ALERT

If you've posted a comment to the blog today and haven't received a response it's because Google is having some kind of issue that's preventing me from replying.  As soon as it's fixed, you'll hear from me.  Thanks!

KRAVEN LIVES

Had a really nice weekend at the Cincinatti Comic Expo—and especially enjoyed the Kraven's Last Hunt panel with my amazingly gifted collaborators Mike Zeck and Bob McLeod.  

I'm constantly amazed by—and grateful for—the long life this story has 
had:  treasured by old fans, still being discovered by new ones and continually in print.  We never dreamed we'd still be talking about KLH more than thirty years later. (Marvel just put out a new deluxe edition last month, featuring our sequel, Soul of the Hunter, along with a number of other Kraven-centric stories of mine.)

In the photo below, that's Bob M on the left, Mike Z in the middle and yours truly on the right.

BEGINNINGS

When I started in comics, the primary purpose of the DC anthology books—titles like House of Mystery, Weird War Tales, House of Secrets—was to find, and train, new writers and artists.  You didn't need to be published to get in the door, you needed to show that you had talent worth cultivating.  I used to call it the vaudeville of comics:  Those books were a kind of small-town theater where you could learn your craft before graduating to comic book Broadway.

The short story format provided a fantastic storytelling education:  You had to deliver a fully-realized plot, character arcs, and convincing dialogue in five to eight pages.  Working on those stories taught me so much.  And it certainly helped that my teachers were legendary editors, and wonderful people, like Jack C. Harris, Paul Levitz  and the late, great Len Wein.

I’d love to see more regularly published anthologies on the market today.  It's great that the business is attracting accomplished screenwriters and novelists, but I'm sure there are many talented people out there, with no credentials, who could benefit from being trained by experienced editors.  And the industry will benefit, in turn.

(If you want to know how my first comic book sale, to DC's House of Mystery, came about just click here.)

©copyright 2018 J.M. DeMatteis

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE KING!

Today is Jack Kirby's birthday.  

Without Kirby, there might not even be a comic book business today.  We all stand in his shadow.  We all build on his foundation.  Not just a brilliant artist but one of the greatest storytellers of the 20th century. (Click on this link to read a tribute to Kirby I've posted here a couple of times.)

Happy birthday, Jack...wherever you are! (Probably riding a surfboard across the multiverse and stopping to draw along the way.)

THE TALE BEHIND THE TALE

This month sees the release of a Brazilian edition of Blood: A Tale.  I wrote a new introduction for the book, looking back on the amazing collaboration that resulted in the creation of what is perhaps the most surreal and unique project of my career (so far, anyway), and you can read it below...

Writers like to pretend we’re the authors of our own stories, but I learned, early on, what a lie that is. No, the story is in charge:  an untamed, heaving, bucking bronco with a mind and will of its own.  Me?  I’m just a cowboy hanging on for dear life.  Try to force the bronco to do what I want and the beast will throw me to the ground, leaving me gasping in the dust.  Surrender to the beast and it will lead me on journeys undreamed of. 

This fact became crystal clear to me back in the 1980s when I was working on Moonshadow:  I’d completed the first two issues and they were by far the best stories I’d ever written (thanks, in no small part, to the art and inspiration of my brilliant collaborator, Jon J Muth).  But when it came to the third issue I hit a wall.  Two thirds of the way into the script and the entire story came apart in my hands.  Try as I might, straining mind and imagination to the breaking point, I couldn’t find the right ending for the story and I was devastated.  So devastated I just gave up, stretched out on my living room floor in despair and pondered the inevitable end of my career.  But a wonderful thing happened while I was writhing on the carpet cursing the gods:  an entire new ending came to me, instantaneously, like a holographic movie, projected from the deeps of my mind.  I watched the film, transcribed it, and, to my inexpressible delight, the entire issue came together in a way I never could have planned or imagined. 

My unconscious mind—that beautiful, terrifying bronco—had taken command.

