Paragraph Movie Reviews: Anvil! The Story of Anvil

If you don't have plans to see this movie, you can check the spoilers here and then come back.

I've heard this documentary following the neverending quest of an aging Canadian metal band to recapture the 15 minutes of fame they had 20 years ago described as both "a real-life 'This Is Spinal Tap'" and "a metal version of 'The Wrestler'" and it definitely fits both bills. It's got the absurd aspects of "Tap" to the point where you're questioning early on if this is really legit or staged, but then somewhere midway the heart of "Wrestler" kicks in and you begin feeling a great deal of sympathy for the would-be rock stars instead of bemusement towards their antics. I'm a fan of both aforementioned films, and while the mash-up can play a bit awkward, I found this piece to be enjoyable and heart-wrenching, if not altogether mind-blowing. Certainly it's a story that was worth telling, and Anvil fan-turned-director Sacha Gervasi excels at choosing the right sound, shots and effects to play with your emotions and really get you behind our heroes. If there's a major failing of the movie, I'd say it's that there's potential for a documentary probably twice as long here that I'd gladly watch, but instead Gervasi zips through to the bits he maybe assumes the average viewer would want to see and glosses over a lot of background. You've got the requisite tour footage, fights between bandmates and confessionals from the guys in the group, but the interviews with their families for one thing show a lot of promise but never get the screentime they deserve. Lips, the uber-optimist/rambling genius lead singer is an incredible character, with his goofy smile and childlike enthusiasm, but I'd like to get a little more background on the older sister who lent him $12,000 to fly to England and record a metal album at age 51. Similarly, brooding drummer Robb Reiner showing us his studio stronghold makes for probing stuff, but I'm far more fascinated by his father who survived the Holocaust and then encouraged his boy's interest in music. It's almost as if Gervasi wants to delve into these guys' lives as much as is necessary to make them accesible, but then stop short so they can still be characters as well. Still, I'd say there's more good in Anvil! than bad and at the end of 80 minutes I was still standing up cheering when they took their final curtain call, so clearly Gervasi did a lot right. The commentaries from guys like Slash, Lars from Metallica and Lemmy from Motorhead on what a huge deal Anvil should have been were also really neat and I wish they'd continued throughout rather than being relegated to the bumpers. If Gervasi failed in any respect, it's that he made half of a movie so good that I'm really bummed I feel like I didn't get to see the rest.

Our Comics Decade: 2002

Rickey
If a magic fire demon swept through my apartment and destroyed everything I owned but only one item survived the shitty enchanted luck I just had, I'd want it to be my copy of Jeffrey Brown's Clumsy.

(Or my girlfriend or my cat.)

Strolling through the indie section of a comic shop near the University of Texas campus in 2002, Clumsy's plain tan cover with slender text caught my eye, and that sleek-ass price tag of 10 bucks meant my broke college student ass could afford to give it a try. In order to buy comics (and beer) in 2002, I gave plasma twice a week and still have the track marks for that high volume of generosity I gushed. Meanwhile, there's never really been a time in my life where I gave up reading comics or felt like I outgrew them or traded them for girls or anything like that - I bought them pretty consistently since I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade. But starting in 2002, I was getting pretty bored with the high-adventure, fantastical elements of superhero comics. So, armed with $20-$40 bucks each Wednesday, I was ready to try new shit at the comic shop and slice-of-life books were the freedom my Thelma and Louise comic passion was looking to drive off a cliff for.

Clumsy is BASICALLY an auto-biographical story about a long-distance relationship and the semi-neurotic dude (Jeffrey Brown) who deals with it all. But you've got to understand, I never read anything like this before! By the second page, Jeffrey's naked and making out with his girlfriend! But not all smooth-looking like Cyclops in a pair of trunks by the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters poolside as drawn by Jim Lee. No, no, Jeffrey draws himself slightly chubby, covered in hair and, most often, in a bedroom or living room cluttered with shit. It was like reading a diary! I know now that the auto-bio landscape has hundreds of similar practitioners and that ground-breakers like Robert Crumb helped pave the way for artistic self-expression in comics by exposing their subconscious by allowing all the grit in their lives to show up in their work and all, but Jeffrey Brown's everyman was more like me and has remained more like me than any other auto-bio protagonist I've found since. I'm a confused dude. I had a girlfriend living in another town. I like sex. I'm a goofball and introspective and worried and joyous. Fuck Darkhawk (not really), I had a new buddy.

That's all not to mention the simplicity of Jeffrey's art. Stark straight lines and ZERO shading mean the story is RIGHT THERE on the page, but that means the emotion has to spurt out from the most surprising places - silent panels, claustrophobic close-ups, natural pacing and more. Seeing Jeffrey employ all this to such effect with such SIMPLE-looking techniques made me A) think I could this myself (I CAN'T) and B) notice how LITTLE those kinds of techniques were being used in the mainstream comics I'd been reading.

Maybe it's nostalgia for Jeffrey and maybe it's a straight-up addiction to his comics, but he's probably the only creator whose work I've bought ALL OF since I first discovered him. Whether it's a book about hilarious robots, a book of one-page gags, a book about cats getting out of bags, a book about a superhero with a big head or a Simpsons homage, I grab anything new by him that I can get my hands on because that honesty and deceiving simplicity I found in Clumsy is still in everything that talented bastard does. COMICS ARE RAD!

Kiel
Over the summer of 2002, I was an editorial intern at DC Comics. The story of how I got the job is far too long and complicated to repeat here (especially considering how boring it would be for y'all to read), but suffice to say, once I landed the gig I was pretty fucking pumped up about it. In terms of ever having any brand of fanboy loyalty, I'd always been more of a "DC kid" dating back to my earliest interactions with comics from around age 6 or 7, and seeing the internship effectively saved me from another summer spent painting houses for extra money, I was already heaping a heavy amount of praise and expectations on the gig before even flying to New York for ten weeks of imposing on my aunt and uncle on Long Island and doing a three-day-a-week commute to 1700 Broadway.

Before I left, I remember my mother (who despite being outwardly supportive always viewed this whole comics thing as a potentially ruinous career path) trying to help keep my sites realistic. "You know, Kiel," she said. "You might go to New York for the summer and realize that this whole comic book thing isn't really cut out for you."

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah. Not so much.

In a lot of ways, my internship was every bit as run-of-the-mill and tedious-sounding as these things are generally viewed – a lot of photocopying. A lot of filing. A lot of labeling envelopes. One editor who shall remain nameless was always asking me to clean his desk when he was out at lunch. But when you're photocopying original Wally Wood JSA stories for reference or sending out black and whites of new books to their creative teams, that kind of work comes off as way more fun than it should be. And beyond that stuff, there were a slew of honest to God fanboy freakout moments for me. From meeting all sorts of creators passing through (Klaus Janson is the fucking BOSS!) to pulling in Billy "The Rocketeer" Campbell off the street for an impromptu tour.

