Rapid Fire Friday III

I have seen way too much coverage of the NFL draft and the thing isn’t until tomorrow.

Didn’t everyone write off the Lakers after Shaq left… someone forgot to tell the Lakers.

With the walkout or whatever they are calling it planned for Monday; it could backfire horribly if there really aren’t any significant problems caused by the missing workers.

Steve Howe’s tragic death today just falls suit with his tragic life. Hopefully he can now find the peace he so desperately needed.

I think Dallas is the only city that currently has two annual comic conventions.

I read Batman: Gotham County Line again last night. It amazes me just how well Batman works in a horror story.

Everyone is talking about the price of gas and what to do about it. I say we go Soprano and simply put the testicles of all the petroleum companies CEO’s into vices until the price drops by a $1.50 a gallon.

I just can’t take Tom Cruise serious anymore. Mission Impossible III could be incredible but all I can see is his jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch.

There is now less than 1,000 days until the end of the Busch Regime. Can we get a countdown clock going?

My mother doesn’t understand my photography. I showed her the new set of lights I bought for $1,000 and she just couldn’t fathom spending that much on lights.

Two fast food restaurants that almost never change their menus are McDonald’s and ‘In n Out’. Yet McDonald’s spends a fortune on advertising where ‘In n Out’ does not. Does anyone need a reminder that McDonald’s exists?

I found out that the Green Hornet’s mask is far more comfortable to wear than I had ever imagined. Now if I can get my prescription lens cut to fit into the eyeholes.

I’m amazed at how quickly the PDA fad came and went. I think its Blackberries fault.

The nice thing about being overweight is no one expects you to be fashionable.

Does anyone actually watch the Ghost Whisperer?

It doesn’t matter whether you ask men or women, the overwhelming majority of people like breasts. Maybe it’s the feeding factor from when we are children; I can’t find anyone who just doesn’t like boobs.

What would we eat at Thanksgiving if Ben Franklin had gotten his way and the turkey became the national bird?

And is the middle finger the state bird of New York?

My second plan to bring down gas prices… make Bush pay for the fuel for Air Force One, Marine One and his limo.

And tomorrow I turn 36 years old… exactly the same age as Andre Aggasi and Uma Thurman. What the hell have I done with my life right?

Comic art taking a new direction?

There definitely seems to be trends in comics, especially when it comes to what art is popular for horror comics. Right around 2002 the big thing was the painted/abstract style lead by artists Ashley Wood and Ben Templesmith. IDW built their company on these two artists and a slew of others with similar styles began getting work everywhere. Now Wood and Templesmith are doing fine, but the industry seems to be going through another change.

You pick up the latest horror comics and you see a more detailed but cartoon-like style. Clive Barker’s Great and Secret Show has art by Gabrielle Rodriguez. Gabrielle’s style is very clean, nowhere near the abstract nature that IDW started with. DC’s new Man-Bat mini-series has art by Mike Huddleston. The book has a true horror feel but the art is again very clean and cartoon-like.

A friend of mine who’s style would be closer to the abstract group, wrote me the other day and asked if he should change his style to find work. It’s a great question and not one with an easy answer. The artist who really make a name for themselves are the ones who have unique styles. Mike Mignola made his name when his style wasn’t the popular one. Now he seems to be the style everyone is trying to obtain.

I think the key here is to draw the way you draw and doing it to the best of your abilities. Then try to find an editor that likes your style. I know of a guy who has an editor at Marvel that loves his work but the higher ups aren’t as impressed. So the editor is trying to find side doors to get this guy work. He found an editor that loves his style and believes in him.

Now what the next art style in vogue will be for horror, I have no idea. Maybe we’ll go back to the hyper-detailed, posed Jim Lee style or back to the abstract Ash Wood feel. The trick is to find a book you love to work on, give it the feel you want it to have and then do your best work. You might be the one setting the next trend.

And writers, this is advice for you too. If you don’t want to write horror, then don’t do it even if it’s what’s popular. If you don’t like what you’re writing then it will show in your work. Write things that mean something to you because in the beginning it’s about making a name for yourself. Later on, when Marvel is waving the big check in front of you to write X-men… then you can mold to what the audience wants… but only in so much as you are doing it your way.

If you haven’t picked up Man-Bat, it’s a really good read so far. Bruce Jones gives us a true horror story inside the Batman universe. Steve Niles did a great Batman horror story last year with Gotham County Line, but it had a feeling that it was outside of continuity and could happen any time in Batman’s life. Man-Bat feels like it could just as easily be in Detective Comics.

I just found a whole new level of irony.

If any of you have met me, you know I’m a big guy. Actually, ‘big’ may not be the word for it. And like most people, I want to lose weight. I’ve tried all the different diets, etc. A year back my brother tried the Atkins – Low Carb diet and that worked well for him. I tried it and really didn’t have that much success. I had some mind you, but not nearly the level he had. I wondered if I was doing it wrong. I knew I hadn’t cheated so maybe something I thought was okay on the diet wasn’t. I really had no idea. I even read the books and couldn’t figure it out.

Well, I’m going to try it again, but this time I have a bit of information my wife discovered that might just help me. Many of you know that you body has a starvation mode that it goes into where it assumes it’s not getting the calories it needs and doesn’t burn as much. Basically if you don’t eat enough food in a day, your body thinks you are starving yourself and it protects you. The amount of calories you need to eat a day is supposed to be calculated by your weight times twelve (I’ve also heard by ten). So for someone 240 lbs they need to be eating around 3,000 calories a day to keep their body from going into starvation mode.

Now, as odd as it may sounds, I really don’t each much. I tend to skip meals a lot and grab bad food when I do eat. And one of the side effects of Atkins for me is I lose my appetite. So for someone who really doesn’t eat much in the first place, losing my appetite means that I maybe want to eat one meal a day. Now this is bad on any diet because they say you should eat frequent small meals a day to keep your metabolism up. So even thought I go on a low carb diet and cut out everything bad (sodas, bread, sodas) I’m not eating enough times a day to keep my metabolism going and I’m not eating enough calories to keep my body burning calories.

The realization here is that I have to start eating MORE to lose weight. Crazy eh? Now I can’t just eat junk. But for me to make Atkins or any other diet work I need to eat four or five times a day. And I’m not going to say exactly how many calories a day I need to take in to keep my body from starvation mode… but lets just say it’s WAY more than 3,000. So I need to plan out my days now so I can eat meat, meat and more meat with the occasional salad thrown in. So tonight’s dinner was at an all you can eat Brazilian BBQ. I am completely full… but I think I still need to eat once more before I go to bed.

If this isn’t ironic, then I just don’t understand the meaning of the word.

I try to get out… but they keep pulling me back in.

One of the things I didn’t like about publishing was being the editor. Now you get to be the driving force of a book, group of books or a company depending on whom you work for. But you also have to be the bad guy when artists don’t meet their deadlines. Now an advantage that someone working for Marvel, DC or other publishers is they have the power of the paycheck. Most of the time artists, inkers, colorists and letterers like to eat so they tend to finish their work to get paid.

When I was publishing, I didn’t have the paycheck. I had the promise that I would do everything in my power to publish the book and to make money and if money were made then it would be shared among those involved. It’s awfully hard to fire someone off a book when you’re not paying them up front. So a few years ago I put the publishing company to rest and began focusing on freelance writing; this made my life a lot easier… or so I believed.

In December of 2005 I came up with this bizarre idea to take all the little comical concepts I had come up with over the years and bind them into one graphic novel. This would construe nineteen different short stories of two to five pages each. Which also meant nineteen different artists. I also set this up to be a charity book so no one involved was going to get paid. In essence, I put myself right back into the position I had left a few years back. I had nineteen artists, an inker, and two letterers now to keep on top of. I also had to assemble pages from an old ‘cut & paste’ set, write the scripts for all of these artists and digitally ink four pages; quite the list of things to do.

