Memories of the Future
Wil Wheaton and I have a hate/hate relationship.
He and I have a lot in common. We’re about the same age. We both have brown hair and brown eyes. We’re both ruggedly handsome. And, in 1987, while Wil was the youngest member of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation, I was the youngest member of the Starship New Promise, a Star Trek fan club.
Oh, and we both seemed to wear a lot of sweaters.
So it’s no surprise that my friends in the Trek group teased me by calling me “Wesley” and I grew to really hate that character.
There’s a thing that happens with actors and their parts. You know the actor is only playing a character, but since that character is all you have to go on, you do blur the two of them. So, my disdain for Wesley was transferred to Wil.
Wil and I grew up. Wesley got a real promotion and eventually left the show. But I always associated some of that Wesley Ick with Wil.
Then, a few years back, I found Wil’s blog. It’s why I tell you about how I felt towards Wesley and the actor who played him. I had a fair amount of irrational predisposition to dislike the blog.
What I found there was an surprisingly honest accounting of being a creative person. He wrote about the difficulties of writing, what he had to do to bring a character to life. I’m stupid for behinds the scenes stuff, and he was delivering it gangbusters. It wasn’t long before, solely through the strength of his writing, that he won me over completely.
So now he’s written a book. Another book, as he’s written a few. This one is called Memories of the Future, and it’s his recapping of the first half of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Hmmm, more behind the scenes stuff. Wonder if Im going to like it.
He’s described his book as “looking through a yearbook and saying ‘Oh my God, can you believe we thought that was cool?’” That’s a pretty accurate description of the book’s vibe. It’s irreverent fun.
I’m a big Star Trek fan. There are parts of that show that have actually defined my life. I once turned down a big job by quoting Kirk in Generations when he told Picard to not do anything that got him out of That Chair. As such, I’m sensitive about people hacking on the franchise too much. (Except for Voyager and the first three seasons of Enterprise, but that’s another story.)
It’s very much “nobody picks on my brother but me.” Wil’s part of Trek, so he can deconstruct some of the early season missteps and do it without malice. The books a lot of fun, and I’m not sure anyone else could have written it.
Wil’s writing style is breezy in the best possible way. Each chapter is candy coated with humor over a solid center of content, and you wind up wolfing it down. Yeah, it’s literary Twix. And eI recommend it.
Here’s the thing that really impressed me, and why I’ve decided to devote a chunk of blog real estate to the former Sweatered One and his book. Wesley was pretty reviled, and Wil could have taken the tack of I read the lame lines I was given as best as I could, dudes, so deal, and he’d be more than justified in doing it. But he takes it a step further and shows, from a writerly point of view, why the character was so unsuccessful.
That shows a pretty impressive intellectual honesty.
The first volume takes covers Encounter at Farpoint to Datalore. He breaks down each episode with a funny recap, some insider’s memories, and a criticism of the episode itself. If you like Star Trek: The Next Generation or behind-the-scenes process stuff, I recommend it completely.
Like I said, I have a hate/hate relationship with Wil Wheaton. When I was younger, I hated the character he played and the teasing I got from it. Now, he’s been on Big Bang Theory, hangs with Felicia Day, and has a family that liberally quotes Monty Python.
So now I just hate him because I’m jealous.
A Banner Day!
I'm alw ays trying to think down the road. Next comic, next convention and so on. I wanted to update my Love and Capes banner stand which is now three years old. I had to wait to see if I could put "Harvey Nominee" or "Harvey Winner" on it. Now that that's done, I'm ready to go forward with a new look for the booth.
My idea is to do a diptych. There will be two stands that will work together or separately, depending on what kind of booth space I have. The left image, with Mark and Abby will be the main banner used at artist alley tables, etc. When I have a booth, like at Mid-Ohio-Con, I can use the other one and get almost seven feet of coverage.
The art should be a little cleaner, and definitely a little more representative of my current level of art monkeying. What say you all?
Advance Reviews
For the first time, I sent out preview PDFs to some comics reviewers. Which means the first review of Love and Capes #12 is up, by Avril Brown from Comics Waiting Room:
An enjoyable balance between the pure heart of a children’s book and the intelligence of an adult story, LOVE AND CAPES is a pleasurable read for all ages…The aesthetically awesome artwork is a unique blend of ’50s comfort and security and modern-day sexiness and sharp lines. LOVE AND CAPES provides a nice change of pace from death and destruction, offering instead a smile-inducing story filled with laughter and love.
