As much fun as I had with Chris Giarrusso these last couple weeks, I can't say how good it is to get back in the saddle with Gregg, taking things back to square one for RE: Comics! and me and Gregg's comics reading history!
Hopefully by now you've all picked up your jam-packed copies of X-BABIES #4 by Gregg and Jacob Chabot, but incase the snow and ice has kept you away, there are still some of the shelves!
Gregg Schigiel: I’ve shaken off my cobwebs and am ready to get back into the mix and regain my spotlight from Greensboro’s beloved (and rightfully so) Chris Giarrusso.
When we last spoke I mentioned my fascination/interest in how you got into comics. You speak often of being fairly new to comics and how Jermaine has been in a lot of ways your “Dungeon Master” as it were, in navigating the hobby. As someone who remembers buying comics off of a newsstand at a drug store and discovering comic stores I think it might be fun/interesting to talk about how we discovered and got into comics.
So I’ll start with a simple: what was first with you? Did you like comics as a kid but not enough to get attached, or did you first come into comics, as I understand it, as a young adult 6 years ago or so?
Stephen Mayer: When I was a kid my mom would take Jazzercise classes on the third floor of an old mall in town. Once my brother and I were old enough (maybe 8 for me and 6 for my brother), she would take the money that she would have paid the Jazzercise babysitter to watch us for an hour and give us the money instead. Then we were let loose on the entire mall for the 50 or so minutes that her class lasted. While most of the stores on the upper floors were pretty boring, the basement featured a pizza parlor, an arcade, a NASCAR collectibles store, a sports/comic card shop, and a comic book store. More often than not my brother and I would raid the dollar boxes at the comic shop and get a couple of books each two or three times a week. I definitely snatched up a lot of the Reign of the Supermen books that way.
A little later on, say when I was 10 or 11, 3rd or 4th grade (1993-94), I was really into the X-Men cartoon on Fox Kids and became aware that my uncle in Texas owned a comic shop. My parents set up a subscription service through his store and once a month he would mail me a lot of the X-Books. I know I had X-Men #25 when Wolverine got his skeleton ripped out (awesome because of the hologram card on the front) and I know I had #30 (because it had tubular cards inside for Scott and Jean’s wedding) and I had the prologue to the wedding in Uncanny #308 with no realization at the time that I was looking at John Romita Jr. artwork. There was also a bunch of Generation X and X-Force and X-Factor mixed in. The only newsstand picks I got were off the magazine rack at the local Harris Teeter grocery store, but I think there was also a spinner at the Kerr Drug in the same strip mall.
Tangentially, I remember having big comic strip anthologies of things like Gasoline Alley. I would wake up in the middle of the night from a bad dream and just read that stuff for hours until I felt okay to go back to sleep. Now that I’ve learned more about Walt and Skeezix and the way the characters aged in real time, I wonder in concepts like that didn’t have a bigger impact on me than I realized at the time.
I can’t explain why I stopped reading comics. I was still a big nerd and got really into Magic the Gathering and Star Wars novelizations in middle school, but comics never grew past elementary school.
I’ll get into my comic rebirth in a bit, but my question for you is, did you ever have a point in middle or high school when you were really trying to hide that you read comics to avoid hazing or impress girls or anything? Or did you have a solid group of comic-loving peers that you could feel secure with?
Gregg: I was one of those (weird) kids who really took ownership and pride in my love for and interest in comics. I never hid it or was embarrassed by it. In 6th grade I brought comics to class for our “sustained silent reading” periods. I pretty much drew superheroes constantly throughout Junior High and beyond, even through college. I never was hazed or mocked…though I’m not sure I impressed many girls either…I didn’t repel them! Maybe you can call it a certain kind of confident nerdiness or geekdom? Or more than that, I was sort of a crossover guy. I liked comics and that was my thing, but I was able to commune with non-comics folks just fine. In fact, my friends outside of my high school art classes had no interest in comics. Talking about comics to them was like them talking about the NBA draft.
But I glommed on to superheroes and comics very early on…that and Star Wars…and when everyone else started to front or hide or leave it behind I was just oblivious to the change. I decided at 11 years old that I wanted to draw comics as my job, you know? I think I was so absorbed by it, I kind of didn’t notice whatever kind of marginalization that came as a result.
