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anthimeriaThere may be things happening with the job I want! Thus, haven't been around much. Wish me luck!
Re: this post's subject--I haven't talked about it much on this journal because it's mostly been about my writing in the last year, which has mostly been my novels, with a few side-steps into short stories. The thing is, I am into just about every medium (except poetry . . . except I like epic poetry and iambic pentameter, so whatever).
I love comics and tv and movies and musicals and plays, although I've found theatre isn't my strong suit. I write everything, depending on the medium the story wants to be in. Sometimes, I've had stories not work until I switched media (I once wrote a short story that sucked until I turned it into the script for a short comic, which was subsequently published in one of Knox's lit mags, Catch--the college's longest-running lit mag, which has won awards, though I'm biased toward the Quiver collection of online genre mags--I did co-found them, I'm allowed to play favorites. Anyway. Tangent, wow). I miss writing scripts, even though I had sound reasons for focusing on my novels for the last year.
Getting into the comics industry is incredibly hard, and it's unbelievably hard if you can't draw. All the numbers are against you. And getting into one of the big two (DC and Marvel, make it three if you include Dark Horse) is even harder than that. I should make it clear that those are the companies I'm talking about--mainstream superhero comics. Indies are awesome but not my thing. I did the circuit at San Diego Comic Con a few years ago, and could barely find anyone willing to give a writer the time of day, let alone take my portfolio. I'd still love to work in the comics industry, because for all the sexism and racism and heterosexism that is built into the industry, for all of that, no mode of storytelling takes my breath away like a well-done comic.
Nothing.
Even when I'm mad at all the -isms superhero comics aid and abet, at the end of the day I'm still going to give them three bucks an issue to read those titles I think are still worth reading (or more than $3. Comics are an expensive habit, lemme tell ya). Comics take my breath away, they hit me where it hurts, they bring me joy and love and terror and sheer adrenalin I don't get as reliably in any other medium.
Their length and breadth and variety are like no other medium in today's world--the only thing that might be comparable is full Doctor Who, with decades of canon in multiple media, and even that can't come close. Marvel and DC have universes full of stories that have been ongoing and intertwined since before World War II.
The reason I'm waxing poetic about comic books today is because I pulled my whole collection out of its boxes this evening in an attempt to bring it under some kind of order.
Mind you, when I first starting seriously collecting, I organized it from here to judgment day--and thank TPTB I did! Two years ago, the summer before my senior year at Knox, was probably the last time I updated my files on the collection or added comics to the boxes in the proper place. And I've bought comics since then, and they've been sitting in piles on top of the boxes where they should, properly, be stored. Partly this was sheer laziness on my part, and partly this was actual uncertainty about the contents and location of my collection--some of it came with me to Knox, some didn't, I'd lent issues to friends and been lent issues in return, etc.
With the possibility of moving on the horizon, I figured it was time I put those new comics in their boxes, and while I was at it perform a chore I've meant to do for years: weeding.
If I'd just been adding and updating, I might be finished. No, I'm going through everything and deciding whether or not I want to keep it, which has resulted in this very late hour and three slightly unstable stacks of comics that will be heading for e-bay or somewhere as soon as I can manage it. And I'm not finished yet. I just stopped because my brain was spinning, and I ceased to be able to tell whether or not I really wanted to keep something.
As a result (and the actual point of this whole rambling mess), I am sitting in a room with comics all over the floor. They're in neat stacks, organized by publisher-title-chronology, but still.
I feel a bit like I've let the stories out of their boxes, for a little while. Astro City and Young Justice, Static and Excalibur, A Distant Soil and Elfquest--superheroes, wolfriders, aliens and psychics. These are the words and images that have spoken to me, and it's good for me to see and remember them. Sometimes I forget.
They renew my sense of wonder.
Re: this post's subject--I haven't talked about it much on this journal because it's mostly been about my writing in the last year, which has mostly been my novels, with a few side-steps into short stories. The thing is, I am into just about every medium (except poetry . . . except I like epic poetry and iambic pentameter, so whatever).
