So, it’s just around 10pm, on Sunday Night, January 22nd, 2012. I don’t typically go into real, personal detail on this blog, as it’s main purpose and goal is for it to be a catalog of all things nerdy that I enjoy.  That said, I started tweeting a bit earlier, and I feel like it’s something that would work in a longer form written piece, and here we are.

For those who are somehow aware of this blog, and not aware of Super Art Fight, let me explain that real quick.  Super Art Fight is an absolutely amazing live art competition, kind of a mix of pro-wrestling and Pictionary.  Started by Jamie Noguchi and Nick Borkowicz, I had the pleasure of being there for it’s inception, being asked to become the live show host, and being a key member behind the scenes ever since.  In the interest of full disclosure, I handle all of the matchmaking/storylines, amongst many other things.   On Thursday Morning, I leave for San Francisco.  This is quite a big deal, as not only is it our first show on the West Coast, but we’re performing as a part of the Macworld|iWorld expo (formerly just Macworld), which in the tech world is something of a “big deal”.  More than that, this is literally going to be my second flight ever, and the farthest I’ve ever traveled away from home.  It’s very much riding on my mind as of late (understandably), but not out of nerves or fear, but the realization of how incredibly lucky and fortunate I am to have an opportunity like this.

Thinking about this is taking me back to where it all started - not just Super Art Fight proper, but my whole mix up in this world of comic, arts and performing.  A step I never thought I’d take.  It’s been a long journey, with a lot of help from amazing people along the way.  This goes in depth, so prepare your reading glasses, gang.

The story begins all the way back in the Fall of 2005.  I was in somewhat of a sad place in my life.  I was heartbroken (always the genesis of any person’s “next great step”), things were rough for my family (my parent’s business fell apart in 2003, so I was helping them support the household, covering a number of bills while they got their feet back on the ground - at a point, I even needed to buy the house out from them) and all and all, I felt tired and adrift.  I was 21 years old, I didn’t go to college, and while having a decent job, I started to feel like I was going nowhere.  Life was numb and difficult. I walled myself up with the internet and movies and just…not focusing on anything but the immediate.

Enter Nick.  Nick was a friend of friends from high school.  He was a few years older than I, his senior year was my freshman year, and while I had upperclassman friends, we never really ‘knew’ each other. I mostly knew him as one of the hippieish kids that was older than me.  That said, he had recently returned to Maryland from a period of time in Portland.  He went out to Portland to find himself, to kick start his creative muse, and had a project he was ready to work on, a zombie comic called Dead of Summer.

The issue was this - Nick was a hell of an artist, with lots of ambition and drive, but he needed a writer to reign in his impulses. Being that we knew each other through alike friends, he knew that I was a big comic book nerd (although admittingly, I had gone a few years without reading anything on the regular - big financial stressors would do that to any hobby).

We started hanging out on the regular, talking movies, comics, music and life.  We learned that we had similar tastes, interests and creative ideas.  It was a positive outlet in a negative time, just reaching out to someone new to get my head straight while everything else was going crazy around me.  And then, that Christmas, after a screening of Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake (a film I WILL DEFEND!), he pushed an interesting concept my way.  This Dead of Summer project. He wanted me to write it.

Here was the problem - I hadn’t written really, well, anything that wasn’t school related. And I hadn’t been in school for a few years.  And who the hell am I to start writing a comic? I’m a sad sack nerd with problems out the ass. I can’t commit to a project!

But Nick persisted. He believed in me. He thought that I could pull it off.  And with enough time, I relented.  But I had a unique demand. I wanted the project to be a webcomic.  Having seen the growth of comics like Penny-Arcade, I thought serializing the project was the right move. Not only would we be locked into producing something regularly (HA!), but we also wouldn’t have to worry about having everything done before we showed it to people. We could learn as we go. The pressure was low, the learning curve was high, but the idea was there. Producing a comic regularly.

We launched Dead of Summer in April 2006.  In the months leading up to the comic’s release, Nick had a brilliant idea - to integrate ourselves in the local music scene.  He had put on a handful of successful art shows at the Ottobar, Baltimore’s best place for indie rock bands to do their thing.  I had been a frequent visitor there, and had struck up a friendship with a pretty great band called Karmella’s Game (although I wondered if they saw me as some goofy fanboy).  Nick, had his eyes on something a bit bigger.  He wanted to make us as key to the scene as the bands in the region.  Start doing poster and t-shirt work for some bands in the area, throw them in as cameos into the comics (always need more zombies, right?), and make it something where if a band is breaking in Baltimore, they know they can come to us…and eventually link back to us when the time was right.

