hudsonwrites.com

JOY’S THAT STING | C.S. Lewis

Oh doe not die, says Donne, for I shall hate
All women so. How false the sentance rings
Women? But in a life made desolate
It is the joys once shared that have the stings.

To take the old walks alone, or not at all,
To order one pint where I ordered two,
To think of, and then not to make, the small
Time-honoured joke (senseless to all but you);

To laugh (oh, one’ll laugh), to talk upon
Themes that we talked upon when you were there,
To make some poor pretence of goings on,
Be kind to one’s old friends, and seem to care,

While no one (O God) through the years will say
The simplest, common word in just your way.

Due to some personal set-backs, I will be taking a break from regular updates.

I will resume updating the site towards the beginning of July and have some great new articles planned. So please check back then. I may chime in with some random thoughts here and there, but no major updates.

I will also be attending HeroesCon in Charlotte and would love to meet anyone who occasionally happens upon this site, so if you’re going to be there, and you see me walking around like a doofus, come say hi.

Also, I’m looking for a new day-job. My background is in graphic design, creative writing, & marketing. So if anyone knows anyone who knows anyone… let me know. You can contact me via the contact link to the left.

Thanks! See ya soon…

Most major superhero comics have been around for decades. If you’ve got a story that is being told in monthly issues for decades, you’re going to have quite a bit of continuity to keep up with. I frequently talk about how much I hate this from the POV of a new reader trying to pick up a book for the first time. Amazing Spider-man is on issue #559. Batman is on issue #676. That’s a lot to catch up on.

The industry does it’s best to make stories accessible, but at the same time, the core audience thrives on this continuity. Because there is something fun about picking up a book, wondering where a character or story came from, talking about it on online forums, exploring old issues, looking it up on wikipedia… it creates this gigantic interactive world that is more than just a story in 22-pages. And with all my complaining, I actually really dig the idea of this. It’s fun and it’s on such a grand scale… something that you don’t really experience with any other medium.

However, comics history is riddled with many ideas that are (to put it kindly) a little embarrassing.

Writer Grant Morrison is kind of a master of embracing past ideas and making them new. He’s done this with the great All-Star Superman book (where he even makes elements such as Krypto the Superdog, Bizarro, & a super-powered Lois Lane seem cool) as well as New X-Men. When he was first beginning his run on New X-Men he said:

“I think everyone agrees that we can no longer afford to be bogged down by 40 years of the most convoluted continuity in comics… we have to find a way be faithful to the sprawling X-MEN mythos without being shackled by events in stories written thirty years ago, for a different world and a very different audience. My intention is to use the rich history of the X-MEN more as background window dressing and as a treasure trove of material we can recut for a new eager audience.”

I think this is the very best way to please long time fans as well as new readers and I think it should be the goal of every writer working on a decades-old property:

Don’t be ashamed or where you came from. Embrace it. Then move on.

I think this is a great philosophy in life as well. There are some definite continuity issues in my own life. I’d love to erase parts of my past that I’m embarrassed or ashamed of… from getting into a bad relationship, ultimately ending in divorce - to letting one of the true loves of my life, music, slip through my hands - to throwing up at assembly in 7th grade or farting in algebra class in 8th.

I’d love to just get rid of my 30 years of continuity and start over. But just like in comic books… I can’t. What’s done is done. It’s out there, written in stone. There’s no changing it.

So, what choice do you have?

Put yourself out there. You can embrace your faults without being proud of them. Learn from your mistakes and move on. Let people explore the “wikipedia” & back-issues of your life. They’ll either embrace it or they won’t. And if they don’t, you’re better off without them. Life is too short to spend life with people who don’t accept you for who you are… mistakes and all.

Some other blog folk have done this, so why not me

1. What was the first comic you remember reading?

My cousin & childhood friend, Ashford, had a copy of Spider-Man #1 that was my introduction to comics.  I remember flipping through it and how cool it seemed.  I was in 6th grade at the time and because of some recent rough times, I needed some escapism.  And I remember going to the comic book store for the first time shortly after to begin my own jouney into comics and I ran across New Warriors #1.  I was drawn to the young cast, to the team aspect of the book (more characters!) and to the fact that it was a first issue that I could jump onto easily.  It actually didn’t have a bad team on the book at the time: Mark Bagley on art with Fabian Nicieza on words.  I ate it up.  I stuck with the book until about issue 2… they had moved onto a new artist by then and I just wasn’t into it. Shortly after I fell in love with the Image books, and shortly after that, I dropped out of comics all together.

