SERENDIPITY

Maybe it was fate...

Lately, I’ve been thinking back to a bygone era when it was much more difficult to actually find your tribe. These days, with the Internet and social media being what they are, it’s hard to imagine a time when it took some genuine effort -- not to mention a metric ton of luck -- to find other folks that genuinely shared your interests…

… especially when one of those interests happens to be comicbooks.

I moved to California in August of 1994. That’s almost thirty-one years ago, by the way. But it’s not so long ago that I can’t remember some of the raw emotions I experienced upon arrival. Of course, I was optimistic. For me, Los Angeles was practically the New World, a magical place of endless possibilities and limitless potential. But at the same time, once the rush of actually getting here had started to wear off… I remember feeling legitimately lonely, maybe for the first and only time in my life. I didn’t know anyone in Cali, I was just sort of floating out in the ether. The first jobs I could get were temp agency assignments, mostly manual labor gigs. Not exactly the most social environment for a kid still in his early twenties.

So I made a move that, for me, seemed fairly radical. I got a job at Tower Records. Now, at that time, the Tower Records located on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood was justifiably infamous, if not outright legendary. Quite a few rock stars worked there (before they were rock stars, of course). The spot had legitimate clout.

Of course, I worked at the one in Pasadena. Not exactly the hippest location. Then again, I didn’t think of myself as particularly hip, either, so it worked out just fine.

In more ways than one, as it turned out.

I’d never worked straight retail before (unless being a fry cook in a strip club counts), but I was willing to give it a shot. Ultimately, I think I landed the job because A) I happily accepted the extremely low starting pay, and B) I was willing to work the worst shifts on the worst days on the schedule, which was Thursday through Monday from 3PM to 12AM, when the store would close. At the time, I couldn’t have cared less. It’s not like I had any kind of social life that I was going to be missing out on. And, as it turned out, the environment at Tower Records -- working alongside other twenty-somethings of all shapes and sizes -- ended up becoming my social life. At least for a little while.

The cool thing about this Tower location was that it was a record store with a video store attached. A truly Clerks-ian scenario, to say the least. So, there were times where I would be working the front register (which I hated), other times I’d be stocking CD’s on the main floor, and then there were times when I worked in the video store section. That was usually the best hang, because it involved the least amount of actual work. Restocking rentals (we’re talking VHS here, folks) and occasionally assisting customers was not terribly taxing on the mind or the body. So, yeah, it might’ve been a nothing job going nowhere fast (especially as I had no aspirations for being a shift manager or upper management or any other bullshit like that), but at least it was some semblance of a life.

Definitely one of the benefits of working there was, of course, free video rentals. Again, it’s probably inconceivable for folks of a certain age, but there was a time when having that kind of constant access to a decent video library actually meant something. I guess it’s a Gen X thing, but that was my time and I sure as hell took full advantage of it.

It wasn’t long before I was taking out videos that were not your typical feature films. One in particular immediately caught my eye: It was a direct-to-video release from Stabur Home Video, part of a series called The Comic Book Greats hosted by the great Stan Lee. The video series seemed to be split between Stan interviewing some of the acknowledged masters of the medium -- Harvey Kurtzman, Sergio Aragones, Will Eisner, Bob Kane, etc. -- and some newer (at that time) artists, mainly the original Image Comics partners, like Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane. In fact, one of those videos that my store had in stock was Stan Lee talking to both Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld together, with Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio making cameos at the end.

(Ironically, I ended up working with all four of these guys at various times in my comicbook career, but I never would’ve predicted that back then…)

Anyway, the official Tower procedure was that you would bring the video(s) that you intended to take home up to the front register and a shift manager would scan them and log them as being “checked out” by an employee (at no charge). So, I took this particular video up to the front to a shift manager named Caleb (who I might’ve known for a week or two at that point). As he checked it out for me, he clocked what it was and asked me that fateful question…

… “So you read comics?”

