Saturday morning thought:
Thinking of the different outfits Princess Leia wore in the original movies. Most people think of the basic white from the first movie, and then they go directly to the sexy Slave Girl Leia outfit.
But I like her dressed as the bounty hunter “Boushh”, even though you can’t see that it’s her. It is perhaps the most romantic of the outfits, because it shows the effort Leia goes to in order to save the man she loves.
Just my thought for a Saturday morning.
Silly comic book thoughts (not based on any ‘announcement’ or image released today).
If the modern day Batman was became Ra’s Al Ghul in a similar way to whats happening in the ARROW tv series; he would move the entire League of Assassins to Gotham. They would become Batman Inc. and he’d put at least one member on every street corner.
A week later the Joker would have killed half of them with Joker gas.
…Okay, I’m too tired. Going to bed now.
Sometime ago JList posted the anime/manga meme image of a girl in a turtleneck sweater withe a keyhole front. It turns out that there is a lot of artwork of girls in these sweaters showing off their assets. Since then a lot of artists have done their own interpretation of the sweater. So, without doing the overt sexuality of it, I wanted to do something with the sweater with my FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY characters.
The band’s costume designer Krystal Wexler has been shown some art designs by Eddie Farmer (Capt’n Plunder of the Villains of Vengeance – stage villains during performances). Eddie is totally into Manga and Anime and designs his own Costplay outfits. So he designed a keyhole sweater based on the internet meme and Krystal liked it enough to make something for Debra (Flying Glory) to wear.
It doesn’t have the same impact as other girls wearing it would. But that’s the point. Not every super heroine can be Power Girl, and they shouldn’t be.
Anyway, enjoy. Then goes visit the FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY webcomic at www.flying-glory.com
“That’s not my Superman”
I’ve heard variations of that mentioned many times before, especially a lot recently. Whether it is his New52 interpretation (and the Earth2 version) or how he appears in the movies. Was about to say it myself today, but caught myself.
What held me back was a memory from many years ago.
I wasn’t a regular Superman reader back then, but I would pick up an issue of Action Comics or his own book from time to time.
One of the books I did read every month was THE NEW TEEN TITIANS. As I was reading their most recent adventure, and all hope looked lost, I turned to the last page and there stood Superman.
(This story by Marv Wolfman stands out as it would lead in to the books first Annual.)
But wait, that didn’t look like Superman to me, but he was of course. The problem being I was use to seeing the Man of Steel being drawn by the legendary Curt Swan. Though I had seen him drawn by other artists, Mr. Swan was the Superman artist to me at the time.
So here was the Man From Krypton drawn by another artist…
None other than the great George Perez.
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| This is a postcard image by George Perez from 1984, around the time I’m writing about.(Image borrowed from www.VaultCollectables.com) |
Here was an artist my young mind thought was fantastic. He certainly drew all of The New Teen Titians in a way that I wished I could draw (and still wish I could), and then when he began CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTH, you couldn’t pull me away from his pages.
But the problem was, his Superman didn’t look anything like the Superman in my head. He didn’t look like Curt Swan’s Superman.
Any you know what, that’s okay. I understood that back then, I really did. I would later come to love not only Perez’s Superman, but also the Man of Steel drawn by John Byrne, Jerry Ordway, and many others. Each had their own Superman, but did they match the Man of Steel in my mind. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But that’s okay.
It goes for Batman as well. There are many great artists who have drawn the Dark Knight; but in my mind there is only one Bat artist and that’s Jim Aparo.
Go find his work if you’ve never seen it. (Check out his Phantom Strange and Specter as well.)
As to interpretations of Superman in other media, I have to be honest; Superman just doesn’t work for me on the big screen. Christopher Reeve’s Superman came out when I was a kid, and as fun a story as it was; the character didn’t do it for me. Reeve’s Clark Kent really didn’t do it for me. (No one can explain to me why he allowed himself to be struck by the taxi when he first got to Metropolis. It is so annoying to me that it takes me out of the movie.)
That all said, my point is; find the Superman you like and continue to enjoy him. You’ve still got his comics in your collection, or can find reprints. But go and search out other versions of the character as well, and you will be surprised by how many of them you like as well. No one said you had to like them all.
Anyone who follows me on facebook or twitter (or Google+) will know I recently released a new story as an ebook. I really hope to be doing this more often, but for now here’s a little something about this one.
This short story was almost more fun to write than the original novel CLOCKWORK GENIE.
