Category: Writer’s Blog

Y’all are familiar with the uncanny valley, right? Well Dawn had to float this video across my radar, partly because it made her laugh and partly because it’s like ClearStream tried to do the worst possible replacement for a live Suzie Zane.

In actuality it’s part of a video series by a lady named Simone Giertz, who does build these robots herself and likes to hurl straight into the uncanny valley with them. In this case, the Westworld TV show sponsored her to do something thematic for them. It’s fun stuff, although a not-so-fun development is that she was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor. Sigh. Sometimes it seems like everything we enjoy these days comes with some darkness attached, eh? But still, I suppose the least we can all do is support her with a viewing or two.

Way back in the day when discussing my inspirations for Zombie Ranch I talked about an episode of the show Dirty Jobs where Mike Rowe went to an ostrich farm and was possibly the most terrified for his life he’d ever been in the face of gigantic birds that could have eviscerated him with a single bad-tempered kick. But the farm workers just wrangled them like it was no big deal, to the point it almost seemed like they couldn’t understand why he was being such a scaredy cat.

The article that floated onto my social media feeds this week reminded me of that:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/30/607067242/watch-surfer-rides-record-breaking-80-foot-giant

And if you don’t want to read that, well, just watch this:

Don’t get distracted by the jet ski shooting off to the right, watch that teensy little scratch of a diagonal line near the center. That’s the surfer’s wake ever so briefly scored onto an estimated eighty foot high wave.

It’s scary enough to me that there are places on Earth that waves this big happen with enough regularity that to locals they’re merely considered impressive rather than OMFG RUN. But then there are the guys like Rodrigo Koxa who do say OMFG RUN… towards that awesome opportunity!

I mean that’s not exactly what happened, no one knew the wave would be that big until it happened, but still there are these guys (and gals) who put themselves out in that roiling megasurf for pride and sport and talk about it afterwards just as casual as you please:

“When I got my wave, I let go of the rope, I started to use my rail to angle towards the shoulder, but then realized, if I used my rail, I’d never get deep. And then I remembered: ‘Go straight down.’ When I said it, I remembered my dream. I turned and I almost fell, but then I got my feet again and went super fast. I’ve never had a big wave like that where I didn’t use the rail at all. Just went straight down. It was amazing.”

What does that have to do with ostrich farms? Well, whether it’s a job or a sport these are folks putting themselves at risk in ways most of us would consider insane, and there’s no superpowers involved but skill, experience, and a mentality that sees opportunity where others see only death. And while not all zombie ranchers might be as enthusiastic as Rodrigo, I think he’d understand their vibe. Catchin’ the wave.

As we continue in the pages of the comic with our first ever rendition of the Zombie Ranch opening credits, the question did roil in my brain of if whether it still just represented needless redundancy. The audience knows all these characters already, right?

Well, maybe. And then again as an avowed audience member of things myself, I often find myself forgetting names and other character details even for my favorite shows. Agents of SHIELD is on its fifth season and, although it does its best with its “Previously…” segments in terms of bringing up elements from its past that might resurface in the episode to come, those segments are brief enough that more often than not, I end up consulting Dawn with endearing questions such as “What was the astronaut about?”

They didn’t bother to explain in the show, probably because it was kind of an important part of Season 3. Integral, even. And yet there I was completely blanking on things until Dawn jumpstarted my synapses by pointing out I was forgetting an entire character who was something of a big deal.

In a sense going over “known” information can be annoying and seem pointless to those who have been keeping up, and there are certainly recent examples where I would argue it was a good call. Spider-Man is one of the most popular superheroes on Earth and that was even before he starred in five Sony movies, two of which spent time retelling an origin story. So by the time he was recast for the third time to appear in the MCU’s Captain America: Civil War they just decided to skip it and get on with things.

But with lesser known properties and people, an introduction or re-introduction is sometimes sorely needed, and there’s still the hope that if I hammer it in enough people might at least stop mixing up Frank and Chuck. As noted above though, that may be a case of glass houses and stones…

And hey, now I get why in reality shows they’ll always put the person’s name on the screen during “interview” bits, sometimes even with a reminder of their job or position. And perhaps something I should think about adopting for Season 3.

There are theme songs that are so widely recognized you can start humming them just about anywhere public and someone will know them. Star Wars is a great example, but not too far behind are the opening songs for certain famed television shows such as M.A.S.H. or Cheers. Harry Anderson just passed away recently and what was the first thing that popped into my head? It was not “R.I.P.” (though may he), but those first few slap bass notes of the Night Court theme.

It used to be that every show (for better or worse) had opening music, but these days it seems to have become less fashionable to have one, or if there is one it tends to be truncated after the first few episodes as if  everyone’s impatient to just get it out of the way. Agents of SHIELD remains a current favorite of mine but it’s a good example of a show that has a theme but exiles it to the end credits, while the beginning is a cold open that will eventually flash onto the title card before continuing. Supernatural was the same way. Screw this opening music-and-montage nonsense, let’s get down to business.