My “origin story” I think is very similar to a lot of folks of my generation. I saw the Superfriends and Spider-Man cartoons on tv (and reruns of the ‘60s Batman series) and that was my first taste of superheroes, so I’d buy comics with Batman or characters from Superfriends (I remember distinctly an issue of Justice League of America that was in the waiting room of my dentists office that mesmerized me (it had everyone in it!). My older brother and cousin had comics as well, and I remember reading the collections at the time, Origins of Marvel Comics and Marvels Greatest Super-Hero Battles. I think a lot of that stuff really informed the characters and types of stuff I like now (original X-Men, Avengers, core DCU characters) Then of course there was G.I. Joe the cartoon, which lead a lot of us to the comics…and comic stores, etc. I got “serious” with THE KILLING JOKE, which I remember reading about in the newspaper (it was a comic with curse words in it!) and had my mom drive me to the comic store to get. From there, and I’d have been in Junior High at the time, I was sunk. There was no way out for me.
If I ever had a drought at all it was during a period where I just didn’t have a regular ride to a comics store or drug store. But you’re saying you were away from comics from elementary school ‘til essentially adulthood, right?
Stephen: Not quite an adult, more a man-child. In high school there was always some part of the comic bug eating at me, but nothing broke through. I saw Spider-man at midnight. I got in a fight with a girlfriend because she said I was being condescending while we were talking about the X-Men movie. My best friend and I would go to the music store in the same shopping center as Acme every Saturday and I'd walk by and notice the posters and window displays that Jermaine and the other guys were putting together.
Things got rolling when I was a sophomore in college. A new guy moved in across the hall and comics were kind of his thing. He was going to school for art because he wanted to be a comic artist and he had prints from HeroesCon and some sketches up on his wall. The first thing that he got me on was Powers, which was about twenty issues in I think, and then Ultimate Spider-man and Ultimate X-Men, which had both been running for a couple of years. Y the Last Man was another big one. Bobby got everyone hooked on Y to the point where when a new issue would come out he would read it, then I would read it, then a guy from the 3rd floor would read it, then some girls from the 2nd floor, etc. etc. until it had been passed around so much that no one knew where it was.
That Christmas, the Christmas of...2004, my parents got me a subscription to Ultiamte Spidey and Ultimate X-Men through the Marvel mailorder service. The next week I went to Acme and got myself set up with a subscription box there for Y and Powers. I would go every week whether I had a book coming out or not and that's how I really fell under Jermaine's influence. I got caught up in the rush that was Acme on Wednesday afternoons. I dropped my 5:00 PM MWF class that semester just so I knew I would be able to make it to the shop. And anytime Jermaine checked my box and nothing had come in he would make suggestions. That's how I got on New Avengers at the beginning, and Astonishing X-Men, and all kinds of stuff. In the summer of 2005 when House of M came out I asked to have everything pulled for me and that was my first exposure to the full scope of the Marvel Universe, alternate reality that it was.
One of my favorite stories from that time period was buying my first box and trying to decide if I should get a short or a long. I turned to Carly to get her opinion and she asked if I thought I would ever have enough books to fill a long box. At the time I was keeping all of my books in my desk drawer and the concept of having 300 books blew me away.
Five years and 20 long boxes and counting, here I am.
The road from that point to the other side of the counter was a winding one, and I can elaborate on all of that in you'd like.
But first, I know you went to the School of Visual Arts in New York, but did you ever attend a standard four-year school or community college or anything before making the move to the big city? And didn't you have some pretty unique comic opportunities while you were still in high school?
Gregg: Now we’re getting in to REAL origin story stuff! I actually attended SVA for all of one month. That’s it. It wasn’t what I was looking for from a college experience so I cut out early. Instead, I attended the University of Florida where I got a Bachelors of Science degree in advertising.
Meanwhile, I’ve never actually used that degree (though I’m pretty sure I can still analyze the heck out of focus group data).
That said, while in college I found/used every opportunity I could to incorporate comics into my classes. I wrote some papers in comics form. I co-wrote comics review columns for the school paper. In the big, final advertising class, campaigns, where we have a real-life client, I based our group’s entire advertising campaign on using comics to communicate the campaign’s message (and used McCloud’s UNDERSTANDING COMICS as part of my justification/resource material).
And I drew. A lot. At this point I was focusing on sample pages and storytelling and all.
It was after coming back to NY one summer to intern at Marvel and then graduating from UF that I officially moved to NY (though between graduation and the staff job I did do my first penciling work – 1997 was a big year!).