2. What was the first comic that made you realize that you might be in this for the long haul?

I guess I’d have to go with the book that got me back into comics.  After a 10 year break (I tried to keep up a little over the years picking up books here and there) I had heard good things about a book called Runaways.  It had all the same things in it that first interested me in comics to begin with… young characters, team aspect, first collected edition.  And it was in a cool format - full-color “digest-size”.  I liked the feel of it in my hands.

Of course all of this wouldn’t mean anything if the book didn’t introduce me to my favorite comic book writer, Brian K. Vaughan.  The story read like a fast-paced movie with real teenage emotions and clear themes.  It was fantastic.  I was hooked for good.  Not only did I start reading comics again, I knew at that moment that I had to write them.

3. If you had to make a snap decision to take one comic or one comic run to a desert island, what would it be? Don’t think too hard!

Scott Pilgrim.  It’s fun, it cracks me up, it inspires me, and it feels like hanging out with old friends.  Also, if I get bored, I can bring some crayons and color in the pages.  How’s that for not thinking hard?

“So go out and live real good and I promise you’ll get beat up real bad. But, in a little while after you’re dead, you’ll be rotted away anyway. It’s not gonna matter if you have a few scars. It will matter if you didn’t live.” - RICH MULLINS

My life has always been balanced with death.

I lost my 37-year-old father at the age of 8 to a car accident. My best friend killed himself at the age of 22. The same year, my first cousin died in a car accident. He was 27. All of my grandparents were dead by the time I turned 25.

Last night I dreamed that my 4-year-old son slipped off of a cliff and fell to his death. I spent the rest of the dream trying to find him, but everywhere I turned, I found a dead end.

The one thing we all have in common is death. We are all going to die. Maybe at the ripe old age of 80. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe right now.

For the past few weeks, months, years… I’ve been struggling with my existence. I grew up with a strong belief in God… that everything in life will work out if you trust him. Well, I still have a strong belief in God… but that bit about trust and everything working out has flown out the window. Because nothing in life is certain. Nothing is a guarantee, except for death. I don’t say that to sound bleak, it’s just a truth…. death and taxes.

I watched the movie Cloverfield last night and I feel like this was a heavy theme of the film. Throughout the film, it “flashes-back” (in a quite ingenious way) to scenes of a guy and one of his best friends, a girl, who he’s been pining after for years, as they spend a “perfect” day together. This perfect day is just waking up, hanging out, riding the train, going to the fair… simple, happy… a perfect day. This is all balanced with the massive amounts of death in the movie. It’s really quite beautiful.

I believe that the real joy in life is found in the moments of simplicity:

The feeling of finishing a great book…
…eating a great meal…
…watching a movie while holding a loved one in your arms…
…the magic of chocolate meeting peanut butter…
…choosing the right lane which zips you past a traffic jam…
…catching up with old friends…
…the wind blowing through your hair as you ride your bike down a hill…
…the pride that comes in creating a beautiful piece of art…
…being greeted with a hug…
…a child’s laughter…
…singing in the shower…
…the touch of the opposite sex sending shivers up your spine…
…being able to become a child again, and just playing…
…learning something new…
…finding a common interest with a stranger…
…a great concert, so enjoyable you can’t keep from smiling…
…the feeling of cool sand beneath your toes…
…cold air conditioner on a hot summer day…
…a warm car on a cold winter one…
…the smell of a loved one…
…the beauty of a sunset…
…exploring a new city…
…windows down, music blasting…
…fill in your perfect moment in the comments below.