Though it didn’t start off all that fun. I had begun by working up a sequel novel, but all the characters wanted their moment in the spot light and that resulted in distractions from the main plot of the book. So I pruned away some of those side lines and found a very beautiful flower, which I call:
THE COP WHO WOULDN’T DIE: A Clockwork Genie Story
Police Detective Whitney Manning escaped from the horrors of the crimes she witnessed nearly everyday into the fantasy worlds of her books. Then one day, fantasy became all too real when she met a girl with a power genie and her life would never be the same.
Having faced on of the most powerful beings on the planet, and survive battle with a dragon made of living stone, how can Detective Manning return to the everyday world of crime and murder?
She was off duty and wasn’t supposed to be there when the bullet struck her chest. Detective Whitney Manning should be dead.
THE COP WHO WOULDN’T DIE
This is the first short story in a series of stories taking place in the world of CLOCKWORK GENIE, and eventually will all be collected in an anthology.
The next story in the series will be about the handsome homicide Detective Marcus Lambert as he discovers more of the secrets his new wife’s family and the genie of the watch.
After this anthology is complete I will return to the second novel fresh.
To those who have read and enjoyed CLOCKWORK GENIE (which you can purchase at one of the links to the right), let me know which of characters from the book deserves their own short story.
Thank you all again for your support.
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity
I know I’m a couple of weeks late to be writing a Halloween blog about what scare me, but go with me here.
First off I don’t like horror movies, definitely not the modern ones, and certainly not the slasher films. All my teen friends would go see those, and I had no interest at all. Splatter blood across the screen and you’ve lost me.
As a kid I enjoyed monster movies. The original monster movies, if you will, the Universal Monsters at the top of the list. Frankenstein, his Bride, the Wolfman, the Mummy, and Dracula (he got plenty of women and didn’t ever sparkle.) I also enjoyed the b-movie monsters that would follow.
None of those scared me as a kid. I was the Mummy one year for Halloween, and Dracula at least twice.
So what terrified my little mind? Would you believe it was a sitcom?
And it was in all black and white.
This past Wednesday afternoon I tuned into the internet radio show STU’S SHOW. A great program that interviews people from the golden age of television. This episode’s guest was Carl Reiner, actor, writer, director, and producer. The multi-award winning Carl Reiner.
As they were talking about “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, the show Reiner created, a flood of memories struck me.
There are two television programs that terrified the little me of many years ago. Even then both series were in rerun syndication for many years.
One of which was “The Dummy” episode of The Twilight Zone. I always love ventriloquist shows, but the concept of the Dummy coming to life freaked me out; far more so than Talk Tina. She was trying to kill Kojac after all. The Dummy was just plain freaky and scary, and would haunt some of my nightmares.
The other show; really scary to a child who had loving parents, was an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. It was called “It May Look Like A Walnut.” Even thought it was a comedy, it was actually a story about fear, and how television and movies can scare the audience. It begins with Rob and Laura (Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore if you didn’t know) watching a late night movie in bed (let’s not get started on why they were in separate beds), the movie is terrifying Laura but Rob is complete engrossed in it and can’t stop talking about it. The movie is homage to the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (I wouldn’t see that movie till years later). Instead of Pod People, these aliens take over the humans through walnuts. (This has nothing to do with why walnuts are my favorite nuts, right?)
Rob’s obsession eventually goes too far until he dreams that the movie is real and his friends and family have been taken over by the aliens, and the world is filling with walnuts. In one scene Laura parts her hair to reveal to Rob she has eyes in the back of her head. No such eyes are shown on camera, but Rob’s reaction was enough. Even after all these years the terror I had as a child came rushing back seeing it again. Every parents and teacher tells kids they have eyes in the back of the heads, don’t they?
I was frightened because Rob was so scared. Even when he wakes up from this crazy dream, he was acting and feeling the same way I did waking from a nightmare and called out for my mommy.
It was all played for comedy; even with guest star Danny Thomas adding to the laughs, yet it is one of the most frightening shows I had seen in my young life.
Watching that show last night I saw what great quality writing and acting went into to make it dramatically scary while remaining funny all the way through.
Today’s TV shows could learn a lot.
There is also another level of fear that Reiner included in the story, one that he and his fellow writers probably experienced regularly, as do I: the fear of losing his imagination and being unable to write. That would truly be a nightmare.
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity
(Off to look for walnuts, I’m hungry)
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity
It has just been announced that DC Comics will be moving and joining the rest of the DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Burbank, CA. (Read the CBR news story here.)
My #Mission818 passion is excited about this news
It also reminds me of when I got to visit the DC Comics offices in New York City when I was a kid.
