My longtime friend, Elliot S! Maggin, is running for Congress in California's 24th district. If you live in the Ventura County to Santa Barbara area, check out his website and give his campaign a looksee. As long as I've known Elliot he's been political involved. And if I lived in his area I'd vote for him.

I haven't been posting much since I've been too busy to have a life worth talking about. But I have been watching TV - my big way of relaxing after a long day working. My favorite summer show has been DAMAGES. It started great and has gotten better. The show is plotted more like a novel than a standard serialized TV show, and it makes you feel like they actually know where they're going rather than making it up as they go (like 24). The show has depth of character, depth of story, forces you to ask questions, to wonder about each of the people in the story, and to realize nobody is all good or bad. Ted Danson's supposed villain is the perfect model for what a villain should be like; he doesn't think for a moment he's done anything wrong. And frankly, from the way they handle things, it's hard to know if he has done wrong. He seems not to want to know what some of his underlings do, although we can also see he's definitely not one of the good guys. Glenn Closes' hero character is amazingly flawed and unlikeable and yet likable, at the same time. Amazing performances in a wonderfully crafted series.

Monk and Psych were both great fun. Monk's stories were actually better than they'd been. Psych is a hoot and great fun to watch. Eureka, Dead Zone and the new Burn Notice were also really good. Burn Notice surprised me because I wasn't expecting much but got a great 1970s show brought up to date and done really well.

The first new Heroes was also strong, better than how it ended. We're back on track for some interesting character driven stories. I just hope the Hiro story fits in with the others and isn't just some separate jaunt. I'd seen Journeyman, Chuck and a few of the others some months back - pilots make their way around LA like a flu bug - and enjoyed them quite a bit. Chuck is full of charm even if I don't understand how having seen already existing files will provide him with the knowledge for upcoming events that aren't chronicled. Not everything Chuck has seen can make him ready for what he'll face. Still, the cast is good and I really like the relationship between Chuck and his sister. The first new Boston Legal was also solid. That show effortlessly straddles drama to comedy to everything between and it may have the best collective cast on the tube.

The comedies such as Two And A Half Men and How I Met Your Mother were also good. Mother is not only funny as always but actually original; we spent several seasons with Robyn knowing she won't be the "Mother" title-character. This isn't a late decision because the wonderfully named actress, Cobie Smulders, was leaving, but it'd been planned from the start. They actually had us care about someone who wasn't going to be the object of the show. Haven't seen that before. Now I hope Ted goes through more date hopefuls before the girl under the yellow umbrella is revealed. Big Bang Theory doesn't work for me yet, but I trust Chuck Lorre so I'll give it a chance. I just can't see where it'll go. I prefer my nerds more like Chuck and the character in the upcoming Reaper, which I also liked.

Tonight, Wednesday, is Back To You, which I enjoyed, Bionic Woman, which I didn't like all that much and Dirty, Sexy Money which has possibilities for being a Dallas-like over the top serial.

Break's over. Got to go back to work. More when I can breathe again.

Labels: TV Fall Season

Noel and I just returned from a wonderful four-day vacation in Carlsbad near San Diego and we didn't go anywhere near the convention center although we were positive our car would steer us there automatically from past experience. We stayed at the luxurious La Costa Spa and Resort and had a wonderful, wonderful time, relaxing by the pool, using their incredible water slides, getting massages and above all taking it easy. We did trek down to San Diego's Balboa Park for a day, wandering the museums and seeing the incredible Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Natural History Museum where they have fragments from 15 of the Scrolls plus a wonderful exhibit to go along with it. This is not a touring show; it was designed for the San Diego Natural History Museum, so if you're anywhere near it, be sure to check it out. It's worth the time. We also had an incredible dinner in the park just down the path from the museum at a restaurant called Prado which is easily one of the best restaurants I've been to anywhere. We sat outside, eating beneath the incredibly beautiful foliage, and wishing it could be like this every day.

We had four wonderfully relaxing days which now prepare us for the hard work of the next few weeks. I've got about a zillion deadlines all coming at once but I'll try to post here as often as possible.

Labels: Dead Sea Scrolls, San Diego Comicon

So O.J. Simpson is being questioned about an alleged break-in and robbery of sports memorabilia in Las Vegas. All I can think about is that they got Al Capone on tax evasion.

Labels: O.J. Simpson

At the big Baltimore Comic Convention this weekend DC announced the new series that I'm working on. It's VIGILANTE, and it's about the all-new character that I recently introduced in the pages of NIGHTWING. Yes, he does have some ties to the Vigilante who appeared in the New Teen Titans way back when, but even before you ask, NO! he's not Adrian Chase. That Vig is dead. Shot in the head. This Vig is new, and I promise you, he's very different from your average DCU hero in many, many ways.

