In an effort to avoid writing the same email a hundred times, and in the interest of providing some context to both the story and the creative process to the five (count ’em) folks who’d actually be interested in this, I’ve jotted down notes about Quantum & Woody’s Acclaim run and the Valiant Q2 project. It’s mostly the usual whining and complaining and biting the hand that fed me (or, at least, gnawing on it a little). The rant is in my Kindle store, but you don’t actually need a Kindle to read it. Details are here.
Just downloaded, looking forward to reading this!
I skimmed a bit of it and flipped ahead in the scripts, eager to see the script for the final scenes of Q2 miniseries — only to find those script pages seem to be absent. In fact, my copy cuts off rather abruptly — did my ebook not download correctly?
(checks my own copy) Fine at this end, sounds like a download issue.
Ibrahim: reminder: these are not the Q2 scripts 🙂 They are the unpublished first drafts of the scripts, which would have had an entirely different ending (which is laid out in the commentary you skipped past) 🙂 They are unedited and unpolished “raw” footage with the deleted scenes added back in. I did not complete issue #6 (of 5), because I’d received other directions from Valiant.
I would like to download it right away but it’ll have to wait a few days. That’ll make three of us, I guess -I never paid much attention to math in school, too busy drawing caricatures of the professors. So, who are the other two nice fellas?
SPOILER
WARNING
FOR
Q2
THE
RETURN
OF
Q&W
Still in the process of reading the scripts, but I eagerly read the commentaries first. Regarding Priest’s explanation for why he refused to get any further involved in Q2 beyond scripting despite Alejandro Arbona’s pleas for Priest to review the pages– *sigh*.
Priest’s account seems to make it clear that Arbona was very keen to reconcile the creative differences between Priest and Bright. Arbona had Bright’s pages altered at the inking stage to correct issues like Bright drawing the wrong gun and removing the mustache from Jonathan. Woody II was redrawn. Woody 1.0 was aged up with a receding hairline and a gut. Eric *felt* old to me in expression and body language, but not old enough. Arbona wanted Q2 to be good and wanted Priest to help at this later stage —
And Priest refused because he wasn’t being compensated beyond his page-rate on the scripts he’d delivered. Why the **** should Priest have to re-re-rewrite his story UNPAID when the artist, getting paid AT LEAST DOUBLE, was the one making a mess of it?
My opinion is that Priest should have done it for me as a personal favour. A favour to me and to all his fans to expend every effort to make sure his swan song for Q&W was a good one. This wasn’t just five issues; this was his creation’s legacy. The final note for QUANTUM AND WOODY as far as Priest and Bright are concerned.
God, even now, I would gladly pay Priest out of my own pocket to see him rework the Q2 pages.
I’m actually looking into some way to rip the digital pages out of the Comixology app and run them through Photoshop — and recolour Eric’s hair (to make it grayer), Woody II’s hair (to make it brown), the red/blue dress so that at least I can re-read a version of Q2 that holds together better if only for ME.
But, setting all that aside, I completely understand why Priest walked away and I cannot blame him in the slightest. I know in my heart that Q2 would have worked better had Priest stuck with it — but I also know in my head that Priest, from where he stood, had given the series his all and been ignored by Valiant, undermined by Bright and had no reason to see why anything would improve under Arbona’s stewardship. The fact that things *would* have improved is completely obvious, but only in hindsight.
Sadly, Q2 was the victim of a perfect storm of terrible circumstances. Bright was clearly distracted by his Hollywood obligations. Valiant editorial was clearly undergoing an internal restructuring that wrought havoc on Q&W. There was also the prevailing belief that surely old friends like Priest and Bright wouldn’t have had any trouble working together — clearly a huge miscalculation.
But it also has to be said — I think Bright had some semblance of a point when he said Priest should have annotated his scripts better. Yes, Bright should have drawn as the script instructed. But I think the best comic books create the illusion that both writing and art came from the same mind; the illusion is likely created by both writer and artist being aligned. Actors need to know why their characters are doing what they’re doing; artists are actors as well directors. Writing seven issues for a five-issue mini-series was also an unfortunate miscalculation, and it speaks to Priest’s character and honour that he completely admits to this.
