HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FRANCIS ALBERT SINATRA

I've written about my love of All Things Sinatra here before, but there's nothing I could say that this wonderful television special, from the mid-1960's, doesn't say far more eloquently.  The magic is in the Voice.  Enjoy!

OF MICE AND HOBBITS

I recently had the honor, and pleasure, of writing the introduction to the newest Mice Templar hardcover collection—the Harvey Award winning epic fantasy from the talented team of Bryan J.L. Glass, Michael Avon Oeming and Victor Santos—and I'd like to share it with you.  If, after reading my essay, you feel an irresistible urge to order the book, just click here:  I don't think you'll regret it.  Onward!

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Worlds Within Worlds

I was a teenager when I discovered Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.  I’d been a fan of fantasy and science-fiction, and a comic book obsessive, as far back as I could remember (blame Dr. Seuss, Rod Serling and Superman)—but I’d never encountered anything quite like The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and Return of the King.  Working my way—slowly, deliciously—through those three massive volumes, I encountered a fictional world that was not only utterly different than the world around me, but, in so many ways, more real.  More true.  All fiction is make-believe, of course—J.D. Salinger is as much a fantasist as Ray Bradbury, they just come at the work from different angles—but Tolkien’s achievement was, to my young eyes, unparalleled:  He created an entire world—a rich, fertile universe filled with multiple races and cultures, a detailed history, unforgettable characters—from the ground up.  I remember being stretched out on the living room couch, stunned and heartbroken as I turned the final page.  The experience was such a unique and memorable one that I haven’t returned to the trilogy since:  I don’t think any rereading could possibly match the magic of that first journey.

I had a similar experience, years later, reading the Narnia series—written by Tolkien’s friend and fellow Oxford professor,  C.S. Lewis—aloud to my son.  When we reached the end—after a memorable voyage through seven books—there was absolute silence in the room.  After a few moments I asked Cody, “Are you sad that it’s over?”  He could hardly answer, just nodded his head.  “I am, too,” I replied.  And I was.  

That’s the power of great fantasy (whether it’s Baum’s Oz or Zelazny’s Amber, Bradbury’s Mars or Serling’s Twilight Zone):  it transports you, alters your consciousness, peels apart the (so-called) reality we know and—most important—reassembles it in a form that serves not just as an escape, but as a way to see our own world with new, and more wonder-filled, eyes.  I’ve long maintained that writing fantasy (and, yes, that’s a broad term, covering a wide range of stories) is, perhaps, the best way to capture the truth about the universe around us.  In my experience, once you peel back the Skin of the World and look, really look, you’ll see that we’re all living in a universe as filled with magic and miracles as any found within the pages of a book.  Our lives are fantasy—of the highest order.

Of course creating the world-building kind of fantasy that Tolkien specialized in isn’t easy.  The bookstore shelves are filled with attempts that, however enthusiastic their creators may have been, just don’t convince.  We may be initially intrigued, but we’re not transported; the alternate reality just doesn’t stick, doesn’t take root in the heart.  I’ve tried my hand at it on several occasions and I’ll leave it up to my readers whether I’ve succeeded or not.  What I do know is that there are few pleasures in the writing life more exhilarating, more intoxicating, than unlocking that door in the unconscious that connects to worlds undreamed of, voices unheard, stories untold.  When I was writing the children’s fantasy Abadazad, it felt to me (no, it didn’t just feel that way, I absolutely believed it) that ‘Zad was a very real place, located on the far side of Forever, and that its inhabitants had somehow chosen me to tell their tale.  I imagined someone hunched over a kind of magical teletype machine, click-clacking away, transmitting the details of the story across time and space into my head.

I imagine that Bryan J.L. Glass feels that way when he’s working on Mice Templar, because the tales he’s woven over the past ten years—abetted by fellow dreamers Michael Avon Oeming (who received the first transmissions from Karic’s world and set this spectacular story in motion) and Victor Santos—don’t feel “created.”  You don’t get the sense of a writer sitting at his computer trying to fit together pieces of a puzzle, figuring out clever bits for this character or that, wracking his brain for a twist in the plot or a surprise ending.  When you read Bryan’s stories it feels as if you’ve had a veil between dimensions pulled back, as if you’ve been yanked, body and soul, into a world that—like Tolkien’s—becomes somehow more real than the one around us.  Bryan’s not a writer:  he’s a channeler.

