I guess it all really started with Comics

Partially inspired by this article in Entertainment Weekly, I've decided to track down my own 'hook' issue of comic books.

While waiting for a flight out of Bogota, Colombia back in 1981 (visiting the vast extended family), we were in the main airport and I was probably a typical fidgety 8 year-old, and like some of the writers in the EW article I was bought a comic book to quiet me:

I'm certain this is the issue--involving Iron Man and and a damaged Submarine, and yes, I think, something to do with revenge-- that I read over and over while waiting to board, and probably during the whole flight. I still see the panel in my head: Iron Man is trying to hold the ship together, water is pouring over his armor, and he's straining--there's a close-up of his eye slot and the inking on the page is dark and intense... I don't remember the plot-- most of the writers in the article probably never revisited the comic in their adult lives-- but the impact was immediate.

A couple of years later, when I was allowed to roam on my own (back and forth to school), I discovered that the Newsagents (essentially a 7-11) sold comics on racks by the entrance...

I began to scrape together my allowance to buy whatever was interesting on the racks... We were several months behind the American issues in Oz (where I was living with my parents at the time)... At first it was G.I JOE, then came the X-MEN--specifically the Claremont/Romita Jr. run involving the Morlock Massacre, and THAT storyline is what really truly hooked me.

Romita's art--oddly neo-Kirby yet all his own style by this point--was the bait. The use of a comic--and more specifically the aspect of 'Mutant'-ism to address social issues of prejudice in a gritty-- in a realistic manner (Prof. X is assaulted at the end of the issue with bricks and bats) for an 10 year-old was the the real hook.

It wasn't until I was 11 that I discovered a PROPER comic shop that the hooks sunk deeper. It was a disorganized place-- I would go there in my catholic school uniform and browse through the stacks (yes, real stacks, no long boxes or anything) of comics arranged by series on the floor. I didn't realize it then but I was the youngest customer there; everyone was easily over 18... It was crowded and dim and some of the comics I uncovered had yellowed; the owner was a swarthy overweight man (with whom I had an ugly inexplicable falling-out many years later) who eyed me with some mirth every time I bought something (I was deeply shy and dough-faced)...

I think it was a combination of the medium and the process of acquisition that ambered the comics medium in my soul.

I dread to think how much money I spent in the next 20-plus years, and nowadays I'm waaaay behind what happens in the industry-- but thank Christ for the rise of the Graphic novel collection format... I can at least lag behind a year or two...

Anyhow. This is was the beginning.

Of storytelling; of art; of literature (Comics were my gateway to Fantasy & SF); of cognitive science (hemispherical processing of language & image, etc)...

Next time I'll post about the Zine nobody's heard of that lead me down the path of design and computer art...