There's an excellent Beatles documentary, directed by Bob Smeaton (who also directed The Beatles Anthology), coming up later this month on the History Channel; but, of course, in the age of the internet, you don't have to wait that long to see The Beatles On Record: it's right here for your listening and dancing pleasure. There's nothing new or surprising, but there's lots of wonderful footage and in-studio chatter. Better yet, the film doesn't dwell on behind-the-scenes melodrama: the focus is strictly on the music, year by year, from "Love Me Do" to Abbey Road. If you're a Beatles fanatic—and I know there are many of you out there—I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
THREE PLUGS AND A PROMISE
As I think I’ve mentioned here before, my son Cody is a very skilled comic book editor, currently working for Devil’s Due, where his Major Project of the moment is a continuation of the cult-favorite Jericho TV series. Jericho, Season Three: Civil War is a six-issue mini that comes out November 25th: the first issue—co-written by Jericho writer/producer Dan Shotz and another of the show’s writers, Robert Levine—continues exactly where the series left off when it was unceremoniously yanked by CBS a couple of years back. I’ve been privy to the unfolding creative process and I can safely say that, if you’re one of the millions of hardcore fans of the show, you will love this. The interior art is by Alejandro F. Giraldo. Below is the first issue cover by Scott West.
***
While I’m plugging away, I should also mention that the first issue of Casper and the Spectrals, the Casper update I’m editing for Ardden Entertainment, hit the stores this past week. It’s a fresh, fun reimagining of the Casper mythos, with a story by yours truly, Brendan Deneen and Todd Dezago, a terrific script by Todd and equally terrific art from Pedro Delgado. We’ve worked hard to make our Casper a smart, all-ages comic book and I suspect that it will be enjoyed by kids—of any age—with a fondness for the Friendly Ghost.
***
Speaking of plugs—well, hair plugs—I recently stumbled across a site that may be one of the weirdest I’ve ever encountered on the web. Yes, I know that’s saying a lot, but just click here and tell me that you don’t agree. As this essay (one of the few posts from my Amazon Blog that hasn’t vanished into the merciless depths of cyber-space) will attest, I’m a total Shatnerd—but an entire website devoted to Shatner’s hairline? As Kevin Costner observed in Oliver Stone’s JFK: “We’re through the looking glass here, people.”
***
I’ve decided that the time has come to finally write about my long-ago encounters with John Lennon, so be on the lookout for “Meeting Lennon, Part One,” which will be appearing here before Thanksgiving. Promise!
©copyright 2009 J.M. DeMatteis
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
THAT WHICH IS MOST NEEDED
Here's another piece from the Lost Amazon Archives that I thought was worth re-posting.
***
The older I get the more I realize that the most important thing any of us can do in life is strive to live compassionately, keeping our hearts open, treating others with understanding and, most important, simple human kindness. “That which is most needed,” as Buddha said, in words that have echoed through my life for decades, “is a loving heart.” I truly believe that the microcosm is the macrocosm. That our smallest acts of compassion resonate across the planet. That one heart can quite literally change the world.
Of course it’s one thing to make compassion an intention in our lives and quite another to live it. Oh, I try, I honestly do, to be as good and decent a person as I can—I’ve been consciously working on myself, on my connection to the Divine, for more than thirty-five years—but the truth is, for all my work, for all my striving, I’m regularly astounded by my ability to say or do spectacularly stupid or hurtful things.
I’ve found that ninety-nine percent of the time, when I’ve done something to wound another person, I’ve done it unconsciously: I was so clueless I wasn’t even aware of my idiotic actions. When I discover my transgression, my response is usually the same: guilt, misery, shame, and abject apologies. (The first three, I’ve decided, are fairly useless. The abject apologies are absolutely necessary.) Then—what else can I do?—I get up out of my pool of self-pity and determine to be more conscious of my actions in the future, to open my heart a little wider, to be more aware.
That said, I think that no matter how hard we try to live our highest ideals, we are, at some point—and, I suspect, with some regularity—going to screw up: say or do the wrong thing. Make idiotic mistakes. Hurt someone’s feelings. The fact is we’re human—if we were meant to be pure and perfect angels we’d have been born with wings—so all we can do is our best. Sometimes our best is extraordinary, sometimes it’s pathetic; but it’s the effort that counts, I think.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s wonderful 1965 novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (one of my all-time favorite books), the main character—a man who cares so much about his fellow humans that it’s driven him to the brink of madness—is asked to baptize newborn twins. Eliot Rosewater then improvises a succinct, honest and heartfelt welcome to Planet Earth that concludes like this: “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—: ’God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’”
Those words, like Buddha’s request for a loving heart, have stayed with me for decades. Neither quote is especially poetic, but both contain enough truth to change the world.
One heart at a time.
©copyright 2009 J.M. DeMatteis
Saturday, November 7, 2009
INTO IMAGINALIS
In May of 2006, Mike Ploog and I were in Washington, D.C., riding high at Book Expo America. Abadazad, our all-ages comic book series that nearly drowned in the tsunami that was the CrossGen collapse, had been miraculously resurrected as a children’s book series, thanks to the benevolent spirit of Walt Disney and the brilliant efforts of Hyperion Books for Children vice-president/editor-in-chief Brenda Bowen. So there we were, walking up stairs decorated with Mike’s art, strolling beneath giant posters of Zad’s beautiful, blue-skinned Queen Ija, and marveling at the fact that almost everyone in the hall had an Abadazad lanyard around his or her neck. Drunk with delight, we signed advance copies of the first two books in the series—we’d contracted for eight, with the possibility of even more—and listened, with equal joy, as a Hyperion executive all-but guaranteed us a second printing. (This, after being told that The Road to Inconceivable and The Dream Thief had first printings of 100,000 copies each.) The icing on the cake came at the Hyperion dinner on Saturday night, when we were approached by Michele Norris of NPR’s All Things Considered, who invited us to come on her show to talk about Abadazad.
