Dave Lanphear

I'm a well-published comic book artist, and more recently a storyboard artist for animation. Google my name or my studio's name (Artmonkeys Studios, created in 2003 from the ashes of the spectacularly-failed fireball that was CrossGen Entertainment), and you'll see a prodigious list of comic books I've lettered or drawn. I've done that work since 1991, after a 5 year attempt to become a comic strip artist from 1985 through 1990. Some of you may recall I did some (really dumb) comic strips in the Thunderbird (thanks Mrs. Riske for putting up with me), and because I was hot on the heels of Adam Orla-Bukowski's cartooning run on the paper, even earned a short-lived nickname of "Little Adam".

The storyboard work was for two animated shows in the late 90s; PBS' Dragon Tales, and a Christmas special "Maxine's Christmas Carol" by Hallmark (the crabby lady from the greeting cards). I'm working my butt off this year to get back into animation and cartooning more often again. I've interviewed with WB, Disney, Nickelodeon and Pixar for story department positions, and gotten some congratulatory near-misses.

Richard Choi looped me into this site since we hooked back up this last year. Apparently, all this time I've been using the web to try to track down alums, he'd done the same just by still being a fan of comics, seeing my name around. Thanks, Rich! :)

I was roped into the Speech Team/National Forensics League my first day at EHS by Carrie Downie and Alan Zimmerman. I have them to blame for my fabulously misspent high school career. :D Mrs. Peele's coaching brought together probably the most eclectic social group I knew at school; soshes, preppies, rockers, aggies, nu-waves, jocks, brainiacs, and geeks, all existing in fun and competition after school and weekends out of town. Them was the daze... days. But for me, it all started with the motor-mouthed Carrie and gangly Alan steering me relentlessly down the main hall by my elbows to the front classroom to the right of the main entry at EHS to be shanghaied into Speech and Debate. I was never the same. Thanks, you two!!

Being involved in High Challenge, Mr. Miner's class, I met a lot of other friends in all graduating classes from '83 through '87. Tim Hu, Richard Dong (now Rich Choi), Paul Juntunen, Julie Keown, Moses Garcia, Renee Paravecchio, Troy Meeks, Monty Manley, James Wilde, Ed Gage, Adam Woodruff, Tomas Pacheco, Karl Hanlon (my first CX debate partner -- we were ingloriously mismatched, but a nice guy), Scott Larsen; plus so many others.

When I graduated in 1985, I left immediately June 6th for California, and have only been back to Cheyenne twice; first time, the day before that torrential micro-burst in August 1985 that wiped out Buffalo Ridge's culvert and caused 13 deaths; and again in 2006 on a trip back to my current home in Florida. I called my sudden move "hitting escape velocity," because it completely separated me from my social world in Cheyenne and forced me to reinvent myself in California. I gradually lost touch with everyone through time-attrition.

Interesting side-note: 12 years later, I made friends with another Cheyenne alum named Daren Clary through my then-girlfriend's best friend in Long Beach, California. He's the only person I bumped into in person who's from the ol' stompin' grounds, and at that, while he was friends with Carrie and Alan and Kevin Cartie in the years I wasn't in contact with them, he's a CHS alum (yeah, I know, consorting with the enemy). Daren still works at BLT in Hollywood, creating advertising for movies and TV.