Hey! We’re Almost Famous In A Bad, BAD Way!

Here’s what happens when you wake up wondering, “Hm… What am I gonna’ do today?”

For friends who have been reading the blog regularly, you know that the Girlfriend and I whipped up a little thing called Charlie’s Monsters which got picked up by that website, creaturefeature comics. The official website being, once again, here. Now, Charlie’s Monsters is about three female monsters, a vampire, a reanimated corpse a la Frakenstein’s Monster, and a werewolf. They work for–or more to the point, kidnapped and set up shop with–a man named Charlie who gives them assignments that they go on which usually result in mass chaos and destruction on the order of the classic anime fare, The Dirty Pair. It was a fun little thing that we whipped up and were surprised when the Creature Feature guys picked us up, but we thought, “Hm… cool…” and went on with our lives.

Now we might get sued!

BY JOHN BYRNE NO LESS!

IS THAT COOL OR WHAT?!?

A little Comic Geek 101:

John Byrne is one of the seminal comic book artists of the 80′s, who with along with George Perez, probably upped the cool factor for comic book art and worked on some of the biggest titles of that time. He is responsible for drawing the much cherished Dark Phoenix saga with Chris Claremont, created the She-Hulk series that took the Jade Giantess in a whole new comedic direction, worked on the Fantastic Four, and is responsible for the “reboot” of Superman no less. He is a seminal influence on many of today’s artists with his innovative use of massive detailing in technology and background, his dynamic lines and his clean character designs. No John Byrne equals no Jim Lee, he’s THAT important, kids.

He is, with no small amount of exagerration, one of the Elder Gods of the Comic Book Pantheon.

And now we’ve gotten his attention.

It seems that completely unbeknownst to us, he was working on a title of his own called You Go Ghoul, about a trio of female monsters, a vampire, a reanimated corpse a la Frankenstein’s Monster, and a Mummy, who take assignments from an invisible man named “Manny”.

There are, of course, many people who are now aware of this.

It has now come to our attention, thanks to the lovely people at creature feature comics, that John is, understandably, perplexed and concerned about the amazing similarity in concepts which is now being actively discussed at his forum here. John has many fans (Of which I am one) and through the love of comics that we all have, they jumped to attention at this strange event and sent out tendrils of investigation with the speed and efficiency that can only come from still living in your parent’s basement. Sorry if I gave offense, boys. I know of what I speak, since I too share that same efficiency.

And so, in rapid fashion as of June 22nd, when the first fan posted our work on creature features to John’s website, they have uncovered A) The Creature Features website, B) the Girlfriend’s website and C) THIS VERY BLOG YOU’RE READING!

Hello, new readers. No, I am not a diabolical photocopy machine who has it in for John, no I am not a jealous fan who has twisted his admiration for John into an obsessive need to destroy him. I’m a writer and I’ve got a couple of novels done which are being handled by my agent and being looked at by some publishers.

[Shameless Whoring Mode ON]

So if you want to read a really fine yarn with mutant madness, ghosts and touching drama, then keep an eye out for Shift and Broken Presences by Shoeless Wayne Santos! Coming out at a book store near you! Own a piece of comic lore and read the works of a geek who got sued by John! Now being being released in three separate editions with foil cover, for your comic investment needs!

If you want to find out more about this writer of litigious tales, then go to his agent’s website, Jack Byrne of the Sternig & Byrne Literary Agency and discuss with him how you too can get a piece of the potential courtroom action and take your place in comic book history the way he just inadvertantly did! Act now Operators are standing by! The first 100 callers get special “early bird” bonus gift! What little is left of his dignity and self-respect at this point!

[Shameless Whoring Mode OFF]

And now, onto the more serious stuff.

Since everyone is going to be wondering, and since I’m sure that I’ve now got a few new readers lurking around here who will act on John’s behalf, I’m leaving it up to this blog to do its job and carry forth this message, which will no doubt make its way back to John. Hopefully it will shed some light on the matter.

