DC New 52 Review: Animal Man #1

I'll admit to not being very familiar with Animal Man. I've read some, but not all, of the Grant Morrison trades (of course, in this New 52 reboot, that shouldn't matter. You should be able to come in cold to any one of DC's new #1s and understand them), and while I enjoyed them, the character never stuck with me. It was Morrison's treatment of Animal Man that I found most interesting. In truth, I tend not to follow characters so much as creators. Animal Man himself has simply never been compelling enough for me to collect his title(s). He's a guy who can channel and harness the physical abilities of animals, right? OK, now tell me an interesting story about him. Make me care.

In a single issue, writer Jeff Lemire did just that.

Animal Man #1 opens with a brief "interview" between Lemire and his titular character, ostensibly as a way to introduce Animal Man's place in the DC New 52 status quo. Buddy Baker is a former Hollywood stuntman who, for the last three years DCST (DC Standard Time), has been moonlighting as the superhero, Animal Man. His bond with the animal kingdom, however, has opened his eyes to the way animals have been treated by mankind. Because of this insight, Baker has taken a step back from superheroics and instead has been focusing his energies on being an animal rights activist. He is also a family man, married for 10 years with two young children. How does a superhero juggle all these responsibilities? Work, family, superpowers. It's a great concept for someone of Lemire's talents and aesthetic to play around with.

I've read some of Lemire's Essex County Trilogy stories, as well as his post-apocalyptic Vertigo series, Sweet Tooth, which feels like an indie hipster take on the genre, not that there's anything wrong with that. Lemire, whose work is sometimes quirky and oftentimes dark and angsty, puts a unique, humanist spin on his otherwise fantastical stories, and when I read that he was going to be writing the new Animal Man series, I became curious. What would he do with a superhero character set in this newly rebooted DC Universe? (Yes, I know Lemire wrote some "Brightest Day" and "Flashpoint" stories, but I couldn't bring myself to care about any of that stuff, the lone exception being 100 Bullets co-creators' Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso's brilliant Batman: Knight of Vengeance, which I simply thought of as an old-school "Elseworlds" story. But I digress.)

The first half of Animal Man #1 is for the most part straightforward superheroing, albeit well-done superheroing. There are some nice scenes between Buddy and his family (his daughter wants a puppy and his wife wants him to return to being a superhero because "[he] just seemed happier then." Then Buddy's son rushes in and tells his father about a hostage situation at a local hospital and we're off!

Animal Man of course averts disaster at the hospital (which is a melancholy, almost poignant sequence that really illustrates why Lemire is a great fit for this book) and then things start to get ... weird. But in a good way.

Buddy returns home from the hospital and, after nabbing "the napping ability of a cat," quickly falls asleep. We're then treated to a beautifully-illustrated, mostly black-and-white dream sequence, in which Buddy is confronted by creepy, nightmarish visions of his son and daughter, and of three "bad things that dress as hunters," twisted, mutated creatures that would appear right at home in an H.R. Giger exhibit. I was already hooked on this book after the hospital scene, but the dream and the chilling last page cliffhanger are what reeled me in. The last few pages are great setup for the larger, overarching story that Lemire is telling and he has me for the long haul. As long as Lemire's writing this book, I'm reading it.

Accompanying Lemire on this journey is artist Travel Foreman, whose work has always been hit-or-miss with me. His art always either seems to be too sketchy, too heavily inked, too blotchy. His pacing is solid and the action sequences flow well, but I'm not entirely sold on him just yet. He draws animals really nicely, though, which is a definite plus in a book called Animal Man. But it's telling, I think, that the surreal black-and-white dream sequence is the best-looking part of the book.

That being said, one week into DC's New 52 initiative, Animal Man is hands down the best title so far. It has humor, heart (almost literally) and humanity, and a big dose of creepiness. It's like Vertigo invaded the DCU, and, I hasten to add, the DCU is better for it.

Review: Pigs #1

Co-written by former Marvel editor Nate Cosby and British expat (and Pittsburgh Steelers fan - w00t!) Ben McCool, Pigs is an espionage thriller about Cold Warriors who never stopped fighting the war. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a KGB sleeper cell was tasked to the island nation. They never left. Now it's 70 years later and the original operatives are old men and women. And so the mission falls to their children. The sleeper cell has been activated, but by whom? Why now? What is their mission? And who, or what, is the mysterious "White Russian" they're searching for?

Cosby and McCool have crafted a tightly wound, ticking-time-bomb of a story perfect for fans of historical fiction and cloak-and-dagger spy stories. Draped in the shady underbelly of Cold War history and the modern climate of fear and terror America now finds itself in, Pigs looks to be an action-packed and politically subversive story. It reminds me of Andy Diggle's woefully underappreciated The Losers, and not just because of the evocative cover art by Jock. (Future issues will feature covers by Francesco Francavilla, Amanda Connor, Humberto Ramos, Ben Templesmith and Becky Cloonan.)

The interior art is handled by comic book newcomer Breno Tamura (with the superb Christopher Sotomayor on colors), whose understated style meshes perfectly with the story's dark and realistic tone. Tamura's characters are all wonderfully unique and the story transitions smoothly from one panel to the next, which is not always an easy task with such a dialogue-heavy book. It's difficult to make two people sitting in a room having a conversation visually interesting, but Tamura pulls it off with ease. His action sequences are also engaging and full of energy.

With its alt-Earth history and intricate spy games, Pigs will have you hooked even before you reach the shocking cliffhanger. The final page is just one last tease to whet your whistle for issue 2.

Pigs #1 is published by Image Comics and will be in stores on September 14. Be sure to pester your local comic shop for a copy.

Preview: The Last of the Greats

Writer Josh Fialkov, best known for crime noir comics Tumor and Echoes, is jumping wholeheartedly into the superhero ring with his latest creator-owned title, The Last of the Greats, debuting in October from Image.

Illustrated by Brent Peeples, Greats is not your average capes and tights superhero book. In fact, labeling it a "superhero" book is probably a mistake, given that where there are heroes, you expect to find villains. Fialkov's superpowered world is not quite so black and white. The Last of the Greats is an exploration not so much of those who wield that power over us ordinary humans, but of humanity itself, and of what happens when our dependence on the Greats is exposed as the weakness it truly is.

In 1991, seven beings of immense power came to Earth in order to help us, to protect us. At first they were seen as benevolent gods, curing diseases and feeding the hungry. Humanity came to rely on the Greats and, as is so often human nature, quickly came to resent them.

We needed them. And we hated them for it.

(While the rest of the comic bears little resemblance, this initial premise flashed me back to the first couple years of The Authority, first written by Warren Ellis and then by Mark Millar, the turn-of-the-century superhuman series about superheroes determined to save humanity from itself, regardless of whether humanity actually wants to be saved.)

Cut to 20 years later. Earth is besieged by millions of unknown vessels. Six of the seven Greats are dead, murdered by those who would be saved. One Great remains, hidden away from humanity in what appears to be a giant Arctic fortress (of solitude).

Where his siblings sought to connect with us, to spread peace and harmony, the Last of the Greats chose isolation. He knew his brothers' and sisters' generosity would be spurned eventually. They were new, all-powerful, beyond our comprehension. The Last knew we would turn on them eventually. We always fear what we do not understand.

