Words in Balloons

On the night of my 16th birthday, I was sitting alone in my basement, watching television.

Not exactly how you celebrate that big day.

Little did I know it was about to become a hugely influential day in my life. I was almost asleep on the couch when my older brother came down into the basement, plopped two comics on my lap and said, “Happy birthday.” Those two comics rekindled my forgotten love of comics.

Let me back up.

While most kids would be reading stories such as Golden Books and fairy tales as they were going to bed, my parents liked to mix in comic books. We would read “Captain America,” “Batman” and nearly every “X-Men” title.

Comics in the 1990s were full of cheap gimmicks, and I ate all of them up. The first issue of my favorite series, “Generation X,” had a shiny, silver cover. Certain comics also had exclusive trading cards, and some issues came in bags that hid their covers to encourage readers to buy more to get the covers they wanted. It was all creatively bankrupt, taking the focus away from the content and putting it squarely on attempts to make more money.

One big instance of that creative bankruptcy is what led my dad to stop getting comics for us. At the end of Marvel’s big crossover in 1996, a whole bunch of series, such as “Captain America” and “The Avengers,” were re-launched with new issue No. 1’s.

Re-launching a series nowadays is perfectly acceptable, as it can signify a dramatic shift in tone or plot of a comic, but then, the re-launch felt like a desperate plea to the collector market. It didn’t help that the new issues had terrible writing, as well as crappy artwork from widely reviled artist Rob Liefeld, which made you question how someone would even function with so many damn muscles. My dad wasn’t buying into it, and he stopped our trips to the comic shop.

Back to my 16th birthday. The comics my brother gave me were unlike any of the things I remembered from the gimmicky 1990s. “Clumsy,” by Jeffrey Brown, initially looked like a vulgar book drawn by a little kid. But when I read it, I discovered an intimate, autobiographical account of a long-distance relationship. I had no idea stuff like this existed, and I instantly craved more.

That night, my brother took me to a party, where I met his coworkers from his high-school job. Through talking to them, I realized my brother actually used to work in a comic shop, something I’d never known. A couple weeks later, I put an application in to work at the same store. I had my first day there within the month and was encouraged to read all sorts of stuff, including “Watchmen,” “Batman: Year One” and “Blankets.”

Suddenly, my childhood love of comics was rekindled.