Hey guys, it's Scott.
It’s Wednesday, March 29th. I can't believe it's almost the end of the month and I am functioning on like, two hours of sleep two nights in a row because Quinny has a raging ear infection. The craniotomy he had when he was six months old makes him more susceptible to these kinds of infections and he is not a well dude right now, I feel terrible for him. He's like, wandering around and he has fluid in his ear, so he's like, “what? What Dad? What?” But he's in good spirits. Anyway, I'm very excited about C2E2 this weekend. It’s the first domestic con I've done in like, six months, so I'm really, really thrilled to get out there and say hi to you guys. I can't wait. I have some good friends going—Kyle Higgins, Sean Murphy, of course Tony Daniel (who I can't wait to see and I'm hanging out with a lot), Brian Azzarello, and Charles Soule. So there's a bunch of people that I'm really excited to see. Come by, I really hope you'll come say hi, at least.
Remember, if you are a paid subscriber ($7/month or $75/year), you get to come at the very first 10 minutes of every signing. I have a section that's really just for subscribers, you get to come up early and get your stuff signed without waiting on line. Like I said, I have not been to a domestic con in six months, I've not been to C2E2 since the pre-pandemic days, so the lines are likely to be long, sometimes they're a couple hours. So you can still do it, you can join the paid tier now, get your name on an email list, and then wind up having your own space before the signing actually opens and getting your stuff signed without having to stand there for a very long time.
You also will get a 30% discount on the VIP night, that event that me and Tony Daniel from Nocterra are doing Saturday night. It's going to be really fun, we have giveaways, you meet us, get stuff signed, you get pictures with us, all kinds of stuff. So you get to hang, it'll be great. If you're a Black Jackett member, that's free for you, so just come by. Also, I'm going to try and set something up on Saturday before the VIP event where you can come say hello, I'll see if I can just hang out at the hotel lobby bar, that kind of thing, and just be there in case you guys want to come up and say hello and chat comics or any that kind of stuff. I'm trying to make myself available. Honestly, the highlights of the last few months have been getting to know you guys, meet you in the Black Jackett one-on-ones, see you at cons, all that kind of stuff. So I'd like to make more time for it. So I'm really hoping you'll come by and say hi in Chicago, so do!
Also, the Wytches writers room starts on Monday, I can't believe it! I'm going to announce who’s in it really soon. I thought I'd do it today. B, but I just don't want to jump the gun and cause any kind of Twitter blowback. But we have amazing people. I have a great co showrunner, we have a fantastic upper level writer, and then we have two more people also joining the room that will announce once everything starts. But yes, Monday, wish me luck. So I'm going to Yankees opening day on Thursday, Friday is when I'm flying to Chicago at 5:30 in the morning, I’m doing the con Saturday/Sunday, I fly back Sunday night, and then the room starts Monday. So hopefully I will be here Tuesday to report back and I'm not a skeleton somewhere.
But okay, so it's Tuesday, so two questions. And the way that I'm gonna do this post is going back to the format that we used to use. I'm going to keep this one up. I kind of just started talking too much and forgetting to do the paid part of the posts, but from now on we're going to have the free part and the part for paid subscribers that’s going to be really fun. It's all about favorite characters and how they're introduced and looking at their introductions. So this part I thought I'd answer to your questions. The first question is:
HobGadling asks, “I’m wondering what your basic tenets are for researching stories? In other words, what do you research first?”
So I've answered this question in one form, so I thought I'd change it because one of the other versions of this question that I got was, when I'm doing research, is it helpful for me to read things like my own, like, what I'm going for? Like, if I'm going to do Clear, do I want to rewatch Blade Runner? Do I want to watch Looper? Do I want to see The Matrix and all the stuff that influences that book like The Big Sleep and all that kind of stuff? Do I want to look at that? Absolutely. I mean, some people don't. For me, I like to take it all in and absorb it because it also reminds me of the things I love about each of those works, and I take inspiration from them, but it also makes me very sort of clear on what I'm going to avoid and how to distill all of it into something that's my own.
So for Clear, for example, I did watch all that stuff. And it was very important to me to create a visual palette that didn't feel like anything like The Matrix, didn't feel like Blade Runner either, didn't feel overwhelming with the things that you see. Instead it felt very dull until you're inside the veils of other people's visions. So you can see the world the way they see it. And then suddenly, it's this kind of kaleidoscopic field. Similarly, looking at the story from something like The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon, wanting to invert some of those tropes so that there isn't just a dead body that's a woman that winds up being the catalyst for the case, but instead, the dead body at the beginning (without spoiling too much of our story) turns out to be the body of a character who's still alive and winds up playing a major role in the story. Also, the woman who seems like the femme fatale takes on another role.
All of it isn't to subvert those just to subvert them. It's because the story is about subverting expectations. Visually, it's about how hidden the truth is. It's about not falling into patterns that make things easy for us. So all of that is part of it. So revisiting all the things that influence that is a really good form of research for me, and I would encourage it. That said, if it makes you worried you're going to write too much like something else you need to be in a black box, go for it, whatever works for you in your own process.
Second question, we got a lot of things about the new relaunches going on at Marvel and DC, so many of which I'm excited for—Tom King on Wonder Woman, Philip Kennedy Johnson on Hulk, Si Spurrier on Flash, just cool stuff up and down the line.
