Now the holidays are over and I'm a little less stressed about the world in general, (only marginally, though) so I figure it's time for another blog entry, anyway... Here's some fun little Love Buzz related goodies I've gotten from some friends over the last couple weeks.
My good buddy Joe Eisma drew this one after finally grabbing and reading a copy of the book. For those who don't know him, Joe is fast becoming one of the most sought after artists in indie and small press comics for his work with guys like Jason M. Burns, Jay Faerber, and soon his new book "Morning Glories" with writer Nick Spencer. Joe and I have been pretty good friends for a couple years now, and we're hoping to do some work together in the next year or two, but we've just gotta wait for our schedules to both clear up. Joe puts up very well with me and all my whoring and vulgarity, and for that I am appreciative. In fact, you can listen to me hijacking Joe's full episode appearance on Fanboy Radio HERE!
Another friend of mine, as well as a frequent collaborator of Joe's is Jason M. Burns. This guy has written more comics in the last couple years than you can shake a stick at, and I've been supporting his work from the very beginning, illustrated from the below picture of me reading Jason's first book, "The Expendable One".
The book is out now! Go buy a copy of the book Ain't It Cool called "one of the most honest and true interpretations of young love and the horrific labyrinth of emotions that we all must navigate at some point in our lives as we mature into adulthood." and Graphic Policy called "one of the best graphic novels of the year"!
It's been a while since I've updated this damn blog, and yet, my presence on Twitter is a big time consumer, so I figured a new segment might be a good way to kill two girls with one cup, so to speak. :P This segment, I'm going to call "Twit Wit" and try to do once weekly, just posting and recounting any and all highlights from my entertaining, and incredibly nerdy pastime. Anyway, a little preface is required to our first installment...
I've had some shitty landlords in my time, and while I'll say this guy's not the worst, he's most certainly the laziest. He cheaped out on everything he put in the house, bought our dishwasher used from some shady place, and it's broken three times, and he's still refused to get a new one. He just sends some dumb oaf over to poke at it until it works again, then a month or two later, it breaks down. We've asked him to take care of numerous things around our house in the last couple of months that have been problems since we moved into the place, and while he's recently started fixing a couple things we've been really bitching about, my bedroom door is still swelled up in the door frame, to where I can't fully close it. Now, I like to sleep naked, and I have roommates. Just because my door is always cracked open doesn't mean I should have to give up my rights to sleep in the raw, but for the sake of my roommates, I always feel at least a slight twinge of guilt. Not enough to stop mind you, but still... Been asking him to fix that fucking door since we moved in, and I've gotten nothing.
The worst part though, is every time he comes over, he's always got some kind of nit-pick about the way we keep house, and he's never hesitant to turn his thin little nose up and make "suggestions" about what we need to be doing to keep the place in order. I've about had it with the condesention and now I'm just having fun with him. Here's a conversation I just had with my snobby assed prick of a landlord when he came to pick up this week's rent check, as recounted through my Twitter page.
Quote: Landlord: "Thanks for the check, and can y'all rake your leaves when it stops raining?"
@LenNWallace *smiling thru hateful eyes* "Sure thing, and can you fix my bedroom door that I've asked you about since I moved in?"
Landlord: "Oh sure, I'll get right on that, and they'll be back to finish your yard sometime next week"
@LenNWallace: *smiling thru even more hateful eyes* "Thanks! Oh, and my book's coming out next week! I'd appreciate if you bought a copy!
Landlord: *dismissive, nervous chuckle* "Heh... Remind me next week."
@LenNWallace *creepy ominous tone as he turns and walks away* "Oh, I will... Be seeing you!"
The idea for the Love Buzz plug was Joe Eisma's brilliant idea, and I think it worked pretty well, so big props to him.
Wanna read the first two chapters of Love Buzz absolutely free? Tired of hearing me talk about this book so much for so long and having nothing to show for it? Well, today's your lucky day! The first 22 pages are available to read now at OniPress.com! The book is on track to be in stores I'm pretty sure by the 11th or the 18th of November, unless something goes horribly wrong.
Got a visitor over for the weekend, or possibly longer in the form of my buddy Rich Caldwell who needed a place to crash for a little bit. The majority of our time has been spent sitting on our individual laptops working on comic shit. We're boring. We know.
But I'm on a roll, lately. Tonight, I cranked out 30 rough pages of script in one day. Won't beat my record of 45 in one day back in '03, but it's the best I've done in about as long. I swear to God, having Love Buzz all but completely off my plate has been the most freeing thing ever.
On the LB front though, Oni has informed me that they'll be printing up a batch of ashcans for the first couple chapters of Love Buzz, for Dave Tuney and myself to drag along with us to the Nashville Comic and Horror Festival, where our buddy Jay Leisten hooked us up with a free table. If you're going to be in the area drop by and say "Hey!" We'll be the ones looking horribly out of place, trying to peddle romance comics to the horror and death crowd! It should at very least, be hilarious!
