“How did I get here?”

No, that’s not me singing along to the Talking Heads. It’s a question I’ve been asking myself quite a bit throughout this year as SKTCHD and Off Panel grew increasingly close to the 10^th anniversary of each’s existence as a website and podcast respectively. 10 years of doing anything is a lot, but 10 years of running a website and a podcast almost entirely by yourself in whatever free time your day job and personal life afford you might be even more so.

It’s only natural to contemplate your life when major milestones like those are reached, and that’s largely come in the form of that “How did I get here?” question. You don’t do anything for this long without having a deep love of it, especially when you’re operating in an underfunded, underloved space like writing and talking about comics. 58 And SKTCHD/Off Panel are undeniably passion projects, efforts that reflect my journey as someone who loves comics far more than a desire to get rich or famous.

That question of how I got here permeated through my brain for so long, though, that the answer became more than something I wondered about. As is often the case, it became a 10th anniversary project, one designed to help both myself and readers of the site better understand what created this seemingly unquenchable thirst to explore the stories behind comics, its industry, Stilt-Man, and everything else. I dubbed it “The Entire History of Me,” and it’s something I’ve been working all year with a single goal in mind: To determine which comic has been the most consequential for me from each of the 41 years I’ve been alive all to better illustrate how I got here, exactly.

And if there was a word in that sentence that shaped this exercise the most, it’s “consequential.” This project isn’t about identifying my favorite comic or the best or anything like that. At least not exclusively. It’s aimed at determining which title or single issue or graphic novel or webcomic or storyline or whatever was the most important in my journey to becoming the person — and comics reader — I am today. That was the objective, and surprising absolutely no one, there were rules that guided me on this endeavor, ones that helped make this exercise the most interesting and accurate version of itself possible. Or at least I hoped they did. Those rules were:

• Personal importance leads the way, especially early on: I could have easily picked classic comics I only recently read for the first time to win the years from my youth — a good example of that is Jaime Hernandez’s “The Death of Speedy” story from Love & Rockets, which would have been a great pick for 1986 — but that would betray the exercise. Again, this is about my own story as a comic reader, so for the most part, the biggest factor in making my picks was how a comic impacted my life as a reader.
• I did not have to read the comic the year it is selected: This one is obvious for one reason and maybe not obvious for another. The first is I wasn’t reading much of anything in my early years. Baby David did not know how to read anything, let alone comics. That makes this rule necessary. The other is that without this rule, much of the 1990s would be varying X-Men and Wildstorm comics, which comprised quite a bit of my childhood reading list. I wouldn’t be mad at that — I really liked the X-Men and Wildstorm — but that wouldn’t tell the full story.
• Personal preference is a key factor, especially later on: Which characteristics lead the way for me will shift the further in my life we get. That’s because at a certain point, I’m just the reader I am, and my affinity for a comic becomes far more important than if it changed my life as a reader.
• Titles can only win one year: I didn’t want this to become the Transformers and X-Men show in my youth. For that reason, once a title is picked, it can never be selected again. Because of that, my positioning of certain titles is often oriented on when I actually started reading them rather than when they launched — although that is not always the case.
• Lasting appeal matters: I could make a case that Marvel’s Onslaught storyline was the most important comic to me in 1996, simply because I lived and breathed the mystery behind that character when I was 12. I could…but I won’t because it had very little lasting influence on my life. Sustained impact needs to be there!
• Ties are not allowed — unless a clear connection can be made: The coward’s route would be to pick multiple titles each year, just because asking me to choose between favorites is cruel and unusual. 59 That’s why ties are not allowed unless there’s an obvious reason to connect winners. That only happens twice, and one of those was hard to do.

That’s it. Those were the rules that guided me as I determined the right fit for each year, even if it was a painful process in doing so. Below, you can find my selections for the most consequential comic from every year of my life, with graphics designed by my wife Amber introducing each one.

Let’s get to it.

This exercise begins with the only title it can. While there’s no way for me to be absolutely certain this is true, Marvel’s The Transformers series that began in 1984 was home to the first comic books I ever read. Or, at the very least, it was the first series I remembered reading, which is all that really matters. There’s a reason for that. I worshipped The Transformers in my youth. To illustrate that, here’s a fact for you. At one point, I estimated that I had watched The Transformers: The Movie at least 200 times, which is both incredible — especially considering the fact that my family did not own it, we just rented it enough times to get me there — and likely lower than reality. I was obsessed with anything that featured The Transformers. The show? The movie? Toys? Of course.

