Romaninfo

In High school Roman Dirge was warned by his art teacher not to pursue a career in the arts, that his style was crude and he'd never make a living at it.Despite such high praise and encouragement, Roman continued to draw and to write and eventually started publishing a low budget art magazine covering the San Diego scene.

Due to a production error, Roman created a small comic strip as a page filler for the first issue. That page filler was a story of a cute little dead girl.

When the magazine hit the stands, readers wanted more of the little dead girl. And through the popularity of LENORE, simply a last minute page filler, XENOPHOBE magazine was a hit.

LENORE became an underground success and Dirge knew that she must someday be featured in her own comic book series. So pen in hand he drew up some samples and took then with him to the world renowned mecca of art and culture, San Jose. It was there that he met Dan Vado, the big cheese at SLAVE LABOR GRAPHICS.

And they lived happily ever after. Well, not quite. Actually, Roman's other career, as a close-up magician started to blossom and he subsequently put LENORE on the back burner.

It would be almost a year later when he would meet up with the SLAVE LABOR GRAPHICS folks again and finally get around to creating the very first ever LENORE comic book. LENORE became one of SLAVE LABOR'S top selling books, along side the comics being made by Romans good friend Jhonen Vasquez.

Almost overnight, LENORE became a cult icon. Even the comic book industry seemed to nod approvingly as Roman was nominated for three Eisner awards ( the comic book industry's version of the academy awards). Still not satisfied, Roman began to create other art projects, including a "children's book for disturbed chirldren" and a powerful book of art and poetry chronicling the devastation of heartache.

LENORE. is slated to become a full-length animated feature film by SONY FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT and has also been turned into an ongoing animated web series as Sony's Screenblast.

Roman has also worked as a writer for INVADER ZIM and NICKELODEON. He illustated a global ad compaign for ADIDAS and is currently creating more LENORE books and developing various other projects for both print, television and motion pictures. Looking back on his experiences in high school, it seems like a good thing that Roman takes criticisim well.