Hey guys, it's Scott.
And it is Tuesday, January 30th. And I wanted to do a very quick post today just as a two-question Tuesday, and also mostly as a housekeeping post, because we have a couple of really exciting things coming up. First and foremost, Thursday night, just in two days, on February 1st at 9:30pm EST, we are doing our first class on horror. It'll be kind of an intro to horror in comics. And so I'll talk a little bit about the tradition of horror and comics, but mostly it'll be a craft lesson. The things I want to focus on for these classes that are about genre are some of the tools available to you and the advantages that exist in comics as a medium for the genre. So we'll be looking at techniques that you can employ that aren't necessarily available to you in film and TV and prose. The things that I lean on that writers like James Tynion or Mike Moreci or Steve Niles or Mike Mignola, I see them lean on for horror in some of their strongest books. So I'm very excited. We're going to be looking at some great, great comics. We'll look at 30 Days a Night. That's a new addition to the Dropbox (bottom of this link for paid students).
We're going to look at The Deviant, a brand new comic by the great James Tynion:
We'll look at The Incredible Hulk, a little bit of The Immortal Hulk, but mostly, if you can only read one, read The Incredible Hulk.
And we're going to look at a couple student things, too. So I'm excited. We're going to use a bit of your work, some published work, and it'll be a bit of a master class on horror in comics. And again, I think it'll probably be the first of a couple dealing with the genre itself, because it's such a great topic. Can't wait. Thursday at 9:30pm EST. Again, if you are a free subscriber, give it a shot! It's seven bucks. And with seven bucks, you get access to all of the classes we've done in the past. We have ones on character building and emotional conflict versus plot conflict and all kinds of craft elements and genre masterclasses, all things, and interviews with creators like James Tynion and Josh Williamson and Kyle Higgins and Donny Cates and tons. So it should be a lot of fun for you to try out. Again, you can sign up anytime!
Black Jackett members, your books are supposed to be on their way back to you now from Florida. Very excited. So you should get all of your signed books soon. Regular paid tier Best Jackett subscribers, your chance is coming up soon. So you'll be able to send two books of your choice if you pay shipping down to the location in Tampa that I go to to sign and they'll have them for me. I'll fly down there. I'll sign all your books. It winds up usually being a few thousand. So I stay overnight and I will have them sent back to you. So all you have to do is pay shipping. Another good reason to sign up right now for the $7 tier because that's coming up and we only do it once a year! And a big thank you also. The paid tier and the free tier keep growing and I really can't thank you guys enough. I love doing this. I plan on doing it until you'll have no more of me.
Also, this weekend, come down to Orlando Megacon. I will be there Saturday and Sunday. I am flying in early Saturday morning and out Sunday night. I'm going to hang out with a couple of friends there, probably Jason Aaron, Charles Soule, and relax Saturday night. But I am there to work. I'm there to say thank you to you, sign your books. And again, if you're in the paid tier, you'll have a section in front of the main signing times, which I'll post below, that will allow you to come up and skip some of the line. It should be fun. Can't wait to see you!
And today, By a Thread #3 is out. This is the book that I'm working on with my son, Jack Snyder, and the incredible co-creator Valeria Favoccia with Whitney Cogar on colors, she's fantastic as well. And so I really hope you'll check it out. It's a big sci-fi epic about kids growing up in a world where the earth is covered in a strange substance, this kind of living organism that essentially kills you if you step anywhere near it and they're trying to find some kind of safe haven and live above all of it. So we're really proud of it. And again, it's my kid's first comic. We really appreciate the support and the strong reviews so far. So check it out if you can!
Alright, two quick questions:
Christian asks, “what are your thoughts on writing for trending genres versus writing because you love the story idea?”
That's a great question. So I saw this one earlier and I was like, I'm going to focus on this one first because for me, I come up against this a lot, right? Do you chase the zeitgeist or do you write what you feel? And sometimes you know you're against the zeitgeist. I'll give you an example—American Vampire. When I was pitching American Vampire, it was an absolute terrible time to pitch vampire stuff. It was at the end, essentially the height to the end, of the Twilight phase. So if you didn't read those books or know about those movies because they're before your time or you’re just blissfully unaware, they were a whole vampire franchise where vampires were like, teen romance stars and they twinkled in the sunlight and all kinds of stuff like that. It was Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart doing the movie. But they were a big phenomenon. There was a bunch of vampire stuff off of that. And so nobody wanted vampires. And so when I came in and pitched American Vampire, my very first comic to DC, I was very worried that they would just say, “no way, not a chance.” But I felt it was the idea I loved the most out of the ones I was going to pitch, because it was the most me. Honestly, it was like, a horror-based lens through which I could look at American history and all these secret things that could have happened, monster lineage, and mix that with all kinds of historical incidents to do an exploration of American identity.
