fool who was, of course, me.

The cartoon of Michelangelo picking his own nose is a priceless piece of spontaneity drawn by a true master of comic art that I will always treasure. It will perpetually be a reminder of the support and encouragement I received from Jerry Kaplan who, unfortunately is no longer with us but understood the magic that could be found in incredible comics.

The next year after I had been given that wonderful drawing, Arnold Roth had a one man show at PCA and for me it was a moral victory to see a cartoonist’s work displayed so reverently at my school. His show validated the aesthetic acceptance of comics that would continue to grow to this day. I am eternally grateful for Arnold Roth’s role in that acceptance and for that felt tip sketch that still hangs by my desk.

I will never forget, however, the twinkle in the eye of my drawing teacher the day he gave me that sketch. He knew that the precious gift he delivered was not made of paper and ink or even the raw talents of Arnold Roth. It was made of 100% inspiration that came entirely from the encouragement that he had personally given to me.

Thank you, Jerome Kaplan, for being the encouraging soul toward young talent that we should all be as artists.

Making Comics Because I Want to.

Gerry Giovinco

OMG it is already Thanksgiving!

Where does the year go? 2011 is right around the corner and soon we will all be looking back examining this past year that has seen a lot of dramatic shifts in the comics industry.

Most folks think of Thanksgiving as Turkey Day, a chance for the whole family to gather and give thanks while feasting on the juicy bird packed with stuffing and served with a harvest banquet reminiscent a of a meal shared between the Pilgrims and Native Americans.

Believe it or not, turkeys and comics have a close connection for me. I actually think about it often when I peer out my window here in a very rural area of the the South Jersey Pinelands where I live. Besides being on the constant lookout for the Jersey Devil, and dodging deer that prance in my headlights, I experience wild turkey by the dozens as they flock through my yard on a daily basis.

The site of them always conjures back the memory of a giant print of an Arnold Roth illustration that was on display promoting a show of his work at the Philadelphia College of Art. He was an alumnus there, and it as were my Comico and CO2 Comics partner Bill Cucinotta and I attended college during the early 1980′s.

John "Bondo" Rondeau settles in front of a huge print that we had "aquired" from a show at PCA that featured a famous cartoonist alumnus, Anrnold Roth, who ironically had been expelled from the school when he was a student.

Bill and I were also instrumental in publishing a student newspaper, DUCKWORK, at PCA and managed to appropriate the photostat print that was mounted on foamcore after the show was over. We displayed it in proudly in the DUCKWORK office until it later migrated to the Comico Studio in Norristown where, unfortunately, it has since been lost.

Duckwork Covers 1 & 2

The image depicted two contrasting iconographies of America in passing. On one side was a valiant looking Madame Liberty with a stoic Bald Eagle by her heal. The other side depicted a more humble and much less arrogant interpretation of Americana, a haggard, pipe smoking, frump of a woman content in her baseness, accompanied by a lowly turkey.

Ben Franklin actually preferred the turkey over the bald eagle as the national symbol.

“For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage…”

(http://www.greatseal.com/symbols/turkey.html)

That turkey, as presented by Mr. Roth and described by Mr. Franklin, came to symbolize comics for me.

Colorful and defiant, native and common, comics find their strength of power in their ability to access the masses and deliver the purest presentation of the message of a sole creator simply using words and pictures.

Underestimated by other media, artists and literati, comics open a unique dialog between to the common folk and the creator who respectfully wishes to communicate directly to them.

As the year quickly comes to a close I am thankful to be reminded by the humble turkey why comics are so important to me. The gobbler primes me for all the comic related resolutions I have in mind for the New Year.

I still, however, have a lot of expectations left for 2010. With the Christmas season upon us, we at CO2 Comics are anticipating that many of you will deem our first print publication, David Anthony Kraft’s COMICS INTERVIEW: The Complete Collection Volume 1, a top pick on your list to Santa.