I am on a journey to rediscover that trust in God. I don’t know if it’s a discovery as much as it is a decision. Maybe I’ll find it, maybe I won’t. But I do know that life is short. We will all die soon (in the grand scheme of things.) So, there is no point in sitting around and complaining. And I feel like that’s what I’ve been doing for a good long while now. So, I am making the decision to get up, get out, be who only I can be, and live life to it’s fullest. To touch, taste, feel, smell, and experience life. To spend every moment creating, living, loving, laughing… relaxing. Too much time is wasting.

I’ll end with one of my very favorite stories:

A monk is running through the jungle. A tiger is right on his tail. He gets to the edge of a cliff and he looks over. It runs down into a deep abyss. He grabs onto a vine and begins to shimmy his way down. The tiger catches up, but the monk is now out of reach. The monk reaches the edge of the vine… nowhere to go. If he goes up, he’ll be devoured by the tiger. If he goes down, he’ll fall to his death into the deep abyss.

In this moment of despair, he looks right in front of his face. He sees a small vine of strawberries. He reaches out, grabs a strawberry and takes a bite. The juices flow from his mouth as he says “this is the best strawberry I’ve ever had in my life.”

Paul over at Fuzzy Typewriter posted a bit of a bio over on this blog. I thought it might be a good idea to do the same… maybe make things a little more personal around here. So, here goes..

• I’m Hudson Phillips.
• I’m 2…., okay 30. I’m thirty and I hate the sound of that. I turned this magically depressing number on April 11.

• This is me:

• I grew up in south Georgia, but luckily lost my accent by spending part of my childhood in the country of Haiti (where I played with tarantulas, took cold showers, and ate fish with the heads still on them) and moving to Atlanta at the age of 11.
• I am not only a college drop out, I’m also a high school drop out (it’s not as bad as it sounds). Went to a private school from 6th-9th grade, was loosely home-schooled for 2 years after that, then got my GED. From there, I studied marketing for about a year and a half before I realized I didn’t have to go to school if I didn’t want to.
• I grew up wanting to be a writer. I loved creating things. Post-high school I got involved in helping high-schoolers out at my church. Was interested in doing ministry full-time, but I just didn’t feel cut out for it. I then fell in love with design, which I did for the next 8 or so years… I have been cheating on design with writing (my one true love) for the past 3 years, and I plan on leaving design for good sometime in the next year (don’t tell her).
• I live in Roswell, GA. A suburb of Atlanta. It’s a nice place where I can ride my bike to a river, hike up a “mountain,” and walk to Krispy Kreme, a BBQ place, and a library (if only we had a blockbuster, comic book store, & grocery store, I wouldn’t need a car).
• I made some mistakes along the way and I am now divorced.
• I have a 4 year-old son named Julien (not one of those mistakes).
• I am in a 2.5 year long relationship with a perfect girl named Anna Kate (also not one of those mistakes).
• I love movies. My favorite movies are those that blend natural characters with supernatural surroundings… with a little bit of style. I ADORE blockbusters. I also have a soft spot for teen movies & romantic comedies. My favorite filmmaker is M. Night Shyamalan. (With a lifetime achievement award to Spielberg.)
• I love comic books. I look for the same thing in comics that I look for in movies. My favorite comic writer is Brian K. Vaughan. Comics readers are, surprisingly, some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.
• The sections of Barnes & Noble I regularly visit are: Graphic Novels/Manga, Magazines, Theology, Writing, & Essays.
• My heroes are Rich Mullins, a musician/writer, (who died in 1997, shortly after I got to seem him play for the first and last time) and author, C.S. Lewis. I believe they were two very different people yet I can’t think of two people I (long to) have more in common with.
• I engulfed myself with music in the late 90’s - early 00’s and that’s still where my taste resides. My all-time favorite albums come from bands like the Get Up Kids, Jimmy Eat World, Blink-182, & Saves the Day.
• I played in two bands in the early 00’s as well. The first was called Three Alarm Fire, the 2nd, Two Week Notice. Over the course of 4 years the bands rotated 12 members in and out. However, they always consisted of me, a girl singer, and a pop-punk sound. I feel like I only have two great regrets in life. One of them is allowing this band to break up.
• I’m addicted to going to the movies, eating out, reading comics & books, flipping through magazines, and listening to podcasts,
• I have a best friend named Marcus Ray who died in 2000. Ever since, me and a group of our friends get together once a year to remember our friend and to make sure we stay in touch. It is the highlight of my year.
• I want a tattoo. Or a series of them. However, I feel like it’s taken me too long to decide what to get and getting a tattoo at 30 feels a bit like getting a sports car at 50.
• My biggest fear is that I can’t make my dreams a reality.
• I want to change lives, but I have no desire to leave a legacy.

