You know who's awesome?

Annie Wu is awesome...

I'm just saying.

San Diego Comic-Con '09: The Year it All Changed

Grandiose title, yes? But it's true. In more ways than one.

THE AUTHORITY. Adam and I are taking over The Book Warren Built for Wildstorm. It's been in the works for a couple of months, and it's a massive thing for us. We are being entrusted with, essentially, the jewel in the Wildstorm crown, and we hope to be equal to the task. Or, at the very least, to blow up enough shit that you won't notice that we aren't.

GENIUS. Top Cow reaffirmed their commitment to the book. We're looking at early '10 for Vol. 1.

CELL DIVISION. Also for Top Cow, a new science fiction thriller. Most likely summer '10.

UNTITLED AMERICAN ORIGINAL BOOK. I'm gonna follow Jeff Katz into the fire for a spell and see what the weather's like. It's an "urban" miniseries — which means it'll have mostly black people in it. But I'll see if I can throw in a Puerto Rican or two.

MONSTER ATTACK NETWORK. I signed a copy of the book for the fella that's gonna be the star. Can't say who, of course. But there is sweetness afoot.

THE CONVENTION ITSELF. Maddening/phenomenal as always. The way the SDCC organizers deal with the press continues to be imperfect at best, impossible at worst. Catching up with old comic-friends is always worth the trip. And there is business to be done amongst the chaos.

But the thing that crystallized how the Comic-Con experience has changed for me was the Wired Cafe. If you haven't heard of it, it only underlines my point. On a terrace bar at the Omni Hotel, Wired set up an oasis: free food, free top-shelf booze, working wifi, banging sounds, gift bags, celebrities, the whole nine yards. It ran from Thursday through Saturday, and it was terrific. Once granted admission, one could visit there as often as one wished.

But the only people who knew of this were the famous and those who covered them. The multitudes who stood on lines for hours, who slept in the open to see Robert Pattinson, who walked the miles of the floor carrying an infantryman's pack worth of merchandise while wearing a Time Lord's trench before hiking to their hotel where they slept five to a room...they were oblivious. The people who made Comic-Con what it was, the very people who needed such sanctuary the most couldn't get it. Sure, there have always been parties and events not for public participation, but this was the first time I'd seen the Comic-Con equivalent of a Sundance gifting suite.

And that marked for me the turning of Comic Con.

My San Diego Comic-Con Schedule

Should anyone want to find me, here's where I'm supposed to be during the San Diego Comic-Con '09. Let the mania begin...

Thursday

• 12:00-1:00pm: Signing at the Top Cow booth
• 2:00-3:00pm: Signing at the Wildstorm cove of the DC Booth

Friday

• 8:40am: Fox 5 San Diego morning show
• 2:00-3:00pm Signing at the Top Cow booth

Saturday

• 11:00-noon: Signing at the Top Cow booth
• 1:00-2:00pm: Signing at the Wildstorm cove of the DC Booth
• 3:30-4:30pm: Wildstorm panel
• 4:30-5:30pm: Top Cow panel
• 5:30-6:30pm: American Original panel

Sunday

• 10:30-11:30am: Signing at the Wildstorm cove of the DC Booth
• 11:30-12:30pm: Comic-Con Independent Film Festival Awards ceremony

Age and Innocence

When I first started reading comics, I always imagined that the people who created them were wizened old men who'd gathered the secrets of the universe — as it related to spandex superheroing — and doled them out on a monthly basis. (Okay, that's not entirely true: When I first started reading comics, I was 11, and I thought they just appeared — fully formed wads of coolness. It wasn't until later that I realized that people actually made them.) Those secrets seemed like the hard-won treasure of a long life lived to the fullest: These guys (and they were always, in my mind, guys) had been to the Well on the Edge and brought forth the Knowledge.

That image of comics creators has stuck with me, to this day. (Not the "guys" part: I know some great women going great work, and wish there were more of 'em. Hey, I like women.) People like Ed Brubaker, Warren Ellis, Brian Bendis, Neil Gaiman, Brian Vaughan, Kyle Baker, Geoff Johns — they all had such mastery of the craft, such surety of voice, I couldn't see them as anything else but Obi-Wan Kenobis.

Then I started meeting them. And so many of them were young.

Given the skill with which he spins those beautiful, knowing noir sagas, I figured Ed Brubaker to be a dude in his sixties. Nope. Half that, give or take a nickel. The regularity with which Warren Ellis complains about the weather, his need for a cane, his failing body and addled brain brings to mind a bloke minutes away from a nursing home (or an asylum). Instead, he's perhaps a few months older than I am.

I say all of this for myself, really. To put this into a bit of perspective. Every now and again, someone will comment on the speed with which we've climbed into the professional comics arena. It'll be five years, this San Diego, since I first pitched Monster Attack Network to Larry Young. And, yes, in that time lots of doors have opened for us, between The Highwaymen, Genius, Push, and the other assorted projects we can't talk about.

But every day, I read something that floors me, something that makes me wonder how someone using the same tools that I do — a keyboard, an artist, and paper — can create such rich magic.