David Anthony Kraft's COMICS INTERVIEW: The Complete Collection Vol 1

We were surprised to discover that the beautiful Hard Cover edition of CI ranked #3 in Lulu’s Comics and Graphic Novel category this week!

David Anthony Kraft is still drooling over the book himself, exclaiming on facebook, “Knocked out by COMICS INTERVIEW HARDCOVER! Getting up from ground — it’s that good! Lays open flat, like a bible. Can’t BELIEVE how great it is!”

Of course, DAK is biased as are we but we have been thrilled and thankful for the generous response and collective appreciation of the book from people who have had the opportunity to hold one in their hands.

A quick reminder that the Premier editions of both the Hard Cover and the Paperback featuring the Platinum version of the classic, original COMICS INTERVIEW logo will be available only until midnight of New Year’s Eve 2010. So, if you are a collector and want to guarantee that you have this limited edition in your library, act soon!

Comics Interview Premier Edition

One last note regarding COMICS INTERVIEW: The Complete Collection. Lulu has been offering generous discounts of up to 20% off for books available on their site. These limited time offers are well worth benefitting from and we will do our best to keep you informed here on the blog and on the CO2 Comics facebook page.

Become a fan of the page and you will be sure to receive these promo updates and be the first to know what is going on here at CO2 Comics.

While we are on the subject of Christmas lists make sure you stop by and check out our newly released DEATH FATIGUE t-shirt line. If you are tired of watching your favorite heroes die the temporary super-death get your very own DEATH FATIGUE swag now!

Captain Obese

I hope that you all have had a chance to check out our latest addition to CO2 Comics, Don Lomax’s The Heavy Adventures of CAPTAIN OBESE. Don’s comic feature is sure to make a large impression on you and make you hungry for more.

Don’t worry! CO2 Comics won’t disappoint you! There will be at least one more big content announcement before 2010 becomes just another space odyssey.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Making comics because I like turkey,

Gerry Giovinco

Business Card Side 1

When we finally became serious about publishing comic books under the Comico imprint we realized that we were going to have to actually sell our comics and generate substantial revenue.

Business card Side 2

We had always sold our handmade, photocopied comics directly to the customer and were never really in a situation where we actually had to profit from the comics we made.

The issues of DUCKWORK that were produced were distributed freely on campus at PCA, supported by student council and meager funds generated by advertisements that we solicited.

Comico, however, was a real business and we had to get our comics sold to as many readers as possible in order to stay alive.

In the old days that meant Newsstand Distribution and its dreaded return policy, but in the early 1980′s the Direct Comic Market was young and growing. It offered an opportunity for an upstart company like Comico to solicit to retailers through several distributors.

Product was solicited three months in advance. The orders gave publishers a solid idea of what their print run needed to be and there were no returns to fret about. This made it easy to borrow money since you could show actual sales ahead of time. It also let you know if you should pack your bags and quit before you absorbed the expenses of production and printing.

Publishers just had to convince the distributors that their product was worth the time to solicit. This generally meant that if one distributor would take a chance on your product the others had to as well so they would not have to explain to their retailers why the guy down the street has a particular title and they don’t.

Our first comic book was a black and white comic titled Primer #1. Historically the reviews on the comic have sucked but it was our first product and at the time we were very proud of our work.

PRIMER #1

Today, I believe that it is highly underrated as a collectible since so few were made and it is significant for having launched a company that discovered many great talents, produced great product and established a business model that other great Independent publishers would follow.

Back in 1982 we had to find someone to solicit Primer #1 before it was even complete. We had very little to show except photocopies of of pencils and a proposed cover.

We wanted to make a great first impression so we put our efforts into a nice presentation package and focused on our business card because we thought it would be the one thing the distributers might keep in their rolodex (who still has one of those dinosaurs?)

The original Comico logo was designed by Phil LaSorda and was as unique as it was cumbersome but it lent itself well to the unusual business card that I would design around it.

