Don't they make a cute couple?

In case all of the candy hearts and flower shop window displays didn’t clue you in, it’s Valentine’s Day today, or as I like to call the holiday, “Oh Christ, not that again.”

In our past life we looked at our favorite comics couples, but this we thought we’d have a bit of fun and play matchmaker by picking characters we’d most like to see shack up, regardless of genre or sexual orientation.

Below is our results. See if you can come up with some of your own unique romantic pairings in the comments section.

Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner – They have so much in common.

Little Lulu and Charlie Brown – After spending so much of her youth surrounded by hooligans like Tubby and Alvin, I’m sure Lulu would greatly appreciate a sensitive soul like Charlie Brown.

Jimmy Corrigan and the She-Hulk — Call it a hunch, but I get the feeling Jimmy’s got a thing for aggressive women.

Astro Boy and Jocasta – Robot love baby! Robot love!

Buddy Bradley and Ramona Flowers – Honestly, I just like to wonder how Buddy would handle Roman’s evil ex-boyfriends.

Maggie and Empowered — I figure their insecurities would cancel each other out.

Olive Oyl and Plastic Man — Popeye’s on-again, off-again paramour is perhaps the only woman in comics who could match Eel O’Brian’s elastic personality.

Dick Tracy and Golgo 13 – He’s a cop! He’s an assassin! They’re on opposite sides of the law, but on the same side of love! It’d be just like From Eroica with Love, but with lots more blood and gunshot wounds to the head. Try and tell me that wouldn’t be awesome.

Cerebus and Misa Misa from Death Note – Dating one of the most shamelessly subservient characters to ever appear in comics would have some appeal to one of Dave Sim’s creations, no doubt.

Power Girl and Mo of Dykes to Watch Out For — Well, someone needs to raise that poor girl’s political awareness a peck or two.

Dilbert and Wonder Woman — There’s always at least one couple that makes you wonder (sometimes aloud) what in the hell they’re doing together. Think of it as the Billy Joel/Christie Brinkley of comics.

Sandman and Sunako from The Wallflower – What goth girl wouldn’t love to have ole Morpheus for a bedside companion?

Elizabeth from For Better or For Worse and Guy Gardner — Let’s face it, anyone’s better than Anthony. Ick.

Beetle Bailey and Sgt. Snorkle — The sexual tension in this strip is beginning to become unbearable. Just hurry up and kiss each other will you already? Sheesh.

Note: The above image was snatched shamelessly from artist Victor Santos’ blog. Sorry Victor!

Today’s guest contributor is Laura Hudson, a senior editor at Comic Foundry Magazine and contributing editor for Publishers Weekly Comics Week. She also blogs at Myriad Issues.

By Laura Hudson

from Finder

A beautiful college student falls in love with two of her professors, both lonely academics and outcasts who happen to be close friends. The book opens on young Vary propositioning one of them – both out of genuine affection and desire for a better grade – only to be rebuffed and passed to the other, who accepts her offer in a way that she never could had imagined.

Did I mention that the latter professor, Dr. Shar, is a giant talking dinosaur whose idea of being pleasured is running at top speed down highways while Vary clings to his back? Or that his less indulgent friend, Dr. Zivancevic, is a blind, exiled misanthrope who walks around on giant mechanical ostrich legs? Or that Vary is majoring in prostitution?

Welcome to Finder.

Creator Carla Speed McNeil has summoned a world where the feudal and futuristic mingle together freely, where the prejudices and superstitions of tribes and clans and guilds coexist with sentient artificial intelligences (Vary’s best friend is a anthropomorphic Pomeranian construct), and infojacks that feed books, movies and even emotions directly into the brain. And then there is the place where the two worlds meet: the strange sort of magic that lingers at the edges of digital and tribal realms, in the place where what is true becomes more important than what is real.

I’m focusing here on the sixth volume, Mystery Date, both because I accidentally left my favorites (Dream Sequence, Talisman and King of the Cats) at New York Comic Con, and because this volume trades the series’ recurring themes of imagination, religion, and guilt to focus on arguably the most controversial and interesting thing in the world: sex.

Sexuality is a very fluid and multivalent thing in the domed city of Anvard, where members of one homogenous clan have nearly identical genders, licensed prostitution is referred to simply as “The Art,” and people who only date one gender (same or opposite) are referred to as “monosexual,” a minority preference that is seen as a valid choice, if odd and perhaps a little provincial.

Mystery Date’s protagonist, Vary, sees her chosen profession – sexcraft – as a way not just to gratify others but to heal them, a complicated undertaking that requires licensing and extensive education. “All of the truly great artists are healers,” says Vary. “It’s the soul and substance of the art. Without it, we’re just playthings, party favors, or worse.”

Prostitutes – at least, the licensed ones – are far more akin to geisha than simple whores whose bodies can be bought for cash; they are sophisticated, selective artisans who cater to high-class clientele, accept patrons only when they wish, and can sometimes achieve the status of celebrities. “Sex is the greatest of the arts,” Vary insists earnestly to Zivancevic. “It naturally perfumes all existence.”

Like many young women, Vary has made something of hobby of taking in stray cats and rescuing broken birds, which is precisely what makes Zivancevic so irresistible to her. He is, of course, broken, not just because he is blind and legless, but because everything about his misanthropy screams of the preemptive strike of a wounded heart.

She wonders at one point why she hasn’t been granted her prostitution license, and of course this is precisely why; she hasn’t learned the most important rule of both love and therapy: that nobody ever really gets saved. That the most we can do is hold people up while they go about the business of saving themselves.

My favorite panel of the book comes when Vary and Zivancevic find themselves in the wilderness outside of Anvard, observing the elaborate mating rituals of Shar and his people, the Laeske. (Although defining what a “person” is in Finder is no simple matter.) After yet another failed attempt at seducing Zivancevic, Vary walks out into the rain in frustration, strips off her clothes, and lifts her face to the sky, reveling in the ecstasy of living in the moment as the brilliantly plumed Laeske turn up their chins and do the same.

It is a moment that crystallizes something visceral and essential about the character without offering or needing any explanation, and for the careful and intelligent reader, this is precisely what the series does best. Finder offers a window into a fantastically imaginative and detailed world, and as a special favor, forgoes exposition in favor of letting you explore it on your own. It comes to life not simply because it is great storytelling, but because it is great comics, which means that it uses every tool at its disposal – both textual and visual – to create a vivid, living place I could never have seen or understood quite as well in any other medium.

So why do I love comics, exactly? Because at their best, this is what they are: a bilingual form of art that can switch seamlessly between the language of pictures and the language of letters, offering readers something that can say more than either one ever could. I love comics because between those two worlds of expression there is magic at the edges, there is alchemy that can turn ink into skin and song and gold. I love comics because they tell me what can’t be shown, and show me what can’t be said, and in the gestalt between the two I believe there is nothing in this world or any other that they cannot hold.

“Imperfections make the gods draw near,” says Vary, shortly before the close of the story. “Gods love nothing better than to break perfect things.”

