Willis Earl Beal was born on the South Side of Chicago. He would never consider it home. An odd kid, he spent a lot of his youth talking with his grandmother, who would entertain his endless questions about the universe and encourage his love of drawing. He developed an obsession with Batman that would last well into his teenage years, when he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a form of vigilante training. Willis Earl Beal died on an army base in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. While in boot camp he was plagued with physical and mental abuse, health complications (which would later require surgery and the removal of large portions of his intestine) forced his discharge. He moved back home. “When that all broke down,” Beal says. “I lost a piece of myself.”