Yeah, Q2 is “Good Enough” and it has moments of greatness, and even without Priest’s remarks, there are enough moments of incoherence and incomprehensibility and art being out-of-sync with script to create distance and befuddlement.
I *love* Q2 — re-read it last night and loved it — but I am fully aware that a great deal of that love is residual affection for Q&W #0 – 17 rather than actual love for Q2’s five issues.
“I would gladly pay Priest out of my own pocket to see him rework the Q2 pages.”
Rework them *how*…? I sit down, look at the finished color art, scratch my head and, what? Come up with an entirely new plot that works with the pictures? Is that how comics works now?
My scripts are fairly detailed and also include footnotes that did not translate to the ePub format–lots of “Hey, watch out!” and “This is important!” Color notes all over, but Doc has typically refused to include color notes on his pencilled pages, IIRC, because they “ugly up the page.” There was also a detailed written overview not included in the eBook, and what felt like thousands of emails and phone calls. If anybody had any questions, I was right there. Now I’ve got to *rewrite* the thing? Seriously?
Please don’t beat up Doc. I promise you, whatever rationale he had was more in the line of creative differences than neglect. Let’s not assign motive “He did this for this reason! He’s evil!!!” That’s just not the case. As I said, over and over: I don’t know what happened. All I know is I was becoming stressed out of my mind and just checked out, so blame me.
Also: Priest suffers from hypertension. The stress of fussing over issue #1 could have put me in the hospital. That’s not funny.
Alejandro is a great guy who, ultimately, pulled the project together. I’m extremely grateful to him and to everyone else for their efforts and, yes, in retrospect, I should have been more cooperative as things finally congealed.
Man…
KLANG!!!
I don’t want to step on anybody’s shoes, but about the art bit, I’d like to drop a couple of words. I haven’t read the whole recap/book/essay but I’ve had a look at a couple of the scripts that Jim sent me. I’m aware I’m just a partial bystander -or, at best, a benchwarmer of sorts- but I must say that I had no issue with Jim’s script in the issue I penciled back in the day -21, wasn’t it?- and what I’ve seen of Q2’s scripts are just basically the same old good Priest Script I’m gladly used to. For the record, I’ll explain that I was following Q&W monthly when I got the chance to draw that issue so I was just trying to replace Bright as seamlessly as possible based on my own knowledge of the book and of Jim’s method behind the madness. Now, Bright is the actual co-creator of those characters and knows them -or so I think-, as well as he knows Jim, by heart.
You’re right in the sense that whatever went south there was just the result of a perfect s#1tstorm and I wasn’t there, so I don’t know. But I know Jim’s scripts and, in my opinion, I don’t find, as a sequential artist, anything of what I’ve seen of Q2’s scripts lacking any further anotations or info beyond what’s already there. Others’ mileages may be different though. Just providing a relatively seasoned second opinion, that’s all.
I swear to God this was just coincidence. Haven’t spoken with Jim in a while.
In some alternate universe, Bright was too busy in Hollywood to draw Q2 and Oscar Jimenez stepped in and it was spectacular.
> Priest exclaimed, in response to my
> wish that he rework Q2:
>
> Rework them *how*…? I sit down, look
> at the finished color art, scratch my head
> and, what? Come up with an entirely new
> plot that works with the pictures?
That was not well-worded on my part. I meant I would wish you could direct a reworking / redrawing of Q2 to get it closer towards what you wanted, probably with redrawn panels, some additional pages and a complete recolouring. Or done whatever Arbona was hoping you might do, as he was prepared to have Doc or the inkers change the art.
I cannot fault you for stepping away when you did. Could you have annotated better? I’m sure no writer looks at their writing without wishing they’d handled it differently. But, as you said, Doc had your number and could have called at any time.
Yes, I would have had you fight for your legacy, for your creations, for your characters and fight to your very last breath — but you had your own health to think of and my wish is selfish, caring more for the contents of my Comixology account than for your well-being.
