A long time...maybe the last time.

I don't know, really. It does really feel like I've run out of things to say, at least in this particular format. And I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps it's because when I first started this blog, I was an editor at Entertainment Weekly, one who spent most if not all of his time disconnected from the internet as a content creator. This was before Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. This was my outlet for opinions I couldn't express in a mass media publication as well as work blogs when I started writing comics on a regular basis.

And then I started writing for EW's in-house blog and got to get some of the rambly off my chest. When I left EW and became a full-time blogger, my life was all about getting paid for stuff I used to write here for free, so I shook my moneymaker where the money was good.

I've spent the better part of the last two years doing that and I think I might've pulled up whatever oil was down there to begin with. Combine that with relatively robust presences on the social-media trifecta I mentioned up top — yeah, I think I might be done. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'll return to this particular format, ready to dig my teeth in and tear a new path.

But I don't think so.

My work leads me to write longer and longer — in comics, novels, and now television — so my play becomes shorter and shorter. Such is the way of things, I suppose.

I may pop in here, every now and again, but I wouldn't count on it. Thanks for stopping by, those of you who still did. If you're looking for more of me, hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr. I still sling bullshit there on a regular basis.

Take care.

San Diego 2010: The Year I Became Part of the Problem

I'd been debating whether I should write a "looking back on this year's Comic-Con" post, given that we're almost two weeks out from the event itself. But time afforded me a perspective that I couldn't have realized that close to SDCC.

This year was a very different year for me: I wasn't covering San Diego as a journalist. For anyone. This was my eighth San Diego, and each of those was under the auspices of Entertainment Weekly's comic-book ambassador. They all required hustling from point A to Hall H, jockeying for position, lobbying for admittance -- the press-pass two-step that hundreds of other people perform every year. But this year, I was a comic creator, first, foremost, and solely. My allegiance was to myself; my time was my own.

Adam and I signed books when we were scheduled to, we took meetings when they presented themselves and did some promising business, and we hardly ever bought ourselves a meal, thanks to the generosity of those with expense accounts (ah, I remember those) and event budgets. The only panels I attended were those I was on or was moderating.

I still had a press pass, though, which secured a host of party invitations -- and being represented by one of the three biggest agencies in Hollywood secured still more, as does being a still-liked veteran of the magazine that throws the big Saturday night soiree. We drank our fill, ate like kings, and danced like Joss Whedon if Joss Whedon could dance.

It was Saturday, I think, when we were killing time in the Wired Lounge, staring around at the gathered doucheyness -- assorted B-level stars, schmoozing producers, and motley sychophants -- that I realized what had happened.

We were part of the doucheyness. We were doing all of the things that people rail against when they talk about how SDCC has forgotten what that first "C" stands for. We were having a Hollywood Con...and loving every minute of it.

Because it's easy to love, spending four days being treated a little better than the lion's share of the 120,000 other attendees. It's easy to understand why "Lounges" are popping up all around SDCC, catering to Los Angeles douchebaggers that see San Diego as a short vacation full of free shit and laughing at the geeks. And my SDCC, I'm almost ashamed to admit it, was wonderfully douchey.

I have become part of the problem. Sorry about that.

San Diego Comic Con Dreaming

Okay, before we get into the new plans I've got for this wee blog, business must be attended to.

So, if you'll be in San Diego for the Big Show next week, here's where you can find me...if'n you're looking for me. Adam and I will be there in support of the new issue of Genius, which'll make it's debut, The Authority, and Monster Attack Network. And we'll be on hand to discuss anything else you're curious about — we do, it turns out, know where babies come from.

Thursday, 7/22
12:30-1:30pm: io9 panel: The Science Fiction that Changed My Life (Room 7AB)
4:00-5:00: Jeff Katz's State of Geekdom Town Hall (a boat somewhere behind the Convention Center)

Friday, 7/23
11:00-12:00pm: Top Cow signing (Top Cow booth)
12:00-1:00pm: DC Comics signing (DC booth)
4:45-5:45pm: Moderating the Fallen Skies (Spielberg's new TNT alien-invasion show) panel (Room 6A)

Saturday, 7/24
1:00-2:00pm: Monster Attack Network signing (AiT/Planetlar booth)
2:00-3:00pm: DC Comics signing (DC booth)
3:00-4:00pm: Top Cow signing (Top Cow booth)

Sunday, 7/25
10:00-11:00am: Top Cow signing (Top Cow booth)

And if you miss us at any of those places, just head for the Hyatt bar.

Clash of the Clashes

When I was a boy of maybe 13 years old, I did something bad. I forged the grades on my junior high report card. I fudged Fs to As, Ds to Bs. Not particularly artfully, either, given that I was a boy of maybe 13 years old. So my parents quickly discovered my lawbreaking and punished me in the matter they saw fit.

I was to stay in my room for an entire summer. Draconian, you say? Sure. My father was old school and brooked no bullshit. I was an ungrateful whelp who knew nothing of hardship, he would say. And he was right, given that he was born and raised in Haiti. He knew nothing but hardship...which is why he left. Anyway.

