Remembering Jontar......

     Back in the early 90's I did some comics for a small company called Miller Publishing Company for publisher Billie G. Miller in Watseka, Illinois.  I got to do this through a chance meeting with The legendary underground comix creator Grass Green at a small comics convention near Chicago.  He was one of the most outgoing people you would ever meet.  He was there promoting his latest work on the book Wildman Comics and stories.  I had my portfolio of current comics samples and he was gracious enough to look at them.  He then asked me to add a sketch to a comics page jam that would appear in issue number 10 of Wildman.  That jam page became my first published comic book piece and I shared the page with many talented and creative people with George Perez being the guest of honor on the page and at the convention.

The print runs were very low, but it was a chance to see yourself published as a comics artist.  I was involved with two of the ongoing books.  One was titled Trial Run and the other was Jontar Returns.  The Character of Jontar was created and written by Bill W. Miller.  It had had a four issue run earlier as Jontar and the sequel was retitled Jontar Returns and ran for five more issues.  The last issue was published in 1992.  I did the interior art for issues 3, 4, and 5 and the covers for issues 4 and 5.

     The first full bookI did was a babtism under fire as I penciled, inked, and lettered the entire inside content of the book over the course of one weekend.

     I recently came across an unused illustration for the book and decided to play with it to create what could have been the next issues cover; the book having ended with issue number 5.

     This, with modern coloring and lettering, might have been Jontar Returns number 6 circa 1992.

                                        Robert L Crosswhite