Mike Jordan has spent the last three years working with middle school kids at the Auburn Public Library, helping them to create and publish their own comic books.

He should know: The artist has a line of comics of his own, set in a fairy tale land he calls Parveria. He has completed eight books in “The Parverian Tales” and is working on a computer-based system to color his early books, created in black-and-white.

Beginning this fall, the colored pages will be released a page per week on his website, www.bigredapress.com.

Name: Mike Jordan

Age: 43

Hometown: Lisbon

Married, relationship or single? Girlfriend. Jennifer Babineau, who is an artist and makes miniatures and origami.

Occupation: Freelance graphic artist and owner/operator of Big Red A Press

How long have you been drawing comics? I created my first comic at age 7, sort of a Mad Magazine deal where I lampooned my favorite TV shows and comic characters, but I’ve been doing it professionally for better than 20 years.

How many characters have you created? From main characters to incidental ones, it’s a safe estimation to place the count well into the hundreds.

What makes a comic special? For me, and this may sound strange coming from an artist, the primary consideration for a book is the story. Unless the writing is provocative or fun or catchy in some way, the best art in the world won’t make it work.

What comics do you read? The titles of all the comics I read would be too long to list here (between Jen and I, we have over 20,000 comics), but the Fantastic Four has always been the favorite. #127 (that’s from back in 1972) is the first comic I remember reading as a child.

How is it different than other media? Will Eisner, the creator of “The Spirit” and the father of modern comics, was often quoted on the singular dynamics of comic (sequential) art. He said that a comic page is a comic page, not a play, not a movie, and should be treated as such. He was referring to the two-dimensional visual storytelling that is exclusive to the comic field and for which he was famous.

You created “The Parverian Tales,” which has heroic deeds, dragons and humor. What drew you to stories that resemble fairy tales? I think I can trace the thread of that back to my sixth-grade year, when my teacher, Mrs. Hamilton, introduced me to the world of J.R.R. Tolkien, and I’ve been steeped in medieval/fantasy ever since. So, it was only natural that I eventually produced a fairy tale-esque story like “The Parverian Tales,” although I do have other titles (which I hope to release soon) that are of other genres.

How hard is it to break into the comic business? The comic field is almost impossible to enter. Even Marvel has ceased their Try-Out books and no longer freely accept submissions from beginners. So, if anyone is contemplating comic illustration as a vocation, you really have to love it to stay with it through the ups and downs.

What’s the biggest obstacle? Exposure, trying to get your writing or art out there to the public, is the hardest to overcome, with competition coming in a close second. With self publishing being so easy these days, it seems everyone who can pick up a pencil has their own comic.

You work a lot with kids. How do you help them to craft stories and images into comics? The students really do all the hard work, coming up with ideas for the collective story and creating their own characters and pages, I simply act as the editor and decide what probably will or won’t work for the final product. (All three can be seen at bigredapress.com/apl_presents.htm)

You have published online and in print. Which do you prefer? I prefer to have a hard copy of my work, but publishing online allows me to reach a larger audience and it costs a fraction of what printing the same number of books would.

What’s next for your work? I’m working on a chronology of the Marvel Universe, and polishing the script for an action/adventure mini-series that is slated for release sometime next year. Also, I’m hoping for another round of APL Presents next spring, budgets willing.

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