RIP Neal Adams

 Neal Adams was easily one of the most important and influential artists in comic book history. I know this because he told me that himself when we met a few years ago. From anyone else it would have sounded arrogant. From him it was simply a statement of fact. I had told my students much the same thing about him just a few weeks earlier.

For a list of his credits and achievements there are many online resources, so I won’t take up space repeating them here. I want to talk about meeting him. He was one of the first comics artists whose style I was able to recognize when I was young, and one of the first artists I was a big fan of. A few years ago he flew into Pittsburgh to appear at a convention and to do a signing at Phantom of the Attic Comics in Oakland. I had the privilege of picking him and his wife Marilyn up at the airport. I’ve met a lot of big names in the industry in my life, I’ve interviewed Stan Lee, but I felt a little nervous. He was one of my first heroes. I didn’t want to just gush my fanboy geekdom all over him immediately. We had a lovely conversation about Pittsburgh as we drove back into town.

Neal Adams was a larger than life character in real life. He was loud, and opinionated, and obviously felt pretty good about himself. But this was all expressed in an open and friendly manner. He was a sideshow barker – he had actually been one of these at some point in his life – and carried that demeanor with him. He was knowledgeable and passionate and talented, and as far as I could see while he was at the store, genuinely kind to everyone he met. Before the signing was over I got something signed, an art book of his I have had since I was an early teen, and got to do my fanboy gushing. I then drove him and Marilyn to their motel.

Neal had some pretty out-there ideas about the world. Hollow earth and expanding planets, and a bunch of frankly crazy sounding nonsense. You can find videos and posts about this if you look. I was treated to some of his rambling theories while we drove. I don’t believe the things he did, but it was entertaining to hear first hand. I was also treated to a rant about how all hotels should have Thomas’s English Muffins instead of any other brand. Honestly that may be my favorite moment, just because it was so very human.

So RIP, Neal Adams. Thank you for Batman and the X-Men that you gave us. Thank you for Ms. Mystic and Skateboy. Thank you for your tireless work for creators rights. Thank you for opening up a world of art and story to this young mind.

I hope Heaven has Thomas’ English Muffins. If not, I’m sure you’ll tell them about it.

Neal Adams with the Phantom crew

Giant Days

A couple of years or more ago I spent some time on the blog discussing some of my all time favorite comics. They overwhelmingly represented the past, mostly from the 1980s. These books are the ones that helped form me in my early adulthood. I have read many, many comics since then but it has felt like very few have inspired the level of love that I have for the old stuff. That’s part of getting older and the same paradigm seems to apply to music and books and movies and whatever else that helped make you the person you are.

As a comics retailer it part of my job to keep up with new releases so that I can make smart recommendations. I admit to a little bit of burnout. There are a lot of comics coming out these days, and many of them, particularly Marvel and DC, seem to this old reader to be a continual rehash of stories and concepts I have read too many times before. It felt like it had been a long time since anything had captured my imagination. But, I’m happy to report, that in the last few years there are several ongoing titles that I have been happily engaged and genuinely excited about. I’ve been feeling the need to write about new loves rather than, like the publishers, rehashing my past. I’ve just been a slacker about actually writing. But last week at San Diego Comicon something happened that told me to get off my ass and write about something.

Giant Days won the Eisner Award for both Best Ongoing Series and Best Humor Publication. I’ve been hyping Giant Days to anyone who will listen for a couple of years now. It’s a book that just makes me happy. I was excited to see that it received the Eisner nomination, but I honestly thought it might be a long shot. I know I love it, but I was unaware of it’s reach and impact. I feel a little giddy that it won.

Yes... I said giddy.

It’s about three young British women in college and their wacky adventures with friends. It’s fun and funny and touching and real. I’m really not the demographic I think Giant Days is aiming for, though there are definitely reasons I like it. I tend to describe it ‟as more adult than old-school Archie comics and far less adult than Love & Rockets.” I’m a big fan of both of those and Giant Days just hits a sweet spot that captures elements of both for me. My own comic from long ago, Grey Legacy, was the story of young people in college, albeit in more of a sci/fi fantasy setting. This was created much closer to my own college and grad school experience. Years later when I produced a short run of a comic strip set in the same world I focused on a young woman named Brix and her wacky adventures with friends, but even then I was aiming for the audience of Chatham University students. Obviously there is something in this trope that speaks to me.

