(part 1)
(Part 2)
By the end of my last year of high school I was still very much a comics junkie. Although I have never tried to completely kick the habit, I did spend a lot of time then paring back my pull list and attempted to manage how much I actually acquired on a month-to-month basis. I had a disposable income and boy howdy I used it.
University beaconed and it seemed suddenly the self-conscious, nebbish outsider with big glasses and oversized t-shirts that had entered high school was finding unlikely acceptance in his new environment. All it took was a little refinement in personal grooming and attire to lead to greater self-confidence, and reestablishment (or redefining) of identity.... it all did wonders for my social life and thus self-esteem. Yeah, I was still a geek, but post-secondary, being a geek suddenly wasn't all that bad. My Superman "S"-shield t-shirt was a big hit on campus and I found new social circles to play in that embraced individuality rather than conformity. Nobody ever looked differently upon me for my comic book fanaticism, and a few people even found me more the interesting for it. People who were snobbish in high school now seemed relaxed and cool, just as some less socially adept kids seemed equally relieved to have left an old life behind. People in upper years of university didn't look down on the new kids, not the same way a grade 12 grad would look at a grade 9 freshman (if at all). It was like an even playing field, and you could connect with anyone, and everyone seemed to be walking with their minds open, receptive to what's different and new. A comic book habit was not uncommon.
My tastes had redeveloped between my closing year of high school and the opening year of University, and I was no longer looking at comics and movies and music as strictly entertainment but also as art. The conceptual side of things began to play as much a part in my enjoyment of entertainment as the execution, and I learned to see past merely my gut reaction and analyze what I had taken in a little more. Movies, while being for the masses, have always catered strongly to an adult audience, but even though I had always trumpeted the maturity level comics could achieve I rarely looked past the development of the superhero genre, and often hit a wall trying transcending them. But, within my new environment I was encouraged to explore things beyond what I knew, to look outside the box in terms of how I thought, and I extended this to my comics interest.
Vertigo was the most readily available source, and I became a fast proponent of the imprint, the bulk of the stories weaved around some element of fantasy or another, but frequently literary in bent or cerebral in storytelling. Neil Gaiman, Steve Seagle, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison and more became the new face of comics, the people daring to do something different and succeeding at it. Series like Sandman Mystery Theatre, Preacher, and the Invisibles weren't the first things I would read when I picked up my weekly stash of books, and often were left lying aside for weeks or months -- my affinity for superheroes still reigned supreme -- but it was those Vertigo books that messed my shit up, that really got me excited about what the medium could do and how stories could be told. That DC and Marvel both embraced these writers on their mainstream superheroes tells me that their editorial wanted the same thing out of their superhero books, to recapture the sense of excitement Superman or the Fantastic Four gave them when they were kids, reviving them with a new sense of adult-centric thrills. Either that or they were desperate for someone to pull them out of the atrocious rut they found themselves in after the comics bust of the mid-90's.
Thanks to Vertigo, I became more adventurous in the titles I was selecting, venturing outside the mainstream, looking at Slave Labor, Oni Press, Caliber and a host of other publishers who came (most who also, shortly thereafter, went) to try something new. What I learned was superheroes are predictable, and dependable... even with bad superhero books you know what you're going to get. But with indie and smaller press books, it's a real crapshoot, and there's little or no sense of familiarity with most of them. Sometimes the artistic style is underdeveloped, over-simplistic, or downright horrible, other times the writing isn't nearly as insightful as the ideas, or the ideas aren't befitting the writing. I picked up quite a few anthologies in the later 1990's as a means of trying creators out, as I discovered that I could more rely upon a writer or an artist to deliver than I could a series, or character, or company.
(Part 2)
By the end of my last year of high school I was still very much a comics junkie. Although I have never tried to completely kick the habit, I did spend a lot of time then paring back my pull list and attempted to manage how much I actually acquired on a month-to-month basis. I had a disposable income and boy howdy I used it.
University beaconed and it seemed suddenly the self-conscious, nebbish outsider with big glasses and oversized t-shirts that had entered high school was finding unlikely acceptance in his new environment. All it took was a little refinement in personal grooming and attire to lead to greater self-confidence, and reestablishment (or redefining) of identity.... it all did wonders for my social life and thus self-esteem. Yeah, I was still a geek, but post-secondary, being a geek suddenly wasn't all that bad. My Superman "S"-shield t-shirt was a big hit on campus and I found new social circles to play in that embraced individuality rather than conformity. Nobody ever looked differently upon me for my comic book fanaticism, and a few people even found me more the interesting for it. People who were snobbish in high school now seemed relaxed and cool, just as some less socially adept kids seemed equally relieved to have left an old life behind. People in upper years of university didn't look down on the new kids, not the same way a grade 12 grad would look at a grade 9 freshman (if at all). It was like an even playing field, and you could connect with anyone, and everyone seemed to be walking with their minds open, receptive to what's different and new. A comic book habit was not uncommon.
