They are A-Changing

So Amazing Spider-Man #700 happened. I wanted to post some thoughts, since I've been seeing a lot of reaction to this on-line. I won't really go into the details of the issue, mainly because I haven't actually read it (I haven't been reading ASM, mainly due to my budget, but I've read the reviews so I know basically what happens). Not having read the issue, I can't really speak to the quality of the writing, but the reviews I've read so far have been largely positive, so I'll just leave it at that. The main thing I wanted to address were the complaints I've been seeing.

And there have been complaints. A lot of people claiming that Marvel and Dan Slott have ruined the character. That it was a terrible way to kill Peter Parker, he deserved better, what a waste, etc. One comment that I keep seeing along the lines of "No wonder no one buys comics anymore."

Now, granted, I haven't really researched the numbers, but it was my understanding that comic sales were in an upswing recently. So I can't help but wonder, when people make this claim, are they referring to comic sales from the 70s? Things have changed quite a bit since then.

And as far as Peter Parker deserving better, that it was a terrible way to kill him, I first want to mention that there is no reasonable person, who is familiar with how mainstream comics work, that could possibly believe that this is the last we'll see of Peter Parker. Beyond that I would suggest that for longtime fans of the character there is no possible death of Peter Parker story that they would accept as worthy of a title that's run for 700 issues.

Which brings me to my larger point (if you haven't figured it out by now, I have a tendency to pick specific events to make much larger, universal, points, because I have too much time on my hands and overthink everything). As I mentioned earlier, things have changed quite a bit since the 70s, or even the 80s or 90s. Status quo is no longer king, and I say good riddance.

ASM 700 marks the end of the Amazing Spider-Man series. There are now only a small handful of titles in 3 digits, and most of them are only a few years old (a la Walking Dead) or books that were dropped decades ago and recently revived with the old numbering (a la Journey Into Mystery). People have been complaining about constantly starting a title with a new #1 issue, to which I respond "Why?" Think of it this way, if I want to read Ed Brubaker's Captain America run in its entirety, I know exactly where to start. If I want to read Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four, Grant Morrison's Batman or Dan Slott's ASM run from start to finish, I have to go digging around for the starting points.

As far as I'm concerned, a new #1 can designate a new direction for a character, team, or series in general. New writers, new editorial direction, or just a generally new concept for the character. Ed Brubaker's Cap was largely an espionage-themed series, Rick Remender's Cap is more sci-fi.The new numbering marks the new direction. Having series run into the hundreds just means there's a big number on the cover. Sure, it can show off how long the series has run, but it can also be intimidating to a new reader who might feel they need to read 700 issues of backstory to understand what's going on. They don't, and a new #1 issue is an easy way of telling them so.

This is, of course, just my opinion on the matter.

As far as killing Peter Parker and leaving Doctor Octopus running around in his body, I personally think this is a fantastic story, with some great potential for interesting character arcs. Doc Ock trying to be a hero, trying to live up to the legacy he's basically stolen, finding out how hard it really is to be Peter Parker? (I can't help but wonder if the Spider-Man we saw in Avengers #2 was Parker or Octavius. I assume it was Parker, based on the fact that it was a flashback, but it would make it so much more interesting if it were Octavius.) Maybe he'll realize that he was wrong and try to find a way to restore Parker to his body? Maybe he'll go out in a blaze of heroic glory, paving the way for Parker to return. The potential is limitless.

And to those who say that this wasn't a worthy end to Peter Parker, I wonder if you've ever read a Spider-Man comic. This is Peter Parker to a tee, and it couldn't be any more heroic (well, yeah, it could be way more heroic, but it was still pretty heroic). Pete is the perpetual sad-sack, the constant loser. Goes out, saves the girl, saves the city, saves the world, then he still has to make rent and his girlfriend's pissed because he missed their date. And the Bugle's front page story is about how Spider-Man attacked some girl, tried to destroy the city, or the world. And he does it all over again the next day. Because he's Peter Parker, and that's what he does. Not because he expects a monument when he dies, or weeping mourners. Because it's the right thing to do. That's why Spider-Man is the best.

And keep in mind that, really, he did win. Sure, he died in Doc Ock's body, and no-one knows it, and Ock gets to tool around pretending to be Peter Parker. But he's not going to use that body to commit crimes. He's not going to kidnap Tony Stark or try to defraud Aunt May or build some kind of Octo-Spider-Pus robot army to take over Manhattan. He's going to go out and Spider-Man it up, and he's going to be the best damn Spider-Man he can be. Like I said, I haven't read the issue, but I know he has Peter Parker's memories now, and I can only assume he's doing it because he's somehow been inundated with Parker's overwhelming need to do good.