But back to Giant Days...

Daisy Wooten was home-schooled and as a result is socially awkward and slightly naïve. She’s also brilliant, ridiculously optimistic, and highly organized. She tends to act as the conscience of the group. Susan Ptolemy is a med student. She’s overworked, down to earth, cynical, and sometimes a little mean and impatient with foolishness. Esther DeGroot is the beautiful Goth girl that everything comes easy to. She’s a whimsical force of nature, lucky, creative, and the object of every misplaced male crush. She’s also much smarter than she gives herself credit for. In spite of their differences they develop a beautiful friendship.

Somehow, I relate to elements of all three of them.

JohnAllison, the creator, writer, and sometimes artist of the series has a long history in comics. He has been creating web comics since the late 1990s. Giant Days is a continuation of some of the settings and characters that appeared there. His characterizations are deft and his comedic pacing is immaculate. Giant Days is a genuinely funny book. But the characters are not merely cartoons. We feel for them and become emotionally invested as they go through relationships and heartbreak and deal with the pressures of school and impending adulthood. In a recent story someone’s father dies and the story is deep and heartbreaking and incredibly insightful about dealing with grief.

I can’t say enough good things about the main series artist MaxSarin. Their drawings are full of life and energy. The characters are animated and feel as though they are always in motion. Sarin is a master of body language, subtle and not so subtle. The facial expressions can be wildly exaggerated, utilizing all of the tools of cartooning, but you are never taken out of the reality of this world. The drawing make you feel what the characters feel. When Daisy cries it is hurt down to the level of her soul.

As a middle aged man I’ve wondered why this appeals to me so much. Some of it is just sheer admiration for the craft of making good comics. Even though I am many years removed from the college experience I am surprised at how many moments in the series, like in every issue, something happens that has a direct corollary to something I have experienced in my own past, or speaks to who I am now.

I had this exact experience with a tripping friend
once. I was in the role of Esther that time.

This is an uncannily accurate description of me.

A large part of the appeal is the nostalgia factor. That’s something I think anyone can relate to. That time in your life, whether it was in college or high school or some other setting, when you were officially an adult, but still hadn’t figured out what that meant. The time when you were experiencing all of your firsts. When everything felt heightened and was tinged with importance in ways that can never be completely recaptured as you get older. When you first started to meet people who would be your chosen family and you can’t imagine life without them in it. For younger readers, those who are the age of the characters, it mirrors their life. For those of us who are older it reminds us of just how important and formative those times were.

Giant Days indeed.

Journey’s End

In 1984 I began a journey, one that ended this week. It didn’t begin as my journey. I was merely a companion, myself and thousands of others, to a stranger who would become someone I felt I knew. Over the last thirty-five years his journey became symbolic of my own, shedding light on my own life in the way all great stories do. Though his personal, real life journey continues, the story he was telling is now over. I want to talk about endings.

Mage: The Hero Denied #15

This is not the first time I’ve written about Mage: The Hero Discovered and its creator Matt Wagner. I’ve talked about it in more detail in a previous blog and written about it academically for Salem Press (though the links in that blog are now dead so you can’t see it anymore). This comic book series began in 1984 and I was there with the first issue. At that time Wagner said that he envisioned Mage to be three distinct story arcs. This week, after thirty-five years and large gaps in production the final issue of the final series shipped. It was the conclusion of a story that I have been anticipating for a long, long time. No spoilers, but I was satisfied with the ending. It wrapped up the various plot lines, encapsulated the feel of the entire series, and stayed thematically consistent with everything that went before. In its ending it conveyed that even when a specific story ends, life goes on.

But I’m not here to do an analysis of the narrative. This is more personal than that. There are specific plot and character elements I’ll go into here but, if you want to know ‟what happens” I’m sure you can find many articles online, or you could, preferably, read it yourself.

