THE CHUK CHRONICLES #06
Andy in the house. Birdies in the comfort zone. Some project "gains." And my advice to an unmade DBZ remake.
Perhaps you're a friend, a fan or even a foe. Wherever our paths have crossed, welcome to the Chuk Chronicles – my newsletter keeping the world-at-large up-to-speed with my comics, books, TV episodes and other writing. Got some updates this time, some pics of Andy in the world, some writing advice and some tidbits on another would-be anime blockbuster I consulted on. Let’s get into it!
As I write this, the entire print-run of Remember Andy Xenon?, including all variants, sits at Zoop's fulfillment center and should be going out to fans any day now. I've kept the final proof copy I approved to get us to this stage, and I keep flipping through it, savoring how great it came out. The glossy paperstock and thicker laminate on the cover really make it feel like a prestige format book. Looks good. Feels good. Even smells good. And soon, everybody will get to see that themselves…
PROJECTS PROGRESSING UP THE PIPELINE
Having seen more social posts about "gains” at the gym than I care to, I've come to realize that people only really want to see that one pair of before/after photos, not any of the incremental steps in-between – and that goes for writing, too. Which is to say, the two projects mentioned last time are advancing, but I've got nothing to show for either yet. Network notes have come back for the TV project I'm staff on and, as I turn one outline into a proper script this week, the concerns they’ve raised all look manageable. I'm in the middle of the last script for the comics project, as well. And even though it all looks like chicken scratch to anybody who hasn't read the script yet, the thumbnails one artist turned in have already shot me to the Moon. Can’t even imagine how much further into outer space we’ll go as the lineart comes in...
FRESHENED AIR
I just recorded an interview about writing and editing Andy Xenon with a big university's podcast. It was conducted more like an NPR segment, with a producer on hand the whole time, and that was a nice change of pace. She did mic checks, calibrated sound fidelity and listened closely to the flow of Q&A, bringing up follow-up questions later on to straighten out any talking points I needed to clarify more. The session went on for 90 minutes, but my ramble will be edited down to half the length for the final piece, which will be polished even more over the next few months. Such technical details might not sound like a big whoop, but as a guy who's come to hate the sound of his verbal pauses/tics after listening to myself speak extemporaneously so many times over the past year, such editing is very, very welcome. Anyway, they're telling me it'll drop in August at the earliest, and if that date sticks, you'll hear it here.
A DRAGON BALL Z MOVIE THAT COULD’VE BEEN
People seemed to like my little reminiscence last time about consulting on an unrealized anime adaptation. I’ll share another, now.
There’s already been a Hollywood version of Dragon Ball, but when a movie’s screenwriter goes so far as to publicly apologize for what he’s wrought… it’s safe to say it didn’t work. Still, the brand remains one of the biggest in the world so, a few years back, another American company wanted to take their own crack at it. And at a very early stage of development, they called in an anime expert – me.
Film options can swap hands fast and often. I doubt this company has the rights, now, but I have no idea who currently does, either. You might use musical chairs as an analogy, but hot potato feels more apt. Anyway, as a consultant, my thoughts on Dragon Ball echoed a lot of my thoughts on One Piece. Like Luffy, Goku has this somewhat jarring dichotomy of being both a naive Pollyanna and furious asskicker at once. I think you see this type of character so often in shonen anime/manga because, generally, there’s less embarrassment about power fantasies. More on that in a sec.
As I explained to my consultees, one hurdle to adapting DBZ is that it’s awkwardly split into two brands. After 100+ issues/episodes of Dragon Ball (which follows Goku as youngster and spoofs martial arts epics) the series is retitled/rebooted to Dragon Ball Z (which follows Goku as a family man and is a ballistic superhero epic). A lot of regions, including America, were effectively introduced to Z first, though, so Dragon Ball became kind of an... appendix to the experience as a result. I’d argue that even a lot of the series’ own fans don’t totally understand it because of this. I myself grew up with the series and didn’t grasp how it really worked until much later.
Akira Toriyama’s success as a cartoonist has a lot to do with being perpetually in touch with the cheeky little boy within, I think. That’s front and center with Dragon Ball – which is basically Dennis the Menace, but with a Dennis who also happens to be the world’s most dangerous martial artist – but it still underpins DBZ if you know where to look. See, there’s kind of a civilizing that can happen to storytellers as they grow up. When you’re smashing toys together in the playroom, there’s no shame in asserting your hero has “double-infinity” power if your friend ever asserts that his only has infinity, right? But then you take classes and read Joseph Campbell and learn all these pesky rules which insist your hero must have a weakness to be relatable, among other buzzkills.
