The Background

Welcome to all those who have found this blog. I'd like to thank you for taking interest. Hopefully I can share with you a valuable experience I hope to gain from exploring a medium I know virtually nothing about. Here is the 411 on what I've encountered so far.

Backstory:

I am a college graduate with a degree in English Literature. Like many college grads, my current career has nothing to do with that area but I do enjoy keeping up with current and classic novels. I've always been a fan of fantasy, historical fiction, and poetry. I try to keep up with new authors when I can.

In college, I developed a close bond with a buddy of mine who we'll call Shawn for now. Shawn was an illustration major whose focus was on sequential art, a technical term for a skilled tracer ;). He started talking a lot about comics to me, whether I chose to hear about it or not. I would join him on his Wednesday trips to our local comic book shop just on the edge of the campus. One of my first comics ever was a Warlands TPB that he bought me from the now defunct publisher Dreamwave Productions.


The comic was actually quiet compelling. I ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting. I then ended up re-reading it to see what the pictures had to offer to the storyline. I never admitted to by friend but I was beginning to really enjoy it.

After years of harassing and tormenting, I began slowly sinking into the comic/graphic novel area with my introduction to Neil Gaiman. It started with his story for the movie Mirrormask, then to his short stories and poetry, and finally to his famous comic series, The Sandman. To this day I still have not finished his entire 10 volume TPB series. The story is simply amazing but there are so many references and allusions to past comics that I have never even dived into that I was bit overwhelmed I wouldn't appreciate it as much. It is a bit silly I must admit. I do plan on finishing the series and then re-read it as I become more involved with this area.

The pinnacle of my comic experience so far was a recent trip to the New York City Comic Convention this past month. Shawn invited me to come along and experience everything all at once. He wasn't kidding. I was dumb founded with the amount of buzz behind this medium. Shawn had his own agenda with promoting his own art and looking for work. If you are publisher, hire him! While he was off doing that, I explored. I found so many small artists with self-published work that was simply a joy to read that I my bank account suffered dearly that weekend. Lets just say I think my economic stimulus package came one month too late.

Present Day:

So now I am here. I have a large stack of unread comics and a local comic book shop just over the river for my bidding. I've been recently inspired by reading the blog of a fellow college acquaintance of mine named Dina to begin this.

I have very little to no knowledge of this business. I am hoping that with my discoveries I can stimulate interest from the novice to the experienced in participating with your thoughts and ideas.

I'll post my current reads and anything I learn along the way. On my sidebar I will do regular polls for my own purposes to get answer questions I might have. I will also have my current read and my next read. At the bottom of the blog I will list all the comics I have read during these posts. Granted, I have read about a dozen or so comics prior to starting this. I might comment on them first or during a busy week when I can't get to something currently.

I guess we'll have to see how this goes...