We Are Write Club! Kurt Christenson: a decade creating

Hey there Write Clubbers!

With all the new readers/listeners out there in internet-ville I figured I'd take this opportunity to say hello, welcome, and tell you all a bit about ourselves.

My name is Kurt Christenson and I formed Write Club earlier this year with my life-long partner in geekery Tim Mucci, who took me to my first comic book store nearly twenty years ago. After the economy went bad and I was laid off, he wanted to podcast and I wanted to talk about comics. So we got together in his apartment about 8 months ago and decided to start recording ourselves as we made sense of the comic book industry.

A lot had changed since I last read comics regularly, so we needed a format to dissect all these changes and examine them, work out the best way to strike if we were to take our comic careers to the next level. There's nothing like taking a break from the thing you love for awhile to make you re-appreciate everything you first fell in love with about it.

I made the decision to start writing comics on New Years Day 2001 after being a longtime reader of Warren Ellis' Come In Alone articles on ComicBookResources. I wrote a few scripts for myself and then hit up Digital Webbing and found a new comic book company called JJAMS that was looking for a writer for a series of one-shots. I wrote three 28 page one-shots, NightDreamer, The Night, and Maracas, all based on generic superhero tropes that I added my own spin on. They came out great and I got paid $50 a script. Then I start a four issue mini-series, Texas Rangers, which I only completed 3 issues of when the company folded due to mismanagement of funds. Shame, as the artwork for the books looked great.

Feeling invigorated by the quick success (I got paid to write within the first 3 months of deciding to write) I went back to Digital Webbing, and wrote a series in 5 page segments for the anthology they started publishing at that time Digital Webbing Presents. I found an artist and my modern day Kung Fu Master vs SuperVillains story took shape, but it never saw print in the end, so I lost the artist's interest and was back at square one. So I wrote a bunch of new scripts as I prepared to start hitting up comic book conventions to network.

My first con as a budding professional was WizardWorld Philly 2001. I sped all the way from Long Island to Philly in order to make it there for the first workshop of the con. At 12:30 that Friday I ran into Buddy Scalera's Networking For Comic Creators panel. Here he broke everyone up into groups depending on what you wanted to work on. The superhero group lined one entire wall, while the crime, horror, and my little group, action/adventure, were placed here and there. That's when I met Chris Chua.

We all flipped through the artists' portfolios as writers told their ideas. As I saw each insane drawing after drawing in Chua's portfolio I was blown away. This kid was amazing. It ended with a full color shot of the Hulk eating his own leg. He was too good, I was just a novice, juat a beginner, I wasn;t good enough to work with him, although the other artists in the group had a long way to go before they were ready to do some serious sequential work.


So I left without giving him my packet of scripts. In fact, I utterly failed. I got intimidated and ran away from what it was I was here to do in the first place; find an artist and create comics. I felt bad for myself the whole day at the con but that night I was determined to find Chua the next day and give him my scripts. So I went back the next day, and while looking around I stumbled across Grant Morrison standing in the middle of DC Comics' booth. Now, Grant Morrison is not only my favorite comic book creator, the writer of my all time favorite comic series, The Invisibles (which he was just wrapping up at this time), he's also my personal lord and savior. I had him sign my Invisibles #1 and his prose book Lovely Biscuits (just to prove that I was an elite superfan) and got my picture with him.

That's when, reeling and stumbling away, high on Grant's ethereal being, I ran into Chris Chua. I ran right over and talked to him for a bit, seemed we had a good amount of similar interests as far as action movies went, and so I gave him my scripts. A month later we began working on a new take on my modern kung fu vs superpowers story. We made it in the future, more of a Mad Max/Road Warrior desolation mixed with old school super kung fu. A few months later Samurai Jack debuted on Cartoon Network and we knew we were on to something.
And so Legend of Liquid Fury was born; our scarred, young kung fu warrior, Wulong, his wise, father figure Master Tze, his brothers, mighty Mao, and stealthy Jian, his childhood love and Tze's daughter, Wei-Lin, the evil General Zhao and his powered minions, mountainous Yama, electric Raiko, and fiery Kaego, were all born through my words and Chris' ink and white-out. Over the years we developed a 200+ black and white graphic novel about revenge and coming back home too late, being unable to make right the mistakes of youth.