Yet on the other hand, prestige television revels in embracing opening sequences and more often than not on my Netflix binges I would find myself watching the beginning credits of, say, Daredevil over and over, whether or not a cold open was involved. Properly composed, such sequences can be a hypnotic gateway into the other world. Or as Cheers so aptly put it, “Wouldn’t you like to get away?”

But yeah, a TV show that chooses to theme has that multimedia luxury of drilling the theme into your head. Zombie Ranch (or technically, the show-within-a-show of Zombie Ranch) has a theme, a theme I actually got some talented individuals to record soon after the comic started, and yet to this day there are long-time readers unaware it even exists. We don’t exactly shove it in the face of new readers, either, it’s buried away in an Extras section which people may not even ever see if they use a reader or feed rather than visiting our site directly.

Also, other than brief bits we’ve never taken the time to show it in the comic; perhaps understandably so given the problems inherent in just trying to represent a musical experience with little note graphics.

But y’know, new arc. New opportunity. So what the heck, it’s about time to give it a try.

What Stan Lee situation, you ask? Well I’ve been hearing rumblings for awhile but The Hollywood Reporter has it all laid out for your perusal, if not necessarily your conclusion:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/stan-lee-needs-a-hero-elder-abuse-claims-a-battle-aging-marvel-creator-1101229

Long story short, there’s been a steadily worsening shitstorm around Stan pretty much ever since his wife died several years ago which is now coming to a head, mostly because people are starting to report that his indefatigable appearances at various comic conventions aren’t so indefatigable any more. I used to joke that advertising your convention would have a Stan Lee appearance was only as big a deal as there was a lack of conventions in your area, because at least around SoCal he’d show up at just about all of them.

Now honestly? The man is 95 years old and that’s a pretty damn good run. He lived to see his co-creations become famous and then even more famous, getting to share the big screen with them, and his name will probably echo as long as there are comics.

But man, the amount of drama surrounding him right now is beyond any amount of Secret Wars. Ugh, I probably shouldn’t joke about it. It’s all really gross.

Personally I feel Stan’s not the Saint some seem to want to make him out to be and wasn’t always the best guy to his creative partners, but the thing is even if the extend of his contributions to the creation of Marvel’s characters are debatable, he *did* have a hand in creating them and he absolutely worked tirelessly to promote the Marvel brand and get it to worldwide recognition. None of the people around him now had a hand in any of that. If this were a throw down between Stan and Jack Kirby, I’d have trouble picking sides, but as it is? Screw all these vultures and their fighting over the fortune of a man who isn’t even a corpse yet. One literally drew his blood and mixed it into ink for profit, and whether or not that was with Stan’s consent it’s still creepy as all hell.

Sad stuff. I just pray my own Autumn years are spent in the company of a lot more love, even if there’s a lot less money involved. And maybe having a lot less money will be exactly why.

I take you where you want to go 
I give you all you need to know 
I drag you down, I use you up 
Mr. Self Destruct

— Nine Inch Nails

Have you ever had a strange thought in your head, an inner voice suggesting actions that at best would be counterproductive (“jump in that pool with your clothes on!”) but often go straight to the outright fatal (“jump over the guardrail of this hundred foot high cliff!”)?

I by no means consider myself a suicide risk and have never seriously contemplated taking my own life, much less tried to do so. Hell, I don’t even like rollercoasters and have no idea why people would subject themselves to dangerous hobbies like skydiving and rock climbing. But that voice can still come up. I think no one likes to talk about it out of fear it will be misinterpreted as a cry for help, but it turns out the phenomenon is common enough the French even gave it a name: L’appel du Vide. “The Call of the Void.”

More scholarly studies use the less poetic term HPP, or “High Place Phenomenon”, but as the article I linked above points out that term can be misleading since L’appel du Vide can just as easily manifest as that thought while driving that just one swift tug of the steering wheel could send you against a retaining wall or into oncoming traffic. Or the flash vision you get of jumping in front of a subway train as it pulls into the station — visions I’ve at times had so potently I wonder if somewhere out in the theoretical multiverse there’s a Clint who did just that and so had his particular storyline come to an (assumed) abrupt end.

But it doesn’t even have to be a life-or-death situation. I remember one time being in a port-a-potty absolutely filthy from a long weekend of festival attendees, staring into that malodorous hole and pondering that just one slip and the iPhone I was holding would go tumbling right in, and then what would I do? And does the fact I’m even envisioning that mean there’s a destructive (and disgusting) part of me wanting to see what happens?

Well, it’s a comfort to know I’m not alone. And in fact that studies of the phenomenon suggest that what seem on the surface to be destructive and suicidal thoughts may in fact be the opposite, that the “Call of the Void” is in fact a wake-up call, a manifestation of survival instinct reminding us to pay very close attention when the line separating safety and disaster has gotten perilously thin. You envision yourself plummeting off that bridge or driving into the railroad crossing precisely because it would be so easy to do it, and nothing could stop you except your own awareness. And for that matter you’ll hold your cellphone just that much tighter as you lean over that port-a-potty hole or cruise ship railing, keenly aware of the consequences that being less mindful could bring.

And while this blog might not specifically relate to Zombie Ranch at first glance… it sure could give a new perspective on Repops, couldn’t it?

