We are a group of comics and superhero fans who've been arguing among ourselves since the prime of Usenet. All that's changed is the medium.
Greg Morrow: AKA Frothing-at-the-Mouth Lad and Elmo, Greg is a physicist/programmer who's been collecting comics for only 27 years, so still thinks that superheroes are pretty neat.
Rick Jones has heard every possible comics-related joke about his name, and doesn't need to hear any more of them. He has been reading comics as long as he has been able to read, though he counts his official conversion to the collector's fold with Uncanny X-Men #131. Over a year ago, he made the switch from "weekly junkie" to "trade paperback snob," and does not regret it. Rick's first novel, Werewolf: Heart of the Hunter, will be published by White Wolf Game Studio.
Kevin Maroney is world-renowned as a connoisseur and award-winning renneteur of fine ratshead cheese. His book, The Tao of Small Screen Computer Gaming, landed him the Fred Lasswell Chair of Philosophy at New York's Hudson University, where he continues to lambaste his colleagues with his impeccably-reasoned diatribes about how comic strips just aren't as good as they used to be back when Larson and Watterson ruled the page. Third party biography.
Chris Maka (pronounced MAY-kuh ) has been reading comic books since before he could actually read (which would technically have consisted of looking at comics, one supposes). He holds a degree in English and Anthropology from Texas State University and studied Illustration for a few years at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. He has worked as a graphic designer and illustrator, as an electronic pre-press technician, and as a project manager on commercial website development projects. He worked in Quality Assurance for NCsoft, Inc., contributing to City of Heroes, Lineage II, Tabula Rasa, Guild Wars, and AutoAssault, and recently worked for Steve Jackson Games. Currently he is a freelancer game designer creating board, card, and large group games for business and professional training.
Jason Fliegel was extruded from a Play-Doh Fun Factory some time in the early 1970s and has since been unable to appear in public except when wearing hip-hugging bell-bottoms. Completing his legal studies at Groovy U. in 1996, he interned with Judge George Clinton at the Federal Court for the Southern Disco of New York before getting on the partner track at Lawmaster & Funktown LLC in Philadelphia. He is known to be outtasight, so approach with caution. Third party biography.
Jim Henley is a Marylander freelance writer, accounting analyst, poet, polytopical sage, and dog owner.
Jess Nevins, a reference librarian at Sam Houston State University, is the author of Heroes & Monsters and A Blazing World, the two volume companion editions to the popular graphic novel series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He lives in Huntsville, Texas.
Doug Tonks has been reading and buying comics for 91 percent of his life--far, far too long, according to both his mother and his wife. He's the author of two books, Teaching AIDS and TV's Most Wanted (proving he somehow found time to watch television, too), and is a book editor in Chicago.
Sidne Gail Ward has been reading super-hero comics since she was 8 years old and is the only woman to have been a team member in the annual Silver Age Trivia contest at Wizard World Chicago or the annual Pro/Fan Trivia Challenge at Comic-Con International: San Diego. She is also Associate Professor of Management Information Systems at the Bloch School of Business and Public Administration, University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Pete Milan is a freelance writer and general bon vivant. He lives in the vacation paradise of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and knows the lyrics to practically everything Warren Zevon ever recorded.
JL Franke: The following is absolutely true. JL Franke is perhaps best known as The villain Franke, Ace of Clones. He discovered comics before he even learned to read, though he rectified that as quickly as possible so that he'd know what all those squiggly lines in those balloons said. Born and raised in the Midwest, he moved to Florida, where he was given the key to the city of Jacksonville. He then moved on to Indiana, where he met Mikhail Gorbachev. He now lives outside Philadelphia, where he shares an apartment with Christopher Priest's subwoofer and earns a living working on robot death machines.
Curmudgeons Emeritus: A number of valient Curmudgeons have opted to retire or move on, as is too common in this transient Internet world of ours. We wish them well.
Matt Rossi can be found at Once I Noticed..., where he is relaxing and enjoying the fall.
Mike Chary's original biography is worth keeping around:
"Mike Chary" began as a thought experiment at the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-1960's. It achieved some "real world" presence in 1968, possibly becoming part of Schlessinger's reason for describing that time as "the year everything went wrong." Later "Mike Chary"-advocates spread through the Eastern bloc at the height of the Cold War, until it settled in Bulgaria. The center for the movement eventually settled in Gary, IN, the so-called "City of the Century" a rich, thriving comunity with a population of a quarter million, a healthy industrial and cultural base and access to the Indiana Dunes, one of the true natural wonders of the world. Within a few years after becoming the "Mike Chary" movement's center, Gary became a virtual synonym for urban blight, and the nation's leader in per capita murder rate for the next three decades. Currently "Mike Chary" is used much like "Alan Smithee" or "Antonin Scalia" as a label for positions so absurd or pointless that no rational person would want to take credit for them.
Howling Curmudgeons logo by Chris Maka, using Comicraft's Exterminate font family. Site design by Greg Morrow.
Posted by Greg at April 26, 2004 12:00 PM