Film, comics, prose, teaching, and a side of wrestling: J.D. Oliva's journey throughout his careers
Learn about J.D. Oliva's journey through multiple forms of media and becoming a teacher.
Remmy Tull, Staff Writer
May 15, 2024
May 15, 2024
In the back of the class, with the overhead lights off, the bright blue neon glow of the 20 or so computers shining what seemed like directly into my eyes. My brows furrowed as I tried to make sense of Photoshop software, desperate to keep the pace of my teacher. I clicked and dragged to no avail; I could feel the anger welling up inside. Why did he have to go so fast through the demonstration? I looked around and it seemed as though every other kid was thinking the same thing.
Despite my frustration at the quick tempo of the 3-minute project briefs my teacher seemed to favor, it was one of the better classes I had taken freshman year. Graphics 1. Not necessarily because of the subject, however useful and interesting I may have found it, but because of the teacher. It was the first class I had had such an indirect teacher - one who didn't hold our hands and coddle us. His fast-paced, minimal-explanation style of teaching inspired me to try and work harder on my own before running to the teacher. That was in 2021, and since then I have taken one other class with the same teacher and gotten to know quite a bit more about him, like why he went so fast. If a subject was second nature to you like it was to him, you wouldn't think to slow down or explain every shortcut you're using; you would just use them.
That teacher was James D. Oliva. Colloquially known as Mr.Oliva, or J.D. (if you're cool enough). He’s one of the current graphics and video production teachers. With an extensive background in filmmaking, writing, comics, and a bit of graphic design, he is an impressive figure within the school and a highly qualified one as well. For the past 2 years, he has been teaching at DHS and has been perfecting his teaching abilities. Currently, he is working on getting his master's degree to advance in his teaching career and become a better teacher (and to make more money), but before he joined our school and before he began to slow down, Oliva was a very different person.
As a fresh college graduate, J.D. Oliva began his career with little direction and an unshakable determination to work in the film industry. He started to make calls to various Illinois production offices, searching for a PA job, production assistant, or someone who helps with various aspects of production. But demand for inexperienced and reputation-less PAs was in short supply for larger productions in 2003, which made many of his calls and attempts at dream-chasing slightly futile. However, that's not to say that he couldn't find work; many indie projects at the time were more than happy to hire him, and he used this interest to obtain his foothold in this sphere, grasping onto the work like a leech grasps onto a sickly Victorian child.
At the time, around 2005, Oliva wanted to begin focusing on his projects but ended up quite frequently getting wrapped up in the sets of other people. That's when many of his friends in the industry began getting work on bigger, more renowned films. Jumping on the trend and hoping to further his experience, Oliva dabbled in the network of those higher-budget films. The most notable of the films he worked on during this time was The Dark Knight, which he worked on for a few days before quickly realizing that being on someone else's set was not for him.
From then on until about 2012, he worked only on his stuff, various low-budget documentaries and films. In that time, Oliva miraculously managed to make 6 documentaries. Which has become a bit of a common theme throughout his career, quantity. The only way he manages to do so much in so little time is because of his relentless working pace and drive, which we can see reflected through his career, and in his teaching as well.
But despite the productivity of this era, Oliva’s film career was not without its difficulties. It was 2008, down in New Orleans, and Oliva had just gotten his very first Emmy award-winning actor and even a union crew for his latest movie, Grotesque. Sitting in the high chair yelling cut and dawning an ascot cap and slightly out-of-fashion scarf (probably), Oliva had finally obtained his dreams of being a full-fledged director. But despite this seemingly picture-perfect setup, “I remember I was on the train ride home, and I’m like, That freaking sucked. It was a miserable experience. And I hated it, and I was done. I did it; I went through with it, and afterward, I knew I didn't want to do it anymore.” Later that year Oliva sat down with a man to discuss how they would make money off the film. As they talked in the small conference room, the man explained carefully the process and everything that would have to happen so they could profit. A sly grin stuck on the man’s face as he talked about the fraudulent and slightly sticky-fingered way they could pay off the movie. “I was like, This is illegal; this is stealing; it's fraud. And he was like, ‘No, no, this is how it's done.’”