Heaven forbid they find Finder.

Love and Capes Valentine

Since 2006 Thom Zahler has been chronicling the romance of Mark and Abby, a.k.a. The Crusader and, um, Abby in the self-published book Love and Capes. As a part of Robot Love week here at Robot 6, Zahler shares a little bit about the couple, romance, the future of the book and a special promotion for fans that ties into the couple’s big day.

JK: What I love about Love and Capes is that the relationship between Abby and Mark is the kind everyone wants, the kind to root for. What kind of relationship advice do you think Mark and Abby would offer somebody less lucky at love than they’ve been?

Thom: Abby would say that you have to kiss a lot of frogs. She was a little unsure of dating Mark when they first met. She took a chance on him after a lot of bad dates with other guys, and wound up being surprised with this quiet guy. We’ll see how, too, because in an upcoming issue, we’ll see their first date.

She’d tell you to be confident, too. Your vision of yourself and how you really are don’t always mesh. Abby dating a superhero is very much like a grade-school teacher dating a rock star. You do kind of look and say “What does the rock star see in that little common person when they hang out with supermodels and actors all the time.” What the other person is looking for is something only they know, so don’t be surprised when they find it in you.

Abby’s very much Mark’s rock in a way Amazonia never could be. Some people think, “Oh, she’d NEVER go for me” or “I’m not good enough for her.” You’ve got to trust that the other person knows what they want.

And she’d also say, “Watch out for the ex.”

Mark would say, “Understand that people are scared.” He had to start his relationship with Abby off on a lie. He couldn’t tell her exactly who he was when they first went out, and that lying always bothered him. It’s the thing he had to fight through when he did reveal the secret. He knew Abby might be upset that he’d kept it, because anytime you say “Now I know I can trust you” the other person is always going to have a bout of “What do you mean NOW? I trusted you a while ago.”

Likewise, Mark would tell you to give the other person the benefit of the doubt. When he dropped the secret identity bomb, he knew Abby would be upset, but he also knew she’d stick around and listen to his “why.” Mark ascribes to the theory that you should assume the other person isn’t trying to tick you off, so find out why before you get mad.
Oh, and he’d say “watch out for the ex,” too.

Love and Capes

JK: How much from your real life relationships makes it into the book?

Thom: As little as possible. I’ve learned that it’s is much safer for me not to pull things too directly from my relationships, past and present, lest I offend someone I’d rather not offend. “Hey, is that supposed to be me?” accompanied by a scowl is not a question you want to field.

But, in generalities, a lot of the concepts and miscommunication come in from my real life. I’ve always been obsessed with becoming a cartoonist. I’m an inveterate workaholic. That’s similar to the Crusader being on call 24-7, although I don’t have the trump card of saving lives.

And there’s stuff inspired by, too. I drive a convertible, and I’ve had girlfriends who don’t like taking the top down. (Was that a double entendre? I don’t know.) So, when Abby complains about Mark’s super-speed flying messing up her hair, that’s gleaned from that. A lot of the little things do make it through.

The best part of Mark and Abby’s relationship comes from the best parts of the ones I’ve had. I like the way they tease each other and give each other nicknames. I like how supportive they are of each other. For as much as they rib each other, they also know when the other needs loving support. That comes from people I’ve known.

There are two relationships, though, that are unabashedly templated on ones in my life. Mark’s Mom and Dad are very much mine. My Mom is less a woman, more a force of nature. She’s a Steelers fan in Browns Town (which is where Mrs. Spencer rooting for the wrong team in #5 came from). And my Dad is my reservoir of calm and wisdom. They’ve both been insanely supportive of their son who decided to pursue a pretty difficult career.

JK: Let’s talk about influences. Obviously superhero comics are referenced throughout the book, but are there any sitcoms that you’d say are influences? I’ve heard Love and Capes described as a sitcom adapted into comics form. The pacing, with a punch line of sorts coming every fourth panel, seems to be different from other comics.

Thom: The pacing structure of a beat every fourth panel actually comes from comic strips. I was a huge Bloom County fan, and that one-two-three-HAH! format is ingrained in me from that.

It’s also a nice metronome. I wrote a sitcom spec years ago and one of the reactions I got was, “There aren’t enough jokes, per page.” Having that four-panel format helps you keep time. Something needs to happen on that fourth panel that’s funny, or a payoff or a serious beat or something. I play with that more and more, doing a half-page panel or a three-tier panel or whatever, but never deviating too far from that initial structure.

Now, as far as sitcoms, the biggest is without doubt Mad About You. I always thought Paul and Jamie had the perfect relationship, and that show, at its peak, was one of the funniest things out there. I’m TiVo’ing some of the reruns now, and it still holds up pretty well, fashions and huge cell phones aside.

Love and Capes

The show also taught me that you have to make all the characters good. In a superhero-based book, there’s a temptation to make the girlfriend “The Girlfriend.” Her role is to be the hero’s significant other. I worked hard to make sure that if I did a page of Abby and Charlotte (who, by the way, is unabashedly inspired by Jamie’s sister Lisa) just talking about non-super things, they would still be interesting and funny.

Sports Night is another influence. It wasn’t quite a sitcom, I think it’s considered a “dramedy” now. But that was a show that showed you could be funny and be serious. Friends did that too. The characters were very funny, but you’d still have a moment where Chandler is worried that his soulless job will be his life, or Ross is lamenting his relationship with his ex-wife.

There’s usually one of two scenes in Love and Capes that turn on the serious moment, and while it’s a balancing act, it gives the book a lot of heart. Issue #1 has the scene where Abby is watching the Crusader in a battle, and thinks he might be dead. That’s kind of a daring thing to do in a comedy, but it works well.

Oh, and with that in mind, be ready for #10. Heh heh.

JK: You’re doing pretty much everything on the book. What’s the process like? Do you write scripts and then draw them? How much of the production do you do on the computer?

Thom: When I sit down to start an issue, I’ve always got the beginning and the end clear in my head, as well as a vague road map for the story. I knew that issue #1 would start with them having breakfast and later revealing his identity, and end with the mid-air kiss and Abby’s line “–sweep me off my feet.” The places I hit in the middle came up along the way. Amazonia was created as I was working on the issue. And I never thought she’d be as popular as she became. Fortunately, once I saw the reaction, I was able to add her to more of the future stories, and man, has that paid off.

Artwise, I work on a page at a time. There’s a nice feeling to actually seeing a completed page at so many points in the process, rather than all the pencils then all the inks. It also lets the specifics of the story percolate in my head nicely so that I can figure out exactly what to do. And, it lets me send it out to my Secret Society of Super Reviewers, those trusted friends and colleagues who read the book in pieces and let me know if I’m doing okay or not.

I do the roughs, often scrawled on my shower wall in bath crayon, and do pencils on tracing paper over and over until I get things the way I want them. I then lightbox them onto a sheet of layout paper, inking in brush for the most part, and some Micron penwork. This way I don’t have to do any erasing. I scan everything in and color it. I work in Photoshop mostly, although I like some of the painterly effects I can get on the backgrounds when I use Painter.

