No More Invisible Girls

My “getting into comics” started as more of a series of unconnected plateaus, but I look back on those early moments of sequential-art-reading as formative in my love for the whole medium. I fell in love with newspaper comic strips when I found my dad’s old “Peanuts” paperbacks at my grandparents’ house. I started reading the daily newspapers strips, not just the Sunday funnies. By the time I was 9 years old, I could tell you who the Yellow Kid and Krazy Kat were. When the Sabrina the Teenage Witch TV show started, I was thrilled to find out there were comic books too. And in middle school, I read Jules’ Feiffer’s YA novel “The Man In The Ceiling”. I was vaguely disappointed it wasn’t a comic, as the cover had initially led me to believe. I fell in love with June Brigman’s portrayal of Brenda Starr, and one of my fondest memories of my late grandmother is the time we discussed the latest “For Better or For Worse” storyline. And in high school, some friends introduced me to BL manga. It was the first time I’d read any kind of queer romance (that wasn’t fanfic /o\)

I made the conscious decision to start reading Western comics when I was 16 and obsessed with the Matrix. When I heard the Wachowskis had conceived of the Matrix as a comic, I realized I was essentially missing a whole medium of stories by not seeking them out. Fortunately, the Wachowskis seemed to have a not-so-secret agenda to evangelize to people like me, and had an array of comics and short stories by some of the best creators in the biz available on the official Matrix website.

After reading the short story Neil Gaiman wrote for it, I tore into school the next day and asked my friends if they’d ever heard of this guy and if they had any of his books I could borrow, not even expecting to get any comics out of it. But one of my friends piped up that he wrote some “graphic novels”, and that I could borrow those, if I wanted (she seemed skeptical in a slightly embarassed way, like she was worried she was exposing herself to ridicule for admitting she read comic books). I immediately said “Yes, I’ll take them,” pleased that I could pursue my plan of finding comics to read while also exploring more of this writer’s work. I was hooked from the first page. The other day on Twitter, one teacher said that after they read Sandman, her students often say to her “I didn’t know stories could do that.” That is precisely what I felt while reading it, which encouraged me that I was in for a world of fantastic new stories told in remarkable ways—exactly what I went looking for when I decided to seek out comics.

I first entered a comic shop to buy the Wachowskis/Steve Skroce’s “Doc Frankenstein” (which is, btw, still the greatest comic of at least the month whenever it comes out, even though it’s been over 4 years since the last issue). The store was in a converted mechanics’ garage and looked the part, in addition to the 15 years of mustiness and grime built up, which is how long it had been there. I nervously stuck to the walls and avoided eye contact with anyone before grabbing what I came in for. I handed over the $3.50 and mumbled vague answers in response to the cashier’s attempt at friendly conversation, my eyes fixed instead on a small stack of newsprint leaflets that had the Joker’s face on them. The cashier told me that those were free and had information about upcoming comics in them and offered to slip one in my bag, to which I assented.

When I got home that day, I read the very satisfying Doc Frankenstein debut, which had an introduction by the Wachowskis in which they asserted their belief, much to my initial confusion, but which I now more or less agree with, that comics are a greater storytelling vehicle than film. I then turned my attention to that bit of newsprint, called Comic Shop News. Opening it, I was aghast at what I found— a preview of a new Stan Lee comic (and you can be sure even a n00b like me knew who Stan Lee was), whose title and main character shared my own name— Alexa.

I knew once and for all, there was no going back.