My Long-Winded Suicide Squad Review

I tried to keep out any major spoilers, but there definitely some in here anyway.

So I went to see Suicide Squad on Thursday night. I was really looking forward to this one, I think it was really well marketed. It gave off a strong vibe of something different, something unique. Something a bit scary and fucked up and also really funny and just not at all what superhero movies have been lately. That said, all the negative reviews persuaded me to temper my expectations to a large degree, so when I went I was still excited but, we’ll say, cautiously optimistic.

Here’s the thing. Suicide Squad is a deeply flawed film. There are weird plot elements, there are a number of characters and arc that are under served, there are clichés and overused plot elements and all sorts of other little problems throughout. There was enough wrong with this movie for me to thoroughly dislike it.

So why did I like it so much?

Honestly, for all its flaws, glaring as they were, I genuinely enjoyed myself. It didn’t blow me away. It certainly didn’t live up to my highest expectations. But I had a good time, and I’m more than willing to forgive most, if not all, the issues I had with it.

The only answer I can come up with is charm. I feel like the movie had real charm, and if there’s enough of that I can forgive just about anything. Will Smith had charm. Margot Robbie had charm. Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Joel Kinnaman. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, under all that Croc makeup, had charm. Narratively, I was given nothing to believe that this group had bonded over the course of the film. But they sold it to me anyway.

There was plenty more to like about the movie. The action, once it actually got moving, was decent. The movie looked great, from the costumes to the special effects to the opening and closing credits. Even the darker vibe worked for me, and I usually get annoyed by movies that are too-dark. (Of course, this is a Suicide Squad movie, not a Superman movie.)

So let’s get into some Pros and Cons:

PROS:

The Cast

This was a very well-acted film. The standouts were the obvious ones: Will Smith as Deadshot, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Jay Hernandez and Diablo, Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc.

Smith brings his signature mix of humor and pathos, playing a killer-for-hire who doesn’t feel any remorse for what he’s done, but clearly pines for his daughter in a way that, I’ll admit, got a bit heavy-handed at times, but was for the most part a strong grounding element.

Robbie is about as Harley Quinn as you can get this side of Tara Strong. She brings the manic energy and twisted sense of humor that’s made the character so popular in the comics, but just when you think Harley’s nothing but a mindless psycho, she’s able to show real heart, and even utilizes her psychiatric background to provide a bit of therapy.

Hernandez as Diablo is a somewhat underdeveloped character, especially considering the major role he plays toward the end. This might have been deliberate, but I still think they could have given him a better introduction to the audience. Still, he manages to bring it hard, and was a surprise favorite.

And Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc was just about perfect. He had only a few lines, but I think that worked best for his character. He didn’t need an extended arc, he just needed to show up when he was needed. His few lines of dialogue were perfect, and he crushed it in the actions scenes exactly as a bruiser should.

The Wall:

Yes, she gets her own sub-header. Half my excitement for this movie was specifically to see Amanda Waller. And Viola Davis was exactly perfect. She was cold, she was fearless, she was badass. And yes, I acknowledge that the entire plot revolved around Waller completely dropping the ball. That’s on her. In all honesty, though, I think that works really well for this movie. The whole concept behind Suicide Squad is that when you bring together a team of villains to do a job like this, the results are going to be unpredictable. The idea is that the whole concept is an exercise in playing with fire. That’s what Waller does.

And outside of the plot, Davis nailed the character. One of my favorite moments is an exchange between Waller and Boomerang toward the end of the movie, and I won’t spoil it if you haven’t seen it, but it’s about as Waller a moment as you can get (and, to be honest, it’s a great moment for Captain Boomerang, too).

The Soundtrack:

You remember the, like, mid-to-late 90s? When there were just a ton of great movie soundtracks. Half the time the movies were crap (*cough* Spawn *cough*), and the music wasn’t even in the movie, or it was shoehorned in with some kid listening to five seconds of it on their car radio or something, just to get it on the album. Man, I miss those. I’d love to see soundtrack albums make a comeback, and I hope this is the start of that.

I was psyched for Suicide Squad’s soundtrack specifically because it has a new Grimes song on it, Medieval Warfare, which doesn’t disappoint. But there’s much more to love on there. Skylar Grey’s Wreak Havic, Grace and G-Easy’s You Don’t Own Me. And, look, there is never a reason to cover Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s a perfect song. But. Panic! At the Disco does a pretty solid job of it. So I don’t mind it.

CONS:

Harley’s “Shorts”:

They look stupid. Like, really stupid. I can’t fathom what they were going for with that. Sexy? Wedgie? Sexy wedgie? Whatever, they look stupid and I hate them. I don’t even care if she wears the original costume or not, just put her in something that doesn’t look stupid.

Pretty Much the Entire First Act:

There’s a sequence, which probably only lasts for about twenty minutes, but feels like half the movie. Amanda Waller is talking to some General or something, who I would swear from the trailers was played by Clancy Brown, but turned out to be some other dude whose name I don’t feel like looking up right now (edit: I think it’s Ted Whittall as Admiral Olsen.) She’s basically explaining her whole Task Force X plan to him, totally Walling it up, positively giddy at the idea of getting “the worst of the worst” for her squad.

And then we go through a series of short, poorly edited flashbacks that show Deadshot, Harley, Diablo and Boomerang all getting caught. And that’s fine, including those scenes is fine, but making them flashbacks, and having another character narrating who these people are in great detail, really takes any tension out of them. They become exposition, nothing more. Most of these scenes didn’t need narrated at all, and we already knew these characters were in jail, we saw them there. We could have opened with these introductory scenes in real time, then cut to them in prison, then have Waller chatting up the military. More economical, more engaging, etc.

Add to that another sequence where Waller and Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) are touring the prison, meeting all these characters once again, and it’s just a lot of bloat, a lot of time spent learning the same things over and over again. It genuinely felt like half the movie had gone by before the first realtime action scene with these characters.

The Villains:

By the villains, I mean the antagonists, since basically everyone in this movie was a villain. Cara Delevingne did a perfectly good job as both June Moone and the Enchantress. I have no qualms with that part of it. I just think everything else to do with her was poorly, I’d say lazily, done. I was never sold on the relationship between Flag and Moone. That was meant to be his entire motivation, and it just never clicked for me. There was very little time spent there, and once again, we were told, by Waller, that he was in love with her, and were pretty much just expected to believe it.

Beyond that, there was a lot of sort of lazy hand-waving around the whole plot. They never even bothered to explain what her evil plan even was, just that she had some ill-defined supernatural sky beam with a whirling vortex of debris around it. It felt like they just couldn’t be bothered to develop a real plot for her, like it was just background noise.

There’s a scene where she’s got her vortex going, and she’s just kind of doing an arm-wave shimmy thing in front of it, generic spell-casting stuff, and the team is trying to sneak up on her and put together a plan of attack. And it felt like one of those points in a video game, where the big boss battle is coming up, and you have to run around and talk to all the party members and make everyone is fully equipped and so on, and the bad guy is just off in the background trapped in some pointless repetitive animation, waiting for you to finish up and select “ready to go” to trigger the next cut scene.