So, naturally, The Transformers were my gateway into comics.

That in of itself would earn it this spot. Being someone’s first comic is a powerful thing. Without it, who knows if everything else that follows on this list would have ever been read. But it’s worth noting that the issue that really did it for me was #41. I didn’t have every issue, at least not at first, as my collection was comprised of random issues my parents managed to find for me. I don’t even know if I read #40 before #41, or #39, or whatever else. But when I read #41, I began to understand the power of comics as a medium, even if I didn’t fully realize that in the moment.

This Bob Budiansky written, Jose Delbo drawn issue was about…well, honestly, what it was about isn’t the point. What mattered to me was something — or, more precisely, two somethings — it did. One is it featured roughly one million Autobots and Decepticons, both on its cover and inside its pages. It achieved a level of character density that was only a fantasy to me at that point. For me, the only way to improve on Transformers was to have more of them. This issue understood that assignment. It was the comic equivalent of a battle a small child would have waged between their toys. And I did! But what that really meant, even if I didn’t understand it at the time, was that comics could do things that other mediums couldn’t, or at least not as easily. You could do anything. You could show all the Transformers, even! And that blew me away. I looked through this issue so many times that even my relentlessly meticulous nature could not protect it from harm. 60

The other thing it did came in the back of the issue. There was a contest where readers were tasked with figuring out who all 35 characters in a specific panel were and to send that “’Bot Roster” into Marvel to win a prize. I read this well after its release, so I was not eligible. But I would still bring it out and name each character like I was Arya Stark, except instead of whispering a list of people I wanted to kill I’d name a bunch of robots I loved. It was like the Marvel Handbook for The Transformers, except strictly visual and designed for a kid that was obsessed with these robots in disguise.

That’s a lot to say that I really loved The Transformers, and that love acted as an entry point to a whole new story delivery device in comics. By the time The Transformers #41 hit, my adoration of The Transformers became something else entirely. It was still there, but suddenly, it had competition.

Because now, I loved comics, too.

Calling this issue Superman Annual #11 feels wrong. Not because it’s inaccurate or something. It isn’t. It feels wrong because you can only call this issue one thing.

“For the Man Who Has Everything.”

This was one of those comics I somehow ended up with because I bought a grab bag of comics. Remember grab bags? Those weird bundles where there’d be two comics that were visible on each end that almost always poorly represented what was in-between them? I loved getting those because a) I always wanted those two comics on the outside and b) you never knew what you’d get in the middle. 61 It felt like a weird fusion of my love of comics and opening packs of sports cards, and I adored grab bags because of that.

This comic somehow was in the middle of one of those grab bags, and let me tell you, it felt a bit different than the assorted New Universe issues I’d typically find there. It’s about Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman going to The Fortress of Solitude for Superman’s birthday only to find The Man of Steel catatonic with some weird space plant attached to him — one that gives him his heart’s desire, as he lives through a fantasy reality in his head where Krypton never exploded — before they have to battle Mongul in an effort to save their friend.

This Alan Moore written, Dave Gibbons drawn issue remains to this day my co-favorite Superman story alongside Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, which was, of course, another Alan Moore written story. And it was one of the first comics that made me realize that superhero stories could be a lot more than cool poses and great action. I mean, it could be both. But this issue introduced a flavor to me — a superhero story with depth and heart and emotion and complexity (and cool poses and great action) — that I never knew existed before. Even though I initially would have preferred more X-Men comics from the grab bag instead of this random Superman story, I’m thankful that wasn’t how my luck played out.

While I somehow misplaced that comic over the years, the DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore collection from 2006 led to many more readings of this issue. And much later, I luckily managed to get a new copy of it at my shop. I didn’t need to own it, but it felt right to have it back in my collection, both as a nod to my history as a comic reader and to recognize one of the greatest superhero comics ever made.

For The Man Who Has Everything is one of the greatest superhero comics ever made…but not the greatest. That’s because like Highlander, there can only be one, and there’s zero doubt in my mind what the greatest superhero comic is. That’s Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil tale Born Again, the arc that took place between issues #227 and #233.

