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Julian Crylock

Name: Julian Crylock

Last known location: Seattle, Washington, USA

Paranormal Registry Classification: Lvl. 4 Imaginator

Status: At large

Area of manifestation: Comics

If identified, approach with caution. To the best of our knowledge, subject is dangerous only in print, but he's a comics artist, so you just never know.

Subject's statement:

Okay, so here's where I tell you about myself. Should I start at the beginning? No, guess not. Nobody's ready for that.

Before I begin, I should probably clear up some rumors you may have heard. Firstly, no, I'm not the guy whose comics violated all those people in Los Angeles. It was a simple case of mistaken identity. My comics may look similar, but they are rarely inclined to commit atrocities, and when they do, they usually limit themselves to two dimensions. The other rumor I suppose I should address is the patently ridiculous charge that I myself am a comics character who killed its creator and usurped his life. Absurd! Unheard of! I couldn't possibly.

All right then. Here it is. I was born in the United States, to ostensibly fully human parents (now deceased, so prove me wrong if you can!). I was raised on the run, up and down the Left Coast, never two consecutive years in the same location. I was trained to kill by the Marine Corps, a skill I have never had to put into practice, and with luck never will.

I attended two years of community college, and two more of a now-defunct commercial art school in Seattle, neither of which taught me my deadly artistic abilities. Those I learned on my own, by dead of night, deep in the forest where no innocents might come to harm.

Likewise my writing skills, which I also gleaned mostly by my own efforts, without formal instruction. In this regard, however, I must cast some of the blame on the Kitsap County Writers Group. This loose coalition of wordsmiths took me in when no one else would, and taught me some things that They Who Rule the Night did not, things like the difference between "telling" and "showing." For this I shall be eternally grateful.

I am and ever shall be, four years in the Corps notwithstanding, a nerd. Nerdhood is something you can compensate for, but never really overcome. Lately the popular definition of the word "nerd" has changed, apparently. It seems the tendency to obsess over the minutiae of popular culture has become the new litmus of nerdliness. By that definition I guess I don't qualify. I don't care how many times Bones said "He's dead, Jim!" Nor can I quote every line from Star Wars. But I've watched every sci-fi movie or show that came around, good or bad. I loved Firefly, MST3K, B-5, Farscape and Buffy. I've fed my brain a steady diet of sci-fi and fantasy books since I first learned to read. I taught myself to draw from comic books, and I consider the superheroes my earliest role models. And I paid my dues in blood and tears as a square-peg child. By my definition, I proudly claim the title of Nerd, and shall not be denied.

I have three natural talents: Acting, writing and drawing. I "trod the boards" a bit in college just for fun, and a few times since. It's great fun, and I get tremendous gratification out of making an audience laugh, but I've never pursued acting seriously. No, it's the drawing and writing that has consumed me and driven me to the brink of madness. I've always been torn between the two, and so divided my time to pursue both. I'm driven by twin demons to create, one demanding that I depict the dark images that haunt me, and the other flogging me to tell the twisted stories that writhe in the deep labyrinths of my brains. Only in the comics medium have I been able to reconcile both of these drives. In comics I can tell stories with pictures, and my demons skip tra-la-la down the path holding hands.

 

 

(More to come)