Katana:

This one really bugged me. I have no problem with Katana per se, but it was never really explained what she was doing there. She just showed up, and Flag was all “She’s with me,” and there was like one bit where they explained how her sword worked and something about avenging her husband’s death, which explains nothing about why she’s on Flag’s or Waller’s or whoever’s side. And then all of a sudden she was just not anymore, everyone fucked off to have a drink, and she went with them. She had almost no dialogue, and when she did it was in Japanese. I can’t help but think she was really important in an earlier draft of the script, and then they just cut her arc out, but left her in.

And yeah, Slipknot was pretty lazily done, too, but he was only in like two scenes, and I thought it was pretty funny how he went out. Clearly he had the same issue of having more of an arc in a previous draft, but it was important for him to stay in just for that minute.

So that’s my Pros and Cons list, and I think that pretty much wraps this review. I feel like there was something else I wanted to mention, but I can’t think of what that might be. So that’s that.

Okay, okay, I was kidding, I’ll talk about the Joker.

First, I think it’s important to point out that I don’t have the same nerd-boner for the Joker that most people seem to have. I think there have been some really well-written stories featuring him, sure. But I never got the whole “he’s Batman’s greatest villain” thing. I think people just like the idea of a charismatic psychopath, which is fine, but it’s not my thing. Give me a Riddler or a Mr. Freeze or a Bane any day of the week. There’s so many fun ones to choose from.

That said, I really dug the last Joker (Heath Ledger, as if I need to remind you), like most people, and Nicholson is a classic, and so on. So I was really interested to see where this one went.

The fact is, it’s really hard to make a solid judgement on this, because he didn’t have that much screen time. I can definitely see where they’re going with the character. More of a drug-lord vibe than anything else, excess, violence. Gangland royalty. And I like it. This is a Joker that we’ve seen in the comics before. He wasn’t always just some psycho, he’s led the Gotham underground before. And I think it fits for the next generation of Batman movies. It gives you places to go.

Whether or not Leto actually pulled this off in a satisfying way is a much different question. And, like I said, it’s hard to tell. There are moments where I think it worked perfectly. There are moments where he’s truly frightening, where he really carries the air of a feared and respected gang leader, and still has that unpredictable mad streak.

There are also moments where it’s obvious he’s trying really hard to seem crazy, and he just comes off as someone trying really hard to seem crazy. And those definitely didn’t work for me. They were few and far between, but again, so were his scenes.

Of course, I know there’s a lot of talk about the Joker/Harley relationship that was seen in an earlier cut, a much more obviously abusive relationship, and honestly, that would have made more sense to me. Trying to spin that mess as anything other than abusive just rubs me the wrong way.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see where he turns up next, with or without Harley.

So that’s that. Clearly you can see that there were a lot of serious issues with the movie. But, like I said, it still worked for me. I still enjoyed it for the most part, once things got moving. And I definitely think that can be attributed to the strong performances by the cast.

Anyway, the movie’s been getting a lot of hate, and a decent amount of it I think is overblown and unwarranted. And I’ll say this, to cap things off. I didn’t care for Man of Steel. Like, at all. (And, btw, I really hated Snyder’s Watchmen, if that matters.) I didn’t even bother with BvS, it looked terrible, and when everyone said it was terrible I believed them, and I even read all the plot summaries and reviews, and everything I got from them told me it was an incoherent mess and not worth my time.

And look, I’m not all of a sudden going to run out and go see BvS or anything. But I do kind of get now why fans of the movie were getting so defensive. There are people that are clearly taking a lot of pleasure from tearing these movies apart. Hell, I was enjoying seeing it get torn apart.

(This is not to say I endorse writing petitions to have review sites shut down or anything, that’s just dumb.)

So there it is. My brief Suicide Squad note that blew up into a really long review. If you stuck with it this far, congrats! Go have a drink! (I mean thanks for reading!)

Campaigners and Crowdfunding

Here I am again, with my monthly, bi-monthly, however-the-hell-long-it's-been blog post! And no, I'm not going to talk movies, not even Civil War (though it was awesome, and yes, I loved Spider-Man in it). I'm here to talk about one of my projects, which I haven't done here in a very long time.

The project is Campaigners, and I know I've talked about it here before, for much the same reason as I'm going to today. I need your help.

As you might have noticed, the Kickstarter did not fund, which was not a surprise as it was for a much larger amount than I had any right to expect. It was just too big a project, so I decided to break it down in to pieces. Five issues, twelve pages each, digital-only. I was able to fund the first issue through indie gogo, and we've completed the first two issues now, with the third well on it's way.

(The first two issues can be found on the website, zeropresscomics.com, or on comiXology.)

The last two issues, however, require a bit more help. We have another indie gogo campaign running right now, this one is to fund issues 4 and 5 and complete the series.

For those not familiar with the story, it's set in 2076, where Presidential debates have been replaced with a no-holds-barred fight to the death. The event is hugely popular, it's like the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the Fourth of July all rolled into one.

Kydra Franks is a high-school girl who hates the debates, is convinced they're the source of all the country's problems, or at least a glaring symptom of them. When approached by a reporter and asked about the election, she lashes out against the debates and declares she's refusing to vote. When her rant goes viral, she gets caught in the middle of a huge social upheaval as more and more young people latch onto her movement.

I say this every time I talk about this book, and it gets more true each time. I am immensely proud of the work we've been doing. The story is turning out wonderfully, and MJ's art is phenomenal. Mey Rude has been consulting and editing the script, and her guidance has been crucial every step of the way. And Sean's letters, and logos, and all the designs he's done have really brought everything together.

I swear this book is turning out so much better than I could have hoped. Whenever I'm worried about a scene being dull and slowing down the book, MJ comes back with some of her strongest pages, taking a simple conversation between a father and daughter and injecting such powerful emotion into it.

This is why it's so important to see this book through to the end. There's so much great work being done here it would be a huge waste not to get all the way through it.

But we CAN NOT do it without your help. This is not posturing. This is not hyperbole. If this campaign doesn't get funded, these issues will not get made. The money simply will not be there.

This is the reality of indie comics. We need your support more than anything. We don't make money off these books, and for a lot of us, we're not even breaking even. We do this because we have passion for our projects, and for the craft. We do this because these stories are too important to us not to tell them.

So please, take a look at our campaign, take a look at the rewards we're offering, and if you can pledge, it would immensely helpful, and if not, even just sharing the project would help.

And thank you for listening!

Captain America: Civil War (no, I haven't seen it yet)

Hey, guess what? Civil War is almost out! I'm hella psyched for this movie! Winter Soldier remains my favorite of the Marvel movies, and I'm really hoping this one will exceed that. I can't wait to see Black Panther, and Cap and Bucky in action side-by-side. I can't wait to see Crossbones in action. I rewatched the first Cap the other night, and it as good as I remembered (maybe even better) and I plan to watch Winter Soldier again tonight.

I just wanted to address something here very quickly, because I have, in the past, been very down on the idea of Spider-Man in the MCU, and now that it's happening, I wanted to say a couple things on it.

First off, I want to make something clear. It has never been my position that Marvel couldn't make a good Spider-Man. It's only ever been my position that Marvel didn't need Spider-Man, and I stand by that. There are any number of young super heroes out there, many designed specifically to replicate the Spider-Man formula, that Marvel could tap if they want that archetype in their movies (Ms. Marvel comes immediately to mind, for one).

I still think the Sony deal wasn't great for Marvel. I think they gave more than they got in that agreement. I won't change my mind on that.

BUT...