Killing Time
I'm at the Apple Store right now. No, really right now. I'm working with one of the Geniuses to try to get my Finder up and running.
If you don't know what a Finder is on a Mac, well, I won't bore you with it here. It's just really important. Fortunately, with Love and Capes #12 pretty well done except for the screaming and the printing, I've had time to kill the day up here watching little shiny blue bars fill up on the Mac. It's not ideal, but it's manageable.
I've spent some of the time on one of their Macs, surfing the web and all, and I found this. It's a new review of the Love and Capes: Do You Want To Know a Secret collection on Amazon. And it's glowing. So I thought I'd share it.
After all, I appear to still have 16 minutes to kill and counting.
You Can't Take the Sky From Me
Saw this over at Llama Butchers and thought it was kinda funny.
Baltimore Randomness Continued
Got to talk to Scott Asdit a few times. He's on 30 Rock, and he's big with the funny. He was very nice to my Mom, and I think I may be able to get him to write a blurb for the next Love and Capes trade. Here's hoping.
As I teased, why I'm jealous of Lora Innes: she got a cosplayer, Sarah Gillig. Someone was a fan of her book and dressed up as the lead. But does anyone ever come dressed as the Crusader, Doc Karma or better yet Amazonia? No.
I got to do some fun commissions, including this one of Poison Ivy growing flowers. It's probably the best freehand drawn hand I've ever done.
An iPhone and an auxilary jack are great things to have. When Mom and I were driving back from Baltimore, I used the phone and the iHeartRadio app to tune into Lanigan and Malone from 300 miles away. Kind of cool.
New Products in the Love and Capes store!
You've been waiting for it, I know, and now it's here: New Love and Capes merchandise. What have we got? Both the Baltimore Comicon and Mid-Ohio-Con exclusives, new lanyards, the new "sketch" shirt design on blue and white ringers, black shirts, spaghetti strap tops, ribbed tank tops, and black hoodies. All sorts of coolness. And, as always, the full Love and Capes Store is available here.
But, let me throw a little more into the mix. All orders placed before October 31, 2009, will receive a free copy the convention exclusive. (In the case of convention exclusive orders, the other version will be supplied. So, if you want the Baltimore version, you'll get a copy of the MOC version free!)
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NEW! Love and Capes #11 1/2 12 pages. Full color cover and interior. $2.00 plus 50¢ shipping and tax where applicable. Available NOW! |
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NEW! Love and Capes #11 1/2 12 pages. Full color cover and interior. $2.00 plus 50¢ shipping and tax where applicable. Available NOW! |
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Love and Capes Lanyard Magenta lanyard with Love and Capes logo and clip! $6.00 (includes shipping). Available NOW! |
My Harvey Awards Night
Baltimore Comicon was its usual greatness. Marc Nathan runs a darn fine show, and has a ninja-like awesome staff. And I'll write more about that soon, but I had a long day of driving and unpacking, and I'm a little beat. I'll post fun stuff and stories and pictures soon, including why I'm jealous or Lora Innes. But for now, I know what you want to really read about…
The Harvey Awards.
Yeah, I didn't win. And I'm disappointed, but man, it was an awesome experience. Let me warn you now, this is gonna be a long one…
I was nominated in two categories: Best Letterer and Best Cartoonist. When you're in comics, everyone knows what the awards and the categories are. When you're talking to people outside the industry, its a harder explanation. It's kind of like being nominated MVP in soccer. People understand it's a good thing, but come on, it's soccer, does anyone in the real world care? So it's hard to find people outside the comics circle who get it. But I'll do my best to explain it.
The Harvey Awards are kind of like the SAG Awards. Voted on by comics professionals. There are the "technical" categories, like Best Letterer and Best Colorist, and the more prestigious categories, like Best Artist and Best Cartoonist. They're all important, though.
The awards are held in the Mariott Ballroom. It's a pretty swanky affair, actually. Hors d'overs, drinks, fancy dinner. I and my Mom headed over about seven.
Yeah, my Mom. When she found out I was up for a Harvey, she decided to come. She was planning on Amtrakking up and surprising me, but was stymied by the ticket-getting process. So she asked in that "I'll just show up anyway" way for me to bring her along.
