I was recently on an episode of FW Presents where Paul Kein, Rob Kelly, The Irredeemable Shag, and I riffed about independent comics. Much of my original exposure to indies was through tie-ins. Comico’s Robotech and Dark Horse’s Aliens books were some of my first steps out of the Big two, although with the exception of Image and the occasional Valiant comic, I didn’t start reading true independent comics until the late ’90s or early 2000s.

The formative event for me when it comes to independent comics was the 2002 Small Press Expo. I hadn’t been to a comics show since I went to a comic show at Nassau Coliseum in 1993. I’d been invited by my friend Paul, who’d become my “older cool comics geek friend” and honestly didn’t know what to expect. Frank Cho was the only signature I was looking for, and I had him sign some Liberty Meadows. Otherwise, my time at the Holiday Inn in Bethesda, Maryland was a lot of wandering around and trying to find something that might be remotely interesting. Among a lot of comics that ranged from the hand-made to the weird and the pretentious, there were a few books I found interesting enough to buy. One was Fade From Blue.

I happened upon the table of Second 2 Some Studios and stopped because the artwork on the covers of the three issues they were selling looked great. At the time, I was still reading a lot of superhero comics, and while this wasn’t one, I could see that the creators–Myatt Murphy and Scott Dalrymple–were influenced by a number of artists I was familiar with. So I talked to them for a while and bought issues #1-3, which they signed. After I read them, I immediately put the title on my pull list, which helped because publishing schedules for a series from such a small press were sporadic at best, and Kickstarter didn’t exist yet, so they were solely relying on sales at shows like the SPX and their listing deep in Previews to get the next issues out. Fade From Blue ran for ten issues and I still have all of them.