Posted on by michaelwconrad

DOUBLE WALKER/DARK HORSE

I’ve returned to this place to write something a bit more meaningful than a witless tweet about something I hold so dear. For those who have seen fit to click the link and read these words, I appreciate you very much. I know that time is a great commodity in this age of endless entertainment options, so the fact that you’ve squared away a few moments for this is meaningful. I’ll attempt to be brief as a thank you.

DOUBLE WALKER is in comic shops this week, and will be in bookstores in early January. If you’re unaware, DOUBLE WALKER is a psychological/folk horror graphic novel I wrote for Noah Bailey to illustrate. We did so in cooperation with ComiXology Originals, where the book has lived on that platform for well over a year since, and will remain available there for digital readers. Now you can purchase the actual print artifact of our baby thanks to the good people at Dark Horse Comics.

When DOUBLE WALKER came to me I was in a dark place. Honestly, I’m no stranger to darkness, but with the approach of the pandemic I was feeling pretty poorly about my future in comics. I knew nothing would stop me from making comics, but I was preparing myself to lose whatever momentum I believed I had been building in the lead up to the release of the second book Noah and I had made. TREMOR DOSE (currently available through both ComiXology and Dark Horse) was a big swing for us, our first collaboration, and ultimately a book we both learned a lot during. We really hoped to broaden the audience as we continued to grow as creators, and further pursue something that balances entertainment and art. 

Noah and I are fairly self aware creators. We know that what we do will not please everyone, and that our names were unlikely to attract sales on their own, but we were convinced that we had produced a work that captured something special. Upon its release DOUBLE WALKER didn’t disappoint, spending a good amount of time at the top of the best sellers on ComiXology.

Now we finally get to share our story with the folks who haven’t accessed it in its digital form, and to please the folks who prefer physical media. 

In the lead up to DOUBLE WALKER’s digital release, several people we respect deeply shared some words about the book. Maybe these quotes will inspire you to check the book out if you’re on the fence…

“With Double Walker, Noah Bailey and Michael W Conrad have crafted an eerie folk-horror fairy tale of the darkest sort, tying ancient superstitions about the fae with modern fears of guilt, loss, responsibility and failure. Beautiful and moody art and smart characterization make this something you need to check out as soon as possible.” Trevor Henderson (Horror Artist, Creator of Siren Head)

“A stinging, slow-creep horror comic where the chills rain like a highland downpour.” Patton Oswalt (Minor Threats., Writer, Comedian)

“I’ve always loved fairy tales that are as messed up and frightening as the old folklore. DOUBLE WALKER is an expert piece of comic book horror, with stunning art, and a deep humanity grounding the horror. Do not miss this book!” James Tynion IV (Batman, Department of Truth)

“A flawlessly crafted and unassuming mingling of energies. They have induced a world of neo-folk horror that pleases me to no end.” Skinner (Artist, Writer, Adult Swim)

With only a few days left of 2022, DOUBLE WALKER in print is perhaps my most important contribution to comics this year. I’m VERY proud of the work I have done for the variety of other publishers I was lucky enough to work with over the past year, not the least of which being DC where I co-wrote no less than 26+ full comics, as well as a number of shorts, back ups, and specials. Hell, 2022 saw the anthology, SUPERMAN RED AND BLUE get nominated for an Eisner, and that was my first solo effort for DC! All of this is huge, and counts so much, but with DOUBLE WALKER, Noah and I were able to operate without any oversight at all. It is purely us, a pure offering. Love it or hate it, that’s a Conrad/Bailey joint, with lovely lettering by Taylor Esposito and design work from Kyle Arends. 

We owe the people at Dark Horse so much for bringing this book to the shelves, particularly Daniel Chabon, who has been a champion of our work over there for quite some time. At ComiXology Originals, of course we owe Chip Mosher a major thanks for being the visionary willing to give our offbeat work a home, and to Bryce Gold for being there every step of the journey, and continuing to believe in our strange contributions to the line he now heads up.

I enter 2023 with the same degree of uncertainty that I have with every shifting year for quite some time now. I am coming to understand that this is simply my reality as a freelancer. I don’t know if publishers will continue to work with me. I don’t know if editors and creative teams trust in my ability to continue to tell stories worth investing in. I’d be lying if I said such concerns were irrelevant, but I remain committed more so now than ever before to the simple truth that I will neither stop, nor will I ask for permission to begin.

Here’s what seems certain for 2023:

-I will continue to co-write several projects for DC Comics, and I am always in pursuit of more work with them.

-X-O MANOWAR will debut in the spring, and will present a very different story than anything Becky and I have co-written to date. I think you’re gonna love it.

-I will continue to work with Noah, and several others on creator owned material.

-I will continue to seek homes for stories with a variety of publishers I respect.

-I will be putting in extra hours on screenwriting, and reapproaching novel ideas that seemed too daunting a year ago.

-I will make sure to completely produce and self publish at least one thing all on my own. This is a process I have a love/hate relationship with, but it’s an important reminder to myself. 

Naturally my capacity to achieve these things are largely shared with external actors, many of whom remain a bit mysterious to me, and some even seem confused about what I wish to do. I suspect this is a commonality among comic creators… I’m a poor salesman, I prefer to just commit to the work rather than figure out how to snakecharm someone into permitting me to do what I can do all on my own. I say that with little ego, I’m not proud of my deficits, but I can’t be ignorant of them either… Maybe my resolution should focus on that…

The point is, it’s currently 4:16AM and I have been unable to find sleep prior to typing this. I needed to get something out… To say thank you. I needed to express the underlying humanity and anxiety that’s so often unseen when consuming the stories I make. Ideally, you’ll show up because you know that when my name is on a book, it means that you enter into it with the understanding that I gave it my best. I wish to entertain you, to provide a place of controlled introspection, and dreaming, to allow both an escape and an embrace. My wish is to connect briefly through the pages, to share a moment.

Here’s to many more of these moments. Here’s to us. 2023 will, almost certainly, present great and terrible moments, let’s meet them as they come and find bliss whenever we can. 

Posted on by michaelwconrad

Sisyphus, The Stone, and The Hill

It feels pretty good to have the word out that Becky and I will be taking over writing the monthly Wonder Woman series as of issue 770. We’re really excited to be working on such an iconic character, one that in many ways is foundational to the entire DCU. This has been a flying leap for me, and for what it’s worth I’m gonna share my version of the story of how it came to pass. This is really just me looking out my own window, I’m not trying to offend or misrepresent anyone; so just keep in mind this stuff is all slanted through my perspective.

MARCH 2020- 

What a shit month. We had just done what turned out to be our only convention of the entire year (Richmond Galaxy Con). After this we were to shoot up to Portland for a few days and then up to Seattle for Emerald City, one of our favorite shows to do. 

At the end of 2019 I felt like I had a good head of steam with Tremor Dose making big noise at ComiXology Originals, our issue of Doom Patrol with its great reception, as well as the Tomb of Dracula short featured in Marvel’s Bizarre Adventures. I entered into 2020 with a game plan and was prepared to spend the first quarter of the year doing the dance with publishers in pursuit of more writing work. Some prospects were already in place, and it was time to lock them in.

Emerald City in particular was critical to this. I had scheduled meetings with a number of smaller publishers and was prepared to wow them with my big ideas and hopefully end up with something on the shelves with one or two of them. I scrambled through my contacts in the lead up to the show and had basically filled my downtime with plans of coffee meetings, dinners, and mid show sneak-aways to discuss what they want as a company and how I could be the person to do it.

You know where this is going.

Covid prevented all of that and damn near broke us all. The timing couldn’t have been worse. We didn’t do ECCC but we still managed to get to PDX where, still not realizing how bad shit was gonna get, we were able to see friends and meet with Image publisher Eric Stephenson. It was the last great trip we were to take together in 2020, and contributed heavily to my initial depression.

Everyone wants an Image book. Most don’t get the opportunity to sit across from the guy who can make it happen. I showed him some of my work and he seemed receptive, and we promised to follow up in the subsequent weeks… you know, the weeks where the world stopped turning, and the entire industry in question nearly died? The weeks during which we cloistered ourselves away in hopes of stopping the virus? Those weeks during which I personally lost several friends to the despair of it all… remember those weeks?

So the follow up didn’t exactly happen, it was very much a wait and see as the dust settled on the memory of the excitement that I once had. I had slipped back down the hill, and the distance between the late 2019 successes and my aspirations at the time grew long and felt invalid.

