WRAITH: Wraith is a series based in a world where myth was once reality, and becomes reality once again. The catalyst is a group of friends, some of whom want to conquer the world. Michael Tang, famed stuntman and burgeoning actor, becomes embroiled in this when his cousin Alex takes over not only his beyond the imagination, and the world becomes something different… something mythical.

THE LAST BASTION: A world infected by zombies has one last outpost against the undead: The Last Bastion! Long Island houses the last living civilians, while Manhattan is the defending outpost protected by what’s left of the world’s super powers… or at least that’s why they think. It’s very much a superhero Walking Dead/Terra Nova… except hopefully better?

SUNSPIRE: In the far future, mankind has found a way to harness the power of the sun to an extreme extent: mining the nuclear forces from the surface itself! The problem: the even further future suffers a geological disaster and decides to stop the past by waging war… on the past!!!

BLACK OPS 51: Debuting in Wraith arc 2 somewhat, this team was created at the enigmatic Area 51, where advanced projects are being worked on, as well as being the fabled repository of Extra-Terrestrial Objects! The team works secret missions for the US government until one of it’s members is caught trying to assassinate the President! The truth behind this attempt reveals something much stranger.

HEALTH:

Go to the gym twice a week: Judging from all kinds of metrics, I am overweight. Either by a little, or by a lot. I want to get into shape. One day I want to have a nice six pack too. Won’t happen overnight, but I’d like to look awesome, and maybe, JUST MAYBE, have one… more… match.. (Christian reference… which is a WWE reference, which I am no longer ashamed to admit I still watch, I like watching people fake fight, big whoop wanta FIGHT ABOUT IT???).

Weight Goal: 200 by my birthday, 185 by NYCC. Simple enough. I estimate myself to be about 205 – 210 right now. My scale broke har har. The goal is to shed weight and THEN build a little mass. I don’t need to be huge, just cut.

Cook more of my own meals: I love food, but I’m pretty much ignorant when it comes to cooking. Most of my life has been processed crap and fast food, a by-product of abject poverty. So is the Type-2 Diabetes. It’s hard to go out and eat healthy, and it’s hard to eat processed food that’s good for you, so I’m going to try to cook more often. Even if it isn’t super-healthy, it’s got to be healthier than eating burgers and fries, pizza, etc. etc. all the time. I also have to cut down on the junk food, I love me my chips…

PROFESSIONAL/CAREER:

WRITE ONCE A WEEK (Aside from the Midtown Blog), that breaks down to:

BLOG at least once every two weeks: I neglect the hell out of this thing. I should really do this more often. If I get into it on the regular, it’ll help me with my other writing which leads me to–

FINISH ONE SCRIPT A MONTH: I’m a comic book writer. I’m not writing comics nearly enough. I have to do this more often. I haven’t finished issue 5 of Wrayth, and I came up with two new ideas the past week, so I need to get pitches ready for those too.

FIND AN ARTIST: I keep saying I struggle to look for an artist… but really I pussy foot. I promised myself when I finished the first story arc of Wrayth, I’d go for it. I’ve  got one more issue to write, so I’m going to go for it. I want to have one by CGS SUPERSHOW, which is the first weekend of May. The plan is to pay for 8 pages to get done, and then do a Kickstarter, hopefully publish in late 2012/early 2013.

PERSONAL:

PODCAST AGAIN: I haven’t podcasted or listened to podcasts in a while, mainly because my PC is dead and I have no way of listening on the road. I plan on buying an ipod touch or an iPad so that will change that. As for recording, just have to do it. I want to start after I move into my new place.

That’s it. Pretty simple. Just have to get a schedule, a routine going.

Since the fire, I’ve written 3 issues of Wrayth. Not a lot of writing for NINE MONTHS, but I’m working on it. Considering I did little to nothing in the past few years, it’s a start. The first arc is 4 issues, but really, it’s like 12. Each 4 issue story flows into the other, so it’s not fair to say that each 4 issue story is it’s own arc. I’m hoping to get started on working on this thing next year. I want to have a year’s worth of scripts written by June, and I want an artist by spring, as early as possible, so we can discuss the book. Here’s hoping. I’ll work on it tomorrow most likely.