As of now, I have all but three artists pages, waiting for the inker to finish up the pages he has and the letterers are cranking away. Everything else is done and I feel a lot better. But I still have to pressure the remaining creators to finish up… and it’s not something I want to do but it must be done. So I’ve dusted off my editor hat and found the old whip. With any luck I won’t have to do much more than a couple emails. But I can see someone flaking at the last minute and the having to scramble for a replacement artist who can do three pages pencils and inks in a week… that type of thing.

What I’m going to take out of this experience is a lesson that should help me as a freelancer. As a freelancer, the best thing I can do is be an asset to an editor that he never has to worry about. Make my deadlines with time to spare. Make changes quickly. Basically be at the top of my game on every project I take on; because in the end, and editor is going to go back to the creators that make their jobs easier.

Me think thou dost protest too much.

I find it odd that so many different programs have been made to investigate the claims made in the ‘Da Vinci Code’. I understand that the author, Dan Brown, has put forth some interesting theories that go against the established teachings of the Catholic Church. But for the church to come out against the novel seems like overkill. The book is a work of fiction that only claims a handful of facts. And now I am currently watching the fourth different documentary examining the ideas brought forth in the book.

Now I’ve read the book. I enjoyed the book. I’m looking forward to the movie. I’ve also read Brown’s earlier novel ‘Angels and Demons’. In the first book starting the character of Robert Langdon, the Illuminati and Vatican City are both put in negative light but the overall theme is that a scientist has discovered a way to create anti-matter and in doing so has proved the existence of God. I’m not going to get into detail on that, you can read the book if you want to know how that works. But I find it interesting that neither the Catholic Church nor any other group came out against the book.

Now, I’m not going to get into the details of either book because that’s not what has my attention tonight. What surprises me is that all of these documentaries come across as the same: the appear to show both sides of the argument but those against the existing Catholic beliefs all come across as either a little crazy or fanciful. Those following the Catholic line all seem to have unwavering proof that Brown is wrong. Mind you, almost all of their proof comes from either what isn’t written in the bible or documents that have not been found. Their proof is the lack of proof. One of the experts’ proof that Jesus and Mary were not married is the fact that there is no marriage certificate or mention of a wedding or reception in the bible.

In the end of all of these documentaries, it’s put forth that Brown’s claims… which really aren’t his claims but rather a theory in a work of fiction… are all erroneous. Tonight’s episode literally ended with a woman saying: “the book is entertaining but the theories are completely bogus.” These documentaries really come across as an anti-propaganda campaign against the novel and they are airing more and more as the release date for the movie approaches.

So why does the Catholic Church ignore the first book whose main villain is a highly placed priest in Vatican City and declares that one of their favorite artists Michelangelo was actually part of the Illuminati and hiding clues under the church’s nose. Yet book two comes out and claims Da Vinci hid the truth about the holy grail in his work and that it meant Jesus was married and had a kid… this gets the church up in arms. So you can make the church itself look bad but not their doctrine.

I wonder now just how much more anti-propaganda we’ll see between now and May 19th when the movie opens? And if you’re looking for a little more conspiracy: while typing up this entry I found out that Microsoft word considers it a grammatical error to have a non-capital ‘C’ for church in ‘Catholic Church’ but has no problem with a small ‘c’ for church with ‘Protestant church’, ‘Baptist church’, ‘Mormon church’, etc. Try it for yourself.

The making of a super-hero.

I’m a little under-the-weather this evening but wanted to keep the posting streak alive, so I’m going to post a column I did about five years ago that was specifically about creating characters for super-hero comics.

There are no hard and fast rules on how to create a character, but there are certain elements that make up a good one.

First is the name, or names if the hero has a secret identity. The hero name needs to be appropriate to their powers, easy to remember, in line with their personality and most important, can it be yelled out quickly on a battlefield. Their real name should also be something easy to remember. Marvel and DC both had tricks for creating real names. Most of the time Marvel used alliteration, the first and last name started with the same letter. Reed Richards, Bruce Banner, Sue Storm, Scott Summer, Warren Worthington, Wade Wilson and the list goes on. DC on the other hand was very fond of the “two first names” method, such as Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Barry Allen and Hal Jordan. Let’s use our favorite Webhead to see if he passes the name tests. Hero name Spider-Man: he has spider like powers, it’s easy to remember, he was a teenager when he created it as a wrestling name and if it’s an emergency, people call him Spidey. So the hero name passes. As for the real name, Peter Parker is a classic example of alliteration.

Second would be their powers. You want to give them a power that makes sense to the reader and is somewhat believable. When Marvel was giving Spider-Man his powers, they could have given him organic web shooters, but everyone knows that a spider shoots webs out of their abdomen, not their legs. So it wouldn’t make sense that he would grow webspinners on his wrists and they couldn’t have him swing around by his ass, so they had him create the formula for the webbing and design wrist shooters.

Third and the most difficult is to limit your hero. Every good character needs a weakness to keep them humble and believable. If Superman was completely unstoppable, then where is the danger or suspense? Hence the need for Kryptonite. Spider-Man doesn’t have any physical limitations, but he has social ones. He has never been accepted by the general public, vilified by the Daily Bugle and feared by many, including his own aunt. So a limitation can be anything from Daredevil’s blindness to Moon Knight’s borderline split personalities.

Fourth would be the character’s motivation. Why on earth would anyone put on a costume and go out to possibly get killed? Spider-Man’s motivation is very simple: he had an opportunity to stop a criminal and didn’t, then that criminal murdered his uncle. So his motivation is guilt. Batman’s is anger over his parent’s death. Superman and Captain America fight for a sense of duty. Deadpool does it for the cash. Motivation is very important for a well-rounded character. Too often the character has no real motivation and the readers lose their connection to it.

Finally, you must decide on the character’s personality. Is this going to be the guy the readers identify with, or is he comic relief? The role your character is going to play in the story should help dictate the personality. If the character is supposed to connect with the reader, then he needs to have redeeming qualities and be the type of character that people would like to be. Characters that started out to be hard such as Wolverine and the Punisher became much more human when they became the focus of their own series. Solo books are limited in personalities because the reader needs to identify with the main character, but in team books you have a more to play with.

To recap the second step, give your character:

1. An appropriate name.
2. A believable set of powers.
3. Limitations.
4. A reasonable motive.
5. A definitive personality.

Just one of those nights.

You ever have one of those nights where you feel like getting out, but you don’t really have any place to go. You’re bored out of your mind and can’t find anything to do. Then, when you least expect it, the night is over and you’ve done absolutely nothing. I had a lot of those when I was younger and single. You spend a chunk of the night dialing up friends to see if anyone wants to catch a movie or hit a bar and when you get through your list of regulars, you start dialing up the people you don’t actually like. Hell, you might even ring up an ex just to have someone to hang out with. Eventually you exhaust every number you know of and still nothing to do.

At this point you could still go to a movie or a bar by yourself, but you don’t. If you get something to eat, it’s fast food and you bring it home. And at some point the television gets turned on. You start flipping through shows you’ve never watched before. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Ground Force, American Chopper or a plethora of others and somewhere in the back of your mind your subconscious is taking notes. I can open a tough bottle with a potato. A 22” slick on the back of a chopper works well but you have to check your fender height. All plants have Latin names and they really don’t make much sense. This is how people end up gaining all the useless knowledge that will someday come back to them at the weirdest moment.

The bottom line is… I had nothing to do tonight, ended up sitting in front of the old TV and ended up watching Supernatural, Dr. Who and The Unit (thank you Tivo) and there’s a good chance after writing this I’m going to go back and watch Smallville. But what I’m missing is that useless knowledge I used to gain on bored nights not that I have a wife who usually keeps me from being bored and a Tivo so I don’t end up on the weird shows. Now if I learn that a one-antlered antelope is shunned by his community, I only have myself to blame.

