Beyond The Panels #1: My First Post or Where I Bore You By Talking About Myself And What Comics Mean To Me.

Welcome To Beyond The Panels!

Hello. My name is David Harth. I'm kind of old, but I don't look it, and I've been reading comics for about 25 or 26 years now. It all started waaay back in 1991. I was in 5th grade. At the time, I was in a gifted class and a few of my fellow students read comics and had the Marvel Comics Trading Cards (the second series). I would look at their cards and be transported to another world. I had by this time read some comics as I was growing up, but they weren't super important to me. It wasn't until then that it became a thing.

I can't remember the first comic I bought on my own, although I'm pretty sure it was Infinity Gauntlet #4. I had read a friend's copy and loved it, so when I saw it on the spinner rack at the grocery, I had to have it. That was the beginning. Not long after, I would start buying X-Men, Wolverine, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, The Avengers, pretty much anything on the spinner racks at gas stations or grocery stores. I would go to comic stores and buy stuff there, but as a child with limited means of transportation, it was those spinner racks that got me my first comics. The introduced to these universes, these stories, and these characters who would come to mean so much to me. And now, I'm going to write about them.

The whole point of this blog is to talk about comics. To me, it's our greatest form of storytelling. It combines images with words. It makes our brains fill in the blanks between panels, give the pictures motion, and feel what the people on the page are feeling. In The Multiversity: Ultra Comics #1, Grant Morrison (my favorite comic writer- I'm going to talk a lot about him) posited that comics are a living entity, made of ink and cellulose, that we interact with. He also makes this supposition in his book Supergods. To his way of thinking, comics are a glimpse into another universe and it's one we're watching unfold, one that is created by us. In those created universes, we see our god-archetypes of our past play out the old stories again and again. Comics are the vehicles of our oldest stories. Everyone knows who Superman is. Batman. Captain America. Wolverine. Spider-Man. They're our Hercules, our Jason, our King Arthur. Our Zeus. Our Odin. Our Set. 

Now, sure, these archetypes live in other mediums, but do they have the continuity that they do in comics? Hell, even the old archetypes are incorporated in comics, so that Superman can meet Hercules. Captain America has led him into battle as an Avenger. An alternate universe Wolverine has been his lover. Spider-Man has probably gotten drunk with him. I agree with Morrison that comics are the new vehicle of our stories, the ones that humans have been telling forever. That's why I want to talk about them, want to write about them. I'm passionate about them. Why wouldn't I be?

I think I'm getting ahead of myself. I probably should have saved all that for the end, but I think, sometimes, it's nice to get a taste of things to come in the middle. It makes you want to move on, to see how things get to that point. I've told you how I feel about comics. I haven't told you the why of it, though, and hopefully, you'll want to keep going, to find out the little things that make me think that way. It's a hook, one that hopefully lead you on, til the end. This first post is going to be a little long winded, but it's all set-up. I'm not Brian Bendis- I want to get the set-up out of the way right off the bat, so you won't have to wade through five posts before you get to the pay off.

Think of this post as a double sized first issue.

It's 1991 again. I'm reading comics a lot. A little comic called X-Men #1 happens. This is my first number one. It's the first time I get to start at the beginning of something. It's hard to explain now, in this age of constant first issues, but this was pretty special at the time. It fucking hooked me so hard. I had already been leaning towards the X-Men as my favorite comic characters- I had a Cap fan friend, a Spider-Man fan friend, a Silver Surfer fan friend, and a friend who was a fan of all of it, really, so I had to differentiate myself from the group. The X-Men were my way of doing that and this being 1991, can you guess who my favorite was?

If you say Gambit, we're gonna tangle ass, motherfucker.

That's right, it was Wolverine. Wolverine was then, and still is now, my favorite Marvel character. He was my way into X-Men, the one I loved. I read X-Men #1 so many times. Over and over and over again. 

So, that was how it began. A boy buying a ton of comics. I would get them off spinner racks. I would visit the comic store once a month, roundabouts. I would go and visit my Dad on weekends and he would have ones that he bought from the gas station for me. For my birthday, I would ask for money to buy more comics. Every month, I picked up Wizard magazine. When Image Comics started, I bought Spawn, WildC.A.T.s, Youngblood, and Cyber Force. I could easily say that comics were my life, if I discounted Star Wars books, Super Nintendo, Magic: The Gathering, movies, 90s gangsta rap and hip hop (later, the music would be alternative rock and goth/industrial stuff), and my friends. Of course, I spent more money on comics than anything of those other things. When Age of Apocalypse happened, I was there and I carried nearly every issue in my backpack to school every day as they came out. 

