Comic book geek girl… sort of

22 Mar

This is the part of the tale where I tell you I am a comic geek. Except… that would be a lie. Here’s the thing- I was raised on comic books, my brother is a comic geek (you should see the collection stored in his room!), and I am affiliated with an amazing shop on the north-side of Chicago – Evil Squirrel Comics (seriously, if you are in the Windy City you should pop by or if not- go to the site, you need something? Ask Shawn). I pretty much collect only one series now- though due to budget cuts in my life (y’all got that I am an grad student, right?), I’m not buying right now and will probably just get the graphic novels when I figure out where to start… Bad geek. 😦

I know the characters. I know the basis of many storylines. And when I don’t, I know to call my brother and ask. Ha! It’s fun when we get to go to San Diego Comic Con and then when I don’t understand something, he explains it to me. It’s a lot like when we go to a football game and something happens that makes the crowd mad, but I don’t know why. He’s a good brother that way.

I’m telling you this because you need to understand… I am not a good comic geek. 😦 I need to be better. I am better with webcomics- HiJinks Ensue is a favorite, followed by the smarty pants of XKCD. I follow a few others but am not religious with the reading due to them not always being good. 😦 But on top of that… on top of my being a shitty comic geek, there’s the fact that I’ve somehow started collected comic artists as friends.

Steve Scott has done some amazing work. I have two lithographs of his up in my livingroom and gave a Batman page to my brother for Christmas. Oh, and his latest project House of Screams looks mighty fine.

Brent Peeples has been working on The Last of the Greats of late and from what I can tell… it looks amazing. (Again, this is one that I’m going to have to pick up retroactively).

Matthew Waite is always working on some new thing or the other… can’t tell you what his latest project is, but I’m sure it’s fantastic.

There are others… but these are the three I jump to pimp. I have prints from each hanging up around my apt and they are the names I’ve found myself looking for when I wander a shop.

I’m off to a conference this week for my field but I’ve got two graphic novels in my bag to help entertain me. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to review them here in the next week or so.