You see, we're not going so fast to get ahead. We're going so fast to catch up.

So Here's the Thing...

...I realize that I haven't updated this blog in more than two months. Prolly because I'm a douche. Prolly. But I've been a busy douche. Not as busy as, say, John Rogers, who's running a bloody TV show and still has time to blog, but still busy. Here's a little rundown of what's been happening:

1. First ever Marvel work. Can't say what yet, but the first of three projects should be out this July. But the time crunch was crazy-times. Still, completely thrilled that we were asked to knock some stuff out of the park. And knock we did.

2. More Wildstorm goodness. Something awesome on the horizon that can't be spoken of, yet, but it's pants-fillingly huge for us. But it's required a whole mess of work in, again, not a whole lot of time. But we're rapidly laying tracks made of pure phenomenium.

3. Robin Banks. Is up and running. Artist locked in -- and this person is gonna blow the doors off of shit. Seriously, if you have any doors, be sure you buy some replacements, because they're gonna get blown. First script is in, beginning on the second. And if all goes according to plan, the cover artist is gonna knock off your socks, fill them with the same stuff that filled your pants, and then put 'em back on.

4. Assorted Hollywoodery. As usual, nothing firm, but a whole mess of irons in the fire, as well as some genuine interest in an unfinished spec script that'd been lying fallow for years.

All of this on top of the day job. So if I've been neglecting you -- and I have -- it's not because I don't love you. It's just...shit's been falling from the sky, and we've been running like mad to keep up.

I promise, though...no more stretches like these. I've missed you terribly.

If it's possible to have a least favorite road in all of creation, it's the road to hell. But 2nd, is the Belt Pkwy.

I'm giving this here Ping thing a try...

Balance

For a good part of my time here, I led a very charmed life. I always had good luck with friends; school was easy -- I was smart enough to afford to be lazy. Was never Col. Woodsman, but I did okay with the ladies. Fell into my job at Starlog, and then bounced pretty easily to Entertainment Weekly, where I was promoted early and often. I've never wanted for much. I was a good kid, so I figured that the relative ease of my life was reward for living righteously. But I started to wonder, as my wife was pregnant with our first kid, if Fate was going to pick the absolute wrong time to level the scales.

And it did. My first born was diagnosed with autism when she was two-and-a-half.

The karmic corrective applied, life went on. We realized early on how fortunate we were with Sophie, even in the face of such cold misfortune. She's a happy girl. She loves to laugh; to be hugged, tickled, wrestled. Her default expression is a smile. And, as we got involved in the autism community -- which, given that everyone we know has a niece/nephew/sibling/cousin/family friend on the spectrum, wasn't hard -- we came to see how rare that was. Each autistic kid is different, but one of the underlying threads is extreme social dysfunction. For our kid to love to interact with us as much as she did...well, fortune in the eye of misfortune.

Things are beginning to go well again. I've found incredible success in comics, first as a journalist, now as a creator. Monster Attack Network is set up at Disney. Genius won Top Cow's Pilot Season competition, and we're wrapping up the rest of that story, with lots of Hollywood nibbles. The Highwaymen is well on the way at another major studio; and Wildstorm was happy enough with that mini, as well as Push, to engage us for some really exciting things on the horizon. A couple of other out-of-the-blue opportunities will, if they come through, make this a potentially game-changing year.

But...I've been down this road with Fate. I can't help but think that a karmic nadshot already has my name on it.

Thora Birch

As in, what the hell ever happened to. Remember her?


As a kid, she was Jack Ryan's daughter in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. Made quite the grown-up impression in American Beauty. Rocked the house in Ghost World. And then...not much. John Sayles' Silver City. Some TV stuff. Dungeons & Dragons. A whole mess of dire direct-to-DVD crap.

She's pretty, talented (or talented enough), doesn't seem overly fucked up for a grown-up child actress...why did she vanish off the face of the entertainment planet? Hollywood has a tendency to grind up its young actresses, but it's always interesting to ponder why one girl gets through and 10 others get left on the side of the road.

Here's hoping that, when Matthew Weiner goes looking to cast Christina Hendricks' younger sister on Mad Men, he takes a look at Miss Thora. Those two women are similarly endowed...with gorgeous auburn hair.

I Have Been Remiss

I've let weeds crop up around the corners, spider-webs breed in the rafters. Sorry. It's been that kind of March. Good busy, to be sure, but busy. Lots of great comic-booky stuff coming down the pike—can't talk about any of it yet, sadly. Hopefully, a decent chunk of it can be announced by San Diego, but the nights have certainly been full of stuff that happily kept me up late.

And as of a week ago, my long distance relationship with Battlestar Galactica has come to an end. I've been writing about that show, in one way or another, for the past four years. And while I can't think of another show as worthy of attention as BSG, I'm glad to get my Friday nights back. I've already written exhaustively on the finale, and where I thought it succeeded and failed, so I'm not gonna get into it here. I just wanna thank BSG for affording me the opportunity to hug Grace Park, swoon over Mary McDonnell, and call Lucy Lawless a man. I will miss it.

So, back to the word mines. See you soon.