2014 – a Reckoning … of comic collections read

This year I decided to start tracking my reading a bit more closely.  I wanted to be able to look at trends in my reading, and possibly identify deficiencies in my habits that I could work on.  For the year, I read 100 collections-slash-graphic novels.  Not a bad number.  But what did I read?

I finally got my hands on Bendis’s Alias, which was a great series.  It tapered off a bit at the end, but still, some really great writing, and I appreciated Andreyko’s art, which helped make this book stand out even more.  This led to me re-reading Bendis’s Daredevil run with Alex Maleev.  Not as great as I remember, from my first reading, but still a strong series of issues, made all the more impressive by the fact that, with rare instances and one fill-in storyline that I can remember, this creative team was on the book for a serious run.  Now I’m halfway through the Brubaker/Lark run, and though I’m not enjoying it as much, it’s still a solid read. 

I also dipped into the Geoff Johns Green Lantern mythos this year - and wrote about it here, here, and here.  I stopped after the Sinestro Corps War, relatively underwhelmed.  There was some nice art (when it was Ethan Van Sciver), and the stories were well done, but I think the facts that Hal Jordan is now a firm fixture in the DCU and that I knew some of the twists and turns coming is what killed it for me.  I may return to see how things lead up to Blackest Night, one of my favorite Flash stories of recent years, but probably not.

I also finished up Bakuman this year, reading the last 11 volumes over the entire course of 2014.  Great stuff.  As long as you can buy into the distinct tropes of manga, then you should enjoy this.  Great drama, great characters, some really funs scenarios, and beautiful art, all revolving around two school friends who decide they want to become the biggest manga creators on Weekly Shonen Jump.  The way the creators manage to imbue their stories with drama and tension, when it revolves around creating comics, is impressive.  Worth checking out. 

I also read the full Locke & Key this year, by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez.  One of the best comic stories in years.  Amazing.  If you haven’t read this series yet, and you call yourself a comic fan, get on it.  You will not regret it. 

Some other standouts from the past year also include:

• Ant Colony by Michael DeForge – one of the most distinct and enjoyable artists currently working in comics
• Family Ties by Eric Hobbs & Noel Tuazon – one of my favorite artists, who does not have enough work out there, but what Tuazon does have is all stellar
• Bumperhead by Gilbert Hernandez – on my Rushmore of comic artists.
• Nemo: Roses of Berlin by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill – Alan Moore, writing god, ‘nuff said.
• The Red Diary by Steven Seagle & Teddy Kristiansen – an incredible creative team with yet another phenomenal book.  Check out anything from them.
• NOAH by Darren Aronofsky & Niko Henrichon – gorgeous art, great story, and not what you expect.  Get it.
• Hip Hop Family Tree v.1 by Ed Piskor – check this out, a history of hip hop told through comics by a guy who is a signature talent.

And there were a lot more.  Going into 2015, I’m going to read through all of Gotham Central, finally, and I also plan on doing a near-complete Frank Miller re-read – I don’t know if I can take Holy Terror! but I am excited to re-read DK2 and possibly writing about it.  And whatever other great titles come across my various social feeds.  If you’ve got something to recommend, let me know.  And thanks.

-chris

What It Is - week ending 26 October [2014]

With apologies to Dave the Thune.

WRITING:
Every day.  1000 words.  That's the goal.

The train kept rolling this week as I added to the novel in progress.  Passed 160 manuscript pages and 44,000 words, which is good.  But I hit a snag in the middle of this week.  I sat down to write my thousand, and it was a chore.  I would type something, sit back and stare at it, work it over in my mind, delete and retype it in a slightly different manner, sit back, stare, delete, skim the internet, skim the internet some more, come back to the writing, type something, finally move on, then sit, stare, and try to get my mind focused.
But it was not working.  So, after an hour, I closed the laptop with only 450 words down.

Now, all this focus on word counts may seem, to some, as if I am focused on the wrong thing.  Why should I worry about the number of words I got down?  Shouldn't I be thinking more carefully about the words I'm choosing?  Isn't that the more important thing rather than just looking at the total (quantity vs. quality, and all that).  And the answer is yes and no - with an emphasis toward "no."

