About these inky stories...
Inky Stories is a web and print anthology of short, self-contained comic book stories by Dave Marshall, self-published through Rotten Kid Press. Genres include autobio, comedy, satire, horror, romance, sci-fi, historical drama, action, and crime fiction. Unless otherwise noted, Dave is the sole creator (writer, artist, colorist, letterer, designer, etc.).
This is Inky Dave.
Dave Marshall is a comic book creator (writer, artist, letterer, colorist, designer) published by Fantagraphics Books, SpiderBaby Graphix, FantaCo Enterprises, Boston Comics Roundtable and Riverbird Studios. He's an in-demand panelist for Arisia, Boskone, Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo, Boston ComicCon, and various sci-fi geek conventions. Dave occasionally teaches Art of the Comic Book, his college-level studio course on making and developing visually narrative art.
Dave's work is self-published as free web comics on this site through Rotten Kid Press. Most of his stories are short, self-contained fiction. Genres include satire ("The Return", "Frank's Next Mission", "(Not Really) Blade Kills Twilight"), horror ("The Bleeding Mirror", "Encore"), crime ("A-Runnin' From a Gunnin'", "Zip's Last Day"), romance ("Cupid's Got A Death Ray!"), sci-fi ("Stop That Panzer Woman!", "Enter…General Zaq!"), with occasional smatterings of historical ("Lucky Seven: The Dee Brown Incident") and memoir ("Six-Year-Old Horse Thief", "School Fight!", "I Did Nothing").
His storytelling leans more towards naturalism these days, using backgrounds and body language as character. He's obsessed with expressing pre-digital comics aesthetics (hand lettering, Ben Day screens, off-register color) with modern digital tools.
Born and raised in Springfield Massachusetts, Dave made his artistic debut at four creating Superman from a lump of children's clay, getting frustrated to the point of toddler rage trying to the diamond-shape logo right twice (front chest and back of cape). In later years he discovered Marvel comics from the Silver and Bronze ages. As he grow older, analyzing the mechanics of artists (Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, John Buscema, Marie Severin, Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia), writers (Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Steve Gerber) and letterers (Artie Simek, Sam Rosen, and Tom Orzechowski) made him think he could be a professional comics artist.
By age 16 in 1978, operating under the influence of Pop-Tarts and How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, Dave began making comic book art with professional tools in hopes of breaking into Marvel. Sadly the original art was lost in a series of self-made bonfires, but the process led to getting into Massachusetts College of Art. Studying comics art & technology history for his Senior Degree Project exposed Dave to the work of George Herriman, Alex Toth, Trina Robbins, and more. This energized his personal discoveries of Los Bros. Hernandez, June Tarpe Mills, Gladys Parker, and R. Crumb.
It's easy to see how Dave Marshall has become America's most beloved cartoonist of all time. He's been preparing for the role since screaming at his mother about Superman's logo in 1966. But the best is yet to come.
Dave M!, giving you all I’ve got.