Wednesday - October 27, 2004:

I have nothing. No, really. I've been coding and formatting and editing all day and night. I am drained and tired, but I can say the last panel brought a slight smile to my face and a little grunt of agreement with that little "FUME". That is why I love comics.

Last night at midnight, I began reading "Men of Tomorrow". I stumbled upon it in a dark and lonely corner at the bottom of a Barnes and Noble book shelf. I haven't bought a book in months, though my library card's gotten a good little workout. The contrast between the Greenwich Public Library (my new, rich town) and the Waterbury Public Library (my old, poor town) is stark, almost embarassing. I applaud local control of things like education and other town services (I'm an angry opponent of NCLB), but there is a point where leaving vital services to impoverished and incompetent local control becomes unfair and immoral.

Most people would probably never realize the difference, not having visited many libraries other than their own. I've been to several dozen in the past few years looking for this book or that. Waterbury's was the most run-down I have ever used. Waterbury, the place that needs help the most, a bankrupt, defunct mill-town whose finances were recently taken over by the state.

Ironically, I found "Men of Tomorrow" in a bookstore a few hundred yards from the Waterbury Public Library. The coffee shop was packed with students from the local community college, struggling to pass classes and get a job in a town where there are few. A similar struggle takes place in "Men of Tomorrow". It examines the lives of the people who started the golden age of comics from both sides of the comic world, the creators' and the owners'. The sense of excitement about comics I got reading the first few pages is the same sense of excitement I get about comics on the web. I see our predicament as similar. How can you make a legitimate living out of a kind of creativity that is not socially acceptable? I hope I can glean something from their successes and mistakes. Of course, it's largely their fault comics are not socially acceptable.

-Bob Stevenson