You would think this wouldn’t be important… and you would be wrong. As a writer, it’s these little tidbits of information that our brain files away that we will eventually use in a story somewhere. A special on Roman weapons could lead to a clue in a CSI story or a historical drama. Watching real life medical shows could come in handy if I ever get to write for House or ER. And I’m sure I’m going to be using a ton of stuff soon from all the episodes of the Mythbusters I’ve been watching.

So next time you have a bored night at home, don’t spend a chunk of time calling around for companionship. Flip on the old TV and learn something new… you may just need it some day.

Rapid Fire Friday

After watching some of Gonzales’ press conference today, it’s obvious that the government will continue to use ‘protecting children’ as an excuse to censor morality for adults.

As a kind I loved baseball, would watch or listen to every Dodger game I could. Now I could care less about baseball but listen to the NFL channel constantly.

A Playboy radio station is just the silliest thing I have ever heard of.

Why do people worry about buying bottled water and then pour it over ice made from a tap?

CSI Miami is the most watched television series in the world… didn’t Caruso leave NYPD because he wanted to be a ‘Movie Star’?

NASCAR would be more fun if the put the fans on one side of the track and the beer vendors on the other… let the games begin.

The most surprising thing out of the Duke Lacrosse team rape scandal to me was the fact that straight guys play lacrosse.

With the fact that I can now pay my bills on-line, writing a check has really become odd.

When I die, I want my ash mixed in with the pulp to make paper and then used to print a comic book… how’s that for a marketing gimmick.

My brother has a hard time accepting that I can put out a book of nude photos and write a children’s book.

Get to know your family, you may just find out you like them as friends too.

Why is one of the kings in a playing card deck suicidal?

You ever notice the number of times two women get drunk and make out at a party on video is drastically higher than the number of times guys do it.

Does it seem that Thanksgiving would be completely off the calendars if it weren’t for the day off?

It takes a geek to look at a dice and think: “I need more sides”.

When you’re a kid with an imaginary friend, they call it cute. When you’re an adult with an imaginary friend they call it religious.

Does anyone actually use a letter opener?

In Lord of the Rings, why didn’t Gandalf just get one of those giant eagles to fly his ass to Mordor and drop the ring in?

Cartoon characters on shot glasses, even the ones from South Park, seem to be sending the wrong message.

Cats have the most amazing ability to know exactly the last thing you would want them to lay… and then they go lay on it.

How to stick to it… or I guess I really don’t need to see my significant other that often.

People really seemed to like the column on choosing a professional name, so I figured I’d do up another on a topic I get asked about a lot: the determination to keep going. There are so many distractions in life that can eat up a creator’s time. Our bodies have this funny desire to eat, to sleep and for the occasional sexual encounter. Also stuff like a day job, family commitments and the ever-evil television. Well, we can get by with a lot less sleep than you think; you can function on four hours a night. You can always eat at you computer/art table and if your partner doesn’t mind, you can take care of that sex thing right there too… and for some without partners, the computer is already involved.

All joking aside, the only way to succeed in the comic industry is to commit the time necessary and sacrifice where necessary. There’s no secret to it. I self-published my own book ten years ago and started moving towards that two years prior; so for twelve years I have been making the necessary sacrifices. And I’m just now starting to make a name for myself. Now I did spend the first eight years trying to be a publisher, but the last four years have been solely focused on freelance writing and I’ve made pretty good strides in that time.

The key is to narrow your focus to what you are a) really good at and b) really enjoy doing. My friend Jason Hanley was torn between writing and lettering. We discussed it and he realized that lettering was something he was really good at, enjoyed doing and more likely to get him immediate work. He went from doing a handful of free books to now lettering books for a few different companies and doing it full time. Sometimes a penciler should only pencil and leave the inking to others. I’ve seen inkers who are decent artists but not on the level that companies would pay for, yet as an inker they could get work the next day. When I decided to stop publishing, I had been doing multiple jobs and have been published as an inker, colorist and letterer as well but knew in my heart of hearts that writing was my best skill and what I really enjoyed.

Once your focus is chosen, you have to allot yourself a set amount of time per week. If you have to go to work Monday through Friday and classes after work or the gym or whatever, then you have to find the time on the weekend or between things to focus on your path. If you’re an artist that needs to draw two pages in a week, then just focus on doing a third of a page a night for that week. You can do more in a night but don’t do less. Don’t set your goals based on time but rather accomplishments. When I sit down to write my goal is based on doing a scene or two from a script or to do the outline, etc. Do not set two hours a night as a goal because one night you may zoom through the two hours and that’s great, but other nights you may struggle through the two hours and that gives you a stopping point without really accomplishing anything.

Its very important to set up these kind of goals early and do everything you can to reach them because when you do make the jump to full-time writing/art then you will need these types of disciplines to make your deadlines. It’s foolish to believe that you will be able to do five pages a week when you get your Marvel job if you can’t don a page a week now. Learn to manage your time now so when you get your break, you’re ready.

Is this ad really necessary?

Volkswagen has a new series of ads called “Safety Happens”; if you haven’t seen them I’ll give you the run down. The first one is about two buddies ridding in a car together. The driver is complaining that his woman doesn’t listen to him and the passenger tries to explain to him that it’s because he uses the word ‘like’ constantly. As the passenger says the line “things don’t like happen, they just happen” a red truck (Ford I believe) backs out of the driveway and the Volkswagen slams full force into the side of the truck. We see the airbags deploy and the two buddies slamming into them. A second later we see the two guys standing outside of the car, marks on their faces from the airbags, and the driver gets the word “whoa” out when they sharp cut to the Volkswagen on display with the quote “Safety Happens.”

The second commercial is pretty similar. Four people in a car talking about a movie and how the guy driving cried. He pulls forward into the intersection on a green when an SUV (Ford I believe) runs the red and T-bones the car. We see the side airbag deploy and then we switch to the foursome… or at least three of them, I haven’t seen the driver in the few times I’ve seen the commercial… standing healthy but shaken outside of their car. The girlfriend gets a “whoa” out and then we cut to the Volkswagen on display with the quote “Safety Happens.”

Now I see a few things here that disturb me. First off are the stereotypes being used for the passengers. The driver, who says ‘like’ constantly, is a typical dumb Caucasian male; the type that seems to be perfectly safe to pick on without any backlash. The second commercial is making the male driver look ridiculous for crying in a theater. Neither commercial has a female driving the car and they go out of their way to avoid the politically incorrect stereotypes but seem fine going with the stupid Caucasian male one.

The second thing I noticed is that the accident was the ‘Other’ drivers fault both times, not the person intelligent enough to buy a Volkswagen. Also the vehicle causing the accident in both cases are larger, American made vehicles; the exact opposite of Volkswagen. Nice subliminal messaging there.

Finally, the thing that disturbs me the most on this one has to be the commercials themselves. We wouldn’t allow a simulated rape on a commercial to sell pepper spray. We wouldn’t shows someone burning up to sell smoke alarms or fire extinguishers. One of the reasons, definitely not the only one, is because of the people who have gone through similar tragic events would have no warning that such a commercial was about to air and could cause some psychological trauma. Now thing about the number of people who have been engulfed in flames compared to the number of people who have been in severe car accidents. Do you think any of them enjoy watching a simulated accident done with such incredible detail? Shouldn’t they get a warning before having to sit through such a thing? The commercial is so innocent until the moment of the accident, there is no time to turn away unless you know it’s one of those commercials and you would only know by having seen it.

I find Volkswagen’s commercials to be irresponsible and I hope they are pulled soon.

In an interesting twist of fate… I finished up the first script for the next 30 Days of Night mini-series. I can’t say anything about it yet, but I’m having a blast. Unlike with Dead Space, I’m going solo on this one. No Steve Niles to hold my hand, which is a huge experiment as there hasn’t been any 30 Days book without Niles on it. Even Bloodsucker Tales, which had a story by Matt Fraction, also had a story by Niles. Unlike doing a run on Spider-Man or Batman… both of which I would love to work on… There haven’t been a handful of different people making their mark on the series. So there is a tad bit of pressure on this one.

