Tyler Weaver's Blog, page 66

DAREDEVIL, Season Two

(Note: this piece originally appeared on my (TW) Tumblr as part of my Informalities series, on 02 May 2016). 

Expectation is a cruel mistress.

While it couldn’t be the revelatory experience of season one, DAREDEVIL season two was nonetheless felled by the lack of a compelling central villain, the overabundance of stop-and-go moralizing, the grating Nelson-Murdock-Page soap opera–all the more disheartening when the dynamic between the three characters was much of what made season one special–and, as with JESSICA JONES before it and, to a lesser extent, DAREDEVIL’s own first season, a meandering, sometimes excruciating middle third.

In other words, DAREDEVIL has become a typical Marvel project.

That’s not to say there weren’t bright spots: Bernthal’s Punisher and Yung’s Elektra were spectacular additions (in spite of leading to the aforementioned stop-and-go moralizing); Scott Glenn was, again, note-perfect as the wonderfully uncompromising asshole, Stick;  Vincent D’Onofrio’s brief appearance revitalized the sagging middle and made a promising set-up for a third season; and Karen Page’s evolution into the new Ben Urich is intriguing.

But.

The most troubling aspect of DAREDEVIL’s second season is that, in spite of D’Onofrio and the promise of his efforts to reclaim his throne and the shades of BORN AGAIN that it cast, its conclusion didn’t leave me with breathless excitement and anticipation for a third, a stark contrast to my ebullience at the conclusion of the first and the promise it held, a promise not met.

Still, I would much prefer a third season of DAREDEVIL to the “street-level Avengers” team-up THE DEFENDERS but, alas, the insistence that everything in the Marvel Cinematic/Streaming/Television Universe lead to a team-up is all-compassing, the Dark Side of connectivity unleashed: everything a perpetual set-up for some future promise, some future expectation, the soul-sapper of storytelling,

At least Robert Downey Jr. hasn’t shown up.

Yet.

(TW)

Returning to MULHOLLAND DRIVE

(Note: this piece originally appeared on my (TW) Tumblr as part of my Informalities series, on 02 October  2015). 

I’ve written before about the illuminating practice of revistation–of re-watching, of re-reading, of re-playing–and discovering new layers to works as you gain in years and experience. Few other films have improved upon revisitation as much as David Lynch’s 2001 masterpiece, MULHOLLAND DRIVE.

When I first saw the film, I hated it. Couldn’t figure out a single thing going on, couldn’t make heads or tails of just what, precisely, the hell Lynch was going after. After that first viewing, the clamshelled film sat in a variety of moving boxes as I meandered from place to place, life to life, career iteration to career iteration, the grand illusion of my youth, that I had figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up, mercifully shattered and splayed across all forms of burnt bridges and decimated post-apocalyptic wastelands, like Cleveland.

A few months ago, I revisted MULHOLLAND DRIVE and could not find a scintilla of the issues that led me to despise the film upon my first viewing, finding instead a surreal, terrifying beauty of lost souls and broken dreams scattered across the fever dream-SUNSET BOULEVARD-vision of Los Angeles that Lynch so ably hurls upon the screen, an unforgettable tapestry of weird and wonderful characters that pull one another in directions only Lynch could craft.

Revistation is all about looking at works without the preconceptions and predjudices you held from the first viewing and looking upon it instead with new eyes, a beginner’s mind, as if you’re seeing it for the first time. If you can do that, you often find your disdain was unfounded, that you weren’t ready for the work when you first encountered it. When you’re ready, the work finds you again; so it was with MULHOLLAND DRIVE, now one of my favorite films.

(TW)

Blurred Lines and Transmedia Storytelling

My latest essay, BLURRED LINES AND TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: DEVELOPING READERS AND WRITERS THROUGH EXPLORING SHARED STORYWORLDS, has been published in the Fall 2014/Winter 2015 issue of SIGNAL JOURNAL: THE JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION’S SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP: NETWORK ON ADOLESCENT LITERATURE.

In BLURRED LINES, I examine my experience in teaching writing to a group of sixth grade students by allowing them to create their own superheroes and shared superhero universe, a la the Marvel Universe of the 1960s and the Marvel Cinematic Universe of today.

An excerpt:

Brought together, these four groups of rules formed an inchoate, character-driven story bible–that is, a document in which the rules were laid out for our shared universe. As part of an educational process to explore transmedia storytelling and to create an environment in which fan fiction can thrive as a creative educational tool, I recommend that story bibles be constructed as students analyze and discuss the works they are reading in class, be it Suzanne Collins’s (2008) The Hunger Games, Lois Lowry’s (1993) The Giver, or anything in between.

To allay potential concerns and anxieties that readers new to transmedia storytelling might harbor, allow me to underscore the following point: the book or text that students study in class does not have to be a transmedia experience for the method I am proposing to work. A teacher and students can transform any text into a world that invites fan fiction by asking questions needed to crafta convincing and visceral world that speaks to the students: Where does the story take place? Is it a city on the verge of collapse? A village of laborers? What is the world the characters inhabit like? Is it a utopian society? A dystopian society? A dystopia disguised as a utopia? When does the story take place? Is it set in the far future or the distant past? What historical events are unfolding parallel to the work in question? How is the society constructed? Are its societal and economic classes divided? Is there a form of caste system in place? How might previous history account for this? What do you think led to the permutation of the world evinced in the work in question? These are only a few of the discussions the creation of a story bible can inspire.