Another year older, another year closer to being old enough to shout down timid senators at Town Hall meetings. Today, I turn 27. The year where it becomes more apparent that you've past the point of no return towards 30. I joke a lot about feeling like an old man, but that's mainly just because of what a curmudgeon I've been from a way younger age than most, as well as the fact that in the words of Abe Simpson, "I used to be 'with it', but then they changed what 'it' was, and now what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me."
The excitement of birthdays kinda fade with age and after so many years and so much distance from being a kid, the thing just kinda becomes another day. I literally didn't realize my birthday was coming up until maybe a week ago. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Every year that notches up is another year I was never expected to live past my own life expectancy. Kinda puts it into an interesting perspective when you're born to having doctors tell your parents that there's a strong possibility you probably won't live past your first week alive, and then later that you won't see past eight years old. My life and my perception of mortality have been pretty skewed after growing up most of my life knowing that to this day, there's a small piece of earth in a cemetery somewhere in Georgia, between my grandmother and grandfather that's been meant for me for almost as long as I've lived, but thanks to fate (and probably more than a few advances in medical science) I'm still alive and healthier than anyone ever expected I'd be.
I know if you're reading this, you're probably taking this entire tirade as something extremely morbid, and y'know? Maybe it is, but the feeling in me right now is anything but. I have my moments of ill feelings about life in general, but lately, I'm finding less and less to complain about... Okay, that's a lie. The news has been pissing me off, the Republicans have been whining on and on like an increasingly disturbing bunch of racist babies, and summer television has been terrible as usual, and the comic industry has been going nuts, but I digress. It's 2 in the morning at present, and while my birthday is technically past, I can't help but feeling that while life ain't quite the grandest, it's heading towards something that I can finally be truly proud of. Love Buzz is finished and on schedule for a release very soon, I've got a couple of other projects quickly progressing, and I'm feeling like a real writer again for the first time in forever, after an embarrassingly long creative lull period.
But now I'm back. I'm feeling better and more invigorated about this asinine career choice of mine, and luckily the world is giving my poisoned pen more than enough ammunition to keep me fighting another day. Ever maintaining my own special blend of optimistic pessimism. I'm living to spite the rules of death another day, and I'll still be here when there's nothing left but the roaches and crickets out of my own sheer stubbornness.
I know it's been a while since we last spoke, and while I promise I have a reason, (although most of them aren't very good) I've been saving a slew of new news for you until it was a little more ready to come out. As you may or may not have noticed, the month of June has come and gone, and if you've been looking for it, you will have noticed that Love Buzz has been nowhere to be found on shelves. Sadly, these things happen with comics. Michelle had some issues with her family as she was closing out the art on the last couple chapters of the book, and we had to pull it for a while until her dad got better and she could rock it strong.
And rock it she certainly has. Just got the last pages a couple weeks ago, and they're gorgeous. The visuals in this book are like she reached into my brain and pulled out every image and put them on the paper. This girl is on her way to becoming a master of this craft and I owe her huge.
Just got word a couple days ago. Love Buzz is now completely in the can and other than a little bit of lettering left over, is good to go. Oni has posted a release date of 11/11, (make a wish!) and Michelle, Dave, Tom, and myself couldn't be more excited to finally be done with it and have it out there for everyone to see and love. Here's a look at the full page solicit from the latest edition of the Previews catalog.
Additionally, that big image in there IS our final cover, although we are still tinkering with the logo. Please, bask in it's glory.
Additionally, a brief segment of me promoting the book, way back on our first round of solicitation on Fanboy Radio's Indie Show. There are a few other creators on there, but you can find yours truly at the 37:35 mark.
Listen to the whole show, if you will. They plug a lot of great indie creators, including Mike Dawson, whose graphic novel ode to Freddie Mercury, Freddie & Me was one of my favorite reads last year.
Naturally, this is exciting news for all of us, and while I don't have a lot else to plug on this, or any other projects, I should have a little more to announce very soon.
Stay tuned. I promise to update a little more frequently.
Jill, my editor at Oni just made a Buffy reference in regards to paralleling something in my script for Love Buzz. I've not watched Buffy beyond a couple episodes into the first season, because I found it to be one of the silliest things I've ever seen. I'm not begrudging anything on people who are into Buffy, or anything. I even like some of Whedon's stuff, (Firefly, his X-Men run) but it just struck me as funny, because says it to me like it's this thing I'm absolutely supposed to know. She mentions the names Xander and Faith, and I'm like, "Okay, I've heard those names before when people are talking about Buffy, but beyond that, I got nothin'."
I get it a lot too in regards to Heroes, which is even worse, because it's such a goddamn awful show. Any time my love of comics, or the nugget slips out that I write comic books, more times than I can count, people are asking me what I thought of last week's Heroes, or saying I must be a huge fan of the show, when in truth, it makes me want to vomit up my gizzards.
Anyway, I am amused. This stuff ever happen to anyone else?