This wasn’t the first time it had happened, but this particular experience made it clear to me—in a way I’d never fully grasped before—that the act of writing is about a continual surrender to the unconscious:  that mysterious realm that escapes all clear definition and functions as a doorway to both the uncharted vastness of our own minds and the uncharted vastness of Creation itself.  I realized that the more I could get myself out of the way and let the unconscious take command, the better my work would be.  (That’s the old spiritual paradox, right?  You’ve got to give it up to get it all.)

Which brings us to Blood:  A Tale.  Would it be possible, I wondered, to write an entire series this way, consciously writing from the unconscious, letting it all spill out from the deepest parts of myself without control or analysis?  It was an exciting challenge—and, yes, a little frightening—but what would be the vehicle for this experiment?  The answer came not in the form of an idea, but of a feeling:  a kind of tingling in the back of my head.  I could sense a new story there,  but it remained mysterious and elusive, just out of reach.

And it might have stayed out of reach forever had it not been for Kent Williams. 

I met Kent through the aforementioned Mr. Muth.  Kent and Jon were good friends—no surprise that these two supremely gifted men would find inspiration in each other’s company—and Kent was kind enough to pitch in on issue #6 of Moonshadow when Jon found himself in need of assistance.  (It’s hard enough penciling a comic book on a deadline, but Moonshadow was thirty pages of fully-painted art that needed to come out every sixty days.  That Muth did it, and so astonishingly well, is a testament to both his talent and his fierce will.)

Working with Kent on that issue was a genuine pleasure—he managed to both mirror Moonshadow’s established visual style and maintain his own identity, no easy thing—and we talked, with much enthusiasm but no specifics, about working on a project of our own.  All the while that idea—consciously writing from the unconscious—was back there tingling away, waiting for something to set it loose.

That something was a sketchbook Kent handed me one day:  page after page of odd, disturbing, fascinating characters that he’d been designing and collecting for years, waiting for the right moment to set them loose them in a story.  I remember flipping through the pages, feeling an strange familiarity—“Yes, I know him!  I know her!  Of course, that’s who he is!”—and realizing that the tingling in my head was now a tsunami, rising, rushing toward manifestation.  Kent’s sketches had unleashed the story-beast slumbering in my unconscious and the creature burst out of my head, knocked me to the ground.  Fed me visions of spiritual search, despair and hope, sin and redemption.  Of looping time, eternal recurrence and stories within stories (within stories within stories).  I started to write, letting the tale pour out of me without filters or expectations:  I wanted to be as surprised by Blood as I hoped our readers would be.       

But Blood: A Tale wasn’t just my story:  it was the result of a true partnership.  When we started work on the series, Kent and I were living in the same upstate New York apartment complex and I could literally walk out my door and be at Kent’s place in two minutes.  This made for one of the most unique, and exhilarating, collaborations of my career.  I’d race over to Kent’s apartment with my latest pages, we’d discuss and dissect them, then Kent would go off to paint, following my story but always free to bend and twist it in any way his unconscious mind dictated.  When he was done, he’d come knocking on my door with the finished art for more discussion and dissection, after which the process would begin again.  

There were times we inverted the system:  Instead of the writing coming first, the two of us would talk over the upcoming sequence and Kent would go off to paint, often spinning our tale into unexpected places, after which I’d take the finished pages and script over them, discovering new levels and layers of story as I wrote.  I remember sitting together about halfway through the project—it was a few days before I was leaving for my first trip to India—and Kent showed me a page he’d painted for an old story of his, completed but never used.  Could we, he asked, fit this into Blood’s story?  We sat there excitedly throwing ideas back and forth and, within minutes, that single page became the jumping off point for an entire sequence that Kent painted while I was away.  

About that trip to India:  In some ways it was as if I’d stepped into the very world Kent and I had been creating.  As if I was walking through the Unconscious Mind of the Universe Itself.  Those two weeks—that felt more like a thousand miraculous lifetimes—echoed and deepened the themes of our story, helping me to bring in new elements (unplanned, yes, but perhaps preordained?) and finding the perfect ending for Blood’s pilgrimage. 

And for a truly memorable collaboration.

