Sunday, July 3, 2011

Welcome Back True Believers!


Week two and I’m sitting at the New World Deli on Guadalupe and 41st. This place is mostly new to me, although not totally. I’ve been here once before to grab a coffee after dropping my car off at the Midas down the street and waiting for Chris and Ann to pick me up for the Google Places Austin “BBQ Bus” event a couple months ago. I’m not here to talk about the New World Deli though. If you want to read my thoughts on that then check out my Google Places review. No, it’s time for another blog entry, as promised and the subject this week is: comic books. Yeah, I’m saving the heavy stuff for later. Believe me, I’ve got blogs about my unique perspective on relationships at the moment, Socialism, hipsters, and the middling of America all in the wings waiting to be written, but right now we’re going to talk about comics. Why? Comics are awesome!

It was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that first got me into comics. Sadly it wasn't the original  Eastman and Laird indie comics that I'm talking about. No, it was the Archie Comics version, initially based off the cartoon series, that I first started collecting back during the TMNT craze of the late 80’s/early 90’s. In its defense, the series (while originally just a panel by panel retelling of the cartoon series) quickly developed into something much more, to the point where the Turtles adventures were virtually indistinguishable from those of any other superhero group from the time, although maybe a little less gritty. TMNT were the gateway drug, but it was a combination of the X-Men cartoon and Hero Illustrated magazine (which I became aware of as the sister publication of Electronic Gaming Monthly) that sucked me into the world of comics beyond TMNT. I don’t recall all the comics I was reading back then, but I know that the series that I chose as my starting point was X-Men 2099. For those that don’t know or don’t remember, Marvel launched an ill-fated line of comics under the 2099 moniker in the early/mid 90’s that attempted to recreate characters such as the X-Men, Spiderman, Dr. Doom, and Ghost Rider 100+ years into the future. It certainly wasn’t their greatest moment, but I didn’t know any better and I wanted to get in on the ground floor of an X-Men book so I made 2099 my own. It wasn't a bad series, all things considered, but there was more to be had and I was eager to explore.

X-Men 2099 eventually led to other things, mainly more X-Men stuff specifically Jim Lee’s run on the title and eventually his inaugural Image title WildC.A.Ts. Image comics was a HUGE deal at the time. Marvel’s top talent, deciding that they were through with the work-for-hire model and not being able to own their own work, struck off on their own to start a creator owned imprint that ended up being wildly successful. For all that it did to change the industry and champion creator's rights, these days Image is just another publisher in a sea of assorted indies, but back then it was a revolution. I consumed a ton of Image books in the 90's, mainly the stuff coming out of Jim Lee’s Homage/Wildstorm studio, but a few other titles as well, chief among these other being Sam Kieth’s The Maxx.

Earlier this week I finished reading the novel Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, a book that I highly recommend if you’re even mildly into the steampunk genre. With book 5 of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire saga coming out next week I didn’t want to start another novel in the interim, but having recently reorganized my comic book collection for the first time in 10+ years, I decided that I could probably get through the entirety of The Maxx’s 30+ issue run. I didn’t realize until I started rereading those comics just how much The Maxx inspired my own efforts at writing and drawing comics back in high school and early college. You might even say that my stuff was practically a blatant rip off.

I’ve never been the kind of person who stands idly by when he likes something; I like to get involved, to give back to the community that has entertained me. This is the reason why I own a guitar and a bass that I’m not very good at playing. It’s why I majored in film in college. It’s how I got into game development. And it’s why in high school I started drawing comics. Now make no mistake, my early stuff was very much X-Men/WildC.A.Ts inspired; Jim Lee figured very prominently in my personal pantheon of gods at the time and I still have folders of various superhero designs that are embarrassing if not ambitious . I never really did anything narrative with those superheroes though and by the time I had worked up the discipline to even attempt something sequential, I had moved on from X-Men, WildC.A.Ts and superheroes in general. It was titles like Sin City, Strangers in Paradise, Transmetropolitan, and of course The Maxx that had my rapt attention at that time and it was the influence of those books and my brooding, anti-authoritarian teenage mind that led to the development of my comic Shadow of the City

I “published” 3 issues of Shadow between the end of my junior year of high school and my freshman year of college. The story followed a homeless, amnesiac drifter named Robert Shadow who was befriended by a woman and given a second chance at life. Oh, he attempted to fight crime and he had developing telepathic powers as well. If the premise wasn’t an almost total rip off of The Maxx (albeit bereft of subtleties) my page work was very inspired by Sam Kieth. Even now, rereading The Maxx, I’m impressed by Kieth’s panel work and while I think he let his desire to design a beautiful page get in the way of storytelling sometimes, when it worked it was fantastic.

I eventually gave up on drawing comics when I started film in college, but I never stopped reading. There was Cerebus and Sandman, Preacher, and a bunch of others either monthly or collected in trades. I loved to support the indie comics: Brian Wood’s early work with Channel Zero, Drew Hayes’ Poison Elves, and others, many of which came and went in the blink of any eye. It was an easy habit to feed as living in Boston put me in close proximity to two of the best comic book stores in the country: Comicopia on Comm Ave, and The Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square. Eventually, as series’ ended or I just lost track of late books or those that I never really cared about much to begin with, I was reading fewer and fewer comics each month. I think for a period of time between the end of 2001 and sometime in 2006 or so, I was maybe maintaining fewer than 4 monthly books and that basically included whatever Warren Ellis or Brian Wood were working on at the moment, The Walking Dead, and random purchases here and there. When I moved to Virginia I started looking for new series’ to read again, thankfully stumbling on Unwritten (the new Sandman as far as I’m concerned), Chew, Rasl, and The Stuff of Legend … with a little help from BleedingCool.com. When I moved to Austin (just around the corner from the amazing Austin Books and Comics) this renaissance continued and has recently found me back where I started, with the X-Men.

The thing I’ve always loved about comics is that they really are one of the last narrative mediums left unspoiled by the masses. Sure, you’ve got big publishers like Marvel and DC where you’re likely to find the same stories you’ve read your entire life repackaged and put back on the shelves, but there are so many other books out there and the barrier for publication is tiny compared with other media. It’s no wonder you find so many mainstream writers either coming from or ending up in comics at some point. Guys like J. Michael Stracynski, Kevin Smith, and Joss Whedon all turned to comics at some point and wrote stories they would never get away with on the big or small screen. It’s really one of the few places where a creator can still reach an audience and maintain total creative control. That was always so much of the allure to me when I was younger. As an idealistic youth with a need to rebel against “The Man” and do my own thing and amidst the revolution of Image, comics were the ultimate medium. If you had the vision and a story to tell, you could get it out there in front of people and while there were maybe a couple dozen people who read my Shadow of the City and I never finished issue 4, let alone the series, I was a part of that world in some way and still am, if only as a spectator.

I still think about writing for comics every now and then, but along with everything else I have going with work and life in general I just don’t know where I’d find the time, let alone a genius artist. Maybe someday I’ll be struck with the perfect idea that can only be expressed via sequential art, but until then I’m content just to read others' works. There’s just an endless sea of story out there in comics, unhindered and unabridged from the author’s mind to your hands and there really is something for everyone. I feel bad for people who write off comics as being childish or unrefined; they really are missing out. As much as I read traditional prose and as much as I enjoy novels, some of the greatest stories I’ve ever read are in comics and I hope that never changes.

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