Pulling myself out of another work-induced anti-social streak to get back to work on a few things, and getting Love Buzz closer and closer to "in the can" as things progress. On that front, we have some unfortunate news. The book is being held back for resolicit by a couple of months, due to some problems that came up that are no fault of anyone in particular. In the long run, it'll hopefully be a good thing that will lead to me being able to better and more properly promote the book in various ways. Michelle and Dave have kicked copious amounts of ass on it in the last few months. This book is going to be above and beyond my original expectations, and I can't wait for you all to FINALLY see it.
In other news, I've been watching and keeping mostly quiet about a pair of projects I'm working on with an artist from Brazil by the name of Jorge Trinidade. He's just turned in the last pencils of the first half of issue one of one of the projects this past weekend, and his line work is very good and precise. This book is going to be filthy and hilarious.
The Day I Tried To Live #1 - Illustrated by Jorge Trinidade
Like I said, Jorge and I are in talks to produce this five issue project, and a smaller scale, more age-friendly three issue superhero title that he'll hopefully start on after the last half of this issue is in the can. I hope to start pitching them soon. Jorge has been a joy to work with, despite some of the funny limitations our language barriers have brought up. (I might tell you guys the 'dildo story' sometime when I'm less tired.)
On another front, now that I've got less of Love Buzz to worry about, I'm getting back on task with my slowly progressive romance anthology idea, Less Than Three. Haven't had a chance to touch it in months, but I've put my game face back on and have been emailing writers and artists about the current status, as well as receiving some really great story pitches and art to fill out the last few slots on the book.
Less Than Three - A short story from the Less Than Three anthology, illustrated by Chris Moreno.
*yawn*
Man, I thought I had more to say in me, but I guess we'll just have to settle for a mini-update and art bomb.
Been a pretty major week on the Love Buzz production front. We had a bit of a crisis Tuesday night, in the form of a frantic phone call from Michelle, telling me that her father had fallen 15 feet off a scaffolding and broken a some ribs. She was on her way to the hospital and apologizing profusely for being late with the night's worth of pages, something she never should have felt the need to do, and I told her as much. There was a bit of drama after that in waiting to hear back from her on whether her dad was okay, but gladly I got a hold of her the next day and he's recovered pretty good. Four broken ribs and on bed rest, but I'm pretty sure he left the hospital the next day. Beyond that bit of drama, I've never heard Michelle to be in higher spirits about the project in all the time we've been working on it. It kind of relieves me to know that too, because it means she cares about it as more than just a job to her, and it's gone a bit further in cementing the bond we've come to grow between each other in this odd little partnership.
In other news, as the book keeps inching towards the finish line of coming together, I got an email with another fun little piece of Love Buzz related eye-candy in the form of another pin-up that will be going to print in the back of the book.
Art by Miss Brenda López
Brenda's a pretty cool character I met through knowing Michelle and I guess them being mutual fans of one another's work. She and I have also recently collaborated on a five page short story for the Less Than Three romance anthology I'm still in the slow process of putting together called The Valentine's Day Massacre. I pride this particular story to be probably one of my top three favorite shorts I've written so far, and I'm happy to report Brenda knocked every panel of it out of the park artistically. I'm hoping to work with her on something a bit more substantial in the future, but she's a teacher, so it might take a little time, but I'll keep bugging her until I either wear her down or she just starts stonewalling me. (A side note to any aspiring comic writers out there. They say patience is a virtue, and it's true. Letting a good artist have the time to take their time is always mutually benificial.)
I'm told Brenda's worked up a color version of the Maggie piece and will send it to me soon, but since the book itself is black and white, this is the version that everyone will be seeing within the book itself. When I get the color version though, I'll be posting it, as well as the other two pin-ups I'm waiting to get turned in soon.
Today's been an interesting, low key day of work with Love Buzz. Hacking out bits of dialogue that were too wordy with Mauer and basically trying to get the first two chapters of the book ready for Oni to compile into a PDF preview that we will then start distributing through the web in the next week or so. I've gotten too many emails from people wanting to see a bit more of the functioning comic itself in all it's glory, and I'm hoping to have the preview together a couple weeks in advance of the pre-order cut off date, so we can finally show people a bit of what we've been doing. Stay tuned for more on that soon.
The other part of my day has been spent going through the old script, looking for ways to cut out or consolidate a few pages here or there, so Michelle can have a little lighter of in the weeks up to her impending deadline. In doing all of this, I've had to spend time getting familiar with all the old friends I locked away inside my head, since I finished writing the book so long ago. The bulk of the editing work will be coming out of the last four chapters, and I've managed to clean up a good bit, and actually just cut a lot out of one chapter and merge what was left into the chapter before it, so go me.
The thing I'm having trouble with now though and probably won't end up changing much, if at all, are the final two chapters. These chapters also represent a bit of a subtle transition between the Len that wrote Love Buzz originally seven years ago, and the man and writer I've grown into to this day and I owe it all to Oni's Managing Editor Randy Jarrell.
Here's how the story goes...
