I'm getting closer to writing again, I swear.
Actually, I really am. I'm moving into an apartment and will have a lot more spare time on my hands, and I intend to use it writing. So I will tackle George & Gracie, and maybe getting BOLO! lettered (the pages I have, with entirely revised captioning and possibly no dialogue) and hopefully set free into the world.
And submitting again.
And maybe other stuff related to writing. I loved the energy, fast receding into the past, of working on Crisis Weekly, which was something that because it was tied up with DC properties, will have to remain tied to DC properties unless I do stuff like disentangling original concepts from it like I did for the A-to-Z Challenge poems.
And I hope to begin blogging regularly again.
Showing posts with label Crisis Weekly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crisis Weekly. Show all posts
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Updates, end of March 2019
A quick check-in:
- Doing the A-to-Z Challenge again this year, again at Sigild V. This year will be poetry, riffing on a character from Crisis Weekly. This has the effects of the proverbial birds with a stone, as I've been wanting to do some poetry again anyway, and I figured I owed the A-to-Z folks thanks for the recent book tour thing.
- Pretty sure I've nailed how I'm going to be writing George & Gracie, after transcribing what I'd written in a notebook at the end of the year and not initially knowing how to proceed from there.
- Submitted a story. It's the Montague in the Leviathan proof-of-concept I wrote last year, where I finally buckled down and attempted some straight literary fiction, which I still hope can become a book later, if I can do the necessary research.
- It suddenly occurred to me that I can turn that Exemplar comic book script into something if I look into getting someone to draw it. So that's something I'll be strongly considering.
- It's nice to have a number of prospects in the air.
Saturday, March 9, 2019
Crisis Weekly, twenty-first and finale
Crisis Weekly #21.
And...we're done. Two hundred comic book pages (roughly the equivalent of nine standard comic book issues), nearly thirty thousand words across the whole script, a hundred and thirty-six pages in the file. It's the first time I've written a complete, extended comic book story.
Thank you, Pat, for reading along.
Writing this for half a year (!), more or less once a week every week, it was a valuable experience. I look forward to moving on to new projects (or perhaps even returning to old ones, like maybe even getting on to writing out BOLO (the project for which I had eight pages of art waiting to be used). I expect George & Gracie, a project I haven't even mentioned here (it's laughable, everything I want to work on, sometimes, even from looking back at stuff I have mentioned here), to be the likely candidate, a children's story, something I haven't really tried in long form.
Either way, one of the perks of Crisis Weekly was sharing regular thoughts here again, and that's certainly something I'd like to continue.
And...we're done. Two hundred comic book pages (roughly the equivalent of nine standard comic book issues), nearly thirty thousand words across the whole script, a hundred and thirty-six pages in the file. It's the first time I've written a complete, extended comic book story.
Thank you, Pat, for reading along.
Writing this for half a year (!), more or less once a week every week, it was a valuable experience. I look forward to moving on to new projects (or perhaps even returning to old ones, like maybe even getting on to writing out BOLO (the project for which I had eight pages of art waiting to be used). I expect George & Gracie, a project I haven't even mentioned here (it's laughable, everything I want to work on, sometimes, even from looking back at stuff I have mentioned here), to be the likely candidate, a children's story, something I haven't really tried in long form.
Either way, one of the perks of Crisis Weekly was sharing regular thoughts here again, and that's certainly something I'd like to continue.
Saturday, March 2, 2019
Crisis Weekly twenty, Sapo Saga
Sapo Saga helped round out the A-to-Z Challenge Book Tour over at J Lenni Dorner's blog. Dorner gave it the second review of the tour, and somehow an even better one, which was very nice to read. You can read it here. Thanks, Lenni!
Meanwhile, Crisis Weekly #20.
This is the big climax of the story, the final confrontation between Bloodwynd, that obscure superhero I plucked from the '90s, and Doomsday. Hopefully everything I've done in the previous nineteen installments has justified this one, and that it does justice to them.
One installment to go!
Meanwhile, Crisis Weekly #20.
This is the big climax of the story, the final confrontation between Bloodwynd, that obscure superhero I plucked from the '90s, and Doomsday. Hopefully everything I've done in the previous nineteen installments has justified this one, and that it does justice to them.
One installment to go!
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Crisis Weekly nineteen
Crisis Weekly #19.
This one's another creative departure. When I began considering writing it as something other than the usual narrative, I wanted to go with eight separate perspectives, but then I wondered if it would be more interesting, and more impactful, if it followed a single person as they aged.
The story itself takes the place of a huge moment that will otherwise not be depicted (two more installments, after all, with two other big things left to do), which I thought I could get away with, since the character who dies already had a big fight earlier, and I didn't really want to cover the same narrative ground. The moments that stick out for me, in this thing, are the ones where I took risks, where I allowed myself to deviate, to try something different. I think if this were a comic book, that's what would stand out for readers, too.
This is the third installment this week, although technically only the second, as I delayed last week's for one of them. If you remember, I skipped a week at Thanksgiving, so I'm really just catching up. The first time I wrote a double-length script I told myself that's what I was doing, but as far as having the material for something that was supposed to be weekly, as advertised in the title, there really ought to have been, on average, enough scripts to cover every week. So now there are, and so we're back on track.
Not that you cared.
This one's another creative departure. When I began considering writing it as something other than the usual narrative, I wanted to go with eight separate perspectives, but then I wondered if it would be more interesting, and more impactful, if it followed a single person as they aged.