We released three versions of the first act through DreamWeaver Press. The first two were full sized and we printed 100 copies of each. These were mostly given out to any and all professionals we could talk to at comic conventions. We debuted the first issue at the National in NYC and gave the first copy to Joe Kelly who read it and loved it. So much so, that when San Diego rolled around he invited us to sit at his ManOfAction table (with Joe Casey, Steven Seagle, and Duncan Rouleau) right next to Richard Starking's Comicraft/Active Images table. We even had a meeting with Starkings at that con to talk about Active Images publishing Liquid Fury.

But it wouldn't be. Just as the art was finished, Active Images stopped publishing work. However they were nice enough to create our own font for us based on Chua's handwriting and wished us luck. As we finished up Liquid Fury we did see our work published in an anthology out of Brooklyn called Reflux. I still have the copy of Previews that solicited the issue in which our first story appeared. Also at the same time we met a bunch of other artists that were hitting up the same cons as us and we joined forces, forming TenTonStudios.com, which is just about reaching it's 5th anniversary this month.

At this point I sort of had a mid-life crisis (at age 27), quit my job, ended a 7 year relationship, and moved to NYC. I needed to live a life of adventure for awhile, and so I did. I moved to the Lower East Side, went to Colombia and L.A., got a tattoo, climbed a mountain, and went to a million events and open bars. At this time I was in the middle of writing a novel, that read more like a collection of short stories, essays, journal writing, called The Tower of Brahma based on a screenplay I started in college. I knew there was 64 chapters, based on the I-Ching, that I'd have to write before it was over. And as I finish up the last three chapters you can read a new chapter every Monday as I near the end.

I became burnt out, on life, on writing, on creating anything after that. I gave up on reading comics, on the idea of creating them, and as a last ditch effort to move forward I decided to go back to school. Fall 2007 I enrolled in classes at New School University and began the process to get my Bachelor's Degree. Finally. I read the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid and wrote papers on them. I saw all sorts of classic films and broke them down, saw what made them work. I took a class in superheroes and what that means in today's world. And as I prepared my final project for that class, a 20+ page paper on the Return of Barry Allen storyline and the Flash legacy (just as Flash: Rebirth was about to be released) I rediscovered my love for comics books and it reawakened my desire to be part of that world, to leave my mark on the history of comic books, just as comics have left their impact on me.

So I helped fellow TenTonner Doug Hills write and letter a comic for his daughter where she teams up with Spider-Man and the Flash. Here was my chance to write a fun adventure, an all-ages romp with two of the best superheroes in all of comicbookdom. Once I got past the intimidation factor of not only writing two of my favorite characters but also a real kid, I found the true joy of piecing a comic together bit by bit; first imagining the scenes, seeing the art Doug created, then dropping text on it and making the characters come alive.


As Tim and I recorded each episode, then began writing articles for the blog, I began to see the comic industry much clearer. I knew that this is what I wanted to do with my life. I heart comics. I slept on top of them for 4 years. I know them through and through and can out geek almost any person I meet who's "into comics". This truly was my destiny. So I finally got over myself and decided to start from scratch and re-letter Liquid Fury (I lost nearly 50 pages while backing it up last Xmas), as I prepare a new digital comic with my good buddy and Write Club supporter from day one, Reilly Brown, and now I'm addicted. I'm writing scripts constantly, and every other waking moment is spent reading comics to catch up on continuity or to write reviews or watching cartoons/movies for inspiration for new ideas. As the New Year approaches, the ninth year since I first decided to write comics, I hope to end this decade long adventure with a slew of my work published finally.

This is what Write Club means to me, unbridled creativity and a means to keep me on track, to maintain the motivation to keep writing, even on those days when I just want to lay in bed all day long, or go out to the bar for a drink. First comes writing, then comes life. And the more I do this, the more the writing becomes the real fun, the joy of creating superseding all else. I'd like to invite all of you reading this to be a part of Write Club in whatever way you'd like. What is it that you've always wanted to do, wanted to create? How can Write Club help you make that come true?

