Year's End, and the Year to Come

I just wanted to post a few thoughts for New Year's, while I'm still coherent enough to do so. This past has been... tumultuous, to say the least. Every year has it's ups and downs, and 2013 was no exception. Somehow, this time around, the ups were higher than I'd expected, and the downs were much lower than I was prepared for. But somehow, with the kindness and support of many, I've made it through. Every year since I decided I wanted to write comics, and I was going to make it happen no matter what, I've managed to get closer to my ultimate goal. Slow going as ever, but I have no choice but to remain optimistic.

This was a good year for me comics-wise. I self-published 2 comics, had tables at three conventions. I learned a lot about what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong. I met a lot of very nice people, people very generous with their time and advice. It's pretty clear that 'breaking in' to the comics industry is a pretty tough thing to do, and the upside is that once you've 'made it', most people seem to have a lot of patience for people who are still on the path.

Something else that I've learned this year is that 'breaking in' is kind of a myth. It seems more like working your way to the front of a large, packed crowd. You don't just appear on the scene, and suddenly everyone's buying your stuff. You get some people interested in this book, and then the next one a few more people pay attention to, and maybe eventually you're making a little money on your books, or getting a bit of interest from editors. The trick seems to be to never stop moving.

Anyway, to recap, I had a table at Heroes Con in Charlotte, where Anonymous Nancy #1 debuted, and really I kind of did too. I attended San Diego, spending four days trying to network to the best of my abilities. That was when I decided I wouldn't be the guy harassing editors at the bar after the con closed. Next was Baltimore Comic Con, where I had Nancy and Lunatic Fringe, and I even managed to sell a few copies. After that was Pittsburgh, and then I travelled to New york for NYCC, my first time attending and I had a great time. Throughout I've been working on short scripts, and developing longer projects as well.

And what's in store for 2014? I have a feeling the coming year is going to be a good one. Busy, no doubt, but also very good. Anonymous Nancy #1 should be available on comiXology soon, and #2 shouldn't be too far behind. I'm going to keep plugging away on scripts and hopefully get moving on new projects. I'm already booked at Nittany Con in State college, PA, in March. With time and money being a big factor in the coming year, I'm planning to do mostly smaller, more local conventions, Central and Western PA, Ohio, West Virginia. I will, of course, keep posting when I have dates.

Beying that, it's just a matter of keeping moving. Keep working my way through that crowd. It's easy to get lost, or stuck, or just plain worn out. Lose interest and just stop. But then what?

So my New Year's wish for everyone is to keep moving, keep fighting, keep working for that thing you want more than anything. No matter how thick the crowd gets, no matter how much longer and harder it gets. Sure, you'll get sidetracked, you'll get lost and you'll get stuck. Even inching forward counts as progress.

If nothing else, I wish for health and happiness, and I hope that your downs are never lower than your ups are high.

Happy New Year

A less murder-y Christmas comic script

I had mentioned I wanted to do another Christmas comic, one that was more in the spirit of the holiday. I'd had an idea I really liked, but I couldn't really flesh out a story from it. Maybe next year. However, I did get an idea at pretty much the last minute. And once I had the idea the script practically wrote itself. It's very short, just three pages, and it's a much more uplifting and heartwarming story. I know, whatever. Anyway here it is.

Just to be fair, I put this one together really fast. Like, I got the initial idea somewhere between 10:30 and 11 pm. So I'll probably want to go back and give it a once over at some point in the near future, go over the dialogue and everything. Hopefully I'll have time tomorrow or the next day, but, you know, holidays and all, and I still haven't even got a second Die Hard viewing in yet. So we'll see.

Not much else to say, hope you enjoy. And I hope everyone has a great holiday!

New Christmas Script!

So I went ahead and finished up that Santa script, and here it is. I'm still not entirely happy with the dialogue (who knew an insane rant would be so hard to write?) but maybe that's my fault for writing a story where Santa meets a crazed murdered. Seriously, I should warn you, unless you're pretty desensitized you might find this one a bit unsettling. (It's hard for me to gauge because I actually am somewhat desensitized, so I can't tell if this is actually not that creepy or if it is and I just don't notice those things. So I thought I'd just add a little disclaimer.)