The story itself takes the place of a huge moment that will otherwise not be depicted (two more installments, after all, with two other big things left to do), which I thought I could get away with, since the character who dies already had a big fight earlier, and I didn't really want to cover the same narrative ground. The moments that stick out for me, in this thing, are the ones where I took risks, where I allowed myself to deviate, to try something different. I think if this were a comic book, that's what would stand out for readers, too.
This is the third installment this week, although technically only the second, as I delayed last week's for one of them. If you remember, I skipped a week at Thanksgiving, so I'm really just catching up. The first time I wrote a double-length script I told myself that's what I was doing, but as far as having the material for something that was supposed to be weekly, as advertised in the title, there really ought to have been, on average, enough scripts to cover every week. So now there are, and so we're back on track.
Not that you cared.
Monday, February 18, 2019
Crisis Weekly seventeen and eighteen...
Because I had a three-day weekend, and the sister and niece were away, I decided to tackle Crisis Weekly a bit differently, with #17 and #18 both available today.
It's actually kind of funny, because the latter entry was always going to be my third and final double-length entry. To tackle writing it on the same day as writing another one meant writing twenty-four pages of comic book script in one day, tripling what I'd done nearly every other entry. I happened to have the time, and narratively the entries easily segued into each other, and perhaps even benefited from being written together.
Anyway, it's always nice to have a little extra writing time, any time at all to myself, any extended length of time. I may not always fill that time with writing, but it gives me a lot of room to play with, and hopefully I tend to use it wisely, even though I always want to do more and there always is more to do, so much I want to accomplish...
That leaves three entries to go, and then it's off to other projects. Since I knocked out a script early in the week, it leaves me wondering if I will actually write four scripts worth of pages this week, if I'll go back on the clock on Saturday morning, as regularly scheduled.
Ah, we'll see.
It's actually kind of funny, because the latter entry was always going to be my third and final double-length entry. To tackle writing it on the same day as writing another one meant writing twenty-four pages of comic book script in one day, tripling what I'd done nearly every other entry. I happened to have the time, and narratively the entries easily segued into each other, and perhaps even benefited from being written together.
Anyway, it's always nice to have a little extra writing time, any time at all to myself, any extended length of time. I may not always fill that time with writing, but it gives me a lot of room to play with, and hopefully I tend to use it wisely, even though I always want to do more and there always is more to do, so much I want to accomplish...
That leaves three entries to go, and then it's off to other projects. Since I knocked out a script early in the week, it leaves me wondering if I will actually write four scripts worth of pages this week, if I'll go back on the clock on Saturday morning, as regularly scheduled.
Ah, we'll see.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Crisis Weekly the sixteenth, Sapo Saga
This week is sort of an ode to Robin: Son of Batman, a short-lived spinoff of Batman & Robin, the New 52 iteration by Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason, which I loved and became one of my all-time favorite runs. Gleason tackled Robin on his own, and as you can see from that cover gave Damian Wayne a unique supporting cast, the daughter of someone he'd actually killed, and a humungous Man-Bat named Goliath.
Yesterday my novella Sapo Saga was in the spotlight! Thanks to its being written specifically for the A-to-Z Challenge back in 2016, it was eligible for a special book tour that's going on at the moment. Jemima Pett featured Sapo Saga on her blog yesterday, and also happened to give the book a glowing review! You can read it here.
Saturday, February 2, 2019
Crisis Weekly, the fifteenth.
Crisis Weekly #15.
Holy crap! I've been waiting to write the last line of dialogue in this one for months! That's one of the joys of writing any story, knowing what's coming up and then finally getting to write it. In that way, the writer's journey isn't so different from the reader's, they just get to get there first.
The whole thing will be explained later, but hopefully some of the clues will start to fall into place, and seem less like clues and more like bludgeons. I once remarked on someone else's blog that I haven't really tried writing mysteries, but mysteries can come in all kinds of shapes. We just tend to think of them almost exclusively as detective stories. But they aren't always. The Harry Potter books were, essentially, mysteries, so it was probably hugely natural for J.K. Rowling to write more traditional mysteries in the Cormoran Strike series, which I again evoke in this installment by returning the focus to Bloodwynd and his amputated leg. But there's a lot more in it, too! There's also a line of dialogue from one of the characters who hasn't really been featured a lot, but nonetheless has been playing a key role, and finally we get to see more of what that is, and again it's inspired by Rowling, something I wished she had done rather than what she did, in this instance. But more on that later.
I love it when a plan comes together.
Holy crap! I've been waiting to write the last line of dialogue in this one for months! That's one of the joys of writing any story, knowing what's coming up and then finally getting to write it. In that way, the writer's journey isn't so different from the reader's, they just get to get there first.
The whole thing will be explained later, but hopefully some of the clues will start to fall into place, and seem less like clues and more like bludgeons. I once remarked on someone else's blog that I haven't really tried writing mysteries, but mysteries can come in all kinds of shapes. We just tend to think of them almost exclusively as detective stories. But they aren't always. The Harry Potter books were, essentially, mysteries, so it was probably hugely natural for J.K. Rowling to write more traditional mysteries in the Cormoran Strike series, which I again evoke in this installment by returning the focus to Bloodwynd and his amputated leg. But there's a lot more in it, too! There's also a line of dialogue from one of the characters who hasn't really been featured a lot, but nonetheless has been playing a key role, and finally we get to see more of what that is, and again it's inspired by Rowling, something I wished she had done rather than what she did, in this instance. But more on that later.
