Resurrection Monday

I am currently grieving.

Sorry to put a downer on you on a Monday (it's bad enough it is Monday, right?), but I'm convicted enough in what I am about to convey that it needs to be said. I am grieving for my brother, whom I most recently lost, though I am still grieving for my father and other brother as well. I feel our grieving never fully goes away if we continue to miss those whom we have lost.

On September 17th, 2015 at 6pm, my brother went cycling with a group of friends as was their custom to go out on a Thursday evening ride. He and another rider never came home. I am not going to go into details, or whose fault it was (it wasn't the rider's or the driver's; it was just unfortunate circumstances), because it is not the point of this post and it is still too painful to recount. The point is he was taken from my life and I miss him dearly.

But I can bring him back.

Well, technically, I can't actually bring him back. No black magic, no incantations, and definitely no flying around the world backwards to turn back time (suck it, Superman). But I'm a writer. I am told I am a good one too. So I've decided to include aspects of my brothers and my father in personalities of the characters I create and immortalize in the pages I write, just as they live in the memories in my heart.

One character can be sarcastic with the driest humor this side of the Atlantic with a love for hiking. Another character can have a brilliant affinity for wordplay and a superior bowler. And another character could have a green thumb with a wild heart. These are all various abilities or characteristics of those whom I lost. And this list goes on, and is abundantly complex in its amazing array of the human condition.

By writing those characteristics into the people I create, I can keep my brothers and father alive. Perhaps indefinitely. In a sense, then, I can, indeed, bring them back. I can talk with them through dialog. Look at them again in the scenes I conceive. Play with them as I weave a plot around who they are and what they want. If I continue to add them to my stories, my hope is I won't miss them so much. And maybe it won't hurt as much when I have no one to lean on for brotherly or fatherly advice.

So the next time you read one of my best-selling, award-winning stories (I can dream, can't I?), your favorite characters may just share some qualities of some of my family. I hope you like them. They were special guys. Damn, I miss them.

1950's Sci-Fi and Shakespeare

Yes, it's true. Some science fiction aficionados probably already know this. When one thinks of 1950's sci-fi, some images immediately come to mind: giant ants, giant mantises, giant grasshoppers, and, believe it or not, a giant woman. Bad make-up, bad dialog, bad comedy, and bad acting (with few exceptions), were the pillars of science fiction from this era and, admittedly, I loved it.

The producers got this gorilla costume at a discount - it was missing the head.

So what does giant, radioactive insects have to do with a 15th century playwright? Nothing. Well, almost nothing. There is one movie from the 50's, however, that stands out from the crowd and is actually a remake of a famous Shakespearean tragedy. The film is Forbidden Planet. The play is The Tempest.

First, let's look at some of the finer points of the movie:

• A very young, Leslie Nielson as the captain. I kept waiting for a joke every time he spoke.
• A Richard Anderson appearance as the doctor, who went on to play Oscar Goldman from The Six Million Dollar Man.You can see his real hair in this movie.
• Earl Holloman plays a goofy cook. He goes on to be a regular on Police Woman, where he plays a goofy cop.
• Special effects by Disney. I was reminded of Fantasia.
• Robbie the Robot. Ok, it was a guy in a bubbly suit, but he was still cool.
• It may have been an early influence to Star Trek - a military navy organization traveling through space right down to using inertial dampeners for slowing down from light speed.

The robot is portrayed as the bad guy here. Sorry, Robbie.

Some story elements of Forbidden Planet are as such: a man and daughter are marooned on an uninhabited planet where the man has powers he gained from being on the planet facilitated by an extinct, advanced alien race. The man also has a robot who does his bidding and is plagued by a mysterious invisible killer "force."

Wow. Sounds amazingly original. Before you petition Hollywood to remake this classic, let's take a look at The Tempest.

Some story elements from The Tempest are thus: a man and daughter are marooned on an uninhabited island where the man has powers he gained from being on the island facilitated by a deceased sorceress. The man also has a slave who does his bidding and is plagued by a mysterious killer.

Hmm... sounds familiar. Not that Hollywood would shy away from reusing (stealing) ideas.

All in all, the movie is considered a classic and is well worth the time to watch.. And there's even a giant in it!

Will Comic Books Actually Rot Your Brain?

The short answer? Hardly.

Everyone is essentially from one of two camps: either you feel comic books are trashy tripe filled with simplistic, overly-muscled super heroes that only appeal to children, o r you feel that comic books are an under-rated, untapped creative medium that puts drama, art, and writing into one enthralling package which takes graphics arts to a whole new level. I am of the second camp. I have been reading and collecting comic books since I was 16. Even then I could tell the writers of the day - Chris Claremont, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman - were all either using comics as a vehicle for voicing their opinions on social strife or they were pushing the medium into the realm of literature and high art.

In fact, comics saved my life.

At 16, I was small for my age. I was the quintessential 100-pound weakling who was socially-awkward and smarter than most others in my school. This trifecta made me an easy target for bullying. Coupled with the overwhelming black cloud of depression that ran deep in my family, it's no stretch to imagine that I was suicidal at several low points in my life. Then I discovered comic books.

Yes, I've certainly heard of the popular heroes - Spider-Man, Superman, Batman - but it wasn't until I picked up an issue of The Uncanny X-Men where my eyes were truly opened to the power and the beauty of modern comic books. I honestly had not heard of the X-Men in 1986. Chris Claremont's treatment of these particular heroes was fresh and new to me, never having been exposed to comics that went beyond the good vs. bad battle royale. Here was an author who took the fear of mutants in the Marvel Universe and paralleled that with the racism, bigotry, and social unrest of our time. So, being a social outcast myself, I really took to the X-Men and identified with them. They became my friends, my brethren.

I could have a horrible week being cut down by the finest athletes our public school system can produce, but I could always rely upon and look forward to that Saturday when I get to go to my favorite comic shop and pick up the latest treasures of fantasy and science fiction. Yes, they were an escape for me. And one could argue that I wasted a lot of money and a lot of time with this "trash," but ask yourself, "Does the cost of my comic books surpass the cost of my funeral? Does the time spent 'wasting it away' reading comic books outweigh the time spent by my family and friends in mourning for my loss?" No, comic books provided a treasure that far exceeded all the tea in China: they gave me hope.

They also gave me a sense of direction and purpose. Inspired by the hope and excitement comics gave me, I went on to pursue a career in art with the ambition that, one day, I, too, can give some 100 pound weakling the hope he needs to continue on in life and find a way to survive the war zone we call high school. I have not given up that hope. And I grew. Now over six feet tall and close to double my weight at 16, I am still socially awkward. But that's okay. And though I may not be the artist I intended to be, I am becoming the writer I intend to be. And if I can provide that escape, though temporary, for anyone in need of it, I will gladly keep writing until my last breath.

Thank you: Chris Claremont, John Byrne, John Romita Jr., Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Neil Adams, Barry Windsor-Smith, Jim Shooter, Al Milgrom, Mike Zeck, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Arthur Adams, Brian Bolland, Dick Giordano, and hundreds others in the comic industry who toil away in their passions and ignore the nay-sayers that they work in an industry that churns out nothing but "trashy tripe." Thank you, a million times thank you. You saved my life.