But in the face of such overwhelming odds, a group of humans, some who were seemingly handlers or ambassadors to the Greats, their most fervent advocates, sought out the Last, to beg him for the help his murdered siblings gave so readily. The conversation does not go ... smoothly. And help does not come without a price.

Joining Fialkov on this epic tale is artist Brent Peeples, whose clean, expressive artwork is a great complement to Fialkov's precise, evocative text. Each one of the Greats is distinctively rendered, as are the principal human characters. Peeples deftly conveys a wide range of emotions, everything from anger and jealousy to guilt and remorse, joy and gratitude. He can draw huge, cavernous backdrops and cityscapes as well as close ups and action sequences. His artwork will definitely be an asset to a story that's as much about ideas as it is about actions.

The first issue of The Last of the Greats sets the stage for what appears to be a wonderfully philosophical and complex series about just what it means to be human in a world given over to gods. How would you react if six Supermans came to Earth and systematically fixed everything to their liking?

There are also explosions and bloody deaths if that's more your speed.

The Last of the Greats #1 ships in October from Image. Be sure to pester your local comic shop to order you a copy.

Review: Echoes

With the Echoes hardcover debuting this week at San Diego Comic-Con, it seems like a good time to post my review of Josh Fialkov and Rahsan Ekedal's dark, horror-tinged thriller.

Film has long been the province for dark psychological thrillers, from Alfred Hitchcock's original classic, Psycho, to more recent fare, such as David Fincher's sublimely disturbing Se7en. And while there have been countless movies of equal or, as is more often the case, lesser quality than these, there is one realm where genuinely creepy thrillers are much less prominent: comic books.

Sure, there are horror comics full of grisly, blood-soaked death, much like the Saw and Final Destination series of movies, in which each iteration attempts to top the previous entry's imaginative killings, but these are generally death for death's sake. Murder as entertainment. Empty calories of the macabre. But far less often is there a comic book that so grips your psyche, so wreaks havoc on your sense of what's real and what's hallucination, and shakes to the core the very idea of narration that it keeps you awake at night with the lights on, unable to free yourself from the darkness you just ingested.

The bleakly addictive Echoes, masterfully crafted by writer Josh Fialkov and artist Rahsan Ekedal, is just such a comic book.

Echoes chronicles the tragic, downward spiral of Brian Cohn, husband and father-to-be, whose own father is a dying old man, a schizophrenic, who, lying in his hospital bed and wracked with Alzheimer's, seemingly confesses to being a monstrous child murderer.

Before he dies, in an apparent moment of lucidity, Brian's father desperately tells him about the box, and about the dead girls, "so many dead girls." He pleads with Brian to find the box and tells him the address, tells him the box is in the crawlspace under the house.

Understandably freaked out, Brian goes to the address his father told him. He tries to reassure himself that his father was just talking crazy, that it was the Alzheimer's or maybe his father didn't even really say any of those things. Maybe it was all in Brian's head.

You see, Brian is a diagnosed schizophrenic like his father, which immediately calls into suspicion everything we see through his eyes and hear through his ears. The conceit of an unreliable narrator has been done before, of course, but rarely has it been handled as deftly as it is here. Fialkov definitely did his homework, researching schizophrenia, its effects and its treatments in order to convey the disorder with both realism and honesty.

It must be a terrible thing, to be unable to trust the voices inside your head, to be constantly questioning the world around you, unable to differentiate between what's real and what's a chemical imbalance in your brain. Brian is constantly second-guessing himself, even when he takes his meds. He's recently been undergoing treatment in a hospital and he can't escape the fear that he'll be sent back unless he acts "normal." This is why he has to investigate his father's deathbed ramblings himself, instead of going to the police. If it turns out not to be true, that Brian simply imagined the whole thing, maybe they'll lock him away again.

What Brian finds in the crawlspace, unfortunately, is all too real.

Or is it?

That's the real beauty of Echoes. Because of Brian's disorder, it's difficult to know what's real and what he's imagining. There are moments throughout the book when you might think the whole thing is one big hallucination, that Brian is strapped to a bed in a psych ward, doped to his eyeballs. But Fialkov doesn't stoop to such a cliched, cop out plot twist.

In the crawlspace, under the house, right where his father told him it would be, Brian finds a box. And inside the box is proof that his father was telling the truth, that Brian wasn't imagining it.

And that's when Brian's life begins to fall apart.

Even during Brian's slow descent into madness, as he fights to keep the schizophrenia from overwhelming him, it doesn't come off as exploitative or cliched. Even as we start to think maybe, just maybe, Brian really is a serial kiddie killer, carrying on his demented father's work, we still feel sorry for him. To elicit sympathy for a man who may be a monster is difficult to pull off, but Fialkov manages it with ease.

Fialkov's work is heavily influenced by the noir style of storytelling, with a doomed protagonist unable to free himself from the web he finds himself caught up in, a web largely of his own making. Truly, the only thing Echoes is missing from the noir playbook is the femme fatale, the dangerous, seductive woman of mystery who lures our hero into a deadly situation. Brian is a happily married man, after all, whose caring, pregnant wife wants nothing more than for Brian to get well, take his pills and return to work so he can provide for his family.

Brian's schizophrenia, however, has other plans for him. Indeed, it is the schizophrenia that fulfills the role of femme fatale, whispering sweet nothings in Brian's ear, driving him to delve deeper into the mystery, making him question himself and, ultimately, destroying him.

Josh Fialkov's twisted tale is only half of what makes Echoes so effective. Without the haunting artwork of collaborator Rahsan Ekedal, the book wouldn't be nearly as effective.

Ekedal's art has a delicate, almost ethereal quality to it, as if Brian's world might crack and crumble to dust around him. Echoes is penciled in black and white, with a minimum of inking, more gray tones than black, which only adds to the ephemeral, ghostlike feeling that permeates the story. The uncertainty of Brian's world is beautifully rendered by Ekedal's light touch.

You can see the desperation in Brian's father's eyes as he pleads with his son to go to the house. The fear is etched on Brian's face as he clambers into the crawlspace, terrified of what he might find. And when Brian discovers a pile of old porn magazines, and thinks that they are what his father was talking about, his relief is palpable as he laughs and laughs, long and loud, sloughing off the fear like a second skin. Until the image shifts and pulls back and we see the bones piled high all around him, the dead girls his father told him about. And in an instant, Ekedal returns us to the foreboding horror we felt just a few panels earlier.

Echoes is a wonderful, must-read example of psychological horror done right, in any medium. Its slow burn of a mystery will keep you guessing 'til the very end, as you question Brian Cohn sanity right beside him, as he tries desperately to retain his already tenuous grasp on his splintering reality.

A Pressing Engagement

Originally written in April 2010 for a grad school magazine writing class

I proposed to the first girl I had sex with. Or, perhaps more accurately, the first girl who had sex with me.

Now, to be clear, I didn’t propose because she had sex with me. It wasn’t some passion- or lust-fueled spur-of-the-moment post-coitus decision. In fact, I had proposed months before the actual sex had taken place. I genuinely loved this girl and wanted to spend my life with her. At least I thought I did.

