The Comic Book Writer—first 20 pages

 First 20 pages of my novel The Comic Book Writer   

ComiCon. A dream. A nightmare. A chaos. A masquerade and its own reality. ComiCon is a sub-culture, culture, world, nostalgia and a childhood dream where women walk around in tight bodysuits and where men show the type of hero or superhero they would really be if they could just stop eating so many Doritos. There are parties every night at ComiCons and a ComiCon itself is one big party.

I hate parties.

I should have stayed in my hotel room and wrote. Worked on a script due soon. But I’d been invited to one of those semi-private parties that night. And the comics biz is very much about networking—even for someone like me who’s actually been in it a while. A comic book is a team effort and you need to know people to have a team. I am the Grinch of ComiCons and am constantly amazed that people there welcome me with their costumed arms.

Emerald City ComiCon officially unofficially begins on Thursday with the first party for those locals in the know and those of us creators (writers and artists) and editors and publishing folks who come in early—which is most of us. One of the big publishers (not the big big ones, the Big Two, but the big medium ones) takes on hosting chores at a local watering hole each night.

The weather that day in Seattle was surprisingly nice—actual sun when my train arrived in the station early afternoon. After I checked into my hotel room I went for a quick run down on along the piers dodging traffic and tourists and other runners with the Olympic peninsula and mountains visible across the bay—most other times I’d been here they had been in the clouds. And how ComiCon-esque to be able to see Mount Olympus rising to the west. You’d almost expect to see gods or superheroes (our gods) flying around.

After a glorious hot shower I even have some hours in the afternoon to walk around downtown and be somewhat normal. Though of course nerd that I was my main destination was Elliot Bay Bookstore—an uphill climb right past the Convention Center. I poked around looking at books without pictures though snuck of look in the graphic novels section. They had one of my books up on top of the bookshelf—my Aquaman compendium. It wasn’t that big of a section so that fact that something of mine was featured was something. There were bigger comics stores in town which I would or would not get around to visiting that weekend. As a reward to the bookstore for carrying me and to be subversive and potentially thrown out I took out a sharpie and secretly autographed it: Dear Elliot Bay: Aquaman was right!!! —Mark Singer

But mostly I looked at books without pictures. People—fans I guess I mean—comic book readers—might have been surprised at how many ‘regular’ books I read. It was what I told aspiring writers at comicon panels: read everything—read read read. Some guys (and gals) that I know do a lot more reading of graphic novels than I do and have encyclopedic memories of all comics everywhere seemingly. My dark secret: I actually thought most comics—comics books—graphic novels weren’t that good. Or not as good as they could have been. Or should have been. Even some of my friends’ work. Even my own. I would have much rather read any given short story by Chekhov than any given comic book—especially the superhero kind but including others. That said—there were comic book writers that could kick my ass. Some so good they made me think about giving up and moving into something lame like writing screenplays. I was friends with a couple. Or acquaintances. I sometimes wondered if they felt the same way about me that I felt about others. Probably. But they were going to be there that weekend—maybe even at the party tonight. There wouldn’t be much time to talk—to really talk. Never was at those comicons. So much going on—schmoozing and planning and gossip when I would have rather been having a quiet coffee in one of Seattle's numerous cafes.

I picked up some books on zen buddhism both for research and my own interest. I had written about more than one character into buddhism including one of my own characters—Robin Midori—though at that time I was writing for a martial arts superhero named Diamond Fist—a rich white guy chosen by shoulin monks in China to wear a sacred magic diamond glove. He was what I call a B character but I’d accepted the offer for maybe a chance to make the series more philosophical and less Great White Savior. And for the money. From a major comics company. In any case I got the buddhism books perhaps looking for something for myself—some calmness and/or meaning to the madness of life and the madness of my own madness.

Back downhill enjoying Seattle having actual people out walking around. People who walked exist edin Portland too where I was then living but growing up in Michigan that wasn’t always the case. Even Chicago where I went to college that was only true half the year when the weather wasn’t freezing-ass cold and snowy. Much more reasonable here in the Northwet. Many folks were just getting out of work waiting for busses to take them to the suburbs where they could afford to live. People in suits people in rags. Young white kids in dreadlocks carrying backpacks. Homeless guys sitting in an alcove watching everyone. Up to a city park—small grassy area with a view of the bay where more homeless people congregated and where I was asked twice if I want edto buy weed though it was soon to be legal there.

And women. Seattle women are lovely. I say that about every city I visit and it’s always true. I love the variety from business suits to jeans and t-shirts. Younger older and in-between. Everyone out enjoying the rare sunny day. I didn’t live that far away but in Portland everything and everyone seems grimier down there. Which was a point of pride. I didn’t know how seattleites did it since they got more rain up there than we did but it was the city itself: Portland just seems to have mold and moss growing everywhere. Seattle shines. Maybe Microsoft elves come out and night and polish everything every night. Or maybe the steep streets insure that all the moss is washed out to the sea but everything felt clean. At that exact time. If it raind the next day I might have ended up thinking otherwise. And I liked Portland anyways. I liked the grime. I’m grimy. I always have been. So when I moved there I felt at home. And Seattle can feel sterile. Like when you go into Starbucks? And it has that absolute cleanness? That you appreciate when you’re driving and want a nice clean private bathroom? And the coffee is fucking good but the food is all dry and tasteless and the music is good but you suspect that huge studies have been conducted to figure out just what kind of music you exactly like? That’s Seattle. Portland is more like fuck you keep driving. Drink a Pabst Blue Ribbon and get the fuck outta here.

I contemplated going to the Seattle Art museum. Few of the masses amassing that weekend for the comicon would even think to pay a visit. Nor would those who went to the museum consider heading up the road to the comicon. Two art worlds within blocks of each other and both snubbing their noses at—or just ignorant of—each other. High versus Low—who will win? Well the Comicon was sold out: thousands and thousands of people were paying fairly big money for normal folks to get into the comicon—many so they could then turn around and spend more money buying comics (that is, art) inside. Pop culture wins. Low culture wins. I didn’t go to the museum.

I had time to catch the sun setting behind the Olympic Mountains down on the pier. Salt air. Ship horns. Down south to my left huge War of the Worlds insect cranes loading train cars onto ships. A few sailboats out on the water and smaller fishing boats. A yacht. A ferry left heading north. I thought about doing that over the weekend—to just stand out on the bow or at least on a rail and freeze my ass off in the wind looking for orcas.

