Hey guys, it's Scott.
And it is Sunday, January 8th (at the time of recording). It is Elvis Presley's 88th birthday today, wherever you are, king of rock and roll. I hope you enjoyed it, go listen to some Elvis if you can today, Ty will put a couple of posts here some of my favorite songs:
Hope you guys had a great weekend! Happy New Year, again. A couple quick housekeeping things. We have Book of Evil #2 coming out from Comixology this week on Tuesday the 10th.
I am so proud of the series. I know I say it about pretty much all the series, because it's true, honestly. But this is a really different kind of book from us that I hope you'll check out. It's predominantly prose with spot illustrations, but it's meant to read as this artifact. So it's beautifully constructed by Emma Price, obviously the co-creator is Jock, so art by him, and it imagines a future where 92% of the population are born psychopaths and it's totally from the point of view of kids growing up in this world who are not yet psychopaths, and likelier to become them. So it's just kind of a super dark and twisted coming of age story in this total pitch-black horror world.
But anyway, that's Tuesday, I hope you'll check it out. Also, I just wanted to say thank you. So many of you that are in the Black Jackett tier have started coming to office hours. So I've been doing office hours every week and it's five to ten minutes, essentially, that are just open slots, and anyone that's in that tier can come talk to me about anything. And people have started showing me their work, which has been incredible. And so I try and look at it and give you advice, and so it's been super inspiring, honestly. It makes me feel like I’m teaching in a even more comprehensive way, so I just want to say thank you to everybody that's trusting me with your work. I hope more of you will come in and try that. We actually we got a number of people who wanted to join the Black Jackett tier, so we built out the infrastructure a tiny bit, just because we accidentally led into many people. So if you're interested, we're still going to have a few spots that we're going to keep open. But again, we have to limit it to a certain number, still, at this point, which my manager is figuring out. But if you want to do it, it's open. I hope you'll check it out! Also, our class is the week after this week. It is a week from Thursday, I really hope you guys will come check it out. If you're free subscribers, this is where we use student work and published work. We're gonna post the work at the end of this week, but we already know what we're using, I'm just kind of refining the last bits of the class. I think it's going to be one of our best ones, so I hope you'll check it out!
So I thought what I do is because so many of you have been asking me for more behind the scenes stuff about what it's like working in comics. And I think it helps to demystify it a bit—what it's like to work in the industry, to break into the industry. I thought I'd kind of do a series now and then. If you guys like it, I can do it every week. But it’d be maybe every other week or so where I talk about different turning points in my career, moments that I really almost fucked things up or did or didn't proudly and instead did something smart for once. But it’s just sort of the different junctures and the different transitional moments in my career that taught me things or that I learned from and that I thought I could maybe provide some educational value to you guys if you're aspiring writers or just maybe amusement, if not. So I thought I'd start at the beginning and talk to you about the first time I ever really got to pitch for superheroes.
So I had already gotten American Vampire through. That was basically accepted a year earlier and we had our first issue coming out soon. It had either just come out, I think, or was coming out that month. But it was, like, March of 2010 and I got invited to C2E2—first con I've ever gone to as a pro, that's why it's always going to be one of my favorites (I'm going to be there this year, by the way, out in Chicago). They were the first con to officially invite me and pay my way instead of me paying my own way and hustling. And I was so excited, and they brought Rafael Albuquerque too, so the two of us were going. It was our first creator on series, I was finally broken into comics. And I was already nervous enough, and I think I've told you guys the story about how we sat at a table and at one point they sat us with Joe Kubert and Rafa was literally tearing up. I mean, I was blown away, but I felt so great for him to be sitting with one of his idols. That was the highs, and then the lows of, like, handing out American Vampire #1 to people to be like, “check it out!” And then watching them take it about 10 feet away and throw it out, and then we’d be getting the copy out of the garbage and putting it back on the table, like wiping it off.