We're here for you, you weary traveler of the lonely path that is beset before the creative individual. We want to help.

We Are Write Club.

K

You can keep up to date with the progress of LEGEND OF LIQUID FURY on my new blog where you'll get to see some behind the scenes stuff, sketches, "lost" pages, and more.

The Process: Featuring Colleen Harris

By Peter Hammarberg

I've known Colleen Harris most of our lives. Her brilliance has only been matched by her charisma and penchant for being a total tattooed badass.

How would you describe your work?

Hrm. It depends on my mood, I suppose – my work is readable for the general public, it’s an exploration of memory, a negotiation of relationships, it’s trying to give voice to the things we don’t say out loud that we wish we could. I do tend to write largely in a woman’s voice, but I think as humans we all have the same general worries, concerns, and yearnings.

Who has influenced you?

I’ve been lucky enough to study under some great poets, especially Alabama writer Jeanie Thomspon, Montana poetry master Greg Pape, Earl Braggs, Molly Peacock, and others. They have helped me refine my work quite a bit. I keep Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Maurice Manning’s Bucolics on my nightstand the way some folks keep their Bibles there, but I wouldn’t say my work resembles theirs in any way. T.S. Eliot and Jorge Luis Borges are a fewmore of favorites. If I had to choose a few poets whose work mine resembles, it would be Louise Glück, Lucille Clifton, and Kathleen Driskell. I like to think that I work in a tradition of poets who work with the fabric of their lives, of reality and relationship as we experience them, and try to process it and come to a truce with it as best we can in words.

What made you decide to pursue being a poet?

I used to write when I was a child, and I stopped for many years while I concentrated on college, and getting a job, and various other things that make us Productive Citizens. It got to the point that I felt something in me was withering away, and no matter what I did, there was a barrier to my happiness. Writing helped me reach my inner spaces. I’man avid reader of all genres, from poetry to vampire romance novels, and I appreciate the escape and intellectual or emotional depth books offer, and I desperately want to be An Author. I want to contribute to someone’s reading, in the hopes they’ll find a poem of mine that resonates with them. When I found out that all I had to do to be a poet was to start writing…well, I wrote. I’ve been lucky, since friends and family cheer my hobby (or at least they humor me).

Have you been compared to anyone else? Would you consider that a good thing?

On my brighter days I’ve been compared to Natasha Trethewey, Tess Gallagher and Janice Harrington. I do consider it a good thing – I am always flattered to be held in company with well-established and well-published poets, and beautiful writers at that. And it’s always interesting to me to see which poets other people relate my work to. I consider it a great compliment.

What drives you?

I once heard someone say that when someone asks you why you write, if your answer is anything but “because I cannot not write,” that you’re in the wrong craft. I write because I have things to say, and poetry is the only medium that allows me to work with language in such a way as to say them properly. I write because if I didn’t, I think I would explode from the life that goes on in my head that I don’t live out in reality. I write because I love metaphors, and language, and odd words. And because as both a writer and a librarian, I covet ISBNs. I want to have some of my very own. I want to be immortal and live forever on library shelves, sitting beside Shakespeare and Eliot and Milosz.

Walk me through your creative process.

“Process” makes it sound like there’s a lot more planning than I usually have! *grin* usually I get caught up in writing a poem, and it sparks a certain obsession. With God in my Throat, I became really attached to the idea of the exiled daughter, and about how God makes decisions about our lives. Sometimes I reach back for a memory, and a flood comes and so I have to write ten poems instead of one. Mostly I sit down and start writing. About seventy percent is crap, and so the challenge is to dig through and find the thirty percent that’s worth salvaging, and crafting it into something that shines around the original idea. Some poems take me years to polish and get right. Sometimes they come out full-formed and need just a minor tweak. I will say that the more I write, and the better I am about writing regularly, the better my writing gets.

You sit down to write a new poem. BONK. Nothing happens. How would you deal with the writer's block? Go around? Climb over? Colleen Smash!?

