I don't really go in for the levels of idol worship considered normal among my people. When I see a toy still in a box, some part of me would rather see it destroyed through joyous play than sequestered in some airless cube, monastic and celibate. But… for paper goods? Like comics, or cards? Prophylactics, man. Every time.

I've always more or less drafted on my friends' collections, outside a couple specific writers I don't really do much collecting myself, and even if I lost my mind on something like Preacher or 100 Bullets it was virtually all trades. The "longbox" was never part of my experience of comics, other than to paw through an associates' collection for the very specific "X-Mans" issue that would help me understand whatever the fuck they were talking about. The funniest part about all of it was that I had a very limited, almost keyhole level of exposure to comics and yet somehow the specific ones I read were the ones they kept making movies of. I credit my friends' supreme acts of curation for that.

When I met Mike he loved to draw and hated writing. I've never met somebody who hated doing something they were really good at before. Well, I guess that's not true; Brenna is incredible at boardgames, like… scary at them in an effortless way, but it's never gonna be a first-choice activity and there is a very real possibility she checks out about seventy percent of the way through because she has already won and knows she already won. There are a ton of overlaps between these two actually, I don't think they like it when I say that, but I'm the one who would know best so tough tits.

Anyway, he is a better writer without effort than many people are who try super hard at it, and that's very frustrating. Outside of that, good 24 year collaboration; let's call it a 9/10.

(CW)TB out.