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Comic books aren’t child’s play for this local author
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Canton Township resident Gary Reed has made a living writing comics and graphic novelsComic books didn’t particularly fascinate Gary Reed when he was a child.
He never really liked the idea of superheroes and when he got his master’s degree, his dissertation was in biology, not literature.
Yet Reed, a Canton Township resident, helped launch several writers and illustrators with his independent publishing company in the 1990s and remains in demand as a writer himself.
Reed owned a chain of four comic book stores in the 1980s, starting with Readers’ Exchange in Westland.
“They started off as book stores,” said Reed. “I moved into comics because I wanted to attract kids.”
Illustrators such as Guy Davis and Vince Locke would come around to check out the latest titles. When they had trouble finding publishers for their own work, Reed started Caliber Comics. Having dabbled with poetry and short stories in college, Reed gave comic book writing a shot, as well.
An early effort, the series “Baker Street” which Reed co-created with Davis, got a lot of notice, including a nomination for a Harvey, tops in the comic world.
“I said ‘Oh, this is easy.’” Reed said.
Caliber published more than 1,300 titles before Reed got out of publishing in 2000. The owner contributed his fair share of material.
“I was the fastest and cheapest writer I knew,” he quipped.
He gained more recognition on projects such as “Saint Germaine” and “Red Diaries,” a conspiracy thriller linking the death of Marilyn Monroe and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Caliber Comics also gave birth to “The Crow,” which was eventually turned into a feature film starring the late Brandon Lee.
After a decade in the publishing world, though, Reed decided to get out. He sold his comic stores during that time, too, and began to focus more on teaching biology classes at Henry Ford Community College and Schoolcraft.
As comics and graphic novels have made headway into mainstream America—evidenced by the box office and critical success of the Spiderman franchise and smaller films such as A History of Violence or Road to Perdition—Reed’s work has garnered renewed interest from publishers.
Two years ago, he signed a deal with a division of Simon and Schuster to reprint “Baker Street,” an alternative take on the Sherlock Holmes mysteries where punks rule London.
Like his contemporaries, Reed’s novels and comics often venture into dark territory.
“Evil fascinates me,” he said. “It’s hard to believe, because most people are good and then you see somebody like a Stalin or Hitler. To me, it’s inconceivable that people like that can actually exist, but there are so many of them.”
Still, he added, “I always try to instill somewhere, that there’s hope.”
One such example is “Saint Germaine,” where the title character “steals people’s memories—but he does it when they’re dying. Basically, he’s telling them they’re going to live forever.”
Reed was in Comic City in Canton last week signing copies of his newest book, a collection of the “Red Diaries” series. Another book, “Renfield,” with art by Galen Showman, is due out in November.
Working these days as a freelancer, he’s free to focus on his family, teaching and choosing the projects he likes most. Like a lot of graphic novelists, he remains an ambassador for the medium.
“The thing I like about comics is it’s almost like directing movies,” said Reed. “You have the story there and pretty much tell it page by page, panel by panel, scene by scene,” he said. “It’s a great medium, comics, because you get to do…all the good parts of the writing.
Reed is in Chicago this week for the Wizard World comic convention. He said the mainstream public has shown more interest in the medium, which has to overcome the stigma of being kid’s stuff.
“To most people, comics are synonymous with superheroes,” he added, “and I don’t think they have to be.”
For information about Reed’s work visit http://www.garyreed.net
