Die by the Pen: Jared 101
Every Wednesday, Jared Gniewek discusses what feeds his fires as an author of comics, screenplays and radio dramas.
by Jared Gniewek
When I was a small boy I lived in a small city called Clinton, Iowa. It lies just north of the Quad Cities, and has an incredible public swimming pool. We lived about a stone’s throw from the Mississippi River and in my mind (ala Woody Allen in Annie Hall living directly under the roller coaster) the mighty river flowed through the alley directly behind our house. As a fourth grader there, I had a ritual. Every Tuesday after brawling in the schoolyard I would walk the five or six blocks of tree-lined streets to the local Library. The children’s section was where I first discovered many of my passions: Time-Life books on the supernatural, UFOs, cryptozoology, Grimm’s fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen, Andrew Lang’s colored Fairy Books, Bullfinch’s Mythology, L. Frank Baum, and photo-picture book adaptations of cheesy monster movies.
It was as though they had a section in the card catalogue entitled “Jared’s Brain”. I’m not sure where that would lie in the Dewey Decimal System but the numbers would probably all add up to AWESOME!
At some point, I discovered the comics trading box. They had a box full of comics behind the desk and you exchanged your comics for whatever you picked out of the box. The only rule was that it had to have a cover. This was my awakening. Out of this box came my first exposure to many of the creators I still enjoy. I’ve yet to come across any other comics readers who had such an incredible resource growing up. To my estimation a full two thirds of the children in Clinton used that box on a regular basis. It was always stuffed to the gills with good stuff.
There was one issue of Winnie the Pooh, though, that never got traded out. In two years of manic comics grubbing, I never once pulled that little number. I read tons of “kids’ comics” but there was something uniquely unappealing about that book. I can remember Kanga and Roo on the cover, and I was Disney nut so I should have wanted to read it, but week after week I passed it by in favor of Uncle Scrooge, Harvey Comics, Archie, and my favorites, the superheroes of DC and Marvel.
I read many superhero comics growing up. I was kicked out of Walter’s News in Morgantown, West Virginia, week after week for reading every book on the rack while we lived there in the early eighties. I would beg my mother for sixty cents and spend an hour and a half choosing one book. They hated me. It might have been that I was friends with a notorious shoplifter who always ganked candy bars whenever we went there.
In any case, the comic books I picked out so very carefully provided me with a stack of about twenty, which provided me with a pretty solid base for trading. Week in and week out I ventured into the Library and came out refreshed with new books. Only a rich kid or the child of a collector had access to so many comic books.
Eventually, though, the aforementioned copy of Winnie the Pooh multiplied. It was like every week of not being picked up caused a gremlin-like spore to fire off of it in the box and a spanking new copy would appear for the next week. Soon enough the entire box was populated with this rather lame looking comic. On my last trip to the box, I foolishly handed my comics to the Librarian for counting before I looked in it to select my fresh comics. I was surprised, in spite of my knowledge of the slow creep of this particular infection. Quarter bin junkies like me know the feeling when the box is tapped out, and that was my first taste of this pain. I gritted my teeth and pulled a copy as I was too shy to ask for my books back. The other books were a selection of Dennis the Menace vacation books and TRS-80 Whiz Kids educational comics. Also, an issue of Doctor Fate that I found simultaneously readable but incomprehensible.
I felt lost on the trip home. Where was I going to get my books? The local book store had a selection but you had to pay for them. I felt like crying. I felt like dumping the worst stack of comics I’d ever seen into the river. I got home and left them in a stack that remained untouched for months.
Later that year, 1987 (to show my age), I read the Doctor Fate comic, and on the splash page was a stamp.
It was the name and address of a comic shop.
I’d heard of these places for awhile, but never got to one, and here was one right in my town! I never went back to the comic box, but it had served its purpose. It made a lifelong comics reader out of me, and clued me in to my next step in life as a reader of the funny books.
I thank the coordination of the anonymous librarians who made that happen at no cost beyond a start up box. I thank the other kids of Clinton who never cherry picked the best stuff and hoarded it in long boxes. I thank parents who allowed me the pleasure of exploring and moving about the towns and cities I grew up in on my own. The thoughtful charity of all involved inspired in me a passion for learning and sharing that I hope will be reflected in the activities of our new Sequential Art Collective.
Jared Gniewek works in the music industry as a back line technician, performer, and promoter. He is also a freelance writer whose work can be seen in the recent re-launch of Tales from the Crypt and heard on The Dark Sense, an audio anthology of the macabre for which he is also the story editor — http://www.earstage.com/darksense.htm.
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