The next few months found us finishing up work on the third book in the series—The Puppet, the Professor and the Prophet—traveling to Finland for the Helsinki Book Fair, doing signings and, finally, landing that NPR interview. The night the interview aired, we watched, stunned, as Zad shot up the Amazon.com sales charts. “Dreams come true and miracles happen,” as someone (I think it was me), once wrote in a song.
The next few months found us finishing up work on the third book in the series—The Puppet, the Professor and the Prophet—traveling to Finland for the Helsinki Book Fair, doing signings and, finally, landing that NPR interview. The night the interview aired, we watched, stunned, as Zad shot up the Amazon.com sales charts. “Dreams come true and miracles happen,” as someone (I think it was me), once wrote in a song.
But by December of ’06, when I turned in the manuscript for the fourth book in the series, Historcery, we discovered that the good ship Abadazad had hit an iceberg—and we were sinking. Sales, we were told, were disappointing (although healthy in the comic book market and with our friends in Finland and other Nordic countries) and it had been decided that The Puppet, the Professor and the Prophet—the best in the series, in my opinion—would only be published in England. Brenda, who always believed in our story, and in us, was looking for ways to save Abadazad. One thing she suggested was dumping the hybrid form—the books were part prose, part comics—and doing a straight-ahead prose novel (with new illustrations from Mike, of course). Were we disappointed that the series hadn’t done better? Absolutely. Still, having seen Abadazad go through one death and resurrection, we were ready to see it rise again. And the challenge of turning Kate Jameson's adventure into a novel—and actually finishing it in one volume—was a very exciting one. But the excitement was short-lived—
—because, within a few months, Brenda Bowen—our champion, our guardian angel, our biggest booster—had departed the halls of Hyperion and we were left in the hands of...well, we weren't quite sure who. Our spirits brightened when we learned that Brenda’s right-hand man. a smart young editor named Christian Trimmer, had taken Abadazad on: Christian was a huge fan of our series and he very much wanted to see it continue; but, without a heavy-hitter like Brenda there to advocate for us, we didn’t know how far Christian’s enthusiasm would take us.
Our spirits brightened again when Christian told us that he’d spoken to Brenda's replacement (I honestly don’t remember the executive’s name), who, we were assured, very much wanted to make Abadazad work. After discussing different ways we could go with the series, what formats might be best, we were told to hang tight while The Powers That Be worked out a solution. So, heartened and hopeful, we waited.
And we waited.
And then, in the spring of 2007, the word came down: No. Just like that. The gods of Hyperion had thought it over and decided, for reasons that never became clear, that they didn’t want to invest any more time and money in Abadazad.
We were finished. Just like that!
Mike and I went through a shared grieving process, after which I, literally, slipped into my personal bed of despair. In Victorian novels, there’s often talk of characters “taking to their beds”: putting the back of a hand to the forehead, with a Lord Byron-like flourish, and collapsing among the covers, in a wasted, heaving heap. Well, that’s pretty much what happened to me. I had invested so much of myself, of my heart, hope and inspiration, in Abadazad that the cancellation of the series hit me like the death of a loved one. Part of my depression certainly involved the loss of income. As noted, we’d signed for eight books and those upcoming four were going to carry me—and my family—through the next year. That’s not a small thing. But that wasn’t the core of my despair. What truly devastated me was the loss of those characters. Characters? No: beloved friends. I believed in Kate and Matt Jameson, Professor Headstrong, Queen Ija and all the rest. Believed in them with every cell in my body, every vibrating particle of my consciousness. With all my heart. And now, I thought, they’re gone. Trapped in some literary limbo, beyond my reach. How will Kate ever rescue Matt from the Lanky Man, how will—
Wait.
Characters trapped in limbo?
What a fantastic idea for a story!
That concept smacked me across the face, grabbed me by the throat and dragged me out of my bed and into my office, where I found myself typing furiously, outlining the tale of a twelve year old girl—Mehera Crosby—whose life is upended when her favorite book series is canceled; upended even more when she discovers that the characters she so loves are alive, trapped in a strange and deadly limbo—and it’s up to her to rescue them. I called the story Mundus Imaginalis and writing that outline totally dissolved my foul mood.
For a few hours, anyway.
Once I was done detailing the major beats of the story, exhilaration passed and I crawled, exhausted, back to bed, wrapping myself tight in a cocoon of misery for a few more days. Then I got up and went back to work. Really, what choice did I have? My ability to create goes to the heart of who I am. No matter what projects may explode in my hands, what doors may slam in my face, I can always (well, once I lick my wounds) pick myself up and begin again. As a writer I live, not from logic, but from imagination. From a profound belief in the power of the impossible. And, in the end, faith in the impossible is all I need. (You can bet my buddy Mike Ploog feels the same way: he’s rocketed on to other projects, bringing to them the same passion and brilliance he brought to Abadazad.)
Some weeks after Zad’s death, I found out that Brenda Bowen had landed safely at HarperCollins, where she was starting up a new imprint, the Bowen Press. Contractual obligations prevented Brenda from discussing new material with me—or anyone she’d worked with at Disney—until the beginning of 2008, but, when Brenda and I finally got together over lunch in January of that year, one of the several ideas I handed her was Mundus Imaginalis. And that, I’m happy to report, was the one she loved. It took months—as it usually does—for the contracts to be ironed out but, eventually, I was off, starting work on a novel—the title wisely shortened to Imaginalis—that’s now completed and awaiting its June, 2010 release from the HC imprint Katherine Tegen Books. (What happened to the Bowen Press? In yet another twist in the tale, Brenda ended up leaving HarperCollins. She’s now a literary agent, working for Sanford J. Greenburger Associates—and, I’m certain, doing it with skill, wisdom and extraordinary grace.)