There’s all sorts of things that can affect how well you do at a convention, and location is one of them.

I mean, some of that’s just obvious. No one wants to be the booth stuck behind the pillar. And so-called “endcap” or “corner” booths often cost more to reserve just by virtue of their presumed increased visibility and access to traffic.

But then you get that stuff that really seems out of your control, and although you can’t be 100% sure there was an impact, your gut tells you there was.

I believe WonderCon this year was an example, where some unfortunate factors conspired to basically cause the entire Small Press section to be “stuck behind the pillar.” The layout of the Anaheim Convention Center being as it is, there are large solid walls between the halls that WonderCon extended through. WonderCon can’t help that, of course, but decided to move the entry point after people picked up their badges to a far side rather than a more front-central position as in previous years. Now this made some sense from a logistical standpoint since before people would have to pick up their badges, exit back to the lobby and then re-enter further down, rather than this year where they just proceeded directly from Hall D to Hall C and poured on in right at Artist’s Alley, beyond which were all the big draws like the DC Comics booth. Finally past all that and past two of the aforementioned walls was Small Press in Hall A.

It’s not easy to get a feel for traffic when you’re chained to a booth, but by the time Sunday rolled around it was pretty clear that there was an imbalance going on with half the convention being a lot more crowded than the other half, and in the after reports a good portion of the Artist’s Alley exhibitors happily reporting constant attention and sales while a good portion of Small Press had the opposite experience. Not a great outcome, particularly when you factor in that a Small Press table also costs twice as much.

WonderCon keeps changing its floor plan every year so far and I expect next year will be no different, so I’m not going so far as the guy who has announced he’s jumping ship to Artist’s Alley, because for all we know Artist’s Alley could draw the short stick next time around. Or ideally the convention finally finds a balance that makes everyone happy, or at least no one really unhappy. In the meantime it’s something to keep in mind… as soon as that floorplan gets published, check where people enter, check where the dividers are and what sections are where. You probably won’t be able to do anything about it, but you can at least steel yourself for a slow outing if the placement seems awry.

Well, continuing my tradition of Johnny-come-lately game experiences, I have finally started my delve into one of the more hyped AAA video game titles of the past three years: The Witcher 3. I picked up the Game of the Year edition through Steam during one of their big periodic sales… Black Friday, I want to say?… regardless of which I recall making my way through the tutorial level and then going back to one of my other games while it’s sat in my library for months. It didn’t quite hook me in at the time, plus I was also a bit worried I’d reached the limits of my modest computer system in terms of getting a decent framerate on the ultra-pretty settings I prefer.

Anyhow, with another arc of Zombie Ranch finally completed I had some extra free time and felt like it was a good opportunity to (figuratively) blow the dust off and give TW3 another chance to impress.

Short answer: so far, it does. Especially for a story/character junkie like me. From the marketing you might not expect a game like this to have any sort of depth to it, but thankfully I’m having the same pleasant surprise I did way back when I picked up Witcher 2 for free on my Xbox and discovered it to be more mature than expected. Truly mature, not just a rating based on the present of blood, boobs and salty language.

Mind you Witcher 2 most certainly had its share of blood, boobs and salty language, and you could hire prostitutes and sleep around with multiple ladies… but then on the other hand you had a choice not to do that, or even to commit to one above all others. Meanwhile there was an interesting tale of power politics being spun, dark fantasy style. Maybe not as complicated as Game of Thrones, but there are arguably positives to saying that. I ended up playing it all the way through, and the only regret I have now is that I couldn’t transfer my console save over to TW3 on the PC, because the designers did include that cool Mass Effect style feature of choices in a previous game carrying over if you want them to. As it was I had to rely on very fallible memory trying to piece together what I’d done. It’s not as complicated as GoT but there are still a shiteload of settings and characters to keep track of and I had to have my inklings jogged more than once trying to remember things like who the main villain of the previous game was.

I think the biggest barrier of entry to the series is probably its protagonist, who at first glance seems like the kind of fantasy character a lot of adolescent boys come up with at some point: the world-weary, stoic moody badass loner with the scars and gravelly voice and the special powers who gets all the chicks. I won’t argue that that’s Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher, in a nutshell. Witcher 2 was more fascinating for everything going on around him than Geralt himself.

The Witcher 3 pulls a hat trick though and has managed to actually make Geralt interesting. He’s older now, for one thing, and there’s actually a sense of humor that occasionally breaks through the Batman/Kratos aesthetic. But most of all, TW3 made him a father.

Not a literal father, mind you, at least not that I’m aware of — Witchers are canonically sterile — but the main questline of TW3 has you on the trail of his surrogate daughter who he raised and trained, now a young woman named Ciri who is quite capable in her own right but nevertheless in deep, deep trouble courtesy of some very bad people having taken an interest in her. Well, “people” may not be the right word. You even get to play Ciri at some points courtesy of a clever flashback mechanic as Geralt in the course of his investigations gets folk he meets to recount their experiences with her.