This meant that Nick and I went to a LOT of shows. It was nice at times - being friendly with Karmella’s Game, I felt somewhat at home whenever we went to shows they were playing.  But at other shows, when Nick was wheeling and dealing, and having me meet people in other bands or who worked for this club or that club or whatever, I was a nervous wreck.  I never let it on as it was happening, but internally, I was over thinking, over processing and just beating myself up.  I was some nerdy kid from the suburbs who just was calling himself a writer. Nick was talented as hell. These bands? Absolutely amazing. I was (in my own head) the odd man out.  Who was I to cross the velvet rope?

After weeks, even months of work, we were on the verge of the big launch.  Nick was going to have an art show, we’d launch the website the same day, and it’d be great!  Nick was completely assured. Me? I just was waiting to be found out as the phony I thought myself to be.

The week of the show, Nick and I were driving back from the Ottobar…and I just broke.  I told him that I wasn’t the right guy, that he was making the wrong choice, that I didn’t belong backstage, that I didn’t belong in this place - that I was the wrong person overall.

Nick took a moment, processed it, and said something to me which has always stuck with me.  I almost wish, after all this time, that he said something a little less vulgar, but it was going to be one of the most important sentences that I ever heard.

“That’s stupid. You’re Marty Fuckin' Day. You have just as much right to be there as anyone else.”

I know, a sentence so simple was all it took to tear down anxiety and self doubt built up so many miles high, but it’s really what happened. That’s the great thing about true friends - they cut through the crap and take you right to what you need to hear, right when you need to hear it. Nick wasn’t just some artist dude, he was my friend, my brother, and he needed me to know that I was just as valid as anyone else. I was, and am, Marty Fuckin' Day.

And that kicked it all off. Dead of Summer grew to run over 300 pages in just over two years time.  We booked art shows, music shows, and became a key part of the Baltimore “scene” of the time.  But our ambitions always were bigger.

As Nick and I started to do conventions, we rolled deep - bringing our friends along to help staff tables, making ourselves seem “important”.  Our first panels at cons, I held my own answering questions and dishing out wit on panels mixed with some of the biggest names in webcomics.  Cocky? Could be seen as such, but I had to prove to myself that I belonged at the same table as everyone else.  And in those moments, I kept my ears open, looking for opportunities where we could shine, and do something bigger and better.

Cut to Katsucon 14, President’s Day weekend, 2007 -  our first “out of town” show, an event where, for whatever reason, Dead of Summer was deemed worthy enough to get a hotel room and free merch tables! Some artist named Jamie Noguchi had missed the convention due to a personal commitment, and the man who ran this event called “Iron Artist” (an Iron Chef esq art competition), Chris Impink, needed a fill in. He really liked Nick’s work, and realized that he drew VERY fast.  Nick was pitched it, and he immediately asked me if it was worth doing.  I told him that he had to - what better way to make a name for us than by out drawing everyone else there?

And draw well he did, turning the competition on it’s head, incorporating crazy antics (including sucking up to one of the hosts/judges, this guy named Ross Nover, who was doing a superhero comic at the time), ultimately getting the win over some well known names.  Nick had made his name. Dead of Summer was known. But still, there was more to be seen.

We continued to work on new concepts - the next was a giant art show/band showcase called Ultimate Kaiju All-Star Barrage. In retrospect, that’s an awful name, but it was an amazing night. Nick and I oversaw the event, booking great artists (including the afformentioned Nover, Noguchi and Impink) for an artshow upstairs and pairing it with a music event downstairs (featuring The Protomen, Peelander-Z and our favorite bands in Baltimore, Karmella’s Game and Avec).  The event was an absolute success.  Our show booking was an absolute success, but we really didn’t grab any of it ourselves.  We still knew we were destined for something bigger, something more outrageous.  But what would it be?

Again, Katsucon would be the scene of something great.  Katsucon 15, another fateful February weekend, lead to another year of Iron Artist.  This time, Chris wanted to pair Nick against Jamie Noguchi.  I thought it was funny that Nick was being pitted against the guy he replaced.  Nick, again, decided to push me out of my comfort zone.  He suggested to Chris that I be one of the judges/commentators.  Knowing my misbegotten youth spent watching Pro-Wrestling, Nick felt that I’d be really fun on stage.  I wondered if I was the right feel, but I trusted him. He got me to realize I was “Marty F’N Day”, he had to be right, right?