When I first encountered Mice Templar, several years ago, I had my reservations.  Talking mice?  Hey, I love Mickey Mouse as much as the next person—maybe more—but a fantasy story about heroic, sword-wielding rodents wasn’t a concept that got my heart beating or excited my imagination.  Which just goes to prove the fruitlessness of approaching art, and life, with preconceived notions.  To my surprise, Mice Templar wasn’t some fairy tale romp through magical forests—although you will find your share of magical forests in these pages—it’s a complex and fascinating epic about complex and fascinating characters, battling their way through a richly-imagined, and utterly convincing, universe.  Strangely, the fact that we’re immersing ourselves in the adventures of talking animals doesn’t pull us out of the story, it somehow pulls us in deeper, makes it all-the-more believable.  (I can’t explain that, but it’s true.)  Of course, channeling a story is one thing—but taking the raw material teletyped across Creation and crafting it into a coherent and engaging tale is quite another.  To successfully mold a fantasy world as powerful and persuasive as the one in Mice Templar, you need to be both a dreamer and a craftsman.  Page after page, Bryan proves himself an expert at both.

But this is comics, after all, and words can only take us so far.  Someone has to sit down and translate visions into images.  Someone has to take a world that exists in the ethers and give it life on the printed page.  Michael Oeming was the first to do that—and he did it brilliantly.  The volume you hold in your hands was brought into being by the astonishingly-gifted Victor Santos (aided and abetted by the vibrant color work of the equally gifted Serena Guerra).  Drawing comic books is fun, no doubt, but it’s also a difficult and challenging profession.  Just being able to draw isn’t enough.  (I’m sure we’ve all read comics that were beautiful to look at but utterly confusing.  Worse:  they were lifeless.  Pretty pictures, I’m sorry to say, just aren’t enough.)  An artist needs, first and foremost, to tell a visual story, to move the eye (and heart!) fluidly, effortlessly, from panel to panel, creating the perfect gesture, the ideal expression—eliciting awe and wonder in the big moments and a range of complex emotions in the quieter ones.  Victor does all that and so much more.  In the end, prose and pictures, Glass and Santos, fuse into one, creating something unique that neither could have achieved alone.  And that is the magic of the best comic books.   

That is the magic of Mice Templar.

©copyright 2013 J.M. DeMatteis 

AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

Last year I wrote about my memories of December 8, 1980, the night John Lennon died—and, as that dark anniversary approaches again, I don’t see any need to repeat myself.  Instead, let’s remember Lennon, and welcome the Christmas season, in the best possible way:  by listening to, and celebrating, the man's extraordinary music.

Back in 1971, John and his wife, Yoko Ono, took the bare bones of a traditional folk song called "Stewball" and transformed it into a Christmas classic.  "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" is a heartfelt mix of clear-eyed Lennon honesty and starry-eyed Lennon idealism.  It's also—in my hyperbolic opinion—one of the greatest Christmas songs ever written. 

WHEN THE WORLD STOPPED

I was in the fifth grade when John Kennedy was murdered.  It's not history to me, it's memory:  as strange, frightening and sad now as it was then.  The assassination wasn’t announced in school that day, but I remember someone telling me that they’d seen the Principal crying (which, when you’re nine years old, is a staggering thing to hear); someone else mentioning that the school flag was at half mast (I knew that had some military meaning, but wasn’t sure what). 

On the way home several people informed me the President had been shot, but no one had any details.  Had it really happened or was it just the kind of crazy rumor children routinely passed around?  If it was true, was he badly hurt?  Was he even alive?  When I walked into our apartment and saw my father and sister sitting, stunned, in front of the television set, a photo of JFK, with the words May 29, 1917—November 22, 1963 emblazoned below it, filling the screen, the sickening truth was confirmed.

The world stopped then—and we all stayed home, for days, glued to our TVs.  (It was the first 24 hour news event and, looking back, we were blessed to have men like Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley sifting through the details, instead of the bellowing, bloviating talking heads we have today.)  I didn’t see Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, but my best friend, Bob Izzo, did—and a group of us gathered around as he described television’s first live murder.  The universe had clearly tipped into madness—but the truth is, this wasn’t news to me.  That madness had been revealed, in all its lunatic horror, the year before when the Cuban Missile Crisis brought us to the edge of nuclear devastation.  The world almost ended then—that’s not hyperbole, that’s fact—but somehow we survived, thanks, in no small part, to a President who refused to listen to war-hungry advisors.  Now, a little more than a year later, that President was dead and it seemed as if the world really was ending.    

