GUESS I’M INTO FEELING

My cat cares nothing for my freelance life. My untranslated copy of Clamp School Detectives volume 3 is in my bag in the other room. She is asleep on my lap—fast asleep, and it’s just too cruel to move her. Normally, if she tries to sleep on me, it doesn’t last. I’m too fidgety, and it annoys her. But at my desk, we can usually come to some kind of agreement. Usually, I’d say I’d hang on until the music I was playing ended, but we aren’t even halfway into Erasure, so it could be a while. (And I always forget how brilliant this album is. I mean, I know it’s really good, but then I put it on and realize my memory can never serve me completely. They really were doing something special here…)

Anyway, looks like she’ll at least get the length of this journal entry for her nap.

It appears my mainstream comics career has hit a wall again. I am not superduper eager to be a superhero writer or anything, but opportunities are opportunities. I like to try, to see what is there, and if someone asks me to pitch, then we’ll tango. C.B. Cebulski at Marvel is a great guy, and he has been really helpful. I’m a tough business, because my ideas are limited in that area, so I can’t toss tons at him until one sticks. I’ve tried three so far, and we just can’t get them going. This last one was a Jubilee story, and it appears to be a no-go. The others were ideas for new series that, really, gave them what they wanted for their Tsunami line, but gave it to them over a year ago. I know that it sounds terribly egotistical, but I believed in the books I was constructing.

But then, maybe that’s been my problem all along. Maybe there is too much hubris in how I approach these things. Outside of two pitches for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer line of comics at Dark Horse, my only other real proposal in the last few years was for an Elseworlds thing at DC. It was also the only thing I wasn’t asked to put together, but I used some connections to get it in. Chynna Clugston-Major was going to draw it, and I did my best to deliver an idea that seemed to be perfectly suited to what it is she and I do. I wasn’t giving them something inappropriate that no one would want to see from us.

I also thought I was giving them a fresh idea, something young and vibrant that would really stand out in a tired line of Green Lantern pirate stories and Superman westerns. Like I said, hubris. I thought I had the goods.

Anyway, Young Justice: Ready, Steady, Go! is the only story in my arsenal that I know is 100% dead, so I share it here and you can be the judge of it. I haven’t even read it over again to post it. It’s a distant memory. If it seems folk like seeing it, maybe I’ll look into putting up some of the others.

Current Soundtrack: Erasure, Erasure

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