I spoiled it all by taking lots o’ pics with my phone and posting to Twitter and Tumblr: “sunset in seattle muthafuckas!” I hated myself and kinda hated my 1,008 Twitter followers too. But that was business. The whole weekend was business. My whole life was business. And schmoozing. And networking.

My phone vibrated. My sort-of-former editor Diane texting to verify our dinner. I texted her back oui and headed back to my hotel room for another quick shower and change of clothes. I was exhausted already. That’swhat I got for walkabouting all over Seattle. But that may have been my last time to get outside and enjoy fresh air for a long period of time. The ComiCon loomed and the schmoozing would begin soon.

Diane Schwarz is/was my editor at White Horse Comics. I should say the legendary Diane Schwarz. If I was proud of my story American Winter and loved the artwork by Paolo Pinto Diane was the one who made it all come together and kept the process going behind the scenes so Paolo and I could do our creative thing. Editors are the real heroes of comics (although sometimes the villains—but not Diane—never Diane—even when she’s cracking the whip) in that they actually make shit happen—make the comic happen. On the writing side making edits checking spelling and making sure the too's aren't to's (or even two's). And they know the difference between their and they're. They also offer larger revision ideas—most especially in streamlining dialogue because especially in comics you only have so much space in which to put word ballons before they start ballooning out all over the panels and the poor letterer person has a hell of a time getting it all in. And then the artist gets angry because the balloons are covering up the art and the editor is the one who deals with all these logistics and the egos involved and also makes sure the colors get right when the original artwork is scanned. Plus they deal with timelines and (mostly) get everything in on time and if not have to deal with the Editors-in-chief and publishers and everyone who doesn't really care about the art or the story but the money. I don't know what's worse: getting paid by the page like me or being on salary but working way past forty-hour weeks: I've gotten emails from Diane at 11:30 on a Saturday night.

Diane was claiming she was nearing retirement but I didn’t quite believe her. Her life was comics and had been for decades. She was the first women to become involved at the editing level for comics with the Big Two and at one point she was editor-in-chief for White Horse. She would have been incapable of doing—as she called it—‘fuck all’ after she left. Someone would come along—some smaller company—and offer her full creative control and she would take it. Though I hoped she worked a little less.

We met at a fairly chi-chi place up Second Ave a bit. She was as usual and as I always was dressed all in black: Usually she just wore a a t-shirt but she was all fancy in a silky blouse thingy for that night. Petite and skinny with long black (by then dyed) hair she always just parted down the middle. Plus her leather biker boots (how did she find them in her size?) and black jeans. I had never seen her wear a dress—not even when she accepted an Eisner award. The only real color to her was her rose-colored John Lennon glasses.

We did the French bise when she came in. I already had her favorite wine ordered and we ching-chinged to American Winter.And started in immediately on business. She made me swear on my life that I had come up with a new story idea for the series. But I was not serious. She knew that. Or almost did. I saw that gleam in her eye that was hoping I was serious. Was I serious? But no I wasn’t serious. Not really. Just had some vague what-if ideas.

The bigger news was of course the television series adaptation of American Winter for the SyFy network which against all seeming odds was becoming a huge hit. Which was in turn sending more readers to the original comics. Which was good new for both of us. Though Diane just gets a straight salary while I as an independent contractor get royalties (so ch-ching!) it was a definite feather in her cap proving once again that she was the queen of comics. She hadn’t exactly been happy at White Horse lately—sick of what she called the ‘boy’s club’ and their obsession with superheroes and science fiction and that they failed again and again to hire women for the editorial teams. I didn’t tell her about Diamond Fist. She probably knew.

Diane played those comicons right—generally avoiding the madness of the main floor and meeting everybody individually throughout the days. And she knew everybody. She was into the comics scene back when I was just reading them as a kid—stuff she edited in fact. And stuff written by one or two of her former husbands. Little did I know then but she had already been helping shape how I thought about comics. She was—perhaps correctly—somewhat annoyed about the state of comicons at that point. —When I started out they were just about comics. You went and looked at comics and talked to comics people and bought and sold and traded comics. Maybe Stan Lee would show up and do autographs but that’s about it. Now it’s all about these kids who come in wearing costumes and they don’t even read comics from what I can tell but they expect everyone to treat them like rock stars.

She was of course referring to cosplayers and cosplay. Costume + play = cosplay. I was sure I’d see plenty of them the next day—maybe even some at the party tonight. For the most part I didn’t mind them and in some ways find the whole phenomenon fascinated me in an anthropological way. I was old enough to remember the old days too—or my old days back when comics were comics and the costumed folks were over at the science fiction conventions. Now they’ve all merged. One could argue—and it’s been done—that superheroes—which is the biggest part of comics so far still is a form of science fiction. But comics have become more about franchises. Or it still can be. But the Big Two and others like White Horse were making more and more (or maybe just more) money from converting their comics lines into movies and/or (like in my case) tv shows. And/or video games. Grant Morrison—one of the biggest writers around then became millionaire when his Batman story about Arkham Asylum became a bestselling video game. Boggled my mind.

The idea for American Winter or the kernel I started with was after 9/11—which to some younger people now isn’t even a big deal I guess though it set many things in motion that still affect America and the world still which I kinda hope I don’t start ranting about and getting into. But. The one thing post-9/11 was how—immediately—muslims were targeted for hate crimes around the country and there was a general feeling of dis-ease (like a disease) with muslims in general by the more conservative (and even supposed liberal sometimes) parts of America. And that made me go hmmm—thinking about my own childhood interest in the Holocaust when I devoured books about what had been happening to Jews before America even entered WWII. And the camps.

That plus the little-acknowledged fact that America rounded up people of Japanese descent living in the States and put them in ‘internment’ camps. And I thought what if? What if in an alternative near future or alternative now the American government rounded up muslims and put them in camps? What would happen? How would it happen? And for those who weren’t adults around post 9/11 this didn’t seem that much of a stretch with the invasions of Afghanistan and then inevitably Iraq in full swing anbd the American government was adopting new departments like Homeland Security sounding like something right out of Nazi Germany.