I love it when a plan comes together.
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Crisis Weekly, the fourteenth.
Crisis Weekly #14.
I realize that sometimes these scripts are hard to read, as they don't seem to give enough visual description, or seem overly repetitive. This week's script has a series of repetitive images, and yes, it was deliberate.
Even if it's disappointing as a reader, as the writer I'm picturing generally what the illustrated page looks like, what the intended visual effect is supposed to be. I can't make readers of a script see the same thing I do, but as the writer, the result is what matters, even if these pages are never drawn. I'm not writing these to be read solely as an elaborate way to read a story, but as an exercise in comic book scriptwriting, easily the longest I've yet attempted.
The funny thing I learned, some time ago, is that in writing comic book scripts, I become a lot more interested in the visual progress of a story. I become a lot more interested in what characters are doing. When I write prose, I'm more interested in what they're thinking, in explaining their internal journeys. This may be unusual and perhaps even disorienting for readers who are far more used to popular writing that relies on action to build momentum, moments that build on each other whether they're mysteries or similar stories. But personally, I'm a little bored by writing that spends most of its time distracting the reader, that expands a story past the story so far that the story all but disappears behind narrative gloss.
My opinion, anyway. But comic books are inherently a visual medium, and it would be unnatural to try and approach them any other way. So, too, with film, which is why most visionary directors are known for, well, their visuals. Some are known for their dialogue, too, but that's because they've spent a good amount of time developing how their characters talk. A lot of writers, in any medium, mistake the ability to write with merely presenting the bare essentials, and not the ability to do it interestingly.
Again, perceptions will vary. You might look at what I did this week and say I wasted my time, and your time. But I had a character (the Caballero) who finally found himself in the spotlight, and there was a lot to accomplish in very little time, and there are bigger things yet to reveal about him, and so I had to be very deliberate in my approach.
So I made some creative decisions.
I realize that sometimes these scripts are hard to read, as they don't seem to give enough visual description, or seem overly repetitive. This week's script has a series of repetitive images, and yes, it was deliberate.
Even if it's disappointing as a reader, as the writer I'm picturing generally what the illustrated page looks like, what the intended visual effect is supposed to be. I can't make readers of a script see the same thing I do, but as the writer, the result is what matters, even if these pages are never drawn. I'm not writing these to be read solely as an elaborate way to read a story, but as an exercise in comic book scriptwriting, easily the longest I've yet attempted.
The funny thing I learned, some time ago, is that in writing comic book scripts, I become a lot more interested in the visual progress of a story. I become a lot more interested in what characters are doing. When I write prose, I'm more interested in what they're thinking, in explaining their internal journeys. This may be unusual and perhaps even disorienting for readers who are far more used to popular writing that relies on action to build momentum, moments that build on each other whether they're mysteries or similar stories. But personally, I'm a little bored by writing that spends most of its time distracting the reader, that expands a story past the story so far that the story all but disappears behind narrative gloss.
My opinion, anyway. But comic books are inherently a visual medium, and it would be unnatural to try and approach them any other way. So, too, with film, which is why most visionary directors are known for, well, their visuals. Some are known for their dialogue, too, but that's because they've spent a good amount of time developing how their characters talk. A lot of writers, in any medium, mistake the ability to write with merely presenting the bare essentials, and not the ability to do it interestingly.
Again, perceptions will vary. You might look at what I did this week and say I wasted my time, and your time. But I had a character (the Caballero) who finally found himself in the spotlight, and there was a lot to accomplish in very little time, and there are bigger things yet to reveal about him, and so I had to be very deliberate in my approach.
So I made some creative decisions.
Saturday, January 19, 2019
Crisis Weekly, the thirteenth
Crisis Weekly #13.
It should come as no surprise that Crisis Weekly was inspired by 52, a weekly series DC did back in 2006-07. 52 was a big deal at the time, both for the fact that it took on the challenge of coordinating a weekly series featuring a continuous story, something that had never been done before, but brought together DC's best writers (Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, and Mark Waid) to collaborate on it. I loved it. I thought and still do that it was a seminal achievement filled with great moments, archetypal storytelling that knew how to turn a dramatic corner and take bold risks with characters nobody would've ever expected to enjoy such results.
Along the way, 52 introduced new characters. Batwoman had the greatest sticking power. She's starred in a few ongoing series of her own since then, and even made a spectacular live action debut in the "Arrowverse" TV crossover event last year, "Elseworlds." There was also Supernova, who was ultimately revealed to be Booster Gold all along, a fact that was a little disappointing to fans who hoped there was another standout newcomer in the mix. (Later, DC attempted to draft Booster's present-day ancestor into the role, but the idea had little staying power.)
This week's installment of Crisis Weekly plays with the legacy of Supernova. I had introduced the character of Boxer (meant to be a representative of a competing space cop organization to the Green Lantern Corps) early on, but hadn't featured him since, knowing that he had little other purpose than to be eventually exposed as one of the White Martians. So, rather than letting readers bond with the guy, I saved him for the moment he gets revealed. Hopefully he still works as interesting in and of himself, what he attempted to represent, above and beyond what he actually is.
This week I also sketched out the rest of the story. Assuming all goes according to plan, Crisis Weekly will end with #21, eight installments later. When I originally conceived of it, I thought the story might go longer, but I didn't want something that eventually just sort of existed. I wanted a story that kept hitting its beats at a reasonable pace. Readers will tell me whether or not I'll have succeeded.