I’ve adopted kind of an animation workflow, where I have characters on the foreground and a painted background beneath them. It’s helped the speed of my process because I don’t have to redraw the bookstore every time, or draw Mark’s apartment over and over.

Then I drop it into Illustrator and letter it. I never work full script, although I will jot down notes on the roughs if I figure out exactly how a line should be written. I’ll often have the punchline, but that might change slightly after I work everything out. I’m a nut for dialogue and cadence, so I like being able to tweak it until it’s just perfect.

There’s only one joke in the run where I drew it before I had the punchline. In #2, Mark and Abby are in the park. I needed one more four-panel moment before I switched to another scene. So I wrote a scene where Mark and Abby were talking about Christmas and were happy. Abby says something and Mark’s face clouds. Then they have a lighter moment reacting to it. That became the “Is your brother going to be there?” bit and it’s how Abby’s brother Quincy was created. That paid off well, too.

It takes between 2-3 months to do an issue. Love and Capes is never the only thing on my plate, so I have to deal with clients and their projects as I’m doing the book. Love and Capes does okay, but most of my income comes from other frellance work so I need to keep those clients happy. If LNC was the only thing on my table, I might be able to a full book a month, though I am afraid I’d burn out writing it. Either way, using those repeated background “sets” certainly makes it possible to keep up the pace.

Issue #10 was done in two months, because the Free Comic Book Day issue had to be done early for Diamond’s FCBD deadlines. That’s the fastest I’ve done an issue, and it’s got an extra two pages of story in it to boot.

Love and Capes TPB

JK: How has the book been doing? Have the new Diamond benchmarks caused you to rethink anything about self-publishing the book?

Thom: The book’s been doing well. Almost every issue seems to do better than the last, Free Comic Book Day excepted. The FCBD issue sells way more than the regular run, but that’s do be expected.

As for the Diamond benchmarks, well… They’re of great concern. The book has been brushing the old benchmarks, sometimes falling below it. Diamond has been supportive of the project, and I’m sure being a participant in the FCBD promotion doesn’t hurt.

That said, the new numbers are probably going to be a problem. And they have caused me to think about some things differently.

Love and Capes has always been designed to be three six-issue arcs: The courtship, the engagement, and the marriage. That’s also why, once the “season” starts, it’s a quarterly pace, and then after that sixth issue I take a longer break. Kind of like TV seasons. So issue #12 was always intended to be the last issue of the second arc.

As it stands now, I believe that Diamond will carry the last two issues. Issue #11 will come out in August, and then issue #12 will be a double-sized wedding issue. The double-size will raise the price point and make it easier to clear that benchmark, and the readers will get a satisfying bang for their buck. One thing the new minimums did was clarify that. I’d been thinking of ending #12 right before the wedding and doing a LNC Wedding Special. That’s probably not feasible now, so I’m doing the double-size issue to make sure I can end exactly the way I want to.

Then, after that, I’ll take some time to reassess my options. I still intend to do the third arc, but it might be a little while before I can get there. There are also some other comics jobs that I can’t talk about yet that, if and when they happen, will demand some of my time. And hopefully they’ll be a big splash and make doing the third “season” that much easier.

All that said, here’s the good news: I promise that I will finish this story. Comics that end prematurely are never satisfying and I’ve always take it as a commitment that once I decide to do a six-issue arc, I finish it.

In the event that Diamond does drop me after issue #11, I will continue the story in a second trade. IDW is happy with the book, and while we haven’t spoken in any concrete terms about a second trade, I think it’s safe to say that it’s likely. IDW has been a dream to work with. And, in the unlikely event that California and the IDW offices fall into the ocean and I can’t get a second trade out, I’ll post it online. This story will end the way it’s meant to. (Best read with the same passion as Daniel Day-Lewis telling Madeleine Stowe “Stay alive, no matter what occurs; I WILL FIND YOU!”)

I don’t begrudge Diamond making a profit, and they need to do what they need to do for their business. And I’ll I’ve ever asked is a level playing field. They’re being up front about what they’re doing and I appreciate that.

I do think that they should have a program where a publisher could pay the difference off their minimum. Right now they’ve got some “For $1,000 we guarantee to carry your book,” and that’s fine. But if Love and Capes sells $2,000 of their $2,500 minimum, I’d like to be able to cut them a check for the $500 difference to keep the book in. In such a case, I would have personally made more than $500 off the sales, so I wouldn’t be losing money, just cutting into my profit. (Not factoring in production costs, obviously.) And, as an entrepreneur, that’s a decision that I may make believing that it will pay off in the long run.

In my case, I think finishing the series will help the trade and the brand. As it stands now, if #11 under-performs, there’s nothing I can do about it. Now if I could find a way to make things right after the fact, even if I was limited to going to that well only once a year, that’d still help me out more than betting against myself and spending $1,000 to guarantee my inclusion and distribution.

It’s a difficult thing, but as long as the rules are clear and apply fairly, that’s all I can ask. Then it’s my job as a creator to play the best I can in that environment. And I think I’ve got a plan.

JK: One of the areas where you’ve been really active is merchandising. On your site, you offer bookplates, T-shirts, tumblers … how important has merchandising been to your bottom line?

Thom: I’ve tried to make the merchandising gravy to my bottom line. Back when I still worked for The Man, I was an art director and graphic artist. I learned a lot about production and made some great contacts with vendors doing that. When I do a product, I try to make it as cost effective as possible, so that if never sell an item (since, gauging what will sell is always such a crap shoot) I’m not hurt too badly. And sometimes I consider it advertising. I did that with the first Love and Capes shirt that was part of a Hero Initiative promotion.

I managed to do the LNC Toon Tumblers because I do the design work on the regular DC and Marvel Toon Tumblers for PopFun Merchandising. Similarly, the trading pin set has been made possible through working with Pop Culture Trading Pins. Even the current Amazonia t-shirts were made possible by doing the design for the Mid-Ohio Con T-shirts and overprinting some so I could have product to sell.

I think it’s important to always have more. If someone has all the books, it’s good to have something additional, and of good quality, to sell them. I have a lot of great fans who want to support the book, so it’s good to have an outlet for the completists.

Between those and the sketchbooks I’ve done, the merchandise has definitely been a support. The books hit with a bang and then drop in terms of sales, which is natural. The merchandise rarely starts out as strong, but it’s more of a constant sales point, too.

My next product is as much a promotion as an item. I think I can say without too much of a spoiler warning that the happy couple will be getting married (or, at least going to the church) in issue #12. I can also further say that Delta Burke will not be invited. Stupid Wedding Destroyer Lois and Clark plot…

Anyway, I’m offering fans the chance to attend the wedding. The cover will be similar to the famous Jack Kirby marriage of Reed and Sue, with the Marvel Universe behind them. For $25 for singles, or $40 for couples, you can send in your photo and appear in the congregation. You’ll also receive a print of the cover.

