I am a failed writer in the sense that I have never had my fiction professionally published. These posts, which will run on most Fridays, are an attempt to keep myself creatively motivated and just generally discuss the creative process from someone trying to figure it out. I genuinely love the process of making things — any things, from writing to drawing to music to woodworking to baking. Maybe my own failures can be a source of amusement or interest to others.
Cole Haddon, who has an excellent newsletter you should subscribe to if you are interested in the creative process at all, asks weekly discussion questions for his subscribers. One of the latest is “Which comics got you into reading comics”, and all I could think of was how my Grandfather used comics to get me into reading novels.
My Grandfather hated comics. When I was visiting one summer, back when they were still on the South Side, he found me reading a Star Wars comic that my youngest uncle (who is only a few years older than me. Apparently, took my grandparents a bit to figure out why that kept happening …) had left lying around. He took one look, grabbed it out of my hand, snarled, “You aren’t wasting your time reading that crap” and took me right to a Waldenbooks where he let me buy pretty much anything on the SFF shelf. I am aware of the irony of mid 80s SFF being favorably compared to comics.
I never did get into comics, though I devoured everything else I could get my hands on. That moment went a long way to me becoming the avid reader, and eventually, the failed writer, you see before you. It wasn’t until I was in college and working for a small comics distributer in their warehouse and then one of their local stores (I would do anything while trying to pay for college. I was a telemarketer, worked in gas stations, dealt blackjack, worked in a frozen food factory, pretty much anything. That dude in Clerks? That was me, but I was probably whinier.) that I picked up any comics again. I enjoyed some, hated others, and was indifferent to most — Sturgeon’s Law made manifest.
But my distaste for comics was never really about the content. I mostly hated the form. Having to wait a week for the next 20ish pages of story? What fresh hell was this? Spending a buck of my hard-earned paper money instead of four or five bucks for four or five hundred pages? Madness! I don’t know if my Grandfather’s antipathy stemmed from the same place, from a hatred of the material, or because my youngest Uncle could be an annoying twit to him. But I do know that the one Star Wars comic I made it through before he interrupted me has stayed with me, unlike almost any other Star Wars story, since.
The comic was a one off, I think, about a storm Trooper from Alderann who wears a piece of the destroyed planet around his neck (If none of this makes any sense to you, go watch the original trilogy.). In my memory, Leia is shocked to see a fellow Aldrerannian (sure, let’s go with that.) serving the Empire. And even more shocked when he points out that, as someone who wasn’t a princess, life on Alderann wasn’t all peaches and cream. The Storm Trooper was wrong, but so had been Leia. As a kid, it was one of the first times I had seen the idea that the lives of the people who aren’t at the top, who aren’t the traditional heroes, could and should matter. And it was one of the first times I had seen a piece of art discuss class, however obliquely, as a lived experience. Am I a socialist because of a Star Wars comic? Eh, probably not.
But it didn’t hurt.
All of this to say two things: I miss my Grandfather, and he was wrong about comics. Format does not dictate quality. You can tell a fascinating, moving story in any format as long as you are willing to understand the limitations of your chosen format. So, no, that Star Wars comic did not drive me to a life of thin paperbacks and foil embossed, special covers. But it did, indirectly, lead to a life of writing and reading. And it does remind me that story can be found in any format, expressed in any medium, if you take the time and effort.
Weekly Word Count
Twenty pages on the script. I hope to finish it this weekend, as I have a group of people ready to read it on Monday. I am sure it is absolute shit, but it’s been fun to write. The change of style from a novel has been creatively fascinating for me.