After leaving, disappointed and disgusted by the way the industry had worked, Oliva went home and found that the man he had just been talking to about his movie ended up going to jail.
This terrible experience forced Oliva to take a lot of time off from film, and eventually, after a grueling year of contemplation, he accepted that this was not the path for him. Movies and films, however much he loved them, weren't the industry he thought they were and weren't what he liked doing. But even after this conclusion, Oliva continued to make documentaries, separate enough from the film, and a passion of his that had grown with him since his youth.
In 2010 Oliva began a new ambitious project in collaboration with USA Wrestling. It was a wrestling documentary that took place across the world in a plethora of countries like Russia, Istanbul, Turkey, and Iceland. The project, which was a heap of passion, dedication, and a love for wrestling, was nearly completed early in 2012 when Oliva got a call from NBC. The big-time network, which was hosting the Super Bowl at the time, informed Oliva of an unexpected fee that he would have to pay if he ever wanted to air his film on the network. “[NBC] Told me they wanted 10,000 dollars per minute of footage they had for the Olympics, so that kind of ended that for me. That puts a bitter taste in my mouth as far as documentaries go.” This loss cemented a decision that Oliva had been mulling over since the beginning of his film career, to leave the film industry. After one too many cumulative experiences, he could no longer stomach the greedy, sneaky, and manipulative industry. Since then, Oliva has yet to release any full-length work in film and doesn't plan on doing any more unless he feels he must.
So the only question after leaving his lifelong dream job was a simple one: What now? Well, there are a few options out there for anyone considering changing career paths: get a job that you can use your degree for, go back to college, or do something that doesn't require a degree. Oliva, being the start-up man that he is, chose to do a bit of everything.
After graduating from The Andy Shmidt Comic Experience School’s pilot course and releasing the first book of his very own comic series, Shunned, J.D. Oliva officially became a comic writer.
Growing up, Oliva had loved comics, novels, and all things superheroes, a passion that stayed through his young adulthood and well into his 30’s and early 40’s. After ending his career among the stars, Oliva rediscovered this passion for the specialized form of storytelling and was able to harness it into a fully-fledged career.
With a couple of award-winning comics and graphic novels under his belt and many new connections and friends being made, Oliva was put on a project for DC Comics. In 2016, after years of experience in this new industry, Oliva was contacted by DC to work on a short comic. After a year's worth of slaving away developing this idea with them and working on their project, it had gone all the way up to the producer. The actual work itself was, in Oliva's opinion, “good and awesome.” The others working on it and reviewing it agreed, everyone except the publisher. The publisher looked at their year's worth of work and just said, “Eh, I don't see it," and that was the end of that.
That whole experience helped Oliva realize just how much he didn't like working for others and on other people's projects. That was one of the problems with film and comics—to make something good, you need other people. For Oliva, being able to control what he produces and make what he wants to make is one of the most important things in each creative endeavor. Oliva started to avoid larger media publications, preferring to stay slightly hidden within the indie sphere. There he has been able to explore and create the works that he wants on his terms, controlling what they do, with no one else deciding to pull the plug after years of work (which seems to happen a lot to him).
Even after having left the industry 7 years ago, Oliva believes that he could easily return despite his hesitance. One of the only reasons he hasn't made another comic is the shockingly high expense of producing one. For someone less artistically gifted, such as Oliva, you have to pay an artist, you have to pay a colorist, and you have to pay an inker. That's a lot of money for someone like Oliva, poor. Deluge, his second comic series that was inspired by the aesthetic of his trip to New Orleans in his earlier years, cost $10,000 after the rest was covered by his Kickstarter. 10,000 dollars out of pocket.
But the money wasn't the only thing that drew Oliva’s attention away from comics and graphic novels; a newfound passion for writing novels had sparked. After conceiving the idea for a supernatural horror comic, hawk Hollow, with his brother in 2011, Oliva hired one of their close friend, Matt Jordan, to work on the project with them. After a year Matt had produced 3 pages of an incredible story that Oliva took to the 2014 New York Comicon in hopes of generating interest and finding a publisher, which he had done quite successfully. Returning home from the event, Matt had confided just how excited he truly was about the project, telling Oliva “I finally have something that I can work on. I finally have a project that's for me.“
Two weeks later Olivas's phone rang.