At this point, I have finished reading the Apocrypha scripts. They’re good and remind me of how much I enjoyed #18 – 21 — even though Q&W had drifted from the original setup, the *voice* of QUANTUM AND WOODY was strong and present. Likely because the voice of Q&W is the voice of Priest and Doc on a good day — or rather, a day that isn’t bad.
Delighted to hear so much from Oscar Jimenez in these posts! I loved Oscar’s work on THE FLASH and SLINGERS and Q&W. His work on JLA with Grant Morrison was brilliant. Haven’t read his work with Garth Ennis yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
I am going to re-re-read Q2 tonight before reading the scripts. 🙂
” I meant I would wish you could direct a reworking / redrawing…”
Writers can’t do that 🙂 Only editors can commission re-dos. And, if we’re up against a deadline (as I presume might have been the case), then there’s no time– faster to order the rewrite than the re-draw. That was the other fatalistic thinking about reviewing the final color art: by that time,it’s much too late to fix anything major, best I can do is rewrite, which means I’m no longer writing the story Valiant approved, I’m writing the artist’s story because, by missing key elements or whatever, he has rewritten me, making more work for me and making the story more confusing. This happens all the time in comics: the artist is almost always late, so there’s no time to fix omissions or changes, so the writer has to fix it in the dialogue, which means the writer ends up writing the artist’s story, or having character explain things that should be in the art.
” I would have had you fight for your legacy…”
Ibrahim: it’s just comics. My goodness, pray my legacy is not Quantum & Woody, but the good I tried to do as a person. and fighting was the last thing I wanted to do. It seemed silly to me for Valiant to ignore my concerns while requesting my input at the same time, and faulting me afterward for not wanting to offer any review of this stuff. “That guy is so difficult to work with.”
When looking at your account of Valiant’s treatment towards you collectively, they seem deranged and incompetent. Once your account of editor Alejandro Arbona entered into your account, however, it seemed more like Q2 wasn’t any editor’s assigned responsibility for a lengthy period — and once it was Arbona’s, he stepped up, but the damage had been done. It’s regrettable.
> My goodness, pray my legacy is
> not Quantum & Woody, but the
> good I tried to do as a person.
I think there’s probably a perceptual gap between me and you regarding your legacy. Comics aren’t your main career anymore. Even as a creative endeavour, it’s all about prose for you now (and I’m looking forward to reading ZION and DUAL).
Your ministry is also central to you and who you are. I’m still seeing you through the eyes of a comic book fan. I don’t really see Christopher James Priest and I’ll never be able to from this POV. I see his (comic book) bibliography. I think of you and I see Eric and Woody — which is an absurd cognitive error that only a fan would make.
It’s likely I’ll only ever know you through your work, so in my mind, Q&W are your legacy, your creation, your children — which, from your point-of-view, is ridiculous. That’s probably a *good* thing. 🙂
I just read Q2 #1 – 3 and I was trying *really* hard to see your criticisms of the art. I don’t really like Mark’s art in this comic, although I’ve never really cared for Dexter Vines’ inking, either. I preferred the texture and ‘roughness’ of Mark’s raw pencils and how they meshed with Romeo Tanghal and Greg Adams — but maybe that lack of texture had *nothing* to do with the inker.
It’s possible I just don’t understand inking.
Anyway. When re-re-reading, I again got really caught up in the story. Goodness, that caption with the MICE AND MEN title and the arrow pointing at the book is clumsy — oh my God, Woody just killed someone holy S-Word! And now, we’re in the present! Eric! No, wait, that’s the bad guy. Hunnh. Why is he drawn like Eric? Oh, now we see Woody! And he’s fat and old! And now it’s Eric! Hunnh. Eric doesn’t look that much older. But this breakfast confrontation — Eric’s dialogue seems to hint at age and weariness and he doesn’t have the acrobatic agility he did before — it works.
