How to Succeed in Comics Without Really Trying

Had a few comics-related conversations over the holidays, and particularly their similarity to theatre. Comic books, like stage productions, cannot show elaborate cinematic scenes. They suggest, and the audience (or reader) fills in the rest from their imagination. Panel 1: close up on a Bat-glove, fist cocked. Panel 2: DEMON minion lying on the floor. You don't SEE Batman attack (reminder if you haven't seen the Arkham City trailer, you haven't seen CGI Keysi Shakespeare the way it's meant to be played), you create it in your own mind, and that folks, is why fanboys are more INVESTED in these characters and these stories. We are more possessive because they truly are OURS more than something we only see in a movie or on television.

Because of that similarity, and because theatre has had to reinvent itself for thousands of years to keep entertaining in a changing world, the modern comics professional can learn a lot from the theatre world. The big one to consider today is literally the difference between a theatre that failed in the last 10 years, and one in the same city that kept its lights on and is still performing shows. The philosophy is simplicity itself:

Look on every single performance of every single show as your one and only chance to win over someone in that audience and make them a lifelong theatre goer. Someone out there has never come to the theatre before, and what they see and hear and experience tonight could be so overwhelmingly magical for them that they are hooked for life.

Look on every single performance of every single show as potentially the last straw for someone who has seen one bad show too many.

Remember The Dark Knight? That movie brought people into comic shops for the first time. They were looking for Batman. If what was in the comics DELIVERED what they wanted, some of them would have come back. (And maybe some comic shops that have closed in the last 2 years would have weathered the storm, but that's a question for another day.)

But it doesn't take a movie. It doesn't even take a cartoon. SOMEONE is be walking into a shop for the first time EVERY DAMN DAY. Every issue of every comic is a chance to win them.

Every issue of every comic is also a chance to LOSE them. There is a misconception out there that because fanboys howl and complain, because they have always howled and complained, that it's fine and even desirable, to anger, disappoint and insult them. And it isn't necessary to master or even understand the basic tenets of storytelling because a bad story will pass the time for the next 6 months as well as, or better than, a good one. There is a reason it is writers with roots in or ties to other media who are having exponentially more success than the hacks: because they understand real readers and audiences. They know that those hundred guys on forums are not representative of anything. The vast majority of readers you never hear from either way. They like it and they buy again, or they hate it and they don't.

Things can be bad enough for long enough that the most vocal and committed fans decide enough is enough. We're seeing that happen in increasing numbers, but those are the extreme cases. Every issue of every comic IS a chance to lose one of those diehards, but it is also infinitely more probable it will lose a hundred casual readers. Particularly when the actual goal is to cause maximum offense. It's not okay to know something is wrong but wait until next year to fix it. Every single issue of every single comic is an opportunity to win or lose. And like life, you simply don't know how many chances you have left. The Reaper is out there, folks, and there are major titles whistling in the graveyard, acting like it doesn't matter, they'll fix it next year. It really doesn't seem to occur to them that there may not be a next year.

It's a new year, and I wanted this entry to be an optimistic one. I want to offer more encouragement to those pros out there who honestly do seem to be trying to fix this. I know things that have been breaking for 20-plus years can't be fixed in a day, but unfortunately, that's what's required here.

There's another theatre principle: the miracle. It's 30 minutes to curtain, the paint is still wet, they're finishing off the second act costumes with a glue gun, the props table fell over, breaking the decanter we need for the first scene, the leads are having a shouting match in their dressing rooms, the fire marshall is seizing all the pyro earmarked for the end of the first act, and the ASM is locked in the costume loft. But the show goes on because even though it is f-ing IMPOSSIBLE to overcome all that in less than half an hour, we dig in and do it, because we gotta. Because we give a damn.

So maybe, just maybe, this can be an optimistic entry after all. All you guys need to do is dig in and give us a miracle. If it sounds like a lot to ask, look at your cousins in theatre who've been doing it for just over 5,000 years.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Please Drink Responsibly

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There is something profoundly wrong with people who don’t like Dickens, but even they allow that A Tale of Two Cities has one of the greatest openings in the English language. The Great Gatsby opens well too, and is also one of the rarest of rarities: a spot on perfect movie. AMC has a collection of films called “Essentials,” films from Casablanca to Close Encounters of the Third Kind that everyone should know. They are part of the collective vocabulary. They are required for cultural literacy. In literature there’s the Five Foot Shelf. In music, it’s Synchronicity and The White Album, South Pacific and Into the Woods. If you seek out what’s good in many fields, you feed your imagination and will be a better artist for it.

That’s the positive side. The flip side is also true. Imagine a professional athlete that ate nothing but Big Macs and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Would any of us be surprised if this guy failed to win the New York marathon? For that matter, would any of us be surprised if he failed to finish and fell down dead at Mile 18? No, of course not. Because this guy who uses his body to do what he does has been pouring poison into it.

If you’re a writer, an artist, a musician, a composer, a creative in any field, then your imagination is the bread and butter machine. Since you’re also a human being, it is the most magical and sacred part of you. That alone is a good enough reason not to flood it with poisons, but I’m talking about something beyond just being human. I am talking about being a creative. The imagination is what stretches beyond the literal and mundane and the goings on in your digestive tract. It is what connects with something higher and better, and channels a little piece of the infinite when you make something that wasn’t there before. If you pollute it with garbage, the result will be the artistic version of that wheezing pathetic “athlete” gasping his way through the race.

