'Eye of the Majestic Creature' by Leslie Stein

Leslie Stein is one of those creators that I met at my very early SPX’s (like Dean Haspiel, Jen Sorensen and Sam Henderson) that I was able to remember without actually seeing or communicating with or even running across any more of their work during my dark years lost in Madison, Wisconsin. When I spent all my time writing novellas that no one has ever read in bars and banging my head against the metaphorical wall created by the minds of college students.

I saw Stein this weekend at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest. I read a lot of her book, Eye of the Majestic Creature (available from Fantagraphics) on the steps outside the show waiting for a friend (from Wisconsin) to show up, and finished it on the bus home yesterday. I never would have guessed that Stein was a native Midwesterner like myself.

The element of her book I most identified with was her general ambivalence about other people. The whole introvert/extrovert dichotomy is relatable.