As the awards approached, the gravitas of the whole thing began to weigh on me. It's a pretty cool thing to be nominated for a Harvey, and the thought of receiving one started to twist in my brain. It was nice to have Mom there to act as a safety valve to keep me from spending too much time in my own head.
I sat with a bunch of my fellow nominated friends and their families, and we had a great time. And the Scott Kurtz started the awards.
I already hated Scott Kurtz. He got to be on MacBreakWeekly, and I love that show all to pieces. Jealousy's a horrible thing. Then, on top of it, he turns out to be a great host. Funny as can be. There was a Glengarry Glen Ross parody cartoon that was pretty funny, and his first quip of the night was "We'd like to thank you all for attending, but our attendance isn't up to Diamond's minimums, so the whole night is cancelled."
It's funny because it's true.
Scott also gets it, in a pretty awesome way. After the whole Kanye West thing, I expected there to be some "You've got a great book, Taylor Swift, but…" thing along the way. I even joked that we needed to have an over/under pool on the first joke. I would have lost, because there never was one.
I mentioned this to Scott after the ceremony, and he said that they thought about it, but any joke like that would have taken away from someone's big moment. That's pretty cool, to be that aware of the moment for the individual to not go for the big joke.
The first award given was the Best Letterer. Honestly, I didn't think that I'd win. I was up against some great letterers, and ones who still practice hand lettering. I started that way, and can still bust it out when I need to, but I'm mostly font-based these days. So, when I lost to John Workman, I was pretty centered with it.
What followed was two hours of the most fun awards I've ever been part of. I'm not a big fan of awards shows. I've always said that unless I'm up for one, or have money riding on it, I don't watch them. I was up for this one, though. Scott was very funny, and so were most of his presenters. It was a great time.
And it almost distracted me from worrying about the big award.
I had all that time to think about winning or losing the Best Cartoonist Award. It was a little nerve-wracking. But a weird thing happened along the way.
I realized the honor that it was to be nominated.
The whole ceremony has a very real spirit of collegiality to it. There's a "we're all in this together" vibe. As it went on, you really get a sense of the heft of the award and the recognition. There have been 22 Harvey ceremonies. If each one has five nominees, and none of them overlapped (which is an oversimplification) that means 110 people have ever been nominated for Best Cartoonist. I'm one of them.
Wow. That's just… wow.
So, by the time that my award category rolled around, I wasn't worried about winning. I was just humbled to be in that company.
Oh, yeah, and I was up against Al Jaffee, of Mad Magazine fame. If I'd won, I might have Kanye Wested myself. It's Al Jaffee, I'm not in his weight class. So, when he was, it was no surprise.
That's all right, though. If you've got to lose to someone, he's a pretty good person to lose to. I can't complain at all.
It was a great time, and I'm glad I got to share it with my friends and family. Congratulations to all the nominees and to those who did win, especially Bryan Glass who was just so thrilled that it was heartwarming. He did a somersault onto the stage, in fact. Heck, I almost didn't want to win just to not have to follow that.
So what's next?
There's an episode of "The West Wing" where the President and his staff are getting upset about the lack of progress they've made and the problems they've failed to find solutions for. In it, Sam Seyborn has this exchange:
Sam: I was thinking about what you asked me before about have I been able to think of anything, and I said, "No." And you said, "Neither have I and neither has the President."
Leo: What about it?
Sam: I wouldn't speak for anybody else, but you know I'm not done yet, right?
I'm not done yet, either.
Your Mileage May Variant
This was revealed by Chris Ryall of IDW over at CBR today:
There will be variant covers by guys like Joe Corroney (paying tribute to Alex Ross, who said he was amused and not offended by the cover, which shows what a good sport he is), Thom Zahler, and a couple other folk I’m working on. And we’re going to offer the first issue as a variant black and white issue printed on newsprint-type paper, to really use the “Weekly World News”-influenced cover to its fullest. And maybe even rope in fans of the paper who confuse the comic for a new print edition of the paper…
Games People Play
Love and Capes fan Phillip wrote in to tell me that he'd developed a Crusader skin for the Freedom Force game. I don't play the viddea games myself. I find my productivity goes up the less distractions I have embedded into my computer. Although the new DC Comics game that's 
due soon may be too much for me to refuse.
Anyway, I think this is just cool as can be. The only thing cooler is that, thanks to some color codes I sent him, there may be a Darkblade and Titania skin, too.