Many of these entries have complicated personal stories, ones tethered to how they sent my comic journey in a vastly different direction. Born Again is not one of those. I could not tell you when I read it for the first time. I couldn’t tell you how it changed my path as a fan. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve read it, besides the rather broad label of “a lot.” I couldn’t even tell you why it’s the greatest superhero comic ever.

It just is.

But if you asked me to try, here’s what I’d say. It’s Frank Miller at one of his hottest moments working with my favorite artist in David Mazzucchelli as the latter is just figuring himself out and how to best deploy his gifts in comics. It’s the best story from the greatest superhero ongoing of all time in Daredevil. It’s the rare superhero story that has a beginning, middle, and end, even if the end doesn’t prove to be a true finale. It’s just…awesome. I love it so.

1986 was a banner year for the history of comics, with a bevy of great options to choose from. But I love Born Again enough that unlike other years, I never even wrote other options down. There weren’t any.

It was always Born Again.

A lazier person than I would have just taken the previous write-up and used the find and replace tool to substitute “Daredevil” with “Batman” and “Born Again” with “Year One.” That wouldn’t be that far off.

Year One is of course another Miller and Mazzucchelli joint, one that explores the early days of The Dark Knight and varying figures from his life, and the second and final part of a collaboration that reached dizzying heights. And as much as I love Born Again, Year One undeniably features a more advanced version of its creators. That’s especially true when it comes to Mazz, as he figured some things out both in terms of his own approach as an artist and how to best color his work 62 while working on Daredevil. It is, in my opinion, the greatest Batman story ever told. I even read it much earlier than Born Again, because a collection of it was easier to find and I was into Batman far sooner than Daredevil for Michael Keaton reasons.

All that makes for an easy pick for 1987, and a story that — if I was forced to choose — might be one of my ten favorite comics ever. Not to make this a competition, though, but there’s just something I prefer about Born Again in the battle of Miller and Mazzucchelli collabos. What that is, I’m unsure. But it’s there. Still, that’s picking between classics, and both were clear winners for a reason.

I cannot talk about my journey as a comics reader without featuring comic strips. Even before I picked up a comic book, I was reading them in the funny pages. Every day, I’d grab whichever newspaper my parents happened to buy — there were two when I was a kid, the Anchorage Times and the Anchorage Daily News, so it varied on occasion — and make sure to read my way through the entire sports section and all the comic strips. Honestly, I liked them all to varying degrees. There were some I enjoyed less, of course. Family Circus never really hit for me. But there was just something that worked for me about these “comic” things, and I knew that well before any single-issue comics entered my life.

While it wasn’t my absolute favorite, one that led the way was Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County. I loved everything about it. Even the parts I didn’t understand, which I later realized were most of them! And what wasn’t to like? It was a bunch of gags featuring a talking penguin, a bizarre cat, and the cadre of regular humans they were pals with. More than that, Breathed’s art was fantastic. I loved seeing how he depicted each strip, from those that found Opus 63 losing his mind to ones where the crew would join the wheelchair-bound Cutter John for a recreation of their favorite scenes from Star Trek. It was funny and confusing and irresistible and weird and not what it seemed on the surface even if the surface worked as well.

Looking back on it, one of the things I appreciated without realizing it was how Breathed made comics that didn’t speak down to anyone. Bloom County worked for people of all ages. Want a funny comic about talking animals? That is a legit interpretation of it. Want an incisive political comic strip featuring a variety of notable figures from the 1980s? That’s there too. And the good news for kids like me was that sometimes those notable figures were also talking animals, like Spuds MacKenzie, who I thought solely existed in Bloom County! 64 Breathed never excluded people. Everyone was welcome, even if you almost certainly would not understand the full breadth of the strip at my age.

Bloom County was something I would read in the newspaper and also reread in its collections, including my personal favorite, The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos. As I aged, I started to figure out more and more of the jokes. That made Bloom County not just something I enjoyed, but something I learned from and was shaped by, even if it happened in ways I could not even explain. It was a special comic, and an essential one from my youth.

Some of these entries will be like Bloom County, ones about comics that changed me in ways both obvious and imperceptible. Those are special comics, ones that are meaningful in major ways.

Then there will be other entries like this one, Uncanny X-Men, where the impact was maybe not as complex but no less important. Uncanny X-Men at this point — one that found Chris Claremont still in the midst of his run and Jim Lee entering the picture — was a machine, a great comic that also was a monster seller. While I did not fully get into it for a few years, 65 even five-year-old David Harper knew about the X-Men. And what the X-Men lacked in some places, they made up for in something much more important to me at that age.