So I'm really excited. I love when the companies refresh things a bit. I love when it's tied to an incentive, also, and it's like, look, we're doing this across the line at a certain point, especially when it's tied together. My favorite versions are when it's tied to a story reason to do it, like an event or an initiative like Rebirth. So it gives a kind of an impetus and a line wide narrative that's going through. My second favorite version is when they just do a kind of All New, All Different where it’s like, you just create an initiative that affords room for new teams to come in and do things. The third favorite, which is not really something I love is like, rebooting and that stuff. But the idea that you can refresh things in a big and comprehensive way is, to me, the lifeblood of comics and exciting. You honor what came before, you try and do things that are new and daring, all of it at the same time. It doesn't need to be either or, it doesn't need to be “reboot or go back to classic,” it can be both at the same time. That's my belief. That’s Death Metal was about and it's kind of the priorities that I would bring back superheroes (if I ever work in them again).
But passing the torch. Passing the torch, to me, the best example of it ever was what Grant did for me. Grant was very welcoming, as I've said many times, and I've talked about meeting them at cons, but I'll tell you a story I haven't told, which is the New York Comic Con, maybe the second year I was on Batman, when the sales of Batman began to really take off and were surpassing Batman Inc.—not that it was more important than Batman Inc. or better than Batman Inc. in any capacity, Grant’s run will always be my favorite one, more than my own or any of that stuff. But Batman will always be the lead book of the Bat-universe. You know, if I do All-Star and All-Star outsells Batman for a month, it will always sink to Batman. Batman Inc, same thing, Batman will take over in this environment post-2010 or whatever when they started really investing in Batman as a flagship book. Before that, I think Batman could sell lower and other books could overtake it, but right now it's boosted in such a way that it will always command the attention. And that could change structurally, definitely, but that's kind of where it is.
So Grant in New York, some people would be angry, like who was I? I was nobody. The sales were doing well, they were rivaling Batman Inc., and then my parents went up to Grant after a panel to just tell them how much I was a fan of theirs. And they pulled them aside and talk to them for like 5 to 10 minutes and told them all the reasons they thought I was a promising writer and why they should be proud of me. And I'm telling you, there's no political gain in that. Like, you're not talking to an editor and acting like a good company person. You're doing it out of kindness. And I've always remembered that. It's one more story why I think Grant’s amazing. My parents tell that story all the time. And I just also love the image of my parents talking to Grant Morrison, who's wearing like, a shirt that says “EVIL,” and like, a suit over it and that stuff.
But anyway, there are three priorities, I think, to passing the torch, and I've tried hard to live by them. And one of them, I think, is just reaching out to the person coming after you and making sure they feel welcome. I tried to do that with Charles Soule, I definitely tried to do that with Tom King, too.
Also, the second thing apart from just as a human being, like, welcoming them to the community, is trying to put the pieces in a position that sets them up the way they want to be set up. For me, on Batman, we got to do everything we wanted to do—push the limits as far as I could with my own skills, I have my own limitations, but that was the farthest that I could do. Having Batman die and be brought back, having him live as not Batman, having Commissioner Gordon be Batman, having Joker pretend to be someone immortal, all of that stuff. I got to do everything. And so now it was time to put the pieces back. And so a lot of the time you do want to leave a couple things changed so it doesn't feel like everything's going back in the box. In that case I did try to put everything back in the box. But you talk to the writer after, you say “what pieces do you want in what formation?” and see if you can set that up. Batman, for me, when Tom came on, was really just about putting everything back for Rebirth. So that's what we did. We undid everything. It wasn't like Batman was gone. It wasn't like villains were off the table, any of that stuff.
Thirdly, being supportive of that person as they go. Because the idea is it's the same thing as teaching. If you can be supportive of the person that comes after you and give them the tools they want and to make something that's their own, there's no competition because they're gonna make something that's so wildly different than what you did that they’re apples and oranges. Like, Grant’s run is completely different than anything that became before, my run is completely different than Grant’s., Tom's run is totally different than mine in all aspects, James is wildly different than Tom's, completely sort of inverts some of the sensibility of Tom's, and then Chip’s is really different than James's. Josh’s was also fantastic.
The whole fun of like, coming in and getting to do something that is your own allows you to stand aside from the people that did stuff before you. So supporting someone in the chance to do that is key, because then they'll make something that isn't competitive with you. And to be fair, you're gonna have bad moments, like we all had our moments when you worry, and you let things get the best of you and you feel like, oh, my God, are they overtaking what I did? Everyone has those feelings, but you do your best to really stay true to the idea that you did your thing and you're proud of it, and they're going to do something that's theirs, and people can love both things equally, or theirs more, yours more, and that's okay.
I will say that I know more than a few writers who had a lot of trouble letting go of the character they were on. Admittedly, it's hard, you're with that character emotionally for years and you live in their shoes for years and years and years, and then to give them to someone else. I forget who said it, but they said it was “like watching somebody else date your ex,” or something. But I think when you do that, when you hold pieces away, or you set them up for failure, or you try to compete with them in another area as opposed to doing things parallel and giving them space—for me, it was important to take Batman out of Gotham, make sure Tom had space in Gotham. But you're always going to have things that crash into each other, you're always going to have moments when you might not agree on the direction of a character, any of that stuff, and you try your best to work it out. But the point is, the more you try and cling to the character in that stuff, the more you are going to wind up in a competitive negative space with the person after you, so torch-passing is hard. I think we all do our best. But yeah, the more you can support the person after you give them the pieces they need and welcome them to the family, the better off everyone's going to be.
Okay guys, see you at C2E2! Now I'm going to do the paid part of the post. So again, feel free to sign up, it's not too late, that seven bucks will get you a lot of benefits, both with the archive of the class, sending your books in to get signed, and if you're in Chicago. Thanks, guys. Again, to $7 a month and you'll hop over to this side and there’s tons of benefits, I hope you'll do it. But no pressure. I'm just happy to have you here as part of Our Best Jackett and can't thank you enough!
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