There are all kinds of comic book superheroes.
Some have superhuman speed, superhuman strength or even the ability to shapeshift.
DeSoto County artist Jake Bostain’s comic book superhero has a different kind of superpower. He can resist peer pressure to drink alcohol and use drugs.
The inspiration, like a lot of art, comes from his own life experiences.
Bostain’s first stepfather, Alan Fox, died when Bostain was very young from being an alcoholic.
“I want to have a message and teach,” Bostain told us during an interview. “I would like to inspire, because I feel like I have a lot to talk about with my stepdad.”
The characters and the stories are based on real life people and instances, but the love for art has been there from the start.
“There is no exact date for that, because basically when I was a baby, there are pictures of me with my brothers and sisters when I was a baby, baby, just drawing on their homework, so it’s always been there,” Bostain said.
Bostain’s mother was born into a military family, spending the first two years of her life in Germany.
As a result of living the military life, the family moved around a lot, eventually settling in DeSoto County, mainly because the family was attracted to the affordable cost of living in Mississippi, Bostain said.
“Growing up, I was definitely an outcast, my entire life, because I was never into any of the Southern things people were into,” Bostain said. “I think that’s partially from my family being a military family.”
It was his stepfather when he was very young, Bostain said, who first introduced him to comic books.
“He was actually really big into comic books, fantasy and all those types of stuff,” Bostain said. “That’s what kind of set it off. From the very beginning, I was already into comics, and it kept progressing until I couldn’t control it. That’s what I wanted to do in life.”
Bostain’s love for art and comic books grew side-by-side, but it was not until the death of his stepfather that the art began to take on a significant meaning.
“There wasn’t any meaning to it,” Bostain said of his work prior to that life event. “I was just drawing for happiness. I was making stories, but there weren’t any undertones to it. There was no deeper message. There was just a story.”
Although Bostain managed to reject drugs and alcohol himself, many people in his life, including his mother and his high school best friend, struggled with substance abuse.
His mother, he said, is now sober, and the two enjoy a much closer relationship these days because of that.
The characters in his first published comic book, The Middle of the Other Side, began to take shape in witnessing all of his loved ones’ struggles.
“I’ve been told that a lot of the main characters that I have are based around me and the events that I’ve had throughout my life,” he said.
Now married to his wife Kimberly, and living and working in north Mississippi, Bostain hopes the characters and stories will reach kids who are being pressured to try drugs and alcohol.
“Comics are made for social issues,” Bostain said. “Every old golden-aged comic was made for some type of social rights issue. I wanted to do that… We were all in high school and were around alcohol. I feel like there’s a culture that we have in America that I want to change.”
There’s more to Bostain, however, than the comic book.
He is a true artist, holding to a lot of traditional art values in a world of digital progression and Artificial Intelligence.
“I love traditional more,” Bostain said of his art, which he said is a balance of that and digital creations.
Art as a vocation has never been an easy one when it comes to making a living.
“Art is really hard. It’s really hard to find jobs, especially in Mississippi. I’ve tried putting myself out there,” he said.
Bostain said he could find steady work, but the reality of AI and its impact on many corporations’ bottom lines has led to fewer contract jobs in the last couple of years.
“Work really slowed down when AI (Artificial Intelligence) really started to pump up,” he said. “Some of the last few jobs I did was actually cleaning up AI, and then it just stopped.”
Bostain has found work outside of his art, and that’s something that he said has been a blessing over the past year.
“In the industry I want to be in, I’m stuck between my job, sustaining my bills and using every bit of free time that I have to work on this,” he said. “That’s a really hard balance, because if I spend every waking moment working on this, then my mental state will come down. We need to be social. We need to go out and do something, so finding that balance has been really hard.”
That does not mean the passion for art has evaporated in any way.
To the contrary, Bostain is as excited as ever about his mission to develop stories around helping youth avoid the demons of alcohol and drugs.
He has also been able to sell some of his merchandise designs to content creators and companies on the internet, something he said has helped to pay the bills.
And there could also be a children’s book in the horizon.
Meanwhile, he is doing his best to get his art in front of the world, whether that is on the internet or at events like the Memphis Comic Expo, where he tries to have a table each year.
Wherever he goes, he will use his art to spread his message.
It is a message of hope in a fallen world.
“I’ve been around people who’ve done hard drugs and have offered me hard drugs, and I’ve the will to say no, because I’ve seen what it has done to other people,” Bostain said. “I think education is the best way to lead people not down that road.”
