Appreciating Journalism in Comics

If you were to ask me when I knew I wanted to be a writer my answer never be the same. I don’t have any one defining moment; I have multiple. There was the time my English teacher told me I was a good writer and I was confused because I thought she was referring to my handwriting, and, to this day, I still have trouble reading my own. Maybe I’d tell you about how I was inspired to retell the story of my cousin’s birth when I was eight and that my aunt still has that piece of paper somewhere. But a story that I haven’t shared much ties back to the early days of my nerdy childhood. Spider-Man is my favorite comic book character for a long list of reasons, including his backstory, villains and mid-fight banter. I even own the DVD for that MTV series that starred Neil Patrick Harris and didn’t make it past one season. This fascination with the wall-crawler started with the Spider-Man series that aired in the ‘90s. It still serves as my base for Spider-Man lore. Like most young children, I wanted to be like my favorite superhero – even if he didn’t look like me, shoutout to Miles Morales, by the way. I even got some “web shooters” for my birthday one year (a.k.a. crazy string and a Velcro strap) and ruined plenty of walls and ceilings due to an overly active imagination and lack of a distinction between reality and fantasy.

I knew that if I were to really be like Spider-Man, I’d have to work at The Daily Bugle under J. Jonah Jameson. To most people, Jonah came off as a loud-mou…