My Life In Comics - So Far…
In which I look back at the impact of four color sequential art, receive some nice words, and get nostalgic about a 55-year-old purchase.
A post on BluSky earlier this week about when people “started in comics” got me thinking about my history with the medium.
I grew up with comics in the house so I’ve always read them. (Except for a few years as a teenager - but I still drew superheroes on the covers of my school books).
At college in my early 20s, I started reading comics regularly again (Thanks to Gillian, and the March 1982 issue of The Spectacular Spider-Man) and began pitching story ideas - which were rightly rejected.
In 1992 I got online for the first time and started to hang out at the Compuserve Comics & Animation Forum - many of the people I met there are still friends.
My first paid comics journalism article was published in Comics World magazine in 1993. I’m still pitching and writing comics-related articles and essays. Was chatting with an editor this week about a potential series of comics-related articles.
In 1993 we started a comics retail mail order business, Forest Comics. A business that still periodically gets resurrected on eBay.
Around the same time we wrote and produced our in-house comics ‘zine, FCQ, which included my own comics strip, Free Earth Warriors.
We also took over running the monthly Bristol Comic Mart for a while.
Around this time we started going to comics conventions (and still do - we will be at the Baltimore Comic-Con this Sunday)
In 1995 I launched the Gotham Gazette website - a monthly online Batman magazine, and its associated Gotham Weekly News newsletter - which ran until 2006
In 1999 I joined the Comicopia APA - magazine crew and stayed a part of the team for 10 years, honing my writing skills along the way.
The Batman Collectors Guide, my first non-fiction comics-related book, hit the shelves in 1999 and amazingly still sells a few copies every quarter. Now I have four comics-history-related books published.
And at last in 2009, I landed my first pro comics writing gig with the God Shop manga for Tokyopop. I’m not doing as much comics writing work as I’d like these days (The last one was the NASA issue of Science Squad ), but I’m still out there pitching ideas.
Over the years I’ve met some amazing creative people, made close life-long friends, and got to travel to some fascinating places.
Comics has been good to me.
Alan
Other Stuff
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Brabazon Bits
A couple of nice surprises with the Brabazon book this week:
One of the Brabazon book’s early readers sent me a copy of his personal archive of Brabazon-related photos - with over 900 images in it. Very cool. I’m going to have fun digging through those.
And another of the industry expert early readers dropped me a note with the following,
Your book is a real “tour de force”, and so much more than just a Brabazon book.
Now that made my week.
Pages and Screens
Books Read in 2024 - “In Turbulent Skies” by Peter Reese
As the subtitle suggests this volume aims to give an overview of the British aviation industry in the 30 years following the Second World War.
It is bookended by the impacts of two government committees- The 1943 Brabazon Committee’s attempts to outline what turned out to be an over-optimistic future for British aviation, and the 1967 Plowden Committee’s declaration that Britain no longer needed an independent aviation industry.
It’s therefore no surprise that Reese’s central thesis is that the British aviation industry was destroyed by meddling politicians who never even bothered to learn how aircraft were actually designed and made.
At times the politics overwhelms the stories of the aircraft and the people who built them resulting in some projects worthy of deeper study only getting passing mentions.
But when he does turn the spotlight on a given subject, such as the focused chapters on the ill -fated Comet airliner; the under-appreciated Harrier jump-jet; and the cancelled technologically advanced TSR-2 military jet, the depth of Reese’s research is impressive and insightful.
Our online bookstore at Bookshop.org is fully up to date with the books read so far in 2024, so you can pick up copies of any that interest you, while also helping out local independent bookstores .
Weekly Web Round-Up
Batman On The Cover - The journey through Batman’s comics publishing history continues over the week as we continue our look at June 1969 with issues published in Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK.
While Superman rather than Bats takes the cover spotlight on the first issue of SuperDC, it was a personal milestone comic for me. For this British reprint series was the first superhero comic I bought with my own money at age 8 from the rack at my local newsagents. I still have vivid memories of wearing the wristwatch calendar free-gift that came with it. Although my original copy is long gone I now have a replacement in my collection - and every time I see that cover it makes me smile. Who could have foreseen what that single shilling purchase would bring with it?
Where on the Web is Alan?
You can now find links to all the places you can find me online, websites, newsletters, social media, and more in a single LINKS page on my personal website.
As always, thanks for joining me this week. If you know someone else who might enjoy the contents of this week’s newsletter, or just my weekly ramblings in general - please feel free to share by clicking the button below.
See you next time
Alan J. Porter
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