My heart thudded in my chest, pounding so loudly I was certain her father and stepmother could hear it in the next room, through the thin walls of the trailer they lived in. My mouth felt dry and scratchy, as if coated with sandpaper, and my palms were slick with sweat. I was all fried nerves. I don’t remember my fumbling fingers pulling the ring from the right front pocket of my jeans, but I know I went down on one knee.

When we met, my America Online screen name was TheCrow331, so named for my favorite film of my high school years and the date its star was killed in an FX mishap toward the end of filming. Hers had something to do with angels. We quickly bonded over the gothic angst of our youth.

The film spawned a host of merchandise, from T-shirts and posters, of which I had many, to statues and jewelry, including a sterling silver ring etched with the film’s tagline: “Real love is forever.” Thirty bucks plus shipping and handling later, I held what would become her engagement ring in my hand.

She cried when I slid the already tarnished metal band over her finger, nodded her head. A skittish laugh lodged in her throat as she looked at me through tear-streaked glasses. She might have even squeaked out the word, “yes.”

She was a musician. Her plan was to major in music in college, though whether she wanted to get a degree in performance, composition or education, I can no longer remember.

When she applied to Youngstown State University so she could attend the Dana School of Music, one of the oldest music schools in the country, I applied, too. It didn’t hurt that the school offered a minor in creative writing and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be accepted by my first choice, the University of Iowa’s highly-regarded Writers’ Workshop.

But, even if Iowa had accepted me, I knew I wasn’t going there. I was following my girl to Ohio.

The first few months of our freshman year are a semi-vivid blur, like a VHS tape on fast forward, full of false starts and the premature giddiness of being on our own. We were clumsy and awkward, yet to find one another’s rhythm. But we’d get there, I thought. It just takes time.

She dropped out of the music program midway through that first year and moved back home to her mother’s. I don’t remember why, exactly. Somewhere between arriving on campus and when she left, she lost her passion. And with her abandoning me at a college I was only attending because of her, I lost mine as well.

We probably spoke every day, using those same screen names that had brought us together. But the immediacy and ease of the Internet couldn’t make up for the growing distance between us. Even our every-other-weekend visits were lackluster. We were already going through the motions like an elderly couple who have been together for 50 years.

The school year ended and, after one final, fervent night together, I moved back home.

We spoke once after that first year of college. Maybe twice. I don’t remember what about. We never did break up. We simply drifted apart, stopped talking.

She still has the ring, as far as I know.

Marvelous

Originally written in May 2010 for a grad school magazine writing class

The elevator door slides apart and I step through. The only thing that tells me I've come to the right place is the large cardboard standee for Iron Man 2 sitting in the corner of the otherwise sparse lobby. There are glass double-doors in front of me. I walk up to the door and pull the handle. It doesn't open. I notice the receptionist sitting at her desk on the other side of the door. She waves me back. I release my grip on the handle and the receptionist reaches underneath the desk. I hear a CLICK, pull open the door and step through.

I’m in New York City, my first time, standing in the 11th floor offices of Marvel Comics, which are located in an unassuming building on 5th Avenue, a few blocks from Times Square. From the outside, the building looks like any other that lines this stretch of Manhattan. I probably would have walked right past it had my cousin Adam not been with me. Adam has lived in New York for about 10 years now, and without his guidance I would have been lost as soon as I stepped off the Peter Pan bus at the Port Authority bus terminal.

I’ve come to New York, to Marvel, to interview for a summer internship position, which was the furthest thing from my mind when I applied to go to graduate school at Emerson College in Boston. Hell, it was the furthest thing from my mind up until a few months ago, when I started following one of Marvel’s editors on Twitter.

Her name is Jennifer Grünwald (@jengrunwald) and she’s worked at Marvel since 2002. She was having an “open-question-ask-me-anything” day, and I asked her how a person goes about getting a job at one of the two big comic book companies (the other being DC Comics). Within minutes, she replied, “@oyboy Well, aside from applying as one would do for any job, there's always an internship. (Which is how I got hired!).”

I hadn’t thought about interning at a comic book company while in grad school. As much as I love comic books, and I’ve collected them for about 20 years, it didn’t seem to be a realistic possibility. I had interned at a comic book company once already, in Los Angeles, while an undergrad at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. It was a small company called BOOM! Studios, and I drove across the country to work there during the summer of 2007. It was an enjoyable and educational experience. I had never seen the industry from the publishing perspective before. I was even offered a job, but I had a year left before I received my bachelor’s degree, and that was more important to me at the time.

Grünwald encouraged me to apply for an internship and see how it went from there. So I did. That was on March 18, a Thursday. I filled out the internship application over the weekend and submitted it. On Tuesday, March 23, I sent a tweet out into the ether: “Registered for the fall. Spring might be tough, but the fall should be a breeze. Still hoping for the summer internship. C'mon, @Marvel!”

Someone at Marvel was listening.

Less than an hour after sending that tweet, I received the following response from Ryan Penagos (@Agent_M), Marvel’s website editor: “@oyboy You're a Journalism student? What department did you apply to? I need a good journalism intern for Marvel.com.”

Now, I’ve had an email address for almost 20 years. I’ve been online in some form or another for more than half my life. I’m comfortable with technology in a way that used to worry my parents (especially after my father would receive a $300 bill from AOL). But even I was amazed by the rapidity of Twitter.

I quickly tapped out a response to Ryan on my phone: “@Agent_M I had applied for editorial, but I'm really open for anything. I have a big interest in the industry in general.”

From Ryan, an hour later: “@oyboy Yup, saw your application. We'll see what happens.”

Two days later, on March 25, I received an email from Sara Del Greco, Marvel’s internship coordinator. She asked me when I would be able to schedule an interview.

I was flabbergasted, nearly speechless. In the span of a week I had applied for an internship at Marvel and been asked to come in for an interview. Perhaps not all thanks to Twitter, but I know it helped. My immediate thought was, This wouldn’t have been possible five years ago. Maybe not even two years ago.

My email back to Del Greco basically consisted of, “Whenever you want me to come in for an interview, I’ll be there.” This was Marvel. The big time. I wasn’t about to let a little thing like a class schedule or the 200 miles between Boston and New York get in my way.

The first comics I read as a child were published by Marvel, though I was ignorant of the fact at the time. I was unaware of things like publishing companies and writers and artists. All I knew was the four-color images that popped off the page dazzled me. I just liked the stories. Later, when I realized this was a job, that people sat around writing these stories and drawing these pictures, I hooked. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to write. And I wanted to write comics.

I’ve never been able to pinpoint what it is about comics that has fascinated me for so many years. It long ago stopped being about the requisite superhero characters. Spider-Man, Superman and Batman were fun when I was younger, but as I got older I didn’t care so much about the characters I was reading as I did about who was writing them. I became enthralled by the process and sought out examples of comic book scripts wherever I could find them. Some I found online, and later a company called Titan Books published two volumes of “Writers on Comic Scriptwriting,” featuring interviews with some of the biggest names in the industry, along with examples of their scripts. Those books became bibles to me, so much so that the spine is cracked on Volume 1 and pages have started falling out of Volume 2.