Most of all though, an internship at a comic company means learning a lot about "how the sausage is made" for superhero books. At any given time, there are a million people on the internet shitting on editors at the Big Two for committing some kind of invisible crime against good taste or the one true Green Lantern or some horse shit, but what I took away more than anything else was how the best editors have a very strong but generally unobtrusive hand in the books they put together. Reorganizing the Bat Office reference bible while Matt Idelson and Nachie Castro tracked down artists who could compliment the tone Darwyn Cooke set for Ed Brubaker's Catwoman run and sitting in Steve Wacker's office ballooning issues of Justice League Adventures while he gabbed on the phone with talent trying to find the best ways to up the fun factor of the books he worked on – these are the kinds of things I remember the most about that summer. The little things where comics veered off that supposed assembly line format of "Writer/Penciler/Inker/Colorist/Letterer" and into really unique and original story collaborations.

And probably the book where I got to interact the most with that often unseen process was Green Arrow: Secret Files & Origins #1. See, my direct internship supervisor was Ivan Cohen. Ivan probably isn't as well known to most comic fans as some of the other editors in the biz (he's since moved on to working in DC's Hollywood unit), but at the time he was the right hand man for then Executive Editor Mike Carlin. Ivan is without a doubt one of the smartest, savviest and hardest working guys in comics (and I'm not just saying that because I essentially owe my entire professional career to him).

Beyond helping oversee a lot of little tasks in terms of the running of all of DC's line, Ivan put together DC's then regular series of Secret Files one-shots along with whatever editor oversaw the particular hero in the spotlight that month. While I'm sure a lot of people see these books as fan service throwaways, a lot of those books had some stellar stories in them. The JLA and JSA editions both come to mind, as does the Catwoman edition with a two-pager Brubaker wrote to "explain" the appearance of Holly in the series where Eric Shanower did the best fucking Jaime Hernandez homage that's ever been committed to a page.

Now, for the Green Arrow comic, editorial was going in with absolutely no involvement from the ongoing series regular writer, Kevin Smith, as he was busy making a movie or something at the time. So the task fell to Ivan and Bob Schreck to make the book feel substantial and worthwhile for readers without the marquee writer who re-launched the series into prominence. It wasn't the easiest thing to do, but over the course of the ten weeks, I got to see the process of building a cool comic from nothing, soup to nuts.

The piece of the issue I personally had the biggest impact on (which is to say, barely any impact at all) was the creation of a diagnostic of Ollie's famed trick arrows. Ivan had me go through a bunch of older GA comics from some Jack Kirby stuff that had been recently reprinted to that killer Grant Morrison two-part with Connor Hawke in the Watchtower from JLA. I'll pat myself on the back a little for suggesting that we include the bleach bottle arrow from the beginning of Smith, Phil Hester and Ande Park's run. The final spread is posted at the bottom of this entry. The issue still holds a privileged place in my collection because of this silly little thing.

More interestingly, I got to see the real impact an artist can have on a superhero comic thanks to the work Ivan did with Rick Burchett on the final story in the issue. The story written by Scott McCullar dealt with the death of Ollie Queen's parents as he related their demise to his extended superhero family before offering them a hearty bowl of chili. In general, it was a decent little story by the standards of 8-page backup features, but Burchett tackled the script like a pro, pulling a lot more dramatic tension and characterization than you'd expect through his own well-honed storytelling instincts. Most of this stuff would probably be imperceptible to readers who hadn't read the whole script, but seeing how well Ivan and Rick meshed the ideas together to elevate the story into something worth the $3.99 price tag taught me a lot more about how comics are really made than the hundreds of cornball articles I'd read over the years in the fan press.

[SIDE NOTE: If you ever see a copy of Wonder Woman #200 as edited by Ivan and written by Greg Rucka on sale somewhere, pick that book up! Burchett does a killer HG Peter in a really smart little story that's not reprinted in trade!]

After that summer and that issue, I was able to go back to the rest of my college career dedicated to getting back to comics after I graduated (sorry, mom). And although I'm still pretty disappointed in myself that I never made it to working in the industry in an editorial capacity, I'm still grateful for the brief chance I had to contribute a little bit back to the medium that'd been omnipresent in my life for so long.

Ben
During the fall of 2002, I took advantage of Connecticut College’s study abroad program and hopped the pond over to Norwich, England, where I spent four months living and studying at the University of East Anglia.

All in all, the experience was one I got some value out of, but also not everything I had hoped for. From an educational standpoint, I was still pretty focused on journalism as my field of endeavor at that point, and anybody who has been exposed to European newspapers or magazines know that their standards and practices when it comes to reporting the news is nothing like those employed in the U.S., so I didn’t learn much that would be applicable to my professional life unless I chose to relocate to the United Kingdom.

On the other hand, culturally I got a lot out of the trip. Just living amongst people from another part of the world is really eye-opening, and only a year out from 9/11, being an American dropped in the midst of a nation who didn’t particularly care for people of my nationality was a bit awkward, but more often than not led to some pretty intense and valuable discourse for me (and to hammer home they "I'm American" point and tempt vandals, I posted the cover at the end of this paragraph on the door to my room). I also got to travel to places like Scotland, Spain, Amsterdam and Italy fairly cheaply, an opportunity that obviously is not readily available when you’re not living within a couple hours of those places; saw some great sights and also made some great memories that I can barely remember (this is well before I stopped drinking).

However, the major shadow cast on the semester as a whole (besides the pretty much round-the-clock grey skies and lack of sunlight that came pretty close to driving me batshit crazy) was that my girlfriend of three years and I, who were pretty much on the outs from the beginning of the year but were clinging to our relationship for whatever reason people do such things, decided that attending the same school abroad and living together would be the perfect remedy to our woes—big mistake. We spent the first two months at each other’s throats, broke up, and then I wandered around in a fugue state between depression and confusion for the rest of the time. We had made a lot of the same friends during our time in England, so all of a sudden they were forced to pick sides, only ratcheting up the awkwardness that much more. I’ll definitely always regret that I spent probably more time trying to patch up my fractured relationship and then mourning its loss than actually exploring the foreign land I was living in, but c’iest la vie.

On the bright side, I somehow made my school’s basketball team; I couldn’t shoot or even dribble, but basically if you were American, they thought you were Michael Jordan. I led the team in steals for the two games I played before quitting to devote more time to “studies” (drinking) because I had no problem walking up to guys on the opposing squad and just grabbing the ball from those pasty, tea-drinking blokes. If nothing else I can always say I played college basketball.

