The Long and Winding Road of Writing Comics

Okay, as some of you may know from my neverending tweets on Twitter, my first comic book story arrived in stores in the pages of DC Comics' Cartoon Network Action Pack #61.  Today, at long last, I am officially a comic book writer.  In the immortal words of that master thespian Keanu Reeves...Whoa.

Since I was able to announce this back in March, I've been trying to wrap my head around the notion that one of my stories was finally -- finally -- going to be published in a comic book.  You see, this is something I've wanted to do since I was about eighteen and hey, it only took twenty-four years to actually happen.

Oh sure, there were a number of reasons why I haven't been published in comics before now.  My own inexperience as a writer was my initial and toughest roadblock, followed by my lack of previously published work, my inability to truly network with others (Thanks for taking that whole first decade to get yourself established, Internets!), the lack of editors attending comic conventions in a "flyover" state like Ohio, and my personal favorite, my colon going toxic and needing to be surgically rebuilt.

Yeah, I know, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans, right?  So years after watching people I knew somehow executing their own game plans to get published in comics, I began to come to grips with the dreaded notion that hey, It May Not Happen After All.  I focused on my job as a Project Administrator -- the job that is kind enough to pay me on a regular basis -- and let various social networks, message boards and other strange little corners of the internet become my creative outlet.  That's how things like DAMN Good Coffee...and HOT, which continues to amaze me as The Little Blog That Could, came into being.

So imagine my stunned surprise months ago when my longtime friend Michael McCalister, now an editor for DC, invited me to pitch a few Generator Rex stories for Cartoon Network Action Pack.  I first thought that okay, Michael's just being his usual nice self with the offer and don't get your hopes up too high here because Cartoon Network could still shoot down the story ideas.  However, in a strange twist of the cosmos that I have yet to truly fathom, Michael told me that Cartoon Network approved my pitches and asked me when I could get the first script to him. 

My reaction to said news can be summed up like this...



Michael's put up with my nonsense for two decades now, so I owe him HUGE for that alone, but that debt has swelled to United States national levels after all this.  The story released today, "Night of the Living Movie," is the first of four planned Generator Rex stories for Cartoon Network Action Pack and shares my love of simply going to the movies and hanging with friends.  Each of the other stories pairs Rex with a different supporting cast member and also pays tribute to something I've loved for years.  I'll pass along more information about them as soon as they appear on DC's schedule.  My biggest hope, of course, is that these stories will lead to addtional comics work somewhere down the road.

And even though today's release fulfills one particular dream of mine, there are still other dreams that have remained horribly neglected over the years.  If this whole strange experience has taught me anything, it's that you should never give up wanting to do the things you love, no matter how unlikely they are or what life sees fit to throw at you.  As the legendary Yogi Berra once said, it ain't over till it's over.

Let's see what the future brings.

Neil Gaiman Shares DOCTOR WHO Memories With Craig Ferguson

Appearing on CBS' The Late, Late Show With Craig Ferguson last night under the pretense of promoting the tenth anniversary edition of his novel American Gods, writer Neil Gaiman instead spent most his 14-minute segment talking about the world's longest-running science-fiction series, Doctor Who.

Gaiman, of course, wrote the recent Series Six episode "The Doctor's Wife," which featured the soul of the TARDIS being downloaded into the body of a woman called Idris.  Ferguson, who has proven to be quite the Doctor Who fan in recent months, admitted that he hadn't seen "The Doctor's Wife" yet but that the episode was on his DVR.

The two gushed over Matt Smith's performance as the Eleventh Doctor.  Gaiman remarked, "He's wonderful.  He actually plays this thing of being nine hundred years and eleven at the same time."  He also mentioned Smith's considerable chin and gave Ferguson the small spoiler that there was one chin joke included in his episode.  "It was a feeling of such peculiar power getting to write Doctor Who."

Gaiman then reminisced about watching classic Doctor Who as young as the age of four, recalling how other kids at his nursery school would bend straws in their bottles of free school milk and go around saying "I-will-kill-you.  I-am-a-Da-lek!"  "I don't know what this is..." said Gaiman, with Ferguson finishing his sentence, "...but I have to be a part of it."

"And three weeks later," Gaiman continued, "I'm watching it from behind the sofa, because there was a shared children's knowledge that they couldn't see you if you were behind the sofa.  We knew that the television was a window and monsters could look out of it, but if you were behind the sofa, they'd just think, 'There's nobody there -- It's just a sofa.'"

