ComiCon is a dream, a nightmare, a chaos, a masquerade and
its own reality. ComiCon is a sub-culture, a culture, a world, a nostalgia, a
childhood dream where women walk around in tight bodysuits, and where men show
the type of hero, 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 stay in my hotel room and write. Work on a script
due soon. But I’ve been invited to one of the semi-private parties tonight.
There’s one every night of the Emerald City ComiCon actually, and the comics
biz is very much about networking. 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 tonight,
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 have 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.
Weather today in Seattle is surprisingly nice, with actual
sun when my train arrived in the station early afternoon. After I check into my
hotel room, I go for a quick run down on the along the piers, dodging traffic
and tourists and other runners, the Olympic peninsula and mountains visible
across the bay—most other times I’ve been here they’re 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 am, my main destination is Elliot Bay Bookstore, an uphill climb
right past the Convention Center, where I poke around looking at books without
pictures, though sneak of look in the graphic novels section. They have one of
my books, my Aquaman compendium. It’s
not that big of a section, so that fact that something of mine is featured is
something. There are bigger comics stores in town, which I may or may not get
around to visiting this weekend. As a reward to the bookstore for carrying me,
and to be subversive and potentially thrown out, I take out a sharpie and secretly
autograph it: Dear Elliot Bay: Aquaman
was right!!! —Mark Singer
But mostly I look at books without pictures. People, fans I
mean, comic book readers, might be surprised at how many ‘regular’ books I
read. It’s what I tell 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 memory of all comics
everywhere, seemingly. My dark secret: I actually think most comics, comics
books, graphic novels, aren’t that good. Or, not as good as they could be, or
should be. Even some of my friends’ work. Even my own. I’d much rather read any
given short story by Chekhov than any given comic book, especially the
superhero kind, but including others. That said, there are comic book writers
that can kick my ass. Some so good they make me think about giving up and
moving into something lame, like writing screenplays. I’m friends with a
couple. Or, acquaintances. I sometimes wonder if they feel the same way about
me that I feel about others. Probably. But, they’ll be here this weekend, maybe
even at the party tonight. There won’t be much time to talk, to really talk.
Never is at these comicons. So much going on, schmoozing and planning and
gossip, when I’d rather be having a quiet coffee in one of Seattle's numerous
cafes.
I pick up some books on zen buddhism, both for research and
my own interest. I’ve had more than one character into buddhism, including one
of my own characters, Robin Midori, though now I’m writing for a martial arts
superhero named Iron Fist. And, 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 walk exist in Portland too, where I now live, 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 just getting out of work, waiting for busses to take them to the suburbs,
where they can 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, a small grassy area with a view of the
bay, where more homeless people congregate, and where I’m asked twice if I want
to buy weed, though it’s soon to be legal here.
And women. Seattle women are awesome. I say that about every
city I visit, and it’s always true. I love the variety, but business suits, to
jeans and t-shirts, some for business, some for play. Some, apparently, for
both. Young, older, in-between. Everyone out enjoying the rare sunny day. I
don’t live that far away, Portland,
but everything, everyone, is grimier down there. I don’t know how seattleites
do it, since they get more rain up here than we do, but it’s 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 is clean. Now. Tomorrow if it rains I may think of otherwise, and I
like Portland anyways. I like 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 contemplate going to the Seattle Art museum. What’s
interesting is few of the masses amassing this weekend for the comicon will
even think to pay a visit. Nor will those who do go to the museum consider
heading up the road to the comicon. Two art worlds within blocks of each other
and either snubbing their noses at, or just ignorant of, each other. High verus
Low, who will win? Well, the Comicon is sold out: thousands and thousands of
people are paying fairly big money to get into the comicon, many so they can
then spend more money buying comics (that is, art) inside. Pop culture wins.
Low culture wins.
Time to catch the sun setting behind the Olympic Mountains
down on the pier. Salt air. Ships 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 leaves, heading north.
Maybe I could do that this weekend, just to be able to stand out front, or at
least on a rail, and freeze my ass off in the wind, looking for orcas.
I spoil it all by taking some pics with my phone and posting
to Twitter: “sunset in seattle muthafuckas!” I hate myself and kinda hate my
441 followers too. But this is business. The whole weekend is business. My
whole life is business. And schmoozing. And networking.
My phone vibrates. My sort-of-former editor, Diane, texting
to verify our dinner. I text her back and head back to my hotel room for
another quick shower and change of clothes. I’m exhausted already. That’s what
I get for walkabouting all over Seattle. But, this may be my last time to get
outside and enjoy fresh air for a long period of time. The ComiCon looms, and
the schmoozing will begin.
Diane Schwarz is/was my editor at Dark Horse. I should say
the legendary Diane Schwarz. If I’m
proud of my story American Winter,
and love the artwork by Paolo Pinto, Diane is who made it all come together and
kept the process going behind the scenes, so Paolo and I could do our creative
thing. She’s nearing retirement, which I don’t quite believe. That is, her life
is comics, has 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’s
incapable of doing ‘fuck all’ after she leaves, as she claims, Someone will
come along, some smaller company, offer her full creative control, and she’ll
take it. Though I hope she works a little less. I’ve told her more than once
not to work on anything, including most especially one of my projects, on a
saturday night, which I can tell she does from her email dates.
We meet at a fairly chi-chi place up Second Ave a bit. She
is, as usual, and as am I, dressed all in black: Usually a t-shirt but she’s
dressed up with a silky blouse thingy for tonight. Petite and skinny, with long
black hair she’s always just parted down the middle, and her leather biker
boots (how does she find them in her size?) and black jeans. I’ve never seen her
wear a dress, not even when she accepted an Eisner award. The only real color
to her is her rose-colored John Lennon glasses.