It's here. It's done. Spider-Man's in the movie, and his own movie is on the way.

Look, I will always root for a movie to be good. Always. I prefer a good movie to a bad one. Now that Spider-Man is officially a part of the MCU, I hope they do it right. I hope they make it work. And from what I've been hearing from early reviews, they've done just that. (I don't tend to listen to early reviews, to be honest, so I'll see for myself on Friday.) Even if his solo movie is terrible, the MCU can survive some bad movies if he's done right when he shows up in the other movies.

So yeah, I still don't think Marvel should have made the deal. But that's irrelevant now. So I'm going to root for Spidey to be good, and when he is I'm going to be happy about it.

(I just hope they don't pull some Age of Ultron BS and kill Zemo offscreen like they did with Strucker. WTF was that about?)

The Mug Story

So here's a weird, rambling little story that I'm going to post for no other reason than that I haven't posted anything here in some time, and I've been think a lot about this.

I was looking at mugs at Target yesterday, but I couldn't quite bring myself to buy one.

Let me back up. I drink a lot of tea. Like, a lot. I start my day with two cups, something dark. I like Constant Comment, I like Earl Grey, English Breakfast (or Irish Breakfast), Darjeeling. I like it strong, and I don't add sugar or milk or anything. I'll make my morning cup, and then when that's done I'll use the same bag to make another. (I also sometimes use loose tea, but it's usually more expensive than the bags so not all the time.)

At lunch I'll make myself green tea. Tazo makes a green with ginger that's really good, or just normal green tea is fine. Depending on what I have going on later, I might have a second cup of green also.

If I work my second job, at a Thai restaurant, I can drink all the tea I want there. So I'll usually have 2 cups of jasmine tea, sometimes four. If I don't have work, I have various herbal teas that I'll usually dig into, peppermint, or chamomile, I have a lemon ginger that's pretty good, or a few other blends. And then I end my night with a cup of sleepytime tea (I'm sipping on some as I write this).

I had this mug that I really liked, and I broke it a few weeks ago. It was a pretty frustrating week, and the mug was just a part of that. It was the week Bowie died, so I was pretty severely depressed all week. (I'm a huge Bowie fan, if I haven't mentioned that on here, and I was devastated to hear of his death.)

That was also the week that I almost quit comics entirely. I had a pretty serious financial setback, or rather, I was counting on bringing in a chunk of money that was going to go to a project, and that money never happened.

I was already pretty low that week, like I said, and then the mug broke, and the money thing happened, or rather didn't happen. It was one of those moments I just really felt like giving up entirely. Kind of an overreaction, I know, but anyway, I ended up launching Campaigners on indiegogo instead, so there you go.

Anyway, yeah. So, I broke my mug. I dropped something (I don't remember what) onto the handle, and it just broke. I was pretty bummed.

I should tell you about the mug. When I started drinking tea a lot, there was this Starbucks mug. I'd never really noticed it in the cupboard before, I assumed it was my wife's. I started using it. It was bigger than normal mugs, and it was the perfect size to make two cups of tea with one teabag. (I'm currently using a mug that belongs to my wife, that's also bigger than a standard mug, but not as big as the Starbucks one.)

So I asked my wife once if it was okay to use the Starbucks mug, or I may have apologized for it getting stained by the tea, or something. I don't remember, all I remember is her saying that it wasn't her mug. She didn't know where it had come from, and neither did I. Like it had just always been there.

That's what was cool about that mug. It had just kind of appeared, the perfect mug, out of nowhere. So I'm at Target yesterday, looking for a new mug, and they had a few that were about the right size, but it felt weird to just buy a mug, just at Target.

The mug I use at work is a mug I got for backing Reading Rainbow on kickstarter. The mug I'm using now my wife bought from a non-profit her sister used to work for. I have a mug I got when the Evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer album went on sale, I bought it with the digital download of the album.

And, of course, the plain white mug that just said Starbucks in small letters on it, that had just materialized in our kitchen, and was the perfect size.

So I didn't end up buying a mug. I'm sure I will, and I'm sure it'll be fine. It's just one of those things. You have a thing, and it's got a cool story behind it, and you love it, and then it's gone, and you just go to the store and replace it, with something normal and boring and functional.

I used to have this pair of Chucks. A few days after I'd bought them I spilled some bleach on one. It looked really crappy with just a bunch of big flecks of bleach, so I just decided to bleach it all the way, until it was this pink-ish, orange-ish color. And I left the other shoe the way it was, so I had two mismatched shoes. It was like a signature, and I had those shoes for years. When it was time to throw them out, I thought about getting a new pair and bleaching one again. Or buying two different color pairs and switching them out. It just wouldn't be the same.

(I might still do the second one, buy different colored pairs, one of these days, when I have plenty of disposable income.)

I don't know what the point of all this is, just thinking about it a lot and I wanted to put it out there somewhere. I think I'm about done now. Time to go to bed.

Campaigners Kickstarter is Live!

It feels like I only come here anymore when I want something from you.

Ah well, if I had more time, or more to say...

Anyhow, I have another Kickstarter running now! I mention a while back about a project called Campaigners, and we've finally got the Kickstarter launched! You can find the project here.

This is a much, MUCH bigger project than I've ever tried before. This is important to me for a number of reasons. This story is incredibly important to me,. It started out as just a small, weird, almost a joke of idea. "What if candidates had to fight each other to the death?" It's one of those things you think of and laugh about. Gee, that'd be great to watch! Right?

Except would it, really? If the sort of person who would beat another person to death with their bare hands for power were put in charge of the country? That would be, for lack of a better phrase, pretty fucked up.

That was my starting point. Looking at political campaigns now, it's all just a game. How best can I convince people to vote for. Not by being the best candidate, but by putting on the best show. In retrospect, pro-wrestling might have been a better analogy for what I was trying to accomplish at that point, but MMA seemed so much more brutal.

While I was developing the idea I realized I needed a POV character. It couldn't just be about the fighters. There needed to be someone watching this and realizing how much a mess it all was.

That's when I met Kydra Franks. A teenage girl, with all the angst and confusion that comes with being a teenage girl. A little bit of an outsider, frustrated at the fact that no one else sees how absurd the system is. The more I got to know her, the more I realized that she wasn't just the POV character, she was the main character. This is her story.

There's a lot of myself in the character of Kydra. Especially the me I was in high school. Smarter than average, but not as smart as she thinks. Self-assured but lacking confidence. As she developed, the idea occurred to me that she should have a best friend. A co-conspirator.

And thus was born Bee. Bianca Faye. Pretty much Kyd's complete opposite. Outgoing. Loves clothes and music. Doesn't care about politics, at all. While I was playing with the her characteristics, I decided to see what would happen if she were a transgender girl. How would that effect the story? And, quite honestly, it opened the story up entirely.

Bee went immediately from a sidekick to practically as much of a protagonist as Kyd. It's because of Bee getting bullied that Kyd lashes out publicly against the political system. It's Bee, trying to piggyback off Kyd's sudden notoriety, who organizes a public protest. And so much more.

The last cog in the machine was the President. I honestly didn't think I needed to do much with him. Just give him a vaguely Presidential history, so I made him a lawyer who got into politics. Give him a background in fighting. He was from a rough neighborhood, poor, learned to fight young, worked his way through school with MMA scholarships.