Matt had passed away from a heart attack that was the result of an untreated staph infection. He was just 30 years old. Two weeks after that call, Oliva had gotten an email from a publisher offering to publish Hawk Hollow, which Oliva turned down. It hadn’t felt right to continue their project with someone else, but it also didn't feel right to just leave it unfinished. Oliva decided that he would finish their project by writing it as a novel. Up until that point he had been entirely unexperienced in prose and had no formal training whatsoever. But after publishing the book on Kickstarter, he was hooked.
Since then, Oliva has somehow managed to successfully write and publish 12 books without any training or a publisher using the general knowledge and skills he learned in past jobs. Over the past 6 years, he's been working tirelessly, relying on the little things he has learned to guide him through the novel writing experience. In an interview on the Constructing Comics podcast in 2020, Oliva said, “Being an indie writer, you don't live and die in one book; you live and die in multiple books, and getting people to keep coming back and getting people to fall in love with the characters, and that's exactly the kind of lessons you learn from even just reading comics''. You can see the influence of his days of graphic novel writing throughout his prose works, from the striking cover designs to the page-turning cliffhangers, and the length of the series. Some of his most popular books are from one of his largest series, The Book of Jericho, which has 6 books so far.
As for the contents of the books he writes, Oliva is currently into narrative fiction thrillers, character-based horror, and realism with just a touch of the fantastical. Through his writings, Oliva explores complex and well-developed characters that dynamically pull and push on one another. You can spot a few similarities throughout his works that reflect his main sources of inspiration: Stephen King, Grant Morrison, and Brad Meltzer.
You don't get a long, successful career, dozens of books and films, and a stable job you love by giving up after falling once, twice, or even a million times! During our interview, Oliva said, “Now I have it figured out, and I’ve tried just about everything as far as creative endeavors go. So I mean like you should chase your dream, because all you have if you don't is regret, and regret is something you’ll never let go of. It's better to fail than to be regretful, right?”
The most evident takeaway from Oliva’s work is the passion he has for the craft and the dedication he gives to every project. With any new field of work, book, or lesson, Oliva gives 100%. That passion for his craft and the ability to throw his all into his work stems from a very simple place that many people can understand: the fear of death. After his mother passed away when she was still young, Oliva began to grasp just how fragile life was. That fear of regretting not doing everything he could allowed Oliva to unabashedly chase after the different dreams he had and turn them into a reality.
Now and again, you can find Oliva discreetly typing his name into Google, and flicking through the results and pages that pop up. “I google myself sometimes just to see what comes up, and it's like 5 pages worth of stuff. It's nice being kinda the only guy with my name, and I’m all over the place, so it kinda sums me up.”
But despite his drive to create, an impressive array of talents, multitudes of quality work, and tons of support he's received, Oliva has been battling a severe case of Imposter syndrome throughout his career. A condition that plagues many creatives and makes them feel as if they are not deserving of success and that they are a fraud. Olivas's initial reaction to anything flattering is that it couldn't be true.
Despite this though, Oliva has been pretty constantly creative throughout his life: whether it's directing or writing, he always seems to have his eye on a story. But that is not the only thing that's stuck with him all these years. His other passion besides the arts, wrestling, has been a part of his life since his college days. “I’ve been coaching and wrestling for a long time, those are the two things that have been constant in my life, being creative and wrestling. And they’ve always kinda fought each other on what I am and what I want to be, and the answer is both.”
After coaching in multiple high schools for short periods, and hosting a long-running daily wrestling podcast, Oliva settled down and began coaching here at DHS in 2016. Being best friends with Coach Hyatt since college, Hyatt brought Oliva over to Dekalb after getting the head position here. Olivas has been coaching here ever since and has thoroughly enjoyed being back in his hometown and staying settled.