This was my experience on my first read of Q2 — some things threw me, but I kept feeling enthralled by the story from Priest — and that must also reflect about Bright’s art. Even if I didn’t like the look of it (and mistakenly attributed that to the inker), it was sweeping me into the story.
One problem here is that Priest is being so fair and even-handed and bending over backwards to avoid impugning the motivations of anyone but himself…that he minimizes the hassles involved at his end.
“Why not just do X?” Maybe X would have worked if everyone else involved was really behaving as best as could possibly fit into the observed events…but how often does that happen around human beings? Someone’s always being at least as much of a jerk as you suspect they may be, even if their reasons for being a jerk are valid at the time.
Once a jerk is in the mix, Priest could have gone into contortions trying to fix things and they would have stayed just as broken.
As a Christian, I commit myself to see the good in people. Also, I believe that, for every disagreement or “falling out,” there is at least one piece of missing information one party or the other does not know.
Therefore, I am compelled by the things I trust and believe in to conclude (a) whatever Doc’s reasons for either accidentally or deliberately missing or changing things, he was doing his best and not “out to get me,” and that (b) things that aggravated me (like Valiant not returning my calls) have a reasonable explanation (problems with their phone system + the editors being on the road).
I go out of my way because I have to; I’m the one being whiny and pointing fingers, and there was a lot going on that I admit I do not know. I’m *very* reluctant to paint anybody a villain, anxious to highlight heroes (Alejandro) and just saying “Here’s the story I had in mind…”
So, I think I may understand what happened with Q2 now.
I finished KLANG! I adored it. It was great to finally see the story Priest had wanted to tell. A brilliant concoction of regret, loss, bitterness ending in — actually, I wasn’t sure what the ending was. Was the story originally going to end differently from the published version, even with Jonathan’s transformation? I was also baffled by A) a present-day Amy Fishbein appearing at the end of the #1 script and B) the absence of a scene where Woody is informed that Woody 2.0 is transgender? It would have been nice if both the Apocrypha and the raw Q2 scripts might have a supplement. A short summary of how the story would have ended?
As for what happened with Q2 — I suspect Q2’s problems are not as simply explained as one party being a jerk. KLANG! was enlightening. Priest, in past interviews, podcasts, articles and blogs, had described the Priest/Doc relationship as unhealthily codependent and dysfunctional. (“I still talk to Doc on the phone too much.”/”Mark hates everything I do and mocks everything I do.”/”‘Jim, that’s stupid.’ Mark thought it was stupid.”) I assumed that this was exaggerated and that Priest was just joking. After all, their collaborations were spectacular especially on the classic QUANTUM AND WOODY. They were friends.
KLANG! would suggest that the Priest/Doc relationship is a twisted, conflicted affair and that this has always been the case.
In KLANG!’s scripts of the Apocrypha, Priest’s notes to Doc indicate their joy and creative chemistry, but also their familiarity and certain points of contention, such as Priest pleading for Doc to include colour notes.
Q2 fell apart mid-way into the creative process. The incoming editor was able to salvage it, turning a near-crash into a flight that wobbled badly but landed safely. This makes me wonder if QUANTUM AND WOODY’s #0 – 17 benefitted from Lynaire Thompson and Omar Banmally making sure only the good points of the Priest/Doc showed up on the page. I wonder what a Thompson/Banmally edited Q2 would be.
(“Priest! This outline is too long for five issues!” “Mark! Draw Bill Cosby!” “Priest! Why is this dress in Woody 2.0’s room? I need to tell Mark why to make him draw it!” “Mark! Stop trying to avoid doing backgrounds with medium shots or Jackson Guice takes over.” “Dexter! Bright made all the characters look too similar; please redraw Jonathan and Koro’s faces.”)
KLANG! makes me feel Q2 needed a project manager to referee between Priest and Bright. But, as Priest illustrates, Valiant was in disarray at the time. By the time an editor had arrived, pages had been misdrawn and the writer had rightly fled.
Alejandro Arbona has a magnificent reputation for being friendly and hardworking. It’s a shame circumstances meant he was a latecomer to Q2.
