Hey Comics People,
Can I take a peek into your comics history? I can’t tell you your future, but I just might be able to illuminate your funny past with these oh-so-serious books…
Humor me, will ya? Show me your palm. Let’s spill the tea leaves. Roll the bones.
Ready?
Okay. I’ve peeked into my crystal ball. The mist is clearing and your history is coming into focus:
Interesting…
Your love for comics faded in so gracefully, so naturally. I can barely tell where the tendrils took their first firm hold… But, ah, there it is. Yes. There were dramatic moments of intense love for a few comics. But earlier that that even, you didn’t think about comics at all. Did you?
No. You absorbed them.
Shapes. Line choices. Color choices. Your eyes locked on target and imagination ignited. The only acclaim or prestige that mattered was the moment. The sparks. But… hmm. Yes. Yes I’m seeing it now:
There was that one comic strip you sought out. Yeah. That was big doings. This was a magnetic pull helped drive your ability to read, in fact. And that desire to understand those jokes? That curious pull helped you grapple with the weight of the entire world, to comprehend new absurdities and wonders that lay in wait outside your door.
Then there’s that one cover image that seared into your memory. Those shapes and colors won’t be leaving you. Like an image left burned into an old tv. Endearingly so.
Ha! Then there was that comic that you kept in your orbit for an entire summer, the one that stuck around until it was coming apart at the binding. You remember the one. Looked something like this by the end?
But then… oh no.
At one point in your history, it looks as though you hid your love for comics from someone?
Why? Were you a bit worried about being judged for that one comic, or was it comics more generally?
Hmmm… this part is a bit blurry. But it looks as though you may have even literally hid some of your comics from sight? Pretended to only read high-brow literature?
For a period of time, you may have even stopped reading comics altogether. So sad… but distance makes the heart grow fonder Blah. Blah. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves. But maybe… maybe that’s not actually such a trite concept after all? I mean, with passions, that is not just some empty saying, after all. Is it? I think that particular glass is quite full, in fact.
Indeed, at another period, or even at intervals, you broke back into comics reading. Perhaps at a time when stresses and mundane cycles caught up to you a bit? It’s unclear when, exactly, but these returns to the old flame were fantastically freeing, weren’t they?
I’ll go one further and predict, as time marched on closer to our current day, any of that odd desire to hide your passion has faded. In an age in which a massive slice of humanity’s only reading takes place in increasingly small snippets from online scrolling, the concept of reading comics acting as a literary detriment is tea-time with the dodos. Comics as brain rot is a concept to enjoy with crackers and nuts. The cold, hard fact is that, in our age of distractions, your ability to sit and engage with a singular text for fifteen minutes or more at a time is elite focus agent certified.
This is where you are now, dear comics reader. For whatever else we face, retaining that ability to focus and read at our leisure (comics or otherwise, including those who can read past the first few paragraphs of a substack post!) is a gift that remains. Good on you to nurture it.
Consider this: how are you going to gift some dedicated time for reading to yourself in the next few days?
I hope you’re able to find it, and that it’s a fight you continue to fight.
And finally, for those of you who made it this far, I’d like to ask that most-wonderful question! The one question that moves this whole thing along:
What have you been reading lately?
THREE PLANES UPDATE: Thanks to all for bearing with the promotional season for THREE PLANES #1, my new comic with David Omar Lopez. We more than doubled our fundraising goals for this initial print run and now our full focus on getting the book out to our backers this fall. Double thanks for those who backed the effort and secured their copy, and a full three planes of thanks for those who have helped us in sharing this grand cosmic mystery of a comic series via re-posts and various signal boosts along the way. Y’all rock.
You can still preview the book and secure a copy for yourself via late pledges on Kickstarter [link].
Heck, maybe we could even still hit stretch goal #6 and get a holo-foil cover for the deluxe edition for ALL physical backers?
David and I joked about hitting a holo-foil cover for an absurd / unlikely-to-hit high tier, but that was before we came within sniffing distance of it, as was the case at campaign’s end (and before we saw the mockup and how well Lautaro Ftuli’s color choices leant themselves to the holo foil treatment). Check it out:
Maybe it’s still too much of a stretch? We’ll see.
In any event, David and I are plotting ways to make this holo-foil edition a reality at SOME POINT in the future. But for the time being, we’re simply too deep into the gleefully fun business of…
I've been reading almost exclusively bronze age Legion lately.