No, I do not read comics anymore. It’s more than not giving DC even $2.95 worth of encouragement for something that is truly bad, it is declining to live on a toxic waste dump. It is refusing to take poison into my imagination. Not only is it bad for me, it’s going to be bad for anything I write.

You are what you eat. And drink. We’ve all seen the creative output of the drunk drivers out there, professional and amateur. It’s time for those of us who are not three sheets to the wind to start staging some interventions.

But let’s return to the Best of Times, because there is a new artist to welcome to the Fan Art Gallery, and she’s certainly kept her imagination fueled with the best of raw materials. Check out the beautiful work of Anya Uribe, an absolute master of feminine curves, color and form.

The Virtual Visitor Center is decked out for the holidays. In Second Life, as in Cattitude, as in Real Life, Cartier wraps itself up in a bow for Christmas. More information on the Cat-Tales website, or residents may teleport directly to the Visitor Center.

Random Equinox even has an update for his spinoff fic: Don't Fear the Z.  And as if that wasn't enough, we had two lovely developments over the Thanksgiving break: The Macy's parade was good enough to open with Aviator Snoopy, providing yet another opportunity for the slow-witted to realize that the inspiration for the Catwoman abomination--the virtual SIGNATURE of the new direction that failed to grasp anything that defined Catwoman and got absolutely everything wrong--was, in fact, based on a cartoon dog. How symbolic do you want it? They didn't understand anything at all about Selina, right down to the CAT in Catwoman. A symmetry such as makes the angels weep, if it wasn't so effing sad. And, finally, the forum's running gag of Batman's Black Friday Protocol finally has some artwork:

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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( . )( . )

I’m pretty sure the most popular entry in this blog is the one from late April: Women Lacking Complexity—For SCIENCE! about blogger Jen McCreight’s initiative Boob Quake.  Wow, who would have thought it?  The most popular blog was about tits. 

Yes, there are two big issues looming when it comes to women and comics.  Seriously, that’s not a rhetorical flourish, there are two.  Let’s deal with the D-cups first, because there is a reason they go on the cover.  Men like breasts.  A couple months ago, Warner Bros posted screencaps to Arkham City, the sequel to the Arkham Asylum computer game. 

The gullible souls who bought into the Brubaker/Cooke scam and continue to think flat-chested and short hair are the hallmarks of a dynamic empowered woman started frothing at the mouth:  Look at those breasts!  How can it be!  It is the goggle-whore costume we have all been trained to defend as practical no matter how nonsensical the word is as applied to any costume in any comic including the one this displaced.  It is black and not purple, she has no long flowing hair cascading luxuriously out the back of her cowl, how can she have breasts that can be seen without special lenses?!  It does not compute.  The horror, the horror!  How dare they defame the good name of Catwoman by giving her a figure men will enjoy looking at!

I really had hoped the Iranian cleric that started the whole Boob Quake thing would have woken those silly women up.  Because if you buy into the idea that boobs are bad and there is something wrong with men who like them, then you’re standing with Fahas Ahardtime Acceptinghalfthehumanrace-majad.  That doesn’t strike me as very enlightened or feminist, ladies, but hey, you don’t see the problem with the whore either, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. 

For those who aren’t irrevocably committed to the doctrine of Men Suck, let’s briefly revisit why the male of the species like the breasts.  I’m sorry Notting Hill fans, there is a reason and it’s not “because they’re stupid.”  It’s because we’re primates.  For a long, long, long, long time, the male approaching a female for mating purposes is looking at a rump.  Now fast forward a few million years.  We're all walking upright. What in the general vicinity of the new eyelevel looks like that? There’s nothing perverse about it.  Men notice cleavage.  Put it on the cover, they’ll notice your cover.  That’s not an automatic sale, but it gets their attention.  What you do then is up to you.

Which brings us to the second issue when it comes to women in comics: who they are as opposed to how they look.  Let’s start with a quote from a creative writing forum, which was sent to me after the recent blog on Fridging:

“As it was explained to me by a comics professional years ago at a convention panel on the topic, the vast majority of comic writers are men who simply don't understand women. Since they don't understand women (and earn more by churning out stories as quickly as possible), they save time by reducing women to cliched roles as either the girlfriend or the victim.”

I include the elaborate provenance – that this is something told to a reader in a con/panel situation—because there is always the possibility that it is simply not true.  That it was given in the context of “Look, we don’t serve up all these rapes and murders because we’re sad little trolls who can only feel like men by bringing down women.”  If that was the tone of the panel, then this could have been presented as a simple expedient.  Rather than debating if there is any palpable difference between murder of Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis and the murder of Duncan in the Scottish play, the above quote diffuses the situation quickly without controversy by playing into the widely held preconception of comics writers as arrested adolescents.

