Frank Miller will die. Neil Gaiman. Morrison and Miller. Ellis and Ennis. Bendis. Sooner or later, all of them will be gone.

And who will take their place? Who will be the next generation of comic book legends? Where will they come from?

The good news is that they're already here. Browsing the comic racks. Scribbling in their notebooks. And God help us all, some of them are posting to internet discussion boards.

Sound like anyone you know?

     "I read comics!"

     "I scribble!"

     "I have an internet!"

If you're anything like me, you're already asking yourself the question: "Is it me? Am I the future of comics?"
 

     No. No, you're not.
 

At least, that's what the odds say. Remember, the comics field is already over-crowded with creators. And all those creators are already competing against each other to win the attention of an audience the size of a walnut.

And half that walnut wants their jobs.

The sad truth is this: Most people who want to become comic book writers don't make it. And many who somehow do become comic book writers don't show much talent for it.

Depressing? You bet. And yet, year after year, great writers continue to emerge.

So we ask, what sets these legends apart? What makes them so great? Which of their character traits should we ape slavishly in a feeble attempt to duplicate their success?

Will there ever be another Will Eisner?

The answer to the last question is a sad, but obvious "no."

The past, however great, is gone. We can learn from it, but we can't rebuild it. We have to get to work on something new.

The common thread that binds the greats is that they've all had something unique to say, each in his own distinct voice:

Miller's harshly moralistic noir. Gaiman's lyrical fantasy. Ellis' bastard futurism.

Their commonality is their difference. And though it's been said to the point of cliche that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the greatest compliment that we can show these writers is to speak with our own voices, too.

So you want to be great? You want to be the next comic book writing legend? STEP ONE: Figure out who you are. Figure out what you believe. Figure out what you have to say that's going to set you apart from every other hack with a typewriter who dreams of writing a mind-blowing Ultimate Devil Dinosaur mini-series.

I'll go first:

Hi. My name is Drew Melbourne, and I want to be the next great comics writer. (But I can wait in line behind Brian K. Vaughan and Andy Diggle, if I absolutely must.) I am young and ambitious and smart and sarcastic and prone to ramble if I'm not reined in. I'm a fiend for folklore and pop culture. I'm a moralist and a heretic. An optimist and a skeptic. A romantic and a cynic.

Sometimes, when left to my own devices, I go a little mad.

I have an obsessive need to decontruct and understand. As the poet said, I murder to dissect*. Though on my good days, I'll have a go at stitching things back together when I'm done.

I've been known to load scripts with the kind of hyper-realistic, overly-nuianced dialogue that would make Bendis squirm. I have never not gone for the punchline.

I see the world in joke logic: set-up and pay-off. I see the comics page as a math problem: words plus pictures in a fixed geometry.

I undermine my own pretention by calling myself an idiot and self-consciously forcing words like "poop" into my writing.

     Poop.

The odds, as we've discussed, are against me. Common sense, some would suggest, is against me.

Many of you, vying over the same walnut, are against me.

Which is as it should be. Because no one ever became great while targeting mediocrity, and no one ever became great while ducking the competition.

That's me. Now, you settle on who you are and meet me back here Thursday for our first regular column.

This is one of Drew's classic Think Like Tomorrow columns.

* Technically, Wordsworth wrote, "We murder to dissect," but he's been dead for a long time, so it seemed unfair to implicate him as a co-conspirator.