The Beat has been reporting over the last few weeks on Ty Templeton’s severe heart attack and I’m pleased to report that he’s home and recovering. In Templeton fashion, he made a comic out of it, but he also revealed the severity of his health issues—he was brought back to life three times and wasn’t expected to survive.
My wife updated the internet about what was going on, so folks knew what was happening, but she kept how bad it was a secret so my kids didn’t know how the real details of it all until I was out of danger. It seems the staff didn’t expect me to survive more than a day or two, and I ended up earning the nickname “Miracle Man” from some of the doctors there when I woke up from the medially induced coma a little earlier than they saw coming. That’s kind of cool. My first professional inking job was in the back of a Miracleman comic from Eclipse, back in the day, so it seems only fitting.
Recovery is slower than I expected. I have to nap every time I climb a set of stairs, and drawing still isn’t back up to speed (hence the stolen panels in the above Bun Toon), but never fear, I’m getting better slowly, and expect to be putting pencil to paper in a week or so, just as soon as I can go more than an hour awake. There’s probably another Bun Toon or two in the whole experience (you people need to know what it’s like to be awake for an aortic stent operation, science is COOL!)
I’m going to close with this: For everyone who needs to think about changing their lifestyle, please use me as the poster boy, and don’t wait until your own wake up call. I’ll take the hit for everyone if they just learn my lesson. NO PROCESSED FOODS! Raw veggies, water and fruits, and no meat until after sundown, and it’s a long life for all of us. Oh, and walk around a bit, not just back and forth to the fridge.
While thankful for Templeton’s survival. it’s worth heeding his closing thoughts as well. As someone who makes her living sitting down for 12 hours a day I can tell you that is extremely unhealthy and I’m not alone. No sleep deadlines backed up by caffeine and nicotine and performance enhancing energy drinks are an industry norm. It’s a good idea to take care of yourself in some way. A couple of ideas:
I’d like to recommend this book, No Pain: Injury Prevention for Cartoonists by Kriota Wilberg which has important information on how to sit if you’ve got to do it. (And just a few minutes ago we reported on one well known cartoonist’s arm injury, so this is a real thing.)
Everyone wants to lsoe weight but there’s love handles and there’s a serious issue. For those who are thinking “I’ve tried and this is impossible” I’d like to point out this inspiring public post by Action Labs’ Jamal Igle who has instituted a lifestyle change that has yielded incredible results for him:
I’ve recently made some health changes myself, going from a diet that was high in sugar and carbs to cutting out bread and sweets about 95% of the time and reintroducing more weight resistance exercise into my life style. Finding the time for all this is hard, but my discovery was that feeling better makes me MORE productive as opposed to sitting and fretting and chugging more and more coffee as a hedge against time. I have a ways to go, but something is better than nothing.
Reporting on health issues for cartoonists is a once a week feature of this site and others. Some of it is chance, but some of it is preventable. Take a few moments to think about yourself and what changes you can make that are achievable to improve your health—if not for you, for the people you love. They’ll be glad you did and so will you.
Cartoonist Ty Templeton—generally considered one of the funniest people of his generation—is in stable but critical condition after suffering a heart attack wife, KT Smith reported on Facebook. Templeton, 52, suffered the attack yesterday but in an update today she reports he’s in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator, but expected to be taken off of it tomorrow.
On his blog, Templeton, like many, had been talking about going to a convention, but also complaining about stomach pains:
Oy, what a weekend. I’m supposed to be at a convention in Kitchener, Ontario, but I’ve been having my tummy problems again. (Long time readers don’t need tickets to a new Stones Tour, but you get the picture).
I worked with Ty quite a bit during my editing days and the short version is…he’s such a great guy and so talented. His Bun Toons comic strips are biting and hilarious takes on comics history and controversy, like this one on complaints over Marvel continuity
Templeton’s work includes his debut classic Stig’s Inferno, and tons of comics for DC, Marvel and Bongo, including an award winning run on The Batman Adventures.
Get well letters can be sent to Templeton here.
Dynamite has been making a lot of announcements, and there isn’t even a con coming. Here’s the round-up:
• CEO Nick Barrucci is selling art from his personal collection by Tom Raney, Mark Bagley, Scott Hanna, and Patrick Zircher from books like The Outsiders, The Punisher, Uncanny X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, The Order, Robin, and more. A portion of the proceeds will go to benefit the CBLDF. Barrucci owns hundreds of pages of art, and fans can order by artist: orders will be filled randomly for $75 a page.
“Art collecting has been a passion of mine for years,” Barrucci explained. “For the past 30 years, I have been picking up pieces from my favorite artists whenever I can. I look at my collection on a regular basis, as I love to appreciate the form, and I was looking at some of these pages by great artists including Mark Bagley, Patrick Zircher and one of my favorite contemporary art teams – Tom Raney and Scott Hanna, and thought that while I have a great collection, I couldn’t possibly appreciate it all properly, as with Mark, Patrick, Tom and Scott I have over 400 pages of these fantastic artists and a few other incredible contemporary artists. I had contemplated selling these via auction houses, but realized that many fans may not have access to original art, and thought it would be cool to offer to the comics fan base first. This is the ultimate one-of-a-kind comics collectible as there is only one of each piece of original art, which is why we need to fill each order randomly.”
