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.
It
was only thursday so I should have just stayed in my hotel room and
worked
on a script due soon but I’d been invited to one of those
semi-private ComiCon parties opening
night. Jet
City ComiCon officially unofficially began
on
Thursday with that first party for those locals in the know and those
of us creators (writers and artists) and editors and publishing folks
who had
come
in early—which was
most of us. One of the big publishers (not the big
big ones the Big Two but the big medium ones) always
took
on hosting chores at a local watering hole each night. And the comics
biz was
very much about networking—even for someone like me who had
actually been in it a while. A comic book is a team effort and you
need to know people to have a team. I hadn’t even been to a ComiCon
outside of Portland in a few years because I was
the Grinch of ComiCons and constantly amazed that people there
welcomed me with their costumed arms.
The
weather in Seattle surprisingly nice with actual sun when my train
arrived in the station early afternoon. 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 in my hotel room I even had 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
a 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 knew read
a lot more graphic novels than I did and had 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. Especially 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 kicked 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 Iron
Fist—a rich white guy chosen by shaolin
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 existed in Portland too where I was then living and
growing up in Ann
Arbor.
Even Chicago where I moved
after
college though only true half the year when the weather wasn’t
freezing-ass cold and snowy. Much more reasonable there in the
Northwet. Many folks just getting out of work waiting for busses to
take them to suburbs where they could
afford to live. People in suits and 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 wanted to 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 loved
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 cities themselves:
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 rained 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 going 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 would
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's what I got for walkabouting all over Seattle. But that might
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 Dark
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 more importantly offer larger revision
ideas—most especially in streamlining dialogue because especially
in comics you only have so much space in which to put word balloons
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'd 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 Dark
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 also 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 got 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 Dark
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 floors
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. By
then
they’d all merged. One could argue—and it had been done—that
superheroes—which are
the biggest part of comics so far—are
a form of science fiction. But comics have become more about
franchises.
Or it still can be. But the Big Two and others like Dark
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 and 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 Dark
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 Dark
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. But 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 Dark
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 Dark
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 about 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.’
The
idea of a story that takes place in a bar was
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 cannabis
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.
Our
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
voilÃ
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.