The logo was designed to bracket the corner of the covers of our comics and it only survived the black and white comics that we originally published. It repeated the name Comico twice, hinged by a shared letter “C” that would eventually provide the basis for several other designs that would represent the future color line.

The card I designed was also hinged, die cut and folded so the Comico logo would read on both sides. When it opened our information was displayed inside. It was black and white, innovative and elegant, just the impression we wanted to create for our line.

The card could stand on a desk where others could only lay and it encouraged the holder to manipulate and study it. Let’s just say it was hard not to notice and easy to remember.

Above all, it was a conversation piece which came in handy when we did follow-up calls to the distributors. In those days, when you made the call, you spoke to the head guy, himself: Steve Geppi, Bud Plant, Milton Griepp, Walter Wang, and so on.

All of these guys were friendly, and were more than happy to offer advice and honest criticisms of the product. There was a lot of criticism and we listened and learned.

Just when it looked like we were going to have to go back to the drawing board with Primer #1 we got our first order. I’ll never forget the moment. I was away from the studio for a rare weekend trip when Phil called to tell me that Bud Plant had ordered one hundred books. You would have thought that I won the lottery!

Bill Cucinotta taking initial PRIMER 1 orders

That week Phil, Bill Cucinotta and I worked the phones to let every distributor know that Bud Plant had given us an order. As we expected they all followed suit, not to be outdone.

We sold less than two thousand books but it was enough to cover the printing costs and generate enough interest for Primer #2 which enjoys it’s place in comics history for the first appearance of Matt Wagner’s Grendel.

PRIMER #2

Today the card of CO2 Comics is simple. It bears our logo and a lone piece of contact information, co2comics.com. Follow that link and everything you need to know about CO2 Comics is at your fingertips!

We hope we still know how to make a great first impression.

Making comics because I want to,

Gerry Giovinco

Gerry Giovinco and Bill Cucinotta

Superman has the Fortress of Solitude. Batman has the Bat Cave. Hugh Hefner has Playboy Mansion. (That lucky bastard…)

The great heroes always had a secret lair, a home base, a castle of sorts. These mythic headquarters become a trademarked extension of the person themselves and ad to the legacy of grandeur attributed to their deeds and accomplishments.

Gerry's space at the Studio

I always had a fascination for a “clubhouse” mentality. I remember being about four years old and having secret meetings with my younger brother, Tom, in a dark closet illuminated only by our dim nightlight which we had drug in before we closed the door. This was our secret place, and though I’m sure my parents knew where we were, it gave us toddlers a sense of independence and awareness of self that we didn’t have when we were supervised by adults.

Two years later, Batmania would grip the world. All my brother and I could dream of was our very own Bat Cave buried beneath our house. We would spend hours scheming secret entrances to our gloriously imagined hangout.

As the years passed, there was always some kind of toy cabin, clubhouse, or tree house that anchored my activities with my three brothers and friends.

Room with a view

This continued into college where I would hole up with Bill Cucinotta and the other so-called Ducks in our commandeered DUCKWORK office on the thirteenth floor of the Philadelphia College of Art.

Given my own propensity for a hangout it is no surprise to me that the defining catalyst for Comico becoming tangible was the availability of office space at 1547 Dekalb Street in Norristown, PA.

Phil LaSorda’s older brother Dennis had just purchased a duplex in which he planned to operate his physical therapy practice. He offered Phil, Vince Argondezzi and me the opportunity to operate Comico from the space in the adjacent half of the building that he had no immediate plans for.

The iron was hot.

Comico, which until this point was as much a dream for Phil, Vince and me as that Bat Cave under my house, was about to become real. This was the moment of truth. It was time to “shit or get off the pot.”

Vince chose to leave the porcelain vacant and, though he would contribute his comic Mr. Justice to Primer #1, his partnership with Phil and me had ended.

