Friday Forays into Fiction

It's November, which means it's time for NaNoWriMo again. That means that for the next 30 days I will be able to watch many of my peers have prick waving dick fights about their word counts while they try to fulfill their ambitions towards writing the great American novel.

I'm not going to lie. Most years, I get caught up in the novel writing fever. In fact, my upcoming graphic novel, Wacky Zack Must Die, started off as an idea for a NaNowriMo project. I'm begging out this year, but I still love the idea. The only reason I'm not giving it a whirl this go around is that I have other projects I want to focus on first - Chiefly among them my scripts for the Silver Age and Western volumes of The Gathering, and my Tarantino-tribute miniseries.

(Sadly true anecdote on that miniseries: I sent an email to my friend Pat's girlfriend the other day, asking her how long it would take someone to die of blood loss from an amputated limb. She's a medical student, and if you're in my life, and you demonstrate any area of expertise, I'm going to corner you at one point and ask you eerily specific questions relating to your field of knowledge. (Poor Pat, who is a juggler, had to spend an hour at a bar with me one night discussing the physics of juggling hamsters for a scene in Wacky Zack.) I was wondering why I hadn't recieved a response yet when a mutual friend informed me that the young woman in question had been in a horrible bicycle accident. 

Me: So.... That's probably why she hasn't wanted to talk about amputations.
Mike: Yeah, probably. 
Me: So... I guess I'm the dick now, huh?
Mike: We all figured you just didn't know.
Me: I didn't. I swear to God I didn't. Still... I'm gonna need an answer. 
Mike: Yeah. You're a dick.)

I should also mention that whenever I think about writing a novel, I can hear Stewie from Family Guy talking in my head. 

Anyway, in lieu of a whole novel, here's a piece of short fiction I wrote about two years ago. Like most things I've written, I can barely stand to look at it now. But several people who I like and respect have told me they enjoyed it, so maybe you will, too.

*****

Near Death Experiences, 3 AM

It was 3 AM, and we were in the Mighty Chicken, my 18 year old station wagon, a half hour into the hour drive home from a show at Studio 158. I had Gary in the back seat, completely knackered and snoring like a beast, and I had Ryan in the passenger seat, changing tapes every thirty-five seconds or so and drinking rum then cokes. Meaning, he had a jug of Captain Morgan he was guzzling from, and a can of Coca Cola he would sip at as a chaser.

I had the stereo up and the windows down. The noise from the stereo was trying (and failing) to drown out Gary’s noises, and the open window was easing the smell the three of us were giving off. We had been five hours inside of Studio 158, jungle steamy, hotter than hell, and unlike a lot of shows, the whole room decided not to wait until the very last band came on to start shaking their ass. We’d been moshing and pogoing and moving around all night, and we stank like a monkey cage.

Ryan had put on some Queers, and then declared it “wasn’t hard enough”. Then he had put on Snapcase, and took it out right away, saying it was “too hard”.

“What are you, Goldilocks? Pick something and stick to it,” I yelled at him above the noise of the wind. I was doing close to 60, which was about 15 miles per hour above the speed limit, but still pretty safe. It was summer, and it was late. Deer weren’t really out yet, no kids would be riding bikes this late, and there were only a couple state cops who worked route 66, and they never ran radar in that area on a Saturday night – Too dead. They were way more likely to set up shop somewhere near the Mobil station or the Dunkin Donuts. Not that I’m trying to perpetuate cop stereotypes, I’m just saying that there was way more chance of them actually busting a speeder or a drunk or something near the center of town. And hey, if it’s late, and nothing’s happening, you’d want to be where you could get a cup of coffee, right?

“I AM Goldilocks, dude. I’m getting fucking shaggy.” Ryan was wearing his trademark Big Mistake beanie, which was totally Ryan, wearing the hat of the band you’re going to see. When he took it off, his hair just spilled across his face. Most summers he shaved his head, but for some reason this year he had been wearing that hat almost nonstop since April, and I’d forget sometimes how blonde he was. When his hair started to get long, like it was then, he looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy in a hoodie and bondage pants.

He put in Black Train Jack, the first tape, the good one. “Ah. Punk Rock Goldilocks thinks this is just right.” He started piling his hair back under his hat, and looked in the back seat at Gary.

“He looks so innocent, sleeping like that.”

“I can’t see him.”

“Oh, dude, he’s adorable. He’s all curled up in the fetal position, and I think, I’m not sure, but I think, he’s sucking his thumb.”

“That’s precious.”

“It IS precious.”

“You want to fuck with him right now, don’t you?”

“Oh, man, you have no idea. I don’t suppose you have a Sharpie or anything? I want to draw cock and balls on his face.”

“No Sharpie.”

He turned back and settled into his seat. “You suck at having a Sharpie so that I can defile Gary’s face.” He took another gulp from the Captain.

“I’m sorry, I guess I really do.”

I glanced at him. “Should you be drinking that much of that shit?”

“How much of what shit? The Coke? Don’t worry, it’s just baby sips. And all the caffeine is good for me.”

“That’s not what I was talking about.”

“I know what you were talking about, and I don’t want to hear about it. I’m fine, and you’re driving, and what does it matter. You’re not my mother.”

It was always “You’re not my mother” with Ryan. Never “You’re not my father,” because that would have meant Ryan acknowledging he had a father, and Ryan almost never did that. Ever since Roy had ditched out on Ryan and his sister and his mom, and had moved to Bridgeport with this bar skank, Ryan had stopped talking about his dad. He pretty much had no father, as far as he was concerned.

“I’m not your mother. I just don’t want you throwing up in my car.”

“I will not throw up.”

“You’re promising? Swearing? Am I getting a guarantee?”

“You are getting a guarantee. I will not throw up. Not in your car, anyway.”