Ciri, by the way, seems at first glance like the kind of fantasy character a lot of adolescent girls come up with at some point, what with her independence and badass-but-gorgeous looks and special powers and bloodline and destiny (she is of course a princess) but oh she is also kind to small children and animals even though she’ll murderously chop through half a dozen men without batting an eye. It is another testament to the writers (and her voice actor) that when I finally “met” her I still ended up finding her charming and genuinely wanted to help her succeed.

Anyhow, I’m barely scratching the surface here by focusing on things that are most important to me. In the absence of character customization, a story-based game is going to potentially live or die based on whether the character(s) the player is asked to inhabit are compelling and whether their story is also compelling. You’re going to be spending a lot of time with them, after all. TW3 is infamously open in its world and the amount of side quests and activities available, which I worried would be daunting enough that I would end up being overwhelmed and feeling a need to just give up the way I did with Assassin’s Creed 3, but happily it feels more like Assassin’s Creed 4 where the balance is there and I like where things are going. The side quests are cool but the main quests are also pretty sweet, and whatever technology is being used for the facial expressions needs to be exported to every other game because it’s very impressive.

Now, the 10/10 rating TW3 enjoys on Steam to this day might still be overhyping it because I don’t find it perfect. The movement controls are wonky and there are longstanding features of games inexplicably missing, such as a 1:1 buyback option on merchant screens which you may find yourself wishing for the first time you accidentally sell your magic sword (and the second time, and third… way too easy to make this mistake and have to pay a thousand gold to get back what you just misclicked and sold for a hundred). Shops you’ve previously found will randomly disappear off your map, which is aggravating when you need to find a blacksmith or armorer to do upgrades. Gathering and looting can also be a serious pain in the ass. Fortunately, much like for Fallout 4 there is a thriving mod community and so (at least on the PC) these shortcomings can be accounted for. But it should certainly be noted that without those fixes I might very well have decided the game was too much trouble.

P.S. if you’re playing on PC you may very well want to turn off the “NVIDIA hairworks” graphical setting regardless of how beefy your NVIDIA card is (or if you don’t have one, though I would hope it’s automatically off if you don’t have one). I didn’t really notice any difference in appearance quality but it completely solved my framerate issues, particularly during dialogue scenes.

This week’s comic was our end of Episode 15, also marking our (eventual) intended endpoint for a Volume 2 trade paperback, assuming we can get that funded successfully next year. I kept promising some reveals and I hope they satisfied, even though the answers to some of the mysteries that have lingered for many years of this comic’s run might only raise more questions.

But that’s the rub, isn’t it? In an ongoing story you don’t want to lay down all the cards, right? How do you reward the loyalty of your audience while also keeping them looking forwards to more? I think the best stories are ones that find a balance of that, and also the ones that can manage to evoke a sense of time well spent both in the casual fan and the fan that does a deeper delve and has been pondering and discussing small details not everyone noticed, or perhaps noticed and forgot.

And sometimes the story itself becomes more satisfying in the course of its telling. Sometimes you as the creator(s) find a detail in your own work that informs upon that course in a way that you may not have laid out at the beginning but seems right and true. Sometimes, for example, Dawn draws a cover for Episode/Issue 4 where you’ve given her the basic layout but she ends up covering part of the photo you wanted with a gun, and then you start thinking about what might be under that gun… and that roils around and develops until you finally bring that photo truly “in universe” four issues later as you begin your second arc, and then you end that second arc with the same photo and it’s arguably now become one of the most important objects in the whole series because of what was hidden and now is revealed.

Chekhov’s Gun is supposed to go off in Act 3, of course… but in a work of fiction with an indefinite number of acts (i.e. this webcomic), why not Act 8 or Act 15? And even then a creator can play… we can figuratively load up multiple bullets and distribute them point by point, so that as the smoke clears the audience now sees further but yet can’t quite make out the final destination. And I should probably stop there before I start hopelessly muddling my metaphors.

I hope you enjoyed, and continue to enjoy.

There’s a lot to complain about in our modern age, but damn if there isn’t some frickin’ awesome features as well. Anyone recall when I was talking excitedly about the potentials of on-demand 3D printing in terms of custom models? No? Well it might have been awhile ago and I can’t really say the revolution has arrived yet.

Except it has.

Okay, okay, this is a niche market, but… that was the whole point of on-demand, right? Satisfy the niche market. In this case, tabletop RPGers who want custom miniature figures of their characters.

The above link leads to a site called Heroforge.com, and I caution you: if you even think you might fit the profile above, DO NOT go there unless you have a few hours free. Holy crap is it cool. Like, really good computer game chargen levels of cool, except you’re mixing and matching parts on a 3d figure that you can then order to be manufactured and shipped to you. Or if you’re lucky enough to have a 3d printer or a friend with access to one, they’ll put a file download together and you can print it yourself.

Now I’ll admit that neither Dawn nor I have actually ordered and received one of these yet, but man is it tempting. If you watch the Critical Role livestream at all, their current figures seem to all be Heroforge products, so at least some level of order fulfillment must be going on.

