Missed Connection

I’ve told this story many times before, but some of those instances – on Twitter – are gone, and one of them is part of post that is actually about something else, so I thought that I should give it a dedicated space, and this seems like as good a space as any, as it’s pretty much what the Reference category is for.

When I was in high school I started reading some of the Bat-books regularly, or at least what passed for regularly for me back then.

One of those issues contained art from a new-to-me artist whose style was fresh and unique but also ideally-suited to the adventures of the Dark Knight Detective. It struck me as a mix of Aparo and Rogers melded with some wild and wholly-new and idiosyncratic approach that brought to mind – but was in no way derivative of – the work of Sienkiewicz.

The artist’s name was Norm Breyfogle, and though I didn’t know it at the time, he was practically my neighbor.

…okay, that’s a bit of a stretch, but he lived a mere 30 miles away, in the same town where I got most of my comics.

In fact, if I’d been paying more attention when I was younger, I would have frequently seen his name in the local paper.

It wasn’t until I was a student at Northern Michigan University – an alma mater I share with Breyfogle – that I learned about his local connection when he did an appearance and signing at my local comic shop.

Being an awkward nerd, I said nothing to him, merely thrusting a copy of the issue of Detective Comics pictured above at him to sign, then thanking him and going on my way.

That he was doing a signing at the shop didn’t clue me in to the fact that he was from the area or that he’d attended NMU. I didn’t find that out until later that evening when the local news ran a story about his appearance at the shop.

Even then I didn’t realize that he actually still lived in the area where I grew up. I just assumed that he’d moved away somewhere and had swung by Marquette to do a signing while visiting his parents or something. Indeed, it wasn’t until his passing in 2018 that I learned that he had still lived there.

Breyfogle was 12 years my senior, so there was never much likelihood of the two of us getting to know each other by chance when we were both in the same area, but one day when my oldest brother – older by 8 years – was visiting, he was glancing through a copy of Comic Buyer’s Guide I had lying around and he noticed Breyfogle’s name in an ad.

I mentioned having met him at a signing, and my brother said that he actually knew him back when he was in high school. They’d attended rival schools – my brother went to a different high school than my other siblings and I did – and had competed against each other in local art competitions.

I worked as a janitor in my student job at the university, and the building I worked in was where many Art classes were taught, with one room being a studio where life studies were held.(When emptying the trash cans I would sometimes find Polaroids of nude models.)

The room was a large space with cabinets against the walls and an open space – with a dais – in the center, surrounded by drawing tables. Students would frequently leave their work on the desks and their portfolios on the counters on the cabinet, and I would frequently take a peek as I cleaned the place.

One day, in 1993, I saw what looked like comic book art on the counter, and upon closer inspection discovered that they were pages of original Breyfogle art from, if I recall correctly, the second issue of Prime. (They were definitely pages from Prime, I’m just not sure on which issue.)

Along with the pages was a note from Breyfogle who had gifted them to his former professor. They were his way of thanking him for working with him all those years before to help create a curriculum that would allow him to develop his skills and make his dream of breaking into comics a reality.

While this was undeniably cool, I have to admit that even though it’s what allowed me to see them, it kind of annoyed me that the professor had so carelessly left them lying about where someone less scrupulous than I was – and I will admit to being tempted – could have walked off with them.

And that’s pretty much it. That’s my cool story about my brush with greatness, one that makes me think about what might have been if I’d been a bit more clued in to what was going on around me. It’s frustrating to know that it was within my power to have actually known one of the most iconic Batman artists of all time, someone who is the Batman artist for many fans.

Maybe we could have been friends. Maybe he could have been my mentor, served as a connection, an “in” to the comics industry.

Of course, all of that would have required more than me just being aware of how close he was, it would have required that I be the sort of person who could actually act on that knowledge and form those kinds of connections, and let me tell you, I very much was not that kind of person then.

I’m really not that kind of person now.

I’m writing this on what would have been his 65th birthday because, even though he and I never did connect, his art definitely connected with me, and it’s not just the connection that never was that I miss.

---

---