We both laughed and I kept driving.  I was feeling pretty good that night. It had been an awesome show, Big Mistake headlining, and Spring Heeled Jack on the bill. We had run into this girl Crystal I knew through Gary, and her two friends, and I ended up dancing with her for most of Spring Heeled Jack’s set. Ryan was still deep in his post-breakup angst over Meghan, hence the drinking binge, so he wasn’t much use, but Gary could be really funny and charming, and never seemed to really get nervous with girls at all, so he ended up keeping her friends busy. I pussied out on getting her number, but she said she was going to the Legion Hall show the next Friday, so I was pretty sure I would talk to her again then.

For some stupid reason, I tried to talk to Ryan about her. “That girl, Crystal? She was pretty hot.”

He had put the can of coke in the console cup holder, was looking out the window, cradling the jug of rum like a baby. “She was okay. Nothing special.”

What do you say to that, right? I knew that he wasn’t going to all be drunk and heartbroken for very long. And if he was saying things like a girl was nothing special, he knew it, too, and I was probably screwed. Because either I make a big deal out of it, and then he knows I like her, and at the show next Friday he totally cockblocks me, or I agree with him that she’s nothing special, and then he hears that as a green light to go after her himself. That’s how it had been with Meghan. We had met her at the Tune Inn, and I had thought she was just amazing. She had this really awesome voice, kind of husky, but not like, deep or anything. Sexy. And she had been really funny, too. I had accidentally bumped into her, both of us looking through the boxes of CDs in the little store inside the club. And she had said “Wow, you must REALLY want to look at those comps.” And for once I hadn’t gotten all stupid and tongue-tied, like I usually did with girls I didn’t know. I had said, “Yeah. But look, if you give me first dibs on whatever we find in there, I promise not to hurt you.” And she had laughed, and I felt flushed from my neck right down to my toes.

We started talking and I found out she was from our town, and she had just moved there from Ohio. I started making that old joke, about how Ohio Is round on the ends and “hi” in the middle, and then Ryan had come up from behind and had gotten me in a headlock and had said, “I’m sorry, is this guy bothering you? You say the word and I’ll drag him out of here and beat the shit out of him. “And she’d laughed at THAT, too, and I figured, she was just one of those girls who laughed at things, and if that’s the kind of girl she was, then it was all over. Ryan had moved in, and I was about to become “Ryan’s funny, fat friend”. And who needs that shit. So later, when he said, “What do you think about the Meghan chick,” I just said, “I don’t know. She’s OK, I guess.” And that was all the permission Ryan needed.

That was just the price you paid for being friends with Ryan. He really liked girls, and they really liked him. And while some dudes said “bros before hos”, and meant that they wouldn’t go after a girl their friend liked, Ryan said, “bros before hos”, and meant that, if you were his boy, you shouldn’t care who he went out with, even if it was your sister or your cousin, or some girl you met at a show and really liked, because you should be loyal to him, not to some girl who maybe didn’t even like you. That was just the way it was.

Look, I know he sounds like an asshole, but he wasn’t an asshole. He was my oldest friend, since the first grade. He got me into punk rock, and he got me into ska,  and he got me into hardcore, and he introduced me to every cool slasher movie I had ever seen, and he didn’t read comics, but he’d come with me to buy mine, and he never gave me any shit about it. He’d bust your balls all day long, and he’d fuck with you just to make sure you could take it, but the things that would really hurt? The things that would really wound you down deep, so that you kind of choked a little, and had to fake a laugh through clenched teeth? Ryan would never go there. Ever. And if anyone else did, Ryan would make sure they never did it again.

Like the one time this guy, Chad Marufo, this guy did give me shit? Eric had been right there. I had been in the school library, and I was reading the trade paperback for Ronin, and I was so totally into it that I didn’t even hear Chad come up behind me until I felt him flick the back of my ear and then grab the book away. “Comic books? These things are for fat pussies, I hear.” And Ryan was up off his chair already and shoved Chad, this big jock kid, like over 6 feet tall, this basketball jock, Ryan shoves him. And he says, “At least he can read, you fucking faggot, “and snatches the book right out of Marufo’s hands. And Marufo’s just standing there with this look on his face like he couldn’t believe some little skinny punk kid had just called him a fag. And for a second, it looked like maybe there was going to be a fight, but then Marufo maybe saw something in Ryan’s eyes. Like something that said, I don’t give a fuck that you’re bigger than me, I don’t care that you’re stronger than me. My dad used to hit me and he used to do it hard enough to knock me down and I’m not afraid of being hit anymore. You just try to hit me. I will fucking kill you. No joke. I will fucking kill you.

So Marufo just backs away, and says, “Fuck you two,” and takes off. And as soon as he’s out of earshot, Ryan grabs my hair and pulls my forehead against his and says, “"When I get aggression, I give it two times back."  And then he sat down again and went right back to doing his homework.

So if Ryan was a little loud, and if he was a little obnoxious, and he didn’t really think about whether you liked a girl or not before he made out with her, that’s the price you paid to be friends with him. And that was a fair price, you know?

And I was starting to get the hang of it now, of liking girls and being friends with Ryan. You couldn’t say you liked her, and you couldn’t say you didn’t, so you just changed the subject.

“So what happened with Meghan? Like, two weeks ago, when we went to Friendly’s and you guys were all hand-holding and whispering, and practically making out at the table. And then, this weekend, you’re all bitter drunk guy. What happened?”

“She broke up with me.”

“OK, but that’s not what anyone else heard.” The rumor in the scene was that Ryan had dropped Meghan, for reasons unknown. I had heard it from Abby Kraft, and Chris Majors, and Genevieve, and Mickey, and the twins. And whether it was true or not, everyone was acting like it was true. Meghan’s social circle had immediately expanded, and she was supposedly now friends with this circle of girls who had all dated Ryan, and now thought he was a scumbag.

“It doesn’t matter what everyone else said, Thom. I’m telling you how it is, okay? Let’s just change the subject.”

“Okay, man. I’m sorry.” And we drove without talking for a little while. Just listened to Black Train Jack do “Time” and “Mad Doll” and “Leapfrog”. And after a little while, Ryan said,

“Thom, I have kind of a situation here.”

“Dude, you promised.”

“I’m not going to puke. But I have to pee like a racehorse. I’m not joking man. I’m going to fucking bust. Pull over somewhere.”

