Tim Nekritz nekritz@gmail.com
While Hollywood isn’t yet clamoring for Aaron Lee’s creations, he is currently wrapping up his ninth and biggest comic book featuring Wesley The Robot, due out in 2023.
TIM NEKRITZ is director of news and media for SUNY Oswego, where he spearheads telling the stories of the campus community.
Aaron Lee, from left, Comic Shop owner Evan Coy and local author Johnathan Ashline at a signing event in October.
Local Comic Book Author Draws On Passion, Community
T
he easy genre-relevant lead would be to compare Aaron Lee to a superhero: mild-mannered art teacher by day and comic book author by night. But that doesn’t tell the full story. Lee’s inspiration was cultivated by small businesses, and another local business, The Comic Shop in Oswego, has constructed a community that supports the creative endeavors of him and others. In addition, the genre that he and his connections love — the humble comic book and its pantheon of superheroes — has come a long way in the decades since it first caught his fancy. Once an interest on the fringes, comic-book superheroes are now firmly established in the mainstream with a series of hit movies, pop culture cachet and merchandise tie-ins. While Hollywood isn’t yet clamoring for Lee’s creations, he is currently wrapping up his ninth and biggest comic book featuring Wesley The Robot, due out in 2023. The fun of putting the comic together and that people recognize him because of this work is gratifying enough at this point — especially as he looks forward to Wesley X, the 10th and next edition that will be more experimental in nature.
68 OSWEGO COUNTY BUSINESS DECEMBER 2022 / JANUARY 2023
Even those who have never visited The Comic Shop may have seen his work in local daily The Palladium-Times, thanks to a clever arrangement by Evan Coy, owner of The Comic Shop. “Evan buys ads for the shop in The PallTimes, and he puts comics in that space, including some of my Wesley strips,” Lee said. Others might have caught Lee on the weekly streaming broadcast of “The Comic Shop Does a Podcast” on Twitch, which started as a way to stay connected with customers and fans during the pandemic. “It started as a regular feature where I was drawing stuff from home for people to learn from or just be entertained,” Lee said. “The pandemic was tough for all businesses. If you weren’t considered an essential business — and The Comic Shop wasn’t — you couldn’t be open. But they were looking to do something for social media and stay connected.” That evolved into a weekly series that serves a number of fandoms. “We talk about movies, we talk about cartoons or other things we like,” Lee said. “It’s a lot like what you’d hear if you were just hanging out at The Comic Shop talking to people.”
Tim’s Notes
