Myth Adventures: why I turned out this way
These days, cartoonist Phil Foglio (the “g” is silent, yo) is pretty well revered — and rightfully so — for his steampunk webcomic Girl Genius. But back in the mid-1980s, when I was your age (I’m assuming here that ftE’s readership is composed primarily of 14-year-old girls, of course), he was an up-and-coming talent toiling away on a comic adaptation of Robert Asprin’s seminal fantasy novel, Another Fine Myth.
That toil resulted in Myth Adventures, which is probably more responsible for the way I turned out as a human being than any other contributing factor.
Stay with me here. Back in 1985, mainstream comics were not as they are today. A very few creators like Alan Moore and Frank Miller were pushing the boundaries of what superhero comics could be, but the vast, VAST majority of that stuff is unreadable today. (Seriously, I loved the Squadron Supreme mini-series as much as anybody, but trying to wade through the wooden dialog recently as an adult just made my heart hurt.) There was, however, this burgeoning wild-west alternative comics culture springing up. And in the days before internet, if you stumbled upon some wonderful discovery at the comic book store, you felt like Shackleton in the antarctic. So you internalized that shit. You made it your own.
Myth Adventures was my favorite indy comic, so when they ran an ad for a fan club, needless to say I was all over it. I sent in my eight bucks and quickly got back a membership packet that included a button, a bumper sticker, a signed print from Foglio and the first issue of the club newsletter, which was printed as a 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 stapled zine. This was my introduction to the very concept of organized fandom. And more importantly, that newsletter was the first publication that ever printed any of my work. They ran some of my fan art (after tracing over my pencil drawings with ink so they would photocopy better) in the second issue.
Soon I was printing my own (truly, truly awful) xeroxed comics. Then, with the self-publishing bug firmly embedded, I took up a spot as the editor of my high school newspaper, where I learned the fundamentals of graphic design on a Macintosh computer. After high school, then, I fell into publishing a monthly music paper with some friends, which led to publishing an alternative weekly for over a decade. These days I earn my living as a graphic designer, and to feed the monkey I write, illustrate and publish my own damn books.
You can blame Myth Adventures for pretty much all of that.
The comic itself holds up surprisingly well. Skeeve is a novice magician apprenticed to Aahz, a brash, hard-drinking demon who has lost his powers. Together they wander the countryside trying to track down the villain who sent assassins after Skeeve’s former mentor and got them into this mess to begin with. It’s lighthearted and whimsical, and the plot follows Asprin’s novel pretty closely. The magic is in the execution, though — Foglio’s gleefully expressive artwork and frenetic pacing are pretty much what made me want to draw comics myself at that tender young age.
You don’t have to take my word for it, though. The artist has reclaimed publishing rights to this stuff, and is currently running it in regular installments for free on the web. As it stands, the story is about halfway through, and if you get caught up and CAN’T WAIT TO SEE HOW IT ENDS (seriously, how could you?) you can buy the handsome collected volume straight from the source.
After adapting Another Fine Myth, Foglio moved on to greener pastures so that’s it for the comics (we won’t discuss Ken Mitchroney’s adaptation of Myth Conceptions except to say that he also worked on “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Meet Archie“). But if you fall in love with Aahz and Skeeve, you’ll be pleased to know that Asprin churned out a whole mess of these books, and at least the first six or eight are pretty wonderful. But to me, they’ll always be secondary to the comic book. To my 14-year-old soul, it was the very best kind of art there is.
The kind that makes you want to rush out and create some yourself.
You have a limited amount of time, so why spend it reading about things that suck or are only kind of okay? Favorite thing EVER is not a review site. We're unrepentant fans, and this is the stuff we love. Hope you like gushing, because we're about to embarrass ourselves.
That is a great story. Thanks for sharing!
I want to buy your awful xeroxed comix! Also, I can get to http://www.fantasticspectacular.com/ but not http://www.twitchrichards.com/ to see MORE of your comics!
Yeah, I let the Twitch Richards domain go a while back. (These were both sample comic submission packages I did for the daily comics syndicates a few years back, by the way). I just got an email from my web host saying renewal is up again, too, so I gotta tell you that Fantastic Spectacular is also on the bubble!
hey! don’t be harshin on FUN NIFTY SWELL Comics! i am who i am today because of them!
do you still have The Rockin’ Tales of Roundness #1? read that again and you’ll feel much better about your foundations
-tbcc.
Ladies and gentlemen, The Big Cheese Cutter.
whatever, you pervert.
That’s per-VECT.
Dude. How did I go to your house, buy two of your Zombie books (best ever!), and leave without copies of Fred the Wandering Idiot?
You have so been holding out on me.
And now I have to figure out what particular FTE is responsible for turning me into the person I am, and write about it.
P.S. There is an interview with Phil Foglio in the current (September) issue of LOCUS.