I remember being slightly cautious about answering. After all, I’d grown up in an environment where you could easily be made fun of for admitting that you were into comicbooks, especially the older you were. Being a teenage geek in the 80’s wasn’t at all the same as it is these days. Socially, it could be a bit of a minefield. Now living in L.A., I’d already found a few comicbook stores to shop at, but it’s not like I’d ever really spoken to anyone while I was shopping. But, in that moment, I guess I was feeling okay about things and answered, “Yup.”

To which Caleb responded, “Me too.”

From that moment, no matter what separate roads we traveled down over the subsequent years, Caleb became a friend for life. In no time, we bonded over the comicbooks we loved… and the ones we didn’t. We were roughly the same age, so we shared the same basic pop cultural references. It’s hard to describe how significant it is to me, personally, that I met Caleb when I did. It was like I had been thrown a lifeline right when I probably needed one.

Plus, Caleb was the first person I knew that had the Internet (back when it was exclusively dial-up). We’d spend a couple of hours at a time at his apartment checking out the DC Comics AOL chat room. It was like a whole new world opening up to me. I mean, at that point, even owning a home computer was way outside of my life experience. Now I couldn’t imagine living without one.

At some point -- maybe even during that first real conversation -- Caleb told me about another shift manager at Tower that was also into comicbooks. In fact, he was an artist hoping to break into the business. His name was Alan and he quickly became my second real friend at Tower.

In other words, I’d found my tribe.

But things quickly progressed from there… taking me down a path that was, in retrospect, somewhat hard to believe, in terms of how it all worked out. Alan was, in fact, an artist. A pretty great artist, actually. And it wasn’t long before we were planning and scheming to collaborate on more than one of our own goofy ideas, with the intended goal of trying to break into the business together. Strength in numbers, y’see. As it turned out, Alan had another artist friend that was working regularly down in Anaheim, at Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios (this was turning into a real Kevin Bacon/six degrees-type of thing, for sure). Pretty soon we were making the long drive down to visit Alan’s friend in the studio -- and possibly scrounge up some actual, paying comicbook work for ourselves.

Which we eventually did. We met pretty much everyone working in the studio at that time, including editor/writer, Eric Stephenson. That brief meeting led to a gig -- ostensibly for the Youngblood: Strikefile anthology title being published by Image Comics at that time -- where I would write and Alan would pencil a short story starring Chap Yaep’s creation, Dutch. That script got written and drawn and fully paid for, but never published (we eventually reprinted that script in the back of the trade paperback collection, YOUNGBLOOD VOL. 1: FOCUS TESTED, which I was proud to write, some twelve years later). But it was a professional sale. My first, as a matter a fact. It gave me a tiny bit of legitimacy in the industry exactly when I needed it.

Within two years, I was a full-on professional comicbook writer at Marvel Comics.

And you can trace it all back to my year at Tower Records and the friends I made there. Eventually, we all went our separate ways. Caleb quickly leveled up, got himself a real career and started a family (although, along the way, we did collaborate on an OGN called FULL MOON FEVER published by AiT/PlanetLar). Meanwhile, Alan moved into animation (a few years before I did), where he eventually became a successful director.

Tower Records itself is long gone now, a relic of a media landscape we no longer live in. But for a brief, shining moment, it was the absolute center of my world. Not to mention, it was a vital piece of the puzzle that’s been my own strange life journey. For that… and for both Caleb and Alan… I’ll always be grateful.

Because, among other things, it lead to this little gem, out in stores next week…

WEAPON X-MEN #3

SHOWDOWN ON HYDRA ISLAND! The newest X-team on the block faces their first trial by fire! Baron Strucker and his new super-army intend to conquer the world – with only Wolverine, Deadpool, Cable, Chamber and Thunderbird standing in their way! This one is a battle for the ages that you can’t afford to miss! Also introducing – WEAPON EXILE!

Joe Casey

USA