“THE END,” Part Five Original Series Artist CHIP ZDARSKY returns for our FINAL ISSUE except for the one issue that comes next that's like a coda or reprise or something classy like whatever the WICDIV guys called it.
"How he got started in comics: In 1983, when Fraction was 7 years old and growing up in Kansas City, Mo., he became fascinated by the U.S. invasion of Grenada and created his own newspaper to explain the event. "I've always been story-driven, telling stories with pictures and words," he said.
Education and first job: Fraction never graduated from college. He stopped half a semester short of an art degree at Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri in 1998 to take a job as a Web designer and managing editor of a magazine about Internet culture.
"My mother was not happy about that," he said.
But that gig led Fraction and his co-workers to split off and launch MK12, a boutique graphic design and production firm in Kansas City that created the opening credits for the James Bond film "Quantum of Solace."
Big break: While writing and directing live-action shoots at MK12, Fraction spent his spare time writing comics and pitching his books each year to publishers at Comic-Con. Two books sold: "The Last of the Independents," published in 2003 by AiT/Planet Lar, and "Casanova," published in 2006 by Image Comics.
Fraction traveled extensively on commercial shoots. Then his wife got pregnant. So Fraction did what any rational man in his position would do -- he quit his job at MK12 to pursue his dream of becoming a full-time comic book writer.
Say what? "It was terrifying," said Fraction, who now lives in Portland, Ore. "I was married. We had a house. We had a baby coming. And I just quit my job."
Marvel hired Fraction in June 2006, thanks largely to the success of his other two comics. "I got very lucky," he half-joked. "If it hadn't worked out, I would have had to move back in with my parents.
Where the last issue was Jon-centered, this one is Suzie's time to shine. In a very Interstellar-esque sequence. Beautiful and moving and a wonderful ending. There is still a spin-off special and the flash-forward coda issue, but this is the main ending of the series, and I've gotta say, Matt and Chip pulled it all together in this final storyline. The middle of this series kinda lagged, and it didn't seem like they knew what they were doing, like they didn't have a plan. But regardless of when they came up with the ending, once they started to put it more fully into motion the book really took off again. Not in the charming, meandering open-ended way that the series started, but in a sci-fi epic with sex jokes and intense character relationships way. I'm so glad it all was able to come together in the end (pun intended).