My comics origin story

There was an idea...

Editor’s Note: It’s Wednesday so that means it’s time for the second issue of Amazing Journey, the new comics section of ARC Worlds.

Every Wednesday, I will touch on a comics-related topic, such as writing the first issue of a series, what it’s like to run a comic book store, working with artists, and how writing comics is different from writing prose.

I’ll also highlight the week’s new releases, indie comics, and backlist titles I’m reading.

Every superhero has a great origin story, so I thought it would only be fitting to share my comics origin story with you!

I wasn’t one of those kids who grew up reading every superhero comic I could get my hands on and I’m still not even sure where the nearest LCS is to my parents’ house. Instead, my first foray into the medium was the adjacent hobby of collecting Marvel Masterpiece trading cards.¹

Then one day in fourth grade my friends started talking about the just-released Death of Superman that had already sold out. Annoyed that I was late to the party, I decided to buy the various Reign of the Supermen titles that followed in the hopes that one day they would be worth something. (Spoiler alert: they aren’t). I repeated the same plan by buying X-Men 2099 #1 and Chris Claremont & Jim Lee’s X-Men #1, with similar results.²

My actual comic reading as a kid was limited to Bongo’s Simpson comics, but my first real exposure to superhero stories was through X-Men: The Animated Series and Superman: The Adventures of Lois and Clark. Of course I ate up the Spider-Man and X-Men movies from the early 2000’s, but still I remained uninterested in actually picking up a proper comic.

Finally, during the heyday of Phase II of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I happened upon an article about the start of Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Wars. “Ooh, a big line-wide event!” I remember thinking. “The perfect time to jump into comics in earnest for the first time.

So I Googled “what should I read before Secret Wars” and Comic Book Herald suggested Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers run as a good jumping off point.

OK great. I liked The Avengers and the other MCU movies, so I thought it wouldn’t be so bad. And, Hickman’s Avengers run started in 2012, so it wasn’t like I had to read 50 years worth of comics to understand what has happened so far.

Except then I fell down a rabbit hole. According to Comic Book Herald, I should read Hickman’s New Avengers as well. At the time I wasn’t sure why there were two sets of Avengers books, but fine, I’ll check out New Avengers too.

But wait. You can’t just read Avengers and then read New Avengers and then read Secret Wars. You need to read them in the correct order, because both series occur at the same time. Except, it’s still not that simple, because to really get Secret Wars, you need to also read Hickman’s Fantastic Four/FF run and his Ultimates run. It was all too much for me and so I gave up.

Fast forward another four years, when I randomly stumbled across an article about Hickman’s relaunch of the X-Men line with House of X and Powers of X. Maybe it was the nostalgia for the animated series and the first two movies. Or maybe it was the high concept combined with the amazing artwork combined with the simple weekly progression of the “two series are that one.” But that proved to be the spark that started the fire, a legend that grew in the telling.

Yasmine Putri’s connecting House of X/Powers of X covers

I devoured the whole thing week-by-week, bought all of the X-books that launched in fall 2019, and then slow starting branching out into more Marvel books.³ Then the pandemic hit and the release of new comics ground to a halt. So I turned to Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie’s Wicked+Divine, reading the whole series over the course of a week.

Then I went back in time, and decided to finally do what 2015-me never thought I would do: read the entire Secret Wars run-up, starting with Hickman’s Fantastic Four: Dark Reign.

It was around that time that I saw a random tweet from JH himself (when he was still on Twitter) about a master seminar he was doing with Comics Experience’s Andy Schmidt about the art of rebooting a franchise. And even though I had never thought of writing a comic before, I took a chance and signed up for the seminar. And haven’t looked back since.

Now, the perfect ending would be to tell you that I’m wrapping up my 43rd script and have published a dozen issues across multiple series, but the truth is that I’m still very much at the beginning of my comics writing journey. Over the rest of 2022, I’ll be working on getting that first issue written, drawn, colored, and lettered, and I’ll be documenting every step of the way. For now, I’ll leave you with the first line of that issue as a promise that there’s more to come:

My dad didn’t tell us he was dying until it was too late.

What I’m reading

• Fire Power #22: Martial arts masters + Fantastic Four family dynamics + Chris Samnee art = must-read

• Legion of X #3: I loved the prequel mini-series Way of X, in which Nightcrawler struggles to understand Krakoa’s Three Laws and this follow-on series about Kurt trying to “enforce” those Laws has a lot of interesting threads so far.

• Amazing Spider-Man #5: The good thing about ASM is the release velocity, so we’re already at the end of the first arc, which pits Spider-Man vs. Tombstone, while teasing some crazy One More Day-style revelations to come. Plus issue #900 is next!

From the Backlist

jaauerbach_author

A post shared by Jon Auerbach (@jaauerbach_author)

• I backed R. Honor Vincent’s Kickstarter campaign for Andraste, her comic series about Boudica’s rebellion against the Romans and finally got a chance to read it during my holiday weekend travels. If you like liberal smatterings of Celtic mythology, alternate planes of reality, and Roman legionary hijinks, this series is for you. Pick up a copy here.

What comic are you currently reading (whether one out this week, 20 years ago, or somewhere in between) and how did you get into comics? Leave a comment or reply to this email (make sure you add “OK TO PRINT” as per comics letter column traditions).

Until next week, Guild members!

1. Somehow I pulled a Thing v. Hulk foil card that I still have to this day. Or maybe I traded for it? My favorite is a bit hazy on this point.

2. At the time I was incredibly confused as to how it was that the first issue of X-Men was only just coming out now and how it was not very expensive!

3. I made a bright-line rule of not buying any DC books, lest my wallet remain perpetually empty, one that I’ve broken a few times depending on the creative team and story.