So yeah, as far as I'm concerned, this is a great direction for Spider-Man.

Anyway, back to my larger point. What this really represents, and what I feel people are most outraged about, is a deviation from the business-as-usual model that comics have followed for so long. The idea that characters should never change significantly, should never grow up and have children and long-term relationships (One More Day, anyone?). Something that has been especially apparent in the Spider-Man continuity over the years.

This is not how you tell stories. At least not good ones. If you want everything to stay the same all the time always, there's plenty of police procedurals on TV, and there's a ton of the old formulaic sitcoms on Netflix. Harsh? Maybe. It's not my intention to offend, but I think the worst thing a writer can do is everything their fans want them to. Of course you want your favorite character to win in the end, and get the girl and all the money and barely even have to try. Good storytelling challenges that desire. Good storytelling puts your hero through hell, and sometimes they don't make it out the other end, and sometimes when they do they're worse off than before.

One of the things that drove me crazy when DC announced their New 52 reboot were all the comments asking "Why should I bother to keep reading the comics that are coming out if they're not going to matter in a few months?" The answer, of course, is for the same reason you were buying them before. Because you enjoy the stories being told. If you're buying comics for any reason other than that, then you're buying for the wrong reason. If you're just reading comics because you buy everything with your favorite character in the title, or because you need to know all the continuity even if you hate the story, then maybe you should just stop. The reason there are currently five Batman titles running, and arguably only 3 of them are any good, is because DC knows there are people who will buy any Batman title that is published. When the Batman title that gets such bad reviews that most sites don't even bother reviewing it is getting consistently higher sales than books like Swamp Thing or I, Vampire, which almost always gets fantastic reviews (I, Vampire is one of my current favorites), there is a problem. People who only care about continuity or who have to buy every book their favorite character is in are hurting comics. They're a huge part of the reason comic sales are struggling to get up.

I'm going to wind things down before this turns into (more of) a rant. I just wanted to conclude with a thought. I've heard some recent speculation calling this the 2nd Golden Age of Comics. Mostly this is referring to the fantastic creator-owned series that have been cropping up all over the place, but I think there's also a good bit of that going on at the big 2, especially Marvel. Writers who grew up on 80s and 90s comics, writers who have a more literary take, but also have a strong respect for the comic book medium. People who saw what was good about those eras as well as what was bad about them, and are creating a whole new tradition in comic books. One that relies more on exploiting the potential of the characters, rather than just maintaining the status quo.

Of course this means that there's not going to be room for some of the old-school fans. But if you can't learn to love good stories, then why are you even here?

Again, this is all just my opinion, and I know it got a bit rant-y there in there middle, I hope I didn't offend anyone.

New script - Raven

New script here. Fair warning, it's melodramatic vampire romance. It's actually an adaptation of a short story I wrote like ten years ago. I posted a previous version of it over at deviant art, but that version was extremely cramped. I'm pretty happy with this version.

Also, got some concept art for Lunatic Fringe, so far everything is looking great!

Some Cool News

Hey all,

So my big news is that I will be self-publishing a new comic next year, it's the first issue of what I hope to be a series, called Lunatic Fringe. It will be drawn by Sloane Leong, who I highly recommend you check out (also here). Bar fighting and space battling and punk rock and all that nonsense. Barring any catastrophes in the next five or so months I should have it ready for next year's convention season, so keep an eye out!

Also next year I should have a feature in The Leaf, not much I can say about that at the moment. I'll be finishing up the script this week, and then I'll probably try to get a few short scripts to post up here. Probably just touch up some stuff from my Deviantart, we'll see.

Anyway, there's my exciting news! Later!

Faking it vs. Making it

I just wanted to post my thoughts on this whole “fake geek” debate that’s going around. Just in case anyone was interested in my opinion. I thought I’d address it with a helpful comparison.

While I have held geekery in my heart for as long as I can remember, there was a period, mostly in high school, when I dabbled in a few other subcultures. This was back in the late 90’s-early 00’s, back before geek-dom had the organization and legitimacy it has now as a subculture. I tasted the offerings of the standard rebellious teenager fads. I tried to be goth, but that didn’t work out. I went to, I think 3 raves in late ’99, but found that crowd to be beyond exclusionary. I had a number of skater friends, but could barely keep upright on a skateboard.