In the time shortly before the gang and I signed with Oni and they'd expressed interest in picking us up, Randy and I were going through some things over the phone. The strong points of the story, the weak points, and anything that might have needed to be changed. Randy expressed some disatisfaction with the ending I had. Upon hearing this, I was a little wounded to be honest. Love Buzz had a lot of shaky points, but in my opinion, the ending was pretty good. Without going too far into spoilers on how things turn out in the story, Randy told me that while things changed for both the characters in the end, he said the old ending was lacking in "growth" and that despite all the changes I saw, Norm and Maggie never actually got to a point where they actually "grew" as characters. He suggested a few ideas and told me I should rewrite the last two chapters from the bottom up.
Needless to say, after hanging up the phone, I felt a sudden rush of panic wash over me. At that point, I'd been about 5 and a half years with Love Buzz living in some form of stasis in the back of my head, and frankly, I was getting sick to death at the thought not being done with it. Even worse, the idea of going back and tinkering with something I'd considered myself to be "finished" with for over three years was something that even thinking about would make me want to get violently ill. I sat on it for a couple of days and groused to myself in normal, crabby fashion until I got exhausted with being mad about it and decided to get started. I mean, Oni fucking Press wants to publish my book. Even if they hated the ending, I must have done something right.
I went back over the script as a whole, got back inside the skins of these characters I'd frankly become sick of, and ruminated on what I could do to change things and make them actually say something if not better, then at least more poetically phrased than what I'd originally had. I backed up the old ending in my emails, and then deleted it off my hard drive and told myself I wouldn't use a damn bit of it in crafting the new ending. the process of rewriting those 30 pages took me a little over a week, but once I figured out what I wanted the new ending to "say" without deviating too far from the basics of where I wanted the characters to be with the original ending, it became a cake walk. I'd spent so long resenting Love Buzz for not being done, and not getting published repeatedly, due to all the different circumstances, that I'd forgotten all the things about the story that made me fall in love with it and the characters in the first place. Once I figured out the direction for the new ending, it reignited my passion for the story as a whole. It's a great ending. I like to pride myself on many of my current projects, that my strengths always lie in knowing how to end a story and end it in a spectacular and unexpected way. The new ending for Love Buzz is just that. Without even trying, I crafted an ending that made me fall back in love with Norm and Maggie and everything they represented about that time in my life, and even found a way to make it pertain to my life now, seven years later. Like I said, I owe it all to Randy.
Anyway, the prompting for this post I guess is just from be going back and re-reading the whole book for the first time the whole way through with the new ending attached. I may post the script for the original ending somewhere down the road, after the book is out, but part of me thinks I should also keep it a mystery, because the new one just blows it so far out of the water that I think showing the old, busted ending might cheapen the impact of the new one. Those last two chapters are really just something that not even I figured I was capable of.
I get a lot of people asking lately about the contributions to the book of Dave Tuney, who's relationship to the book thus far, is only known by his name on the solicits. His contribution to the book is only about 30 pages, as opposed to Michelle's 150, but the quantity of Dave's work is part of what makes what he and I have been cooking up for his role in the book so special. Just because he gets less stage time doesn't take away from the fact that his contributions are just as important, and in some ways, a bit more fun.
In Love Buzz, the book's central male character Norm is like most of us, crazy about comic books and wants to become a professional artist when the story takes place. At a point through the book, Norm in his budding relationship with Maggie, begins keeping and trading off this big sketchbook with her that he'll every now and then begin drawing little comic entries into about their relationship and later their love and numerous break ups along the way. Dave's role in Love Buzz is essentially acting as Norm's hands through these segments.
I get a lot of people asking me to show off some examples of Dave's work on Love Buzz and how it relates and contrasts to Michelle and what she does as the person telling the book's central story. I've worked with Dave on several small projects over the last several years, and his role in Love Buzz was cemented into place even before Michelle came on board. I applaud him for sticking with us through everything, and I'm even more in awe of seeing how much his art has grown since our first work that we abandoned half way through, [URL="http://www.myspace.com/cousinwinslow"]My Fair Zombie[/URL].
My first work with Dave on the short-lived, unfinished opus, My Fair Zombie.
Here's a page Dave just recently completed in a 4 page sequence. An homage of Norm's to Jim Steranko's original Nick Fury comics. The rest of the sequence is a blast, and adds a little extra flavor to the story of Norm and Maggie's relationship as well as the whole "Hero worship" aspect of Norm's own "coming of age" story. There are several independent Dave scenes as well as a few other really fun homage sequences that include Frank Miller's Daredevil, Herge's Tintin, and the campy Adam West Batman TV series among a couple others.
Love Buzz - Page 46 - illustrated by Dave Tuney
Dave and I have also worked on a couple of short stories for various anthologies that either have already, or will soon see print, and he's been a great go-to guy for kicking out some of my better small ideas over the years. That said, with the improvement in his game and the spotlight that will be provided to us both, post-Love Buzz, Dave and I are in the process of looking forward into a new, bigger collaborative effort in the coming future. We've yet to hammer out any concrete details yet, and probably won't be able to until Love Buzz is turned in and off to the printers in a couple weeks, but there's something big brewing there.
