Nor do I smoke, but I love me a Zippo lighter. I've got two on my desk right now. There's just something perfectly elemental about that hunk of metal. You can hear the simplicity when you flick it open. That sound is rewarding, in a strange way. It's like an E chord on an electric guitar: it's not complicated, but it's satisfying.
I'd been thinking about writing, recently. That I want to do more of it. That I want to get better at it. We're coming to the end of the line on the Wildstorm book, the writing of it, anyway, and doing this miniseries has reinforced something that I think I knew about myself, but hadn't really...faced is the wrong word. Codified is better.
I'm a power-chord of a writer. The stories that float in my head are not the kinds that lend themselves to multi-level narratives, they're not dense puzzle-box mysteries or deep character studies. They are about mashing the pedal to the floor, pulling the trigger, or getting the girl. Scotch, not martinis. I deal in base pleasures.
You turn to the first page of a comic I had something to do with the writing of, and my goal is to make you hear that click of machined simplicity. That Zippo magic.
If you do, then I am a happy man.
4 comments:
Welcome to the world of pulp - the juiciest part of the fruit, the hottest part of the flame and the loudest chord...
Man, it's a good place to be. I loves me the whip-crack of taut story.
My favorite zippo is one my brother gave to me for my 21st birthday. It's got a quote from From Dusk Till Dawn engraved on it, a personal favorite of his and mine -- "You, Be Cool."
There's as much an art to doing finely-tuned pulp as there is the sludgiest Merchant-Ivory picture. Don't fret it, if you are. Revel in it, if you aren't.
Welcome to Hell.
In a good way, of course.
-Kleid
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