The Journey

 While the 11th of November of obviously an important day of it year, it also holds another special significance to me.

Two years ago today I woke up feeling slightly invigorated; the day before as I was heading into downtown Calgary, I got an eagerly anticipated phone call.
The job interview I went in for a week previously had been successful and I had the job.

I remember I was so excited about this job because it meant more stability in my work schedule (9-5:30, Monday to Friday), weekends off, holidays off, no worrying about getting called in to cover a shift and best of all, more money. So naturally the first thing I did when I got home that day was go online and buy tickets to the Calgary Expo.

In the meantime, my company had to go through a 10 day background check to make sure they didn't hire anyone who may have been a criminal (I was acquitted!). So when I woke up the next day, you can imagine my shock and sadness when I saw breaking news that Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy had passed away the previous day.

I wrote something on this blog but something gnawed at me and I couldn't explain it. I wanted to do something more to honor the life and legacy of a man who's work meant so much to me.
And in that moment I decided, "I'm gonna write a comic!"

The nice thing was...I already had an artist in mind.
Marcelo Millicay's work caught my eye via Twitter/X and I had messaged him about maybe doing a commission in the future. He was also open to doing a fan-comic.
"Great!" I replied. "Only problem is...I can't think of a thing to write about."

And yet, I had it in my mind, that I was going to do this. I was going to put a script that hopefully he would agree to do. I wasn't too worried about the money as I knew my upcoming job would make that easy. So over the course of a few hours, I tried my best to properly articulate how I (and so many others) felt about Kevin and put it into a script that hopefully people would like.

I sent it to Marcelo (After accidentally sending it to the head of my company's HR Department) and when someone reads something you wrote and their first response is, "Dude. So so damn good"...well, I think I could have replied with something better than "Are you sure?"

He wanted to be the one who drew it, I wanted him to draw it and thus a partnership was formed. We did have to wait until January to get it out but the wait was worth it. Marcelo had other commitments and obligations and it wouldn't be fair, nor professional, if he put mine ahead of other commissions he had lined up.

Our comic, "A Big Fan", came out and needless to say, the response was overwhelmingly positive. I got a lot of people on social media replying with crying gifs, telling us we did a great job. Susan Eisenberg, Kevin's friend and co-star on Justice League, even saw the comic and described it as "Extraordinary" sharing it on her Instagram.

Two of my favorite comic creators even ended up seeing it as well and their words were encouraging. One simply responded, "LOVE the comic!" while the second told me, "Keep up the good work" and congratulated me for putting it together, saying how hard it is to put a comic together. The more I keep making comics, the more I keep re-learning this.

This day was the start of my real journey as a writer. For years I wrote but...never really did anything with it. It was just a hobby that I took seriously but in the time since that first script, I've written a few more. Marcelo and I did the Robin origin story, "The Partner", which was the first time we got to collaborate with Carl Shinyama.

People might think that all a letterer has to do is put the words in the right spot but Carl letters like an editor. I'm...a bit apprehensive about someone changing my script but whenever Carl made a change it always for the better. By simply breaking up a narration into another text box, or removing a few words, he made the comic look even better.

Carl's been interviewed by DC Comics a few times for editorial positions and when he does get the job, I know whatever series he gets, be it Scooby-Doo or Superman, the series will be in good hands. That's how I feel whenever Carl lettered a comic for me.

Marcelo's art is the sundae, Carl's lettering and small changes are the whipped cream & cherry on top.

I also got encouraged by someone to...look outside of Gotham story. As they put it, "You write really well. Your stories are good but you could probably do a lot more if you told your own stories."
The fact that Chip Zdarsky gave me the same advice told me that maybe I should do that.
Right now, there are two more Batman: The Animated Series fan-comic scripts that I have written (The last one was finished around Thanksgiving last year)...but I'm not sure if I'll ever make them.

Not that I don't want to (Marcelo had preliminary sketches underway for a Catwoman story) but at the same time, I want to focus on showing that I can get an emotional response from people with original stories.

As Chip told me, "It's easy to get readers to care about Aunt May. But if you can get me, as a reader, to care about a character you just introduced to me a few pages ago...that shows me you've got it."

Plus, maybe I'll tell those other Batman stories if I ever get hired by DC Comics.

So I set myself a challenge at the start of 2024. Every month, I had to write at least one original comic script. No Batman, no pre-established characters, no fan-comics at all. It could be whatever genre, horror, action, crime, sci-fi, but it all had to be original.

Right now, I've got one of those stories being made, a five page story, and I've also got a bigger one underway...one that I'm planning to physically publish.
Marcelo is drawing this one and he is absolutely killing it. He told me that he felt his art for our third comic, "Here's to Survival", was his best but by the time he's done this project, this might take the top spot.
Then again, Marcelo's an artist who keeps getting better and better.
Currently I'm working on the script for November and trying to think of a script to do for December.
And at the start of 2025 I'm going to start all over again.

In the past two years I've grown as a writer, become more confident with my ideas and words. I've been able to work with some phenomenal talent that actually makes me want to do better and put out some stories that make me proud to say, "I helped make that."

What a journey it's been...and I'm just getting started.