Staring at the sky…

[NOTE: the following was written under the influence of allergy medicine. The opinions expressed cannot be held against me, as they may in fact not be my own]

“52″ is over, and “Countdown” has begun. For a few minutes, I found myself standing in front of the comics rack, wondering if we would have a year of 51, and whether DC, in fact, has a 52 year plan… But then I came to my senses, more or less.

Not sure how I feel about it based on the first issue. I’m always happy to see Darkseid around, even if he does testify to a lack of originality of any sort from George Lucas. I’m somewhat surprised that Jack Kirby never sued, in fact. Harlan Ellison would have. In many ways, I suppose, it’s lucky that Harlan doesn’t draw, however…

At any rate, I — oh wait, the postage stamp rate. I forgot, I need to buy 2 cent stamps.

Where was I? Oh, the plot. Well, it seemed to be a bit Duela Dent heavy, which is fine, I guess. She was fun in the most recent Teen Titans arc, though, so I was kind of sad to see her be gunned down, and killed by a [Spoiler alert, do not read the preceding 7 words, or the next one if you don't want to know what happens in to Deula, or how she dies a terrible, terrible death] Monitor.

There was also the threat of Monitor on Monitor violence, which is a shame, and seems to be happening more frequently these days. You would think that angry red bearded aliens responsible for the balance of he universe, would be able to get along with one another, and band together.

I also have to wonder where Black Adam is, and what his secret word was changed to at the end of World War 3. I hope, whatever it is, that it’s really amusing, and very out of character for him to say. Something like “Leg Warmers,” or “SpongeBob.”

I also wonder what the great disaster we are counting down to will be, but I can only imagine that the 52 worlds of the new multiverse will have to return to being 1 world at some point. It’s depressing, but the only possibility I can imagine. If DC were truly brave and bold, they would destroy all of the worlds, except one, stop publishing all of their titles, and start running only a new “Kamandi” title weekly. You’ll notice I said “Brave and Bold” and not “Smart.”

I probably shouldn’t have even started this. Maybe I should go lie down… I feel sbvzgvhg b,v,jg,jhhjv, v yhyfv lyl ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Well, this is week 52 for the ambitious, and interesting DC Comics project, “52.”

Admittedly, I started off pretty skeptical about the whole thing. I bought the first issue mainly just to see if it would be any good, and expecting it would just be too much to keep up with. Really, the odds were stacked against me, as I’ve always been fond of such background characters as the Question, Booster Gold, and some of the others.

I enjoyed the plot twists and the way the story lines developed. Unfortunately, I never really got a sense that they were going to connect, and apparently they didn’t. Which is fine — I prefer the way the story matches life, to a certain extent. One year is only ever part of the story, and following individual people to tell of an entire universe’s story was pretty ingenious.

All the same, on a purely writing basis, while the story tended towards being somewhat homogenous in tone (no small feat considering the very distinctive writing style), I could always pick out the plot points from Grant Morrison.

Now, I like Grant Morrison a lot. The guy can definitely come up with some of the most amazing left-field ideas. And he never panders to the reader, which is a problem that plagues old comics.

Nothing puts me more on edge, when reading the old books, than to see something like Superman standing, hearing a scream, and a thought bubble next to him reading, “Oh, a scream!” Except, of course, for the follow up panel where he’s clearly flying thinking “I must fly.” [NOTE: Chris Claremont, who never really showed this tendency so far as I noticed in his early work picked it up somewhere along the way, and it helped make his brief run on JLA with John Byrne pretty unreadable -- what really pushed that over the edge, however, was creating a vampire character named "Crucifer," and having him run a home for teenage 1980s refugees]

Morrison would never write this, because he respects the intelligence of his audience. The trouble with him is that he takes this one step to far, and thinks that they are both as intelligent and as insane as he is. He writes unabashedly without explanation, and sometimes, it’s a bit necessary.

For example, I’ve been reading comics for a long time, and DC Comics for a shorter, but still reasonably long time. I had never encountered the character of Mr. Mind. If I didn’t read other sources (i.e. Wizard) I wouldn’t have known that the evil caterpillar turning into an evil cocoon was particularly important. Granted, they also inadvertently tipped me off to the fact that Mr. Mind was clearly controlling Skeets, by over explaining things, so I guess the key is that it’s a fine line.

My other major problem with the story is that you get a lot of leeway when you have a 7 issue series like Identity Crisis, or Infinite Crisis, or any of those. The reader knows that there is a finite space for explanation (slightly ironic with infinite crisis that this is the case). But with 52, even though they gave a pretty good attempt at finishing up, it still seemed rushed. When you have 51 issues behind you, a summery of 1 just seems like too little. 1 issue also seemed to short for World War 3, which tied up too many loose ends all at once.

On the whole though, I think it turned out well.