The thing is, the crux of the story hinges on this character. If the system is going to change, he's the one that has to decide to change it. If it isn't going to change, it will be because he chose to do nothing.

The big breakthrough was a line that he says, and I'm not going to say the line, or who he says it to, or any other context, because it's late in the story and it would give too much away. But it really informed his character for me, and I suddenly understood who this man was. This was a man who defended poor teenagers, mostly black teenagers, being bullied by a dysfunctional legal system. This was a man who lost his first fight for the Presidency, nearly died, and was told he would never fight again. This was a man who fought his way back into the ring, and destroyed all comers.

Of course, it didn't become real until I came across MJ Barros online. I don't remember at this point where I first saw her work, but I knew immediately that she was an artist I wanted to work with. It was clear that she would be an ideal artist for this particular project. It wasn't until she started putting together character designs and promo art that I realized that she was the perfect artist for the project.

I can't imagine doing this book with anyone else. She's brought so much to the project. Everything she's done has been better than expected. And it's not just her art. MJ is from Chile, a country that was until recently run by a violent dictator. These issues are very real to her. She reminds me regularly how important issues like voting rights and the right to assemble are to her. Having her on the book, I think, forces me to take it more seriously than I might otherwise. It keeps me from being overly cynical. There's a passion to the project that simply wouldn't be there without MJ's presence.

And finally, Sean Rinehart, who designed the logo and has put a ton of effort into making all the promotional material look great. He's done an amazing job so far of designing everything and he'll be lettering the book as well as providing further designs (including something really interesting in the book that I don't want to go into too much detail on but am really excited about).

Everything about this project has been an incredible experience so far, and I can't wait to see this book completed. It's terrifying and amazing and I can't wait for everyone to read this story!

So please take a look, and share it around, and maybe give a little money? It's a huge goal, I know, but every cent will go toward creating the book, paying the artists, printing the book, getting the rewards made, and so-on. It's necessary, I promise. And it will be worth it, I promise that as well.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Brendan

Summer Playlist!! (there's still a little summer left)

So I know it's kind of late, since summer's just about over. But the weather is still pretty hot where I am, and there's a nice three day weekend coming up for Labor Day, so I thought I'd share what I've been listening to all summer.

(Note: I tried posting this on my tumblr, but I couldn't seem to get the actual player to embed. I think I've figured out how to do it here, which will be much better than just posting a link to their web-player. If it doesn't work, I'll probably just delete this whole thing.)




So there goes Enjoy!

New Kickstarter: Tales of the Damned

Hey everybody!

So it's that time again! I'm running a new kickstarter campaign. This is for a comic collection of three short horror comics, all written by me, with art by Kevin Enhart, Pramit Santra, and Chris Brown. This is horror in the more classic style, period pieces with creepy monsters and ghosts and so on. I'm very proud of how all these stories turned out, and I would love to share them with everyone, so I'm hoping you guys will take a look and back if you can, and share the link around as well.

Thanks!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/152668502/tales-of-the-damned-horror-anthology

Campaigners!

I’m going to take a break from complaining about Spider-Man to talk about something much more important to me. I may have linked to the tumblr blog for my project, Campaigners, already. If not, there it is. Please check it out.

Campaigners is a graphic novel I’ll be running a Kickstarter for this summer. It’s a project I very much believe in, and I’m incredibly excited to share it with everyone.

I had an idea a couple years back, probably not a new idea. What if candidates won the Presidency by fighting? What if you had to beat the crap out of your opponent? I mean, everyone knows that politicians are full of shit, and everyone not only acknowledges that elections are just a big mess of smoke and mirrors, but actually actively participate in it.

So why bother with the elections at all? Why not just have them beat the shit out of each other?

As the story evolved in my head, it became clear that it needed a focal point, a point-of-view character from which we could watch this chaos unfold. I came up with the idea of a kid whose turning 18 on Election Day, and as an act of protest has decided not to vote.

Because have you ever told anyone you don’t vote? Have you ever been in a room when someone said that out loud? It’s like they said they like to use pieces of the American flag for toilet paper. It’s crazy.

Over time, the story started to revolve around this kid, and this little rebellion began to grow in scope.

And then I realized that I really wanted to make this story happen. And it occurred to me that an election year would be the best time to put a book like this out. An election year like the one coming up in 2016. But there was no way I could come up with the money to make this happen by then.

So I decided to turn to Kickstarter, and the rest will (hopefully) be history. I found MJ Barros online, she’s an incredible artist who has already done an amazing job of bringing the characters to life. She’s already provided a ton of art and it’s all awesome.

This is going to be a very ambitious project for me, and I really hope to make it happen. I hope you’ll all check out the tumblr, and I especially hope you’ll share it with others. There’s so much great stuff coming down the line for this.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

Last thing about Spider-Man movies, I swear (UPDATED)

So I’ve been meaning to say something about this Spider-Man business, mainly because I was so certain it was never going to happen, and now, clearly, it is happening. I would have liked to post something right after the announcement, but quite honestly I just haven’t had then time.

Anyway, yeah. Marvel announced that they made a deal with Sony allowing them to use Spider-Man in their movies. And the nerd-world had a collective orgasm. While I was certainly not surprised at the overwhelming support for this decision, I’m definitely not joining in the enthusiasm.

Look, I know it’s going to seem like, being the one guy shouting that this was never going to happen, now I have to say it’s a bad idea to save face. But, really, I think this is a bad idea. I’m not going to go over all the reasons why. I've done that before, anyone interested can go look at what I’ve already said on the subject.

Just want to mention, though, that Spider-Man has had five movies in thirteen years. This is a known property, and to audiences that aren't familiar with the comics, this is going to make about as much sense as suddenly throwing the Ghostbusters onto the Avengers.

So the details of the deal, as far as I’m aware, are as such: Marvel can use Spider-Man in their movies however they wish, but Sony can basically ‘veto’ if they don’t like what Marvel’s doing. And Sony gets a cut from any Marvel movie Spider-Man is in. Marvel has input into Sony’s Spider-Man movies, but Sony doesn’t have to listen to them if they don’t want to. I don’t know if Marvel gets a cut of Sony’s Spider-Man movies, but I highly doubt it. And, apparently, Kevin Feige will be co-producing Sony’s Spider-Man movies for free.

The interesting thing, to me, is that when these details came to light, the comment people kept making was that Marvel got the use of Spider-Man “for nothing.” Like this is some kind of steal for Marvel.

Guys, really, Sony comes out so far on top in this it’s not even funny. Like no contest.

Sony gets a cut from any Marvel movie Spider-Man is in. So they get a percentage on some highly successful movies for doing literally nothing other than saying “Yeah, go ahead.” That’s just free money for them. Plus any Spider-Man movie they make is going to bring in a wider audience now that the character is part of the Marvel lineup. They can do whatever dumbass thing they want with the character, and Marvel just has to put up with it. More than that, they have to incorporate that into their stories.

Because he’s a part of it now. Once he shows up in Civil War, Spider-Man is officially, canonically, a part of the MCU. And anything that Sony does with Spider-Man is officially, canonically, a part of the MCU. Do you remember the things that Sony has done with Spider-Man so far?

Also, Sony gets Kevin Feige for free.

So Sony gets a huge, huge, huuuuge lifeline. And Marvel? Was Marvel having any real problems without Spider-Man? Other than the comic fans wanting him there? And really, that was as much because they didn’t like the Sony movies as anything else.

