My early comics and childhood/teenage doodles (fun fun and more fun)!
More stories and sketchbooks will be added over time, so please check the news page every now and then for updates
I was born to Greek parents in a tiny town called Terang in the outskirts of western Victoria, Australia.
The town was essentially an Irish cowboy settlement and my folks had opened a fish and chips shop there.
We stayed in Terang until the shop, and our home on top of it, were burnt to the ground. In the early '80s we moved to Coburg in Melbourne, in which suburb my dad had two sisters and their families and my mom two brothers and their families all living nearby (not to mention all their first and second cousins), so I grew up in a pretty cosy environment full of tens of cousins and family friends (I still say that i have more relatives in Australia than I do in Greece)!
(above left) A polaroid of my mom holding me at the back of our fish n chips shop in Terang.Probably my first photo (above right) My baptism in Brunswick. Bear in mind that all the people are either siblings or first cousins of my folks. That's how big the family was in Melbourne.
My earliest memory of anything creative would have to be a gigantic Hulk colouring book (The Incredible Hulk Colouring Book 1979) that my mom had bought me from Coles.
The book had a load of puzzles and hundreds of pages of colouring-in and fill-in the drawings/gaps activities and I remember spending ages on that!
My three years older brother obviously influenced me a lot at that age, so whatever fad he was into, I usually followed suit. So in the early '80s he was heavily into KISS, collecting their cards, eating their ice-creams, buying the showbags and all that and I kinda dug that at the same time. He's still into KISS and I even did a documentary at film school about his obsession! Anyhow, KISS, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Elvis and Greek anti-junta songs is all that played in the house!
In terms of cartoons, TV and movies, I remember my brother developing a huge Fonz (from TV sitcom Happy Days) thing. He had a tiny leather jacket and would go "aaay!" and do a thumbs up all the time ...so we loved Happy Days! We also loved Mork and Mindy! "Na-Nu Na-Nu!" We Even named our dog after Robin Williams' character.
Then there was the A-Team and the first Wrestlemania (Hulk Hogan and Mister T tag-team anyone?). For a few years we attended Shotokan Tae-Kwon-Do lessons in huge gyms ala Cobra Kai dojo in The Karate Kid, 'cause karate was so dang huge that one can't fathom it today. Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan were though to be made of marble, steel and tiger claws!
We absolutely adored He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and we had a deal with our folks where we'd buy a figure once a month, my brother collecting the villains and I the heroes! So we gathered a nice, balanced team of classic He-Man figures and in combination with the static toy soldiers, artillery and tanks that we collected (my brother again bought the USSR villain (lol) armies, while I got the allies) we'd have them duke it out by throwing marbles at each other's army.
(above left) A photo of me dressed as E.T,. with my dad, after the Moomba carnival at the Yarra River, Melbourne, Australia (1983). The showbag featured an E.T. mask, a poncho with E.T. on it and of course an elongated index finger that would light-up! (above right) A photo of me at Coburg West Primary circa 1984.
I still have all the above-mentioned stuff, and it's all in pretty good condition considering how many years passed!
Another item that was in the house was a hardcover comic called The Super Heroes 1984 Annual which collected some beautifully drawn DC heroes stories and, after revisiting it a couple of years ago, I noticed that it even had a Superman short story written by Alan Moore (accompanied by a single illustration), that I haven't read elsewhere! The Annual was printed and distributed only in the UK (and the Commonwealth), so I was pretty lucky to read these stories (again and again) in great quality! The same went for a He-Man 1984 Annual that was also in a hardcover edition! I just read these comics again and again and again! Around this period I obviously adored Star Wars (Return of the Jedi had just been released) and the first movie I got to see in the cinema (at the West Coburg Progress) was E.T. in 1983. I actually thought E.T. existed and just lived and breathed the character and merchandise.
(above left) A photo of me and my brother,Leon,circa 1984 in front of our house and our silver Holden Premier, West Coburg, Melbourne, Australia (above right) A photo of me sitting in front of my desk in my room, which was at that 'balcony' window in the photo on the right. Hey, my desk was acceptable in the eighties!
We obviously watched Spider-man and His Amazing Friends and Superfriends reruns and Space-Ghost and I remember waking early in the morning to watch '60s or '80s episodes of Astro Boy, Roger RamJet and Mr. Squiggle's drawing lessons.
