I just ran across a blog entry made by Scott Kurtz, writer and artist of the long-running Webcomic PvP, and author of the book How to Make Webcomics. His words so mirrored the sentiments expressed in the Beckett quote I’ve used for the title and subhead of this blog (as seen above) that I felt compelled to share them with you.

He wrote:

All of the progress I’ve made in my work, be it writing or art, was accomplished through getting it wrong the first time. My father always told me that the first brush stroke will never be perfect. There’s only so much you can learn from reading books on writing or art theory. You have to create and get your hands dirty and see what works. You have to take risks and you have to fail.

So there I was, sitting in the Marvel Bullpen in the mid-’70s, proofreading away, the original artwork for the latest issue of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire spread out before me.

When my Assistant Editor position called for me to proof, I had to keep my eye open for many different types of problems, ones which don’t turn up when dealing with straight text.

Accidental typographical errors made by a letterer. Costume mistakes drawn by an artist (perhaps the webbing in Spider-Man’s armpits was penciled or inked incorrectly, or the wings on the Submariner’s ankles were drawn too high on the leg). Inaccurate references by the writer in those editorial boxes at the bottom of panels which would point back to earlier issues. Or even something deliberate that one of these creators was trying to get by the editorial department and sneak into print as a joke that wouldn’t make the company laugh.

On the very last page of the issue, I did indeed find something which needed changing. (It might help if you click on the image above once, then again, to see the original artwork at its largest size.) Looking at the excerpt from an unidentified issue of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire (unidentified because, though I may I have kept a photocopy of the panel, I don’t keep track of everything, so it will be up to someone in the blogosphere to track down the issue number), can you spot the faux pas that I needed to get changed?

I dreamt this morning that I was sitting with Peter Heck in a convention dealers room. Not sure why I was just sitting there, chewing the fat, as the only times I ever did that was when I was actually working a table, and I haven’t been involved in something like that for years.

But there we were, parked as if we intended to stay for hours, leaning back in our chairs, relaxed. Somehow we got to talking about the value of old magazines.

“Did you know,” he said to me, “that a complete run of Interzone in mint condition is worth $3,000,000?”

I did not know that, I told him, and thought back to the days when I’d bought the first issues of Interzone at the Forbidden Planet bookstore in New York, and how I’d sold them long ago for far less.

I woke, wishing that I’d hung on to them.

Once awake, I check over at eBay, and see that the sixth issue of Interzone is currently for sale. It has but a single bid, and its price is only $5.58. That tells me that you’re not going to need $3,000,000 should you wish to amass your own collection.

I have no idea why my subconscious thought that you would.

Woodstock: A New Look, due out in October from Writers’ Collective and authors Gregory Walter and Lisa Grant, is being promoted with a contest which the publisher is promoting as “sure to be one of the most talked about marketing events of the year.”

Their promotion is called “Find the Great American Tush.”

See that butt above? If it belonged to you, and you can come up with the documentation to prove it, you could win $5,000!

While it’s a cute idea (I’ll leave it to others to decide whether it’s a cute butt), and while it will be interesting to see whether anyone ‘fesses up, when we look back at this year from the vantage point of 2009, will this concept really be in the running for “marketing event of the year?”

First let’s see whether anyone else pays attention to it except for me.

According to Heidi MacDonald over at The Beat, you’ll soon be able to buy a complete collection of Stan Lee’s “Stan’s Soapbox” columns, which were originally published as part of the Marvel Comics’ Bullpen Bulletins pages from 1967 through 1980.

When I was a kid, it was that interstitial writing, as much as the comics themselves, which made me into a True Believer. Stan somehow made me feel as if I had a pal.

The book, which will be available in November, is being published as a fundraiser for the Hero Initiative, a federally chartered not-for-profit corporation which provides a safety net for comic-book creators in need of emergency medical aid or other financial support.

In additional to the columns themselves, the collection will also place Stan’s columns in their correct historical context via essays by current Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, Marvel Studios President of Production Kevin Feige, former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, and others.

But one thing I’ll bet the book won’t contain is scans of the original typed copy for those Soapboxes, direct from Stan’s hands. Why, to read something like that, you’d probably have to have been working at Marvel Comics in the mid-’70s so you could go through the trash next to the typesetter’s desk.

