geardrops [blog]

It’s rare I kvetch about writing on here, simply because I’m still very much an amateur and thusly have little weight behind my words.

But this bullshit was pretty awesome. I missed all of this because I was at Comic-Con. But now I’ve caught up. It was delicious. Many thanks to Shweta for making me aware.

Anyway, I said projects in the title so I’ll flub about on those.

Current Novel is still untitled, but I’ve been calling it The Runner Novel, so I’ll keep going with that (though I’m looking for a good symbol for metamorphosis that isn’t a butterfly, if any of you can think of something…). I’m at a little over 60K, and considering I started in early April I feel that’s pretty good for a rookie.

Finished a short named Doll which I’m editing, currently at a little over 3K but I have a feeling I need to expand on one of my characters, and I think it’ll be brushing against 4K by the time I finish.

Lastly, I believe I have a friend who will be my artist-type for Steampunk Samurai Graphic Novel AKA Zodiac, which has me really stoked.

Oh, and I need to get back on editing the script for Wolf (comic), so I have something to show Dale Mettam for all my posturing.

That’s about all, I suppose. My own existence is largely uninteresting. Maybe I’ll be heading off to the Floating Market up in San Francisco, which Kat discovered just this past week.

I realized I needed a wrap-up post for Comic-Con. Because you care, and I care that you care, and you care that I care.

The problem with Bill Willingham is that he wants more readers, just not you. He made this abundantly clear by wasting easily a fourth of the Fables panel mocking the television-viewers in the room, instead of talking about Fables-related things. Sir, I understand you’re bitter that the line to 6DE wrapped thrice on itself solely because of Venture Brothers and nothing to do with yourselves, but it’s not very classy when you let it hang out like that.

9 looks promising. District 9 will either be amazing or shit.

Doc Hammer cannot seem to remember that the room might be populated with those under the age of eighteen, even when reminded.

Audience Member: I just wanted to start off by saying, Mr Publick, I’m sorry for trying to lure you to my hotel room last night.

Jackson Publick: Were you?

Audience Member: You were pretty drunk.

Doc Hammer: Wait, where the hell was I when this happened?

Jackson Publick: Probably drunk too.

Doc Hammer: [to audience member] Damnit, why didn’t you ask me? I could have been waking up in your tub right now.

This only got worse as the panel continued…

Audience Member 2: Just wanna start by saying I love you guys…

Doc Hammer: And I love you. Let’s go back to your hotel room. Can we get that first guy involved? The one with the glasses? You and I can do a high-five over him.

James Urbaniak: So I just noticed… on the back of these little nameplates, it says: “Please be aware that some of your audience members might be under the age of eighteen, and that you are advised to keep the content of your panel appropriate for this audience.”

Doc Hammer: … [staring at this second audience member] … [realizes he looks a little young] …

Jackson Publick: You know what we should be talking about? Vegetables.

Doc Hammer: Yeah! And when I say ‘get it up and keep it up’ I mean your grades.

This was some of the milder stuff. My hobby during this was to watch Keith Crofford simply react.

Watchmen was fun, if for no other reason than Zack Snyder wound up accidentally hosting a food drive simply from being asked if he preferred smooth or crunchy peanut butter (so you do not freak out, I believe the answer was smooth). An audience member cried out that he must have jelly, to which he replied: “I don’t want any jelly that could possibly have come from this audience.”

In the end, a good time was had by all. And I received an ARC of THE CHILD THIEF, which is great so far. Was pretty sold on THE MAZE RUNNER but, alas, no ARC to be had.

As per the usual summer activities, I will be attending ComicCon. The schedule has (finally) been released, and the time has come for me to parse through and find what it is I wish to peruse.

Thursday

• 10:30-11:30 Science Fiction That Will Change Your Life ]Room 8]
• 12:30-1:30 Richard Hatch: Battlestar Retrospective [Room 6A]
• 1:30-2:30 Avatars, Icons, and Antiheroes [Room 7AB]
• 3:30-4:30 Evolution of Fantasy [Room 3]
• 4:30-5:15 Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus [Hall H]
• 8:00-10:00 Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog [Room 6A]

Room 6A for Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog? Fucking Room 6A? Seriously, ComicCon, didn’t you learn from last year when you had to open up THREE MORE ROOMS to accommodate everybody? And had to cancel the PANEL because there wasn’t ROOM? Just leave Ballroom 20 open, you will fill it, believe me.