I look forward to “Countdown” to whatever…

My first observation upon reaching New York for the Comic Convention was that it was cold. It’s not that I wasn’t expecting it. It was, after all, the middle of winter in Manhattan. I knew at best it would be the kind of cold where sounds hover close-by, and at worse there would be a wind tunnel blowing between the buildings, sliding cars up ice covered roads filled with angry yetis.

And, point of fact, cold has never bothered me, but the realization that the San Diego Comic Con is in the middle of the summer, and this one was in the middle of the winter, just hit me as poor planning. I may not have even noticed, had we not been forced to stand outside because there wasn’t enough room inside of the Javits center for the slinking line of Comics and Sci-Fi fans that formed both Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. Sharing the line with me were groups of shut-ins who were visibly scared of the strange yellow glowing orb in the sky, and women in comic book character costumes that were not exactly designed for warmth.

Inside was shear chaos and confusion upstairs, and quiet, well organized conferences downstairs.

At one point, as I walked through artists alley, I looked up and saw a guy pushing his way through the crowd. He shoved several people out of the way, myself included, and close behind him was another fellow following in his wake. This second guy, however, was purposely ramming into people, rather than just taking the path that was now there. When he got to me, he rammed straight into my sternum. If I hadn’t out weighed him by a good 90 pounds, he probably would have knocked me down. He did the same thing to a girl behind me. She and I just stood there for a second. I was standing in front of the booth for Jim Su from Beach Studios in Toronto. I assume the guy behind the table was Jim. He had stood up to see where this guy was going. “What the Hell?” He asked. The Girl walked by saying, “If I had more balls, I would have tripped him.” I was so surprised that all I could do was blink, and mutter something incoherent. I really feel bad for the guy who hit me in the sternum. It must be hard being so insecure.

But, besides the negatives, there were many positives. One of the best being Kevin Smith’s Battlestar Galactica Panel. Why was he hosting it? Who the Hell cares? It was hilarious. James Callis (Baltar) and Tricia Helfer (6) were both there, as well as a marketing guy from the Sci-Fi channel whose name I forgot, but who probably has a family somewhere, so I’m going to mention him.

James Callis was asked a throw-away question on what it was like to step into playing a role like Baltar, which had been established in the previous version of the series. His response was that he tried to get as far away from that character as he could. He summed up Baltar’s motivation in the previous show as

Cylons: “We want you to betray your entire species”
Baltar: “Well, what’s in it for me?”
Cylons: “A bathrobe!”
Baltar: “I’m in!”

But the biggest high point (a higher point even than being close enough to touch the hem of Kevin Smith’s garment — which based on fan reaction to Kevin’s solo panel could probably have cured everything from the sniffles to syphilis) was a small panel with a couple dozen attendees on breaking into the comic industry. CB Cebulski, Colleen Doran, and (I think) Guy Leshinski (but I had to sort this out after the fact, so I may be wrong) sat in front of the group doling out advice on getting yourself out there.

Amongst this advice was:
1) Don’t peg your hopes for future fortune on the comic book industry. You probably have a 1 in 10 chance of making enough to survive on if you do break into the industry.
2) Don’t email the submissions editor — go straight for the book editor. CB let us all in on the structure of email addresses for the big 2. Seems rude to post that here, though. He mentioned something about his life being in danger if word got out.
3) Don’t go to the larger cons like New York (sigh) and San Diego to get discovered. They’re too crazy. Find something small and local.
4) Everybody highly recommended going on-line to self publish…

And that’s what finally forced me to get around to starting this web page. I knew it would go this way eventually, but that was the 30th or 40th time I heard the advice, so I decided to go for it. Soon as I have enough content, I’ll start posting some of my stuff… keep your eyes on the front page.

While I was at it, I figured I would start a blog. Now, I’m not the sort to put my entire life up on the internet, because, well, frankly, it’s no one’s business but my own, and even if it was, it’s not consistently interesting.

All the same, I have a goal that many people share — to be published in some form or another. I’ve written novels, short stories, comics, screenplays, and once in college I even submitted to a greeting card company (who, it should be noted, hated every single one of my ideas — including my Arbor day card). The only thing I’ve ever gotten published is a letter to the editor of the Durham Herald Sun, who criticized a class I took in college.

Now, whenever I read about a writer, and how they first got published it’s usually relegated to a one sentence summary which says how hard it is to get published, but that they got lucky one day. Not helpful, not interesting, and not what I want to hear about.

So, here’s what I’m going to try to do. I’m going to email writers I like, and ask them for the detailed version of this sentence. The full page, as it were, on what went wrong, the pain, the trouble, etc.

Here’s hoping some respond, and here’s hoping it helps somebody. Admittedly, I’d like to be that somebody, but there’s room for more than just me on this boat.