The irony is if that's true and not an invented excuse, it’s completely unacceptable.  Women are 53% of the population.  You can’t be a professional writer in any medium and “simply not understand” half the human race.  You’re going to embarrass yourself, embarrass the idiots who hired you, and you’re going to fail—over and over and over.  So let’s cut these guys a break and reveal the key to writing women that both men and women in the audience will love.  Then everybody can do it and that removes "I don't understand lumpy people" as an excuse.  The following has been said elsewhere, but never as well as by the late Harold Ashman:

“In every classic musical, one of the first three songs belongs to the heroine.  She comes downstage, often sits on a convenient planter or bale of hay, and sings about what she wants from her life.  And the audience falls in love with her… and they spend the next three acts rooting for her to get it.”

It is, honest to god, that simple.  And that complex.  Start with what she wants.  If Cattitude succeeds where others have failed, it is because it is grounded in what Catwoman wants from stealing: a restoration of the love and safety she felt as a child, which she came to associate with the wealth and comfort she knew in her parents’ home.  I cannot accept that the ability to pee standing up somehow short-circuits the ability to understand that simple human motivation.  What we want is seldom a function of gender.  The best art and jewel thief in the world comes from privilege and not poverty because the root associations make sense.  If any man wants to step up and explain what in his anatomy would screw with anything that shampoo simple, I would be fascinated to hear it. 

Food, shelter, love, freedom, a sense of self-worth.  None of them have anything to do with reproductive plumbing.  If you “simply don’t’ understand” women, then you simply don’t understand people and if that’s the case, you have no business writing at all. 

Now, if you don’t get a particular subset, join the club.  Twilight fans, the gals who take the Sex and the City bus tour, the Real Housewives of anywhere… Don’t ask me, fellas, I’m as confused as you are.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Fat is Flavor

Chef Josh Grinker recently blogged a list of “Things Chefs Don’t Want You To Know.” The explanation for #1 (There is butter in everything) began like this:

In every culinary school in America, they hammer home the same three-word mantra to students day after day, year after year, until it’s like a little voice in your brain that guides virtually every culinary decision you will make for the rest of your career: 'Fat is Flavor.'

Now, this isn’t a cooking blog, and if there are any nutrition proselytizers out there who want to make the case for their fat-free, salt-free, gluten free, lentil and tofu roulade being just as tasty as a deep dish with pepperoni and sausage from Giordano's, they can lump it. Because there are two key elements in Grinker’s statement which are the gateway to serial success or—in DC Comics’s case—serial failure.

First of all, the three little words are true. I could spend a day perusing the Good Eats clips on youtube for Mr. Science-style demonstrations explaining that reality molecule-by-molecule, but again, this is not a cooking blog. The point is, regardless of what you say on the convention floor, no matter what you put in the press release or tell the columnist from IGN, and no matter what would be convenient for you personally or professionally, no matter what creates a political pain in the ass for you personally or professionally, the bedrock principle on which you base your decisions has to be TRUE. One example off the top of my head: readers like the theme rogues. You can accept that and build your one year arc around Croc, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Joker, Harley Quinn, Riddler, and Two-Face and be on your way to the hit of the decade, or you can reject it, stage a parade of faceless mobsters and serial killers, and then grouse that grumble that you’re never as popular as that other guy.

Assembling the list of wrong ideas DC has about life, the universe, and everything would be a daunting task, and not necessarily a productive one. Because the second key in Grinker’s statement is that repetition of the founding principle(s) until it becomes an instinct. There are some major figures out there who are so consistently wrong in everything they say and do, they’ve definitely got the instinct mechanism working, it’s just based on faulty base principles.
From "Bruce Wayne is the mask" to the fallacy of Millerism, they have core ideas, those ideas just happen to be wrong. But there are others who have no little voice leading them in any direction. They go from mediocre to pretty good to clinically insane, from really bad to slightly above average to “oh hell, the syphilis got to their brain.” That is the mark of a writer, editor, or manager who is stumbling blind. They have no root principles, so every choice brings them back to square one. They’re a ping pong ball in a wind tunnel, and whatever gusts hit them last will determine where they go next.

Look, things do change in this world. One of the major reasons the Titanic went down is because everything Captain Smith knew was wrong. It was based on based on 30 years of experience, but on that ship on that voyage in those waters: wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. But here’s the catch: other things do NOT change. There is a reason the term is bedrock principles. Some things simply are, they are constants, they do not alter. “You know how you cook a great steak? You slather it in butter, throw it on the grill, paint it with more butter.” Because fat is flavor. The principles of storytelling do not change. Going home. Coming of age. Sin and redemption. The hero. The power of love. They are hardwired into us, just like our taste buds process sweet, sour, bitter, and salt. Can a new voice come up with something startling and creative and unprecedented? Absolutely. Can they invent a fifth taste? No. No, they can’t. Can they make it so we don’t like sweet anymore? No, no they can’t.

Find the true bedrock principles, repeat them until they become a little voice in the back of your mind shaping every decision you make, and you might just rock the world. Insist that fat isn’t flavor… well, enjoy your empty restaurant.