Open Letter To John Byrne

Dear John,

(No, I’m not dumping you)

It is, actually, a matter of some excitement and even a little bit of honor that we have come to your attention. It’s unfortunate that the circumstances are what they are, but nevertheless, for the geek inside me, it’s still a very cool thing to be noticed by you. When I was kid, I grew up playing video games, reading novels, playing Dungeons & Dragons and, last but not least, reading many, MANY comics. And many of them were things you worked on. I even toyed with the idea briefly of being a comic book artist and it was you and George Perez who were my guiding lights for art during my childhood, in addition to Japanese anime. As time passed, I realized that my talent lay more in writing than in drawing, and so, reluctantly gave it up to pursue a more productive (But no less frustrating) venture into becoming a novelist, something that is on the verge of happening today after many years of work, hope and inspiration from people like you.

Your comics were amazing to me growing up. Your art was–and is–beautiful to look at, and I distinctly recall wondering, “WHO IS THIS GUY?!?” when I first saw your work appearing in Marvel comics. I remember the amazement of seeing Reed Richards and the rest of the group rendered under your deft penciling. But most of all I remember how moved I was by the work you did in the X-Men with the Dark Phoenix Saga. That will, to me personally, always be the defining moment when comic books rose above the stigma of being just “funny books” and became literary and artistic work, capable of moving the human heart and speaking to us about the best that we could–and should–be. That’s what art does, and that’s what Claremont’s story and your tragic rendering of Jean Gray’s final moments of life did. It was good work. The best work. And it is something that you should rightfully always be proud of because so many things that we take for granted in comics today arose from that one story, and you made it, shaping the minds of millions of dreamers like me into wondering if some day, it wouldn’t be a cool thing to do just that ourselves.

But then you went on from there. You made me laugh with She-Hulk, you made me proud to be a Canadian with Alpha Flight, and even brought a touch of pride to this little geek’s heart when you took Alpha Flight to West Edmonton Mall, and showed a panel with a comic book store that this very geek bought some of your work at. Then you tackled the great American myth of Superman and you made him good again, wonderful and inspiring and in all these things, you have done nothing but create work that would go on to entertain, move, provoke thought and best of all, leave people feeling a little good, a little wonderful and giving them permission to dream, maybe even take a chance on those dreams.

That, Mr. Byrne, is what you have done for me, and I can’t thank you enough for that.

So it is with no small amount of fan-boyish enthusiasm that I have found out that my girlfriend and I have actually garnered you attention, something I never dreamed possible. It’s unfortunate that it had to be within a legal context, but one doesn’t have control over life, only how one responds to it, and this is my reponse:

There is NO malicious intent or even purposefully imitative intent behind Charlie’s Monsters. That seems hard to believe in light of the–and I’ll be the first to admit this–AMAZING similarity in concept, but nevertheless it is the truth, and here is my side of it.

I am the writer. She is the artist. Charlie’s Monsters came about one day because the girlfriend knows that I have a love of bonehead stupidity and sarcasm–or sometimes just stupid sarcasm–that, if left unchecked, woud doubtless cause my head to explode into a million mean spirited comments. She had recently been working on a run of Indy/Alternative style comics which were, for the most part, very dialogue heavy and tended to emphasize more focus on film noir angling, composition of characters in conversation, basically creating mood. However, she felt that she would like to keep her hand in the action genre, so as not to lose her familiarity with jumps, leaps, fighting and all the other stuff that say, ordinarily wouldn’t appear very much in titles such as The Sandman or Gloom Cookie, which are the big favorites in our psychotic little house hold.

