4 September 2007
“It’s raining in Washington tonight.”
Posted by Greg under: Uncategorized .
Oh, look at this!
It’s the cover of the first comic I can remember reading. I’m sure I read others previously – we always had a whole shelf of Asterix and Footrot Flats collections in our house, plus a bunch of coverless old Peanuts digests from the fifties. This once sticks in my mind, though. I must have been about 8 when I read it. Looking at the line-up now, it’s no wonder. The first comics story I read and remember is Alan Moore and Steve Bissette’s “The Anatomy Lesson”.
That’s the kind of thing that does stuff to a child.
I was never into Superheroes in a big way, though I had (and continue to have) a soft spot for a well-written Superman or Batman story (a rarity). I started reading Neil Gaiman at Uni, and went on to Warren Ellis, Jhonen Vasquez and Sam Kieth. I never really got into much weightier material. My local store didn’t stock it, and this was the early days of the internet I didn’t really know what existed. After a while I got fed up entirely with comics (a longer story) and swore off them almost completely.
A few years after, in August 2002, I read this article in a now-defunct magazine called HQ.
It focussed mostly on Nicki Greenberg’s then in-progress adaptation of The Great Gatsby, along with other Australian comicists such as Eddie Campbell and Peter Savieri. It opened my eyes, and I started on a whole new journey of comicsy discovery. And now, 5 years later, Nicki’s Gatsby is finally out. It’s going to be launched this week.
It’s every bit as amazing as I’d imagined.
One Comment so far...
Greg Gerrand » Near and Far Says:
5 June 2008 at 10:29 pm.
[...] Ages ago I talked about a certain magazine article that brought me back to reading comics after a longish gap. It also made me realised just what could be done with the form. There were two standout images that stayed with me ever since – the first is that little picture of Nick driving his car to Daisy’s house (which Nicki tells me was 1) the first car she ever drew and 2) was destroyed in an unfortunate toning experiment). [...]