I’d love to tell you that I know—to the bottom of my soul—that Imaginalis will be a spectacular success; but, if the preceding tale makes anything clear, it's that the only thing I know for sure is I don’t know a thing. I certainly hope that Imaginalis does well, that it transforms my career, and my life, in magical, miraculous ways; but, if it doesn’t, I’ll take to my bed for a few days, bang my head against the wall, rail at the gods, whimper pathetically—and then get back to work, setting my sights on the next impossible goal.
Because I’m a writer—and that’s what I do.
©copyright 2009 J.M. DeMatteis
—because, within a few months, Brenda Bowen—our champion, our guardian angel, our biggest booster—had departed the halls of Hyperion and we were left in the hands of...well, we weren't quite sure who. Our spirits brightened when we learned that Brenda’s right-hand man. a smart young editor named Christian Trimmer, had taken Abadazad on: Christian was a huge fan of our series and he very much wanted to see it continue; but, without a heavy-hitter like Brenda there to advocate for us, we didn’t know how far Christian’s enthusiasm would take us.
Our spirits brightened again when Christian told us that he’d spoken to Brenda's replacement (I honestly don’t remember the executive’s name), who, we were assured, very much wanted to make Abadazad work. After discussing different ways we could go with the series, what formats might be best, we were told to hang tight while The Powers That Be worked out a solution. So, heartened and hopeful, we waited.
And we waited.
And then, in the spring of 2007, the word came down: No. Just like that. The gods of Hyperion had thought it over and decided, for reasons that never became clear, that they didn’t want to invest any more time and money in Abadazad.
We were finished. Just like that!
Mike and I went through a shared grieving process, after which I, literally, slipped into my personal bed of despair. In Victorian novels, there’s often talk of characters “taking to their beds”: putting the back of a hand to the forehead, with a Lord Byron-like flourish, and collapsing among the covers, in a wasted, heaving heap. Well, that’s pretty much what happened to me. I had invested so much of myself, of my heart, hope and inspiration, in Abadazad that the cancellation of the series hit me like the death of a loved one. Part of my depression certainly involved the loss of income. As noted, we’d signed for eight books and those upcoming four were going to carry me—and my family—through the next year. That’s not a small thing. But that wasn’t the core of my despair. What truly devastated me was the loss of those characters. Characters? No: beloved friends. I believed in Kate and Matt Jameson, Professor Headstrong, Queen Ija and all the rest. Believed in them with every cell in my body, every vibrating particle of my consciousness. With all my heart. And now, I thought, they’re gone. Trapped in some literary limbo, beyond my reach. How will Kate ever rescue Matt from the Lanky Man, how will—
Wait.
Characters trapped in limbo?
What a fantastic idea for a story!
That concept smacked me across the face, grabbed me by the throat and dragged me out of my bed and into my office, where I found myself typing furiously, outlining the tale of a twelve year old girl—Mehera Crosby—whose life is upended when her favorite book series is canceled; upended even more when she discovers that the characters she so loves are alive, trapped in a strange and deadly limbo—and it’s up to her to rescue them. I called the story Mundus Imaginalis and writing that outline totally dissolved my foul mood.
For a few hours, anyway.
Once I was done detailing the major beats of the story, exhilaration passed and I crawled, exhausted, back to bed, wrapping myself tight in a cocoon of misery for a few more days. Then I got up and went back to work. Really, what choice did I have? My ability to create goes to the heart of who I am. No matter what projects may explode in my hands, what doors may slam in my face, I can always (well, once I lick my wounds) pick myself up and begin again. As a writer I live, not from logic, but from imagination. From a profound belief in the power of the impossible. And, in the end, faith in the impossible is all I need. (You can bet my buddy Mike Ploog feels the same way: he’s rocketed on to other projects, bringing to them the same passion and brilliance he brought to Abadazad.)
Some weeks after Zad’s death, I found out that Brenda Bowen had landed safely at HarperCollins, where she was starting up a new imprint, the Bowen Press. Contractual obligations prevented Brenda from discussing new material with me—or anyone she’d worked with at Disney—until the beginning of 2008, but, when Brenda and I finally got together over lunch in January of that year, one of the several ideas I handed her was Mundus Imaginalis. And that, I’m happy to report, was the one she loved. It took months—as it usually does—for the contracts to be ironed out but, eventually, I was off, starting work on a novel—the title wisely shortened to Imaginalis—that’s now completed and awaiting its June, 2010 release from the HC imprint Katherine Tegen Books. (What happened to the Bowen Press? In yet another twist in the tale, Brenda ended up leaving HarperCollins. She’s now a literary agent, working for Sanford J. Greenburger Associates—and, I’m certain, doing it with skill, wisdom and extraordinary grace.)
I’d love to tell you that I know—to the bottom of my soul—that Imaginalis will be a spectacular success; but, if the preceding tale makes anything clear, it's that the only thing I know for sure is I don’t know a thing. I certainly hope that Imaginalis does well, that it transforms my career, and my life, in magical, miraculous ways; but, if it doesn’t, I’ll take to my bed for a few days, bang my head against the wall, rail at the gods, whimper pathetically—and then get back to work, setting my sights on the next impossible goal.
Because I’m a writer—and that’s what I do.
©copyright 2009 J.M. DeMatteis
Sunday, November 1, 2009
SUNDAY MORNING DREAMING
Several years back, I was away on retreat at a spiritual center in South Carolina and I had a glimpse—just a glimpse—of how much of an illusion (what the Hindus would call Maya) this world really is. Everything around me felt as insubstantial as heat trails wavering on the highway on a hot summer day. The people I encountered seemed like they were weightless, unreal: made of morning mist—or perhaps pixie dust. I mention this because I’ve been reworking an old story of mine that deals with the idea that this life we’re living is as much a dream as the ones that fill our heads when we’re asleep; that, in fact, we’re asleep and dreaming right now—and, if we knew that, really knew it, we could become lucid dreamers and transform our world.
