This may seem disconnected, but it all makes since by the end, trust me.

My Father told me while I was helping him out last Tuesday that I was a very independent child. When I argued that I was a flaming pussy as a kid he countered that my mother had beaten independence out of me and that he was glad to see that I had brought it back. I told him it was partially his fault, to which he happily accepted blame.

Age 15 down to as far back as I can remember, I was indeed a flaming pussy. I never stayed out late. I didn't watch R rated movies. Only watched cartoons. Didn't play sports or do any kind of extra activity. I did doodle, but it was all G rated. And this will surprise the fuck out of you Candy, I didn't pay any notice to women at all. At 15 I was still two years from my first orgasm and yet more years before I nixed virginity in the but. I was a pussy. I blame Mom.

Erhm... Me at 11:
"Mom? There is this girl at school and I think I..."
"You are not allowed to date until your 21 so you shouldn't even bother talking to her."

Me at 13:
"Mom? Do you need any help cleaning?"
"No, your video games are obviously more important than keeping the house clean. Don't worry about how I feel, go back to your games."

Me at 14:
"Mom? I think I'm going to try out for the chess team. I really like playing."
"I really can't pick you up after school every day David. I need you home to watch your brothers and sister. You have a responsibility to this family before you go hanging out with your friends."

To my mothers credit. Her guilt has kept me out of a lot of trouble. I've never tried any illegal narcotics. Never tasted liqueur of any kind. I don't have a long stream of failed romances. But on the other hand, keeping out of trouble also meant most of my youth was wasted and hardly ever enjoyed. I would recommend anyone who is reading and is still young, make some small mistakes while you still can.

My father is not free of blame but as a military man he was hardly ever home. There was a two year stint where he went to Korea while we stayed in the states. He has some lead in that he needed to work to care for the family. But that only excuses so much.

So, me at 15 and 11 months, June 20th, Grade A world class pussy, total Mama's boy.

At this time a certain R rated movie was being advertised all over the TV. One my old man wanted to go to, but didn't want to go to alone, one the wife definitely did not want to see or have her children see and all of his friends were currently deployed.

So my father (My old man) hatches a cunning scheme. The eldest boy is turning 16 in two days.

"Hey David! How would you like to go camping for your birthday?!"
"Wow!" (We went camping all the time back then. Back when MRE's seemed to taste wonderful.) "I'll tell the others!"
"No Dave. It's your birthday, so its just you and me."

Now I mentioned before how infrequently the old man was home. Getting to spend exclusive time with him was a treat because what father isn't his boy's hero? and I say boy because I was definitely developmentally stunted (thanks mom) for example I didn't, at the time, understand what was so interesting about a girl's breasts.

So June 22 my 16th birthday. I'm gathering firewood. Dad is reading a newspaper and he says:

"Yah know boy" (Mind you this isn't an exact transcript I don't think he ever called me "Boy".) "I think for your birthday we should go see a movie, just you and me."
"Sounds great! Whats playing?"
"Well I think we should go see ALIEN 3!!!"
I had seen the ad's for Alien 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vnj.....eature=related
And now so have you.
To the child's mind that I owned at the time, the image of Sigurney Weaver cowering with that sweating skull puppet right next to her head ("The Bitch is back!") gave me nightmares on more than one occasion. So I said:
"Sounds great!" Because my own father wouldn't lead me astray, right?

...Right?

On the way to the theater I got the synopsis of the first two films and things didn't sound great. Crab lays eggs in your stomach and you reverse vomit a blood lusting monster.
(Indecently since then I have done the synopsis role for him several times. I have explained to him the plots of Halo, Spawn and several others)

I spend much of the movie counting popcorn dropped on the floor and trying to pretend the noise I'm hearing is a man deeply anguished because his celery stick broke in half.

When it was all over my father was deeply disappointed. But I was ecstatic. I'd never seen anything like it, my G rated only days were over. I kept asking my father about the creature in the film and that night after roasting marshmallows I used the ashed end of my stick to sketch the monster on a rock near the fire pit.

Living on the military base we had access to the library and the library had movies and I watched all the movies with a freakish creature on the cover as fast as I could.