In effort to make this readable I’ll skip over the stuff that saved me. I’ve spoken about the real savior that came in the form of the work on Skeleton Crew for Cinder Cone Games, and pushing myself to write and draw a few comics on my own. These things are incredibly fulfilling but I knew that it wasn’t my future. I doubt anyone will ever hire me to write a game again (not for lack of quality, but more for lack of inroads in that industry) and that I may never develop an audience that wants to see my art on a consistent enough basis to live off of it. These projects were not long term solutions, but they were medicine for my broken outlook. These things saved me.

MARCH 2019-

We went to WonderCon without a table. Yes, they would have loved to have Becky be a big part of the show, but really we just went to hangout. Becky did a couple panels and maybe a signing, but we wanted to get to LA to visit the DC offices and to see friends. The trip was outstanding in many ways, we not only toured DC, but also BOOM!, and Humanoids. We got to connect with friends, run around haunted hotels, visit the DC archives (absolutely mental) and generally have a blast. At the convention we were able to bother creators and dig through the “old town” back issue bins in search of rare Conan editions. It was fun in a time when Covid wasn’t even a word.

I bring this up because this is where we bumped into this guy Jamie S. Rich. Here is where the story gets strange because on the off chance that Jamie reads this I’ll be mortified… but this is how it went…

At the end of the show we bumped into Cecil Castelluci who had been working on Batgirl with Jamie, the two were to meet at the hotel bar to chat and have a cheeky drink. She invited us along, moments later I was seated across from the (at the time) editor of the Bat Family of books at DC.

Now, I’m not TERRIBLE with these kinds of interactions, but I do get excited. This excitement often manifests as finding myself either speaking too much or too little. In this case I’m not sure exactly where I fell on that spectrum, but I don’t think I was exactly the most charming person Jamie had ever met.

Jamie is cool. He looks cool, acts cool, and oftentimes folks like that will throw me off, for the same reasons they might throw you off. Not only was this guy in a seat of power, but also he’s more charismatic, funny as hell, and most importantly he has NOTHING to prove. Meanwhile I’m stewing in juice hoping to make a good impression on this guy who holds the keys. I don’t know that he was aware that I’m a creator, and I wasn’t trying to pitch him on anything, but it would be a half truth to say I wasn’t looking for any opportunity to make my doals known. I kind of wish I was just like “Hey! I’m a comic creator and I’d love to connect later about some ideas I have!” This would have broken the tension and given him the opportunity to ignore any emails that might follow; like any good editor!

Anyway, I didn’t- Becky did mention it toward the end. She brought up our DC trip and how we lightweight pitched a XXXXXXXXXX book. She reminded him that our Doom Patrol book was initially run through him. He was cool about it, but as the bar time was coming to a close he picked up the tab. I insisted on paying my own way and he said something that haunted me for the next year. It was a VERY dry joke, and one that was so true I couldn’t help but feel stung by it.

“Nah, it’s cool man, ride those coattails!” He said it with a deadpan that had me ruminating on how I am perceived, and allowed me to sink even deeper into my fears of being seen as something other than a legitimate creator.

SOMEWHERE IN THE MIRE 2020

I was nearing the end of my work on Skeleton Crew when Becky came into the room and said that she had just gotten an email from DC. She had been asked to write a Midnighter thing for this even called Future State. I was stoked for her immediately, I love Midnighter. She then hit me with “They specifically asked if you’d like to co-write, they must have liked what we did with Doom Patrol!”

I didn’t believe her at first and asked to see the email, sure enough “they” did, and it had been Jamie S. Rich who had made the call and sent the email. I was flabbergasted, I thought he HATED me, or at very least saw me as some barnacle on the side of the SS CLoonan!

I knew what their gig was, my paranoia speaking to me saying “They’ve asked after you because they know she’s more likely to take the job to help Michael.” This machiavellian scheme may or may not be of my own imagining, but I didn’t care. I was getting another shot at DC during the height of Covid!

I immediately set to work crafting an idea that would allow us to explore our interests while bringing forth a Midnighter story worth reading. We created something wholly unexpected by the editors and I really believe that this is what brought what would follow. I was a bit aggressive in video conferences, polite, but I didn’t bother to hide my drive. When we chatted with the whole Superman team that Jamie was now shepherding, I was ecstatic to find that our ideas for Midnighter would inform the work of our peers. We created a big mess, and intentional mess, a mess that everyone seemed to want to contribute to.

After turning in those scripts we were hit with another offer.

“Would you two wanna tell a story about Wonder Woman wayyyyy in the future?”

This was a no brainer, it took us almost no time to submit our idea for Immortal Wonder Woman and I’m not playing when I say it’s an Eisner level book. Anyone who sleeps on this WILL be hearing about it and will be tracking it down. The only problem with Immortal is that it wasn’t enough! We fell in love with telling Diana stories and wanted more. Our editors Jamie, Brittany, and Bixie casually asked if we would like to tell more, so of course we said yes!

NOVEMBER 2020

We were asked to participate in CCXP Worlds, one of the biggest conventions in the… uh- worlds. Becky and I along with Jen Bartel, artist of Immortal Wonder Woman were to appear on a digital panel along with the other Wonder Woman teams to hype the Future State event. Moderated by Jamie himself, this would air in early December and serve to provide a bit of insight on what we had planned for Diana, Yara, and Nubia. Prior to starting the panel Jamie said that they would be announcing that Becky and I were the new writing team on Wonder Woman and that we should keep that quiet until the panel went live. I didn’t really understand the full extent of this in the moment.

It was only later that I realized what had been obvious to everyone but me… we were the writers of the Wonder Woman book. Like… the series… during the year she turns 80. We were there. I am part of the mythology now.

NOW 2020

I had him all wrong. In getting to know Jamie through our efforts to make cool comics I have discovered he is anything but rude. He IS  smart as a whip, and at times scary. He’s also kind and thoughtful, and someone who really is trying to make people feel at home in their professions and allowing talent to explore what they are capable of.You know, he might have meant it- the coattails thing, but it wouldn’t be untrue, but it isn’t really an insult. A coattail only lasts as long as the person riding it doesn’t ruin everything. From my position I was able to play a role in getting us going on an A List book at a premier publisher. We’ll see how you like Midnighter and Immortal Wonder Woman, after those I suspect that I’ll feel a little less like an imposter and more like who I am. A regular guy with a passion for telling stories.

Posted on by michaelwconrad

Bad Advice.

I have posts coming about Wonder Woman and Midnighter and all the excitement I have about those projects, but I figured it might be a good time to talk about something that has bothered me for years. I’m not going to include names because the players involved are insignificant. I am only able to see this now, because of the confidence afforded through the forward momentum of my writing. There were long stretches of time where stuff like what I’m about to share really bothered me. If anything I’d like to think that the pain that comes from striving has made me only less likely to push that pain along to others.

It was maybe 8 years ago, I was very early in my efforts to self publish comics and had formed a collective called Mystery School Comics Group. The purpose of the group was to create the illusion of legitimacy, to give myself and the others involved a sigil under which to build our resumes, and mostly because it pleased me to do so. Early on it was myself, my brother Winston (who designed much of the imagery still in use), along with our friends Justin McElroy and Jef Overn. We had others jump in and out, but really that was the roster. We all tried our hands at writing and drawing with varied results, but it was our enthusiasm that fueled the whole thing. While sales were never great we weren’t in the practice of keeping count, we were there for the passion of doing it.

Part of the fun, but also part of the struggle was getting accepted into conventions. Most of these charged a lot, but they were also very choosy about who they would allow to table. I remember sending countless applications and only hearing back from a select few. When we would do shows it was always a party. We would get a hotel room and make a whole thing out of it. Nothing nefarious, just a couple dudes trying to sell comics and zines, drinking too much at the hotel bar, and retiring to the hotel room to shared beds and bad reality tv. None of us had interest in much beyond sharing our work, checking out the work of others like us, and spending time doing something that was ultimately quite costly but fun. Between the tables, the room, the tab, and all the comics we would buy we would VERY rarely even break even, most often taking a loss. No one cared. We were happy.