They were one of the coolest things I’d experienced up until then.

What makes this the right window to highlight Uncanny was the arrival of Lee. Jim Lee’s take on the X-Men made my love of comics go into overdrive. If The Transformers introduced me to comics as a medium, Lee’s art and subsequent X-Men card set were what turned that curiosity into a roaring fire. Jim Lee was on the Mount Rushmore of the coolest people from the first ten years of my life, alongside other luminaries like Ken Griffey Jr., Bo Jackson, and Optimus Prime. My favorite version of every character was the one that Jim Lee did, and my favorite characters were all the ones Lee would draw the most.

While my passion for the X-Men was at least in part born because of Lee’s art, it carried on well past then. Lee may not even be my favorite X-Men artist anymore. 66 But he was the one that got me started and sent me down a path that included massive moments from my childhood like X-Men #25, 67 Age of Apocalypse, and Onslaught. More than any other superhero franchise, the X-Men are the one I always root for, hoping for the best as a new era in comics or movies launches. And Uncanny X-Men was what started it all for me in comics. There’s a reason this is the one volume of comics I’m trying to own the entirety of. It’s a landmark series for me, as I would not be a comic fan today without Uncanny X-Men, or Jim Lee, for that matter.

For those educated in the history of X-Men crossovers, this may seem like a cheat considering the whole “Titles can only win one year” rule. This crossover merged three comics for a story of the wider world of the X-Men taking on the anti-mutant country of Genosha, and those three comics were New Mutants, X-Factor…and the previous year’s winner in Uncanny X-Men. Shouldn’t that exempt it? Maybe, but my case for why it should be included is the same for why it’s my pick.

Up until X-Tinction Agenda, I had only read comics in single issues. I didn’t even know there was another way to read them! And I was fine with that. Why would I possibly need another way to read the single greatest medium known to man? But then — and I honestly do not even know how this happened — I ended up getting a book collecting Uncanny X-Men #270 to 272, X-Factor #60 to 62, and New Mutants #95 to 98, or the issues that make up X-Tinction Agenda. It was released in 1992, so it came into my possession at least a couple years after this point. But this story introduced me to a completely new way to read comics, one that merged all the issues from a single story into this weird…book thing. I was told it was a trade paperback, but I had no idea what that meant.

I may not have been able to explain it, but I read that thing like it was my job, and then reread it many times more for good measure. And yes, I enjoyed the Jim Lee parts the most, the Rob Liefeld parts the second most, and the Jon Bogdanove ones a distant last — although my appreciation of the latter has grown over the years — as you might expect. But this story changed my comic reading life because it revolutionized how I could read comics. This was of course the first of many trade paperbacks in my life, 68 but I remember my first fondly, both because it led the way and because it remains to this day as the collection I’ve probably read the most times.

And I still have it!

At this point in my life, both my older brother and I read comics. Sometimes it’d be difficult to determine who bought what or the origins of our interest in certain titles. It was almost like a hivemind of curiosity, one where all ideas began and ended in our brains simultaneously. And somehow, someway, Bone #1 ended up in my family’s possession shortly after it arrived, which is clear because the version I still have to this day is the second printing.

Whatever its origins were, I dearly loved that comic. I still have almost every issue from the series, even though I also have the trade paperbacks and One Volume Edition and the first volume of the new Bone Deluxe format and assorted other versions. That alone could have earned Bone a spot here, as Jeff Smith’s work on this series resulted in one of my favorite comics. To read Bone is to love Bone, and I have read Bone…many times. 69

But it earns this spot for two other reasons. One was that it introduced me to this entire other world of comics. Did you know that companies besides Marvel and DC made comics? And that some of them were black and white and not about superheroes? I certainly didn’t! It was mind-blowing. In a real way, Bone married my love of comic books with my adoration of comic strips and affinity for fantasy stories, smashing three passions together into one that spoke to me in a way that I could not even explain in the moment. It just made sense to me. It was funny, 70 it was beautifully drawn, the characters were incredible, and I just loved it so. It expanded my horizons in a way that paid dividends for the rest of my life.