I also started working out. 2nd workout was today. So far, so hideous. I am so out of shape. Slowly building up my stamina and  conditioning, but every time I look around, most people at the gym are skinny and/or really built. It seemed like some people were there to put on muscle or they were there to keep what they had going. Just feels weird… of course I hate how I look so nothing is going to change that until I have like killer superhero abs. It’s surprising how good I feel after a workout. I feel like taking on the world. I feel unstoppable. I feel like getting in a ring and going 60 minutes in an Iron Man Match. I feel like facing the hordes of Xerses with nothing but a sword and shield. So yeah, it’s having a good effect on me. I feel better. I’m ever so slightly more focused. Didn’t write today, unless you count this.

All in all, I don’t feel bad. There are some things missing in my life, and I haven’t accomplished everything I want to, but I’m taking more significant steps than I have in a while.

I am the Double-R Superstar. I’m really starting to feel that.

Man, I’ve watched WAAAYYY too much wrestling…

Conceived by Grant Morrison, the New DCU Superman diverges from the Byrne/Smallville/Geoff Johns Silver-Age/Modern pastiche that he’s been mired in for the past two decades. I say mired in because to me it seems like DC has been making changes in the past decade to make Kal relevant again. In the New DCU, we have two Superman titles. Action Comics focuses on the earlier days of Kal-El, written by Morrison and drawn by Rags Morales. George Perez handles in-continuity today Supes in Superman. To understand why I’m not freaking out like I might be expected to, we have to look at two things: Superman’s History in my lifetime (which pretty much goes back to Byrne’s reboot), and Grant Morrison’s perspective on Superman.

Without providing an extensively boring history lesson, John Byrne spearheaded the post-Crisis reboot of Superman. There were some major changes from the Silver Age: Kal-El was the only surviving member of Krypton (No Supergirl, No Krypto) and depowered him (no juggling planets or Super-Ventriloquism). He was still powerful, but not to the point of being a deity. Over the course of a few years, his power levels creeped back up, he died and came back. He had a mullet. Then he was Electric Blue. And this is where the paradigm shifted.

I came in a few months into the Electric Blue Era. I’ve been a Superman fan since I was 3 years old, but I collected his comics starting with the Evolved Superman. The Evolution actually makes sense, given Superman’s origins. If your powers are due to the fact that you’re a battery, wouldn’t you then evolve into a being of pure energy? Isn’t that the next step? Aren’t we looking to find a zero-point energy source? It’s loosely scientific, but science fiction can be as loosely or tightly based in actual scientist as the creator chooses. I thoroughly enjoyed Superman’s Energy Being Era, and part of that is owed to Grant Morrison, who produced one of the greatest pages I have EVER WTINESSED. This page changed how I felt about comics and about superheroes and the whole universe. Growing up a devote Roman Catholic, it just blew my mind. I’ve reproduced the panel below:

I’m going to come back to this. First, let’s finish the history lesson.

After Superman re-formed into his original look, the book took a sci-fi approach, trying to re-invent itself (yet again) for the new millenium. There was the future-fication of Metropolis thanks to Brainiac 13, the Elite in Action Comics #775, the “Our Worlds at War” event… throughout 2000 – 2004 though, a couple of curious things happened:

1. Jeph Loeb, who was writing Superman at the time, re-introduced the Silver Age aspects of Superman’s life. Superman got to meet his parents, and also brought Krypto back from “Krypton” with him. It turned out to be an elaborate simulation of Krypton. But here it is, Krypto is back!

2. Mark Waid wrote Superman: Birthright. It was a new origin story for the new millenium. Mark re-introduced Kandor and also the fact that Clark Kent and Lex Luthor knew each other in Smallville… which I believe is also Silver Age? The WB Smallville show had some influence as well.

The paradigm shifts again, when Geoff Johns decides to open another can of worms with Infinite Crisis. A sequel of sorts to Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis brings back the Silver Age Superman, and the Multiverse comes into play again. After Infinite Crisis came 52, and with that, the revelation that the Multiverse is back. No more single Earth. Different possibilities, different realities. But DC never played with it. As for Kal-El himself, he basically reverted back to his Silver Age self, sans ridiculous powers and silly stories.

Two years ago, Geoff Johns wrote yet another origin for Superman, simply called “Secret Origin”. It essentially takes elements from Byrne, Waid and the Silver Age. At this point in Superman’s life, from Post-Crisis to now, he’s died, had a mullet, evolved to be an being of pure energy, been split into two energy beings, recombined, been hyper-powered, met his parents, got a dog, got his cousin back (forgot to add that in), and also reabsorbed elements of his older self.