If I hit a block, I’ll work on some poetry prompts just to get something written and de-grime the gears. Usually those prompts have to do with working in a formal structure, like a sonnet, pantoum, or sestina (if I’m feeling brave). Since I don’t usually work in form, it forces me to exercise different writing muscles. I also keep a “slush pile” of poems I’ve tried to write in the past that didn’t work in one way or another, as well as a file of lines that will sometimes come to me that I think are magnificent, but that didn’t develop into whole poems, and I’ll try to see if I can salvage them. Imight also pull out whatever manuscript I’m working on at the time and go back to revise some work to see if that jump-starts me. I usually have more than one project going at a time, which helps. I try not to break things, since stuff is expensive, and I’m usually broke *grin*

Any new projects?

I have a few new projects burning – I’ve got three book manuscripts I’m working on, in various stages of development.

Gonesongs is nearly complete, it’s a collection focusing on how our understandings of relationships, love and betrayal change as we grow from children into adults, and how we reconcile the family relationships we want with the ones we get. A good portion of this was my creative thesis for my recently completed MFA at Spalding University. I’m still lassoing a few stray poems into their proper places, but I expect this one will be done by New Year’s Eve.

The second one is tentatively titled The Green of Breakable Things, and it’s a very different sort of poetry from what I usually write. If I had to jam it into a sentence, I’d say that it’s a series of semi-surrealist meditations on the objects in our lives and the impact of memory. I lived in Kentucky for nearly ten years after leaving Long Island, and there are a lot of echoes of Kentucky’s landscape and weather in this collection.

The third manuscript is a collection of persona poems, which vaguely resembles my first published book, God in my Throat: The Lilith Poems, which was a full length collection of persona poems in the voice of Lilith. This one is so far the least formed. I started out with poems from the perspective of various goddesses, then started including fictional female characters, and now some real people and some men’s voices have crowded in. I’ve decided I’m just going to keep writing as they come to me, and I’ll deal with getting it into decent manuscript form once they peter out and stop haunting me!

Any advice you could give to someone starting out?

I would tell any writer starting out that there are three keys to success.

First, read. Read as much poetry as you can get your hands on – new poets, the old canon, everything. You’ll get a better sense of craft, of why you like the poetry you like best, of the art of the line break, of form and free verse, all of that. Too many poets refuse to read poetry because they think it will affect their work – it’s supposed to affect and inform you. The master painters first trained by imitating their masters, and picked and chose from the skills they learned before developing their own masterpieces, and poetry is much the same.

Second, community is essential. Find other writers in your community to share your work with, to develop programming like reading series and workshops with. Having like-minded people with which to share your writing dreams is essential. Developing within your community an audience to appreciate writers’ work is essential to everyone’s success! Other countries give much more support to their artists than the U.S. does – poets read to sold out soccer stadiums in Russia and other countries, and writers can be fully funded and make a living off their work alone. It tends to be harder to do here in the United States, where we have the freedom to say whatever we want, but often lack the support to make a living out of it. Building relationships within the writing community and then connecting that to your larger community or neighborhood is essential. Your work doesn’t come alive unless someone is reading (or listening to) it. Cultivate appreciation of the arts.

Third: Submit, submit, submit. Unless you don’t want to be recognized until after you’re dead, in order to participate in the published-writers world, you have to submit your work. It helps to read the journals to see where your work will best fit, and this helps you get to know various editors. You can’t make a splash – big or small – unless you toss some stones into the pond.

Lastly, I would remind new writers that writing is not a competitive sport, for all that the contests would have us believe that. We are a family. Writer and MFA program director Sena Jeter Naslund has said countless times to her students that our competition is not beside us in the classrooms, or workshops, or readings. Our competition is in the library. Don’t write to “beat” your contemporaries. Write to join your literary forefathers.

Ultimate Goals?

I would love to be able to make a living with my writing, or to work as a creative writing professor, which would allow me to write and to teach writing. That’s my ultimate goal. My intermediate goal is to be a full time academic librarian (as I am now) and teach a creative writing course or two, until I can afford to be poor *grin*

Now for the serious stuff!

