Jeff
Boison ’95
Director, Publishing Planning, Image Comics
Boison still has the rejection letter from DC Comics when, at age 11, he sent the comic book publisher some sketches. Twenty-five years later, the English major joined DC as an executive director and today oversees Image Comics’ English language graphic-novel sales to bookstores worldwide.
Photo: Owen Boison
Which superpower would you like to have?
a. Super strength
b. Flight
c. Precognition
b. Flight
c. Precognition
I’m a huge fan of flight, but unless it also comes with invulnerability, I’m not biting. Precognition seems like it would actually be a curse.
Which fantasy world would you like to live in?
a. Dungeons & Dragons
b. Gotham City
c. Pokémon
b. Gotham City
c. Pokémon
If I had the chance to catch a real Psyduck, or even just glimpse one, it would be totally worth it. I don’t want to catch ’em all. Just Psyduck.
3. What artist would you most like to have working for Image?
a. Rembrandt
b. Salvador Dali
c. R. Crumb
b. Salvador Dali
c. R. Crumb
I’m a sucker for the surreal. In comics, you don’t need a huge special effects budget to bring your wildest imaginations to life, just pencil and ink. Seeing how Dali created paintings, sculptures, books, film and more, it’s pretty cool to think about what he might have done with graphic sequential storytelling.
4. What comic changed your life?
Maus. Before reading Maus, I considered comics a casual form of entertainment. Art Spiegelman’s memoir about his parents, who survived the Holocaust, showed a power within graphic novels to inspire and teach. I realized that comics and graphic novels could be “real books” and began to seek out graphic novels that were about more than just superheroes saving the day. Coincidentally (or not), convincing people that graphic novels are “real books” has become my full-time job.
What graphic novel should be required reading at Bucknell?
Stray Bullets by David Lapham. In 2014, Image published the final, 41st issue. We’ve continued to publish new arcs of this classic series, which excels at the same kind of “I can’t stand to watch this, but can’t look away” situations as in Breaking Bad or The Wire.
Which Bucknell professor would make the best comic book character?
The English Department’s Professor John Rickard, whose class on Joyce’s Ulysses opened up so many doors within the mansion of my imagination that I can’t even begin to count them all. His superpower would certainly be the ability to actually read all of Finnegan’s Wake.
“Convincing people that graphic novels are ‘real books’ has become my full-time job.”
Images: Dean Bertoncelj/shutterstock.com