If sales go crazy gangbusters, I’ll do an alternate version with Mark in a tux, as opposed to his Crusader uniform, and fill in that crowd with the overflow. It should be a lot of fun.
I did a “soft” announcement of it at the New York Comic Con, and some people have asked if they can have their character appear in it, too. The answer is yes. So, for example, John Gallagher’s Buzzboy and Rich Faber’s Roboy Red will be attending the wedding as well.

For more information on that, go to www.loveandcapes.com/rsvp

I think I may have to draw/invite President Obama to the wedding, too. I hear having him on a cover can really help sales.

Love and Capes #10

JK: And finally, tell us about your plans for Valentine’s Day and for Free Comic Book Day.

Thom: Valentine’s Day I’m cooking dinner for my girlfriend. Simple and low-key.

As far as the big FCBD, I’ll be in Austin, Texas at Randy Lander’s Rogues Gallery Comics signing and drawing. I’ve got friends in Texas (including Randy, I’m pleased to say) and I’ve been to Dallas and Houston, but never to Austin, so I’m looking forward to that. Randy’s always been supportive of the book, and he’s met most of the riders on my appearance. He’s not flying in a Ghirardelli sundae from San Francisco, but hopefully I’ll be on his Comics Pants podcast that weekend.

I can only be in one place for FCBD, but if any retailers are reading this and need some flyers or maybe a T-shirt or some signed books or something, give me a shout through the website and I’ll see what I can make happen, too.

Paris

Paris
Written by Andi Watson; Illustrated by Simon Gane.
SLG; $10.95

I blame my love for Paris – a city I’ve never physically been to – on Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Gaston Leroux. Any city so full of swashbuckling musketeers, romantic revolutionaries, cathedral-dwelling hunchbacks, and catacomb-inhabiting phantoms is bound to be fascinating. When you figure in Bouguereau and éclairs, Paris tops the short list of cities on the Eventual Michael May World Tour.

My great hope for Paris the graphic novel was that it would come somewhere near capturing everything that I imagine I love about Paris the place. Not musketeers and hunchbacks necessarily, but art, architecture, bistros, coffee, and – oh yes – especially love. I was not disappointed.

Watson and Gane tell the story of a young, American art student named Juliet who’s come to Paris to study at an atelier. The back cover says that the story takes place in the early ‘50s. I don’t know enough about Paris’ cultural history to know why that’s significant – the details of the plot could’ve taken place yesterday as easily as fifty-something years ago – but the style of the thing is certainly nostalgic and romantic; like an Audrey Hepburn movie. Hepburn would’ve been out of place in this particular story, but right at home in the setting.

Juliet is hired to paint a portrait of a young Englishwoman named Deborah who’s on holiday in Paris with her chaperone, Chap; a pinched-faced old woman who makes A Room with a View’s Charlotte Bartlett seem like a desirable companion in comparison. At first, Juliet and Deborah seem like they couldn’t have less in common. Juliet – with her triangular glasses and perpetual ponytail – has embraced bohemianism. Deborah is a stunning beauty with perfect posture and soft, golden curls who appears to resent Chap’s repressive company, but isn’t really bucking against it either. After working together for a while though, Juliet realizes that Deborah shares her love of art and that the proper Englishwoman’s tastes are more adventurous than she first lets on.

What follows is a beautiful, heart-breaking courtship. It’s beautiful because Juliet – who’s grown disillusioned and disappointed with Paris while living there – finds the romance in Deborah that she’s been missing from the city. It’s heart-breaking because while Deborah seems interested in Juliet, she doesn’t openly express her feelings. Juliet’s left guessing and longing and hoping and anyone who’s ever been in that position will understand and long and hope right along with her. And when Deborah becomes engaged to a friend of her brother, we’ll be devastated along with Juliet too.

Roommates

There are other characters in Paris, each adding to the city and helping to make it simultaneously romantic and flawed. Juliet’s atelier buddy Gerard is fond of her, but his affection soon turns to ugly jealousy of Deborah. Juliet’s free-spirited roommate Paulette is sweetly supportive, but she also likes to walk around the apartment naked and have sex while Juliet’s in the room. Not that Juliet seems to mind, except when Paulette’s hairy boyfriend also insists on standing naked and uncomfortably close to Juliet in order to have a conversation. None of these are evil people; not even Deborah’s stuffy, selfish relatives. But they complicate things for Juliet with their agendas and a couple of them are absolutely infuriating in the way they throw up obstacles in poor Juliet’s pursuit of love.

As wonderfully as Andi Watson builds these characters though, it’s Simon Gane’s art that completes the book. Without a single word of dialogue, we get the sense of these characters through Gane’s depictions: Juliet’s weary longing, Deborah’s innocent beauty, Chap’s stiff unfriendliness, Gerard’s arrogant awkwardness, Paulette’s naughty wit. You know these characters and what they’re thinking as soon as you see them. And the city Gane draws for them to inhabit…

Ah... Paris...

Like I said before, Gane’s Paris is the Paris I want to be real. There are lots of full-page illustrations in the book: jazz bars buzzing with music and conversation, busy hotel lobbies full of foreign tourists and travelers, intricately detailed markets where the common folk of the city buy their produce and flowers and bread, landmarks like the Louvre and the Notre Dame cathedral; winding, cobblestone streets. And everywhere: bits of trash on the ground and birds and blowing leaves. And lovers.

Ganes fills his pages with Where’s Waldo-like detail. Every person in every panel has a story and the book is filled with these wonderful little glimpses at other people’s lives. But none are more tantalizing than the book-long glimpse we get at Juliet and Deborah. As much time as I was allowed to spend with them, I wanted more. Paris doesn’t need a sequel, but I want one. It’s a complete story. I’ll even dare to say it’s a perfect story. But I still want to know what happens next.

Five out of five lonely art-girls.

Agents of Atlas

Editor’s Note: With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, we’ve declared this the week of Robot Love and resurrected I ♥ Comics. In one of our favorite features, various comics creators, bloggers, retailers and fans discuss the things they love about the medium.

Today we welcome our guest Jeff Parker, creator of The Interman, co-creator of Mysterius: The Unfathomable and writer of a lot of Marvel’s comics — Agents of Atlas, Age of the Sentry, X-Men First Class: Finals and Exiles.

by Jeff Parker

These comics we read can make us smart. Or at least, able to kill Seat 28D during the InFlight Trivia Challenge.

