By Darryl Ayo

Your influences will pass through you like roughage. Whether you’re a novice artist or a wizened veteran, you will become absorbed in the work of somebody else and occasionally you may fear that this influence is having too strong an effect on your thinking. There is no need to cut yourself off from it, however. Drink deeply of the well of inspiration and it will pass.

Indulge yourself. Allow yourself to go through phases. They will pass. When the mood leaves you, what is left will be the traces of influence. In this way, you will advance your craft and your understanding of your medium.

Eventually, it all becomes a part of the matrix of ideas and thoughts that comprise you. So you will be able to embrace it all at once: personal identity as well as the building blocks which helped create you.

By Darryl Ayo

According to my calculations, I read my first comic in the summer of 1987. The Sunday newspaper was laying flat on the radiator in the kitchen and my mother stood over my shoulder and read this aloud with voices:

Thanks mom!

I was born in 1981. So for many people my age, I was just about Calvin’s age when Bill Watterson started Calvin and Hobbes in 1986. And like many people my age, I fought back nostalgic sniffles on December 31, 1995 when Calvin and Hobbes took their final sled ride.

I haven’t seen the above strip in years, friends. Today (Thursday, December 1st 2011), I finally discovered which volume  of the black-and-white collections that this particular strip was compiled in and I promptly purchased that book. Whenever possible, I think we all owe it to ourselves to look our origins right in the face. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve been striving to do all my life stems from this strip–and moreover, stems from the direct memory of my mother showing me something that she thought was really cool.

A lot of people don’t really understand my need to talk about and discuss comics. Since comics are printed literature, many would prefer to read and absorb the work privately. For me, the discovery of comics was very tied in with the idea of a shared experience and even performance (since my mother loves to read things dramatically). Comics, at their best, are an integrated part of a wider cultural experience; no different from films or novels or music.

For me, comics have always been a something one shares–as well as part of a larger tapestry of daily experiences. Now…how about them Yankees?