Around this time there was this influential comics creator who was well known for hopping on a soapbox and telling everyone the RIGHT way to do things. He was in our orbit as he had expressed some interest in Justin’s work, and rightfully so, Justin is a beast. This creator in question once again undertook to deliver unsolicited advice on a thread that several of us were participating in on an indie creators group on social media. Someone outside of our group had lamented the high cost of tables at shows and was asking for advice as to how to deal with this. Several from my group chimed in about the value of collective investment in projects, understanding that loss is almost guaranteed, and how we go about feeling ok about what others might see as a something less than successful.

So this established creator pops onto the thread and basically is like “If you can’t make money at a con you shouldn’t do them.” This might seem like sane advice, but we took it a bit like “If you fall off of a skateboard while attempting a new trick, stop skateboarding.” We said as much, without any disrespect, and were met with a really aggressive response from the dude in question.

“Comics aren’t for everyone, if you can’t make money that’s saying something, it’s saying they aren’t any good. Good comics sell, bad ones don’t… this is tough for some people to understand. If you do a convention and can’t make money you might wanna look at doing something else with your time.” I’m not exaggerating, this is almost word for word what he wrote. I remember my brother being like “Yo, fuck that guy.” But we all made excuses for him, and defended his stance by reworking the message to feel less gross. It turns out my brother was just the only one among us who wasn’t starstruck by some passing interest from someone in the industry.

This guy turned out to be a real shit. A couple years later it became public knowledge that he was a fucking creep. While we were losing money at conventions, he was using some of those same places to harass women. While we were drinking budget beers in the budget inn, he was using the perception of authority he carried to manipulate and deceive. This information wouldn’t come out until years later, I wish we had known it at the time, it would have been easier to shrug off his dumb comments.

Anyway, we kept it up, but the damage had been done. We couldn’t shake the nagging self doubt he had inflicted on the group. We didn’t slow down because of what he said, but we weren’t exactly empowered by it either. When you’re striving toward a goal the LAST THING someone should do is suggest that you aren’t growing, and that the struggle isn’t worth it.

This kind of gatekeeping bullshit has been the bane of my creative life. It was like this in music, and to see it in comics as well is incredibly disappointing. Art and storytelling serve a lot of purposes for folks, for me at the time it was giving me a reason to dream. I was working in a very taxing field, I had stopped playing music (unable to find time with the kind of work I was doing) and comics were my escape. I found myself dreaming of some of the things I get to do now, and really that memory is so strong, and so close, I don’t see how anyone can get anywhere in comics and manage to forget the fight. Maybe it’s easier for folks who have an art style that immediately grabs the attention of publishers? Maybe this creator never had the kind of struggle we had? Or maybe he had supportive voices in his life rather than the flat disinterest or discouragement most of us face?

With my achievements sometimes I fantasize about telling off doubters from those times. I daydream of my work being celebrated in the faces of those who didn’t believe in me. I want them to know that I kick ass, and I want them to feel ashamed for missing that. Of course this is the wrong way to engage with growth as an artist, but I’d be lying if I claimed to never have thought such things. 

I temper this egotistical thinking by reminding myself that I’m extremely lucky. I have been granted access that few manage, I have been encouraged by more folks over the past few years than I have deserved, and maybe most of all I’m thankful that I am the kind of person who doesn’t give up easily. I’ve had more dark nights of the soul than I care to admit, and it has really added gas to the tank. In many ways I feel like these are the last days I will be able to work with the vigor required to get where I wanna go and I don’t want to miss my chance. The hardship reminds me that the stuff I get sore about is much closer to my dream than the previous concerns.

This all comes to mind when I see how folks engage online today. Things have become even more aggressive, dismissive, and rude by orders of magnitude. I see people take shots at peers for sport, and grind their heels into those “beneath” them. I see putting on airs of superiority that’s almost laughable, but not entirely, because I know for those on the receiving end it can be a real wound. I’ve been wounded before, and will be wounded again, seeing it happen to others sucks.

So I try to be kind and to share the very little I know. In truth there isn’t a huge gap between the most established folks in the comic industry and those losing money at shows. We’re all just making things and hoping they make others happy. 

Not long ago I offered advice to folks looking to self publish. I had 2 individuals take me up on it. One was not motivated, the other dismissed my advice by saying he “wanted to do it for real.” Two polar opposite ends of the equation, both completely understandable, both as right as they are wrong. The lesson was mine, I can’t show others the path, that’s for them to discover. Their path will be invisible to me, occulted by my own experience. I’ve found all I can do is not stand in anyone’s way, to welcome them to this world with stories of my own, and to hear theirs with unbiased ears.

We need each other, we always have. Maybe when we realize this people will be less concerned about status and more concerned about the responsibilities we often neglect in pursuit of feeling important.

Posted on by michaelwconrad

What do I know about immortality?

So here we are, a handful of days following the announcement that I will be part of the creative teams for DC Future State “Immortal Wonder Woman” as well as “Midnighter” and I wanted to share the story about how these things came to be and some reflections regarding them.

At the beginning of 2020, I, like many creators, felt like the future was mine to take. I was to attend several conventions, notably one of my favorites, ECCC in Seattle where I was to meet with a number of upstart publishers that are currently the source of many of your favorite books. I had my foot in the door to work on an IP that is super near and dear to my heart, and I was beginning to think I could wave my hand and make things happen. “Doom Patrol” and our “Tomb of Dracula” story in Marvel’s “Bizarre Adventures” seemed to have captured the imaginations of readers and “Tremor Dose” my OGN at ComiXology Originals was getting more than its share of attention. 2020 was mine to shape and define.

Covid fucked up those plans, as well as the plans of everyone I know. Everything shut down, doors swung closed, and the thing I had spent years of my life striving toward fell into a deep set relief on the wall I had battered myself against. I wasn’t back to square one, but this was a major wound that would take the better part of the year to heal from.

So, I tried to do the thing we all promised ourselves we would do. I made stuff. In the first two months of Covid I made two comics while working on a video game. I was really proud to have done those books but they made it very clear to me that while I had an audience, it wasn’t growing much at all. I spent too much time wondering how one develops and expands an audience. It remains a mystery to me, but I do know that it took a bit of a toll on me creatively. You see, I’m used to this kind of shit. I played music for many years and most of the bands I played with made it RIGHT THERE to the cusp of being something people were aware of. We worked with small labels, toured extensively, recorded out of our pocket, played with bands that would shape the face of music to come and yet… we were always too early or too late, or fate would pull our card and remove us from the equation.

Becky will tell you, I didn’t believe “Doom Patrol” was gonna happen, even after being paid. I’ve been so programmed for disappointment that I figured that surely something would kill the project before it ever made it to the stands. I feared Gerard would decide it didn’t work, or that the editors didn’t want to risk their name on someone like me. When word came that Young Animal and the rest of the imprints over at DC were gonna fold I was gutted. Months had passed and I was sure nothing would come of the work we had done. Thankfully it did happen and I was able to put one up in the win category. That issue of “Doom Patrol” will forever be something that I’m grateful for, it’s quite possibly the moment when I rediscovered my capacity to hope for the best.

I can’t say that hope is always a good thing. Conceptually it works, certainly for folks in dire situations hope is often a critical component to making it through. But sometimes hope will lead to expectation, and expectation is the keystone to entitlement. While I pride myself on being humble (like the most humble, wayyyyy more humble than you could even dream of… so humble it likely deserves an award or a yearly parade), like everyone else I feel like the work I do is often overlooked and marginalized. This leads to bitter feelings and an endless quest to feel seen. I had crossed over to a foul place of feeling like I was due greater attention and more opportunities. I say this in effort to be honest, knowing full well that this is a sickening way to be, but our secret truths are often repugnant and can only be discussed openly when we see how wrong we were.

Hope isn’t the bad guy, but it’s likely to bring along his good homie Ego to the party without asking if it’s cool. Ego will always bring his cousin Disappointment, who in turn will invite his brothers Bitterness and Grief. Before you know it they start bringing in more of their people and what was intended to be a small gathering of good folks turns into the kind of rager that requires the host to secretly call in the cops to break up. We never wanna see the cops, but we don’t want the responsibility of tempering our own feelings and expectations so we put it in the hands of someone else. Editors, publishers, people who should know who I am because I wrote a hell of an issue!

I felt like I was disappearing. I’ve repeated that a lot over the past few months, a kind of fucked up way of displacing the blame. I had gotten wrapped up in my own expectant glory and was gulping down my own cyanide laced Kool-Aid. I was dumb to do so, I had ignored finding balance and feeling gratitude and had lept into feeling due more.