From the standpoint of teaching, the collective creation of a story bible provides a valuable analytical and discussion tool that allows developing readers and writers to think about stories in ways that go beyond theme and plot. In doing so, it gives them a chance to discuss the storyworld of a story and create a set of rules that allows for unfettered creation via students inserting themselves into a storyworld that already carries meaning for them. By establishing these rules and allowing students to create within the parameters they afford, either using pre- existing characters or by developing their own, teachers can create opportunities for students to internalize the thought processes that constitute a genuine and ethically sound (read: not crafted solely for the purposes of marketing and selling a product) transmedia experience, while developing an intellectual mastery of a constantly- shifting media landscape they wouldn’t necessarily have achieved through more traditional means. As Jenkins (2006) argues, “Just as we would not traditionally assume that someone is literate if they can read but not write, we should not assume that someone possesses media literacy if they can consume but not express themselves” (p. 177). Modern media literacy is not, then, only about consumption. It is also about creation, and educating students in the tenets of transmedia storytelling is key to their understanding the fluidity of our modern media landscape.

The complete essay is available to members of The International Reading Association’s Special Interest Group Network on Adolescent Literature (SIGNAL).

Dispatches from My Digital Identity Crisis

When Apple rolled out iTunes in the early noughties, I was an immediate fan. Over the years, the program, at least the desktop version, has become a Frankenstein monster, a hodgepodge of pieces that once took the world by storm but now barely hang together in a cohesive whole.

While I never took the world by storm and doubt that I ever will, my digital life has become a social desktop iTunes, a hodgepodge of career paths, false stops and starts, failures and successes; on one hand, a digital painting of my evolution; on the other, a glimpse into a past I no longer recognize.

The need for a reboot is critical.

A story…

Once upon a time, there was a guy and that guy was me. I began using social media in its nascency and in mine.

In my twenties, I was lost, adrift in the corporeal Back Bay and Belmont and Ipswich and Beacon Hill, and, God help me, Cleveland, after the end of my musical aspirations and pissed off about it; so too was I adrift in the digital, searching for meaning, searching for myself, searching for mentors, hoping that in the vast connectedness of the promise of the digital frontier, I could find the direction I so desperately sought. In 2011 and 2012, after years of searching, clicking, writing, and pushing myself, I thought I had found the answer, and, in selling the outline to Focal Press and publishing my book, Comics For Film, Games and Animation, I did find part of the answer: I had been in a creative field for all of my adult, legally smoking age and voting age, and had never been more in love with a process than I was with writing.

And, it seemed, I had something resembling a talent for it.

I turned 30 the week before I sold the outline to Comics. Less than three months later, I met the woman who, three years later, would become my wife, and my life changed forever, again. Along the way, I had to abandon the old me and craft a new one. It, like any change that forces you to examine all of your myriad failings, wasn’t easy: there was the reverse cultural shock of being back in the middle of Ohio, overcoming the feeling of being a failure, that I couldn’t “cut it” in the “big city,” and that I was in the midst of a forced retreat from everything around me and all I had known, facing the question of how would I persevere in a place where my only goal the first time around had been to escape?

All of these divergences converged into a morass of brutal change after the release of Comics, in 2013: that winter, my grandmothers died within six weeks of one another; that summer, my mother was diagnosed with Stage One and Stage Two breast cancer (right and left); in October my dog, Orson, died of stomach cancer; and, six weeks after Orson, Katie’s beloved dog Sarah, was put to sleep, after a long run of 18 years of love and Muffin-ness.

In the midst of all of that tumult, I was still writing: I was writing on a legal pad in the hospital as my mother went under anesthesia for her mastectomy, the smell of hand sanitizer invading my olfactory senses. The ritual of work (and later, the ritual of running) was my saving grace, my foundation of sanity. Coming to Quiet Country came out near the end of October 2013; Whiz!Bam!Pow! Books One, Two, Three and The Adventures of the Sentinel radio show were released from 2012 through 2014…

…and then…

On 27 June 2014, Katie and I were married in what was, and is, the happiest day of my life. It was at that moment that the two key realizations of my thirties came to pass: one, that I am happiest in life when I fall asleep every night holding my wife’s hand, thinking to myself that I want to ask her to marry me again because it’s so right; two, that I am happiest in work when I sit, day in, day out, in a flow of focused craftsmanship, working on a manual typewriter to realize the transformation of a single awful paragraph into a single great (enough) paragraph so that I may do it again, and again, and again, and have, at the end, a new book that can go on my bookshelves, next to the names who brought me the greatest joy no matter the tragedy of their words, in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, I can give someone else that same joy, if only they do me the honor of adding me to their bookshelves.

And through all of this, through all of these peaks and valleys, I have been on social media.

At its best, at my best usage of it, social media is a tool that opens connections that never existed and allows me to share my work, passion, and thoughts with those of like mind and those of not; at my worst, social media brings my worst attributes—self-consciousness, resentment, jealousy, insecurity, flightiness, and most glaringly, disingenuous maskings of those feelings behind crap efforts at humor, half-hearted conversation, and sharing of any ephemeral bullshit that crosses my path—to the forefront of my digital persona and bleeds into my physical life and work. On top of it, I felt as though my well of non-book digital writing, of conversation, of having something to say, had dried up.

To those who left, you were probably smart to do so; to those who stayed, I apologize.

I aim to do better. And that’s the point of this ramble.

