On November 7, 2022, my story “Dermis” was published on Havok. This is a story I started many years ago in high school when I met a new friend, Len. Len was an artist, I was a writer, and we were both excited about horror comics. Together, we decided to put together a comic book in the spirit of E.C.’s “Tales from the Crypt.” I came up with five stories and he illustrated three of them.

This was my first collaboration, and it taught me something at an early age. Being a teenager, I thought I was God’s gift to writing. If I could just break out, I knew I’d write best selling novels, be successful at everything I tried, and have millions of fans. When I gave my stories to Len, his illustrations brought them to life as I expected. What I didn’t expect was that he added captions to shape the tales in a visual way. He increased the level of quality of the stories, and to this day, my hat’s off to him.

This made me realize a few fundamental elements of writing. The first is that the author doesn’t work alone. Even if writers don’t elect to have their stories illustrated, they still collaborate with fellow writers, editors, and their readers to make a stronger story. Len taught me some basics of writing a comic book that I’ve applied to general writing for the rest of my life.

The other element was humility. We all want to be the best at our craft, but you can always find someone better. And it’s not that simple. Someone may excel at dialog but have less skills in sensual detail. Others may have solid foundational talents but less creativity. No matter what you do, don’t compare yourself. Learn instead. You may think you are better at something than someone else, but that shouldn’t inhibit you from growing. Even the best soccer player in the world can learn from the second-best.

Getting back to “Dermis,” I wrote a similar story for our comic book collaboration all those years ago. This was one of the three Len illustrated, and I remember the last panel perfectly. That one-pager was ridiculous but a ton of fun and always somewhere in my memory. While the original story has changed quite a bit, the bones (sic) of it remain the same. In tribute to its early origins, I asked my collaborator now, Dan Johnson, to illustrate the final panel like a graphic novel (see below). He did a fantastic job. And I consider “Dermis” incomplete without his contribution.

Havok site: https://gohavok.com