Mid-Life Crisis on Infinite Hils

I knew what I wanted to do with my life when I was five. Yes, five. I was in kindergarten, couldn’t even write, but I dictated stories to my teacher. I was going to be a writer. Sure, I had times when I strayed along my career path (can you believe, marine biology?), but I always came back to writing fiction.

I did this very mid-life crisis sort of thing and quit my stable, good-paying job. The plan: convince people to give me contract work so I could live out my boyhood fantasy of moonlighting as a fiction writer. So far, not that many jobs. But the fiction writing is in full force. I’m sure you already heard me go on and on about my book of short stories. Well, I’ve got something else in the works.

Comics became a big part of my life in fourth grade due to social necessity. My friends were reading Uncanny X-Men at lunch and I had no clue what the fuck anyone was talking about. So I started buying comics — X-Men, Batman, Spider-Man, etc. I fell hard for comics and for the past few decades I’ve read a lot. My friends in elementary school and I even did our noble best to make our own comics. I am pretty sure all our stories were better than things like Dark Phoenix Saga and The Dark Knight Returns. Ahem.

In my college days, I made a serious attempt at getting into comics, but each project fizzled out. The truth is, I was kind of good enough to have a self-published ‘zine, but I was not at all up to snuff to write comics professionally. Now I’ve picked up the challenge again and this time, I’m pretty sure I can actually break in. The years have been kind to me — maybe having a critical eye towards books when I ran IGN comics helped or I just got better as a writer, but I’ve got some shit brewing. Some good stuff.

Comics is not an easy one to crack into, as anyone in the industry will tell you. Tougher for writers for two reasons: 1) artists can usually only do one book a month, where a writer might do 3-5, so fewer openings and 2) no one wants to read a n00b’s script. So how do you even get into this business? The advice I’ve received makes sense. Create pitches. A lot of pitches.

A pitch, which is for Image, Dark Horse and smaller publishers, really only needs to be a one-pay synopsis of the series that catches someone’s interest and about 5-10 finished comic book pages. Finished meaning actual pages with pencils, inks, colors, lettering and a cover. Rather than make a full 22-page issue of one idea, you create a few ideas with different creative teams. Don’t bother developing much further until someone says, “Shit, I want this book.”

It started out as one project, actually. Someone who knows my work at IGN hit me up, said they wanted to work with me on a comic book project. I developed an idea based around her talents, wrote a script, and off we went (sorry, she wants to stay anonymous for now). She’s amazing. The work so far looks great. And I’ve been fortunate that this is a passion project for her. She’s doing it all on spec (meaning, free for now in hopes we get picked up). Most artists aren’t going to offer that.

A few weeks ago at Comic-Con, as I spoke to professionals and publishers, the message was pretty clear: I was a fool if I didn’t assemble some other ideas. I have a ton of confidence in this first project, but that doesn’t mean it’s an automatic pick-up from a publisher. Maybe they don’t think they can sell it or they don’t want to take the risk of doing a series with two comics newcomers. It’s certainly harder to sell an ongoing series when you’re unproven.

I now have four other pitches that are getting off the ground. All are with artists who have been published — mostly indie, some with Image and Marvel. The nice thing is that they still have to read the treatment and the script and decide if they want to do it. Everyone who’s read this stuff has been excited so far. Each project is very different. Each artist is very different. I think they’re all good. I love each of them for different reasons. I will always push the first project most, because I know the level of investment of my artist. This is our baby. But I think one or all of these could have a future.

I don’t really like talking about things that are basically in concept phase, especially since I’m not going to show off much art. The alpha dog is a fantasy, steampunk, and ’80s punk blend (you can see two early sketches above). Others include my spin on the classic Lone Wolf & Cub story with the ronin being a bad ass ex-mossad widow, a Teen Titans book with lots of attitude, a drama about the struggles of people saved by superheroes, and a mini-series about a sidekick dealing with the death of his mentor.

Whether accepted or rejected, one day you will get to see some of the work developed for these and get more insight into the process. I find that comics writers tend to do a fairly shitty job at discussing how they got into the industry. I’m certainly on the outside looking in, but consider yourselves along for the ride.

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