I’ve read a lot of comics. I’ve been doing so my entire life and for the last twenty-two years I’ve worked at a comics shop which give me access to everything that comes out. As much as I love the medium most books I read are an ‟in the moment” thing and then forgotten. That is more true now than when I was younger, of course. Like a lot of media consumption the majority of it can be enjoyed while engaged with it, then easily discarded. There are those that deserve further study, of course, and those that reward multiple readings. It is an art form that comes with all of the problems and expectations and joy that can be associated with any other art form. But for everyone who loves this stuff, I assume, there are those few titles that become a part of your life. Heart books I have called them in the past. Those books that speak to something more personal.

Mage is one of those series for me, perhaps the biggest one. At the time I couldn’t have told you why it spoke to me as strongly as it did. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it since. Mage appeared in the early days of the Direct Market, an innovation in comics distribution that allowed for more diverse content from a wider range of creators. I liked a lot of the books I saw then simply because they were not the traditional Marvel and DC superhero fare. Mage was a unique mixture of superheroes, fantasy, myth, and Arthurian legend, all things that I was into. What made it different at the time was that it was all took place in a contemporary setting. The popularity of the genre we now call Urban Fantasy has made this approach much more common, but back then it felt unique. The protagonist, Kevin Matchstick, was a young man wearing jeans and a t-shirt, someone I could know, or more importantly, someone I could be.

This is a core part of the connection. The story opened very differently from most. We didn’t get an explosive fight scene. It was very understated, but it’s was definitely the hook that reeled me in. Kevin meets what appears to be a homeless street urchin and proceeds to have a very personal three page conversation with this stranger, revealing his doubts and anxieties, the kind of questions about life and identity that most people have in their early twenties. It turns out that the homeless man is Mirth, the avatar of the World Mage... Merlin, if you will. This Meeting With the Mentor serves a

dual purpose, one that works on a meta-level. For Kevin, his meeting with the Mage launches him on his personal journey of self-discovery. For me, and probably for others, my meeting with the series Mage brought me into the journey as well. Mirth spoke to Kevin and Matt spoke to me through Mirth. In this way the series became a mentor for those engaged with the narrative. It did for me at least.

What I didn’t know at that time was that Matchstick was an avatar of creator Matt Wagner. He looked just like him. Since that time Wagner has called the series and ‟allegorical autobiography.” He took elements of his own life and fictionalized them. Over time, the more you knew about Matt, the more you could recognize in the narrative, and the more personal the story became. Over the years, because of his other work in the comics industry, through interviews and letters pages, we saw elements of his life outside of his work seep through. Because of these, and because of the personal nature of Mage, an illusion of intimacy was created. This happens a lot with artists, though I think it is probably more obvious with musicians or actors. Through their public persona and the work they create we feel like we know them better than we actually do. This feeling is heightened when we can see ourselves reflected in their work.

2009 San Diego Con.

I don’t know Matt, not really. I have met him in real life exactly twice, once at a convention in Ohio in the early 90s and once at San Diego Con in 2009. During the 80s and early 90s when I was trying to get into the comics industry through self-publishing I sent copies of everything to several receptive creators, Matt among them. He always wrote back, even if it was just a postcard. He was supportive and friendly and those things felt really important at the time. A few years ago when I was researching my article for Salem Press he was gracious enough to answer a bunch of questions for me. He would probably recognize me if I walked up to him at a convention. We’re friends on Facebook. I feel like I know Matt, certainly more than he probably feels like he knows me. But all I really know is what he has revealed to me through the allegory of Mage.

Matt and I are contemporaries. I’m about three months older than he is. We grew up with a lot of the same cultural touchstones, and it’s obvious to me we read a lot of the same books and comics and shared many of the same interests. It’s part of why I could so easily project myself into the series. As time went on some of these interests became more well-developed. Matt has said many times that he was unaware of the mythologist Joseph Campbell and the idea of the Hero’s Journey when he began working on Mage, even though in retrospect it is amazing how closely Kevin’s path follows this pattern. Campbell came to prominence in 1986 through a series of interviews with journalist Bill Moyers (available in print form as The Power of Myth). This series was eye-opening for me and still qualifies as one of the most influential books of my life. It pulled together so many of my interests and the ideas I had been having about them and gave me a language and worldview that still resonates with me today.