“Like where?” Pulling over on these roads was no joke. It was one lane in either direction, and almost right where the road ended, right on the edge where a sidewalk would be if we lived in the city or the suburbs and not out in the goddamned sticks, that was where the trees started. If you had to stop, there was almost no place for you to pull over. And I wasn’t worried about cops, or regular traffic, but at 3 am, you never knew when a drunk or fucked-up redneck asshole in a jacked-up truck was going to come flying up right behind you. There had been a kid at school when me and Ryan and Gary were freshman, this senior, who had gotten killed when his car was rear-ended by some drunk farmer going 80. Drove the kid right into a tree, and that’s that.

“Dude, anywhere. I have to piss. I can’t fucking hold it.”

“You should have gone before we left!” And now I wasn’t sounding like Ryan’s mother, I was sounding like MY mother.

“I did, man! But then I drank, like, this whole fucking jug of rum! You’ve got to pull over.”

“It probably wasn’t the rum, it was probably the coke that did it. Just that little extra that pushed you over the edge.”

“Thom, PLEASE…”

“OK! Hey, look! Right there. Right over there.” And there was a clearing in the endless woods we had been driving past. It was a piece of shit auto shop and junkyard we had driven past a thousand times. There was a single overhead light mounted above the sign, so you could see the letters that were left – U-A-L-I-T-Y-M-T-O-R-C-O-A-C-H-S.

I pulled in, taking my time, not to torture Ryan (although that was kind of fun), but because I had fucked up my parents’ Buick a little, making a fast U-turn out of a parking lot just like this one. I had come into that lot going too fast, caught up in the music, listening to Screeching Weasel, or NOFX or something, and hadn’t seen the catch basin, not quite flush with the ground, and semi-jagged with age and rust. So I hit the stupid thing, and my tired popped, and I tried to get it under control, but it took a few seconds to stop the car, and I managed to bend the axle somehow. I needed to get the thing towed out of there. Somehow I managed to escape being grounded until I was in college, but I was a little overly cautious when pulling into strange places now. 

I pulled up in front of the garage’s bay doors, and Ryan was out of the car before I could even get it into park. I thought he was going to just run up to the doors, but he took off around the side of the building as fast as he could run while doing the pee-pee dance.

I turned off the stereo, and sat in the car, listening to Gary’s snoring. After a few seconds, I got out of the car myself. There was a coke machine near the main door into the garage, and I was hoping I had enough change in my pocket to get myself a coke that hadn’t been tainted by Ryan’s rum-lips. I was halfway between the car and the machine when I heard the crunch of sneakers moving fast on loose gravel. I turned around to see Ryan come hauling around the side of the building. He hadn’t zipped up after peeing, and his cock was bouncing furiously as he ran, like it was waving at me.

I started laughing and pointed at him. “Dude, your cock is out.”

In a stage whisper, he hissed at me, “Thom, Get in the car! GET IN THE CAR!”

“What’s your probl…” was all I managed to get out. Ryan did a straight dive through the open passenger window of the car, and at that moment I heard

BOOM! BOOM!

coming from behind the garage.

I had heard gunshots before. Living in the woods, out in east bumfuck, CT, you hear gunshots all the time - hunters in the fall, white trash with guns shooting at squirrels or at cans in their yards the rest of the year. I knew gunshots when I heard them. But these were so fucking loud. They sounded like cannons, like bombs, like guns you’d hear in a war movie. I went cold.

Ryan was getting himself right-side-up in the passenger seat, and I could see him, tucking his junk back into his jeans and mouthing, “COME ON!” and I took off running to the car, and  my hand came out of my pocket, and all of the change I had been jingling came out with it and scattered all across the ground, and I realized oh holy fuck, my keys were in that pocket, and I stopped short and started looking around frantically, trying to figure out where they had gone, and Ryan opened my door and was yelling now, “Thom, COME ON! Hurry the fuck up! Please”

I couldn’t see my keys anywhere, and I started patting my jeans, and then I realized I had left them in the fucking car, they were in the fucking ignition, and I jumped in and turned the keys and heard a grinding noise, and the fucking car was already on, Thom, get it together, and Ryan was yelling in my ear, “GOOOOOOO!”

I slammed the car into drive and hit the gas with all of my weight, the tires spinning in the gravel, the ass end of the Mighty Chicken fishtailing, all the lessons about driving slow in strange parking lots forgotten, totally forgotten. There was a slight incline coming out of the lot, and the Mighty Chicken launched into the street, I swear to god we caught air, and I remember Ryan was yelling, “HOLY FUCKING SHIT!” and I managed, I just barely managed, to get the wheel turned hard to the right, so the Chicken hit the street and made a nasty, lurching turn, and I could hear the branches scraping the driver’s side door, and then I got control again, and got us back on the right side of the street, going like a bat out of hell. I had the gas pedal down to the floor, and I looked at Ryan and I think I said, “Ryan, what exactly is going on?” but later Ryan told me that what I actually did was scream, “RYAN! FUCK! WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK?”

And he says, “Holy shit, man. Holy shit. I went out back, and I’m peeing, and oh my god, it was a relief, and I’m standing there, dick in my hand, and I hear voices. And I kind of turn and look over my shoulder, and there are these guys, probably four or five of them, standing in front of two big-ass cars.”

“Big ass cars?”

“Like fucking Cadillacs or something. Long. And they’re passing briefcases back and forth.”

“Ryan, are you fucking kidding me with this shit? I just about crapped myself…”

“Thom, I swear to god. I swear to Buddha. I swear to Joey Ramone. I swear to whoever the fuck you want me to swear to, but this shit is for real. Those dudes were doing a drug deal or an arms deal or some crazy mafia or KGB shit or something!”

“Dude, there are no mobsters around here. We’re lucky to have cable.”

“I know what I saw, man. And I saw these dudes. And they saw me. And one of them was like, ‘Who’s that?’ and they all pulled out these goddamned hand cannons and I just bolted it out of there.”

“Cock flapping in the breeze.”

