And now for something completely different

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

I can tell you the moment I had the idea for this week’s cover story. I was listening to NPR, and the reporter was talking about a Time magazine listing of the Top 100 novels since the magazine started. As a sidebar, there was readers’ poll. The No. 3 book was a graphic novel, Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I guess a light bulb went off. Maybe it’s because Mad Magazine used to do entire satiric, comic book-styled stories.

As I look back on my out e-mails, I see my first one in reference to this was last Halloween. What is that? Six months? Well, the fact is, Mike Grimm and I went through a couple iterations of what the story should be, and we picked it up and dropped it at our own convenience. It was a friend who suggested we do the Eddie Floyd story. It’s a peculiar process putting together a thing like this. Mike and I don’t share an office, so in some ways, we were working in individual vacuums. Still, I like this method of storytelling. I like it a lot.

But, as much as I’d like to say the idea was original to me, I see some other alternative newspapers have done it. You might check out what Creative Loafing in Atlanta did with the concept: atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A20871.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy the piece. I can tell you the multi-talented Mike Grimm—actor, cartoonist, designer, brother of Bob—did the lion’s share of the work on this thing.

Along other lines, I hope you’ll listen to Floyd’s side of the story. He’s innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. I’ll tell you something I discovered while reporting this story that lends credence to Floyd: Some of the addresses listed on the indictment appeared inaccurate or nonexistent (like 4065 Boca Way, #106), but the U.S. Attorney’s Office refused to comment on the matter.