The End of a Very Strange and Long Trip...

I’ve been told by a close friend of mine several times that I’m the most loyal person she’s ever met. I’m not exactly sure what that entails but on closer inspection I find it hard to disagree with her. Taking a step back, it seems that I have a trouble disconnecting myself from friends, family, sports teams, writers, artists, bands, creators in general, abstract concepts that I feel at some point in time I was close to (and because of this, I still intensely close to even to this day). This was no more apparent than when I stepped into the comic store yesterday.

For the last several months I’ve known exactly what October 7th was to me and what exactly I was waiting on. If someone had told me back in March of 1999 that I would have this feeling, I’m not sure how I’d react. But there I was standing in front at the rather large stack of Planetary #27 issues with a look on my face that would seem quite foreign to almost anyone who has known me at any point in my life (probably because no one ever sees me at these moments). But I couldn’t even wait to buy the issue before I started to skim through it and then it took me all of five minutes to find a coffee shop to sit down and read it.

A little back tracking to when this started. Looking back, I find it funny that there are certain things that I classify as my favorite…whatever, and most of them extend back to my sophomore year in high school. My three favorite albums come from that year (Alkaline Trio’s Goddamnit, Refused’s The Shape of Punk To Come, and The Get Up Kids’ Something To Write Homes About), my favorite film (Rushmore), and as it turns out my favorite comic (Planetary). I remember being absolutely psyched at the time to be picking up the first issue of Planetary (although I sort of remember being more excited about buying The Authority, I think I had a bigger attachment to Bryan Hitch at the time). For whatever reason, the previews just led me to believe that this is exactly what I wanted out of a vaguely super hero comic. Of course I didn’t realize how correct the statement was.

I have a belief that something can’t really be considered your favorite…whatever, unless you experience it in real time. What I mean by that is that you don’t quite have the same emotional attachment if you discover it awhile after it was first produced. It’s just not same connection if you’re not involved with something the moment it’s actually happening (you know, within reason). That’s not to say you can’t love something that was before your time, I just think there’s a disconnect there that doesn’t allow you to attach to it the same way as you would if it had just come out.

Planetary was that comic for me. It wasn’t recommended to me by anyone. It was just something that I was instinctively drawn to. Other comics that usually make it into my top 5 are Starman, Justice League International, Lucifer and Akira. With the exception of Akira (where I was denied access and was chomping at the bit to get my hands on the reissues), all of them were comics I’d heard about being great and decided to check them out. Lo and behold, I did like them. Planetary was different though.

The first couple of issues were released on time (which was originally supposed to be on a bi-monthly schedule) but then the delays started. Warren Ellis (the writer) became ill and his father passed away sometime in 2000 or 2001 (maybe not in that order, but they occurred one right after the other) which sent the comic into delay nightmares. At the same time John Cassaday (the artist), began taking on other projects because he had to support himself. When Ellis got back on his horse, Planetary was coming out whenever the two of them got the time to complete an issue. That never really deterred me. I bought every issue as it came out, sometimes waiting years between issues. It didn’t occur to me how much the comic meant to me until issue 16 came out (which at the time was the longest delay the comic had incurred). It had been well over a year since issue 15 had been released and when I got word that issue 16 had a release date, I went back and reread the back issues. I started picking up on all the subtleties again and how the art and words effortlessly painted a greater picture than either could do on their own. It didn’t hurt that issue 16 absolutely blew me out of the water with wire-fu pastiche. Ellis and Cassaday deftly went several wordless panels in one of the most breathtaking fight scenes I’d ever seen in a comic and they captured the final scene between two recurring characters’, Anna Hark and James Wilder, reunion lovingly and perfectly. It reminded me what was great about the comic and why I’d stuck with it and why that was going to continue for however long it took to finish the series (and there was a definitive end to the series, even at that point).