Basically, a big long rehash of what has come before.

Enter the NEW DCU. Enter Grant Morrison and Action Comics #1. But also, enter Supergods.

Grant has released a new book, Supergods, in which he simultaneously records the history of superheroes, expounds on their qualities as modern myths, and gives us a subjective look at their influence on him, and the world in general. I’ve only read about 60 or 70 pages since buying it on Thursday, and so far I’ve gotten to the end of the Golden Age. Morrison describes Superman in the Golden Age: activist, rough housing seeker of social justice. Superman took down corrupt senators, punched out wife beaters and sent corrupt arms makers deep into the heart of war. Could you imagine the CEO of Halliburton being taken out of his home and tossed in the middle of Afghanistan? That’s what Superman did. He didn’t kill, and he didn’t hurt the innocent, but he did NOT fuck around.

So Morrison’s take, if I read the Newsarama article correctly, seems to be a return to this root, but in a different sense. Superman is a bit more alien, a bit more detached from what we’ve known. He’s being chased by cops in one image, and he’s tied down in another. Superman in the very beginning was a vigilante. He was known to barge into places he wasn’t wanted, in the name of justice. Cops tried to apprehend him even as he stopped crooks they were ALSO TRYING TO STOP. Superman isn’t welcome, Superman isn’t beloved. Growing up as a Superman fan, I felt that way, no one I knew liked Superman. It may also have been due to my own feelings of alienated, but that’s beside the point. Back in 1938, Superman caught the imagination of millions of people suffering from the Great Depression, today, we’re in the worse recession since 1938… in dark times, good ideas light the way to salvation, even if it’s entertainment and not financial or political.

People accuse Superman of being disconnected, being a goody-goody. Well, they’re sort of right. He’s a corporate icon. He’s Mickey Mouse, he’s Ronald McDonald. He’s got to toe that line, because he’s a beloved international icon and product. He sells lunchboxes. Commercial art. That’s what Superman is. That’s what every DC and Marvel superhero is. They can have great creative adventures, but in the end, they sell product. Movies. Toys. There’s a limit to what they can do. Grant Morrison has always managed to work so well within that framework, and it’s perhaps because he gets a bit of leeway (a drug addled Batman overcoming his enemies who have taken over Gotham and taken out all of his allies? Pretty out there.) that he’s so successful. With Action Comics #1, Grant is pulling from that time, that era, and reinterpreting it and revising it for our 21st century world. He’s attempting to make Superman relevant, which is so very hard to do.

So he’s not married to Lois Lane. So he’s more rooted in his Kryptonian heritage… so WHAT??? Flashpoint is supposed to wildly change everything we’ve known and loved about DC. It’s a radical, sweeping change. You can’t change characters by making minor tweaks. Superman hasn’t been a successful selling series in my time as a Superman fan. Only because Geoff Johns was on it, did Superman ever crack the top 25. Flashpoint changes EVERYTHING, so why not get rid of Lois Lane and Clark Kent’s marriage? Is it any worse than having Mephisto magically undoing reality to save Peter Parker’s 90 year old Aunt?

Convoluted. Boring. Stupid. This is what people say to me about Superman. About the most important fictional character in my life. About the one  character that almost defines who I am today. I wouldn’t like comics with Superman, I wouldn’t be trying to write superheroes with Superman. Maybe I’m an immature man-child who desperately needs to grow up and face reality, but Superman inspires me to be more. He reminds me of the best of humanity. In this extremely shitty world where politicians lie, violence and greed dictate terms and apathy and cynicism is our default response, Superman reminds us we can be better than what we are, than what we have been. He’s the bright shiny beacon that represents our future, and I for one want to embrace that. Grant Morrison is taking elements of what made Superman an icon from very early on in his career, and he’s shifting the paradigm once again. I’m looking forward to this shift, because it’s much more radical than anything since Electric Blue Superman, which is what got me into this crazy world of comics. I love perverse change in comics. I love characters you hate. I love characters you don’t care about. I take them and I make them my own and embrace them. Superman is about to become relevant, and it makes me very happy to think that more people will rediscover what makes Superman so great. So give Morrison’s Superman a chance. I’ve been waiting for this since I opened the pages of JLA #7, when he opened my mind to the mad possibilities of superheroes and comic books. I’ve been waiting since All-Star Superman, for Morrison to take over a Superman title. So hop on, and take the ride with the Mad Morrison Man.

- Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions: The under-appreciated last two movies of the trilogy had three great fights.

BURLY BRAWL/SUPER BURLY BRAWL This is the perfect marriage of two genres of violence: Chinese Kung Fu, American Superhero. These two movies are the biggest influence to my school of fight scene construction. Neo vs. Multiple Agent Smiths. The idea of the individual vs. the monstrous, faceless majority. Individuality vs.  submission to a cold machine. Two beings with the power to level a city actually USING the power they have to DO SO. It’s gorgeous. Keanu moves a little slow, but he’s not a trained master, and he was impressive for an actor with only a few months training.

EXILE FIGHT: The fight between Neo and the lackeys of the Merovingian is pretty cool too. Lots of good weapon usage. Particularly the sai. I know I’m biased, but the sai is mostly used for defensive purposes. Keanu gets good use out of them.

LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY: This trilogy does epic swordfighting battles right. Two main battles come to mind:

Battle of Helm’s Deep: For the sheer scale of this battle. 10,000 Uruk-Hai , a couple of thousand Rohan, along with Elves and half of the Fellowship. The close quarters combat and the drama of the odds is amazing. It’s close, always unrelenting, just like it would be if a fortress were under siege.

Battle of Pelennor Fields: While Helm’s deep is an excellent siege battle, Pelennor was actually a great showcase of the diversity of Sauron’s troops. The Rohirrim riding through the Oliphaunts… it’s got a nice scale, not quite as good as Helm’s Deep in my opinion, but still.

KISS OF THE DRAGON: This movie was full of excellent, close quarters fight scenes. Jet Li went back to his “Fist of Legend” philosophy for the fights: more realistic, efficiency and brutality over elegance. More “real” in a sense, but there’s some fictitious, over-exaggerated moves in the movies.

The Initial Escape: Jet Li is set up for the murder of a drug kingpin by the chief inspector in France, who happens to be the kingpin’s dealer in France. Jet Li uses a lot of acrobatics and close quarter combat. Highlights include Jet Li kicking a cue ball into a guy’s skull (CG’ed) and using the laundry chute to escape.

The Boat/Bridge escape: Jet Li is trying to meet with his liason from China. The Liason is assassinated, while still possessing the key evidence Jet needed to prove his innocence. The main highlight for me is the knife fight against the French police on top of the boat. The knife tactics used by the police felt real, and it looked like someone could’ve easily gotten cut.

The Shrimp Chip fight: This is the one in the middle of the movie where Bridget Fonda’s character sews up Jet Li’s injury. Her pimp, Lupo, comes in and gives her a hard time. Jet Li intervenes, and kicks the crap out of every one of his henchmen. One last henchman shows up, and he’s a lot more stacked than the others were. More of an MMA style fight, the new opponent uses a lot of elbows and more direct attacks. The finish was disappointing, as Jet Li uses a behind the back kick to knock the guy out, which looks fake as all hell. Highlights include a throat punch and the opponent punching a wooden frame and pulling the splinters out of his knuckles.

The Police Station Break-In: Climax of the movie. Jet Li finds out where the dirty Inspector is, by getting him to come to the window. On a cell phone he says “Now I know where you are. I’m coming up.” He proceeds to kick the policeman at the gate THROUGH the wooden station he’s in, take down a few officers in the lobby, and then lock himself in a room of students training in martial arts. They all have nightsticks. Jet Li proceeds to DESTROY all of them. Highlight is definitely taking on three men with nightsticks AT THE SAME TIME. Very reminiscent of the scene from Chinese Connection/Fist of Fury.

The Twins Fight: After the break-in, on the Inspector’s floor. Jet Li fights a pair of twins. One is a giant who hits very hard. The other is about Jet Li’s size, and uses acrobatic kicks to fight. The director of the movie said he had to SLOW DOWN the footage of the fight between Jet Li and the smaller guy. He also used wires for the special somersault kick the smaller guy does. It’s an incredible fight. Definite highlight for me is when Jet Li gets the acrobatic twin to fight in a narrow space, where he can’t use his legs. Jet Li’s fists are much faster. The best part of the scene is Jet Li showing off his hand speed. He fakes out his opponent TWICE by flashing an open hand past the defenses of his enemy and then slamming him with a shot to the jaw. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, why the hell am I looking at the open hand??? The way he finishes off both brothers is pretty brutal too.