Every writer whom I admire has stated numerous times that if one wants to be a writer, one must write.  Not think about it.  Not read up on the subject.  Not philosophize and market test ideas.  Write.  It's the only way to learn, because if you haven't actually written anything, well, you haven't written anything.  Now, is the word count the final goal?  No.  But, I can assure you, when I was only writing intermittently, there was little growth in what I was producing.  Since I've been writing regularly (and keeping track with my spreadsheet has been the best thing for me - a quick, visual check on whether I am keeping up my end of the bargain that keeps me honest), though, I know I've grown quite a bit.  Actually doing the writing comes more easily, connections within the narrative (whether to points earlier in the story or through metaphors) reveal themselves to me, and I approach my writing differently now, working to make them more effective dramatically rather than crafting a dot-to-dot series of events.

And, when I have trouble "getting the words out," I realize that something is not working.  It's a gut feeling, but one I recognize now, and it makes step back and re-assess the point I'm working on.  Which is what happened the night I slogged through getting down those 450 words.  Something was off in what I was trying to do.  So I went to bed, pouring over what I'd read and what I wanted from this scene, and by morning I had it figured out and was able to write 1400 words that pushed the narrative forward a bit more (rather than stagnating it with "spinning wheels," as I think was happening the night before).  It would be nice if my gut would pinpoint what's going wrong in the writing, but at least I'm learning to understand what that feeling means and work to adjust what's going on the page.

That - learning how I need to write - is the best thing that has come from writing consistently, with a daily goal in mind.  And, no, the goal doesn't need to be a word count, it can be a set amount of time, or some other goal.  As long as it's a regular thing and you approach it honestly, then it will be something that will help you improve your writing.

WHAT I'M READING:
In comics, horror may be the most difficult genre to do.  There's no music, no dripping blood (i.e. being able to watch the blood fall to the floor), no movement (as in film) allowing us to watch the monster slink out of the shadows behind our protagonist, none of those tools are available to the comic artist.  So achieving that gut-twisting punch of horror is an almost impossible task.  Which means many horror comics turn to gore and grossness, in order to shock their readers with how far over the line they are willing to go with their grotesqueries.  And, I suppose, that's one approach.

Thankfully, Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, choose the higher road.  I finished volume 5 this week, but am thinking specifically of a scene from volume 1 that just froze me, when I turned the page.

*** SPOILERS ***  SPOILERS *** SPOILERS *** SPOILERS *** SPOILERS ***

Bode, the youngest Locke child, has been talking to the woman in the wellhouse, at the point I'm discussing.  And we know that the woman in the well is evil, wants to hurt the Locke family, but is trapped in the well (may even be an immaterial ghost or spirit).  And, to this point, Bode has gone down to the well to speak with the woman a few times.  It's become relatively common, and the readers have come to expect how these discussions go.  Add to this the fact that Hill & Rodriguez have crafted believable and very sympathetic characters in the Locke family, and the scene is ripe for a big shock.  Which we get with a page-turn late in that first volume when Bode turns away from the well to answer his sister (iirc) that he'll be right up to the house - as it is late - and behind Bode, in this large panel, we see the woman from the well creeping out of the well, arm outstretched, reaching for the young boy.  It gave me chills.  This was brilliantly executed, from the set up, to the characters we care about, and the large panel on a page-turn that changes the entire status quo - so good.  If you haven't read Locke & Key yet, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Also finished the screenplay for Harlan Ellison's Cutter's World (I read his teleplay of the same idea last week).  Through the first 100 pages, it stayed very close to the teleplay, which was disappointing.  But then, once Cutter and his son arrive on the alien world, things changed.  Ellison didn't excise anything, instead, he chose to enhance these scenes, and it worked wonderfully.  He managed to share more of the alien civilization while also ratcheting up the drama and the emotional connections with the characters, by dropping in scenes here and there, expanding others, and rearranging still others, with additional antagonists that also made the final part of the narrative feel more natural and not as familiar as it did in the teleplay.

As an example:  In the teleplay, when Cutter and his son sit down to eat, after making their way to Deke's on this new world, Cutter and a Kyban (Ellison's go-to aliens) coincidentally reach for the final piece of meat on the platter between them, a fight ensues, but in the end they become uneasy allies because of a connection Cutter had made previously.
In the screenplay, the Kyban across from Cutter deliberately reaches for the meat at the same time as Cutter to goad him into fighting, and the "friendly" Kyban is alerted by Deke (the connection Cutter made) to intercede, without others realizing, and he pushes aside the antagonistic Kyban, feigning cultural offense at Cutter's insolence, and the same fight ensues but with a far different, and more interesting, reason behind it.  Things like this really made reading these two screenplays not only interesting but also a good lesson for approaching my own writing.

