My love affair with the Written Word began before I could read. My mother sang and read to my sisters and me, from as long back as I can remember. My father was an information junkie. He was always on the prowl for information that he did not know. I’ve inherited the best of both. Like my mom, I love Literature. Tell me a story. Like my dad, I love data. I Want to Know.
As a youngster, one of my earliest exposures to Storytelling was my first Comicbook, “Marvel Collectors Item Classics #13”, circa 1968. I spent my entire twenty-five cent allowance on this magazine, and after reading it, that I knew that I was a writer. I wanted to tell these kinds of stories.
And I did. I wrote dozens of fanfics. I made up my own characters. Sure, they were either my takes on existing characters, or ridiculously overpowered, but I was writing superheroes. In my Seventh Grade Creative Writing course, one of the assignments was writing a Science Fiction story. I wrote a “Legion of Superheroes” yarn.
From Third Grade on, I was voracious. The Reading textbooks we were issued were tomes of roughly two hundred pages. The Lessons were contained in the first seventy-five. That’s where all of the Vocabulary Words and all that we were supposed to learn were contained. But , behind the assigned reading was a treasure trove. Science Fiction, Adventure, Mystery, Fun. To this day, I expect that I’m the only one who read the Reader cover-to-cover.
A major turning point in my literary journey, was Goodwin and Simonson’s “Manhunter”. Forget the Batman lead story in Detective Comics, Paul Kirk was the reason to buy this book. At the same time, Atlas Comics were hitting the scene. My horizons expanded. Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League, Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-man…on and on. My desire to know more lead me further and further down the rabbit hole.
Then, in 1975, Joe Sarno opened The Nostalgia Shop on Lawrence Avenue, in Chicago, and I discovered Back Issues. No slabs, no bags, no boards, just tables of Long Boxes, and the aroma of Aging Newsprint. I immersed myself in the genre. I learned the history and lore of comics. I learned of the Great Ones. I may not have read all of their work, but I knew who they were. And then, the dam broke.
I discovered the Pulps and Men’s Adventure. Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Avenger, Mack Bolan. The Elegant Trash; John Carter, Carson of Venus, Pellucidar. The classics and giants of Science Fiction; Wells, Verne, Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury, And my personal favorite, Heinlein. Ever onward; Steinbeck, Twain, Dickens, Shakespeare. On and on. Literary Geniuses whose work I could never hope to touch in my wildest aspirations.
Yet, here I am, in my own small way, impacting the world. In 1992, I sold my first story to Now Comics. It was printed in their “Twilight Zone Annual #1” in 1993. Since that time, I’ve considered myself a Professional Writer…if not a particularly successful one. In the intervening thirty years (rounding up), I’ve had some credits; My work with Big Bang Comics, my authorship of “Vendetta”, for Hanson Press, and my near-grasp of the Brass Ring with the “Do-it-Yourself Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse”, also for Hanson Press.
By any practical metric, I’m a failure as a writer. Hell, I make my living delivering mail. Yet, here I am, still writing. I can’t stop. As long as I have stories to tell, or thoughts to share, I’ll keep transcribing them. A writer isn’t just what I do, it’s who I am. I stand upon the shoulders of giants. The genius of men whose work only highlights the insignificance of my own, inspires me to keep striving. Thanks, fellows.