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I love comics. I love comics in a way that is frightening. It is frightening because I love comics more than I love anything else. Comics are a passion for me the way sports is a passion for many other men, the way music is a passion for some, and they way religion or politics is a passion for others. Discovering a new comic or finding a new way to look at or related to comics gets me so excited I tremble.
I am endlessly curious and voracious about new comics and new forms of comics. I am curious about Japanese comics, Francophone comics, British comics. I love comics of all sizes and shapes and all subject matters. I enjoy funny books, action books, sexy books, wordless books, ugly books, pretty books. I spend more time and energy thinking about and talking about and reading comics than I do anything else, even school. I have loved comics, as I said, since I can remember, and my love grows stronger every day. It shows no sign of diminishing. I seek to understand comics the way a scientist might seek to understand fusion or an painter might seek to understand texture or technique. It is, quite simply, an obsession and a fetish. It's a powerful force in my life, so powerful I feel overwhelmed by it at times, compelled by it. It feels as if I'm not under my own control sometimes. It's scary, but I like it. The fact that most of my life, especially during the formative years of adolescence, I was strongly conditioned to think of comics as juvenile fare to be maligned and embarrassed of. I have only very recently in my adult life gotten over this. Say, the last three or four years. So, here I have this powerful obsession that I am embarrassed or ashamed of and seek to keep marginalized in my life. The whole time, it is the very center of life. I'm glad I've gotten over that. I have much more room to revel in my love affair with a magical art form. A rebel art from, in its own way.
Recently I have finally made accommodation in my consciousness for the Art of Comics. This is a phrase I have embraced for years but only recently have I opened my thinking up to accept the Art of Comics. I think now of the physical form of words and pictures, of books and bindings, of pages and pigments, as one might think of canvas and pastels, of ink and paper, or lumps of clay to be shaped in infinite variety and form.
I feel as if I'm on the verge of a great chasm. Hanging just above my head is a precious, succulent fruit. I can reach it, I can taste it, if I stand on the very edge of this vast abyss, on my tip toes, and reach my arm out as far as I can over the black, bottomless gorge.