I really became aware of comics, as a cool medium, when we first went to Greece in 1985. My brother started buying old Greek Marvel reprints by the bundle and the first one I read was a black and white reprint of The Amazing Spider-man Annual #1 (1964) by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko (the one that features beautiful pin-ups in between the action scenes of Spider-man fighting the Sinister Six). After that there was no way back. Greek comics fans were incredibly lucky in that Kabanas Press reprinted, weekly, a Spider-man, Master of Kung-Fu or Avengers, Rom or Daredevil or Captain America comic within the same issue! Weekly! Even though the black and white print with the red hue had the worst quality ever, the stories were just pure magic. So once my brother managed to find all the back catalogue of these reprints we were reading these tales like they were true stories, man! Silver Age Marvel was our new religion!
As the times would have it I got heavily into cartoons like Thundercats and the moving "anime" series The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (Holgersson), as well as lots and lots of '80s sci-fi/adventure flicks like The Explorers, The Black Hole, Krull, Enemy Mine, The Goonies, Excalibur and Back to the Future. Around that time I started drawing, more than usual, and I produced lots of "mini-comics" just for fun, like the Dark Ninja one featured in this website! Many were even collages, made from cut out Mike Zeck Master of Kung Fu panels! Yikes! The sacrilege!
In 1988 we moved back to Australia, our folks worked their asses off doing 12-hour nightshifts in sweatshop factories and we returned to Aussie school. I got more and more into more "mature" comics of the day, as they were available at my local library and even the school encouraged drawing so within that frame I created my first character, The Tarantula (see below for more info)! As I was also kind of maturing as a person I started getting into metal, grew a mullet and an even larger Ace Frehley obsession, listening to his Trouble Walking LP day in, day out!
When our folks bought us a Commodore 64 with a cassette deck, we zombied out for days, maybe weeks trying to clock Rastan Saga, Ghosts and Goblins, Out Run, Kung Fu Master, Wonderboy or my favourite: the C64 video game adaptation of Stallone's Cobra. Glorious video game days.
I really have no right to point my finger at kids flippin' out on their consoles these days, instead of readin' comics and all that yarn! I really spent hundreds of afternoons indoors geeking out at the latest graphics (or maybe that's because you had to wait half an hour for a game to load)! See kids! That's patience! Darn kids!
In the late '80s I renewed my interest in Star Wars and had conversation upon conversation about the origin of Darth Vader and so on with my schoolmate Andrew Pocock. In regards to Star Wars, even though a movie hadn't been produced in only 5 years, it seemed so boring to everyone else and so last year's news that it started becoming embarrassing to embrace the movies so publicly. Only after the prequels came out, just like with the KISS reunion which occurred in almost the same time frame, did they both manage to become massively accepted again.
(above left) from left to right: I, my brother, Leon, my cousin Chris and our mate Michael! '80s Aussie suburbs skateboards gangs man! (above right) Con circa 1990 wearing an Anthrax T-shirt, probably my favourite band that year.
In the early '90s we moved to Greece and at that point i devoted my whole existence to two things. Girls and comics. It sounds like a weird combination, but it actually worked... I just hit on girls 24/7 and in my spare time bought and read Marvel comics frantically, especially old reprints, thus my obsession with Marvel's X-Men universe just went beyond any reason. At the same time I continued drawing/developing(?) my Tarantula character and started learning a bit of guitar on my own...
I guess I started feeling a bit confident with my art when I was about 17. At that point I left Greece and went back to Australia- but that story continues in the next chapter.
(above left) Circa 1991. By now in my early teens, i grew a mullet and made collages of all sorts of weird images of things that I was in at the time! Like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, The Doors and ...90210 (above right) Con circa 1992 sporting his mullet, a bandana and a clip-on crucifix earring! Yes, that cool!
There's just too much stuff to sum up my absolute influences, but I will be making a top, almost complete, list on that in the near future (I've been at it for years) and I will be posting it on my front page. i think '60s-'80s cheesy TV pop cartoons, rock god music and far-out comics made my style and taste what it is today, and no matter how I try to sophisticate myself at times, it's really that art that I yearn for and miss most.
This story was drawn when I was 8 years old. We'd left Australia and come to Greece for a couple of years and I was infatuated with the Master of Kung-Fu Marvel Comics reprints and at the time everyone was still into karate and ninja films (my favourite being Ninja III: The Domination).
I eventually did a remake of my Dark Ninja story and printed it in Subart Comics Vol. 2 #3, using the original corny dialogue and spelling mistakes and I've included that remake in the freebie book, that you can read if you click below!
Click here to read more about my mid-'80s adventures and read the WHOLE Dark Ninja story! Wow, what a treat! Does Marvel do that?
Once I returned to Australia, having already read and gotten badly brainwashed by hundreds of '60s-'70s Marvel reprints, I was lucky enough to have my 5th grade teacher at Coburg West Primary School, Mrs. Ennis, give us the task of creating and illustrating a story from scratch.