It’s been a while since I posted the 7-page Strongsville preview, and many of you may have noticed that it has now disappeared.

Well, I was working with artist Rebekah Isaacs on the project, and shortly after finishing the preview, she left to move onto bigger things. She drew a great run for Hack/Slash and is now working on Drafted, both from Devil’s Due.

So, I began the search for a new artist and discovered the amazing talent of Chrissy Delk. Like Rebekah, Chrissy is a graduate of Savannah College of Art & Design. She was a Rising Stars of Manga finalist, has an original graphic novel published through Iris called Paintings of You, and did beautiful guest-art for TokyoPop’s Labyrinth & Dark Crystal series.

I am very happy to announce Chrissy Delk as the new artist of Strongsville. I feel like Chrissy really captures the look and tone of Strongsville exactly as I pictured, and I’m very excited about her work. A new 7-page preview is coming soon, but here is Chrissy’s fantastic take on the 5 main characters in the story:

I love comics. I love writing. So, one would think the dream job for me would be a comic book writer. And one would be right. I’m currently piecing together a couple of different projects, and along the way learn as much as I can about the uniqueness of the medium and how to tell great stories by embracing that uniqueness.

Over the past few years, I’ve been soaking up as many comics as possible, and here are the 5 writers who have influenced me the most as a writer and why:

1) Brian K. Vaughan (Recommended Reading - Y: the Last Man, Runaways, Dr. Strange: the Oath)

I just adore every single thing written by Vaughan. He’s a master at balancing plot, characters, & theme.

He taught me that “world-creation” is key to a great series. The idea that you create something like Y: the Last Man, where all the men in the world have died… except for one. What does a world without men look like? What are the political, social, sexual, physical changes that take place in the world as a result of that? What stories arise from that world? It’s not just a premise, it’s a world.

This has encouraged me to look at my own projects: What does the world look like? How is it different than a world I’ve seen before? What are the stories I can tell that are unique to this world?

2) Robert Kirkman (Recommended Reading - Invincible)

Kirkman taught me that superhero comics should be fun. No one has as much fun writing comics as Robert Kirkman, and it shows on the page.

Reading Invincible made me realize that you can get away with things in comics that you can’t in movies, TV, & books. You can have 100 wacky supporting characters, introduce a popular character, kill him, and bring him back, you can have a kid worried about his relationship with his girlfriend on one page and have him flying to Mars on the next, you can have a man having a baby with a bug woman, or a man who travels through different portals in time. In comics anything is possible.

On my projects, this opened up a lot of possibilities for me. I began to think in these “anything is possible” terms and it really expanded the stories that I could tell.

3) Jeph Loeb (Recommended Reading - Hulk: Grey, Daredevil: Yellow, Superman: For All Seasons)

Nearly everything Loeb’s done with artist Tim Sale has blown me away. Probably my favorite writer/artist team of all time.

He taught me that you can embrace the super hero genre and still make it deeply human. He’s great at balancing that. He loves the super hero genre, and doesn’t try to make it dark or angsty… his books are fun. But at the same time, there is a deep emotional core to his stories. It’s a good lesson in all story-telling that something doesn’t have to be dark to be

He’s also a master at coming up with creative ways to frame stories - Hulk: Grey is told as a story from Bruce Banner to his Psychiatrist, dealing with the “grey” nature of his psyche. Superman: For All Seasons is written with each chapter physically and thematically representing a different season.

I really wanna capture that emotional core that he explores in each of his characters on my projects. And his framing devices have challenged me in my screenwriting as well.

4) Bryan Lee O’Malley (Recommended Reading - Scott Pilgrim)

O’Malley captures the voice of a generation. Scott Pilgrim has me hooked. I have more fun reading a Scott Pilgrim book than I do with almost any other media. Reading this series is like hanging out with friends.