So Marvel now “gets” to use this character, in exchange for sharing their profits with another company. Because there are literally no other characters in the Marvel universe that can fill the shoes of Spider-Man?

Guys, there are probably at least dozens of characters that could fill Spider-Man’s shoes in the movies. Did anyone look at the New Warriors? Young Avengers? The Initiative? Kamala Khan? This new Nova kid?

My pick? Cloak and Dagger. Not going to explain why. Just like them.

**UPDATE: So there is a rumor going around - and so far it's just a rumor, so I'm taking this with a sizable dose of salt - that they might be looking for a person of color to play Spider-Man, and that Spider-Man might not even be Peter Parker. *cough*cough*Miles Morales*cough*cough*

So I'll say this. If they choose to use Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker, I will have 1000%  more faith in this move. If they cast a person of color as Peter Parker, look, I'm not gonna complain about the sudden race shift, it really won't bother me at all. But it won't change my opinion on the move.**

Seriously, there is no reason why Marvel should make such a one-sided deal. The beauty of having the Marvel universe at your disposal is having a character to fill literally anything you need. Usually there's a few.

The only thing that gives me any hope here is the rumor that Marvel was really trying to get Spider-Man for Civil War, which to me implies that the decision is based more on the story they have than on them buckling to fan pressure or whatever.

Okay, I’m gonna call this a wrap. There are other things I could add here, but my thoughts get less and less coherent as I go, so I’m just gonna stop here.

Check out Anonymous Nancy on comiXology. Check out the tumblr for my upcoming project, Campaigners.

I'll be locking down a convention schedule soon, so keep an eye out for that. And keep an eye out for my next blog about how Batman v Superman is proof positive that Warner Brothers has literally no idea what to do with DC.

Birthday Post

Today's my birthday!! I usually try not to make a big deal about birthdays, but I wanted to post for two reasons. One: Roy Stiffey, artist on Anonymous Nancy and all-around awesome guy, sent me this



Which is completely bad-ass! (btw, you can still pick up Anonymous Nancy, issues 1 and 2, on comiXology here)

The other reason I wanted to post is because it was on my birthday last year that I started my 365 stories project. Which means that, today, I have posted a new flash fiction story every day for the past year. That's 365 stories! Holy shit!

As I mentioned already, I'll be finishing out the month. Just feels cleaner that way. I'd like to say that I have special, profound story to end on, but I'll probably just crap something out about, like, fantasy warriors defeating an ancient enemy, or something post-apocalyptic, or whatever.

I'll probably spend the next couple weeks digging through the stories, just taking stock. I'd like to do some rewrites on the better ones and maybe put up a digital collection on like Amazon or something. We'll see.

Anyway, that's all for now!

365 Stories is Almost Done!

So, holy crap guys, I’m less than 20 stories short of completing this 365 stories project! I have to admit, when I first started on this I was less than convinced it was going to make it this for. I know for a lot of people it might seem like no big thing, a story every day, and most of them under 500 words, whatever. But for me? This was HUGE.

So looking back, what have I got? Well, if I’m being perfectly honest, a lot of it was pretty bad. Which is fine. That’s what I was expecting to end up with. These are all first drafts, and a lot of them were written just to get a story written. That’s writing, folks.

A lot of the stories seem like they could be the start of something bigger, like a series or a book, something like that. Some of them were clearly prologues to something much bigger. A few of them are actually pretty solid, stand-alone stories, or will be after a fair bit of editing. And a good bit of them will likely end up being stuffed under the rug and forgotten.

I’m especially happy with the 100 word stories. These were inspired by a friend, Eric Boyd, who posts regular six word stories. I wanted something with a bit more meat to it. I feel like telling a complete story in 100 words is an interesting literary challenge. I often found myself with a story at 105, or 112, or something like that. And I’d have to go through and figure out what I could cut or reword for the sake of brevity. That’s an exercise I’d recommend to any writer.

So, now that I’m almost up to 365 stories, I have to say that it’s about time to end this project. I won’t be writing daily stories anymore.

The whole point of this, after all, was to get myself writing every day. I feel like I’ve achieved that. The problem now is that, since I have so little time to write in a day as is, these short stories are starting to eat into my other projects. As fun as it is, and as useful, I think it’s time to take what I’ve learned and move on.

And, really, flash fiction is great, but there are things that you can’t do with it, and there are things I can’t learn and skills I can’t develop if my stories are all under 500 words. I need to learn to develop characters, and build arcs and so on and so forth.

So I’ll still be writing every day. Just that most of the time it’ll be part of something bigger. Like a longer short story, or even a novel. My goals for the year include writing a novel, and a screenplay, and I have some big comic book projects coming up (campaignersblog.tumblr.com). If I have something I feel is appropriate for the site, or if I just feel like cranking out a 100 worder as a warm-up, I’ll certainly post it. But otherwise, it’ll all be going elsewhere.

I actually thought about asking who might support a Patreon for more stories, but the more I thought about the more I realized that just didn’t feel right for what I was doing here. I might edit some of these and collect them, put an anthology up on Amazon, at some point in the future. We’ll see.

So, in the coming three weeks-ish, I’ll be winding down. I think I’m going to keep going through the end of the month, which will be a little over 365, but I fudged by posting a few older stories right after my daughter was born, so that should make up for it.

Thanks for reading, and for faving and reposting. And if anyone out there has any favorite stories or just wants to say hi, I’m here.

A New Year's Post!

So it’s a new year. Or at least it was four days ago. Some people use this as a time to reflect on the recent past and consider the near future. Some people think that’s dumb. As a writer/creative/whatever, I find opportunities for reflection and consideration, artificial or not, to be useful. So I thought I’d put some thoughts down, both on the past year and the one to come.

Outside of my own life, 2014 was kind of a rough one. At least from the news, the running theme seemed to be challenges to the established power structure, and violent response from that power structure. Whether it was GamerGate threatening women with rape and violence for daring to suggest they’d like to see women in video games who aren’t being raped or killed, or police bringing riot gear and tear gas to a protest of police brutality, there was definitely a theme there.

And, look, I mostly talk about comics here, so I don’t want to go too far down this path, and really so many other people have spoken more eloquently and with greater authority. So I’ll just say to those fighting the good fight (and, trust me, when you’re threatening to rape people or defending a police officer gunning down an unarmed man, you aren’t fighting the good fight): Keep at it. As a white guy, I can tweet my support, I can donate to causes, I can even show up at protests. I can support media that portrays women and people of color and other minorities in a positive light. Hell, I can even create that sort of media (or at least I can try). But at the end of the day, it’s gonna be you guys, fighting, sometimes an inch at a time. It may not seem like you’re gaining much ground now, but when you look back in a few years, (hopefully) you'll be able to say it was worth it.

To move on to lighter topics, in my personal life, it was actually a pretty great year. Anonymous Nancy issue 2 was finished, with the help of a Kickstarter. (Thanks again to all who backed and/or shared the link!) It’s even up on comiXology right now, along with issue 1. (Issue 3 is moving along quite nicely.) I’m mostly finished with a collection of three short horror comics. And I was able to write a brand-new short story every day! I’m almost up to 365 stories, which is kind of a huge deal for me. When I started that project, I was sincerely concerned that I would crap out after a few days.