One of these ideas is that of a personal mythology. Psychologist Carl Jung asked the question, ‟What myth are you living?” The idea is that each of us reenact recurring motifs in our own personal story. We are the products of our culture and for good or ill we can all become caught up in unconscious behaviors due to the social structures we live in and the stories we have been told about our place in it. The benefit of knowing the myth you are living is so that you can break out of harmful patterns of behavior and self-delusion and adapt a story for your life that is healthier and more fulfilling.

Matt put his personal myth on paper and shared it with all of us. By doing so he set a precedent for his readers to do the same. As we saw throughout his series, it is possible to be living several different myths at the same time. It’s also important to acknowledge that everyone around us is doing the same thing. We may be the protagonist of our own story, but we are also the supporting cast in the lives of others.

It’s important to note here that while the story of Mage, and that of Kevin Matchstick, is over, Matt’s life isn’t. Without spoilers, while there is a definitive end to the series it is implied that life goes on for our protagonists. Endings are important. It’s part of what is missing from mainstream comics. Great myths have their ending, but as licensed corporate characters none of our modern superheroes get to have that. Every character at Marvel and DC have died at some point, only to be resurrected (an overstatement, but you get my point). Big events happen and then are quickly forgotten. We all say we want continuity, but with an eighty year history and characters that never really age we can never really get that. Not as long as people are making money from the products. We continue on with what Stan Lee referred to as the ‟Illusion of Change.” We can never get true closure.

Endings are difficult in real life. Even when the result is a good thing, such as leaving a bad job for a good one, or moving to a better house, it is still stressful. Change is hard. When it is the end of a relationship or a life it can be emotionally catastrophic. Experiencing these in our fictions provides a catharsis from a safe emotional distance. That is but one of the lessons of empathy we can learn from them.

I watched as Matt, metaphorically through his avatar of Kevin, grew in strength and power and came into his gifts as an artist and storyteller. I saw him when he fully embodied that power, when he served as an inspiration for a generation of other creators and shared his path with them, creating opportunities for others to share their own journeys and find their own power. I saw him age and discover new challenges in life, just as I was doing in my own. I have joked with him that I have always identified with Mirth more than Kevin, and maybe that is because part of my path has become that of the Magician. As a writer and artist and educator I embody more of that myth than I do that of the Warrior or the King. Through Kevin, Matt has shared his family with us and his experiences as a father. That part of the recent series became more profound because it was colored by his now adult son Brennan, who wasn’t born when Mage first appeared.

So it goes.

I recently taught an Intro to the Graphic Novel class at the University of Pittsburgh. I taught some of the canonical works that everyone teaches, like Maus and Persepolis and Fun Home. I did a section on the superhero, of course, with Batman Year One and Watchmen being the primary texts for what I wanted to do. I finished the section with Mage. Hey, it’s my class, I can teach what I want! I may be the only person to have done this, and to be honest, I questioned if this was just my favoritism coming into play and if there was anything of value to discuss in a college level comics class. Looking at the work through this lens I was able to use it as a way to talk about myth and Arthurian legend, Jungian psychology, Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, and the genre of Urban Fantasy. We also were able to touch on a different way to do autobiographical comics, comparing it to some of the other books I mentioned. Where Watchmen and many other books of the time are famously a deconstruction of the tropes of the superhero I argue that Mage (and a few others, like Scott McCloud’s Zot!), are a reconstruction of the trope clothed in a modern setting. However you look at it, the title was a great success in class and gave us a lot of material to discuss. At the end of the semester several students referenced it as their favorite thing we read all semester, and I know I made a couple of avowed fans. The journey Matt documented still speaks to certain people.

So now what? What do I do now that I have seen the end of something I have anticipated for thirty-five years? Is my life that different? Not really. The only thing I no longer have is the anticipation. I trust that Matt will continue to create new material, not for Mage but for other projects. As a fan of his work I still have things to look forward to.

I also now have the entire story of Mage. I have a new anticipation, that of rereading it. I have gone back to the original many times over the years and as I have grown and changed and aged I have discovered new things in the narrative. It speaks to me in different ways at different points in my life. Now that there is more of it I believe this experience will only increase.

