Read Online The Last Tomorrow by Ryan David Jahn - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ryan David Jahn
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aren’t getting your own book right away. We’ll run these four stories in the next few issues of Bash! Comics , see if the kids respond to them. If they
do we’ll think about it. And work on your drawing. You’re at the back end of good. Improve a bit and I’ll pay twenty bucks a page, but you ain’t there yet.’
Eugene stood silent, unable to believe what he’d just heard. He made a dollar twenty-five an hour doing construction – ten greenbacks a day – and this man had just off-handedly
offered him hundreds.
‘Do we have a deal?’
Eugene simply nodded.
‘Good.’
He had his own comic book within six months. He wrote every story. He had notebooks full of ideas and was always adding more while refining the ones he’d already jotted down. Once each
month’s stories were decided upon, Leonard would assign them to various artists. Eugene would draw one himself and oversee the completion of the rest. It was a productive, creative time.
Then the kids started to get tired of superhero comics.
Circulation dropped fast.
The last issue of Rabid! ran in April 1943.
As the superhero comics were sinking, crime comics were rising. Eugene stayed on at E.M. Comics to write and draw for Gutterguns , an anthology comic about lowlife criminals. He handled a
story a month for a couple years, making enough to get by on, but not much more. Making less than he had in construction.
This was not the escape from poverty he’d imagined it would be.
In 1945, feeling depressed and creatively stifled by working on other people’s projects, he told Leonard he wanted to do a comic book of his own again. It would be a crime comic, but one
that allowed him to stretch himself a bit. Every story would be set in a fictional place called Down City, where dark things were always happening. Criminals ran the place. Albino alligators
survived in the sewers, living off the bodies of those unfortunate enough to have crossed the wrong mobster – or the corrupt police department. Each story would reference something that
happened in another story, would reveal a previously undisclosed connection, until there was a network of fiction so elaborate that Down City seemed real, seemed a three-dimensional place that a
person could step into.
The first issue ran in August 1945. The last issue ran in December 1949. It was never the most popular comic E.M. published, but it was a good run all the same, and Eugene managed to accomplish
some of what he’d wanted to accomplish when he began. He’d even seen adults reading his work. Those were proud moments, moments when he felt he’d actually done something worth
doing.
But by 1949 he’d been in the business eleven years. He was thirty-eight and he was tired of comics. He decided he wasn’t going to do them anymore. The quiet pride he sometimes felt
wasn’t enough.
He had a little money saved. After eleven years of work in comics he had accumulated enough cash to keep himself out of the poorhouse for six months, assuming he was very careful, and if he
really committed himself to it he thought six months might give him enough time to write a novel.
He’d come out here from Kentucky to make it as a writer, to make it as a novelist, but had not yet written a single book. Not even a bad one. He’d written a few dozen short stories,
published six or seven of them, but he was still on page twenty-nine of the novel he’d begun in 1936. He wasn’t even sure where the manuscript might be. He hadn’t seen it since he
moved apartments in 1947.
His eleven years in comics now felt like they’d been wasted, like they’d distracted him from what he really should have been doing. He’d made no money and the art he produced,
if it could be considered art, ended up getting tossed into trashcans by bedroom-cleaning mothers and Sunday-school teachers. He could stay and continue to turn out tomorrow’s trash for
twenty dollars a page, or he could do what he should have been doing all
do we’ll think about it. And work on your drawing. You’re at the back end of good. Improve a bit and I’ll pay twenty bucks a page, but you ain’t there yet.’
Eugene stood silent, unable to believe what he’d just heard. He made a dollar twenty-five an hour doing construction – ten greenbacks a day – and this man had just off-handedly
offered him hundreds.
‘Do we have a deal?’
Eugene simply nodded.
‘Good.’
He had his own comic book within six months. He wrote every story. He had notebooks full of ideas and was always adding more while refining the ones he’d already jotted down. Once each
month’s stories were decided upon, Leonard would assign them to various artists. Eugene would draw one himself and oversee the completion of the rest. It was a productive, creative time.
Then the kids started to get tired of superhero comics.
Circulation dropped fast.
The last issue of Rabid! ran in April 1943.
As the superhero comics were sinking, crime comics were rising. Eugene stayed on at E.M. Comics to write and draw for Gutterguns , an anthology comic about lowlife criminals. He handled a
story a month for a couple years, making enough to get by on, but not much more. Making less than he had in construction.
This was not the escape from poverty he’d imagined it would be.
In 1945, feeling depressed and creatively stifled by working on other people’s projects, he told Leonard he wanted to do a comic book of his own again. It would be a crime comic, but one
that allowed him to stretch himself a bit. Every story would be set in a fictional place called Down City, where dark things were always happening. Criminals ran the place. Albino alligators
survived in the sewers, living off the bodies of those unfortunate enough to have crossed the wrong mobster – or the corrupt police department. Each story would reference something that
happened in another story, would reveal a previously undisclosed connection, until there was a network of fiction so elaborate that Down City seemed real, seemed a three-dimensional place that a
person could step into.
The first issue ran in August 1945. The last issue ran in December 1949. It was never the most popular comic E.M. published, but it was a good run all the same, and Eugene managed to accomplish
some of what he’d wanted to accomplish when he began. He’d even seen adults reading his work. Those were proud moments, moments when he felt he’d actually done something worth
doing.
But by 1949 he’d been in the business eleven years. He was thirty-eight and he was tired of comics. He decided he wasn’t going to do them anymore. The quiet pride he sometimes felt
wasn’t enough.
He had a little money saved. After eleven years of work in comics he had accumulated enough cash to keep himself out of the poorhouse for six months, assuming he was very careful, and if he
really committed himself to it he thought six months might give him enough time to write a novel.
He’d come out here from Kentucky to make it as a writer, to make it as a novelist, but had not yet written a single book. Not even a bad one. He’d written a few dozen short stories,
published six or seven of them, but he was still on page twenty-nine of the novel he’d begun in 1936. He wasn’t even sure where the manuscript might be. He hadn’t seen it since he
moved apartments in 1947.
His eleven years in comics now felt like they’d been wasted, like they’d distracted him from what he really should have been doing. He’d made no money and the art he produced,
if it could be considered art, ended up getting tossed into trashcans by bedroom-cleaning mothers and Sunday-school teachers. He could stay and continue to turn out tomorrow’s trash for
twenty dollars a page, or he could do what he should have been doing all
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