Comic collector now living dream

BY APRILL BRANDON
Associated Press/Victoria Advocate

VICTORIA, Texas (AP) -- Meet Doug Hazlewood. Living in a cozy home in Victoria, he is simply a mild-mannered collector by day. Surrounded by his virtual museum of comic book memorabilia, he is the ultimate fanboy of superheroes.

But at night, this regular family man turns into The Inker. Sitting in his home office, he lives out the fantasy of millions of kids as he helps bring to life Superman, The Flash and Animal Man.

Hazlewood is living out his ultimate dream. As a kid, he'd ride his bike all over Victoria buying comic books. Now he spends his days inking comic books -- filling in the details, depth and shadows of a pencil-drawn image -- for DC Comics. He even got to work on his favorite childhood superhero The Flash.

"The Flash is actually what got me interested in comic books in the first place," Hazlewood, now 54, said. "So being able to work on a Flash series is a source of pride for me. It started out I was only getting paid $25 per page, which even for back then was very little. But eventually you keep working, you get better books, send off better samples, get even better books and then you get a raise."

Although he graduated from college with a degree in commercial art and ended up working in a print shop, his heart always lay with the comic book industry. He managed to get his foot in the door after winning the inking category in the Official Marvel Comics Tryout Contest.

Work came little by little and by 1986, he was working full time as an inker.

His resume is impressive. He's worked on the Adventures of Superman, one of the highest-selling comics of all time. Other titles with his name on them include Superboy, Doom Patrol, Birds of Prey and Animal Man. He is currently working on Secret Six. The pages are shipped right to his door, proving that you don't have to live in New York to make it in the industry.

"I learned as I went. When I was doing my amateur work, I did it in ball point pen because I had never heard of India ink," he said. "Back then, there wasn't a school you could go to to learn this stuff."

It's not always an easy road. Just one page takes him an entire day and with comic book readership down and technology replacing some inking jobs, Hazlewood jokes that he does worry he may have to get a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart. But even though the future of the industry is on shaky ground right now, that doesn't change the fact that he got to eat dinner with Jerry Siegel, the co-creator of Superman. Or that he was an extra in an episode of "Lois and Clark." Or that he has worked with some of the biggest names in comic books.

Luckily, Hazlewood does think that the blockbuster movies coming out that are based on comic books, such as the highly anticipated "Watchmen," have helped the industry a little. And as a fanboy, he loves the fact that he can see his heroes finally coming to life.

"I had always hoped technology would catch up to where it could do superheroes justice and now with (computer-generated images), it has," he said. "If you really love the fantasy part of (comics) and want to see them brought to life well, it's exciting. It's something I never thought I would see."