My first Vertigo book was Preacher, but it wouldn't be the last. I discovered Grant Morrison on JLA. A friend loaned me his copies of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns in senior year. I would start collecting The Sandman trades in 2000. When Grant Morrison went to Marvel, I started to follow him more and his New X-Men converted me to a diehard fan (as years went by, I would get Animal Man, The Invisibles, Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo, and more). In the 90s, I was mostly a Marvel kid, but the 00s would make me into a DC dude as well.

So, you may be asking, after all that long winded set-up, "Okay, David, I get it, you've read a lot of comics and obviously love them, but why? Why the fuck do you love them? YOU PROMISED ME AN ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION, GODDAMMIT! GET TO THE FUCKING POINT!!!"

To which I would answer (in a super suave, dashing sort of way)- I love stories. I always have since I learned how to read. To me, stories are the most important thing humanity has ever created. They're magic.Writers and artists take their ideas and make them reality. I'm a fan of all the vehicles of stories-books, movies, TV, music- but to me, comics are the most perfect form of them. First off, there's reading involved and I fucking love reading. I once read a five hundred page Chronicles of Narnia reference book. In 4th grade. Secondly, the art adds something to the storytelling. There's a lot of people who are all like, "Comics are for dumb people who need pictures to tell them what is happening." Those peoples are assholes. The art is an addition. The right team of writer and artist can make magic happen. Let's be real- a lot of those early Stan Lee Marvel stories kind of suck. The dialogue is horrible, the characters are paper thin, and the situations are cliche... but when you add in Jack Kirby's pencils, you get magic. Or, take The Sandman. It's always masterfully written, but each artist brought something to the issue they did and made it that much better. Third, the continuity of them. With the Marvel and DC books, you're watching universes unfold. You're there, watching as many of their stories as you want. You, the observer of battles, love affairs, betrayals, and intrigues. You're watching worlds where the best and worst of humanity are striving for conquest or freedom. There's nothing like it. What other medium is going to give you nearly a century of stories to choose from?  Finally, I love them because you can use them to tell any kind of story, in any scale. From little personal stories to romances to comedies to gritty crime dramas to allegorical sci-fi to fantasy to big budget action, you can use the medium to do anything you need it to. Sure, you can do this with books, movies, and TV, but there's difference- in movies and TV, you're never inside the characters' heads, a part of the story. In books, you're a part of the story, but you can't see it. You're not really there. With comics you're there. You're witnessing the internal and external all at once. You're God, looking down at the Earth. You're making the whole thing come to life. You become the story. Those are the reasons I find them to be a perfect vehicle for stories. Those are the reasons why I live for Wednesdays.

In all these years, I've became an expert on comics- characters, stories, creators, and more. I've studied the medium. Even now, in my old age, it's still my dream to write some comics. Maybe it will happen, but until then, there's this. This blog. About comics.

I'm going to talk about all kinds of things here- I'm going to recommend titles, talk comics news, talk about creators, talk about the companies. As of right now, I'm going to plan on doing a post a week, but you never know- there might be more. Or less. It happens. I don't know how many pictures I'm going to have. I don't know if I'm going to put panels of stuff in. I'm not super visually inclined. I'm more about words. So, I'm going to use them. If you want to read about comics, you've come to the right place. If you don't, well, still come back every week to drive up the views so maybe I can get noticed and get a paying writing job. We're friends- I'd do that for you. 

So, that's that. Double sized first issue over.You have the origin, how I got my powers, seen me use them. The last page is a full page spread of me, on a building top, the sun coming up in the background, looking out, ready for the next adventure. Full of hope that these adventures will continue for a long time. For most of us, this will be the only place we spend time together. Like a comic, the only time I'll be real to you is when we interact here. So, why don't you come back for the next adventure? Why don't you come back.....

NEXT ISSUE- 

So, next time, I'm going to the state of the comic industry as I see it. I'm going to be focusing on the companies whose books I read- Marvel, DC, and Image. If you're hoping for indie coverage, I'm the wrong man for that. Anyways, that's what to expect next time here at 

BEYOND THE PANELS!