David Lasky '90 is not the guy who keeps his comic books wrapped in plastic to protect them from curious fingers. Nor is he the guy at the convention trying to trade you his mint Green Lantern for your vintage Batman. He is the guy trying to write a story while educating his readers and himself along the way.

Almost every American has read comic strips in the local Sunday paper or perhaps has picked up an old comic book featuring superheroes like Superman or Spider-Man. But how many people are aware of a whole culture of noncommercial comic books that get published across the country every year by folks like Lasky? Lasky's current comic strip appears in the Ebbtide, Shoreline Community College's student newspaper.

If you search the Web, you will find a plethora of comic book resources -- it's a very popular hobby for collectors, but it is also an art form for those creating alternative comic books. Plenty of people may be familiar with the commercial comics like Marvel, but the alternative comics have an even smaller following and are considered well-crafted stories or pieces of art compared to the formulaic best sellers. Lasky has been trying to make a living by creating these niche publications since graduation and it hasn't been easy.

"The main thing I try to do is make a comic that's intelligent, something I'd be interested in reading," he says. "I also want them to be funny."

At the age of 13, Lasky began reading comics that his mother picked up for him at flea markets. At William and Mary, where Lasky majored in fine arts and minored in English, his interest in comics was rekindled by a crowd of comic book enthusiasts who would loan their books to each other. Who knew William and Mary had its very own alternative comic book circuit?

While at the College, several people influenced Lasky's work. In 1989, his first collaborator was Patton Oswalt '91 (now a stand-up comedian and also an actor on King of Queens), who wrote comics that Lasky drew for the Flat Hat -- Lasky's first published strips. Paul Bonelli '89, Lasky's first comic book collaborator, created the Radio Man character, which appeared in the Boom Boom comics. Radio Man, a satire on the traditional comic book hero, lives in a town modeled after Williamsburg. His only special power is a walkie-talkie he can use to call the police for help (this was before the age of cell phones). It was Bonelli who encouraged Lasky to pursue a living as a comic book creator, so after graduation Lasky ventured to Seattle, Wash., to explore his dream.

Lasky took a lot of odd jobs to support this dream -- even a five-year stint as an internal auditor, which was especially odd since he never took a math class in college. Eventually he found something he would love to do as a career if he couldn't survive on his comic book money -- working as a graphic artist at Fantagraphics, a comic book publisher. Before leaving that position, Lasky collaborated on a comic book called Urban Hipster (UH) with his co-worker, Greg Stump. The first edition was a hit and has had a second printing (3,000 copies), which is available in select comic bookstores around the country.

Urban Hipster explores the antics and day-to-day lives of a young, alternative Seattle crowd. It's just one example of Lasky's diverse comic book work. He also gleans from a variety of artistic sources, such as musicians John Lee Hooker and the Carter family of Virginia, as well as the writings of James Joyce.

"I really hope more intelligent adults become unafraid to read a comic book if it is well-written and well-illustrated," says Lasky.

In his latest project, "The Carter Family" stories, Lasky and his collaborator,

Frank Young, give a semi-fictional account of the lives of the Carter family, including Maybelle Carter, mother of June Carter Cash. Although he is originally from Northern Virginia, it wasn't until he lived in Seattle that Lasky became interested in this type of old Blue Ridge music. The stories will be published in anthologies, the first of which was in Kramer's Ergot.

"Frank and I want to create a full novel, a story of their career from the 1920s to the 1940s," says Lasky. He's interested in traditional story-driven comics, which he hopes will entice everyday people and not just comic book collectors.

Currently, Lasky is pursuing a career in graphic design while writing and illustrating comic books on the side. In 2002, he enrolled at Shoreline Community College (SCC) where he's working toward an associate's degree and drawing comic strips for SCC's paper, the Ebbtide, that are based on his own life -- one of which was titled, "Back to School at 35." His ultimate goal though? "I would like to look at my bookshelf and see a row of graphic novels [written and illustrated] by me -- that would be exciting."

Visit David Lasky online here.