I learned that some writers write very intricate, detailed scripts, wherein they describe everything from the characters’ facial expressions to the pattern on the wallpaper. Most comic books are 22 pages. One writer, Alan Moore, often wrote 100 pages of script for every 22-page comic book. Other writers are very sparse in their descriptions, sometimes only a paragraph or two per page, entrusting the artist to lay out the pages to best tell the story. It was the process of taking pages of dialogue and description and turning them into coherent, monthly serials that enchanted me, and I wanted in on the magic.

I’ve gone to a number of universities and colleges, lived all over the country, from Los Angeles to Boston, and the one constant throughout all those years has been comic books. I’ve lugged my collection back and forth more times than I care to remember. If there was one opportunity I was going to drop everything for and jump at, it was working at Marvel or DC Comics.

And here I am, April 2, slightly more than two weeks since I first inquired through Twitter about working at Marvel, waiting for an interview. The kid I used to be, the one who sat on his bedroom floor surrounded by stacks of comic books, all perfectly enshrined in their plastic bags and cardboard backings, flipping through stories he’d read countless times before and would read countless times since, he was crazed with excitement, bouncing off the walls inside my chest.

I calmly sit in the waiting area, across from a wall display filled with new comics, the way a doctor’s office has copies of Sports Illustrated and People, and fill out the internship application paperwork. I fight to stifle a grin every time I look up and see the life-size Hulk statue glowering at me from just inside the entrance to the offices.

Unnatural

Originally written in April 2010 for a grad school magazine writing class

Last weekend I took a bus from Boston’s South Station terminal to the Port Authority in New York. During the 200-mile long, four-hour trip, I looked out the window perhaps two or three times. I can tell you more about the young boy sitting next to me than I can about anything that rushed by as the bus rumbled along the interstate.

The boy was Jewish, and had dark, curly hair. He was a Red Sox fan. He carried with him in his blue backpack a book of Garfield comic strips and a 2010 sports almanac. He ate matzo and was excited about Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury’s 70 stolen bases in 2009. While the Red Sox were his favorite team, he liked the Yankees, too, especially Derek Jeter. He was traveling with his father and brother to Pennsylvania.

Of the world outside the 45-foot-long bus in which I sat, I saw thin, stick-like trees alongside the interstate, still bare from winter. Some evergreens. A number of small creeks and ponds that may have had names, though I wasn’t in any position to know them. It was a bright, crisp morning, the sky cloudless and almost painfully blue. A chill in the air I thought would burn off by the afternoon. And that’s it. That’s all I can remember.

Nature is an abstraction to me. I’ve always fancied the idea of it, and liked it in a general sense. I have nothing against Nature. But when it comes to actual real-life experience, I demur. I used to tell myself it was for no reason other than lack of opportunity to be around Nature, even though I knew that wasn’t true. I’ve had plenty of chances to enjoy all that Nature has to offer, from offers to go camping with my brother and his family in the Badlands of South Dakota to all the times I’ve driven across the country.

On the last family vacation I remember with any sort of clarity, my parents piled my brother, sister and I into my father’s sedan and drove us to South Dakota to visit Mount Rushmore and Deadwood, a once-bustling mining town turned old west tourist trap. We stood in silent awe of the great stone faces of presidents’ past for a few minutes, maybe as many as five or 10. We spent more time indoors, in the museum.

The last time I drove the 1,500 miles from Omaha to Los Angeles, I took pictures through the dirty, bug-smeared windows of my beat-up ’99 Dodge Avenger. I propped the camera on the steering wheel or pointed it out the window beside my head and snapped photos of cloud formations, of the wide-open prairies and cornfields of western Nebraska, of the distant mountain ranges of Colorado and the dry, arid desert of Utah and Nevada. I dubbed the collection of 107 photos, America @ 80 MPH.

Aside from pulling off the road for gas and bathroom breaks, it never once occurred to me during my eight-to-12 hour driving sessions to stop the car, to get out and walk around. I had places to go, people to see. I cared only about my destination, the journey be damned.

When I’m driving, I can only move forward. Deviating from the endless asphalt path is anathema. I don't pay attention to the Natural world around me, just the highway in front of me.

When I tell people I’m from Nebraska, their eyes light up with thoughts of vast acres of cornfields and cows, roosters crowing, signaling the start of a new day, farmers plowing fields before dawn. And this pastoral scene is true of much of the state, but not Omaha. I was raised in the suburbs of an honest-to-God city, with rush hour traffic and skyscrapers, street gangs and drug problems.

Omaha has its fair share of parks and green open spaces, and a “world famous” zoo, but mostly there are roads. Streets paved with asphalt and concrete in constant need of repair. I remember the field behind my middle school, tucked away behind West Center Street, lush and verdant, before it was bulldozed to make room for a shopping mall. And later a movie theater. And a Best Buy. And numerous other big box stores.

There was another field alongside L Street, stretching between 120th and 132nd streets, not far from my house. Driving past, it almost looked like a miniature forest. Tall oak trees bunched together, nearly 12 square blocks of grass and shade. The land was owned by some technology company that had its office park hidden away behind the trees. Then, a few years ago, the company sold the land back to the city, which promptly designed plans to rip up the trees and drown the field in acrid black tar.

Now, where the trees once stood, sit even more box stores, selling you anything and everything you could possibly desire. Nature once again forced to give way to commerce.

Of course, I never went to either of those fields before they became shopping centers.

Review: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

There have been numerous adaptations of L. Frank Baum’s whimsical fantasy series of Oz books since they became part of the public domain in 1956, including books, television shows, video games and even a film version starring Kermit and the Muppets. Some of these adaptations are good, though many are not. And one of the very best is a comic book published by Marvel: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, faithfully adapted by Eric Shanower and beautifully illustrated by Skottie Young.

Unlike previous adaptations, including the beloved 1939 Judy Garland musical, Shanower’s Oz hews closely to the plot of Baum’s original novel. It begins, of course, with young Dorothy Gale and her little dog Toto being swept up and away by a tornado, house and all, from the colorless Kansas farmland and deposited in the magical world of Oz, whereupon Dorothy discovers the house has landed on and crushed the Wicked Witch of the East.

And there was much rejoicing.

What follows is the well-known adventure as the Good Witch of the North bestows upon Dorothy the magical silver shoes -- not the ruby slippers of the Garland musical; I guess sparkly red looks better on-screen -- the Wicked Witch of the East had been wearing when she died. The Good Witch of the North then sends Dorothy on her way down the yellow-brick road toward the fabled Emerald City, where, Dorothy hopes, the powerful Wizard of Oz will help her return home to her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em.

Along the way, Dorothy meets her beloved companions: the Scarecrow who only wants a brain, the Tin Woodman who wants a heart, and the Cowardly Lion who wants courage. Dorothy convinces each one that the Wizard can help them, and they agree to accompany her on her journey.

I don't remember the last time I watched the 1939 film, let alone read the original books, so I was coming into this adaptation cold, with only a few fleeting images from the movie rattling about inside my head. I had no preconceived notions about the book, save for Young's artwork, which I knew was going to be gorgeous, and I was certainly not disappointed in that assumption.

