The Comic Book Guide to Growing Food

I love surprises, and that’s precisely what I got when I received an envelope from 10 speed press the other day containing of all things, a graphic novel about vegetable gardening written by my friend Joseph Tychonievich and illustrated by Liz Anne Kozik. But first, I should share some background here, about me. In my previous life, I was a creative director for Hasbro (you know, Transformers, My Little Pony, Marvel Comics, Star Wars, etc). Comic books were part of my everyday life, from Comicon to day-long meetings at Marvel Studios. Not that I am anything close to a comic book fan, but I can appreciate the medium and especially the higher-end category of graphic novels, like this.

So believe me, while I’ve seen my share of graphic novels and comic books, I never let that life interfere with my plant life. I never read comics (I would usually fake it) (did I say that already?) and I certainly never collected them, yet I learned to not hate them, and as an art buyer or someone who has dealt with his share of comicbook geeks, who am I to say anything since I am a bonified geek myself (but with South African Bulbs).

So at work, as I kept my secret, secret I tried to look engaged with my peers. I kept my light saber and pony brush on the table at lunch milestone meetings about particular video games and feature films, and quetly listened to the Dungeons and Dragons guys from the Seattle office argue the powers of the white knight as I ate my tacos looking very interested.

But if there is one thing that I have learned over the years is that comic book art is indeed an art, and most comic book artists are extremely intelligent, if not falling on the spectrum somewhere brilliantly, (believe me, I can say that cuz…) let’s just say