In 1991 I drove across country to stay with my friend Matt’s family in San Diego, and attended a whole day of the San Diego Comicon. With only a few hours I achieved my main goals- to find two of my art heroes, Dave Stevens and Steve Rude and see if I could visit them later while I was staying in California. I was kind of brash and assuming that way, I’d also visited Al Williamson and Mark Shultz by writing to them. Steve invited me to come up and get a good and thorough critique/art lesson which I’ve always treasured, and Dave invited me to come up to Disney Comics and show my art. I’d already met him at an ACME convention in Greensboro the year before, but I wasn’t sure he’d remember me (That was another roadmark for me, when Al Williamson let me come back and sit with him behind the table, but I’ll tell that another time). I was beside myself with excitement that I might get to draw one of the Rocketeer shorts in the Disney Magazine.

During my college years that Mr. Monster poster with the Little Rascals that Dave drew hung in my various apartments. I read the Comics Journal interview with him so much the cover fell off. For those who label him a ‘cheesecake’ artist, look at the charm of that cover, those kids-Petey the dog! In fact, he was one of the few artists I would show his comics to my parents because I knew they would like the timeless feel of it. My Mom would go through and point out all the golden age of cinema stars that he would draw into the backgrounds. Dave hit most of my buttons for what was great about cartooning and comics. He paid attention to me because I showed samples that had adventure and old period settings instead of what he was usually seeing at conventions. It was the early nineties, so if you were into comics at the time, it’s not hard to imagine or remember the stuff most young cartoonists’ portfolios were full of. Phew. So even though my art had a long way to go (still does) I probably got a pass for the subject matter. Nonetheless, it was extremely gracious to get me a meeting with the editors, then Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, and Marty Pasko. I borrowed my pal’s VW van and drove up to LA, and I had a couple of pages of Rocketeer samples I’d drawn right after the show. I was broke, so I drew on both sides of the one nice sheet of bristol I had. The scene was the Rocketeer saving a girl at an amusement park, I still have it somewhere.

The visit was the first time I’d been to comics offices, and I was sponging the experience up. Bob Foster (of Myron Moose fame) showed Dave pictures of the Disneyland Rocketeer display that was being put together at the time. In his aloof manner that made it hard to tell whether he was bothered or not, Dave pointed out that the plane had the wrong landing gear (once he pointed it out it was obvious how the wheels were way too small). Wein and Wolfman looked at my pages separately and gave the exact opposite advice of each other, one thinking my penciling was far ahead of my inking, the other vice versa. They didn’t seem to have any slots for me anyway, but it was still very interesting. Dave then took me out to a Mexican restaurant nearby that he liked and shot the breeze about comics with me for a couple of hours. It’s one of my best memories, hearing him talk about Doug Wildey and Alex Toth, both of whom I would later get to know a bit. More Doug than Alex, because I could call Doug and got to see him a few times. I’ve also never forgotten a wisdom he dropped about comics properties becoming film, that on the average it takes about eight years for a story to make it through development to the big screen, if ever. As I got ready to head back down to San Diego, Dave took a print of the Rocketeer out of his trunk and wrote “Keep at it, Jeff- Put us all to shame.” I didn’t want to dig that out of storage today because I knew seeing it would likely flatten me for a while, but I’ve always cherished it.

In 1999 I moved to Los Angeles and Dave was good enough to invite me to hang out with him and some of his talented cronies like Mike Kaluta and Bill Stout, but I wasted those opportunities. By this point I think I was too self-aware in that way I wasn’t at all years before, and felt like I’d be intruding. Or I probably had some ridiculous hang up that I hadn’t achieved much in the way of a career that people like Dave had expected of me- scratch that “probably”, that’s exactly where my head was at. It was stupid, and Dave was approachable enough that I could have called him at any time and gotten together. I didn’t know until a year ago about his leukemia, and now he’s gone. I realize I’m not adding anything to what you haven’t already heard about Dave Stevens; that he was a good guy, laid back and all that. He saw to it that the revival of Bettie Page initiated by him alone eventually went to help support the pin-up queen in her later years. I only wish I had written to him to let him know that at a key time in my formative years, he helped justify my faith in myself and stay on a path that I’m glad I’ve taken. He probably thought he was just springing for enchiladas.