"Hmm... I found Alien and Aliens, but no Alien 2... weird... whats this? Hellraiser? Boy that guy must love carpentry. Ooh here's a colorful one. Predator. Staring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oh right, the guy from kindergarten cop. Lets see... Half man, half machine, all cop. Put it in the pile."

I gobbled that shit up as fast as I could. But now I found... I was addicted... I wanted more than Hollywood could offer! I wanted to make my own movies. I remember making a musical with my plush animals and then I made a film about my pet whom I affectionately called "The Gerbilnator" But I felt hindered.

My age was a problem and I was completely disheartened one day after watching the Lion King and seeing just how many people it took to make a movie. I didn't have nearly enough friends to fill a split second of credit space.

I had my goal, I wanted to tell stories. That was Alien 3's doing, so thank you David Fincher. Alien 3 was a bad film in retrospect, but you've more than made up for it with Fight Club and what would be an important film in my life, Se7en.

So I'm 16 I write stories on the home computer. Mostly parody's of films I liked with the Warner Brothers cartoon characters as cast. (For example Yacko was Danny Glover and Wacko was Mel Gibson while the Tasmanian Devil was Gary Busey)

I would doodle on the side but writing became my main passion. I didn't think much of my doodles. Or my writing for that matter. Everything I wrote at the time were comedies, I was still somewhat of a looser mama's boy and still needed to grow out of that and comedies were safe. Drama and the rest are dangerous. The worry "What if someone laughs at this?" doesn't apply to comedies.

School let out early one day and I decided to walk home. I don't remember exactly why I didn't want to go home right away but I figured I'd walk, plot, then catch a bus home. Not something I'd do in my pre Alien 3 days, which by now I've seen a million times thanks to the Base library. I pass this store called "O'Leary's" it had a drawing of a leprechaun leaning on a cane on the sign.

Sadly O'Leary's is now a hardware store called "Bob's Hardware"

Anyway I gave the store no notice until I saw a poster in the window that said "Alien 3" and had a picture of the creature from the film. But I knew it wasn't a movie poster. Weaver's bald head was nowhere in sight. It was a painting of the monster (the "bitch" is back) sitting on a pile of rotting bodies with gore hanging out of its mouth:
http://www.northamericanrarities.ne.....duct/21483.jpg
I went inside to discover my first comic shop.

I never really cared for the spandex crowd. Batman was always my stock answer to the question "Who is your favorite super hero?" and I was always thinking of the Adam West version when asked. (Though Nolan and Bale make a great team) and it was only last year I found something in Superman to be interested in. I had a fling with Spawn and I own 1 -100 but 50 is where the love started to die.

Inside O'Leary's I found the Movie adaptation advertised on the poster and I had some money (Paper route, don't knock it, it bought me my SNES) so I picked it up and found other Aliens only not movie adaptations but original stories. My other favorite heavies were there too. Predator, Robocop, Terminator you name it, they all had original comic stories.
(The best in each category: Aliens: Labyrinth, Predator: The Bloody Sands Of Time and Robocop Vs. Terminator by master comic scribe Frank Miller)

This was also when I picked up my first two furry comics before I knew there was a fandom (A Furlough (One with a segment of Roz Gibson's "Escape to New York") and a Shanda The Panda.(The James Bond cover (Go figure;))

I read 'em, loved 'em and when ever I had money I got more. And I realized that I don't need a film crew to make my stories, I just need a piece of paper and some pens.

I made my first comic soon after called Strange Bedfellows (A horrible mess where Timone from Lion King starts a coup to dethrone Simba when suddenly the Predator interrupts the revolution to slaughter the masses. (and then they all sing circle of life at the end) I still own it and it makes me sick to look at it. But it was a first.

All my movie faves fell under one publisher: Dark Horse Comics with its classic Knight logo (Horse = furry, Knight =chess team... never mind, that's bad math) and I loved the Dark Horse format of stories consisting of three to four issues, all self contained, connected to other stories only by it's title creature (Sounds like "Jack" to me)

Since one of the Alien's cute pet names is "Bitch" (Weaver (or maybe it was Cameron) started it in #2) and Dark Horse used this creature to draw me into the prospect of telling stories through sequential art. I like to think of Dark Horse as the Bitch who gave me the bug to do comics.

See it all came full circle eventually.