The Accidental Superhero and An Awfully Big Adventure

Happy to report that my custom comic book cover is now on view until December 21st, 2024 at Carol and John’s Comic Book Shop‘s annual Holiday Art Show. I’m happier still to say you have a chance to win it (or one of over 150 other amazing original covers created specifically for this show) and help the Greater Cleveland Food Bank at the same time!

I want to share some of the backstory behind my cover, but first things first! There are two ways to enter the raffle:

–If you live in Northeast Ohio, or are visiting for the holidays, you can visit Carol and John’s Comic Book Shop (17462 Lorain Ave, Cleveland, OH 44111) to see the Holiday Art Show in person through Saturday, December 21st. Quoting directly from C&J’s:

“…covers can be won in a basket raffle system where one dollar gets you one ticket to a cover of you choice. (you can also buy six tickets for five dollars, and you can buy as many tickets as you want.) Each cover has a number assigned to it, and we have a corresponding basket for each of those numbers. You buy the tickets, write your name and phone number on them, and place them in the basket(s) of the cover(s) you want to win.”

–If you don’t live in the Cleveland area, or just can’t make it to the shop, you still can enter to win! On the evening of Friday, December 20th, C&J will post photos of all the covers on their Facebook page. Once you’ve checked out the gallery, you can buy tickets via credit card by calling the shop at 216-252-0606 between 12 noon and 6PM EST on Saturday, December 21st. Each cover is assigned a number; please have it ready when you call. (NB: My cover is #140.)

In either case, winners will be drawn at 10:30 PM, Saturday, December 21st, during C&J’s annual Holiday Party. You do not need to be present to win!

As I mentioned up top, all proceeds from the Holiday Art Show go directly to support the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. The GCFB can take one dollar and turn it into three full meals. C&J’s Holiday Art Show has been around for 12 years now, and in that time, thanks to the money it’s raised, the Greater Cleveland Food Bank has been able to use those funds to create 159,000 meals for people in need.

So, that’s the scoop on the art show and the raffle.

Now, as promised, it’s time to give my cover some context.

The Manx: Across The Rainbow Bridge! is a tribute to Winston Zeddemore, the late, great, much-missed shop cat at Carol & John’s. Winston passed away in March 2024; he was roughly 16 years old.

Winston went from being a stray cat found near a fire station in Cleveland’s Union-Miles neighborhood to being the de facto symbol of Carol and John’s Comic Book Shop, represented on stickers, buttons, pint glasses, specially printed comic book covers for Free Comic Book Day and limited edition prints by renowned comic book artists.

(When a teacher friend of mine in rural Montana assigned me a Flat Stanley figure to send back to one of her students, and told me to take Stanley around on a typical day in Cleveland, I felt I had to take him to meet Winston.)

In 2015, Winston made a break for the outside world via the shop’s front door, and wasn’t quite fast enough. The door shut on him, necessitating a minor surgery: a partial tail-ectomy.

Then a couple of weeks later, he tried again, with greater success. Winston was missing for a couple of days, generating headlines in Cleveland- area newspapers and broadcast channels. There was much anxiety and consternation.

But he was found — nearby, in a storage shed for salt behind the store — and Winston’s grateful fanbase rejoiced when the shop announced his return via Facebook.

When someone asked in the comments what Winston might have been up to during his absence, John Dudas (the “John” of Carol and John’s Comic Book Shop) had the perfect answer in light of the tragic “tail vs. door” mishap:

I’d always amused myself by thinking of Winston as a secret superhero, and now I felt John had given him the perfect moniker. It took me a while — and an encounter I had with Winston at a midnight Free Comic Book Day party — to create a comic commemorating his beginnings.

Not long after I’d learned that Winston had died, I knew that my submission for this year’s art show would have to pay tribute to him.

And I knew right away that my cover would have to allude to the most famous comic cover involving the death of a superhero.

It only made sense: after all, both Winston and Superman were born in Cleveland.

(Back in March, the art show obviously didn’t have a theme yet, but I figured I’d just finagle a way to adapt my cover to whatever the theme ended up being. Serendipitously, this year’s theme turned out to be “Homage to a Classic Comic Book Cover,” so hot diggity dog, I was all set. I have to admit, though, my cover is a very, very, very vague homage to the original.)

As it happens, this year’s Holiday Art Show opened the same week that the trailer for the upcoming Superman movie was released. (It features lots of scenes from Cleveland; I get a special kick out of the fact the entrance to the Daily Planet building is, in real life, the entrance to the building where my dentist has his office.)

I reflected that Superman is doing pretty well for a guy who died thirty plus years ago.

But that’s what stories can do — reimagine plots, keep memories alive from one generation to the next.

My cover is a tribute to Winston — but it’s also a tribute to the staff at Carol & John’s (you can spot my renditions of Ben, Missty, and John), and everyone who loved and mourned a comic shop cat…

Everyone who keeps the story going.