a big ghost gun: thedeadairchannel022

Hello, it's been a minute, hasn't it?

Sorry about that. Busy. Here's what busy looks like as a comic book writer:

I'm at a place where I'm somewhat out ahead on most of my projects. Which is good, because there are rather a lot of them. Shredder issue 8 and Nightwing issue 138 came out yesterday, and I've recently handed in the scripts for Nightwing 143 and Shredder issue 13.

The Energon Universe Special dropped this month, which will lead straight into next month's M.A.S.K. #1, and I've just handed in the script for M.A.S.K. #6.

I also have two miniseries that should start coming out before the end of the year. I'm going to have to start doing that project codename thing that people do in these newsletters, aren't I?

Let's call one miniseries Project Bolt and the other Project Flask. Bolt is a six issue book in a corner I haven't worked in before of a universe I have worked in before. It's huge and audacious and fun. Flask is a five issue creator-owned series, the first I've had out since The Six Fingers. Since these haven't been solicited yet, and thus are not yet tethered to the monthly release schedule, we've been taking our time with them, toiling away in the background.

There's another creator-owned book too, but I'm only two scripts into that, with the second requiring a fairly hefty rewrite. Partly due to editorial notes, and partly because I've come up with a whole new framing device for it, which will be very worth it but probably means burning most of what's in my current draft of the script to the ground. So it sometimes goes. "Perfect" is the enemy of "done", but sometimes "done" can be ambushed and beaten with sledgehammers until it promises to behave a lot closer to "perfect." So let's call this book Project Sledgehammer.

Three of the books on my slate will be finished by the Autumn- Shredder, which I'm wrapping up with #18, and projects Bolt and Flask.

I already have two projects in the wings which will take their place: let's call them Project Fear and Project Expel. Both currently need outlined to go for approval in the next few weeks, so there's a whole other job that needs doing while the other plates are still spinning.

There are clues to the natures of the books in all those titles. I'm reminded that until Project MK Ultra, CIA projects were designated "MK" followed by an entirely randomly generated word. Which makes sense, when you think about it. Sneaking ironic little nods to the nature of the project into the title is fun for teasing a comic book, but stupid if national security is at stake. All you'd be doing then is revealing the nature of an operation to the enemy if communications were intercepted, or telling a spy exactly which files to pluck out if they went rifling through your cabinet.

And then Ultra was designated as such on purpose, ignoring precedent for no other reason than someone important thought that secretly dosing a fuck tonne of people with LSD in order to beat the Russians to developing mind control weapons was ultra ultra awesome.

Which speaks to the decadence of that whole affair. Operating with zero oversight and a near unlimited budget- and with many of the involved thoroughly enjoying getting high on their own supply- Ultra devolved to a point where CIA-run brothels were dosing johns against their will while the boss (equally intoxicated on a cocktail of narcotics) observed from behind two-way glass. While sat on a specially installed secret toilet. That all really happened. You can look it up.

That depraved little side quest had a title itself. It was Operation Midnight Climax. Because of course it was.

Since my last newsletter went out, the Batman: Dark Patterns trade came out in stores... and, wow. It appears a lot of people were waiting to read the book I. this format. The single issues did well- we went back to print on issue one, which I was told is rare for a maxi series like this- but from I'm now told, the trade has been flying off the shelves. If you've been struggling to get hold of it, DC assure us that plenty more copies are on their way.

Thanks so much to everyone who's turned out for and spread the word about the book. It means the world, especially when there's this many incredible different takes on the character happening all at once, that ours has cut through the noise for people. The li'l Batman book that could.

Eisner nominations came out last week, and it's wonderful and well deserved to see Hayden nominated for best cover artist and best penciller/inker in part for their work on the book. With covers like these, how could they not be?

And who knows. If Dark Patterns keeps selling as well as it has been, maybe we can talk DC into letting us do another one.

The response to yesterday's issue of Nightwing was a pleasure to see. We'd teased that a member of the Titans was coming to Blüdhaven, but not that it was Starfire. People broadly seem to have been pleasantly surprised.