The punk subculture I found to be interesting. I think mostly because at the time I was discovering it, so were most of America’s youth. If the first decade of this century belonged to any subculture, it was punk. And one thing I noticed was that every punk had a different idea of what made something punk. Sure, pretty much everyone agreed that Avril Lavigne wasn’t punk, but what about Green Day? What about Blink 182? Could you call yourself punk if you didn’t know who Pennywise was? Did you have to own a Dead Kennedys album on vinyl to really call yourself punk?

There were people that would argue that any band on a label bigger than Epitaph was a sell-out. I remember watching an Against Me! DVD in which a kid explains that whenever a band signs to Fat Wreck Chords, they suddenly start playing mainstream music. There were people that claimed that the very act of making money off your music made you a sell-out. That the only way to really be punk is to refuse to get a job and Molotov the local Wal-Mart. And anyone who considered themselves a punk claimed that everyone who became punk after they did was just a poser trying to be cool.

A lot of the same things are happening in geek culture now, and I think it’s for a lot of the same reasons. If punk was the definitive subculture of the 00’s, nerd culture is set to be the definitive subculture of the 10’s. Which means a lot of the same arguments. “You can’t be a nerd because you don’t know who the original five X-Men were.” “I’m more of a geek than you because I’ve read every Dune/Ender/Discworld/etc book!” “I’m more of a nerd because I’m in a weekly LARP group!” And so forth.

And of course, everyone who’s reading comics, or genre fiction, or playing WOW, or whatever the case may be, for any length of time is immediately going to accuse people who are just getting into these things of being posers

The fact is this, plain and simple: Culture does not belong to anyone. Just because you were a fan of Doctor Who before Russell T. Davies, doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be allowed to just like Matt Smith, any more than you liking Bad Religion in the 80’s means that people shouldn’t be allowed to like Rise Against. You don’t get to decide how/when/why someone else’s fandom manifests.

Even if, for the sake of argument, there are people just going to conventions because they enjoy dressing up, and that’s the extent of their interest in any of it, that’s still a form of fandom, that’s still a form of geekery, and it’s not your place to give or deny permission.

That’s about all I have to say about that.

Overtime

I decided to take some overtime this weekend, because I'm super-broke, and I'm finally done (still have my regular work-week to go, but whatever). I probably could've done some writing this weekend, but I decided to be lazy and pig-out on discount Halloween candy instead. It tastes a little better when it's half-off. Also my wife stole like four candy bars from a little kid. Full-size.

I'm working on something for a Canadian super-hero called the Leaf, http://www.redleafcomics.com/, still in the early stages. Not much to say there. I have some other short things I want to work on. Maybe I'll have another script to post here at some point.

Anyway, I'm hungry. Time to make spaghetti.

Some Updates

Hey, I just wanted to throw a few updates down, it's been a while since I posted anything here.

So I'm almost done with the next draft of the graphic novel I've was working on cutting down. It's down just under 90 pages which is good. I think I cut out a lot of fat from the script. Stuff that I liked writing, and could picture in my head, but when I really think about it in comic book terms, would just be really boring to read for page after page. I decided to add an epilogue, as the previous draft just sort of 'faded to black'. I'm just trying to get that idea together into something I can write.

I have a couple ideas I've been thinking of tackling next. I wrote a short "St Patrick's Day" comic back in March, I might make some revisions to that and post it here, possibly see if I can get an artist to draw it by this coming St Patty's Day. After that I have a few other things I can jump on, I just have to decide what.

I put a post up on Penciljack, but I'll mention it here too. Basically, I've seen a lot of artists looking for short scripts for their portfolio, so what I'm proposing is that I will write the short, whatever it is you need for your portfolio. What I'm asking in return is that I be allowed to post the finished comic here, and possibly have it printed to hand out to editors/publishers at conventions. Nothing would be getting sold (at least not with out previous discussion and consensus), this would just be for the purpose of having something to show editors/publishers.

Anyway, I think that's all I got for now.

Lantern Corps

Recently I've taken it upon myself to become more familiar with the Green Lanterns and the mythology surrounding them. I was reading some of the trades I found at the library, and I started to wonder about the rings. So, naturally, I looked it up on Wikipedia. Reading through the entry I got to the bit about the different colored rings, the 'Emotional Spectrum.'

I was aware that there were different colored Lanterns before, but seeing as how I was only vaguely familiar with the Green Lanterns, I didn't know really anything about the other colors, so I thought this part was pretty interesting. As I was reading through, I got a distinct feeling of familiarity.

So I'm pretty sure that whoever came up with all the different colored Lantern rings was probably playing some kind of RPG, and decided they wanted to make Lanterns out of all the different classes. You've got healers, you've got your black magic, your white magic, your magic that mimics other magic. It's like a Final Fantasy game stuck in the middle of the DCU.

