Kalvin
Born in Edmonton on July 23, 1981, the first of two sons to Ken & Kelly Lock in the University of Alberta Hospital; I enjoyed a materially frugal life that was rich in family and friends.
Early interest in my father’s drawings and an intense infatuation with cartoons such as He-Man, Transformers, Inspector Gadget, Hercules, The Ghostbusters (both “Real” & “Original” series), indeed almost anything animated, all but guaranteed that I would eventually attempt to make such creations the focus of my existence. In fact, my first memories mostly revolve around waking up every morning long before five am only to have to wait for the television to beam me something other than a test pattern. I educated myself in this fashion anytime a TV was in operation and within my ability to view it. As you can well imagine, I ended up a rather shy and awkward child, which up until I discovered the mystery and majesty of professional wrestling at age eight, kept me uninterested in physical exertion and terribly afraid of injury. My schooling up to this point had been entirely French emersion, which meant I was able to read and write in French, but had to teach myself these skills in English with no small amount of help from my mother and the Serendipity Books Collection.
At age nine, my family (mother, father, and younger brother, Kyle) moved into a motor home and we “flew south” for the winter. Long, hot days and blistering cold nights awaited us in the Arizona deserts, and it was here that I learned to spend hours walking alone with my thoughts, meditating, and basically just passing time until the snows in my near arctic homeland retreated and we could venture back. We did this for a year, mom stayed behind for the second. In the desert, I was home schooled, which in practical terms means I was not schooled at all, given the lax attitude my mother took to long division the first year, and her absence in the second trip down after my parents split up. During this period 300 or so Marvel Comics cards were my main source of entertainment and as a result I had a very detailed knowledge of various heroes and villain’s heights and weights.
When we got back to Canada, Kyle and I went to stay with mom in her home town of Fox Creek, an oil town of 2500 people situated in the middle of nowhere. I was a poor student there from grades 6-12, relying on decent test scores to offset the total lack of homework accomplished. The most relevant lesson I learned in my time there was how to shotgun beer. Of it, I will only add (as seems to be the opinion of many other small town ex-patriots I’ve spoken with) that I loved the people I knew there, but I hate that damn town.
I bounced around for a year, moved back to “the big city” and partied for four more while I barely held down menial labour and service positions. When I found myself in a sales job that threatened to destroy my soul I realized I had to face facts and take the advice of my girlfriend at the time to look into higher education. I went to an open house at Grant MacEwan College and was struck by the possibilities of a career in design. Around this time, some of my less inebriated chums and I had begun work on ideas that would eventually form, first the comic, later TV series concept for “Brainsick Jones.” Within the framework of our tightly knit gang of well meaning miscreants (the early iterations of Thunderfist), we crafted characters and stories while I studied and honed my design and illustration skills.
Three years of toil and effort in this direction have been the most challenging and satisfying of my life and I hope to continue in such creative endeavours for the rest of it.