“Like I’m going to stop and zip up in the middle of Reservoir Dogs or whatever the fuck that was.”

I was starting to relax a little. This was all a big misunderstanding, some fucked-up joke of Ryan’s, or too much rum messing with his head. I opened my mouth to call Ryan a drunk jerk-off, and that’s when the headlights appeared in my rearview window, coming up on us fast.

“FUCK!” I screamed.

“What? What is it?” Ryan was screaming back.

“Both of you be quiet, please?” came, fuzzily, from the backseat.

“Dude, they’re behind us! They’re right fucking behind us!” I stood on the pedal, willing lightspeed from the Chicken. It lurched a bit, and the engine revved as it tried to give me what I was asking for. The headlights were getting bigger and brighter, and I knew the other car was coming up on us fast, faster than I could manage.

The woods on either side of the road were starting to break a bit. We were starting to get into a section of the drive where farmsteads and housing developments battled it out in this constant “progress versus tradition” turf war. So you’d pass a clearing in the trees and see a bunch of rolling fields, and silos. And then, three miles down the road, the next clearing broke, and you were looking at a pod of McMansions that had sprung out of the ground like multimillion dollar mushrooms occupied by yuppie Smurfs.

I had the Chicken at 80, which was 10 miles per hour faster than it could comfortably travel. These were back roads, paved when the town got to it, and we felt every rut or bump or pothole like it was the Grand Canyon. Every imperfection in the road was like a punch to the ass, as we bounced in our seats, and I tried to keep the Chicken under control.

If we could get a little farther, just a little farther, we’d be into the center of town, and there would be people, somebody, anybody. There’d be witnesses and we couldn’t get executed, mob-style in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot in front of a bunch of witnesses, right? I thought about the term “Columbian necktie”, and I could feel myself starting to completely lose my mind with panic. The headlights were right on my bumper, and it was as bright as daylight inside our car. Ryan was saying, “ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck”, just this mantra of complete, pants-shitting terror, and we hit another pothole and for a second I thought the car chasing us had rear-ended us, had just gunned the engine and rammed us, and Ryan must have thought that, too, because he yelled, “I’m not dying like this”, and grabbed the steering wheel, yanking it up so that the car suddenly banked to the left.

Over the yellow line, off the road, and if I had hit the brakes like my instincts said to, we probably would have flipped the whole car, but I was so shocked by what Ryan had done, all I could manage was to say, calmly and in disbelief, “Dude, don’t grab the wheel…” and then we smashed through the fence.

Through the fence, over a hill, up a gully, and then into the middle of a field, and Gary sat up from the back, still half-asleep, and yelled, “COW!” and that’s how I managed to hit the brakes in time. The car skidded in the wet grass, and turned sideways, and we bumped the cow, just barely tapped it. And the cow said, “moo” - which I guess is how cows say, “What the hell, guys?”

Gary was still sitting in the back, in the middle of the back seat, his hands on the front bench, and he said, “Why are we in a field?” And Ryan threw open the door and yelled, “Fuck, man! Assassins!” And I looked out of the driver’s side window and saw a pickup truck parked on the road with its hazard lights on, and this big slab of redneck in bib overalls and a tee shirt (and this is the part nobody ever believes but I am swearing to you, the dude was literally wearing bib overalls) running down the hill towards us, and saying, “Oh man! You kids okay?” And I realized we’d been “chased” by some guy named Cletus or “Arlo” or something, and the guy was getting close enough for me to see he’s wearing a John Deere baseball cap, and I started laughing, and in my head, all I could think was “John Deere Mafia. Hillbilly Cosa Nostra”.

The guy stopped running when I started laughing and said, “Jesus. Are you kids drunk?” To which Ryan yells, “Oh shit! Evidence!” and grabs the jug of rum from the passenger seat and flings it as far as he can, which, the state he was in, was about twenty feet, and then leans over and starts to puke between his feet.

“Sir, we’re cool. We’re not drunk. Well…“ I looked at Ryan, “I’m not drunk. We thought you were someone else.” Ryan said, “I didn’t puke in your car, Thom!” And Gary said, “Seriously, guys? Why are we in a field?”

So that was that, basically. The redneck guy (who’s name was Harrison, his first name, if you can believe it), called the state cops, and told them he’d been following us and had seen the whole thing, and we’d swerved to avoid hitting a skunk, and was actually pretty unbelievably cool about the whole thing. He didn’t mention the jug of rum, and I didn’t get grounded. My insurance actually paid for the fence we broke. Gary swore he was never driving with us anywhere, ever again, but Gary swore stuff like that all the time.

Ryan wanted to go back to the garage the next day and check for shell casings or something, but I passed. Either we’d nearly been killed, or we’d nearly killed ourselves, either way, I didn’t want to know. It had been a near death experience at three in the morning, and I just wanted to leave it at that.

*****
I had thoughts, once upon a time, of doing an entire book of shirt stories like this. Just vaguely autobiographical anecdotes about punker kids in the early 90s getting into trouble and slowly growing up. Who knows, I may still get to it someday.

Hugs and kisses,
(The) Travis

NYCC 2011: Veni, Vidi, Vici

Aloha!

Sorry I haven’t been more attentive to this blog lately. I blame it on a combination of three things:

-        Coming back from NYCC with a bunch of projects I want to do.

-        Spending the weekend following NYCC on an impromptu road trip to Philadelphia, about which I cannot speak, due to the statute of limitations on certain events.

-        I bought Batman: Arkham City.  

I swear to God, the lack of bloginess is due more to the first two items than the third. Honest.

To make up for my slackeriness, I will endeavor to blog more regularly. To facilitate this, I will do a Q&A blog sometime in the next week or so. Send me some questions, if you are so inclined

NYCC WRAPUP!

Holy shit. That was a good time. Jenny and I have been attending New York Comic Con since its inaugural outing in 2006, and have been to every show since then, with the notable exception of 2010, when I was busily going blind. It’s one of the rare social or cultural events I have the privilege of having been in on the ground floor for (oddly enough, the only other example that springs to mind is the Warped Tour), so I feel oddly proprietary towards it.

