Johnny Zito — writer / artist / futurist

I got this wood chest where I keep everything creative I’ve ever done; from my very first Wolverine drawing (Circa - 2nd grade) to a copy of A Hunting We Will Go ( Feb 2003), all the Review cartoons and everything in between.

With the move and all I ended up really going through the box yesterday for the first time ever. I started with the most recent stuff because it’s all on top; college and high school cartoons on loose leaf paper… art projects and feature length scripts written long hand in copy books… Nothing to blow your mind.

Then I get to the grade school stuff and I stumbled on the very first super heroes I ever came up with on my own. This team of characters, all original, and a series of lil comic books I made about them - complete with fully fleshed out story arcs and a rotating cast of villains and conflict and character development and life and death and revenge… all these great things about comic books I must have subconsciously learned to emulate even then.

Obviously the dialogue and the art are poor. I was prolly in 4th grade when I worked on all this nonsense… But its more original and imaginative nonsense than I’ve been able to come up with ever since. There’s a talking psychic chimp, a guy with an F-14 strapped to his back, a super genius who has to keep his head shaved because when he thinks too hard his brain steams. They’re deadliest enemy is the sole occupant and sovereign ruler of the sun. They prevent war between Atlantis and her democratic sister nation, The Common Wealth of the Pacific Ocean (saving the continental United States - caught between the warring under sea nations). These heroes were celebrities and they lived in a super high tech fort on the Ben Franklin Parkway, later relocating to the Navy Yard after the government black mailed the heroes into working for them and completing more politically motivated missions…. Pretty crazy stuff to be doodling in Social Studies Class.

By the time I got to high school I stopped making my own comics and coming up with my own characters and I just started using arch-types. For instance Major Liberty borrows heavily from Superman, Batman/Robin; and to a lesser extent Green Lantern and Captain America.  Of course all the character traits are unique to the Major; it took a dozen people to help flesh out his selfish and emotionally immature personality. But all the cool stuff, all the imaginative stuff is either homage or straight up theft.

I can’t tell you how jealous I am of 4th grade me, cause I don’t really remember coming up with any of that stuff but I’m sure I had a blast doing it.