Well, here I am sending in the first script and I get this press release:

IDW SELLS OUT!
Swallow Book Two Among Many Sold-Out IDW Publishing Titles

What do a reborn title, Clive Barker’s latest, some transforming beasts, an art bonanza from Ash Wood and friends, and a couple vampire tales have in common? They’re all among the latest IDW Publishing titles to completely sell out through Diamond. In addition to the sell-outs IDW recently experienced with SUPERMARKET #’s 1 & 2, the company announced today that the following books are also sold out through Diamond:

• 30 DAYS OF NIGHT: DEAD SPACE # 1 & 2
• ANGEL: OLD FRIENDS # 2 & 3
• CLIVE BARKER’S THE GREAT & SECRET SHOW #1
• FALLEN ANGEL # 1, 2, & 3
• SWALLOW BOOK TWO
• TRANSFORMERS: BEAST WARS #2
• UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION

“It’s great to see quality books met with such positive performance,” said IDW’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall. “We print significantly more copies than the initial orders we receive from Diamond. When we set a print run for a book, we try to print enough copies so that retailers will be able to re-order the books through the run of the series. These sell-outs caught us by a surprise, and signal a nice upturn for the industry in general. I also hope these numerous sell-outs encourage retailers to similarly recognize the demand for IDW’s books and order accordingly. As much as I love to see a title sell out, I like even more for anyone who wants an IDW comic to be able to easily find it.”

SWALLOW BOOK TWO will receive a second printing, along with a new cover from artist Ashley Wood. Retailers can order the second printing with item code # FEB06 806. The second print is due to arrive in stores on May 17, the same day the second printings of SUPERMARKET arrive.

Okay, so most of that news was about other titles… but the first two issues of Dead Space have sold out and that means a lot to me. Not just from the standpoint of the book doing well; but also so that it’s a profitable book for IDW. Now I need to keep up these numbers.

There’s a benefit to being married that few people talk about but most everyone understands.

What is this benefit? No more first dates. I think everyone has a ‘bad first date’ story, some are worse than others. But I know very few people with a ‘good first date’ story. Which amazes me that anyone ever finds the right person. Hell, it could even explain why the divorce rate is so high. A first date is a job interview for a position that you don’t even know if you want. Sometimes I think the best way to have a first date is for it to be naked in a hotel room. You see everything right up front and get it out of the way. If you get sex out of the way in the first house then there is no reason for false pretense.

But that’s not what tonight’s rant is about.

The worst first date I ever went on involved a girl from the store I was working at. I was 17 at the time; really liked her and she invited me over to watch Dirty Dancing (you’ll do anything for a woman you like). After we decided to go see a movie. Her parents had gotten home and blocked in her car, so she was going to back her mom’s car out while I backed hers out. Well… I had never drive a car with automatic steering so when I turned the wheel to clear the driveway, I scrapped the brick fence slightly. The car had a tine scrape along the bumper. The fence crumbled like a house of cards. She ended up being my prom date… but not much else.

Another bad first date involved the second killer… the blind date. My buddy Brian got me to go out with his girlfriend’s best friend. Well, it turns out she was: a) just getting out of a relationship, b) unable to stop speaking for more than twenty seconds at a time and c) taking crystal-meth to help her lose weight. Mind you she was already skinny made it even more ironic. She spent the entire night talking about her ex and how much she wanted to go back to him. A few hours into the date I was recommending that she should not only go back to him, she shouldn’t wait another moment and I would take her there myself. There was no second date.

Now I had one first date that was great until the next day. I was on a business trip, hit it off with one of the employees there and we ended up going out that night to a few bars. Just a relaxed and fun night. The problem came at 3 AM when we went back to my hotel room so she could get her stuff she left there before we went out. I hit the bathroom, the phone rang and she answered it. It was my co-worker letting me know the morning meeting was moved up an hour and he had forgotten to tell me. Of course the next day, it was all over the place that she was in my room at 3 AM. Now I only call this a first date because months later her and I hooked up again… but absolutely nothing happened that first night but everyone was certain it had.

I know those aren’t the worst first dates… and I would love to hear about some others… but I truly believe that between nerves and posturing no first date will ever be successful. And if it is… somebody is lying.

Collecting original art.

This wasn’t something I thought about doing until I got into making comics. And in the beginning I focused on pieces from books that I wrote. I even took the time to get the pages framed professionally. I have pieces by Walter McDaniel, Tim Vigil, Kieron Dwyer, Steve Ellis, Tone Rodriguez and others. They cover a wall in my office and I really enjoy looking at them.

This was all well and good until I started talking to Steve Niles about his collection. Suddenly I’m out on eBay looking at all the original art pages and I end up bidding. The sad thing is I only started buying original art in September of 2004 and I already can’t remember the first piece I bought. I’m pretty certain it was a 3 pack deal of Gary Frank pages from Supreme Power but I can’t swear to that.

In the first year I became obsessed. I bought a portfolio to display them in and quickly filled up one so I had to buy a second. I got pages from Darrick Robertson, Bernie Wrightson, Ashley Wood, Keith Giffen, John Byrne, J. Scott Campbell and Phil Hester. At Wizard World Los Angeles last year I got into the big poker tournament and won; and with that money I bought two Jim Lee pages. In other words… I REALLY like original art.

Now I was trying to figure out why. I think its knowing that not only do you own something original, one-of-a-kind but also the knowledge that thousands of others have looked at a print of this but only you can say you own it. I can flip through my trades of Hush or Forever Tomorrow and find the piece of art history that I’m in possession of. And as history shows, the value of the pages continues to go up… so they are an investment into your future (or at least that’s what I tell my wife).

Now the problem I have is that I still have that urge to frame and hang up the art; but I now own over 60 pages. I couldn’t afford to frame all of the pieces and I know I don’t have the wall space to hang them. So I have my two portfolio books full of these little treasures and I still spend time looking out on eBay for my next acquisition. Now I’m not buying at quite the pace I was that first year… I think I dropped about $5,000 on pages in under twelve months… but now I look out there for a good bargain on pages for an artist I really like.

I still want to find a Jack Kirby page, something from Gil Kane and a page from Captain America 195 by Frank Springer would be awesome… as it’s the first comic I ever read.

There’s also something extra special about buying the page directly from the artist. I bought a Defenders page from Erik Larsen while at Wondercon and a Cuda cover from Tim Vigil at Wizard World. Though it was through eBay I just got a Grim Jack page directly from Tim Truman, which is very cool. There is just something special about owning a piece of art history and I highly recommend it to everyone… but be careful, it can be addictive.

Well, I thought I was going to write today.

Last night when I get home and settled onto the computer, my plan was to do a few things for the Book of Bad Ideas and then I would put that aside and spend all day Saturday on the first script for my new mini-series. That was the plan at least and as most plans, it went astray. Not often do I get to use the word astray and it’s usually related to plans of some sort. But I digress.

I got up at the insanely earlier time of 5:30 AM. Why you might ask? Well, that’s the time I would normally get up to go to the office for the programming contract. I guess my internal clock has no idea that it’s Saturday and the contract is over. So 5:30 AM and I’m awake. I head up stairs and figure I’ll pull up the outline that has already been approved and start laying out first issue. That lasted until I got to the top of the stairs and into my computer seat… then it was email checking, website checking, seeing what is on TV. Between the Sudoku website and BBC America, I could waste hours without even trying.