In fact, the star of Marvel’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is without a doubt Skottie Young, whose imaginative interpretations of these iconic characters are nothing short of masterful. Young has a sketchy cartoon style of artwork that perfectly captures the childlike essence of these 100-year-old characters while updating them for today’s visual medium. He takes these characters and puts his own spin on them while maintaining their charming familiarity.

Dorothy is sweet and innocent, with big, expressive eyes, while the Cowardly Lion is a big ball of cuddly fur, more kitten than king. The Wicked Witch of the West is a creepy old crone, with sickly green skin pulled tight over her boney face. (The coloring by Jean-Francois Beaulieu perfectly compliments and enhances Young's pencils.)

The collection is rounded out with images from Young's sketchbook, allowing insight into his creative process as he tries to get the characters just right for the tone of Shanower's adaptation. Young's initial Cowardly Lion looks more stately and lean, dark and brooding, like something out of The Lion King, while his early Scarecrow design looks like it escaped from a Batman comic, which, now that I think of it, I would love to see Young penciling a Batman series, if for no other reason than to see his interpretations of the villains. I imagine Young's Joker would be particularly frightful.

The story plays out as expected, with Dorothy and her new friends arriving at the Emerald City and being granted an audience with the great and powerful Oz, who promises to grant their wishes, but only if they agree to kill the Wicked Witch of the West for him.

Shanower's script is full of energy and keeps the story moving at a good clip. There's never a dull moment, just the occasional pause for breath and to enjoy more of Young's lush pencils. The Wizard of Oz remains a classic with good reason, and Marvel's adaptation is poised to become a classic in its own right, a fairy tale suited for kids and adults alike.

Originally published as an eight-issue mini-series, Marvel’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is now available in both hardcover and softcover collections. Shanower and Young followed up their delightful first collaboration by adapting Baum’s sequel, The Marvelous Land of Oz, currently available as a hardcover. Their third volume, Ozma of Oz is due to be released in Sept. 2011.

Review: Footnotes in Gaza, by Joe Sacco

Faris Barbakh lives in the town of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. In 1956, when he was 14 years old, Israeli soldiers burst into his family’s home and took away all the men, his father, older brothers, uncles. A short time later, Barbakh was sent to fetch water and on his way he “saw all the bodies. More than 100 bodies ... close to the wall, from the beginning of the wall to the end ...”

The wall Barbakh is referring to is part of Khan Younis’ Mamluk castle, built in the 14th century. The bodies are those of the town’s men, gunned down and lying in pools of one another’s intermingling blood.

This is but one of the deeply personal, first-person accounts cartoonist-reporter Joe Sacco illustrates with the deft touch of a master craftsman in his latest graphic novel, Footnotes in Gaza, the story of two long forgotten mass killings of hundreds of Palestinian refugees by the Israeli military, lost to a history rife with constant bloodshed.

On November 3, 1956, the Israeli military entered the town of Khan Younis, ostensibly searching for terrorists and guerrilla fighters. They killed 275 men. Nine days later, on November 12, Israeli soldiers went to a neighboring town, Rafah, and after herding that town’s men to the school and shepherding them through a gantlet of bats and clubs, another 111 lay dead.

Documentation of these two events is scarce, rating only a few lines in a United Nations report. Initially, Sacco himself recalled it only because of a passing reference made in Noam Chomsky’s book, The Fateful Triangle, he had read years earlier, and after the Khan Younis portion of an article he had illustrated for Harper’s Magazine in 2001 had been edited out, Sacco decided he would tell the story himself.

Sacco is unique among journalists. While he researches and reports as well as anyone, it’s his method of storytelling that stands him apart from his peers. Rather than relying solely on words on a page to tell his stories, Sacco brings his subjects to life with intricate, detailed artwork in the form of a comic book.

On one page, Sacco gives us a bird’s eye view of the bodies lining the crumbling castle wall, young Faris Barbakh walking toward them. And on the facing page, from the same angle, Sacco shows us the same wall nearly 50 years later, plastered with posters and covered in graffiti, cars parked in front of it where bodies once lay.

Sacco uses this technique often throughout Footnotes in Gaza, juxtaposing the past and the present, to literally illustrate both how much and how little the lives of these Palestinian refugees have changed.

It is a technique Sacco has used before, first with the American Book Award-winning Palestine in 1996, a collection of stories about his time in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the early ‘90s, and then with Safe Area Gorazde, a book about the Bosnian War which won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel in 2001. With these three graphic novels, Sacco has carved himself a niche as the foremost journalist/cartoonist working today.

For Footnotes in Gaza, Sacco embedded himself in the Gaza Strip for about three months between November 2002 and March 2003, living among his subjects, eating their food and earning their trust. He was constantly peppered with questions from curious Palestinian youths, who wondered why he was asking questions about incidents that happened nearly 50 years ago.

Sacco recounts a conversation with a group of teenagers with bad acne and wearing western clothing. One of the boys asks, “Why is our country like this?” referring to the almost daily demolition of Palestinian homes by the Israelis.

“Because we’re not close to God,” another responds.

When Sacco asks them what they think is the best way to resist, one boy says, “Get close to God.”

“With bombs,” another says, looking at the ground, already defeated, beaten down by the harsh life of being a refugee in his own land.

To ensure accuracy in his reporting, Sacco carries with him a tape recorder and a digital camera. He photographs his interview subjects, their homes, their families, so that he can recreate them later in pen and ink. For the flashback sequences, he visited the United Nations Relief and Works Agency archives, pouring through old photographs, and dug through Israeli Defense Forces records.

Sacco concedes in the book’s foreword that when talking with people about an event 50 years in their pasts, when many were children and young teenagers, their memories may not hold up to scrutiny. Whenever possible, Sacco sought corroboration from other sources, knowing full well one person’s account of an incident that far back in their memory may not be wholly accurate. Indeed, Faris Barbakh, the man who as a child found the bodies lining the wall of the castle, could remember only the names of eight of the 12 relatives he helped bury that day.

Some critics of Sacco’s work have accused him of having a bias toward the Palestinians, which Sacco denies. He has said in interviews that he merely thought the voices of the Palestinian people were rarely heard in mainstream media. In the end, Footnotes in Gaza is neither a condemnation of the Israeli occupation nor pro-Palestinian propaganda, but a well-researched and important book about a forgotten chapter of the horrors that have plagued the region for centuries. While everyone else focuses on the macro, Sacco hones in on the micro, the individuals who have been first-hand witnesses to countless atrocities, and he perhaps uncovers part of the root of today’s animosity between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Sacco interviewed Hamas co-founder Abed El-Aziz El-Rantisi, who was nine years old in November 1956. El Rantisi, who was later killed by an Israeli missile, recalled the day his uncle was killed: “I still remember the wailing and tears of my father over his brother ... It left a wound in my heart that can never heal ... This sort of action can never be forgotten ... [T]hey planted hatred in our hearts.”