It was through this coaching position that he was able to get a teaching job here when Dr.Larson offered. At the time, Oliva hadn't had much teaching experience, but over the past two years, he’s been able to find his place here at DHS and settle down(even managing to get much better at teaching). “I was surprised, but at the same time I fit, I fit here, I like it here. It's the only regular job I’ve had that I don't hate. I love this place, I love teaching, and I love being with the kids. It makes me feel whole in a way that nothing else really has.”
Despite my frustration at the quick tempo of the 3-minute project briefs my teacher seemed to favor, it was one of the better classes I had taken freshman year. Graphics 1. Not necessarily because of the subject, however useful and interesting I may have found it, but because of the teacher. It was the first class I had had such an indirect teacher - one who didn't hold our hands and coddle us. His fast-paced, minimal-explanation style of teaching inspired me to try and work harder on my own before running to the teacher. That was in 2021, and since then I have taken one other class with the same teacher and gotten to know quite a bit more about him, like why he went so fast. If a subject was second nature to you like it was to him, you wouldn't think to slow down or explain every shortcut you're using; you would just use them.
That teacher was James D. Oliva. Colloquially known as Mr.Oliva, or J.D. (if you're cool enough). He’s one of the current graphics and video production teachers. With an extensive background in filmmaking, writing, comics, and a bit of graphic design, he is an impressive figure within the school and a highly qualified one as well. For the past 2 years, he has been teaching at DHS and has been perfecting his teaching abilities. Currently, he is working on getting his master's degree to advance in his teaching career and become a better teacher (and to make more money), but before he joined our school and before he began to slow down, Oliva was a very different person.
As a fresh college graduate, J.D. Oliva began his career with little direction and an unshakable determination to work in the film industry. He started to make calls to various Illinois production offices, searching for a PA job, production assistant, or someone who helps with various aspects of production. But demand for inexperienced and reputation-less PAs was in short supply for larger productions in 2003, which made many of his calls and attempts at dream-chasing slightly futile. However, that's not to say that he couldn't find work; many indie projects at the time were more than happy to hire him, and he used this interest to obtain his foothold in this sphere, grasping onto the work like a leech grasps onto a sickly Victorian child.
At the time, around 2005, Oliva wanted to begin focusing on his projects but ended up quite frequently getting wrapped up in the sets of other people. That's when many of his friends in the industry began getting work on bigger, more renowned films. Jumping on the trend and hoping to further his experience, Oliva dabbled in the network of those higher-budget films. The most notable of the films he worked on during this time was The Dark Knight, which he worked on for a few days before quickly realizing that being on someone else's set was not for him.
From then on until about 2012, he worked only on his stuff, various low-budget documentaries and films. In that time, Oliva miraculously managed to make 6 documentaries. Which has become a bit of a common theme throughout his career, quantity. The only way he manages to do so much in so little time is because of his relentless working pace and drive, which we can see reflected through his career, and in his teaching as well.
But despite the productivity of this era, Oliva’s film career was not without its difficulties. It was 2008, down in New Orleans, and Oliva had just gotten his very first Emmy award-winning actor and even a union crew for his latest movie, Grotesque. Sitting in the high chair yelling cut and dawning an ascot cap and slightly out-of-fashion scarf (probably), Oliva had finally obtained his dreams of being a full-fledged director. But despite this seemingly picture-perfect setup, “I remember I was on the train ride home, and I’m like, That freaking sucked. It was a miserable experience. And I hated it, and I was done. I did it; I went through with it, and afterward, I knew I didn't want to do it anymore.” Later that year Oliva sat down with a man to discuss how they would make money off the film. As they talked in the small conference room, the man explained carefully the process and everything that would have to happen so they could profit. A sly grin stuck on the man’s face as he talked about the fraudulent and slightly sticky-fingered way they could pay off the movie. “I was like, This is illegal; this is stealing; it's fraud. And he was like, ‘No, no, this is how it's done.’”
After leaving, disappointed and disgusted by the way the industry had worked, Oliva went home and found that the man he had just been talking to about his movie ended up going to jail.