An hour later my beautiful wife stirs and I remember something about taking her to breakfast if she woke up before 7 AM. So now I she gets ready, I get ready and we head out the door to the International House of Pancakes. I’m not going to make any jokes about it being international; I’m pretty sure all of the jokes have been done to death. I order up the chocolate chip pancakes as a farewell gesture; on Monday I’m going to give the whole Low-Carb thing a try again and see if I can get back down to my girlish figure. I also order a cup of hot tea. I’m not a coffee drinker; I prefer hot tea. You would think that would come from my British mother, but in truth my mother drinks coffee like it’s keeping her alive, so I picked up my preference for tea (PG Tips or Earl Grey if possible) from my Irish grandmother. Anyway, I’m digressing again, I ordered hot tea and a moment later we hear a crash from the back of the restaurant. Our waitress spilled the hot water on her arm, burning herself pretty badly. The odd thing was as soon as the noise happened not only did I know exactly what happened, the guy at the next table did as well… it turns out he is the waitresses father and tells us that his lovely daughter is a bit of a klutz.

After breakfast, my wife reminds me I offered to go with her to Target. I have no recollection of this offer, but she has the breasts in this relationship so we go to Target. As I am wondering through the store I come across the most amazing isle you will ever find in a Target… the musical instrument isle. I didn’t know they had such a thing but there it was, a row of acoustic, electric and bass guitars as well as keyboards and all the accessories. In an odd moment, I decided to pick up a distortion pedal for my bass… this was definitely not on the shopping list but my wife lets it slide, calling it a necessity.

We get back to the house and my beautiful bride reminds me that I told her I would take her out to Dark Delicacies this weekend and it would probably be better if we go today instead of tomorrow. I’m now worried that I’m talking in my sleep, or at least promising stuff in my sleep. So I get upstairs, check emails, etc and then we head out to Burbank. The first thing that happens when I get in the door is the owner ask me to sign the copies of Dead Space #3 which I do gladly. Some guy named Steve has scribbled in the good spot so I had to sign on the side. I wandered the store while my wife scoured the shelves for her desired purchases. I picked up the Land of the Dead trade with art by Gabriel Rodriguez. Gabe is also doing the Great and Secret Show art and seems to literally get better with each page he draws. Amazing stuff. I also pick up a DVD of a movie called The Pyjama Girl Case starring Ray Milland. I know nothing about the movie or the actual case it’s based off of, but I love a good mystery and figured I’d give it a shot.

We headed back home, listening to Radio Classics on Sirius… I can’t remember if it was The Whistler or Richard Diamond, Private Eye… but I enjoyed the show. I also remember signing along to White Lines and How Bizarre. It was now about 12:30 PM and my hunger had returned so we picked up a couple Double Doubles from In-n-Out and headed home. Had lunch and headed back up stairs only to discover I was yawning too much to keep my eyes open. So at about 1:30 PM I headed for a short nap.

At 4 PM I got up, short nap my ass, and decided I need a shot of caffeine that only the good Dr. could provide. So a quick trip to 7-11 for a Dr. Pepper and then back home to the keyboard. That’s when I realized I should probably write up my blog entry before starting on the first script… so as not to break the wonderful stride I’m certain to get on… and here I am typing up the last of this entry as my watch approaches 5:30 PM; twelve hours since my day started and I have yet to write a single word of a script that I cleared my day to write.

Now as long as I didn’t promise my wife anything else while I was sleeping, then I should be good to focus on nothing but the script tonight. We’ll see if that actually happens though.

Rapid Fire Friday:

It’s very difficult to type on the computer while wearing ‘Hulk hands”.

Sudoku is an evil plot by the Japanese to stop American’s from doing anything productive.

I don’t think Basketball actually has an off-season.

Every major advance in computer science over the last 10 years has been driven by the porn industry.

I have a hard time believing that South Park has been on for 10 years.

Someone should have told Queensryche that 18 years is a long time to wait for a sequel to an album.

The TV show The Unit would be better if they stopped spending times on the wives.

Does anyone ever look at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue with the idea of finding a new swimsuit?

The fact that no one is producing new material for The Shadow or the Green Hornet is a crime into of itself.

The idea that a bass guitar would be easier to play because it only has 4 strings is erroneous.

The starting line-up for the Lakers involve players named Kobe, Lamar, Kwame, Luke and Smush.

With scanners, printers and email… I don’t see why Fax machines are still so popular.

I think David Letterman is getting cranky as he gets older.

I think bad news should always be delivered by a naked woman… making the news a little less bad.

The use of green onions to garnish food should be eliminated at all cost.

I’m done with wirework martial arts. Lets just see a movie where two people beat the crap out of each other on the ground.

I sometimes forget that Canada is it’s own country.

If you’re an actor, do you take a role in a commercial playing a sexual predator?

If the guy who invented duct tape had any idea how many different ways it could be used, he probably wouldn’t have called it such a limited name.

One of the nice things about being a photographer is when you get caught staring at a woman you can claim it was for artistic purposes.

How can you not like that, it’s great?

Is there a type of food you hate? Perhaps vegetables or strawberry soda? I personally would be considered a “fussy eater” or as my father would call it: an “asshole”. I don’t like cheese, eggs, rice, beans or fruit. There’s other stuff too but we’ll just work with this group and how the world seemed geared against anyone who don’t like those item.

Starting with eggs. Try going to any restaurant to get breakfast; you’ll find dozens of breakfast combos at various prices as long as you liked eggs. If you didn’t, you could get a stack of pancakes. There are no combos that don’t involve eggs. Restaurants must think that if you don’t want eggs then you must not want sausage, bacon, hash browns or anything else. You have to order your pancakes and then side orders of anything else and you end up spending a lot more. Or you could simply order a combo meal that has pancakes hash browns and sausage and when they ask you how you want your eggs you tell them to put them on someone else’s plate.

Now on to cheese, the food that everyone is expected to eat. It used to be that you could add cheese to items for a small cost but now you have to order items without cheese… but they don’t lower the cost. You order a Jumbo Jack they ask you if you want cheese and charge you a quarter more. But if you order the Sourdough bacon burger hold the cheese they don’t drop the price a quarter… why? And try to get a soft taco at Taco Bell without cheese, what you end up with is a tortilla filled with lettuce. I guess there is a weight that these tacos are supposed to be and without the cheese they have to fill it some how and heaven forbid they give you more meat.

Rice and Beans fall into the same category, an ethnic staple. Tell a the waiter at a Chinese restaurant, a real one not a fast food one, that you don’t want rice and they literally stare at you for a while. They don’t know what to do. Everyone gets rice. Usually what happens is they offer you a different type of rice… you turn down fried rice they offer you steamed rice. I usually ask: “Is that still rice? Then I don’t want it.” You get the same look from a waiter at a Mexican restaurant. The plates at a Mexican restaurant are planned out for their display and if you don’t want the beans then the plate is off balance and they don’t know how to fix it… and leaving it empty doesn’t seem to be an option. They also like to cover their beans in cheese and put rice on the plate. I usually end up with a small little soft taco just filled with chicken on a giant oval plate.

And now my personal favorite dislike: fruit. If I didn’t like vegetables I don’t think anyone would have a problem with it. My brother hates vegetables and people just nod knowingly. But tell someone you don’t like fruit and it’s very different. This is the conversation I end up having every time:

FRIEND: YOU WANT AN APPLE?

DAN: NO THANKS. I DON’T LIKE FRUIT.

FRIEND: YOU DON’T LIKE FRUIT?

DAN: NOPE.

FRIEND: NO FRUIT AT ALL?

DAN: NOPE, NONE AT ALL.

FRIEND: NOT EVEN BANANAS?

DAN: NOPE… NOT BANANAS.

FRIEND: WHAT ABOUT ORANGES?

DAN: NOPE, NOT ORANGES.

FRIEND: GRAPES?

DAN: NOPE.

FRIEND: HOW ABOUT…

DAN: DID YOU MISS THE PART WHERE I SAID ALL FRUIT?

FRIEND: HOW ABOUT STRAWBERRIES? YOU CAN’T HATE STRAWBERRIES.

DAN: I CAN AND I DO.

FRIEND: BUT FRUIT IS GREAT.

DAN: I’M GOING HOME NOW.