The writer also mentioned that the first mythology he ever loved was Doctor Who and that for him, he's always preferred the Daleks over the Cybermen.  After a brief discussion about his beekeeping hobby, he ended the segment by opting to go with the very British awkward pause but asked that the TARDIS model on Ferguson's desk be included in the shot.

If you're interested in checking out the full segment, you can view it below thanks to the kindness of YouTube user Someoddstuff...

Will Amy & Rory Wave Goodbye to Their "Hungry Earth" Selves?

Yeah, consider this nothing more than Doctor Who speculation time once again, but I was thinking recently about the probable exit of current companions Amy and Rory Pond at the end of Series Six later this fall.

With only Matt Smith confirmed as returning for Series Seven, it seems likely that the Ponds are being written out of Doctor Who...at least until a potential return for the show's 50th anniversary in 2013.  So while watching the Series Five episode "The Hungry Earth" again not too long ago, I wondered if we'll see the flip side of an encounter that takes place early on in the episode.  If you recall, the story was set in the year 2020, ten years later from the time that Amy and Rory both began travelling in the TARDIS.  The two see what is presumed to be their 2020 selves waving to them from a distance, seemingly revisiting the adventure their 2010 selves are now taking. 

Since the Doctor has been shown in recent years as being a sentimental old sort, and showrunner Steven Moffat absolutely adores to play around with timey-wimey storytelling, I've been wondering if these 2020 versions of Amy and Rory will actually turn out to be the Series Six Amy and Rory waving goodbye to their earlier "Hungry Earth" selves.  This, of course, means we'll see this same scene again, but this time from the other perspective of Series Six Amy and Rory.

Just a thought of mine that may not pay off, I know, but if Moffat deliberately set up Amy and Rory's eventual exit in advance, it would certainly be consistent with his handling of River Song and the mysterious Big Bad manipulating events from behind the scenes over the course of multiple seasons.  In any case, I heartily recommend stocking up on tissues for the Series Six finale...

GENERATOR REX: Night Is Coming...

Wednesday, June 29th

Your friendly neighborhood comic shop

Cartoon Network Action Pack #61

Ten pages of Generator Rex goodness written by some guy named Charles

BE THERE

DAMN Good Comics -- SUPERMAN #712

You know, for a Krypto tale originally shelved in 2007 during writer Kurt Busiek's Superman run and then abruptly used as a controversial replacement to another chapter of the interminable "Grounded" storyline started back in June of 2010, it's pretty impressive that this story managed to beat out everything else I read this week.

Busiek's "Lost Boy" is set back in the days when Superman's young clone Superboy (a.k.a. Conner Kent) was killed off for a few years during the events of Geoff Johns and Phil Jimenez' Infinite Crisis mini-series.  In a character spotlight that Busiek does so brilliantly in books such as his Astro City series, we see Krypto waiting sadly and loyally for Superboy to return home, even though for all we knew at the time, he wasn't.  Seemingly determined to find out what happened to Superboy, Krypto flies off to follow a scent trail that takes him to Titans Tower and other various locations.

At each stop, Krypto grasps an idea of the events that took place, finally arriving at the exact place where Superboy dies in the hands of his girlfriend, Wonder Girl.  The scent of death is all too telling to the Superdog and in a heartbreaking sequence depicted well by artist RIck Leonardi, Krypto lets out a powerfully mournful howl for his younger master that carries throughout the land and even shatters windows in the process. 

Leonardi's art looks a bit rushed in a couple of places, but he still does a solid job of conveying this mostly-wordless story.  You really have to wonder what the nonsensical reasoning was that went into the editorial decision to pull such a touching story years ago, but at least Superman fans finally to got to read it, albeit because another editorial decision was made to replace "Grounded" writer Chris Roberson's story.  Ah, well...Maybe in four years, we'll get to read that story as well.

FRINGE Showrunners Tease Season 4

In a piece for The LA TV Insider Examiner, Fringe writers/executive producers Josh Wyman and Jeff Pinkner dropped some hints about what we might see when the show returns for Season 4 this fall on September 23rd.

At the end of Season 3, Joshua Jackson's character Peter Bishop created a dimensional "bridge" between Earth and the alternate Earth from where he originated.  However, doing so caused him to vanish from reality after things changed so that he never existed.  "Josh’s character, Peter, made a heroic choice," said Pinkner, "and Walter recognizes he might have to sacrifice to save his son, and now we’re fighting the consequences of that."