Here's to you, Dave. And your luxurious girl hair!
Sitting here between bouts of Wii induced euphoria and writers block on the last page of a first issue for a project that's been in my head for a very long time and taking a moment to step back for a second and survey the tremendous floodgate that stands before me on the verge of bursting open in my post-Love Buzz world.
Love Buzz used to represent something wholly different to me than what it does now. When I first wrote Love Buzz, I was going through some motions of change and frustration, due to getting my butt kicked repeatedly by love. The more years that have gone by since the book's completion (on my part, at least) the more it's taken a form of a different meaning in my life.
The beginning of my new life. The beginning of the day where I can quit telling people I'm a writer and having them look at me with that look of feigned interest, like I'm some fucking crackpot. Now, Love Buzz represents validation. It represents burning down the bridge between feeling like any given shithead chasing his dream while other people just smile and nod, to being the guy who has something to show for it.
Love Buzz will come out and Love Buzz will be a goddamn success, because Michelle, Dave, Tom, and everyone else whose had their fingers in it along the way have worked just as hard or harder to make it so. Maybe I'm being arrogant or setting myself up for an upset, but Love Buzz, to me, is already a success, because it showed me more than just an introspect into my processes in relationships, it showed me what I'm made of and put a fire in my guts that's never going to go out. It took me to the point where I can't NOT write or tell stories. The day I stop that is the day that I'll die. I've been fired from enough jobs to know that this is the only thing I'm REALLY good at, and the only thing I give a shit about. Failure is no longer an option.
And to make this entry complete for all the people out there who tend to glaze over at entries that are nothing but paragraph after paragraph of text, here's some pencils from another upcoming project, drawn by Brazilian artist Jorge Trinidade. Can't reveal too much behind it, but ain't it pretty?
Anyway, heading back on point... You may not know me by now, but mark my words, I'm about to write my name across every one of your foreheads in the biggest way possible. That may sound arrogant or cock sure, but at this rate I think I've worked hard enough to have earned it.
A new feature we'll be having in the blog, to further cement the place's title of truly being "Wasted Space". Weird, disturbing, or gross things I find in my many strange journeys across the strange, fruitful world of the World Wide Web. Today's inaugural entry...
This disturbed beauty, as per the instructions listed on the website I found it one, consists of the following.
2 pounds thick cut bacon 2 pounds Italian sausage 1 jar of your favorite barbeque sauce 1 jar of your favorite barbeque rub
So, in other words, that's four pounds of pig parts mashed together and rolled into a log that resembles a really dried up, but shockingly long and wide piece of excrement. To further hit home the point of this, here's another shot of it with a rather turd-ish, glossy sheen to it.
And a shot of this thing cut in half so you can get a good glimpse of what's inside. Shock! There's more bacon!
Click the link, there are tons of pictures of this beast as it's progressively made, including the bacon woven net that makes up the beast's outer shell.
Been a while since I've done one of these on any form of any blog I've ever had, so here goes nothin'. Some new pages by the lovely, and talented Michelle Silva as the book winds down the path to it's completion.
Enjoy!
Michelle assures me that the image on the TV screen on the splash page is Mickey Mouse holding a banana. I maintain that she drew him holding a boner, but in the end that will be for the reader to determine.
Also, a little promotional banner that The Mauer and I cooked up!
Available this May in comic retailers and finer book stores everywhere. Diamond order code - MAR094378 on page 278 of the Previews Catalog.
So, with Love Buzz on the verge of coming out, I'm trying to think of different ways to get my name out there and get more people to pick up the book. Also want to take my current position as well as a couple of the contacts and things I've made with people in the industry. I'm in talks with a decently circulated comic news site to carry the show, and while I love Word Balloon, I want to make this pretty much the 'starving artists' version of Word Balloon.
I'm kinda green to the concept of podcasting, and I pretty much just came up with the idea today, but I'm putting the wheels in motion to try and record my first episode this week, if possible.
My question to you, my potential listeners, on a show about creators who are struggling to get to the place where they've "made it", what kind of stuff would you like to hear discussed. Would you prefer stuff like, two decent sized interviews per show? One big interview, or like, 3 or 4 with different creators in chunks.
I want to try and do this and if I can get some ears on it, to make it successful, because I love the world of comic podcasting, but find it sadly lacking in the perspective of the so-called underdog voices. The guys who I read books from every day who are just as good as the big dudes like Bendis and Brubaker and the like, but just haven't gotten "there" yet.
Wanted to take a sec to show off a Love Buzz pin-up that just got turned in by my buddy/hero Steven Walters.