The other big plus I took away from my time at East Anglia was the town of Norwich itself. It was a really gorgeous little oasis located about an hour and a half northeast of London, surrounded by farms and whatnot but with a really cool hub of stores and attractions at its center. My friend Adam and I spent countless nights at the Canary Cue Club, a classic smoke-filled billiards establishment located within the winding halls of a sketchy factory that looked like every stereotypical seedy British club you’ve ever seen in the movies and served some of the greatest cheeseburgers I’ve ever eaten. There was also a legitimate old school castle you could tour and a great open air tent market with all sorts of bizarre knick knacks for sale, including some comics (I picked up both bookends of Eclipso: The Darkness Within there) and a red jumpsuit I ended up converting into a Super Mario costume for Halloween.

There was also a wonderful little comic shop, which gave me no shortage of relief upon my arrival in town after being scared I might miss months of my favorites titles and became the center of a weekly pilgrimage I’d make via bus into Norwich every Thursday (England’s free comic day). The trip was as much to get away from the aforementioned girlfriend and give myself at least a few blissful hours of me-time each week as anything else.

My ritual started with me heading straight to the shop, which wasn’t much different from any you’d find in the U.S. other than a uniquely British excitement the owners and patrons had for the then-upcoming Alan Davis Killraven limited series. I’d generally just snatch whatever new books I wanted for the week, but that place also helped me out a lot with filling the holes in the full run of New Teen Titans into New Titans that I was assembling (for some reason they had had a lot of the post-Zero Hour New Titans issues I couldn’t find in the U.S., so I guess England really appreciated that era).

Occasionally after I’d step outside and transfer the bagged and boarded books I’d accumulated from the store’s plastic bag into my backpack and dispose of the excess (I’ve never been a bags and boards guy, but they didn’t really give you an option there), I’d stop by the novelty store a few doors down where they had some cool toys and games and where I actually also snagged the Avengers: Nights of Wundagore pocket-size book.

My comics purchases squared away, I made a beeline to this hole-in-the-wall Thai place I had discovered one day where the super-nice British owner and his wife actually came to expect me each Thursday evening (I was the only person ever in there at that time) and had my Pad Thai and tea waiting for me so I could settle right in, share a few nice words with them, and then enjoy the books I had just bought over noodles I could not believe an Englishman had cooked.

Maybe the highlight of my weekly Norwich trip though was my last stop at the local public library. Located just above the tent market, this place was a gorgeous and modern architectural marvel of glass and steel that puts to shame any library I have seen before or since. They had an incredible selection of any book or research material you needed, as well as an awesome pizza place on the second floor that overlooked the entire town.

But most importantly, they had a huge comic book graphic novel section off in the far corner that blew my mind.

I had never seen comics in the library before outside of a few books on the craft of making them back in Newton, so this was a revelation for me. And the fact that the section was pretty well separated from the rest of the high traffic areas of the place made it nice and easy for me to settle in, grab a trade or two, and mow through them without ever leaving the building.

The Norwich library had a pretty eclectic selection of trades that I can’t fully recall, though there was of course a lot of manga and foreign stuff that at the time I had no interest in. I do remember there was a lot of DC and virtually no Marvel, which didn’t really bother me as I was heavy into my DC period. I got my hands on the Grant Morrison JLA issues I hadn’t read via their collection and also checked out stuff I never would have otherwise like Superman/Gen13 or Batman: Fortunate Son.

They also had a near full run of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, but I wasn’t ready yet (more on this in a future post).

The primary poison of the Norwich library came down to two primary flavors though: Superman and/or Elseworlds. I most vividly remember reading a lot of late 80’s and 90’s Superman stuff like They Saved Luthor’s Brain and the Revenge Squad stories that, again, I would never have tracked down on my own, so it definitely filled in some major gaps for me. I pretty distinctly recall Son of Superman and how awesome I thought the costume designs were, as well as really enjoying John Byrne’s Superman/Batman: Generations and being super-psyched when the sequel turned up (they would rearrange the trades weekly, rotating stuff in and out, so there was no guarantee if you didn’t get to something one visit it would still be there the next).

When I returned to the States near the end of 2002, I was down one girlfriend but up a lot more knowledge of comics than when I had left (the perfect comic geek’s tradeoff). The combination of more free time/improved comics IQ would lead me to lobby for a comic book section on 411mania.com, the entertainment web site I was writing pro wrestling columns for, and a ways down the road, that would usher me into the comics industry for real.

In defense of the Daredevil movie

One (possibly) balmy evening in February of 2003, my college chum Tim Stevens and I set out to our local Connecticut cinema to take in the Daredevil feature film. Both of us comic nerds of the highest degree, we weren't sure what to expect, as it was still early yet in the New Golden Age of Super Hero Cinema and strikeouts came as frequently as homers.

103 minutes later we exited in giddy amazement, feeling we had witnessed an incredible achievment in moviemaking that would vault the Man Without Fear into mainstream legend and make Ben Affleck billions of dollars.

The very next day, we coaxed several of our friends into seeing Daredevil with us for the second time in two days and we were jonesing for another hit after less than 24 hours and eager to share the wonder with our brethren. Imagine then our disappoinment when after we enjoyed the movie even more the second time we were greeted by our cohorts with at best "Meh" and at worst comments not suitable for print.

For six years now I have been trying to figure out why comic fandom and the world did not embrace Daredevil as Tim and I did. Why was this flick that we loved shunned by the folks who made the X-Men and Spider-Man franchises into multimedia juggernauts?

The easy answer for me at first thought was that I simply was never that into Daredevil as a character pre-movie, so maybe my lack of attachment and veneration made it easy for me to overlook liberties taken or missteps in the comics-to-film translation. However, Tim was (and is) one of the biggest DD fans I know, so that wouldn't fly.

Some have told me Daredevil is guilty of trying to cram too much story into too little time (you've got the origin as well as large portions of pretty much everything Frank Miller did plus bits and pieces from Kevin Smith and others' runs as well). However, I was pretty impressed at the job writer/director Mark Steven Johnson did with that compression. I thought the use of flashback to get the origin and other stuff told then still end up at the big action climaxes without heels having to be dragged was top notch work.

I've also heard complaints about Ben Affleck's performance as Matt Murdock, and this may well be a case of me not having a huge ingrained fondness for the character as I mentioned, but I thought my fellow Bostonian did DD justice. Affleck is a long-noted real deal fan of comics in general and Daredevil in particular, and I thought that enthusiasm showed through in his performance as he seemed both to be having a blast and also very concerned about getting the portrayal right. I enjoyed his balance of brooding and wit as well as the way he made Murdock, very much a blue collar hero, as relatable and down-to-earth as his character in Good Will Hunting.