MISCELLANY:
World Series time!  I don't have cable, so this is about the only time I get to watch baseball on TV, since Major League Baseball doesn't seem like they want to try and encourage a new, younger generation of fans.  Ah, well.  Just means I can focus more on my writing at night.

The first two games weren't what I expected.  Even though the Giants won 7-1 in game 1, it felt like the Royals were just on the cusp of breaking through against Madison Bumgarner.  I'm hoping they are able to do that when they meet Bumgarner again.
I'm an American League guy, plus I love the way the Royals play the game - running, good defense, productive hitting even when they make outs - so I was happy they won game 2.  Admittedly, I didn't see the blowout coming.  with 5 innings in the books, it felt like Peavy was just getting stronger, making pitches he wanted to make and forcing the Royals to chase those out of the strike zone for outs.  I wasn't feeling good about an AL win, but they came through against the bullpen and meant I'd get at least one extra game out of my baseball viewing this year.
Game 3 - this is what I was looking for.  Pitchers' duel.  Great defense on both sides.  And scoring a run with two productive outs, as the Royals did in that first inning.  Sure, the general audience loves the home runs and the scoring, but give me a low-scoring, well played game any day. It's far more exciting than a home run derby blowout.
But damn...game 4 just turned the momentum back to the West Coast.  Let's see if the Royals can pull this out.

OCTOBER COMICS REWIND:
Three years ago, I did a short series here called "October Comics."  Nine posts about comics that would be perfect to read this time of year - they either had a horror element to them, or a dark fantasy element, or were specifically Halloween themed.  It was fun, and I figured I should dust them off and share them with anyone checking the blog this year.  The first two repeats (with three books each) are below this post - the final one goes live Wednesday.  But here are links to all nine individual posts, if you like.

A Glimpse of Crime & Terror by Steve Niles and Scott Morse
Hellboy by Mike Mignola, et al.
Taboo from Spiderbaby Grafix (Stephen Bissette)
Batman: LOTDK Halloween Specials by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
The Broadcast by Eric Hobbs and Noel Tuazon
Coraline adapted by P. Craig Russell from the novel by Neil Gaiman
the Universal Monsters adaptations by Art Adams and others
Little Book of Horror: Frankenstein by Steven Niles and Scott Morse
Starchild by James A. Owen

SIGN OFF:
All right.  Two for two, which leads to the fact that I pushed out my 42nd and 43rd submissions of the year this past week.  I believe that puts me one ahead for my goal of 52 submissions this year.  Each year I've increased the number of submissions, which means next year, I'm going to need to really up my game - and get some more stories ready for submission - so that I can continue that trend.

'Til next week.

chris

What It Is - the week ending 19 October [2014]

With apologies to Dave the Thune.

So...I don't update here as often as I should be (that's an understatement).  But seeing friends like Brad & Matt, as well as Don McMillan, offering regular posts at their respective sites, it's obvious I need to do something to keep up - and, really, who's going to check Warrrior27 out when the top post never changes?   Time to face reality.

Why haven't I been posting here more often?  Easy answer - time.  There's never enough time to get everything done you want.  I have a day job.  I'm a father and husband - and I do not want to take away my family time for writing, as a general rule.  And there's always working out and sleep, along with all the books & comics to read and the films & television shows to watch (I'm still two seasons away from finishing LOST and have yet to watch Battlestar Galactica, while Locke & Key is still unfinished [should remedy that soon] and the latest David Mitchell novel hasn't even made it to the to-read pile).

So, time.  It's not going to materialize out of nothing.  I'll need to carve that time out somewhere to make this a regular - read: weekly - thing.  But I can do that.  And here's that first baby step.