My tastes had redeveloped between my closing year of high school and the opening year of University, and I was no longer looking at comics and movies and music as strictly entertainment but also as art. The conceptual side of things began to play as much a part in my enjoyment of entertainment as the execution, and I learned to see past merely my gut reaction and analyze what I had taken in a little more. Movies, while being for the masses, have always catered strongly to an adult audience, but even though I had always trumpeted the maturity level comics could achieve I rarely looked past the development of the superhero genre, and often hit a wall trying transcending them. But, within my new environment I was encouraged to explore things beyond what I knew, to look outside the box in terms of how I thought, and I extended this to my comics interest.
Vertigo was the most readily available source, and I became a fast proponent of the imprint, the bulk of the stories weaved around some element of fantasy or another, but frequently literary in bent or cerebral in storytelling. Neil Gaiman, Steve Seagle, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison and more became the new face of comics, the people daring to do something different and succeeding at it. Series like Sandman Mystery Theatre, Preacher, and the Invisibles weren't the first things I would read when I picked up my weekly stash of books, and often were left lying aside for weeks or months -- my affinity for superheroes still reigned supreme -- but it was those Vertigo books that messed my shit up, that really got me excited about what the medium could do and how stories could be told. That DC and Marvel both embraced these writers on their mainstream superheroes tells me that their editorial wanted the same thing out of their superhero books, to recapture the sense of excitement Superman or the Fantastic Four gave them when they were kids, reviving them with a new sense of adult-centric thrills. Either that or they were desperate for someone to pull them out of the atrocious rut they found themselves in after the comics bust of the mid-90's.
Thanks to Vertigo, I became more adventurous in the titles I was selecting, venturing outside the mainstream, looking at Slave Labor, Oni Press, Caliber and a host of other publishers who came (most who also, shortly thereafter, went) to try something new. What I learned was superheroes are predictable, and dependable... even with bad superhero books you know what you're going to get. But with indie and smaller press books, it's a real crapshoot, and there's little or no sense of familiarity with most of them. Sometimes the artistic style is underdeveloped, over-simplistic, or downright horrible, other times the writing isn't nearly as insightful as the ideas, or the ideas aren't befitting the writing. I picked up quite a few anthologies in the later 1990's as a means of trying creators out, as I discovered that I could more rely upon a writer or an artist to deliver than I could a series, or character, or company.
I can be pretty hard on the comic scene of the 1990s, and also myself as a comics collector/sucker back then. Even when I went "indie" I still wound up blindly buying some titles, and delicately handling my books, bagging and boarding everything and keeping an eye on how issue X of series Y was performing on the resale market. I never did think to sell anything though. But for all my newfound loved of Jhonen Vasquez and Evan Dorkin and Kyle Baker and the Vertigo stable, I couldn't leave behind the DC Universe, and I followed closely the happenings in that particular superhero stable via Previews every month, adding to the pull list the odd issue of one series or another which crossed over with something I was reading or guest-starred a character I liked or seemed to have an important happening (this was still a time before every issue of a comic had something important happening, like today's environment).
If asked why I couldn't shake the DCU (afterall, I gave up on Marvel altogether for about four solid years) I guess it would come down to investment... I had spent many years learning about and caring for the characters within (my well-worn issues of the 1985 run of Who's Who can testify to this), and when a book like Starman or JSA tugged so heavily at those nostalgia strings, and managed to wondrously capitalize on what it is that makes a comic book superhero universe so great, I couldn't help but still be enthralled. Not only was my affection for superheroes sustained, despite the plethora of awfulness that abounded then (en masse from one source called "Image"), but my interest in superhero history only grew.
All those books about comics that I had received as presents over the years (and any comic book geek will be familiar with the well-intentioned gift giving of uninformed family or friends) I finally read, and my growing disposable income (as well as the burgeoning collections/trade paperback market) had me acquiring not just comics, but knowledge and a sense of history. I filled my brain with a vast array of comic book knowledge (as opposed to just comic books) during the late 1990's, something I would do again in the new millennium. Had I been going to school taking some degree in comics literature or history, I might have actually done well, as opposed to being a merely mediocre student. But comic book fanaticism and comprehension really doesn't come in useful in everyday life or the real world, probably much like a Medieval History degree or a masters in Romantic Literature, and I would soon find that my own business degree was about as useful.