If this is true—and the older I get, the truer it becomes, not just philosophically but experientially—then it means I’m dreaming everything around me. The entire universe (including all of you reading this) doesn’t really exist, any more than the people and things you encounter in a dream exist. You are all reflections of my consciousness, of my vision of the world, of my vision of my Self. A movie projected from my unconscious mind. And here’s the paradox:
The same is true for you. Everything you see, everything you experience, is a dream dreamed just for you, for your amusement and unfoldment, for your awakening and ultimate joy. I am just a dream you have dreamed. This blog is just a dream you have dreamed.
And here’s the kicker: You don’t exist. And neither do I. We’re both thoughts floating in the mind of the One Dreamer, the Only Dreamer, God Himself. (I say He, but I could just as easily say She or It.) It’s God’s dream, all of it, and He’s dreaming it through us and with us and—best of all—as us.
Think of it like this: You’re writing a novel and become so immersed in your story, so in love with your characters, that you completely identify with your fictional world. When you write the hero, you are the hero, when you write the villain, you are the villain. Sometimes you even forget that you’re you, the writer, and that what you’re creating is just a story—and then the tale seems to start telling itself, your characters take on lives of their own.
This metaphor breaks down after a certain point, because—if a multitude of spiritual paths and traditions are to be believed—in the cosmic drama that is Creation, in the dream that the Only Dreamer is dreaming, the Divine Author doesn’t just imagine the tale, He consciously descends into his own story in order to awaken his characters to the truth that—much like a hologram—each one isn’t just a piece of the tale, each one is everyone and everything in the tale. And more: each one is the Author Himself, in an extremely clever disguise. Some of the characters embrace what the Author is saying. Some deny it. Some hate the idea and oppose Him. Yet, to the Author, it's all an essential part of a wonderful story. Even the opposition. Especially the opposition. (Let’s face it, what good’s a story without a strong antagonist? Well, I have a theory that it could be even better—but that’s another post for another time.)
If you accept this, even for a moment, the inevitable question that arises is: What kind of dream are we choosing to dream right now (and if each one of us is the Dreamer, then it absolutely comes down to personal choice)—and what miraculous new dream can we manifest tomorrow? Even if this is nonsense—the biggest load of pseudo-mystical, New Age, quasi-Eastern moonshine ever concocted—how much about ourselves and our world could we change if we lived as if we believed it was true?
This universe we inhabit is so unfathomably huge that no one perspective could ever capture more than a splinter of its magnificence (in other words: everything I say is true—except when it’s not), so take the preceding as a Sunday morning brew of faith, hope and imagination. I invite you to pour your own faith and imagination into the mix. And let’s see what miracles we can manifest, in this strange and wonderful dream we’re dreaming.
Next stop: Imaginalis.
©copyright 2009 J.M. DeMatteis
If this is true—and the older I get, the truer it becomes, not just philosophically but experientially—then it means I’m dreaming everything around me. The entire universe (including all of you reading this) doesn’t really exist, any more than the people and things you encounter in a dream exist. You are all reflections of my consciousness, of my vision of the world, of my vision of my Self. A movie projected from my unconscious mind. And here’s the paradox:
The same is true for you. Everything you see, everything you experience, is a dream dreamed just for you, for your amusement and unfoldment, for your awakening and ultimate joy. I am just a dream you have dreamed. This blog is just a dream you have dreamed.
And here’s the kicker: You don’t exist. And neither do I. We’re both thoughts floating in the mind of the One Dreamer, the Only Dreamer, God Himself. (I say He, but I could just as easily say She or It.) It’s God’s dream, all of it, and He’s dreaming it through us and with us and—best of all—as us.
Think of it like this: You’re writing a novel and become so immersed in your story, so in love with your characters, that you completely identify with your fictional world. When you write the hero, you are the hero, when you write the villain, you are the villain. Sometimes you even forget that you’re you, the writer, and that what you’re creating is just a story—and then the tale seems to start telling itself, your characters take on lives of their own.
This metaphor breaks down after a certain point, because—if a multitude of spiritual paths and traditions are to be believed—in the cosmic drama that is Creation, in the dream that the Only Dreamer is dreaming, the Divine Author doesn’t just imagine the tale, He consciously descends into his own story in order to awaken his characters to the truth that—much like a hologram—each one isn’t just a piece of the tale, each one is everyone and everything in the tale. And more: each one is the Author Himself, in an extremely clever disguise. Some of the characters embrace what the Author is saying. Some deny it. Some hate the idea and oppose Him. Yet, to the Author, it's all an essential part of a wonderful story. Even the opposition. Especially the opposition. (Let’s face it, what good’s a story without a strong antagonist? Well, I have a theory that it could be even better—but that’s another post for another time.)
If you accept this, even for a moment, the inevitable question that arises is: What kind of dream are we choosing to dream right now (and if each one of us is the Dreamer, then it absolutely comes down to personal choice)—and what miraculous new dream can we manifest tomorrow? Even if this is nonsense—the biggest load of pseudo-mystical, New Age, quasi-Eastern moonshine ever concocted—how much about ourselves and our world could we change if we lived as if we believed it was true?
This universe we inhabit is so unfathomably huge that no one perspective could ever capture more than a splinter of its magnificence (in other words: everything I say is true—except when it’s not), so take the preceding as a Sunday morning brew of faith, hope and imagination. I invite you to pour your own faith and imagination into the mix. And let’s see what miracles we can manifest, in this strange and wonderful dream we’re dreaming.