Thank you, Matt, for sharing your journey, for inspiring me and many others. Thank you for being a friend in a very meta sort of fashion. Good luck in all of your future endeavors. You have let Mage go, but your well-earned power as a storyteller remains.

Posted today by Matt.

2018 Comics Retailer Survey

Recently I was asked to participate in Publisher’s Weekly’s annual review of the comic book industry. You can read the article by Shannon O’Leary HERE. I was quoted a number of times in the article, but a lot of people, mainly my customers at Phantom of the Attic, have asked about the whole questionnaire so I decided to share it here. This really only of interest to anyone who wants to know more about the state of the comic book retail industry. My caveat here is that my answers reflect my opinions and observations based on 21 years of experience in one specific store. I don’t claim to have all of the answers or to speak for other stores. We all have different experiences.

1) What were your best selling graphic novels in 2017?

Saga continues to be our bestselling series of graphic novels for the third or fourth year now. We’ve had a lot of success with The Wicked and the Divine and East of West because they are books that a couple of our employees push pretty hard. In general the Image TPs top the list. They are self-contained series without crossovers, so people can get into a series and, quite simply, know what to read next. The introductory $9.99 price point doesn’t hurt either. We moved a lot of My Favorite Thing is Monsters. Though there are few specific standout titles in general we do really well with the FirstSecond catalog. World of Edena by Moebius did extremely well for an expensive HC. We’ve had customers regularly asking for Moebius stuff for years so the prospect of his work finally coming back into print here is exciting.

The DC Rebirth TPs increased sales over DC from the past couple of years. Marvel TPs are mostly dead stock for us. I can’t put my finger on why, other than as another indicator of the downturn in interest in Marvel. There are many Marvel trades we don’t order at all. We only move a couple of each of the X-Men TPs when they come out. The Epic Collections do pretty well with an older customer base.

Wizard World Pittsburgh: Local Comics Panel

This past weekend I was privileged to participate in two different panels at the first Wizard World comics con held in Pittsburgh.

One was listed in the program as follows:

1940: WORLD WAR II AND COMICS: THE JOKER, ROBIN, THE FLASH, CAPTAIN AMERICA, CAPTAIN MARVEL, AND THE SPIRIT! With FINGEROTH, WISE, HASTINGS, GAVALIER & MAVERICK


75 years ago, in 1940, as the Nazi conquest of Europe continued and the Battle of Britain raged, the United States watched from the sidelines while instituting the first peacetime draft. At the same time, the world of comics was experiencing an incredible sustained period of invention, as The Joker, Robin, Green Lantern, the Flash, Hawkman, the Spirit, Catwoman, and Captains America and Marvel all debuted! (Not to mention the debuts of pop culture icons Bugs Bunny, and Brenda Starr, and classic movies Fantasia and The Great Dictator!) Showing and discussing historical and cultural factors that made that year so important is a panel including moderator Danny Fingeroth (Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics and the Creation of the Superhero) as well as an array of history and pop culture experts including Wayne Wise (Chatham University), Waller Hastings (West Liberty University), Chris Gavlier (Washington & Lee University) and Chris Maverick (Duquesne University of Pennsylvania).

Given the topic I was surprised at how well attended this panel was. The conversation went really well. I was pleased to join these other academic professionals.

The other panel was about the Independent Comic Book Scene in Pittsburgh. The panel was moderated by Dan Greenwald from the Comic Book Pitt Podcast. I was joined by Scott Hedlund, Jim Rugg, and Marcel Walker.

You can watch it here.

An Evening With Neal Adams

This is an overdue story, but I've been telling it again recently, so I thought it was time to put it in writing.

Last April 25, legendary comics artist Neal Adams made an in-store appearance at my place of employment, Phantom of the Attic Comics in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh.

