Meet Your GeekWeek Contributors: Eric Skillman
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Jan 3 2010, 9:01 PM
Wait... "geekweek"? Does this mean I'm a geek?
I suppose if you were to judge me by my record collection, or my comic collection, or my DVD collection, the answer might seem obvious. But I've always resisted the label, or any label, because, why limit yourself, y'know?
For example: there were these kids I went to high school with, who fell hard for the punk-ska craze in the mid-'90s, to the point that it totally defined their identities. (You know, Operation Ivy, Rancid, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Suicide Machines, that whole thing.) They wore ska clothes, they had ska haircuts, they danced (or "skanked") in the ska manner, and they refused to acknowledge any music that wasn't ska.
I don't mean to pick on the ska kids in particular; feel free to substitute your subculture of choice. But the idea that if you find some thing you enjoy you have to build a whole identity around the baggage that comes with it? Bleh. How boring is that?
Which is what I like about the idea for this site: if I'm understanding Jeff's vision correctly, it's meant to be sort of a unified field theory of pop culture: music, movies, tv, comics, sports, etc....
I might not personally have used the term "geek" to define all that, but I know I'm in the minority there: here in the 21st century, we're supposedly all geeks now, right? It's just a question of what kind of geek.
And if you're a comics geek and a music nerd and a film buff and a sports fan and a politics wonk and a foodie and whatever else... didn't they used to just call that "well rounded"?
Anyway, I'm babbling.
My point was to introduce myself: my name is Eric Skillman. I'm 30 years old. I was born in Rochester, NY, but I've lived in NYC for the past 11 years; 7 of those in Brooklyn, where I live now.
I keep a roof over my head working as a graphic designer—in the unlikely event that you're familiar with my name at all, it's probably through my design work for Criterion Collection DVDs, or my design process blog, Cozy Lummox.
More recently I'm also a writer of comics—I've got a little self-published anthology book called EGG: Hard Boiled Stories; you can order the first issue at Indyplanet, (illustrated by such fine artists as Connor Willumsen, Jorge Coelho, Jhomar Soriano, Dan Duncan, and Joe Dellagata), and I'm aiming to have a second issue ready for this year's MoCCA Festival. I've also done a little comics coloring (mostly of things I've written). And most excitingly, my first honest-to-god book, a pulpy noir-flavored thing called Liar's Kiss, drawn by the inimitable Jhomar Soriano, should be coming from Top Shelf later this year. (More about that soon, I promise.)
And, I suppose, if you insist... I must be a geek.
Wait... "geekweek"? Does this mean I'm a geek?
I suppose if you were to judge me by my record collection, or my comic collection, or my DVD collection, the answer might seem obvious. But I've always resisted the label, or any label, because, why limit yourself, y'know?
For example: there were these kids I went to high school with, who fell hard for the punk-ska craze in the mid-'90s, to the point that it totally defined their identities. (You know, Operation Ivy, Rancid, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Suicide Machines, that whole thing.) They wore ska clothes, they had ska haircuts, they danced (or "skanked") in the ska manner, and they refused to acknowledge any music that wasn't ska.
I don't mean to pick on the ska kids in particular; feel free to substitute your subculture of choice. But the idea that if you find some thing you enjoy you have to build a whole identity around the baggage that comes with it? Bleh. How boring is that?
Which is what I like about the idea for this site: if I'm understanding Jeff's vision correctly, it's meant to be sort of a unified field theory of pop culture: music, movies, tv, comics, sports, etc....
I might not personally have used the term "geek" to define all that, but I know I'm in the minority there: here in the 21st century, we're supposedly all geeks now, right? It's just a question of what kind of geek.
And if you're a comics geek and a music nerd and a film buff and a sports fan and a politics wonk and a foodie and whatever else... didn't they used to just call that "well rounded"?
Anyway, I'm babbling.
My point was to introduce myself: my name is Eric Skillman. I'm 30 years old. I was born in Rochester, NY, but I've lived in NYC for the past 11 years; 7 of those in Brooklyn, where I live now.
I keep a roof over my head working as a graphic designer—in the unlikely event that you're familiar with my name at all, it's probably through my design work for Criterion Collection DVDs, or my design process blog, Cozy Lummox.
More recently I'm also a writer of comics—I've got a little self-published anthology book called EGG: Hard Boiled Stories; you can order the first issue at Indyplanet, (illustrated by such fine artists as Connor Willumsen, Jorge Coelho, Jhomar Soriano, Dan Duncan, and Joe Dellagata), and I'm aiming to have a second issue ready for this year's MoCCA Festival. I've also done a little comics coloring (mostly of things I've written). And most excitingly, my first honest-to-god book, a pulpy noir-flavored thing called Liar's Kiss, drawn by the inimitable Jhomar Soriano, should be coming from Top Shelf later this year. (More about that soon, I promise.)
And, I suppose, if you insist... I must be a geek.
I suppose if you were to judge me by my record collection, or my comic collection, or my DVD collection, the answer might seem obvious. But I've always resisted the label, or any label, because, why limit yourself, y'know?
For example: there were these kids I went to high school with, who fell hard for the punk-ska craze in the mid-'90s, to the point that it totally defined their identities. (You know, Operation Ivy, Rancid, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Suicide Machines, that whole thing.) They wore ska clothes, they had ska haircuts, they danced (or "skanked") in the ska manner, and they refused to acknowledge any music that wasn't ska.
I don't mean to pick on the ska kids in particular; feel free to substitute your subculture of choice. But the idea that if you find some thing you enjoy you have to build a whole identity around the baggage that comes with it? Bleh. How boring is that?
Which is what I like about the idea for this site: if I'm understanding Jeff's vision correctly, it's meant to be sort of a unified field theory of pop culture: music, movies, tv, comics, sports, etc....
I might not personally have used the term "geek" to define all that, but I know I'm in the minority there: here in the 21st century, we're supposedly all geeks now, right? It's just a question of what kind of geek.
And if you're a comics geek and a music nerd and a film buff and a sports fan and a politics wonk and a foodie and whatever else... didn't they used to just call that "well rounded"?
Anyway, I'm babbling.
My point was to introduce myself: my name is Eric Skillman. I'm 30 years old. I was born in Rochester, NY, but I've lived in NYC for the past 11 years; 7 of those in Brooklyn, where I live now.
I keep a roof over my head working as a graphic designer—in the unlikely event that you're familiar with my name at all, it's probably through my design work for Criterion Collection DVDs, or my design process blog, Cozy Lummox.
More recently I'm also a writer of comics—I've got a little self-published anthology book called EGG: Hard Boiled Stories; you can order the first issue at Indyplanet, (illustrated by such fine artists as Connor Willumsen, Jorge Coelho, Jhomar Soriano, Dan Duncan, and Joe Dellagata), and I'm aiming to have a second issue ready for this year's MoCCA Festival. I've also done a little comics coloring (mostly of things I've written). And most excitingly, my first honest-to-god book, a pulpy noir-flavored thing called Liar's Kiss, drawn by the inimitable Jhomar Soriano, should be coming from Top Shelf later this year. (More about that soon, I promise.)
And, I suppose, if you insist... I must be a geek.
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