With Joshua Jackson still listed as remaining with the show as a series regular, it probably won't be long before we see Peter return...somehow.  According to Pinkner, though, he isn't going to be the only one returning.  "Without revealing anything, we have some really -- we have some things we’re very excited about.  We’re bringing back some characters who were among our favorites."

So who does that mean?  Charlie Francis?  Thomas Newton?  Personally, I'm hoping for David Robert Jones.

And if you happen to be foolish enough to not watch one of the best science-fiction series currently on television, Wyman says that the Season 4 opener is a good place to jump on.  "We’ve had a lot of people say ‘We love the promos; we want to figure out time to watch’, but not everyone has time to sit down and watch (three full) seasons, so we tried to make this season like a new pilot.  We did that a little bit last season, too, but it will just be an entry point for people to come in who haven’t seen everything."

He also added, "We always look at it as a new chapter every season.  It’s like you get the book and so you can expect something you did not expect.  We like to say that.  It’s not as easy as ‘Oh, it’s a jump forward.’  We always try to go a little deeper than that."

Wyman and Pinkner originally started with a six-year plan, so as long as the ratings continue to hold up well enough, it's going to be interesting to see if we're at the halfway point or if the overall timetable has been pushed up so that we're now at the homestretch and heading for home.

How to Prevent the Superhero Moviepocalypse

 

And here we go again.  Thanks to Green Lantern's mediocre $53.2 million initial weekend haul at the box office and excessively harsh reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, the comics and movie blogospheres are once again starting their doomsayer predictions of The End of Superhero Movies.  Yes, the same doomsayers who proclaimed that superhero movies were worm food after Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer in 2007, The Incredible Hulk in 2008 and Watchmen in 2009.

So I guess that means there's no point in seeing upcoming movies like Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises or The Man of Steel because all of them are destined to fail, right?  Well, even if the Superhero Moviepocalypse is upon us, I've been doing some thinking about all this (Uh-oh...) and have a few suggestions for any Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox or other studio executives who are starting to go into Panic Mode about the future for superhero film projects...

1. Don't Panic -- As shown above, even when a superhero film doesn't perform big at the box office, it's not the end of the world despite what you read online.  I know this sounds crazy, but audiences will generally show up for superhero films that look to be a quality production from the start with trailers that look genuinely compelling and interesting, not cheesy and desperate.  Don't believe me?  Look at the trailers for The Dark Knight versus the trailers for Batman and Robin.  Which one would you see first?
2. Don't be afraid to use lesser-known superheroes -- Okay, Green Lantern was a lesser-known character that didn't perform great, but is that actually the character's fault or the way the character was handled?  The character of Green Lantern is essentially a guy who becomes a cop in outer space and you're telling me that cop movie good, space movie good, but space cop movie bad?  Sorry, nobody's buying that one.  Meanwhile, look at Blade...Only old-school Marvel fans remembered the character and he still ended up with three movies.  Or Iron Man, who wasn't nearly as well-known as Spider-Man or The Hulk and still made solid box office on a weak sequel.
3. Every first movie for a character doesn't have to be an origin story -- There seems to be this preconception that every superhero's first movie has to tell his origin in the first half to two-thirds of the movie before finally diving in and getting down to full-on superhero business in the final act.  As a result, superhero movies are locked into a storytelling formula that feels repetitive at times and audiences are responding accordingly.  Go ahead and change things up once in a while and try starting the first film off with the superhero already in action, like Tim Burton did in Batman (1989) when you only learned Batman's origin later on through a flashback scene.
4. Make sure the supervillain is at least as interesting as the superhero -- Now, that doesn't mean make the hero less interesting, just that audiences seem to respond better to superhero movies where the villain practically overshadows the hero.  Heath Ledger's Joker, Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus and Jeff Bridges' Iron Monger are great examples of how a strong villain elevates the material and makes for a more entertaining movie.  As a moviegoer, you want to see the hero defeating a truly menacing Bad Guy, not some lightweight villain of no substance.  Just because they came from two-dimensional comic book pages doesn't mean they have to stay that way.
5. Stop phoning in the orchestral music scores -- Remember John Williams' iconic Superman theme or Danny Elfman's Batman theme?  Of course you do, because they were arranged such in a fashion that you can hum them to yourself while waiting inside an elevator.  With the exception of Hans Zimmer's "Molossus" Batman Begins theme, music score composers have ironically forgotten how to make superhero themes that are actually memorable.  Go ahead and try to hum the theme to Thor or Green Lantern while you attempt to prove me wrong on this one.