Next stop: Imaginalis.
©copyright 2009 J.M. DeMatteis
Monday, October 26, 2009
ORSON AND VICTOR
The rest of my story about the demise of Abadazad and the birth of Imaginalis will have to wait until next week because I’m busy finishing up an animation script for a new series created by Samurai Jack’s Genndy Tartakovsky. While you’re waiting—or even if you’re not—here’s something I think you’ll enjoy.
In 1937, Orson Welles—then a twenty-two year old force of nature who was transforming the American theater—adapted and directed a brilliant seven part radio version of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. I think Les Miz is one of the most magnificent stories ever created: a profound, deeply moving, tale of life, death, sin, redemption, war, revolution, true love and the majesty of God expressed through the humility of man. The combination of Welles—if you’ve been reading The Life and Times of Savior 28, you know I’m a major Welles fanatic—and Hugo is something to be savored. And here’s the good news: you can download all seven episodes for free—and, yes, it’s legal—right here at one of the internet’s most rewarding sites, Archive.org.
If you decide to give Orson and Victor a listen, take my advice: Wait till you’re alone, preferably at night, stretch out on your bed or couch, shut off the lights, open your mind and just listen. Radio drama was a unique and powerful art form that, for a few magnificent decades, dominated the American landscape—and Orson Welles was one of its absolute masters. If you love having your imagination actively engaged by a wonderful story (and I suspect most of the people reading this fall into that category), you’re in for a great ride.
©copyright 2009 J.M. DeMatteis
In 1937, Orson Welles—then a twenty-two year old force of nature who was transforming the American theater—adapted and directed a brilliant seven part radio version of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. I think Les Miz is one of the most magnificent stories ever created: a profound, deeply moving, tale of life, death, sin, redemption, war, revolution, true love and the majesty of God expressed through the humility of man. The combination of Welles—if you’ve been reading The Life and Times of Savior 28, you know I’m a major Welles fanatic—and Hugo is something to be savored. And here’s the good news: you can download all seven episodes for free—and, yes, it’s legal—right here at one of the internet’s most rewarding sites, Archive.org.
If you decide to give Orson and Victor a listen, take my advice: Wait till you’re alone, preferably at night, stretch out on your bed or couch, shut off the lights, open your mind and just listen. Radio drama was a unique and powerful art form that, for a few magnificent decades, dominated the American landscape—and Orson Welles was one of its absolute masters. If you love having your imagination actively engaged by a wonderful story (and I suspect most of the people reading this fall into that category), you’re in for a great ride.
©copyright 2009 J.M. DeMatteis
Thursday, October 22, 2009
ABADAZAD...AGAIN
I want to write about the genesis of my upcoming fantasy novel, Imaginalis—and I will, very soon—but in order to do that, it's important for you to understand the long and tortuous journey of the project that preceded it, Abadazad—because it was Zad's demise that sparked the idea for the new book. I'd love to just link you to a lengthy post I did, a few years back, on my Amazon.com blog, but, as I've mentioned before, Amazon has pretty much torched those archives. What follows is a slightly-edited version of that post. It ends on what was, at the time, a justifiably happy note. When I continue the story, I'll fill you in on what happened after that initial rush of pre-publication joy and how Abadazad's crash and burn led to the birth of the kingdom of Imaginalis. But, for now, let's go back in time to 2006 for the Semi-Secret History of Abadazad.
***
I've often quoted Joseph Campbell’s famous advice to “follow your bliss”: In my experience, following your deepest passions may not lead you exactly where you want to go, but they'll always lead you someplace good; and sometimes your final destination will be better than the one you had in mind.
Case in point: Abadazad.
As many of you know, the first two books in the Abadazad series—The Road To Inconceivable and The Dream Thief—came out just about a month ago. What many of you don’t know is how long it took to get here. Looking back, it’s a lesson to me in how important it is to hold tight to our dreams...even when everyone around us is telling us to let them go.
Back in the mid-1980’s I had an idea for a story called “Silver Shoes.” It was about a little girl, living with her abusive father, who’s befriended by an old woman named Dorothy. Not just any Dorothy: this old lady claims to be Dorothy Gale, from L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz. After Dorothy passes away, the girl finds a gift the old woman has left behind for her: a pair of silver shoes (that’s what they were in Baum’s book. MGM magically transformed them into technicolor-friendly ruby slippers for the 1939 film) that the girl uses to escape her father and live happily ever after in Oz. It was, I thought, a wonderful idea, but I never did much with it. At the time I was fairly immersed in the Marvel and DC comic book universes and there was really no place for “Silver Shoes” in those worlds. I recall pitching the idea to a television series called Tales From The Darkside...a kind of low-rent Twilight Zone...but they passed. (I may have even pitched it to the revived Twilight Zone a few years later. Trivia Fact Of The Day: My first professional sale in that strange land called Hollywood was a 1986 Zone episode called “The Girl I Married.”)
Rejection is part and parcel of the freelance writer’s life, so I just sighed, filed the story away...and forgot about it.
For ten years.
In the mid-90’s I started toying with an idea about a mother who discovers that her abducted son has been taken to a magical world that—she’d assumed—only existed in books. I named the world Abadazad—and began developing it as a movie treatment. In fact, it was the comment of a producer I’d pitched the story to that led me to change the main character from a parent to an older sibling. Without that offhand remark, Kate Jameson might never have been born.