Along the way, 52 introduced new characters. Batwoman had the greatest sticking power. She's starred in a few ongoing series of her own since then, and even made a spectacular live action debut in the "Arrowverse" TV crossover event last year, "Elseworlds." There was also Supernova, who was ultimately revealed to be Booster Gold all along, a fact that was a little disappointing to fans who hoped there was another standout newcomer in the mix. (Later, DC attempted to draft Booster's present-day ancestor into the role, but the idea had little staying power.)
This week's installment of Crisis Weekly plays with the legacy of Supernova. I had introduced the character of Boxer (meant to be a representative of a competing space cop organization to the Green Lantern Corps) early on, but hadn't featured him since, knowing that he had little other purpose than to be eventually exposed as one of the White Martians. So, rather than letting readers bond with the guy, I saved him for the moment he gets revealed. Hopefully he still works as interesting in and of himself, what he attempted to represent, above and beyond what he actually is.
This week I also sketched out the rest of the story. Assuming all goes according to plan, Crisis Weekly will end with #21, eight installments later. When I originally conceived of it, I thought the story might go longer, but I didn't want something that eventually just sort of existed. I wanted a story that kept hitting its beats at a reasonable pace. Readers will tell me whether or not I'll have succeeded.
Saturday, January 12, 2019
Crisis Weekly, the twelfth
Crisis Weekly #12.
This is one of the moments I've been building toward, one of the ones I've been eagerly anticipating writing. President Reilly, a.k.a. Firehawk, finally gets to command the spotlight, in the most dramatic fashion possible. In a way, it's a reprise of her earlier battle against a legion of Man-Bats, but it's also the State of the Union address! And it's her confronting, head-on, the challenges of the public's negative perception of superheroes, allowing herself to be viewed as the first time, as president, as a superhero.
I didn't invent the concept of Firehawk as a politician. I first came across her in that regard in the pages of Firestorm. Her secret origin is actually horrifying. The daughter of a US senator, Lorraine is kidnapped as forcibly experimented on, in the hopes of duplicating Firestorm's powers. The results aren't quite as intended, but she does in fact gain superpowers, and eventually a reputation as a bona fide superhero, who eventually for a time joins the odd "Firestorm matrix," in effect finally becoming Firestorm. But not before becoming herself a US senator.
She doesn't even rate her own Wikipedia page, however. She's lumped in for one of those group pages of miscellaneous characters, with a fairly brief entry even at that. Yet Firehawk has fascinated me since, as I've previously mentioned, I first learned about her on the back of a trading card, and then her later appearances in Firestorm, as a senator, as part of the Firestorm matrix (there's usually two individuals who comprise Firestorm: the one who represents the body and the one who in effect represents the mind, the role Firehawk assumed).
Her major role in Crisis Weekly is a small indication of what I consider to be her vast potential.
I didn't invent the concept of Firehawk as a politician. I first came across her in that regard in the pages of Firestorm. Her secret origin is actually horrifying. The daughter of a US senator, Lorraine is kidnapped as forcibly experimented on, in the hopes of duplicating Firestorm's powers. The results aren't quite as intended, but she does in fact gain superpowers, and eventually a reputation as a bona fide superhero, who eventually for a time joins the odd "Firestorm matrix," in effect finally becoming Firestorm. But not before becoming herself a US senator.
She doesn't even rate her own Wikipedia page, however. She's lumped in for one of those group pages of miscellaneous characters, with a fairly brief entry even at that. Yet Firehawk has fascinated me since, as I've previously mentioned, I first learned about her on the back of a trading card, and then her later appearances in Firestorm, as a senator, as part of the Firestorm matrix (there's usually two individuals who comprise Firestorm: the one who represents the body and the one who in effect represents the mind, the role Firehawk assumed).
Her major role in Crisis Weekly is a small indication of what I consider to be her vast potential.
Saturday, January 5, 2019
Crisis Weekly, the eleventh.
Crisis Weekly #11.
The last new character is introduced this week (probably), and his name is Ezrah. Ezrah is named after someone I met during my first six months in childcare, who was in fact one of the kids. Interacting with kids all day, you see a wide variety of personalities, and naturally some are going to stick out. Sometimes it seems like the ones who do stick out for all the wrong reasons, and sometimes it's not even their fault, but because for one reason or another they have developmental delays. Ezrah required a lot of attention, but I didn't mind at all. I tend to feel most accomplished when it's clear I'm helping kids like Ezrah, and I guess that kind of instant gratification is basis human nature. You want to know you're making a difference. Most of the other staff in the facility are women, and it was theorized that Ezrah responded to me because I'm male, as he was at the time otherwise at home with a single dad, and you can do the math for the rest of it. I like to believe it wasn't so simple, but who can say?
For those keeping score at home, I'd love to disclose some additional inspiration for the fictional Ezrah, but that would be telling. Instead, I'd like to just reference one additional source of inspiration that cropped up this week, for the splash page involving El Dorado's apparent death, which is a callback for me to Mike Costa's brilliant G.I. Joe/Cobra comics, in which Chuckles gets the last laugh by assassinating Cobra Commander. It was Costa's biggest moment in his long run (and led directly to two G.I. Joe crossover events, "Cobra Civil War" and "Cobra Command") across several series, and I just like to bring up his work, on the chance it'll inspire more people to read it.
