Casefile: 2
A BAKERS DOZEN…of COMICS
Growing up my Dad owned a bakery on a pretty average small town main street. I think we had a total of two stoplights. Me, my brother, and my sisters would spend a lot of time there. We’d help out…or rather we’d eat everything in sight.
It was a small town that you could walk from end to the other and back in 15 minutes…but we had a comic shop.
After a little bit of boredom at the bakery, probably after double fisting pastries, I’d ask for a couple of bucks to walk down to the comic store. With a handful of money in my pocket I’d look around at the various comics on the shelf. I’d pick a random Superman or Batman or X-Men comic…maybe a copy of Witchblade as well…and that would fill my imagination until the next time I conned some money out of my Mom or Dad to go again.
As I got older this became MY shop. While my friends would go and play Magic in the back I would be out front scanning the different books.
I remember the first time the owner told me that I could ask for comics to be held for me. Naturally, I filled that list with every book that came out. What started out as a few books here and there turned into a weekly pile.
My shop was the last on the priority list for Diamond so I’d have to wait until around 5pm every Wednesday for the comics to be delivered. A bit OCD and anxious, I would hang out while the owner inventoried every comic and then pulled mine. It was grueling but worth it because I would rush back home and just absorb them.
And as a teenager I was down for every book that came out. Electric Blue Superman, Batman: Hush, Morrison’s New X-Men, put me down for it. I was a sucker for every crossover and big event. I don’t know if there was a comic I didn’t have on my pull list.
The summer my Dad sold the bakery my family piled into an RV travelled cross country for 8 weeks. This was in the heat of the Hush storyline and I was completely sucked into its mystery. Do you know how painful it was to not have my weekly fix while looking down the gulf of the Grand Canyon? I was hard to see anything spectacular because I didn’t know what was happening in those 22 pages.
We made a pit stop in Oklahoma, where my cousins lived, so my parents could travel back to NY for another cousin’s wedding, So, I asked my WWII veteran Grandpa to pick up my comics for me so my parents could bring them back. When they did get back I had a literal box of comics to go through as I sat in that RV while beautiful, majestic America wizzed past.
I finished that box in a matter of days and was hungry for the next fix.
When I set off for college I no longer had MY shop. I dropped out of comics for a bit. I would pick up trades of stuff I was still interested in. Turns out I missed some awesome books and creators like Jeff Lemire and Rick Remender. But, luckily I am finding them now and loving everything I read.
Four years ago I moved in with my girlfriend (now fiancé/soon to be wife) to Westchester, NY. I started a job as a real estate photographer which brings me all around the county. One day driving through a main street I saw a sign that said COMICS. It had been a long time since I was in a real comic shop.
Talking with Marc at AW YEAH COMICS in Harrison, NY felt like coming home.
And thus it started again. First grabbing a few comics off the racks then spiraling into an ever growing pull list. Fortunately, I am not as susceptible to the cross overs and events anymore. More of my list is devoted to comics from Image, Vault, Boom, and Source Point.
Having a shop again helped reground me and got me to jump back into creating in a medium that has always filled me with wonder and awe.
THE STATE OF THE WORK
As I write this BURN RESIDUE #2 is just going through a few corrections and then off to the printer. As has been the case fulfilling this kickstarter I am excited for backers to get their copy but not looking forward to the angered look I get from the local post office workers.
Rossano and I are working on a pitch that we are going to go out with after BURN RESIDUE is all done. It is currently titled ONLY BAD THINGS HAPPEN AT NIGHT and is a police procedural/horror/thriller comic with a touch of classic 70s American cinema.
TALES FROM THE DEAD ASTRONAUT #2 is just about done and Jorge is diving right into #3 when he finishes. For those who have read TALES #1, I hope #2 and #3 will excite you even more. Each issue will have a stand alone story but I continued with THE STAR and PRINCE OF STEEL to round out those stories.
Finally, I am teaming up with Ryan Tavarez for a crime comic one shot called A GAME OF DOUBLES. It is a a black and white tale in the style of a STRAY BULLETS story. It has been marinating in my mind for years. It is the story of Jackson Teach, a former tennis all star, who is far from the limelight and celebrating his 50th birthday with his twin brother, Franklin. It’s a hard night for Jackson as he can’t stop thinking about the game where he lost everything that made him feel special. We’ll be launching a Kickstarter for that around April so keep an eye out for that.
Thanks again for signing up to my newsletter. I hope it gives more insight on who I am as a creator and what brought me to do what I do.
I still have a handful of physical copies of BURN RESIDUE #1. If you head over to spacestationzed.com you can grab the monthly bundle for $30 just in time for BURN RESIDUE #2 to go to print.
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