Before today’s story I want to continue my twelve posting days of Holiday Wishes. So far I gave some love to Sam Kieth and Joshua Hale Fialkov. Today goes to the man behind my all-time favorite comic series.

It was at Mid-Ohio con last year (2004). I was doing my first convention as an exhibitor, met Josh for the first time and tried to push copies of Western Tales of Terror #1 onto anyone who glanced at our table. Josh told me to sit tight; he was going to get me a “thank you” present. He comes back twenty minutes later with Stray Bullets #1-10. I devoured the first issue while sitting at the table, breaking my own rule that I should always be approachable when I work a con. On the plane ride home I polished off some more and as soon as I got back to the apartment I finished up the rest. I told Robin how I needed to track the rest of these issues down and she told me to wait until Christmas. While I waited a month I read those ten issues 4 times, picking up new things each times and formulating theories as to how it all ties together. For Christmas Robin got me the rest of the run up until that point.

I read them all that night.

And over the past year I’ve read them all several times.

Stray Bullets is, in my superior opinion, the greatest comic series every produced. I’m not talking mini-series; it’s hard to top a great mini-series. But I am comparing it to books like Sandman, Preacher, the Marvel and DC mainstays, etc. 40 issues in the can for Stray Bullets so far and every one of them is exceptional. Dare I be so bold? I dare. Each issue is damn near flawless, even.

Happy Holidays to David Lapham. Over the past year he not only delivered several issues of Stray Bullets but did a good job on his Detective Comics story-arc and a damn good job on his Daredevil vs. Punisher mini-series. I hope to see more mainstream work from you over the coming year (because you deserve to get paid) while continuing to blow my mind with Stray Bullets. And I hope you finally get the original art sales going on your site; that was supposed to be my “big present” this year.

Happy Holidays, you violent fucking genius.

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I’ve talked about Ron in the past. He was this dude that I was friends with throughout high school. He lived with his divorced, constantly traveling father. In other words, everything I ever need to learn about alcohol I learned at Ron’s house. I already talked about the big party we threw there that sort of solidified our place at Midwood HS. But there were many, smaller, intimate moments where a bunch of high school kids got together and discovered exactly what alcohol is capable of.

Most of the time it was just a couple of kid’s sitting around and acting like kids. Ron had this laser tag set-up that included several guns and this battle-station type of device that detected people in the area and shot at them if they got too close. We’d turn all the light off in the house and play this hide & seek type game where the hiders got to put the battle-station anywhere in the house in an attempt to alert them that the seeker is coming. We played drunk, usually, obviously, and only occasionally the game went to fisticuffs. Like when a seeker would pin down a hider and shoot his target three times to “kill” him. Since physical attack is illegal in laser tag, that behavior usually resulted in a punch to the chest.

There was the occasional drunken barbeque. Kids don’t know how to barbeque and when alcohol is involved you get a bunch of undercooked chicken that was marinated in Bud Light. A bunch of people sit around the grill drinking 40s and talking loud about the sex we imagined we had. Saying how much a freak so-and-so was whereas, in actuality, she cries during sex or something similar that happens when you’re trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing down there. Only occasionally the barbeque came to fisticuffs.

I remember being at Ron’s house the night Kurt Cobain died. We went to the Arab store down the block from him since we wanted 40s and the father used to only keep hard liquor around the house. We never went to this store before; we usually had certified 40-purchasable stores in our own neighborhoods where the owner was a friend of the family and would sneak us malt liquor while telling us to tell our moms he said “hi”.

So we get to the store, it was Ron, Max, G and I, and grab four forties. The man behind the counter wouldn’t sell them to us – not without ID. We give him the ‘ole, “I left my ID home.” The guy shakes his head “no”, he’s kind of weak-willed, you can tell – it’s like blood in the water. So we’re begging him and he just keeps saying “no”. Finally he tells us that he’ll sell us one 40 if we leave. So we buy one 40 and walk back to Ron’s house, each with 10oz of Colt-45 allocated to us.

We get back to Ron’s house and watch MTV all night, debating whether or not we should go back and try to buy another 40 before raiding his father’s liquor cabinet like we should have done from the start. We crashed at Ron’s house that night, as usual, and at one point we took turns going into Ron’s bathroom and measuring our dicks, witnessless, which is only slightly less gay. It was total honor system but it was that night the legend of The Brajole started which has since been confirmed by girls we knew.

And then there was the really weird night.

Let me start by quoting Ron’s yearbook entry:


I don’t quite recall all the details, we were drinking obviously, and down in Ron’s basement looking through shit. I know that we were looking for something in particular, something he claimed his father had and for some reason I think it had to do with Mickey Mantle. We get to a box that contains his sister’s clothes, she didn’t live at home anymore, she lived over in Brooklyn Heights. There was this one horrendous looking outfit in there – it was like the definitive 80s outfit – and as a joke I took it into the bathroom and put it on.

It looked hysterical, honestly, and Ron decided we need a picture of it. So he gets his camera and we start looking through the rest of the box and there are tons of really bad clothes.

So, as a joke, we all start putting Ron’s sister’s 80s clothes on and taking pictures of each other.

It was all fun-and-games, a good drunken romp amongst male friends. Until we got the pictures back and realized how weird a bunch of drunken high schoolers trying on women’s clothes and taking pictures of each other really is.

It was at that moment I realized alcohol is evil.

And no, I don’t have the pictures anymore.