The more I worked to flesh out the Abadazad concept, the more I was convinced it should be a comic book. The comic book business had been exploding since the 80’s, opening the door on new—and far more challenging—content. This growth allowed me to do projects like Moonshadow, Brooklyn Dreams, and Seekers Into The Mystery—all aimed at an adult audience. Unfortunately, this new direction left what was once the prime target audience for comic books...children...out in the cold. As a parent—and, as a reader who’s taken many nurturing journeys to Oz, Wonderland, Neverland and Narnia—I found this a frustrating state of affairs (to say the least). So I hatched a plan:
My idea was to do smart, literate, beautifully-illustrated comics for kids . The comic book equivalent of the finest in children’s literature. (I’d actually attempted this once before, in the late 80’s, with a series called The Stardust Kid. Took me more than fifteen years to get that one into print.) At first—encouraged by my old friend, and Overseer of DC Comics’ Vertigo empire, Karen Berger—I tried to sell everyone from Marvel to Archie on a proposal for an entire line of sophisticated kids comics. When that failed, I whittled the concept down to two titles: one of them—The Life and Adventures of Skylar Orion—was a co-creation with Sandman illustrator Michael Zulli. The other was Abadazad.
Back in the mid-1980’s I had an idea for a story called “Silver Shoes.” It was about a little girl, living with her abusive father, who’s befriended by an old woman named Dorothy. Not just any Dorothy: this old lady claims to be Dorothy Gale, from L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz. After Dorothy passes away, the girl finds a gift the old woman has left behind for her: a pair of silver shoes (that’s what they were in Baum’s book. MGM magically transformed them into technicolor-friendly ruby slippers for the 1939 film) that the girl uses to escape her father and live happily ever after in Oz. It was, I thought, a wonderful idea, but I never did much with it. At the time I was fairly immersed in the Marvel and DC comic book universes and there was really no place for “Silver Shoes” in those worlds. I recall pitching the idea to a television series called Tales From The Darkside...a kind of low-rent Twilight Zone...but they passed. (I may have even pitched it to the revived Twilight Zone a few years later. Trivia Fact Of The Day: My first professional sale in that strange land called Hollywood was a 1986 Zone episode called “The Girl I Married.”)
Rejection is part and parcel of the freelance writer’s life, so I just sighed, filed the story away...and forgot about it.
For ten years.
In the mid-90’s I started toying with an idea about a mother who discovers that her abducted son has been taken to a magical world that—she’d assumed—only existed in books. I named the world Abadazad—and began developing it as a movie treatment. In fact, it was the comment of a producer I’d pitched the story to that led me to change the main character from a parent to an older sibling. Without that offhand remark, Kate Jameson might never have been born.
The more I worked to flesh out the Abadazad concept, the more I was convinced it should be a comic book. The comic book business had been exploding since the 80’s, opening the door on new—and far more challenging—content. This growth allowed me to do projects like Moonshadow, Brooklyn Dreams, and Seekers Into The Mystery—all aimed at an adult audience. Unfortunately, this new direction left what was once the prime target audience for comic books...children...out in the cold. As a parent—and, as a reader who’s taken many nurturing journeys to Oz, Wonderland, Neverland and Narnia—I found this a frustrating state of affairs (to say the least). So I hatched a plan:
My idea was to do smart, literate, beautifully-illustrated comics for kids . The comic book equivalent of the finest in children’s literature. (I’d actually attempted this once before, in the late 80’s, with a series called The Stardust Kid. Took me more than fifteen years to get that one into print.) At first—encouraged by my old friend, and Overseer of DC Comics’ Vertigo empire, Karen Berger—I tried to sell everyone from Marvel to Archie on a proposal for an entire line of sophisticated kids comics. When that failed, I whittled the concept down to two titles: one of them—The Life and Adventures of Skylar Orion—was a co-creation with Sandman illustrator Michael Zulli. The other was Abadazad.
Skylar almost got off the ground a couple of times, but never quite made it. Michael and I put it aside—and I focused my energies on the Land of Zad. By this time I’d begun weaving Abadazad into my daughter’s bedtime stories—and I was becoming obsessed with the idea of creating a comic book that I could share with her.
Out I went (again!) into the marketplace: You can still hear the echo from all the doors that slammed in my face.
Nobody wanted it. Nobody got it. Well, that’s not completely true. There were a few editors who understood what I was trying to do—Joey Cavalieri and Shelly Bond at DC, Philip Simon at Dark Horse—but they weren’t the ones who made the Big Decisions. Still, I’m forever grateful for their encouragement along the way.
Years were passing and the comic book landscape was changing rapidly, skewing ever older. The notion of doing kid-friendly comics, at least for a mainstream audience, was looking more and more hopeless. But the deeper I got into Abadazad, the more I fell in love with it. The idea was pulsing through my blood, my bones, my soul. I knew Kate, Matt, Queen Ija and The Lanky Man—and I had to tell their story. Problem was, there really weren’t many avenues left open.
In 2003, I decided to give it a last shot with a relatively new company called CrossGen. I didn’t know all that much about them, but they seemed interesting, forward-thinking. And they had a new line called Code Six that seemed perfect for Abadazad.
My proposal arrived at the CrossGen office on a Wednesday. Two days later I got a call from Code Six editor Ian Feller, who told me that he absolutely loved Abadazad—and so did CG’s owner and guiding light, Mark Alessi. All the rejections had rattled my brain considerably, so I wasn’t quite sure I was hearing correctly: “You actually want to do this?” Ian assured me that they did. (And, for that, both Ian and Mark have permanent plaques in my Hall of Gratitude.)
The enthusiasm at CrossGen was encouraging, to say the least—but I went from encouraged to completely blissed-out when Alessi recruited Mike Ploog to do the art for Abadazad. Mike, if you don’t know, is one of the greatest fantasy illustrators on the planet. He’d made his mark in comics in the l970’s and then (with a few rare and brilliant exceptions) left the business to focus on the world of film, where he’s done storyboarding and production design on everything from Superman II to Shrek. Having been a huge fan of Mike’s work at Marvel, I was delighted—and really, that’s too small a word—that he’d chosen to return to full-time comic book illustrating with Abadazad.