The last new character is introduced this week (probably), and his name is Ezrah. Ezrah is named after someone I met during my first six months in childcare, who was in fact one of the kids. Interacting with kids all day, you see a wide variety of personalities, and naturally some are going to stick out. Sometimes it seems like the ones who do stick out for all the wrong reasons, and sometimes it's not even their fault, but because for one reason or another they have developmental delays. Ezrah required a lot of attention, but I didn't mind at all. I tend to feel most accomplished when it's clear I'm helping kids like Ezrah, and I guess that kind of instant gratification is basis human nature. You want to know you're making a difference. Most of the other staff in the facility are women, and it was theorized that Ezrah responded to me because I'm male, as he was at the time otherwise at home with a single dad, and you can do the math for the rest of it. I like to believe it wasn't so simple, but who can say?
For those keeping score at home, I'd love to disclose some additional inspiration for the fictional Ezrah, but that would be telling. Instead, I'd like to just reference one additional source of inspiration that cropped up this week, for the splash page involving El Dorado's apparent death, which is a callback for me to Mike Costa's brilliant G.I. Joe/Cobra comics, in which Chuckles gets the last laugh by assassinating Cobra Commander. It was Costa's biggest moment in his long run (and led directly to two G.I. Joe crossover events, "Cobra Civil War" and "Cobra Command") across several series, and I just like to bring up his work, on the chance it'll inspire more people to read it.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Crisis Weekly, the tenth.
Crisis Weekly #10.
I don't necessarily have a lot to talk about this time, except to note that Jack Ryder as depicted here is being inspired by Tom Hardy's Eddy Brock in Venom. Bloodwynd, too, as revealed last installment, is inspired in part by Cormoran Strike, the amputee detective in J.K. Rowling's Robert Gailbraith mysteries (who is himself inspired, I'm sure, by Rowling's own "Mad-Eye" Moody from the Harry Potter books). And, since we're talking inspiration here, some of Rachel "Bulletproof" Rogerson's arc is inspired by the movie Isle of Dogs, which I love.
So there's that!
I don't necessarily have a lot to talk about this time, except to note that Jack Ryder as depicted here is being inspired by Tom Hardy's Eddy Brock in Venom. Bloodwynd, too, as revealed last installment, is inspired in part by Cormoran Strike, the amputee detective in J.K. Rowling's Robert Gailbraith mysteries (who is himself inspired, I'm sure, by Rowling's own "Mad-Eye" Moody from the Harry Potter books). And, since we're talking inspiration here, some of Rachel "Bulletproof" Rogerson's arc is inspired by the movie Isle of Dogs, which I love.
So there's that!
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Crisis Weekly, nine installments completed.
I was barely a dozen years old when Superman died.
Nowadays, it's almost difficult to remember, the seismic impact a fictional event like that had, even if there have now been two animated and one live action movie adaptations of the story. Sure, DC had created a media frenzy over the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd, a few years previous. But sensational superhero deaths became almost a matter of course in later years. Captain America died, in the aftermath of the original Civil War comic, and that got some pretty good coverage. Johnny Storm died, and his passing merited a special black bag edition of Fantastic Four, much like Superman's. It started to seem that if you wanted the public to pay attention to comic books, you had to kill off a major character.
Because the death of Superman was huge. It coincided with a massive boom in comic book buying. Marvel had struck big with comics drawn by artists who somewhat promptly left to start Image. A whole speculator market flooded the medium, and of course the bubble burst, and really, comics are still struggling to emerge from the fallout.
The story everyone remembers, though, from that time is the death of Superman. Like I said, I was a kid at the time. I can't say that I was emotionally affected, but it was a powerful formative experience, a touchstone event right there near the beginning of my reading life. It's impossible for me not to think of it in relation to Superman and comics in general. The story itself quickly segued into another grand adventure, four impostor Supermen appearing only to make room for Superman himself, returning from the dead. Lots of people now like to believe it happened at all as a crass publicity stunt, but the creators insist it was a way to delay the wedding of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, since the TV show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was about to launch, and the comics had only just got around to letting the silly lovebirds approach a happy ending to their decades-long romance, and they didn't want to get there before the show could. So they threw a crisis at Superman, the biggest imaginable.
The comic book creator most synonymous with the whole thing is the guy who wrote and drew the pivotal issue, Superman #75, Dan Jurgens, and he's freely returned to the story whenever he's had the opportunity over the years. But I figured there was still room to play around with it. So this edition of Crisis Weekly begins to make clear how this particular story dives into that one.
Nowadays, it's almost difficult to remember, the seismic impact a fictional event like that had, even if there have now been two animated and one live action movie adaptations of the story. Sure, DC had created a media frenzy over the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd, a few years previous. But sensational superhero deaths became almost a matter of course in later years. Captain America died, in the aftermath of the original Civil War comic, and that got some pretty good coverage. Johnny Storm died, and his passing merited a special black bag edition of Fantastic Four, much like Superman's. It started to seem that if you wanted the public to pay attention to comic books, you had to kill off a major character.
Because the death of Superman was huge. It coincided with a massive boom in comic book buying. Marvel had struck big with comics drawn by artists who somewhat promptly left to start Image. A whole speculator market flooded the medium, and of course the bubble burst, and really, comics are still struggling to emerge from the fallout.