The rest of the cast ranged from quite impressive to at least passable in my view as well. I maintain that Colin Farrell's Bullseye is one of the great unsung cinematic super villains, as he threw himself into the character's manic quirks with reckless abandon and ended up creating a weird cousin to Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow that I thought fit perfectly into the larger tapestry of the film. Jennifer Garner's Elektra may be the weak link of the bunch and certainly bears little resemblance to the bad ass broad from the comics, but she hardly sank the plot, held up her end of the romance, looked good and had great chemistry with Affleck (which obviously makes sense in retrospect). Michael Clarke Duncan was obviously a departure from the classic Kingpin, but he's pretty scarcely used anyhow and carries himself like a fucking monster (he certainly looks like one), so that was fine with me too. Jon Favreau was scene-stealer as Foggy Nelson, Joe Pantoliano was good cavalry as Ben Urich, and hey, Ellen Pompeo didn't forget her line as Karen Page. Even journeyman actor David Keith pitched in a nice heart-wrencher as poor ol' Jack Murdock.

Perhaps Daredevil was just a bit too over-the-top and didn't take itself seriously enough for some people, and I get that. In the comics, from Frank Miller on the character and his series have been a borderline noir saga of a guy who is constnatly having shit end up terribly for him, from every romance he gets into ending tragically to his career being in constant jeopardy, etc. Folks expecting that probably weren't ready for Matt Murdock and Elektra having a flippy fight on a children's playground in broad daylight or Bullseye killing an oldy lady on an airplane with complimentary peanuts or every time Ben Affleck tried to do a tough guy voice. But y'know what? I loved that the movie didn't get too far into the grim and gritty. At the end of the day, this is still a genre about guys running around in spandex, and I've got no beef with a movie being a little goofy and overwrought as long as it's still entertaining, which I feel Daredevil certainly is.

One thing I really can't understand (and to be fair haven't heard much of) is complaints about the action sequences or fight scenes in Daredevil. From the choreography to the use of effects (at first I thought all the CGI rooftop stuff was better-suited for Spider-Man until I realized it looked awesome) to film geek stuff like the lighting and color (the contrast of Daredevil's red suit against the flames when he sets Josie's bar on fire looks amazing) it all kicks ass in my mind. Every time DD locks figurative and literal horns with Bullseye or briefly at the end with Kingpin, there's a street-level intensity among the graceful ballet of violence you don't typically see much outside of say The Dark Knight. All the performers more than carried their weight when it came to physicality and Johnson pulled it all together nicely.

The minor quibbles from Johnson ripping off The Crow with the flaming DD symbol (I love The Crow too, so I don't care) to Elektra getting beat too easily (Jennifer Garner made a good job at convincing me she had a shot against Bullseye but not that much) I can't really even both to argue against. I more remember the cool ways they found to portray Daredevil's radar sense or the numerous continuity winks Johnson threw in (Stan Lee, Frank Miller and Kevin Smith cameos as well as numerous throwaway character and locale names) or the fact that Matt Murdock actually goes through a real hero's journey over the course of the story in having to learn the difference between vengeance and true justice.

And yeah, those fucking Evanescence songs got in my head too; I didn't mind.

End of the day, Daredevil stands up as a rad movie, super hero or otherwise, in my book, and as I've demonstrated here, I stand by that conviction.

As an ending coda, I will say that both Tim and I screened separately the movie for our then-girlfriends/now-wives and they both loved it. Perhaps Daredevil has more value still as a romantic compatiblity barometer, which just makes it even more awesome.

Bullseye.

Our Comics Decade: 2001

Kiel
College, man.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

I'm pretty sure that there's nothing I could write about my first year of college that would sound meaningful or important. I mean, I'm pretty fucking sure that 99% of Americans couldn't write something meaningful or important about their first year of college. But I'm also sure that anything close to feeling that epic for me came along at a time when I was not what doctors would call sober. At least in all the clichéd hijinx, there were some pretty fun comics around and fun people to read them with.

I lived in this dormitory at Michigan State called Abbot Hall, which – besides being across the street from the 7-Eleven with the most Slurpee sales and variety (8 flavors rotated weekly with a calendar to tell you what was coming) of any location in America – was generally awesome for having rooms set aside for other arts and letters majors. That meant damn near everyone on my floor was studying English or Theater or Art or Drug Use or whatever. Amongst my new peers was a fine art major named Ariel who would aggressively tell me that superhero comics were fucking stupid compared to Battle Angel Alita whenever she had a chance and a good buddy we called Stomp who was known for wearing Morrisey t-shirts and studded collars, running the dorm's drunken Dungeons & Dragons night and getting way into CrossGen.

Coinciding with our matriculation was the opening of a new comics shop in East Lansing – the very well-run 21st Century Comics & Games. For the first time ever, I had a crew bigger than me and my bud Tony heading out on Wednesday and a shop that had deep stock of independent and alternative books and The Comics Journal and even fucking trade paperbacks (a novelty then, for sure). Though with all the new material I was able to explore, one of the books that stands out most to me from that time was a Marvel superhero book: Pete Milligan and Mike Allred's X-Force.

Honestly, the series was a hard sell for me at first, even though I was a big enough Allred fan to schlep a bunch of
Madman issues from Flint to San Diego that summer when my dad took me to Comic-Con (graduation gift!) AND bought even more at the show (Creatures of the Id #1 FTW!) for autographs. Still. Something about the whole "NuMarvel" approach of tearing up lame duck franchises I'd never read by putting entirely new characters in them (see also) felt really hammy and lame. It probably didn't help that this particular case of trying to make Marvel feel "edgy" again was Mike Allred drawing MOTHER FUCKING X-FORCE.

But I tried the whole thing out after hearing about how Allred's art helped make the gruesome "death of half the new team" opening chapter more satire than shock value. The vibrant pop art feel of he and his indispensable colorist/wife Laura certainly defined how the series was breaking from the "gritty splash page" mentality out the gate, but what kept me plugged in was Milligan's character work.

Plenty have written about the media satire and conspiracy threads Milligan weaved throughout the run, but what brought me back each month was the honest and brutal way he portrayed the team's flaws and emotions. With names like U-Go Girl and Phat and plots revolving around publicity campaigns, this X-Force could have easily been a camped up comedy fest, but the characters were always played straight. Vivisector and Phat weren't portrayed as Broadway-loving, fashion-conscious stereotypes. They were two gay men living under the extremely fucked up scrutiny of the public eye. The Anarchist's tough guy attitude saw a chink in its armor in the form of a surprisingly subtle struggle with OCD. Best of all, the awkward, combative and ultimately tragic love between self-aware and put upon leader The Orphan and self-destructive, would-be boss Edie Sawyer provided a rock solid emotional through line for a book that was often about letting superhero tropes wildly spin out of control.