Mike and I hit it off pretty much from our first phone conversation and the more we worked together, the better it got. When we started out, I wrote detailed outlines/descriptions of the characters...and those went off to Mike (who lives in a hobbit-hole, somewhere in an English forest). He then did designs based on those notes. Sometimes Mike would give me exactly what I saw in my head, sometimes he went off in a new direction and came up with something better than I could have ever imagined...and sometimes I drove the poor guy crazy, making him redraw and redraw till the characters were just right.
The result was magical. The kind of creative combustion I’d only seen happen a handful of times in my career. With each issue we produced, Mike and I were pushing ourselves into new, and more creatively exhilarating, places: We were flying high.
Then, after only three issues of Abadazad had seen print, our publisher crashed and burned: CrossGen went bankrupt. I don’t need to go into all the depressing details here but let me say that, by the summer of ‘04, The Esteemed Mr. Ploog and I had hired a lawyer in a bid to get Abadazad back. We were hopeful—but we knew the process could take years. Which meant that, for the moment at least, Abadazad was dead in the water.
Rather than sink into the quagmire of our misery (which was considerable), we decided to do the only thing we’re really any good at: create. I dusted off an old project of mine—the aforementioned Stardust Kid—and Mike told me, in about five minutes, how to make the story better than ever. We corralled our Abadazad colorist, Nick Bell, and letterer Dave Lanphear—and we were off.
All the while Abadazad was hovering, a dark cloud, in the back of our minds. (And the legal bills were piling up, too—which certainly didn’t help things.) We’d heard about various companies sniffing around the CrossGen corpse—the name Disney came up once or twice—but these were just rumors, so we kept working on Stardust Kid and hoping for the best.
The best arrived in the form of an e-mail from Brenda Bowen, vice-president and editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books For Children. Brenda told me how much she loved Abadazad and that she envisioned relaunching it as a series of children’s books.
There are moments in our lives when our intuition rocks us, when we can actually feel the universe shifting beneath our feet: reading Brenda’s e-mail was one of those moments. (A brief phone conversation with Brenda only deepened this feeling.) I wasn’t sure where this contact would lead us, but I knew, with every fiber of my being, that this was a turning point. More important: the very fact that Brenda understood Abadazad...what it was and what it could be...gave me hope.
I forwarded the e-mail on to Mike, who was equally intrigued by Brenda’s enthusiasm and grasp of the material—as well as the opportunities that making a deal with Disney/Hyperion would offer.
Disney Publishing did win the bidding—and we were stunned to discover that the reason they went after CrossGen in the first place was because of Abadazad. We were told, point blank, that Disney was going to walk away from the entire CrossGen deal if they couldn’t come to an agreement with us.
Wait a minute? Our little comic book? The one nobody wanted to publish? My head was spinning.
Long story short (well, shorter): After some heated negotiating, an extremely satisfactory deal was struck and we were suddenly rocketed from Legal Limbo straight to the Magic Kingdom. Was I happy? Delirious. I’m a Total Disnoid. Walt Disney is one of my heroes: it’s extraordinary what one man, armed only with will and imagination, accomplished. To have Abadazad become a part of that history, that legacy, is a genuine honor.
Now jump ahead to May, 2006: I’m at Book Expo America in Washington, D.C. The first two Abadazad books are days away from hitting book stores. Mike Ploog and I walk in and receive our official BEA badge-lanyards. What’s on them? Our Abadazad logo. We look at the stairs leading to the upper level: they’re completely covered in gorgeous Ploog art. We head for the stairs leading to the lower level...and there’s an enormous banner with Queen Ija’s face on it, hovering over the crowds like a victory banner.
I’d started out writing a fairy tale and now I was standing in the middle of it.
Twenty years since “Sliver Shoes” edged up through my unconscious. Ten years since the first version of Kate Jameson’s odyssey took shape on paper. Slammed doors. Bankruptcies. Lawsuits. Despair. And I’m grateful for all of it. Because now I’m sitting here holding these two magical books in my hand. An initial print-run of 100,000 for each book. Starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. And we’re just starting on this journey.
Inconceivable, isn’t it?
If I’ve learned anything from this wild ride, it’s that, yes, you have to follow your bliss—but you also have to know that your bliss might take you down a very long road. And that you simply can’t give up.
Far more important: Have faith. In yourself and in the universe. Because it’s just possible that every obstacle you encounter is really an opportunity in disguise. That every door slamming in your face, every (apparently) awful thing that happens along the way—is leading you to a place far better than you could have ever dreamed.
So don’t just follow your bliss: hang on to it for dear life. And don’t let go.
Out I went (again!) into the marketplace: You can still hear the echo from all the doors that slammed in my face.
Nobody wanted it. Nobody got it. Well, that’s not completely true. There were a few editors who understood what I was trying to do—Joey Cavalieri and Shelly Bond at DC, Philip Simon at Dark Horse—but they weren’t the ones who made the Big Decisions. Still, I’m forever grateful for their encouragement along the way.
Years were passing and the comic book landscape was changing rapidly, skewing ever older. The notion of doing kid-friendly comics, at least for a mainstream audience, was looking more and more hopeless. But the deeper I got into Abadazad, the more I fell in love with it. The idea was pulsing through my blood, my bones, my soul. I knew Kate, Matt, Queen Ija and The Lanky Man—and I had to tell their story. Problem was, there really weren’t many avenues left open.
In 2003, I decided to give it a last shot with a relatively new company called CrossGen. I didn’t know all that much about them, but they seemed interesting, forward-thinking. And they had a new line called Code Six that seemed perfect for Abadazad.