The family was visiting New York before heading on with the rest of our travels.
Not only was I looking forward to visiting the offices of DC Comics, the publisher of my favorite super heroes, (actually, at that time I was only reading DC,) I also had a fan letter to drop off. It was for Mike W. Barr and the crew of BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS Annual #1. My one and only letter I’ve ever written to a comic.
Long before that time, I knew I wanted to work in comics, so the chance to visit their offices was a dream come true.
We had purchased lemonades from one of the stands at Rockefeller Plaza, and my drink wasn’t finished when we arrived at 666 5th Avenue. I was hesitant about entering the building with the drink. That hesitation caused my arm to get caught in revolving door. Not only did I spill the lemonade (which is what I was worried about happening,) the door yanked my watch completely off my wrist.
My wrist, though not broken, did hurt for days in to the rest of our trip; it didn’t matter a few minutes later when I was sitting next to Clark Kent in the lobby of the DC Comics offices.
Yes, I did deliver my letter (thought it wasn’t published), but that was nothing compared to being inside the company I dreamed of working for someday.
That dream is still alive.
Now, all these years later, DC Comics is moving to be near me. (That has to be the reason, right?) I trust their drawing, writing, and editing hands don’t caught in any doors when they arrive.
As stated many times before in this blog, I have had a passion for DC Comics all my life, and an ever-increasing desire to work for them.
Now that the company is coming to me, I hope my chances are improving.
I won’t bring a drink to the office this time. Promise.
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity
I have never considered myself a comedy writer, but that isn’t to say that I don’t write comedy. Rather, I never set out to write comedy, and in so doing the comedy tends to write itself.
If any of that makes sense, I hope what follows will as well.
I am a writer of characters.
Usually, I have a rough outline of a plot, hardly a skeleton to build upon. I start with a simple idea, usually a question. I see something, or read about something, and ask “What if?” Lots of times it has to do with looking at something from a different angle.
A lot, or a few, notes go down next. But that all just sits in a pile and does nothing if there aren’t any characters to march through it and kick up the dirt. Otherwise, it’s just a garbage heap of useless words.
Just writing that paragraph gave me a simple idea. A Garbage Heap. What follows is finding the story, and the first question I ask is “What is it like working on a garbage heap?” You know, those people who take our trash to the dump, and those that sort through it. Some for recycling, and those who scrounge around the dump looking for things they can sell in order to survive. (I know old door nobs can bring a penny or two.) But the job isn’t interesting enough. So what if I changed the question: “What is life like for those who live on the garbage heap?” I think there is some drama in that, and maybe some comedy too.
(Almost forgot my blog’s topic there didn’t I?)
We’ll have to wait and see if I actually discover a story in garbage heap and expand upon it. I see a lot of drama, even depression, about the people living in lean-to huts atop or even inside the garbage mounds.
But is there comedy among that garbage and depression? If you find the right characters there are.
What if our story is about a teenage girl working along side her parents looking for scrap and selling what they can. She has a boyfriend, but when he shows up to take her on a date (what kind of date can there be on a scrap heap), she complains that he was cuter before he took a shower.
Okay, that might not be the funniest thing in the world. Like I said, I don’t write comedy. However, if I wrote this story completely out, I think our little Dust Bunny (yes, I just named the girl Dust Bunny. The boy’s name is Smudge, no, Kruntch ) would have a whole lot of funny things to say as she is clearly the only person on the garbage island that enjoys being there.
The point, if there is one, is that comedy like everything else in a story comes out of character. Creating a funny situation and dropping your characters into it doesn’t necessarily make it comedy.
Learn about your characters; find out what makes them tick, and what ticks them off. Don’t tickle them; annoy their pants off. They’ll tell you what’s funny when they start throwing mud back at you.
Maybe I will write this story sometime. Maybe set it on a garbage planet (this story is getting gout of hand). (Kruntch is out; the boy’s name is Smudge again. The letter K didn’t test well.)
Then we’ll discover if I can write comedy or not, and see if I am really worthy of being:
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity (certainly not of comedy).
As the sun sets upon this hot-as-hell day, and the shadows creep across the alleyways of our cities, criminals raise their heads to steal your Aunt Harriet’s silver candle sticks, or mad scientists wind up their giant robots to take over the world.
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| She never figured it out. Who’s aunt was she? |
The villains who make the heroes…. heroic… are out and about, and soon they are about to get their day in the sun.
No, I’m not talking about DC Comic’s Forever Evil comic book event.
What I’m asking you to do is be careful and look inside the Black Fedora.