Priest describes a plot implosion where he asked about extending Q2 by one issue, was ignored, then told “we’re working on it,” then ignored again, then told no. If Valiant were such a mess at the time, it must have been difficult for any one editor to agree to extend Q2 by one issue; they would have been taking responsibility for a project that wasn’t theirs.
Hindsight is 20/20. But Q2 should have been put on hold until Valiant sorted itself out. As Priest suggests, the thinking may have been that old friends like Priest and Doc wouldn’t need a project manager. But that wasn’t the case even when they talked daily on the phone. Yes, they were friends, but they’d been friends working for Dennis O’Neil and Fabian Nicieza — while on Q2, they were working without any oversight until late in the process.
In an interview, Mark said of his Hollywood career: “I’ve been still basically doing comic books but it’s storyboards. Stuff for TV, commercials and stuff. The same kind of drawing, just that drawing doesn’t really matter.” I’ve read the Q2 scripts now. Compared them to the drawn issues. Mark seems to have brought that same approach to his Q2 art. His storytelling is functional. But Q2 has no sense of design or detail.
In #1, the script specifies that Eric tells the girls to run while he and Woody will confront the approaching truck — only to find that the girls are running and Woody is running with them. Mark simply drew Woody, Marcia and Amy as turning their heads while continuing to stand near Eric. The art in Q2 consistently fails.
The script plays the reveal of Jonathan under Quantum’s mask as a shocking moment. Mark draws it in a tiny panel with Jonathan an anonymous mannequin with no distinctive facial features. Jonathan’s joyful heroism is absent from the pages. A transgender character is drawn as a boy. An asthma inhaler is drawn as a pipe. Mark’s attitude towards the script avoids research, choreography, challenge or creativity. Priest perceived this as hostility.
To me, Mark’s art communicates an aversion to effort. Like he was tired. Distracted. Unhappy. Not doing his best for some reason. Or out of touch with comic book storytelling. Distant from creating artwork that must express emotion and impart information. If I were the writer and saw what Mark was producing from my scripts, I’d think Mark was sick or depressed or out of practice.
Or maybe he needed an editor to tell him, “Come on. We’re paying you for this. Design buildings. Draw backgrounds. Do choreography. Do your job.” Maybe he needed a project manager. Some artists simply need a boss to give them that kick in the ass. Q2 had no one running the show for most of it.
At this point, I no longer wish for Priest to perform the review work Alejandro Arbona sought. It would help a bit, but it’s the plot implosion that hurts Q2 most. Jonathan’s arc was lost. The art errors mean the multiple versions of Eric finding Woody 2.0 are incoherent. The synthetic-human plot feels like background noise. Fragments of an incomplete story.
Despite Priest’s best intentions, Eric *never* comes off as a great superhero. He’s hinted at being a master manipulator in #1 – 4, but #5 has his plan only vaguely revealed before he gets poisoned. Eric is not a good superhero in Q2; he’s an awkward figure in a fragmented plot, partially due to Bright’s artwork missing critical points and also Priest being denied that much-needed #6.
And yet, I still enjoyed Q2. Why does Q2 work sufficiently to be readable despite all these disasters? The Eric and Woody friendship comes through, triggering affection for #1 – 17 and the final pages make the flaws seem acceptable if they brought us to this lovely ending.
So, can Q2: THE RETURN OF QUANTUM AND WOODY be saved? I still think it can — if Priest someday writes a novelization. A novelization with his vision, converting his original scripts to prose with some illustrations (Oscar?) that render select scenes and characters as originally intended for the Q2 comic. Q2 the comic is Mark’s vision (I guess?). Q2 the novelization could be Priest’s vision. Perhaps more time-efficient, however, would be a novel that uses the screenplay format and the language of images in motion but presented in PDF or EPUB.
Hey, Priest, will you do it for — *checks wallet* — a hundred bucks and a cinema discount card?
I have some (final) questions about Q2 and QUANTUM AND WOODY, but I’m going to try to put them in a very short post later as this post has gone on long enough.