Fred the Duck. Gerry Giovinco, Bill Cucinotta and Phil LaSorda

Phil and I had grown used to the idea of a third person in the partnership. It especially came in handy breaking stalemates on important decisions. We turned to Bill Cucinotta who had been my right hand man while publishing DUCKWORK at PCA.

Bill knew the Direct Market of the comics industry very well because of his experience working retail at Fat Jack’s Comic Crypt in Philadelphia. As a partner, his knowledge gave us an edge that we did not have before.

Partners

Comico’s partnership was once more a triumvirate and we had our own headquarters dubbed simply “Comico Studios”. We generally would refer to it just as The Studio never intending to confuse or compare it to The Studio in Manhattan where Bernie Wrightson, Jeff Jones, Michael Kaluta, and Barry Windsor-Smith hung their hats.

Recently I have heard stories from various Comico fans that had found their way to Norristown and decided to look up the Comico headquarters which, in their mind, was a shining tower of architectural wonder. They were surprised to find that it was simply an old three-story, stone-fronted, duplex building that was once a family home with a wooden porch located on the corner of a busy street in a tired industrial town whose glory days had long passed.

Our main activities took place in what would have been the living room and dining room of the original house, complete with very dated orange, shag, wall-to-wall carpet that covered beautiful hardwood floors. Eventually the bedrooms would become offices as our staff expanded.

At the time all of the guys that hung out at the studio were college age and we had a very fraternal sensibility that had carried over from our DUCKWORK experience.

We tended to play as hard as we worked and seemed to never leave the building, often crashing on the couch or cots that we had brought in for the many all-nighters that were pulled to meet deadlines or to just hang out. The pizza shop on the opposite corner made it easy for us to always have food and drink.

Our families forgot who we were.

Posters and art covered the walls. There was a riddled dart board that was used to shake out those punchy moments in the wee morning hours. It was not unusual to find the mantel of the fire place lined with empty beer bottles.

Bill Cucinotta and Bill Anderson, Trashed and too close for comfort

This would all change eventually as Comico became more of a business and less of an adventure but those early days harbor all of the most romantic memories of young guys setting out to conquer the world of comics as they knew it with little more than hope, a dream and some talent.

Reggie Byers and a new shipment

We would get visitors. Many with portfolios or scripts in hand. Some just curious. The visitors that thrilled me the most though were heros that provided inspiration so great that I get misty thinking about their visits even today.

Murphy Anderson whose Visual Concepts Inc. was our flat color separator and would visit often.

Joe Kubert, whose school we offered a small scholarship to, and whose sons eventually worked on our books, stopped in to say hi.

Dick Giordano along with Pat Bastienne would stop by for holiday parties.

All of them are comic book legends.

They would marvel at our humble space and it would take them back to stories of the good old days when they, themselves were kids in the industry holed up in hotel rooms knocking out an issue by committee overnight.

The twinkle in each of their eyes as they reminisced is something I’ll never forget.

When I write these articles, I get that twinkle and I remember why I love making comics.

It is more than the art of it. More than the love of the medium. More than the camaraderie of other comic artists.

It is being part of it all.

Being part of the history of all the folks that made the comics that put a smile on the face of a reader young or old.

Gerry Giovinco, Reggie Byers, Phil LaSorda, Bill Cucinotta. Neil Vokes (in back), Matt Wagner, Rich Rankin

Being part of a unique tradition of a wonderful medium and passing it forward to the next generation.

Snowmageddon trashed the front porch

The clubhouse is a lot different today. It exists in a technological wonder called the internet. It is not bricks and mortar like the old duplex in Norrisown. It is digital and the visitors stop in from all over the world.

Our new headquarters has a name. It is CO2 Comics.

It has an address: www.co2comics.com

Stop and visit.

Visit often.

Making comics because I want to.

