I’ve been a comics reader my entire life. Ever since I was very little, there were comics in my house…which is a bit strange, because neither of my parents read comics and my older brother had no interest, either. I think that early collection came from garage sales—my mom and a neighbor frequented them often, and I’m pretty certain they’d snag cheap, beaten-up issues to give to the kids on my block. My earliest issues—mainly Detective Comics—were all published well before I was born. Although I do remember the first comic I ever bought of a spinner rack: It was a Web of Spider-Man with Hobgoblin on the cover. I was maybe seven years old at the time.
Anyway, comics have always played a vital role of my life—I mean, it’s why I write them (in addition to novels). But there was a time when, I admit, my love affair with comic books was on the wane. There’s are a lot of contributing factors as to why. I was in college, so I was broke; and, at the same time, I was being forcefully shoved into pursuing more “serious” literary pursuits (thanks, perfessors!). But also… I was fatigued. I’d been reading comics my entire life, from Marvel to DC to Image to Malibu and back again; I’d read a lot of comics. Had I read it all? Hardly. Had I read enough? It felt like it, at the time.