We do the French bise when she comes in. I already have her
favorite wine ordered and we ching-ching to American
Winter, starting in immediately on business. She makes me swear on my life
that I’ll come up with a new story idea for the series. But I'm not serious.
She knows that. Or, almost does. I see that gleam in her eye that's hoping I'm
serious. Am I serious? But no, I'm not serious.
The bigger news is of course the television adaptation of American Winter, for the SyFy network,
which, against all seeming odds, is becoming a huge hit. Which is in turn
sending more readers to the original comics. Which is good new for both of us.
Though Diane just gets a straight salary, while I, as in independent
contractor, get royalties (so, ch-ching!) it’s a definite feather in her cap,
proving once again that she’s the queen of comics. She hasn’t exactly been
happy at DH lately, sick of what she calls the “boy’s club” and their obsession
with superheroes and science fiction, and that they fail again and again to
hire women for the editorial teams.
Diane plays these comicons right, generally avoiding the
madness of the main floor and meeting everybody individually throughout the
days. And she does know 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 but she was already
helping shape how I thought about comics. She is, perhaps correctly, somewhat
annoyed about the state of comicons now. “When I started out, they were just
about comics. You went and looked at
comics, talked to comics people, bought and sold and traded comics. Maybe Stan
Lee would show up and do autographs, 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 is of course referring to cosplayers, and cosplay.
Costume + play = cosplay. I’m sure I’ll see plenty of them tomorrow, maybe even
some at the party tonight. For the most part I don’t mind them, and in some
ways find the whole phenomenon fascinating in an anthropological way. I’m 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, 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 Dark Horse are making
more and more money from converting their comics lines over into movies and/or
(like in my case) tv shows. And/or video games. Grant Morrison, maybe the
biggest writer around now, became millionaire when his Batman story about
Arkham Asylum became a bestselling game.
The idea for American
Winter, 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 affect America and the world still, now, 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 for 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 liberals sometimes) parts
of America. And that made me go hmmm, thinking about my own childhood interest
in the Holocaust, when I devoured books about just 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 kind
of wasn’t that much of a stretch, with the invasions of Afghanistan and then,
inevitably, Iraq in full swing. Or, not for me, when 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 guy, white,
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, ostensibly, 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, 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, you
know, 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 DH less on the story than on the
creative team, but that’s 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, forced dig a large trench, then were 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, 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 was familiar with, grew up with. And
the woods were the Michigan DNR woods I’d explored in my youth where, I found
out later to my surprise, there actually was an internment camp for Germans
during World War II! I grew up there and never knew until someone at a panel
discussion brought it up.
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, 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 were
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 is 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 DH 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 sometimes inked) the
characters. But, he doesn’t do interviews, doesn’t really speak English that
well, hiding out in Rio. I was the one that took the brunt of the criticism.
But there was good stuff, and that’s what 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, fought the good fight, and once the tv
deal went through, money was not a problem (at least for a while!) for either
of us. 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 DH 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.
The irony, of course, is 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, read 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 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 chat for an hour, then more Dark Horse creators
filter in. People I’ve met but haven’t worked with, like the artist Sam Froud,
and people’s who’s work I know, like Anna Aramyan who’s made a name for herself
through coloring—adding in the colors of drawn and inked pages. I’ve 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 too 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 Columbia, 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, listening to Miller, who 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 like the subject matter, which at the
time neither of us could articulate, really, but what I know now was writing
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 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 like 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 at Columbia)
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, later
with Microsoft Word became a thing, 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, and is, true, though
he could walk around downtown Portland and nobody would recognize him, nor
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. Which 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,
in 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, 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, also to underground comics. Which,
you know, at this point was a level of professionalism that would be unheard of
from most creators, because there was no, and still isn’t, one way to get in
the biz, where a lot of it is, still, who you know, and (less so now with the
internet) where you live. What I mean is, I actually wrote a script, Jared
actually drew it, I actually queried. At any point either one of us could have
just gone down the pot 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, might have been
less. 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, at that time, things were more up in the air,
especially at the underground comics. But, so, 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.
Point is, the issue of Prana Comics 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 my story inside, with three issues there for people to buy. 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, well, disappointing. I think, since the
story was more serious, that I expected the artwork, 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. Later actually some artists would go
out of their way to send me sketches of the characters for our stories,
sometimes going back and forth, sincerely wanting feedback when usually I just
go with whatever they want, which seems 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 it 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, when the paycheck arrives, I feel much better.
That was the end of Jared and I’s creative work together,
for a couple of reasons. One, he’d gotten the confidence to write and draw his
own stories, with all the big tits and joints he could cram into any one panel.
Two, I got a phone call, back when phone calls were a big deal, from Mike
Barcock, the editor from DC, a little after that second story came out. He congratulated
me on the two stories, and said he’d enjoyed them, and would I be interested in
writing something for DC?
My bowels about exploded at that point. DC! Fucking DC! The
company whose comics I’d grown up on! The company that published fucking Batman!
The company who published Wonder Woman, whose image had imprinted itself in my
mind such that every women after that was compared to her.
I said, “Um, yeah.”
“Great!”
“Who—which character?”
“How about Aquaman?”
Aquaman? Aquaman?!
The joke of the Justice League? The clean-cut Leave It to Beaver-ish half-man, half-Atlantean guy who could talk
with fish and dressed in an orange shirt and green pants with green booties?
But, it was fucking DC
Comics. I said, “Yeah, sure.”
“Great. Can you get me a script, twenty pages,
self-contained, by next Friday?”
That was in a week. Including mail time. “Um, yeah. Sure.”
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