Well, I quickly found out that the world wasn't ready for another Frank Lloyd Wright ... and I would end up doing parking lots and designing heating / cooling systems.

[5] He left college in 1971 before graduating, and returned home to New York, where he discovered his family was moving to Denver, Colorado, where his father's employer, Johns Manville, was relocating.

Opting to remain, he completed a 52-page story he had begun in college and presented it in 1972 as a sample to Marvel Comics production manager John Verpoorten, who found Rogers' work wanting.

When one client went bankrupt owing him at least $1,000, a friend, Jim Geraghty, offered him a rent-free house for the winter in Easthampton, New York, on Long Island, in exchange for "four or five illustrations" for a local art project.

[8] The following summer he worked in a hardware store for several months, was fired, and while living on unemployment benefits approached the short-lived Atlas/Seaboard Comics and, he said: was given a couple of very small assignments.

'[8]At some unspecified point, Rogers recalled, he "bounced in and out of a shipping clerk job" and did some retouching work for DC Comics on reprints of 1940s Batman stories.

[8] He continued showing samples to both Marvel and DC, and in 1977, his artwork began interesting Marie Severin and Vince Colletta, the two companies' respective art directors.

[15] The two also did a sequel miniseries, Batman: Dark Detective,[16] and worked together on other series, including Marvel's The Silver Surfer and a short run on DC's revived Mister Miracle.

[22] In 1986, Rogers drew a graphic novel adaptation of "Demon with a Glass Hand", an episode of The Outer Limits television series, based on a script by Harlan Ellison.