Well … either that … or else, lacking a time machine, you could just take a look below. (more…)

In the September issue of Esquire, the editors tossed together Werner Herzog (director of such films as Grizzly Man, Fitzcarraldo, and Aguirre, the Wrath of God) with Philippe Petit (the performer best known for his illegal high-wire walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center back in 1974).

Unexpectedly, as they bantered, I discovered that Philippe Petit already knows one of the main reasons that I write.

Here’s how their dialogue ended:

Werner Herzog: What I do is for spectators. Whether Philippe’s walk between the Twin Towers was witnessed by anyone down in the street really didn’t matter. Philippe once secretly put a cable across a 2,400-foot ravine and walked across it and danced on the rope. Only a farmer who was driving his cattle at sunrise realized that someone was there. He rushed into the village to wake a policeman. And when they came back on a motorcycle, there was no Philippe, there was no wire left.

Philippe Petit: But the cows remember.

I, too, do it for the cows.

Remember the book I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago, titled The Swap, by Antony Moore? I had been bothered by the fact that the MacGuffin of the story—a copy of Superman #1—was stated as being valueless when traded away by a kid in the UK in 1982, and now that I’ve finished the book, I’m still bothered by it.

I (first of all) found it difficult to swallow that a 12-year-old kid in 1982 would even have a copy of Superman #1 (especially when that kid lived in the UK, and there are only a total of 46 copies extant in the world today), and (second) even if he did manage to end up with a copy, that he would not suspect its worth at the time, considering all the newspaper coverage in the previous decade about the value of Golden Age comics.

The fact that the novel revolved around that particular comic took me out of the story right from the beginning, and even though it turned out to be a well-written book with nice touches of character and setting, it annoys me still. As I wrote back on August 3, I was hoping for an explanation as to how the protagonist could be so ignorant of its worth back then, and … well … I didn’t really get any. (more…)

I’ve often pondered the problem of presenting genius in fiction, since I’m not a genius myself. If I write about a great writer, how can I prove to you that he or she is great without sharing some of that writing, which will inevitably disappoint you, since it can only be as good as my own writing, and therefore not great?

I’ve come to believe that art can only portray great artists when done in forms which don’t match up.

That is, I can write a story about a great opera singer, and pull it off, because you’ll never get to hear the song. Whereas in a movie, I’d have to show it. Same thing for painting, or acting. I can get away with describing, with telling rather than showing, and make claims I’ll never have to live up to, because, good or bad, there’s no way to present those forms in print. So you’re stuck with trusting me. (more…)

John Picacio has alerted me to my brief appearance as part of a feature segment which appeared on NBC affiliate News9 last week.

Since I can’t seem to embed the video, if you want to see me (as well as John Picacio and John Hertz), click here—and then keep your fingers crossed.

And whatever you do, don’t blink!

I spoke too soon when I wrote that Denvention ended for me on Sunday night, because when I headed out Monday morning to grab some breakfast to bring back to the room, I ran into Joe from Chicago, whose last name I didn’t catch. I’d never met him before, and because we were now both without badges, I couldn’t tell at first whether he was, as they say in organized crime, “a friend of ours,” and so didn’t immediately say hello in passing as I would to a fellow fan. But once we sorted that all out, we had a nice talk about this con and Worldcons past, his first being ’82, if I’m remembering correctly, versus my ’74. And he was a subscriber to Science Fiction Age, so I’m forever in his debt.

An hour later, when I left the hotel to head over to Zaidy’s, a deli which served pastrami highly recommended by Bob Silverberg, so that we wouldn’t have to suffer airport food for lunch, there were friends Sandy and Risa Stewart, waiting for the shuttle to take them to the airport. Even though I’d bumped into them several times each day of the con, I hadn’t known we were in the same hotel.

I couldn’t chat long, because I needed time to get over to Zaidy’s and back with the pastrami for Irene and a bissel brisket for me in time to make our own way to the airport. As I walked, I saw a cornerstone labeled Writer Square, which I soon discovered was a sign for a shopping complex.

(more…)