I share this shame as if I was stomping about with big demands, which isn’t the case. These feelings were internalized and I conducted myself in a more idealized manner. I would share the truth about how blessed I felt, and withhold the parts about wanting more. Facing myself now I understand that this kind of thing is very human and very normal. We are all seekers, even with plenty we want more, an overabundance, and even then we will seek. This is a critical element of abuse and if you don’t have moments of reflection such as this you will never be charitable, understanding, and compassionate. You will become a hoarder of emotions and commodities. You will become a dragon nested on a mountain of ill gained wealth and feelings that have been so tamped down they have become crystalline vestiges of the qualities that you have sacrificed in pursuit of the unattainable.

Do I still strive toward something greater? Of course! It’s fun to chase this vaporous idea of success, even as it changes form and deceives you at every turn. My father is an avid fisherman and he would be the first to tell you that a bass on the line is only a small part of the allure of it. It’s the ritual, the escape, the mystery of what waits in the darkened waters. The good stuff swims deep as David Lynch says, and the good stuff is only good when it’s rare and elusive. This is true in love and life and most certainly with regard to big creative goals.

Months into the Quarantine I was no longer feeling like I could keep it up. I wanted to keep making things but it felt unimportant. In addition to the disease we were seeing all kinds of dramatic and painful things happening day after day. My little dreams didn’t matter. Comics didn’t matter. I didn’t matter. In many ways this still rings true, but I worked to redevelop my relationship with the process and that continues to this very moment.

Out of the blue an email came through from the most unlikely editor. This editor is someone who I thought hated me, or at least saw me as some kind of abscess. The email specifically asked about me and my interest in writing a Midnighter book with Becky.

This was a no brainer of course, YES I am interested in writing Midnighter! I’m no fool, I recognize that Becky is the target here, but goddammit my name was there too… I was asked for! I felt like a polaroid slowly revealing its subject. I had been seen, however vaguely, and I was again visited by Hope. This time I was prepared and demanded that we meet in a public space and I let my loved ones know where I’d be and if I didn’t return to send help.

Immediately I knew what I wanted to do with Midnighter and I think my enthusiasm was appreciated. After a video conference with some of the other Future State teams I felt validated knowing that these ideas had inspired them to connect with us further to tie the pieces together. Not long after this the Goddess herself presented.

When we got asked to do the “Immortal Wonder Woman” book I was more prepared for the good feelings. I was riding high on Midnighter, and I was ready to simply smile and nod and commit to telling the best damn Wonder Woman story I could. It all came together quickly and since completing it I feel confident in saying it is going to shake people to their core. Between the recent work on Midnighter and Wonder Woman I feel like I have made the most of this opportunity and I have been a valuable asset to the team. I cannot wait for y’all to see what we’ve done on both of those books.

After these things come out I don’t expect anything. I hope that people like it. I hope I have done my editors proud, and that we’ve given the readers something worthy of attention. I hope that I find other opportunities as a result, but these are the limits of Hope this time. I have a healthier relationship with it and I feel proud to have killed that greedy nag that it can become. 

I’m one of several newer voices in Future State and I’ve seen some strange things as a result that I would like to comment on in closing. Something that has kind of bothered me is the way people have responded to some of my peers on social media as if they stumbled onto a loose bit of cash tossed down the street by some zephyr beyond their control. This is strange because getting a job is never like winning the lottery, especially in cases such as this. The folks who have contributed to the strange tapestry of Future State have busted their asses off in ways that some cannot imagine. Indeed, maybe some can, because it is this kind of heartache and soul crushing rejection and radio silence and perseverance required that keeps some from pursuing this kind of work. Even in my case as a co-writer, if what I contributed wasn’t up to snuff I would be cut. Plain and simple, this isn’t luck, it’s the product of a lot of sleepless nights, self doubt, and a willingness to walk through fire; and that’s just to get to the dance. We will only know if the pain was worth it when we are done and our self assessment is balanced against the response of the readership and critics. In the meantime we wait and develop stomach issues. We question our own value, right to the core, bypassing the work entirely. If you don’t like what we’ve done it hurts, I don’t care what anyone else says.

That aside, it’s been really neat seeing people get excited for this event. There is so much good stuff going on and it’ll be really thrilling when January and February roll around and the most important ingredient of the creative process is added. You.

Posted on by michaelwconrad

24 Hour Comic Reflections

This past Saturday, October 3rd, 2020 I did my second 24 Hour Comic and was again successful. My story, as per the rules, was completely unplanned, unprepared, and made up on the fly. It’s 24 pages (and a cover) and this one contains over 90 panels (there is no panel goal as far as I know… just wanted to brag on that bit). I began my quest at 11:30am CST and finished the following morning at around 6:15am CST. During this time I updated periodically on IG Live and spoke with friends who were attempting to do the same challenge.

The 24 Hour Comics Challenge was created some years back by Scott McCloud who you know from his award winning “Understanding Comics” a book that has informed my understanding of the medium since I first picked up a copy in the mid 90’s, before I ever considered that one day I would be doing this stuff for a living.

I’ll spare you the fine details of the 24 Hour Comic origin and rules, but I encourage you to look these things up as they may inspire you to make your own attempt, or to modify the challenge to meet your needs. When I’ve done this challenge I have been by the book. I see the rules as the definition of a challenge… I mean, any diversion would certainly make it less challenging and what would be the point in that? This said, I levy no judgement on those who chose to modify, some folks are just plain less masochistic and prideful than I am. 

I do take pride in having done this. The freakshow nature of the challenge appeals to me, I live a pretty easy life in many ways and opening myself up to the brutality of a sprinting marathon of sequential art and storytelling is a good shot of the good stuff. As a freelancer I spend a lot of time in my head wondering where the next job is, who will collaborate with me, and what the next story I need to tell is. This challenge answers all of these questions with a dispassionate list of rules and forces me to get going even when the whole thing seems (at times) to be a fool’s errand.

The hardest bit this year was the first few hours. I had stayed up late the night prior catching up with friends on a lengthy phone call; full disclosure, I drank a bunch of beer in the process. I don’t know what it is, I like to drink beer and laugh with friends even when I know it will create another obstacle the following day. I was aware of my choices and I was willing to endure this stuff to be present for my friends.

Thankfully I wasn’t too low energy. I’m used to working on a less than ideal sleep schedule, so I have learned how to rally and know that coffee is my friend. The real struggle in those early hours was determining what kind of story to tell and reconciling that I wasn’t going to be able to draw it the way I prefer to. I’m never super precious about my art, but the nature of the challenge requires that one presses on even when knowing you kinda phoned it in here or there, or should have spent more time working out the composition of a page or panel. This kind of charge toward the goal changes the creative process quite a bit and I learn a lot every time. One of the great lessons, hard as it is to face, is that my best work isn’t too far removed from my bad work. I think this is because I am very much a student of visual art more than I am an artist in many ways. I’m happy with the fact that I become a better artist every day, and I can say in all humility that I prefer my own work to many who exhibit greater confidence than I can muster.

The big hurt is not being able to tell some stories because it would require a degree of precision or research that the challenge time wouldn’t allow. I needed to set my story well away from something recognized as “our world” so that I would not be held to, or hold myself to, any of the rules associated with such a mundane setting. I think I was quickly able to convey this by making the lead character have elven ears- bang! Subtle cue and away we go!

I decided that the best way to tell the story would be for me to quickly write down some notes I wanted to hit and figure out how to make that flow through the 24 pages. I jotted down some blocks and began, without any idea at all of how I would end the story. I knew it was about a guy who decided he would be king. I knew that the story would center on his efforts to please everyone, so he embarks on a journey to collect information from a variety of the inhabitants of this strange world. I didn’t know how to give that idea value, I just knew that at the end I had a few pages left to close out the account and to try to make some kind of statement, or to leave a particular tonality with the reader. I didn’t plan this out because I knew this was where I would get stuck in the weeds and end up falling behind on myschedule.

Plunging into it I HATED it. I was ready to stop, admit defeat, and go play some video games or faceplant on the bed and feel sorry for myself. I wanted to shitcan the whole thing, post to social media that I’m a fraud and a blowhard, and just disappear. Again it was pride or vanity that prevented me from doing so, but I wasn’t happy with what I was producing and I felt woefully alone and exposed.

