000119 - My Life in Comics... uh Manga

This entry is a response to my friend, Kevin Patrick, Comics Down Under's entry about how I got hooked on comics.

For those who don't know already, I am originally from Hong Kong and moved to Australia when I was 9 years old. My mum and grandpa used to buy me manga like Doraemon, Dr. Slump, Game Center Arashi and Ngau-chai 牛仔 (Cow Boy) to keep me occupied and/or distracted. In terms of creating comics though, I used to create my own little flip book comics featuring Spider-man or Bugs Bunny cartoon series characters like Road Runner. I got a Captain America action figure from a Kris Kringle at my dad's work on Children's Day (April 4 in Hong Kong) one year and used to love watching Spider-man & Friends on TV amongst other anime series.

When I came to Australia, I was really into Garfield and then MAD Magazine because my friend, Terence, had brought an issue and had shown me all these funny short parody comics of popular movies and celebrities, Spy vs. Spy and that fold 'em up inside back cover. I brought MAD every now and then but it wasn't until when I went to the Royal Melbourne Show around when I was 12 years old that I was really hooked by comics. From memory, I was given a limited allowance to buy whatever showbags I wanted and I remember going around comparing the contents of different showbags making sure I picked the right one. One important factor I was looking out for, was it had to have a comic in it. The comic I got was What the --?! #5 from Marvel Comics. I really liked it because it was similar to MAD magazine where all of the stories were parodies of super-heroes I had heard of before but never really read about. It had a really funny opening story about Wolverine vs. the Punisher, a pin-up of Colossus and Magneto by Jim Lee, a L.E.G.I.O.N story by Whilce Portacio an Incredible Hulk story. I was really hooked and wanted comics to read, so I went to my local newsagent about a few weeks later and choose two that I really liked visually. They were Amazing Spider-man #325 (drawn by Todd McFarlane, conclusion to the Assassin Nation Plot storyline) and Spectacular Spider-man #157 (drawn by Sal Buscema, featuring Electro & Shocker). After this, I pretty much rode my BMX to the newsagent looking for new comics at least once a week. I started collecting Amazing Spider-man because Erik Larsen just came on board from issue #327 as well as Spectacular Spider-man, Web of Spider-man, and Uncanny X-Men.



By this point I had officially become a serious comic book reader and collector. I got into skateboarding as well at the time and one of my friends, Sam, mentioned that there was this shop in Windsor that was filled with comics. I was getting unsatisfied with the limited range at my local newsagent and the infrequent scheduling. So one weekend, I got my parents to drive me to Chapel Street and I remember asking a guy on the street about this shop and he told me to keep walking another 2 block or so and I should find a shop called, Alternate Worlds. At that time, I remember walking into this long narrow shop (it's now a 2 storey place) filled with heaps and heaps of comics! I was in heaven. I even remember asking the clerk where I could find back issues of "Todd McFairlane" (sic) comics! From then on and discovering Minotaur (which was still at its Elizabeth store), I started completing my McFarlane Amazing Spider-man issues.

I also continued to buy manga, mostly from Chinese stationary and magazine stores. I was really into City Hunter and bought every single book that was being published. The other manga artist that I liked at the time was Masakazu Katsura and I collected his Video Girl Ai and I"s series. In terms of Hong Kong manhua, I was into a weekly comic called Tin Ha 天下 or better known in the west as Storm Riders.

Even though I had found comic book stores, they were still a bit far away for me to get to at that time since I lived (and still do today) about a 40 minutes train trip from the city. So each week, I continued to visit my local newsagents buying whatever comics they had that caught my eye. This included picking up an Issue One Comics anthology, Anthology #2 and then later on, Zero Assassin #0. From then it was small but respectable range of Aussie comics like Cyberswine, Bug & Stump, Greener Pastures, Platinum Grit and Pizza Man. I picked up all these Australian comics from newsagents, and I remember bringing my own copy of Zero Assassin #0 to get it signed at a comic convention, to which I receive a few weird looks since I don't think anybody did that. I got this really detailed pencil print by Chris Wahl with all the Issue One characters on it and I got most of everyone to sign all over it! My very first experience at a comic book convention, I think it was OzCon, I listened to a talk from Grant Morrison about his theory of what if everyone in the world jerked off at the same time and other mad ideas, I met Warren Ellis and told him how much I loved Aliens vs. Wildcats which Chris Sprouse drew. I got Dave Sim to sign a couple of Cerebus comics but was too shy to say anything to him. I also met Eddie Campbell for the first time, got Jozef Szekeres to sign a mermaid poster and Aaron Shanahan drew me a sketch.

I think I'll stop here for now about my love affair with comic books. In the future, I'll have to write about my first overseas trip by myself to San Diego International Comicon in 1999 and 2000 as well as my decision and journey to go into self-publishing Knight-Edge.