Before Comics

Long before I ever read a comic book, I wanted to work for NASA Mission Control Center. All those consoles with the flashing lights and the big screen at the front of the room looked so cool (this was before the Challenger explosion or the Apollo 13 movie). At least, that's what I wanted until first grade. First grade was when I got my first "F" and it was in math. Someone told me you had to be good at math to be a scientist and/or work for NASA, so that was the end of that. Dreams can get crushed at such an early age or else I'm easily crushed.

But don't worry, I soon realized that I was good at storytelling, and that's better than math anyday. I had the same teacher for first and second grade. She encouraged my strengths and would give me writing assignments which she would proofread and correct for extra credit. I liked true stories just as well as fiction and my favorite books to read at this age were biographies. That's how I learned that Walt Disney did more than just make movies and open theme parks. He became my childhood hero because he was an overall showman and I when I grew up, I wanted to be one too. Not just an animator and a voice actor, but a designer and futurist too. In third grade, I made up my own company which I called Magic Productions and I planned its roster of movies, music albums, TV series, all with their own books and merchandising. That's what "Fireball's Magazine" is all about (pictured above to illustrate my early obsession with lists and spreadsheets).

Looking back, I never had any original concepts back then. My logo for "Fireball's" was a near-identical match to the logo for one of my favorite toy lines at the time. Even the idea for a magazine based on a cartoon series probably came from my love of movie souvenir magazines when I was a kid. Part of what got me into comics was Tim Burton's Batman (1989), which was also the first movie magazine I actually bought (pictured below in tattered glory - I must have flipped through it everyday for years). Granted, I was already into newspaper comic strips and classic animation so it was a natural evolution. Aside from that though, I must pose the question, "What comes next for a kid who isn't good at math and science but likes science and fiction and drawing?" Comic books, of course.

I'm skipping ahead because before Batman I was all about Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), which is kinda Disney for grown-ups. I used to do all the voices and sound effects like actor Charles Fleischer and that got me in trouble in class a lot. When I told my family that I was going into movies when I grew up, their only response was that there was a lot of sleeze in Hollywood, and with that, my second dream was crushed. After I got into comics, I realized that they paralleled movies in many ways, but could be created without going to Hollywood. I kept my new career plans to myself, and until now, never mentioned them to another soul. It's funny, I got into comics the first time with the Batman movie, took a break during adolescence, and then got back into comics with the Spider-Man (2002) movie, so I can't ever say I prefer movies or comics more because they owe so much to each other in my mind.

I already addressed the question of which Batman I prefer in a post a month or so ago, but now I want to discuss the Joker. I hear a lot being said about Heath Ledger making Jack Nicholson look as ridiculous as Cesar Romero from the '60s TV series, but I hope the picture to the right refutes that claim. The surgery scene and the mobster burned alive from the '80s movie were just as scary as anything in the The Dark Knight (2008), which I also love.