Before that…I’m trying to remember which high school stuff I might’ve mentioned “off screen”. The one thing I think of is when Ted McKeever come to our art class to talk to us. That turned out to be pretty great. I was all about superheroes at the time, so I had no idea who Ted McKeever was…never heard of EDDY CURRENT, etc. But he was very cool and not in any way an overly pretentious artiste or whatever my 17-year-old jackass brain might’ve thought at the time. He brought photocopies of various artists’ pages, so it was the first time I’d ever seen what actual pencils for comics pages looked like (including the inclusion of Xs to indicate solid black). But more than that, he was really very encouraging of my work, particularly in that he gave me the nudge to start drawing pages and sequential stuff instead of what so many of us do, which is pin-up and splash/action shots. It does wonders to have someone who isn’t your family, teacher, or peer give you that kind of encouragement.
Similar to that experience was, after I’d left SVA, back in Florida, I got to take Will Eisner’s “Comics and Sequential Art” workshop. This was an 8-week course where aside from his lectures, we’d have weekly assignments drawing 2 to 4 pages and he’d go over them and offer pointers and critique the work. Talk about encouragement…hard to beat Will Eisner putting his hand on your shoulder and asking if you’ve sent work in to publishers (though, all due respect, I was still more than a few years away from being good enough to get work). But that…that was an incredible experience that had a pretty profound effect on my work and approach to comics storytelling.
For the record, it bugs me out that Spider-Man came out when you were in high school. I’d already worked at and left my job at Marvel…that’s nuts. And “House of M” as your first big exposure…that’s trippy, too. It’s such a different point of entry it’s literally hard for me to wrap my head around it. I can’t even think of a proper way to ask questions about it.
So instead: you became Jermaine’s padwan by virtue of him making recommendations and those recommendations sticking? Is that how he built up the trust? Like, had he recommended the wrong comics might that have driven you away or kept you, at the most, a casual reader? Or do you think you’d been re-awakened and Jermaine simply acted as a turbo booster?
Stephen: I think the combination of Ted McKeever coming to your high school art class with copies of original comic art and the Will Eisner workshop you took in college were what I had in mind when I asked the question. Just as crazy to me as you having trouble getting your head around my recent re-awakening to the comics world are the stories that you have about not only meeting, but being under the tutelage of Will Eisner! Sadly, one of the first stories I remember seeing on the old Acme Comics website was an obituary that Jermaine had written for him a few days after his passing in January of '05.
One of your stories that I can very much relate to is incorporating comics into whatever aspects of your life that you could. Fortunately, I think it was a little easier for me since "graphic novels" were already starting to garner more attention and respect within general academia. I took a class on American literature since 1950 and MAUS was on the syllabus. It really opened me up in the classroom for the first time in my collegiate career, but I think a lot of the geeking out I was doing went over the heads of many of my classmates and sometimes the professor. For our final exam in that class we had to pick a piece of historical fiction and write a 15-page paper on it and I was lucky enough to get Bendis and Marc Andreyko's TORSO pushed through.
Back to your last question, there were a few more twists on my road to Acme employ. I can't say that Jermaine always gave me the good stuff or advised me of the right moves because a lot of the House of M tie-ins were completely beyond my understanding at the time or were just outright terrible. But for every stinker he let me get away with, there was a winner. He claims that I was really resistant to his influence at first, always just walking in, grabbing my books, and hopping in the check-out line. He probably isn't wrong.
Anyway, at the same time I had become friends with a guy that was planning on opening his own store in Winston-Salem, about 20 miles from Greensboro. When he opened his doors in January of 2006, I moved most of my subscriptions over there and began helping out around his shop. Mainly unpacking the shipment and running subs for his customers. That was my first experience interacting with Diamond and I learned a lot about the pulse of Wednesdays and nuances of customers during my time there. My fall 2006 schedule didn't provide me much time to make the 30 minute trip there and back a few times a week, so I briefly moved my sub list to the other store in town, which at that time was literally less than 100 yards from my house.
It wasn't until January of 2007 that Jermaine got in touch with me again on MySpace (does anyone remember MySpace?). They had about 10,000 comics at the shop that needed bagging and he wanted me to help them out for trade credit. January 19th, 2007 was my first day doing trade credit, which I remember because it had snowed the day before, but I'd still driven to see Fall Out Boy, New Found Glory, and the Early November that night. At the same time there was a "help wanted" sign in the window and after a few weeks of proving I had what it took to bag comics the Acme way, Jermaine strongly suggested that I apply. I did, and by the beginning of March I had quit my job at Outback Steakhouse and thrown in with Acme. March 7th, 2007 was my first Wednesday at the store, because that's the day Captain America #25 came out and one of the first phone calls that I took as an employee was some guy saying, "I heard Captain America died today. Is that true?" before I had even unpacked the book. Spoilers, guys! Geez.