My initial thoughts and the initial proposals I sent out to prospective companies (including Diane at DH) centered around white characters still. I wrote half a script about the US army coming into my hometown of Ann Arbor and declaring martial law and how some students would protest initially in the Diag then try to escape when the Army used violence. That script stuttered to a stop for while. Then I had the idea of a white guy being asked by a muslim family friend to smuggle two muslim children out of Michigan across the border to Canada. The idea being that the country was already on lockdown but the border up in Northern Michigan is a lot more open. And I liked the idea that somewhere in there that the man would be helped by the Michigan Militia—conservatives waging a guerrilla war with the feds (like the real-life Michigan Militia dreams of doing) but only as long as they don’t find out the two children—a boy and a girl disguised as a boy—are muslims. Because everybody hates muslims at that point. Fans of the tv show will recognize that storyline vaguely. That was my contribution to the script sessions when it became obvious from on high that the show had to have some heroic white people in it. That guy became Douglas the Smuggler. But in comics form the story didn’t get far. I kept having doubts. Like if it’s about muslims then the main characters should be muslims. Except I knew nothing about Islam except for what I remembered from a college class at MSU years ago. Which it turns out was way more than more Americans knew, including the talking heads on tv.

So I guess I just doubted myself. As usual. And as always. It’s what creative people are best at. But you just slog through. Not all of my characters had been white males. Robin Midori and John Dogo from CABRONA. And I’d written female characters like Red Sonja. Writing about religion and other cultures is hard. But hard is good I’ve found. Hard means risky. But I doubted too whether a comic book company would touch a story about muslims being rounded up in internment camps at that time. Faux patriotism was high in America at the time of Bush II’s reign. Dissent meant you weren’t with them and as Bush II famously said, “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.” Which was ridiculous except that at least half of America believed it.

And that’s where Diane came in. She loved the initial proposal and didn’t blink when I changed it a bit. It helped that I had Paolo Pinto on board as the artist—the man who can do no wrong. I suspect she may have made her own proposal to the upper-ups at White Horse less on the story than on the creative team but that was fine. She never told me. They accepted. And then I had a deadline.

So, while continuing research (involving both stuff on Islam but also on the Holocaust and the Japanese internment camps) I had the idea for American Winter based on a true story I’d read about of a Jewish man who was taken from his home in Poland before things were really going down. He and some others were taken out to some woods outside his city at night and forced dig a large trench and who were then lined up along it and shot. This guy somehow missed being shot and was buried under and among the other men’s bodies. After the Germans left for the night he managed to extricate himself and escape into the woods eventually making his way back to the city. Where he found that no one believed his story. People just would not believe what had happened. That story stuck with me so I just went hm, what if? What if it was a muslim guy? And so I made him an employee at the university and added in another memory about how people had been rounded up in Chile during the coup and kept in the city soccer stadium until they were disappeared. So I had him and other muslim men (at that point) rounded up and put in the Big House—the stadium for the U of M football team. Which was almost blasphemous to Wolverines and I did get some flack for it when the story came out but the blasphemous part was fun and scary. Risky. Also familiar—working with at least the area I grew up with—Michigan DNR woods I’d explored in my youth where I found out later to my surprise in my research there actually was an internment camp for Germans during World War II!

I knew though that American Winter had to be not just one story and one character but multiple characters. I knew too that I wanted each issue—or most issues—to be self-contained. I’d learned that from my Aquaman days, that readers—if they feel they’re coming into a storyline mid-way—will feel lost and opt out. That had happened to me as a reader too. Plus, I envisioned a world. I knew I wanted to start with Ann Arbor but I knew at some point exploring what had happened in this alternative world in other parts of America would be interesting. Or, if not all of America then Michigan and/or the midwest where war-patriotism was at its highest.

The model I used was the great SCALPED series by Jason Aaron which did just that by placing most of the stories in a certain western Indian reservation and sometimes following a few main characters but sometimes not and sometimes going to other reservations. Aaron’s vision isn’t an alternative America although you could argue life on the reservations is an alternative America anyways but it fit and many of the issues are stand-alone though all build towards a bigger picture of life on reservations in general.

It worked. It worked beyond my and Paolo’s and Diane’s expectations. Mostly because of the controversy it caused. I was accused of being anti-American and a traitor on the one hand but also surprisingly of being anti-muslim and/or portraying muslims as only victims and exploiting them (the term ‘Islamploitation’ was used without irony which I thought was actually pretty funny). And/or knowing nothing about Islam. Which that last was the one that got to me the most. But the rest? Loved it. Didn’t love the media circus interviews that White Horse arranged but it sold copies. The more outrage the more money we made.

But yeah, living in fear each month of someone coming out with some legitimate complaint about how I was portraying muslims. And they came. Or what is legitimate? To complain about whether a certain muslim character would still wear a headscarf seemed silly since if I learned anything from the experience there are many kinds of muslims and many kinds of interpretations and a multitude of different styles and looks. Plus though the visual part was a lot on Paolo since he actually drew (and inked) the characters. But he doesn’t do interviews and doesn’t really speak English that well. He just hides out in Rio. I was the one that took the brunt of the criticism.

But there was good stuff and that made me happy. I got many emails and radio talk show phone calls and tweets thanking me for bringing the whole issue out in the open. And I even got suggestions from actual muslims telling me their real-life stories from other countries and/or their own speculations about what might happen and why and I realized that this world I’d created needed more stories. More stories than I could come up with. At first I still clung to my ego and envisioned me keeping the main story but having separate mini-runs based in the same world running parallel to mine and taking place in other parts of the country. And that part did happen. But I also, after a while, decided to just step back and give the main title to others to experiment with. Plus three and a half years was enough. We got through the end of the Bush years fighting the good fight and once the tv deal went through money was not a problem (at least for a while!) for either of Paolo or me. So on to other projects. I talked to Paolo about it, and although he really loved the series he too liked the idea of handing over the reins to an actual muslim artist—the first of whom turned out to be Fareed Biljon right out of Detroit who is fucking great.

The one (horrible) irony was seeing the Obama administration become the biggest deporter of ‘illegal’ immigrants than all previous administrations combined. To the point where—gulp—it was rounding up these so-called illegals and putting them in for-profit prisons without trials while they supposedly waited for deportation. I got a twinge of guilt about that. Like shit did I give them that idea?

