MAKING A CALL FOR COMICS

This item caught my eye over at Book­slut last Fri­day as I whit­tled away at my feed read­er. As I checked out io9’s plea to Hol­ly­wood, it under­lined how much I need to start read­ing comics again. But there’s more to it than that. If you’re one of the poor souls fol­low­ing me on Good Reads, you know I’ve been work­ing on David Had­ju’s lat­est book, The Ten Cent Plague, for­ev­er. It’s been a fas­ci­nat­ing read, but an inter­rupt­ed one. The upshot? I want to read comics like nev­er before!

A lit­tle back­ground: I’ve nev­er been a com­ic book read­er. A lot of that I’ll chalk up to tim­ing. Being born in 1977 to par­ents in then very rur­al Berks Co., Penn­syl­va­nia, meant not hav­ing access to a lot of things cul­tur­al (read: cool.) It also meant not being exposed to such-like until lat­er in life. My friend Ben Warfield hand­ed me a few comics dur­ing high school, mem­o­rably the Martha Wash­ing­ton series and V for Vendet­ta, both of which I con­sumed hasti­ly when I should’ve been read­ing stuff like Ethan Frome. I haven’t read much since then, oth­er than falling in love with Amer­i­can Splen­dor a few years ago when the movie came out, just like every­one else.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I plan on track­ing down some of io9’s sug­ges­tions, start­ing with Heavy Liq­uid, which is con­ve­nient­ly being reis­sued at the end of Sep­tem­ber. Treat their list like a primer. I’m also reach­ing out to folks who I know are into comics (Toby and Dou­glas, you’re my only hopes. Send links!)

But what would a blog post be with­out a seri­ous qual­i­fi­er? Here it comes: I’ll issue the caveat that it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that I’m not going to end up devot­ing myself to comics (maybe I’m wrong?), but I’d love to be exposed to some cool, new stuff. If any­one has sug­ges­tions, or is as curi­ous and in the dark as I am on this stuff, feel free to hit up the comments!

(P.S. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how I want to for­mat titles on Black­mail Is My Life. Tell me if you pre­fer all caps to what I’ve been doing. You can also let me know if you think the font is easy to read, or if changes should be made. Thanks!)