This terrible experience forced Oliva to take a lot of time off from film, and eventually, after a grueling year of contemplation, he accepted that this was not the path for him. Movies and films, however much he loved them, weren't the industry he thought they were and weren't what he liked doing. But even after this conclusion, Oliva continued to make documentaries, separate enough from the film, and a passion of his that had grown with him since his youth.
In 2010 Oliva began a new ambitious project in collaboration with USA Wrestling. It was a wrestling documentary that took place across the world in a plethora of countries like Russia, Istanbul, Turkey, and Iceland. The project, which was a heap of passion, dedication, and a love for wrestling, was nearly completed early in 2012 when Oliva got a call from NBC. The big-time network, which was hosting the Super Bowl at the time, informed Oliva of an unexpected fee that he would have to pay if he ever wanted to air his film on the network. “[NBC] Told me they wanted 10,000 dollars per minute of footage they had for the Olympics, so that kind of ended that for me. That puts a bitter taste in my mouth as far as documentaries go.” This loss cemented a decision that Oliva had been mulling over since the beginning of his film career, to leave the film industry. After one too many cumulative experiences, he could no longer stomach the greedy, sneaky, and manipulative industry. Since then, Oliva has yet to release any full-length work in film and doesn't plan on doing any more unless he feels he must.
So the only question after leaving his lifelong dream job was a simple one: What now? Well, there are a few options out there for anyone considering changing career paths: get a job that you can use your degree for, go back to college, or do something that doesn't require a degree. Oliva, being the start-up man that he is, chose to do a bit of everything.
After graduating from The Andy Shmidt Comic Experience School’s pilot course and releasing the first book of his very own comic series, Shunned, J.D. Oliva officially became a comic writer.
Growing up, Oliva had loved comics, novels, and all things superheroes, a passion that stayed through his young adulthood and well into his 30’s and early 40’s. After ending his career among the stars, Oliva rediscovered this passion for the specialized form of storytelling and was able to harness it into a fully-fledged career.
With a couple of award-winning comics and graphic novels under his belt and many new connections and friends being made, Oliva was put on a project for DC Comics. In 2016, after years of experience in this new industry, Oliva was contacted by DC to work on a short comic. After a year's worth of slaving away developing this idea with them and working on their project, it had gone all the way up to the producer. The actual work itself was, in Oliva's opinion, “good and awesome.” The others working on it and reviewing it agreed, everyone except the publisher. The publisher looked at their year's worth of work and just said, “Eh, I don't see it," and that was the end of that.
That whole experience helped Oliva realize just how much he didn't like working for others and on other people's projects. That was one of the problems with film and comics—to make something good, you need other people. For Oliva, being able to control what he produces and make what he wants to make is one of the most important things in each creative endeavor. Oliva started to avoid larger media publications, preferring to stay slightly hidden within the indie sphere. There he has been able to explore and create the works that he wants on his terms, controlling what they do, with no one else deciding to pull the plug after years of work (which seems to happen a lot to him).
Even after having left the industry 7 years ago, Oliva believes that he could easily return despite his hesitance. One of the only reasons he hasn't made another comic is the shockingly high expense of producing one. For someone less artistically gifted, such as Oliva, you have to pay an artist, you have to pay a colorist, and you have to pay an inker. That's a lot of money for someone like Oliva, poor. Deluge, his second comic series that was inspired by the aesthetic of his trip to New Orleans in his earlier years, cost $10,000 after the rest was covered by his Kickstarter. 10,000 dollars out of pocket.
But the money wasn't the only thing that drew Oliva’s attention away from comics and graphic novels; a newfound passion for writing novels had sparked. After conceiving the idea for a supernatural horror comic, hawk Hollow, with his brother in 2011, Oliva hired one of their close friend, Matt Jordan, to work on the project with them. After a year Matt had produced 3 pages of an incredible story that Oliva took to the 2014 New York Comicon in hopes of generating interest and finding a publisher, which he had done quite successfully. Returning home from the event, Matt had confided just how excited he truly was about the project, telling Oliva “I finally have something that I can work on. I finally have a project that's for me.“
Two weeks later Olivas's phone rang.
