By Connie Shriver
Eric Turner just finished his first year of college and he has already discovered fame. Not in the conventional sense of wealth and mass publicity, but in a more quiet way that has given him modest satisfaction. This West Muskingum graduate and Ohio University Zanesville Campus student created a character that appeared in a Marvel Comics comic book, called X-Force, that circulates nationwide.
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| Eric Turner |
Turner is an avid comic book reader, and when he saw an advertisement in April 2001 for a contest, he thought, "Why not? I can do that". The book was looking for sketches of a new character with a catchy name, and the deadline was only days away. He sat down to draw, and within twenty minutes, Sycamore was created. Sycamore is a massive, powerful-looking character -- a man who looks like a tree and is as tall as a building, with long, snarled limbs for arms and sturdy roots for feet. Turner mailed Sycamore to Marvel Comics, along with a couple of other characters he created in less than an hour, and then forgot about them.
A few months later, he received a package with a letter informing him that he had won the contest and that Sycamore had been selected to appear in an X-Force comic. He was speechless; all he could do was scream.
"I was flabbergasted, I didn't really expect to win. I sent in three characters and maybe spent an hour on them all. I was very surprised," he said.
When the issue of X-Force hit the stands, Sycamore had been brought to life as a hopeful from an X-Force "farm team" who tried to prove he was worthy to join the "Big League."
Besides minor details, very few things had been changed from his original twenty-minute sketch. One Big League character describes Sycamore as a "tree with brains", while another says that his "bark is worse than his bark". Overall, the story is very clever- Turner describes it as a "satirical look on society".
He's not sure if Marvel Comics will use Sycamore again. They bought all rights to the drawing, but Turner didn't see a nickel.
"A lot of people asked me why I would do something like that if they weren't going to pay me, but I didn't do it for the money," he said. "It didn't matter to me. It just felt good to see something I created get published in a book I read".
He plans on entering more contests and continuing to draw, but for the next few years, he will be finishing his degree in art education at Ohio University Zanesville Campus. He wants to teach the joy of art to elementary students.
"I enjoy art and I have great rapport with kids. Plus, my grandparents are both teachers, so I guess it's just in my blood," he concluded.
Connie Shriver is the public relations coordinator for Ohio University Zanesville Campus.
