 It was comics that sparked my lifelong fascination with art and storytelling. When I was a kid, my older brother gave me two paperback books filled with reprints of EC horror comics for my birthday. Around the same time, the first issue of Warren's CREEPY came out, and it blew me away.
I was never too taken with superheroes, but I tracked down every issue of the Warren titles. I spent countless hours copying the pictures from them. I had a great dad. In the Seventies he took me to several of Phil Seuling's New York Comic Cons. We lived in Detroit. It was also on these trips that I became fascinated with New York City. It was always the setting in my comics and doodles, I was always trying to draw it. In later life, I'd live there for almost twenty years. By the time I started high school, I revered artists like Berni Wrightson and Jeff Jones, but I had lost interest in horror stories.
My interest now was science fiction. We had gone on a weekend family vacation, and friends of my parents were putting us up. I got the room of the older daughter. I couldn't sleep, so, without much hope, I looked for something good on her bookshelf. I found Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451. I was up all night reading it cover to cover. It was around this time too that 'head shops' sprouted up in the Detrioit.
Did I look 18?
Highly doubtful.
But they still let me buy all the Zap comics they had. I was brought up in a Catholic school, taught by nuns in full regalia from Grade One. Finding the Undergrounds was like having Satan jump out of my pants and take me on a life-altering road trip. I liked the really bizarre trippy stuff; Rick Griffin, S. Clay Wilson. I also dug that there was so much sci-fi -- Metzger's Moondog, Corben's Rowlf, Bode's Cobalt 60.What really got me hooked on science fiction took place in a head shop too. One of the head shops was run by a pretty hippy girl who sold used sci-fi paperbacks for a quarter. After school, I'd go to the head shop to buy a couple, and talk to the pretty hippy girl. She had all tons of them, from fantasy and sword and sorcery, to hard SF. She had the whole Conan series with the famous Frazetta covers. I liked Fritz Lieber, Heinlein, Simak ... The books had all belonged to the pretty hippy girl, so she'd make recommendations and talk about her favorites. The headshop didn't last long. When she left, she gave me all the books inthe store for free.
That's how I got hooked on science fiction.
When I was 15, I produced a comic book called Armageddon. I printed about 100 and my family and friends had to buy them.
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