Early Elementary

Later Elementary

Todd Comics

Fame Comics

Middle School

High School

College

The Dark Ages

Art School




© 1970-2002 Todd VerBeek
High Schoool
High School was a major blow to Todd's artistic career. He attended City High School, an academically challenging program for highly-motivated students... a place to "cure" such students, according to Todd's sometimes-acerbic writings of the period. Not only was he faced with dramatically more homework, after-school activities, and a magazine-delivery route, he also found himself in the presence of talented students whose facility with drawing made his own seem inadequate. Ever the perfectionist, he responded to this by... not drawing very much.

Besides, Todd had become fascinated with photography. This involved both the promise of flawless images in 1/60 of a second, and high-tech gadgets to play with. With unrestricted access to the yearbook darkroom and a lab in his basement, he was as prolific in this area as he was parsimonious in his other art; this retrospective isn't even going to try digging through all those boxes and boxes of slides and black and white prints, and making sense of them. Nuh-uh. A couple of samples - literally pulled off the top of the first box we opened - are included just so we can say we didn't overlook his high-school photography completely, and to keep this page from looking sparse.

One of the few major drawings of his period was a portrait done as a prop for the school play, "Harvey". It featured the eccentric Elwood Dowd and his friend the six-foot rabbbit. Elwood had to look like D.J. Boyd, the student playing the part, which required a bit of effort on Todd's part. It was rendered in colored pencil, which was undoubtedly time-consuming for a piece larger than Todd normally prefers. Unfortunately, Todd didn't keep the portrait; apparently overcome by an adolescent crush on Boyd, he let him have the drawing. All he retained are a practise "study" for the final portrait and a blurred snapshot of it during a performance. The following year, Todd had the male lead in the school play, in which a freshman by the name of Gillian Anderson had her first taste of acting. Anderson went on to play Dana Scully in The X-Files; Todd never appeared on stage again. Todd drew the cover of the program, from a design by another student.

to the College years