As the series progressed, Milligan did the requist amount of envelope-pushing while Allred traded off with a series of guest artists so unique yet compatible in tone that it seems a shame to call the "fill in guys." X-Force never failed to take chances with the development of its cast, making Edie's eventual death somewhat expected but no less of a total fucking gut punch.

The series eventually relaunched as X-Statix as part of the general course of the story and NuMarvel's "just try some shit" nature, and a lot of those later stories are good too (until things lost steam with the whole Princess Diana incident). Still, for me it'll always be that initial X-Force rush of shattered expectations and surprisingly strong character work that made those comics so worthwhile and fun and memorable during a time when everything was coming on so fast that it's mostly a blur now.

Ben
2001 did not start out particularly well for me.

Since I can remember, I’ve always had a weak stomach and bad nerves. For most of my childhood and young adulthood it wasn’t anything I thought was anything serious or even medical, I just got really sick from eating Chinese food sometimes and paced like a nutcase before my wrestling matches even if I was going out to collect a forfeit—that’s just how it was.

Something happened over my winter break from college during my freshman year that I still don’t fully understand and can’t entirely explain. Some switch flipped in my head and I became terrified of needing to go to the bathroom and somehow being in a situation that wouldn’t allow it. I could not ride in a car for more than five minutes out of fear I’d be “trapped.” I refused to eat for days at a time and ended up losing about 25 pounds. Additionally, I began having episodes lasting as long as half an hour where I’d go into a blind panic, breathing heavily and barely able to communicate, fearful that somehow my life would never be “normal” again.

I ended up missing the start of my second semester as I ran through a battery of unpleasant tests that tried to determine what the heck was wrong with me. I celebrated my 19th birthday with my very first colonoscopy (I’ll never forget the sad look on the nurse who was checking me in’s face when she asked for my date of birth). Nothing revealed anything.

It was at the urging of my primary doctor that I ended up sitting down for a session with a therapist, an idea that both my parents and I were both pretty hesitant about as they both had been raised in a time when such a thing was looked down upona and I personally had negative connotations associated with the practice due to growing up in a rich suburban community where a lot of kids I knew went because their own parents didn’t feel like talking to them.

However, we were at the end of our rope, so we relented.

It was one of the best decisions I ever made, as sitting down and speaking with a third party made me feel safer than I had in over a month. Pretty quickly he diagnosed me with Panic/Anxiety Disorder and began to treat me. Through consultation with the other folks I had seen, he was also able to suss out that I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome and I was given instructions on how to deal with that.

Going to therapy was a life-changer for me, as it taught me how to deal with my problems head-on rather than hide from them. I’ve gone long periods since without being in treatment regularly, but I always find it’s nice once in awhile to take stock of where you’re at by chatting with a trained professional and getting your head on straight. Certainly therapy is not for everybody and not everybody needs it, but it’s done wonders for me, and if anybody reading this has ever thought about it but held back out of biases like the ones I had, I urge you to give it some more thought.

So over-self-sharing aside, what does all this have to do with comics?

I did make it back to school by February, but obviously it was not the easiest transition. For one thing, I didn’t know how the friends I had only made a few months ago would receive me after all this (I’d kept them caught up with the situation), but I needn’t have worried. Still, as I was still adjusting to the pressures and fears better awareness of my IBS and other conditions brought with them, things like having roommates, keeping a decent diet on cafeteria food and especially driving into town or using public transportation without being afraid. And don’t get me started on spending the weekend in the girl’s dorm at Trinity…

One of the things that helped me through this difficult transition period was of course the ability to escape into a world where the eternal battle between good and evil took center stage as opposed to mundane health problems and needing to locate the bathroom nearest to your classes.

Spending more and more time absorbed in comics naturally led to me wanting to expand my tastes; man after all can not live on X-Men alone.

I had grown up mostly a Marvel kid, with the X-Men books in particular being my poison, but I did occasionally wander over to check out the odd DC book, with the Death of Superman being a particular lure for me. However, the DC heroes had just never captured my young attention, as they seemed old (Superman was married, Green Lantern had grey hair) or trying way too hard to be cool (Aquaman had a hook for a hand, Gunfire was…Gunfire). I loved Superboy and to a lesser extent Robin and the Legion of Super-Heroes, but if I lived in the Marvel Universe, the DC Universe was more like my grandparents’ place in Cape Cod where my folks took me for a month every summer.

But as I said, at age 19, I was ready to try new stuff (in comics…pervs), so it was off to the DCU for me. JSA ended up being my gateway drug to a whole new level of the comic habit.

I was surfing Sarge’s for something to sample and the cover to JSA #27 by Rags Morales jumped out at me; I had a vague idea about the Golden Age Green Lantern and Black Adam from stuff like Zero Hour or articles in Wizard, but most of the other characters ere complete mysteries to me—mysteries with really neat costumes who Rags made look absolutely awesome.

Picking up JSA #27 revealed JSA #26, a cover with even more heroes completely foreign to me, with Hawkman, who I’d always thought of as one of the worst characters ever (everybody can fly, they just don’t all have giant cumbersome wings), standing front and center looking bad ass.

Perhaps this DC stuff I had written off years earlier had something to offer.

Because I had some disposable income from working at the school’s snack shop and needed to fill my days with something other than dwelling on my health, I snatched up half a dozen issues of JSA on a whim. By this point it was the fall of my sophomore year and I had my own room, so I was able to dive right into my new treasures without the prying eyes of roomates or unexpected visitors.

It’s definitely a bit ironic that I had shied away from DC as a kid because I thought of them as being “too old,” and yet here I was getting totally absorbed into a book headlined by some of the oldest characters of them all. But just as my teenage years had been all about youthful rebellion, pierced ears and razor stubble for me, I guess as I approached 20 and was confronted with setbacks considerably more serious than trying to sneak into R-rated movies, suddenly the idea of a place where the heroic ideal glows strong and people don’t fade away and become irrelevant as they age appealed to me a whole lot.

That’s what I found with DC. While I was still heavily into Marvel, and it’s protagonists with feet of clay, there was something beautiful about the stalwart champions of the DC Universe and the vast mythology they carried with them. At a time when optimism was what I needed most, books like JSA, Flash and Young Justice became just what the doctor ordered (along with medication and the aforementioned therapy).