Who would win in a fight...

Kurt Vonnegut or Hemingway?

While it might be a tie (they could bore each other to death), I vote Hemingway. Crazy people have incredible strength. Plus, he had a shotgun.

William Blake or Virginia Woolf?

*torn* I’ll have to go with Blake. He was a virtuoso and a real Renaissance man.

Bea Arthur(before returning to The Force) or Optimus Prime?

Bea Arthur, hands down. She wins at everything.


Shameless Plug Time:

Colleen S. Harris is a librarian at North Carolina State University. Her poetry has appeared in The Louisville Review, Appalachian Heritage, Wisconsin Review, descant, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, 66: The Journal of Sonnet Studies, and various others. Her first full-length poetry collection, God in my Throat; The Lilith Poems, is available from Bellowing Ark Press. Colleen goes by “warmaiden” on most online social networks, and can be reached at warmaiden [at] gmail.com

The Walking Dead: "Fear the Hunters"

by Pete Lenz

I love zombies. I am tired of zombies. It used to be that we had zombie movies. And they were plentiful, and this was good. These days, we're seeing zombies in every aspect of pop culture. They pervade every avenue of entertainment nowadays. Novels, comics, video games; they're everywhere. The zombie archetype has even evolved to the point where they don't even shamble anymore, at least, not all the time. It is 2009 and Zombies have jumped the shark. It is 1979 and Lucio Fulci has shown us, in Zombi 2 (Zombie) a zombie actually fighting a shark. Underwater. A zombie fights a tiger shark. Fulci is a seer, a zombie futurist. We have scoffed at this scene, poked fun at it. What this was, 30 years ago, was an actual, verified, postmodern allegory from the future.

Or, in other words: enjoy this gore while you can, for one day zombies will sprint after you and George Romero will make shitty films.

I continue to enjoy zombie entertainment, but my critical filter for new material featuring zombies is unforgiving. There's just too much garbage out there to do anything other. One thing I often do, when the moment permits, in the midst of any discussion about zombies and my feelings about them, is to let people know about The Walking Dead. Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard's The Walking Dead is one of the few current, and luckily, ongoing pieces of zombie pop culture worth a damn. Robert Kirkman began his series as a familiar ride through a zombie apocalypse; now nearly 70 issues in, he's pushed it into realms that I wasn't aware possible. He is in the midst of writing the masterpiece in the genre of zombie literature.



The group of characters that inhabit the world of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead have been through a lot. The group has been small, large, and middling in its numbers, and they have all suffered, whether it is physically, emotionally, or otherwise. The rotating casts of characters are never safe, and they do their best to survive the myriad of typical survivor tropes--their relationships within the group (if such a group exists), their connection to their former lives, and their connection with their own minds. As in any apocalyptic fiction the really interesting stuff comes when the characters are forced to acknowledge and confront themselves. Kirkman has given us many zombies, they are ever-present, but he continually shows with each arc and issue, that while zombies are clearly the most obvious antagonist the characters face, the rot not only occurs with the titular walking dead, but has also been systematically taking apart each character since the book's very first issue. Effectively, and I'm not the first to make such a comparison, turning Rick Grimes and his troupe over the course of their travels into a whole other sort of walking dead.

The Walking Dead reads quickly. Month after month, it is the book that I finish in the least amount of time. A few minutes at best. Part of this is due to my enthusiasm for the book, the relief that comes when I get to finally scratch the itch the previous issues' cliffhanger has left (Kirkman writes cliffhangers nearly every issue. And each time, they are wonderful.) part of it is also how Kirkman writes his dialogue - yes, people complain it is wordy and dense, and it can be, but it's also very snappy and real. It's always pertinent to the event, and chugs along with a great pace. It's also a quick read because of how spare and fluid Charlie Adlard's art is. Often, the storytelling done in this book is achieved in panels and sometimes pages of no dialogue and only character action. These moments are always effective and arresting; Adlard draws zombies and gore and fear with such precision. It's one of the greatest books to go back to, after each arc is finished, or when a new trade paperback comes out, and read in succession.

