Superhero fanboys lead vicarious lives. Some trudge through conventions with knives made of spray-painted cardboard taped to their knuckles. Others, like masked crusader Phoenix Jones, bust Seattle carjackers. But sometimes wearing orange foam bricks and growling, “It’s clobberin’ time!” just doesn’t scratch the itch. Enter Jeff Johnson. Popping up in nearly 30 comic books, he has become the industry’s Waldo—a lurking stowaway who has managed to hijack the unlikeliest panels.
“It’s the ultimate bragging right to go into a comic store and pick up a book you’re in,” says Johnson, a 30-year-old Kmart electronics clerk from Leavenworth, Kansas. His infamous glasses-and-goatee mug has been zombiefied (The Walking Dead), digitized (Tron: Betrayal), and placed alongside Sinestro (Green Lantern Corps), thanks to his ceaseless lobbying and the cooperation of artists. The project, tracked on his blog, DrawMeIn.com, has brought no money (“I don’t think the publishers are aware of what I’m doing,” he says) but plenty of nerd acclaim. The idea sprang from a 2006 FHM contest in which entrants sent pictures of themselves in homemade costumes of villains; the winner (if you want to call it that) was drawn into Ultimate X-Men. Johnson didn’t want to dress up, so instead he handed out DrawMeIn flyers at Comic-Con, after which penciler Ryan Ottley worked him into Invincible.
Today the cameos keep rolling—eagle-eyed readers can expect to see Johnson this spring in Image Comic’s Near Death and Paul Cornell’s Saucer Country. And while he’s got his eye on an even 50 books, he maintains that it’s about quality, not quantity: “I’m pretty sure Stan Lee has an edge on me.” For now, at least.
Wired.com: 28/2/12
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