When you work in comic books as long as Legendary Writer, Editor and comic book company creator Jim Shooter has, you come across many an artist and writer who are now mainstays in the industry. Oh…the stories this great former Marvel Mastermind should have. Well, here’s a doozie Mr. Shooter shared with us from the floor of this years Tampa Bay Comic Con. It’s a very interesting one concerning one of the founding members of Image comics. The one and only Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen.
With so much writing on parallel dimensions, alternate universes, and “what if?” storyline’s, I thought I would take my love for canonized stories and embark on a mission as a continuity buff to explain how comic book characters survive through an elastic sense of time. I had the liberty of meeting with comic book writer J.M. DeMatties, who was signing re-released copies of his 1993 graphic novel “Mercy.” As I arrived at Jim Hanley’s Universe this Wednesday, I thought it would be a good idea to ask the man who wrote such greats as Kraven’s Last Hunt, and the 2004 Eisner Award winning “Formerly Known as the Justice League” his take on the way in which characters are placed within arcs.
Have we as members of the comic book fandom lost our roots to this genre of camaraderie and cultural heritage? The written values, and artistic panels have seem to lost its meaning in regards to pop cultural imagery and larger than life stories. What I mean by this, is that the convention scene has been overridden by the New York Comic Con’s transformation into a “Hollywood” phenomenon, by which fans purchase countless tickets to re-sell them while celebrities take over with their expensive autograph sessions.