The group of characters that have banded together in this book are no strangers to the ugly face humanity has begun to wear in this new world. They have been in conflict with other living humans before, to staggering degrees of loss and misery, and once again Kirkman has written a story that shows the characters are just as vulnerable to the machinations of other survivors as they are to the zombies that color this book in its often gruesome shades.



I recently went back and re-read the latest story arc, "Fear the Hunters."

It is difficult to talk about The Walking Dead without spoilers. Like any good serial fiction plot threads and character histories weave throughout each new narrative. If you are going to be upset with reading plot details, please do not proceed.

The Walking Dead: "Fear the Hunters," Issues #61- #66.

As the characters take refuge in the church of a priest they've recently met up with, Father Gabriel, who tells them how he had to turn away hundreds of people seeking refuge when the "event" began. Rick Grimes' young son, Carl, is harboring a devastating secret and is being torn apart by the guilt stemming from it. Andrea is getting the distinct feeling that she is being watched; that the group is being stalked by a presence she feels coming from the woods surrounding the church. Dale, the group's one legged eldest member, and Andrea's lover, is bitten by a roamer (what the characters call the zombies) and hides his injury, but is suddenly accosted in the middle of the night and taken away.



The meat of this story revolves primarily around the aforementioned characters, and while several other members of the group’s stories continue here, and are affected by these events, I feel that the focus should be on the above for now.

Andrea panics when she realizes Dale is missing. The group takes action and begins to search the nearby woods, but their search is cut short for fear of attracting more roamers, or leaving the remaining members of the group back at the church vulnerable. To Andrea's dismay, Rick calls an end to the search for the day. Rick shows his concern for Dale, but explains the situation and promises Andrea they will continue to search for him.

Dale wakes up in a strange place, lying down on his back. There are a group of strangers surrounding him. A man who seems to be their leader begins to talk to Dale in a calm, detached, creepy manner. He is explaining to Dale why he's been taken. Dale, groggy from trauma doesn't understand, until it is blatantly spelled out by this man. Here is where Adlard's full page art makes the scene: We see Dale lying down on a picnic table, his good leg missing and the stump bandaged; and here it is, he realizes it as it is spoken; The group that has taken him are cannibals, and they are going to eat him.

To step away from this story for a moment, I would like to share the tag line of Lucio Fulci's Zombi "We Are Going to Eat You"



Zombies eat the living. They sometimes eat brains, but mainly they eat flesh. Any and all of it. Zombies and their affinity for brains, as far as I can remember, began with the horror comedy Return of the Living Dead. Zombies do love brains, but it should be remembered, most specifically in the genre's most brilliant film, Night of the Living Dead, that they also eat flesh. They are cannibalistic in a way. Although no longer living, they are eating what they once were. Trying to siphon life, trying to build back their rot with warm, living flesh. This is what they do. If zombies were able to speak intelligibly, they would tell you: WE ARE GOING TO EAT YOU.

As the group attempts to reconvene and rest at the church, just as everyone is exhausted and frantic, Andrea screams and the group runs outside. In an attempt to break down the characters by scaring them, the cannibals have brought Dale back and thrown him outside the church. The group runs to him, and in the process, one of them, Glenn, is shot in the leg from the woods. Fire is returned, and the group takes shelter back in the church. Rick and Abraham discuss what has happened. It is determined that since they left Dale alive, and only shot Glenn in the leg, they don't want to kill them outright. They want to scare them, they want to pick them apart, and they want to HUNT them. In true grit fashion, Rick, the group's steadfast leader exclaims the simple truth: "They don't know who they're fucking with".

Dale is hurt badly. Now missing both legs, and admits to having been bitten. Andrea and the rest of the group realize what is happening. Dale explains what the hunters are up to, how they're planning on eating everyone. Dale makes Andrea promise to take care of him once the turning begins, and with reluctance she agrees, but makes sure Dale knows just how deeply she loves him. Here is the essence of The Walking Dead: never-ending horror and grief with splashes of beautiful humanity. As Dale recollects his surroundings, Father Gabriel determines that there are only a few neighborhoods in walking distance. A few members set out to set things straight.

