Collectible Me

Once upon a time, I was a comic book editor that lived in Jersey City. I worked too many long hours near the PATH line in Manhattan, and at the end of the day, I would go home and work on my freelance projects.

2007? No. 1992.

In my former life as a Marvel Comics editor, I had boxes full of Marie Javins trading cards. This admittedly seems odd, but all the editors had their own trading cards.

No, it wasn't vanity. Us editors needed something to sign and hand out at conventions. Kids would line up to get something from us. Maybe they weren't even sure what. For lack of anything else to talk about perhaps, they'd ask for an autograph. Some kids thought to bring comics that featured our names, but others showed up sheepish and empty-handed.

"I like your work. Aren't you Marie Severin?"

"No, Javins. I'm Marie Javins."

(Marie Severin is a marvelous comic book artist.)

"Oh. What do you do?"

"Some comics by Warren Ellis. You've never seen them because your mother won't let you read them."

No, that's not true. I mean, it's true about their mothers, but no one cared what I edited. They only cared that I was also a colorist. On books that started with X-. My normal book was X-Force, but at any given moment I'd be called upon to color something else in the X-Men family, because deadlines were pretty tight, and the work was spread out among a few of us depending how close the print date was.

When I left Marvel in 1995, I didn't know I'd be back a few years later. I threw away a ton of Marie Javins trading cards (reasoning that my comic book days were past and my mother would not want all of them). I kind of regret that now. Maybe I can ask the Bucce to draw me a new one.