I came to realize that I do this stuff for a number of reasons. Some are very petty, like feeling somehow elevated because I don’t personally know anyone who has been able to complete this challenge in recent years. Again, pretty weak, but I also like knowing that some see this as impossible, irresponsible, or just plain dumb. With it being October, folks are reminding each other that Inktober type challenges are super hard and that it’s ok to skip days or whatever… I’ve never been of that opinion. YOU can do what thou wilt, but when I take on a challenge I do it, and do it by the book… that’s what it’s all about… not to prove it to you but to prove it to myself.

I fail regularly. I’ve become so well acquainted with failure that I am at risk of accepting something as a failure before it’s even begun. I’ve been a frequent victim of a self-defeatist attitude because I put myself out there a lot. I take shots at things I have no business attempting, so I accept failure pretty readily. Like everyone I am far more likely to share the shiny successes over the heaping mounds of ruin that threaten to define my creative life. THIS challenge however was something I could control. I CAN BE ON FOR 24 HOURS. 24 hours isn’t much, we can suffer and push and go and get the thing done. It may not be pretty, and it may not feel good, but this was something that I could show agency over. A 24 Hour Comic has no gatekeepers. A 24 Hour Comic can’t be assaulted by critique because it is, by its nature, something that any critic would likely fail to do. Those who would throw stones would be unlikely to ever attempt such a thing because they’re too busy trying to find funny ways to shit on other people out there hustling.

In these ways the 24 Hour Challenge provides a feeling of freedom and a return to the exuberance and excitement of PURE CREATIVITY that is unencumbered by fears and happens without focus onn impressing anyone, creating a saleable product, or even exhibiting any talent. The talent on display is self discipline and willpower. As I came upon these thoughts I was able to rally in the 3rd or 4th hour and start to feel good about what I was producing and the path that I had chosen to take.

Once I found that peace I was more at ease. I was still not completely confident that I would make something worth all the trouble, but again the “trouble” was the damn point of the exercise. Could I choke down this meal of self doubt and still manage to clean my plate? Could my efforts here inform future struggles about my willingness to grind and to create, to get through tight spots? I didn’t have a clear answer to those questions but I continued on and as I did so I had other strange thoughts that were both egotistical and self deprecating… as ya do.

I can’t deny that the egotistical thoughts included wack stuff like “I’ll show them!” and “Behold my (dumb) might!” and even more thoughtful but equally self congratulatory thoughts like “Maybe this is inspirational for someone?” Along with these thoughts were the negative little vampiric ideas and voices that want to remind me that I’m a hack and an imposter. The voices would say that I lack fundamental skills, and that projects like this are a smokescreen to obscure that. That this challenge created the illusion of progression while ultimately doing nothing but perhaps drumming up some attention. I also wondered if this book would stand up against “The Watts”, my book from the year prior that has quite surprisingly found a nice little audience of folks who seemed to enjoy what I had done.

Discovering a middle ground between self admiration and self loathing is a huge part of my story as not only a creator, but as someone walking the earth. That story is writ daily through my actions and thoughts, and I’m trying real hard to be fair to myself and to the world around me. Completing the challenge would not be a measure of my value, it wouldn’t change the way I am seen or see myself, it wouldn’t legitimize me or elevate me, it was something I was doing because I wanted to see what would happen. What happened was this meditative introspection that no one, my partner included, knew was going on. I was facing myself and all the gross and misguided ways I think of myself and my impact on the folks around me. I was humbled and made stronger, just a little bit, and I was happy to have found something to force me into real self examination.

We all wonder what others think about us. Some of these same egoic factors drive our thoughts, to the same degree of counter measures often find their way into that as well. We feel hated by those who love us and to be loved by those who don’t care. We seek approval from those who would withhold such things, and completely ignore those who think we’re great. This is the silly nature of affirmation seeking that has ruined countless people who would be just fine if they chose to see things as they are.

The way I see it most folks are struggling with their own wounds, and triage dictates that they address this first. Unfortunately from the moment we are able to say “I am.” we begin bleeding and it never stops. We pack gauze into the wounds and petition the great invisible powers to save us, but it’s damn near impossible to take our eyes off of our own desperation. We will withhold care at times in a misguided attempt to not cheapen our efforts, or to protect ourselves from the embarrassment of giving something to an unwilling recipient. We are so fucking scared for ourselves that we struggle to see that not only are we being neglectful of those who need us, but we become so preoccupied with finding life support that we fail to see the forest through the trees. The people who back us up become translucent, sometimes dismissed or explained away with the flawed, damaged logic of someone whose fears have taken the wheel. We lose sight of what we can give and what we’re being given. We can’t expect to be celebrated, the party doesn’t need to be cancelled because it’s already been happening and we’ve been sleeping through it. There will never be enough cake, and when you do get a piece you’ll eat it so greedily it’s as if it was never even there.

Becky went to bed awhile after midnight. She didn’t want me to go it alone, but was exhausted. She was so sweet and so kind about making sure I had water and snacks and support that I damn near had to chase her from the room. Having ruminated on these ideas of support and ego and all that I was able to see how goddamn lucky I am to have someone who believes in me and is willing to let me know. I really hope that everyone has at least one person like that in their world, it makes all the difference.

As the hours grew small I was going at a much quicker rate. I had figured out where it was all heading, I had found a shorthand for representing the characters, and with the end in sight I found a second wind for that final dash. I’m not gonna delude myself into thinking that the final pages are some great display of my skills, but they work and before I knew it my story was told.

Finishing early is when you can find a new kind of guilt. This is the guilt of calling it done and getting some well earned sleep rather than going back and fixing stuff or adding some more details and background context. I didn’t give myself that hard time, as the process had in fact reminded me to cut myself some slack and to loosen up. I was delirious from the experience and ready to be done with it.

CLimbing into bed I briefly rolled around the thoughts that I had confronted during the process of the 24 Hour Challenge. I wanted these to be the last thoughts in my head as I fell asleep, because I knew without further meditating on such ideas I would surely return to old bad habits. The habits of self celebration over honest evaluation, and negativity over troubleshooting solutions. The habits of feeling invisible and unloved, and of course its ugly bedfellow that doesn’t allow me to celebrate the beauty and talents of others.

This challenge is hard. This thing isn’t for everyone, and I don’t think it’s meant to be. Conversely, it isn’t elite, or exceptionally more difficult than other things… it’s a tool that I welcome you to pick up and add to your personal creative utility belt. There is as much to be learned from this challenge in failing, or in deciding it isn’t for you as there is in its successful completion. I just wanted to put it out there, and to share the relationship that I have had with it.

When I finished the final page I immediately swore I was done with this challenge. I had again proven that I could do it, no need to go for it next year. Here I am just a few days out and I’m already reconsidering… This is why people climb mountains- sure they miss the view, but it’s that incline and the burning pain that brings them back.

Posted on by michaelwconrad

The Withered Edification of Time

     The meteor shower was much more than we had expected. I don’t know why these things always have to be scheduled for the small hours of the evening, but I can only assume that the inconvenience contributed to the dispassion I felt as we watched the sky fall.
     There was a lot of crying, failed  attempts to call loved ones in the city, prayers falling clumsily from faithless mouths. We were getting much more than expected. By this time the wine had run its circuit, at first filling me with a poetic vigor, retiring over the past hour as a dull veil on reality.
     The city burned in the distance, from on the hill we could feel the heat as the space rock found its home, smashing into the Wine Country lighting it ablaze. In that moment I remembered wishing for something like this, when I first met my husband. The scene was remarkably similar, we stayed up all night, climbed the hill to the clearing and watch the universe do something special. As we saw the uninspired twinkle of meteoric activity I called to them to crush us all, so I could die aware and accepting, ready to go before time took this brief window of joy away from us. The world didn’t end, the universe was just giving a wink, a little dramatic foreshadowing to this night. 
     The meteorologists really earned their pay earlier this week warning of the event, we were just young enough to appreciate a potentially world ending scenario. Watching the city burn was just the beginning, I knew from the reports that if there was to be a collision, the big one would follow in the coming days. This was the beginning and the end.
     As my husband wept I just stared onward, wondering how long it would all take,hating the anticipation. I wondered if it would come with the horrific clapping of the ocean tossed upon us, or a more insidious cloud of debris, slowly painting itself over the sun. I had hoped that it would come like a shot, planting itself square on our blanket while we stared to the sky wondering when it would all happen. As with so many dreams reality proved to be all too prepared to disappoint and what had been a simple request would be answered with a complicated series of other questions.
     I grabbed him and told him there was still a chance (lying) that this would be the extent of it, that the weatherman was hack and we all knew it. But he knew as well as I did that while the governments of the world downplayed the event as much as they could, all world leaders and great thinkers of the age had been oddly silent in the days leading up to tonight's show. They were without a doubt, sequestered away in underground bunkers thinking they can outwit nature’s effort to delouse this wretched planet.
     So many had chosen to run, jamming the roads out of town with their Beverly Hillbilly survival SUV’s thinking that they could make it if they just ran to the woods with a couple cans of Hormel Chili and a compass. I briefly considered the same before recalling a vivid dream I had as a child.
     My brother and I were playing in the backyard, when suddenly the midday sky popped, spilling black ink across the blue. It happened again and again, like drops of oil, spoiling the sky. 
     “RUN!” My brother screamed, and we did, cutting through neighbors yards in terror, until we both slowed our step, knowing the world was over, there was no safety to be found. We embraced and heard the whisper of death.   
     There was nowhere to run. I held my husband and stared at the burning city knowing my dream of a clean ending was gone. We would struggle, clinging to this rock that wanted nothing more than to wipe itself clean. I knew there were no words of comfort, there would be no eulogy, no remembrance, no wake. For us there would be only the miserable waiting game.
     We would spend the rest of our lives waiting to die, which made me reflect on my life before wondering how I ever found value in anything. I always knew how the story would end, as the final pages of this thing were being writ before my eyes. I couldn’t help but feel cheated. There would be nothing special about our death, we would die with the rest of humanity without so much as a solemn scattering of our ashes. 