And of course the coolest thing about waiting until I was in college to really discover the “other” comic company was that suddenly I had literally tens of thousands of new stories to explore. Reading JSA made me want to learn more about the other heroes of the DCU, so I picked up Batman, Superman and Titans. Reading those made me curious about DC’s past, so I hit the back issue bins for old runs of Justice League of America. Falling in love with George Perez’s art led to tracking down his full tenure on New Teen Titans with Marv Wolfman, which I have discussed at length here before. And all that led to the motherload: taking the gift certificate to New England Comics that my girlfriend’s parents gave me for Chanukah (which in retrospect I believe was their way of thumbing their noses at what they felt was my immaturity, but I could be completely off-base as they were always pretty nice to me) and using it to buy the biggest trade on the shelves: Crisis on Infinite Earths.

I wrapped up 2001 using the first half of my winter break to get lost in Crisis, mentally noting all the new (to me) characters I wanted to read more about later and thinking about what a difference a year makes.

Oh, and of course JSA also introduced me to the work of writer Geoff Johns, who would become very important not just to my fandom but my professional life as the decade rolled on, but we’ll get to that later.


Rickey
It's hard to remember how I first found out about Dave Crosland. Part of me feels like I first read about the intensely stylized writer/artist in a Wizard Magazine sidebar. Part of me remembers reading Jim Mahfood's website where he talked about Crosland with such contagious excitement that I caught the bug. And another part of me remembers stumbling across one of Crosland's "Slop" mini-comics while browsing the indie section of a comic shop in Austin, Texas. Whatever the introduction was, it split open the worlds of do-it-yourself and alternative comics for me to such a profound degree that I credit Crosland's work for helping me develop as an artist and a comics reader.

DIY comic?! What the fuck?! I can draw ANYTHING I want with ANY characters I want and then print it off at a Kinko's as a mini-comic and get my local comic shop to buy them and sell them for me?! MADNESS. But that's just what I ended up doing for the better part of about 6 years thanks to books like Crosland's. I remember lots of spectacular nights in my dorm sitting up late with my best friend Josh and drawing comics together and listening to music and talking about designs and ideas we otherwise never would have. Slop's energetic, signature style showed me and Josh that there was a market out there for just about every kind of comic and Slop's wide range of genres (poetic war parables, action-packed ninja tales, bizarre full-page pin-ups with an urban flair) and zany layouts taught us anything was possible when you were your own editor and publisher; and that creative freedom is the SOUL of indie comic-making.

My new addiction to Slop and other mini-comics kept me so consistently glued to the indie sections of all the local comic shops that I started growing an interest in and recognizing other artists I still adore today. It was my shopping for Crosland's work that helped put creators like Adrian Tomine and Chris Ware and James Kochalka on my radar. And it was THEIR work that put the works of guys like Seth and Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Paul Pope on my radar. And it was guys like that who put the literary alt comics scene on my radar and so on until NOW where I'm driving to shows like SPX and MoCCA and talking intelligently about comics with friends and sifting out PRECISELY what I like in a comic. It all grew out of simple 20-page Xerox'd mini-comics. And thanks to Crosland, I have many bookshelves bowing under the weight of MANY creatively explosive mini-comics from over the past decade whose contents get me just as excited about comic art and design as they did in 2001. Crosland's minis were popping with such fervor and life that they not only entertained me—they INSPIRED me to create. When was the last time a comic did that for you?

PS: I eventually met Crosland and his enthusiasm was no only-for-the-page show. I still have the business card he gave me tucked away in my wallet.

Silent Night, Blackest Night

Another way to know when your wife is awesome: you bring home a set of Blackest Night promotional rings and she comes up with the idea to turn them into ornaments on your Christmas tree!

(Pics by Rickey Purdin)





Happy holidays!

Hark...Holiday Comics

Lo in years past there weren't always trusty collections of holiday-themed comic book stories that could all be found in one place (such as the 2009 Marvel Holiday Spectacular featuring Werewolf By Night in "Werewolf By Eve"--available now both online and in print!). No, in the days before consolidation became hip, tales of Christmas, Chanukah, etc. cheer were instead relegated to issues of ongoing series, weaved seamlessly into a character's tapestry of continuity each December or there about.

Ok, I'm lying; "Holiday Special" type comics have been around since at least the 90's (probably the 80's) and occasionally there is still a one-off issue of your favorite super hero title that takes a month off to dress their lead up as Santa or teach us the meaning of the Menorah. Still, I just ate up two paragraphs pretty quick, didn't I?

Where was I? Oh yeah: holiday comics.

I can't say I've read enough enough comics centered around holiday cheer that I can compile any sort of definitive "Best Of" list, but here are five from my youth or thereabout that I at least remember, meaning that for better or worse they did make an impression.

"...Guess Who Just Came Down the Chimney!" from UNCANNY X-MEN #143
The final issue of Chris Claremont and John Byrne's legendary run together on the X-Men, and while it has since been reported far and wide by both that they were not getting along by this point, it certainly doesn't show in this classic. Not a shocker that in their last shared tale on the franchise they'd shape for a generation or two, these creators chose to focus on Kitty Pryde, a character near and dear to both. With all of the other X-Men out enjoying their Christmas plans, young (and Jewish) Kitty sticks around the X-Mansion and ends up having to face a N'garai demon with pretty much only her wits. Of course there's a happy ending and the plot is plenty sappy, but it also has awesome action and is beautifully drawn, and really that's pretty spiffy for a comic of this type.

"Funeral for a Friend Part 4: Metropolis Mailbag II" from SUPERMAN v2 #76
In general I thought Dan Jurgens' concept for his annual "Metropolis Mailbag" issue of Superman--in which the Man of Steel takes a break from fighting aliens and scientists and whatnot to fly around fulfilling all the wishes kids send to Santa via the Metropolis mail--was a wonderfully simple and fun one that guaranteed a nice uplifting story with plenty of "Aww" moments at least once a year. However, the most poignant of these unquestionably came the year Superman was unavailable for his task, having "died" at the hands of Doomsday a month earlier, and thus his super friends have to pick up the slack. Thus you've got the Justice League, Captain Marvel, the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and even Kiel's beloved Agent Liberty reunitin families and delivering presents, culminating with a picked up thread of the heroes helping to rebuild a house destroyed during the Doomsday fight and the jerky teenage son admitting Superman didn't suck after all. Jurgens is in his prime drawing every DC hero and the cover has Batman releasing a friggin' dove from his hand.

