A big thanks to Editor in Chief, Tucker Stone for allowing me to do
a week of diary comics over at The Comics Journal this week! Do
you wonder why I’m doing this? Do you have questions about
how reliable they are? Do you wonder when it will be a
Netflix series? I have answers!
I never really gave much thought to creating autobiographical comics. After all, my life has not been incredibly traumatic or
amazing. I wasn’t a kid who made the difficult move from my
country of origin to a foreign land. I didn’t survive a war. I didn’t
grow up in a funeral home. I didn’t even work as file clerk at
the Veterans Administration Hospital in Ohio! The short stories
related in my Semi-Reliable Diary Comics from the 90’s kind of
spilled out of me as I attempted to write some sort of 90’s genre
tv show review. That idea deflated as soon I typed the words,
“Night Man was a tv show…” But what was going on with
me personally while Star Trek TNG and Batman Adventures was
king seemed like a story I was more interested in telling.
These “Diaries” were a bit therapeutic for me, even if reading
them is absolutely no fun for you. Writing about past events
can cause long lost memories and emotions to bubble to the
surface, and I tried my best not to be too precious or make
poignant inspirational messages out of my memories. What
you see is mostly how it all came back to me. We all know
memories are unreliable.
Why are they “semi-reliable?” As I said above, our memories
are imperfect at best. I was a big fan of Eddie Campbell’s comics
in the 90s and often enjoyed his Alec strips. Thus, I admit taking
a page from Alec and changed names, dates and chronology
to protect the guilty and the innocent. After all, when it
becomes a Netflix show I don’t want any lawsuits.
