My revised cover to Ray’s offshoot comic! Yeah, he’s gone ahead and fully lost it with delusions of grandeur….
In 1988-89, I met Ray Castaldo via several mutual friends. But we became fast friends via my comics… we had a bunch of mutual friends and the comics had a lot of parodies of them, he LOVED them! We (mostly) got along great with and he later became my best friend due to the fact that I don’t stay in touch with many of my old classmate friends, but Ray and I do. We share many likes — we both loved Transformers, Star Wars, video games, WWF/E, and actually dated the same girl in high school (at different times, different times! Sheesh! We weren’t THAT close!). We were even both about 50% Italian-American mix, so we kind of got along like cousins in a way. Back then we had no film political opinions, but as adults, we now also mostly agree on politics as well, so our friendship remains close decades later.
In fact, Ray loved the comics so much that he made a spin-off comic, which I absolutely got a huge kick out of! In fact, he introduced several characters into the Universe that became faves — including Ian “The Brain”, who was based on a mutual friend who was 2 years younger, but was so gifted with a calculator-like brain that he skipped 2 grades in school! In fact, we tested him… he could do mathematical equations as fast (or faster) than we could on calculators! And… his mother made clothes for him and dressed him… quite… poorly. In high school. Yeah… if that kid isn’t a character to base after in my comic, then nobody was!
So, Ray wrote and drew a comic. I liked it so much (it made me laugh out loud!) that I took his script and layout and drew it myself! Especially because a mutual friend — one David Desgrosiellier — defaced Ray’s via graffiti and people HATED Ray’s art. Both my versions (above) and Ray’s versions (below) are included on the site. Enjoy.
ORIGINAL VERSION BY RAYZOR C.:
(S)Hitman Comics (1989)
Written by RaYzor C.
Layouts by RaYzor C.
Art by Chris Stevens
Graffiti by David Desgrosiellier
