THE MOUNT AIRY NEWS -Local Comic Book Writer Hit’s the Big Time
By WENDY BYERLY

Staff Writer

A local comic strip writer will have a whole wall of his work displayed at the New York Comic Book Museum during an upcoming press party dedicated to the Sept. 11th, tragedy.

Danny Donovan, 21, and an employee of Pages Bookstore on Main Street in Mount Airy, was one of the main masterminds behind a 189-page comic book that was put on sale Wednesday in comic and book stores across the country.

The comic book, 9-11: Emergency Relief, was printed free by Quebecor Printing and the contributors all did their work for free. All of the proceeds from the $14.95 book will go to the Red Cross.

Donovan, who has been dabbling in comic book writing for a long time, recently moved onto the national comic book scene, landing gig for a 12 page X-MEN Gambit book that will be published in the near future.

“It was just dumb luck” said Donovan about the X-MEN comic book.

He explained that Joe Quesada, the editor in chief of Marvel Comics, had cancelled a number of X-MEN comic books.

“I told them why I thought they weren’t doing so well,” said Donovan. “They forwarded my thoughts to X-MEN editor Mark Powers and he offered me a 12 page story.”

Donovan got the national job, just six or seven months before the Sept 11th tragedy occurred. He said, “I was surprised to get it. It’s not every day you walk off the street and get the most popular characters. I would have just been happy to get a Marvel hat.”

Soon after Sept 11th, Donovan got the idea to do a comic book to benefit the people affected by the tragedy.

“I called all of my Marvel friends” explained Donovan. “Me, Neil Kleid and A. Dave Lewis started the book. When we started calling around, everybody wanted to help.

“As we were looking for contributors, Neil spoke to Jeff Mason, who took the reigns as editor, and he did a great job. The cover was done by Frank Cho, who does Liberty Meadows.”

Donovan said there is also a special comic strip from Will Eisner, who has been in the comic business since the 1940’s.

“He (Eisner) set the standard for a lot of the creators to come after him.” Noted Donovan.

Eventally, the number of contributors had to be limited because so many people wanted to contribute.

“We have about 83 contributors total,” reported Donovan. “Wizard Magazine, and Wizardworld.com did a lot of press for us. We got mentioned in Time Magazine when we first started working on the project and we will be mentioned again in Monday’s issue of Time.”

He added this is the only comic book that the Red Cross would endorse.

Donovan and other contributors who are interested will be doing a series of book signings in comic stores across the east coast in the coming months.

“The tour begins next weekend. We will be doing a signing in Georgetown on the 19th.” Said Donovan.

There will also be signings in Richmond, VA on Jan 26th, Baltimore, MD., on Jan 31st, and In Orlando Fla., Feb 22nd, through the 24th.

The big event of the tour comes on Jan 23rd, in New York City with a press party at the New York Comic Book Museum. Donovan’s comic book, along with Marvel’s Heroes and Moments of Silence, will be on display in an exhibit called “Heroes Among Us.”

“It’s a big fancy do,” said Donovan. “I have to get dressed up for it.”

“I am the only person who has a full story up on the wall as far as I know,” added Donovan, who hopes to meet Samuel L. Jackson while at the event. “It would be awesome to get to chat with Shaft (who is played by Jackson)”

“On Feb 13th, a bunch of us are doing a reading of selected stories at Ground Zero.” he added. “This is the first time I have ever done a professional tour. I wanted to just do the book, raise the money and go hide.”

Donovan thinks that tackling the terrorist issue is a good thing for the comic book industry.

“This is one of those things that is pretty good for comics. They just had issued a special Spider-man Comic book, where Spider-man reacts to the tragedy. In a later edition they added letters that had come in from across the country. One letter was from a dad who had read the special edition of Amazing Spider-man to his son to try to explain what happened on September 11th.”

One of the comics in 9-11: Emergency Relief was done by Evan Forsch, who happened to be on the 87th floor of building 2 of The World Trade Center when it was hit. He made it out, and the strip in the book is about his escape.

“Gray Morrow, an artist, has his last work in this book,” Donovan replied, “He died a couple of months ago from a heart attack.”

When asked how it felt to go national with a book, Donovan replied, “It’s actually kind of cool. I didn’t really think about it until it came out. We all worked really hard and tirelessly on it. When we were doing It, we had 100 things going at once. It wasn’t until I opened the box on Wednesday that I thought, ’Wow! It’s done!’ Everybody is really happy about it. I’ve gotten a lot of good comments about it.”

911: Emergency Relief is the top selling graphic novel in the nation and it’s the number three in top sales in general comic sells according to Donovan.

“It was ready early, so it actually came out a week earlier than scheduled,” he said.

Donovan also said he felt Mount Airy was lucky to have a store like Pages.

“Pages is a big thing here. We are lucky to have a bookstore and a comic store because we can get it both ways. We can order from Diamond the comic distributor, or from Ingram, the book distributor. I want to thank Steve and Bonnie Martin, who keep the book in stock.”

9-11 Emergency Relief can be purchased several ways: On the internet at <http://www.indyworld.com/relief> or by visiting Pages bookstore.

For information on Donovan, visit www.dannydonovan.com