I had tables at several conventions this past year, including Nittany Con, Sci-Fi Valley Con and WV Pop Con. Got to meet some cool people and had a really great time. Also slowing getting the hang of the whole “trying to get people to give a crap about things I write” thing.

More personally, and more importantly, I became the father of an amazing little girl. Five (and a half) months old now, and every day she’s challenged me, and every day is something special because she’s there when I wake up.

So that was my year. And for the coming year? Well, of course there’s writing. Always writing. Once I’ve finished up with all 365 stories, I’m likely going to put an end to that project. It was great fun, a huge challenge, and worth every story. The whole point was to get me writing every day. The problem is that now it’s taking up time that could be spent writing other, larger projects. So I’ll still be writing every day, certainly, but going forward it will be for larger projects; novels, full-length short stories, etc.

That’s one of my big goals for the new year, to write a novel, in full. I have a few novels that are close to being ready, so I’ll have to decide which one to write first. But it’s one foot in front of the other time. Time to get marching.

As far as comics go, there’s Nancy issue 3, hopefully I can have that ready to go by convention season, as well as this horror anthology, which I may end up running a small kickstarter for. I’d like to put together at least one more, but ideally two more anthologies. Similar format, three short, eight-ish page stories, but in different genres. Probably sci-fi next, and then maybe western or crime before coming back to horror again.

And of course, there’s the big project, Campaigners. This is going to be a pretty sizable Kickstarter, which I plan to run during the summer. If you’re not following the tumblr, it’s a story set in the year 2076, when presidential elections are decided by hand-to-hand fights, often to the death, and a young woman turning 18 on election day raises the ire of the entire country by declaring she plans not to vote. So check it out, share it, talk it up!

And of course, there’s more conventions to attend! People to meet, comics to sell! Friends to make!

Anyway, that’s my year-in-review, and my year-to-come. Best to all of you!

Thoughts on Sony, plus some awesome links

Okay, well, I’m going to start off with a couple links, because I’ll probably lose anybody reading this right away, so hopefully you’ll checkout these links first.

So I took part in a Holiday anthology. There's only a few stories, of which I wrote two, and it's free, and festive, and you should check it out. 

Anonymous Nancy issue 2 is still available on comiXology here, the first issue is there as well. Badass assassin on a quest for revenge, and so on.

Also, check out the tumblr for Campaigners. It's a graphic novel I'll be kickstarting next summer. It's the future, there's a girl who doesn't want to vote. Oh, and Presidential candidates beat each other to death for the right to run. So there's that.

So go check those out now, before you read these other things I have to say.

So I have some things to say about this Sony nonsense, and once again, no matter how you feel about it, you probably won’t agree with me.

First off, I know that there was a ton of stuff that came out regarding Sony and Marvel and Spider-Man, and a lot of it flatly contradicted most of what I said in my last post about Spider-Man. So I guess I should address that first.

Look, I’m not Nostradamus, and I’m not a Hollywood producer. There’s literally no reason in the world that I should ever have any idea what I’m talking about, really about anything, but especially about insider information regarding the film industry.

That said, I think it would be prudent to take all of this with a grain of salt. Let’s look at it realistically. Best-case scenario, Sony and Marvel were in talks about sharing Spider-Man, were close to making a deal, and talks fell apart at the last minute.

But this isn’t coming from information that someone in a meeting between them leaked. This isn’t coming from anything remotely resembling a reputable source. I know, you’re thinking “It came from Sony’s own internal e-mails!” Well, yeah. Sony’s. Disney/Marvel has given ZERO response to these rumors. Nothing from them.

So let me give you my worst-case scenario. ASM 2 didn’t perform well, Sony freaked out. They said “Look, we need to do something here. Let’s see if Marvel wants to share Spider-Man.” They called Disney/Marvel, offered them a deal. D/M said “Yeah, sure, we’ll think about it.” Whilst making an obscene motion with their hand and giggling behind their hands. And Sony said, “Look, it’s okay, Marvel might let us put Spider-Man in their movies!”

Probably it’s somewhere between the two, but if people didn’t really, really, REALLY want to see Spider-Man in the MCU, they wouldn’t be so close to believing this.

And I will still argue that Spider-Man doesn’t belong there. At least not Peter Parker. Maybe Miles Morales. Definitely Miles Morales. Maybe the next time I have some free time I’ll explain why Peter Parker’s Spidey has no place in the MCU, but Miles would be a perfect fit.

So I’m going to leave that there. Again, I could be totally wrong here. Just my line of thought on the matter.

Continuing with Sony, I have some thoughts on the cancellation of the Interview.

I want to mention two things first. One, I actually wanted to see the Interview. I didn’t think it was going to be an amazing movie, but it looked funny enough. Two, I am absolutely, unequivocally, without reservation against censorship.

But, come on, guys. This is not the blow we’re making it out to be, and more importantly, it’s not at all surprising, and really I don’t even blame Sony.

Because when Sony got hacked, and all their internal emails were leaked publicly, how did everyone react? We were metaphorically rolling around on a bed covered in hacked emails, gleefully reveling in the gaffes and faux pas, and whatever else we could dig up. There was zero support for Sony, there was zero concern for Sony. No one stopped to say, “Hey, this is private stuff. Maybe back off?”

So why the hell should Sony think that anyone was going to have their backs in the face of a terrorist threat?

Plus, really, it’s a Seth Rogan/James Franco comedy. It’s not some biting satire, it’s not a hard-hitting documentary. The trailer boasts a scene where Rogan shoves something up his ass. Something that’s way too big to fit up a human’s ass!

So, yeah. The stakes on this weren’t exactly super-high.

And anyone bitching about the Pyongyang movie getting cancelled? “When they came for Sony’s emails, I said nothing…” and so on.

That said, you can still buy the Pyongyang comic. And you can write a comic critical of North Korea if you want. Or critical of anyone. That’s the beauty of comics. You can do whatever you want. You can write a comic about Presidential candidates who fight each other to the death, and then try to turn it into a coming-of-age story somehow.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that. If you vehemently disagree, feel free to comment or w/e. Otherwise, check out those links at the top, and keep posted for why Miles Morales is the perfect movie Spider-Man.

Anonymous Nancy issue 2!

As promised, here is some news:

Anonymous Nancy issue 2 is now available on comiXology! Check it out here: http://cmxl.gy/1FvcdAE

You can pick up the first issue while you're at it, it's right there on the same page!

Roy and I have put a lot of effort into this book, we're both very proud of it, and we hope you'll check it.

We're hard at work on issue 3 as well, hoping to have it ready to go ASAP. (I've seen the roughs already and it's going to look great!)

So there's that. I'm still putting together a con schedule for next year. (Anyone in KC want me to pay a visit?) Campaigners is still in full swing. Been a little lax on updates due to the holiday and general madness, but I've got new character art to post, probably this evening or tomorrow.

Also, I'm participating in a holiday anthology, should be available right around X-mas, so keep an eye out for updates on that as well!

I think that's it.

Laterz

Thoughts on Spider-Man and the MCU

I know I said I was going to try to blog more, and I know I promised something “next week,” and that was like three weeks ago. But, you know, stuff… I know, whatever.

Anyway, I did mention something about Spider-Man and the MCU, and I may not have pissed off all 4 people who read this blog with my last post. So here goes: Why Spider-Man will never be in the MCU (and why he doesn’t belong there)!