I've been absolutely smitten with this guys work for several years, and getting this into the back of the book will be an awesome honor. Steve's working currently on his second OGN, the tentative title of which, I believe is The Sweet Souvenir. I've read and helped him edit the script on it, and it's going to be another slice of gold from him. Seriously, anyone who checks out Love Buzz and digs the tone and the slice-of-life story telling in the comic form would be doing themselves, Steven, and myself (as probably Steven's biggest fan) a favor in ordering and checking out his first book, Suburban Folklore as well as his second one, whenever he finishes it. Both of them are brilliant, criminally under read, and some of the most emotionally affecting stories I've read out of the comics medium in the last several years. You can see more of Steven's work at his website, www.ourobor.com
And have I mentioned we're close to working on a project of our own together? ;)
It's been close to two weeks now since the ad for Love Buzz hit Previews, and this one man PR machine has hit the ground running hard. Calling comic shops around the country to ask them personally to pick up the book, or to thank them if they already have, as well as working on closing out what I need to do for the local promotional push here in Louisville. (There's talk of us throwing a party in one of our favorite coffee shop/bars and a big signing!) Anyway, I figured now could be a good time for a little info dump of new developments and press.
The book's Diamond order code is MAR094378 and the cut-off date for pre-orders is April 7th, so reserve your copy today. ISBN number is 978-1-934964-21-7.
Here's a list of places it's available to purchase online, although I stress the importance of supporting any good, solid comic shops out there.
My first big interview about the book with Jen Contino @ The Pulse! A great treat to get to give Jen my first big, in depth interview, because she's been an instrumental in helping me navigate my way into comics. I always told her once I had something to promote, she'd have the first exclusive.
And you can add Love Buzz on MySpace, even though the page is in desperate need of some sprucing up, of late. http://myspace.com/lovebuzzcomic
Naturally, I'll keep updating the blogs here as soon as new stuff comes up.
I agree, the title of this blog is a bit too obvious and lame, but I'm saving up my creativity for the night of book plotting I have ahead of me, so screw you. Probably spoilers ahead, so be warned...
If you're like me and read the book years ago and never thought it would ever be possible to make an adequate movie adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, you've probably been looking at the prospect of this movie, and all the footage that has leaked over the last year with a mix of promise and skepticism. It looked a lot like they might have been able to pull off the impossible with this one. I just got back from the theater about an hour ago, and I really dug it for the most part.
A minute to talk about the director of the massive opus, Zack Snyder. I became a fan of him through the surprisingly good Dawn Of The Dead remake he did a couple years back. I'm by no means a fan of remakes of almost any kind, but that movie surprised me and many others. While some hardcore zombie fans will cry foul for the concept of running zombies, I loved it. It's a lot scarier when the thing that wants to eat you can catch up to you on foot. Then he went on to adapt Frank Miller's 300, which was good and beautifully executed, but not something I was overly bowled over by. (I'm a fan of Miller, but was never a fan of 300. Personal preferences...) Upon hearing that he'd been given the keys to the notorious "unfilmable" book gave me a good bit of interest.
Snyder made a movie that visually, was pretty fucking amazing. Colorful backdrops, vivid imagery, virtually every image looking like it's been ripped straight from Dave Gibbons' art and brought to animated life. Stunning stuff, with a couple minor problems here and there. With Watchmen, I ended up thinking Snyder reeeeeally should've reigned it in with the slo-mo/fast-mo stuff. That shit was cool in 300, because 300 didn't require a brain stem to enjoy. 300 was just greased up, half-naked men beating, gouging, and stabbing the shit out of other greased up, half-naked men. It doesn't get much more base than that. A movie like Watchmen requires a bit more finesse, and I think with the tone of "realism" a story like this is most noted to bring to the world of superheroes, a much more brutal and less choreographed approach to the fight staging should have been taken. It's been a while since I watched his Dawn Of The Dead remake, but the violence in that and the approach to how it was shown would have done more of a service to a movie like this.
Another big flaw is that his direction of the actors seemed kinda bloodless at times. A movie like this should have demanded a bit more from some of its performers. Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach/Walter Kovaks was a pretty great performance, despite the constant low, growling "Christian Bale as Batman" voice. I've been a fan of Jackie's since I saw his creepy and sad performance in Little Children, (also featuring his Watchmen co-star Patrick Wilson and Kate Winslet.) so hopefully this role will prove to be a breakout for him, and get him much more work. Jeffery Dean Morgan as The Comedian fit really well, and you can tell Morgan had a blast playing the sadistic asshole the entire time. Billy Crudup's lifeless performance as Dr. Manhattan fit in really well, because... Dr. Manhattan is about as disconnected a personality from human emotion as you can find. I'd call Matthew Goode's performance as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandius lifeless too, but I'd mean it in more of the bad way. The character to me demanded someone with a little more presence. Not some moosed up, twig wristed fop who I'm supposed to buy as the world's smartest man and world class athlete. Watching the guy kick the crap out of everyone else in the movie was just too hard for me to buy and ended up being disappointing. Carla Gugino's turn as Sally Jupiter/Silk Specter I was a bit of a let down as well, but I blame that fact more on the direction than anything else. Carla playing Sally in the early, younger days was a great fit and she did a good job, but I have a hard time, no matter how much makeup you wanna cake onto her, believing that this beautiful woman is playing a 67 year old. They got an older actor to play Hollis Mason for the five fucking seconds he was in the movie, why couldn't they have done the same for Sally?