One day, she came up with the idea of Fran, a reanimated corpse who got into stupid misadventures of the espionage sort, and she threw the idea at me. I caught it and, as I usually do, started throwing out all kinds of stupid dialogue and situations around the idea that left us both cracking up, and eventually we thought it would be neat if she had friends and took assignments from someone and me being the pop culture freak that I am, immediately said, “Charlie’s Monsters.” And that was that. From there we dreamed up Harriet, the skittish werewolf girl, and Mira the sexy Vampire and envisioned a world and a 3 page series where we would get a chance to make fun of every single action move/comic book convention that had ever annoyed us or made us laugh. And the comic was born. At first we didn’t even think we’d do anything with it outside of just writing/drawing it for ourselves, but then she decided for fun that we might create a website specifically for it where people could just see a free 3 page monthly comic. We never got that far. She posted the work on her own work-related website, and gave it to the kind people at Creature Features who saw it, liked it and asked her if we’d be interested in having the work put out there. Initially, my biggest concern was with all the current Charlie’s Angels hoopla flying around, Aaron Spelling’s people would jump all over us, but I figured, “Hey, we’ve got no money, and if it comes to that we just stop doing it and make them happy again, no harm, no foul.”

So we did it. The Girlfriend still has yet to take down the original work from her website, but since Creature Features isn’t officially up and running anyway, there hasn’t been any need to do so, and since the free preview included at Creature Features is exactly the same one that appears in the Girlfriend’s website, and is INTENDED to be viewed for free, it didn’t seem like something that had to be rushed and anyway, the Creature Features guys hadn’t asked us to do it yet.

Which leads us to where we are today.

John, I have nothing but respect for you and your work. You have given me many intangible things over the years that have carried me through many moments when I suffered my own creative doubts. I still go back to the Dark Phoenix Saga on occasion and just look at it again to remind me of where things can go. I know it seems like an unbelievable coincidence that You Go Ghoul and Charlie’s Monsters have so many similarities, but then it seems like creative types always work on the same wavelength, and we were both subject to the Charlie’s Angel’s vibe that’s been going through the pop culture undercurrent for the last couple of years since McG brought the franchise back.

Charlie’s Monsters, is, to us, a fun diversion, nothing more. The Girlfriend has her own comic book work that she has to think about, and I will always think of myself as more of a novelist than anything else, so it was really just a kind of “neat” thing for us that Creature Features wanted to pick up what amounted to an exercise in stupid fun. But that’s all it is to us an exercise. We had no idea you were working on a similar idea and didn’t even know about it until Creature Features brought it our attention, much in the same way that you had no idea of us until your fans made it known. But if You Go Ghoul is something that matters to you, something that is important, than I would be the last person in the world to get in the way of someone that inspired me as a child. I’d be a pretty rotten geek if I actually stopped a guy I admire from putting out work that I myself would probably love to see, so the same “Just In Case” scenario we had for Aaron Spelling is also open to you.

You can discuss it with us, and with Creature Feature Comics, but the bottom line is, we didn’t want to hurt you, didn’t know what you were doing, and we are sorry that it came to this. If it means that much to you, Charlie’s Monsters can either change it’s title and concept, or, disappear entirely. No harm, no foul. I’m not going to get into a fight with a guy who gave me so much. Especially since we just didn’t know.

I know there are fans out there who (And I can hardly blame them) will probably say this is all a total pack of lies and that we are obviously looking at your work and aping it. To them, all I can do is shrug my shoulders. It may be an amazing coincidence, but it is just that. However, if it is a coincidence that means much more to John than it does to us, then we’re willing to let it go. It was always supposed to be for fun, not to annoy or worry a major comic icon.

So that’s my offer to you, John. We can discuss it, or you can discuss it with Creature Features, or you can have your lawyer do it (We don’t have a lawyer. We don’t have money, we’re starving artists) though I completely suck at legal proceedings, but in the end, whatever it takes to put your mind at ease, up to and including outright sacking the whole Charlie’s Monsters idea, it is something that I am willing to do.

I hope this clears things up for you.

Sincerely,

“Shoeless” Wayne Santos