by Matthew Russell - Posted 5 years ago
Welcome, fellow Vigilantes! First off, I didn’t pick the title. That was our amazing CEO Jared Brague. He has been a friend for many years, and a purveyor of cheesy titles since I met him. I make fun of him a little in this post (don't tell him).
Now, About the Author, where do I begin? I have been doing some interviews and they keep asking me the same question, “What’s your story?” For years now I have been so focused on other things that I never really thought that anyone would be interested in my story. It never occurred to me that someone would want to know about me and my creations.
So now I’m sitting here in the dark on my iPad and remembering all the ups and downs that got me here. That and Jared keeps hounding me to get my story out there. So, here we go. Let me premise this by stating that Crypto Comics already has an Origin Story. This is not that story. This is my perspective of events.
I was born on a distant planet that was doomed. My parents placed me in a rocket that would take me to...wait, that's the other guy.
When I was a little kid growing up in Washington (Port Orchard to be exact) I was hanging out with a friend from Elementary School. His brother was watching us. I ended up getting lost and found myself in a comic book store. The owner ended up giving me a Batman comic to get me to stop crying so he could ask how to contact someone to come pick me up.
It was the strangest thing, there was a character that I watched on tv (Adam West, need I say more) and on Superfriends. This was in print. The stories, the art, everything was right there. It was magical. The only problem was, I hated reading.
As I said, I was a little kid. In kindergarten, I had decided that reading was stupid. I wanted no part of it. As a result, I wasn’t very good. My current predicament; I had something that I wanted to read, and couldn’t.
I sat there with that comic and figured out how to read. I needed to know what was going on. I read that story over and over until I understood the format, the lingo, and the lessons that comic had to teach.
Before that day, I would tell my parents that I wanted to be a fireman, a policeman, an astronaut, the President and so on. Every day it would change. They got to the point that they would barely look up and just tell me “That’s nice dear. You would make a great (insert new career here)” and they wouldn’t put much thought into it.
I was so fickle. My mom used to watch a show called “The Big Valley” and I would want to become a cowboy for the rest of my life. You could probably guess what I wanted to be when she would watch “CHIPs”.
I was so impressed with that Batman story that I sat there all night long and couldn’t sleep. I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t be Batman, so I would be the next best thing. I would write and draw comics.
I immersed myself in the various comic book universes. DC Comics became my true love although Marvel was like a mistress to me. My true home became Captain Comics (shout out to my old stomping grounds).
I was in the 1st grade when I submitted my first comic to Marvel Comics. It was titled Punisher Junior about a little kid that finds out he is Frank Castle’s (other) son and becomes another Punisher.
The art was childish. The story was odiously written by a kid and it was drawn on torn out notebook paper. I got my first rejection letter, first of many. Instead of deterring me I just thought holy crap, they saw my comic!!!!
I never changed my mind about what I wanted to be again.
Once my mind was made up I spent every waking hour trying to perfect my craft. I got really great with pencils, and inks. Color was never my forte. I also realized something profound, I couldn’t ever be a comic artist due to the fact that it took me WAY too long to draw. A single panel takes me roughly about three weeks to complete. I started to focus more on writing.
I had some great opportunities in school. During High School, I worked for the local newspaper as a writer and learned how to pace a story. I was in a creative writing class that required that we focus our efforts on poetry.
I entered into several poetry contests and even won a few. I picked up a publisher and even got a small book of poetry published, even though it didn’t sell that well, I did it. The strange part was I was still flunking Senior English class.
We were studying Shakespeare. I loved it. Taming of the Shrew was fantastic. It was nothing but a giant book of insults slung between the two main characters. I couldn’t stop laughing. It fed into my dark sense of humor.
The problem was I was getting something else out of the material then my teacher was, hence the F in her class. When I challenged this, she said “Take it up with the school board”, you can probably guess what I did at their next meeting.
Well, they froze my grade at an A but I had to maintain my attendance to keep it. Worst decision ever made. This gave me license to be the worlds greatest sh*t, something I would go on to regret.
After high school I wanted college. Problem was, my poor @$$ couldn’t pay for it. I did the next logical step, I decided on the military as a means to gain the education that I so desired. I set up an appointment with the Air Force Recruiters.
They must have forgotten about me because they weren’t in their office at the time of the meeting. A Marine Recruiter came up to me and told me to forget about those guys and took me out to lunch. Next thing I know I’m shipping out.
Problem was, I’m a smart@$$ by nature. Turns out, that’s a bad thing in the Marines. I got SO good at push-ups! A year later one day we are on a morning run; 5 miles. To my embarrassment, I trip, not over anything. It was just 5 in the morning and I trip over nothing. I landed hard on the pavement and caused enough damage to my knee that I’m out of the Marines. I lost the title of Marine that I worked so hard for. I came home in shame.