In the meantime, you create an account and then you can play with and save different designs and share the pictures and/or configurations. Are the options perfect? Nah. But I guarantee you they’re far better than you expect, and certainly a godsend to any gamer who has ever been frustrated rooting through a game store selection trying to find a figure for their half-orc bard. Heroforge lets you customize the height and build and even the expression on your character’s face in addition to all the props and hair and poses and etc. But whatever, I mean, half-orc bards are one thing but alternate-future Mexican mechanic ladies are going to be…

…huh. Entirely possible. Shit-eating grin and all.

Oh and then just a couple more clicks gives her a motorbike option.

I mean again, not 100% perfect (no jumpsuit/flight suit options… at least not yet), but hell I’m almost just blown away by the fact they had something close to Rosa’s haircut.

And you know, a few years from now maybe this will all just seem very primitive and quaint, but for the moment me and all my nerd friends are too busy bringing our imaginations to life to care.

So as you might know if you’ve been following this blog, over President’s Day weekend Dawn and I got back into the convention groove with the Long Beach Comic Expo, with the holiday allowing us to take full advantage of the early setup on Friday.

No complaints there, honestly, we got loaded in and got our badges with minimal fuss, although I did end up scrounging around for alternate parking options since paying the convention center a $15 “all day” fee for two hours of being there didn’t sit well. On Saturday and Sunday when we truly were there all day, fine, but otherwise that was going to be steep.

This phenomenon is not isolated to Long Beach, in fact it’s a reason we continue to pony up the ever-increasing fees for a hotel stay at WonderCon despite theoretically being able to drive back and forth: the Anaheim Convention Center wants you to pay an all-day parking fee even just to access the loading dock for a few minutes, and the lots are set up in such a way that means you could very well end up paying twice.

Maybe it’s changed now, but that was a rude realization a few years back. Speaking of changes, though, as I went to re-enter the Long Beach convention hall from the frontal direction after getting the car parked at a street meter (a far more economical option for two hours or less, believe it or not!), I was reminded of the relatively new additions of metal detectors and bag searches to convention entry.

I mean, I’m pretty sure we can thank Matthew Sterling for that since this only really started happening after he tried to bring a loaded arsenal into Phoenix Comic-Con. It’s also something that as an exhibitor you can still be surprised by, since truth to tell there have been conventions where we barely get a look at the front lobby, much less the entrance. Even those times we use the front lobby to load in, we’re doing so early in the morning, sometimes before things are fully set up. It can easily skew your perspective. You wonder sometimes why the crowd is so thin for the first couple of hours after opening, and then find out that due to various factors it’s taking the crowd two hours just to get inside, even if they pre-bought. And that was before things got all TSA at the entryway.

Anyhow, thankfully I had nothing I was carrying or dragging when I came back to the convention that Friday afternoon, but despite showing my exhibitor badge I was still made to empty my pockets and walk through the detector. Keep in mind the convention isn’t even open until the next day and meanwhile the loading dock has no such screenings going on. Which, yeah, can you even imagine how crazy that would be? And in my head I imagined the situation if we didn’t have Friday off and were trying to wheel our stuff in on Saturday morning, as we’ve done in the past. “Sorry, sir, you’ll have to open all those boxes and bins for inspection.”

And so once I was cleared to go inside, I went straight to Dawn and said sorry honey, we’re not sleeping in as much as we thought tomorrow because we need to make damn sure we get here before they close the loading doors, because I am not arguing with security and I especially am not going to try to explain to them that yes, there is food and drink in this cooler because we are exhibitors who need to eat and we are a long-standing exception to the rules on that.

Exceptions are why exhibitors have a love/hate relationship with security staff, who tend to be temporary hires that were briefed that morning for all of 15 minutes and the briefing was, for example, “no one gets through this door.” Often omitting crucial riders like, “unless they are exhibitors with an official confirmation letter authorizing them.” Because that’s happened. I’ve had a letter from the convention organizers that in boldfaced print says LET THIS GUY IN THROUGH THIS DOOR and the security guy won’t let us in, because his scant-yet-absolute orders are NO ONE GETS IN an  there’s no one around to override him.

But on the other hand, Matthew Sterling, right? But on the other other hand, cavity searching every exhibitor and their merchandise would be… impractical. On Saturday at Long Beach I did check out the lobby in the morning and exhibitors were bringing in their stuff through the front, so I asked if they’d had any trouble and they reported that after from some grumbling and arguing, security was allowing them to pass. As one does, I ween, when confronted not with a singular backpack but a rolling cart stacked to the brim with containers secured for transport.

So where do we go from here? Probably the same old same old from an exhibiting standpoint, as any convention which started making exhibitors pry open all their crates before entry and letting poorly-trained temps paw through their merchandise likely wouldn’t have exhibitors for long.

Other than that though, I figure that like it or not, the metal detectors and potential pat-downs are going to be here for the foreseeable future.

So you might have heard of an obscure little indie film called Black Panther that opened this past week, and by indie I mean Marvel Studios/Disney and by obscure I mean a wide release that shattered all expectations to become a opening weekend phenomenon that joins the likes of the Star Wars and Jurassic Park franchises, to say nothing of the superhero genre of which only the mighty Avengers did better.