So, there’ve been a lot of rumors/speculation/expressions of desire regarding the Spider-Man and Marvel’s movies. A lot of fans are unhappy with what Sony’s doing with the movies right now, they feel like Spider-Man is an essential part of the Marvel Universe, and they want to see him on the movie Avengers.

Guys, it’s not gonna happen.

Full disclosure: I really like the Marc Webb Spider-Man stuff. (More on that in a bit.)

The main reason why I think it won’t ever happen? Spider-Man has nothing to offer Marvel. The current slate of Spider-Man movies aren’t out-grossing anything Marvel’s putting out right now. So are they going to include a character they don’t own in their movies, that as far as they’re concerned isn’t likely to increase their profits at all, and then have to share what they’re making with Sony?

And think of this: Spider-Man has had two movies come out already. Marvel has put out ten movies and a season-and-a-half of a TV show (with several more movies and four short Netflix series in the pipeline). At no point thus far has anyone in the MCU mentioned a guy dressed as a spider flitting around NYC. No one’s said anything about that time a bunch of cops were turned into lizard people and the top of a skyscraper was knocked over. No mention of Oscorp.

In the same vein, when Electro was destroying Times Square, no Avengers? No SHIELD? At the end of ASM 2, when the Rhino shows up, it is specifically implied that Spidey is the only one capable of defeating such a foe. It’s one thing to leave the different heroes out of each other’s films, it’s another thing entirely to make a plot point out of there being no other superheroes around.

Look, I’m not saying it’s impossible to deal with those issues. Certainly some clever screenwriting, maybe a dedicated episode of Agents of SHIELD. I’m just saying, it’s not worth the trouble Marvel Studios would have to go to, considering it’s a character they don’t even own.

So what if they get the rights to the character back? Well, that’s even less likely. Sony just made another movie, they’re going to have those rights for a while, unless Marvel’s willing to pay for them. And, again, why would they be? People were complaining about the first Marc Webb Spider-Man being a reboot of a movie franchise that was only ten-year-old. They’re not going to complain about this? People aren’t going to be confused with a new Spidey so soon after the old one?

It’s just plain not worth the effort.

And here’s why I think it shouldn’t happen:

Spider-Man doesn’t belong in the MCU. He just doesn’t fit.

What’s one of Spider-Man’s most defining characteristics? His secret identity. Juggling Peter Parker and Spider-Man is an essential aspect of his personality. So much so that when they had him reveal his identity in the comics, they decided it was such a bad idea they immediately retconned it in a way that most people consider to be the clumsiest and most ill-conceived retcon in comics history, even as they almost unanimously agree it was absolutely necessary.

The problem is that secret identities don’t exist in the MCU. The very first Marvel movie ended with Tony Stark revealing himself to be Iron Man, and that was enough to set the standard for the MCU. Everyone knows Captain America is Steve Rogers. Thor is just Thor. That’s not a costume, that’s just what he wears. Probably most people don’t know who Hawkeye and Black Widow are, in the same way that I don’t know who the SEAL team members who took out Bin Laden are.

I hear a lot of comments about the Civil War movie along the lines of “How are they going to do Civil War when they don’t have Spider-Man and there aren’t any secret identities?” Obviously it’ll be about something else. The Civil War event wasn’t about secret identities. It was about a rift in the superhero community. A civil war, if you will. They can have that rift be about anything they want. They can have it be about Stark wanting to head SHIELD and Cap wanting to keep it shut down, for example.

The other reason Spider-Man doesn’t really belong is, to be honest, he’s too well known for the MCU. One of the biggest factors in what made the MCU what it is is that Marvel didn’t have the rights to their biggest characters.

Without Spider-Man and the X-Men, Marvel had to make people care about characters they’d never heard of before. Sure, if you were a comic book fan, you knew who Iron Man was, but if you weren’t, you probably just thought of that Black Sabbath song (or that really weird Japanese movie).

They had to build people’s awareness of these characters, and draw them in, with well-crafted movies. They did that the only way it can be done: by bringing in people with a clear vision and allowing them to see that vision through. When I first heard they were making an Iron Man movie, I genuinely didn’t care. When I heard Jon Favreau was directing, and RDJ was playing Stark, that’s when I started to get excited.

I’m starting to meander away from the point here. The point is that the MCU thrives on characters that wider audiences aren’t familiar with. Stories they can tell from scratch. Probably the weakest point of Man of Steel for me was that I was expected to care about and understand the characters without the movie doing the work or making me care. Like they decided “Well, that’s Lois Lane, you know who Lois Lane is, right?” No, I don’t know who this Lois Lane is, you have to show me.

Meandering again. I think the point is adequately made. There’s just no reason for the MCU to care about Spider-Man. That’s why he belongs over there in his own world, with his own movies.

And, look, those movies are good movies. I never read the early Spidey stuff when I was young, so I never really cared about Gwen Stacey. But man, I believed in that relationship. They sold that. And Garfield is a great Peter Parker. And the action is very well-done. These are just some solid superhero movies.

But, guys (talking to Sony this time), Spider-Man simply doesn’t have an Avengers-style franchise in him. All the best Spider-Man characters need to orbit around Spider-Man. Those spinoffs just aren’t going to be able to sustain themselves.

Seriously, I usually defend Hollywood and the motives of film studios, but this habit of trying to turn every goddamn thing into the Avengers is idiotic, and it needs to stop. You’re going to destroy the movie industry. Again.

Also, despite everything I just said, I kind of really want the new Fantastic Four movie to tank, like hard enough that Marvel gets the rights back in time to cram an FF teaser into Black Panther. Because Doctor Doom is the greatest villain in the Marvel Universe, and he really belongs over there with everyone else. And yes, that kind of contradicts everything I just said about Spidey, but really, those movies were never anywhere near as popular as any of the Spider-Man movies, even the really bad one.

Okay, end of rant. Assuming you’ve made it this far, I’ll have a pretty good announcement in a few days. And it won’t be 1300 words long, I promise.

That’s all. Next time, I’ll explain why Agents of SHIELD is a great show, and also the worst thing to happen to the MCU. Maybe. That one might be tough to get through, even for me.

Some thoughts on events

Hey all, been a while since I posted anything that wasn't just promotion. I've been incredibly busy lately, not least of all because we had a baby about three and a half months ago, and I've had a number of projects to work on as well.

I'd like to start using this blog more, specifically for comic-related thoughts and things like that, assuming I can find the time.

In that spirit, there's something that's bugged me for a long time now, and I wanted to post something about it. This isn't like a big social issue or anything, just some standard bitching about comics, and it'll probably be a bit disjointed because I'm writing this in bed while my daughter sleeps next to me, hoping I can finish before she wakes up.

So, anyway, Marvel's been putting out a lot of teasers lately, and while I've been seeing a decent amount of speculation about what they might be about, trying to figure out what next year's big events will be, are they all tied into Secret Wars, etc, what I've mostly been seeing are fans bitching about it. Talking about event fatigue and how much of a mess Marvel is making of everything. Talking about a "Crisis-style" reboot. Things like that.

Look, I get it. Events can be annoying. They rarely live up to the hype. Even the best events really only start out strong, and always seem to end on more a whimper than anything. They make these "huge, sweeping changes" to the status-quo that never last long enough to really sink in because they just lead into to the next event and it's "huge, sweeping changes." It almost seems like they're more of a tool to make the changes in the first place than they are any real storytelling device.