Neal with most of the staff of Phantom of the Attic Comics.
Me, Dave, Neal, Jeff (the owner), and Jim

Neal Adams is easily on the top ten list of most influential comics creators ever. I don't have time or room here to address everything he has had a hand in creating. He helped to revitalize Batman in the early 70s, establishing a more realistic and darker take on the character than was usual at that time, laying the groundwork for the version everyone is familiar with today. Along with writer Denny O'Neil he was responsible for a series of stories featuring Green Lantern and Green Arrow that brought a social relevance to comics that had never been seen before. He established a tradition of heroic but realistic anatomy, and realism in general, that was revolutionary when he first began.

I could go on and on, detailing all of this, but that isn't what this is about. Go look him up. There's a lot to learn.

For me personally, Neal Adams was one of the first artists whose name and style I was able to identify when I was a young comics reader. One of the first fan purchases I made, something comic book related that wasn't a comic, was a collection of Adams art called The Neal Adams Index. I mailed away from an ad in the back of a comic. It was magazine format and had a checklist of his work, and a lot of unseen black and white artwork. Because I was a kid I colored in some of the pages with magic markers.

Adams was scheduled to appear at Steel City Con. Apparently, when he travels, he likes to schedule additional appearances at other, local comics shops. We were recommended to him and after some phone tag the signing was set up for Thursday evening at the store.

In all of my years of going to comics conventions I had never met him before, so when I was asked by Jeff (my boss), to go pick Neal up at the airport I had a little fanboy moment. Now, I should say here that I have met a lot of comic book professionals. I've interviewed Stan Lee. I've had beers with Frank Miller. I have postcards of encouragement from Scott McCloud. I used to hang out some with Steve Bissette and John Totleben (two-thirds of the Swamp Thing team, along with Alan Moore, who are responsible for the creation of John Constantine). So, I'm not a rookie. Truth be told, it's been a long time since I've really been a big fan of Neal Adams. I still love his earlier work and give total mad props to his place in history. But I don't get all excited over any new projects by him.

But, this felt a little full circle for me. He was the first comics artist I was genuinely a fan of.

So, I drove out to the Pittsburgh Airport to pick up Neal and his wife Marilyn. I was determined not to be a complete fanboy goober immediately. I think I was pretty successful in that. I met them and shook hands. They were friendly and outgoing. On the way back to the city we talked about where they could grab a bite before the signing. Neal asked questions about Pittsburgh. The conversation was pleasant and lively.

The store filled quickly. To say Neal was outgoing is an understatement. He held court. He's a showman. A carnival barker. A salesman. He told many stories about his days in the industry, filled with personal anecdotes about himself and other professionals. While he was friendly and made time for everyone who showed up (and stayed well past the allotted time with no complaint), I had the distinct impression that his bombastic persona was off-putting to some people. In the days after the signing I had several people say they thought he was arrogant.

And he is. The thing is, he's earned it.

There is anecdote from that night that sums this up for me. Among the many art prints he was selling was one that featured the cover of Green Lantern #85 from 1971. Here's a picture of it.

Here's the link to the Wiki page about this issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowbirds_Don't_Fly

A young woman was looking at it closely and Neal said to her, fairly loudly and proudly, “That cover completely changed the history of comics!” I was at the store counter when he said that and my first thought was, “Wow! What an arrogant thing to say.” My second thought was, “He's completely right. I said the exact same thing about this cover to my comics class just a couple of weeks ago.”

So, is it really arrogance when the facts agree with you? Maybe we're just not used to hearing such a definitive proclamation of achievement, so it sounds like arrogance. We're always expected to be humble with what we accomplish, sometimes to the extent that we all downplay things we rightfully should be proud of. History has borne out his claim. Why shouldn't he be proud of it?

"I am the greatest!" Muhammad Ali would proclaim to anyone. Neal Adams is the Muhammad Ali of comics.

Neal also had a fairly long story about being the first artist to draw male nipples in comics, so there's also that.

While he was at the store I had him sign my copy of The Neal Adams Index and told him my story of how he was the first artist I was a fan of. When the signing was over I drove him to his hotel in Monroeville. He talked pretty non-stop the whole way out there. I was happy to listen. He's comic book royalty. He's earned it.