Kennedy was the first President I was ever aware of—I was six when he was elected—and, as a result, he loomed large, like some handsome American demigod, in my young consciousness.  We all know now, of course, that he was was far from Deity Status:  his many flaws have been repeatedly, and often luridly, catalogued in the years since his death; but JFK was also man of intelligence and wit, passion and wisdom.  It’s the tension between the flaws and ideals, the “what was” and the “might have been,” that makes him such an intriguing figure.  I’ve read more-than my share of Kennedy books over the years, digested innumerable documentaries, and the fascination continues.  How could it not?  

The Kennedy assassination remains one of the defining world events of my childhood.  It echoes on in my mind and heart to this day.  To some, perhaps many, people born after the Kennedy era, all the attention focused on today’s fiftieth anniversary might seem excessive; but those of us who lived through those years will never stop reliving the experience. 

©copyright 2013 J.M. DeMatteis

HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

I'm often asked about script formats for comic books.  (I remember it being an unfathomable mystery to me before I entered the business.)  The answer is that—although there are general rules to adhere to—there are as many formats as there are writers and the template is evolving all the time.  When I started in the business at DC Comics, my first editor—the always wise and insightful Paul Levitz—handed me a sample script, explaining the way the page should be broken down:  I've pretty much followed that template ever since.   

In the end, it's easier to show than tell, so here are the first three story pages of one of my all-time favorite projects, The Life and Times of Savior 28.  (I pondered including the entire script, but it runs to nearly seventy pages, which seemed excessive.) Keep in mind that this is how I do it.  Other writers approach the script in different ways—but everyone is breaking the story down by page, panel, captions and dialogue. 

What you see below is called Full Script.  There's also the so-called Marvel Method, where the writer presents the artist with a detailed plot outline.  The artist then draws from the plot, the art goes back to the writer who then provides the dialogue and captions.  I'll post a few pages of plot soon and discuss that method in more detail.

The advantage of Full Script is that the writer is in complete control of the materials: the visuals and pacing, the flow and rhythm, of the story are in his hands.  But the truth is, however specific your script may be, ten different artists will turn that script into ten different reading experiences.  Some will raise your story up to heights you never dreamed of, others will drag it down and kick it in the head for good measure. A few will magically pull the pictures directly out of your head and draw them exactly as you imagined them.   There's nothing more exciting for a comic book writer than that moment when the art arrives and you see your story exploding across the page. (Savior 28 was illustrated by Mike Cavallaro, one of my favorite collaborators.  If you pick up the series, you'll see how brilliantly he brought this sequence to life.) 

Give the script a read and, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section.  

The Life and Times of Savior 28 is ©copyright 2013 J.M. DeMatteis & Mike Cavallaro 

RETURN OF THE TITANS

My next Teen Titans Go! episode—"No Power"—airs tonight, at 7:30 pm Eastern, on Cartoon Network.  I've embedded a preview below.  Enjoy!

THE ELUSIVE MR. DITKO

Today is the 86th birthday of one of most influential artists in the history of comics, Steve Ditko:  the visionary creator who pushed, some might say shattered, the boundaries of 60's mainstream comics with his work on Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.  I can't think of another artist of the era—aside from the King of all boundary-shatterers, Jack Kirby—whose work was more revolutionary and influential.

Ditko illustrated a couple of my early stories—including a Legion of Super Heroes issue that's considered one of the worst Legion tales of all time (my fault, not Steve's!)—back when I was starting out at DC Comics, and one day, when I wandered into the office of editor Jack C. Harris, there he was, the legend himself: an unassuming middle-aged man, dropping off his latest batch of pages.  Ditko is notoriously reclusive, the J.D. Salinger of comic books, so I was delighted—and perhaps a bit awed—to be standing in the same room with him, making (very) small talk.

Now imagine my excitement when I discovered that Ditko was leaving the office at the same time I was.  We hopped in the elevator, walked out of the building together, and headed off, side-by-side, in the same direction.  We talked a little (perhaps about the story we'd just worked on, I can't say for sure) and the twelve year old inside me was doing cartwheels.  Me and Steve Ditko, strolling down the avenue and chatting?  By the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, I was in Comic Book Heaven.

I didn't stay there long.

We'd gone, perhaps, half a block, when I said something to the effect of, "So...ah...do you ever think you'll go back and draw Spider-Man again?"  In my defense, I don't think I realized that the subject of Spidey, of Ditko's Marvel work in general, was verboten—but I found out soon enough:  Within seconds of opening my ignorant mouth, Ditko wished me a good day, crossed the street and vanished into the crowd.  I felt like an idiot, but a lucky one:  I'd had my moment, however brief, with the elusive legend.  And, all these years later, I still treasure it.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Ditko—and thanks for all the brilliant work. 

©copyright 2013 J.M. DeMatteis