(I know a lot of people put a lot of hard work into these events, so I don't want to sound like I'm dumping on them, there have been many events that I've very much enjoyed, I just think that they're a tough thing to get to work quite how the publishers usually want them to. Especially when the ending is more often anymore just a set-up for stories to come.)

So I understand that they're annoying. I've dropped many titles solely because they lost their momentum and got dragged into these events. I've tried to get on board with the events only to find that I lost interest halfway through. (And lest you think I'm picking on Marvel, I dropped a lot of my DC titles for similar reasons, and I think every September was basically "lose all momentum on the storyline you've been getting invested in" month.)

But, you know who I bet is more annoyed by the teasers and the event? Marvel. They have to put out teasers to keep people talking about them. They have to have regular writer's retreats to keep all these different threads straight. I'm certain they'd like to let their stories and characters build on their own, in their own titles, instead of having to have these events, one after another.

But every time someone brings it up, the response from anyone at Marvel is basically that the events book always sell. Probably better than the regular books. So I'm betting that everyone that complains about the teasers, and constant events, still goes out and buys them.

There's a type of reader that I'm sure I've complained about before. The sort of reader who will complain about a title, but keep buying it because it's their favorite character, or because they've been buying it since they were a kid. The type of reader who will buy every Batman title, ensuring that there are at least four on the shelves at all times, even if only one of them is any good.

These are the people who complain about renumbering a series to coincide with a new creative team or direction. These are the people who complain about a costume change, no matter how stupid the old costume (or, really, the very concept of costumes) is, because it's "a classic." These are the people who flip out over ever new storyline, every character that isn't treated exactly the way they want them to be.

(To be clear, I'm not specifically talking about readers who send death threats to creators, or even readers who get angry about "SJWs" and their "agenda" regarding black or Muslim or female superheroes. That's a whole different issue and one that I hope I don't need to preach to anyone here about.)

These are the people who buy every issue of every event, and hate every issue of very event. They buy it because they know it will "matter," and they have to be able to fill their knowledge-box with every factoid available to them. They hate it because it changes things, major things. They hate it because their favorite character didn't save the day, or someone got beat by someone else that, according to their knowledge-box shouldn't be able to defeat them. They hate it because they hate events, and it's an event, and therefore they hate it.

But even that strikes me as a disingenuous characterization. Because the truth is, I don't understand these people. I don't understand why they even read comics, or watch movies or TV shows. Certainly not for the same reason I do.

I read comics because I enjoy stories, and I enjoy comics as a storytelling medium. I read superhero comics because I enjoy superheroes, and I enjoy the worlds that have been created and the scope of them, and the unique storytelling opportunities afforded within them. I don't care if it "matters" so long as the story is well-told. I don't care how much it "matters" if the story is poorly-told.

I know it sounds like I'm putting myself on a pedestal here, and yes, to a certain extent I am placing myself above the sort of people I'm talking about. Maybe that's wrong, maybe I should be content to do my own thing and leave them to do theirs.

But when I hear the same, predictable complaints from people who are, at least in my estimation, causing the very problem they're bemoaning, I can't help but get frustrated and annoyed.

I guess you can take comfort, at least, in the fact that I'm pretty sure no one will read this.

Next Week: Why Spider-Man should never show up in the MCU! (maybe, if I feel like writing it).

A little bit of news

A few things:

Anonymous Nancy #2 is done and printed, any kickstarter backers should have theirs, or it should be on its way. Issue three is scripted and on its way to Roy to start drawing.

I have all the art for my short horror anthology, save the cover, which I haven't really decided where I want to go with. Should I have one of the artists in the anthology do a cover? Have an different artist do a cover? Something to think about, for sure, but I'm not going to worry about it until the last two shorts have been lettered.

I don't really have any conventions lined up in the near future. I wasn't able to make Pittsburgh for various reasons. I'm working on putting together a schedule for next year. Probably be limited due to both money and time issues, but we'll see how things look when I have a few more things to offer.

And, finally, we've launched the tumblr for a new project, called Campaigners. Campaigners is a graphic novel that I'll be kickstarting next summer. Written by myself, with art by MJ Barros, the story is set in the year 2076. America is on the verge of an election, which will be decided by a fight to the death between the candidates. The main character, Kydra Frank, is turning eighteen on Election Day, but wants nothing to do with the election. When she says so publicly, she has to face the public backlash.

It's a story I'm very proud of, and I hope to get enough people paying attention that when the kickstarter launches we'll be able to fund it without too much trouble. Ideally it will be ready for release during convention season 2016.

The tumblr can be found here. There's not much up yet, but we're hoping to have content updating at least weekly in the near future.

One last thing. I've been doing this 365 stories thing for a while now (right now I'm doing all spooky or horror type stories for Halloween, so if that's something that excites you...). I've still got a few months before I've reached the full 365 stories, but I'm starting to think about what I want to going forward. Should I keep writing these stories every day? The problem is that I don't have a whole lot of free time lately, and the time I spend on these stories could be better spent on other projects; longer short stories for submission, comics, novels, etc. I might start thinking of a patreon or maybe self-publishing a few collections of these stories.

Just thinking out loud, I guess.

So that's all for now.

No More Cons (this year)

So I haven't posted anything here in a while, mostly because I've been really busy lately and it just kind of slipped my mind. Pittsburgh Comic Con is this weekend, and I'm hoping to get a chance to top by, but I will not have a table. I'm especially bummed about this because I should be getting physical copies of issue 2 of Anonymous Nancy by the end of the week. But there's just too much going on right now and I won't be able to make it.

I don't think there are any more conventions this year that I could conceivably make it to. To be honest, when next year rolls around I'll probably only make it to a few. Money, time, all of that. But I'll still be working on projects, still writing and getting comics made. I'm pretty close to finishing up this short horror anthology I've been working on, and once I'm done with that I'll be moving on to a sci-fi one. I want to try something with smaller, longer comics. Like something that feels like a book, that you can fit in your pocket. Maybe 100-150 pages? I dunno. I have a lot going on right now, so we'll see.

That is all for now. Hopefully Anonymous Nancy #2 will be up on comiXology soon, and I'll be sure to drop a note here when it is. In the meantime, make sure to pick up Lunatic Fringe and Nancy #1 if you haven't already!

Morgantown or Bust!

Getting ready to leave for Morgantown for the WV Pop Con. I'll be the guy passed out at my table.

Seriously though, stop by and say hi!

WV Pop Culture Con!

Hey everybody! Been a little while since I posted here. Things have been pretty crazy lately, with the new edition to the family and a bunch of projects in various stages of getting done.

First and foremost, I will be at the West Virginia Pop Culture Con in Morgantown, WV, the weekend after this. The dates are August 23-24. Details here. It looks to be a pretty good time, so I hope any of you reading this will stop by and say hi!

The Kickstarter for Anonymous Nancy was a success, so thanks to everyone who contributed to that as well. I'm hoping against hope to have copies of issue 2 ready for the convention. I should, at the very least, have the prints available.

I have another project in the works, that's getting pretty close to completed, and I'll be announcing that as soon as it's ready.

Also, Lunatic Fringe is now available on comiXology here, or you can just look up my name and pick up a copy of Anonyous Nancy while you're there!

I think that's all I have at the moment. Ciao