Sharing My Story

During the early 1980s I started researching and writing
an article on the early 1970s “Fourth World” comic book
series by Jack Kirby. I believed it was a tragedy that the
series was canceled before any real conclusion had taken
place. I also saw a thread of spirituality running through
the stories—a thread of Biblical Spirituality. Toward the
end of 1983 Paul and I began planning a newsletter. This
newsletter would be geared towards comics fans who were
Christians. We named it Valiant—a sort of revival of the
short-lived fanzine I’d help produce in high school 18 years
earlier. We run a short ad in the classified section of
Comics' Buyers Guide announcing a free newsletter for
“Christians interested in comics”. Our first issue was dated
May 1984 and began with a six issue installment series
of my New Gods article. The letters from Christian comics
people came in at a slow, but steady rate. At the end of
Valiant’s 14-issue two-and-one-half year run we had
accumulated around 200 on our mailing list. We developed
a “phantom/umbrella” organization called the Christian
Comic Arts Society that ‘produced’ the newsletter. Paul and
I were essentially the CCAS at that point.

Through the newsletter, Valiant, we made the earliest
contact with Christian comics fans who are or were well
known in the movement. Billy Leavell, John Pierce and
Harry Miller all responded early on to the CBG ad. One
local Southern California Christian comics fan called
me in the summer of 1984 and wanted to check me out.
Was I a real Christian or just some sort of cultic mole?
Every month or two thereafter and we had some great
discussions on comics and faith. Finally in 1986 I made
a trip to his new home in nearby Santa Fe Springs where
I met him and his beautiful wife. This was Ralph Ellis Miley.

Toward the end of 1984 Paul Johnston suggested that we
produce an amateur press association (APA) publication
where the newly forming community of Christian comics
fans could connect and express themselves creatively.
I thought it was an excellent idea. I had been involved
in a short-lived comics Apa back in the mid-1960s. We
made announcements in Valiant about the upcoming Apa
that we christened Alpha-Omega. The first issue of
Alpha-Omega made its debut in March 1985 and has been
published on a bimonthly basis ever since. About that time
Paul was bowing out of involvement (he did write some
material for Valiant, but never contributed to the Apa that
he had originally suggested).