Willceau Illo News

A little over a year and a half ago, I dug out a drawing I’d penciled back in the mid-1980s and finally inked it. Finishing that 40-year-old piece lit a fire under me. I started filling sketchbooks with new drawings and notebooks with ideas. About a month ago I began my morning ritual: one dedicated hour each day writing the story. I’m now well into the first draft.

It might become a prose novel, an illustrated story, or even a comic book—I’m still figuring that out. But as I write and draw, I keep needing reference and inspiration for the period details.

The story is set in a high school sometime between 1978 and 1982. I considered watching movies from that era like Foxes or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but they felt filtered through Hollywood casting and art direction. The kids were a little too perfect, missing that raw, authentic awkwardness of real teenagers.

So I thought about tracking down my old high school’s yearbooks. Logistically, that quickly proved impractical. Then I remembered the great modern elephant graveyard where people unload their pasts: eBay.

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