He taught me that people connect with natural dialog, personal stories, and inside jokes. That even though my relationships & my friendships & my sense of humor is so personal to me, that’s what people want.

The more personal you write, the more universal it will be. I’ve always heard this, but it’s hard to put into practice because you always 2nd guess yourself. O’Malley has challenged me to be honest in my work, from dialog, to jokes, to plots that, on the surface, might seem petty

5) Gerard Way (Recommended Reading - the Umbrella Academy)

Way has only written one book so far, but it was my favorite book of this past year. A lot of people say that he’s just channeling Grant Morrison, but I haven’t read much Grant Morrison, so I’ll give Way the credit. He’s the one that’s influenced me.

He taught me that, in comics, you can let your creativity run wild and still make it work. The Umbrella Academy is a quirky book. It’s super heroes, but not. A lot of times I limit my creativity and quirkiness on a project, because you feel that people may not “get it.” The success of Umbrella Academy has proven that people will “get it” no matter how “out there” you go with it.

I feel like this is something that is unique to comics. Maybe it’s because comic readers are more prone to wackiness or maybe it’s because it’s such a small niche audience. Either way, it’s encouraged me to really push myself creatively and to not be afraid to try new things and put out whatever pops into my head.

A huge thank you to all these authors for letting me “take their classes.”

My writing partners and I have been writing screenplays for about 3 years now. We’ve found moderate success. We’ve written 3 screenplays and one TV show. We’ve sold an option on a script. We’re in talks for a couple of other things. We have a great attorney, but no manager and no agent… yet. We’re not WGA… yet.

We assumed that once we sold a script, we’d be “in” and that it’d be “easy” from there on in. We were wrong.

It has been the most passionate, challenging, encouraging, pulse-pounding, smile-inducing, hand-raising, heart-racing, head-scratching, hair-pulling, wrist-slitting, higher-power-questioning, mind-numbing experience I’ve ever gone through. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

As we continue our journey, 4 things have consistently popped out in my head as the “building blocks” of a screenwriter. Without these 4 things, you will never make it in this crazy world. (It’s yet to be seen if we truly have these 4 things or not.)

1) PASSION

Trying to break into screenwriting is a long and hard road. Notice that I said just “trying” to break in is a long and hard road… not breaking in. There is no guarantee at the end of the journey. So, you better be sure that you are passionate about, not only movies, but writing. If you are not truly and deeply passionate about what you are doing, you will not sustain.

We’ve gone through a lot in our 3 short years… from bad script notes to rewrites to being replaced to falling-outs to lies & deception to long drawn out contract negotiations… The only thing that has kept us going is the fact that we LOVE writing.

I feel like I have stories within me that need to be told. I love movies. I love the power they hold. The power to entertain, to take you to worlds you never dreamed, the power to challenge, and the power of escape. To have written a screenplay is like learning a magic trick to me. I feel like I’ve been let into this world of creation, shared by Steven Spielberg, William Shakespeare, and God himself.

The first thing I want to do in the morning is write. The last thing I want to do at night is write. I want to write movies that show my girlfriend how much I love her, to teach my son a lesson, and to tell my friends how much they mean to me. It’s in me and I have to get it out or I don’t feel like I’ve lived.

Because of this, no matter what obstacle comes my way, I will be writing today, tomorrow, and every day for the rest of my life, even if it takes that long to “break in.”

2) PREPARATION

You’ve got to know what you’re doing. I think there are many people who are born talented writers. Others have to work at it. Everyone strikes that balance to some degree. No matter where you lie in the talent department, you need some education.

I have not been to school for screenwriting, so I can’t speak to that. But I have read basically everything I can get my hands on.

It’s important, first of all (of course), to get a handle on what a screenplay looks like. Learn the rules. There are any number of books out there about the how-to’s of screenwriting… or you could just pick up a script and “see how they did it.” That’s how I first learned the proper screenwriting format. Buying software such as Final Draft or Movie Magic Screenwriter does this for you.

But secondly, you need to learn the “secrets” of screenwriting. Screenwriting is unique in a number of ways and you only realize this as you start writing.

