From the Vault WEEK- Exit 6 1989

The first actual issue of the self published comic book EXIT 6 was published in 1998. Before that I had used the characters from the book in many a class assignment when I was at the Joe Kubert school in the early nineties.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to find a bunch of pages under the bed in Maine that pre-dated even those college assignments. These must have been done in my senior year of high school. I remember I conceived the idea and the characters in the early years of 1989. Who knew that I was so ambitious that, in just the few short months after, that I would have an initial storyline in place and a few pages under my belt?

Exit 6, at the time, was simply called "Keith Howard: Vampire." Not too flashy or original but, you know, you got the point of what the book was about right off the bat.

At the time, I was reading a lot, and really loving, the few manga books that Viz Comics was putting out in the late 80's. Unlike today where your neighborhood Borders or Barnes and Noble has whole shelves devoted to the Japanese comic book art form in the 80's I think I only had three or four titles to choose from. Two of these books that captured my imagination were Area 88 and Xenon: The Heavy Metal Warrior. Using those books as inspiration, these pages have a lot of gray wash and a bit of zip-a-tone on them to mimic the work I was seeing in those books.

Another funny thing to note is that I was sharing the writing credit with my brother, Josh. I'm not sure how much we really collaborated on these pages or what ideas he and I knocked around. But, it was fun to create with my brother who, at the time and probably still is, a HUGE horror fan. Who better to work on a book about a vampire with?

So, over the next few days I'll show you some of these old pages. Up tomorrow will be the inside front cover of the book, featuring the characters from the story. And, if you think you know the story of Keith Howard and Exit 6, then you're in for a surprise. This original story is totally different.

Have a great day!