Gerry Giovinco

Enter at your own risk

 
An ominous, orange glow cast its pall across South Philadelphia in the spring of 1981. It was a sign plastered with fluorescent tempera paint on a thirteenth floor window of the ARCO Building on Broad and Spruce streets, home of most of the classes taught at PCA, Philadelphia College of Art which is now known as the University of the Arts, one of the most respected art colleges in the country.
 

Room with a view

 
The letters that read “DUCKWORK” could be seen as far south as Veterans Stadium where the Phillies had won the World Series just months before and marched past PCA in their triumphant parade that rocked the City of Brotherly Love.

Behind the window was the office of a motley group of art students banded together to publish a “student” newspaper by the same name.
 

John "Bondo" Rondeau settles in front of a huge print that we had "aquired" from a show at PCA that featured a famous cartoonist alumnus, Anrnold Roth, who ironically had been expelled from the school when he was a student.

 
DUCKWORK, though tacitly supported by the school, was never a school newspaper. It was a publication commandeered by an assembly of comic art enthusiasts led by myself that defiantly produced comics in an educational environment that, at the time, considered the medium to be kitsch and derivative.
 

DUCKWORK Covers 1 & 2, Cover #1 illustrated by Bill "Fostex" Foster, #2 by Gerry Giovinco with inks by Bill Anderson

 
Our pseudo-fraternity proclaimed each of us as DUCKS and, as a proud rogue clan, we wreaked havoc on the school with our publication and our mischievous pranks some of which might have us arrested if done today.
 

Bill Bryan who is now at CBR Woodworking where thay make incredible furniture for offices and corporate spaces among other things. http://www.cbrwoodworking.com/index.html

Evan Nurse was a Jr. Duck who attended a cartooning class on weekends at PCA for young students. Evan's senior prank at Sharon hill H.S. was to join the girls Lacross team. They let him play but they made him wear the kilt. He is now an AV instructor at an area High School.

 
PCA had very little sense of community at the time. Because of this, our little group managed to control Student Council and Arts Council giving us the opportunity to allocate funds and office space for our ventures. The DUCKS ruled!
 

DUCKWORK Covers 3 & 4, both illustrated by Gerry Giovinco

 
DUCKWORK quickly became a magnet for cartoonists especially after it became known that I was attempting to start a comic book company named Comico with two friends of mine from high school, Phil LaSorda and Vince Argondezzi.
 

DUCKWORK Covers 5 & 6, #5 illustrated by Bill "Cooch" Cucinotta, #6 by Matt wagner

 
Bill Cucinotta, my partner here at CO2 Comics, knew of me and Comico from Creation Conventions and was enthusiastically involved with DUCKWORK from the start.

Nick-named Cooch, his loyalty and ability to get the job done whenever needed along with his knowledge of the direct market derived from his experience working retail at Fat Jack’s Comic Crypt, Philly’s premier comic shop made him invaluable. It would later make him the most logical choice to fill the void left by Vince Argondezzi’s abrupt departure from Comico’s initial partnership well before our first book Comico Primer would be published.
 

Edwin Arocho is now a fine artist and musician living in San Juan, Puerto Rico

 
The list of colorful guys and gals that frequented DUCKWORK’s office is peppered with talented artists that went on to creative careers. I’ve included photos of several DUCKS. It is easy to see that besides comics, we were seemingly, also influenced by the movie Animal House!
 

Danny "Hank" Lange followed his dream and actually learned to play that guitar. He recently did a sound track for an award winning film. Check Dan out here: http://www.myspace.com/buskersblues

The fall of 1981 brought a new landscape to PCA. Two older buildings across the street had been purchased by the school and turned into dorms. One of these dorms would quickly become a DUCKWORK annex and be dubbed the SWAMP. The SWAMP was home to new DUCKS, Matt Wagner, Mike Leeke, and Dave Johnson, three guys that each would later play a role in the accomplishments of Comico.

