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Updated November, 2006: A number of people have written to ask "What IS Quirk, anyway?" Twenty years ago I knew the answer to that question. Fortunately, I never published that origin story and today I have changed my opinion on the subject. Not everything needs to be quantified -- in other words, some mysteries don't need to be solved. Quirk is Quirk, and that's all what he yam. You might as well embrace the ambiguity. It's been a rough couple of years, and it's likely to get rougher, but for now I suddenly have the time to resume updates on this website. I'm dipping into the archives to provide you with some of the vast backlog of stories I have on hand, while completing work on BRUCE CANWELL's terrific QUIRK story, "The Prunes of Ire," which will resume from the beginning sometime in 2007. Don't forget you can always email me with your questions and comments, some of which may appear on this page. -- Doug | |
I've been making comics since I was five years old. At that time I lived with my family in Edina, Minnesota. My first comic strip character was a superhero called Diamond Jewels. DJ was a Batman rip-off with five assistants who all looked the same. In their first and only adventure, they rode in a swamp boat into the deepest part of the everglades, where they met a gigantic swamp monster who turned out to be friendly. We moved to Maine when I was seven. Perhaps because I lived a much more insular life, I began drawing comic book adventures like crazy. There was Sock Man, who had a round nose that shot out from his face and socked evildoers. There was Guess Who Man, shaped like a gigantic question mark. They faced villains like Flat Top and Tip Top -- hats with legs. One of my favorites was The Mummy -- a cross between King Kong and Boris Karloff. A professor and his young son discovered a gigantic 30 foot tall mummy who turned out to be friendly. |
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Many of my early comics appeared in home-made Monster Mags that I exchanged with my cousin. | |
Actual comic books were frowned on in my house, so I did not start reading them until I was old enough to do what I wanted to do and stand my ground with my father. This was in 1977, and although I became a fan of nearly all Marvel comics, Howard the Duck was my favorite, because it came the closest to being about Real People. One thing led to another and in 1978 or 9 I opened Maine's first comic shop, Duck Soup. I reasoned that my own comic shop would be the perfect place to sell my own comics, and so, in 1981, QUIRK was born. Through Duck Soup I made several life-long friends. These friends were the only ones who bought my comic book. One day, a lady came into the shop, saw the first issue of QUIRK, and launched into a dissertation of how awful it was. She went on and on, not knowing that she was talking to the author. She was not very polite, but she was right.Buyer's Guide columnist cat yronwode was more polite, calling Quirk "a better than average amateur effort." |
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This is a page from Quirk #3. In those days I drew in felt tip on 11x17" bristol board. Now I use the standard India Ink and a brush, and individual web installments usually measure 13"x14". | |
| I pressed on and published a second issue. This was much better, to large extent because the story was good and the characters more lifelike. This time, Ms. yronwode wrote "The story reads as well as any newstand comic and better than Jim Starlin's current work for Epic. In this adventure Quirk, a sort of rough cynic with a nose worse than Manthing's, decides to take on a Chandler-Hammet guise with science fiction overtones -- but the writing goes a good deal deeper than a parody of detective genre fiction as it delves into the questions of sorrow and happiness, of the enforcibility of states of mind, and, yes, love. I can't call this the greatest thing since sliced bread -- the art is far too rough to be anything but improved upon in later issues -- but any story about a man of honor is worth reading, even if that "man" looks like a walking spaghetti-nose. " |  |
Lettering is done in Adobe Illustrator, using Blambot's Digital Strip font for dialogue. | |
| But there were to be no later issues, although I completed a third story and had three more in the works before I stopped. After Duck Soup closed, I wrote some articles and drew some single-panel Quirk'toons for the CBG, then stopped drawing for about ten years while I wrote two novels (you can read one of them complete at this site) and worked retail. Eventually I bought a Macintosh Quadra 660AV and taught myself just enough about graphic arts to land a job in the art department of a local newspaper. I learned a lot more while I was there, then moved on to a small mutimedia company and high-end color work. Following a management coup there, I joined my fellow workers in walking out of that job -- which might have been a good idea if I had had another job lined up. |  |
Finally, Quirk is colored in Photoshop and saved in both jpeg and TIFF formats. | |
With nothing but time on my hands I started this website. As a way of generating income it wasn't much, but when I saw Don Simpson's weekly Megaton Man serial I knew that I had found the right way to return to my first love: comics. I picked up in the middle of one of the unfinished Quirk stories and went right on from there. Today I produce the strip on a System 9 iMac. The stories start out as scribbles on loose sheets of paper or in my notebook. I never did write a complete script out in advance and that hasn't changed: the story and art grow together as I go along. A typical webisode amounts to 2/3rds of a page of art, if were drawing in standard pages. The original art of most episodes measures 13"x14". Since I no longer have a working scanner, I take the finished pages to work with me, scan them there and email them to myself. When I get the files, I have to unzip and reassemble them in Photoshop. Then I letter the pages in Adobe Illustrator, which takes more time than you might think since I'm usually finalizing the dialogue at the same time! Then it's back into Photoshop where I import the word baloons, marry them to the art, and color the page. |
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Two of my oldest friends from Duck Soup days, Bruce Canwell & Lee Weeks, created Batman Chronicles: The Gauntlet for DC Comics. Bruce has guest-written a new Quirk story to appear here soon! | |
I save the file in about umpteen different formats: a black and white TIFF with dialogue for the print version of the strip (which until recently was appearing in a local Arts newspaper), a color JPEG to use on the web, and a slightly higher resolution TIFF to use in the PDF version. All the time I'm doing this, I'm doing the same for TINSEL*TOWN and working at a paying job -- as a part time Reference Librarian at Unity College Library. It keeps me busy. I like working at the library, but if I could have one wish it would be that I could make enough money doing comics so that I didn't have to work another job. That isn't likely top happen anytime soon. If you have read this far I hope you have found it informative and enoyable. If you like my comics, you can make me happy with a quick email. I won't bite, or add your name to any mailing list. Best wishes, Doug. |
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Separated at birth? A couple of people have pointed out a supposed resemblance between Quirk and Squidward from Spongebob Squarepants. This is purely coincidence. I created Quirk 20 years ago and have never seen the show in question; I seriously doubt that they even know of Quirk's existence. | |