The story everyone remembers, though, from that time is the death of Superman. Like I said, I was a kid at the time. I can't say that I was emotionally affected, but it was a powerful formative experience, a touchstone event right there near the beginning of my reading life. It's impossible for me not to think of it in relation to Superman and comics in general. The story itself quickly segued into another grand adventure, four impostor Supermen appearing only to make room for Superman himself, returning from the dead. Lots of people now like to believe it happened at all as a crass publicity stunt, but the creators insist it was a way to delay the wedding of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, since the TV show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was about to launch, and the comics had only just got around to letting the silly lovebirds approach a happy ending to their decades-long romance, and they didn't want to get there before the show could. So they threw a crisis at Superman, the biggest imaginable.
The comic book creator most synonymous with the whole thing is the guy who wrote and drew the pivotal issue, Superman #75, Dan Jurgens, and he's freely returned to the story whenever he's had the opportunity over the years. But I figured there was still room to play around with it. So this edition of Crisis Weekly begins to make clear how this particular story dives into that one.
Saturday, December 8, 2018
Crisis Weekly, eight weeks completed!
Wow. So I've just posted Crisis Weekly #8.
I say "wow" for a couple reasons. The first is that this week's script is double the length of previous ones, sixteen script pages as opposed to eight. This is because I'm hedging my bets about how next week will turn out. I've been writing these scripts on Saturday, but next Saturday I'll be participating in a mini family reunion, so if I don't get a chance to write something before then, I'll at least know I've got the script numbers where they should be (old NaNo habit).
The second is that I finally got around to something I've been itching to write since I started this thing, which is to say the first of two spotlights on Bloodwynd's origins. This week is the origin itself, which I've revised. It was previously detailed in the pages of DC's '90s Showcase comics. I decided that it would be interesting, given the confusion some fans still have about this, to have Martian Manhunter help explain it, because these fans think Martian Manhunter is Bloodwynd, which I again reference in the script. Probably won't get around to actually exploring that, although I certainly have ideas. Likewise, I obliquely reference Firehawk's origins, but probably won't be getting back into that, either, but it's nice to mention, something I remember from DC's '90s trading cards, where I first learned about Firehawk at all.
And for once, action fills the story, and that felt nice, too, a change of pace, and getting into the thick of the White Martian plot, which will continue to ramp up in the weeks to come.
The next script, whenever I get around to it, will continue Bloodwynd's origins, and I'm very much looking forward to writing that one...
I say "wow" for a couple reasons. The first is that this week's script is double the length of previous ones, sixteen script pages as opposed to eight. This is because I'm hedging my bets about how next week will turn out. I've been writing these scripts on Saturday, but next Saturday I'll be participating in a mini family reunion, so if I don't get a chance to write something before then, I'll at least know I've got the script numbers where they should be (old NaNo habit).
The second is that I finally got around to something I've been itching to write since I started this thing, which is to say the first of two spotlights on Bloodwynd's origins. This week is the origin itself, which I've revised. It was previously detailed in the pages of DC's '90s Showcase comics. I decided that it would be interesting, given the confusion some fans still have about this, to have Martian Manhunter help explain it, because these fans think Martian Manhunter is Bloodwynd, which I again reference in the script. Probably won't get around to actually exploring that, although I certainly have ideas. Likewise, I obliquely reference Firehawk's origins, but probably won't be getting back into that, either, but it's nice to mention, something I remember from DC's '90s trading cards, where I first learned about Firehawk at all.
And for once, action fills the story, and that felt nice, too, a change of pace, and getting into the thick of the White Martian plot, which will continue to ramp up in the weeks to come.
The next script, whenever I get around to it, will continue Bloodwynd's origins, and I'm very much looking forward to writing that one...
Saturday, December 1, 2018
Crisis Weekly, seven down!
My favorite was Superboy and the Ravers. This was a team composed of damaged individuals like Half-Life, half of whose body was literally exposed skeleton covered in ectoplasmic goo. Take that, X-Men! This was a dude oozing with angst! There was also Hero, a rare gay superhero who also happened to have possession of a power vest and later the H-Dial (as in "Dial 'H' for Hero"). Then there was the Qwardian warrior Kaliber, who had a near breakout moment during the Genesis crossover event. And Aura. And Rex the Wonder Dog. And the Flying Buttress!
But mainly, I loved seeing Sparx get a chance, because she was a fun character, and unlike the rest of the Bloodlines generation, she seemed packaged for greatness, part of a whole family of superheroes but powerless until alien parasites attack her. There was always a ton of potential in her, and so yeah, of course I was going to have to include Sparx, too, in this crazy adventure, even if she isn't immediately a featured player (time and space will tell).
Saturday, November 24, 2018
Crisis Weekly, the sixth week!
Just posted Crisis Weekly #6.
The whole concept of a DC crisis has rich history. The original, 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths, remains a huge watershed moment. It was originally designed to collapse the multiverse back into a coherent, single DC continuity, so that every superhero operated in the same world. This was a problem since DC had inadvertently created the concept of the multiverse based on how its publishing fortunes had developed since Superman's debut in 1938. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have always been DC's three most important creations, but they originally existed at the same time as the Justice Society of America, several members of which were famously reinvented at the start of the Silver Age, the second wave of DC superheroes in the 1950s. One of them, the second Flash, met his predecessor in the famous "Flash of Two Worlds" issue, which in effect ushered in the era of the multiverse. Eventually, the Justice Society was placed in a second continuity, Earth 2, and there were regularly team-ups between the Society and the more famous Justice League. In Earth 2 continuity, Batman and Catwoman really did officially get married, and their daughter was Huntress, and eventually, Batman was even permanently killed off!
Anyway, so DC got fed up with competing continuities, and so Crisis on Infinite Earths happened. But then DC decided that the multiverse was a good idea, and so Infinite Crisis happened in 2006, and later Final Crisis in 2008.