The show has been getting bigger and bigger every single year, and this year almost everyone who had a basis of comparison said that it was reaching San Diego levels of humungousness. Despite having absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with the planning or execution of the show, I still felt strangely proud of that. Our little boy’s all groweds up.

TRAVIS’ TOP 5 AWESOME THINGS THAT HAPPENED AT NYCC 2011

1. I ARE A COMIC PROFESSIONAL

I got to rock my Pro Pass this year as a bona fide “person who makes funnybooks”. That was pretty righteous, not just for the ability to stand in slightly smaller than average lines, but for the looks on the faces of the occasional fanboy who would catch sight of the “Pro” on my laminate, and then try to decide if I was or was not Robert Kirkman*.  

I also got to do my first official comic book signing. Saturday morning, I found myself at the Grayhaven Comics table, hocking comics with the fine gentlemen of Grayhaven (Andrew, Doug, and James), and signing copies of the Gathering. I also got to hang out with the gorgeous, hilarious, and insanely talented Amanda “Clown Town” Rachels, and the gentleman’s gentleman, Len “Love Buzz” Wallace.

Me! (And Grayhaven Comics' James O'Callaghan)

A whole bunch of folks from the Bendis Board came and bought books from us while I was there. I was seriously blown away by the support I received from all these fine people. I am humbled and honored and thrilled to be a part of a community that has given so much to my life, including the lovely lady I tricked into marrying me.

Seated: James and I. Standing: Harry Crosland of the Next Issue Podcast, James Hooks, and Grayhaven's Doug Hahner

2. THE ANNUAL FRIDAY NIGHT BENDIS BOARD DRINKUP

A fine tradition harkening back to the first ever NYCC, the New York City Bendis Board regulars invite all travelling nerds to join them for an evening of food, libations, and fun. This was one of the bigger turnouts we have had, damn near filling the bar we chose, and scaring the living shit out of the bar’s manager. (Pat Loika has a picture of the guy’s face. It’s hysterical.) I had my shit together enough to actually learn every single person’s name, which, if you know me, you understand is a “snatch the pebble out of my hand” moment for me.

I had a blast with some of my best friends on the planet, made a lot of new friends, and laughed until I thought my ribs were going to snap. I think it can be truly said that a good time was had by all.

3. THE LOCKE AND KEY PILOT IS FUCKING AMAZING

The Powers that be were good enough to allow IDW to show the pilot episode of the “Locke and Key” series, based on the absolutely brilliant comic series by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. Oh my God, it was brilliant. The fact that it didn’t get picked up makes me angry enough to punch television in the face.

I am making it my mission in life to grassroots this series into existence. If you get a chance to see the pilot at a Con, DO IT. Also tell Joe Hill and IDW how much you love it. DO NOT download it or torrent it or any of that shit, as that’s the surest way to make sure it never sees the light of day.

4. THE WOMEN OF MARVEL KICK ASS

Hands down, the best panel I attended during NYCC was the “Women of Marvel” panel, held Sunday morning at an ungodly early hour.  The panel was moderated by Marvel Editor Jeanine Schaefer, and featured Colleen Coover ("Wolverine: First Class"), Kelly Sue DeConnick ("Osborn"), Editor Lauren Sankovitch ("Fantastic Four"), Editor Sana Amanat ("Ultimate Spider-Man"), Sara Pichelli ("Ultimate Spider-Man") Emma Rios ("Cloak And Dagger"), Marjorie Liu ("X-23"), and Editor Ellie Pyle.

It was an amazing hour. These women make me want to write better. They’re intense, brilliant, driven, and so fucking talented. I walked out of that room wanting to work with them. I wanted so badly to write something that they all thought was good. Talking to Chris Page after the panel, I told him, “I don’t know how hard it is to write for the average fanboy. Maybe hard, maybe not. But if I could write something that those women appreciated, THAT would mean I am killing it.”

It was especially amazing to be at that panel with Jenny. Watching her see these women doing what she wants to do, reassuring her that it CAN BE DONE. It was amazing to watch her face throughout the discussion and see how intensely and emotionally the whole thing resonated with her. If we had done nothing else the entire trip, that panel would have made NYCC worthwhile.

5. HANGING WITH KELLY SUE!

Kelly Sue DeConnick is one of my heroes. She’s an amazing writer, and a genuinely cool person. I’ve been spending a lot of time hanging on her forum on Jinxworld, and the people I have met there have all been top shelf (looking at you, Terry Tyson and Karen Mahoney). Kelly Sue has been just ridiculously generous with me, giving me advice that has truly helped me, and pushing me to do better. The one goal I had for the Con was to get to meet her face to face and tell her how much she had helped me out. And I finally got a chance to do so Sunday, after the Women of Marvel panel.

She might only be 5 feet tall, but she’s got ten feet of heart. Jenny and I are sort of in love with her.

*****

New York Comic Con, I salute you. You are truly big-assed and full of all varieties of glorious nerditry. See you next year!

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis

*Jenny did not get this joke until we saw Kirkman on "Talking Dead" this week. Then she turned and looked at me and said, "HOLY SHIT!"

Coming in 2012 - WACKY ZACK MUST DIE

WARNING: Shameless self-promotion to follow.

Since this past spring, I have been diligently working on my SUPER-SECRET ORIGINAL GRAPHIC NOVEL PROJECT. Now I can finally show you guys some teaser art from the book, drawn by my partner in crime, Mr. Chris Hopkins.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present your first look at WACKY ZACK MUST DIE.

Max is living a charmed life as the alpha-nerd of his particular zip code, but he knows he won't be truly happy until he finally lands the girl of his dreams, the delectable Kelly Dee. Only one thing stands in his way - her unicycle-riding, hamster-juggling, amateur prop-comedian boyfriend Wacky Zack. So as far as Max is concerned, there's only one solution. Wacky Zack must DIE.

In these pages, Max is attending his high school reunion. His adoration of Kelly Dee from afar is interrupted by his old high school nemesis, Rob Bannerman.