FRIEND: NO, WAIT. HOW ABOUT SOME CHEESE? I CAN SCRAMBLE YOU UP AN EGG.

SFX: DOOR SLAMS.

I’d like to say I’m joking, but literally every time I tell someone I don’t like fruit they proceed to list off every kind of fruit they can think of. It must be inconceivable to them that someone could not like any fruit so I must have forgotten about some that I really do like. What they fail to realize is my first job was at a fruit stand and I got a chance to try just about every type of fruit you could think of and guess what… I don’t like any of it.

Independent creation versus writing for the corporations; is one better than the other?

I remember a few weeks back Erik Larsen did a column about how you need to create your own title. At the time I took it as kind of an insult to the creators who were satisfied with working on books for Marvel and/or DC. I also felt that it was slightly self-serving of Erik since he is the head of a company that focuses on creator owned properties and some of those big named creators at the big two would definitely help Image if they came over to do a book. Plus it came across that fans should be more supportive of creator owned properties because it’s the true mark of creativity.

Fast-forward to this afternoon when I was discussing writing careers with Elk’s Run creator Joshua H Fialkov. Josh told me today that he would be happy if he could spend the rest of his life writing creator owned books. He said a few other things but I promised I wouldn’t repeat them. But like Larsen, Josh seemed to feel that the mark of true creativity was creating a property from scratch.

So is writing Superman selling out? If I start scripting Daredevil, am I wasting my talent?

I think the key difference has to be as a writer, what you want out of the experience? If you’re goal is to create the next great property then Larsen is right, you should stay away from the big 2 and focus on your own stuff. In a lot of ways, this is the mentality of a novelist. Basically you create every aspect of the story, beginning middle and end and have little to no input from outside. Independent filmmakers fall in the group as well.

Doing work for hire in comics is really no different than writing for licensed properties or for film studios. To do this well, you have to enjoy the writing process. You have to look at editorial mandates and notes as a challenge. If DC asks you to write a Batman story where the Joker uses a giant balloon to spread Smilex gas over Gotham and Renee Montoya has to help Batman stop him… those are merely the parameters that you have to create within. It adds a degree of difficulty to the project. At that point the challenge is to create the best story possible within those confinements.

Now I have tried creating my own properties, published my own books and dealt with all the aspects that go with it. I have also been doing scripts for 30 Days of Night and a handful of Avatar Press properties and the truth of the matter is I thoroughly enjoyed the work for hire projects more than the creator owned ones. Why? Because I was able to completely focus on the process of writing. I had my approved outline to work from, a number of pages to fit the story in and a deadline. What I didn’t have was the stress of making sure the artist gets his pages to the inker, the inker finishes in time for the letterer to put everything together and get it to the printer. I don’t have to think about printing costs, advertising in Previews or getting retailers to buy.

So where I fully respect the writers who want to create their own properties, I’m at a point in my life where I want to just write. I want to work on Superman and Daredevil. I want the challenge of creating great stories within a cohesive universe. I want to write and only write.

I think I know why Aquaman is not as popular as the rest of the DC characters.

He’s been around as long as most of the others. When I was growing up I remember watching Superman, Batman and Aquaman on TV. He’s been part of the Justice League, had his own series numerous times and has never been replaced by another (that is until now and I have no idea what they are doing yet). And, to make him even cooler, he’s royalty. The freaking King of Atlantis with a hot wife and child.

So why isn’t he as popular as Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman? My theory came to life when looking at the action figure designed by Alex Ross. First, the color scheme… orange and green. Orange is a tough color to wear, especially if you're a summer. Heavy people look like a pumpkin and in shape people just look like a scrawny pumpkin. The green is all right but his boots are part of his pants. He’s basically wearing footies. And the fins on the calves have to make sitting in a recliner tough. Plus on Ross’ figure the character has a very wide collar that is open to the top of the shoulders; similar to Superman’s but without the cape to cover. It's a horrible ensamble and the gold belt just clashes with the orange tunic.

The bottom line, Aquaman looks to be either one of two things… the first super-metro-sexual OR the real first homosexual hero. I know, I know… Mera and the kid right? Hasn’t DC already given Aquaman a beard once? But if he was metro he would dress a hell of a lot better. I think the truth is that Aquaman has always been on the edge of coming out. There were many comic moments where other heroes were talking about the endowments of female characters and Aquaman seemed to not even notice. And just about everyone in the JLA has hit on Wonder Woman (probably Zatanna included) except our under-sea friend.

And DC hasn’t helped one bit. Why would a man who can swim amazingly fast underwater need a Seahorse to ride on? That’s like Superman using a giant eagle to get around Metropolis. And why a seahorse? There isn’t any that size anyway so why not just have him ride on a whale, a shark or a dolphin? Could you think of any more effeminate creature to choose? And the trident he carries… just how phallic do they need to make it? The one Ross designed isn’t even a trident, it has 5 spears (all very phallic)… I guess that would be a pendant? (uni, bi, tri, quad… ????)

Even years back when Peter David decided to make Aquaman tough, grow out his beard and hair, give him a new manly armor and have his hand eaten off by piranhas…. (wait, I thought he could talk to fish, couldn’t he say ‘Stop, that hurts’?) the character became more popular but then DC decided to take him back to the orange and green, short hair metro and now he’s not even himself anymore.

I’m going to read along and see where Busiek and Guice are taking Aquaman now… but if it fails to snag the readers I think the answer is obvious. Aquaman becomes a comic version of HBO’s ROME and then the question of his sexuality won’t matter, because when in Rome….

What the hell should I write about today?

I’ve started today’s blog twice already and deleted both. The first was about your web-presence and the second about he fascination with Jack the Ripper… both good topics but neither of them are singing for me today. This is just one of those weird days that I would have preferred just to stay in bed. It started off so positive. Going into the last week of a day job. About to start on the next 30 Days script, getting pages in for the Book of Bad Ideas… all of this had me smiling as I hit my alarm clock this AM.

From there the day started going down hill. As I drove to work, I noticed the crack in my windshield continued to grow. I’m hoping to wait till next week when I’m off work to get it fixed… but it seems to be increasing in size exponentially depending on the overnight low. I get to work and get the stuff I needed to get done in the morning finished up in no time. Then my soon to be ex-boss comes in and asks for one little change that throws off the entire project. I think he’s just trying to get me to stay longer.

Then I have a minor spat with an editor but it clears up quickly… nothing important really but mixed in with the rest of the day, not helping. Then I read about this report going around the web about a female creator who got sexually assaulted at a convention only to find out that it was someone I know personally (https://www.popcultureshock.com/features.php?id=1357) and no matter who you are, that increases things 10 fold at least. So all of this is percolating in my wee brain when I finally decide to just work on something artistic and start digital inking a page.

While working, my wife brings up dinner… two of the worst tasting Taco Bell tacos I’ve ever had in my life, and one steak taco that wasn’t too bad. Another hour passes by and Deb comes back up to tell me she heard some crashing and banging sounds outside. So I head downstairs to investigate. I grab my shoes and my gun… you never know… and head outside. So now I’m walking around my house, with a loaded .357 looking into the dark corners for prowlers and all I can think to myself is… what happened to that smile I woke up with?

I find nothing outside other than stray cats, I put my gun away and head back up here to do a little more on the page and then decide its time to do the daily blog. After two false starts we end up to where we are right now… five paragraphs in on a topic-less entry and me re-thinking the blog marathon idea. Now I’ve made the commitment to do it, but it’s kind of like that commitment not to eat chocolate after New Years… it sounds like a good idea when you’re eating that last Hershey Bar the night before.

So I guess I’ll end this with a shout out to my peeps… both the yellow chickens and the pink bunnies. I’m going to go looking for Easter Candy this weekend… my Dad told me they have chocolate crosses now and that’s just something I have to see for myself.