Infinite Crisis was a story predicated on the notion that the grim nature of superhero comics that had developed roughly since Alan Moore's seminal Watchmen twenty years earlier had become toxic. In it, the characters are fully aware that they're no longer seen in their best light. Wonder Woman had been forced, like Superman in the real world controversy in 2013's Man of Steel where he snaps the neck of General Zod and audiences watched in horror, to murder a diabolical schemer named Maxwell Lord, and that was used as the main focal point. DC used the opportunity to also reflect on Superman's periodic relative unpopularity, as well as the massive success of the "Doomsday" arc in which he became the most famous murdered fictional character since Sherlock Holmes.
And Batman offers this choice observation:
Ouch!
So anyway, this week's Crisis Weekly is very much in the spirit of that particular moment. There's a brutal verbal takedown, in this case reflecting once again the real world, where confidence in the US seems to be at an all-time low. Fiction ought to reflect reality, comment on reality, otherwise it's mere escapism.
But this installment also bursts into "mere escapism" by finally unveiling Man-Bat, long teased, as one of the main antagonists of the narrative, thereby plunging a lot of heavy real world issues back into fiction, and as promised, beginning a full-throttle dive into more traditional superhero storytelling. It's the first big culmination point, equal parts summary of what has come before and an illustration of what it's all meant.
And it's really just getting started...!
The whole concept of a DC crisis has rich history. The original, 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths, remains a huge watershed moment. It was originally designed to collapse the multiverse back into a coherent, single DC continuity, so that every superhero operated in the same world. This was a problem since DC had inadvertently created the concept of the multiverse based on how its publishing fortunes had developed since Superman's debut in 1938. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have always been DC's three most important creations, but they originally existed at the same time as the Justice Society of America, several members of which were famously reinvented at the start of the Silver Age, the second wave of DC superheroes in the 1950s. One of them, the second Flash, met his predecessor in the famous "Flash of Two Worlds" issue, which in effect ushered in the era of the multiverse. Eventually, the Justice Society was placed in a second continuity, Earth 2, and there were regularly team-ups between the Society and the more famous Justice League. In Earth 2 continuity, Batman and Catwoman really did officially get married, and their daughter was Huntress, and eventually, Batman was even permanently killed off!
Anyway, so DC got fed up with competing continuities, and so Crisis on Infinite Earths happened. But then DC decided that the multiverse was a good idea, and so Infinite Crisis happened in 2006, and later Final Crisis in 2008.
Infinite Crisis was a story predicated on the notion that the grim nature of superhero comics that had developed roughly since Alan Moore's seminal Watchmen twenty years earlier had become toxic. In it, the characters are fully aware that they're no longer seen in their best light. Wonder Woman had been forced, like Superman in the real world controversy in 2013's Man of Steel where he snaps the neck of General Zod and audiences watched in horror, to murder a diabolical schemer named Maxwell Lord, and that was used as the main focal point. DC used the opportunity to also reflect on Superman's periodic relative unpopularity, as well as the massive success of the "Doomsday" arc in which he became the most famous murdered fictional character since Sherlock Holmes.
And Batman offers this choice observation:
Ouch!
So anyway, this week's Crisis Weekly is very much in the spirit of that particular moment. There's a brutal verbal takedown, in this case reflecting once again the real world, where confidence in the US seems to be at an all-time low. Fiction ought to reflect reality, comment on reality, otherwise it's mere escapism.
But this installment also bursts into "mere escapism" by finally unveiling Man-Bat, long teased, as one of the main antagonists of the narrative, thereby plunging a lot of heavy real world issues back into fiction, and as promised, beginning a full-throttle dive into more traditional superhero storytelling. It's the first big culmination point, equal parts summary of what has come before and an illustration of what it's all meant.
And it's really just getting started...!
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Crisis Weekly, five weeks in!
Did I say last week that I was done introducing the real world crises? Ah! Because this one features Mexican migrants...!
Crisis Weekly #5 also features obscure superhero El Dorado!
El Dorado is best known as one of the ethnic creations from Super Friends, all of whom were later dismissed as bad stereotypes. But well before I had ever heard of the teleporting mutant Nightcrawler, and certainly before I'd ever seen X2: X-Men United, in which Nightcrawler so memorably invades the White House, I was fascinated by El Dorado's wonderful cape, which he used to transport himself wherever he pleased.
But to everyone else, El Dorado more or less never existed at all. He's made a handful of appearances since, even made a cameo in the comics, but certainly never starred in his own series or been featured as a member of the Justice League (which, as we all know, the "Super Friends" was all along).
So of course if I was ever going to write comic book scripts, I was going to rectify that.
In Crisis Weekly, not only does El Dorado exist, he's helping migrants cross the borders, and in his civilian identity (a name taken from his appearance in the Young Justice cartoon, because he never got one in Super Friends) even serves as Vice President of Mexico! (Before you say so, officially that office hasn't existed for a hundred years.)
Vindication! Viva El Dorado!
Crisis Weekly #5 also features obscure superhero El Dorado!
But to everyone else, El Dorado more or less never existed at all. He's made a handful of appearances since, even made a cameo in the comics, but certainly never starred in his own series or been featured as a member of the Justice League (which, as we all know, the "Super Friends" was all along).
So of course if I was ever going to write comic book scripts, I was going to rectify that.
