Drawing Inspiration

If you follow my social media you might have seen that I’ve been talking up Spider-Girl by Tom DeFalco with artists Pat Olliffe and Ron Frenz as of late.

They just came out with a new collected edition of this, which is my favorite comic of all time.

People who haven’t heard of it or read this charming series always get shocked: all time? What about watchmen? or sandman?

If you follow along, you’ll also know that I think Watchmen/Sandman and that style ruined comics, as it took a fun, pulpy medium based on action, and turned it into a dark, introspective, nihilistic experience.

But that’s another blog.

Today I want to sing the praises of Spider-Girl. This is comics done right. There’s a great supporting cast with deep relationships all the way, heavy amounts of conflict both personal and with super villains, and it only gets better as the issues go along with twists and turns and developments in characters which couldn’t be allowed in the basic marvel universe.

It’s sorta like it’s own indie universe within marvel with characters we love actually progressing.

And that’s why it was so easy for me to just turn to indies as these companies drifted from their cool stuff like Spider-Girl, finally cancelling the book which really is a primer on HOW TO WRITE COMICS.

I want characters that develop, characters that change. I don’t want mysterious magic events to erase continuity and reset everything for the sake of selling a little on a coat tails of a movie. Nor does anyone else. There’s no fulfilling stories if the heroes can never win, never change. No one dies, nothing matters. The whole concept of current modern comics with this reset mentality IS nihilism. It’s literal hell.

Spider-Girl, meanwhile, even when things go wrong, there’s something to look forward to. Even when she loses her powers, she fights for what’s right. It’s inspiring. It’s what a hero should be.

I think I captured the feel of this book very well in my Flying Sparks, with Meta-Girl and her development. It’s a different story with a different outlook, of course, but being able to tell a full story in a single issue while developing a whole greater work is what comics is all about, and we’ve accomplished that. Once Volume 3 is out, that will make 10 issues worth of content for a series — most indies never get NEAR this far and I’m hoping I can last as long as Spider-Girl did with this — or perhaps even beyond.

I hope you’ll check out Volumes 1-2 and catch up for the kickstarter launch in 11 days!!!!