D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

I just got done reading Mark Evanier’s “KIRBY: KING OF COMICS” - and of course, it was great. I can’t wait for the TOME he’s planning on writing. Get to it Mark!

Every now and again, I get asked about, what’s the deal with Jack Kirby’s ghost and Yirmumah and all that? And it’s not really a complicated story, but one I didn’t like to talk about publicly until recently, for fear of it making me sound crazy. Maybe it still will… But it’s odd, how everything comes together. Here’s a timeline of events…

1993 - I’m now embarrassed to admit, but when I was 17, my whole goal was to come right out of high school and be the next hot artist during the 90s boom. You had tons of young “hot” artists breaking in, some featured in Wizard and I’d just eat that up. It’s really what I wanted to be. I’d ditch school and go hang out at Extreme Studios and be the guest of Danny Miki there, it’s where I learned first hand that Rob Liefeld was a jerkoff, but also where Todd McFarlane said something nice to me in the elevator about a spawn print I had had made and happened to have on me. Marc Silvestri, McFarlane, Capullo, Larsen, these guys were my comic gods back then. I was completely ignorant of comics history—– When I’d even come near Silver Age or Golden Age comics, they just looked lame to me at that age.  They weren’t as exciting as McFarlane’s Hulk bashing through a brick wall and like 5000 bricks going all over the place. — I’m really ashamed of this now, but hey, I was a real know nothing kid.

San Diego Comicon 1993 - I went with what I thought were solid samples of my work, looking back now they were terrible. But I still managed to get portfolio reviews with any small companies I could. I remember a portfolio review with Chaos Comics, but my work wasn’t horror, and I remember them saying I needed to draw bigger boobs on the women! No kidding… Even though I was being shot down left and right, those cons made it seem like you were absorbing some magical energy you could take back with you to the drawing board at home. I remember it was almost time for me to catch my ride back home to the desert, and I was waiting out in an out of the way place. Over to the side I saw a small group of people gather around some older guy, some trying to get autographs and one guy trying to show his portfolio– I heard it was Jack Kirby, who all I knew then was the rumors that this guy created just about everything at Marvel and Stan Lee had taken all the credit and he didn’t make a dime. I walked up in he middle of a conversation, someone had asked him about Stan Lee, and he said “If Marvel Comics is hell, then Stan Lee must be satan!” and the 5 guys around all chuckled– a couple artists, including myself stood with little pieces out for him to look at, and I mean, it did look like he was looking at work and giving a critique—- knowing what I know now, I would have never bothered him, just thanked him– but he did look at whatever mish-mash I had there and I could tell he wasn’t really looking at it– I don’t recall what he said exactly, but it was just a standard encouragement to keep drawing and drawing. He told another artist “well why are you here? you should be drawing!” — and the group moved along.

For years after that I guess you could say I tried to “break in” to comics. I did the normal routines of sending in samples and getting rejection letters, and then I stopped doing that and just began working for independent writers and small companies that didn’t pay. My work was still pretty bad, but was getting better just from the sheer amount of volume I’d produce.  I think in this period though, I became more and more jaded as I saw a lot of crooked things by small companies, people being stiffed, work being stolen. Suddenly those dreams of being that hit artist, you know they dry up. I was really cynical and jaded. I still had offers from so called companies, but they all just seemed like people who needed artists so they could make a dime and not pay you anything. Mark Evanier would later call those types “Unfinanced Entrepreneurs” — Yeah, I worked for a lot of those! — I gave up on the idea of comic books, and started doing comic strips for newspapers, etc.

It was around 1997 I was producing different samples for newspapers, while i worked shitty day jobs. Just married and with a kid on the way, I took a long hard look at my dreams of drawing comics. I think I may have been about to hang it all up, I had definitly hung up the idea of producing mainstream anything in comic books. Then I had that weird dream.

The dream… well, Jack Kirby was in it. Sort of, verbally slapping me around. Asking why I was slacking, wasting time on other things. There was a weird Mexican Radio playing in the background– I was very confused in the dream — but this Jack wasn’t the kind old man from 1993, this one was energetic, drinking and smoking, tough talking. Basically in that dream he told me I couldn’t wait around for someone to come hand me work, I had to just start putting out my own books, and that ghosty Jack encouraged me to tell the truth, if I knew someone was treating someone unfairly in comics, bring it to light, so that other creators wouldn’t get bamboozled by some of those douchebag small publishers who were just feeding off young talents. That dream was so weird and vivid, I drew the first Yirmumah minicomic about it. I did what the Jack in my dream told me to, I took it to shops myself.— the response to it was fun, and got me interested in self publishing for the first time. Even mini comics, hand stapled…. even sometimes it was costing ME money to put them out or drive them into shops.

