I remembered, the other day, about getting an unexpected letter from America when I was in my early 20s — 20, maybe, or perhaps 21? — and how it felt at once entirely surreal and unexpected and perfectly in tune with everything else that was happening in my life at the time.
I was finishing up my second year at art school, which had been frustrating but good for me in any number of ways I wouldn’t realize until years later; I’d become more self-sufficient after living on my own in the middle of nowhere for six months or so, and I’d started to find out who I was in terms of being a social animal as well, which is a thrilling moment for anyone of that age. Certain benchmarks were still months and years away from happening, but I finished up the year feeling like a very different person than I was when I’d started, and that was an exciting realization to have. The world felt filled with possibility.
In the midst of all of this, I’d been writing to my favorite comics of the era, because that’s what was done back in those pre-internet times. To my amazement, some of those letters had been printed and people had written to me in return, which was even more amazing. (My full address was published with each letter, because I didn’t know enough to ask them not to include it.) It felt like a connection to a world and an industry than I’d loved for years by that point, and one that had previously seemed to be separated by a magical veil that only allowed me to receive information. Now, somehow, I was sending and receiving. Again, everything felt newly possible.
One day, in the last few weeks of the school year, I got an oversized envelope that had DC Comics branding. I opened it to get a note explaining, basically, hey we saw the letters you wrote to some of those comics and we thought you might like this comic, too, give it a try and if you do like it, spread the word to your friends. There was also a black and white photocopy of an upcoming issue of Xombi, one of Milestone Media’s comics of the time.
To their credit, I did like it: it was weird and lyrical and read like the spiritual successor to Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol of a handful of years earlier, but drawn by an outsider artist who was mad at the page. I started buying it, and would have spread the words had I any friends who’d be into that kind of thing. (I didn’t.)
What stuck with me more than the comic itself, though, was the idea of someone who published the comic seeing something I’d written and thinking I was worth the photocopying and postage to get this preview. I felt accidentally, undeservedly important and entirely humbled and terrified by the concept. But it fit with the everything is possible somehow feeling of the year I’d just had, and the blurring of lines between me as an audience and a participant in whatever I was reading. The boundaries became that little bit fuzzier.
Looking back, I wonder if I’d have ended up where I am now professionally (or even personally) without that letter signalling that someone, somewhere, had been paying attention and some domino in the back of my head falling over at the thought of, if it happened once, why couldn’t it happen again…?