Diane still edits American Winter. She was shocked and appalled when I bowed out. Still kinda is though I explained why. I’m proud of the storylines I came up with and the characters—some of whom still make appearances. B ut I knew that no matter how many muslims I checked with ahead of time that I was bound to make a mistake or misunderstand. And it just seemed to right thing to do. It was a risk. The upper-ups at White didn’t like it and didn’t like me walking away but they’re also on the other hand been great about creators keeping the rights to work and supporting that. And they did score the tv show deal so they couldn’t complain too much.

Another irony was when Hollywood got the rights to do the tv show they brought in a stable of white writers. I know because I was there and sat in on some of the beginning sessions reading some of the scripts. And irony upon irony the scripts were pretty good. They started with some of the storyline from my runs but quickly developed other ideas and stories based both on budget and I guess on what the producers wanted. I feared the worst—everybody at White Horse did too—as did my twitter and Tumblr followers—but in this case it worked: For its genre the show is getting a good chunk o’ audience and a second season has been given the thumbs up. Ch-ching!

Diane and I chatted for an hour then more White Horse creators filtered in. People I’d met but hadn’t worked with like the artist Sam Froud—and people’s who’s work I knew like Anna Aramyan who’d made a name for herself through coloring—adding in the colors of drawn and inked pages. I’d wanted her to work on a project of mine for years but it’s never worked out. This is the power of Diane: she knows everyone and brings them together sometimes not even on purpose. We just all happen to be here for the ComiCon and this is the power of ComiCons: the behind-the-scenes networking that happens. That’s how I made my break into comics at a then-rare ComiCon in Chicago in my mid-twenties. Waiting in line to get into a panel featuring Frank Miller (one of my heroes) this guy behind me was sketching so I asked kind of stupidly now that I look back if he was an artist. Of course he was and we talked about comics we both liked like Miller’s run on Daredevil but also the underground stuff like Robert Crumb. This was Jared King and eventually he asked me, —Are you a writer?

I was though hadn’t thought of myself as a comic book writer. I had a BA in English from Michigan State and had written stories and poems and even a play or two—all of them not so good which I knew even at the time though I’d had a sense that I’d gotten better somehow. Write that much and you’ll automatically get better. But much of that had been in response to assignments for school. What did I want to write on my own? Or worse: was I ever going to write on my own? But never had I attempted a comic book script. I wouldn’t have known what to do since that wasn’t an acceptable form of writing in college classrooms. But I said yes I was a writer—just not mentioning what kind I thought I was. Because it was kind of at that moment when I became a comic book writer—by Jared asking. Something clicked. Comics were after all, what I’d grown up reading before I’d gone on to ‘real’ books. That click might have gone on un-acted upon—or not I don’t know—except for Jared. We sat together during the Miller panel and right before it started Jared offhandedly said, —We should a comic together.

I nodded and smiled and said yes and that may have been all that happened (people say stuff like that to each other every day) but I sat there thinking while listening to Miller who was and is both an artist and a writer and something he said then—or maybe it was the person interviewing him (the details are lost to the haze of time and my lost memories) about how lucky he was to be both. And part of what Miller said was that he started writing because originally as an artist he had a hard time finding good stories by other people. I saw Jared nod to that. And I thought hm. What if?

Jared and I talked some more and I asked him what kind of story he might like. We went back to Crumb. Jared really liked that grainy squiggly kind of artwork. And he really liked the subject matter—which at the time neither of us could articulate really but what I know now was writing about ort documenting the lower class. That clicked with me in that I liked the writer Charles Bukowski who did the same thing—with humor like Crumb. I told Jared about Bukowski and later loaned him the Notes of a Dirty Old Man story collection which he loved (and which he never returned!). But even before then we’d agreed to do something like that.

So I went back and read my Crumb comics and my Bukowski and at the same time I’d been reading a used copy of DT Suzuki’s Essays on Zen Buddhism which I’d delved into via Jack Kerouac and his novel The Dharma Bums and this I think is how creative shit happens: a melding or crystalizing of things in one’s life. I thought, what if? What if I could talk about some of the zen weirdo-ness with the koans but like in a grungy Bukowski bar. So I wrote “Armadillos.”

Now, the idea of a story that takes place in a bar is kind of cliché and may have been even then since Bukowski kind of almost defined it. But I just liked the idea of a couple barflies and a hot female bartender (my weakness throughout life) hanging out and this old japanese dude walking in and fucking with them with his zen koans.

Jared loved it and to my relief had no problems with how I formatted the script (which I stole from my playwriting class) since he had no idea either (and in fact there is no one standard way to do comic scripts—which freaks beginners out but which I love—I’ve seen other guys’ scripts and they’re way different from mine)(also as a side note—with Microsoft Word I had one artist who would change the right margins of the scripts I sent jamming them in so he had space on the right hand side of the page to do small sketches as he read along).

Jared at the time was actually not what you’d think a disciple of Robert Crumb and the whole Zap Comics scene might look like. He had a blonde crewcut and wore solid color plaid shirts and corduroy pants. At least at first. Once he got famous (as much as anybody in the comics industry is famous—Kelly Sue DeConnick once told Brian Michael Bendis that he was ‘comic book famous’ which was true though he could walk around downtown Portland and nobody would recognize him nor even recognize the ‘famous’ titles he’s written). But Jared for some reason never lost the crewcut even when hanging out and smoking big ole spliffs with a bunch of longhairs like me. (I’ve since cut my hair to an inch all around off the scalp).

Almost by accident I kept “Armadillos” short. That is, the story ended a ten pages. But that was perfect and in fact a lot of the underground comics were like that though I didn’t consciously realize it even as I was re-reading them. Duh. But later Diane would tell me that that was her criteria for writers and creative teams: can they tell a story in ten pages? Versus the industry standard (which has varied) of twenty to twenty-two? And you know—ten pages is still a lot. Took Jared three weeks to actually draw and ink and word balloon it all. Meanwhile I was like come on come on and worried that he might not actually do it and that I’d written the story for nothing. Which is something I go through still with every goddamn comic I write and with every goddamn artist I work with—even the good ones. Especially the good ones.

But he did it. I got lucky. There are so many flaky artists at the beginning stages—guys and gals now too—who think they want to be comic book artists but who realize once they have to work with panels and visually tell a story along with what the script says they’ll just go off and draw cheesy CD covers for their friends’ bands instead. Or not draw anything. So yeah I was goddamn lucky.