Comics have an inordinately facile ability to get information into the reader’s head. A few years ago I was in Washington, D.C. running around looking at monuments and the like, and I took the once-a-week tour of the Federal Reserve building. It’s surprisingly cool, do it when you’re there on a Thursday sometime. At the end of the tour they gave out a COMIC BOOK that attempted to explain how the Fed works. It was badly drawn, weakly colored, and yet- it actually got across to me some understanding of the mysterious process by which the Fed sets interest rates and influences economic growth or tries to thwart inflation. I was impressed that they took the steps to make a comics giveaway, and it made me happy to retrace the steps they must have gone through. As the guide of the day had explained, one of the big hurdles the people in the Federal Reserve have is trying to explain to the public how they do what they do. The job description requires some understanding of economic theory and process to even get to the nuts and bolts. They obviously spent a lot of time trying to figure out what delivery system could get the curious up to speed, and they arrived at a flimsy newsprint comic with no coated stock cover. And I still have it. They also showed a film about the Fed, but the comic still did a better job distilling the information.

There’s really no reason comics can’t be a major force in education, they can engage a student and slip knowledge into their skulls through any number of paths and convey the most complex lessons (Naturally I also like the idea of inculcating youth with the habit of reading comics). But back to the love, what I’m talking about is not really the overt teaching that comics can be used for. I’m talking about the way knowledge of the writers and artists ends up in their comics and subsequently in my own noggin. I remember as a kid an old ’50s reprint where Superboy generated a massive amount of static electricity by fashioning a gargantuan glass rod and rubbing a similarly huge silk cloth against it. Many of those stories read as if the writers kept a stack of Popular Science close at hand, and it’s noteworthy that I can’t remember the plot but still remember how Superboy made the electricity he needed. Any young Superman reader would also have a vague understanding of the process that turns carbon into diamond- any time Clark Kent was running low on cash he’d scope around for some charcoal briquets at a cookout and squeeze/heat vision himself up some stones to impress the ladies. The science would usually be fast and loose, but a key connection was still made, and I would have some bit of insight into the physical world.

Don’t worry, I’m working my way up in sophistication, I’m not actually advocating shoehorning experiments into comics. The breadth of what can be put across is much greater. Later in college, I started getting the Terry and the Pirates reprints (which now exist in superior form from IDW). Besides Milton Caniff’s skill at roping the newspaper readers in day after day, he also was a king of research. He had to be- unlike Alex Raymond who couldn’t be challenged on his knowledge of the planet Mongo, Caniff was setting his adventures in current China, and as the U.S. entered World War 2, the strip followed suit. Caniff wasn’t about to fake military dress, nomenclature, protocol and a thousand other details that his readership now hung onto- and if he did miss something, letters would flood in by the crate to correct him. As a result, you can read Terry and come away with a strong sense of wartime life as it connected to the Pacific Theater, though you may think everyone talked a lot more hep than they did.

Terry and the Pirates

Similarly, you could read Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant and come away with a strong sense of the period of the stories. He’d bother to have Val on the right kind of horses, and drawn in armor as close as he could find appropriate to the period. In these strips, familiarity with the subject is used organically to build the world the characters inhabit. Speaking of the world, you could take in big chunks of it by reading Carl Bark’s Duck adventures or following Tintin and Snowy all over it. It’s easy to imagine the studios of Barks and Herge lined with not only National Geographic, but the yearly indexes of the magazine. I realize I keep citing works of near antiquity, but smartypants comics writing is far from extinct.

Xenozoic Tales

Mark Schultz is a modern cartoonist who clearly loves his research. Xenozoic Tales, while taking wild liberties to create a dinosaur-filled world full of righteous hotrods driven by women in hot clothes, would also shore up a lot of the fantasy with real down-to-earth science. In one issue, the heroes disrupt a waterspout by firing a gun up into it. Here, you know you like to break up a vortex. And in one of the last Xenozoics, we see an arachnid creature based on a Daddy Longlegs (or Harvestman) that breaks off a leg to get away from danger like its real-life counterpart. I’ve talked to Mark about how he uses his research, and he’s careful to not force it on people. In many of his stories, even in his Superman work of the ’90s, there is an implicit ecological theme; but always well-handled and not used to batter the audience into his position on the subject. Not surprisingly he’s ended up with the writing duties on the current Prince Valiant strip.

All of this makes Schultz well-armed to write overtly when it’s called for, as it is in the recently published book The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA, illustrated by Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon (who despite their claims of non-relation, are brothers and always will be). And if you’re looking into overt delivery systems, Jim Ottaviani’s books from GT Labs are waiting for you, ready to walk you right into the greater world of the sciences. You’d also not want to miss anything Jay Hosler chooses to cartoon.

Comics that impart knowledge are indicative of the creative process pulling in the greater world and converting it into fiction, and I have a lot of time for that particular energy transfer. Conversely, I have no time for stories that don’t. Lots of stories use only facts typical of their genre, they smack of action movies that can only reference things done in other action movies and at best scale up the stunt. This reeks of a closed system where writers seem to only have the world of comic books as a primary source, the snake eating its tail. Whoop — I digressed into Hate during Love month, sorry.

I’ll bet valentine candy that you also have a fair amount of knowledge you were first exposed to by a comic book. What was it?

Today’s guest contributor is blogger and critic Tucker Stone, who writes a weekly column for Comixology called “This Ship Is Totally Sinking” and blogs at The Factual Opinion.

by Tucker Stone

Hmmph. I used to think the easiest answer to a question like this—a question that demands a sort of explanation of how far you want to go with your definition of the word love—is just to throw out a pat “I love comics” one and leave it at that. I used to think that, and “used to” can both mean that A) I don’t think that anymore or B) I’ll think it again later. So yeah, what do I love about comics?

I used to take these religion classes in college with this woman who had gotten herself a good bit of the Worldwide Acclaim through being listed as one of the world’s most effective English-speaking preachers. She was, if I remember correctly, the only one on the list who wasn’t a dude, and one of the few Americans. I didn’t take her classes because of that—that’s not the sort of list that would have crossed my Doom Patrol covered desk when I was trying to find a college that would take me away from frying chicken. But I ended up taking her classes, and it was one of the more challenging experiences of my life, that is if you gauge “challenging” by “things that mostly involve thinking and talking” instead of, you know, something that involves heavy lifting or lightning reflexes. Her classes filled up fast—religion majors got first crack, then the regular student body and any empty seats were taken by non-students, most of whom were her former parishioners who showed up since she’d discontinued her regular preaching upon entering the education field. (In other words, they missed her enough to pay to be around her.) I’m sitting there in class one day, and this really nice old lady piped up in the middle of a discussion on the Book of Job, which is what the entire semester focused on, and said that no, she’d never—not once—had a moment in her life where her faith had been tested. Never had a moment of doubt. Never a moment of question. Not one. She was really firm about it, in that nice old lady voice of hers.

And yeah, because…because whatever, because I was obsessively reading stuff by people like Thomas Merton at the time…I kind of hoped she wouldn’t ever come back to class. She didn’t, after about a week. She couldn’t do the work, or she didn’t want to do the work, or she just was happier not doing the sort of stuff that one had to do in a class where you’re reading theological arguments for days on end and trying to come up with your own. People like that—and yes, this is cold stuff—don’t interest me. That is, of course, fine and dandy. People who don’t have any interest in cursing and Tarkovsky don’t have any interest in me either, and they’re better off. I’m a pain. The world’s a better place when we don’t all think the same, and it is everybody’s right to look at something and say “No, I don’t have any more questions to add.” It was her right to say “not interested” just as much as mine is to say “not interested in YOU then, no more cookies!” Free to be you and me, all that. Nobody’s punching each other.

