Shi’s Billy Tucci’s Crusade for knowledge
By Billy Tucci – North Babylon, Long Island, was a great place to grow up. I spent the summers of my boyhood playing with my friends, making movies with my brothers, and romping through playgrounds and backyard barbecues. A few years later I was bombing down Deer Park Avenue with my 1966 Mustang Fastback piled with maniacs looking for girls and mischief. I played hockey in the winter, baseball in the summer, and basketball any time of the year. The only thing missing was fantasy and adventure in the worlds of the imagination. That I found in books.
Sidney Lanier’s The Boy’s King Arthur, with incredible illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, made a powerful impression on me. I fell in love with Guinevere, I admired Arthur, and I wanted to be all the knights, especially Lancelot and Galahad. Wyeth’s art introduced me to the Brandywine School, the awesome group of early 20th-century American illustrators that also included Howard Pyle and Maxfield Parrish. This was the stuff dreams were made of, and I sought it all out. I knew I wanted to create stories like this, and I wanted to be both the writer and the artist.
Books answered questions for me; they fulfilled my hunger for knowledge. And I was ravenous. From junior high school to my senior year I consumed The World Book Encyclopedia, 1967 edition, reading every volume cover to cover. I remember updating it as I went, filling in the dates for the deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. And, of course, the encyclopedia only fired my fascination with a host of subjects: dinosaurs, war, medieval Europe, feudal Japan—you name it. I wanted to know everything. There was that big book about World War II that I borrowed from the public library over and over again. There was another volume I read repeatedly on the lives of the saints. I read Greek mythology by way of Bulfinch and Hamilton. And, of course, I read the typical smattering of Burroughs and Howard, London, and Stevenson—Treasure Island was a particular favorite. I guess one strand ran through everything I read, and that was my fascination with heroism. I believed in great deeds done by larger-than-life heroes. I still do—that’s where Crusade Comics got its name.
But in all of this reading, one thing was missing, and that was comics themselves. Somehow they never caught me until I was well into adulthood, when an Army buddy turned me on to them. I had missed it all, and I’ve been playing catch-up for the past half-decade. The great creators of the Golden and Silver Ages were unknown to me until very recently. Even Jack Kirby was a relatively recent discovery. Here was a universe of creations that appealed to everything that sparked my joy and wonder, all new to me!
I’ve been learning as I go. Even as I’ve created Shi, I’ve discovered new influences: Frank Miller’s Elektra Lives Again; Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer; Koike and Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub; and anything by Bernie Wrightson. I am constantly renewed, challenged, and inspired by other creators publishing their work today: Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise; Jeff Smith’s Bone; Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada’s Ash; and Steve Bissette’s Tyrant; Don Simpson’s Bizarre Heroes; and Dave Sim’s Cerebus—a model for us all. I’m trying to make up for lost time by devouring as much as I can of the work of my peers and my predecessors.
What books am I reading now? A couple of biographies: Edmund Morris’ The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt—loaned to me by Shi Editor Gary Cohn—and Musashi, by Eiji Yoshikawa. William Stout and William Service’s incredible The Dinosaurs. Another Cohn suggestion, Japan Prepares for Total War, by Michael Barnhart, Gary’s doctoral dissertation advisor in the History Department at SUNY Stony Brook. I don’t know if these qualify as light summer reading, but they’ve caught my attention.
I’m still drawn to heroism, adventure, dynamic action, and drama, and I still find it all in books. Reading is how I’ve learned to understand the world around me, and it’s still where I find hope, inspiration, and faith. My greatest source for these things is the Bible, which I try to read from at least several times a week before I go to sleep at night. The Bible contains the best stories ever told, as well as the greatest story ever told, and the deepest meaning I’ve ever found—it’s what drives me to continue my crusade.
