Ok, so long ago and far away I took a trip to Emerald City Comics.  I was just getting into comics and I found the listing in the yellow pages while I was on my Summer vacation.  What I found there was a slightly fear inducing, utterly magical world of tables and boxes filled with stories and pictures.  This is where I found ‘Hero Sandwich.’  It was a collection of about six issues that comprised one story line.  I fell in love.

I can’t say if this was really in a time before the internet or if it was just a time before I was aware of it.  Basically, I had little access to finding more except for that same shop, Emerald City Comics, or the ad for a publishers catalog in the back of ‘Hero Sandwich.’  The ad was already old and I wondered, as I filled out and sealed up the request, whether or not I would hear anything of it.  A month or so later, I had mail from Slave Labor Graphics.

I gathered up my meager allowance savings and placed my order for a few titles including Milk and cheese, Library Bonnet, and Pirate Patrol.  My comic book collecting was slow in those days and everything got put on hold during the school year.  By the time I made my second order, I had found SLG’s online site and discovered Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Rare Creature, and Lenore.  Eventually SLG publications started showing up in honest to goodness bookstores, and then in used bookstores.  This is how I found Rex Libris.  That bowling ball monolith logo was all I needed to see to know I wanted the comic it lived on.

Somewhere in the middle of this I got the idea in my head that I might create a comic myself.  I’m not even sure where this initial attempt ended up.  I think I can remember it being pretty bad, you know typical Mary Sue turned mutated super hero.  It was the idea of SLG’s open submission policy that made me even want to attempt comicking.  I was misguided, I know.  I have much better reasons for drawing comics now.