In Crisis Weekly, not only does El Dorado exist, he's helping migrants cross the borders, and in his civilian identity (a name taken from his appearance in the Young Justice cartoon, because he never got one in Super Friends) even serves as Vice President of Mexico! (Before you say so, officially that office hasn't existed for a hundred years.)
Vindication! Viva El Dorado!
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Crisis Weekly, four weeks down!
I just posted Crisis Weekly #4.
Four weeks and four different crises, all of them ripped from the real world (a scandal, a presidential assassination, a school shooting), with the latest being...a black man is pulled over unjustifiably by a white cop.
The only way this would've been more relevant is if the black man had been shot dead. But the black man in this instance is one-time Justice Leaguer Bloodwynd, and the cop is Guy Gardner. The unprovoked pullover is itself an all-too common occurrence. The black community views it as residual institutional racism, and it's been one of the things that has contributed to the heated nature of our times. Guy Gardner has never been portrayed as racist. I've been playing a little fast and loose with him in Crisis Weekly. He has been known, for most of his appearances, as brash. What I've been doing with him isn't so much out of character as implied as highly possible if he existed in the real world. Even if he doesn't mean to come off as racist, he's the kind of guy (heh) who could very easily appear to be, and might even be, even if just a little. Racism in its benign form is prejudice, the inability to look beyond one's own perspective. To be, in other words, a fairly rude individual, when confronted with strangers. Guy doesn't care who he offends.
The other benefit of this unfortunate encounter is that it unites Guy and Bloodwynd from their experiences in the first and second installments of Crisis Weekly, begins to move along the narrative of the White Martian crisis, the fictional construct that grounds the otherwise real world problems in a familiar superhero context. And for the third time in four weeks, there are also bats, of which we are getting closer to finding out about, too. Much sooner than the White Martians, actually.
And this rounds out the first month of Crisis Weekly! Wow!
Four weeks and four different crises, all of them ripped from the real world (a scandal, a presidential assassination, a school shooting), with the latest being...a black man is pulled over unjustifiably by a white cop.
The only way this would've been more relevant is if the black man had been shot dead. But the black man in this instance is one-time Justice Leaguer Bloodwynd, and the cop is Guy Gardner. The unprovoked pullover is itself an all-too common occurrence. The black community views it as residual institutional racism, and it's been one of the things that has contributed to the heated nature of our times. Guy Gardner has never been portrayed as racist. I've been playing a little fast and loose with him in Crisis Weekly. He has been known, for most of his appearances, as brash. What I've been doing with him isn't so much out of character as implied as highly possible if he existed in the real world. Even if he doesn't mean to come off as racist, he's the kind of guy (heh) who could very easily appear to be, and might even be, even if just a little. Racism in its benign form is prejudice, the inability to look beyond one's own perspective. To be, in other words, a fairly rude individual, when confronted with strangers. Guy doesn't care who he offends.
The other benefit of this unfortunate encounter is that it unites Guy and Bloodwynd from their experiences in the first and second installments of Crisis Weekly, begins to move along the narrative of the White Martian crisis, the fictional construct that grounds the otherwise real world problems in a familiar superhero context. And for the third time in four weeks, there are also bats, of which we are getting closer to finding out about, too. Much sooner than the White Martians, actually.
And this rounds out the first month of Crisis Weekly! Wow!
Friday, November 2, 2018
Crisis Weekly...week three!
The third installment of Crisis Weekly is up. Find it here.
This week was a little bit of a departure narratively. It's the story of a school shooting. No bats, no mention of White Martians. As school shootings go, I figured it was worth introducing the topic on its own.
Obviously these things have been happening. The first time I remember one was back in 1999 with Columbine. We talked about it at track practice. The Matrix had opened, and people wanted to blame Neo and company for looking all swank while they shot up buildings. But we know school shootings don't happen because of The Matrix. The Matrix isn't cool anymore, and yet the shootings keep happening.
So I decided to include it in this story. Yes, it's also the third crisis in a row in a series with "crisis" in the name, and a DC story, where "crisis" tends to be the operative word. But this one seems like one of the worst crises of the modern era, and everyone has an explanation, even today, for why they keep happening.
All I knew is that I had to write about it. I processed Katrina like that, in the unpublished manuscript In the Land of Pangaea. And I'll probably process the recent Hurricane Michael. I have friends who were personally impacted by that one, and I have experience in the area affected by it, and it's still weird to think about that. Writers process by writing. It's what we do.
This will probably be the toughest week to read.
This week was a little bit of a departure narratively. It's the story of a school shooting. No bats, no mention of White Martians. As school shootings go, I figured it was worth introducing the topic on its own.
Obviously these things have been happening. The first time I remember one was back in 1999 with Columbine. We talked about it at track practice. The Matrix had opened, and people wanted to blame Neo and company for looking all swank while they shot up buildings. But we know school shootings don't happen because of The Matrix. The Matrix isn't cool anymore, and yet the shootings keep happening.
So I decided to include it in this story. Yes, it's also the third crisis in a row in a series with "crisis" in the name, and a DC story, where "crisis" tends to be the operative word. But this one seems like one of the worst crises of the modern era, and everyone has an explanation, even today, for why they keep happening.
All I knew is that I had to write about it. I processed Katrina like that, in the unpublished manuscript In the Land of Pangaea. And I'll probably process the recent Hurricane Michael. I have friends who were personally impacted by that one, and I have experience in the area affected by it, and it's still weird to think about that. Writers process by writing. It's what we do.
This will probably be the toughest week to read.
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