Oh my, quite a few, actually.

First and foremost: Calvin and Hobbes. The first comic books I ever owned were Calvin and Hobbes collections and I read them VORACIOUSLY. I guess I felt that if Calvin's crazy daydreams could be that fascinating, then my own wacky fantasies must be okay too.

Right after that is The Far Side. That was where I first learned to laugh at something specifically because it DIDN'T make sense. That's been a foundational principle in my life ever sense.

Bone rocked my world back when it was serialized in Disney Adventures. I've never been huge on fantasy, but the fantastic art and perfect writing was unlike any comic I'd read up to that point. That was where I first realized you could really tell a STORY through comics.

Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu, not unlike the show it's based on, wasn't on my radar all that long, but it made a big impact while it was. I'd been fascinated by Japanese art for a while, but that was the first manga I actually owned. My geek baptism, if you will.

RPG World had already stopped updating by the time I discovered it, but I was still astounded at the way it juggled the comic and dramatic elements so flawlessly (appropriately enough, Order of the Stick knocked me out the same way) and my own writing style was strongly influenced by it.

Finally, Dominic Deegan is especially important to me because it was reading that comic that finally put the notion in my head "Hey, wait a minute. I could be doing this!" And that's where the long decent REALLY began...

Oh, and while this was technically an animated cartoon rather than a comic, I have to mention Bonus Stage for the awe-inspiring train wreck that was its ending. The series was awesome for the most part, but the downright suicidal final episodes will always stick with me as examples of how NOT to go out.