Bringing her into this arc was a bit of a calculated risk. Not because it guaranteed I'd get yelled at on the internet- it's the internet, there's always yelling. More because we've been establishing Nightwing as more of a boots-on-the-ground detective book in this arc, where the more fantastic superheroic elements are embellishment that rather than central to the stories.

Cape comic readers are better trained to understand suspension of disbelief than most. It comes with the territory. Yes, we believe a man can fly, or that a domino mask means one can be face-to-face with a close relative and not recognize them. But moreso we understand that although these characters coexist in a shared universe, they cannot all cross-pollinate at all times. We understand that why can't Superman just deal with Batman's villains for him? just isn't really an interesting question.

He can't do so because then we would not have the kind of Batman stories we want to tell or want to read. And therefore we accept it and move on.

These universes contain everything. Magic, mad scientists, space-opera, time travel, dimensional portals, all these and more are always on the table. And sometimes part of the fun of working in these worlds is seeing how those bleed into each other. But if they're all on top of each other all the time, it can lose meaning a bit. It locks us into a form of maximalism that isn't always the goal.

I think I've used this example before. A writer establishes a locked-room mystery where someone is murdered, but the door and windows are all locked, and all the suspects are normal humans. Then the resolution is that a ghost walked through the wall and did it with a big ghost gun. That's going to feel dissatisfying as a reader. Even if ghosts and big ghost guns are pre-established in said world.

Because, yes, the universe has parameters, but so does the story itself. Rules and stakes that should be adhered to, particularly when it comes to a mystery.

For Nightwing 138, I knew I wanted to tell a detective story that brushed up against the sci-fi elements of the DCU in an X-Files-esque way. And then I began thinking that bringing Starfire in for this would work well, especially since we had Batman in the last issue. That'd allow us to revisit two formative relationships for Dick Grayson through the lens of where he's currently at.

But I questioned if Princess Koriand'r- a god-like, ultra-powerful Tamaranean alien badass named for a garden herb- felt like she broke the established boundaries of the arc?

Then I realized that perhaps this was exactly what we needed. Here's what I wrote in the script for the panel she shows up:

She should feel alien. She should feel like a goddess. She glows like the sun, and her hair is a constant comet trail behind her.

Denys immediately got what I was going for:

By removing the wider context of the Titans and the other fantastical things that happen there, she contrasts sharply with Nightwing and Blüdhaven. She becomes a jolt to the system. A moment of awe.

It was a calculated risk, but I'm very happy with it. I don't approach storytelling as magic, but sometimes it does feel a bit like mad science.

I'm doing an AMA on the DC Comics Reddit tomorrow, which is always fun. I hope to see you there. A tip I'd give with these things: I'd personally try and ask creators questions about things other than "would you write" or "when will we see" X or Y character. I understand why people ask- I never resent the questions, and do endeavour to answer them best I can. It's simply that in the former case, the answer is almost always "yes, if the story was right." And in the latter case the answer is almost always "wait and see" because even if I know, I don't want to give out spoilers far in advance. You can still always ask, though.

I hope to get at least one more of these letters out the door beforehand (so they don't keep turning into long essays like this one), but I'm signing at Midtown Comics on June 11th for the release of M.A.S.K. #1, the new Energon Universe series I'm writing with Pye Parr on art. Bleeding Cool reports that the first issue had over 200 000 orders, which is an incredible number, and makes this easily the biggest launch of my career.

If you like any of my work at all, I'd really urge you to pick this one up. The good folks at Skybound really encouraged us to go buck wild on this book, and I don't think it's what people will expect it to be. I truly love this mad thing.

Aaand just as I'm about to hit send on this, Anyone Comics post out the flyer for the panel I'm moderating at the Brooklyn Pride Comic Book Fair. I'm really looking forward to this- I've done plenty of panels in my time, but never actually moderated one before- and the topic will be fascinating, especially with these panelists. If you're in NYC, do come by.

Right, that's quite enough from me. I'm aiming to get the next script of Project Bolt in by tomorrow, but the AMA may complicate things. We'll see what happens. Always living on the edge over here.

This has been thedeadairchannel. A transmission from the desk of Dan Watters. Please do subscribe.