He promised he'd be here. Today is July 30, my bud Frank Turner's 53rd birthday. I met him through his art first, up on the wall of Birmingham's first comic book shop back in 1981. Owner Steve saw me studying this wanna-be upstart's drawings & said, "Yeah, there's another kid in town wanting to do comics! You need to meet 'im; he's pretty good!" Well, he was & I didn't like it. Or him. But we met & became friends anyway, then good friends, & then brothers-in-arts. We inspired, competed with, encouraged, critiqued, argued with, forgave & loved each other. Frank was an insatiable learner, deeply contemplative & one of the most honest people I've ever known. We played racquetball lots, & though I could beat many, I couldn't him. Once, when he came back to win from 20-0, I griped, "It wouldn'ta KILLDJA to let me HAVE a point, y'know!" This seemed to strike him & he thought, finally shaking his head, "No...no, that wouldn't be right."
We planned to work together when we could, me inking his pencils, so of course all our joint efforts were him inking me. He was more disciplined but I was more focused. He had more savvy but I had tact. Frank was driven but I was patient...Together, we made a great artist.
I had my eyes opened to racism & prejudice by seeing how the world treated & considered Mr. Turner. He had the deck stacked & restacked against him & even after witnessing it for 20+ years, it still shocked me. And his stillness & pride in living with it made me honored to call him friend.
Frank left us suddenly & quietly--as was his wont--almost 6 years ago. When he died, he was learning Chinese, reading a textbook on string theory, & planning to print and sell his own comics with an industrial machine-thing that half-filled his living room. Most of his incredible ideas & amazing stories left with him. We knew I had a terminal disease & he'd promised that--all those characters & sketches I'd seen for years--he'd finally get it all down for me to read. Lots I knew, but he had a whole universe in his head & there was SO much more. He also promised that when health issues returned Janet & me to Alabama, we'd get a place together so he could help take care of us. We DID move home, though Frank had been gone 3 years, & I swear, part of the house-hunting process WAS my making sure there was enough room IF...by SOME chance, y'know...
Obviously, I could talk about my buddy all night & then some, but I should wrap while it's still his birthday. Happy 53rd, ya big lug; hope you know how much you're missed! If not, well, y'shoulda BEEN here!
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There's the boys back 93-ish! Shades INside, huh? Shows we were cooool.
Frank was THE man! Thanks for writing this Craig! Happy Birthday Frank. ;)
ReplyDeleteFrank Turner was a hell of a man. Of course, I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Big, brawny, kind, gentle, intimidating, hilarious, artistic, musical ... there seemed to be no end to his different sides. I only met him once, but everything I had heard about him was confirmed in our one evening of late-night reveling with Craig. I thought I knew him through Craig's stories, but there was even more to him than I realized.
ReplyDeleteI learned that he'd been cab driver in Birmingham for awhile and his willingness to pick up fares that other drivers steered clear of nearly cost him his life. He found that “packing some heat” was essential to the job and found himself having to draw his weapon not only to defend himself, but in some cases, to simply collect his fares.
He was a long-time bouncer at Sammies, a Birmingham nightspot that most people I know would be afraid to even enter. Probably some combination of his association with that place and the color of his skin made a regular target for the Birmingham police. He endured harassment, false arrests and short-shrift by the judicial system with more composure than you would think possible.
But the other side of that big fearless bear of a guy was Frank the artist, Frank the writer and Frank the musician, Frank the NERD, even. So comfortable with technology that he adeptly composed music on his computer and bought his own printing press. He was truly self-publishing his work and taking control of his destiny in his last few years — and was managing to do it in his spare time, to boot.
Since we’re talking about morbid subjects here, one of the lessons of Frank’s end has to be: look out for your brother. Frank became somewhat paranoid in the end, obsessively videotaping his front door, 24 / 7, in an attempt to keep out whatever enemies, both real and imagined, that might try to enter his space. Like so many creative types, he may have had some undiagnosed mental illness. And he definitely craved his solitude, so perhaps there was nothing that anyone could have done. But remembering Frank reminds me to make more effort to keep in touch with those “lone wolves” out there — we don’t want to lose any more of them before their time.