One more week…

About a year ago I left my day job to write full-time. I did this for eight months and then realized the old bank account was getting a touch low. So I picked up a six-month programming contract about twenty miles from my house. Going back to a day job after eight months was more difficult than I thought it would be. I had gotten into a good writing groove and having to shift back to just writing at night was really taxing. Not to mention my programming skills were a touch rusty after being away from it for so long.

Well, this Friday marks the end of the six months. I’ve stashed enough away for at least four months of full-time writing if I don’t make a penny in that time. I’ve also got a 5-issue mini-series green lighted so I might be able to extend this period of time till the end of the year. I’m also going to be showing around my first TV series concept during pitch season… so I’m very excited about this next stage of my life.

Now the funny part here is the job I’m leaving. I went in as a contractor but the boss treats everyone like a full-time employee… the good parts and the bad parts. It’s an interesting place with good people. The problem is I HATE programming. I hate it with a passion. I would rather work security at a pickle plant than write code. But, I can make a lot of money programming so that’s why I went back to it.

So about two weeks ago I told my boss that I wasn’t going to extend my contract with them. I was going to work until the end of the six months and then move on. I figured he might let me finish what I was working on and then show me the door. I got the opposite reaction. Each day that I’ve seen him he has tried more and more to get me to stay. He’s offered me full-time work with benefits. He’s offered letting me take a month or two off and come back as a full-time employee. He talked about me doing projects from home. And finally the other day he asked if I would be interested in working two days a week there and have the rest of the week to write.

Now, I’m a good programmer. I get the job done in quick fashion. But I don’t think I’m worth bending over backwards for. But that’s what this guy is doing. I was joking with my wife last night about it. Leaving this job is starting to feel like breaking up with a girlfriend. You know the routine… you threaten to break up and suddenly she becomes a sexual dynamo with an appetite for any kinky thing you could imagine. Every place you want to go is great, all your friends are funny. I had an ex-girlfriend like this. When I got close to leaving, she’d want to do things that would make a porn star blush but when I would stay it would eventually shift back. I learned my lesson and stopped dating her. Now it seems I have to do the same thing with my current boss.

So five more days of going into the office… should be interesting to see what he comes up with next.

NASCAR… I don’t get it.

I am sitting here today trying to watch the Bush Series: O’Reilly 300 from Texas Motor Speedway… at least that’s what the info button on the TV tells me it is. I’m watching it for two reasons… first because I got hooked at Wizard World LA on these little Race Day cars you can buy where you get Magic Cards and assemble the little racecars. I bought a few packs this morning and was building them when I saw the race and stopped. The second reason is very simple… there is absolutely nothing else on.

The first thing I notice when looking at the cars is every square inch is covered with some kind of corporate sponsor logo. Some of the ones I’ve seen today are the Army, Coast Guard, Navy, Marines, National Guard… which makes me wonder exactly how much of our tax money is going to slap logos on these cars. Other sponsors: Clorox, Dollar General, Target, Du Pont, Pennzoil, Penske, Auto Zone and Ameriquest Mortgage. But those are the main sponsors. You can’t look at anything in the race without seeing a sponsor. The inside car camera has “FreeCreditReport.com” and the overhead shot is constantly passing by the Dickies logo. My personal favorite is Texaco… how about instead of slapping your giant ‘T’ on the number 42 car, how about dropping gas prices instead?

Does anyone think these sponsorships work? Am I supposed to believe that the #41 Discount Tires car is really running on discount tires? When I see the Marines car, should I feel like enlisting? Is the MacDonald’s car going to make me want French Fries?

Even when the post the pictures of the drivers, the put the logo of the car manufacturer behind them: Ford, Dodge, Chevy, etc. Even the walls and the turf around the track are covered in sponsors. Their fire suits have logos everywhere. Hell, even the series name and trophy have sponsors… the Bush Series is for Anheiser-Bush and their racing for the Nextel Cup… it used to be the Winston Cup and at not point did they think being sponsored by a cigarette company was bad until the contract ran out.

Now the most ironic part of all this… in this sea of color and logos, each car has two decals where the headlights would be… since they don’t race at night they don’t need headlights… so what type of decals do these logo-happy individuals place where the headlights should be… that’s right decals of HEADLIGHTS!!!!!

So basically, from what I’ve been able to tell about NASCAR in my afternoon of watching it is this: you have 35 drivers pushing their cars as fast as they can, yet their cars have restrictors in place to keep them from going too fast… they are covered in sponsor logos and going around in an oval for 200 laps only making left turns. Now why it’s called the O’Reilly 300 when they are only doing 200 laps… I don’t know. And why they having started putting sponsor logo’s on the track itself… just wait for it. Overall, a NASCAR race really is just a very long commercial that people watch in hopes that someone will crash.

I wonder what it would cost to have danwickline.com put on the hood of a car…

What’s in a name?

A famous Shakespeare line that almost everyone has probably heard, and it’s a great question. When we are younger, most of us get “eeed”: Billy, Danny, Debbie, etc. As we move into our teens we usually rebel. Danny becomes Daniel, Debbie becomes Debra, Billy becomes William and we will immediately correct the person who uses our ‘younger’ name. Eventually we relax and except the fact the people will shorten our name till its Dan, Bill and Deb.

Now there are some exceptions to this of course. One of my publisher’s names is Jade and I don’t know of many variations of that. And if you’re a boy named Christopher you better hope that your parents don’t “eee” you. Worse of course is if you get stuck with a nickname growing up like Rocky, Mookie or Scooter… nicknames usually linger.

But when you make the jump into the entertainment industry you have a whole new name thing to worry about. Because your name is your brand; it’s the way everyone will identify your work. So you better take the time to pick which variation of your name you are going to use to find one you can live with for a very long time.

When I first started writing I used my full name: Daniel R. Wickline. It was pretentious enough to sound intelligent and the middle initial meant I was to be taken seriously. I clung to this moniker for quite some time until one day I decided to get a website in my own name. The idea of making people type danielrwickline.com was insane. Would you need the period after the ‘r’ or not? You want your website to be found easily. So I sat and contemplated for a while and decided that since everyone called me ‘Dan’, everyone in the industry knew me as ‘Dan’ and if I was a fan I would be more likely to want to have a beer with a ‘Dan’ over a ‘Daniel R’; I decided to make the change not only on my website but on my writing credits.

Now I’ve had the name conversation with a few people in the past… namely A. David Lewis and Joshua H. Fialkov… obviously I didn’t make a convincing argument. But there are so many things to consider when you choose your ‘professional name’ that it can be very difficult. I just did a mini-series with a very talented artist named Milx. Well, his name is Mahathir Buang but he is credited as Milx; so from the stand point of easy to pronounce, the Milx pseudonym is great… but how often will his name be written as ‘Milk’? I’ve seen it in one review already. Another artist I worked with in the past is named Mikel Whelan, a good strong name… the problem comes in is that there is a famous fantasy artist named Michael Whalen who is well known in the comic industry. So Mikel constantly has to follow his name with “no, not THE Michael Whalen”. Another buddy of mine wants to drop his first name and just go by his last… his name is Bobby Breed and I told him that not only would I refuse to call him ‘Breed’ but I was not going to call him any other verb either.

A couple good rules to follow when thinking about your professional name: 1) Make it easy to pronounce – “Get me the number for T… a Munga… Biaka… or forget it, get me Joe Kelly.” 2) Make it memorable and unique – “I’m going to google my favorite artist, Dave Smith” 3) Make sure it doesn’t have any existing baggage – “Hi, I’m a new penciler name Rob Lief… Hello? Hello?” 4) Make it one you won’t mind having in a few years – “Uhm, yeah… I’m Snooker McNasty” and 5) the most important one… make it something easy to sign. Think of the years of drawing we have lost to autographing by such great artists as David Mazzuchelli, and Bill Sienkiewicz.

So, if you are someone wanting to make a name for yourself in the industry… make sure it’s a good name.