Anyway, yeah, I'd still like to write something a little more uplifting and less murder-y, so I might try to work that other little idea out over the next couple days. We'll see what happens.

That's all for now! Happy holidays and all that!

Die Hard!! ...and stuff

So with the holiday coming up I decided I wanted to watch Die Hard. Because it is the best Christmas movie ever and also the Citizen Kane of action movies. It turned out I didn't own a copy of Die Hard (I know!), so I went to Target. Looked around for about 20 minutes, no Die Hard! At Christmas! What were they thinking? They had the new one that I didn't even bother to see and most people insist shouldn't even count as a Die Hard. But they didn't have the original. So I went to Best Buy, which was just at the other end of the mini-mall. Looked around for probably closer to 30 minutes. No Die Hard! Come on!

So, long story short, I ordered it off Amazon. It actually came in the mail yesterday, but I had to work both jobs, so I had to wait until today to watch it. And watch it I did.

What a great movie!I could seriously go on for pages about how awesome Die Hard is, but I don't know that there's anything I could say about it that hasn't already been said somewhere. I intend to watch it at least twice more before the holiday season is over.

In other news, I wrote a Christmas comic. It's pretty dark, it's about Santa meeting a serial killer. I need to punch up the dialogue before I post it. I have an idea for something shorter that I might try to crank out real quick before going back to the serial killer one.

And in case you're wondering, yes Anonymous Nancy will still be appearing on comiXology, and from what I've been told it should be very soon. I'll post it when I have a definite release date, until then just know that it's soon.

That's all for now, hopefully have some new scripts up soon.

A Brief Interlude

I was at Target the other day, buying some Christmas gifts for nieces. I was wearing a Batman shirt. When I got to the checkout counter (and this is not the first time this has happened to me) the cashier, a young guy, late teens, maybe very early twenties, asked me how I felt about the casting of Affleck. I told him I wasn't really worried about it.

Of course he brought up Daredevil. I couldn't even tell you if I saw that movie. I don't really care much about it. We went back and forth, he seemed to be under the impression that Daredevil was made by the same people that have been making the current Marvel movies, and when I mentioned I didn't care for Man of Steel, he argued that that wasn't a Marvel movie. I was a bit confused about what his actual argument was.

It occurs to me sometimes that most people, out in the world, don't spend so much of their time reading about all this comic book and comic book movie and movie news. When they pay attention to the news, it's normal news sources, like CNN or the local news. The only news sites I frequent are comic book or "geek culture" news sites. Most of the people I follow on twitter or tumblr are in the comic book industry. I know all the details that are publicly available for most of these properties Most people don't do that. They have other things on their mind.

Still, I know I'd hate it if the only thing anyone ever remembered about me was some unfortunate incident that happened a decade ago, and every time I tried to accomplish something new, they just brought that one mistake up. People change, guys.

I don't really have a point to this. Just, the guy annoyed me. But hey, all my Christmas shopping is done!

That's all.

Random Wonder Woman Rant

In my last blog post I promised some thoughts on the new Wonder Woman casting announcement. I'm not going to recount the news, you're on the internet, look it up. anyway, I had some pretty strong feeling I wanted to relay, but it's been kind of a long, busy weekend and I didn't a chance to get my thoughts down, and now that I'm further away from it, I honestly don't care as much. So instead of an impassioned blog post, I'm just going to give you a few bullet points, in completely random order. Here goes:

• I didn't care for Man of Steel. Just didn't really care for it. And it wasn't the bit at the end. It wasn't that Superman killed Zod. I didn't care. And that's why. I didn't care about any of those people at any point. So when Superman snapped Zod's neck it wasn't some betrayal of the ethical core of Superman's character. It was a generic hero killing the villain and then whining about it. The end. Is that Zack Snyder's fault? I don't know (probably). It felt like he was trying to hit all the superficial bits of Superman that everyone knows about without ever actually trying to create characters. Anyway, moving on.
• Anyone who says Wonder Woman is tricky is wrong. Period. There is nothing more complicated about telling Wonder Woman's story than any other super hero. If you can write a Superman movie, and Batman movie, or a Captain America movie (set in WWII no less), you can write a Wonder Woman movie.
• I am, still, about 92% certain DC and Warner Bros are making this movie up as they go along.
• They keep adding heroes to this movie, and I think it means one of two things is likely to happen. The first is that, come SDCC '14, they'll announce that this was a Justice League movie all along. The second is that all these heroes will be in cameos, either peppered throughout the film or in some teaser capacity, or something like that. I read a comment on another site that mentioned a time-travel plot.
• Seriously. I wouldn't be surprised if Warner Bros execs are trolling comment sections for story ideas right now. (Scratch that, they'd make the interns do it.)
• I get that there's never been a Wonder Woman movie. And I absolutely agree that sexism is a part of that. But, at least in the last two years, Green Lantern is probably a bit bigger a part of that. Batman had three incredibly successful films before Batman and Robin killed the franchise, and then three more highly successful films. Superman has a similar series of successful films in the Christopher Reeves movies. Sure, they should have made a WW movie somewhere in there, but they didn't, and after Green Lantern tanked, I imagine they decided to only work with proven properties until they could get a proper franchise going again.
• Let's not forget that this is still MoS 2. So while you complain that WW is playing second fiddle to Superman and Batman, keep in mind that Batman, who's had at least twice the number of successful films, is technically playing second fiddle to Superman. Like I said, making it up as they go.
• Also, for those complaining that they cast an unknown as WW, she was in two incredibly successful action movies. And I had never heard of Henry Cavill before Man of Steel, so casting an unknown does not necessarily mean a lack of interest in the character. And I'm sorry that you really wanted Jamie Alexander (or whoever your personal must-have actor was), but she signed a contract with Marvel. Everyone gets mad when their dream cast doesn't happen. Personally I'm still holding out hope for the spinoff where Jane Foster and Sif team up to solve mysteries.

I had more, but I think I'm gonna stop now, as I'm getting pretty tired, and my list of bullet points is turning into a full-on rant. I don't think MoS 2 is going to be good. I don't think it'll matter, people will still go see it. (Unless 2015 is the Hollywood blockbuster apocalypse some people think it will be.) I think the actress has a good a chance to be a fantastic Wonder Woman as any of the more favored actresses. Even if DC announced a Wonder Woman solo movie tomorrow, they'd still have a long way to go to convince me they had any idea what they were doing and weren't just trying desperately to catch up with Marvel while having no idea how to do that.

My bigger question is, why do Batman and Superman have like 9 comic series between them, but Wonder Woman only has 1 (and a half if you count Superman Wonder Woman). I mean really, when I thought about it for more than twenty minutes I was able to come up with like three four solid WW story pitches.

And with that, I will call it a night.

P.S. - Matt Idelson, if by some weird accident you're reading this, I wasn't kidding about those pitches. Hit me up.

ASM2 thoughts + New Script

Posted a new script! It's seven pages, I was hoping to keep it down to five, but there was just too much going on, the last couple pages still feel a little cluttered. I might go back and revise them later (and I'll definitely be going back and revising the dialogue). Also I can't decide if I love the title or hate it. It's set in the late 17th/early 18th century, on a merchant vessel at sea. It plays on the whole "women on board are bad luck" superstition. Plus, fish-people!

While I'm here talking, I thought I'd mention the Amazing Spider-Man 2 trailer, which I am feeling very positive about. I have to say, when I'd heard about all the different characters they were adding, I was very nervous. act is, I don't think Rhino's going to have too much screen time. I figure he'll have at most two fights with Spidey, one without the Rhino-mech, one with, and then probably he'll be approached in prison by one of the Osbornes, maybe even in a post-credits scene, to join the Sinister Six. I figure the main conflit of the film will be Electro, and I doubt Spider-Man will even meet Green Goblin, let alone fight him, in this movie. It's all just seeds for the larger Spider-Man movie-verse.

Just my thoughts, but if you haven't figured it out by now, I tr to be as optimistic about these sorts of things as possible. I feel a similar way about X-Men: DoFP. When they kept announcing more and more actors, especially from the old series, I was more and more concerned. But I figure they'll mostly just be brief cameos in the beginning, before Wolverine goes back in time. We'll see.

Anyway that's all for now. I have some thoughts on Wonder Woman in the new MoS movie, but I'll save that for later. Here's a teaser: whatever your opinion on the matter, I probably disagree with you.

Later on!