The first step is to watch a lot of movies. The more movies you watch, the more storytelling comes naturally to you.

The 2nd step is to read a lot of scripts. What better way of learning the craft than seeing how the greats have done it before you.

The 3rd step is to read a lot of books. I’m going to recommend a couple of resources here that aren’t books, but to me are way more important.

wordplayer.com - this is the single greatest resource I’ve found anywhere on screenwriting. 48 columns written by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, the screenwriting team behind Aladdin, Shrek, the Mask of Zorro, & the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. These columns opened my eyes to that “new level” of writing. Ted & Terry share some amazing inside information here from their many years in the business.

Artful Writer Forums - In a very close 2nd to wordplayer is Artful Writer, a website started by Craig Mazin (Scary Movie 3&4, Superhero Movie). Part of his website features a forum with a section called “Ask A Pro.”

In this section, people have posted questions for professional writers, and each thread on there is like taking a class. The professionals posting their thoughts include John Turman (Hulk, Silver Surfer), Mike France (GoldenEye, Fantastic Four), the Wibberleys (National Treasure, the 6th Day), Jeff Lowell (Sport Night, Spin City), Tim O’Donnell (Growing Pains, Phil of the Future), Tim Talbott (South Park, the Stanford Prison Experiment), Derek Haas (3:10 to Yuma, Wanted), Ted Elliott (Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean), and Brian Koppelman (Rounders, Runaway Jury.

Go there and you can spend days getting a free education.

3) PEOPLE

The old saying, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know?” Well, it’s true. When it comes down to it, you could write the best screenplay this side of Casablanca, and if you have no one with connections to give it to, no one will ever see it.

This has been tricky for us as we’re still in Atlanta. The way we’ve gotten around it is just asking around… following every lead we can. Following up on every friend who says “hey, I’ve got a cousin who worked on this show…” No one you meet is not worth meeting. Get to know people. Don’t just take advantage of them, befriend them. No matter how low on the totem pole they are, they could be running things down the line. If you’re outside of L.A. find people in your own area who share common interests. Hollywood is a collaborative business, so collaborate.

The other way we meet people, more than any other, is through the wonders of the world wide web. Get on a forum of other filmmakers. I think you’ll be surprised by how willing some people are to help you. Find out emails of Agents, Managers, Producers, Execs, and just give it a shot. We’ve blindly emailed over 100 “business folk” and got about a 10% response rate. (That is 10% actually returned my email). Part of this is due to our having sold something before, but I believe nearly as many would respond to a quality script.

All this is moot of course if you don’t have a great product. You’re only as good as your latest script. So, make sure you have something of quality to present before you contact those directly involved. They can’t help you if you can’t help them.

4) PERSISTENCE

Writing is 90% observation, 90% persistence, and 0% math.

This screenwriting thing is a long and bumpy ride. You’ve got to be in for the long haul. And I mean really long.

Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio gave themselves 10 years to break into the business. Rossio made the observation that “anyone who worked at a job for 10 years invariably became an expert at that job.” Therefore, they would give themselves 10 years to become experts and if they didn’t break in by then… well, who knows what would’ve happened. They did it in five.

Five Years is still a long time. Remember how long High School was? Add to that Freshman in college.

If you’re not willing to give it that much time, at least, you’re probably not cut out for it.

For me, part of what keeps me going, besides my love for the craft, is having writing partners that encourage me… having parents that encourage me… a girlfriend that encourages me. It’s important to surround yourself with people who keep you going.

I have a feeling that I’ll always be writing to some degree… and I hope the Hollywood thing happens soon. It would be really hard to hang around for another 7 years with nothing to show for it, but I can’t imagine doing anything else.

I don’t talk politics too often, mainly because I don’t feel I’m educated enough to really engage in the conversation. Also, because it’s a subject that is so explosive, and like Religion, people like to judge you as a person and view you through a certain lense based only on the fact of your affiliation.

However, I feel like I have something to say, and I’d like to share.

I was flipping channels the other night and ran across a quick interview with Bill Maher and, who I believe was, the Governor of Pennsylvania.