Working with Kent on Blood: A Tale taught me that all storytelling boundaries are there to be exploded.  That once you’ve consulted your map, the best thing you can do is burn it, throwing away your compass for good measure—stepping onto the path with one foot rooted in mystery and the other rooted in faith.

In writing as in life:  Don’t tell the story, let the story tell you.

©copyright 2018 J.M. DeMatteis

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAY!

Today is Ray Bradbury's birthday.  I’ve written about this extraordinary writer—this extraordinary man—many times over the years and, as a birthday tribute, here's a tapestry of selected passages from previous posts.  

***

There are few people on the face of the planet who have influenced and, more important, inspired me as much as the great Ray Bradbury.  Reading a classic Bradbury short story or essay on creativity, immersing myself in his novels (especially Dandelion Wine, one of the most glorious and magical books ever written), is an experience that strips away the layers of what I call the CNN Reality—the voices of Doom and Naysaying Cynicism that seek to tell us that we're small and helpless, ordinary and afraid—and opens our hearts and minds to a deeper, truer, more joyful reality:  one where life is sacred, creativity is an expression of pure delight and the universe is viewed with eyes of innocence and wonder.  Bradbury's words set fire to my soul decades ago and they still do the same today.

***

People call Bradbury a science-fiction writer, a fantasist, but I don’t think either label applies.  He’s a preacher, a rhapsodist, an interfaith—no, interdimensional—minister.  I’ve rarely encountered anyone who more eloquently encapsulates the sheer sacred joy of life.  When I read a Bradbury story, I not only want to race to the computer and create literary wonders of my own—the greatest gift a fellow writer can give you—I want to race out the door and up the street with my arms wide, embracing the entire universe.

***

Reading Bradbury—opening your mind and heart to that unique voice, that amazing spirit—it’s as if the author himself arrives at your house.  The door bursts opens, nearly flying off its hinges, and Ray races into the room, enveloping you in a bear hug—nearly cracking your ribs—spinning you around in circles as he bellows with laughter and perhaps sheds a tear or two, touched, as he is, by this reunion.  He’s a one-man Imagination pantheon, an explosion of gods and goddesses, each one with a unique story to tell.  You get him to sit down for a minute or two, have a sip of wine, but he’s soon up on his feet, dragging you to the window, pointing to the clouds, the moon, the stars...the whole wide universe.  You watch in wonder and delight as Bradbury reaches out, wraps his arms around God, yanks him down to earth and kisses Him full on the mouth. 

When Ray’s done, when he’s given his last oratory, spun his last tale, he crushes you in another bear-hug then races out the door, leaving you utterly exhausted, inspired—and grateful to be alive.

                                                         ***

Here’s a passage from Bradbury’s essay “Predicting the Past, Remembering the Future” that, for me, boils the man down to his cosmic essence:

"My own belief is that the universe exists as a miracle and that we have been born here to witness and celebrate.  We wonder at our purpose for living.  Our purpose is to perceive the fantastic.  Why have a universe if there is no audience?

We are that audience.

We are here to see and touch, describe and move.  Our job, then, is to occupy ourselves with paying back the gift."

***

Read Bradbury.  Listen to Bradbury.  Unfold your soul and let his words wash over you.  If you're a budding writer, he'll fill you with burning passion for your chosen field.  If you're an old hand like me, he'll make you feel like a newborn, just beginning on the most miraculous path God ever created.  And if you're not a writer, I suspect he'll touch and move you in surprising ways that will echo on through your heart—and through your life.

***

I’ll add one final thought to those I’ve reposted above:  The writers that matter most to us become our dearest friends and companions. 

Happy birthday, Ray.  I still treasure your friendship and always will.

THE SUNSHINE BOYS

Here's a short clip from the recent Raleigh Supercon panel where I talk about how I came to work on Justice League International.  

Oh, yeah: some guy named Keith Giffen was sitting next to me and I still have no clue who he is!  (But he seems absolutely thrilled to be up there with me, doesn't he?)



Update:  And here are the Sunshine Boys again, talking about their, shall we say, unique collaborative process.