I love comics and tv and movies and musicals and plays, although I've found theatre isn't my strong suit. I write everything, depending on the medium the story wants to be in. Sometimes, I've had stories not work until I switched media (I once wrote a short story that sucked until I turned it into the script for a short comic, which was subsequently published in one of Knox's lit mags, Catch--the college's longest-running lit mag, which has won awards, though I'm biased toward the Quiver collection of online genre mags--I did co-found them, I'm allowed to play favorites. Anyway. Tangent, wow). I miss writing scripts, even though I had sound reasons for focusing on my novels for the last year.
Getting into the comics industry is incredibly hard, and it's unbelievably hard if you can't draw. All the numbers are against you. And getting into one of the big two (DC and Marvel, make it three if you include Dark Horse) is even harder than that. I should make it clear that those are the companies I'm talking about--mainstream superhero comics. Indies are awesome but not my thing. I did the circuit at San Diego Comic Con a few years ago, and could barely find anyone willing to give a writer the time of day, let alone take my portfolio. I'd still love to work in the comics industry, because for all the sexism and racism and heterosexism that is built into the industry, for all of that, no mode of storytelling takes my breath away like a well-done comic.
Nothing.
Even when I'm mad at all the -isms superhero comics aid and abet, at the end of the day I'm still going to give them three bucks an issue to read those titles I think are still worth reading (or more than $3. Comics are an expensive habit, lemme tell ya). Comics take my breath away, they hit me where it hurts, they bring me joy and love and terror and sheer adrenalin I don't get as reliably in any other medium.
Their length and breadth and variety are like no other medium in today's world--the only thing that might be comparable is full Doctor Who, with decades of canon in multiple media, and even that can't come close. Marvel and DC have universes full of stories that have been ongoing and intertwined since before World War II.
The reason I'm waxing poetic about comic books today is because I pulled my whole collection out of its boxes this evening in an attempt to bring it under some kind of order.
Mind you, when I first starting seriously collecting, I organized it from here to judgment day--and thank TPTB I did! Two years ago, the summer before my senior year at Knox, was probably the last time I updated my files on the collection or added comics to the boxes in the proper place. And I've bought comics since then, and they've been sitting in piles on top of the boxes where they should, properly, be stored. Partly this was sheer laziness on my part, and partly this was actual uncertainty about the contents and location of my collection--some of it came with me to Knox, some didn't, I'd lent issues to friends and been lent issues in return, etc.
With the possibility of moving on the horizon, I figured it was time I put those new comics in their boxes, and while I was at it perform a chore I've meant to do for years: weeding.
If I'd just been adding and updating, I might be finished. No, I'm going through everything and deciding whether or not I want to keep it, which has resulted in this very late hour and three slightly unstable stacks of comics that will be heading for e-bay or somewhere as soon as I can manage it. And I'm not finished yet. I just stopped because my brain was spinning, and I ceased to be able to tell whether or not I really wanted to keep something.
As a result (and the actual point of this whole rambling mess), I am sitting in a room with comics all over the floor. They're in neat stacks, organized by publisher-title-chronology, but still.
I feel a bit like I've let the stories out of their boxes, for a little while. Astro City and Young Justice, Static and Excalibur, A Distant Soil and Elfquest--superheroes, wolfriders, aliens and psychics. These are the words and images that have spoken to me, and it's good for me to see and remember them. Sometimes I forget.
They renew my sense of wonder.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-17 04:45 pm (UTC)I'm applying for a new job too, at the Cooperative Children's Book Center. But changing $9/hr part time jobs is not quite as big a deal.
Will you be at Kristin's this weekend?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 04:31 am (UTC)Good luck getting in at the CCBC (that's an awkward acronym)! It sounds like an interesting place to work.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-18 06:31 pm (UTC)I'd love to see you, but I hope for your sake that you're busy!