Everyone's story would be hung underneath the blackboard and the rest could borrow it to read at home, like a proper library book! I set out to create a superhero, and thus Tarantula was born.
The story incorporates Captain America's, Spider-Man's and even Green Lantern's origin (I was lucky enough to find a hardcover edition of the O'Neil-Adams Green Arrow / Green Lantern run in my library)! Oh, and it also incorporates an ultramuscular dude with a curly mullet.
Plus, my character has a lightsaber! Beat that! This story started my obsession with evolving Tarantula and from 1988 to about 1994 i drew at least two long Tarantula comics per year!
Click here to read more about my Coburg West years and read the WHOLE Tarantula story! Wahoo!
After I created the Tarantula story, the following year I attended the 6th grade, where Mr. Hero taught and we were encouraged to try a bit more in terms of writing our story, being descriptive, using more adjectives etc
So that year (seeing that I'd just seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at the movies) I did an Indiana Jones sequel (the title incorporates almost all the previous movie titles)! Just like Tarantula, the mini-book was available for loan within the class and everyone had done some kick-ass stories! Fun times!
The story has all sorts of weird (and cringe worthy) stuff inside, like an Indian with a T-shirt that writes Lebos on it (a derogative term used for Lebanese in Australia), a tiger that looks like Battle-Cat from He-Man and even a Death Star garbage compactor-type trap!
Click here to read the WHOLE darn thing! George Lucas can kiss my ass, it's two decades old fan art!
For the first time ever my folks bought me a really proper sketchbook, with velvet paper made for inking, so i went to great lengths to make every page on this sketchbook look as cool as possible!
It incorporates all my late-'80s fascinations, like the then new Tim Burton Batman film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Thundercats, He-Man, The Dark Knight Returns, oh, and stacks of new Tarantula (told you I was obsessed with him) sketches with costume revamps, hidden headquarters and a f*ckin spinning plane that spins so fast that it drills through mountains (why fly around it?)
Click here to check out the WHOLE sketchbook AND read my director's commentary on every page! WOW!
Tarantula's next big adventure! After having his sidekick, the half-Indian girl wonder Running Eagle, killed by a villain called ...The Roller-Skater (yes, cringe now), the revamped Tarantula returns to kick some serious butt!
Set up to be as ridiculously similar to Captain America's accidental secret identity revelation to his sidekick Bucky, followed by a tribute to the then recent death of Robin (Jason Todd) from the Batman A Death in the Family story line, this comic had it all!
Scenes that looked like they came right out of 1986 gung ho fest The Dark Knight Returns (and they did) to Neal Adams'The Demon Lives Again rip-offs! At the time I thought it was my magnum opus. It probably is.
Click here to read the WHOLE sequel to the legendary Tarantula comic (now, besides myself and my mom, you'll have read it too! Feel special already?)
My mom owned a mini-mart and in it she sold all sorts of things including tiny A6 size note pads.
I used to draw hundreds of little character sketches in them and this specific one dates from early 1991!
I guess I was heavily into the Roy Thomas-Neal Adams late '60s X-Men run (and I remember obsessing over Paul Smith-era X-Men too)...
...and there surely must be at least one Tarantula sketch in there! :-)
Click here to flip through the WHOLE sketchbook! It's like a secret keyhole to the abyss I call my soul!
Yes, siree! Tarantula's back! And this time he's not wearing all that extra gear, he's doin' it old-school!
The title 'A New Beginning' probably reflects my lifelong Star Wars fascination (A New Hope being the first movie from '77). This story was never completed, that's why it will always remain a huge what if... Like what would've Eyes Wide Shut have been like if Kubrick had lived...?
Click to find out why Tarantula is standing on top of a heap of human bodies. Holocaust, you say? Nay! Tis a fair fight between the Man-Spider and the lowly serpent fiends of the villain called Cobra!
I was living in Greece at this point and I decided to draw another revamped origin of ...yes, Tarantula!
I made his costume look a bit more '90s and wrote the story in Greek in an effort to try and pitch it to Kabanas Press, who republished Spider-Man and other Marvel comics in Greek. In this comic, my Tarantula character fights Marvel's villain, also called, Tarantula, in order to resolve who the heck will earn the right to the name (the same thing happened in Power-Man #24 (1974) when Luke Cage fought and won the original Power-Man and gained the right to use the name). I never finished this story, 'cause I knew deep down that Marvel would never let me do that! Damn capitalist pigs! :-) I even cut out ads from Marvel comics and pasted them on random pages to make it look like a bona fide comic! On the back I had glued the back cover from a 1991 issue of X-Men, which featured the promo poster for the movie Hook.
Click here to read the WHOLE Tarantula versus Tarantula comic and check out the nifty sketches after it!