“The best thing to do with a bad day is to end it.” The project is done. Move on to the next project with the faith that the outcome will be great.
Oh, you young, naive person… 🙂
I agree with Thelmon. As much as I want to campaign for Priest to do a Q2 novelization, KLANG! and his blog indicate the best thing is to move forward on a new project. Any new project has the potential to be a XERO-level disaster or a Velluto-PANTHER success (well, creative success), and we accept the possibility of the former while aiming for the latter. And for all I know, Priest is doing exactly that, maybe not with comics and Milestone and novels, but with something else.
I know it’s hard for Priest to wrap his head around how much his work means to me. “It’s just comics.” I guess, on some level, Eric and Woody feel like they are my friends. And Priest and Doc created them. So I will always support Priest and Doc in whatever projects they pursue whether they pursue them together or separately. I hope Doc is doing okay and that his storyboarding work continues well and I’m eager to read Priest’s novels. We are intrepid. We soldier on.
“It’s Just Comics” was a Paul Levitz/Jim Shooter mantra, uttered most often by Levitz as he swept the DC editors out of the office around 6:30 or 7PM. Paul was deeply averse to staffers not having a life or spending enough time with family. Shooter, OTOH, allowed us to practically live there. I’ve spent many weekends–as in sleeping in my office–fighting deadlines, along with various freelancers. Marvel, in the 1980’s, was a 24/7 operation; pizza and rock music and the place going at times all night and over weekends.
Ib– I hear ya, I greatly appreciate you. There’s stuff in the works that I can’t talk about until deals are actually signed. Stay tuned.
So, at the moment, Klang! is #4 in Amazon’s sales ratings for superhero ebooks, #2 in Comicbook Literary Criticism, #2 in Comics History, and #8456 overall in the Kindle store.
Bulk purchases by Valiant’s lawyers 🙂
The rankings are a blip; I presume it’ll sink like a stone and be forgotten by Tuesday.
Well. I have some closing questions before leaving Mr. Priest in peace (well, leaving him in peace on the subject of the Q2 project, anyway):
1. Did you and Doc ever work out why Eric and Woody’s fathers were killed? What was the answer? Terrence Magnum said that Mr. van Chelton and Mr. Henderson were working in “the God machine — the next stage of human evolution” — presumably, in converting humans to energy and granting them the immortality through perpetually ‘resetting’ their energy matrices. Was that as much exposition as we would ever get, or was there some further explanation?
I found it fascinating to learn from Koro that van Chelton and Henderson Seniors had been “watched” by various government agencies.
2. Why was Quantum occasionally referred to (mockingly?) as “Quantus”?
3. QUANTUM AND WOODY #12 ended on a cliffhanger where Eric and Woody are being brought in for police questioning over the murder of Kenny, who may or may not have killed a prostitute whom Woody befriended in his youth. This cliffhanger was meant to lead into CONCRETE JUNGLE, but that didn’t work out due to Acclaim’s bankruptcy. Where were you going with this story? Was it supposed to relate to Eric’s mysterious and somewhat fraudulent mentor? How? Who killed Tammy? Who killed Kenny? And how would the answers have affected Woody, and, to a lesser extent, Eric?
4. When is QUANTUM AND WOODY #0 supposed to take place? I thought it took place during the first story-arc as the boys are chasing Terrence Magnum, but #0 has Eric and Woody using the force and heat beams. They didn’t learn about the control band energy beams until after Magnum had been arrested.
5. Did you ever work with Valerie D’Orazio while you were writing for Acclaim?
SPOILER
WARNING
FOR
Q2
THE
RETURN
OF
Q&W
So, how did you arrive to the decision to restore Eric and Woody to youth? What were you trying to achieve? Was this also meant to serve as the answer to what Mr. van Chelton and Mr. Henderson had been trying to create before the chopper crash?
This plot development was a huge risk; it could have been very silly. It isn’t; it leaves the reader with hope and the uplifting thought that even though there is no #6, the boys are still sniping, snarking, saving lives, klanging those control bands and may keep doing that forever, even if you may not write it and Doc may not draw it.
