I haven’t been able to read much long-form lately for a variety of reasons. As you’d expect, Brian Clopper’s 101 First Chapters is the perfect book in that regard.
I’ve known Brian casually for over 30 years as, to invoke Chris Staros’ phrase, a friend through comics — save the sizable gap between the days I could make it to conventions or at least hang out in various Internet forums and when I slowly reconnected with folks, if only by returning to online activity, having lost touch with so many for too great a stretch.
The Clopper oeuvre grew wildly across those decades. While he was already a disciplined, prolific author when interviewed for my All-Brian Issue of Comicology back in 2001, some time after releasing early comics work like Partners in Pandemonium, Bombastic, and Marshall: Godling of War, the sheer mass and pace of his output is staggering.
I can’t vouch for all of it but the five volumes of his 20 First Chapters series collected with a new entry in the first 101 First Chapters Omnibus, a 600-pg. tome from Clopper’s Behemoth Books that I’ve been enjoying too intermittently, make for novel reading. Or potential-novel reading, since the contents are indeed what’s promised, although I see in perusing the backlist on Brian’s site that at least one tale aborning has been expanded.
I’m not so big on high or urban fantasy these days. There’s a wide mix of types and settings represented, however, and when idly checking out the back matter I discovered a breakdown of the contents by genre that got me skipping around. Favorites so far include a die-hard collector of comics getting way more than he bargained for when finally completing a certain set, self-aware narrators negotiating control of their shared story, and multiple people in the modern world suddenly transforming into the popular conception of Jesus.
The built-in feature here is of course that if an entry is leaving you cold there’s only a few pages until the next, and I found the ratio of kickoffs that had me intrigued or flat-out disappointed when they ended too soon impressive. A couple have even felt entirely satisfying on their own, which I expect bodes well for when I’m able to dig into one of Brian’s many, many full-length works.
Cover art: Tithi Luadthong.
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Thanks for the lovely review. I’m a month away from releasing the third book that was birthed from this series. Look for Lurks in October. And Eric Can’t Spell and the multiverse book are the two others that owe their origins to 20 First Chapters.
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