When an actor becomes identified with a character, how long does it take for them to shake that association? For some actors it never goes away. Adam West will always be Batman; Leonard Nimoy will always be Mr. Spock and Christopher Reeves will always be Superman. But William Shatner seems to have shed his Capitan Kirk persona and has become a character all onto himself. But how many actors have been able to build their careers on a character then successfully move on?

John Laroquette has successfully moved past the Dan Fielding role by doing a series of character roles. And if you look at David Caruso, he never bothered becoming a character at all… John Kelly from NYPD Blue is just a younger Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami. And I tried watching Threshold this season but couldn’t get past Brent Spiner playing Dr. Nigel Fenway… I kept expecting him to break character, become Data and shut off the holo-deck.

I bring this up because of an odd thing that happened to me the other day. I was never a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, I am a fan of Joss Whedon’s comic writing and didn’t think Buffy was a bad show, it just wasn’t one that caught my attention. So neither did the spin off Angel. Well, that is until the very last season of Angel when he left whatever small town Buffy was in and started working out of a law office with Spike. The puppet episode a highlight for me. So I got to know David Boreanaz as Angel. A while after the show was cancelled, I picked up the latest Crow movie where Boreanaz is the villain… the movie was all right but I just kept seeing Angel instead of the goth guy possessed by the devil.

Move forward in time… (queue Tardis sound effects)… now there is the TV series called Bones and Boreanaz plays Agent Seeley Booth. Now I have no idea where the name Seeley came from unless it was the mattress he was conceived on. But I’ve gotten into this show and at times wish they would knock off the female lead and let the show be about Booth. Boreanaz brings an amazing depth to the character. He has a history, a sense of humor and a sense of honor that all come through without it being pushed in your face.

The weird part happened last night when I sat down to read through an Angel trade from IDW. The artist on the trade, David Messina, does a great job making the character look like Angel without it looking like he’s tracing photographs. And the writer, Jeff Mariotte, has a great understanding of the character and brings across the feel Whedon created with the show. So I should be able to dive and re-live the experience of the television show I enjoyed… but instead I kept seeing Seeley Booth fighting vampires… which in of itself would be an interesting story: ex-army ranger sharpshooter now FBI agent goes against the undead. I’d read it… hell, I’d write it. But this wasn’t the story I was reading and its definitely not the creative teams fault… it’s because Boreanaz has imbedded himself in my brain now as a whole new character and pushed Angel out.

Now why can’t anyone from Seinfeld do that?

I found a story this morning that just screams “hypocrisy”. The Deputy Press Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security was arrested and charged with 7 counts of using a computer to seduce a child and 16 counts of transmitting harmful to a minor. That’s 23 felony counts for the man who works for the DHS.

Authorities say that Brian J Doyle engaged in sexually explicit conversations and sent pornographic movies to what he believed to be a 14-year-old girl but was in reality a police detective from Polk County Florida. In a statement from the sheriff’s office it was said: “Many of the conversations he initiated with the ‘victim’ are too extraordinary and graphic for public release”. In his very first conversation he identified himself by name and told her of his job at the DHS. He also gave her his home, office and cell phone numbers. He offered to exchange nude photos with the girl. He was arrested after the ‘victim’ arranged to meet him on-line having claimed to get a web-cam and her mother being out for the night.

Those are the facts of the case. But who he is adds the extra kick to the story. If this was Mike Smith from Hoboken who works at the local hardware store, it would never have made CNN. This man works for BIG BROTHER. The guys who are pushing their moral imperative in an atmosphere of terror can’t even weed out a sex offender in their own office?

In no way am I trying to down play the tragedy of 9/11 or the importance of increased vigilance. But this administration has taken the mandate for security and followed an Orwellian blueprint. They’ve stood on what they felt was a moral high-ground based on their own definition of morality and attempted to dictate how we should live out lives. But what do they say about people in glass houses…

My big fear though is that the administration will latch onto this as a cause and not a wake up call. They will ignore the fact that this was someone in their government and instead use it to call for severe restrictions on the internet. It seems to be this administrations belief that people shouldn’t take responsibility for their own actions but instead the government should mandate rules to prevent even consenting adults from using any service that might be misused. Yet I don’t see them trying to take away handguns.

A friend of mine was explaining to me the wonderful features of his new cell phone… it has Lotus Notes, games, internet connection and a 3 megapixel camera. I asked him how the reception was on the phone and he had no idea… he hadn’t actually received or made a call with it yet. So he paid close to $500 for an “amazing” cell phone with no idea of how it works as a cell phone.

Why are we adding so much garbage to the phones instead of improving the phones themselves? As a published photographer, I look at these camera phones the same way I look at those Fisher Price phones that have the rolling pictures in them… these are toys and serve no real purpose other than to make the phone more expensive. I’ve heard the argument that you can take a picture in an emergency… and do what with it? It’s a tiny image, usually blurry? “You’re Honor, we’d like to pass the plaintiff’s cell phone to the jury as exhibit B.” I don’t see that happening.

Now, the concept of combining a PDA and a cell phone makes sense to me. Blackberries and Treos have their place and I’m all for that. Hell, I’m still waiting for my Dick Tracy communication watch… but when I can drop my 5 megapixel Canon Power Shot SD400 in my pocket through an entire convetion, why would I possibly need a camera attached to my phone?

You want to impress me… put a GPS system with maps in it that can be voice controlled so when I’m trying to find a used bookstore in downtown all I have to do is say the name of the store and the city. Or put a camera in the phone so you can look at the person you are talking to… that would be nice.

Religion is always a funny topic to me. Now I think the first thing you have to understand is my belief in a higher being and my belief in religion are in no way connected. I believe that religion in its basest form is man coming up with stories to explain away the things they don’t understand. The Greek’s believed a grieving mother missing her daughter caused the seasons and the sun was Apollo in his chariot. As man has gained knowledge, the need for religion has diminished… or so you would believe.

Instead now most people seem to use religion as a crutch. Anything that goes wrong in their life is attributed to God’s will instead of their bad decision making skills. God should never be an excuse. Also, the belief that some one is wrong because they don’t follow a specific religion amazes me since all religions agree that God is benevolent. Yet if you live your life without committing crimes, without hurting anyone and being basically a good person you will still burn in hell if you don’t go to a specific church, eat the wrong thing on the wrong day or think the wrong thought.

Needless to say, I believe the use of the government to forward a religious/moral agenda is not only wrong but also unconstitutional and violates the separation of church and state. I believe that organized religion is the cause of many problems in society today and should hold no more a special status than any other organization.

Now my rant here is leading to something: The Boy Scouts of America. When I was younger I was part of the Boy Scouts like a lot of my friends. I did the camping and merit badges thing but quickly became disinterested and quit. What I didn’t know at the time… and maybe it wasn’t a prevalent then as it is now… but the Boy Scouts are mainly funded and supported by the Mormon Church. Part of its bi-laws is the discrimination against atheists and homosexuals. How did a youth organization meant to teach boys confidence and help prepare them for the world turn into a religious training camp for bigots? Did I miss something?

I’ve seen nothing in any of the Boy Scout literature that mentions the ties to the Mormon Church… but it’s there and I think that should be something told to all parents when their child signs up. I am also amazed that the Boy Scouts received government money… the use of military bases for the camping and jamborees and the use of public schools for meetings. Yet every public school has a rule against clubs and organizations on campus that discriminate. So why do the Boy Scouts get to slide?

If you are a religious person that goes to church every week reads your bible regularly and does your best to live your life to the teachings that you grew up with; I am sincerely happy for you. If you believe it’s your duty to spread the word of your church to anyone who is interested, go for it. But stop there please. Don’t force your believes onto someone who is either not interested or not capable of understanding what it is you are trying to teach. And any organization that is funded by a church and adopts the tenets of that church should be clearly labeled as associated with that church so parents can make an informed decision about whether or not they want their children to be in a group that teaches intolerance on any level.