The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1525: The Last One #1, July 1993

At this past weekend's Calgary Fan Expo, I hosted a panel on Queerness in Comics. One of the things we discussed was the wonderful explosion of queer comics that occurred in the early 90s, spearheaded, I'd argue, by the fabulous Vertigo Comics and their sainted editor Karen Berger. Last year at Pride I gave a talk about queer comics, and Milligan and Fegredo's The Enigma was a part of that presentation, also published by Vertigo. Today's comic is no exception, as Mr. DeMatteis and Mr. Sweetman tell a story of a bi-gender angel, the last of their kind left on Earth.

I've had this comic for a long, long time. After my brief hiatus from comics in the late 80s and early 90s, I started reading them again in '96, and rediscovered in my parents' basement my old comic collection. In there was the amazing, terrifying, Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children, all illustrated by today's artist. Once the collecting bug really hit me, I decided to track down all of Louapre and Sweetman's comic work, together or with other creators. The Last One was one of the first ones I found, ironically. But, somehow, until about 2 years ago, I only had the first issue. I remember having the others, or a few of them at least, but when I recently went back to look at my Vertigo titles, this issue was the only representative.

This reminds me that before I had exhaustively catalogued my collection, it went through numerous shifts. There was a point when I worked at a used book store, and the owner allowed me to trade in comics two-for-one. So I'd grab whatever I no longer wanted (?!) and trade it in for other stuff. This must have been about 1997, and I hadn't quite become the voracious collector that I am now. I can't for the life of me remember what I traded in, though when I left that job and started my own store, I actually bought most of my old employer's comics, so there's a good chance I still have all the comics I traded in, and the ones I got.

I'd forgotten about that. It seems Walter Benjamin was right about libraries after all.

"Don't worry. I won't throw you down the stairs. That's not what you need."