The other thing is it fostered connection in two main ways. One was thanks to its reprinting — in color! — in the 1990s magazine Disney Adventures. While I didn’t really know anyone who read comics early on, I knew a ton of people who read Disney Adventures, and that opened a door for me to be able to talk to other kids about comics and Bone in specific. That was important because it started to normalize a love of mine that was an outsider hobby before then. And that continued onwards after the One Volume Edition arrived in the 2000s. Bone was a comic I could always loan to people who might be interested in comics. I passed it onto friends, family, nephews, nieces…you name it. Bone wasn’t just a comic I loved; it was a comic we loved, and that made a huge difference for a person who mostly loved them in isolation.

Beyond the simple fact that Future Imperfect absolutely rips, this two-issue series has the unique distinction of birthing three of my comic loves and solidifying two others. Let’s start with the latter two.

At this point, I was aware of writer Peter David and artist George Pérez, as well as some of the work they had done. I’d read a bit of David’s X-Factor and even some of his Incredible Hulk, albeit in the random, always incomplete way you do as a kid. It’s possible I’d read some if not all of Infinity Gauntlet. But seeing these creators together on this story of the Hulk — the version that was Banner Hulk, where he was both smart and strong — being sent to a possible future where a much older version of himself had become a monstrous dictator named The Maestro was something else entirely. It was two greats making the sweetest of music together, and something that spoke to kid version of me like you wouldn’t believe.

You could say the three loves that were spawned by this comic were less consequential, but anyone that knows my habits as a comic reader — particularly of the superhero variety — understands that these are important to me. One is the alternate future it takes place in. I don’t think I’d read a story that existed within one of those before this, and it created a lifelong love of that type of tale. What’s not to love? At a base level, it’s interesting because it creates an entirely new storytelling environment. Because it’s only a possible future, it allows a story like this one to do anything. It’s a narrative get out of jail free card, and its creative team maximized the potential that offered them. I loved that aspect of it, and it’s something that’s continued to be a fave — including in other places on this list.

Related to that, there’s a specific moment in Future Imperfect that rocked my world, and it’s a section that I’ve probably looked at about as many times as any other in comic history. It’s the double-page spread of Rick Jones’ collection of superhero memorabilia, a museum he built to help remember the good times before all the superpowered folks were killed. I’d never seen anything like it. The details Pérez puts into it are fantastic. Every time I looked at it I discovered new elements. It’s like one of the hidden object pages from Highlights Magazine except entirely built on superhero materials, making it considerably cooler than those puzzles. Any time a comic does something like this, I immediately go from wherever I was to all the way in. 71

Lastly, it was the first prestige format comic I experienced. You wouldn’t think that’d make a huge difference, but I have always thought that perfect bound single issue comics are just more important than regular ones. Having a flat edge at the binding with an actual spine makes an enormous difference to me as a reader. And it’s all because Future Imperfect’s issues had one. It’s just cooler!

The biggest deal here is that I loved this comic to bits, and it created a super fan of David and his Incredible Hulk run in particular. But the rest matters. Every comic you read has the potential to shape you as a fan in ways you might never expect, and Future Imperfect is…well, a perfect example of that.

I always say that Marvel’s The Transformers was my first favorite comic. That’s partially true. But it’s only partially true. It was my first favorite comic book. But it wasn’t my first favorite comic.

That was Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson’s classic comic strip.

I cannot stress this to you enough. I didn’t just love this comic because it was a great comic; Calvin and Hobbes was a foundational text for me. I read it religiously. In the newspaper. In its collections. In whatever format I could get. My worldview and ethos and who knows what else were shaped by this strip, and I think you can draw a direct line from Watterson to a lot of my favorite artists and comics throughout the years, some of which will appear on this list. Heck, my senior quote in high school was a line from the comic! 72 Calvin and Hobbes isn’t just one of the reasons I love comics. It’s one of the reasons I love life. 73

You might be wondering how I ended up picking 1993 as the year to represent this comic, especially considering the fact that it ran from 1985 to 1995, meaning this was towards the end of the run. That’s easy. It’s because that’s the year that The Days Are Just Packed came out. That was a collection of Calvin and Hobbes strips, and its cover image is what I envision when I close my eyes and think about it. While I loved it in the newspaper, Calvin and Hobbes — at least for me — was defined by those collections, and the endless hours I spent reading and rereading them in my youth and beyond. That made 1993 the right year for this selection, even if it really could have taken the spot any year.