Dougray Scott and Tom Cruise in MI: 2: This is where I actually began to really respect and like Tom Cruise. He did his own stunts, he did his own fights. Really impressive final fight. Too bad Tom is a loony cukoo bananas man.

Transformers 2: Okay, so the movie SUCKED BIG TIME. But Optimus Prime got a really awesome death scene. This is how a hero dies, fighting half a dozen other robots and slowly getting dismantled, but still taking out a good 3 or 4 of them before you finally get your chest exploded.

Sure, there’s stuff like Braveheart and other (higher) quality movies, but those were movies I remember watching the fights in the theater and just feeling that thrill of violence.

Goals for the month:

- Write a full 22 page comic script for myself

- Publish Episode 88 of my podcast

- Write a 2 page script for Hadron Colliderscope

- Send some of my work to people I promised to send it to

- See a doctor, my knee is bad and I should see how the diabetes is… and if I’m also anemic.

Goals for the summer:

- Have four full comic scripts in the can

- Flesh all of my stories out, at least 2 arcs per series.

- Release episodes 89 and 90.

- Quiet retreat somewhere cheap.

- Pay down my debts to $3900 (from about $4490)

- Get below 200 lbs… I’m somewhere on the border, but more like 204 than 198.

For the rest of the year:

- Try to get near episode 100 of Geeks Unite Network, retire the show? Maybe. We’ll see…

- Finish a story arc of Wrayth.

- Have a script for every project I’m working on.

- Go on a vacation, maybe to Cooperstown? Doubtful if I want to hit my debt goal

- Get to around 3400 – 3250 debt-wise.

Goals for now till I’m 30:

- Publish a story in print.

- Have a girlfriend…? Maybe? Who knows, I’m such a headcase, it’ll take a lot of work.

- Make enough to live on my own.

- Live on my own.

- Have my debts be below $1000.

- Go to San Diego for Comic Con.

Goals for my 30′s:

- Be a published and working comic book writer.

- Work on a book for the big 2.

- Have my own panel or be featured on a panel for my work at a comic book convention.

- Get married, have kids.

- Be able to own or co-own a comic book cafe. At least start saving towards it.

- Stay in good health, maybe even “fix” my diabetes?

- Play in the World Series of Poker

LIFETIME GOALS:

- Have a bunch of grandkids

- Try not to divorce, if it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be… but I’m not going to do anything stupid.

- Have 500 – 1000 comics, short stories, poems, novels, novellas, whatevers published.

- Redefine Darkhawk for a new era of comic book fans.

- Be respected throughout the comic book industry.

- Die writing, or doing something very apropos of me.

- Make a hard drive back up of my brain ala Dollhouse, live forever.

- Live to see mankind travel to the stars.

- Make a movie. Doesn’t have to be a Hollywood production, but more than a 2 minute YouTube thing. Something like RandomGuy or the Mortal Kombat Rebirth guys.

It’s good to write goals down. You have an idea of what you want. You can picture it. It’s now tangible to me what I want. So I can now make steps to achieving what I want. I can now look at the steps it takes to get what I want. It becomes easier, but it also becomes harder. When I figure out what I have to do, I don’t have the excuse of ignorance. I know what I have to do to get what I want. I have to go and get it. I can’t hide behind my parents’ neglect, my ill health, my desire to punish myself… these all serve to lessen the true self. They tempt me to accept my circumstances. They tempt me to stay who I am. Growth isn’t magical, it doesn’t happen tomorrow. I won’t suddenly be an accomplished writer/comic shop owner/poker champion/whatever else I want. I keep losing sight of that… I want to be the best me now, I don’t want to build up towards it. That’s an excuse. If I can’t be perfect, I won’t do it. It’s an excuse to not do things. So I took it away.

Let’s go from here.

ANYWAY:

- Send e-mails to people I promised e-mails.

- Budget next pay cycle.

- July Spreadsheet

- Plot Wrayth arc 2.

- Write Wrayth issue 2.

- Work out BO51 story.

- Write blog entry for halfway point of Fantasy Baseball seasons.

- Edit and Release GUN 88.

- Budget for next pay cycle (Weds or Thurs)

- Pack for trip (Thurs): Going to Philly Fri and Sat, maybe even Sun?

- Plot BO 51 (Mon or Sun)

- Write a GL review for Geeks Unite/This Blog (Mon)

- Edit and release GUN 87 (Mon)

- Midtown Blog (Mon): Probably going to do a piece on the Big Apple Drink and Draw.