I love the experience of reading comics. I love the joy it’s brought me. But I think what I love even more—actually, let’s not mince words. I’m sure, 100 percent, that what I love more, is discussing these things. I like it when somebody who is smart, who has a spine, and is somewhat funny, doesn’t like my favorite movies. I like it when a friend reads something that I’m infatuated with and says “Yeah. That was terrible.” When that happens, I know that we can have some fun with it, because we’re not going to be a bunch of babies who bring hurt feelings into the discussion, we aren’t going to bring up some ridiculous anecdote about the time that dad didn’t hug us enough or make it to enough pee-wee games like that proves a point, we’re not going to let an argument of whether or not “Riot At Xavier’s” is awesome turn into something that involves one guy saying something about the other guy’s mother. I know that if we start nailing each other on how the other one never actually finished reading Maggots that it isn’t going to turn into some pointless discussion on snobbery and elitism. Nobody is going to cry, even though we might scream.

Let me be clear though: I don’t think it takes courage to do that. I think it takes faith—faith that your love for something can’t be destroyed simply because somebody has demanded you explain your reasons. Faith that what you think, what you care about—that you believe in something enough to jack into real discussion. Not “I’m right, I’m going prove it.” It’s the spine to say that you love this thing, and you’re willing to go to the wall to figure out why. Because I want my love—whether it’s for Kirby or Ware—to be built on a solid foundation. And if you’re not willing to fight for what you care about? If a simple disagreement somehow ruins your ability to enjoy something you did before you started?

Then I’m not so sure you cared about it that much in the first place.

Loving art shouldn’t be a passive, easy job. It shouldn’t be a game of “I need to disconnect from my crappy life choices that have resulted in a job/life/relationship I don’t care for.” No. Art isn’t my escape. It’s the blood in my fucking body. It’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to matter.

The thing that breaks my heart about comics isn’t that Diamond is going to screw over a lot of great artists, or that a bunch of smart people are going to waste their time with a lousy issue of Nightwing. That stuff might irritate me, but no: doesn’t break my heart. What breaks my heart is that I don’t get to be here in 100 years, when one of the many who are smarter than me will have studied these comics I’m seeing for the first time. They’ll have dealt them into an intellectual discussion—whether that’s in print, academia or even on these blog things that continue to sprout up—and that discussion will have reached the heights that other great art see nowadays. I want to know, hear and experience what decades of intelligent readers have to say about Acme Novelty Library, RASL, Jack Kirby’s 4th World, Calvin & Hobbes, and Brian Chippendale’s Ninja. (I won’t. My fantasy afterlife doesn’t include a library of future comic discussion, just lots of golfing.)

I’ll make do with what I have now—which is when my friends and I get together, and without a computer in the way, we War Room down on what makes comics great. That’s what I love. Talking about comics. Arguing about comics. Thinking about comics. Fighting about comics.

Today’s guest contributor is comics retailer James Sime, owner of Isotope Comics in San Francisco.

by James Sime

Hello, I’m James Sime. I sell comic books for a living.

Daredevil #154

My life-long love affair with funnybooks started way back in the ’70s with a second-hand issue of Daredevil #154 purchased at my friend Joel Patterson’s yard sale for a nickel. I’ll never forget the way Joel’s eyes sparkled or his sly car-dealer smile as he put it in my hand and said, “You know you want it!” And I will always remember sitting there on a park swing hunched over reading it for the first of thousands of times. I fell head over heels right then and there for Roger McKenzie’s writing and Gene Colan’s amazing art. That one moment of hucksterism has proven to be one of the most important moments in my life. It was then, sitting on that plastic park swing, that I first knew a strange, new, overwhelming passion I had never felt before. I didn’t understand the feeling at the time, but I do now. Baby… James Sime was in love. And I knew I had to get more comic books.

But more importantly, I knew I had to become better friends with Joel Patterson.

Joel was on to something that was good. Better than good, it was great! He had a whole box of those things with a whole variety of other characters and even stuff from other companies. He had mystery comics and horror comics and superhero comics and war comics and weird comics that I honestly didn’t know what the heck to make of. I had to know more! And Joel knew all sorts of things about this blind superhero, he even knew of more comics drawn by that Gene Colan, he knew who the Purple Man was and why his power wouldn’t work on our hero, and he even knew who the heck that pretty blonde was. It felt that he knew more about these comic things than I ever would. And I wanted to soak up as much of that knowledge as possible. And, it occurred to me fairly quickly, I wanted to find out who else was reading these things too.

I had discovered the fellowship of comics. As much as it might have been The Avengers who were filling boxes in my comics collection, I also found myself collecting fellow comic fans at an ever-rapid pace. I was (and still am) thrilled by this vast, secret world of people who loved comics just like I did, who felt that same burning passion for “stupid comic stuff” like me. I wanted to meet a hundred thousand Joel Pattersons so I could have even more people to talk to about Daredevil and Bullseye, Steve Ditko’s art on Doctor Strange, the Unknown Soldier stopping Nazi super-weapons, or whether the Human Fly actually was a real guy or not.

As a funny-looking guy with goofy clothes, silly hair and that special something that makes it impossible to blend in with the crowd no matter how hard I may try, it wasn’t an easy thing to make new friends. And as anyone who has ever met me will tell you, I really like making new friends. But how could I ever hope to strike up a conversation, what did I have in common with the Jimmy Millers and the Geri Ryders? Damn little. Without a way to meet people, life really would be a King Sized Special of isolation or Giant-Size Annual of alienation. I’ve got the fellowship of comics to thank that it’s not.

Each and every time someone new walks into my shop, I get a special thrill, because I know we are all part of the same family, and it is these common interests that open the door for all of us. This fellowship of comics that could possibly set us down the road to being great new friends. I still want to become better friends with the Joel Pattersons of the world, and that comics have diversified so much over the last ten years that finding a good read for even those people who have never picked up a comic book in their lives means so many exciting new members to the fellowship of comics.

My first brush with comic retailing and connecting to the fellowship was actually as a kid in those early, early years of my comics love affair. My folks didn’t do much to help fund my comics addiction, which was ever-growing, so I had to find other means of getting them. My young self made the same decision my older self would eventually make: to both share my enthusiasm for comics with others and to get a chance to read a whole lot of books my pathetic allowance could never afford me. I went into the funnybook business. Each kid in my neighborhood had picked a favorite superhero and it was understood that that was “their guy.” There was the Spider-Man collector, the Master of Kung Fu collector, the Batman collector, the Conan collector, and many more. I would trade a couple Spideys to Ben for his “junk” comics, sort out the Batmans, the X-Mens, the Teen Titans, the Power Man and Iron Fists, and ride my bike over to Colby’s, Andrew’s, Todd’s and Joel’s houses to trade for more “junk.” But not before I read them! The rest of the flotsam and jetsam was my collection, which was perfectly alright with me! Honestly, back then (and now) I didn’t really care if it was another crummy issue of The Hulk, a surprisingly awesome issue GI Combat, a coveted Daredevil or even the bicycle safety superhero Sprocket Man… if it was comics, I just wanted to read it.