Maher asked the Governor, something like “if America is made up of ‘good’ people, why is our rate of violence and crime so high?”

The Governor gave some answer about our youth needing to be better educated or something along those lines, which is all well and good, and I agree with him, but I don’t think that is the answer to Maher’s question.

And I hear this kind of question/argument a lot. And I feel like there is a fundamental reason why America has so much crime:

We are free.

We are free to say what we want to say, to share our opinions, to worship who we want or to not worship at all. We are free to speak out against our leaders. We are free to carry guns. We are free to protect our property. We are free to be private. We are free to live lives of freedom.

Freedom gives us power. And with power (as Uncle Ben is fond of saying) comes great responsibility.

The unfortunate part of that equation is people are not always responsible. I’d go as far as saying people are not even ‘good’. The majority of people I encounter look out for themselves first. There is a natural survival of the fittest attitude among every human being. This leads to us, quite often, to being not so responsible for the betterment of society.

So, our choice is to either live in a place of dangerous freedom or safe slavery.

If we want to live in a safe place, where we will never feel threatened or endangered, then we have to lose our freedoms. The government could tap all our phones, be free to view all our correspondence, be free to enter our homes, take away our right to carry guns, and the country would become a safe place. But I don’t want to live in that place.

I love the freedoms we have as Americans. I don’t own a gun and never will. But I feel everyone should have a right to one (that right can be taken away, however). We should have the right to protect ourselves. And we could take away all the guns and we would be safe, but we’d have to sacrifice our freedoms.

To bring it back to comics, this was explored interestingly in the recent Marvel Comics crossover, Civil War.

For those of you who aren’t aware of the story, what happened was a super hero group, chasing after a bad guy ended up inadvertently blowing up a school full of children. The government then introduced the Super Hero Registration Act, where all super powered people had to register with the government and become government sanctioned agents or become outlaws and be hunted down and imprisoned. A brilliant story.

This, of course split the Marvel universe in two over this very same issue: What is more important - safety or freedom? Captain America led up the freedom side and Iron Man led up the safety side.

What’s interesting is that the majority of readers seemed to side with Captain America in the comics… but I’ve heard from many who said if it was real life, they would side with Iron Man. I wonder if this has something to do with comics existing in an idealistic world, free of the realities we face every day.

To be honest, I didn’t feel like the execution of the story did the concept justice, but it was a fantastic concept. And I think it’s a question that everyone should answer for themselves, as each year we edge closer to more and more of our freedoms being taken away:

What is more important to you? Freedom or safety?

Strongsville tells the story of a shy, young teenager named Kevin, who moves to a new town after the death of his father. He begins a friendship with an elderly neighbor who he starts to believe was once a real-life superhero from his comics.

NEW PREVIEW COMING SOON.

I have been wondering how the Writers Guild strike would affect me and my writing partners. We’ve optioned a script to a major studio, but it was not covered under the WGA agreement, so we are not members of the guild. So, I wanted to get my own thoughts down on the matter and figure out what it does for us, personally.

Why the strike?

I’ll keep this brief as you can read about this just about anywhere online right now. But the main issue is over residuals from internet downloads. The writers got screwed in a deal in the mid-eighties over residuals from home video. It was a new technology, no one knew where it was going to go, so the writers agreed to a measly .3% of profits. This has not been raised since the eighties and probably never will be. DVD’s are now the bread and butter of the movie industry and writers make about 4 cents per DVD sold.

We are now dealing with internet downloads… it’s a new technology, no one knows where it’s going to go… but writers aren’t going to make the same mistake twice. Studios are offering .3% of internet downloads. Writers are asking for 2.5%. The writers would obviously settle for something in the middle, but the studios are not budgeting. Hence, the strike.

I’ve been asked a few times why writers need residuals anyways… don’t they make enough money as it is? Well, writing is not a full-time job. You may sell 3 scripts a year, or you may sell none. Residuals are what keeps writers going in that off season. And contrary to popular belief, not all writers are millionaires… most are middle class.

How does it affect us?

We’re not sure what it does to our project currently in development, “Church League.” I would imagine it would put that on hold as it is currently being rewritten by, what we can assume, are WGA members.