That being said, I can't help but wonder why we don't have a Green Lantern-centric video game yet.

Anyway, definitely enjoying the Lantern stories so far, I wish I'd dug into this sooner. Might even say I like this mythology more than Batman.

Script time!

Just posted a new script. It's not really new, I wrote it a while ago, but I thought I'd post it. This is the first issue in a five-issue mini-series being drawn by Roy Stiffey. You can check out some of his work here. I recommend it, he's currently putting up a new horror-inspired piece every day for the month of October, it's pretty awesome.

Anyway, the series is about a mercenary who's fallen on hard times. She's just made it back to the US after a job gone wrong in S America. She's convinced someone betrayed her, and is determined to find out who. Add to that, she's somehow found herself taking care of a 10-year-old boy, and she's out of cash so she has to take a minimum-wage job as a cashier.

So there it is, hope you enjoy.

Avengers 2 Rumors

So it looks like this might become a regular thing, my using my blog to rant about random things that I feel like ranting about. Which I guess is what most people use their blog for.

Anyway, so I read these rumors floating around this week regarding Carol Danvers in Avengers 2, and I wanted to throw my 2 cents in (I know you're reading this, Joss Whedon, don't pretend you're not). I think it's a mistake, for two reasons.

First of all, you can't just throw a character like that into the mix without explanation. People were familiar with almost all the characters in Avengers from previous movies, If you suddenly have some flying, super-strong woman appear without any back story or anything, people are going to wonder where she came from, why she wasn't there to help out with the Chitauri, etc. And trying to cram another character's origin story into an Avengers movie just seems messy to me.

I think one the things that has been really beneficial to the Avengers movie franchise, that's made it stronger than, say, some of the recent X-Men movies (Wolverine, I'm looking at you), is that they resisted the urge to cram as many recognizable faces into the movie regardless of how it might effect the story.

The other reason I think they should leave her out is that with all the back story, with the Kree, Mar-Vell, etc, I think this character not could support a solo movie, but really deserves one. Given proper treatment, they could show Carol getting her powers and taking on the mantle of Captain Marvel without it even really feeling like an origin movie. And it would certainly do the character and the mythology more justice.

I could also mention that, while I'm not especially familiar with Emily Blunt (I was broke and haven't seen Looper yet, plan on seeing it this weekend), I have seen enough of Luther to say that I'm pretty sure casting Ruth Wilson in the role would be a mistake.

There is, of course, the possibility that she'll show up in some other capacity, pre-Ms. Marvel. I'm just hoping they don't turn her into another SHIELD agent. Being an Air Force pilot is an integral part of her character.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. I'm still writing, I just finished the rough draft on a 5-issue mini series (I'm not going to post rough drafts here, no one wants to see that). I'll be spending the next few days working on a few things that are still in the idea stage, just doing some outlines, character stuff, things like that, before I jump into my next thing, which is a graphic novel rough draft that I need to cut down to size. It ended up at about 130-ish pages and I'd like to at least get it down under 100. If I can get it to 80 pages that would be ideal, but we'll see.

I might post a script that I currently have an artist drawing, but I want to make sure it's cool with him first.

That's all I got.

New Script

Update: It looks like the links are working now. We'll see if this lasts.

I finally got a round to figuring out how to get scripts up as a separate link, rather then just posting them to the blog like regular posts. It may be a bit of a roundabout way, but I'm too lazy to figure out a better method.

Anyway, I just posted a script called Rescue, it's basically an action vignette. It's actually based on a short story I wrote many years ago, back before I started to focus on comics. I adapted it into a comic book script for fun, and then I recently revisited it, with the intent of having it actually get drawn. I made a few edits that I think really help it out.

Anyway, it's there, just click on My Scripts on the side of the page. Let me know what you think! also if you know of an easier way for me to post scripts, I'd be happy to hear any feedback on that as well.

Edit: So for some reason every time I try to link to a new page it's not working. I'm going to mess with this for a while and see what I can figure out, but in the meantime, you can go to scriptshykes.blogspot.com for the script.

Post-AvX thoughts

So I don't really comment on stuff like this much, but now I have a blog, so I get to do that if I feel like it. I've noticed a lot of people around the web making comments about this, and the larger consensus seems to be that Cyclops was right. I think there's even a t-shirt to that effect. I wanted to throw in my 2 cents on the matter.

Cyclops was wrong. Captain America was just more wrong.

It's kind of a subtle distinction.

