If I'm ever going to take control of my life, motivate myself, get some momentum, take some risks,
try to do something with myself that would actually have a shot at providing me something like fulfillment or even happiness or, at the least, engagement: I need to get over two related character flaws that dominate my lack of a life. The first is my characterological paralysis, the second is my intellectual/creative restlessness.
"Intellectual/creative restlessness" sounds like I might be self-aggrandizing: "Ooh, my brain is so interesting and high-powered it can't possibly concern itself with any one thing for too long." No, my brain is so scattered and short-attention-spanned that despite my best efforts I can't concern myself with any one thing for too long. To wit:
This weekend, I didn't do anything constructive. I didn't work on - either in writing or in conceptual development - any of the viable ideas I have in my head for novels. I certainly didn't do any work on realizing the idea I was supergungho about only .. one month ago. No, instead I finished reading
Volume I of
Runaways, which got me thinking about comics, which I hadn't done in a while, so I pulled some off the shelf and then:
(Sidebar:
Runaways, at least Volume I, is really good. Really really good. My default aesthetic sensibility, especially in a medium like comics, is usually "I would've made it darker," so I'm always delighted - and you know it's good - when my favorite character in a comic turns out to be the mildly obnoxious twelve year old mutant with superstrength who needs a nap after using her powers and is nicknamed "Bruiser" by her friends but would prefer to go by the name PRINCESS POWERFUL. Awesome.)
I spent the majority of my intellectual energy coming up with what I'd do if I got to write
Batman.
Not, like, "huh, those are some cool ideas if that unlikely event ever comes to pass." I mean, I thought out a two-year story arc of twenty-four issues with three major plotlines, and went so far as to break down the story details for the first plot and first seven issues. I didn't write any of it down, it's all in my head, but a lot of thinking went into it. And it's all useless. It would've been worthwhile as a pie-in-the-sky thing to say "hey, these are some neat ideas" and file them away for future enjoyment, but pretending it was worth my time to think about in this detail is ridiculous, and yet I couldn't possibly make myself think about anything else of more immediate utility: I HAD to work this shit out, and I'm going to be completely uninterested in continuing to work it out within the next two days.
Let me not say that "I'll never get to write an issue of a Batman comic." Maybe I'll become a famous an noterietous writer who drops enough hints in interviews that he'd love to try his hand at writing comics such that eventually, like a less famous Kevin Smith or Joss Whedon, I'm given some cool opportunities, and maybe some of those would eventually lead to writing something for Batman. That would be YEARS away. Half the characters I'd want to use might be dead (or resurrected) by then. It'll probably never happen. I have no reason to think I'd be any good at writing comics. Hell, I'd probably be the least invested comics author of all time, which is why I'm not interested in actually being a comics writer; certainly not in the sense that a guy like Brian Michael Bendis' entire career has become writing exclusively for Marvel, in all sorts of capacities. I'm not, in the relevant ways, THAT big a fan of comics - or rather, a lot of what I like about comics is tangential to, or sometimes contrary to, the evolved imperatives of being in either the DC or Marvel universe. The idea that I have a cool twenty-four issues' worth of cool shit for Batman represents the entirety of everything I have to say, and would want to say, about hands down by a country mile my favorite comic book character and in some respects one of my favorite literary characters of all time. Even if I were superfamous and an automatic draw for lots of readers in the way that, say, Whedon's run on
Astonishing X-Men or the various shuttlings of artist Jim Lee around the DCverse have guaranteed those titles bestseller status, I would not want, nor should the editorial departments of the two big houses want, someone like me to spend too long in their worlds. I might elaborate on why I'm always at odds with superhero comics despite really liking them some other time; the point is to indicate that I don't have a lifelong dream of becoming a great comics writer in the mold of Bendis or Brian K. Vaughan or Alan Moore or even Neil Gaiman (to pick someone who's worked in a lot more media), I just think I have some cool ideas for a limited run at Batman. (And I could probably find stuff that
I found interesting to say about most of the major figures in the Marvelverse, but again for very limited periods of time.) I
do have a lifelong dream of being a writer of novels, and yet I wasted my time planning out the first arc of my very special
Batman engagement instead of figuring out what I needed to do to execute one of my much more realistically executable novel ideas.
I will never amount to anything if I can't get my own head under control.
(If you stuck with me this long:
Arc One (seven issues): Batman investigates the murder of a former lover [of Bruce Wayne], is bored with run of the mill crimefighting, worries about getting old, has all kinds of borderline misogynistic issues with the women in his life that Catwoman calls him on.
Arc Two: Less of a coherent multi-issue plot, Batman tries to get back into the normal swing of things but is increasingly haunted by emotional fallout from Arc One. Also, the Scarecrow takes this opportunity to seriously fuck with Batman's shit. When I was a kid most of the comics I read were actually 60s comics my dad had owned; I bought relatively few modern day comics, but one that made a huge impression on me was
this one, which I don't remember the plot of at all but the last page and especially the last panel of which is burned into my brain. It came out when I was just older than four years old, and I refuse to believe that I was that young when I read it, so I have no clue how it came into my possession probably a year or two later, but I read it over and over. When I realized that the Scarecrow was one of the primary antagonists in
Batman Begins I simultaneously giggled happily and sucked my breath in saying "oh god oh fuck SCARY" while flashbacking to reading that particular issue on my childhood bed.
Arc Three: The Joker unleashes diabolical plan, Batman fights him, regains some measure of his [white man's definition!] mojo.
Yes, the descriptions get increasingly generic, but trust me, they're really cool ideas in my head. And a lot of it is tone - plus a kind of tone-related arrogance: "
My Joker is going to be fucking pants-shittingly frightening and more wicked than those everyday writers could ever dream of." Remember what I said about going darker. But the murder mystery is worked out in some good detail. Sigh.)
Labels: Comics, Personal, Writing