Matt had passed away from a heart attack that was the result of an untreated staph infection. He was just 30 years old. Two weeks after that call, Oliva had gotten an email from a publisher offering to publish Hawk Hollow, which Oliva turned down. It hadn’t felt right to continue their project with someone else, but it also didn't feel right to just leave it unfinished. Oliva decided that he would finish their project by writing it as a novel. Up until that point he had been entirely unexperienced in prose and had no formal training whatsoever. But after publishing the book on Kickstarter, he was hooked.
Since then, Oliva has somehow managed to successfully write and publish 12 books without any training or a publisher using the general knowledge and skills he learned in past jobs. Over the past 6 years, he's been working tirelessly, relying on the little things he has learned to guide him through the novel writing experience. In an interview on the Constructing Comics podcast in 2020, Oliva said, “Being an indie writer, you don't live and die in one book; you live and die in multiple books, and getting people to keep coming back and getting people to fall in love with the characters, and that's exactly the kind of lessons you learn from even just reading comics''. You can see the influence of his days of graphic novel writing throughout his prose works, from the striking cover designs to the page-turning cliffhangers, and the length of the series. Some of his most popular books are from one of his largest series, The Book of Jericho, which has 6 books so far.
As for the contents of the books he writes, Oliva is currently into narrative fiction thrillers, character-based horror, and realism with just a touch of the fantastical. Through his writings, Oliva explores complex and well-developed characters that dynamically pull and push on one another. You can spot a few similarities throughout his works that reflect his main sources of inspiration: Stephen King, Grant Morrison, and Brad Meltzer.
You don't get a long, successful career, dozens of books and films, and a stable job you love by giving up after falling once, twice, or even a million times! During our interview, Oliva said, “Now I have it figured out, and I’ve tried just about everything as far as creative endeavors go. So I mean like you should chase your dream, because all you have if you don't is regret, and regret is something you’ll never let go of. It's better to fail than to be regretful, right?”
The most evident takeaway from Oliva’s work is the passion he has for the craft and the dedication he gives to every project. With any new field of work, book, or lesson, Oliva gives 100%. That passion for his craft and the ability to throw his all into his work stems from a very simple place that many people can understand: the fear of death. After his mother passed away when she was still young, Oliva began to grasp just how fragile life was. That fear of regretting not doing everything he could allowed Oliva to unabashedly chase after the different dreams he had and turn them into a reality.
Now and again, you can find Oliva discreetly typing his name into Google, and flicking through the results and pages that pop up. “I google myself sometimes just to see what comes up, and it's like 5 pages worth of stuff. It's nice being kinda the only guy with my name, and I’m all over the place, so it kinda sums me up.”
But despite his drive to create, an impressive array of talents, multitudes of quality work, and tons of support he's received, Oliva has been battling a severe case of Imposter syndrome throughout his career. A condition that plagues many creatives and makes them feel as if they are not deserving of success and that they are a fraud. Olivas's initial reaction to anything flattering is that it couldn't be true.
Despite this though, Oliva has been pretty constantly creative throughout his life: whether it's directing or writing, he always seems to have his eye on a story. But that is not the only thing that's stuck with him all these years. His other passion besides the arts, wrestling, has been a part of his life since his college days. “I’ve been coaching and wrestling for a long time, those are the two things that have been constant in my life, being creative and wrestling. And they’ve always kinda fought each other on what I am and what I want to be, and the answer is both.”
After coaching in multiple high schools for short periods, and hosting a long-running daily wrestling podcast, Oliva settled down and began coaching here at DHS in 2016. Being best friends with Coach Hyatt since college, Hyatt brought Oliva over to Dekalb after getting the head position here. Olivas has been coaching here ever since and has thoroughly enjoyed being back in his hometown and staying settled.
It was through this coaching position that he was able to get a teaching job here when Dr.Larson offered. At the time, Oliva hadn't had much teaching experience, but over the past two years, he’s been able to find his place here at DHS and settle down(even managing to get much better at teaching). “I was surprised, but at the same time I fit, I fit here, I like it here. It's the only regular job I’ve had that I don't hate. I love this place, I love teaching, and I love being with the kids. It makes me feel whole in a way that nothing else really has.”