To get into a more specific origin, you met Chris and Jacob in the Marvel offices, I guess, but what really brought you guys together to become such excellent friends, collaborators, travelling companions, etc.?
Gregg: I’ve been looking for the old pages I did for that Will Eisner workshop…they’re in a box somewhere and I’ve not found them just yet. But I’ve been very, very fortunate to get some of the feedback and lessons from the folks I’ve gotten feedback and lessons from.
I also had a college class, a history class, which had MAUS on the syllabus. And there were a couple random comics classes once every couple of semesters. I worked with one of those professors to create an “independent study”, which was essentially a “make up your own class for credit” deal. Naturally, I created a comics class.
It’s hard to pinpoint anything specific that brought Chris, Jacob and I together. Chris interned at Marvel the summer after me, coincidentally in the office for whom I did my first penciling work (WHAT IF? V.2, #104). He joined the bullpen some months after I started in editorial. It’s hard to say how we became friends, though…that kind of happens or doesn’t, right? Professionally, I was a fan of his work and encouraged the then editor of the then Bullpen Bulletins page to run his stuff. And he dug my work and always encouraged/pushed me to go cartoonier with my stuff. So as professional peers we’ve had good give-and-take going…positive reinforcement and honest critique and all that.
Jacob was an intern in the Marvel bullpen in my last few months. He sat right outside the office I shared with Tom Brevoort, so he likely remembers me more than I remember him…but I remember Chris suggesting Jacob have me look over his work, and I definitely remember looking at the sample pages Jacob had done; they were Spider-Man pages and they were quite good. Once I left staff and Marvel, Jacob joined the bullpen and I’d hang out with Chris and Jacob, etc, etc. And so it went.
As for our conventioneering together, that just came out of our friendship. Chris and I went out to Comic-Con one year and had a good time…a few years later Jacob joined up. Brian Smith came out one year (he and I were interns together at Marvel and then assistants together as well). And it’s just a lot more fun to travel with friends and do the shows sitting together. What’s kind of funny is I’ve long been very resistant to us calling ourselves by any sort of collective or studio moniker (a la Gaijin Studios or The Blvd), but at this point when we go to shows if one of us isn’t there people ask why, etc…and now that Chris let us play in the back-ups to G-MAN and Jacob and I did X-BABIES together, it’s become even more so we’re kind of a collective by default. I could do much, much worse than to have those guys as my cartoonist cohorts (though I still resist giving us a collective umbrella name/title).
Come to think of it, we refer to you guys as “The Acme Crew”…and it’s almost natural to think of people in groups…so do we, without knowing it, have an umbrella name you or others might refer us as? Are we “Chris and the gang” or some such thing? “The New York Jackballs”, maybe?
Stephen: I think I've called you guys the "All-Ages Trifecta" or some such thing when we talked about bringing you guys in for G-Man's Greensboro Cape Crisis or again sometime later in 2010 while we plan out the calender. We recently extended an offer to Chris to come out to Free Comic Book Day this May and I definitely expressed a regret over not having the resources to bring all you guys down at once again. Same with HeroesCon this year, I was bummed at the notion that Chris and Jacob might come, but you'd be hanging back in the Big Apple.
But what would you guys be? G.C.S.? That's Guilford County Schools around these parts. Perhaps there's a prevailing inside joke for you guys you'd like to share with the world. At the same time, you've all been developing your own "brands" for a while with Beetle Bug Comics and Hatter Entertainment, etc., so maybe an unspoken understanding or comradery and creative excellence is really all you need.
Hopefully now folks have a little better understanding of our humble beginnings and if we're lucky we blew a few more minds than just each others! Next week we'll finish up out indepth analysis of the X-BABIES mini series with issue #4 and the finale was without a doubt my favorite!
Gregg Schigiel is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. He's worked as a penciller and editor for Marvel Comics and an illustrator and cartoonist at Nickelodeon in addition to creating his own characters and books. He's recently wrapped up the X-Babies mini series for Marvel with artist Jacob Chabot and writing and drawing Pix: Teenage American Fairy and Safari Junior High, appearing in the back of the G-Man: Cape Crisis mini series from Image. Check out his website at Hatter Entertainment.com.
Stephen Mayer makes his mama proud walking miles in the snow to Pizza Hut and Donut World and helping his neighbors dig out their cars any way that he can.
