I think something's wrong with my lava lamp.
When I first got it, for my 40th birthday last year, it would fill my nights with radiant globules of green, dividing and multiplying, floating and falling, in a cascading dance of serene creation. But now, for the last several weeks, it's dim and murky, like the polluted swamp waters of some Louisiana bayou from which Alec Holland is just waiting to emerge, half man and half vegetative muck monster.
Oh, I know it's the bulb -- don't get me wrong on that score. It's just that for the longest time, I misapprehended what was going on. Because all of the lava globules were bright on the bottom and dim on top, I naturally assumed that there were two bulbs: one on the bottom and one on the top, with the top one being burned out.
Well of course, when I removed the little silver capola from the top of the glass - what do you call the part with the lava and liquid in it, anyway? Tank? Unit? Bulbous appendage? -- anyway, when I removed that li'l silver cap, I saw that there was no top bulb at all. Which leaves me stupefied as to just how the lava globulets can be seemingly illuminated from above in the first place.
* * *
Here's what might be swirling around the maelstrom of your mind if you were a 40-year-old father of a nigh on two-year-old boy who's in the third year of a five-year plan to write comic books for a living.
(Apologies for the dangling antecedent, oh grammar gurus. For the sake of clarity, it is myself, not my soon-to-be two-year-old son, who's in the third year of a five-year plan to write comic books for a living.)
Swirling Maelstrom of my Mind
Table of Contents
- "Looks Like We Made It" by Barry Manilow is not a song you can really write to. May as well not even try.
- "Shadow Dancing" by Andy Gibb is much more conducive to keeping a train of thought on track for more than two seconds.
* * *
Here's the dealio.
The real, unexpurgated truth of the matter.
My son started reading comic books this week. And it's all my fault!
A little known fact is that the impending birth of my son was a catalyst for my decision to throw my heart and soul into writing comic books. Why, exactly, I'm not sure. I just know that for my birthday in 2004, I got a copy of the Jack Kirby Collector #40 (with Kamandi on the cover). And reading that inspired me to go eBaying in search of Kirby's complete run on Kamandi. And once I had that treasure trove in hand later that fall, reading those tattered, fading comic books from my youth did something to me.
It was like flipping a switch.
You see, I never got to read Kamandi as a kid. I did read other DC titles, mainly the Superman and Batman ones. And I remember vividly the house ads for other DC titles that ran in each issue. The Magic Mart in Searcy where I got most of my funnybooks didn't carry a wide selection. So every comic I read, I'd spend inscrutable minutes peering at the house ads for books like
- Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth
- OMAC: One Man Army Corps
- Prez
- The Haunted Tank
- The Witching Hour
- and more!
The covers to these mystical, elusive books that I'd never actually seen in real life beckoned to me from the imprecise newsprint, black and white and so small that you had to really strain to try and read the dialogue on a given cover. They called out to me, speaking of strange new worlds I could only imagine, of heroes my elementary school brain could not begin to fathom - a last boy on Earth? a one-man Army corps?
So, when as an adult I finally got to read some of those books (namely, Kamandi and Omac), it was like a Boom Tube had been opened between my long-ago childhood and the present - and likewise, between my present and my future son's childhood - and it all came together for me.
Somehow, my multidinous pleasant memories of reading comic books as a kid, and my desire for my son to experience that same pleasure, spun around and around in some cosmic centrifuge and WHAMMO! Out came the crazy notion that I'd dive headlong into the role of Aspiring Comic Book Writer, and commit myself in advance to sticking with it for five years no matter what.
* * *
I suppose it's ironic - I"m sure Alanis Morrisette would consider it so - that my son's arrival in my world would provide both the number one catalyst and number one obstacle to my carving out a career in comic book writing for myself.
Wow. It sounds awfully, incredibly wrong to say my son is an obstacle. And it's not really an accurate assessment. It's just that before he came along, I had oodles of free time in the evenings and weekends which I pretty much squandered on things like:
- naps
- primetime TV
- Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord and Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin (computer games, for the unindoctrinated)
So now that he's here and now and for the rest of my life the single most important part of my life, I want to spend as much time as I possibly can with him. And that means the comic book writer part of my life generally begins at around 8:30 or 9:00 every evening, whereas had I gotten the urge to write comics a year or two earlier, I could've easily gotten started by 6:00 every evening.