The cannibals are discussing their plan of action. They are filled with hubris, and feel that although this new group is larger than what they're used to hunting, they will be able to take them out regardless. Rick shows up and the group's leader allows a dialogue to begin. The leader speaks with confidence, letting Rick know that they will not let them go unharmed, that what they are doing is what they need to do to survive. The leader shares an allegory of how if a bear is starving she will eat her young to survive. If the mother bear dies, the cubs will die, but if she lives, she can always have more cubs. He then tells Rick how there used to be children in their group. And with this, shit pops off.

Rick calls out to the woods "big one, left ear" with a zip and a ping one of the cannibal's ear is shot off. Rick threatens that if anything moves, it will be shot at. Abraham walks out of the woods. The cannibal leader calls Rick's bluff. From the woods, Andrea shoots off his finger. The cannibals are disarmed, and, their leader pleads for their lives. With no reluctance, and in one of the best drawings of Rick's expression, Rick denies him. The group begins to dismember each and every one of the cannibals, making them all watch as it happens. No remorse, no hesitation. Just horror. They are doing what needs to be done in order to survive. An eye for an eye.

Rick and company return to the church. Everyone is assured that the threat is passed, and it is left at that. Dale and Rick make peace with each other, and in the night Dale begins to turn into a zombie. A single shot rings out as Andrea holds true to her promise. Rick, now falling apart emotionally, begins to tell his tale of guilt to Abraham. Of how he is at odds with how easy it was to do what they did, to slaughter the cannibals, even in the face of the danger they presented. He says to Abraham how if his son Carl knew what happened, he wouldn't know what to say, wouldn't know how Carl would be able to process that. Except, Rick hadn't been speaking to Abraham, it was Carl who was behind him the whole time. And with tears in both their eyes, Carl admits to Rick his own dark secret: he is a murderer as well.

So wraps up another horrific and elegant story in the world of The Walking Dead. This arc encompassed nearly all of what makes Kirkman's book such a wonder. Specifically how, in the face of life and death, decisions are made that make everyone compromise their own humanity.



If you're at all interested in what you've read, pick up a collection of The Walking Dead. I am confident you will not find a better piece of zombie related pop culture anywhere today. It is in a league of its own. And, if Kirkman's word holds true, he has no intention of stopping anytime soon. He has said, explicitly, that these stories will go on for years to come. I for one moan and shamble in delight at this prospect.

Write Club Funnies!

Write Club! "King Con Day 2" Pt. 1: Volume 2, Ep. 8

Day two of Write Club at King Con in Brooklyn. Tim & Kurt work out some of the recording kinks from the previous day, and land an impromptu interview with local creator Ben Granoff--who gave WC the skinny on his comic book "We Were the Freedom Federation."

The boys also have a chat with Matt Loux, author and illustrator of "Salt Water Taffy," published by Oni Press.

Intro: "Peaches" The Stranglers

Outro: "Write Club Theme" Scott St. Pierre

flaming babies

King Con: Write Club Promotes You! Pt. II

It's not just creative products people are pimping out at these cons, sometimes the potential clients are the con-goers themselves. In this case we have imPhotoGraphics who print up business cards, banners, table throws and runners--all the good stuff you may need at a convention if you wish to sell your wares. The postcard looks good, the prices seem fair, and once I'm at the point where I need to throw together a huge production, well I'll check this blog post and go there. Plus, he's out of Merrick, Long Island so I gots ta represent.

Another non-creative, but very essential, part of being a comic professional is looking after your funds (when you get to the point where you are an actual PAID freelancer). We spoke with a financial wiz who is looking to work with those of us who are doing something a bit more interesting than the average banker, trader, or whatever it is that people do to make lots of money these days. Joshua Hurni out of Advanced Wealth Solutions Group is this man and he'd like to help. So if you're interested hit us up here and we'll pass along his information.

Straddling the line between creative and informative are sites that provide you with news & reviews (much like ourselves, though we like to stress our creative side more); we had a Brooklyn couple stop by that had just heard of the con last minute, who run a site called SFSCOPE which looks to be a text heavy news/review site of all things SPECULATIVE FICTION not to be confused (aka slumming it) with Science Fiction. There looks to be a good amount of information here, so take a gander why don't ya?


