A roomful of about 40 aspiring comic book artists sat at tables inside the Forest Road Park recreation building one night in May 2022 and got lessons in pencil drawing, 3D shapes and the basics of making comic book characters come to life. The instructor was a 20-year veteran of Marvel Comics whose work lives today in Transformer, Ghost Rider and Sleepwalker books. The instructor was Fanwood’s own Recreation Director Bob Budiansky, known in comic book circles across America for all of the above and for being the editor-in-chief of the Spiderman line until Marvel went bankrupt in the mid 1990’s.
Bob Budiansky shows stages of a comic book cover
“I started drawing when I was five,” he remembers. “When I was in eighth grade, I thought to myself, I want to grow up to be a comic book artist.”
His path was not a straight line to comic book art. He went to Bronx High School of Science followed by the University of Buffalo where he earned his bachelor’s in civil engineering and was all set to get a master’s in transportation engineering. He never stopped drawing, however.
“A friend got an entry-level job at Marvel Comics but left for a job he really wanted at the New York Post. He asked me if I wanted to interview for his job at Marvel. I dropped out of my master’s program, got his job at Marvel and stayed for 20 years.”
For his class at Forest Road Park, Budiansky showed how a comic book cover goes from a pencil sketch to the black-inked version and the full-color work familiar to Marvel superhero fans. He demonstrated how to make a human figure, a car or a plane out of basic shapes. The class participants, kids and adults, followed along with pencil and paper. His confidence at the easel was evidence of his years of experience and the class participants were rapt.
