Monday, April 5, 2004 11:56 AM CDT
Instructor once sailed the comics seas as a space pirate
BY HERB MEEKER, Staff Writer
MATTOON -- Lake Land College instructor John Bennett usually doesn't talk much about his adventures as a space pirate long, long ago.
It's not that his pirate days had to be erased by therapy or electro-shock treatments. Actually, you can still find look up his adventures in newspaper files.
Just turn to the comics.
Look up the Star Wars comic strip drawn by Al Williamson and written by Archie Goodwin about 25 years ago and you will find story plots featuring the space pirate "Raskar" battling Han Solo and other Star Wars heroes from the movies. The strip was requested by Star Wars creator George Lucas as another way to continue the story lines of the different characters from his popular movies, which premiered in 1977.
Bennett, an English instructor, was the "model" for Raskar, a villain who paralleled Han Solo in different story lines in the comic strip printed in newspapers like the Los Angeles Times.
"He was more mercenary, but not as evil," Bennett said in his deep voice during an interview one morning in the Lake Land College cafeteria.
Looking over a bound set of the Star Wars comic strips is like looking over a personal photo album for him.
"I'm fond of these strips because they remind me of when I had dark hair and I was relatively thin," the silver-haired Bennett said. "When Al showed my wife one of the proofs, she said, 'You captured his sneer perfectly.'"
The collection of strips also brings back memories of hanging out with talented artists like Williamson, who gained worldwide fame for his work on the "Secret Agent X9" comic strip. At the time, Bennett was working as an editor for a children's publication, so his work as Raskar was a different way of letting off steam. This collaboration happened while Bennett worked in Honesdale, Penn., not Hollywood.
The creation of different scenes required some posing with props or costumes.
Then a certain pose might be captured on an old Polaroid camera at different angles. This provided the artistic building blocks for different strips a generation ago.
"This was a lot of fun. It was a lark, just a couple of buddies getting together," Bennett said of the work sessions. "It was great having friends with a different job and being part of their world for a short time."
He also posed for a role that was more real-to-life in a Belgian comic strip called "Tin Tin." He posed as a college professor. He has kept a large reproduction of that strip as well.
"That was when I was working as an adjunct faculty member, so the artist thought I might make a passable college professor," Bennett said.
He has put his stint in comics to work in the classroom since he came to Lake Land more than 10 years ago. On the opening day of some of his humanities classes, he would try to catch the attention of his students with a panel from the Star Wars strip.
His favorite was the one with a closeup of Raskar making a threat to Han Solo: "It's a sword my ex-friend and it's about to pierce your gizzard!"
"That was my way to show the students that I'm serious about my requirements on the course syllabus," Bennett said.
Over the years, he has come to greatly respect the work of comics creators, especially the late Archie Goodwin.
"I have the greatest respect of his ability as both an editor and a writer," Bennett said. "That is a very specialized profession and it is fascinating to see the intertwining use of illustration and text."
He also cited the award-winning work of Art Spiegleman in the "Maus" books that tell the story of the Holocaust through artwork using mice and cats as the characters. Spiegleman's work was dedicated to his father, a concentration camp survivor.
"He was dealing with powerful and tragic material in a format that many people associate with Archie and Jughead," Bennett said.
Now, there are festivals and conventions honoring comics notaries like Williamson or R.C. Harvey, another acquaintance of Bennett. And young people are being drawn to graphic artwork that mixes imagery and text.
Bennett travels to the art get-togethers as part of a hobby, and even a trip down memory lane with some old friends. And sometimes he will get a stare from Lake Land students running across him at these events. It is a great opportunity to talk about art and writing with a student with a common interest, he notes.
"I will run into students there and it is fun to relate to them in a different world."
Or even a galaxy far, far away.
Contact Herb Meeker at hmeeker@jg-tc.com or 238-6869.
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