Joe Cursio was another Jr. Duck who hung out at DUCKWORK and is now living

 
DUCKWORK was populated by students that lived on campus and commuters who often crashed at the office or the SWAMP. SEPTA strikes were usually great bonding experiences for the commuters of which I was one.
 

Joe "Zig" Zigler rarely showed up with clothes on... Joe is a fun pal that we've managed to lose touch with. Joe, if you are out there, drop us a line!

 
One commuting DUCK who recently has emerged on the web-pages of CO2 Comics with his wife and former PCA alumnus, Tina Garceau, is Joe Williams who has recently posted several great flashbacks about DUCKWORK on his blog at www.willceau.com.
You can read Joe’s 5 part DUCKWORK retrospective here.
 
By the time the spring semester had ended in 1982, a total of six issues of DUCKWORK had been published.

It was the end of my junior year at PCA. Phil Lasorda’s older brother Dennis had just purchased a duplex in Norristown for his Physical Therapy practice. He had offered us the opportunity to run Comico out of the half he was not using.

It was time for this DUCK to sink or swim. I left PCA to pursue a dream. Cooch came along as well. Without its leaders DUCKWORK quicky faded away but Comico was about to become official.

When it came time to take the big leap of faith, Vince chose not to commit and Bill took his seat at the drums. Phil, Cooch and I were now the standing partners of Comico as we began to solicit our first publication.
 
Matt Wagner was a prolific contributer to DUCKWORK and continued to contribute as Comico took off. Matt’s feature Grendel first appeared in Comico Primer #2 and went on to become an iconic character in comics. Comico also published Matt’s Mage the Hero Discovered.
 

Matt Wagner, The Comic Artist Discovered.

 
Mike Leeke was significant as an artist on ROBOTECH and later went on to pencil Bill Willingham’s popular ELEMENTALS.
Mike’s contributation to CO2 Comics. The Amazing Liberteens, can be seen Here.
 

Mike Leeke, who would later become the penciler extraordinare of ROBOTECH and ELEMENTALS is just thrilled that he can hide all of his mechanical pencils and rapidograph pens in his tremendous fro!

 
Dave Johnson was also a penciler on the ROBOTECH series.
 

Dave Johnson, former denizen of the SWAMP and penciler on ROBOTECH The Next Generation for Comico.

 
Joe Williams along with his wife Tina Garceau creates Monkey and Bird which is featured here on CO2 Comics.
 

Joe Williams is now a featured artist here on CO2 Comics with his wife Tina

 
Bill and I have ironically redeveloped our webs. We’ve gone from DUCKWORK to Web Comics with a long history in between.
 

Bill "Cooch" Cucinotta reclines on a cardboard 3-D project that was retired to the hall in front of the DUCKWORK office

Ouch! Gerry Giovinco, is another Duck trapped in a world he never made!

 
NOTE: In 1984, two years after the DUCKWORK crew had disbanded at PCA, Jim Carrey makes his Hollywood debut in an NBC television series titled “The Duck Factory” about a quirky group of animators trying to keep their studio alive. Kinda makes you wonder…

Looking back, I guess it took a lot of guts for three kids from Norristown to decide that we wanted to start a comic book company especially considering that we were all still attending college and had no money except for what little we made working part-time jobs.

I struggled to meet class deadlines at the Philadelphia College of Art (PCA now UArts) and labored on weekends at places like 7-11, K-Mart, and Pizza Hut just to have spending money. The dream of making comics preoccupied my mind at every job I held. The evidence is a comic that I made while working as a cook at Pizza Hut in the winter of 1980.

Read Pizza man And Pizza Woman

The Norristown Pizza Hut Presents…Pizza Man & Pizza Woman was the first comic that I had published by anyone other than myself. It appeared on the last page of the company’s nationally distributed, monthly, twelve-page, 8.5 x 11″ newsletter Pizza Hut News Brief. This was a format that I would adapt later when publishing DUCKWORK at PCA with CO2 Comic’s own, Bill Cucinotta and the rest of the self-proclaimed DUCKS.

