Deadpool artist-SCAD professor lectures Sunday

SCAD-Atlanta’s interior doesn’t look like any school I’ve ever been to. An high-security labyrinth full of techy design instruments, the place looks more like Area 51 than a campus for higher learning. Computer monitors outnumber people, as do the silent practice mannequins used by the school’s popular fashion design department.

I visited SCAD-Atlanta for the first time Tuesday with another writer colleague. Although I met a number of interesting characters, I was intrigued to shake hands with Shawn Crystal, a professor of sequential art and the latest penciler of Marvel’s Deadpool franchise.

In short, Deadpool’s a mercenary whose super-origin is connected to the hero of Hollywood’s latest comic book (re)production. Like Wolverine, Deadpool has regenerative powers, but he’s more or less permanently disfigured, is hilariously delusional, and loves to use traditionally unheroic weaponry, including swords and massive automatic firearms. That’s right, guns. Plus, for all his crazy antics, Deadpool’s proportionately and paradoxically aware of his existence as a comic book character, a fact that allows him to “break the fourth wall.”

Check out Shawn Crystal’s lecture on “The Language of Comics” this Sun., May 10 at 3 p.m. at Ivy Hall on Ponce de Leon Avenue.

(Illustration by Shawn Crystal/courtesy IGN.com)