Meanwhile, the Cat-Tales kitchens are bustling these days. Electron 29: Chapter 4 is out. Compilations of Books 1 through 4 are out in ebook formats for Kindle, Sony, Nook, iPhone/iPad/iPod, and pretty much everything as well as new print-ready pdf editions. Individual Tales 1 through 50 are also available, and several have new covers showcased here, here, and here. The last ten tales (through #60) will be out - both individually and as the Book 5 Compilation - in time for Christmas. New installments of both spinoffs: Capes & Bats by Wanders Nowhere and Don’t Fear the Z by Random Equinox are in the pipeline and may actually be out by the time you read this, and an amazing new artist is soon to debut in the Fan Art Gallery. And oh yes, Batcatfever will kill me if I don't mention that the forums have been quietly devouring the latest snippets from Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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The Fallacy of Fridging

This is dedicated to the ones who scream “Fridge” if anything bad befalls any female character in any context… 

The Overthinking It Flowchart of Female Characters
from Overthinkingit.com

Fridging, for the happily unenlightened, is taken from the title of an essay "Women in Refrigerators" which deconstructs female characters who are killed, raped, or otherwise brutalized... but mostly killed and decapitated so their heads can be left in the hero's refrigerator.  The complaint--and it's a fair one up to a point--is that the women and their deaths are just plot devices.  It's not the story of their deaths, it's the effect their deaths have on the hero.

Of course the same can be said of Duncan or Hamlet's father, but nobody ever bemoans king-snuffing. 

Look, I know these Fridge-Screamers are good people, most of them, and they’re honestly trying to help, but the fact is, they are the problem, not the writers. These well-meaning souls seem to think they are educating the rest of us by dissecting women’s roles in fiction in the ways shown here. In their minds, it’s writers putting women in these categories that keep them from being full and equal human beings alongside the men. We who might actually enjoy these outings are like savages worshipping a radioactive idol, not realizing that the glow we find so fascinating is bad for us.

Well, sorry, fact is, the Fridge-Screamers are the ones who have a faulty understanding. Because the thing that keeps these women from being full and equal human beings is that THEY’RE NOT. They’re not real! They are CHARACTERS. Characters in stories are going to repeat certain patterns and fit into certain roles. You accept that in order to experience the story in the same way you buy a ticket to a movie. It is literally the price you pay to get in on the experience. We could play this same stupid game with the men, because they too have a role to play in any story. But we don’t dissect them for 180 kinds of imaginary subtext simply because they have testicles—and that is the only thing that is keeping them on a higher shelf than the women. The women aren’t as real because of these analysis matrices taking everything they say, do, or wear out of the context of the story and run through the defensive paranoia filters of every silly blogger out there who read the syllabus for a women’s studies course one time and imagines she has amazing new insights.

Look, there are misogynist trolls out there masquerading as writers, as editors, as movie directors. They are not hard to identify. That seems to be the problem, actually. Sally Sophomore doesn’t feel like an enlightened intellectual pointing to the sky and saying “It’s blue.” On the contrary, there is a predisposition to reject the obvious simply because everyone can see it. “All you people, the peasants, you think the sky is blue because that’s what your eyes tell you. You’re not as wise and wonderful as me. I am one of the elite who can appreciate the particular un-blueness that so eludes your simpleton mentality.” While Sally is harmless (annoying as hell, but harmless), she does contribute an awful lot to the noise pollution that keeps real issues from being discussed. That’s a pity, but hey, that’s the Internet.

It is Monday, so a brief CT update is order. I really don’t know where to begin at this point, which probably explains the diatribe on Sally. I guess Electron 29: Chapter 3 would be a good start. That’s out! I don’t usually release stuff over the weekend, and I know how it slips by a few readers when I veer off schedule that way, but the way things are going, I can’t be that choosey about when things get done. Anyone who misses an update, hey, there’s the newsletter, the forums, Twitter, ffnet author alerts, and this paragraph. If all that escapes ‘em, DOUBLE CHAPTERS NEXT TIME! Woohoo! They can have a Cat-Tales readathon.

Anyway, one of the main reasons for the big time crunch is the ebook conversion. The Book 1 compilation as well as all the individual B1 tales are done, and Book2 is so far along that it will probably be up on the website by the time you’re reading this. That brings us up to the present, but things don’t line up for the future by themselves: writing on chapter 4, conversions of Book 3, prepping the fan art gallery for a new artist, all these things are in the pipeline, along with one other treat I’m trying to arrange by Christmas… *stops and takes a deep breath* …which is why I can’t afford much blog time to shout out to all the Purple Catwomen at New York Comic Con...

The forum's own "Glitch2" as Eddie in this one

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldofrandsom/5063929074

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwick/5066797000/

...Let alone recap “Why men like boobs” for the new crop of terminally confused whackadoodles. I’d like to, along with a few other issues that cropped up over the summer, but the Tales come first, and the commentary on non-tales matters comes second. Today we got Overthinking It out of the way. It’s a start…

That said, Kitty can really use an extra set of hands. So… I’m thinking it might be time to get an intern again. Since we now have a virtual visitor center in Second Life, I’d prefer an SL resident. If you’re interested, stop by the Cat-Tales Visitor Center in Second Life and send me a notecard. If you’re not in SL, you can send me a PM through the forum, but I’m giving preference to SL people on this one.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Capes, Bats, Cats, Covers... Not so much with The Closet

I certainly hoped to get in a quick comment on all the stuff that has been going on this summer which certainly warranted a purr or a scratch, but for which I didn't have time.  A metaphorical closet-cleaning to match the physical one.  Unfortunately for my mental closet but fortunately for Cat-Tales, there has been - yet again - too much going on to bother with the knucklhead stuff.