DBZ sort of… doesn’t bother with any of that. If Goku dies in battle, it’s more an inconvenience he’ll walk off. If he attains ultimate power as a Super Saiyan and it’d seem to limit where he can go next, Toriyama will just reveal that Goku can go “double-ultimate” as a Super Saiyan Level Two. DBZ gets away with what’d feel like cheating, I believe, because at heart it remains the parody Dragon Ball was, even if it’s not overtly presented as such. It gets to have its cake and eat it, too – ridiculing hero tropes while also relishing in them more than any self-serious series are comfortable with.
That last bit bears out in the ongoing rivalry between fans of Goku and Superman. Go online for two minutes. You’ll find countless “battle threads” hypothesizing how a fight between the two would go down – obsessing over power levels, contrasting their origins’ similarities, etc. I’ve yet to see one grasp that Toriyama made Goku more like Superman in DBZ to specifically parody Superman II‘s plot, which is one example of fans loving the series without being in on the joke. Though, I’ve also yet to see DBZ ever feel the need to meditate on whether vigilantism is justified or if might makes right while there’s basically a cottage industry of Superman apologies. That’s the real, key difference between the two.
By the time I got to the end of this spiel, I could see in my consultees’ eyes that this silly hero brand suddenly looked way more complicated. Maybe I scared them off of doing it. Maybe I talked my way out of more work. When I close my eyes, it’s hard to imagine a live-action DBZ ever working. The series works because of a very precise tone and actually rather delicate balance of humor. One moment, Toriyama will find it all so patently absurd, he’ll name villains after vegetables. The next, he’ll make a battle with one of these villains feel Apocalyptic. Dial either quality up or down and it ceases being DBZ. Though, again… maybe it wasn’t worth it to actually say that during this consult.
Clay McCormack contributed one of the “photos” in the “We Remember Andy Xenon” article – the delightfully-deadpan one where Andy must simply sit there on a public access talk show and humor the host’s red-faced rant about conspiracy theories.
Recently, he wrote and drew an original graphic novel, Bloody Hel, and it’s one of my favorite comics of late. I didn’t know anything about it going in, other than what the cover suggests, and I think saying too much about its plot here might do the book a disservice. Clay structures it so tightly, your feel of what type of story you’re in for takes switchback turns each chapter, and that kind of unpredictability is so rare. Also, the handling of the supernatural elements, and how they interact with the historical settings, has such a precise tone. Paired with some really spellbinding, lyrical dialogue, it recalls Sandman in the best way.
And that all goes before even remarking on the sublime art, which is so atmospheric throughout. Clay worked with a top-notch colorist, Russ Badget, who builds tremendously on the mood. Whether you’re seeing the hellscapes of trench warfare or of Viking netherworlds, the imagery’s so searing and hypnotic. To add another comparison, it has the same kaleidoscopic feverishness as Storaro’s Apocalypse Now cinematography at times.
Anyway, as you can tell, I like the comic. A lot. So, go find it!
TIPS & TRIPS
Last time, I half-remembered a book on writing which my sister used to refer to as a teacher. Since then, not only did some eagle-eyed subscribers remind me that the book was actually Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, my sister also made sure to send me a copy of it. Thanks, Sis…
With more of a conversational tone, it's equal parts memoir and instructional, and definitely a worthwhile read. Lamott's bibliography leans to non-fiction and down-to-Earth drama, which doesn't have a lot of overlap with my areas of creative writing, of course. But despite such differences, there’s much common ground in this book I can relate to as a writer. (Although, I had to snicker when she talks about writing to music and specifically points to heavy metal as anathema to the experience. I write to metal all the time! Different strokes…)
To take a step back… reading Bird by Bird has reminded me it's important for any writer to take a step back. Venture outside your purview from time to time. Some of my best stuff was inspired by non-fiction I read or experiences I had which had nothing at all to do with comics, fantasy, sci-fi, etc. When I've taught writing classes, I'll ask students what genres they want to work in, then encourage them to take a break from it – at least in their input – and explore genres they've shied away from for a while. I think it's crucial to do this to keep yourself from cannibalizing ideas. Being creative is all about synthesis, after all. Reaching out and grabbing some unusual stuff outside your usual boundaries and bringing it all back to center, as it were.
I should probably think of some snappier analogy for that…
I’ll be sharing more Tips & Tricks in future Chuk Chronicles. If you have any writing questions, thoughts on my work, or bon mots, shoot me a message. You might get answered here! Next time, a lot of stuff mentioned above should be further along. And I’ll talk about an important lesson I learned after meeting Stan Lee!