Favorite Comics Part Five: Mage: The Hero Discovered

As I said in some detail recently, I discovered the work of comics creator Matt Wagner through the black and white issues of Grendel. Because I was so enamored of it I picked up the first issue of his next series, Mage: The Hero Discovered without hesitation, even though it looked like a very different kind of project. In the course of my life in comics there have been very few that rank as highly in terms of ongoing influence, or simple enjoyment. Last year, when I had the opportunity to choose the graphic novels I wanted to write about for Salem Press's CriticalSurvey of Graphic Novels, Mage was my first choice. I was thrilled to get that specific assignment. The article is a more academic approach to the topic than I plan on going into here, but if you want to read it go to http://salempress.com/Store/pdfs/Mage.pdf. All of the details of the story and character are covered there.

So, what is it about this series, among all the multitude of comics that I have read, that struck such a chord with me, and continues to do so? Good question, with a lot of answers (or quasi-answers, anyway).

Matt Wagner and I are contemporaries, in terms of age (he's like three or four months younger than I am, if memory serves), if not career. We grew up, obviously reading a lot of the same comics and books and loving a lot of the same influences. I say obviously simply because of the ideas that show up repeatedly in his work.

Let me try to be more specific about something that is probably too big to be specific about. As I've said repeatedly, I learned to read from comic books. There was Archie, and Dennis the Menace, and other “kid-friendly” funny books, but there was a tremendous amount of superheroes as well. This interest in heroic fiction has been a through-line in my reading interests and in what I create ever since. I “graduated” from comics to books pretty quickly. The Howard Pyle version of Robin Hood was one of the first real novels I ever read (third grade, if I'm not mistaken). I can't tell you how much I was into this when I was eight years old. The sense of adventure, the fun, the action, all of it added up to enthrall my imagination. I think it's safe to say that this experience was instrumental in Hawkeye, the archer from the Avengers, being my favorite superhero (and why Hawkeye instead of Green Arrow, the more obvious Robin Hood archetype, is another blog).

I also remember reading tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I also read stories from mythology. I read a lot of historical fiction aimed at kids. And I read Comics. All of these ingredients went into the gumbo of my imagination, so it's evident to me why I have always seen them as connected. Superheroes have always been, to me at least, the 20^th century iteration of myth and legend, of heroic fiction.

So let's jump to the early 80's. I saw John Boorman's Excalibur in the theater in 1981. The imagery completely blew me away and reignited my interest in Arthurian fiction. At this time I was pretty immersed in fantasy fiction anyway, thanks primarily to Lord of the Rings. Even then I knew that some changes had been made to the Arthurian mythos, at least the one I was familiar with. In the film it is Percival who is with Arthur at his death, and who throws Excalibur back into the lake from which it came. While I loved the movie, this confused me, simply because in all of the stories I had read it had been Sir Bedivere in this role (read my ebook Bedivere for my take on the legend). I wasn't as aware then as I am now of how different movie adaptations are from their source material (and at times have to be). I also wasn't as aware of the wealth of Arthurian fiction available. In my mind there was only one story. I had no idea of how the King Arthur tales grew over centuries and had been written by many, many hands, each of which reflected the times they were written in. There is no one core King Arthur story, only a collection of different writings, all of which deal with the same characters, tropes and archetypes. The enduring longevity of these stories, I believe, is because the core issues they deal with remain core issues for people no matter where or when they are from. The eternal issues of duty versus personal interest, what it means to love, the quest for deeper meaning still ring true for people.

Of course, as the world moves on the stories need to grow in ways that still speak to the current world. All enduring myths go through this process (see the book Transformations of Myth Through Time for more on this).

The first comic book series that really opened my eyes to this idea was Camelot 3000 by Mike Barr and Brian Bolland, published by DC as a 12-issue maxi-series. In retrospect this series has a number of problems in terms of storytelling and themes, but at the time I really loved it, and it still ranks pretty highly in my echelon of comics, more for nostalgia of what it meant to me then, in full acknowledgement of its faults. In the big picture, Camelot 3000 was more important to me in firming up my interest in the Arthurian myths than in influencing me in comics. This story showed me how you could take the characters and themes and transplant them to a new setting and make them work. It also introduced me to the story of Tristan and Isolde. While I had heard the name Sir Tristan in conjunction with King Arthur, he was not one of the knights who stood out to me as having his own story. The subplot of Tristan/Amber March was my favorite part of Camelot 3000, and led me to researching the core story, and reading many more variations on it over the years. The romance of Tristan and Isolde has become my favorite of all the Arthurian tales. It resonates with some real-life aspects of my life and speaks to my sense of love and tragedy and sacrifice in ways that are probably too psychologically telling.