1.  The new Cat-Tale: Electron 29 hit the cyberstands last week,  and as anyone who has written Edward Nigma will tell you, he doesn't sit quietly in the back of your head waiting for you to finish other things before you start on his next chapter.  If you don't start writing, he'll start without you.  Meh. 

2. Wanders Nowhere has released a new installment of his Dracula in Gotham fic Capes and Bats.  Much as I want to gush, you simply will not believe me.  Believe the forum: "This little tale created an imagery and gravitas in the first chapter that the graphic novel storytellers of Gotham have been trying to do for decades" "Gorgeous prose" "Masterful".  'Nuff said.  Read it, just read it... in time for Halloween because we're not done yet and... Whew... *fans self*  just read, trust me.

3. We're getting ready to welcome a new artist into the fan art gallery, and that requires a little more work backstage than a busy girl could want in the midst of #1, 2, and 4.

4. EBOOKS!  Yes, the new ePub format is going to make mobile readers very happy and it's also given me an opening to redo the printable pdfs and kindle documents so we have some consistency.  Win-win, but it's the sort of thing where the first few will take a while, but taking the time to do them RIGHT will make everything go much smoother down the line.  In that spirit of doing it right, I want to give the individual story pdfs their own covers.  Right now, they use the square ones from the website and it's okay but the images are not made for the medium and it shows.  Now, I don't plan to do this for all the tales, but Cat-Tale #1 is, of course, a special case. So I have 4 possible covers up, and I am opening it up for a vote.  Please don't worry about the words of the title "A Girl's Gotta Protect Her Reputation."  They will be placed better on the final image, whichever it is to be.  Just vote for your favorite image. 

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Cleaning out the Hell Mouth (Not a Metaphor)

Writing is a more complicated process than most people think.  Many readers certainly come to the conclusion that there is a lot of me in my Selina, and of course there is.  It doesn’t stop there, however.  There’s a lot of me in Bruce, in Alfred, in Eddie and Harvey, in Talia, Whiskers, Sly, Luthor, Ivy and Ubu.  All the characters come out of the 9th circle of the Dee brain. 

One of the details I do share with Selina is a hell mouth closet.  It is not a metaphor, it is – or was – all too real.  Last week, I cleaned it out.  Again, this is not a metaphor.  This was a very real exercise in sifting through clutter, throwing out stuff, and sneezing a lot.  I am happy to say I have a hell mouth no more.  Yay for the nice walkable path down the center of the storage bins, which could be thinned a little more if I want to spend a month on ebay, but I don’t.  So for now, we’re good.

Except for one thing: comics.  All the comics remain out here in the non-closet world.  Those from the closet and those that were never returned to it after being pulled for reference in this fic or that.  They’re going to be here for a week or two.  Some to be filed or refiled, some to get broken down into smaller boxes.  Some will be going into their first box from the land of “stack and drawer”   It’s going to be interesting.  When it’s over, there’s another smaller closet I have my eye on (not a hell mouth, we’ll just call it Jersey).  Once the comic boxes are arranged, I’m hoping to purge its contents and put the boxes in there. 

What does any of this mean for Cat-Tales?  Well, there could be an upswing in silver age influence if I get to reading as I work.  I don’t think Selina will be cleaning out her hell mouth again.  She says once was enough for that kind of thing.  So long as Catwoman has one and only one origin, she sees no need for more than one voyage of discovery into that closet.   That just leaves the sneezing.  Some character sneezing his head off could have enormous comic relief possibilities, but it’s unlikely I’m ready to see the funny since it was only about 72 hours ago I was the one doing the sneezing.  Still, one of these days, somebody… probably Oswald.  Heh.

So that’s the art follows life side of the equation.  Life also follows life, and there is going to be some metaphorical closet cleaning too.  Because the long, hot summer is drawing to a close and not only are we a little backed up on Cat-Tales, there is a certain backlog on blogging.  I’m hoping to get them all out of the way in a few quick entries. 

You have been warned.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Lost in Cat-Tales

The Lost finale was last night, and considering the number of comic book writers who took a turn on the island, I figured it was worth an evening of my time, if only for blogging purposes today. I hadn’t watched for the past few years. The one time I looked in, I saw some kid (who I think might have been the French woman’s son) strapped into the eyelid-propper torture chair from Clockwork Orange. “Yeah, okay…” and I went on my way. For the past few years I have been very nicely holding up the show as an example for non-comic friends to see what most comic writers do: take everything that brought the audience in in the first place and wreck it.

So I went into last night’s viewing in pretty much the same spirit that I went to see the first Iron Man film: not expecting to have a wildly good time. Like the first Iron Man, I was pleasantly surprised. First, ABC did what they learned in that very first season with Lost and Desperate Housewives: shows that had too many secrets, mysteries, and half-told backstories for the average viewer to keep track of, particularly over the mid-season mini-hiatus. As I said back then, it wasn’t a case of thinking the audience was stupid, it was a simple acknowledgement of the fact that this is just a TV show and people have lives. For every person who can identify all the record albums in the hatch, there are 100,000 who have to remember to pick up the dry cleaning. So those recaps were very important, but there was a downside. Every time they necessarily began with the plane crash and the introductions, so every time they necessarily reminded you how good the show was in the beginning, why you came to like it, and that automatically drew attention to how far it had drifted off course.