And so I pitched really hard and was like, “I know that this book is sort of behind the zeitgeist, but I love this book,” and they were kind enough to take it. And one of the funniest things is once Stephen King got involved, after I sold it on a whim, he wanted to do a poster, I think I said this here, but he wanted to do a poster of Skinner Sweet standing on a bunch of handsome teenage boy-looking vampires, all dead, and it was going to be him with his guns and saying “I don’t fucking twinkle.” But DC obviously nixed that. So yes, don't chase the zeitgeist. It never works. You'll always be playing catch up. Do the thing that you would love to pick up and read. It's the golden rule of our class, right? And I really, really believe in it.
Caesar Baez asks, “what kind of thought process goes into making fictional races of creatures, aliens, monsters, and whatnot?”
Great question. For me, it depends on sort of the genre, right? So if I'm doing sci-fi, like Duck and Cover right now has aliens. Spoiler, but there are aliens in it. It's the book I'm doing with Rafael Albuquerque for Comixology. That race, the race of aliens, is essentially a reflection of the things that the characters are most afraid of and that I'm trying to explore as a cultural fear at that moment. And you'll find, I think, if you look back at genres throughout history, not to just be obvious or reductive, but genres are often a way or a vehicle to talk about things that are in the zeitgeist, right? Horror is designed to present something as scary as this monstrous other. So it's almost a delivery system for whatever it is that you want to approach as a cultural or personal fear. Sci-fi is there for something speculative, for a wondrous or terrible sort of prediction about the future. Same thing romance or melodrama is there essentially to talk about the things that hold us back from what we want in the everyday life, but in a heightened way. So they almost exist for you to plug these things into. So with monsters, it's always fears, right? It's always, what is the thing I'm most afraid of at this moment? What do I want to explore? And so I designed a monster around that, right?
So I'll give you an example with Wytches, because it's on my mind as we wrap up the first season of the writer’s room. Wytches was really about me being afraid of being a dad, that first book. The show is very much about, like I said, both the fear of being a father, the trials of that, but also being a kid growing up and seeing your parents in a different light as you become a teenager and a young adult. But I was terrified of being a dad. I thought it would get in the way of my career, which I'd never expected to have. I didn't think I'd have a career like I have. I was afraid I was too selfish. And so both Death of the Family and Wytches were largely about those things. But the idea was to create a monster that would be reflective of that, right? So Wytches, for me, was about creating something that didn't just come out of the ground and eat you, because the witches in that series are these cannibalistic subterranean creatures. Instead that they knew you were bad enough that you would give other people to them to eat to get what you wanted. And so they just live there in these burrows waiting for us to be cruel to each other and to reveal our own worst impulses. And so the monster there was designed to be able to highlight the ways in which that we have things that we don't want to say, but we feel about ourselves, about other people, about the world, and that we're willing to act on those if offered just the tiniest nudge by the wytches.
So that's the idea for me is that with genres like sci-fi, you're creating an extension to the things that you're most hopeful or fearful about the future. With horror, it's the immediacy of the fears that you're dealing with at this moment. And similarly with what you use as a love interest, for example, in melodrama, or what you use as a supervillain or hero in the superhero genre. So it's always about that. Genres are almost delivery systems that you plug things into. But the idea with it is always to try and bend it. Make it something that really speaks to you. That might mean blowing up the kind of genre you're using, or using it by turning it inside out. It might mean blending it with something else. We can do a whole class on that. I mean, there's some real masters in comics who are so amazing at taking a genre and just transcending it. But as they're designed, genres are these mechanical systems of storytelling that you always hope to use and then be bigger than in some way through the power of storytelling and the personal aspects that you're putting into the narrative you're telling.
All right, guys. So listen, Thursday, two days from now, be there, tell a friend, and if you sign up for the paid tier, you get it in archive also. So if you miss it and can't do it live, you can get it the next day. All right. See you soon. Bye!
S
Newsletter #174: Vampires Don't Sparkle