Next in my pile is a postcard for Christopher Irving & Seth Kushner's website NYC GRAPHIC NOVELISTS with some bold photos by Kushner of some of the industry's top creators (I love the shot of Dean Haspiel atop the Studio). They profile some of the coolest creators that live and work in NY, as well as some reviews and articles. "A photo and essay journey into the heart and soul of New York City through the eyes of her cartoonists" as they put it on their postcard. They're both very cool guys themselves and even allowed me to tag along on their interview of Carmine Infantino; seeing as how I'm an insane Flash fan, it was truly an honor. Hopefully we'll have these guys on an upcoming episode as they try to turn this site into a hardcover book. You can read the review of their King Con panel here.


In a future post I'll be talking more indepth about Act-I-Vate covering Seth Kushner's new webcomic SCHMUCK and the documentary he co-directed on the Act-I-Vate creators the Act-I-Vate Experience.

When you don't have a slick psotcard or a business card, what do you do? Steal priority mail stickers from the post office and write your info on them apparently. A Reid Harris Cooper, writer/artist/actor, handed me this after a brief conversation. I checked out his site PopCultureSpectrum and it's a blog with some random info, and something that I think is a must see is the Spider-Man Pedicab Driver post. I gotta keep my eyes peeled for this lunatic on the streets of NYC.


Along with Bree of Sex, Drugs & June Cleaver as mentioned in a previous post, a young lady handed me her business card, with a cute graphic on it, rounded edges, and nice design pointing me to her webcomic THE GLASS URCHIN. It's a nicely organized site with a cutesy auto-biographical comic, where the main characters (and only the main characters) happen to be cutesy animals. From whimsical to philosophical to goofy, the strip covers a full range and there's a nice honesty to the art. Definitely worth a look and a nice companion piece to the aforementioned S,D&JC, seeing as they're both friends and all.

Another webcomic, launching around Thanksgiving-time, is MOONLIGHTING which I'm looking forward to. Ms. Emily Wernet's artwork is cool, the idea (a sleepwalking superheroine) sounds cool, and she fights cryptozoological creatures which is definitely cool. I'll hit this up once it goes live and pimp it out a bit more once I get to give it a read. You can see the promo image and some scratchy short comics on the site above in the meantime.

A promo poster for Kevin Mellon's Suicide Sisters somehow wound up at our table and it looked cool so I snagged it. Bad ass chicks chasing down demons on motorcycles. And it's coming out through APE Entertainment which is awesome as I didn't know they were still around. Check out the sites and look at the artwork which is pretty impressive. I'll keep my eye out for it.

Last, but certainly not least, is one of the funniest mini-comics I've read in awhile. A young cartoonist named Lauren Barnett came by and dropped off a mini-comic "A Story About Fish", which I thought was good, with art ranging from cartoony to realistic(ish) much like the tone of the story. When I got home that night I had looked up her comics on her blog MeLikesYouComics and saw the other book "I'd Sure Like Some F#*%ing Pancakes" and just loved the title, wishing I had that one as well. Sure enough, as we're packing up our stuff Sunday I found a copy lying on the table next to us. I read it on the train on my way to work after the con (yes, I had to work all night long after both days of the con) and I literally laughed out loud on the train the whole time. It's a certain type of humor, for sure, but I get it and love it. Check out her one panel comics up on the site and enjoy. It's really fun stuff that makes me smile. (She also has something coming soon called SECRET WEIRDO which looks cool and I can't deny that title intrigues me.)

That about wraps up my stack of goodies. The one other thing I'd like to throw out there is the Abrams ComicArts Book Club which is hosted by Bergen Street Comics. They had their first meeting this past November 12th, which unfortunately due to the con, a 40 hour workweek, and terrible flu-like symptoms, I had to miss, but they discussed Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, and our own Tim Mucci was on the scene, so maybe if we ask him nice he'll give us a review of the event. Or maybe we'll see you at the next one.

Til next con kids,

K