Once we had those ten pages of artwork and a script neither of us knew what to do with them. I wrote query letters to our favorite editors at the Big Two along with copies of the scripts, and since we weren’t writing about superheroes at Jared’s suggestion I also wrote to underground comics. Which at that point was a level of professionalism that would be unheard of from most creators because there was no one way to get in the biz (still isn’t) where a lot of it is—again, still—who you know and (less so now with the internet) where you live. What I mean is I actually wrote a script and Jared actually drew it and I actually queried. At any point either one of us could have just gone down the cannibis rabbit hole and done nothing.

The Big Two weren’t interested though one editor Mike Barcock from DC—who happened to be in charge of the Aquaman series—did write me back a short note saying it wasn’t his thing—or rather DC’s thing but that it was good. This would be key later on and a lesson in never knowing what small butterfly-wing effort might have an effect later on.

But Prana Comics took the story. The editor Mark Gonzalez (‘Gonzo’) loved it and featured it in an issue a few months later—for which Jared and I got paid something like $200. Might have been more. I should have kept the check stub. That brought up issues Jared and I had never even conceived of like how to split the money. Later working for the bigger companies that generally gets worked out separately ahead of time by the editor. But at that level and at that time things were more up in the air at the underground comics. But after Gonzo sent me the letter saying we were getting paid Jared and I sat down with some beers and figured it out. Jared actually thought we should split the money 50/50 but there was no way. Writing the script took me no more than a week including ‘research’ (re-reading Crumb comics) whereas he’d spent three weeks drawing and inking every day. So I proposed me with 25% and him 75%. Which is somewhat standard nowadays from what I can tell though it depends on writers and artists at higher levels.

Out Prana Comics issue came out and suddenly I was a professional comic book writer. And then nada. No interwebs back then—no kind of way to tell if anybody was even noticing stuff though I remember going into my favorite head shop at the time—Crazy Bob’s—and seeing that rack of underground comics et voilà there was our issue and there was my story inside.Three copies. I went back every day to see if someone had bought one of them. On the fifth day there were only two issues! Someone had! Two days later the other two were gone. I asked Bob if who bought them all.

“Nobody. If nobody buys them we tear off the covers and send them back.”

Thus my first lesson in remainders. But! Someone had bought that one issue! Someone somewhere had read something I’d written! Had paid money to do so!

Gonzo asked if we had anything else. I didn’t know what to do. Jared said, “Well, that zen buddhism stuff was funny. Maybe you could do something else like that.”

We also both agreed we should put pot smoking in there too, as a political statement, and just for shits and giggles. (We were of course high when we thought of it). Plus there had to be a woman with large breasts (an idea that would of course be true when I went on to work on superhero stuff). The result though, ended up being something a little more serious than I thought, and it wasn’t even zen-ish, necessarily. I’d just stumbled across the Dragon Girl, a character the The Lotus Sutra, who’s youngish but wise in Buddhism and who lectures people much older than her. I kind of liked that idea, but it being just after the Reagan 80s, and the first Bush’s presidency, I was perhaps cynical about Americans, still am, and so I couldn’t help but think, what if? What if the Dragon Girl appeared in America, how would she be taken? Seriously? Or as a joke?

I didn’t want to do another bar scene story. For some reason I had the idea of a trucker, some big chunky guy who finds her on the side of the road hitchhiking in the desert. So he picks her up, and then I just had her say randomish zen quotes. Like he tries to talk to her and she’s says, “Form is emptiness, Emptiness, form.” And then I just felt like, where do you go with that? And that I didn’t like this guy. So I had him take her out in the desert and basically rapes her. That is she never says no even as he’s telling her what he’s going to do. She just keeps with the zen quotes even when he leaves her standing naked in the desert at night. Yeah dark stuff but it seemed the natural American redneck response to eastern philosophy: fuck the bitch.

Jared was perhaps less enthusiastic. Or, I don’t know. I gave it to him then didn’t hear from him for a couple days. But he drew it. But I think he wanted something more nutty. And there wasn’t any pot smoking. The result when I finally saw it was disappointing. I think since the story was more serious that I expected the artwork and the characters to be a little more gritty and realistic but they were drawn as even more as caricatures than in “Armadillos.” Which maybe sort of worked with the trucker—he was gnome-like and had a beard which I hadn’t pictured—but the Dragon Girl who I’d pictured as actually skinny and beautiful and exotic was instead a Crumb-ish plump woman with enormous tits. Thus my first lesson in compromise. And also my first lesson in being very fucking specific in script descriptions. With later artitsts actually some would go out of their way to send me sketches of the characters for our stories. Sometimes we’d go back and forth with them sincerely wanting feedback and me wanting to spend my time on something else. Usually I just went with whatever they wanted which seemed to disappoint them almost. So now I know enough to mention some little things I don’t actually care about like yeah maybe her boots should be knee-high?

There is a certain letting-go a comic book writer needs to perform once the story is written. Nothing is ever going to be like you picture it in your head. And that might be a good thing since comic book artists can be amazing and come up with stuff way beyond my word-centered imaginings. And too sometimes artists have told me that my scripts influence the way characters look beyond just a physical description of them—that for example dialogue helps shape how a person looks. Which is interesting to think about in real life. Like does how we talk, or talk with others end up affecting how we look?

But we sent that second comic off to Gonzo and he took it. And we got paid again. And I gotta say—this has happened again and again—that no matter how uncomfortable or annoyed I ever feel about the artwork of a project I’ve worked on that when the paycheck arrives I feel much better.

The Snake Mountain Hotshots (first 15 pages)

 First 15 or so pages from my novel The Snake Mountain Hotshots (formerly CAT or A Season In Fire)    

In the black: Moon-scaped ash and juniper tree skeletons. Buggies parked, we unloaded jumping out the back doors with our packs, grabbing tools and saws out side compartments, the only moving things under the already hot blue sky. Bob stood next to his supe rig, leaning on his shovel watching us. —Today people.

All twenty of us lined out in marching order: Saw teams up front behind him and Paul and Nando, then us scrapers. Bob told Paul to go ahead and we and headed up the hill. And for an older guy Paul to hike. The jokes and small talk ended quick. Just breathing, creaking pack-straps, banging fuel bottles, Vibram boot soles scuffing dirt, whispered cursing. Up through dry ash, kicking up a black cloud behind us, dusting out the guys in back.