I loved it.
Ib: for most of this, I honestly don’t remember. Dude, it’s been two decades. 🙂
1) No, not definitively. I’m not even sure they *were* killed; I think Eric wants to believe they were killed and that it wasn’t just a chopper accident. Of course, researchers on the cutting edge are being surveilled. 2 ) Put on a costume, stand on a street corner, and tell people your name is “Quantum.” It’ll take them awhile to get it. Qantas airlines commercials were huge in those days, so most everyone I told about the new comic called it “Qantas and Woody.” 3) I’m pretty sure they were brought in for questioning and that was it. The arc was intended only to spin off CONCRETE JUNGLE. As for the rest of the many questions asked in question #3, Ib, honestly, it was 20 years ago, man. In any case, whatever those plans may have been could be recycled into something new, so I’d rather not explore it. 4) Sorry, I have no idea. 5) That was the point of the whole story, to bring the boys back to one, to leave a door open for Valiant.
Sorry I couldn’t be more help.
Those answers were plenty, Priest! Thanks! I’d never heard of Qantas Airlines or seen their ad campaign.
On an unrelated note, I was re-reading your GREEN LANTERN novel and I wanted to ask — how did things turn out with your neighbour and Cody the barking dog?
Sadly, Cody passed away a couple years back. The good news is my guy went out and got another dog just like him. I mean, the new dog *looks and barks exactly* like Cody. Having learned apparently nothing from our years of head-butting over the dog, he chose to continue the fun. His pattern is to leave New Cody outside after dark, which I’ve repeatedly asked him not to do, and to let him out around five in the morning before my guy goes to work. Thus, the barking is the last thing I hear before going to sleep and the first thing that startles me awake in the morning.
On another note: anther neighbor, around the corner now, parks his semi tractor trailer in front of his (and his neighbor’s) home on a narrow, winding subdivision road. For reasons I cannot fathom, he leaves this truck idling all the time. No, seriously, it’s been idling, so far as I can tell, for three days now, all night, all day, just idling. I presume he may have some problem with the truck and doesn’t want to shut it down, but it’s the most unfathomably selfish thing I’ve ever seen. The entire subdivision smells like diesel fumes.
Q: why won;t people say or do anything? I mean, why is it always me, why am I always the one to knock on a door or call the sheriff when this kind of foolishness is going on? How do you just sit in your living room and inhale diesel fumes? How do you sleep with that truck idling outside your home… and say and do nothing? What am I missing?
http://dvandom.tumblr.com/post/128565925827/final-three-pages-of-captain-america-the-falcon
I scanned these for another purpose, but they’re slightly relevant to Klang’s essays. The climactic fight with “Anti-Cap” in Priest’s Captain America & the Falcon was supposed to be at the same location as this fight, an homage to it. But that wasn’t something you could figure from the actual comic.
Yes. 🙂 Might be my favorite Marvel comic ever… well… okay, the death of Gwen Stacy arc is my favorite, but I digress… Yes, the Anti-Cap thing was supposed to mirror this arc in some ways, and there were notes in the script re: the location. But, no KLANG! essay for this; I was thrilled to have Dan Jurgens step in after artist Joe Bennett got hired away to do something else. I’d only worked with Jurgens once, way back at the beginning of his career, on an issue of DAREDEVIL. I don;t actually know Dan, but I received these two issues as a gift. He did a great job, though it seems he likley was not familiar with this iconic fight by Our Pal Sal Buscema. I just assumed everybody was familiar with this scene.
Dan was, of course, the Anti-Sears: *very* clean storytelling, big, open panels, and of course, human proportions on everybody. I thought the inker made Dan’s pencils seem a little softer than someone like Josef Rubinstein might have, but other than that, Dan parked it. Not sure I ever reached out to thank him–I was very pleased.