And then the show happened.  As mentioned, Iron Artist was structured very much like Iron Chef, right down to the slightly over the top, but generally controlled presentation.  Chris Impink always outdid himself with amazing video packages, giving a narrative to the event, incase the art didn’t keep people interested.  Unfortunately for him, an hour of well programed video content didn’t go as planned. No less than 5 minutes into the show, the video feed dropped out.  It was do or die time - we on stage had to improvise. We had to keep the packed audience interested (in the Main Events room, Katsucon would show Iron Artist to a crowd well over 1,000 people in size).

I remembered back to when I did theater in High School. One of the keys to keeping your audience was to act like everything was supposed to happen.  Nick looked at me. Nick looked at Jamie. The gears were clearing turning.

Once again, Nick pushed his game up, drawing outrageous things, combining sheets of paper to draw massive monsters - literally going outside of the lines to make his art work, while Katsu’s video team struggled to keep up.  Jamie saw Nick’s idea, and thought he’d try to out do him. The art went crazy - they drew on each others work, they added to it, drew on EACH OTHER, and even pulled people from the audience on stage to draw FOR them.  I matched their intensity - ramping up my commentary to add a sense of ridiculousness and drama to the proceedings.  And the crowd absolutely loved it. I still remember the line that got them the most - “IN ALL THE ONE IRON ARTIST’S I’VE CALLED SO FAR, I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS!”

We had arrived onto the big idea.  This played. This played to a big room. This made the artists larger then life - drawing based rockstars, illustration superheroes. And then it was time to do it live.

The rest has been written about much more, but the gestation was key.  It was all about saying yes in the moment. It was all about taking the opportunity presented and meeting it with everything you had.  That’s what Art Fight was really about.  That’s what this entire journey had been about.  Living in the moment, taking what you knew was in you, and with no doubts, no fears, bringing it to life.

…of course, ArtFight.com was taken, which is how we ended up with Super Art Fight (.com), but that’s incidental.

Super Art Fight officially started with it’s first live show on June 1st, 2008.  As of the time of this writing, we’ve put together 60 live events which have taken us to seven different states. We’ve performed to crowds as tiny as 10, as large as 2500. We’ve built an amazing roster of a dozen regular artists, and featured the talents of dozens more. We get to share the stage with some of our favorite musical guests in the world.  We’ve built an incredible second family for all of us. We have an annual Christmas party which I honestly look forward to more than my real family’s gathering.  We’ve fought, we’ve celebrated, we’ve cheered, we’ve cried.  We’ve grown into a group of well rounded adults.

And in four days, I jump on a plane to do our first show on the West Coast.  I will be nearly 3,000 miles from home, in front of an audience who doesn’t know who I am, what Super Art Fight is, and honestly, may not care. But I’m ready to rise to the occasion. To tkae the brass ring. To make us known.

Before Nick and I embarked on this journey, I had seen all of 4 states in my lifetime, and I never knew if I’d ever get out of Baltimore again.  I’ve flown all of once, this will be my second time.  And no matter how the show goes on Friday, I will be standing there realizing how lucky I am.

I embarked on this journey a 21 year old boy who lived with his parents and didn’t believe in himself with any level of conviction. I’m now a 27 year old man with a place of his own, who isn’t afraid of any audience in this world.  I’m not a religious man in the least, but I believe I’m blessed.  And it’s all because of hard work, and one very key thing - in the moment of fight or flight, when the odds were stacked, I answered the call. I said “Yes.” I jumped in with both feet.

I’m Marty F’N Day. And I deserve to be here.

I can’t go without thanking a few people along the way.

Nick, you are my friend, my brother and I love you. It’s been an honor to grow up beside you, and I’m sad you can’t join us this week, but the journey will take us both to great places and great shows.  

Ross, I give you all the shit in the world, but I can’t imagine hosting this thing with anyone else.

Jamie, thank you for not looking at Nick and I like we were crazy when we said we wanted to do this in front of an audience, and thank you for letting me help plan the first shows before we became “a thing”.  

My Super Art Fight roster mates, you’re all amazing talents, and it is an honor to try to make you look even better than you already are. I hope my dick jokes don’t take away from the beautiful and wild work that you produce from thin air.

To the audiences that tollerate (and even enjoy) what we do - you make this worth it. If I weren’t on stage, I’d be there amongst you cheering and geeking, and I hope that enthusiasm is noticed.

There are others worth thanking, some who truly have helped me in tough off-stage moments, and helped me learn to love myself (and really hammered home that I need to learn to accept that my hard work got me this success, even though I have a really hard time processing that), but that’s between us.  This is an amazing journey - I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.