There are many thinkpieces on why this is, such as it benefiting from the Marvel Studios branding, but although that branding has been shown potent enough to get movies like Ant-Man and Doctor Strange into profitable territory, Black Panther’s opening weekend combined with positive reviews and good word-of-mouth seems to me like it’s no longer out of the question that it could break a billion dollars worldwide by the time its run ends.

It’s no question a cultural phenomenon. But having seen it I will declare it’s also a well put together film with a strong script and strong performances nearly across the board, and that includes one key aspect: the villain.

Or antagonist, if you prefer. I’ve written before about how some of the most compelling villains are the ones who from their perspective are the heroes of the story. Without delving far into spoiler territory, I think it’s safe for me to state that Killmonger–the main antagonist of Black Panther–fits this bill. That’s right, Ryan Coogler took a Marvel Comics character with the name Killmonger and made him not only not a laughingstock but arguably one of the best foils to ever grace the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I mean, much love to James Gunn but he basically just turned Taserface into a joke. I can’t really blame Gunn for that I suppose, but Coogler decided to step up to the challenge instead.

Mind you, conventional wisdom holds that the quality of the antagonists is one of the greatest ongoing weaknesses of the MCU franchise so one might accuse me of damning with faint praise, but I’m really not. Killmonger is so convinced of the rightness of his cause he just might carry you along with him at times, and perhaps most striking of all, his actions cause the hero himself to re-evaluate how he looks at the world. That’s pretty amazing and something I can’t really say I achieved with Muriel even though I might have gotten the “righteous cause” bit down.

So again, can’t really say any more without stepping into spoiler territory, but if you go see Black Panther (or are planning to see it again) it’s worth keeping an eye on Killmonger and thinking about what makes him tick, because you could certainly do a lot worse as a template for your own baddies.

No, don’t worry, that’s not code for a heroin habit. Interesting story behind that whole bit of slang, though.

Means it’s time to get back on the convention circuit again after a few months of downtime. Dust off the storage bins, check the inventory, and load up the car for a weekend of tabling at the Long Beach Comic Expo.

I’ll admit, last year’s Expo didn’t go so great, and it certainly didn’t help that both Dawn and I were “playing hurt.” Literally. Her hip was flaring up and I was dealing with a broken toe, all factors which will make you feel really, really young… so perhaps top that off with a bit of depression and stir in an underwhelming amount of sales and you had a recipe for bleah.

Now part of me says that means this year has nowhere to go but up! And another part says to keep the expectations low. And a third part says just chill out and go and see what happens. That last part is probably the best voice to heed. Whatever else, the Expo tends to be a fairly chill experience and that’s a good thing when you’re just trying to get everything sorted and get your mind back in the game. It being President’s Day weekend here in the States will also help since we can take advantage of a Friday load-in, and then Saturday all we have to do is drive down, throw off our tablecloth cover and be ready to go. I cannot express enough how nice it is to be able to not have to load-in and then do a full day’s conventioning on the same day. It’s so much less stressful and definitely less sweaty, but on the other hand due to day job commitments or costs or distance, sometimes you just have to suck it up and face a 10 plus hour day including travel and manual labor. That is not chill at all.

The best of all is if you can afford a hotel stay, but… that’s a matter of affording a hotel stay, and that’s getting more and more expensive every year. It’s not something we can justify for Long Beach which is usually no more than an hour from our house, but still, when we have to factor in setup that’s another two hours and so we’re waking up at what my ex-military father would term “oh dark thirty.” A Friday setup means some extra gas spent and possibly parking fees if we can’t finagle a spot in the loading docks, but it also means being able to wake up after the sun rises and getting on our (Subaru) horse with the pleasant knowledge that we’re looking at maybe five minutes of table prep once we arrive.

I don’t know what exact price tag to put on that but feeling but as first outings for 2018 go, I’m going to be happy to be a part of it.

I admit, sometimes I feel like I’m making all this up as I go.

I’m not, believe me… but on the other hand, I do allow for a certain amount of malleability in getting from Idea A to Publication B. Still, here I am, greatly cognizant of the need to be putting a bow on these last several issues with the thought of eventual collection into a second print volume. The first compromise on that point was letting seven issues extend into eight, since I wasn’t feeling the closure yet. Now comes the second compromise, where after seven episodes of exactly 24 installments, this eighth episode since the end of the first volume will now be extending past that.

I mean, these are all self-inflicted constraints. I’m making the rules and so I can damn well break them if I have the notion. And man, do I have the notion. I wrestled with the idea of stopping here, this week, at the 24th “page.” Dawn had no objections, but as I nudged and smudged and hemmed and hawed at my draft, it just didn’t click. The gut said no, despite last week’s comic finally coming full circle and presenting the teaser image at the beginning of episode 14 in context. It was certainly tempting what with the day job being a busy time right now, but nah, there’s a few more pages needed. By the end of those pages I hope to have a good, worthwhile arc completed, even if it might not be as clear-cut as the first.

No going back on the decision now, in any case. Onwards!

Somewhere in nearly nine years(!) of blog postings I’ve probably talked about this before, but it bears repeating for any of you aspiring scribes out there.