IIRC, the issue before had Cap fighting the Hulk, which I wrote specifically and with great enthusiasm for Bennett, who was snatched for another project. The fill-in artist did a good job, I mean, it is clear and well-drawn, but the Hulk fight was conceived, specifically, for Bennett to cut loose, and the fill-in guy seemed a little timid on a story that should have been balls-out. Also, because I presumed it would be Joe, I was writing the script in a kind of minimalist shorthand, really depending on the pictures to carry the narrative more than the fill-in guy was capable of doing, so there may have been confusing spots because I was banking on a specific facial expression or gesture, etc. It wasn’t a disaster, but Joe would have just laid us all out with that story had he been given it. Yes, I know, woe is me, Priest and his pity parties…
Self-pity aside — I often think that comic books are not your medium. Prose seems to be where he truly shines. I mean, I love Christopher Priest comic books, but it has to be said that artists rarely seem to be in sync with your writing. Maybe it’s best to cut out the middleman between you and the reader.
I’ll have to remember to check it out. Which reminds me, I should leave a review for Zion. (Sort version: I liked it.)
I thought Q2 came out pretty well, all things considered; sorry to hear it was so tough to put together and didn’t come out the way you wanted.
I’ve enjoyed the Asmus/Fowler/et al series too (though perhaps not as much as the rebooted Archer and Armstrong); you’re right that it pushes a lot harder into straight-up farce than the original, but I also think it’s managed to find the same heart. No matter how ridiculous the scenario may get, it’s still, fundamentally, about two best friends who care deeply about each other but can hardly stand to be in the same room.
Looking forward to whatever you’ve got coming next. Take care.
Well, thank God. I can never tell because I know what I’d wanted the project to be. I was put off by the new Q&W being so broadly comedic, but do agree with you regarding the quality of the work and the “heart” still being there.
I always liked CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON. Bart Sears was a deadly choice to start the series, sadly, but Bennett and Priest *really* clicked and Dan Jurgens did a nice job, too! I’m actually going to re-read the whole Ed Brubaker run of CAPTAIN AMERICA soon — and I’m going to start with CAF.
I remember how CAF ended with the Falcon going missing and Cap at a loss as to where Sam had gone.
The next appearance the Falcon made (that I read, anyway) was in a Brubaker issue where Cap learns that Bucky is alive. Cap is in agony and the Falcon comes to his aid and comfort. I thought that was very intriguing — that Sam disappeared into that never-to-be-written-FALCON series, but hearing that Cap was a mess brought Sam swooping back in. (Likely unintentional, of course.)
I am a huge fan of the Asmus reboot of QUANTUM AND WOODY. It doesn’t have the strengths of the Priest/Doc team, but it has its own strengths. The humour isn’t at all confined to Woody, but that feeds into Asmus’ style of crazy ideas and absurd-and-deadly situations and some truly inventive approaches to action-adventure-comedy. I would some day like to see Asmus write an arc of the Classic Q&W and Priest write an arc of the Reboot Q&W.
I re-read CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON and it was pretty awesome. Even the Bart Sears issues. I suspect it’s because, having read Priest’s blogs regarding CAF, I now see the story he meant to tell. All the gaps and holes and incoherent choices made by Sears are filled in by my familiarity and awareness of the story, so I can’t do anything but enjoy it.
Dang- stuff like this is why I have to remember to check in here more often. Makes me wish I had a Kindle, but it looks like I can download an app to read it on my computer, so this is a definite purchase for me. The backstory on Q2 sounds interesting, but I’m really mostly interested in the Lost Scripts. Finally, something to go with the Flashback Panels from Acclaim’s old website to accompany issue #32. 🙂
I’m sure somebody likely mentioned, but you don’t actually need a Kindle to read Kindle books. It’s one of the drawbacks to their marketing strategy; everybody thinks of kindle books like 8-track tapes. 🙂 ePub format is MUCH better and you can get creative with it, but .mobi is a proprietary Amazon code; I can’t really blame them for clinging to this old, deprecated and inflexible code, but they are the 800-lb gorilla of eBooks. Their product would look better and be much easier to code if they’d come out of the 1970’s. At any rate, there are a plethora of mobile apps and desktop programs that can read their code. You can download their reader, or get one from Adobe.