If my personal and creative lives have found their bliss, I need now to allow my digital to follow suit, to balance the triumvirate. As such, you may consider this a rebirth, the death of the Frankenstein monster amassed from ten years of false starts and wrong brains, and the rising of a new tide.

So, let me reintroduce myself and, by proxy, provide myself and you a statement of my digital self going forward:

I’m Tyler, and I write and I cook and I run. I am happily married and, when not writing, cooking, running, maintaining the lawns of various family members or lifting heavy things or building pergolas, I maintain the peace between two greyhounds and a Morkie. I used to be a drummer and a musician, even went to Berklee, and majored in classical composition, which was the wrong path for me but is very right for others, like my friend Uziel; the dude’s a genius.

My favorite film is Once Upon a Time in the West. There is no dispute that it is the greatest film of all time, nor is there any dispute that fried pickles are a marvelous appetizer. Do not engage me in dissent on these points, unless you come bearing fried pickles or gummi butterflies or frogs or worms or you are Claudia Cardinale circa 1968 bearing fried pickles, gummi butterflies, frogs, or worms.

Unlike the other Tyler Weaver who has been on Oprah, I am not a teenage karate black belt phenom. That Tyler Weaver could totally kick my ass. I was asked to be on Maury once, but that was because I was robbed when I worked at a wine store around the corner from John Kerry’s house after he fumbled the 2004 election. If you came here looking for that Tyler Weaver, I am not the droid you are looking for, but, what the hell, I’ll give lectures on karate. Sounds like fun. But I will not be a guest on Maury, because ethics.

I’ve written a book that people seem to like (even if I loathe the title) called Comics for Film, Games and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld. It was published in 2012 by Focal Press. I’m proud of it.

I also wrote a work of short narrative non-fiction called Coming to Quiet Country: A Journey from Pyongyang to Holmes County whose 3500 words took a year to write.

Right now, I’m writing my next book, a novel. It is my passion, my pride, my torturer and my partner in mental anguish and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I write slowly because I enjoy it, or I enjoy writing because I do it slowly; I’m not sure which.

I dedicate four days a week to the novel; the fifth to side projects like comic scripts, a series of novellas, blog posts like this one, and the Whiz!Bam!Pow! Comic.

I dedicate seven days a week to being a husband and to being a son and to being a rescue dad to my four-legged brood.

I finish what I start, no matter how many years it takes, unless it sucks, then I throw it away without remorse.

I prefer silence to talking and the company of few to the company of many.

The process is more meaningful than the result.

I tend to swear a lot; when in situations where I can’t swear, I hold my breath. Saying “darn” makes me feel dirtier than saying “fuck.”

On this site, you will find the best digital representation of me that I can give you, my words, my work; they are my lifeblood, the only currency I have in this world.

Going forward, my goal is to provide one new essay or interview per month to offset the languid pace of my book writing. And, while the subject matter of these new essays is hazy at present, I do know that they will arrive two weeks before the Spinner Rack newsletter goes out, beginning next month (August).

Now, on to the social: I have a few diplomatic embassies that are under renovation:

+ On Tumblr, my blog is FIIK, which stands for Fuck If I Know, because I don’t know what I’m going to put on there next (except for Fay Wray, The Invisible Man, baby goats, and assorted black and white photography). And, if you recall, I swear a lot. Don’t be surprised if music reviews, television reviews, film reviews, and the like show up there.

+ I need to give Twitter special mention, because that’s the place most under renovation. Over there, I’m @tylerweaver. I’m working on getting the hang of it again, so be patient. I will rarely talk about works in progress, because, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “I think it’s a pretty good rule not to tell what a thing is about until it’s finished. If you do you always seem to lose some of it. It never quite belongs to you so much again.”

If you follow me looking for writing advice or the use of the #amwriting hashtag, I’m the wrong person; I have a hard enough time following my own advice, thank you very much. There is, however, a page here that contains all I’ve learned about writing, so look there. That said, the only piece of advice that matters is sit down and do the damn work.

I tend to stay away from venting outrage in 140-character form. This is not because I don’t care, but rather out of a need to stockpile a primal emotion like anger and outrage for constructive use in my work, articles here or elsewhere, or anywhere where I feel it can do the most good to alleviate the source of said anger.

I do input purges from time to time. If I unfollow you, know that it is nothing personal, but simply a diverging of paths at that particular moment and that it may not be permanent; the digital world is all about flux. If you unfollow me, well, as The Swell Season sang, “If you’re gonna go, go with happiness”; I wish you nothing but the best.

There will be times that I’m unresponsive or go on extended hiatuses. These sabbaticals are essential to my working brain, and, to me, the work is supreme.

As for what I will talk about? Good question. I’m in the process of figuring that one out.

+ I like Instagram. It’s where my dogs live. I posted a food photo once. I’m tylerweaver there, too.

+ I’m on Snapchat, and, while I have no idea how to use it, I’m fond of the ephemeral nature of its content. I’m tylerwvr ’round those parts.

+ I’m on Facebook, but I don’t post there and the only reason I’m keeping the account is because I like to see that I’m married to my wife and remember my birthday.

+ And, last but certainly not least, my main method of communication is my monthly email newsletter, The Spinner Rack. If you like what I have to say, you can sign up and I’ll love you.

+ You can email me: tyler@tyler-weaver.com.

Welcome to the rebirth. Nice to meet you. I hope you find something of value here.

TW

On THE WEST WING

“What are you thinking about?”