- Send some e-mails (Mon/Sun): I owe some e-mails to people and I really need to get off my ass.

LAST WEEK:

- Midtown Blog: Already done

- Plot Black Ops 51 for about 3 stories worth UPDATE 06/17: Still working out the group’s composition.

- Re-Plot Wrayth UPDATE 06/17: This has become a challenge!

- Outline issue 2 of Wrayth

- See Green Lantern:  will post a review soon!

- Read a non-comic/magazine for about 20 – 30 pages (finish whatever chapter page 30 is in)

- Finish my “Drawing” Blog post

- Groceries

- Check out jobs on Craigslist, see what’s out there. Maybe part time? Two jobs at once + writing isn’t fun, but it’d mean my freedom from the parentals.

Honestly, I don’t know anymore. I think I’m being really stupid and stubborn. That’s the Asian Survivalist in me. He wants me to get a decent paying job and live safely. The “Writing is my Life” guy wants me to go for what I really want. Honestly? The Lazy Ass is beating them both anyway. So we all have to kick Lazy Ass out and THEN let the other two fight it out.

Okay, so most people know the basics about me: I love comics, I’ve been superhero crazy since I was about 3 or 4. I’m trying to be a comic book writer, and my therapist and I actually talked about what I REALLY wanted. My identity took me up until a few years ago to find. It’s been a long struggle of trying to do what my parents thought was right (safe job, good benefits, middle class is better than being shit poor like we’ve been), to what other people wanted me to do (own my own business, be a team-builder, work with financial products), to what I think I should be (doctor, physicist, politician, astronomer, etc.) that would benefit society… None of that stuff is what I really want. So I looked back into my life. I looked at what were the first things that I wanted to do in life: 1. Be Superman 2. Be more powerful than Superman 3. Be immortal 4. Become a decorated Starfleet Fleet Captain 5. Captain the Enterprise – Z, the most advanced starship in history, forever and always better than anything you can come up with. 6. Run a book store. 7. Be a movie star. Of all 7, I think only # 6 is really attainable. Star fleet doesn’t exist, I’m not Kryptonian, there’s no immortality serum and I do not have the build or connections to be a lead actor. The skills? That I could work on, but that’s the least of the three things. So with all of that said, there’s one thing I always did as a kid: Draw. I doodled and drew everywhere I could. In Pre-K, there was a painting activity and I always painted vividly. Big splotches and circles. I remember calling one of them “Ninja Turtles” and another “Transformers”… I was on my way to revolutionizing the Abstract Impressionist movement. Jackson Pollock would’ve risen from the grave and called me his successor. (If the sarcasm doesn’t come through, I must be very bad at sarcasm). Around the time I was 7 or 8, I had moved on, and saw the value of realistic drawing. Abandoning the arena of splotch and finger paint, I took to drawing Starships and Superheroes: two things I know best in life. I spent hours and hours of free time doodling X-Men and Federation starships to team up with. I can still remember my first frustrating moment as an artist: adding the third dimension. I actually lifted my pencil off my page and tried to draw on atmosphere. I remember wanting to quit drawing because I had reached a limitation right then and there. I doodled another 10 pages a few days later. My parents, the wonderful, hard-working poor people that they are, never liked my drawing. My mom called them something like “the chaotic drawings of ghosts” (not an exact translation), and she got upset that I wasted perfectly fine loose leaf paper on drawings (that is how poor we were: loose leaf paper was considered an extravagance). She always said I was wasting paper on drawing. What she really wanted was for me to use paper that wasn’t meant for school. So later on, she would bring me paper from her factory (she worked in a clothing factory up until about 10 years ago), that nobody wanted. When I got to about 12, she even commented on how good I was getting… but by then it was too late. I had come to find her observations unwelcome. I hid my drawings. I left the room, I put them away. Every time my parents have expressed any pride in me, I’ve always felt it was the fakest expression of interest ever. I never believed them… especially when it comes to life and when it came to drawing. Their criticism was what really mattered. Criticism is what really matters to me. Not what I do right, but what I do wrong. It’s pathological. I’m not perfect, but I want to be. If I can remove my flaws, I can be better. Is that an Asian thing? So on that note, we get to middle school, the worst two years of my young life. A combination of low self-esteem, awkwardness, hormones and all my childhood issues all balled up into the loving social environment that is middle school. The one thing that saved me during that time was a man named Moses, and the beginning of my now 14 year serious relationship with comics. In all honesty, I had no idea how to draw. If you were to observe my artistic style back in my child hood days, I drew so many muscles on the arms of my characters that they resembled a snake that swallowed half a dozen bowling bawls more than they did a human arm. In 8th grade, Moses ran a comic book store and sometimes I would spend hours there, talking to him about comics, life and the mysteries and histories of both. Moses in many ways is my father. He was there for me when my own father wasn’t. He didn’t yell at me randomly, didn’t make me afraid, didn’t make me feel wrong for being who I am. I wrote an essay when I was in 6th grade about myself, and I described myself as being a free-spirit. To say the very least, that is an apt description of who I am, when I’m not burdened by my baggage. It’s why I usually bounce back from all of the crap I’ve been given. I endure. Anyway, as it turns out, Moses used to be an artist at Marvel and DC. He was friends with Neal Adams and Rich Buckler and had mostly been a ghost artist. I showed him my drawings once and he didn’t berate me for my inaccuracies or my lack of skill. Instead, he quickly told me what was wrong, took a pencil, and drew an arm next to what I had drawn. It was a simple thing. I wasn’t paying attention to the arms. I was just drawing whatever came to mind. So yeah, in my mind, muscular men have 12 bowling ball masses in their arms.