"Rhino Plastered" from INCREDIBLE HULK #378
Once again, we travel back to Peter David's epic tenure as writer of Incredible Hulk, because it was simply that awesome. In this installment, that lovable loser the Rhino opts against robbing a bank when he sees the Hulk is in town and instead steals a Santa suit off a Salvation Army volunteer, planning to scrounge up cash for "charity" then take off. Unfortunately for the horned one, a mall floor manager in need of a last minute Santa spots Rhino and drags him inside to sub in. At first, Rhino goes with the flow, but even this hardened super villain is disgusted at how bratty the kids are, causing him to lose his cool, causing the nearby Bruce Banner to lose his cool...and so forth. Though the visuals of Rhino as Santa Claus fighting the Hulk through a packed mall would probably be enough to make this a gem on their own, but David has a leg up on many writers who awkwardly stumble their way through comedy issues such as these in that he is actually a funny dude and has a knack for this sort of thing. Also, the fact that it's the curmudgeonly grey Hulk as opposed to the dumb green Hulk works wonderfully here. I won't spoil exactly how they get there, but the final page of the issue features Rhino still as Santa and Hulk as the world's biggest elf working together to save one little girl's Christmas; it's awesome.

"What Do You Get the JLA for Christmas?" from SUPERMAN v2 #165
Jeph Loeb pretty much makes sure he gets the equivalent of a nice slow softball right down the middle to hit a holiday home run here by assembling the all-star art team of Ed McGuinness, Art Adams, Ian Churchill, Rob Liefeld, Joe Madureira, Humberto Ramos and Mike Wieringo to draw a story wherein Superman buys Christmas presents for the other members of the "Big 7" JLA, but hey, a hit out of the park is a hit out of the park, and this issue is great harmless fun that also helps advance the series' ongoing plots and gets some clever sight gags in to boot. The story follows right on the heels of Lex Luthor getting elected President with the narrative being driven by Superman getting each of his teammates' opinions on the deal, but the draw here is really seeing what Lois thinks Batman wants for Christmas and Rob Liefeld drawing Aquaman.

"Tidings of Comfort and Joy" from FORCE WORKS #8
13-year old Ben was totally fooled by the seemingly obvious juxtaposition of a giant "X" and the silhouette on the cover to this issue into thinking it was yet another gratuitous Wolverine guest appearance, but that's actually Hawkeye, who shows up in this issue as an invited guest of USAgent to the first (and last) ever Force Works holiday bash. Agent's intent is to reunite Clint Barton with his former West Coast Avengers teammates for the first time since the death of his wife, Mockingbird, but unfortunately Hawkeye's distrust of Iron Man and a sitcom-esque bit of confusion where he watches Tony Stark dissing him during a speech on a video monitor then mutes it before he can hear the subsequent compliment scuttles the deal. Speakin of USAgent, his crazy red, white and blue Sgt. Pepper's get-up is another highlight of this issue, as are the attempts of the various Force Workers and Spider-Woman's daughter Rachel to teach Century the meaning of Christmas. Man, I really owe Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning a pair of cards this year reminding them of this bad boy.

Our Comics Decade: 2000

Ben
I’ve given the cliff notes version here before, but after my high school graduation from Newton South in the spring of 2000, I migrated about two hours south to matriculate at Connecticut College. Conn used to be an all-girls school up until about the 70’s and thus it comes as no surprise that the only two people I knew from high school going in were girls—both very cool individuals, but neither a person I saw watching wrestling with me on Monday nights. Factor in that the girl I was dating at the time was going to school at Trinity—only about 45 minutes away, but neither of us had a car—and I found myself in the familiar situation of being psyched for college, but quickly going from the “I have so many friends!” rush that senior year at high school brings to the “I have nobody to eat dinner with” low that accompanies your freshman year at college.

Fortunately, I did have my interest in various extracurricular activities to fall back on when it came to meeting friends. While there was no wrestling team at Conn (and frankly my surgically reconstructed shoulder and torn up ankles were grateful for that), I did continue my interest in theater, and as a result met an outgoing giant (seriously, he’s like 6’5”) named Jordan Geary who would become my best friend in college and introduce me to most of the other folks I’d grow to consider my family away from home.

An interesting tidbit myself, Jordan and our friend Chris Everson discovered during one late night chat was that we’d all been hardcore comic book geeks in our younger years, but had each lapsed during high school in favor of not being shunned by the social majority (which still only like half worked). We found we shared a mutual love of the X-Men and immediately took to looking up clips of the old cartoon online and deciding which team members us and each of our crew most closely matched for nickname purposes (I was Iceman, Jordan was Cyclops, Chris was Wolverine, and we literally came up with dozens more for pretty much everybody we even casually interacted with).

Seeing as we had a big awesome freaking comic store a five minute drive away (and Jordan had a car), regular trips to Sarge’s became a foregone conclusion. When I first entered the store and gradually got past the overwhelming feeling of being a obsessive nerd away from his element for nearly five years, I made a beeline to the section housing the X-Men titles, eager to learn what I had missed since dropping out of the scene in 1996 with the end of the Onslaught saga.

The first title I vividly remember purchasing in my second life as a comic book fan was Uncanny X-Men #390, written by Scott Lobdell with art by Salvador Larroca and featuring no less an event than the death of Colossus. It was a deceptively welcoming comic to come back to, as Colossus was an old favorite, Lobdell was the same writer I remembered from my youth, and Larroca’s style was tight and colorful ala Jim Lee or Andy Kubert. Even the main thrust of the issue’s plot involved curing the Legacy Virus, a plot device I had seen the birth of at the conclusion of my beloved X-Cutioner’s Song.

In an interesting parallel to being away at school for the first time, that first issue of Uncanny X-Men was like coming home and finding your room exactly as you had left it (it was also a darn fine issue, as Lobdell always did know how to wring the pathos from a heroic sacrifice and write the “X-Men as a family” stuff decently rather than them just being a military-style strike force).

However, to follow the same analogy, in the subsequent visits I paid back “home” over the next several months, the more and more the furniture seemed to get moved around, and not particularly to my liking.

Grant Morrison and his New X-Men revamp were well in the hype stages even as I was trying to piece together what had become of the Blue and Gold teams. Picking up Wizard (another ritual I was glad to return to) and seeing Frank Quitely’s proposed visual re-imaginings of Beast (he’s a cat?!), Wolverine (no mask?!) and Emma Frost (…huh?!) certainly did not deliver the nostalgic comfort food of bright costumes, big action and ill-defined energy powers I was looking for. Indeed, I found those first few issues of New X-Men so distasteful to my old school 90’s palate that I was about ready to throw in the towel and get back out of comics no sooner than I’d returned. Fortunately for me (and all of you who enjoy this blog, I guess), that aforementioned at-the-time girlfriend got me a subscription for Christmas that year, meaning Grant and I were stuck with one another at least for a bit.

Bringing my little comparison to what will hopefully be a poignant or at least sensible close, I gradually learned to appreciate—or at least tolerate—Morrison’s different approach to the X-Men and also to sample new comics I would never have thought to try as a kid, which of course paid off big-time in the long run for me. I would have to take the same approach to college itself, learning not to focus all the time on how it wasn’t high school and instead come to find all the neat new stuff that I had to look forward to.