Yirmumah was like therapy to me… I spilled out all that cynical rage onto paper– very bitter and jaded stuff, but hilarious. Much of it is misguided, but still hilarious in a raw way. I made my good friend Bob into a character of sorts, and we said, to heck with this, we’re going to take it to conventions! So we booked Mid-Ohio Comicon first, Pittsburgh second….. at the first Mid-Ohio con we took Yirmumah to, I remember Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones were having a Jack Kirby tribut panel, and Bob encouraged me to go to it, so we did. Bob had joked he was going to embarrass me with the story about the Kirby dream, and he actually raised his hand to ask a question and I was sweating… he asked instead whether there were any creations Jack thought were bad or disliked, and I think I remember Mark Evanier laughing and saying Red Raven???— but the one thing that freaked us both out…. they had said that for background noise, Jack would listen to radio, often on a mexican radio station…. so here we were a year later, and that one weird detail of my dream had come out. Bob and I looked at each other with a Twilight zone’d freaked out look. — When I tell that story to anyone who asks, they usually ask me, are you sure you didn’t read that somewhere earlier and knew it before the dream? — No. Honestly, and it’s shameful for me to say, but up until that point, I had no desire to learn anything about the forefathers of comics at all. I’d SKIP those articles if I ever saw them. –

but after these strange events, THAT is when curiosity took over. I found myself not buying any NEW comics. It was around that time I read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud— if you’ve read that book, there’s a character in there, that was almost who I exactly was, and it resonated with me. The guy who thought he’d be the next big thing, but it all fell apart, and he realized he was all about surface, and then had to start learning about MORE than just the shiny surface of the apple. Looking back now, I think that was a turning point for me– it was as if that chapter was written specifically to put me on a BETTER path. And do I did– my buddy Jim Rugg leant me his Will Eisner books (he probably remembers) — Comics and Sequential Art, etc…. I devoured those and bought my own copies. I had no interest whatsoever in the late 1990s comic market mainstream stuff– I found myself buying collections of old stuff and just DIGGING it now. Really learning about the craft of comics– and becoming VERY inspired learning about the work ethic of the comics forefathers. This period actually made me LOVE comics. — You can ask my wife how passionate I can talk about these subjects.

Yirmumah, without me knowing it, had brought me back into comics. And thinking back on it now, it was as if Jack had delivered to me in a dream something I’d need if I’d ever make a go of comics as a lifelong career… Yirmumah was some sort of attitude. Some sort of unstoppable DRIVE– a tough talking old school sort of mettle. And it did make me feel like I could do it again… but on my own terms with my own rules.

A strange series of domino like effects lead me from project to project, and ultimately to WEBCOMICS, and the enlightenment that they were the future of the medium. I always kept in my mind, as I talked with other creators or groups– what would those guys from the 40s have done with all the tools we have today? Why, I don’t think they would have persued books at all if there was a way to magically beam your comics right into kid’s bedrooms and families living rooms every day! — that’s what got me so hyped on Webcomics, even during the days when publishers at shows would just see anything on the web as not fit for print. — in just a few years how things have changed!

Back to Kirby and Yirmumah— I Had old fans of Yirmumah ask me why I never put Jack in the webcomics– and I think it was after I had learned so much about the past, I just didn’t want anyone to think poorly of me for portraying Jack in this REAL tough guy, no nonsense way. I just didn’t feel right about it. — But I get to the end of this KIRBY: KING of COMICS book, and Mark Evanier tells this story about a rough time he was having when he was 18– and Kirby just kinda sensed it and got him to spill the beans about what was up. See Mark was being harassed by an ex-employer, threatening legal action all while other things were weighing on him, and Kirby went to the phone and all Mark heard of the conversation as Jack called his harrasser was “If you ever bother Mark again, I’ll come down there and punch your goddamn face in,” -

I’d buy this book just to read that story, because now I know that my depictions of Jack weren’t so far off. Which makes the dream even freakier to me.

In a weird way, I see Jack Kirby now like the grandfather I never had or knew when he was alive. I don’t wish to ever draw like him, in his style– only to be inspired by the sheer amount of energy, work ethic, and love for his family and friends that he had. Even total strangers. I think one of my goals is to just inspire others like he did. Maybe telling this story will do that.

So what now!? My studio is 85% wallpapered with Kirby’s Mister Miracle work. Those black and white collections make a mean wallpaper, I’m tellin yah! I just like being surrounded with that crackling energy. When I’m feeling lazy or uninspired, all I need to do is look up somewhere, and he’s slapping me in the head telling me to get back to work. And not just Jack anymore, I think about all of those guys, and how hard they worked. I’m grateful because, well, I feel like if not for them, I might not have the opportunities I have now. They are the greatest generation of comic creators, and a huge inspiration to me.

Back to the drawing board.