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.