After getting hooked on comics, discovering comic book stores, and shoplifting when my need outgrew my means, I rode out 1988 by serving my punishment. Even though my modest collection was returned to me, I wasn’t exactly encouraged to buy more. I lived with my dad and grandma in Little Havana, Miami, and I managed to sneakily buy a copy here and there from the 7-11 right around the corner.
Luckily, they carried my top 3 titles, but it’s where I also discovered that my favorite artist, John Byrne, drew X-men before his run on Superman… and it was great! This was an X-Men comic I can get behind. Unfortunately, Classic X-Men #33 was the only issue I saw for a long while.
Since I wasn’t buying much, I was also trading a few comics with schoolmates. I have no idea how a little kid got that Marvel Collector’s Item (which broadened my Kirby & Ditko palette) but that thing was a legitimate relic. I also got some Todd McFarlane comics. I never saw these on the newsstand, so it was a pretty sweet score.
My mom moved to Texas with my stepdad the previous year, but they returned to Florida in the spring of ’89. They got an apartment in a nicer part of Miami, with a nicer 7-11 a block away. I wasn’t technically supposed to be buying any more comics at this household either, but my mom made an exception for my birthday. She took me back to A&M Comics, the shop I originally stole from, and had me pick out the one comic I always talked about getting.
That thing was twelve bucks. Twelve! That’s a lot for a recent-ish back issue even by today’s standards. I had saved up a little bit of money, but if it wasn’t for me cashing in my birthday chips to help me cover the rest, I wouldn’t have been able to get Justice League #1.
It was so worth it. I savored every panel.
And yes, it was very weird and awkward going back to the scene of the crime. They most certainly remembered me.
I kept making comics on folded sheets of typing paper. These were coverless items for some reason. It was the Justice League versus a demonic Shade the Changing Man. 22 story pages each. I only colored the splash on the first issue, and I stopped drawing a third of the way into the second issue.
Starlin-inspired silent close-ups montage.
Maybe I was burnt out on doing it all myself? I wanted all my friends to make comics with me, so I went ahead and listed them all in the credits of my next comic. (Where JL’s Booster Goold is punching out my Punisher rip-off character called Killer.) That indicia, too… man, I wanted to make a comic book so bad.
See that Editor’s Note up there? Jesuz Cruz didn’t do that! I don’t think he even knew he was a part of this scheme of mine. Nobody did. I barreled through solo, but I only got a handful of sheets completed.
Check out this Booster Gold monologue page, full of swipes. First panel is from a Ross Andru Blue Beetle. Panel 7 is a from a Ty Templeton JLI fill-in.
I created a Batman rip-off character called Nightdevil. Here’s a single sheet of notebook paper with a scene heavily influenced by Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. (I only had the third issue at this point.) Byrne-inspired info dump at the bottom of the first page.
MAY: That nice 7-11 by my mom’s was giving up the goods. I was intrigued by the “Atlantis Attacks” event; seeing a few issues at once made it look like a thing that was happening now. Made me try the X-Men again. Oh, and that Spidey was my first Rob Liefeld comic. Couldn’t pass a Byrne cover anyway.
It was peak Batmania, too. Tim Burton’s Batman film was coming out that summer. I had never felt that level of anticipation for a movie before or since. It was a big deal.
I was really into Batman shirts. Here’s a previous, brief post about it.
My step-dad got me a white Bat-themed shirt from a university I can’t remember to save my life. (See my rough facsimile from memory.) It was a good beach shirt, but my mom thought it’d be a nice gesture if I wore it to the Batman showing we were all going to.
I had my own Batman Shirt Plan in mind, but I gave in and wore Bat-Dawg and was jealous of all the other kids with “real” Batman shirts waiting in line at the theatre on U.S.1. I felt like I stood out. I didn’t like standing out.
I would kill for that Bat-Dawg shirt now.
The movie was excellent.
Back to comics.
