Meet Illustrator Joe Wehrle, Jr.

Artist

Illustrator and artist Joe Wehrle first got into illustration and art at five years old when he tripped over daily Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph papers tented on the floor beside his father's chair. He saw The Phantom comic strip and went crazy. He had his mother clip the strip out each day so he could save them and study them. It was the start of his obsessive collecting that continues to this day. He still studies the work of other artists to learn how to increase his own skills as an illustrator.

Collector

He collects comics, jazz CDs, original comic art, and books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, A.E. van Vogt, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Sax Rohmer, Jules Verne and lots of science fiction authors. He has accumulated four guitars to date, five if you count an electric one with no guts. He created a "Fake Fender" groovy black rubber logo for it which he glued on the head. One day it may acquire guts and an amp, then look out. Meanwhile he keeps adding to all his collections.

Update 2008: Now there are multiple saxes in the house and they're breeding like rabbits!

Musician

Music is in his bones. If he's awake, he's whistling, humming, or mangling a song with ridiculous lyrics he makes up as he goes. He loves the really old blues by the likes of Blind Lemon Jefferson, and that's what he plays on the guitars. He loves Scott Joplin's rags and is learning how to play a couple of those on the guitar instead of the piano. He also plays bebop jazz on sax and clarinet. Does he read music? Not him. He's proud to be a play-by-ear musician.

Bookbinder

Bookbinding and book restoration are a real passion. There's nothing he enjoys more than getting hold of a book or comic in poor shape and restoring it to as near new as possible with his artist's skills. A whole day can pass without him realizing it as he removes poorly-applied tape and glue, matches paper, reglues pages and covers together properly, restores any areas missing fabric, then paints and colors as needed. The transformation can be amazing. What seems like magic, he just calls bookbinding.

Writer

Writing, for him, involves deep thought as he works out unique, convoluted plots and twists, then mutters and grumbles under his breath as he prints the words on yellow legal pads with a felt-tip pen. He sold a number of science fiction short stories. A short story called "The Bandemar" was published in English and in German. Despite his last name, he doesn't read German, so we're fascinated when we compare the two versions and try to pick out his sentences in a language that's foreign to us. Another story was published in an Australian science fiction magazine called Void. Of course that went into his collection of writing.

Self-Publisher

Self-publishing comes natural to him. He likes to keep control of every aspect of creating a comic strip or book until he holds the finished product in his hands. The biggest project was his replica of a small, fat Big Little Book like the ones popular in the thirties and forties.
Cauliflower Catnip was a hard-boiled cat detective with a soft spot for catnip tea. Joe had to self-publish that one, because no one was set up to print on that old pulpy paper just right. The local printer hated how often he had to clean pulp dust out his printing press. Nonetheless, that book was our most successful venture in self-publishing.