10 Years of Titans Sketches!

In November of 2008 I had a rather serious surgery (things obviously worked out fine) and my friends Adam Hauenstein, John Popa and Andy Varcho, surprised me afterwards with a brand new sketchbook! Andy airbrushed the Titans logo on the cover, which as you can see is incredibly sharp!

In case that wasn't cool enough, they had our pal Darryl Banks start off the book with a sketch of my favorite Titan, Wally West as Kid Flash!

Kid Flash actually ended up on page 2 though. Darryl Banks is not only a superstar comic book penciller but a friend we've known for many years, so he made his own contribution on the first page with a sketch of ME with Donna Troy and Starfire! I was blown away! What an amazing gift! The problem was that now the pressure was on! I had an entire sketchbook to fill with Titans sketches that lived up to the awe-inspiring start!

I decided to start I would continue on with the original, Fab Five Titans! I added Robin by Bob McLeod, Aqualad by Kelly Yates, Speedy by Gene Gonzales and Wonder Girl by Cliff Chiang! As you can see, the bar remained set very high!

I went onto collect sketches from Titans creators such as Nightwing and Kid Flash by George Perez and Troia by Phil Jimenez!

The book is filled with one phenomenal sketch after another! Through my travels to conventions I was lucky enough to become friends with Jeremy and Kelly Dale, two of the most fun people anyone could know! Sadly, Jeremy is no longer with us but I'm quite fortunate that Jeremy and Kelly drew possibly the greatest sketch ever of Impulse, in my book! It's perfect!

The book ranges through a wide collection of heroes and villains and I tried to incorporate characters from around the Titans universe including the Young Justice comics and animated series, Doom Patrol, Kingdom Come, Titans of Tomorrow, the Teen Titans cartoon and even the Protector from the Keebler Drug Abuse issues!

Characters I love like Wally West, Donna Troy and Roy Harper obviously show up a lot! It's my book! Meanwhile, characters like Starfire, Bumblebee and Jericho only show up once.

As time went on the book filled up and somehow it started to run out of blank pages. I wanted to end the book with some kind of theme, go out on a high note but nothing was really coming to me. The next thing I knew, there were only 5 pages left and I decided to end it how it started,with the original Titans in some of their adult costumes.

Here are the final sketches in my Titans sketchbook! Troia by Paul Pelletier (his run on Titans was far too short!), Arsenal and Nightwing, each by Tom Grummett (Tom may be my favorite Titans penciller of all time!), Tempest by Martin Egeland (Martin's work put Aquaman on the map in the 90's and he's a Cleveland boy!) and finally, the last page of the book, Wally West as The Flash by Darryl Banks!

This book ran from November 2008 until November 2018 and every page is a memory, every page is a story. It's far too sad that Adam can't be here to see the completed book but I think Andy and Popa will agree that while Adam would find plenty of reasons to harass me about some of my character choices, this book was a massive success!

I can't thank my friends enough for starting this book for me! That alone will always mean the world to me! So many friends also drew in the book and brought these characters to life, without all of you , this book not only wouldn't have happened but it wouldn't mean as much!

You can check out all of the art from my Teen Titans sketchbook and the stories behind them, over at Comic Art Fans: https://www.comicartfans.com/galleryroom.asp?gsub=72582