“Tomorrow.”

Idealism is, at its best, a marriage of hope and pragmatism: the belief in the best vision of the world and the tenacity to realize that vision in the face of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles hurled from every direction. When those of an idealistic persuasion rise to the position of governance, to the opportunity to realize their vision, a battle is waged between preserving and realizing the pragmatic idealism that paved the rocky path from campaign to governance and the danger of compromising oneself amidst the reality of the systemic corruption, unrepentant self-interest, and the dinner theater of the political stage, where the dinner rolls are stale and useful only as weapons to hurl at those who disagree in stubborn, childish, arm-crossing and tantrum-throwing displays of churlishness.

That THE WEST WING so deftly examined those battles, both between walk-and-talk White House staffers and between the detritus-strewn aisles of American politics, with each and every episode is a testament to both its timeliness and timelessness.

During its initial airing (1999-2006), I lived in a tiny studio apartment in Boston with a television whose sole means of communication with the outside world was a pair of $20 Radio Shack bunny ears. My choices were limited: Fox, Pax, or QVC and, as I watched endless reruns of THE SIMPSONS and SEINFELD amidst the fall of my musical aspirations and the backdrop of Bush Junior’s second war in Iraq, my inchoate understanding of the world grew in incremental realizations that the imperialistic, xenophobic propoganda wrapped in flag-waving bravado of the Bush Junior years was not right, let alone human and, when coupled in 2004 with the doldrums of the Kerry campaign, whose namesake was the most ineffective Democratic “standard-bearer” since Dukakis, and the resulant election night heartbreak leads me, in retrospect, to one inescapable truth: had I watched THE WEST WING in its initial airing, I would have slipped further into a despondency wrought by the chasm between the hope of the alternate present of the Bartlet administration, in which an honorable and flawed human being sat in the Oval Office with the humility and sense of duty it deserves, and the cowboy-boot-up-your-ass spur of the then-reality of the world stage in which the leader of the free world was a rodeo clown who didn’t wear the right makeup and the best chance of unseating him was a piece of snowboarding driftwood.

In bringing humanity to the image propogated by the bullet-point-and-Capitol-backdrop sound bite reciters that appear, see-sawing from drone-like chess pieces or well-timed volcanic eruptions of vacuous, rhetorical bullshit, THE WEST WING showed that the people making the laws of our land and halting the march towards World War III were just that, people: some energized, some overwhelmed, some attaining personal self-actualization of their mission in the hallowed halls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue–the sacrifice being only family, sleep, and health–by the weight of winning the prize that they sought on the pandering, baby-kissing, hand-shake-and-break reality show of the campaign trail.

That’s not to say that the show was without its faults: the often heavy-handed descents into soapboxing to the detriment of drama; the abysmal Toby-leaked-space-shuttle stuff in the seventh-season and subsequent efforts to show that the show hadn’t lost sight of the Bartlet administration in its twilight; and, most notoriously, nearly all of the show’s fifth season, the first of the post-Sorkin era, which hemmed and hawed its way to find direction, until the magnificent Israeli-Palestinian peace summit sequence at Camp David, which sadly, was all-too-presecient in its harrowing depiction of (then former-) Chief of Staff Leo McGarry’s near-fatal heart attack (John Spencer, who played McGarry, tragically died of a heart attack midway through the show’s final season).

At its best, THE WEST WING represents the epitome of a concept I hold dear: that the best television shows are filled with characters that you look forward to seeing with each passing week. As we approached the end of the series (we watched all 156 episodes in a four-month Netflix binge), I began to lament that I would soon never see these characters again; now I understand why my wife (who watched the show during its initial airing) would perk up as soon as Toby (Richard Schiff) showed up on BURN NOTICE or MAN OF STEEL or Donna (Janel Maloney) appeared on HOUSE or THE BLACKLIST or House Speaker Haffley (Steven Culp) showed up on LONGMIRE: it was a chance to see them, if not in character, again after THE WEST WING–and the Bartlets–had flown off on Marine One at the first light of the new Santos administration.

And now, like the show itself, I must bring this to an end.

I’ve been writing this piece on and off for the four months in which THE WEST WING was an indelible part of our lives and the thought of crafting a final word for a piece on a show that I never wanted to end has been a struggle. So I’ve decided that I won’t have the final word.

A recent Twitter exchange:

@tylerweaver We’re still here, you know. — Donna Moss (@donnatella_moss) April 1, 2015

ROBIN HOOD: OUTLAW OF THE 21ST CENTURY – An Interview with Matt Dursin

In the Spring of 2011, I went to my first comics convention in years, the Boston Comic Con, and, while at the Convention (ok, not there, exactly; rather, it was the pub down the street), I struck up conversation with Matt Dursin, the co-host of the LEAGUE OF ORDINARY GENTLEMEN podcast, and, through virtue of staying in contact through the years, I was lucky enough to be a guest on the LEAGUE podcast to promote the release of the first WHIZ!BAM!POW! books and COMICSTORYWORLD.

 

Now I get to turn the interviewer-interviewee tables on him, as Matt debuts his first comics series, ROBIN HOOD: OUTLAW OF THE 21st CENTURY, a reinvention of the ROBIN HOOD legend for the 21st century that blends heists and high adventure amid a ripped-from-the-headlines backdrop. In the interest of full disclosure, I did a bit of transmedia consultation on the ROBIN HOOD comic last year.