Anyway, by the time I hit high school, I abandoned drawing. My depression deepened and combined with my tendency to be over angsty… well really ANY teenager’s tendency to be over angsty is natural. I also had something of a social life again. I focused on girls, pro wrestling… got away from comics for a little while. Got sick. Got 9/11′ed (my window faces Ground Zero), went to college, did miserably, worked at my cousins and decided to do comics… then I enrolled at BMCC, to fix my GPA.

My first semester at BMCC, I took a course in illustration. I made a lot of progress that year, as an artist. I actually looked at what was in front of me. I wasn’t good enough to tell stories, but I was beginning to understand how anatomy works, and how details work…

One day, while waiting for my brother to finish an appointment, my father and I were sitting in the waiting room. I was sketching in a little notebook. I had taken to cutting a picture of a celebrity out (I was working on drawing women, which is really hard btw), I think it was Mandy Moore actually. My father catches a glimpse. I stop. This guy represents every critical voice I’ve ever heard… even if it hasn’t always been him. I don’t want him taking a nasty shit on my still undeveloped art skills. He says to continue, so I do, cautiously.

I forget when exactly, but a few days later, he yells at me for keeping all of these magazines in my room, some of which were for reference, some were just because I happen to like reading, and some were honestly of women I thought were hot. I told him they were for reference, and he told me my art was lousy.

There it goes. End of story. I haven’t really drawn since. Sure, I do the napkin sketches at the Comic Geek Speak events in Reading, but I’m surrounded by people who mostly don’t judge me or treat me like crap… so I feel safe.

Of course, this could be seen as me being weak-willed and lacking the spine to continue with my work. You can say I’m blaming my parents a little too much. You can say I’m using all of this as an excuse.

I certainly do. I’m in an endless loop of doubting myself, criticizing myself and criticizing my doubt.

So here we are. I’m 27 years old. I was 19 when I said I’d write comics. I’ve encountered artists of different varieties. I made progress with some, didn’t with others. I’ve had character sketches, pages drawn… I’ve come close to almost publishing. Hell, I have a three page story up on Hadron Colliderscope….

but DEEP DOWN… I regret not at least trying to learn how to draw more.

Drawing frustrates the shit out of me. I can’t translate what I see in my head to paper. It’s hard and takes a lot of work… but I LOVED it.

So I’ve been thinking of taking art classes. I’ve been thinking of re-dedicating myself to becoming a true cartoonist: one that can provide the images AND the dialogue. Follow in the tradition of the people I admire: Jurgens, Kirby, Byrne… and earn that much vaunted “writer/artist” tag.

Maybe I’ll never get good, maybe I won’t be an artist… maybe I should focus on making more money before pursuing my dreams.

Just some thoughts. Dragged out. Torturous thoughts. How torturous? I started writing this on June 5th… 12 days. To be fair, I don’t do any writing on my work days. To be unfair, I SHOULD do writing on my work days.

Whatevs. Just wanted to share my history with drawing, and how my storytelling desires were there from the very beginning.