Chris is hard at work cranking out pages and finishing promotional material for the book. Our goal is to publish sometime in 2012. Watch this space for more details.  

NYCC 2011

Oh, goody! My favorite time of the year in the nerd calendar is at hand. New York Comic-Con 2011 will be kicking off this Thursday, October 13th through Sunday, October 16th. SO EXCITED!

I will be at the Grayhaven Comics booth (2547) on Saturday from 10am until noon, signing copies of The Gathering Volume 2 (“The Other Side ofDespair”, featuring “The Hopester Vs. Despairicus”, with art by Pat Loika), and Volume 6 (“Further into the Abyss”, featuring “Jack, Unblinking”, with art by Chris Page). Please stop by and say hello! Grayhaven Comics will also have Gathering Volume 5 on hand (“Love Letters”), featuring the story “Green Carnations” written by my lovely wife, Jenny Langin, and featuring art from Amanda Rachels (Clown Town).

Hugs and kisses,
(The) Travis

The Laura Hudson Sex/Sexism Kerfuffle: What Have We Learned?

So Laura Hudson, a very smart lady who writes very smart things about comics, posted something on Comics Alliance discussing how women are presented in superhero comics. (SPOILER ALERT: It’s not always in a good way.) Her article was based directly on two of DC Comics’ recent relaunched titles, Catwoman, and Red Hood and the Outlaws. If you haven’t already, read the article here. It’s very interesting, I think, and raises some damned good points.

The comics fan community on the internet, predictably, went apeshit. My favorite comment from the peanut gallery? “Hudson is the prime example as to why women shouldn't be able to access the Internet.” Charming.

Man, I struggled with this one. I have seriously been kicking this stupid blog around for almost 2 weeks, trying to figure out how to crystallize all of my thoughts on the topic into some coherent points. And I still don’t think I’ve managed that. Talking about this, in fact, might be the very definition of beating a dead horse.

But I’ve also kept my mouth shut after reading articles like this one on the SDCC “Oh You Sexy Geek” panel, and I had a very similar reaction to that article that I did to the Comics Alliance piece (and the almost immediate backlash). And I can't help but think about the criticism some women had for the "hentai" Heroes for Hire cover from a few years back, and how hostile a lot of the fan response was to those women. Again, my reaction was the same.

That reaction: Sometimes nerd culture is awfully mean to the ladies we say we love.

Look, I understand that processing criticism of comics you like and movies you dig (Sucker Punch, for a painfully obvious example), or video games you play, or whatnot can be a bit troublesome -  Especially when that criticism is that there is an inherently sexist or misogynistic streak running through your chosen entertainment. Nobody likes being told that they’re a creep. I get that. But here’s my point, if I have one at all. You don’t NEED to agree with Ms. Hudson’s article 100%. You don’t need to throw away your issues of Catwoman or Voodoo, or Red Hood. You don’t have to stop liking something you like. But you DO need to take a moment, and read the article carefully, and disengage your personal stake in the material from the criticism being leveled, and then acknowledge that – like it or not – SHE HAS A POINT.

Especially if you’re an aspiring comic creator.

I haven’t read any of the issues Hudson refers to. Not because of any specific issues with sex/sexism in these books, but just because they’re not my cup of tea, and that was made pretty clear to me before going into the relaunch. There’s other books in the DCnU that are tailor made for a reader like me, and those are the ones I sought out. So I can’t comment on the quality of these specific issues, nor would I, honestly, strictly as a matter of professional self-preservation. But what I DID do, is read the article and think about how I can maybe take some notes from it, as I try to build my career, as I try to tell my stories, and as I try to continue to grow recognition and appreciation of my personal favorite art-form.

And that’s all I think Hudson really wants. I don’t think she’s suggesting we march on the offices of DC with torches. I don’t see where she’s suggesting that everyone involved is a misogynist. I think, at most, she’s accusing the parties involved of being a bit careless, but that may be me reading into her words. At any rate, it’s the lesson I’m taking away: To remember to be careful. To remember that sex sells, but you have to know who’s buying it. To remember that if you want to write comics and stories that appeal to real women, you need to put some REAL women in there.  

Maybe it helps that I have so many women in my life that I love, respect, and (sometimes) fear. I think about how my Mom would react if she read a certain portrayal of a character. I think about the fact that I WANT to show my work to my wife and her amazing sisters. I think about how much I would love to be able to hand my younger female cousins some comics that speak to them without pandering to them, and that entertain them without insulting them. And I try to do my best, and I try to be CAREFUL.

I welcome discussion. Post your thoughts in the comments.

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis

I Can't Kill That Guy With My Chainsaw If I'm Hiding Behind This Rock...

TALKING WTH MY WIFE

Jenny, on the topic of menstruation: “Why does everyone say “On her period”? Like it’s a horse? ….. Well, maybe it’s a BIG RED HORSE that gallops all around and you have NO CONTROL over where it goes! It’s just galloping all over kicking people in the face and wrecking joints!”

YAY! VIDEO GAME TALK!

By the time you read this, Gears of War 3 will be out. I probably haven’t purchased a copy yet. But the active ingredient in that sentence is the “YET”, so rest assured that the sound you hear amongst the grinding of chainsaw teeth against putrescent alien flesh is me weeping in frustration.

I really love Gears, but it’s a very schizophrenic experience for me. I’ve been fascinated by the game since I first saw the TV ad for the initial installment.

Fucking WOW, right? There’s a promise of a game there that’s not only action packed, but tense, involving, and angsty. (It’s the promise of a game experience that Bioshock actually lives up to, oddly enough.) But it’s never quite realized by Gears. The aesthetic is there, and some of the existential despair, but it’s also codified within the body of a shooter game, which means it’s also going to be a lurking hive of the inherently stupid.