It was amazing, but one of the crazy things about that convention was that right at the point that I was about to leave, I got an email from who I think was Jim Lee's assistant at the time. I don't remember if it was if it was her or if it was Dan DiDio’s assistant, but essentially I got this message that was like “Dan DiDio, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee—we're all going to be at the convention and we'd love to hear if I was interested in pitching for superheroes, and what that pitch would be if I was interested in doing superheroes in addition to creator-owned.” And so I was nervous out of my mind. I had never met them, first of all. I had never met any of them. I knew I hadn't met Jim or Geoff, I'm pretty sure I had not met Dan either, I think. I had seen him in the hallways in the New York offices, but that was about it. So I was just, like, terrified, terrified, terrified. And I had my The Black Mirror pitch, but at the time, I didn't know what it would be. I mean, I didn't know if Detective was open, I didn't know if Batman would ever open, I didn't know if there was going to be a Gordon book. I had no idea if there was any place for this thing if it was an eight page anthology or what, but I just wanted to do a story about Jim Gordon not being able to solve the case of his own son because he's too close to it in some way, and tying it to this idea of Gotham, always presenting you with your worst nemesis in some way. Because it's like the greatest antagonist in literature because it's like an enemy generator, but an enemy that you have to overcome to become better because it's like the personification of your worst fear.
Anyway, so I get to C2E2 and I have my experiences with Rafael, and I'm all excited and dejected by seeing people throw out the comic, but I'm overall just thrilled. And I'm just completely nerves, just jangling, anxious nerves. And if you've ever been to C2E2, it's held at this very big convention center where they have multiple conventions going at the same time. And at the time I had practiced my pitch about The Black Mirror over and over and over again. But as time got closer to meeting Dan and Jim and Geoff, which was about five o'clock in the afternoon on I think it was a Saturday, and I had been there Thursday/Friday and I was more and more and more nervous. And I'm walking around and at the same time, there was a kitchen convention happening, a kitchen equipment convention. And so it was crazy. It was probably as big as the comic one, they had, like, ovens and refrigerators and all kinds of things, and they had like dancers and stuff that were, like, promoting stoves. But it was really crazy. We were meeting right around that area, the entrance to the convention, And I remember standing there just being like, “you know what, man, I have not had a drink. Maybe if I had one beer or one glass of wine or something, I'll feel more chill and relaxed before this. It’s gonna take the edge off.”
And I'm standing there, and there's a dude, I don't know if he was cosplaying Qui-Gon Jinn or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Because I said to somebody, “do you know if there's a bar in here, or there’s anywhere to get a glass of wine or whatever?” He was, like, “hey, check it out.” And he had taken a bottle of wine, Jedi that he is, off of one of the display tables in the kitchen convention area, because they had bottles of wine to make the countertops look nice. So it'd be like, Oh, look at these marble counters! And it'd be, like, a bowl of fruit and wine or flowers or whatever. So I was, like, “Alright!” So I was like, you know what? No one's in there, they're not gonna miss it, I'm gonna get a bottle of wine. And my editor Mark Doyle was there, he was sort of around the corner, And because they had delayed the meeting, I'm said, “I'm gonna go, I'm gonna have a glass of wine or whatever,” because there was no place to get a drink in the whole convention center.
And so I remember going in and having my hand basically going out almost on this bottle of wine, and then having an image of myself getting arrested or thrown out of the convention and being, like, shuttled by Jim Lee, Dan DiDio and Geoff Johns in, like, handcuffs and being like, “wait, wait, I have a meeting! This is the pitch for The Black Mirror! Gotham, James Gordon Jr., and blah, blah, blah!” as I'm literally being taken down the escalator in cuffs. So luckily, I came to my senses and did not do that and try and steal a bottle of wine from the kitchen convention, because my life might have taken a completely different turn. And instead, I just met them, as nervous as I was, and stone-cold sober. And I did pitch them The Black Mirror. Geoff wasn't there, he had to do something else, but it was Dan and Jim, and Dan did say that he thought there might be an opening on the back of Detective, and that there might be a place for it. And that's literally where The Black Mirror began. And again, I feel like that Obi-Wan or Qui-Gon Jinn was actually a Sith in disguise because my career could have gotten very differently had I given into those impulses.
Alright, so listen, I'm gonna go over to the paid part now. Again, you can always subscribe for $7/month. You get all the classes we've done, access to all the classes coming, you get to skip the line and cons, you get all kinds of good stuff. So if you have any interest, please sign up. But that said, I'm gonna be talking about what I think about this current moment in television and how to apply some of the lessons that I think I've learned, at least, in the writers room and also just in my own work recently, to your work and talking about elevating craft. So if you're interested, again, and you're a free subscriber, you can jump over to the paid section (Ty, put the button below!) by subscribing to the $7/month paid tier. If you're a paid subscriber, just keep listening or reading. Alright guys, talk to you soon!
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