Hey guys, it's Scott.
It is Thursday, January 12th and I can't believe how fast this month is moving, it is just crazy! But I'm just going to do a very short post today, answer a couple of your questions, and also just give you a quick prep for next week's class. I'm super excited—January 18th on Wednesday, 9pm ET live, we'll be doing our second session of Comic Writing 102, where we look at your work along with published work to create one big comprehensive lesson for the month. So this month, we have some incredible student work by some great aspiring writers and artists. For our longer piece. we're going to be looking at a superhero story called Adastra about a young woman with shapeshifting abilities in a wholly creator-owned superhero universe by Omari Malik and Ronaldo Barata. And for a shorter piece, we're going to be looking at a really haunting little gem called “The Beekeeper’s Due” by Jimmy Stamp and Débora Santos. And as a counterpoint for the published work we're going to give you kind of a whole host of stuff, but the main things we're going to be looking at are Rogue Sun #1 from the Massive-Verse and a short called “Just Some Guy” from Amazing Fantasy #1000, the celebration of Spider-Man's anniversary. So we'll have a couple other pieces in there, we're going to put in Static #1, Kamala Khan’s Ms. Marvel #1, all to sort of browse after the lesson, but primarily look at those first few pieces. Be ready for Wednesday night. If you can't read them in time, I still go over them, but please, it'll serve you a lot better to familiarize yourself with those four things. Ty puts the links right here, best assistant in the universe, in the multiverse, and the omniverse right here (BOTTOM OF THE POST FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS).
And what I want you to think about the lens through which to look at this work is fundamental to the class, it's kind of the primary thing I always try and keep as the compass for the whole class—writing something that matters to you. So when I asked you to look at things I always ask you first, what's the fundamental question? The question is, what is this trying to say? And what is this about? So for this week, we're going to be looking at balancing communicating what a comic is about with enough breathing room so that it doesn't necessarily feel incredibly airtight and not give room for interpretability. So sometimes you'll write something that maybe doesn't communicate something as clearly as you want. Other times you might write something that communicates it so clearly that there isn't a lot of wiggle room or a room for interpretation. And so we're going to be trying to talk about striking that perfect balance in between, use it as a lens to look at things all week long before we go. So when you're watching a scripted drama on television, when you go see a movie, when you're reading a novel, whatever it is, think about it through that writer's lens to prepare for the class. It'll be a lot of fun.
So just a quick thank you, also, to everybody that submitted. We've gotten such great stuff, we have enough for at least two semesters, but keep sending. We look at new stuff all the time. And again, I just want to say thank you for trusting us with such great work. I'm really, really excited to dig in and just show it off and also to share it with everybody and use it as a text to learn more about writing all together.
Okay, so for the two quick questions:
DarioMorgan asks, “What was the work that you went into with the most self assurance you've ever had?”
Oh, my God. Well know that like the most self assurance I've ever had is, like, level two of ten. I always go in nervous, I always go in anxious, I always worry, “this is the one where they're everybody's going to figure out I'm a big fraud.” We all feel that way all the time. I think the most assurance I've ever had, if I think about it, on an issue was probably Batman #51, I think it was. Our last issue of Batman from me and Greg.
We had tried all of this stuff that I was worried about from the very beginning, giving Bruce a possible evil brother in Court of Owls and we had created the Court of Owls itself, which I wasn't sure people would buy into, then we had Joker without his face, and then we had Joker come back and pretend to be immortal, and we had Gordon as Batman, and we re-did Batman's origin, all this stuff that I was constantly in love with, but terrified of. It was ours, and it was personal to me, and it was swinging for the fence in all the ways that mattered to me on that book. And yet, every issue I sweated. James Tynion IV will tell you I had a panic attack every issue for five years. And that last issue, when I knew all the tough stuff was done, and it was a thank you to the fans, that last issue were Batman essentially takes a tour thinking something's gonna go wrong that night. He's waiting for anything bad to happen, and for one night, nothing goes wrong. Everything is quiet. And it was meant as a tour of Gotham and the answer to the question that we posed in the very first issue of our whole run together—what is Gotham? The opening lines of Court of Owls, in those first pages, we start describing a column that was in the Gotham Gazette that Bruce grew up with where they would ask what is Gotham? and the answer to that is—Gotham is you. It's all you readers that make it real. So on that issue, I've never been calm or going in to something.
Okay, for the second question:
196RelesAbe asks, “Is there any non-comics character in fiction that you have a strong desire to write (i.e. Buck Rogers, The Shadow, Flash Gordon)?”
Oh my god, all three of those. But yes, I would say Godzilla. I know there are Godzilla comics, but Godzilla is my favorite kaiju. I grew up as a little kid with Sunday monster matinees on Channel 11 WPIX in New York City, on these Godzilla marathons, and since I was very, very little, Godzilla has been my favorite. And I have a lot of stories in my head for his whole mythology and going all the way back to the beginning of the universe to the end. So Godzilla is one of them. Sherlock Holmes is another, I would love to write Sherlock Holmes. I'd love to write James Bond. And I think another one, Robocop, I would love to go into that mythology. There are tons. There are too many now. Now as I started to think about it, I'm like this, this, this, this. But I'd have to put Godzilla at the top of my list.
Also, thank you, guys, for the early birthday wishes, I appreciate it. Thank you for the comments on my crappy beard.
This is the closest I've ever gotten to a beard in my life. This is, like, over a month of not shaving, essentially. And it’s still terrible. But I'm just rolling with it and going for it, so why not, right? And then I'll give you a heads up that on Wednesday of next week, before our class, I'm actually getting a tattoo! I have a few, you don't see them my shoulders and back or anything, but it's not my first. But I'm getting one of the symbols of Best Jackett, because this has been such an incredible couple of years of going out and doing our own thing!
And having you guys show up and make every part of it inspiring and exciting and terrifying and nerve wracking, but awesome. So I felt what better thing to do, than kind of go out and get a tattoo that says “bet on yourself,” right? Bet on the people you care about, that you trust, that inspire you and all that. And you guys are a big part of that. So thank you very, very much and I can't wait for next week!
Oh, and last thing, but thank you so much for the kind words on Book of Evil! This book is obviously really special to me and Jock. We have some big news coming about Wytches soon. I know we always say that, but we really really do this time. And the fact that you guys are responding to it so positively when it's such a passion project for me and him really means a lot to us. We wanted to try something different with it to get at material even more deeply, and the response has just been phenomenal. So thank you so much for checking that one out!
S
P.S. Here’s just some fun photos I saw this week that I wanted to share:
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