 

Without further verbiage, here’s my interview with Matt, in which we chat about ROBIN HOOD, the state of independent comics, pitches, and Kickstarter.

 

Tell me the story of your new vision of ROBIN HOOD.

ROBIN HOOD: OUTLAW OF THE 21ST CENTURY is a modern take on the Robin Hood legend, where Robin and his merry men steal medicine and give it to those in need, such as people who can’t afford them or people who don’t have health insurance. That’s the quick synopsis, but the plan is for the story to go in different directions as Robin sinks deeper into a world of crime. Not every story will focus on him robbing a pharmacy.

The first issue was written by me, with art by Mark Vuycankiat, lettered by L. Jamal Walton and colored by Tamra Bonvillain, who is coloring the SLEEPY HOLLOW comic right now. Also, the cover is by Jason Baroody and Mark McKenna, who have worked all over the industry.

How did your version of ROBIN HOOD come about?

I had the idea years ago, and originally it was going to be a movie screenplay. I pecked away at it for years, but never had any clue how it would end. Then in 2009, I took an online Comics Experience writing class, and the first night we were put on the spot to pitch the instructor (former Marvel & IDW editor Andy Schmidt) an idea for a 5-page comic story. After much deliberation, I pitched the modern-day Robin Hood story that I had rattling in my head for years. And years later, the five page story I wrote for the class became the first five pages of the very first issue.

One of the difficulties in working with a story where an issue is so front and center, in this case, the exorbitant cost of health care and the sad state of medical affairs in this country, is that the story is overshadowed by the message, but ROBIN HOOD manages to deliver a great story with great characters (elements like delivering meds in pizza boxes) AND deliver a clear message about the inaccessibility of health care, the chasm of income equality, and treatment of veterans. How did you walk that razor’s edge?

I tried very carefully not to be too preachy, especially with the dialogue. One strategy I attempted, which is hard for me, is to take a “less-is-more” approach with it. There’s no need to over-state your point, because hopefully, if you do your job right, your characters will bring your ideas to the forefront. Plus in a comic book script, you have to leave room for the artwork, so if a whole panel is a giant word balloon with a character rambling on and on, it kind of ruins it.

Also, I think infusing some humor helped me not hammer the reader over the head with the message. You don’t want to put too much in, but the Robin Hood of some of the folklore is often portrayed as an imp, so it does work.

 

You’ve said in other interviews that one of the inspirations behind the series was the BBC’s stellar reinvention of Sherlock Holmes in SHERLOCK. What is it about characters like Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood (and Superman, and Batman, etc.) that make for seemingly endless interpretations of character across time periods?

I think certain characters are timeless and can work in any era. BBC’s SHERLOCK helped me see that it can be done and done well. Originally, before Robin Hood, I was trying to write a story about a modern-day Billy the Kid, but that character was not coming to life as I’d hoped, and I think part of the reason is because Billy didn’t have that mission, that raison d’etre, so to speak, like Robin Hood. The “robbing from the rich to give to the poor” paradigm is something a lot of people can understand and get behind.

 

Your love of comics is apparent in every page of ROBIN HOOD and in all of our chats. What was it about comics that hooked you? First to start a podcast, THE LEAGUE OF ORDINARY GENTLEMEN,  dedicated to them and then to create your own?

I’ve been a comic book fan since I was about nine years-old. I honestly think it was probably watching Spider-Man cartoons and reruns of the Adam West Batman that made me start reading them, because I wanted to devour as much of that stuff as I could. And then I started reading Marvel’s G.I.JOE and TRANSFORMERS books because I liked the toys, and all that eventually bled into reading all kinds of super-hero books. The best thing is they were .65 or .75 cents back then, so even for a kid, it was easy to just read as much as you wanted. But I think mostly what drew me in was the colorful characters and the basic, solid stories. “Spidey saves the city from The Hobgoblin.” What more does a nine year-old kid need? And honestly, I don’t think my sensibilities have changed that much.

 

You and I both became comics fans at around the same age. Do you think that a kid, nine or ten years old, would have as easy a time getting in to comics today as we did back in the days of yore? What’s stopping them? 

It’s hard to say, really. On the one hand, if a kid has access to the internet or a tablet, there are a lot of cheap or free comics out there, and Marvel even has that Unlimited membership deal for $9.99, which they would have to get from their parents, I guess. And there are a lot of animated shows and the movies to help raise awareness. But at the same time, there’s a lot of competition for kid’s attention these days, and for a nine year-old to be a regular reader of something like AMAZING SPIDER-MAN every month would cost him a lot more than it did when we were kids. So, it’s probably easy to get into comics these days, but harder to stay into them.

 

You talked about being put on the spot to pitch in your online Comics Experience writing class. What did you learn about pitching an editor from that class, and, to you, goes in to a great pitch? 

The class required a beginning, middle and end for a five-page comic story, so that was hard, but I think, in general, that really means a clear vision for your story. Editors can differ in what they are looking for, but I think they can all agree that they want a clear, comprehensible, and probably marketable, idea.

 

While digital distribution channels have opened up near-infinite means of getting your work in front of eyes, what are the challenges of independently producing a comic these days?

There are challenges I couldn’t have even imagined, and part of the challenge was my own ignorance about some of the technology. As the writer, I knew just enough to find an artist, a letterer and a colorist, but I didn’t know much about the actual production. As far as digital distribution, I drove myself crazy because Amazon needs the files in one format, while Comixology needed them saved a completely different way, and the printer needed an even different way. Plus, I had two different versions to send to my Kickstarter donors who chose a digital book as a reward, depending on which format they wanted. I have so many versions of the first issue saved on my computer that it’s insane.