In this evening’s twilight I received word of the release of a New Pulp anthology by Pro Se Production entitled the Black Fedora will be released later this month (September, 2013).
I’ll have more to write about it as we get closer to the release. In the meantime, be sure to check under the cover for ancient monsters and alien invaders, the bad guys are about to get their day. Will the heroes survive?
Pleasant dreams.
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity
We use to call it the San Diegan, then in the year 2000 Amtrak decided to remain the train and it’s been the Pacific Surfliner ever since.
And so it was the Pacific Surfliner that Shannon and I traveled on down to the San Diego Comic Con International and then back home again.
It is a great way to travel. Sitting back and relaxing, take a nap, read a book or write one. Sure beat being trapped in traffic on the 5 Freeway.
It was also a whole lot less expensive then trying to get a hotel room.
I am my own worst enemy.
Aren’t we all?
I can be extremely shy. Not only with people I haven’t met yet, but also with people I really respect and don’t want to come off looking like a fool. That fear has saved me from time to time, but more often than not it has been a hindrance to achieving what I was really after. Letting great opportunities slip away.
In a Comic Convention setting this can be a real problem. So many people wanting to talk with the same people you want to it is so easy just to chicken out.
As professional animation writers, Shannon and I have been able to attend the Writers Guild of America gathering at ComicCon. Over the years we’ve gotten to know several people in the group, and with some it’s really easy to talk with. However even within that environment it can be difficult to talk with others beyond a few words as more and more people crowd the room. After a while we end up standing off to the side and I return to being my usual Wallflower self for the rest of the TWO HOURS as the event goes on.
There’s where the answer lies.
This year, as mentioned previously, Shannon and I were taking the train back and forth to ComicCon each day. This limited our schedule, but that actually turned out to be something good.
In order to attend the party this year, we had reserved tickets on a later train, but were required to be at the station at least an hour early. (Anyone who took the train will tell you just how long the lines were. You’d think they were waiting to get into Hall H.) Because of this we were only able to stay at the party for only the first half hour.
With only 30 minutes we watched the door as different people signed in. Anyone we knew, or wanted to talk to, we immediately said hi to and began to chat. We only got a few minutes with each person, but they were well-spent minutes.
In those thirty-minute we probably spoke with more people than we usually do in an entire two-hour evening. There was no time to become wallflowers.
What I learned from this night is this: don’t plan to stay at the party all night. Set yourself a limited amount of time and with that deadline talk with as many people as you can. Keep moving around, or find a good position near the entrance where people are forced to walk past you. Quickly say hi, make introductions and chat for a while and then let them get on to the food while you find someone else to talk to.
This may not be what works for you, but it will be how I will fight the Wallflower Wars from now on.
Yes, we did catch our train on time and even chatted with more people in line, but more of than next time.
Many of my professional comic book and animation friends on facebook and twitter have commented how this was one of the best San Diego Comic Cons they have had. Each say this for their own reasons, and it’s up to them to tell you why, but let me talk about why this is one for me.
As I’ve written about before, when I first got into reading comics I discovered the Justice Society of America before I really knew the Justice League was more than SUPER FRIENDS. Soon after that I found a comic called ALL-STAR SQUADRON. This book was written by Roy Thomas, and in one way or another included every single ‘Golden Age’ hero that DC Comics owned.
For many years, Thomas had his hands controlling the greatest of characters from both Marvel and DC.
Because as a kid he grew up reading all the original Golden Age characters he maintained a passion for all of them when he became a professional writer himself. I’d like to think I’m following in his footprints.
At the first ComicCon I attended, I was excited to attend a panel on Roy Thomas and his books. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, he couldn’t make it to the panel but con personnel said he was there. So another attendee and I mustered up enough courage to go to the info booth and ask to have him paged. (Realize I was a very shy kid in my early teens. Of course I’m still rather shy in my mid—never mind.) But Mr. Thomas never showed up. I was disappointed, but didn’t have any negativity against the man who controlled all these great characters.
Years later after getting my first job in the comic book industry, I met him extremely briefly while attending Pro-Con in Oakland. (Anyone remember that?) But he and Marv Wolfman were in deep discussion that I didn’t want to disturb him.
(I lost a lot of opportunities over the years because I didn’t want to disturb people. Finally getting over that. That’s a blog post all into itself.)
Finally we reach this year. Shannon and I attended a couple of spotlight panels. One on the artist George Perez, and the second was on Roy Thomas. The panel was moderated by Jon B. Cooke (editor of TwoMorrow’s COMC BOOK CREATOR magazine), and they talked about Thomas growing up and reading comics as a little boy, on to writing and editing for Marvel, and then doing what he says is his favorite book for DC Comics ALL-STAR SQUARDRON.
