I started reading comics in '79. I basically learned how to read from a combination of Sesame Street and Spider-Man comics. From age six through fifteen, I read super-hero comics religiously. Back in those days, having a local comic book shop was a rarity. When we wanted to buy comics we went to the local convenience store or grocery store. A trip with my parents to buy groceries meant I would be leaving the store with the latest adventures of Captain America, Power Pack, or Firestorm. The loss of this market in the current comic marketplace is what I believe is making it difficult to bring in a new crop of young readers.

In 1988, at the age of fifteen, my interests changed, and I left my hobby/obsession with comic books behind. I missed most of the nineties (for the most part, this wasn't a bad thing). I didn't think about comics again until 1999 when everything came together to create a situation that brought me back into the world of comic book fandom: I had a job that gave me expendable income, the Internet let me take a glimpse of what was going on at the time in comics through fan sites and newsgroups, and I found a local comics shop. I've been reading ever since, and I don't foresee leaving again anytime soon.

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Five Things I know about comics:

1. Larry Hama is terribly underrated.

2. In the mid-eighties, Ann Nocenti was the (wo)man! (Yeah, I read Miller's Daredevil, but years later the stories that stuck with me most were the intro stories for Typhoid Mary and Rotgut.)

3. I normally prefer artist who draw in a more realistic style, but when I see work by Mike Allred I can't help but think it's not just a comic, or it exists only to tell a story...it's Art with a capital "A".

4. It all began in the Golden Age. The Silver Age changed the comic landscape with the birth of Marvel Comics as we know it today. But for my money, the Bronze Age of the '70s was when it all came together.

5. There is nothing cool about zombies. Let it go.