The Secret Origin of The Cosmic Treadmill

by Julio Diaz

Why write a comics column at all?

The short, cynical answer is to get free comics, but that would only be a partial truth. The question deserves a deeper look; one that – I hope – will tell you more about not only my reasons for launching The Cosmic Treadmill, but about who I am and how I got to this point.

It’s said that most comics fans never forget their first, and I’ve found that to be largely true. A cursory chat with any comics aficionado will find that most can not only tell you what magazine they read first, but can also rattle off the issue number and details of the story. Many could even tell you where they were that fateful day that they first came under the spell of that magic book that hooked them on the medium. But I can’t.

[[gl]] See, by all accounts, I was a pretty precocious kid. My parents and grandparents tell stories of me reading at a very young age – like well before preschool. My dad won bets with my reading abilities, shocking his friends that I could read and even spell large words like “elephant” before I was two (my grandmother even likes to tell a story of a stranger in a store who openly accused her of playing some kind of trick or hoax for attention). By two years old, I was reading the newspaper daily. I don’t really remember much of this, but the stories are told by basically all my relatives, so frequently, vividly, and similarly, that I have to believe they’re true.

Comics, then, have been a part of my life for longer than I can remember. Oh, I can recall being awestruck by The Super-Friends on TV, and vividly remember issues of Justice League of America, Green Lantern (my childhood hero, the Hal Jordan GL remains my favorite comics character today), The Flash (from whence this column draws its name), Superman, Batman, and The Legion of Super-Heroes, but can’t, with any real veracity, tell you which was the very first I’d read – simply put, I was too young to remember. But I don’t believe that makes me any less of a fan.

[[jla]] Unlike most people, I never really kicked the comics habit. Oh, I’d go short spells without reading comics (as a kid and teenager usually due to being busy with other interests; as an adult, sadly, usually due to simple economics), but I’d always get sucked back in. I think the longest I was ever away from the hobby was early in high school, for a couple of years, but by the time of the 1989 Batman movie, I was back in full swing, and I’ve not been away from the hobby for more than a few months (due to economics) since.

[[squad]] It was inevitable, then, that I’d want to get more deeply involved in the medium I so loved. While I never had any serious aspirations to write comics, and I knew my drawing ability wasn’t up to snuff, I was always eager and enthusiastic. This led to my spending a lot of time writing and mailing fan letters to comics in the late ’80s and early ’90s – pre-Internet, mind you, so we’re talking about actually mailing letters. In comics circles, this is often referred to as “letterhacking.” And if your fan letter is actually printed in the letters page of one of your favorite comics, well, then that’s validation of your opinion and status among your comics-loving peers. I had more than my fair share of letters published in those days (some of which seem quite embarrassing, in retrospect), in titles like Suicide Squad, Hawk & Dove, Detective Comics, and many others. I credit letterhacking for getting me started on the road to writing that eventually led to my taking a position of some (mostly falsely-inflated) prominence as a commentator on pop culture (and eventually, an editor of same) at Ink 19, culminating with the launch of this column.

[[supes]] Around the same time I started letterhacking seriously, a job opportunity opened for me running a local comics shop. I did that for about a year. This was in the early ’90s, just before the “speculator boom” – a period when a lot of people started looking at comics as an investment rather than entertaining reading material – and it was great fun being able to talk comics all day. Had the money been better and the ownership of the shop been better people to work for, I might still be in retail today. From there, I went to a two-year stint working for Diamond Comic Distributors during the heat of the speculator boom. Yes, I remember pulling all-nighters on a weekly basis to make sure every comics fan in the state of Florida got their comics on time, and if you were among the millions of people that bought the first issues of Spawn, Youngblood, and the other Image Comics launch titles; of any part of “The Death of Superman”; or the breaking of Batman in “Knightfall,” chances are good that I touched your copy (and no, that doesn’t mean I take responsibility for its condition being anything less than mint). All this time, I was reading ever more comics.

One of the things about working for a distributor, though, is that it takes some of the fun out of the hobby. I was reading more than ever, and enjoying less. When I left Diamond, I slacked off dramatically on my reading – but I never really quit entirely.