Yay, me too.
Here’s the cover of the very first Issue I bought:
Getting to hear him talk about all that was really good, but the day wasn’t over. After a dinner at the hotel before heading to the Writer’s Guild of America gathering, we were coming down an escalator and knew we had a limited amount of time. Standing in the corner by the Starbucks in hotel’s lounge stood Roy Thomas.
What feels like the first time in my life, I didn’t hesitate or think about what I was doing, and just went up to Mr. Thomas and introduced myself.
He was extremely friendly as I told him how ALL-STAR SQUADRON not only got me into comics, but also into enjoying history of World War II. That pleased him, because he was always incorporating history into the stories.
I told him how I later worked for Brian Murray who had been one of the artists on the follow up series YOUNG ALL-STARS.
Shannon spoke up saying how as an editor at Marvel, Roy had given a writing assignment to Christy Marx who later became a mentor to her which lead to her own career in animation.
I thanked him and his wife once more and headed off to meet more of our fellow writers. I was walking on cloud 9 almost crying with joy. Nothing could have made this Con better, and yet there were other things that we will be talking about for a long time to come.
Though most of those ‘golden age’ characters have dropped back into the shadows as new generations of writers and characters take over, Roy Thomas and the ALL-STAR SQUADRON will forever be the heart of what makes comics special to me and why I write and draw them.
Thank you Mr. Thomas.
Well, I’m back from ComicCon and survived being one in 130,000 people on the convention floor.
I won’t tell you how many conventions I’ve been too, and have only missed one in all that time, but what I can say is this may have been one of the most productive cons so far.
Over the next week I plan on writing short blogs about different parts of the con that I experienced. I hope it’s worth the reading.
Shannon and I road the Amtrak Train “Surfliner” down to San Diego and back home again each day. (We didn’t go for Sunday. We needed the rest.) It was a relaxing way to do it, and actually get some writing done. On Saturday we met someone at our hometown train station that was also going to Con, and saw again when we got back late that night. It turned out we had other connections, and this chance meeting may lead into some positive networking with companies down the road. We can only try.
Each day was crowded with people, and sometimes that can be frustrating when you’re trying to keep up with your partner salmon swimming up stream, but it is still fun.
The TV news kept going on about the costumes (or cosplay), but there was so much more to it than that. Though there were some really great costumes. The ones that really got to me were the families. Not just a group of people together, but families. A family that was dressed as Superman/Wonder Woman and Supergirl/Superboy. Another family that was the main pantheon of Star Wars characters. Do what you’re children love, and your children will do what you love.
As stated in my last blog we were going to avoid Hall H and Ballroom 20. However we did make one attempt to get into 20, Steven Moffat was there about the TV series SHERLOCK. The line which began at ground level near went up a long set of stairs and then Disneyland Lined back and forth. We spent 40 minutes in the line, but once the actual program began we knew we’d never make it inside. A friend of ours spent 3 hours in line for the same panel and still never got in.
We never even contemplated going to see DOCTOR WHO in Hall H. Not only getting in line itself can be bad, but also a lot of people decided to camp out in line or in the Hall itself once inside. The simple concept is that you go into see one panel even if you’re not interest in it and stay there until you see the panel you want. Sometimes if you sit in an earlier panel you might discover something new that interests you. Sounds like a good plan, but then you decide to do it for Hall H. Waiting 3 hours might be okay for some, but would you be willing to camp in the Hall our outside the convention center all night long? Well a lot of people did. Not me; no way!
Even avoiding the masses, we did end up in some very good panels. We sat in on one about writing for television and the experience in the “writer’s room.” It was fun that one of our friends was on the panel, would be even more fun if we were friends with the rest of the panel. We got in but the line beyond use couldn’t, this was a much smaller room.
Shannon really got a lot out of a panel on Digital Comics in Schools and Libraries. She’ll be writing her own blogs about that.
There were also a couple of spotlight panels that we attended. Those were cool to hear the people we look up to talk about their careers in their own words. I’ll be writing about one of those later. Of course it was also great to meet people on the floor, in artists alley, they we’ve worked with in the past.
We also attended the Writers’ Guild of America gathering, but could only stay for about half an hour, as we had to get to the train station.
It doesn’t sounds like a whole lot, but the little things are what matters. Each a small part of my #Mission818
We really had a good time.
More Con Blogs to follow.
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