Unlike most games of this type, which seem to basically be a delivery mode for online play and the savage derision of the prepubescent, Gears actually has a single player mode that engages me. I’m committed to the story, in a way that I could never muster with a Call of Duty game. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to gun down aliens, instead of Nazis. My internal brain circuitry is better configured to dealing with a problem of invading subterranean grotesques than it is with actual genocidal monsters of flesh and blood.  It’s also because the heroes of the story - despite being gigantic, monosyllabic, lurking bundles of testosterone and bullets - are oddly sort of likeable. There is no poetry in hacking a Locust to chunks with your Lancer, but there is a sort of gleefully maniacal joy that our heroes take from the act. As my grandmother used to say, “It’s hard to argue with anyone who looks that happy.”

My issue with Gears is basically internal. Regardless of the game I am playing, and its ostensible category, I treat all gaming experiences as RPG experiences. I don’t have heart palpitations while playing Dead Space because of their masterful use of darkness and claustrophobic spaces, I do so because I do not want to have my flesh flayed from my body by oozing space zombies. I don’t know how YOU play Pac-Man, but I know things about his backstory and motivations that would shock you.

I blame some of this on my cousin Kevin. During our formative video game years, as young Atari enthusiasts, he would sit next to me as we played Missile Command and identify which of our family members were in each bunker, adding a fantastic layer of real-life stress and survivor guilt to what should have been a simple fucking game about shooting your glowing dot at the other glowing dot.  

So now take my fragile psychic projections, and strap them onto Marcus Fenix. Gears of War mixes a robust cover system with a protagonist who is constantly yelling exhortations to grind his enemies into paste.  Try to parse that for a minute. You are given the tools to move gingerly from cover to cover, avoiding conflict until the last possible moment, and you are armed with a machinegun taped to a chainsaw. I can’t keep up. I’m hiding behind rocks and chunks of beautifully rendered wall, thinking, logically, that it is a smarter place to stand than in front of bullets. And while I am doing this, Mr. Fenix is telling the Locust hordes about how he’s going to murder their mothers and rape their fathers. I feel like he’s judging me. He’s never yelled “MOVE ME INTO MELEE RANGE, QUEERBAIT!” But I feel like it’s implied.

Penny Arcade, as always, sums it up better than I ever could.

MISCELLANEOUS GOODNESS

My lovely wife, the insanely talented Jenny Langin, has her first published comic book story coming out very soon, in GrayHaven Comics’ Gathering Volume 5: Love Letters. Please check it out, and then tune back into the Gathering for Volume 6, where I have a scary story with art by Mr. Chris Page.

Hopefully some big comic book related news from me coming soon. Watch this space.

As always, Q’s for me to A are welcome. Hit me up in the comments here, on Twitter, or email me.

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis

I Hate Rob Liefeld. But Probably Not For the Reasons You'd Expect

I once loved a girl who, it turned out, didn’t love me back. So I hate Rob Liefeld.

Let’s backtrack.

The year was 1996, and I had spent a thrilling summer in wild, crazy, head-over-heels love with a young woman whose name we shall not utter here. She was the first great love of my life. If you subscribe to Chaz Palminteri’s speech in A Bronx Tale, she was definitely one of the Three Great Ones for me.

Sonny: Let me tell you somethin' right now. You're only allowed three great women in your lifetime. They come along like the great fighters, every ten years. Rocky Marciano. Sugar Ray Robinson. Joe Louis. Sometimes you get 'em all at once. Me? I had my three when I was 16. That happens. What are you gonna do? That's the way it goes, you know? Tell you right now. See this girl? Maybe this girl, she put wind in your sails. Maybe she's your first great one.  

After the summer was over, we had a huge tearful departure, and the promises of visiting each other as often as possible. I was going back to school at UCONN. She was headed back to Buffalo, NY. Despite all of the warnings we had heard about long distance relationships, we had no doubt that we would be the exceptions to the rule. That we would make it work.

I actually thought I might marry her.

At the same time, the comic book world is being rocked (I may be a bit hyperbolic here) by the aftermath of Marvel Comics’ “Onslaught” crossover. In a nutshell, a big bad guy named Onslaught, a psychic entity ripped from the merged souls of Professor X and Magneto, ran roughshod over the Marvel Universe for most of the summer. He was only defeated when the combined forces of the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the Hulk sacrificed their lives to banish him.

This epic was followed by “Heroes Reborn”, an alternate world relaunch of our heroes under the guidance of superstar artists Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. Wizard Magazine was going absolutely apeshit over the news. It was a very big deal.

Now we turn to our hero (I mean me. I’m the hero.) as he takes the train from Hartford to Buffalo (something like an 8 hour trip, by the way) to see his lady love. She met me at the train station and we had a wonderful evening getting caught up. The next day she showed me all over Buffalo, and introduced me to all her friends. We met one of her professors, who remarked on what a handsome couple we were. We had a delicious dinner, and a romantic walk. We came home to her room and crawled into bed. Twenty minutes later she rolled over and told me she was breaking up with me.

It was brutal. I cannot oversell how bad it really was. She couldn't have taken me more by surprise or hurt me more if she had shot me in the gut.

So having just had my heart yanked out of my chest, and having a non-refundable, non-exchangeable ticket back to Hartford on a train that didn’t leave for two days, I found myself trapped in a strange city with very little cash, and the company of my now ex-girlfriend. It was definitely in the top five worst weekends of my life.

In retrospect, I know I should have just grabbed my bag and left, but I didn’t have any place to go. Though, again, in hindsight anything would have been better. Sleeping on a bench at the train station would have been better.

So what do you do when you’re trapped in your ex-girlfriend’s apartment? If you’re me, you grab the stash of comics you brought with you to read on the train back. Among those comics? Rob Liefeld’s Captain America #1.

I only had maybe a half a dozen comics with me.  And I read them over and over and over again. I read that issue of Captain America about 30 times. It was either that or go play Uno with my now ex-girlfriend and her roommates. By the time I was actually able to get on a train and go home, I was wrapped in a depression so thorough and all-encompassing that it was practically Shakespearian in its depth of tragedy. Also, I wanted to kill Rob Liefeld with a fireplace poker.

Poor Rob. He didn’t do anything wrong. I was a really big fan of his up until that point. I had collected all of his New Mutants and X-Force issues when he was with Marvel. And when he co-founded Image Comics, I was right there at the ground floor. I thought that Youngblood was the latest in French cool.