Phil LaSorda, Vince Argondezzi and I were all dreamers, but at the time we never believed that we could not do what we had set out to do once we had read Don Rico’s How to Start a Comic Book Empire in Free Enterprise magazine.

We considered our biggest asset to be ourselves since we knew that we would create the art for our own publications, saving us a lot of money.

Our biggest asset, however, turned out to be our own naiveté. To every person who scoffed and told us we could not do it, we had only one answer. Why not? Honestly, because we didn’t know any better.

Phil Lasorda & Vince Argondezzi at Creation Conventions

The summer of 1980 was spent developing product for the new company that we would call Comico the Comic Company. My recollection is that Vince first dubbed it The Comic Company. Phil suggested that we shorten it to ComiCo to which I responded that we should pronounce it Comeeco to sound like Mego and Coleco which were popular toy companies at the time.

Gerry Giovinco At Creation Conventions

We each had our own characters to work on. Phil had Az, Vince had Mr. Justice and I had Slaughterman. We planned to feature them in one magazine titled Comico Presents.

That summer Vince illustrated the cover of Comico Presents that would never be published other than as a flyer to promote our new company.

The Comico cover that never was © TM Respective Owners

The Comico Portfolio cover

We each made color illustrations of our character that we would have produced as 8×10″ color glossies and inserted in a hand-made card stock envelope that we simply called the Comico Portfolio. This is officially Comico’s first publication.

AZ from the Comico Portfolio © TM Phil Lasorda

MR JUSTICE from the Comico Portfolio © TM Vince Argondezzi

SLAUGHTERMAN from the Comico Portfolio © TM Gerry Giovinco

Finally, we printed up Comico t-shirts and prepared to exhibit at the Philadelphia Creation Convention were I had made inroads with my Thing costume at previous shows.

Gary Berman and Adam Malin, the producers of the Creation Conventions, were very gracious in giving us an opportunity to display our work. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude for being the first to believe in us.

We had gone public with Comico. There was no turning back…

Gerry Giovinco

Next week: DUCKWORK!
Meanwhile you can check out another DUCKWORK retrospective by Joe Williams HERE!

Liberteens on CO2

Mike Leeke Cover Art

AmazingLiberty.com

Mike moved to Lone Star Press to provide art for Pantheon and then rejoined Bob Layton to work with Dick Giordano and David Michelinie on Freemind for Future Comics. One Look at The Amazing Liberteens and it is easy to see why Mike has been able to hang with some of the greats in the industry, not only is he an incredible draftsman he is a great visual storyteller.
His partner and creator of The Amazing Liberteens, Robert Jackson Jr. , is the author of the fantasy novels, Turn of the Circle and The Amazing Liberteens as well as the on-line comics Warrior Son and Anarchia. Mike and Robert have some big plans in store for you lucky readers of CO2 Comics so grab your shirt tails and dive into the adventures of the next hot teen super group and let us know what you think!

Joe is a friend from way back in our days at the Philadelphia College of Art (PCA) currently named The University of the Arts (UArts.) He was an illustration major with a penchant for comics like all of our pals who had gathered together to work on a publication called Duckwork which was more of an excuse to draw comics and create mayhem around the school than anything else.

We were a prolific group that, besides Joe Williams, included myself (Slaughterman), Bill Cucinotta (Skrog), Matt Wagner (Grendel, Mage, Trinity), Mike Leeke (Robotech, Elementals, Fathom), Dave Johnson (Robotech), and Joe Matt (Jam, Peepshow) just to name the guys who went on to work in comics.

Joe presents us with a fun short story called Deadline that was originally created as a promotional tool and does a great job displaying Joe’s talents as an illustrator with a comic flair. We expect to see more of Joe’s stylings on future projects but for now, kick back and enjoy the pressure that every professional artist endures when it comes down to the dreaded Deadline!

Gerry Giovinco