I’m passionate about comic books, which are sometimes called sequential art as stories are told through a sequence of pictures with accompanying text.

Where does this driving passion come from?

I can probably trace it back to one defining moment of my life.

I must have been about 14.

I had just recently started collecting and had about forty to fifty Marvel comic books in an old cardboard box.

They were my pride and joy and I had read them every inch from cover to cover.

At one stage I even knew the contents of all those titles by issue number only!

That comic book was Defenders #113 (# = number) guest starring the Squadron Supreme, yes I still remember it vividly.

All you need to know at this point is that the Squadron Supreme were one of the coolest assembly of super powered individuals.

Trust me.

That collection was a personal achievement that I had spent time and energy putting together and I wasn’t about to let it disappear.

I removed them from the bin, still in the box, and brought them back indoors like Perseus rescuing Andromeda from certain death (taken from the Greek myth).

This one act steeled my resolve to continue my life long obsession with comic books.

A major factor in making comic book reading and re-reading a joyful experience is the established continuity.

This is basically respecting what has gone before. As time goes on all ongoing comic book titles build up history for all the characters. Events that happen often refer to past occurrences.

Many older issues (called back issues) had references to previous appearances of characters with the title and issue number included.

Though this is rewarding for the long time reader it can act as a turn off to a new one. Who wants to have to read 100 back issues of a series in order to enjoy one issue!

Also, a new writer could see decades of continuity as a millstone weighing down around their neck and stifling creativity.

This is being addressed in recent comic books by having back issue references phased out.

This bonds you to the characters and helps build that connection which you need to keep coming back to find out what happens next.

This is a reflection on reality in the sense that if a traumatic physical or mental event happened in your life the effects would last a long time.

To show this in comic books gives them an aura of maturity and moves them away from the throw away stories of the distant past.

Like I said earlier there are many, many simply fantastic comic book stories that haven’t been collected in trades.

For example, the Roger Stern/John Buscema run of The Avengers and the John Byrne run on Alpha Flight.

Also, the Fabian Nicenza/Mark Bagley run on New Warriors and the entire Kurt Busiek/Mark Bagley run on Thunderbolts.

All that effort will go out the window if the cancer of the industry takes hold.

Lateness.

For whatever reason, sometimes a comic book title doesn’t come out on it’s announced date.

The longer the title is late the greater the chance the reader will forget what happened before and that will kill interest in the title.

This has happened once too many recently (most famously Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Strikes Again (DK2), which was the long awaited sequel to his ground breaking Batman story The Dark Knight Returns and was almost a year late!

It’s hard to get the same excitement for a story in situations like that and, like a weary lover whose heart has been broken one time too many, cynicism can begin to set in.

That story is also a chapter of a larger story (called an arc) which fuses continuity to complete an entertaining read.

That and those cliff-hanger endings get me every time!

The popular, and increasingly sensible, thing to do at the moment is to ‘wait for the trade’.

This eliminates the agony of waiting for late comics.

There are many great comic book stories that have not been collected into a trade.

You see current thinking is that strong sales of a title will warrant a trade collection.

Therefore titles without big marketing budgets behind them will get poor sales and not get collected.

A revamping of the aforementioned Squadron Supreme, this is a modern day, somewhat cynical, take on a group of newly emerging super powered people and the authority’s role in dealing with their existence.

Basically, it’s asking what would it be like if this happened today, here and now.

It’s very thought provoking and contains mature themes. It is a great example of the power of graphic storytelling within comic books.

I’m also loving DC Comics’ excellent, new, all ages series Teen Titans by Geoff Johns and drawn (or illustrated) by Mike Mckone.

Highlighting the struggles of the next generation of super powered characters this is one of the best titles out at the moment.

It shows, through great pacing and fantastic artwork, what comics are truly capable of.