Boston Comic Con 2011 (video)

After being held last year at Boston’s Westin on the Waterfront, the Boston Comic Con moved this year to the more spacious Hynes Convention Center to accommodate what convention organizers hoped would be yet another increase in attendance for the six-year-old comic book convention.

This year’s guests included noted artists J. Scott Campbell, Adam Hughes, Art Adams, David Mack and the legendary Joe Kubert, an industry staple for more than 70 years.

The convention was held over two days, April 30 and May 1, and included artist signings, spotlight panels and what many consider to be a convention highlight, the annual costume contest.

For more information about Boston Comic Con, check out bostoncomiccon.com

Q&A with Diesel Sweeties creator Richard Stevens

Richard Stevens is the quirky, idiosyncratic 34-year-old creator of Diesel Sweeties, a popular web comic filled with random pop culture references, nerd humor and sentient, talking robots.

Stevens began Sweeties in 2000 and has been able to focus on it full-time since 2002. Before the strip, he worked as a graphic designer and built tech support websites for a Connecticut phone company.

Aside from admitting he originates from Southington, Conn., Stevens declined to discuss his upbringing and his family, because, “some are in the public sector and I make dick jokes.”

Today, Stevens is firmly ensconced in Easthampton, Mass., where he spends his days at Eastworks, a converted factory building that houses various young professionals and plays host to the now-annual New England Webcomics Weekend, a yearly gathering of web cartoonists.

In addition to writing and drawing a five-days-a-week web comic, Stevens has also carved out for himself a niche of geeky merchandise he sells through the Diesel Sweeties website. Stevens designs T-shirts, socks, stickers and bags for a very specific type of audience. For instance, one of his designs is of a sheep plugged into an electrical outlet, an allusion to the Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was adapted as the film, Blade Runner.

Stevens, in perpetual need of a shave, is quiet in a crowd, though he is an avid tweeter under the handle, @rstevens, where he once tweeted, “It still amazes me how my work is most successful when I don’t analyze anything, but rather do stuff I’m personally crazy about.”

What brought you to Easthampton?

I’ve been coming up this way to clear my head since I could drive. First visited for the long dead and lamented Words and Pictures Museum. I moved here in 2004 when I needed to get the heck out of Connecticut and a friend pointed out an interesting converted factory building to me.

How did you decide you wanted to do web comics?

It wasn’t a conscious decision to pick web over print. Originally, the plan was to test out comic ideas on the web and see which I’d self-publish. It worked out better than expected!

Was Diesel Sweeties your first attempt at a web comic?

[It] was my first serious web comic. I posted some hand-drawn story stuff on college servers in the mid-’90s, but the talent and the audience weren’t there yet.

Why web comics, as opposed to strictly print comics? Do you feel there’s a discernible difference between the two formats?

Why not? I personally feel that “it’s all comics” and an author should look at their project and decide where it fits best. Daily humor and the like seem to work best online. Books are still the best way to take in big stories. Subject matter counts a lot, too. Video games and robots work perfectly on the web, but I’m not sure the same holds true for longer, personal, graphic novels.

The advantage the web has over stores is immediacy. You can always bump into new things with nothing more than a link. No stores or mail order to deal with.

How many readers does Diesel Sweeties attract?

I honestly don’t know. I don’t track everything. Definitely in the tens of thousands of people per day and the hundreds of thousands in a given month, but that isn’t something I worry about.

If you don’t mind my asking, how much revenue does the merchandise bring in? Does the web comic itself turn a profit or do you rely on the merchandise for that?

That’s between me and Turbotax. Let’s just say I’m middle class, don’t think I’ll ever be wealthy, constantly need a little more cash and yet somehow always have a new iPhone.

My comics are a total loss and I’ve never really tried to make money off them. It’s all merchandise, which works for me because I love silly things like T-shirts and toys.

What made you decide to create the T-shirts, hoodies, stickers, socks, et cetera?

I love merchandise, T-shirts and the like. I honestly love this kind of stuff and spend as much time thinking about it as writing comics.

I was lucky enough to know a spectacular T-shirt printer and the price-profit ratio on shirts is great. It just happened. It cracks me up when people tell me they don’t really like my comic but love my T-shirts. That’s a huge compliment! Overcoming distaste to actually get paid means the shirts are good.

Is there a particular Diesel Sweeties strip that you consider a favorite?

Nope. When you do something pretty much daily for one-third of your life, it all blends together. My favorite comic is the one that most recently popped into my head and isn’t done yet.

Where did the ideas for the characters come from? You introduced the strip with Maura, an alcoholic ex-pornstar who used to date the robot Clango. Indie Rock Pete is that obnoxious hipster music snob we all know. Red Robot just wants to crush all hu-mans. It’s a pretty varied cast of characters, human and robot alike. What do they mean to you?

I didn’t realize this at the time, but all the characters who stick around anthropomorphize one of my personality flaws. They all represent something about me and just kind of developed their own names as I drew them.

Do you have a favorite character? Someone you really enjoy writing for?

Following up on above, it depends what is on my mind that day. I think Lil’ Sis is the backbone of the strip, with connections to more characters than anyone else. Not sure that counts as a favorite, but she is the most important to me.

Could you describe your creative process? Do you script out the strips before you start drawing? Do you do both simultaneously?

It is extremely efficient and inefficient at the same time. Basically, jokes pop into my head completely written while I’m doing other work or taking a walk. I guess it’s as close as I get to meditation. That’s the fast part.

I follow that up with a mess of editing and restructuring on paper, then draw and letter it up one strip at a time. I don’t usually work in batches. It’s pretty close to “live” in that it was baked fresh most every day.

What do you use to illustrate the comic? Hardware/software? How has new hardware/software changed the way you’ve drawn Diesel Sweeties over the years?

I sketch on legal pads and in email, then do everything in Photoshop with the pencil tool. I use a Wacom Cintiq for some of the naturalistic drawing, but do 90 percent of it with a mouse and keyboard. You’d laugh if you could see just how much of the “drawing” is done with arrow keys.

The biggest change over the years is speed! For the first time in my career, my laptop is fast enough to keep up with me drawing and pounding on the keyboard.

Why draw the comic in an 8-bit style?

I started with the idea: girl dates robot. Tried about three, four styles until I hit pixels, which clicked for the subject matter.

How geeked (no pun intended) were you when you found out your shirts were going to be featured on The Big Bang Theory? How did that come about? Did they contact you about it, or was someone on the show already a fan of the comic strip?

Pretty geeked!

All credit has to go to Wil Wheaton on that one. He suggested some shirts for his return appearance, having worn Penny Arcade stuff the first time. He showed the staff, the production folks bought a bunch, then he called to ask me to express them over. Took me about .00001 seconds to run to the office and pack ‘em up!

How many conventions do you attend a year? Do you have a favorite con?

It depends on the year. It’s usually about five to 10. I hate prepping for cons and constantly try to talk myself out of the stress of traveling, but love it when I actually get there.

TCAF [Toronto Comics Art Festival] in Toronto is the only show I never threaten to skip, so I guess that is my favorite by default!

How has your con experience changed over the years as Diesel Sweeties has grown in popularity? What was your first con as a pro like compared to today?

