Little Fish, or, How I Got Back Into Comics

In a previous post, I talked about how drawing cartoons on my daughter’s sandwich bags got me back into drawing regularly. Today, I want to talk about what got me back into buying and  reading comics on a regular basis.

As I wrote a few weeks back, I started reading comics when I was maybe six or seven, when my dad found and gave me some of his old comic books. From that point on, I read whatever I could get my hands on, whether it was the random selection on the spinner rack at the grocery store, or, eventually, my first comic shop (the late, great Daydream Comics, in Charlottesville, VA).

By the time I was in high school, I collected entire runs of a great number of titles (and, of course, their variant, foil-embossed covers--it was the 1990’s), dutifully bagged and boarded and preserved for posterity.

I managed to keep up my comics habit pretty much through college (without bags and boards and variant covers, alas), and for a couple of years after that.

By about 2004, when I was teaching and newly married, I had started to drift away from comics--the stories had largely taken on a boring sameness, and I didn’t really have the time or the money to bother. Once my daughter came along in 2006, that was the nail in the coffin--no time, no money (except for Hellboy. Always Hellboy.).

That might have been it, except that, on a whim, one day in about 2013, I stopped in at Little Fish Comics, a smallish comic shop in Fredericksburg, VA. The shop is only about a mile from where I was living at the time, and, if I remember correctly, I wanted to see if they had the final few collections of the great crime noir series 100 Bullets. (I hadn’t kept up with it, but it was a great read, and I wanted to see how it all turned out.)

They did!

After that, I popped in from time to time with no real purpose or focus; I wanted to read comics, but I hadn’t really kept up with them for approaching a decade, and had no idea where to start.

The sign of a great comic shop owner is the ability to help you find the comic(s) you’ll really love, sell you on them, and then sell them to you. (As opposed to selling you all the foil-embossed variant covers.) While I realize this is also in their best financial interest, it speaks to a love and knowledge of the art form, and a respect for the customer that goes beyond dollar signs.

Mike Porter, owner and operator of Little Fish Comics & Collectibles, is a great comic shop owner. (Scott Saternye, formerly of Daydream Comics, was another one. I’ve been lucky!)

Over the next several years, Mike got me hooked on comics that were what was missing when I quit reading them: New takes on old characters, or at least new storylines and new voices.

One of the first was the Hawkeye series by Matt Fraction and David Aja, which will always be the gold standard for that character (sorry, Jeremy Renner). Then there was Mark Waid’s run on Daredevil, and the always-hilarious Squirrel Girl, offbeat series like I Hate Fairyland, and the really ridiculously good Star Wars comics. And Postal. And Victorian Undead. And others.

Boy, did I get back into comics.

Drawing for my daughter returned me to art, which led to Harold. But it’s also true that, without Mike’s recommendations, and his compliments on my artwork, I might not have undertaken to create my own comics. Seeing the great and varied work out in the wider comics world made me want to add my own, and I wouldn’t have gotten there without Mike Porter and his shop.

Thanks, Mike.

If you’re in the Fredericksburg area, or if you’re passing through, drop by and let Mike help you find the best new comic you’ve never heard of. (You can find the shop at 9961 Jefferson Davis Highway in Fredericksburg, in the front row of the Target shopping center at Cosner’s Corner.)

Thanks for reading! Page 12 of Harold & The Monster will post next Monday morning, and next week on the blog I’ll be writing about a great series with a name that sounds a lot like mine (but isn’t). Hope you’ll come check it out!