A trip down Memory Lane

Before I wrote:

All these great books are available at Amazon by clicking one of the links on the side.
All About Nikki will be coming sometime in 2011!

 I wrote:

Classic Mayor Fox Covers! What happens when your kids have too much time and too much imagination!

Way back in 1982-83, when I was a little cheese, living in a rundown one-bedroom apartment next to the Metro-North railroad tracks on Park Avenue in the burnt down Bronx, I became enamored with a Richard Scarry character called Mayor Fox. In between games of Tabletop Pac-man, the Atari 5200, Saturday Morning cartoons, trips to Alexander’s, McDonald’s, Pioneer Supermarket and the Pizza shop on Washington Avenue, I devoured all the Richard Scarry books my parents bought me. I also had most of the Puzzletown figurines. 

(c) TM 1976 Richard Scarry. Thank You for Inspiring me to create.

I also loved the comic books in my brother’s comic collection. Unable to draw the intricate art I saw in  his comics, I decided to use words to make the pictures in my Mayor Fox adventures. After I wrote my Mayor Fox stories, I took a little Elmer’s glue, some construction paper to design a cover and made these crude comic books featuring my favorite characters (and a couple of others co-opted from Disney movies, TV shows and other stuff). Oh and like any good comics , mine feature ads from sponsors:

Look kids

Crudely desinged back interior ads! I think the networks would pay me NOT to endorse their shows in my home-made magazines!

Snorks! Hey this was a favorite back in the day. On Saturday morning at 8::30 on Channel 4 back in 1983 or 1984.

Some of these home-made comic books like this issue were ahead of their time incorporating bonus material inside their pages:

Look kids, it's a poorly drawn Voltron Poster by an 11-year old that has nothing to do with the story. I just liked the show!

And on the back- A Garret A. Morgan CES 132 Memo!

Others like this later issue depicting the death of a major character were 72 pages long. The cover idea for this came from the Daily News front page featuring the rubout of Mob Boss Paul Castellano way Back in 1986:

The interior page of this issue with the official Mayor Fox seal! Check out my commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Statue of Liberty at the top of the page!

I took my allowance and got a Record book from McCrorys on Third Avenue and made these:

The first books I ever wrote!

The wrecked accounting book ith the Heathcliff Stickers from 1983 is a compendium of the First Mayor Fox Stories I wrote when I was nine. The non-stickered book is a compendium of crap I put together with help from classmates in 1984 when I was in gixth grade.

No front matter here, we get right to the story!

Even though I’ve moved on to publishing real books, I still cherish my home-made comics and books. Sure they’re crude, poorly written, and filled with very silly stories that only make sense to me.

I hope by seeing these home-made comics all the readers of this blog will understand why it’s important to never give up on your dreams. I wanted to be a writer since I was nine years old and twenty-seven years later I’m living my dream. So keep persevering, one day your dreams will come true!