• Reanimator, a character created by H.P. Lovecraft in 1921, is coming back in a four-issue miniseries written by Keith Davidsen and illustrated by Randy Valiente, debuting in April. Variant covers include Jae Lee (Dark Tower), Francesco Francavilla (Afterlife with Archie), Tim Seeley (Hack/Slash), and Andrew Mangum (Wilder).
In Reanimator, Dr. Herbert West heads to New Orleans to continue his life’s work: the revival of the dead by purely chemical means. To accomplish this task, he recruits Susan Greene, a young and wide-eyed pharmacologist fascinated by his macabre experiments. Initially unfazed by West’s unorthodox practices (including how he funds his research – by selling zombie brain fluid as a narcotic), Susan may regret her scientific curiosity as sinister forces – those aligned with Elder Gods and Haitian Voodoo – begin to align against the Reanimator. Reanimator blends mad science, Lovecraftian tentacle terror, backwater Louisianan superstition, and fan-favorite elements of such television shows as Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead.
• Jungle Girl is also coming back in April, with cover art and writing by Frank Cho. Frank Cho and Jungle Girls…it’s like peanut butter and jelly. The series is co-written by Doug Murray (The ‘Nam) and illustrated by Jack Jadson (The Savage Hawkman).
Jungle Girl: Season Three picks up where the previous series left off, following Jana’s escape from an underwater city and a gigantic, otherworldly creature. However, her father soon reveals that those actions have doomed the Lost World in which they all live, as a wormhole appears in the sky and flaming debris begins to fall through. As the jungle burns, Jana and her friends must contend with stampeding behemoths and displaced, murderous natives. Furthermore, the rift presents a new, fearsome threat, for the fire from an alien dimension was not the only thing to come through.
“I’m delighted to be back with my co-creator, Doug Murray, and finish out the final story arc of Jungle Girl,” says Cho. And surely many will be delighted to see him back. What is it people like about jungle girl comics anyway? Could it be…the themes?
“Jungle Girl appeals to readers for the same reason that other such stories do,” says Murray. “We are fascinated by the ‘Noble Savage’, the man or woman who, untainted by society, lives a life filled with the challenge (and pleasure) of the hunt as he/she fights for survival. It’s a genre that has existed for over a century but was perfected by Edgar Rice Burroughs in Tarzan and associated books. The TV series Lost touched upon the same challenges and appeals.”
• AND the 2008 Shuster Award winner for “Outstanding Canadian Web Comics Creators” Looking For Group is getting an ongoing series. Written by Ryan Sohmer and illustrated by Lar deSouza, Hawk, Ryan Dunlavey, and Ed Ryzowski, with variant covers by Ty Templeton and Becky Dreistadt, and bonus stories from the Non-Playable Character and Tiny Dick Adventures spin-off series.
Looking For Group follows the adventures of Cale’Anon the elf and Richard the undead warlock, as well as their companions, through Fantasy, Pop Culture, and Gaming tropes, set in a reality and time unlike our own. It’s a place where the eating of small children is not necessarily frowned upon; where beings of extraordinary power can destroy entire villages with only “because I could” as an excuse; where magic and adventure are as commonplace as setting fire to, and then reanimating, a chipmunk into a skeletal minion (it happens more than you’d think); and an epic journey can begin by an accident of fate.
The first round of sketches Ty Templeton did for Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman contained a striking piece that unfortunately did not make it into the book.
It’s art to accompany the brief account of Batman’s origin, and though the tragedy of young Bruce Wayne’s parents is expressed in the text, I felt showing it so graphically would make the book a challenge to read aloud in schools.
Published here for the first time (unless it’s already been on Ty’s blog and I missed that!), the first proposed sketch for the origin scene:
Final art from the book:
How Ty Templeton signed a copy of Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman:
Used with permission. (Ty’s, not Bob’s.)
Ty Templeton, artist magnifico of numerous stories including Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, permitted me to show sketches of cover ideas for the book.
1/21/11:
Including notes by Ty.
These were homages to early Batman comics. While I liked that idea on one level, ultimately I wanted our book iconography to stand on its own—to avoid referencing existing images. I also didn’t want to represent Bill as Batman himself. Though there are parallels (life in the shadows, namely), it seemed inconsistent with the tone of the story. Bill is the hero of the story, but not quite heroic; his fatal flaw is a lack of self-defense—emphatically not Batman-esque.
3/7/11:
I loved the angled, almost subtle silhouette. But I felt the cover overall was too colorful for Batman. I specifically did not like orange. I also did not prefer vertical type treatment for our names.