Friday

• 10:30-11:30 Coraline [Room 6A]
• 3:45-5:00 Sony Pictures Entertainment: Legion and District 9 [Hall H]
• 4:45-5:45 The Mighty Boosh [Room 6A]
• 10:00p-Midnight Spike and Mike Double Feature [Room 6BCF]

And Coraline in 6A. Really, organizers. Do you want to piss people off? Guarantee that they will be turning people away for this panel.

Saturday

• 1:00-2:00 SteamPunk Meet-Up! [Room 24 A]
• 2:45-3:45 Sony Pictures: Zombieland and 2012 [Hall H]
• 3:30-4:30 Spotlight on Ray Bradbury [Room 6BCF]
• 3:30-4:30 SLG Publishing [Room 10]
• 6:00-7:15 Adult Swim Development: The Venture Bros. Panel [Room 6A]
• 8:30-12:15 Watchmen: Director’s Cut [Room 6BCF]

Sunday

• 3:00-4:00 Full-time Creative Work on a Part-time Schedule [32 AB]

Of course, there are overlapping times, and I probably won’t make it to everything I want to go to. But we shall see.

As I’m trying to write, and failing to do so…

Me: So I keep getting distracted by having Wonderella open.

Boy: Oh yeah?

Me: My friend described it as me, if I were a superhero. He was prettymuch right.

Boy: What would it say if I identified with her arch nemseis?

Me: … I think you might have a tough time identifying with Hitlerella.

Boy: Yeah, okay.

Moral of the story: go read Wonderella.

Saturday I saw Gene Yang at Books Inc in downtown Mountain View, CA. He did the usual spiel about his latest publication, his career, et cetera, and was really rather nice and charming about the whole thing.

What I loved, though, was in the last fifteen or so minutes, we the audience made a comic with him. At the start, I thought it was a cute exercise, and I like seeing into someone’s creative process, even if it’s just a fly-by view of it.

Through the process he stated some obvious things (make sure the reader can tell your characters apart, your story needs an arc) but the end point was what I liked. It was something I had an intuitive idea of, but more on the prose side than on the comics side, and never really put into words.

The story is split in two parts: internal and external. Displaying the story is split in two parts: art and words. And those two pieces have to each carry half the story. Meaning you can have (1) art carry the internal and words carry the external or (2) art carry the external and words carry the internal.

We made a three-panel comic, one where the art carried the internal and words carried the external, and one the opposite. After, we got into a (brief) discussion about which is better. (I ruined it by saying my opinion, which made Gene say “Yeah, that’s the point I was going to get to, after hopefully some discussion.” Whoops :( ) (Oh, and my opinion was you need both, you need a balance, pick which best suits the specific scene, and you really need to keep changing it up to keep the reader from getting bored/tired.)

As I said, I’ve had an intuitive grasp of this, in prose. But I never had it explicitly stated and I thought it was useful noob advice. And it’s advice that goes beyond comics.

Now, I know for many of you this will probably be pretty obvious. But having it laid (lain?) out so explicitly was really awesome.

(Also if Gene Yang happens to stumble on this, hi, I was one of the three at the end who took the comic we generated. Specifically, I was the Warren Ellis fan :) ).

I haven’t been doing my part. Time to fix it. Repeating viral marketing for Watchmen.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5WsciSNVS0]

Go check it out.

It’s everything the first trailer wasn’t. For one, there’s speaking. They give a hint at the actual story. And it’s… it’s got Muse in it, people.

Go.

The title is meant to tantalize. In all honesty, this is just a moment of great minds thinking alike. But I just want to point it out.

God bless my pathetically encyclopedic knowledge of Penny Arcade.

Because xkcd happened to do a strip that was the same as an old Penny Arcade strip.

Though with all due respect, I liked xkcd’s better.

Dear New York Times:

First Steampunk and now this?

Leave the nerds alone.

I keep linking this at people so I might as well just post it already.

God bless you, Mastodon.