But, as much as I liked it, Camelot 3000 was primarily a retelling/rehash of the original stories that brought very little new, other than green-skinned aliens and transgender characters, to the tales.

Then I read Mage. The Arthurian connection was not made manifest in this series immediately, and though hints were sprinkled throughout the narrative, it was only revealed near the very end of the story. When the series began it was more of a tribute to classic superhero origins. Kevin Matchstick, who wears a t-shirt with a Captain Marvel lightning bolt symbol on it, gains superpowers thanks to an encounter with a magician, just like Captain Marvel. It was only later that the magician, Mirth, was revealed to be an incarnation of Merlin. He certainly didn't look like any standard version of Merlin (like the one in Camelot 3000 did).

Merlin by John Buscema,
from a B&W Marvel Magazine

Merlin, from John Boorman's Excalibur,
as portrayed by Nicol Williamson

The wizard SHAZAM looked
more like Merlin than Mirth.

Over the course of the series we saw the tropes of the superhero genre skillfully interwoven with classic Arthurian memes, creating, as a result, something new. This series accomplished what I had always believed... comics as modern myth.

There were certainly no shortage of precedents for mythic characters in comics. But for the most part, prior to this, the mythic characters succumbed to the tropes of superheroes more than the other way around. Thor, for all of the Asgardian trappings, was a Marvel superhero far more than he was ever really a god. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of the old Thor comics. But at Marvel, the character was stripped of much of his truly mythic resonance in favor of tights and fights. He was an old god in a new milieu, but, for me at least, he never spoke to my personal experience. The same was true for most of the “gods” that appeared as comic book characters (that includes Kirby's New Gods, an overt attempt to create a modern pantheon).

Mage spoke to something more personal. It wasn't a retelling of the Arthurian stories. It was a recognition of mythic patterns in modern life. The fact that the way Kevin Matchstick looked was based on Wagner said that the things that happened in the story were, in some way, fictionalized autobiography. It said that Myth wasn't just a collection of musty old tales from the past that had no relevance to modern life, but that it was something that was still alive, and that with open eyes, we could see these patterns in our own lives.

That idea alone brings a little bit of magic to the mundane (and isn't that what I was looking for in my interest in comics and speculative fiction anyway?).

Not long after that I was introduced to the ideas of psychologist Carl Jung ( I was a Psychology major, after all). The first book of his I read was Man and His Symbols (which is probably the best place for the newcomer to his work to start), and doggone if a lot of these ideas about the nature of myth weren't present in his work as well, long pre-dating either me or Matt Wagner. From Jung I went to the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell. I first heard of him from his famous series of interviews with Bill Moyers that appeared on PBS around that time. These were collected in print form as the book The Power of Myth. There have been very few books in my life that have been more influential. There are lots of books (many by Campbell), that cover the topics in far more exhaustive and academic detail. But, for me, this served to give me a specific framework of thought for a worldview I had always intuited but didn't have the words for. It's still pretty much my default framework for a lot of what I do.

The key idea I took from all of this is what I said in my article about Mage:

“Myth is not just a story, but a roadmap; the goal of one’s life journey is to discover the myth one is living. By being aware of these themes, readers can recognize and discover the hero within any life, including their own. Matchstick does not simply accept a destiny—he agrees to take an active role in creating it.”

And that's what Myth is to me. Since then I have read a bunch of psychology books that deal with this theme. But Matt Wagner was doing it in fiction, in a comic book, before I ever saw any of this. He was taking themes of mythology and folktale and weaving them into his personal life in a way that created art.

There are a lot of other aspects of Mage I could talk about. While writing the Salem Press article I thought of a number of things that deserve looking into in greater detail. But, this has gone on long enough, and those are probably bigger articles (or maybe papers).