As for the new ending, and it's deviations from the book, I'll just say I think putting Manhattan as a scapegoat, even though he probably is too detached to give a shit was a shitty thing to have done, but for a movie going audience, I think it's a more plausable idea than a totally out of left field "here comes the giant vagina-mouthed octopus from space". I don't agree with it... But I understand.
Overall I enjoyed Watchmen more than my skeptical ass expected too. It's just that some of the problems that stuck out really kept bugging and keeping me from loving it.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama is planning to sign an executive order Monday to overturn Bush-era policy that limited federal tax dollars for embryonic stem cell research, according to administration officials familiar with the deliberations.
Obama's move will be hailed by advocates for those suffering from a host of afflictions, ranging from diabetes to Parkinson's disease, who believe that an expansion of stem-cell research could boost medical progress toward eradicating the debilitating diseases.
But many conservatives object to the destruction of human embryos because they contend that it ends a human life.
The officials said the administration is planning a Monday event at the White House at which Obama will overturn the executive order signed by President George W. Bush in August 2001. It barred the National Institutes of Health from funding research on embryonic stem cells beyond using 60 cell lines that existed at that time.
Tony Perkins of the conservative Family Research Council accused the White House of leaking the details Friday night so that the move gets little attention, declaring that it is "a slap in the face to Americans who believe in the dignity of all human life."
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, "Advancements in science and research have moved faster than the debates among politicians in Washington, D.C., and breakthroughs announced in recent years confirm the full potential of stem cell research can be realized without the destruction of living human embryos."
In addition to signing the executive order, Bush twice vetoed legislation -- in July 2006 and June 2007 -- that would have expanded federally funded embryonic stem cell research.
At the time, Bush also argued that scientific advances allowed researchers to conduct groundbreaking research without destroying human embryos. Bush's moves led to Democratic charges that he had put politics over science.
Speaking as someone whose life has been saved by cutting edge technology and experimental surgical procedures in my life, I've been hoping and praying that the world would come to their senses on this issue. It means a lot to me, and even more now than in the past, since I've spent the last ten years counseling camp for children with heart conditions like myself. Over the years, I've seen so many of them die way too young, and I'm just so tired of it. Stem cell research may not be the cure-all to every situation, but I can't help but thinking a lot of these deaths might have been avoided, if these new sciences could have been better pursued here. It shouldn't matter what your stance on abortions is, because they're still going to happen and they're going to keep happening whether we like it or not. It seems more reasonable to me to put any aborted fetuses to use to at least save a life than to let them go to waste.
This whole ban was one of my biggest problems with the Bush administration, and I'll rejoice all day long when the lift is finalized.
It would so appear that today's issue of Previews has hit stands and Love Buzz has now been officially solicited by Oni Press. (Click for full image)
Pressure's on now... Seven years of toil and heartache of putting it together and it all comes down to this. I sincearly hope everyone heads out to their local comic stores and pre-orders a copy. A lot of love, blood, sweat, and tears have gone into it on the behalf of not only myself, but Michelle, Dave, and the countless other people who have been involved in and encouraged this project ever since I wrote my first draft when I was 19 years old.
So, a friend of mine forwarded me this email today... I know, I know. Email forwarding is best off being ignored and sent to the spam folder and when acknowledged in passing with a grunt when you friend asks what you thought of it, but this one had a title that just grabbed my attention and wouldn't let go for some reason.
The title read...
"Fwd: Proud to be white"
And the email read as follows... (I'm leaving it intact with all of it's shit grammar, spelling, and incomplete thoughts, because I just really don't know where this guy is going some of the time.
"This is great. I have been wondering about why Whites are racists, and no other race is......
Proud to be White
Michael Richards makes his point.....................Michael Richards better known as Kramer from TVs Seinfeld does make a good point. This was his defense speech in court after making racial comments in his comedy act.. He makes some very interesting points...
Someone finally said it... How many are actually paying attention to this? There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, AsianAmericans, Arab Americans, etc. And then there are just Americans. You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction. You call me 'White boy,' 'Cracker,' 'Honkey,' 'Whitey,' 'Caveman'... And that's OK. But when I call you, Nigger, Kike, Towel head, Sand-nigger, Camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink .. You call me a racist.
You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you... So why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?
You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day.
You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day.
You have Yom Hashoah. You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi.
You have the NAACP. You have BET... If we had WET (White Entertainment Television), we'd be racists. If we had a White Pride Day, you wouldcall us racists. If we had White History Month, we'd be racists.If we had any organization for only whites to 'advance' OUR, lives we'd be racists. We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, and when we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce. Wonder who pays for that?? A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American pageant but any color can be in the Miss America pageant. If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships ...You know we'd be racists. There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US . Yet if there were 'White colleges' That would be a racist college. In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists. You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.
You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug dealer running from the law and posing a threat to Society, you call him a racist.
I am proud... But you call me a racist.
Why is it that only whites can be racists??