There was a week-long lag time in release dates between comics stores and newsstands — I don’t think it was a whole month at this point — but I do associate these comics with these months. This isn’t a strict record, but I was definitely going hog wild with whatever that nice 7-11 had in stock.
JUNE: What If… was a fun staple I always looked forward to. Batman Year 3 was revving up. Pictured below is last issue of Suicide Squad that I bought for a very long time. I loved it, too! I just never saw it, and by the time I got into back issues, SS was no longer an ongoing concern.
JULY: Norm Breyfolge Bat-stuff! What If... body counts! (My first Jim Valentino.) Dark doppelgängers!
AUGUST: More Bat-stuff! (First Sam Kieth.) What If... body count rising! Tried X-Men yet again! (First Marc Silvestri.)
These weekly acquisitions piled up over at my mom’s place, away from my dad’s stricter eye. I started saving up my allowance money. I wanted more comics. I couldn’t get enough of them.
I wanted rows of comics, but I barely had enough to fill a longbox. My desperate junkie-mind reasoned that I would draw them instead and fill those boxes with my own comics. Because goddammit, those boxes had to be filled anyhow.
I decided to start with the covers, and that I would concentrate on one series at a time. So I went to my oldest character: Death Man.
I talked about these Death Man covers before. I was into Byrne’s style, but I was really into the sheer amount of comics he produced. It was impressive and inspiring.
I never got past the covers, though.
Back to School. 5th Grade.
SEPTEMBER: My Daredevil and JLA books (first Adam Hughes) were usually stocked at the 7-11, so I was fortunate in that regard. What If… #7 blew my mind; it was my 2nd Liefeld comic. And since I was already a mark for crossovers, I picked up every “Act of Vengeance” crossover I found. (First Walt Simonson and Dwayne McDuffie.)
OCTOBER: Breyfolge & Byrne continue to draw me in. First Quasar. First Klaus Janson on that Punisher Magazine! Though I recognized the name from DKR, this was the first time I saw his full-on art. He was also inking Byrne on that Wolverine run, so I got to see what an inker brings to the table. I became an instant fan of Janson’s.
Oh, yeah… Halloween…
Back to comics.
NOVEMBER: I can safely say that it was Byrne who got me to try out Marvel comics in earnest. I kept seeing his art in all over the place, and it made the Marvel Universe seem like a cohesive, appealing place. She-Hulk, Avengers West Coast, Wolverine, What The–?!… I seamlessly followed him, and I’m still very fond of his output during this time. Oh, hey, look — my first Jim Lee!
DECEMBER: “Acts of Vengeance” wraps up. Killer issue of Captain America. Killer issue of Uncanny X-Men. Killer issue of Fantastic Four.
Disinterested in doing only covers for comics that will never exist, I was determined to finish at least one full comic before the year was over. Enter: Nightdevil #1.
Classic First Issue! I don’t know what compelled me, but I used the same panel formation from Liefeld’s What If… #7 for this comic.
Looking back, the drawings were getting a little more solid at that point. By reading so many comics, I was absorbing the rhythm of storytelling through panels. I was relying less on swiping and mostly just going for it. Using that Liefeld grid probably helped anchor me in some way, giving me a type of parameter to work within.
Somehow, my local 7-11 would always order both “newsstand edition” comics (cheaper paper, lower price point) and “deluxe edition” comics (nicer paper, more expensive). I though “deluxe” comics were exclusively for comic shops. Not that I knew that back then, but I did notice the difference. I really liked the “deluxe” quality, especially on titles like Wolverine, which also had pin-ups as back covers. Hence my own back-cover for Nightdevil #1:
Christmas came and I received the one thing you can easily make a pyramid out of.
It meant the world to me.
I had been saving up my money on the side, too, because there were three expensive collections that I wanted more than anything. So I saved up around sixty-four bucks in my homemade comic-themed piggy bank and come X-Mas time, I spent it on those three expensive collections.
I even had some money left over. Not that I used it. These were all the comics I needed.
1989 was a good year.
Next: The fever gets worse, I try to draw it away, 1990.