There will come a time when even when you know exactly what you want to happen next, you will figuratively hit a wall on how to express that properly in the story. Even if you have it all outlined — hell, even sometimes when you’ve got a draft, you’ll suddenly be seized with the surety that not only is what you currently have inadequate, you’re not up to the task of making it right. Your brain becomes a whirl of all sorts of thoughts but they’re mostly anxieties and recriminations that aren’t doing anything but make you feel terrible.

And it’s at this point I force myself to walk away.

Now, this won’t work for everyone, and certainly won’t work in every situation. If you’re up against a deadline, having a nap or taking a stroll may not be an option… but then again, although I love procrastination as much as the next Joe or Jane, this is why I tend to leave time available to procrastinate. That may sound very strange to read, and yet it’s the truth: I like to tackle the current writing project at least a day or two beforehand, just in case I get clobbered with a heavy helping of writer’s block. I don’t mean just thinking about it but actually getting the words down and the panels visualized so that if something isn’t working there’s some leeway to do other than become a frazzled mess forcing myself to stare at uncooperatively blank pages. Animals evolved their fight-or-flight response as a means of self-preservation, but when you stress yourself to that level it’s no good for thinking.

That’s my experience, at least. It’s like when I’m looking for my keys (again), cursing myself for losing track of them, cursing the universe for being so big and key-swallowing, or just plain cursing as I rove back and forth through our tiny (and yet somehow insurmountably vast) apartment getting more and more upset. And then I collapse on the couch in miserable defeat, slumped and stumped… and a few minutes later as my brain quiets, a gentle thought rings through of somewhere I’ve missed, and lo and behold when I get up and follow that thought the keys are found.

Thus it is with writing, sometimes:

GrrArghHateSelfHateWorldImposterSyndromeYouSuckEverythingSucksThereIsNoWayToMakeThisWorkJustChuckItAll…

And then I make myself stop. Play a videogame. Watch a show. Do that horrid thing you’re never supposed to do and chill out for awhile on Social Media. Maybe even the biggest extreme where I just shelve it all for the night and go to bed, for tomorrow is another day. Epiphanies can come at the oddest of times, but for me they definitely like to arrive after a decent sleep when I come back to that page I was having trouble with and the answer is just right there, just waiting for me to fit it into place as if there was never any trouble at all.

Oftentimes as a writer it’s good to let others take a look for a fresh perspective. But sometimes, the fresh perspective you’re looking for is your own. You just need to let it be heard.

I sort of was going to talk about this two weeks ago but went off on a tangent about the vagaries of the cosmos and our notions of the calendar, which felt more interesting. Probably still is. But anyhow, Dawn and I are easing into 2018, slowly and cautiously. I mean it doesn’t help that we’ve been sick (along with half the rest of the nation, it seems) but we haven’t exactly been sprinting from the starter gun.

I don’t mean in terms of the story, of course, we’re back on our weekly schedule with that for the time being. But there’s all the other stuff. Gotta put together our sales tax report by the end of this month. Had to send in paperwork and money for Long Beach Comic Expo. Still have to send in paperwork and money for WonderCon — we’re confirmed, but I need to get the table invoice paid and our BOE 410-D form in.

If you don’t know what BOE 410-D form is, consider yourself lucky.

Okay I exaggerate. In truth I’ve found doing convention business in the state of California to be fairly painless. The state was perfectly willing to grant us a free permanent seller’s permit even way back when we were starting out and has been very patient and helpful when I do my yearly call to the BOE (that’s Board of Equalization) because I forgot how to do the yearly return again. Again I exaggerate somewhat since last year I finally remembered enough to submit it on my own, so this year it’s about time to see if I can repeat the feat. Now that we’ve started recording our convention sales totals through Square’s register app, whether they be cash or charge, it also saves me the trouble of hunting through and checking tallies on various order books.

I keep feeling like I’m forgetting some crucial deadline or failing on a follow-through I ought to be checking up on, but we just got in our POD order of Issue #12 floppies well in time for the start of the convention season. Long Beach is in less than a month so I should check and see if they’ve got the maps up yet, but no huge need for lead time there. WonderCon I really ought to check on again in terms of the deadlines for the program books, etc. but as of a couple weeks ago nothing was there yet, so I can’t feel too bad. The hotel stay is all taken care of. So even as I might feel at times adrift and unglued, as it were, the empirical evidence suggests adulting (for this given value of adulting) is indeed still happening. Good enough.

Weird discovery today: the word “overwhelmed” is redundant.

I mean first I was just looking up “whelmed” on writerly whim because I wasn’t 100% sure it was in the dictionary. Logically it should be, and yet I never hear someone saying how whelmed they are at work. Yet beyond confirming its existence, the dictionary provided the following definitons: “to submerge; engulf…to roll or surge over something, as in becoming submerged.”

And most notable of all: “to overcome utterly; overwhelm”

In other words (heh), the notions behind “whelm” and “overwhelm” are entirely the same, except the one in common usage adds an unnecessary modifier of two extra syllables. It’s like the people who say “irregardless” except in this case both words are in the dictionary and no one ever bats an eye at all of us who all these years have been basically expressing how whelmily whelmed we are. We are overoverwhelmed. It would arguably be more grammatically correct to phrase an extreme state of whelmedness as “I am so damn whelmed, dude!”

