92615_RAA_LooseCannon_Text_R1_PROOF

It’s particularly challenging, getting back in the saddle this year, in that we’ve just moved the AiT production offices into our palatial new opera tions facility in downtown San Francisco, so while Making Comics Better and Recovering From San Diego, Mimi and Josh Richardson and I have also been Moving Boxes. So after finding a new spot for my Mission to Mars spacesuit, and the big frozen Han Solo, and Cap’s shield and Iron Man’s helmet and the Larry Young action figure and the mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex and the giant penny and the enormous Joker-faced playing card and all the other sou venirs of my adventures, we got down to the computers and phones and the graphic novels and the other boxes of stuff from the old place. So just as I’m telling Josh that the British sci fi mag SFX has reported that Bruce Willis is up for playing Nick Fury, and I ask him who he thinks Thomas Haden Church will be playing in the next Spider-Man, he drops a box of all my Mego-sized Marvel and DC superhero action figures, and as we’re picking them up he starts making fun of me about them. Well, sure, I admit, you can’t be good at comics if you don’t have at least some sort of underlying appreciation for the form and its rich history. Some folks like the nostalgia of it, some the fact they’re invested in a modern pantheon of epic heroes. Some like the action-adventure, and some like how Los Bros. draw Maggie. There’re all sorts of ins to comics. Guys my age usually have a fondness for their favorite superheroes of their youth, no matter what sort of entertainments they produce as adults. Superheroes are the start for most comics fans, but the field is so rich now that there’s literally comics for everyone and every taste. “I gotta pretty good idea for a comic,” Josh says, as we’re making Hawkeye and Green Arrow face off against each other on the shelf, so I tell him to pitch it to me. He’s seen enough people pitching me their stuff on the fly that he knows to start out with a good title and a decent hook. Which he does. His title’s awesome. Puts a thought in my head. His tagline is decent, too, but then he starts pitching me the story. It starts out good enough, but he eventually gets to “… so, see? The crime guys are all clones .” OK, I tell him, that’s where you go off the rails. You gotta not be so obvi ous. You gotta tell the one story that only you, can tell. Writers trot out the evil twins and the dopplegangers and the clones and whatnot when they’re vamping from one plot point or set piece to the next. “General Kenobi, “Yeah, ‘Mister King of Independent Comics,’ you’re a fanboy just like the rest of us,” he says.

211