Last night’s recap had none of that subliminal trouser-dropping. It wisely edited out as much of the dross as it could, so if you didn’t know any better, you’d think the show had never lost its way. One of the execs proudly declared “The mystery of the show is ‘Who are these people?’” as if they’d known it all along. Daniel Dae Kim (the actor who plays Jin) smilingly remembers that Season One was his favorite.

With that recap bringing the rest of us up to speed, so we could enjoy the finale alongside the die-hards who never left, the last chapter of this 6 year story commenced. I found it to be extraordinarily well-written. /spoilers follow/ Little structural touches like the “Sideways” Jack restoring Loche’s legs at the same time Jack is gearing up to kill Loche in the main timeline, that isn’t something we see very often in this arena. I was also impressed by the theme explored. Scratch that – I was impressed by the writing chops they brought to the task. I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but in my experience, comic writers as a breed don’t do too well when they tackle the big meaning of life stuff. As for the theme itself as a resolution for the series, I find it strangely fitting. Yes, we all die, but in the world of Lost there was an actual rule to that effect. Honest to god mandate of the writers room: you could snuff anybody except the dog.

The USA Today commented that the finale “like anything that is earnest and hopeful” will attract mockery in certain quarters. While I don’t feel it deserves it, I would like to submit the following to the Millerites and misanthropes who are currently firing up their 2-cycle weedwacker intellects for the task: We all die—except for the golden lab.

As for Cat-Tales… Okay, briefly: Seriously productive week. Chapter almost done. One possible additional scene I may tag on after the proof and polish run. I figured I’d decide later and sent it out to the betas for some pre-proofing commentary. That’s an unusual practice for me, but schedules (mine and theirs) are like the tides: they wait for no man, and they don’t stop for oil spills. I finished some video capture and cataloging that video for a TBA. Editing is next. Followers of the Dark Knight ARG know that I’m no stranger to simple video and not-so-simple Flash, but that was two laptops ago and, more to the point, there’s a new generation of software to contend with. Kitty is a little intimidated by an interface that looks like the cockpit of a 747 compared to the stuff I was using, but hey, gotta take the leap sometimes, right? We also had a little upheaval with the old forum problem. The All-Seeing Oracle could post regular messages but not create polls, so I had to step in there, just for the week. And it looks like we’ll be on a Wednesday-to-Wednesday schedule for a while with the caption contest. Got some stuff in for one of the summer projects—YAY—and what’s unbelievable is, as much as I was looking forward to seeing what this person came up with, it completely exceeded my expectations. I’ve said it before, it’s going to be a very purple summer. Meow.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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The week in... Screw it. A love letter to Jim Lee

Two insanely busy weeks down, one to go. Yet despite a lot of real life demands, it was a gratifyingly productive week for Cat-Tales – for everything except the actual writing, that is. Construction is finished on the TBA, edits completed on several chapters of War of the Poses, and a number of those pesky support services that keep the web extras operating have all been attended to. As for the writing, well, officially, that resumes next week. My friend and client’s book release is Friday, so on paper at least, these next five days are on stand-by for him… That’s not to say writing does not occur. I don’t know how it is for other people, but the characters in my head tend to start without me sometimes. They have in this case. While I didn’t technically do any writing this past week, they did. It isn’t written down, but they have several story developments all arranged to their liking. We’ll just have to see if it’s workable or if it’s another one of Joker’s “Rainy Sunday Fun! All the hamsters out of the microwave” ideas.

In other news, not Cat-Tales specific but, well let’s call it Cat-Tales adjacent, Jim Lee got one of the first iPad off the assembly line. And just look at one of the first things he drew with it:



iPad quick sketches by *jimlee00 on deviantART




Yes, okay, I know, goggles. But hey, this is Jim Lee, as in the man behind the Hush rooftop clinch, the image immortalized in CT 28: Awkward Pauses, the image about which Selina, glorying in her Post doppleganger’s purple tint, stated “It’s not real, it’s Photoshop. That means if it’s purple, that’s because somebody made it purple.” Jim is the man who made it purple, and for that he will always have my love. Here,of course, it’s more than a vague “are my eyes deceiving me” tint. So, y’know, progress. That said, Jim, I love you. I love how you clearly love Selina. It comes out when you draw her. You can’t hide it. What I say now comes from that place of artist love: Lose the goggles. As Selina has also stated, it’s not just how they look, it’s what they mean. You make those awful things based on a goddamn cartoon DOG look as good as they can, but even you cannot make them look feline rather than bee-like. And even you, you wonderful man, cannot change what they represent.

That said, thank you for the purple, then and now.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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The Week in Cat-Tales

What an amazing week it was, on the Cat-Tales stage, backstage, and in that pesky real life far from Gotham.
Chapter 4 of Don’t Fear the Joker got a wonderful reception.  April 1st saw the hacking of our beloved forum (and this very blog) by agents of Ra’s al Ghul.  You can’t imagine the headaches cleaning up something like that. 