But after what was essentially a long weekend of aversion therapy, I now associated Rob Liefeld’s art with one of the worst times in my life. And I never bought another one of his comics again. You could have achieved the same thing by giving me an electric shock every time I looked at a page of Brigade.

Cut to this Wednesday.

Jenny stops at the comic book store on the way home and grabs this week’s comics. Among our normal pull, she picks up a handful of DC Comics’ “New 52” so that we can check them out. One of the ones she brought home was Hawk and Dove #1.  

Drawn by… guess who?

I looked at the book and looked at Jenny. “Really?” I asked.

“Yes, really,” she said, indignant. “I wanted to check it out.”

She then went into the next room where I can hear her messing with her phone. It turns out she is online trying to figure out why I am being such a dick about her taste in comics.

Thirty seconds later, I heard her gasp.

“Oh SHIT! Liefeld drew that one? I am SO SORRY!”

It’s okay, Jenny. It’s not your fault. And it’s not Rob’s fault either. He didn’t mean to break my heart.

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis

Winter is Coming, Y'all...

“The maester had taught him all the banners: the mailed fist of the Glovers, silver on scarlet; Lady Mormont’s black bear; the hideous flayed man that went before Roose Bolton of the Dreadfort; a bull moose for the Hornwoods; a battle-axe for the Cerwyns; three sentinel trees for the Tallharts; and the fearsome sigil of House Umber, a roaring giant in shattered chains. Even the sigil of House Holyfield, two extended middle fingers flanking a pair of rolling eyes.”* **

I spent the past week’s free time reading A Game of Thrones, the first book in George R. R. Martin’s epic Song of Ice and Fire series. In keeping with what lately seems to have become the pattern of my life, I am a VERY late adopter on this. (I also discovered I like Mumford and Sons this week. Hooray for being behind the curve!) Friends have been poking at me to pick this up since 1996, and I had managed to handily blow them off up until now. Predictably, I loved it, as they all said I would. But I stand by my reticence, and have no intention of picking up the sequel, A Clash of Kings, until sometime in 2012.  I’m not just trying to be contrarian, I swear. I’ve got good reasons behind my stubborn foot dragging.

Mostly, I just don’t like fantasy books.                           

I’ll take a moment and let the thick, rich, sugary irony of that to sink in. Understand that as I write that sentence, I am sitting two feet away from a stack of D&D Dungeon Tiles. I spent an hour earlier crafting a ruined keep with the intentions of inflicting it on a brave group of stalwart adventurers at my regular Tuesday night D&D game. I’ve been neck deep in Dungeons and Dragons for around 25 years, so for me to eschew fantasy on general principle would strike most who know my predilections as counter-intuitive, at best.

Look, early in my nerd life, I DEVOURED fantasy novels. I spent more hours in Xanth, and Pern, and Krynn, and Toril, and Narnia then I ever did in my home town – mentally, if not physically. I’ve hung out in Nehwon a lot, and spent my fair share of time in the Hyborian Age. And I just burned right out. That’s the fact.

A lot of it is due to the world-building aspect involved in fantasy literature. The nature of the genre, especially in the shadow of Tolkien, is to craft gigantic, sprawling tapestries full of rich geographic detail, full-blooded characters, and millennia of history, all of it dreadfully important to the epic narrative at hand. And for the most part, I can’t handle it anymore. I already know more about Middle Earth’s geography than I do about the actual planet I live on. There are only so many brain cells left available to me.

Truthfully, I know plenty of fans of the genre who can handle all of this detail no problem, and can switch back and forth between their favorite author’s realms with a barely audible click of the rails being shifted.  I’m not wired that way. “Different kind of nerd”, as Brian Posehn says. I can tell you way more than you probably care to know about Latveria, though. And draw you a map of Metropolis practically from memory. So I’m not cutting on anyone. Just saying I’m not strong in that particular style of nerd-fu. Spent my building points elsewhere, you might say.

So why did I finally pull the trigger on GoT? Because I watched the TV show, that’s why. I’m not normally the guy who prefers the movie to the book, I promise you (except for Jaws). But I found the TV show a much more accessible entrance point into Westeros than trying to pick up the books would likely have been.

Jenny and I saw the preview for the HBO show, and she couldn’t understand why I wasn’t peeing myself in excitement.  Not being an enthusiast of the books already, I told her I would check it out, but that I had my doubts as to whether or not it would stick in my mental craw. I mean, HBO is good and all, but it’s also the network that produces True Blood, which manages to be simultaneously one of the best shows on television and seven or eight of the worst .

So we watched the Game of Thrones premiere. And I had three thoughts that I took away from that episode.

1. Nobody in this show was safe. It would be a mistake to get too attached to anyone.

2. Nobody in the show had ever heard of the missionary position.

3. I was hooked.

Game of Thrones was my must-see TV for that first season. I watched it on the edge of my seat, and walked away from every episode sweaty and tense, and frothing at the mouth to see what was next. My reaction to episode 9 was not dissimilar to that of the gentleman in this video, although I think I phrased it differently. (Spoilers!)

At the end of the season, I felt like weeping, because Game of Thrones was over, and stupid True Blood was coming back to suck (no pun intended) an hour of my life on a Sunday.

That’s when everyone else I know who had not previously read the books jumped into them and plowed through everything available. But not I. I have read the first book. Read it and loved it. And I eagerly anticipate the second part of the story. AFTER THE NEXT SEASON OF THE SHOW. I’m enjoying the show on such a visceral level that I don’t want to chance ANYTHING interfering with that. (This also means if you try to spoil things for me, I will make like Joffrey Lannister and have your head on a spike.)

Jenny and I had fun the other day deciding on our house sigils (hers would be a uterus with a shotgun in front of it), and the words of our people (mine would be “Fuck ‘Em If They Can’t Take a Joke”).

It’s not going to be easy waiting until 2012 to see the next season of the show and then devour the next book. I know that. But Winter is Coming. And so is more Game of Thrones. I can be patient until then.

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis

*From A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin.

**Well, not the last bit.