I stared at the sky. 

Posted on by michaelwconrad · 2 Comments

An Unnamed-Unknowable Place

I used to have these bad ear infections as a kid. Apparently this was something that had been going on since I had been a baby, but there were a couple standout moments in my early childhood that I can still recall.

Ear infections are tricky to describe, it’s a pain that has no analogous value, if you’ve had one you know. It isn’t exactly a headache, or a sinus issue, it walks the line in a way that generates agony of an exquisite nature that we lack the language to describe. Something interior, hot, a pressure, it isn’t a migraine, but similarly it cannot be escaped, and sensory input can exacerbate it. In my case the afflicted ear would boil with heat, the outer elements would feel swollen, ablaze with radiant torture from deep inside.

I must have been five or six when the last real bad one gripped me. I’ve had them since, but life dulls the intensity of all things. When I was young there were many foods I struggled to eat, things like onions and tomatoes. I’ve read that it’s the acidity that makes kids less likely to enjoy such things. Young, sensitive palates that have not yet beaten into submission by whiskey shots and packs of Pall Mall. I suspect that this is the case with pain as well. Suffering is something we learn to rationalize after years of torment inflicted by virtue of existence and all the nastiness of feeling our bodies slowly become less and less capable. While I can no longer engage in some of the high impact foolishness of my youth, I am well prepared to accept pain and to move through it.

Maybe this was an exceptional infection, it’s hard to say, I just remember my parents showing great concern and preparing hot packs to hold to my ear. Little was expected of me, I was allowed to heal, I was allowed to cry and even to feel sorry for myself. I was given affection, my back was rubbed and I was told that I was a beautiful boy, that this would pass, that I was loved.

The pain that comes later in life is generally more existential. We fear bills and betrayal by our lovers. We start to think more often of death as a cruel eventuality rather than a freak thing that happens to the unfortunate. We start to see the celebrities we admired meet their ends, old school friends pulled away from this life by the kinds of ailments that were surely only dangerous for the few older people we had in our lives. We start to look at our failed dreams and those still lingering as foolish trappings of a time when pepperoni was too spicy. We get cigarettes punched out on our dreams and we’re left with the ashen reality of the situation. The rent is due. You don’t have good ideas anymore. Whiskey shots.

This sadness can’t be properly addressed. Mom can’t rub your back and tell you that you are her little pumpkinhead. The person you love is looking at their own mortality with the same terror you are, your friends are reconciling their orphaned dreams with the same degree of regret and woe. Most importantly, you can’t talk about your pain and fear because it’s too strange to describe.

This last earache kept me up at night. I was allowed to stay on the couch with the TV on, my parents knew that a bit of distraction goes a long way in situations such as these. I don’t recall what was playing, I just remember laying there in the stillness of twilight. The program on the TV was of little comfort- I had this pain I couldn’t figure out, no end in sight, no way to end it, I just had to endure.

So I screamed.

It was from somewhere deep, not from the lungs or the diaphragm, it was from a deeper place, a place beyond my body, somewhere in a distant time before me, a place that will still be there when I am gone. This mysterious place, this unnamed-unknowable place, a place I suspect mothers who have lost their children know. A place the clinically depressed are too familiar with. A place of suicide and loss and grief. An echo shot back in time, a scream that I cannot find today, but I know it’s sound, I’ve just lost the threshold with which to hear it. It’s the sound of the vacuum. It’s the sound of the universe mourning itself. I had stumbled across that tonality through the pain, but was well aware the scream would bring me no comfort… I was just out of options.

My parents came to me, both with great concern. They understood the sound to be their little boy in pain. They just didn’t know that this was the start of the long, hollow, now muted bray that would live inside of me, as it does in you, forever.

I took up meditation very young, several years later. I explored religious thinking, trying to understand this new pain. The ear healed, the details now live on an island in the fog of my memory, the pain was an effigy of the yawning terror of living. I didn’t suffer like that again, I had graduated. The meditation has tamped it down at times, but there is no silencing the bellows. It’s always there for me, my truth.

I started eating onions and swearing and living on less sleep. I started drinking booze and not sharing my fear. I stopped complaining and lived with it; rubbed some dirt in it, walked it off. I took work helping others, ate up all their “sins” and tried to forget what I learned. I changed my worldview, I abandoned hope, I became something other than myself.

Earaches are caused by lifeforms setting up shop in the cave of your tympanic cavity and struggling to live. Theirs is an existence so completely strange I cannot even imagine. They find somewhere suitable to reproduce (in this case your ear hole) and build communities. These communities use resources and produce waste and in time their world will die. I wonder if in those short generations there are ones who peer from the depths of the ear canal? Do the young fungi scream? Do the mature bacteria mourn their squandered time? Do they miss their dead? Does the ear speak to them as it spikes with heat attempting to stem-the-tide of growth and consumption? Do they dream, in their viral incompleteness, for something we understand less than simply living? 

My mother stayed up with me, consoling me, holding the hot compress to the side of my head. A tiny dying Christ tableau in the darkness. Somewhere in her heart she had that scream too. Somewhere we all scream within. The ear of the universe too infected to listen, an atonal plea to be seen. 

I cannot describe this pain.   

Posted on by michaelwconrad

…told in 3 parts

This is the first time I have mustered the gumption to sit down and write in the past week, and my spirit has been really damaged by it. I am not typically comfortable writing at home, I have, and I will, but as it currently stands I have no real privacy when I do so. I don’t know why this is a struggle, as cafes and the library don’t offer much there either.

A big part of it is knowing that I’m scared. Most of the writing I do is for the comic book industry, which is very much wounded by the fact that we have to find a new way of getting our stories out there. I felt like I was getting somewhere, and now every publisher is pulling back to see what happens. When this happens the least necessary projects get shelved, and no one is looking for new projects. I feel like I am disappearing.

I know there is a lot that I can be doing right now, but it’s hard to get going, I was operating under the guise of things becoming easier and now it’s going to be awhile before… whatever sense of normalcy can return.

I feel sad venting about this because I know it sounds silly, given that lives hang in the balance, and people are at risk of illness, and the economic strain of lack of work- but this is my blog so allow me to indulge in sharing my piece.

I. The Virus of Self Doubt

The biggest fear I have is giving up, but I’m also a person who has chased really hard goals my whole life and I can’t help but imagine if my life would feel better if I would just submit. I have long seen this as among my greatest strengths, but I have quit before, so it wouldn’t be entirely out of character either. Sometimes giving in/up is the best play.

I’ve always said that if I was stricken with a horrible affliction that I would press on, knowing that something is better than nothing, and that happiness and wellbeing are on a sliding scale. Now that I am older and I have seen folks struggle with terminal illness, I know there is some real grace in allowing the end to be on your own terms and not to draw out painful inevitabilities. Quality of life is something we take for granted when we are well, and when you see someone stripped of that it puts it in a whole new light and makes it very clear that it’s easy to make such statements from a place of health.