8/21/11:
Dramatic improvement in color. But I wanted my name and Ty’s to be on equal footing. And I wanted the subtitle, which contains the most marketable word on the cover, to be higher. Also, the bow tie seemed too twee; besides, several I asked said Bill did not wear them.
9/6/11:
Names look much better. Bow tie gone but top-buttoned shirt not much less twee.
10/24/11:
Finally we get a bat! And a loose collar! But the red is Superman, not Batman. I asked for purple to match the original color of Batman’s gloves.
The winner:
On 1/11/13, at 11:30 p.m., I was interviewed for the second time by a radio show out of New York called Destinies: The Voice of Science Fiction.
The topic was Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman; though Batman is not sci-fi, the show host, Dr. Howard Margolin, is good to me. This is the second time he has had me on...and my Boy Wonder illustrator, Ty Templeton, beat me to it by, oh, 21 years. Yes, he was first interviewed by Howard in 1987.
Thank you again, Howard.
Bob Kane had Bill Finger.
Batman had Robin.
I had Ty Templeton.
We all lucked out.
Technically, the above is not a seamless parallel; Ty was not my anonymous contributor nor my sidekick, but rather my always-reliable partner in creating Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman.
(Batman has actually had multiple "work partners"�Commissioner Gordon, Batgirl, Nightwing, Ace the Bat-Hound, to name a few—and I did, too; all of them are thanked in the book and some will be thanked again here.)
But back to Ty...
I first e-mailed him on 3/11/10 to tell him that I was looking for an illustrator for the project and that he was on my short list. An excerpt from his kind reply: "You couldn't find a more sympathetic soul for the plight of Finger's legacy than myself."
If that (plus talent) wouldn't sell you, nothing would.
(To be clear, the illustrator decision was not mine alone, but it did not take much convincing.)
As of this writing, Ty and I have not met in person or even talked on the phone. The vagaries of illustrated publishing...
Here is a photo I lifted from Ty's blog. I hope to be able to post a similar photo but with me as well, before long.
A public thank you, Ty, for acing this book.
Ty Templeton’s illustrations for our upcoming book on Bill Finger and Batman (Charlesbridge 7/1/12) will thrillkill readers just as they have me. He is a crazily good fit for the material, and not just because of his respected years working on Batman comics. He is not only professionally connected to the Dark Knight but emotionally connected to the Wronged Writer. It meant a lot to me that he knew more than the basics about Bill Finger before I pitched him this idea.
As he wrote me in March 2011 (and gave me permission to share), “This is a book I’ve wanted to be a part of since before you thought of doing it.”
He also made a quirky observation: the logo of our publisher, Charlesbridge, looks like the head of Batman.
So perhaps not only Ty was predestined for this book, but Charlesbridge, too.
...Ty Templeton, fan-favorite artist of, among others, The Batman Adventures (the first of multiple comic book series based on Batman: The Animated Series and its subsequent incarnations).
Besides loving Ty's style in general, I love that he was tapped into the tragic legacy of Bill Finger before we approached him. He is clearly bringing that passion and knowledge to his work on the book.
Here is how Ty's first sketches arrived from Charlesbridge:
Much more Ty the Guy to come!
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A cartoonist friend of mine keeps his drafting board strapped to his treadmill.
I think thats brilliant.
I met this dude in person. He was setting up for a class about drawing. He was nothing but a huge prick when I asked him questions about the class. Huge ego and such a negative attitude, towards someone interested in learning, for someone with mediocre/basic skills.
yeah, pretty sure that’s just you, dude. I’ve taken a bunch of his classes over the years and he’s among the best teachers i’ve ever had-doesn’t play favourites and is encouraging to people of all skill levels.
But hey, it’s a normal reaction to hear someone nearly died and then call them a prick.
Doob, you just crazy, son.
Ty is an incredibly friendly and outgoing guy, with a real gift for teaching. I’ve never seen him be less than encouraging and supportive, even to some truly tortured pitches. If you managed to provoke a hostile reaction from him, I can only assume the scale of your prickdom is mountainous .
Ty Templeton is a great guy, so Doob’s story is already suspect. But, hey, everyone has off days, so maybe Doob could have just caught Ty at a really bad time? Except that Doob then used to word “mediocre,” thus proving himself beyond all doubt to be utterly untrustworthy, because there is nothing about Ty or his abilities that remotely approach “mediocre,” as Ty the Guy is one of the most talented individuals ever to work in comics.
Jamal Igle is an inspiration. If people aren’t watching his progress then they might be stuck on the notion that creative people (like comic artists) are destined to be the comic book man stereotype as seen on The Simpsons. Clearly, Jamal has taken charge of his life for the better.
I need to take charge of mine, as well. On my Facebook / Twitter accounts I often joke about how badly I’m eating. All the junk I consume. It’s funny… until it’s not. So when reading about Ty Templeton it does hit home and I consider this another straw for the back of my bad-diet-camel.