There is nothing improper about this e-mail. Let's see which of you are proud enough to send it on. I sadly don't think many will. That's why we have lost most of OUR RIGHTS in this country. We won't stand up for ourselves!
BE PROUD TO BE WHITE!
It's not a crime YET ... But getting real close!"
Classy, right?
Reading all of this, I felt compelled to delete it to the trash bin, roll my eyes and say "Oh well", but the churning feeling of gravel this had put in my guts ended up getting the best of me. I pulled it out of the trash folder and proceeded to write the following response.
Sorry, but yeah... This reads as extremely racist to me, and even just a tad bit whiny. The Michael Richards thing, for one... The guy full on blasted a guy in the audience, who was heckling him and called him "Nigger". Not just once, but several times, and went further by saying that "If this were a few decades ago, they'd have you hanging from a tree with a fork in your ass." Again, extremely racist. As a guy whose done stand-up in the past, I've been heckled too, and it sucks, and it makes you fucking furious, but at the same time, I don't care what race someone is, or if they call you something that's the "white" equivalent of a racial slur, it doesn't make it okay to hit their ignorance back with more ignorance. If Michael Richards didn't want to get the shit storm he had justly brought down on his has-been head, he'd have just engaged the guy in the audience like any good comedian would do when someone fires something off at them. Disarm it and turn it into your own joke. Or better yet, just call him an asshole and be done with it. There were plenty of other ways that shit could have gone down without having to lose your shit and act like the only thing to do is put him on blast over the color of his skin. It's bullshit of the highest caliber, and for anyone to try and defend what he did is even lamer.
As for the rest of this shit pack of other whiny "Oh, it's so hard for me because I'm a white guy" statistics, Martin Luther King Jr. was an African American man, but his accomplishments were enough to transcend the racial boundaries at a time when white people were living on a pretty high horse. Martin Luther King day represents that wall "supposedly" being torn down, but obviously, that's not the case. MLK's accomplishments aren't or at least shouldn't be centralized to African Americans. He helped everybody. Saying that white people are the only ones the world considers racist, is wrong at worst and a half-truth at best. White people get called out most as racists, because we've got a history of opressing different races. We're not going to live that down for a couple more generations at least, so why don't we just get the fuck over it and move on already? On the other hand, ANYONE can be a racist. African American, Asian, Mexican, etc. Anyone can have a prejudice against someone else for any stupid reason without even talking to them. It's no more right for anyone to call a black guy "nigger" than it would be for him to call me "cracker" or whatever. Our own past racisms have bred a flawed system where people of so called "minority" races find it okay to take pot shots at slurring white people. Am I saying that's okay? Absolutely fucking not but this whole "You call me 'cracker', you're not racist but if I call you 'nigger', I'm a racist." arguement is just as fucking childish as a pair of five year olds fighting crying to their mother because one of them called the other one a 'doo-doo head'. It's a stupid arguement, and I think any sane, rational person should be able to rise above it and turn their backs on anyone who stoops so low as to call them by whatever racial slur might apply to them.
Racism isn't going to end. People are going to be hating other people for dumb, surface reasons until the end of fucking times, and even in the age of Obama, where a significant wall has been broken down and people want to believe racism is over, racism is still around and still going to be around until humanity nukes itself back to the Stone Age, as illustrated by this ignorant ass chain email. And that last line, "It's not a crime YET..." Give me a fucking break. Whoever wrote this piece of crap should be shot out of a fucking cannon for being brainless. Racism is still alive because of people who believe in this shit. Who believe that white people should have shit like "White History Month" and stuff like that. That's exactly why Black History Month does, and SHOULD exist. African Americans get one month out of the year. Other races get maybe a couple of holidays, but at the end of the day, America was built by white people. (although, I could argue it was also built on the backs of slaves from Africa, but that would get me started in a whole 'nother direction and my fingers are already tired.) White people get America for the rest of the year whole fucking year.
Rant over. I know it won't win me any friends, but I'm half tempted to forward this back up the entire chain of email addresses I've got here from the ones before it, because I think anyone who had to read a dose of this poison should be presented with an antidote and they can feel free to write me back and disagree.
My name is Len. I'm a 'white' American. I'm part Scotish, part German, and proud of my heritage going back as far as 800 A.D. I believe in pride in one's culture and heritage over pride in the color of one's skin. Skin is what's on the surface of us, and whatever color we are, that's not what makes us "who" we are. Anyone who believes that I question that they've ever taken a step outside their own neighborhood. That we even refer to ourselves as white people or black people just rings as stupid to me. We don't refer to Asians as "yellow people", or Middle Eastern people as "brown people". At least not loud enough that I've been hearing it, so why don't we all just quit with the dumb "color coding bullshit" and go back to hating on someone because they're an asshole, or because they cut you off in traffic. Y'know, the shit that really fucking matters!
Grow up, 'white' people...
Sincerely, Len N. Wallace
I hope when the person who sent this to me reads this, they'll give it some serious thought. I've known them for a very long time and have come to love and respect them a great deal, but there's clearly something there they need to be taught.