Obviously I won't say much other than I have the character's history worked out in detail - and I did so even before he made his appearances in the pages of Nightwing which I'll be leaving to work on Vigilante. And though I would have loved to stay on that title, too, DC told me upfront that I'd write Wing for only four months but then increased it to a year. But when all is said and done, I think it actually comes out to closer to a year and a half, which I deeply thank everyone for. Plus, I think Wing's latest arc, the beginning of the Vigilante story - which concludes next month - has really helped to bring me back into the art of writing monthly comics. The Vigilante arc is my strongest story Wing story yet, and what I'm doing in the Vig comic itself should be even better. At least, based on my script for #1, I think so.

Some of the Nightwing storyline will come over to this title as the new DC crossover story which is in Wing #138 & 139 (among other titles) was somewhat of a surprise and I had to "end" the story earlier than planned. But DC made it easy for me to have some really big surprises in our first two issues which makes for a wonderful segue to the new book, much better than I could have hoped for. I hope Wing fans will come over to see what I'm doing and then stay to see where we're going.

Michael Siglain, my editor, already mentioned in his NEWSARAMA interview one of the biggest aspects of the comic that will affect the entire DC line. As Vig moves through a very real and gritty New York underworld, he will very quickly discover that some DC character has actually turned against the other heroes. We already know who that character is, and the impact the character has on the rest of the DCU will become apparent in a matter of months. This is a story with far reaching tentacles and it begins in Vigilante #1.

That's all I'll say at the moment. Keep tuned.

Labels: Vigilante

Apple got reamed to the core yesterday for lowering the price of their iPhone by $200 only 8 weeks after its debut. First day buyers were up in arms. Apple's a company that has built its loyal followers through solid computers and constant innovation such as the Mac, iMac, iPod and iPhone, as well as a sense of design unmatched by anyone else in the computer business. But to lower their price $200.00 in only eight weeks rankled every early adopter, even though the price of computers tends to plummet by the time you leave the store.

But unlike other companies (Hi, Microsoft) when the people complained, Apple actually listened. Take a LOOK HERE and see how Apple Prez Steve Jobs handled what could have been a disastrous move. I congratulate him for thinking about the people who actually buy Apple products rather than solely the bottom line. Is it the very best that could be done? Maybe not. But it's a pretty smart decision. And yes, I know for them a hundred bucks is actually less than half that, but you and I would actually have to spend that full amount. Is actual money changing hands? No. But again, I think this is a pretty good move. I don't have an iPhone. Not yet. A lot of my friends do and nearly every one is incredibly pleased with it. So I'm not affected by this move. They may be trying to close the barn door after the horses have gone, but I've been an Apple user for a long time now and I appreciate when a company realizes it may have made a mistake an alienated its base and did something about it rather than simply saying, well that's the way things are.

Labels: iPhone

Labels: Nightwing #136

I've been talking lately a lot about writing. Not here, but in a number of recent interviews and just this past Friday for a DVD extra for an upcoming movie. I've also done writing seminars at Disney, Blizzard and other companies, too, and quite frankly they are a lot of fun to do. For those who attended the San Diego con, I gave my most recent writing seminar, and this one was the best attended yet in the biggest room I've had. I'll be doing another writing class this October overseas (more when the time draws nearer).

It seems that a lot of people either want to know about writing to become professionals or to make their fan fic stronger or just because it interests them. I get emails at least 3-4 times a week asking how one becomes a writer, or if I can help them with their story. The answer to the former is "I dunno. You write?" and the answer to the second is no, but..." and then I lead them to the starting point of many of my lectures; a series of pretty easy to read columns I did a number of years ago, which you can still find on this site. Go to my WHAT TH--? pages and look for columns marked in red with the letters WR next to them. They either directly talk about writing or they are interviews with other writers in which we talk craft and not "Who's stronger, Superman or Sally Fields as the Flying Nun?"

Writing is an art and not a science, and therefore you can't really teach it the way you can, say, math. There are no absolutes. Even grammar can be played with especially when you are dealing with dialog. Perhaps the only absolute is spelling, but that's assuming we're using American English and not British English and that we're also not using slang or intentional misspellings. To me writing is about character and ideas even more than plot. It's been said a zillion times that there are only X number of plots - you fill in the number because I've heard as many different numbers as people who have told me there are only limited plot concepts. That's true to some degree, although probably not quite as limited as some would think. But there are billions of people and most would go through the same story in a different way because they bring with them different attitudes and baggage, and that affects their experience, making it personal instead of generic. If you consider each story as told by a specific person and how they experience it, the world of story telling is opened up.

Take a look at the What Th--? columns. Come see me at a convention where I'm giving one of my talks and feel free to ask questions there (no time to answer them here, unfortunately). Read as much as you can, and of course, write, write and write.

Labels: Writing 101