In twenty minutes we hit fire-line where the crew from yesterday stopped, at a patch of green junipers. We smelled smoke. Bob caught up with us and ordered Nando up the hill to scout while we pounded water, sweating already. Joseph from the Hoopa Valley Rez back in California turned and grinned and punched me in the arm almost knocking me over. —Singer! Ready to dig line, rookie?

An air tanker roared over, low and loud, old orange and white two-prop plane. Helicopter somewhere, rotors echoing through the canyons.

Nando radioed all clear. The sawyers choked their chainsaws, gunned them, letting them warm and purr, putting in earplugs, wiping sunglasses, tightening leather gloves. CK went first, making it scream, ten feet off the fire edge, cutting brush and small trees at their bases, with Lucky Charms swamping, both smiling and laughing, deranged forest gnomes. Schmitt and Buckner went next. Schmitt wearing his weird alien sunglasses looking like a tall skinny Communion Visitor, Buckner leaving most of his brush for Roo and George, though neither complained. Once they moved enough ahead, Yoli told Joseph to start digging.

He lifted his pulaski and swung, gouging a chunk of oak brush at the root, moving two steps and taking another. I raised my pulaski and let it come down, taking a chunk of my own, hitting and moving, hitting and moving. Cat behind me with her chingadera, sometimes digging like us, sometimes just scraping off the dead oak leaves. She and I had both cut line before, on Type II crews, but this, a Type I hotshot crew, was faster, more efficient. Yoli, my squad boss, walked with us, keeping everyone working and not talking too much. Ace, the other squadie and the only black man on the fire, if not New Mexico, walked by on his way a good lookout spot. —Asses and elbows people! That’s all I want to see!

The fire at first was just smoldering in juniper needles and oak brush, but the warming sun increased the wind, both feeding fire, forming dark columns of smoke way out in front of us. Hot-wood crackle, flames in gamble oak. A ten-mile-square mountain bonfire. The helicopter passed over with its huge orange bucket hanging from a cable, stray drops of water on the dirt and my shoulders. It hovered over a hotspot up ahead by Nando and Bob, dumping 300 gallons on a torching tree.

Hard to pace myself, shoulders aching, pack not fitting well but no time to adjust. Sweat dripping off my nose. Joseph just a digging machine—grub, step, grub, step—but the rest of the crew looked how I felt: Faces red, sweat-soaked hair.

The tanker flew over again, this time belly doors opening. Yoli yelled, —Heads up!

A heavy wet red cloud poured down. I ducked, closing my eyes. Cool slimy liquid sprinkled my shoulders and neck, rattling my hardhat. When I opened my eyes, the ground glistened red. My yellow nomex shirt covered in pink splotches. Cat looked the same way. She laughed. Joseph punched me in the arm again. —Woo-hoo Singer! First tanker drop! Thanks for the beer!

Yoli yelled again from the back of the line. —Come on! Back to work!

Most of the smoke from the main fire was actually rising to the north, though we passed hotspots, and stayed along the edge of the black up a ridgeling. By noon, we had worked up to a high rocky ridge, Ace’s lookout spot, and stopped for lunch. Paul wanted us to stay put, to see what the fire would do during the hotter part of the day. I ate some veggie soy jerky offering some to Cat. She wrinkled her nose but tried it and nodded. —Man, it’s actually not bad. Thanks, Singer.

Bob called Ace on the radio, needing what he called a gazelle squad: saw team and a couple scrapers in shape enough to get out quick if needed for putting in a check line. Ace pointed at Schmitt and Buckner, telling them to get going, and looked at me. —Singer? You’re a good runner.

I grabbed my pulaski and rolled myself up. —Sure.

He looked at Cat and jerked his head. —Go ahead marathon runner.

We followed the saw team down off the ridge. Bob was waiting at the side of a steep open bowl. —Alright just check line. If we stop the fire from burning through here we won’t have to cut line uphill and around it later. Don’t worry, I’m your eyes. Let’s git’er done quick!

He and the saw team bumped ahead to the thicker brush and Cat and I dug, taking more with only two of us, me the first half foot and Cat the other. I yelled back, —You good with this pace?!

She nodded not looking up. —Hell yeah man!

We caught up to Schmidt standing knee-deep in cut piñon branches yelling at Buckner. —Swamp that shit!

Bob stood watching. Paul radioed about winds picking up and that we might want to come back. Smoke blowing up below us getting darker. I looked at Cat and raised my eyebrows.

Bob turned to us. —You heard him. Head on back. I’ll stay down here.

We hoofed it back up. Everyone else was still kicking back at the ridge. A type II crew had come in bunched up behind us in our safety zone. Wind getting stronger. Paul had to cup a hand over his radio. —Bobby you’d better come up. The winds are getting squirrely!

—Doesn’t seem so bad down here.

—Well it is up here!

A huge gust came in and trees below the ridge torched flames fifty feet high. The type IIs were nervous looking at us crazy hotshots sitting around joking. Ace glanced at them then me, smiling, and slowly pulled a cigar out of his front pocket and lit it, puffing softly, letting the smoke drift over. Joseph got out a can of chew taking a huge gob and putting it behind his lower lip. —Don’t know nothing, do they Ace of Spades?

—Hell no, Injun Joe. Fucking deucers.

Joseph punched me in the arm again. Basically every time he talked to me he punched me in the arm. —Used to be you, huh Singer?

I nodded and shrugged. —Yeah, I guess.

—Not no more though, huh? This ain’t no trail crew. I wasn’t so sure about you with that long hair and shit, but you work hard.

I grimaced. —Gee, thanks.

—For a hippie.

—I’m not a hippie! I’m a metalhead!

He punched me again and laughsed. —Fucking Metallica and all that shit, huh?

Smoke was now pouring over us. And heat. Trees torching twenty feet away but the flames could’t cross our rocky clearing. Thin smoky fire-whirls in the sky. The type IIs retreated back down the line saying nothing and then just like that the fire surge ended, the smoke vanishing and flames dying down. Paul told us to get ready to get back to work.

Cat and I leaned on our tools waiting looking south out on the valley to Taos way way down below. We talked about how people there probably couldn’t even imagine what we were doing. I couldn’t have before last year when I’d started fighting fires. She took a gulp of water, face covered in dirt and ash. —It is cool being on a hotshot crew instead of a deucer crew. I like being in the action, man.

