By Shaenon K. Garrity
Our columnists are independent writers who choose subjects and write without editorial input from comiXology. The opinions expressed are the columnist's, and do not represent the opinion of comiXology.
I'm moving this weekend, which means I've spent the past month scouring the comics out of every corner of my apartment. When I packed all my work manga (that is, the very important manga I need for my very important work, not to be confused with the leisure-reading manga, bathroom manga or kitchen manga), I found a Jax Epoch sticker affixed to the back of the bookshelf. Jax Epoch! Heroine of
Quicken Forbidden, by Dave Roman and John Green, first published in 1997! How could I have forgotten?
Quicken Forbidden came on the tail end of the 1980s/1990s black-and-white publishing boom, a little too late to ride the direct-market tiger, a little too early to make a splash on the Web. (There were a handful of webcomics in 1997, but these were the earliest of early adopters:
Slow Wave,
Argon Zark, Cat Garza's first online comics.
Sluggy Freelance and
User Friendly came along in late 1997,
PvP and
Penny Arcade a year later.) It managed thirteen issues before vanishing into the ether, not an uncommon fate at the time. The story of a teenage girl who finds a portal into alternate fantasy worlds and disrupts the multiverse by bringing things back with her,
Quicken Forbidden wasn't quite remarkable enough to survive the comics crash of the late '90s; besides the nerdy female protagonist, which was enough of a hook to grab me, it wasn't radically different from many other fantasy comics of the day.
But Dave Roman stuck around. In the 13 years after
Quicken Forbidden, Roman wrote and drew webcomics and graphic novels. He won a Harvey and an Ignatz Award. He served, alongside Chris Duffy, as comics editor at the late, lamented
Nickelodeon magazine, making him one of the most important editors in the indie comics world;
Nickelodeon had a great page rate and a roster of cartoonists that included Craig Thompson, Richard Sala, James Kolchalka, Kim Dietch, Bobby London, Sam Henderson, Ellen Forney, Nick Bertozzi, Art Spiegelman, Gahan Wilson, and many, many other alt-comics superstars. Roman's own comic,
Agnes Quill, was optioned by Paramount Pictures. And he married
Smile creator and
Baby-Sitters' Club artist Raina Telegemeier, with whom he co-wrote an
X-Men miniseries.
He's kept busy.
These are the people who make me happy about comics. Not the
enfants terrible who burst out of the woodwork with spectacular, fully-formed Great American Graphic Novels, although they're fun too. The creators who keep plugging away, getting better, trying new things, always loving comics. Admittedly, I like these guys because I'm one of them. But I love watching cartoonists develop.
Now that I've been deep into comics for about a decade, I get to see some of the promising new cartoonists from my early days on the convention circuit turn into the experienced creators of today. I just dug my box of minicomics out of the back of my closet, and it's awesome! Here's an early
Acme Novelty Library, whatever. Here's Jesse Reklaw's old
Concave Up comics; his book
The Night of Your Life came out from Dark Horse the year before last. Here's Erika Moen's
I Like Girls. Heh. She just finished her webcomic
DAR. Here's
The Date, a Jason Shiga mini from over ten years ago. Since then, Shiga's won multiple Eisners and Ignatzes and been profiled in
Time. His choose-your-own-adventure masterpiece
Meanwhile is coming out next month from one of those real-book publishers.
I've got a minicomic Drew Weing did as a project for the Savannah College of Art and Design, long before he started his webcomics
Pup and
Set to Sea—and, geez,
Pup feels like a million years ago now. I've got an art-school mini from Spike, too, predating
Templar, Arizona. And the
Understanding Minicomics minicomic, with the cruel parodies of Scott McCloud and James Kochalka! And, oh, Jesse Hamm's
Redheads of Cartoon Land! Has anyone else ever done a pinup of Maiden CurlyCrown from the short-lived
Lady Lovely Locks cartoon? I say thee nay!
Then there are the cartoonists who have dropped off the radar, maybe dropped out of comics for good. Why must some people develop common sense? I demand more Tatiana Gill, dammit.
There's a
Quicken Forbidden minicomic in the box, too. On the back cover is a pinup by one Gerard Way, Dave Roman's classmate at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. When that minicomic was published in 1999, Way had just graduated from SVA. Two years later, he was working at a comic-book store when the September 11 attacks inspired him to "get out of the basement" and form the band My Chemical Romance. In time, he came back to comics, writing
The Umbrella Academy for Dark Horse in 2007. Now that's a guy who's had a busy ten years.
I've been in this apartment for almost ten years now. The comics have been piling up around me all this time. They will keep getting better, three steps forward, two steps back, and one of these days each of us will look back and think it was just about worthwhile. Until then, I've got packing to do.
Shaenon K. Garrity is a manga editor at Viz Media and is best known for her webcomics Narbonic and Skin Horse.
All the Comics in the World is © Shaenon K. Garrity, 2010