Hasn’t really changed much over the years, I’m just a little lazier. Still have to buy our own booths for the most part, still carry our own crap. Biggest change is that we’ve seen fans grow up and change over the years kind of like extended family. That and we have better hand trucks.

I’m curious, could you describe your work area? Do you write/draw at a desk? Are you surrounded by boxes of T-shirts and hoodies?

I’m in a big messy factory room I call “the garage” after the actual garage my dad fixes cars in. My desk is a big, crappy folding table I found in the basement and sawed a bunch of holes in for cables. It’s a total piece of shit and perfect to cover in electronics, coffee and paper.

I keep the T-shirts safe and clean in the next room and work in a chaotic pile of mess. Clutter is comforting and I’m always getting ideas from looking around at all the junk. Old computers, office supplies, all manner of broken industrial junk, clocks set to the wrong time, books, you name it.

Hope that my description of my office, which I will never, ever let anyone take a picture of, doesn’t make me out to be too insane.

Just a little insane.

TV and Comic Book Writer Christina Weir

As far back as she can remember, Christina Weir, Emerson College class of ‘94, knew she wanted to be a writer.

“When I was a kid, I was sure I was going to write prose,” Weir said. “My mother had written several books, and I thought that was the coolest thing in the world.”

In high school, however, Weir realized the power of a more visual medium: television. During her senior year, Weir interned at Boston’s CBS affiliate, where she was given the opportunity to write a five-part, 20-minute “teen soap opera” that aired on a morning show for children.

“The week they filmed that was the most amazing experience I had ever had,” Weir said. “I loved the notion of having written a script and then watching actors say the lines as the camera people filmed it.”

After high school, Weir toyed with the idea of attending Emerson for her undergraduate studies, to “kick-start [her] life in Hollywood,” she said. But she ultimately decided to “do the liberal arts thing” first. She enrolled at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, where she met her future husband and co-writer, Nunzio DeFilippis, though neither of them knew it at the time.

Upon graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, Weir decided she was ready to tackle Tinseltown. She enrolled in Emerson’s Mass Communication graduate program and focused on creating a career in television, while DeFilippis attacked Hollywood directly by enrolling in graduate school at the University of Southern California.

“I knew I wanted to work in film and television and there was no denying that Emerson had a fantastic program that would give me amazing classes, networking opportunities and valuable internships,” Weir said.

It also didn’t hurt that Weir’s father was Emerson’s dean of continuing education at the time. “It was the logical choice,” Weir said.

While at Emerson, Weir spent a semester in Los Angeles interning at NBC, during which she said her “certainty that [she] wanted to work in television only grew.” Once she completed her master’s degree, she did what any aspiring television writer would do: she moved to L.A.

But as the old saying goes, you can take the girl out of Boston, but you can’t take Boston out of the girl.

“I love to set stories in Boston,” Weir said. “The city has such a rich environment and history. Boston has a personality all its own. And in many ways, my sense of what a city is comes from living in Boston. I had no idea what to expect when I moved out to Los Angeles. I had visited New York and lived in Boston and those two combined defined what a city was supposed to be. Cities are things you can walk around and take in. You can sit at a street cafe and watch the people go by.”

In Los Angeles, Weir wrote for the HBO series Arliss and the Disney Channel cartoon Kim Possible with DeFilippis. Comic books were never something Weir gave much thought to, despite her husband’s love for the medium. It wasn’t until good friend and acclaimed novelist Greg Rucka (the Atticus Kodiak novels) wrote a comic book called Whiteout, about a deputy U.S. marshal dispatched to Antarctica, that Weir, wanting to be supportive, read her first comic since the Archie comics she had read as a child.

“I loved it,” Weir said. “Suddenly after years of my husband trying to coax me to read comics and me politely declining, I was interested in learning more.”

Weir quickly developed a taste for comic books, devouring her husband’s collection.

“I read all of his favorites and found a definite appreciation for the medium,” Weir said.

When Weir and DeFilippis were developing the idea for what would become their first comic book, Skinwalker, they originally planned to write it as a film. Rucka, by then an established comic book writer, had a suggestion.

“[He] came to us and said, ‘Hey, have you ever thought about doing that as a comic?’” Weir said. “We hadn’t, but then we started to entertain the idea and decided it would be perfect as a comic.”

Weir said that transitioning from writing for the screen and writing comics was a learning process, but not a difficult one.

“They’re both visual mediums,” Weir said. “And when you’re writing a comic script, it’s as if you’re the director as well as the writer.”

In addition to Skinwalker (with artist Brian Hurtt), Weir and DeFilippis have written numerous comic books over the past decade, everything from Marvel and DC superhero mainstays like the X-Men and Batman to creator-owned work like crime story Three Strikes (also with artist Hurtt) and the action comedy Frenemy of the State (illustrated by Jeff Wamester), which they developed with film and TV actress Rashida Jones.

Weir and DeFilippis also have a series of graphic novels about a young private investigator in Los Angeles named Amy Devlin.

The seedy underbelly of humanity always seems to find its way into Weir’s writing.

“There’s a romanticism to the crime fiction genre that’s fun to explore,” Weir said. “I think being from Boston definitely influenced that. I grew up on Beacon Hill which at times feels like you’re walking around a movie set. It looks like what you think an old New England city is supposed to look like. … I just feel like any neighborhood you go into in Boston can serve as the perfect backdrop for a story.”

For a complete bibliography and updates about what’s next for Weir & DeFilippis, check out their website at weirdefilippis.com

Social Media Maven Margarita Vaisman

During her time at Emerson College, Newbury Comics was a regular destination for Margarita Vaisman, class of ‘00, though her taste strayed from the superhero adventures of comic book publishers Marvel Entertainment, Inc. and DC Comics.

“I was really into the goth scene in Boston and a lot of those folks were into comics and made regular trips to Newbury Comics and Million Year Picnic,” Vaisman said. “While I didn’t read many comics beyond Sandman and The Crow — both on the goth required reading list — comics were certainly a common interest among many of my friends and acquaintances, along with black clothes and gloomy music.”

When it was time to look for colleges Vaisman zeroed-in on Emerson after reading a listing in The Princeton Review.

“I knew Boston was the ideal location for college, because I wanted to leave New York City, but not venture too far,” Vaisman said. “I also wanted to major in Creative Writing … [Emerson] matched both criteria and was described as ‘a school for freaks and misfits.’ The second I read those words, I knew that would be the school I’d attend.”

At Emerson, Vaisman, 33, majored in creative writing, with a minor in psychology.

“My favorite professor was the late Peter Corea, who I was fortunate enough to have for two psychology courses,” Vaiman said. “He always stressed empathy and kindness and I think he wanted to teach us to be decent human beings above all else. He certainly left a lasting impression on me.”

After four years of clubbing and writing, Vaisman, a 2000 graduate and now a community manager for Google, was unsure what was next for her.

“I think [Emerson] gave me a good foundation in terms of developing my talents and interests, but by the time I graduated, I didn’t know how I wanted to apply those skills.”

Vaisman moved to England after graduation, where she said she was biding her time until her ideal job was invented.

“I always had a feeling that whatever career I was going to have didn’t exist yet,” Vaisman said. “And wouldn’t you know, here I am working in social media.”

