My Comics Journey
My earliest memories of buying comics are pretty hazy. When people recall their childhood with clear eyed certainty it makes me instantly suspicious. My own memory just does not work that way. I have flashes of images of newsstands, but mostly I remember the smell. The dank pipe tobacco scent that coated the US News shop on 4th Street. I remember the bright storefront of Pete’s News on Central Avenue where we’d play Pac-Man and buy candy & smoke bombs with our comics. And I can remember Matt’s News on 3rd & Main. My dad would stop in for a Sunday paper after church. I’d always try to talk him into buying me some comics or baseball cards. That was another place thick with tobacco smoke and old men playing scratch offs.
It’s so odd to me that a major distinction in my memories is what places stunk like smoke and which ones were clean. Suppose that’s one hell of a generational marker.
Captain America was always my favorite. I can remember one comic where Crossbones gets Cap with a poisoned blade. Cap has to suck the poison out, with one panel showing the emphatic discharge. A weird couple panels to remember.Or maybe my faulty memory is making that up? After that the next comic that stands out in my memory is the Death of Superman. This was such a big deal it was even on CNN, the only cable news network at the time. One day my dad brought home the trade paperback of the whole series. I finally got to read how Superman died. Doomsday was terrifying. The massive bulk of muscle and bone. The eyes, mad with hatred. The pure shock of seeing Superman bleed. I wonder where that book is now.
US News and Pete’s News eventually closed up. Dunkirk was always a dying town. A few brief good years provided a handful of good memories. When the shops closed up that was pretty much it for comics. I still loved them but I had no access. This was the 90s – before the MCU and *gasp* the Internet! But there were Saturday morning cartoons packed with X-Men, Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man. Batman movies were about the only live actions, along with the less popular films for The Phantom & The Shadow (the Shadow knows!). Oh, and there was that one Captain America flick! The Spawn movie was something that blew my mind. It might look silly today, but at the time the special effects were stunning.
Batman, Spawn, and of course Punisher were characters that appealed to me too. That pattern probably says a lot about my childhood.
But Captain America always remained tops. He’s who I always wanted to be.
The MCU was for me, and probably for many others, a spark that reignited a deep love of comics. Still, I had no LCS. Without a LCS it just felt impossible to follow any series. I’m a person who likes to hold the book. I spend hours soaking in the art, picking apart the panels and details. I just can’t do that on a screen. So for as much as I wanted to get into a series I saw coming out for a favorite character I just had no access.
That is, until 2018 when my wife and I moved to the Buffalo metro area. All of a sudden I had multiple LCSs near me. Chris had been telling me I had to try out Pulp 716 and one day I popped into the North Tonawanda location. I was instantly in love. I felt like a kid going into those old newsstands again, minus the pipe smoke and smoke bombs. Making that connection with Pulp awoke something in me that had been dormant for nearly 30 years. It’s no exaggeration to say that without Pulp 716, their awesome owners & staff, I wouldn’t be writing this. Band of Bards would not exist. I’d have missed out on so many great stories and so much incredible art.
Local Comic Shops are the lifeblood of the comics multiverse. Without those stores and their passionate owners, fans would never read these stories. Creators wouldn’t be able to connect with fans. Your LCS is the critical linchpin, the ether that binds us together.
My comics journey started very young, but it nearly died because I lacked a LCS. I love comics, they are the ultimate storytelling medium. While this good journey is reaching a new stage, going from reader to would-be publisher, the tenuous comic fandom of my younger self remains at the front of my thoughts. The comics industry needs to connect with young fans for sustainment purposes. I think it’s better to view this from the opposite side though. Young fans need publishers to put the effort in so that they are not left behind. We need to support young fans whose access is limited.
Band of Bards is about Comics Doing Good. In that respect we will support young fans by publishing titles for children and sponsoring a comic book donation program. Details on that will follow, the key components will involve gathering books to donate to local libraries, both ours and yours. This permanent program will help more children have easier access to comics and encourage children to enjoy reading. This is something I could have used as a child who missed out on a rich period of comics. Now, as a publisher I can do something to help other kids along in their comics journey.
#ComicsDoingGood