Beyond just the technical stuff, the fact that there are so many avenues makes it harder to separate yourself from the pack, because anyone with the drive and the know-how can produce their own comic these days, just like anyone can make their own movie or record their own album. The hard part is making people want to buy yours when there are so many options for their entertainment dollar.

With the first batch I printed, I even tried a sort of Radiohead technique, where I printed no cover price and asked people to pay what they wanted. Granted a few people just took the book and ran off, but most people understood what I was trying to do and paid for it, some even paid more than regular comic book price.

 

As a writer, what lessons did you learn from putting together that first issue?

I learned that the writer is an important, but also pretty small, part of the process. Despite the fact that it was my concept and my script, comics is a visual medium, so the art, the lettering and the coloring (even for a black-and-white comic) are obviously essential. But they are all part of the whole. All the elements have to come together to make the issue a reality.

 

You ran a successful Kickstarter campaign last year. Can you talk a bit about the experience of that? Obviously since it was successful, I don’t know if you’d do anything differently, but is there anything you would have done differently?

It was a really great experience for me, because you get to see what kind of friends you have and you get to see that there are good people out there. It’s a great feeling to get donations from strangers or people you haven’t seen or talked to in years. It’s also a little scary because I was about $1000 away from my goal with about a day left, and I thought I had exhausted every avenue, but a lot of people came through in that last day, and that was really cool.

If I could do it over again, I would change the reward structure a little bit because I ended up having to send out a couple hundred reward packages and that ended up being more work than actually making the comic. Obviously, I was grateful to have made my goal, but that was a crazy few days of sending out a lot of comics.

 

Why did you want to include transmedia elements with ROBIN HOOD?

Going along with that previous answer a bit, I feel that using different transmedia elements helps get as many eyeballs on your work as possible, because there is so much out there. I could print a comic and try to sell it at conventions, but literally hundreds of people are trying to do the same thing. So, if they see my book at a convention, and they say, “I’ve heard of this book because I saw something about it on Youtube,” or whatever, they may be more likely to buy it.

But beyond marketing, it opens up a lot of fun, creative avenues for someone like me. I get to step out from behind the keyboard, so to speak, and play with some of the other toys in my toybox.

 

What are the plans for the series? Will it be an ongoing, serialized story, or will it have some episodic, done-in-one tales, a la DC’s JONAH HEX or Warren Ellis’s FELL?

Panel from ROBIN HOOD: OUTLAW OF THE 21st CENTURY Issue Two.

I would like for it to go as long as it can, or as long as I can. I think there are a lot of possibilities with a story like this, and I don’t see the health care system improving anytime soon, so I would like to keep writing them until the well runs dry. As far as the kinds of stories, I think there will definitely be some done-in-one tales thrown in, because I really enjoy what those can say about your characters. I’ve been inspired by BREAKING BAD a lot, like the episode where Walt chased a fly around his lab for the entire hour. I would definitely like to get to tell those kinds of stories at some point.

 

Elevator pitch: why should people buy ROBIN HOOD?

If you enjoy comics that feature some action with a side of social commentary, and enjoy stories set in the real world, with no powers or capes or cross-overs or anything like that, then this may be the one for you. And if you enjoy helping out independent creators, then give it a try. Think of yourself as a modern-day Robin Hood, helping the poor.

 

You can purchase the first issue of ROBIN HOOD: OUTLAW OF THE 21ST CENTURY, written by Matt, with art by Mark Vuycankiat, lettered by L. Jamal Walton, colored by Tamra Bonvillain, and featuring a cover by Jason Baroody and Mark McKenna, in digital and print editions, from:

 

DIRECT | INDYPLANET | AMAZON | COMIXOLOGY

Erstwhile, on FARGO: A Review

Note: while this is not a recap of the events of the first season of FX’s  FARGO, spoilers will be, in spite of my best efforts, inevitable. 

 

Three words spring to mind when a translation of a film to a television series or vice versa is announced. The first is “ballsy”: can the producers really expect to bring something that the other didn’t? The second and third are “cash grab”: because let’s be honest, in most cases of adaptation and/or translation, the almighty dollar is a skilled and convincing orator.  And, when the starting point for translation is an absolute masterpiece like the Coen Brothers’ 1996 film, FARGO, cynicism is not only warranted, but unavoidable.

 

In the case of FARGO, that cynicism was completely unwarranted.

 

From the first scene to the last, the first season of Noah Hawley’s serialized exploration of the Coen Brothers’ snow-blanketed, “oh yah,” hunting-hat adorned and wood-chippered world, rises above mere imitation to become, like its precursor, as masterwork of its chosen medium, hurling the viewer into a world that is both as close as the backyard barbeque and as foreign as the surface of Bradbury’s Mars and populated by some of the most distinctive, flawed, and charming characters to come to televised life in recent memory.

 

Billy Bob Thornton gives the performance of his career–a career filled with performances of his career–as Lorne Malvo, a hitman with a penchant for twisting and manipulating the lives of all who dare enter his orbit, making death seem the easy way out, from mindfucking a lowly hotel kid to piss in the owner’s gas tank, to manipulating Martin Freeman’s Lester into “being a man,” to making Oliver Platt’s supermarket king Stavros Milos, in the most overt connection to the Coen Brothers’ film, believe that the travails and blackmail that befall him are God’s vengeance for his becoming an insufferable ass on his way to lording over a supermarket empire where it’s always “July in January.”