WRITING PROGRESS:
Preamble:  My daily writing goal is 1000 words.  This takes roughly an hour (though I think about what I'm going to write throughout the day; it never stops).  For a long time, I was aiming for this but having trouble achieving it.  Again, it was that constriction of time.  I needed to make the time.  So I decided to schedule an hour, after my son was in bed and my wife was heading to bed to read, within which to get this writing done.  And it worked.  So well, that I began carving out an hour at sunrise on weekends, to get my writing done before everyone got out of bed.  Not surprisingly, my output increased and my writing has certainly improved.

Writing regularly - at a similar time each day - has certainly made it easier to sit down and get the words out.  The muse shows up more regularly when you train your mind to expect that you will be writing at the same point each day.  Also, I approach my writing in a wholly different manner now.  I am thinking more about craft, about the plot, about how to "upset the apple cart" and add tension to the scenes I am putting down.  Scheduling your daily writing is, perhaps, the most important thing any aspiring writer can do.

So, this week.  I've written roughly 5500 "new" words, while dropping 2400 words onto critiques at the Comics Experience creators' online workshop, which comes to about 8000 words for the week.  For the year, I just passed 248,000 total words (broken down into New Words, First Revisions, & Critiques).  My goal is to hit 300,000 for the year, and I think I'll make it.

The project on the front-burner right now is a novel called "On the Ledge," which is an expansion of a short story I wrote a number of years back.  Thus far, it seems to have legs, and I feel this could be a breakthrough piece of fiction for me.  Currently, I'm at 141 manuscript page, totaling 37,900 words (an average novel runs about 100,000), and I just passed one of the major plot points in the outline.  So, I'm feeling good about that.

And I had a short comic story, drawn by the incomparable Angela Allen, accepted for a quarterly independent comic anthology.  I'm really excited for this to see print.  If you want to check out a sample of Allen's art check this post out - which is just below this one, as it is.

THOUGHTS ON WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:
I'm currently reading volume 3 of Harlan Ellison's Brain Movies - collections of his screenplays and television scripts (both filmed and unfilmed).  Volume 3 includes two versions of an unfilmed story, Cutter's World, from the late 1980s.  I finished the first script, written for television.  It was classic Ellison, with fantastic ideas and cool characters.  Next, I'm going to read the film script and am curious to see the changes between the two versions.

I also finished volume 4 of Joe Hill's & Gabriel Rodriguez's amazing comic series, Locke & Key.  That volume ended with a plot twist that was brilliant, for a number of reasons.  One of the tropes (or maybe accepted realities) in horror fiction is the fact that the people being terrorized are never very smart.  They always make the dumb move, the foolish decision, that the audience yells for them not to make, that inevitably ends up with someone bloodied and butchered.  With volume 4 of Locke & Key, Hill & Rodriguez show up characters, in the Locke children, who are not dumb, who are able to see connections and begin to figure out who it is, in their midst, that is causing all of the harm and horror.  And they take action to stop him/her/it.  But, with a brilliant and elegant twist - playing off something first seen in volume 1 - Hill & Rodriguez bring the terror even closer to the Locke family, while making them believe that maybe, finally, there can be a respite to the craziness.  It was fantastic.

A MISCELLANY:
Started watching season 1 of the Newsroom with my wife (I did mention I was way behind in my TV viewing above).  It's Aaron Sorkin.  On HBO.  I loved it.  Sure, the hectic pace of the dialogue can, at times, become irritating and problematic.  But that is easily overlooked for the brilliant lines that come out of the mouths of many of these characters.  Loved it.  We watched the first two episodes, and are all in on this one.  One of the things I greatly appreciated came, in the second episode, when the newscast lost their major interviewee and did not come through, in the end, with someone to equal the person they'd been advertising for that night.  It was refreshing to have the "heroes," for want of a better word, lose.  Well played.

Also, with the return of Twin Peaks in 2016, I bumped the original series to the top of the Netflix queue.  What a great show.  Damn.  David Lynch is a genius.  Looking forward to rummaging through this seminal series, which helped spawn so much of today's "new golden age of TV."  3 episodes in, already, and, I have to say, the series holds up and would not feel out of place next to Mad Men or Breaking Bad or the Sopranos.  Great, great, stuff.

SIGN OFF:
So, we'll see if I can keep this up.  One week down, an infinity to go.  And, hey, if you made it this far head on over to In the Mouth of Dorkness and Donist World, and check out what Brad & Matt and Don have to say on all things, geek, nerdy, and cool.  You won't be disappointed.

Thanks,
chris