Comics and Cousins: Childhood Memories of Being Creative with My Cousins

From elementary school to middle school, I didn’t really have many friends growing up. Partly due to my Autism and the fact I was very shy, my cousins AJ and Shane were my best friends growing up. Growing up my cousins and I loved being creative and to entertain people. I remember during sleepovers with my cousins, as we all hung out in the basement of my childhood home, we wrote and drew our own comic books. We even created our own comic book publisher named “That Spells Action Comics”, and we slowly started to build a shared universe of characters together. We weren’t very good artists and since we were kids, our humor wasn’t well defined yet. 

But it was just fun bonding with each other over comics. We created superheroes like The GreenSpeed and Super Dude. We created silly characters in our humor book “Silly Comics”, like Funky Monkey and Bear and Snake. One thing we collaborated that wasn’t a comic book, it was something magical. Quite literally, we wrote a fantasy book together called “The Warriors”. My cousin AJ drew illustrations for the book, I wrote the first chapter, and excluding chapters four through seven, I finished the rest of the book on my own. My cousin AJ wrote the second chapter on his own, and my cousin Shane wrote the third chapter on his own. Eventually, my cousins couldn’t finish the book with me though, but since it’s our book, they deserve credit no matter what. Besides comic books, my cousins and I made home movies together. I played Super Dude, and my cousin AJ played his sidekick Young One. I have to say though, our greatest legacy together is The Shekys. The Shekys were made up of Sheky 1 (Shane), Sheky 2 (AJ), Sheky 3 (Myself) and occasionally we bring in our older cousin Brock to play Sheky 4. It was our homage to The Three Stooges which my cousin AJ and I were really into at the time. 

We even loved to perform The Shekys live at family parties in front of relatives. But to be honest, we weren’t ready for prime time yet and as I grow older, I don’t quite remember those live shows at family parties. As my cousins and I got older, we kind of slowly began to grow a part. As time marched on, the sleepovers stopped and well, I’m slow to mature due to my Autism. 

Elsewhere, my cousins were moving on with their lives, finding love and living in the real world. Funny enough, we’re all still performing in our own ways. I perform improv with my improv group at Laugh Out Loud Theater in Schaumburg, IL. My cousin AJ moved to LA to pursue an acting career and is a stand-up comedian. Lastly, my cousin Shane occasionally posts videos of him doing Yo-yo tricks online. My cousin Shane even appeared on The Steve Harvey Show to show off his Yo-yo tricks. As for writing, I self-published a book of my own with some of the characters I created with my cousins. I’m currently writing to this day anyway I can. Be it screenplays, TV pilots or short stories. My cousin AJ still writes jokes and comedy sketches. Of course, we still stay in touch and see each other at family gatherings. We’re still close, but I do miss the bond we had in the past. But I’m just happy I’m still close with my cousins AJ and Shane today and that we still have a relationship. We may not be as close as we used to be, but we’re still definitely friends for forever.