I don’t think my dreams are terminal at this point, but they are certainly in intensive care. The fact that I’m writing this (or anything at all) is a testament to my will and desire to proceed. I’m trying not to feel like someone who gave it a good shot, and trying to focus on the fact that the game is still afoot, the ball is in the air, and that the distance from whatever I seek is not becoming any greater. I am still in charge of my creative life and how I use my time, I just have to adjust my expectations.

I suspect that I’m not alone in these fears, I suspect there are many just like me. I’m sure others are better adjusted, or struggling more, but the fact remains, this is how I see it. I don’t pity myself, it just makes me sad to see that the wall I have struggled so hard against can heal. This evil virus has crept into all of our lives in one way or another, in mine it comes as mortar. It mends the holes, it reinforces the cracks, and I can only stare on from a distance and hope I can rally enough insanity to continue to drive myself into it, heart first.

II. The Comedy of Existence

Our refrigerator shit the bed on day 1. We were supposed to stock up on supplies and cloister ourselves away, but without the magic box we had been living on rice and potatoes for too long. Our landlord kinda failed to do anything about it, so finally Becky and I decided that we needed to risk exposure and get some fucking vegetables. So, we grabbed bags and walked the 2 miles to the nearest grocery store (our cars both died, that’s another story). The walk there was fine as expected, but Austin decided to take a turn for the tropical, so conditions were less than comfortable. Becky and I spoke on the way about some of my fears and she did a fine job of not trying to console me. She knows sometimes it’s best just to let me blow it out without trying to offer any comforting talk, my powers of negativity are strong and I can always find the hole in such niceties when I’m blue. 

Once we reached the store we found that the line to enter was about a quarter mile long, a Black Friday line of folks mandated to stand 6 feet from each other. I was happy to comply, but some septuagenarian behind me saw fit to stand closely as he normally would while he scoffed at such things on the phone. 

“Can you believe it, they want us to stand 6 feet apart!” He said, loudly, I swear I could feel his breath on my neck.

Finally someone tending the line advised that the man provide 6 feet, to which the man responded laughingly and counted out 6 feet from me exactly, his starting point coming in the form of him pushing his backside directly into me like an NBA player. Even after his comedic act he continued to encroach on me until the tender reminded him to provide space. The man laughed, a snicker really, and started to protest when I lost my cool.

“This is for people’s safety dude, give us some fuckin’ space!” 

At this point I was ready for war. The man said no more and provided the space suggested without protest. While all of this was going on another older person rolled by in a powerchair loudly saying something about how ridiculous this whole thing was. He apparently would like a packed store, rather than staggering admittance, potentially exposing us all to a more dangerous situation than we were already in.

As I type this a friend just texted to tell me about a church group down from her house ignoring the “shelter in place” order. They are gathered in the parking lot of a local hospital holding hands, praying for the disease to go away.

III. Life Uh- Finds A Way

Who do we blame? A virus is an incomplete thing, very strange really, it needs to complete its biology. We surely can’t blame the virus for that, it is its way. One day, if we insist on holding hands and singing Kumbaya they may inherit the Earth.

We could blame the Chinese right? Our leader, a leader elected by your fucking neighbors, those same people who don’t get what all the hubbub is, they certainly would love to blame the Chinese. They’ve never been to China, and they don’t wanna go, they don’t wanna see the humanity in the Chinese because to do so might mean some real tough thoughts. Like the thoughts about how we as Americans exploit them routinely. Like how (for many of them) their children’s dreams are limited. Like how we are wildly privileged and for some of us our concerns are about not being able to get money for writing comic books… boo fucking hoo… these are tough things to think about. I’m tempted to do some research and share some statistics here, but honestly I’ve got all the sadness I need right now. It isn’t a Chinese Virus, it’s something that humans can get, full stop.

I have no science to back this up, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it is a combination of factors.

–Overpopulation

–The Meat Industry

Overpopulation is a no brainer… more humans travelling all over, we carry shit home, home is in cities, it goes quick. The meat industry thing goes to my belief that all the gallons and gallons of antibiotics we pump into livestock has created a virus with the capacity to live, against the odds. Like I say, I have no real science here, just a random but insanely accurate stab in the dark.

For years we have heard about antibiotics being over prescribed etc. but the real monster is out there in “fields” with the cattle, chicken, pigs, etc that are being raised for slaughter. This may be where the virus found its power, its strength to live on, like I say this is a guess.

Doomsday killed Superman on November 18, 1992. Here is just a touch of Doomsdays origin~ maybe it’ll sound a bit familiar…

Originally known as “The Ultimate”, Doomsday was born in prehistoric times on Krypton, long before the humanoid Kryptonian race gained dominance over the planet about 250,000 years ago. It was at that time a violent, hellish world, where only the absolute strongest of creatures could survive.[4][5] In a cruel experiment involving evolution, intended to create the perfect living being, the alien scientist Bertron released a humanoid infant (born in vitro in a lab) onto the surface of the planet, where he was promptly killed by the harsh environment. The baby’s remains were collected and used to clone a stronger version. This process was repeated over and over for decades as a form of accelerated natural evolution. The agony of these repeated deaths was recorded in his genes, driving the creature to hate all life.

Thank you Wikipedia. 

You tell me, does this sound familiar? If my guess is at all accurate we created this thing, through our own consumption, and now we have to make it right. 

We have to be more thoughtful in the future. We can’t scoff at people TRYING… the people in line trying to be safe… those might be the tree huggers (still ok), the do gooders, the save the environment types, the gender equality folks, the free healthcare folks, the people who want to be better. We need more Supermen (and absolutely more Superwomen and Superpeople) if we’re gonna beat this. We have to adjust for a time, get this thing locked away, and most importantly we have to understand that it’s still down there, locked away in the lab. It’ll break out if we are careless. We MUST make better choices or you may as well pack it in. This is not the quality of life we deserve, we need to look at the ugly truth and do the little we can every day to be able to not have to hide our eyes anymore.

Stay safe, consider those who are more at risk, and don’t play too many video games. (Been playing Witcher like crazy… See what you did to me!)

Posted on by michaelwconrad

Somniloquy

This is one of those mornings when the words aren’t coming easy, not for lack of ideas as much as not knowing what the move is right now, let me explain-

I’m in an awkward position of having a number of projects nearly at a point where the fun can begin- projects with big publishers, more work with the incredible Noah Bailey, potential interest from even more publishers, a newfound interest in finding a literary agent, so much to do without really having a straight up greenlight to follow. This is a trying time, as I feel like I’ve been suited up, ready to enter the arena and there keep being delays. I tell myself to just keep writing, keep thinking about stories, everything I consume I consider and examine for its strengths- but I just want to get in there and mix it up- like, yesterday.

At GalaxyCon Richmond I told a young writer to just keep grinding, that the path to writing is simple: if you wanna be a writer you must, no matter what, write, always. Right now I feel like a bit of an imposter, but I’m doing what I suggested, I am typing. I told this guy that most will give up, most will be defeated, and only those who push can manage the sad pressures of waiting. I was speaking from a very real place of experience, it’s really the only advice I can give knowing that I am becoming a master of that particular discipline.

I am not where I want to be right now (who is frankly) but I write knowing that if I obey the creature that crawled into my mind and told me to write I will get closer to my goals. I know that if I keep throwing my body against the wall it will break, if I spend my whole life doing this it will not be a life poorly lived. I don’t know how many other writers meditate on this, but it has been my mantra, I will not stop.

Twitter can be an ugly place, right? Aside from the unavoidable elements of negativity there are the folks who, rightfully so, boast about new projects coming together. They got a Marvel contract, they have a book doing big numbers, they have something coming next month in Previews, hell- they have an editor/agent who believes in them. As someone early on the path this can be very discouraging because I want these things, I feel I have the ability to tell stories that will connect and intrigue and drive interest to a book, why not me? The answer is simple, I have to work more, work harder, attack my goals from all angles, I have to obey the mantra and not stop.

I recognize that I am in a position that is enviable, I have written for the big two, I have an OGN that has done well in sales and the critics have appreciated what I have done. I also recognize that due to having Becky coaching me through this I have a level of insight not afforded to many. Couple this with the fact that I have found a mentor in Shelly Bond, and numerous other seasoned professionals, I am in afforded opportunities that few have. This doesn’t stop the voices though, the nagging, taunting voices that drone on from the moment I wake till the moment I find sleep. The voices enter dreams, interrupt sweet moments, distract me from the work at times, they do as much good as they do bad. These are the voices every creator requires and hates all at once.