Yes, if Captain America had not shown up at Utopia with the Avengers loaded up in battle mode, none of this would have happened. However, if he had gotten there and been met by anyone other than Cyclops, none of it would have happened. Cyclops was looking for a fight the second Cap set foot on that island. In fact, he was looking for a war, and I imagine he was looking for one well before the events in AvX. I think Cap knew this when he decided to confront Cyclops, and that's why he brought the Avengers. Which was his biggest mistake. He knew Cyclops wanted a war, and he brought him one, which was the exactly the opposite of what he should have done.

Of course, we can also blame Xavier for a lot of this. After all, he's the one who basically raised Cyclops, and he raised him to be a soldier. Which seems kind of contrary to what he claimed to be trying to do for the world. The best leaders in wartime are rarely the best leaders in peacetime.

It's also worth noting that Cyclops had no reason to believe that the Phoenix force was coming to Earth to do anything other than destroy it. It was barreling through the galaxy, wiping out anything in it's path without even pausing to see what it stepped in. Cyclops was gambling with the entire human race, and he had no right to do so. Yes, it turned out that the Phoenix force could be contained and channeled to restore the mutant population, but that just means they got lucky. A father who gambles his children's college fund at Atlantic City doesn't get to be father of the year just because he wins. Cyclops risked the entire world, and he did so mainly because he had a chip on his shoulder.

Furthermore, did he ever bother to ask Hope what she wanted? (I'm actually asking, I don't feel like digging through past issues to double-check.)

After everything, he gave his little speech about how he'd do it all over again. It reminds me of Tony Stark. After the Civil War, and the whole Dark Reign mess, during which Tony had to basically wipe his mind for whatever reason, and after Osborn was deposed and everything put back to pre-Civil War status, Tony was confronted by some of the people he had turned against during the Civil War, and he told them that, despite everything, he would do the same thing all over again. Because he was still convinced that he was right, despite everything. That's basically the same attitude Cyclops took, that arrogant attitude that everyone else was wrong for not falling in behind him.

Anyway, before this turns into a rant, or into more of a rant, I wanted to hit a bigger point regarding this crossover, and why it never felt like it worked for me. I feel like it never should have been Avengers vs X-Men. It would have been much better served as being called something like "The Return of the Phoenix" or something that was less focused on schoolyard arguments. If it hadn't been immediately about Avengers vs X-Men, they could have spent time building up the conflict, maybe start by bringing Cyclops into the discussion about how to stop the Phoenix, have him be the only one in the room bringing up the idea that the Phoenix might not be coming to destroy them. Have him get shouted down, go home angry, try and recruit people to his side of things. Turning it immediately into an AvX conflict removes a lot of room for nuance, and forces a number of characters into actions that make little to no sense.

I also want to point out that I called that ending at issue #0. I can't prove this, because the only person I told was my wife, and she doesn't read comics so doesn't care, but I totally said that Hope was going to get the Phoenix force, and use it and Scarlet Witch's powers to restore all the mutants. (I know, I'm not the only one that saw it coming, just let me have this little moment.)

So that's my assessment of AvX. Captain America was absolutely wrong in how he approached the situation. But so was Cyclops. And while Cap's bad choices allowed (some might argue they just about forced) Cyclops to almost destroy the world, Cyclops was the one that actually made the decisions that almost destroyed the world.

Of course, that's just my opinion, and I've never much cared for Cyclops, so you can take that with a grain of salt.

lazypants

I know it's been a while, I got caught in a debate about whether I should put scripts in it's own little section or just post them here. Anyway, just went to see Sleepwalk with Me, which I thoroughly enjoyed. If you know Mike Birbiglia's stand-up, you'll hear a fair amount of it repeated, but it's still an excellent movie.

Anyhoo, I have a script that I wanted to post, but I still haven;t decided how I want that set up, so it might be a few days. Decision-making is not my strong suit.

Messin aroud

So this is my first time doing a blog with blogger, so I'm going to be trying some things, just to get a feel for this site. Just a warning that weird things might pop up and then disappear, or the whole blog might spontaneously transform into a bear and eat your lunch. No idea what features this site offers. Just letting you know.

First!

Hey all,

So I'm starting this blog to post comic book scripts and basically just have a place for people to connect with me. I don't really have anything new to post right this moment, other than to mention that I've started this blog, which if you're reading this (statistically speaking, you probably aren't) you already know. I'll probably start going through some of old scripts and maybe editing them a little before posting them. Mostly these are shorts that I've written for practice more than anything, and probably won't ever see an artist's pen. I haven't decided if I want to post my longer scripts, the ones I intend to try and get drawn and published. We'll see.

Anyway, here I am.