And despite the considerable demands related to that book release in a few weeks, I made enormous headway on one of those big TBAs I’ve been referencing on and off for a year.  So much so that I expect to actually make good on the implicit promise of calling them TBAs and announce one by the end of the month for a May opening.  Huzzah!

In other news, Random Equinox slipped in a new fic on us when he thought we weren’t looking.  Sneaky, sneaky, Random, but I found you… One of Those Days at ffnet.  Check it out, everybody.  

And finally, I caught up on my reading this weekend… well, almost.  There’s still a half-finished library book on the nightstand, but all the rest is done.  And the unfinished one has only itself to blame.  I’m not what I’d call a lazy reader, but a 60-page introduction drains away all the reader’s enthusiasm for the material.  Let’s put it this way: you know the one about the IT guy who goes to a Tech Support center for some extra training?  They’ve got this picture up of a ditzy looking blonde with the caption that her password is MickeyMinnieDonaldDaisyGoofyPlutoSacramento – because it had to be 6 characters and a capital.  Here’s the thing:  if that’s your opinion of your audience, you shouldn’t be writing.  Seriously.  Yes, there is a need for context if you’re serving up period material from the early years of the Cold War, but 60 pages worth?  I’m not sure if the problem is lack of discipline – taking 9 paragraphs to say what can be covered in 2 – or if it’s what I suspect:  simply not trusting the readers.  The thing is, we’re not talking about some random sampling off the street.  We all made a choice to buy the book, or in my case borrow it from the library.  Assume we’re at least, y’know, functionally literate and didn’t buy the book as a doorstop.  Give us a little context, and then pay us the compliment of assuming that if we need more, we can take what you’ve told us and Google for more.  Anyway, point is, apart from this one annoying volume that is probably going to go back to the library unfinished, I’ve swept away the backlog.  Life is good.  Meow.

The week ahead looks to be a busy one.  I doubt I’ll be able to finish up Chapter 5, but as stated previously: book release.  You really have no idea how much graphic art and other paperwork is required.  Oh, which brings me to the neatest piece of trivia from the mailbag… which I realize will be a longer entry.  We’ll save that for Wednesday.  Ciaomeow, everybody.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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New Chapter Day!

Three words:  Chapter 4 - Racecar!

Yes, chapter 4 of Don’t Fear the Joker is upon us, with both couples returning to the Wayne Manor and Ha-Hacienda after the events of Chapter 3.  There’s been all kinds of speculation, but as soon as I get this posted… well, you’ll see. 

Speaking of the chapter release, it was time for a new update of Cat-Tales news for the little SitePal widget, and I had a bit of a time recording it.  You might not think it if you open the window, but apparently it’s Springtime out there.  At least as far as the pollen index.  Just enough to give me some oddball congestion in my one ear over the weekend.  Honest to god, felt like I just took a long plane ride and forgot to swallow.  So I’m really not sure how bad my voice sounded.  I do know it’s not the best time for plants to be getting on my bad side.  I mean, there’s a chapter 5 that comes after 4, and a chapter 6 that comes after that.  The title of the story is Don’t Fear the Joker.  You hear what I’m sayin’, Pammy?

Okay, moving on.  It’s hard to imagine there could be something more besides coming back from a hiatus with a shiny new Joker chapter, but if you check your calendars, you’ll see April 1 is coming up.  And it seems that since the first year that Gotham After Dark became the Metropolis Tourist Bureau, there’s a small, deeply disturbed following wondering what will happen next.  Not to worry, SDDFs, I found a few minutes to whip up something appropriate for the message boards.

And finally *checking the time* work will resume on that pesky TBA just as soon as the chapter is launched.  Which is why I can’t dawdle making this morning’s entry more amusing.  Ciaomeow, everybody.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Previously on Cat-Tales...

Originally, this week’s blog was going to be more of a heartbeat message.  As I mentioned, I’m currently working on a client’s book cover and it doesn’t allow for a normal CT-schedule at all.  Got a little writing done, but not much.  Luckily, what this passing situation does allow for is little bubbles of opportunity where I can catch up answering emails and even put in some work on the TBA.  Both are the kind of thing where I don’t have to get into a mode, and can drop it in an instant when the phone rings.  So, moral: downtime in one area (the writing) doesn’t have to be downtime across the board.

So does that make this a “When life gives you lemons” entry?  Not really.  I don’t consider the bookcover lemons, for one thing.  I guess it’s just an ordinary Monday entry, closing out the books on a slow week and opening a new one what should be a much more exciting one.
My friends who visited EmeraldCon and MegaCon this weekend also remind us that the first of those two DC Actually-gets-it-right Classic-Purple-Balent-Costume Naughty-Grin Figures comes out at the end of the month, so make sure your comic shop knows you want one.  Meow.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Oh, FWIW, the friend at EmeraldCon said he was amazed at the money being spent, which is the best economic news I've heard in 2 years. Here's hoping - for Balent-Naughty Grin-Kitty and her whopping $99 price tag, sure, but also for those comic shops that have managed to weather the storm this long.

