I SAID GATHER!

That's right! It's time for another edition of...

Our story begins in the city of Philadelphia, give or take a few feet, in the Year of our Lord, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Six. Reagan was President, the Soviet Union was still an evil, evil empire, and Michael Jackson was an excellent role model for children.

I was still in Elementary school, but my brother John had already hit the big time. That's right: he was working as an assistant manager at a local comic book shop.

The shop saw its share of "famous to a comic book fan" types pass through it doors: comic book artist Mike Manley, some guy who used to be a DC editor, plus some guy who knew comic book artist Mike Manley, just to name a few.

But the one customer who had the real whiff of fame to him was this manic little red-headed kid named Seth Green...

Of course, I was a manic little red-headed kid, too, but I hadn't been on Amazing Stories. Or played a young Woody Allen in Radio Days. Or co-starred in the last two episodes of Facts of Life.

My family loved hearing all about Seth's latest accomplishments and dutifully taped and cataloged each and every one of his television appearance. Some days I thought that they were imagining me, happy and successful, in each of his roles.

On other, sadder days I decided that they were imagining him as their son, instead of me.

     I was a moody nine year old.

Back then, I thought I might become an actor too someday. I even had the lead in my sixth grade Drama Club's production of Dragon, Dragon until a bad case of the flu forced me to drop out.

If not for that flu, I might be Ashton Kutcher right now. Alas, I was punk'd by fate.

Eventually, my goals changed. Writing had always been more important to me than acting, anyway. For me, acting was just about getting people's attention. It was just a way of getting people to listen to what I had to say. And, even back then, I had a lot to say.

Years later, when I was in high school, I worked at that same comic book shop for my brother. I met Seth once or twice, though I don't know that we exchanged more than a few words. My brother probably had me filing back issues or, I don't know, scrubbing the employee bathroom or something like that. That sort of thing happens a lot when your brother is your boss.

I continued to follow Seth's career through the 90's. For a long time, it was just a guest appearance here or a failed TV show there. Certainly, nothing to get too jealous about. And, hey, I actually liked Byrds of Paradise! By the time I went off to college, Seth Green had become an anecdote I'd tell at parties.

     "I met that kid from Can't Buy Me Love."

     "No. Not Patrick Dempsey."

But all that changed in 1997. My roommate Daniel had introduced me to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and as a long time genre geek, I immediately took to it. Every week, we'd sit down to watch the show, crack jokes, and put off reading Moll Flanders or Pamela or Tristam Shandy for at least another hour. Those were good times. Unfortunately, good times can't last forever.

     "Uh... Isn't that the kid from Can't Buy Me Love?"

Once again, Seth Green had invaded my world. And suddenly he was everywhere. There he was on Buffy. There he was in the Austin Powers movies. There he was being named "The Hottest Actor Under 25" on E! Entertainment Television.

"If it weren't for that damned flu," I muttered, "It'd be me at the top of that list."

But that's not what I wanted, I reminded myself. I had long ago decided to become a comic book writer. I was working with artists. I was trying to get my work out there. It was an uphill battle, but I knew I would make it someday.

I didn't need to compare myself to Seth Green, because we were different people with different goals. I took a deep breath and everything was okay.

     Because Seth Green doesn't write comics.

     Because Seth Green doesn't write comics.

     Because Seth Green doesn't write comics.

I graduated from college and moved to New York City. (Cue the Indiana Jones music.) Seth was huge and that was okay. It took me a few years, but I figured out how to write and pay the bills and, more often than not, function as a rational, grown-up member of society.

I struggled, as I'm sure a lot of you have, with how to break into the industry. I tried to self-publish a comic about superheroes who bowl, but I had trouble negotiating a deal with the artist. And, in the mean time, Marvel put out an awful, awful comic about superheroes who bowl, and that just killed the project stone-cold dead. Later, I submitted a few scripts to Marvel, through their Epic imprint, but by the time they received them they were already shutting Epic down.

By late 2003, I was at a loss. Maybe it wasn't meant to be. It was Dragon, Dragon time again, and I was home in bed with the flu.

Then came the Top Cow contest. The folks at Top Cow were running a contest through Wizard magazine to promote their new superheroes-eating-donuts mini-series, Common Grounds. This was an open call to writers, asking them to pitch their ideas for the next Top Cow comic book series.

The grand-prize winner would actually get his comic published by Top Cow! More importantly, the grand-prize winner would get to write the comic himself.

Pretty cool, but let's be real here. Any time you have an "open call" like this, you're going to get thousands and thousands of entries. Most of them are going to be crap. And the entries that aren't crap can very easily get lost in the shuffle. Sure, it helps to have a good entry--a good pitch--but honestly no one ever really wins these things, right?

     Long story, short: sometimes people win these things.

So I had my foot in the door. My pitch for Heroes of Tomorrow had been hand-selected by the editors at Top Cow to become the next big thing. There was a write-up in Wizard and everything.

     Yay!

That was a year ago. Obviously, Heroes of Tomorrow hasn't been the next big thing yet. It's still in the pipeline--along with three or four dozen other next big things, I'm sure.

Top Cow plans pretty far ahead, so I knew from the start that the comic wasn't going to come out tomorrow. (Still, the more apt title, "Heroes of a Few Years from Now," didn't have the same ring.) Add to that a series of editorial shake-ups, a deluge of work during convention season, and the simple truth that my book wasn't anyone's top priority, and a whole year goes by with relatively little movement.

Back in February I visited the Top Cow offices to talk to some of the editors and see if I could get things jump started. There had been talk, at one point, of getting the series out this summer--in time for San Diego--but something had come up. I wanted to find out what that "something" was, and see if there was anything I could do to get things back on track.

Well, I found out what the "something" was. Top Cow had just gotten the rights to publish an exciting new comic by an exciting new writer. And, as it happened, it was an exciting new teen superhero comic, just like mine. They weren't canceling my book, they explained, but they were bumping it back a few more months so that the two books wouldn't have to compete for an audience.

Okay, I thought. That sounds reasonable. You don't want two comics that target the same demographic hitting the stands at the same time.

So I took a deep breath, swallowed my pride, put on my happiest of happy face, and asked, "So what's this exciting new comic all about?"
 
 

     Seth Green. Oh, how I hate you. 

Drew Melbourne is the writer/creator of Top Cow's (upcoming) Heroes of Tomorrow and a few other fun projects that he'll be able to talk more about in the coming months. He doesn't really hate Seth Green (much) and recommends that everyone run out and buy a copy of The Freshmen #1 when it hits the stands. (The series is actually written by another one of my brother's old customers, the soon-to-be-huge Hugh Sterbakov.) Also, Troy Hickman's Common Grounds is out in TPB. You should buy that too.