So thanks to the fellowship of comics both then and now for helping me do just that. I am forever in your debt.

Just this last weekend I attended the New York Comic Con. And like the thousands of others there, I caught up with friends old and new, met some great new people, and I stayed on the sofa of one of my best friends in the world that I wouldn’t even have if it wasn’t for comics. So for me it was a truly unforgettable weekend filled with happiness, and lots and lots of comics, and lots and lots of fans. If you haven’t been to a convention, I definitely think you should go sometime. It’s really incredible to see a whole convention center filled with people connecting over comic books and the fellowship of comics in all its glory like that.

Today I’ll probably spend no small amount of time with more Joel Pattersons doing what you’re doing right now, connecting to the fellowship on the internet. To me there are few things more remarkable than being able to make friends with fellow comic nerds from all over the world, so if you’re out and about on the virtual comics circuit, you’ll probably run into me.

And I also have that funnybook business to run, so you know I’ll be the one behind the counter here at the Isotope connecting with hundreds of fellowship folks and hopefully meet some more awesome new ones this week. Over the years experiencing that instant fellowship on a daily basis has been a real dream come true. The sheer number of best friends who have met at my shop, or the romances I’ve seen spark up over those four-color pages, or the bonds that I have seen formed that stretch over years and continents is really staggering. The fellowship of comics is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I’m going to leave you with a quote from a truly wise man, who just so happens to be Brett Warnock of Top Shelf Comics. Brett ends each and every email with a small nugget of truth that I desperately wish I could just steal from him and pretend it was my idea all along. Because more than anything else I think it sums up and distills down the very best aspect of the comics industry and community.

“Your friend through comics.”

- James

The War at Ellsmere

Editor’s Note: With Valentine’s Day coming up on Saturday, we’ve declared this the week of Robot Love and resurrected I ♥ Comics. In one of our favorite features, various comics creators, bloggers, retailers and fans discuss the things they love about the medium.

Today’s special guest contributor is Faith Erin Hicks, creator of two fun graphic novels published by SLG, The War at Ellsmere and Zombies Calling. She also has a webcomic called Ice on her website, whch she just so happened to update yesterday.

by Faith Erin Hicks

I’m fairly new to comics. This was not my choice. As a kid I was deeply in love with comics, and taught myself to read on Asterix and Tintin, both of which were readily available at my local library. When I was really little I had a comic book Bible, where a very white looking Jesus preached the word to some equally white looking followers. I memorized that Bible, and it wasn’t because I found the stories particularly enamouring: I just liked reading comics.

However, other than Tintin, Asterix and white Jesus Bible comics, little else was available to me. I grew up in a tiny suburban town, and the only comic shop was a dank, terrifying place that I was scared to death of. When I was a teenager I would walk by the store entrance five times before summoning the courage to go in (my occasional purchase: X-Men comics). I didn’t have any friends who read comics, so there was no one around to say “try this,” and hand me a copy of Jeff Smith’s Bone. Which was really what I wanted to read, not Joe Mad X-Men.

Eventually I moved out of that town for university, into a city, and found Bone. It was right at the end of the first amazing black and white run that I discovered a tattered copy of Volume 3 (The Eyes of the Storm) at a local bookstore. I bought it and devoured it, thrilling at the world and artwork of Jeff Smith, although I really had no idea what was going on. Let it be known that Volume 3 is a very bad place to start reading Bone. But it didn’t matter. I’d found an amazing comic that seemed to be just what I was looking for, an entry way into the bizarre universe of comics themselves. There WERE things beyond superheroes, and I wanted to know what those things were. I bought the remaining Bone volumes, read them in order, and collapsed in delight that there were such things as this comic in the world.

I moved again after school ended, to the far east of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and found a wonderful comic book store called Strange Adventures. Simply having a great, friendly local comic store to go to regularly opened up even more comic worlds for me, and I swallowed whole the comics of Andi Watson, Jim Rugg and Ted Naifeh.

But I have never been a regular comic reader. I have never followed a series, never anticipated the release of a certain book. Most of the books I bought and read were single stories, or had been published for a few years. Most were chosen as a result of browsing.

That changed last year.

Monster, Vol. 1

I stumbled on Naoki Urasawa’s Monster while making an aggressive attempt to read manga. I wasn’t deliberately avoiding the art form while the bubble grew (then collapsed, and now wobbles around while people speculate), I just hadn’t yet found the one story that would sell me on it, much like Bone showed me that North American comics could be different from what I thought they originally were.

I complained about my lack of manga-experience to an employee at Strange Adventures, saying I didn’t know where to start reading. What would be good for someone like me, who worshipped at the altar of Bone? The difference in storytelling between Japanese and North American/European comics was intimidating. Where should I start reading the backwards comics?

“Try Monster,” the employee said. “It’s my favourite.”

“What’s it about?”

“A doctor who saves the life of a kid, and then the kid grows up to be a serial killer.”

High concept is a wonderful thing. I don’t think I’d ever been so intrigued by a story idea since hearing “live dinosaurs run amuck in a theme park.” Jurassic Park still holds a special place in my (now much older than) 12-year old heart.

Since I didn’t have the money to buy the (then) 14 volumes, I checked them out from the library (libraries are wonderful things if you’re poor). And read them. And then clutched the books dramatically to my bosom and wailed “where have you BEEN all my life??” The books were dark and adult, but not ‘edgy for the sake of edgy.’ The characters were likable and hateable and lovable and the main male lead was smoking hot. And tragic and misguided and haunted and stalked by an Inspector Javert-like figure. And the artwork was amazing! It wasn’t that it was unlike anything I’d ever seen or some kind of new evolution in the world of drawing, but it was so perfectly realized, so intricate and carefully drawn. It flayed alive all those previous puzzlements I’d had about manga artwork (where are the backgrounds? Why are the people drawn that way? I’m confused!).

Fourteen volumes had been released when I started reading Monster, so four more were yet to be published. And over the coming year, I bought each volume as it came out.

With Monster I experienced something I had never before experienced with comics: anticipation. The excitement of counting the days off until the next volume of Monster was out, and then racing down to Strange Adventures to pick up my copy. I was thrilled. I’d always anticipated movies, looked forwards to birthdays and Christmas, been excited for upcoming U2 albums, but anticipation had never before been a part of my comic buying. With the exception of Bone, which I started reading right as it was ending, I’d never before been made to wait for a comic. It felt like I was finally part of some collective comic experience, bouncing into my local comic store to pick up MY order. And then racing home to read the book and bite all my fingernails off due to sheer reader excitement.