* * *
I'm not complaining, by the way. I wouldn't trade the experience of raising my son for any amount of comic book writing success, or anything else in the world.
* * *
Now, I tried to get my son into comics when he was about four months old. I sat down in the rocker with him, and in lieu of the usual One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish or My Baby Elephant, I started reading to him from Jack Kirby's Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #1.
He was enthralled. NOT!
He couldn't have given two craps less. I didn't even get to the double-page splash on pages 2 and 3 before he was ready to move on to something a little more age appropriate.
So, I bided my time, and a couple of months ago, he came into the bathroom when I was, ummm, indisposed whilst reading a comic book, and asked what I was reading.
"Daddy's reading a comic book."
"I read comic book too."
Hmmm... this was my big chance, I figured, to sow the seeds of comic book reading in my little guy. So I handed him the new Jonah Hex that was sitting in the magazine stand, and he sat down on the floor and started reading.
Now, about a year ago, I decided I was going to ditch the whole idea of collecting comic books in favor of simply reading them. This was inspired in part by the knowledge that my son would one day want to read my comics, and in part by my belief that if we all stopped collecting and started just reading, and passed our comics along after reading so that others could read them, the world would be a better place and we might actually get some new comic readers.
But I digress...
Anyway, I made my peace many months ago with the idea of my son possibly wreaking havoc on my comic books. So, when he was trying to turn the page in that ill-fated Jonah Hex and I saw the page rip in half before my eyes, it really didn't faze me much at all.
Still, I was glad when I stumbled across a stash of a dozen or so random comics a friend gave me for my birthday a couple of years back. I figure I can parcel those out to him a few at a time over the next few months and he'll really get a lot of joy out of them, and can bend and fold and tear and otherwise abuse to his little heart's content.
The first couple of comic books I gave him were a Conan and that issue of Avengers (500 I think it is) where it's all "Avengers Disassembled!" and chaos and stuff blowing up. He's really enjoying them!
I've never read them myself, but he wanted me to read one to him at bedtime the other night. He picked Avengers, so I did my best to do a two-year-old version of the story.
It went something like this:
"There's the big house where the Avengers live. Oh, now there's a big explosion and it's really loud. Now someone's saying, 'Aaargh!' Now someone else is saying, 'Aaargh!' Now these guys are not following the rules, and they're about to be in big trouble and have a timeout. Now someone else is saying 'Aaargh!' Now something else blows up and it's loud."
* * *
Year three of my five-year-plan to conquer the world of comic book writing proceeds relatively apace. I am beginning to realize that I can't possibly write as much as I imagine I can, in the amount of time I have for writing, so I'm constantly feeling under the gun and behind whatever self-imposed schedule I'm currently striving to meet.
But, so far this year, I've managed to:
- Prepare and submit my first-ever pitch (for TWILIFE) to actual top of the line publishers
- Write the second story for my Anthology With No Name, "This Is Where I Am." Noel Tuazon illustrated it for me and I'm lettering it now.
- Write the third story for said anthology, "The Barber," that the fabulous Renzo Podesta illustrated and lettered. This also goes out to J.S. Earls for his upcoming Frameworks anthology.
- Tentatively land a spot in an upcoming anthology about which I can say naught at the moment other than the mere thought of it makes me a right jolly old elf!
- Tentatively lined up a chance to pitch for a truly first-class anthology.
- And by this Sunday, I'll have the fourth story for my anthology, "By The Southern Grace of God," in the hands of one Mario Cau. I can barely wait to see how he brings it to life!
So, it could be worse, you know? I'll feel a lot, lot better about future career possibilities once I get that elusive first miniseries picked up and published.
Till then, all I can do is keep my head down and my spirits up, and keep running up that hill.
Elton Pruitt writes comic books in the bustling metropolis of Little Rock, Arkansas.
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