 

Thornton’s Malvo is, like the best fictional villains, a force of nature, a chameleonic alpha predator (his “why do we see the most shades of green” exchange with Colin Hanks’s Gus will send chills down your spine) who toys with his prey before ending them in the tradition of the best of the best: of Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigur in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN; of Robert Mitchum’s Reverend Harry Powell in NIGHT OF THE HUNTER; of Heath Ledger’s Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT; of Christopher Lee’s first performance as Dracula in HORROR OF DRACULA; of Anthony Hopkins’s first performance of Hannibal Lecter in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS; of Christoph Waltz’s Hans Landa in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS; and of Darth Vader in STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

 

The lynchpins of FARGO, and the shots that set off the devasting events of the series are the insecurities and the perception of a demolished masculinity of Martin Freeman’s Lester Nygard, who goes from slippery little shit to more of a monster than Malvo in his quest for an awakened, bastardized form of masculinity and self-preservation. Lester is the kid who was picked on at school and who never got over it, always running on the thin ice of perception and paranoia, desperately trying to put one foot in front of the other; he’s the guy who, in a burning building, would cry out “women and children first” but flee the inferno before anyone else, then set his shirt on fire for the third-degree burns so he can say that he tried to save everyone, all the while saying “oh, geez.”

 

In Alison Tolman’s Molly Solverson, as with her spiritual precursor, Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson, we are given one of the great female protagonists of television: no-nonsense, relentless (though there was  one scene which stood out as untrue to her character; you will probably be able to spot it), and driven to solve the tangled web of the murder of her mentor, Chief Vern Thurman (Shawn Doyle, who, though appearing in less than 1/10th of the series, manages to stay with the viewer for the entire series, much akin to Linus Roache’s exemplary and underrated performance as Thomas Wayne in Christopher Nolan’s BATMAN BEGINS). Tolman brings rationality, doggedness and a willingness to see beyond the mirage of peace and tranquility wrought by lifelong connections and small-town neighborliness (given voice by Thurman’s successor, Chief Bill Oswalt, portrayed by Bob Odenkirk in a post-BREAKING BAD, pre-BETTER CALL SAUL foray into brilliance).  Through Molly’s eyes, we see the pendulum of horrific and heartbreaking swing back and forth as FARGO makes its way towards its inevitable and endlessly satisfying conclusion.

 

The ultimate success of FARGO lies in its willingness to veer wildly through a slalom course of tone and character: within a single scene, FARGO can be laugh-out-loud funny and, seconds later, shatter the viewer with heartbreak and violence. In the hands of less capable storytellers, these tonal permutations would feel half-baked and representative of indecision; in FARGO, these permutations are essential elements of both the world and themes that hurl the viewer through an addictive and visceral television experience, one that can only be described as “aces,” with a Billy Bob Thornton smile and finger-gun.

TW

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On GOTHAM

Like any Batman fan, I approached the buzz around Bruno Heller’s (ROME, THE MENTALIST) new Batman-less Batman show, GOTHAM, with trepidation. I had already seen a perfect Batman-less Batman story in Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker’s sadly-departed GOTHAM CENTRAL series in the naughties; I didn’t need more.

I would like to correct myself on something here: on Twitter last night, I said this:

Very well, #Gotham, you have justified your existence for another week. Given time, it could become quite excellent.

— Tyler Weaver (@tylerweaver) September 23, 2014

Upon further reflection, I’ve decided that I was wrong.

Here are a few loose thoughts:

• It unnecessarily complicates an origin story that was brilliant in its simplicity. The murder of the Waynes is a thing of comics legend; in the hands of Heller and company, it becomes little more than an over-wrought conspiracy involving characters that fall flat. I knew we were in trouble when the Miller-imagery of Martha Wayne’s pearls falling to the ground was revisited for the umpteenth time within the first three minutes of the pilot.

• While McKenzie and Logue would make a fascinating team on any other procedural/mystery show, the writing is so hackneyed and clichéd that the two leads (never mind the rest of the cast) never rise above a few moments of excellence before falling back into the cesspool of the muddy world thrown on the screen by Heller and company.

• It is six years too late to be interesting. A GOTHAM CENTRAL show set during the Nolan continuity that takes place between THE DARK KNIGHT and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES would have been interesting. On that same token, there was more character development, verve and vitality in the first five pages of Brubaker and Rucka’s GOTHAM CENTRAL comics series than in the entire pilot episode.

• GOTHAM has no idea of its tone: some scenes brings memories of the Schumacher Bat-films, another heralds the arrival of HOMICIDE meets BATMAN. Neither rise above homage.

• Unless balance is found, the Easter-Egginess of it all, of (not so)subtle hints here and there, of the Joker, of the Penguin, of the Riddler, of Selina Kyle, will overshadow GOTHAM and drown it in fan-pleasing callbacks for fans who will have no interest in the show after the premiere.

• I wish Heller and co. had paid more attention to the critical success of NBC’s HANNIBAL; a show that mines canonical material and molds it into a character-driven, stylish, intelligent prequel series that is absolutely fearless. It has become, in my eyes, the primary canon of the Hannibal Lecter mythology; GOTHAM doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell.

Will I make a return visit next week? Maybe. But my arms are even more tightly crossed. Should you? Go read GOTHAM CENTRAL instead.