Until recently, Vaisman, was the social media manager for Marvel.

Before she started working at Marvel, Vaisman wasn’t very familiar with superhero comics. She had been reading more realistic work by creators like Adrian Tomine and Daniel Clowes, but she wanted to branch out. So when she heard about the job opportunity at Marvel, Vaisman dove right in.

Vaisman was particularly drawn to Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing X-Men.

“Someone pointed-out to me that I probably have a fondness for those characters because they are all misfits in some way, and I think that’s true,” Vaisman said. “This also goes back to what drew me to Emerson.”

Check out Margarita’s blog, The Diary Project, at metadiary.wordpress.com

Indie Comics Writer Josh Fialkov

What drew indie comic book writer Josh Fialkov to Emerson College was the school’s strong liberal arts reputation.

“I’ve wanted to write and create since I was a kid,” Fialkov said. “I was producing radio serials on my Fisher Price tape recorder at age 4. And these were real serials, where I actually had a whole programming slate of recurring shows.”

Fialkov, Emerson class of ‘00, grew up in Monroeville, Pa., just east of Pittsburgh, a city he said has strongly influenced his storytelling.

“I worked in the mall [where] they shot Dawn of the Dead in,” Fialkov said. “I worked at the same theater that Tom Savini was mounting his gore soaked production of Dracula in. Pittsburgh is a very noir city and a very horror-filled place.”

Those noir and horror influences are evident in Fialkov’s Eisner Award-nominated graphic novel Tumor (with artist Noel Tuazon) and his psychological thriller Echoes (with artist Rahsan Ekedal).

“Where we come from and where we are influences our work because it changes who we are,” Fialkov said. “My work is the sum of every place, person, song, book, play, movie, TV show and novel I’ve ever experienced.”

Fialkov counts the time he spent in Boston among the biggest influences in his life.

“Being in Boston expanded my taste a lot,” Fialkov said. “Being surrounded by people reading Ibsen and watching Frankenheimer, and being equally drawn [to] both had probably the biggest influence on what I do.”

After a friend raved about Emerson’s theater program, Fialkov decided to visit the college and see for himself.

“I instantly fell in love with Boston, and immediately felt at home,” Fialkov said. “I miss the city deeply.”

Fialkov majored in theater and, despite not being allowed to double major, he took an bachelor degree’s worth of film classes, enough that he was able to graduate a year early.

“I was equally interested in being a performer and a writer/director at the time,” Fialkov said, “and when I auditioned and interviewed it seemed like the program was going to flexible and supportive of that.”

Fialkov read comics as a kid, but his interest waned during his high school years.

“I realized my money would be better spent on buying guitar equipment and impressing girls,” Fialkov said. “In that order.”

During his time at Emerson, Fialkov said he would read the occasional issue of Usagi Yojimbo and Concrete, but it wasn’t until after he moved to Los Angeles after graduating that he fell back into the writing habit.

After graduation, Fialkov and his writing partner wrote spec scripts. To make ends meet, Fialkov worked on film crews around New England, filming commercials and low-budget movies. He also worked at the Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge.

A producer had attached himself to one of Fialkov’s scripts, and he and his writing partner packed up their stuff and “started the long migration to Los Angeles on Sept. 9, 2001.”

By the time Fialkov and his writing partner arrived in L.A., their production deal had fallen through.

“The world wasn’t interested in the sort of achingly dark stuff we were writing,” Fialkov said.

With his film career stalled, Fialkov returned to the comic books he loved as a kid.

“I was getting more and more frustrated with my career and direction in life,” Fialkov said, “and suddenly, there they were, like a 32-page stapled piece of salvation.”

Fialkov’s salvation sparked within him a need for a creative outlet, and the newly-rediscovered comic books provided the perfect opportunity.

“I never really thought about writing comics until I came back to them,” Fialkov said. “I was pretty seriously depressed and needed an escape, and comics were just … there.”

Fialkov began writing comics “as a way to actually create finished products out of my ideas that I could share with the world.”

Read the first two issues of Josh Fialkov’s Echoes, illustrated by Rahsan Ekedal, for free online at Comic Book Resources and visit his website at thefialkov.com

The Marvelous John Cerilli

When Marvel Entertainment, Inc. executive John Cerilli was a boy, he never thought he’d work in the comic book industry.

“To me it was an unreachable goal, like trying to play third base for the Mets,” Cerilli said. “It was beyond my comprehension.”

Still, Cerilli, Emerson College class of ‘89, was a steadfast fan of comic books from a very early age.

“I remember being attracted to them even before I could read them,” he said. “My aunt read a lot of horror-based comics in the early ‘70s and I would flip through them at first looking at the pictures.”

Cerilli, vice president of digital content and programming for Marvel.com, eventually learned to read and began selecting his own titles in his early teens.

“I was a Marvel guy through and through, but I read a ton of DC books, too,” he said. “The X-Men, Spider-Man, The Thing, Conan and Batman were far and away my favorites.”

Cerilli, 44, had never heard of Emerson College before his high school guidance counselor mentioned it to him, but the school’s focus on media and communications immediately piqued his interest.

“I went to visit the school and, simply, I was hooked,” he said. “I loved the fact that our ‘campus’ was the city of Boston.”

In fact, Cerilli was so enamored by Emerson and Boston that he never considered applying anywhere else.

“It really seemed fantastic and felt like home,” he said. “The vibe, it being situated in the heart of a major city, was just perfect.”

Initially, the New York-born and New Jersey-raised Cerilli thought he would have a career in sports writing or commentary when he began his academic career at Emerson in the 1985 fall semester.

Cerilli, an avid Mets fan, said, “Sports, especially baseball, were and still remain an enormous passion of mine … Little did anyone know that the Mets and Red Sox would meet in one of the greatest World Series ever played in 1986, which made the experience of going to school at Emerson all the more amazing.”

At Emerson, Cerilli majored in mass communications, but, encouraged by his teachers, quickly shifted gears.

“[I] decided to switch to writing when professor after professor commented on the quality of my papers,” Cerilli said. “I finally had a chat with one of my professors who seemed to like my writing during my freshman year.”

That professor was Mary Karr, who would later write “The Liars’ Club,” among other award-winning memoirs and volumes of poetry.

“I asked her if she thought I was good enough to pursue a career in writing and she didn’t dissuade me from that,” Cerilli said. “Just the opposite, in fact. For me, that was a major victory as I respected her enormously.”

Cerilli’s history professor was also influential in setting him on his writing career, “even if I didn’t really know how I was going to make a living from it,” he said.

“My favorite professor was Dr. John Coffee,” Cerilli said. “In fact, I achieved the entirety of my history minor by taking classes with him … [he] actually used to have a class called Cartoons and American History. It was brilliant. In fact, I ended up writing a paper on the X-Men – comparing their plight to the civil rights movement that fueled their creation.”

Even in college, comic books remained a part of Cerilli’s life.

“I was a frequent visitor to Newbury Comics on Newbury Street and would often walk back to Fensgate with CDs and comics,” Cerilli said. “I still remember the buzz around ‘The Dark Knight Returns.’ I had to have it.”