|
but it’s hard for me to determine exactly WHY.
when was late 1993/94 when i came back to America. my comic reading experience in Nigeria had been very different: for one thing, we didn’t have comic book stores then. so you just went to a supermarket or bookstore or wherever and picked up whatever comics you could… you were never sure they were gonna have the next issue the following month, so you tried your best to find people who had the issues you didn’t have, and trade with them (or in my case, buy them off them since i didn’t like to part with any of my comics)
this gave comics fandom a certain energy… you were constantly trying to keep up, so you were always communing with other fans, filling each other in on plotlines and trying to find yet more fans to commune with. i think i became addicted to this paradigm; it became part of my concept of reading comics
when i came to the States and went to comic stores for the first time, it was just sensory overload. for the first time, every comic i wanted was at my fingertips: not just the next issue, but all the past issues going back 20, 30 years too. and i quickly realized that i could not afford to buy them all… hell, i didn’t even have the time to READ them all.
but as it turned out, i didn’t even WANT to read them all. it was like i arrived in America at the exact moment that the comics industry started losing their minds. this was the dawn of the Image era, and there were hundreds of new titles from companies i had never even heard of, and they were all dark, ultra-violent with Rob Liefeld-influenced artwork.
i HATED Image with a passion and refused to touch any of their books. the Image influence had started rubbing off on Marvel too, so i decided to stop reading Marvels.
meanwhile, DC was acting funny-style… The Death of Superman seemed cynical and exploitative to me and they were royally fucking up my favorite comic book character with this Knightfall business.
another thing that discouraged me from mainstream comics and the comics scene was actually meeting comics FANS. back in Nigeria, comic reading was not really considered a cool thing to do if you were older than, say, 14 but it didn’t necessarily stop you from getting pussy. most of our comics fans were nowhere near the arrested development cases i was meeting in comic stores here, and i knew i didn’t want to be included in any scene they were a part of
so i stuck with Vertigo, buying just about anything that was written by a Brit, had surreal artwork and a photo-collage cover. plus, Vertigos were easier to follow because they were a lot more arc-driven than other comics of the day.
i was still interested in breaking into comics and i had run into writer Tom Sniegowski at a comic store, and he told me to try submitting to smaller presses like Caliber. i picked up a few Caliber books but found them somewhat amateurish
i joined the military, went to basic training, came back to no job… i was so broke i could barely make rent or eat decent meals, so comics were out of the question. i could still scrape together enough to keep up with Hellblazer (until Garth Ennis’s run ended) and Love & Rockets (since it came out so seldomly). i had stopped following Sandman halfway through the penultimate arc “The Kindly Ones” since that was one of the first books to be collected on a regular basis, so i decided i would just cop the trades when i was flush
anyway, i never left comics completely… through the 90s i continued to read Preacher and just about everything Alan Moore wrote, and some other Vertigo titles like 100 Bullets… but i never went anywhere NEAR the superhero section.
hell, there were times i’d see comic book posts here on OKP and try to join in based on my past knowledge, and i realized that i was hopelessly out of touch. i didn’t even know the majority of creators working in the industry at present, let alone what was going on in the stories
that changed earlier this year. two things happened:
1. i went to the comic store and realized i had nothing to read. Preacher was long gone… Alan Moore was walking away from his ABC titles. i didn’t feel like reading Ennis’s Punisher anymore… but i didn’t feel like leaving empty-handed. so i went to the “Mature” shelf and tried to find some Vertigo stuff i hadn’t read. couldn’t find anything…
what i DID find was the TPB of Powers: “Who Killed Retro Girl?” i had seen it around for a while and was intrigued by the cartoony art and dramatic layouts, but i always thought the trade was too expensive to experiment with. i was also leery about the fact that it was an Image book.
but i was interested in this Bendis dude… i remembered his name from the cheap-ass Caliber comics i bought in the early 90s and was intrigued that he had finally made the big time. so whatever… i picked it up. and then i picked up the next Powers trade. and the next. and the next…
because Bendis writes so many titles, my interest in him plunged me back into the comics world… i found that he was writing Daredevil (i had actually bought the first two issues of his run way back when – but only for the art. and i never read them) so i started reading that. i noticed cats were talking about him in PTP. him and some dude named JMS. also another guy named Geoff Johns who appeared to be DC’s equivalent of Bendis, writing every single title in the line.
long story short, i was back in again.
oh yeah… i said two things happened. the other thing happened roughly at the same time… i was too early to catch a flight this past February, so i walked around downtown Boston a bit… there’s this store here called Newbury Comics. it’s actually more of a record store and hip boutique than a comic store at this point, but they still have a lot of good stuff. they have these shelves full of marked-down trades and GNs, so i started browsing and i ended up picking up $40 worth of stuff. then they started putting out quarter bins and i did a lot of catching up there.
and of course, like everybody else, i can’t overstate the importance of Wikipedia
i always say that the funny thing is: Image comics chased me away 10 years ago... and it was Image that kinda led to me coming back. and these days, when i walk into the store not knowing what i'm gonna buy that day, it's usually the Image shelf i go to first!
EDIT: sheeeit... this post is long as fuck! i didn't realize how much i was rambling. just feeling nostalgic, i guess! lol _____________________
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2010/287/6/c/the_wire_lineup__huge_download_by_dennisculver-d30s7vl.jpg
The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali
|
Printer-friendly copy 
Email this topic to a friend
Pass The Popcorn 
#/media/File:Firefly.png)