In a way, the strike could help us. Over the past 6 months we have been shopping a new script (as well as pimping ourselves as writers) to agents, producers, & managers. The response has been expectantly quiet. Being in Atlanta, we don’t have as many contacts as we’d like in L.A., but thanks to the world wide web, we’re able to make more every day. During this time period, agents and managers will not be busy with their normal clients because they are not working. But, there is a good chance they will be looking for new talent during this time. So, maybe we’ll start to get some phone calls returned.

I don’t know if these agents or managers can take us on during this period. It’d be pointless anyway since they couldn’t get us any work. But it is a great time to network and get to know new people who can help us out in the long run.

What are we doing in the meantime?

We’re continuing to write, write, & write. We’re currently working on a script that is something, even if we finished the script, we could film ourselves outside of WGA jurisdiction.

We have a backlog of ideas that we are dying to write. And, as long as we aren’t getting paid to write any of these ideas by a guild signatory company, we are free to write them.

I will spend a great deal of time writing “Strongsville” and work everyday on marketing that project as well.

And of course… we all have day jobs that we are eagerly trying to escape.

Strongsville is a story that has been brewing in my head for half a decade now. It all started with an image in my head of an elderly man, mowing his yard, wearing a superhero outfit. This was the genesis for the story of Strongsville.

The story follows Kevin - a young, shy, outcast of a kid as he reluctantly moves with his mom to Strongsville after the death of his father. His impression of Strongsville as a sleepy beach town is shattered, however, after becoming suspicious that his elderly neighbor is actually a superhero from his comic books.

The series is being written by me, drawn by Rebekah Isaacs, colored by Michael Bills, and lettered by Randy Gentile. We are currently pulling together a proposal for the series to shop around to publishers.

It is with great pleasure that I present the cover for Strongsville #1, featuring the very image that kicked off the entire project:

A special thanks to Rebekah, Michael, and Randy for making my dream a reality.

I have fond memories of my mom picking me up from school… stopping by the Circle K… picking up a Cherry Coke and a pack of Reese’s… and then heading over to the comic book store. I would come home with my comics, lay around my room, listening to the then local radio station, Power 99 (playing everything from R.E.M. to Tom Cochran to Red Hot Chili Peppers to En Vogue), and escape into the world of comics.

The first book I remember buying was New Warriors #1 from Marvel. I loved the young relate-able characters, the team dynamic, the sense of humor, and, it being a #1, I felt like I was getting in on the ground floor.

From there I got into X-Men, X-Force, X-Factor, Spider-man… pretty much anything with an “X” (or a spider) on it.

At that point, some of the major creators (and record-breakers) in the comics industry split to form their own company, called Image comics. All of my favorite artists (Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen) from my favorite Marvel books, creating an entire world where I could get in on the ground floor? I was in. For the first couple of years, I bought everything Image put out (and almost exclusively). I ate it up and I loved every minute of it.

The stories in all these books took me to a place I’ve never been before, in a way that movies or television never did. With comics you feel fully engulfed in this amazing new world. You feel like you’re a part of it. Not just the stories, but the industry. The fact that you could correspond with the creators in their letters pages or create your own worlds at home with just a pencil and paper or discuss the books with a small handful of fans all added to this. I felt like I was in a secret club.

Then High School happened. I had less and less time to read comics, and more importantly, less and less money to buy them.

Cut to 15 years later (holy cow, I’m old) and having fully experienced adulthood, the one thing I know is that I want to rediscover childhood. I once again fallen head over heels in love with this brand of storytelling. I’ve tried to get caught up on all the good stuff thanks to my local library and various comic-related blogs and podcasts. Some of my very favorite stories right now from any medium are in comics (Runaways, Invincible, Scott Pilgrim, Umbrella Academy, to name just a few).

The great thing about comics today is that it’s a medium that serves a number of audiences. It’s not just superhero books for kids (as I believed when I was one). Many of my favorite comics tell adult stories to an adult audience in a variety of genre’s.

So, while I will always love and be involved in movies, music, and everything else, I can no longer deny my love for comic books. It is with this that I introduce you to the newest addition to my creative arsenal… Strongsville.