Jim Higgins:  

Life I guess I've had a lot of jobs. I worked as a maintenance slave at the Staten Island Mall, was briefly a messenger working with the dregs of humanity, and eventually became one of the managers of a comic book store while I was in college. I got a Master's in Cinema Studies (history, theory, etc.) but didn't think I could get a college teaching job with just that (I found out years later I could have). I stumbled into social services counseling and liked it. I worked for The Seamen's Society for Children and Families, a foster care agency, counseling families that abused or neglected their kids. I enjoyed the work and I think I got pretty good at it. I did that for five years until I realized that I really wanted to pursue my lifelong interest in working in the comic book industry. I found out about a job at DC Comics, home of Batman, Superman, and some other, more eclectic types of comics. I got hired and worked on the eclectic stuff. I was an assistant editor and eventually editor of a line of books of non-fiction in comics form. We also did a line of mystery graphic novels which included Road to Perdition (made into a film with Tom Hanks and Paul Newman). The work was great but the environment was akin to working for Stalin, so after six years I left. Believe it or not, working with abusive families was infinitely less stressful than working for a comics company fulla rubes. Go figure. Right now, I teach comics classes at The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, write comics freelance, and have a teeny, tiny art-comics publishing company. I'm also i...Expand for more