At the ripe age of 23, I left Thunder Bay, my family, my friends, my comic book store, and headed south, destination somewhat unknown, following the lead of my then-girlfriend. It seemed like the mature thing to do, now a university graduate, and confused about my place in the world. We wound up in Barrie, Ontario, where I found employ at a brand-new Wal-Mart as a department manager. For a whole year I put myself through the wringer, working a job I didn't like all that much, living (later engaged) with someone whom I wasn't in love with, and deprived of longstanding friendships, not to mention my longtime comics companion. During that year I had left my subscription at Hill City Comics open and would every couple of months have my pull list sent down to me, these packages one of few highlights from the time. Eventually I saw the hole that I dug under my feet for what it was, and managed to start climbing out... but from a comics perspective, that was the first of the lean years. And the first in a long time that I went without regular trips to a comics shop.
Although I would manage my comics account from afar (as there actually was no comics shop in Barrie at that time) I felt distanced from the active pursuit of being a comics fan. I guess without others around me that shared my interest or any sort of central place for me to stay in the thick of it all, I just couldn't keep up, nor did I really try (the internet wasn't yet with Comic Book Resources or Newsarama to help people like me along). With my Hill City packages I basically read the books I had already been buying before I departed Thunder Bay. I rarely added anything new, and more likely things would drop off my pull list as titles were cancelled or mini-series' ended.
Hill City would send a Previews down with every shipment, but more often than not they were out of date by the time I actually called for and received my order and thus I couldn't add anything outside the mainstream to my orders. I wasn't all too disappointed, though. My mild depression about my life perhaps affecting my enjoyment. Definitely my sense of urgency on reading comics had waned.
I left Barrie in the summer of 2000, returning home to Thunder Bay, a renewed man, single and happy, having all my friends back and a renewed interest in old hobbies. I was surrounded by my comics collection again, which to me seemed massive, if not nearly as impressively diverse as I had previously recalled. I spent some time getting reacquainted with everyone and everything in my old home, a dark year had passed giving way to a light and bright summer.
I got a transfer up to the Thunder Bay Wal-Mart, which was more about keeping me in a job than any sort of loyalty to the company. I mean, I needed money, having put myself in a few thousand dollars of debt in Barrie, and back in Thunder Bay I dove head first into debt spending, buying new DVDs every week on Tuesday and new comics every week on Thursday, and hanging out with friends old and new nearly every night of the week. For another full year I was exceptionally happy with life, frivolously spending money and denying myself very little. Comics were but one a part of that (the arrival of DC Direct action figures another horrible strain on my pocket book). It was excessive and I knew it, and I tried to control myself, only I couldn't, and before I knew it I was ten thousand dollars in debt and only making twenty-six thousand a year (if that). But that was hardly at the forefront of my mind. I tended to ignore it and kept on spending.
I became a fixture at Hill City once again, which made me happy to no end. My former home away from home was as cozy as it every was, some faces I was used to seeing had gone, but most of them were still right there. Geeky conversations abounded and I thrust myself amidst them, soaking it in like I'd just fallen off the wagon after a long drought. I had contemplated starting up reviewing again, and Rob, wanting to bolster the shop's web page, asked if I'd like to do reviews for the store. And I did.
For two months I went into Hill City every Thursday after work and sat down to a handful of comics from the shelf. I'd quickly read through them and then turn to one of the in-store computers and write my (poorly formed) thoughts down, committing them to HTML and plopping them on the website, unedited for the world to ignore. I enjoyed the hell out of that and even though I still review comics today, that was the best environment I had to do it in.
I wound up departing Thunder Bay, once again, in July of 2001, this time on my own terms. I knew I wouldn't be settling in anywhere quick, so I asked Rob to once again hold onto my books every week and I'd have him send me a package every so often. This time, I did the smart thing and pared it right back to "the essentials". The trade paperback market was growing to such an extent that most of what I wanted to read would be in trade anyway (and I really was preferring the format to monthly floppies). I packed up my car with a couple bags of clothes, a few books (and comics), a pile of CDs, a folder full of resumes and some action figures for company. I had no plan, just thoughts on seeing where life would take me.
in part four: Toronto, the Snail and the prettiest comic geek ever.