Posted by: Emily in Craft
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We’re Writers Old Fashioned, a group of Bay Area comic book creators bound together by our collective four color dreams. We’re polling our resources (us) to answer the age old question: Why comics?

And more importantly: Why the hell do we MAKE comics?  First up, Jason and Emily…

 

The place stunk of bloody meat and kicked up sawdust and I couldn’t be happier.  The longer the butcher took to take my pop’s order, the longer I could spin the lopsided, creaky comic rack.  Bat-Man, Spider-Man and The Hulk were familiar friends I had seen on TV.  Riding home on my father’s shoulders, I held tight to Pork Chops and a handful of 35 cent adventures to be read to me.  And then suddenly without warning…

“Jason” my father warned me “Don’t turn around.  Two-Face is behind us.”

Oh Shit, Two-Face was the worst of the bunch that chased us home.  I held on tight to his sweatshirt as my father broke into a run.  Soon I’d be filled with meat, four color funnies and, if I was lucky, a baby can of Budweiser to calm my 5 year old nerves.

Why do I make comics?  Because I want every kid in America to think Two-Face is going to chop him or her into little pieces.

-Jason McNamara

 
 

Here’s how my mini-drama-comic-love-affair goes, in three parts.

Part One- Girl meets comics.  I was naive and unsuspecting, the perfect age for a comic book to be thrust upon.  The first time I held one of those colorful little books, I knew I would do whatever it took to stay close to them.  I had to draw for them, write for them, anything!

Part Two- Girl leaves comics. Along with the my little ponies and legos of my youth, the rolled up comic book in my back jean pocket was doing nothing for my social life.  I was too cool for comic books, if such a thing ever existed.

Part Three- Girl comes crawling back to comics.  I was wrong and I wasn’t fooling anybody.  The doodles of Rogue on the corners of my school papers were a dead giveaway.  I was the one who was “uncool”.  Comic books are the coolest and they aren’t even smug about it.  I jumped back in, head first.  I even starting making them myself, an offering to the comic gods.  Repentance.

So, here I am, back in the warm embrace of comics.  Back where I belong.

-Emily Stackhouse