This brings me to the present. After ten years and seven months, Planetary has wrapped up its run at 27 issues (for those paying attention that’s 2.7 issues a year, much less than their originally planned bi-monthly schedule) and you know what, the wait and trip was absolutely worth it. The main story had been tied up in issue 26 and this was basically just an epilogue tying up the major loose end (which the characters had been actively mentioning for the last few issues anyway). But because this is Planetary it didn’t just tie up a loose end up also throws in several big ideas about a corner of science fiction they’d yet to cover: time travel. I had to read some of the pages a few times just to grasp the concepts that were being thrown out, but it’s all in depth and is nuanced enough that it never feels like a chore to get through. Despite what Ellis says, this comic means far too much to him to turn out an issue that hasn’t been held up to his highest standards. This could’ve been easily been tossed aside but the level of detail in the writing is there as it’s always been. And of course there’s John Cassaday’s art (and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Laura Martin’s coloring, which is stellar), who always seems to bring his “A” game. There isn’t much action in this story (and the series as a whole doesn’t have as much action as is commonly associated with super hero comics, but that’s just another aspect of its uniqueness), but the body language and facial expressions are used to perfection. In essence, it was exactly what I wanted out of the comic. Plus it ends on a pitch perfect note that sums up what this comic that is in and of itself a comic about comics and genre fiction is all about.

I know I haven’t been too descriptive about what this particular issue or the series as a whole is about, but that wasn’t really the point. To me this is absolutely what I wanted out of a comic and I can’t really imagine anything being better (granted, that’s completely subjective). Basically I just wanted to express my joy in something being completed and sticking with it, knowing that the end result was worth it. I would love for everyone to read Planetary, it’s not for everyone, but hopefully that my enjoyment is expressed over this and allows someone to take a chance on it (or rather to take a chance on something they know very little about it in general in the off chance that you might love it).

Steve's reason for this blog (not?) existing.

There are a few major reasons why I’m fairly certain the blog format is not best suited for me. As far as I’ve been able to determine at this point, when you’re writing a blog that’s not for profit (or for some larger purpose of a group), you’re writing mainly for yourself. This essentially means that you’re creating your own deadlines (as there is no one else to provide them for you) and keeping yourself motivated to write about whatever you find interesting. This presents an obvious problem for anyone who’s known me for longer than five minutes; I am terrible at keeping myself under those kinds of constraints. I am very good at motivating other people and keeping them focused (or at the very least keeping them in a positive mindset), but I am not the best person to keep myself motivated. I imagine this because I have a hard time being practical about blogs as there’s no tangible reward at the end of finishing each blog post or a group of blog posts.

Usually the people who write blogs about their own life either lead very interesting, off kilter lives or are self centered enough to think that their lives are interesting enough to read about (or possibly both). I don’t particularly like talking about myself. Every time I sit down and write something, it’s a bit of a struggle because I’ll ask every few minutes why anyone would find what I’m writing about interesting because ultimately I don’t think I lead a very interesting life and while I think I have some interesting thoughts, I don’t necessarily think they have enough substance to them to really take up much space. This is why my last attempt at a blog failed (plus I did end up hating the title).

The other reason the last blog failed was because I’m stubborn. What I wanted to do with the last post there was to cover the most recent volume of Scott Pilgrim, but I ran into some snags along the way. The biggest one being that I wasn’t quite sure how to approach Scott Pilgrim but I was determined that the next post was going to be about Scott Pilgrim.

The reason I hit a snag is because I was having a hard time relating the idea that Scott Pilgrim is a zeitgeist for the post Generation X generation. A generation up until this point doesn’t really have much in the way of a definitive story told about the generation by someone among the generation, but I feel once completed Scott Pilgrim will be it (although I don’t expect anyone to actually agree with me, which is always part of the problem with this whole endeavor). The hang up basically arose when I tried to define the generation as I felt that it was crucial to do this to explain why Scott Pilgrim was important. This primarily impossible because as the generations go on and as they get more coverage, more contradictions arise about each and every generation. They used to be defined in generalities because no one really knew better and there wasn’t enough information out there to stray from those generalities (there also weren’t enough tangible choices in life for the majority of people to really make a difference). But as more information was presented and offered, it really became harder to define generations (although the need to define generations increased, go figure), so instead we get a bunch of vague definitions that don’t really make any sense to anyone who is remotely paying attention.

