Uh, what the hell is this?

In 1982, I fell in love…

That was the year I bought my first comic book – Justice League of America #206. Inside its cover, Batman and his teammates were putting some nutty on-the-loose demons back in the bottle. Missing the next issue, I picked up #208 where my new friends were already knee-deep in a three-team time-traveling, parallel earth, full blown CRISIS! I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I loved every panel of it!

I was hooked. While an occasional Flash or Spider-Man found its way into my pile, my passion was clearly team books. And series like the Avengers, New Teen Titans and Uncanny X-Men had juicy sub-plots between all the fighting – full of drama, romance, and super secrets! Then came the Legion of Super-Heroes (my forever favorites) – it had a whole dang universe of characters to fall in love with (and I did)! Okay, ‘hooked’ is putting it mildly.

And so, like any dateless squeaky-voiced teenage fan-boy, I put my mind and rudimentary art skills to work on creating my very own super-powered people! Thus was born the heroic Protectors – Magma Mite, Object Kid, Speed Queen & Nightmare – squaring off against the villainous Feared – the Possessor, Humanoid, Tranquility and the Time Trapper! But that was just the beginning. Before I knew it, I had created my own legion of made-up super people, each one begging me to craft their adventures beyond the punches.

And craft I did – drawing inspiration from the sorrid tales I had soaked in about Luke & Laura, Brenda & Sonny, Cecelia & Grant, Frisco & Felicia, Dawn & Decker, and others employeed at the WSB, ELQ, or the very active Port Charles General Hospital. Just like those beautiful yet troubled peeps, my creations likewise found themselves falling in-and-out of love (sometimes just for a night), discovering friends to be siblings (or enemies to be parents), tying the knot (sometimes to an imposter) and even dying a tragic death (with the possibility of ‘un’ dying at a later date). And all with secrets (love-children, murderous actions, hidden agendas) that never stayed secret long. My super friends had evolved into an ever expanding super-hero soap opera universe.

Alas, when young adulthood (and all its temptations) took priority, my creations retreated to just piles of drawings and notes hid away in a desk drawer. But they always found ways to creep back out. In my 20s, navigating through the actions and consequences of adult decisions, in my head I found myself revisiting and revising the ones I devised for them. In my 30s, as I experienced major life-changing events of loss and marriage and parenthood, I thought about how those joys and sorrows would have really shaped their ficticious days. Then, in my 40s, with life more firmly in a stable, happy place, I realized it was finally time to give my old companions, now rattling around in my brain on an almost daily basis, the attention they needed.

Leaning on new inspirations, like diverse and complex character-driven morality studies like the Sopranos and Breaking Bad and Lost (the best show ever!), I began to remold these imaginary beings – no more bucket A or bucket B. No more just ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘black’ or (mostly) ‘white’, or ‘straight’ or well, ‘straight’. I might not reach 50 different shades of gray, or paint every color of the rainbow, but I wanted each one to feel and look and act unique in some way. And like Lost, a series that weaves fantastic characters in, around and through a mythology, my characters would be in the thick of some over-arching universal mystery – whether they realize it or not, and not just fighting the good fight. And finally, throughout the struggles, the journeys, the epic throw-downs, my universe MUST be injected with that Seinfeld-like irrelevant, odd, immature-yet-somehow-clever humor and absurtity. Because…that’s life.

So now, entering my 50s, and finally fresh out of the self-inflicted delay tactics intended to spare myself potential humiliation and utter failure, I’m finally here – cracking open my cranium, and letting all my imaginary friends and enemies spill out into the digital world. My secret super friends with all their super-battles, sexcapades, dirty laundry, embarrassing moments, family surprises, dumb jokes, first loves, and last words to be revealed. And the unexplainable mysteries of their universe – the symbols, the scrolls, the prophesies, and that really old dude – will all be asked and all be answered. In time.

And while I know where my fictional story finishes, I have absolutely no idea where this very real adventure will end up for me. Which is scary and exciting as shit! Will anyone really love Liz, Michael, Eddy, Sunil, Bernadette, and the 100 others as much as I do? Maybe. All can I guarentee for sure – is that, if YOU are here, reading what I wrote – then my wonderful creations have found a way to live a life beyond me. And damn, that’s pretty fucking cool, right?!