DAYTON, OH, March 23, 2009 — Sometimes an artist’s work is so unusual that comic book readers aren’t sure what to make of it. Daniel Crosier’s comic book illustrations fit the bill. The 30-something, Denver-based artist has created a technique he dubs “comic books in wood.”

It works like this: Crosier goes to a lumberyard or hobby shop and buys a plank of birch or pine, takes it home, chops it into page-sized chunks and starts burning images into the wood with a woodburner.

It’s a unique idea that might never have seen the light of day if Crosier hadn’t hooked up with indie comic book publisher, Bluewater Productions. After seeing some of his illustrated pin-ups, Bluewater approached him to illustrate a new horror comic book series, Bartholomew of the Scissors.

“’Well, I’ll do this,’” Crosier says, “’but what do you think about woodburning?’ They had no idea how to take that. … They were like, ‘What’s this guy up to?’ But they granted me the leniency to do that.”

Nice move. The work’s so unique it started generating underground buzz before issue #1 hit shelves late in 2008.

“The [woodburning] aesthetic is, for lack of a more graceful word, badass,” wrote reviewer Peter Hall on HorrorsNotDead.com.

Bartholomew of the Scissors tells tale of a young boy named Bartholomew who’s tortured, sexually abused and eventually murdered only to be resurrected as a member of the undead. Back to take revenge on the “perverts” who are viewing pics of his own crime scene on the Internet, Bartholomew’s got the power to control a murderous, eye-gouging Scissor Swarm. Throw in paranormal detectives, the Cult of the White Blob, and a psychic girl with powers of pyrokinesis, and you’ve got another unusual work by horror writer, Chad Helder (author of the comic books Vincent Price and Plan 9 from Outer Space Strikes Again!).

Daniel Crosier’s artwork, though, threatens to overtake the plot as readers try to process his otherworldly images.

“The ones that really didn’t know how to process it were still very much interested in how I was doing it and why I was taking that approach,” Crosier says, before admitting that the “whys” are hard to explain. Other than saying that regular pen-and-ink might not have stood out too much, he’s not really sure what prompted him to try woodburning.

In fact, he hadn’t picked up a woodburner since Sunday school, he says. But he got plenty of experience with unique media as a student at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. He joined the program originally as an illustration major where he learned technical illustration, but after two years, he says, he was bored. He switched to sculpture and found his passion using new artistic implements like chainsaws, welders and blowtorches.

A new sensibility was born.

Comic book artist Daniel Crosier with one of his masks in his studio on Blake Street in Denver, Colo. Image courtesy of the artist.

Crosier’s still struggling to make a foray into major label comic books like Marvel and DC. He’s keeping his dayjob as a facilities manager in Denver for now, and he was tight on cash when he landed the Bartholomew contract. That forced him to use cheap pine wood that he bought at Home Depot for the project.

“Sometimes, areas of the wood were too awful to do anything with,” he says. “I’d even incorporate the knots some of the time. Now, that I look back, I’m like, ‘Wow, that was really stupid.” he says. There were knots, twisted planks, tree sap and gouges in the wood – all of which made it harder to illustrate on.

But, he’s a firm believer that innovation comes when artists face monetary constraints. They’ve still got the drive to create, and they’re going to do it anyway they can.

“In this economy, art is seen as more of a luxury,” Crosier says, “so it becomes kind of this throw-away thing. Still, there’s this amazing drive of innovation and creativity, and now it’s got a budget constraint. I think that’s when the greatest amounts of creativity emerge.”

Now that Bartholomew of the Scissors is finished, Crosier’s working hard to get a contract for more woodburning comic work. He’s creating and submitting images of the Swamp Thing and Dr. Strange, for instance. But there still seems to be some resistance to his approach on the part of the major comic book imprints.

“I’ve only been doing this for two years now,” he says of woodburning comics. “I’m still learning the ropes and making contacts, but the comic book industry is a tough thing. And it seems like a strange dynamic. You might be somebody that stands out and does some amazing stuff, but nobody wants to takes a chance on you. … ‘I’m like wait a minute – this is comics. You’re still the subculture in America.’ … Almost anywhere else in the world, you wouldn’t have that. Comics are mainstream [there].”

The full run of Bartholomew of the Scissors is due out later this month or early in April as a complete graphic novel. “I don’t know if it’s groundbreaking,” Crosier says, “but it’s my approach to thinking outside of the box.”

Daniel Crosier’s created mockups for comic book imprints Marvel and DC — including this one of the Toxic Avenger. Image courtesy of the artist. All rights reserved.

In fact, Crosier’s got something of a reputation for thinking outside of the box in Denver. There, he’s the director, creator and costumer for the performance group OdAm fEI mUd. Filled with a cast of martial artists, musicians and actors, the group is a cross between Gwar and the manga, “Lone Wolf and Cub.”

The group tells a never-ending underground play that focuses on tyranny. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Crosier conveys that message in a setting that’s something like feudal Japan filled with monsters, ninjas, atmospheric music and lots of fake blood.

It’s that strange sensibility that creeps into Crosier’s comic book art. There’s mystery in his wooden planks, and there’s a clear refusal to submit to the threshold guardians – the men and woman who stand watch at the cultural gates and pick one form of expression over another.

Like Bartholomew with his scissors, Crosier’s attacking the status quo. In the process, he’s giving us his views on life between warbling grains, knots and sap in planks of pine.

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