This brings us back to Scott Pilgrim. In the end it doesn’t really focus on any of those vague definitions but instead focuses on the lives of a middle 20s group living in a major city. Ignoring the difference in eras, this is something that doesn’t really change and despite differences on the surface, the overarching story encasing Scott Pilgrim is a timeless one. Which is ultimately why I feel it’s important to this generation, as it’s the first story being told that I’ve connected with in this (of course since reading Scott Pilgrim, (500) Days of Summer was released which also fills this void for me) and I really want to impress upon people that they should be reading this.

Of course there’s an ulterior motive to getting people to read (or at least be aware of it). Sometime next year (2010), a film based off the six volume comic is going to be released called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (named after the second volume). The film as a solid chance of being excellent as the director (Edgar Wright) and lead actor (Michael Cera) are both very good, as is the rest of the cast (or at least the ones who aren’t complete unknowns). I would like people to at least be aware of Scott Pilgrim ahead of time because (and this is rather selfish) it would be nice not have people ask me whether or not I was aware Scott Pilgrim was a comic by people who really ought to know me better. But as with everything, I don’t expect anyone to actually listen to me.

Steve starts a second blog...

So this is my second attempt at a blog. The first one wasn’t so much of a failure, as it was a poorly thought out miscalculation. This makes complete sense considering I painted myself into a bit of a corner by just deciding to focus strictly on specific aspects of culture and a very narrow brand of writing.

The reason it was a miscalculation was because I don’t particularly like talking about things in terms in reviews. If I’m talking about a movie, chances are whether it was good or not, while important to me, doesn’t hold much weight as far as discussion for me. What would’ve ended up happening was incredibly boring diatribes that I eventually would’ve hated writing (and well, I did hate writing about it). Also, it eventually left any sense of self out of the equation, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it takes something away from my voice if I don’t insert myself into the subject matter. And while that seems very much self involved, well, it makes for much more interesting reading because in the end I’m not trying to be objective about anything (I understand that this might contradict anything I said before).

So here we are blog part 2. I’m writing this thing for various reasons. One, because I feel like I need to get certain thoughts into some concrete form whatever they be. I lose a lot of ideas that I think are moderately interesting (of course I don’t expect anyone else to find these thoughts interesting or even read this thing, that is a prevailing theme of anything I write) and really want to stop doing that and it might give me the chance to bounce some ideas off of people (of course, no one’s going to read this, so that might be a moot point). Two, I really need to get this very loud voice of Kylan out of my head (which is slightly ironic because the only time Kylan becomes loud is when he’s talking nonsensically). He’s the only person that has been a constant proponent of me writing stuff down (and not in a fictional writing sense, because there are a few more people in that camp, which is quite baffling to me) or creating a blog for that matter (although I only know of two people who read the previous blog).

The basic premise of this blog is essentially a present tense memoir (or whatever), where I just talk about anything I damn well please (is it a premise to really declare that there is no premise?). I’m thinking this will open a little bit more doors for me because my main hope is that it will just get me more into a writing mood than I normally am (or rather to the point where I just stop doing plot outlines and actually get a story down, which would make a few people happy…at least until they actually read what I wrote). There’s a good chance that I’ll give everything up within a few weeks (just like last time). The difference is that I’ll be more inspired to pick things back up again without setting up any guidelines (as ill-defined as they maybe in the first place). A general warning though, this is going to be increasingly self indulgent and as anyone knows from hearing me tell a story, there will be plenty of name drops (and I do plan to create sort of a key to make things easier to follow because most people I know only know of each other peripherally). There’s also a very solid chance that this will end up killing me with people I know because I will ultimately treat this as something no one is actually reading (and I doubt that there will be anything to dissuade me from this thought). Also plan to see a number of errors within the text of each blog as I’m not all too concerned about whether the blogs are grammatically correct as much as I’m worried about the content (so never bother me about spelling mistakes or sentence structure). There are also going to be a liberal use of parentheses. So if you have a problem with that, this probably isn’t the place for you.

So sit back and enjoy what I think will be utter crap (I apologize for the lame URL).