This week in Cat-Tales: Joker vs. The Outline

You know, there’s really nothing like writing Joker. Any other tale, I’d be here saying I had a finished chapter draft, it was out for beta, and we could expect it to be posted in a day or two. With Joker involved, I honestly don’t know if I have a finished chapter or not. Either the ch 3 draft is finished and I’m well into chapter 4, or else I’m about 80% done with chapter 3. I seriously do not know.

See, it’s not that Joker doesn’t care about the outline, it’s that he doesn’t care about pacing either. He wants to do his thing in his own way, and he doesn’t care if all of you have been reading for 6 pages or 12 or 20. So I keep passing these lines and moments that would make a decent breakpoint, and he chimes in “NOT YET! NOT YET! Stall ‘em! Harley’s almost got the flamingo feathers stapled to the swimming pool!”

Then there’s a sound of a chain saw, a kitchen timer, a flamingo screams, and Harley says “oops.” I don’t know what the hell is going on in there, and I’m afraid to ask. My inner Bruce is scowling. He says this is no way to run a storyverse, and he’s right. But here’s the thing: I just heard a flamingo scream. I wouldn’t have thought there was any difference between a flamingo and any other bird when it came to squawking but there is. There is a very discernable difference. So for right now, Joker is calling the shots. I’m going to let him get to the end of chapter 3 or 4, and then I’ll make the call on whether it is one chapter or two.

Until then, renewed apologies to chipsnopotatoes. You were indeed the first to ID the Dustin Nguyen PIC and last week’s blog has been duly edited. Meow.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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This Week in Cat-Tales

Another backstage week.  I know they’re not very interesting from the outside looking in, but the show can’t go on without them.  I finished up the draft of Chapter 2 and started working in earnest on a TBA to unveil (we hope) in March for the anniversary.  Didn’t really have a chance to make progress on the laptop situation.  Maybe this week.  (What can I say, Santa once again failed to come through on my pleas for a clone, a staff, a slave or a robot. So it’s another year of one thing at a time.  What can you do?)

Had a fantastic surprise when Hitman Tommy Monaghan returned to the forums.  Tommy and I go way back… damn, I don’t even know how many message boards and rpgs we go back.  It’s been incredibly fun having those chats about writing again, and one of these days, who knows, he might just have something new for us all to enjoy.  If not, he’ll keep us honest in the Iceberg Lounge (that’s the general chit-chat thread in the forum, for those who have not visited).  With apologies to King Hal:  Men now sipping appletinis will hold their manhoods cheap while any speak who hoisted a Guinness with Monaghan upon St. Siegel’s Day.

Other than that, let’s see… I did finish off the new Dan Brown this weekend.  It’s not a bad book, just a slow starter – and unfortunately, it suffers from inevitable comparisons to The Da Vinci Code.  I’m sorry, there is no pretending Washington DC is as rich in history and mystery as Europe or that the Masons can bring the same organic conflicts, plausible heroes and villains to the table that you get with millennia-old, hardline, Old World Christianity.  Still, The Lost Symbol is a good read.  CT fans will see familiar James Sanborn sculptures referenced, as well as a few mentions of string theory.  Thematically, however, my heart will always belong to The Da Vinci Code: To kneel at the bones of Mary Magdalene is to pay homage to everyone who has been robbed of their voice. That’s good stuff.  I like adventure and suspense as much as the next gal, I really do.  I just like it more when it is all about something larger.  Remembering those who have been robbed of their voice, cheated of their power, harmed by abuses of power, that resonates.  TLS does have some thematic meat on the bone, its ultimate revelation is a good one, and one I happen to agree with.  But for me, at least, it doesn’t have that punch of DVC.  Which brings us back to: if this book was by anyone other than Brown and free of the DVC comparisons…  C’est la vie. 

Anyway, before I flee to start the week, the best while-you-read snack food has to be Emerald Cocoa Roasted Almonds, Dark Chocolate Flavor.  I am completely hooked on these things.

And on that note…  New week and new month hitting at the same time is always festive in the old inbox.  Ciaomeow, everybody.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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This Week in Cat-Tales

I guess if I’m going to be making these posts on Mondays instead of Fridays, they should be “Last week in Cat-Tales”, but we may as well continue as we’ve begun.  You all know the mantra: it’s not a mistake, it’s feline quirkiness. 

I was really pleased that I could post the chat transcript on schedule.  I was finishing up a big laptop migration at the same time, and it was touch and go for a while if this machine would be open for business with all the web applications.  Happy endings all around there.  If I can just get one more program working with a certain piece of hardware the way that it should, I can be completely mobile on one ‘puter again.  This nonsense of being spread over 2+ laptops and a desktop has been going on since last August, and I’ve seriously had enough of it.  Every time I see that ad for Carbonite that says “You don’t realize how much of your life is tied up on one computer,” I think how I would LOVE to have that problem again.

But back to the Tales.  Don’t Fear the Joker has launched, HAHAHAHAHAAAA! And the response has been amazing.  Any time there is an event story like Do No Harm, there is that concern that there will be a letdown.  No fear of that where Smilin’ Jack is involved. 

Broke ground on Chapter 2 this weekend, finally, and got the best email from a long-time reader I haven’t heard from in a while.  Their commentary on Riddle Me-Tropolis left me in stitches.  Hm… must return their email, and get some real progress made on chapter 2.  I guess I better get a move on.  Happy Monday, everybody.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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