My proposal arrived at the CrossGen office on a Wednesday. Two days later I got a call from Code Six editor Ian Feller, who told me that he absolutely loved Abadazad—and so did CG’s owner and guiding light, Mark Alessi. All the rejections had rattled my brain considerably, so I wasn’t quite sure I was hearing correctly: “You actually want to do this?” Ian assured me that they did. (And, for that, both Ian and Mark have permanent plaques in my Hall of Gratitude.)
The enthusiasm at CrossGen was encouraging, to say the least—but I went from encouraged to completely blissed-out when Alessi recruited Mike Ploog to do the art for Abadazad. Mike, if you don’t know, is one of the greatest fantasy illustrators on the planet. He’d made his mark in comics in the l970’s and then (with a few rare and brilliant exceptions) left the business to focus on the world of film, where he’s done storyboarding and production design on everything from Superman II to Shrek. Having been a huge fan of Mike’s work at Marvel, I was delighted—and really, that’s too small a word—that he’d chosen to return to full-time comic book illustrating with Abadazad.
Mike and I hit it off pretty much from our first phone conversation and the more we worked together, the better it got. When we started out, I wrote detailed outlines/descriptions of the characters...and those went off to Mike (who lives in a hobbit-hole, somewhere in an English forest). He then did designs based on those notes. Sometimes Mike would give me exactly what I saw in my head, sometimes he went off in a new direction and came up with something better than I could have ever imagined...and sometimes I drove the poor guy crazy, making him redraw and redraw till the characters were just right.
The result was magical. The kind of creative combustion I’d only seen happen a handful of times in my career. With each issue we produced, Mike and I were pushing ourselves into new, and more creatively exhilarating, places: We were flying high.
Then, after only three issues of Abadazad had seen print, our publisher crashed and burned: CrossGen went bankrupt. I don’t need to go into all the depressing details here but let me say that, by the summer of ‘04, The Esteemed Mr. Ploog and I had hired a lawyer in a bid to get Abadazad back. We were hopeful—but we knew the process could take years. Which meant that, for the moment at least, Abadazad was dead in the water.
Rather than sink into the quagmire of our misery (which was considerable), we decided to do the only thing we’re really any good at: create. I dusted off an old project of mine—the aforementioned Stardust Kid—and Mike told me, in about five minutes, how to make the story better than ever. We corralled our Abadazad colorist, Nick Bell, and letterer Dave Lanphear—and we were off.
All the while Abadazad was hovering, a dark cloud, in the back of our minds. (And the legal bills were piling up, too—which certainly didn’t help things.) We’d heard about various companies sniffing around the CrossGen corpse—the name Disney came up once or twice—but these were just rumors, so we kept working on Stardust Kid and hoping for the best.
The best arrived in the form of an e-mail from Brenda Bowen, vice-president and editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books For Children. Brenda told me how much she loved Abadazad and that she envisioned relaunching it as a series of children’s books.
There are moments in our lives when our intuition rocks us, when we can actually feel the universe shifting beneath our feet: reading Brenda’s e-mail was one of those moments. (A brief phone conversation with Brenda only deepened this feeling.) I wasn’t sure where this contact would lead us, but I knew, with every fiber of my being, that this was a turning point. More important: the very fact that Brenda understood Abadazad...what it was and what it could be...gave me hope.
I forwarded the e-mail on to Mike, who was equally intrigued by Brenda’s enthusiasm and grasp of the material—as well as the opportunities that making a deal with Disney/Hyperion would offer.
Disney Publishing did win the bidding—and we were stunned to discover that the reason they went after CrossGen in the first place was because of Abadazad. We were told, point blank, that Disney was going to walk away from the entire CrossGen deal if they couldn’t come to an agreement with us.
Wait a minute? Our little comic book? The one nobody wanted to publish? My head was spinning.
Long story short (well, shorter): After some heated negotiating, an extremely satisfactory deal was struck and we were suddenly rocketed from Legal Limbo straight to the Magic Kingdom. Was I happy? Delirious. I’m a Total Disnoid. Walt Disney is one of my heroes: it’s extraordinary what one man, armed only with will and imagination, accomplished. To have Abadazad become a part of that history, that legacy, is a genuine honor.
Now jump ahead to May, 2006: I’m at Book Expo America in Washington, D.C. The first two Abadazad books are days away from hitting book stores. Mike Ploog and I walk in and receive our official BEA badge-lanyards. What’s on them? Our Abadazad logo. We look at the stairs leading to the upper level: they’re completely covered in gorgeous Ploog art. We head for the stairs leading to the lower level...and there’s an enormous banner with Queen Ija’s face on it, hovering over the crowds like a victory banner.
I’d started out writing a fairy tale and now I was standing in the middle of it.
Twenty years since “Sliver Shoes” edged up through my unconscious. Ten years since the first version of Kate Jameson’s odyssey took shape on paper. Slammed doors. Bankruptcies. Lawsuits. Despair. And I’m grateful for all of it. Because now I’m sitting here holding these two magical books in my hand. An initial print-run of 100,000 for each book. Starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. And we’re just starting on this journey.
Inconceivable, isn’t it?
If I’ve learned anything from this wild ride, it’s that, yes, you have to follow your bliss—but you also have to know that your bliss might take you down a very long road. And that you simply can’t give up.
Far more important: Have faith. In yourself and in the universe. Because it’s just possible that every obstacle you encounter is really an opportunity in disguise. That every door slamming in your face, every (apparently) awful thing that happens along the way—is leading you to a place far better than you could have ever dreamed.
So don’t just follow your bliss: hang on to it for dear life. And don’t let go.
***
That advice would serve me well in the following months, as Disney's Abadazad Ride went spinning out of control, crashing into Sleeping Beauty's Castle. That's the bad news. The good news is that, without the crash, I never would have discovered the dimensional doorway that led me from Abadazad to a new world called Imaginalis. I'll share that story with you next week.
©copyright 2009 J.M. DeMatteis
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)