Friday - October 29, 2004:

I admit it. I own some pretty strange books. "Brother Power, The Geek" is not even close to the low point of my collection. OK, the Vertigo remake is pretty far down there, but I'm proud of my copy of the original 60's Geek. I am not so proud of my Nintendo books or He-Man or Starriors, well, maybe the Starriors. I'm amazed by the people who can read the same comic month after month, year after year, decade after decade. I spent my entire comic collecting years, 25 now, jumping from title to title. Mostly That's because I'm most interested in the creators not the creations. Bone, Cerebus and Stray Bullets, even Groo were refreshing concepts for me when I discovered them. A creator sticking with a story from start to finish? Wow. And That's another reason webcomics appeal to me so much. The creator's fingerprint is even deeper, bolder because there's not much in the way. No printers, editors, conflicting visions, big pictures. The comic goes wherever the creator needs to take it. I've been disappointed with the past two weeks of PVP. An editor never would have let Scott spend a week signing books at a show and another on a cheesy build-up to Halloween and therein lies the beauty. Who knows where it goes next? One could say the same about HB and they'd be right.

Oh, and my most embarrasing comic book purchase would have to be "Amethyst", an 80's version of The Wizard of Oz only instead of Oz, there's Gem World. There was a whole line of dolls and everything. Wait, I take it back, there was that soft-core porn comic I bought around 1986. I think I actually picked it out of a catalogue and pre-ordered it because, um, the potential to see some skin. What? We didn't have the internet, you know although my friends and I were doing some freaking and hacking around that time using a TRS-80 and a Vic-20 to make our own little internet.

-Bob Stevenson