When I played music my friend Richard and I used to fantasize about what we would do and who we would become when we hung up our guitars. We would have hobbies and good jobs, we would be normal. I realize now that not only am I not capable of being normal, I wouldn’t want to be. Making things gives my life a value that cannot be fully defined, but it is by no means easy, and it doesn’t always feel good.

I know that when I post about some of these things coming together (soon) that some will feel like I have made it. This thought is laughable, and it speaks to the agonizing fate of an artist. Nothing/everything is not enough. It isn’t for money, or legacy, or acclaim, it’s to feed the monster. The more you feed it, the more it grows and the hungrier it becomes. I will, one day achieve the goals I have in place and on a grey day like this I will take a moment and write a post just like this one. I will be looking for more, looking for a sunrise, feeling like I am not doing enough. It’s a strange fate to resign yourself to, but I find some comfort in knowing that there are always upgrades.

Let’s change the subject though, let’s talk about some nice things.

-I’m really proud of those short stories I shared. I hope you took the time to read them. I continue to write them but I will no longer be sharing them here. This is due to “plans” I have and advice from folks in publishing. Additionally, I was starting to feel like I was hitting folks with a bunch of content that no one was asking for, so I’ll save it for only the folks who appreciated that part of my writing regimine.

-At GalaxyCon I was treated well by mostly everyone. I sold a good deal of stuff and signed a lot of the work that I already have out there. I got to be part of a panel with Becky and Richard Case, a man whose work I have admired for the better part of my life. I felt like I was at The Dance. This was a privilege and I look forward to more.

-I’m proud of the script I wrote for Noah Bailey, my partner on Tremor Dose. Our next book is going to really blow everyone away, and I hope that a few months from now I will be talking about how incredible it was to work with him again, and how much easier it was now this time around.

-I’m making strides in working on my self confidence. A huge part of it is adjusting my language to reflect a new opinion of myself. I’m trying not to say “I am not really an artist.” because this is patently untrue and it does a disservice to my work. I’m trying to accept compliments without running away from them, be it by dismissal or literally leaving. I’m trying to accept that I have the ability to connect to others through my work and that it is a mark of my hard earned skills. I’m feeling more like I have earned this.

-I’m trying to be a better person, to share what I know and who I am in an honest way. I’m trying to see myself as a peer and not someone who aspires to attain something that is an illusion any damn way.

-I’m trying to feel less jealous and critical of others in the industry. This is juvenile and weak, and it has no place in my life- or yours.

-I’m trying to be a better friend to the planet and to people. I aim to improve my perspective, and I’m really proud of that.

-I remain humble. I remember to feel gratitude, but not to displace my good fortune. Luck is not the critical ingredient, I work hard.

No, I’m not there yet. The destination keeps moving, the goal post is on wheels, it’s only in accepting this that I am able to grow. I thank you all for allowing me to share and for the kindness you have shown me. I’m living my dreams and that is the most important thing I must remember. I’m already there, with you.

Posted on by michaelwconrad

Keep Running.

The past few days have consisted of a bunch of work, work- as you know- is both a symptom of, and the seed of HOPE for freelancers. It’s brutally hard to thrust yourself into the fire when there isn’t much going on and I suspect this willingness is truly what separates those who will succeed from those who continue to wish instead. At my best, I’m the warrior, at my worst I’m immobilized and frozen. It goes without saying that I strive to the former, the diligent worker rather than the milky eyes dilettante with a head full of ideas that find no concrete expression.

I suppose it’s important to once again redefine success. In many ways I am already successful, depending of course on the metric we go by. I have been paid to work for the big ones, and I have earned my pay. I have created successful work, Mirriam and Webster could tell you as much. But, while I do identify as a writer I have the all too human tendency of ignoring conventional definitions and fostering new ones entirely. Sometimes my definitions appear in harsh contrast to those approved by the masses as rote and inherent. In the case of “success” it’s fluid and ever changing, which I suspect is true not just for me, but is instead the REAL definition that the dictionary finds hard to whittle down. Success as a concept demands multitudes of essays and books and TED Talks and podcasts and films and deeper levels of understanding. Success for me is a thing I doubt I have the capacity to attain because I suspect it requires some sense of finality. With invisible goals there is rarely a ribbon to run through at the end, it just recedes into the horizon and we keep pumping on, and that’s where the fear comes in. 

So if success is unattainable, why bother defining it? Well, I would say that in its evolution we can find mile markers of where we are and where we’ve been. With careful meditation one can turn their head in that neverending marathon and see that progress is in fact being made. It’s hard to do because we have to keep our eye on that goal if we are to keep up the pursuit, but if we don’t check the rearview periodically the outcome would surely be madness.  

Right now I have to keep pressing forward and ignore the progress I made in 2019. In the moments when I have reflected too much I have found myself fearful that I won’t have a 2020 that feels more accomplished than the year prior. A great anxiety of mine is that I will slip back down a bit, while this is natural, it’s also something that I hate to consider. I have to keep telling myself that this isn’t a competition (even against myself) without losing my edge. It’s a sad state of affairs when fear and pain are the only gas for the tank.

I’m doing what I love. I have told young folks for years that if you want to be a (insert creative profession here) that you become one by doing it. I’m terrible at taking my own advice, even in the rare instance that it is good or true, so here I am again typing to rewrite the neural pathways that keep me pitching dark clouds up over everything. I love the struggle. The struggle is my choice. I thrive in the struggle. The struggle defines me. The struggle is success.

But I digress… over the past few days the struggle has taken on a different shade. I’m in the process of selling another graphic novel, I’m working on several secret projects with a legend of the comics industry, as well as several other creative pursuits that have promise of coming to life. I’m so much better off today than I have been in years prior, social media has a way of reminding me of this with that “On This Day” function. It used to be that the only potential I had was created strictly by my own grit and financial sacrifice, it’s wild that now I expect money for something that I was doing/would do regardless.

Another big step that I have taken is that I have gotten much better at listening to critique, gleaning information, and not getting a hair up my ass about stuff that might sting a bit. I had a lovely conversation just the other day in which several of my precious little ideas for stories were cast off like befouled wet socks. As recent as 6 months ago I might have packed it in and shut down the whole affair. I would have defended my work with a sad vigor reserved for the hopeless. I would have reminded myself that people can’t understand my genius because they fail to see nuance and subtlety… this is an important skill, but equally important is to remember that most of the time that is weakness and bullshit. I have found refuge in knowing that where these darlings came from are a lot more, and that like ants attempting to cross a stream, these will do so on the backs of their fallen kin. This is a huge step for me.

To close the conversation this mentor gave me something to work with that is more valuable than placating my fragile ego would have ever been. In this instance Senpai told me I was holding back my weirdness and that I was doing myself a disservice by not leaning into that. I had been trying to make stories and build pitches that felt familiar and safe, an error, and an affront to my aspirations to live authentically.

I don’t know when I started to fear my weirdness- I suspect it came during an important pitch on a project that actually happened. I was told that the story was strange, and that it might be hard to sell. At the time I took great pride in this, but it rotted away like an old tooth exposed too only the sweet candies of self assurance and became an infected abcess. I feared my pitches failing because they were too “me” and I’m cursed shine like a mysterious star that no one else can understand- right? Wrong. Ever hear a sad breakup song at the right/wrong time that is almost too painful to listen to because it captures your heartache a little too perfectly? How often did the lyrics-all the lyrics-echo your situation completely? I would guess “rarely” as this has been my experience. The thing that connected me to the artist during these times was a shared humanity. Our worldviews, experiences, values, etc. can be wildly different, but the song itself reverberates off of our longing to feel understood. The magick was in hearing elements of truth in someone else’s engagement with pain, especially when it was an abstraction of my own. I needed to hear that universality isn’t born of being able to speak for the masses, it’s born of sharing the thing about myself that is unique to me that others identify with on their own terms.

So what does this mean for my writing? Well, it doesn’t mean that I won’t consider my audience, but it does mean that relationship will become more healthy. I promise to lean into my own personhood and I promise not to be sad if you don’t see yourself there- but if you do… firstly, condolences, but more importantly I have a lot to share.

Let’s get bizarre in 2020.