I spent the next couple of years not doing anything very important. Mostly playing. I still worked on a comic story but not very hard until one day in 2001. I was at my sister's house and turned on the tv.
There seemed to be the movie “The Siege” and although I love that movie, I wasn’t in the mood to watch it so I changed the channel. On that channel was, “The Siege”. Same thing on the next. It was at that moment that I realized that this was no longer a movie, it was September 11th and 2 planes had hit the World Trade Center in New York.
After a few doctors appointments, I was back in, this time in the Army. I was nothing heroic. I was a parachute rigger. All of a sudden everything for my comic came together. I created my magnum opus. My comic had that missing piece. Now I just needed support.
On a 4 day weekend, some friends were heading back home to Fair Haven NJ. I hitched a ride with them and they dropped me off in Red Bank. I got a cab to Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash to meet my idol, Kevin Smith. Whoever said don’t meet your idols can kiss my half black @$$. He is amazing.
I spent all 4 days with him talking about comics, plot points, set up, atmosphere, artistic interpretation, and my comic creation. I have never met anyone as encouraging as him. He gave me the courage to pursue my dreams.
Before I could finish I took my knee out again. Once again defeated by this stupid knee. I get home and meet the love of my life (cheesy, I know), get married and have my first kid. Life got in the way and I am working at a place building furniture.
My daughter is now in kindergarten and I tell her “You can be anything.” The little snot then says to me “Then why aren’t you writing Batman?” I hate it when my kids are smarter than me.
So I dust off my story and pitch it to DC Comics. Somehow I get an appointment with Paul Levitz and Dan DiDio. I head off to New York. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out due to scheduling. It did get my foot in the door and some valuable insight into the inner working of the comic industry.
It was around this time that I developed my own catch phrase. Much like “Excelsior!” or “Holy something or other Batman” I now use the “Awersome”. This came about during a text conversation with a friend. I misspelled Awesome and then tried to play it off. It stuck.
I found an artist that contracted me to write a horror comic about Zombies. Together we worked on several different titles for Delve Comics (a small independent publishing company). Let me go back a little.
If you remember, I was working at a furniture company building high end tables & cabinets. I still was trying to pursue a position as a writer in the comic book industry. I met a guy named Eric (an artist). He introduced me to a guy named Chris that was going to do the programming for the site.
Together we started to form an idea that would eventually become Crypto Comics.
The idea was that it was going to be a standard publishing house that would exclusively cater to the internet. Basic idea but we had to start somewhere. I brought on my good friend Drew that would be the Ditko to my Stan Lee.
This led me to work with Legendary Author Ron Fortier during that time. You should check out his fantastic work at Airahip27. I’ve gotten to know some amazing people like Rob Liefield, Trevor Reed, the late Stan Lee, and none other than Greg Horn. I got to sit down and talk for hours with Neal Adams, and Mike Grell (that was a day to remember).
Delve Comics fell apart. I was pretty crushed. Drew called me everyday and eventually got me to believe in both myself and the comic company again. We began to put our heads together (occasionally bumping them) to think of a way to make this all work. Eventually both of us decided that we needed to call in some outside help.
I met Drew at his house when he called over a buddy that could “Sell a pork chop to a Vegan”. I had met him a few times at one of Drew’s barbecues but I didn’t know him that well. Jared was a good driving force and pushed us all to be at our best.
Turns out he never stops selling. He has 1 gear; "GO". I will admit, there are times where I want to strangle him. Last night, as an example, he tried selling me on an idea. Right away I bought into it. He kept trying to sell me on it for about another half hour before he realized I had agreed and moved on with my life. Strange how he always seems to be the hero in his own stories, but I digress.
Eventually we formed eX-Comics. History was made that day, (see origin story) and here we are.
Since then I have written about 20 different indie titles such as Hunter, Hero’s Story, Champion and so on. I even wrote another comic that got me arrested, but that’s a story for another time.
Eventually we couldn’t get any further with eX-Comics and had to call it quits. That was a sad day. I still remained friends with Jared and then he calls me up, "ApogeeINVENT want to talk to us about starting a new comic idea called Crypto Comics."
I drove about an hour and a half to talk with Joe, our President, and he outlined his ideas for Crypto Comics. It sounded fun. I jumped at the chance to get into it again. Eventually a lot of ideas from Delve Comics & eX-Comics got folded in, and here we are today.
I wouldn’t change a thing. I have had one of the most spectacular careers that I could hope for. I want to thank everyone that has helped me along the way. This has given me the desire to begin paying it back and turning that spotlight on some much deserved indie creators.
I want to make it so they can work on their comics full time. I want to see what they can produce when they have the resources to create their dreams.