Paul looks down off the ridge for Bob, worried, but Bob’s voice comes over the radios. —Where are you guys? Let’s get moving!

We lined out. Ace hiked by Cat and me, smiling. —Goddamn my rookies, you’re starting to look like hotshots!

Our check-line had held. The saws started back up and we cut and dug for hours. My arms and shoulders and back were almost numb, but I don’t complain. No one did, and we tied into a rock cliff by the end of the day.

Then the long hike back out, but with the setting sun turning the valley pink and orange and purple below. Being tyired and covered in sweat and dirt made the view that much better.

Back to our buggies, 13-1 and 13-2, SNAKE MOUNTAIN HOTSHOTS in big black letters on the sides. We hung out and sharpened tools and saws, milking another hour of overtime. On the drive back down I dozed even with all the bumps. Back at fire camp, exhausted, we piled off the buggies and lined up for dinner along with all the other hotshot crews, Type IIs, and engine crews. Because we were hotshots we ignored everyone else but other hotshots, checking out who looks the filthiest meaning who worked the hardest though of course the guys checked out the few women which seemed to amuse Cat.

Bird and potatoes for dinner with a meager ‘salad bar’—lettuce and some cherry tomatoes though there are rolls which I slathered with butter. As hotshots we ate quick—no time to relax even though we were off the clock—there were still chores to do: Cases of water and Gatorade to get. Saw parts, medical supplies (sunscreen, lip balm, bandaids). Cat and I were in charge of filling the five-gallon water jugs for each of our buggies.

Afterwards I wandered around in the dark checking everything out: Pickup trucks and green Forest Service engines everywhere. Hotshot buggies. Even two horses tied to a trailer. Diesel fumes. Generators growling. Showers on the back of a semi. Clustered single-person pop-up tents, big khaki-brown canvas caterer tents. Old green army tents for medics, human resources, Incident Command personnel, with light shining out of open flaps and light-green glow-sticks hanging outside entrances. Laughter, shouting, joking. A carnival. The Forest Circus.

I was hoping to run into her. Ever since that first day of work two weeks before back in California when she pulled into the district office parking lot in her old blue Toyota pickup getting out with her black hair pulled back in a pony tail. Faded jeans, black t-shirt, catwoman sunglasses and a barbed wire tattoo around her left bicep. Most of us were already gathered up outside the office. Ace smiled and said, —You look like you’re from Chicago!

And she raised her right hand in a fist. —That’s right, man! Got a problem with that?!

I found her at the information board showered and reading a local newspaper article about the fire. She smiled. —Hey Singer, I was hoping I’d see you.

I somehow summon the courage to ask if she’d like to take a walk. She hesitated, but then said sure.

Off the main dirt road leading into fire camp we found a two-track going south into piñons and a field of sage, and lost the camp lights and most of the noise except the humming generators. Sky clear. Millions of stars. Milky Way actually milky-looking. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. —Man it’s beautiful here. I love the smell of sage.

—I almost can’t believe they pay us for this job.

She laughs. —Really?

—I said almost.

We walked a bit further. She wasn’t actually from downtown Chicago but a small western suburb called Wheaton. Like when people from Royal Oak have to say they’re from Detroit to anyone outside of Detroit.

—So how do you like being one of two women on a hotshot crew?

She tilted her head grimacing. —It’s like being a girl on a boyscout camping trip. I don’t think Bob likes women though. On his crew or otherwise.

—He doesn’t seem to like anybody.

She laughed again and broke off a twig of sage holding it to her face. —Man, I don’t know why you’d want to be on a hotshot crew. But I’m glad you are.

—Thanks, I guess. What’s that supposed to mean?

—I don’t know man. A philosophy major?

—This coming from the Spanish major.

—Ok bueno. If I even finish.

—Why wouldn’t you?

She waved back at fire camp. —Because of this. Of fire. I want to be a smoke jumper now. I could learn spanish better just going to Costa Rica on my own in the off-season.

—Sounds awesome actually.

She looked at the sky and I looked at her looking at the sky. I stepped toward her. She turned. I put my hands on her hips and kissed her. She wraps her arms around my neck and kissed back. —Wow man you move fast.

—Is that ok?

—I’m just stating a fact.

I slipped my hands under her t-shirt touching skin. Her stomach, her back. No bra.

She stepped back and put her hands on my chest. —We should go back.

We snuck back into camp splitting up before we get to the crew sleeping area so people wouldn’t see or say anything though she gave a quick wave before heading for our tents where a bit later later I lay there wondering about how suddenly there was something that could be said.

At night I would wind down a bit by putting on my Discman headphones and listen to music whether flamenco or Voivod and read from my Nietsche Reader (Kaufmann translation)—sometimes or most times I would be too tired to read more than an aphorism or two but that was what I liked about Nietsche. That night I re-read this section 341 from The Gay Science:

How, if some day or night a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, “This life as you now life it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurable small or great in your life must return to you—all in the same succession and sequence— even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a dust grain of dust.” Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon you spoke thus? Or did you once experience a tremendous moment when you would have answered him, “You are a god, and never have I heard anything more godly.” If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you, as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “Do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” would weight up your actions as the greatest stress. Or how well disposed would have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? (The Gay Science, 341 (p. 101 in Reader))

My Existentialism professor back at Michigan State had thought Nietsche’s Doctrine of Eternal Recurrance was something Nietzsche literally believed about reality—that the finite molocules in the universe would all eventually form again—but the ‘Doctrine’ was always an ‘as if’ proposal—are you living your life such that you’d be fine with having to live it again and again

I put the book down and lay back on my hotshot hoodie pillow and listened to Montoya’s guitar racing through the stars up above and thought about Cat and Fire and my life and at that moment I thought yes I could live through this again. That I’d chosen or ended up on a wild path that I was ‘well disposed’ to. Then I fell asleep.

Growing up in Michigan I didn’t even know wildland firefighting existed. A firefighter was one of those guys in the big red engines in town. I was only vaguely aware of things like National Parks like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon though couldn’t have even said that Michigan had some. Nor did I know the difference between a National Park and a National Forest though Michigan has both. I couldn’t have even told you the difference between a National Forest and a State Forest. Or a county park even. To a city mouse like me parks were parks, woods were woods, forests were forests. In lower mid-Michigan, down in the Rust Belt, the most outdoorsy thing I ever did was take walks out in what even then I didn’t know was state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) woods outside of Ann Arbor. And camping was what you did in one of those crowded campgrounds by a lake somewhere for the Fourth of July.