But the general populace would no doubt give you funny looks about that, the way William Safire gets funny looks when he orders “two Whoppers Junior” at Burger King (I suspect William Safire does not really frequent Burger King for meals, though, no matter his claims to the contrary).

So anyhow, another example of how being grammar police in the English language sometimes feels like you’re a corrupt cop, or maybe at best an honest cop trying to make their way in a corrupt system. How do you get out there every day and stamp on that new crop of “your an idiot”s and “the truth is out their”s when you know you’re ultimately defending an institution that is arguably broken to begin with?

It’s enough to leave one whelmed.

You know, sometimes dates feel very significant to me, and other times I just think about how arbitrary they all are. Last week was January 1st in the year 2018 because a consensus of humanity decided it was so. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s not even very logical from a natural standpoint. True, it’s based on the journey of the Earth around the Sun, but you could mark any point along that elliptical path as the end of the old cycle and the start of the new. If I had to pick that point I’d probably base it off the Winter Solstice, because that would seem logical to me as the point where the days stop getting shorter and start getting longer again. Decent enough “death and rebirth” metaphor, right? And as close as the cosmos is ever going to get to caring.

I’d be really wrong though because that’s a Northern Hemisphere thing. Pure Northism, yo. Also if I’d done five minutes of googling I’d learn about perihelion and aphelion and that this year the perihelion of the Earth was January 2nd (in Los Angeles at least), which is pretty damn close to when we celebrate the turning.

If you didn’t follow that link, perihelion is the point in the Earth’s orbit where it is closest to the sun, while aphelion is when it is furthest away. And here’s something to really throw logic for a loop: perihelion is the dead of Winter for the Northern Hemisphere, while aphelion is in the heights of Summer.

That’s right, it’s the coldest time of year for us when we’re closest to the big ball of fire. Maybe the Australians and their fellow Southern Hemisphere dwellers–who have Winter in July when Earth is in aphelion–don’t have it so backwards after all?

So it’s of course the axial tilt of the Earth and not its closeness to the sun that has far more effect on Seasons and temperatures, but still, that’s funky to try to wrap your brain around. It’s like you put your hands closer to the fireplace but because you tilted your fingers away, they’re freezing. Now draw your hand back but tilt the fingers towards and wow, that’s hot! Don’t quite make sense, at least not with that analogy.

But wait! There’s even more evidence the Universe doesn’t give one flying fart about our attempts to schedule it, and that’s how Earth’s orbit doesn’t stay constant. In fact it’s so erratic that in the year 2020 perihelion will have moved 2 days forward. And looking at the long term is even worse, because in the year 1246 was a couple weeks earlier and actually did line right up with the Northern Hemisphere’s Winter Solstice. Meanwhile astronomers calculate that 4000 years from now perihelion in the North will be in March on the Spring equinox.

I mean, assuming there’s still a concept of “March” by then. Or “Spring.” Or humans.

You know the thing people arguably take the most for granted in Science Fiction? Using our modern Earth timekeeping in settings where we’ve moved beyond Earth. God forbid you got a mogwai on Babylon 5 because what the hell does “don’t feed them after midnight” even mean in that case?

Anyhow I suppose all of these thoughts were way more interesting to me than the turning of the year, which I am facing without much in the way of either hope or dread. The cosmos continues to cycle, and thus, so shall I.

No blog this week, folks — I am wrecked, and not even the good kind of wrecked that might have come from partying too hard on New Year’s Eve. However, nothing that some rest shouldn’t cure. Hope everyone had a decent turning of the annum!

So… we “have a guy,” as they say. He prepares our taxes every year. For the longest time I did my own, then several years after Dawn and I got married I did them for both of us, and then one year I tallied everything up as usual and instead of getting a refund or breaking even, we owed a significant hunk of change. We weren’t really making any more money than before so we’re talking about having to pay money we didn’t have. I checked twice more over, couldn’t figure it out. Something in the laws had changed, something expired perhaps… I think it might have been the earned income credit? The fact I wasn’t sure was the worst part. Well no, the worst part was having a month to figure out where we were going to scrounge up that extra cash on short notice.

It worked out, but after that I swallowed my pride and got a guy, the same guy that friends I trusted had already been using. And yep, he’s good. Up until we started using him I’ll admit I was scared of putting anything “Studio” related on our return because I didn’t know what the laws were on doing such. He got that straightened out. It’s not cheap, but after he takes his fee we’ve still come out consistently ahead of that one awful year.

Now the tax situation in the States is set for a big change again and there’s a lot of confusion about what and what didn’t make the final bill that was signed, and who it benefits and who it hurts. At first there were scary rumors about “pass-through” deductions being eliminated, which would have been a huge hit on us and other small-timers like us. That thankfully has been reported to not be the case, or was walked back after protest, or whatever. As for what else is changing or not changing as a result of that massive 400+ page document, well… I’m glad we’ve got a guy so we can spend our Holidays with more cheer than worry.