Today I can go back and actually enjoy New X-Men because I’ve got such a broader view of what comics can be and how they evolve. Similarly (I think?), I ended up becoming closer with most of the friends I made in college than I ever did with my old pals from high school.

At the time, comics ranged from a fun hobby for me to a survival aspect I utilized to feel safe in a new place; I had no idea that my decision to start reading X-Men again in 2000 would end up being one of the biggest turning points in my life.

Rickey
In 2000, I was a senior in high school and allowed myself $20 a week maximum to spend on comics. It's weird thinking back to a time when I didn't buy trade paperbacks online (if at all) - and how I got my hands on comics in general. Like a squirrel burying acorns in a rain storm, I'd hold on tightly to any books I bought, even if I eventually thought they sucked. By the time I dismantled my collection so my parents could sell their house in 2008, I had the equivalent of 12 long boxes and maybe 30 collected editions and original graphic novels back in the room I grew up in. That's why it's all the more impressive that I bought Warren Ellis's four Stormwatch trades in 2000.

I'd just finished reading Sandman through collected editions and that mission had taken almost 2 years and (what was at the time to me) lots of money. But my comic shop was cool about ordering stuff for me in advance and letting me pay for it as I picked up each new collection. That's why it was no hard task to talk myself into trying Stormwatch. At the time, I didn't know Warren Ellis's work at all and just knew that I read in Wizard that the title was fun and weird. Unlike most people my age, I'd never really gotten into Image at any point in my life, so I didn't know dick about Stormwatch or the WildStorm universe. I was a blank slate.

But over the course of January through December that year, as I wrestled with what college to go to, graduated high school, said goodbye to almost all my friends, moved myself into my dorm and started college living with a cockhead jock-turd of a roommate, the high-octane action-adventure sci-fi superhero bonanza of Stormwatch rocketed my notions of what could be done with spandex heroes into subspace eternity. In the first fucking issue, Ellis fires half the team and introduces new characters who went on to become cornerstones of the WildStorm universe. People got their jaws punched off, the leader wound up being the bad guy, several of the characters DIED in battle, they traveled to an alternate reality and introduced the Bleed (an updated version of the Multiverse), and, in the final volume of the regular series, a Superman-level hero returns to active duty after a self-imposed exile to round up a crew of partners to tell the world they better behave or the super heroes are gonna MAKE you behave. I'd never seen anything like this!

And the continuity! Ideas, themes and concepts debut throughout the run that later played into the Authority and Planetary, two books also written by Ellis and that I also bought in trade. And not just red sky continuity, I'm talking about stuff like the Superman-level hero I mentioned cameo-ing as a conversation piece in Planetary or how the mechanical blood of a bad guy in one arc was used to create the Engineer in the Authority. Or how a Green Lantern-esque character is hunted down and murdered in Planetary, but his lantern later shows up as a weapon wielded by a member of the covert operation that gave birth to Apollo and Midnighter in Stormwatch. I'm a sucker for tiny continuity nods that don't call attention to themselves and are directed at those paying attention - and this book is filled with them.

The tongue-in-cheek style of Ellis's later work hasn't really appealed to me, but this earnest superhero epic not only naturally built my love for the WildStorm universe, it showed me that superhero tales could be more than cookie-cutter stories at a time when my mind was looking for expansion in all the forms of art I was most interested in. And by expanding what was done with superheroes on a personal and wide-screen level, I credit Ellis alongside guys like Bendis for introducing the kind of radical ideas in the early 2000s that helped revive the aging mainstream scene by trying new things and for paving the way for that genre's fandom to change their visual prescriptions from following JUST artists to finally faithfully following writers.

Kiel
I'm not usually one to attribute any extra significance to supposed "milestone" occasions in time from the simple changing of years or the turning of significant birthdays to the conclusion of decades. Still, even I can't ignore that a lot changed in my life in 2000. I graduated from high school that spring, which comes with enough drama, awkwardness, excitement, fear, stress and joy without being a comic nerd even coming into it. Luckily though, my personal life and my comics life collided in a pretty significant way back then.

Towards the end of my senior year, I started dating this girl named Laura Gutierrez. She was a year behind me in school and a friend of a friend, but for some reason I never really met her until sometime around that winter. I always thought that a little STRANGE as she was someone who was extremely smart and unpretentious in a way few people (certainly not this guy) are at that age. We hit it off pretty quickly and were fast on our way to the kind of brief, crazy, doomed relationship that you can only have when you're a teenager.

When school ended that year, Laura was set to fly to Finland for the summer on some kind of foreign exchange student program, and by the time she returned I'd be away to East Lansing for college. Faced with the choice of whether or not to date knowing full well that we weren't going to try and make anything out of it once she left, we totally went for it. It was one of those go to a lot of parties but ignore your friends, get caught making out in your parents basement, go park on a dead end street and lay next to each other on uncomfortable reclining car chairs talking about everything and nothing in intense marathon sessions for hours on end kind of things.

And at some point in this long string of dramatically impassioned yet timed to expire conversations, we talked for a while about comics and my impractical plan to try to work in them some day. And at one point Laura looks at me and says, "I have something you should read. It's kind of like a comic. At least I think it is."

Then she gave me her copy of Craig Thompson's Good-Bye, Chunky Rice.

At that stage in my comics-reading life, I'd been reading comics outside the superhero mainstream for a while, but most of them still fell into that "published as a monthly serial with some vague adventure ties" category like Bone and Skeleton Key or at least something with a certain level of reality to it like Palooka-Ville. To be that age at that moment and have my girlfriend drop Thompson's lavishly rendered, formally playful graphic novel on my head was a mind-blower (and to the professed comics expert in me more than a little embarrassing).

More importantly, the story hit me in a way that I'll honestly admit I couldn't even comprehend at the time. More than any other comic I've ever read, Chunky Rice draws out the sad, strange, sweet set of emotions and experiences that accompany letting someone fall out of your life. From the titular character's painful choice to leave his best friend Dandele through the tragic fable of Solomon and Stomper to all the bizarrely forlorn characters Chunky meets on Captain Chuck's boat, every thread Thompson spins in the story echo that feeling of loss and in their own way the bittersweet joy that comes with accepting the fact that though the ones you love may be out of your life, they're still with you in other ways.

It took me a long time to process everything that book made me feel, partly because at the time I was so far up my own ass I wasn't confronting the very obvious parallels to my own situation and relationships (hooray for being 18!) and partly because when you're still so close to letting so much go to try something bigger, it feels like you'll never get beyond the worst feelings to appreciate the best ones.

All in all, knowing that girl and having that story with me in 2000 helped me through the next ten years in ways that I'm still insanely grateful for and hope to never let go of completely.