N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – Some artists draw from personal experience, while others pursue it for reasons we may never know
“I’ve got a pencil and my hand is trying to move faster than my brain,” said comic artist David Vandyke, working outside at the Centennial Center in downtown Cramerton.
He uses his creativity to mentally escape his past.
“It was everything, it was everything,” he told Queen City News, describing an uncertain time in his life.
In an era of digital art, he works by hand.
“I like the tactility of it, like I like feeling the paper,” Van Dyke said.
He draws a comic book series called Mercer, which he co-created with Jason Seibel.
“It’s basically if the Punisher was a demon hunter type thing,” he says.
He has come far from the chilling conversation he had 21 years ago.
“The doctor literally came into the room and said, ‘Your life as you know it is over,'” he remembers vividly.
Vandyke broke his back in 2005 while working as a mechanic in Gastonia.
“I heard a pop, and something moved out of the corner of my eye, and I just turned and caught it,” he said of a devastating shop accident. “It was like a 400-pound transmission—and I caught it at a dead stop—and it annihilated the bottom two discs in my back.”
That crushed his dream of a drumming career.
“When I had the accident, my left leg was basically useless, so I knew right away ‘I’m in trouble,'” he recalled.
At the same time, he was almost in denial.
“This is my identity; this is everything I’m supposed to be. Like, what do you mean [doctor]?” said Vandyke.
But one night, he picked up a pencil and reinvented himself.
“Like before music, what did you want to be?” he asked himself.
The answer is a comic book artist.
Instead of dwelling on depression and anger, he practiced drawing as his body healed.
“You determine your story,” he says.
Within a few years, he made connections that eventually led to work with Image Comics, Marvel, and DC Comics.
Now, his focus is on Mercer. VanDyke hopes to finish the series early next year.
“I pull out the portfolio so I can pull out pages to start working,” he said, showing us his process. “So, this is a rough page where I’m roughly laying out this character is here; a little bit of detail.”
He’s had 11 back surgeries since the accident. As he works, he sometimes feels pain in his legs. Somehow, those lingering effects haven’t weakened his resolve.
“It’s only over when you decide it’s over,” Vandyke said.
Queen City News
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