I won’t recap the series for you. I think you should read it, rather than have someone online spout their opinions, but I will say this: I’d never before been so caught up in a narrative. I’d never before seen an author juggle so many storylines like a magician spinning plates, draw so many amazing backgrounds, compose so many deeply emotional meetings between flawed but occasionally admirable characters. It was like someone out there in the universe of comics reached forth and created a story specifically for me, which is the greatest experience a reader can ask for.

The final volume of Monster came out in December, and while others had differing opinions on the conclusion of the series, I liked it just fine. It was the first time I think I’ve ever read a comic and at one point started screaming “SHOOT HIM SHOOT HIM SHOOT HIM IN THE HEAD!!!” at static pictures on a page.

The translated volumes of Naoki Urasawa’s next two books, 20th Century Boys and Pluto, come out on Feb. 17. I’ve already ordered them at my local comic store, and am biting my nails off in anticipation for their release. I hope I’ll have some fingernails left by the time I get to read them.

Atomic Robo and the Shadow From Beyond Time #1

Editor’s Note: With Valentine’s Day coming up next Saturday, we’ve declared this the week of Robot Love. And to kick things off, we’ve resurrected one of our favorite features, I ♥ Comics, where we ask comics creators, bloggers, retailers and fans to discuss the things they love about the medium.

Our first guest contributor this week is Scott Wegener, the artist on Atomic Robo, which is written by Brian Clevinger and published by Red 5 Comics. The first issue of the third volume, Atomic Robo and the Shadow From Beyond Time, is in this month’s Previews.

by Scott Wegener

Ask a guy like me why I love comics and the answer is likely to be a verbatim repetition of my answer to the other question people are constantly asking me –”Why do you love oral surgery?” I love comics because they are necessary, because they promote good overall health, and because I really enjoy the way my gums throb after a good issue of All Star What’s-His-Face.

Seriously, it’s much easier for me to come up with an essay about why I hate comics. I don’t know if that’s because there really is a lot wrong with the industry or if it’s just always easier to criticize than it is to praise? I won’t bore you with a list of things that drive me nuts about comics -we’ve already done that on Atomic-Robo.com. It’s enough to say that I expend more time than it’s worth taking a verbal dump on comic book culture.

And yet there came a time just a few short years ago when I took a hard look at my life and decided that I didn’t like where it was going. And when I tried to figure out what it was that I really loved in life, I found the answer on my mental hard drive under >Geek/Adventure/Comic Books. And so I stopped doing what I was doing, and started doing what I’m doing now.

Looking back on it all, I guess I’d always known that I loved comics, but the 1990′s really jaded me. “Oh Christ,” I can here you thinking. “Another jaded Thirty-Something with a ‘boo-hoo 1997 killed comics’ ax to grind.” Well just keep your pants on for about two paragraphs so I can get it off my chest, and then I promise we’ll roll on to the unicorns and rainbows.

One minute I was a high school intern at Marvel Comics and life was good. I was reading fan mail addressed to Peter Parker (seriously), assembling (page by page) “preview” copies of every Marvel title then published to be delivered to the various editors — 90 percent of whom threw them away without reading them — trying desperately to make friends with the old war horses in the Bullpen, and ogling Joe Mad’s first submissions to Marvel and photocopying them on the sly to take home with me.

Then suddenly I was in college and I was in a store holding a copy of Battle Chasers (henceforth known as Boobie Chasers), throwing nervous glances over my shoulder less anyone catch me looking at this thing. And that was the Moment. It wasn’t Joe specifically. I’m sure he’s a really swell egg. He was just drawing what sold: mostly-naked girls, giant breasts, foil hologram covers (with trading cards!), and enough variant covers to choke a cat. I put the comic back on the shelf, left the small pile of books I’d planned on buying sitting on the back issue box where I’d placed them a moment before and I walked out. For about ten years I never looked back.

Then a friend of mine convinced me to do a short story for an anthology he was putting together. His name is Tom Mauer, and as far as I can tell he letters or edits every single book put out by the “Indie Press” — in fact, he was ret-conned and given credit for works dating back to the Golden Age of Comics. A little while later I got a few random emails of praise from The Internet and it was time for another Moment. It wasn’t that complete strangers were telling me that I was awesome, (which was awesome by the way). It was that I’d done something that made people -four beautiful people- happy. A story about a guy, blowing up another guy, with an ironic twist at the end, had brightened the lives of four people enough that they took the time to write me and tell me so.

Atomic Robo

It was Care Bear Stare time – you know what I’m talking about. Well, you youngins who wear my childhood plastered across your carefully pre-worn T-shirted chests won’t understand, but you old bastards will. That’s the part of the show where all the Care Bears (and later their Cousins too) hold hands and shoot a giant beam of flesh-searing Love out of their stomachs and incinerate every living creature within a quarter mile. The black chain-smoker’s tar was stripped away from my heart…for a few minutes anyway. But it was long enough. Long enough to remember my prized collection of TMNT comics, Grendel: War Child and Robotech. I can even tell you that my very first comic book was actually a comic magazine, handed to me by my mother in an effort to keep my amused as we flew to Scotland for the first time. It was 1980, and I was five. The only story from that magazine I can remember was the tale of how Ben Kenobi kicked young Darth Vader’s ass and dumped him into a pool of lava – I loved it. All these warm fuzzy memories came flooding back. They didn’t cancel out the negative aspects. They just sort of mingled with them.

It’s been like that ever since. Comic books are like friends or spouses or significant others. You’re not going to like everything about them, and you might even hate certain things about them. But if the good outweighs the bad, then you do whatever it takes to make them a part of your life. I’m looking at my bookshelf right now, and I never noticed before how happy it makes me to see some of my old favorites like Appleseed, Hellboy and Bone, sitting spine-to-spine with some of my new favorites like Top Ten, Scarlet Traces, Invincible, Tom Strong and Powers.

Because comic books are a sub-genre of the wider pop-culture world, they follow the same pattern. There is a mind-boggling array of content of varying quality and intellectual merit. There are rare individuals whose tastes (or lack there of) are wide enough to embrace most of what is foisted at them. For most of us, though, I think it can be overwhelming. There’s only a limited portion of the pie we find appealing, and finding it in amongst all the other noise (pie noises?) can be hard. But it’s worth it. Because every so often you find the comic that just works for you. It works so right that it inspires you to write a letter, it inspires you to make your own comic or it creates a memory about an airplane ride that sticks with you for 28 years.

And speaking of friends, that’s the other thing. The people who make, sell and read comics. Yes, it’s true, there are creepy comic book people. There are also creepy accountants, creepy firemen and creepy stock brokers. In the short time that I have been making comics, I have met some of the most wonderful people. I’m not just talking about people I enjoy working with. I’m talking about people whose friendship makes me feel complete, I’m talking about the new friends I’ve made and the old ones I’ve reconnected with.

And that’s what I love – that’s what it’s all about. Those comic book gems you find on the shelves, and those comic book gems you find yourself sharing a drink with.