Yesterday I celebrated the birthday and life of my hero, and life/career inspiration, Michael Turner.
I don’t exactly remember when I met Mike, or how old I was. I do remember I was young – still a kid, and it was at a comic convention. I was so excited to be meeting my favorite artist and co-creator of some of the most popular titles in recent comics industry history. You’d have thought I was meeting a huge movie star or recording artist.
I waited for hours in one of those ‘meet the artist’ line-ups where Michael was greeting fans and putting his characteristic loopy signature on his books. I eagerly anticipated being able to present some of his earliest work for him to sign and for the chance to say hi – the work was a 3 issue mini-series called ‘Ballistic’ that was published by Top Cow Studios (an independent studio that was at the time under the Image Comics umbrella). I hadn’t realized that I had even been in the line for almost 3 hours when they announced that his table was closing and Michael was done greeting his fans for the day – I had been so lost in thought about it that time had passed like the popularity of yesterday’s favorite pop song – What was it called again?
Discouraged, and feeling slightly robbed of my time and money (admission fee to the expo), I decided to go back out into the foyer of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre where the expo was being held and plopped down to read of the treasures I had unearthed earlier that day.
I think I was reading a convention exclusive of Mike’s work when someone came over and sat down beside me and pointed to the page I was looking at and said that it had taken him almost an entire day to get that page just the way he wanted it to look. I was amazed and surprised at the same time – I had lost my opportunity to meet Mike as scheduled at the expo and now I was having a personal discussion with him on the floor outside of it.
I had, and have always been, a creative/artistic person. I was immediately curious how his school year’s had gone and how long he labored over his work to make it look so effortless in print. He just looked at me, smiled, and told me that when it’s something you love and have passion for there is no process or labor about it – that it just flows from within you. I hadn’t fully understood what he meant at the time, and I think he knew that, but he offered to sign all of my books while we chatted and he even offered that if I was ever in the Santa Monica area that I could stop by the studio and see how it all happens and gave me his e-mail.
He left for the day shortly after that, but not before reminding me to write him – which I did weekly over the next few years.
I followed Mike’s career very closely. He created a best-selling book entitled ‘Fathom’ based on a young woman’s life who had been born of two worlds – but not outer space worlds – the world below the ocean’s surface and the one above.
Michael had created this entire collection of races that lived in the oceans – these races were ancient, and just like our world, they had wars and a history that fractured much of their existence. The lead character, Aspen Mathews, was completely unaware of this history or even the existence of these races. She had been discovered as a child and was thought to be the sole survivor of a tragic cruise liner sinking and had no recollection of her previous life.
Following the book it’s explained that Aspen would be the one who will re-unite the water and surface worlds as it was millennia ago. But of course, there are rivalries in any culture – even the ones below the surface.
This book would be the first to be moved from Top Cow Studios and then launched as the first book to be published by Michael’s own media company, Aspen MLT after a lengthy drawn out legal battle between which studio held creative property over the title.
Once ‘Fathom’ volume one started coming to a close it was announced that Michael had been creating other properties as well – ‘Ekos’ & ‘Soulfire.’ These titles would have the first 6 pages of their previews published in Wizard Entertainment Magazine (a popular geek culture and pricing guide back then) and the industry fans would vote which they would like seen published first.
Ekos, a book that has yet to see publication centers around an entirely different planet full of varying races of alien design dealt with their struggles of having their world invaded by humans. I know a lot of people will scream ‘Avatar’ at that explanation but let’s keep in mind that this title was announced in 2004 and developed for almost 5 years prior.
Soulfire was the winning title by a small margin – it’s story centers around our own world in the not so distant future when magic returns to the world. A young boy will be the cause of this and focuses on his journey and struggle.
It was during volume one of Soulfire that I went down to California for a 4 month work term and finally managed to visit Mike. I didn’t know if he’d even recognize me but I wanted to see him – in 2000 he had been diagnosed with chondrosarcoma, a cancer of the bone in his right pelvis. He had been through surgery during which they removed his hip, 40% of his pelvis, and three additional pounds of bone – subsequently 9 months of radiation therapy followed. The whole time smiling and believing he was going to beat it and running his company (while still illustrating), from his hospital bed.
Michael met me at the studio, you would have never thought that the man had been through any of it, his smile radiated through the place, his energy was incredible and his face was lit up like an excited kid – you knew the man absolutely loved his world and his work.
After a tour of the studio we went for a drive through Santa Monica before he dropped me back where I was staying with an invitation to go surfing the next day – chondrosarcoma and surgery and the man was still surfing!
During my 4 months in California I visited with Mike a few times more – and even gave him a
piece of combined medium artwork that I had drawn and then edited on a computer right before heading home to Canada.
It was when I returned home from this trip in 2005 that my mind had been entirely made up – I was going to do what I loved doing creatively for my career too. The inspiration was there and I have steadily been building SERIAL SEAN since then.
I remained in contact with Mike – he was a coach of sorts – helping me stay focused, encouraging my progress and telling me stories of the absolute mayhem that he would get up to with his friends back in CA. His phone number would pop up at the most random of times and I thought that he was calling to wish me Happy Pride on June 27th (Pride Sunday) in 2008 but it was his mother that was calling me from his phone. She explained to me that he had finally passed on due to the cancer that day and she was sorry to have to pass on the news.
I was floored.
There I was, surrounded by closed to 2.3 million people, endless thrums of bass lines, smiling people, in the middle of celebrating who I was – and I was being told that the biggest inspiration to me and my life, my mentor, and my friend were gone.
I celebrated.
I celebrated who I was, I celebrated the impact he had on my life, but most importantly – I celebrated his life and who he was and how thankful I was to know and have someone like him in my life.
He died almost 2 years ago at the age of 37. I celebrate his birthday every year still – there are parts of him still alive within me : )
RIP Mike.
SERIAL SEAN
xo
SERIAL SEAN is a Toronto based entertainment entrepreneur that specializes in publicity, event planning, public relations, journalism, photography/videography and is the creative director behind his Performance DJ shows. Contact him through his website http://serialsean.com.
