Comics & Cartoons

Amid the sea of games that have to be played there was also a meeting with the Nanoboy folks on the changes to be made to the next script. That went pretty smoothly and then after that an article that should have been a breeze took an entire day to finish ’cause I kept backtracking and wondering if I’d made the right decision.

I’m supposed to write a short piece about 5 essential writers in comics. After initially going on reflex as to the Big Three of Miller, Moore and Gaiman, I found myself doing a lot of shifting about the last two. I did resolve it eventually, but it’s just like any short piece; you wish had a ton more space to do the writers justice and in a perfect world, you’d be able to devote an article exclusively to each one so you can show the arc, the history and the analysis behind each writer.

I always get a kick out of the biographical data of these guys. They all seem to come from such diverse backgrounds but there seems to always be that one phrase, “And then they decided to write comics.” As if it was, in fact, the easiest thing in the world.

I can’t really comment on the difficulty of it or not as I’ve never actually seriously tried to submit anything to either DC or Marvel. It’s a foregone conclusion that my writing sensibilities could not give them what they require and I seem to lean far more heavily into the Vertigo camp of magical/mysterious/non-super hero stuff. Though I’ve never actually tried submitting anything to them either.

If at some point I had the opportunity to write a comic, I probably would do it, though I would never touch any of the existing big franchises. No Avengers, Justice League, Spiderman or Batman for me. I’d be a lot happier on the fringes with the likes of Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison and of course, Neil Gaiman.

But I guess I’ll worry about that on the day that I have to…