Will Surf Comic Book Ride a Wave of Success?

First, there’s “Riders of Steel”: A surfer rides through a wall of water and comes out in an aquatic future world where surfing metallic creatures war with another genetically augmented race.

Then there’s “The King and I,” where the hero has the waves to himself until a guy in a pink Cadillac pulls up with “three killer chix in teenie-weenie bikinis.” The driver looks familiar. Yes, it’s Elvis! (“I knew it was him because of his blue-black hair. He had rhinestones on his wet suit, and the legs had a bell-bottom flair.”)

Welcome to the wacky world of Surf Crazed Comics--a new quarterly comic book published by San Clemente surfer-artists Salvador Paskowitz and Roy Gonzalez.

The duo recently shipped 55,000 premiere issues ($2.50 cover price) to comic book stores and surf shops around the country. They’re banking on surfing’s worldwide popularity to make them more than a flash in the sand.

“There’s no surfing comic book just based on the culture of surfing. Just us. We’re all alone out there,” says Paskowitz, 24.

What about Marvel Comics’ the Silver Surfer, around since 1968?

“He’s a dork; he’s not a surfer,” scoffs Paskowitz, pooh-poohing the cosmic super hero, who travels through space on a silver surfboard.

Surf Crazed Comics, Paskowitz says, “is like day and night compared to that. This is about us, our culture, about what we’ve grown up with.”

Indeed, in Paskowitz’s case, he was born to surf: He’s one of nine children in a clan that has been described as the first family of world surfing.

His father, 69-year-old Dorian Paskowitz, is a surfing pioneer who gave up his medical practice in the early ‘60s to lead a nomadic existence, surfing and living out of a cramped camper with his wife, Juliette, and their growing brood.

To finance their unorthodox lifestyle, which took them to 48 states and several foreign countries, Dorian Paskowitz worked in hospitals and clinics. And each summer for more than two decades, the band of surfing gypsies returned to San Onofre State Beach, where the elder Paskowitz ran a surfing camp. The Paskowitz family still operates the 10-week camp; Dorian and Juliette Paskowitz now live on the tip of Baja California.

Gonzalez, 30, is a former champion knee boarder who owned a San Clemente surf shop in the mid-’80s, but he sold it when he found more success drawing surfing T-shirts.

Both he and Paskowitz were doing graphic artwork for manufacturers in the surf and skate industry--T-shirts, beach towels--when they decided to publish a surfing comic book.

“We were doing all this work just being hired artists, and we decided to step back and say, ‘Let’s do our own thing: Why don’t we illustrate what we know?’ ” Gonzalez said. “Comic books were also getting big again, and we thought this world we loved should be portrayed, too.”

Paskowitz and Gonzalez are featured in the premiere issue, which includes work by Cliff Galbraith, a New Jersey T-shirt designer who attended the Paskowitz camp, and Jim Philips of Santa Cruz, who does artwork for Santa Cruz Skates. Other surf artists will be recruited for upcoming issues.

“It’s a little showcase for showing surf art, just for the sake of art,” Paskowitz says. “Nowadays all surf artists are related to a product, to sell a pair of shorts or something.”

Locals may recognize the hero of the continuing “Riders of Steel,” drawn by Paskowitz.

The character, Sean Spencer, is named after Paskowitz’s longtime San Clemente friend, who is the drummer in a band called Johnny Monster and the Nightmares.

“Sean has been an authentic surfer all his life,” Paskowitz says. “I was looking for a humanistic character to be a foil for all these metallic creatures. But more than anything, to be honest, the name Sean Spencer was just so perfect.”

Working from a storefront office in San Clemente, Paskowitz and Gonzalez draw originals in pencil and pen, then color them by computer. The comics are printed in Ohio.

The nearly $40,000 it cost Paskowitz and Gonzalez to purchase equipment and print the first issue (the printing tab alone runs up to $15,000 an issue) came from a few outside investors, but mostly from family. As Paskowitz says: “Who better to support you than your family, who believes in you?”

Business hours at Surf Crazed Comics are as unorthodox as might be expected: If the surf is good, Paskowitz and Gonzalez simply lock up, turn on the answering machine and head for the beach.

But the two partners, who plan a second issue in April, are determined to make Surf Crazed Comics more than just a one-shot deal, like some previous attempts at surfing comics.

Paskowitz wrote and drew a surfing comic book several years ago called Wave Warriors, published by Astrodeck manufacturers. All 25,000 copies sold, Paskowitz says, but Wave Warriors ceased publication after only one issue because the profit margin was deemed too small.

Steve Pezman, longtime publisher of Surfer magazine, has seen a couple of one-shot attempts at publishing a surfing comic book.

In the mid-’70s, Surfer even published its own single-issue comic, bound into an issue of the magazine. Called Tales From the Tube, it featured the artwork of longtime Surfer cartoonist Rick Griffin and a gaggle of underground cartoonists then published in Zap Comix, including the legendary R. Crumb.

Pezman says he has scanned Surf Crazed Comics and looked at some promotional artwork.

So what’s he think?

“I enjoy the raw energy and expressiveness of the artwork. . . . They (Paskowitz and Gonzalez) do good work, and I’m rooting for them,” he says.

Pezman says surfing’s widespread popularity, combined with the comic-book revival, might make Surf Crazed Comics “a right-thing-at-the-right-time kind of project.”

And while Paskowitz and Gonzalez’s lack of publishing experience may be evident in the premiere issue, Pezman says, “they’re flirting with success nonetheless.”

“It’s sort of a naive, raw and enthusiastic kind of venture,” he says. “But sometimes those things, even though rough around the edges, strike right at the heart.”