 

If you want to keep up with the things I’m working on, get access to exclusive stories and discounts, or learn recipes for candied bacon, I have a newsletter, THE SPINNER RACK, that’ll float your boat. Trust me, I hate newsletters, but I like mine. – TW

On Writing

The following represents all of the advice I have on this weird craft of writing. I’ll update it as pearls of wisdom hit. Those pearls hurt sometimes.

 

• Be wary of following the advice of people who dispense it without provocation; they often have difficulty following it themselves.

• Stop aspiring. Be or don’t be.

• Follow your own path.

• Readers/viewers/etc. only care about what you’ve done. Your job is to care about what you’re doing. No one cares about what you are going to do.

• Ideas are made good or bad by the person writing them. The good ones possess you to the point that the only means of exorcism is writing.

 

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” — E.L. Doctorow

 

• If you want to write, read. Read everything.

• Learn everything you can, then forget it and just do. You often have to do this at the same time.

• Never stop learning.

• Never stop loving to learn.

• Find a writing time that works for you and stick to it.

• Take care of yourself physically; I maintain a six day/week exercise regimen to offset my love of pizza, beer and candy.

 

“I’ve tried to write faster and I don’t really enjoy it. I don’t enjoy the process… No fun for the writer, no fun for the reader.” — Donna Tartt

 

My Essential Writing Library:

Strunk & White’s ELEMENTS OF STYLE

Lamott’s BIRD BY BIRD

King’s ON WRITING

Murakami’s WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING

Chandler’s THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER (essay)

HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT

Lynch’s CATCHING THE BIG FISH

Suzuki’s ZEN MIND, BEGINNER’S MIND

Copland’s WHAT TO LISTEN FOR IN MUSIC

 

• Trust your gut.

• Finish

• Shortcuts are bullshit.

• Be wary of writing classes and groups.

• Write what makes you happy, not what you think will make others happy. People have fickle tastes; they often don’t know what they want until you put it in front of them.

• If someone says, “you should write about me,” run. Or, tell them to read this page and write it themselves.

 

“Listening is writing’s occasionally overlooked and undervalued companion, and when not clacking away at the keyboard, comes the chance to sit in sometimes awkward, sometimes painful silence with the characters and world you’ve struggled to create. Even if not a single word is written, you have shown up, you’ve affirmed the simple fact that you care and have the patience to endure” — Dinaw Mengestu

 

• The hardest part is sitting down. The really hard part is staying there.

• You can’t compare yourself to others. It’s a pointless exercise.

• All that matters is the words on the page.

• Find a hobby.

• Writing is a craft.

• Don’t romanticize what you’re doing. You’re doing your job. You happen to have a cool job.

 

A Paragraph on Writing

Writing is waking up alone on the hard floor of a dark house you’ve never been in. Even though you can’t see a thing, you can feel that you’re in a house; the vibe is in the air. You decide to hunt for light. As you wander through the room, your head brushes past a lightbulb dangling from a chain in the dark. You reach for a way to turn on the light, but you don’t find one. You feel around the room, run your hand over the walls, and finally, you find a light switch. You flick on the switch but nothing happens: the bulb is out. So, you have to feel around all of the other rooms and all of the cabinets in the house to find one. The room you’re in is the only one with a light switch; you try to find it in other rooms, but you don’t; there are no bulbs dangling from the ceiling. You accept the darkness and get on with finding a lightbulb. You feel and touch and eventually find where the bulbs are kept: some really odd place, behind the dog food in the bathroom closet. Then you find your way back to the room in which you began. You know the way because you’ve felt it out in the dark. When you return to the bulb dangling from the chain, you grip the old bulb too hard and it shatters in your hand. By this point, you’re so tired of being in the dark that you grab the shattered bulb and the broken glass cuts your hand but you twist anyhow and out pops the old bulb and in goes the new. You see the room and now, because of the light in that one room, you can see the outline of other rooms, and all of the other rooms that at first didn’t have light switches now have light switches and broken bulbs dangling from chains and because you went through the first bulb-hunt at least now you know that the bulbs are behind the dog food in the bathroom closet. So, you go room to room, switching on lights and replacing bulbs until finally, the house is illuminated. You see that the house is in need of repair–but at least the foundation is solid–so you set to work painting and filling in holes in the walls and re-doing the flooring and your cut hand aches and you have to change bandages but you keep going until finally you’re done and you see that you’ve built your dream house out of the darkness. And then you put a “for sale” sign in front of your dream house, massage your scarred hand, and wake up alone on the floor of another dark house, ready to begin again. – TW, 24 April 2014

 

• Write what you care about. If you don’t, don’t write about it.

• Ghostwriting is nothing to turn your nose up to.

• If you do ghostwrite, be up front about what you will and won’t write. Stick to your values, if not your name.

• Don’t tell anybody how they should do their jobs. Everyone has their own methods.

• If you have to collaborate, collaborate with people who will make the final product better than you envisioned it.

• While the right negative comment can be just as effective as the right positive one, don’t be a dick.

• My perpetual New Year’s resolution: write more, write better, care less.

• Outlines are fine if you use them. I don’t. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.

 

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.” — Octavia Butler

 

 

•••

If you want to keep up with the things I’m working on, get access to exclusive stories and discounts, or learn recipes for candied bacon, I have a newsletter, THE SPINNER RACK, that’ll float your boat. Trust me, I hate newsletters, but I like mine. – TW