I was punished for the summer. No outside, no TV, no visits from friends. In retrospect, that time indoors reinforced my love of reading -- and I had nothing to do but read. And so I did. One of the few places I could go was the library, where I devoured all they had of Conan novels -- my first exposures to Asimov, Herbert, and Ellison came that summer. But even as I watched day turn into night and my friends head out to play and back for dinner, the thing I wanted most wasn't to join them. I wanted to watch Clash of the Titans.

It was premiering on HBO that summer. June, I believe. I was a sucker for Greek mythology, and wanted to see it terribly. But I couldn't. No TV. So it came and it went. As did the summer. The strictness of my confinement would ease before school started; even my father realized that he was being a little too strict.

The weekend before school started, the old man sat me down and asked me, as he did during every week of my punishment, if I'd learned my lesson. And, as I did every week, I told him yes. But this time, he handed me a videocassette. I put it in the VCR, pressed play, and smiled like an idiot as Clash of the Titans popped on the screen. He taped it for me three months prior. Because, through it all, he was still my dad.

So while I understand that the Harry Hamlin Clash of the Titans is a honking piece of cheeseball shite, I've got a love for it that can't be diminished by such a petty thing as quality.

I Do Not Wish

I do not wish for much of this new year, save more from myself.

This is the first year, in a long while, that begins with me as my own man. I am no longer beholden to anyone -- anyone I didn't choose to be, anyway. My time is my own, and now I must make the most of it, as opportunities like this come along but rarely.

I am a patient man except, at times, with those closest to me. That will change, because it must. Because I refuse to let anger cloud judgment, to let frustration obscure compassion.

How much will do I have, and can I bend it to what needs doing? This will be the question that I'll answer at the end of 2010, one way or another.

Can I change? We'll see.

Bamf, bitches!

At last, after a couple of little stories here and there, we've hit the motherlode -- or, at least, the motherlode of one-shots. But still, 30 solid pages of X-Men action from me and Mr. Freeman. And we could not be happier. Not only was it a hoot to write, but the artist on the book is Cary Nord and he's just goddamn phenomenal.

Look for X-Men Origins: Nightcrawler #1 on March 3. And buy it, please. I am unemployed...

Happy holidays, Everyone

I've never been a big Christmas guy: My parents put up lights until Santa regained his spot in the myth closet. But this year I bought the a wad of lights to decorate the outside of the house. For the first time in, literally, decades. Not sure what that means. Either I've got a touch of holiday cheer, or it's the cheesesteak I had for lunch.

Either way, enjoy yourselves, folks.

Well, okay...it's been MORE than "a while"

It's been almost half a year. Since just after San Diego, actually. Almost six months. And a wee bit has happened since.

For starters, I've gone and lost my job. Actually, that's not accurate -- given that I know exactly where my job is. After 13 years at Entertainment Weekly, I've been relieved of my duties. "Laid off" is the official term. And, you know, I'm okay with it. I've spent most of my adult life at EW and, while I wouldn't trade the experience for anything -- especially the late '90s, the last of the halcyon days of magazine publishing -- it was time for me to spend some time running down the dream.

So that's what I'm gonna do for the next couple of months: write my ass off. There's a decent number of contracted comics that need finishing, a couple of ideas that need developing, a screenplay that needs to be juiced back to life, and a novel that I can not write because I'm scared of it.

On the bright side, before I left EW, I got Nathan Fillion to come and visit, purely through the power of Twitter. So I've got that going for me...

I'll be here a lot more often, given that I've, technically, no place else to be.

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.

Boom goes the dynamite!

From today's Variety:

New gig for 'Mountain' man
Fickman to direct 'Monster' movie for Disney
By MICHAEL FLEMING

Looking to match its Race to Witch Mountain director Andy Fickman with another family adventure film, Walt Disney Studios has attached him to helm Monster Attack Network.

Scott Elder and Josh Harmon have been hired to adapt the AIT/Planet Lar graphic novel, which the studio bought last summer.

The 2007 graphic novel focuses on a team of first-responders who guard the citizens of Lapuatu, a Pacific island that would be a paradise except for frequent attacks by giant monsters that rise from the sea. Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman wrote the graphic novel, illustrated by Nima Sorat.

Jason Netter is producing through his Kickstart banner. Disney views the film as a visual effects-heavy tentpole. built around an elite government agency's resolve to protect America's coasts from huge, rampaging monsters.

With Witch Mountain and The Game Plan, Fickman has now delivered two family-flavored hits for Disney, both with Dwayne Johnson in the starring role.

The studio is also high on Elder and Harmon, whose script Snow and the Seven was bought in a spec sale by Disney. Script reimagines the Snow White story by making her a British girl raised in 19th century Hong Kong who battles an evil force after she's trained to fight by seven Shaolin monks. Scott Rudin and Andrew Gunn are producing.

The scribes also wrote The Naked Jungle for Paramount.

Soon