Not that I never got out of a fifty mile square area like most Americans: my mother’s parents lived down in Phoenix, so we’d visit them for holidays and once we even did go to the Grand Canyon. And it’s not that I was a shut-in watching tv in my house all the time. I was on the Pioneer High School varsity soccer team, and in college at Eastern Michigan University I discovered running, for fun. Some of my friends and I would take long walks on the trails around the Huron River. But I just never went camping or anything, and never even went up to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. When I got to college I heard about people doing that but that was for all the Forestry and Biology majors. I was just an philosophy major,—I just read books mostly though from high school on my main focus was music—playing guitar in various and sundry bands so that my weekends were more about gigs at The Blind Pig or the Heidelburg. Or if I wasn’t playing I was probably there checking out other bands until finally the last band broke up when I was a senior and I found myself approaching graduation. Suddenly I had to think what exactly does one do with an philosophy degree? Stay in Ann Arbor and continue playing to indifferent crowds of fifteen to twenty drunk college students? And become one of those older guys I’d see still in the music scene trying to ‘make it’ while making sandwiches at Zingermann’s? I was tired of Ann Arbor anyways perhaps related to my breakup with my last girlfriend who had ended up sleeping with not one but two members of a rival band.

Meanwhile, since I had taken so long to get through college, the friends I’d had were already gone, scattered across the country. This came both from Michigan’s economic outlook—there were and are simply no jobs in Michigan for college grads— but also from all of us looking for something different, somewhere where we could fit in culturally. Creatively. One writer friend decided to try getting into publishing in New York. Another wanted to try acting in Los Angeles. Another went to San Francisco because that’s where the Beats hung out and because he was gay.

And I certainly wasn’t going to stay with my parents. My dad was re-married with a whole other family by then. My mom had sold our old house and moved into a condo. We were never the most affectionate family anyways.

Time to go. Time to leave. Time to do something different. But what?

I went into Eastern’s Student Services office my last semester, the first time I’d actually even been there, and seeing all these people my age—my classmates—dressed in suits, the guys with short hair and ties, interviewing with companies like 3M and General Electric. That was Hell. I walked out.

I wasn’t so sure I wanted the big city life. I wasn’t so sure about anything though except that I should do what my literary heroes did: Melville, Hemingway, Kerouac all went off and had adventures. So I would too. When I graduated in December 1993 with money I got from selling my amps and most of my guitars plus some graduation present money from relatives the only thing I could think of was to go hike down into the Grand Canyon. I figured it was Arizona, desert, it would at least be warm.

When I finally got there after a nightmare Greyhound hell in February with a new backpack there was a foot of snow at the South Rim. But with the help of the backcountry rangers I did eventually get down into that huge space, even bigger and more amazing than I remembered. This all a whole story in itself but my life changed by just happening to meet a gal Shawna on the trail right by the Colorado River who worked as a wildland firefighter for the Park in the Summer. She was hiking for fun at the time but we got to talking and she told me about her job going to fires in the woods and digging in dirt and I was like you get paid for that?

Shawna helped me get a job first as a volunteer at the South Rim which led to a summer job on the trail crew. And my supervisor there was cool enough to let me go to the basic fire training classes so I could get my ‘red card’ qualifying me to go on fires as a supplementary firefighter for the Park if needed. 1996 was a big fire year with fires all over Arizona and all over the country. Our trail crew helped out on one down in the Kaibab National Forest just south of the Park. And I’d never seen anything like it: probably about four or five acres (though back then I didn’t yet think in acres) in the ponderosa forest with blackened earth and ash and actual real flames. Not big nor moving fast but at the time it seemed like the most dangerous thing I’d ever seen. This was late afternoon and the fire was already dying down. A Park engine and Forest engine had already dug line around the fire. Not the big red city engines—these were four-wheel drive flatbed pickup trucks, Park white and Forest green, with pumps and 300 hundred gallon tanks of water. Us trail dogs helped mop-up—digging up any hot or smoking areas putting dirt on them or water if available—ometimes just scraping around with gloved hands. We stayed on into the night digging in that orange glow in the trees with embers glowing like eyes and sparks drifting up into the sky. And again I was like you get paid for this? I had the fire bug.

With such a busy fire season, resources were needed all over the country, and the Park and the Kaibab would put together joint twenty-person hand crews to travel to other parts of Arizona or even out of state. One crew I was on went down to Sedona for a big fire on the Mogollon Rim, and then towards the end of the summer another crew went up to Yellowstone National Park where I got my first of many helicopter rides.

These hand crews I was on were the Type II crews. The Type I crews were the Hotshots, the elites—crews that worked together all summer long and traveled all over the West. Wherever the big fires were that’s where they went. They were way more in-shape and more capable of handling rugged and dangerous situations when fires were in steep terrain. Once the hotshots got a fire under control they’d leave for the next fire and we would come in for mop-up. In bigger Fire Camps on bigger fires you could just tell: the hotshots knew what they were doing—had their shit together—all wore the same t-shirt uniforms and went to parts of fires with the most activity and danger.

Plus, the women. Once I got out west I’d been seeing women that were outdoorsy and in shape which I’d discovered was really attractive. But the women on hotshot crews? Awesome. There weren’t a lot of them, one or two every crew and some crews didn’t have any but the ones that were there seemed just mostly badass. My childhood fantasy come true—women right out of comic books like Wonder Woman, Elektra or Red Sonja, strong and confident and wearing knee-high leather boots.

That was what I wanted to do. So, after that summer, I found a Wilderness ranger job down in the Superstition Mountains for the Winter, and applied to all the hotshot crews in the Southwest and California. Mostly hotshots hire from engine crews, but I didn’t even think about doing that first: I’d seen the hierarchy and ‘engine slugs’ were way below hotshots. But since I’d only been a lowly trail dog and Type II loser, I didn’t hear anything and thought I’d end up going back to the Grand Canyon until the Snake Mountain Hotshots called in mid-April. It was Nando. —Hey Dan. You still interested in being a hotshot?

Hell yes.