About

An about page is important apparently.  …I’ll work on improving this over time.  For now, let’s start at —

I knew for a very long time before I actually started reading and collecting comic books and graphic novels that I was a comic book reader and collector.

Throughout the late 80’s and 90’s as I trolled local comic shops looking for something of interest, I really never found anything other than The Simpsons and Futurama comics that I wanted to read.

I blame this on the sparse and watered down sampling of titles that my local comic shops offered. Super hero junk, The Tick, maybe some Archie…  but very little diversity or broad appeal.  I swear that I don’t remember any of my local shops carrying anything good like Disney titles – not in the 90’s.  Unfortunately, the story is just about the same today at most comic shops that I visit.  The selection is garbage even when the shop owners are knowledgeable and into really good titles.

Eventually – maybe a year or so before the internet – I began finding some independent titles like Optic Nerve and Love and Rockets.  Then, when the internet finally got going, I began to learn of other great titles.  Now, thanks to great publishers like Fantagraphics and Drawn and Quarterly, I’ve found almost too many things to read and goggle at.  I’m in bliss.  And best of all are the waves of newspaper reprints like Walt and Skeezix, Krazy and Ignatz, and Dick Tracy.

I’ve even found a super hero series that I love – the original Batman strips by Bob Kane.

I’m always on the lookout for new comic shops when I go on vacation and I always hope that I’ll uncover some rare, unwanted, leftover throwaway that they couldn’t sell.  Just a few months ago, on a business trip to Boston, I found volume 1 of the Walt And Skeezix series — for $6.00.  I had know of that series – and had wanted to read Gasoline Alley for a few years since first hearing about it – but hadn’t for some reason (probably a good topic for a post at some point).  So I greedily snapped it up in a second – as if some other customer was suddenly after years and years of passing it up would start fighting me for it.

I’m always looking out for some other strip or title that I never heard of and suddenly can’t live without.  Bone is a great example of that.  I could have been reading Bone for years if my local shops had carried it.  I almost feel robbed – but I’m also a little happy that I came late to that party.  I didn’t start reading Bone until a few years ago when the color volumes were published and it was worth the wait.

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I’m a software engineer.  I don’t want to pollute this blog with too many diversions – but I’m considering posting an on-going series on a Tic Tac Toe game that I’ve been working on (from time to time – rarely).  It’s a board of any size – with a variable length combo to win type game.  Well, maybe sometime soon.

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Thanks for reading. Please come back again.