[[kabuki]] These days, I find I’m reading a lot again, and am always hungry for more. And there are a lot of great comics out there to enjoy (as I’ll discuss at length in future columns). I met the woman of my dreams and got her into the habit – now she’s not only a fan, but she has a tattoo of David Mack’s Kabuki. We welcomed our first child, a beautiful baby girl, a little over 20 months ago, and she’s already following in her dad’s footsteps – she can’t read yet, but she sure loves to look at the pictures! And we’ll be taking her to her first convention, this year’s MegaCon in Orlando, in a little under a week (a full report will naturally follow in this column).

But I still haven’t answered the question that started this column: Why write a comics column at all? Well, as I said, the cynical answer is free comics, and partially, that’s the truth. Ink 19 already receives some comics for free, and we cover them in our normal print reviews sections. Likewise, we have run occasional interviews in the “main” section of the magazine – and have some more coming up, including The Dreaming writer Caitlin Kiernan and indie comics and music godhead James Kochalka. So The Cosmic Treadmill isn’t meant to lessen the amount of comics coverage you’ll see in the “main body” of Ink 19, by any stretch.

What I hope the column will do is raise the profile of comics at Ink 19. I hope that by providing a regular, special, and ongoing place for comics coverage, comics publishers will be more interested in keeping us updated with news, make their creative folks more available for interviews, and yes, send us more free stuff to review. Beyond that, though, I want to raise the awareness of comics with our readership and the public at large. Ink 19 isn’t part of the traditional comics fan press, and while there are many outstanding sites that do a great job in that regard (Comic Book Resources, Comicon’s Newsarama, The Comics Continuum, and World Famous Comics, to name just a few), I don’t believe they really reach an audience outside fandom. I’m hoping to do just that: reach new audiences for comics, create a few new fans, and get people excited about the great stuff that’s out there.

The Cosmic Treadmill, then, will cover everything from mainstream super-heroics to hip indie stuff, from manga to illustrated prose. We’ll also talk about comics culture, about comics’ influence on other media, and their depiction in other media. We’ll bring you a mixture of reviews, news, interviews, and everything else under the sun. But above all, I hope to keep the Treadmill running regularly and always accessible. I know how easy it is for an obsessive fan like myself to devolve into the “Who’s stronger, Superman or the Hulk?”-type debates and to get so involved in the minutia of the continuity of imaginary universes that it can seem imposing and hard to understand to new readers. That’s one thing I hope will never happen here.

And with that, the Treadmill is off and running. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you’d like to see covered here. Please write care of Ink 19’s general mailbox, letters@ink19.com.

In the next edition of The Cosmic Treadmill, I’ll be discussing some of the best comics of 2001, including a few surprises. After that, in the weeks to come, the Treadmill will take a look at the recent spate of post-9/11 benefit books. We’ll dive into the blossoming new universe of comics from CrossGen Comics, and their unique studio system. There will be a complete report from Orlando’s 2002 MegaCon.We’ll look at musical interpretations of comics with Eclipso’s Hero and Villain in One Man! and Gregg Bendian’s Interzone’s Requiem for Jack Kirby. And that’s just for starters!

I hope you’ll keep hopping aboard the Treadmill – I think you’ll enjoy the exercise. ◼

Postscript

Wow, all these responses are going to give me a swelled head! Thanks to everyone for your support!

Josh: A bunch of us that hang out on the Tony Isabella board are going to meet up at MegaCon. You’d be more than welcome to join us. I’ll e-mail you with details.

Alan: Of course! Hulk is strongest there is!

Joe: As ever, we have too much in common…

Dave: I was always more of a DC fan, too, as you can probably tell by the above cover choices. For the record: the Green Lantern and JLA comics depicted above are not the earliest I recall clearly, but they’re issues that stuck with me enough that even though it’s been ages, I remember them vivdly. Ironic, considering how lame El Espectro, the one-shot villain in the GL comic, was. The Suicide Squad is there because it’s one I clearly remember having a letter in – I think my letters were run more often in Squad than in any other comic. It’s also the penultimate issue of the wonderful Ostrander run. The reason for the rest should be self-explainatory.

James: You’re nuts if you think a complete run of Cerebus would go anywhere but my home – I happen to have a tattoo of said aardvark. I’d let you have the ones I already have, though (the first seven or so collections). I got the first three signed and sketched in by Dave “The Lunatic” Sim several years ago in Miami…

Sam: Thanks for commenting again! Those Silver Age Superman books are a hoot! But for sheer cover craziness, no title tops The Flash – i looked at a lot of covers before launching the column (surprisingly, the treadmill is only on one!). Hmm… column fodder, I think!