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.