thedeadairchannel003

Hello. This is coming to you far later than I would have liked, but periods of intensive work tend to send me into a lockdown mode which leaves little room for much else. Now here I am, coming up for air. Hoping the surface world is still where I left it.

I like to watch bad movies. Particularly when I've burned myself out on a day, when all that's left in my head is grey static but I'm too wired to sleep, I like to scroll through Prime and dig out some obscure Gamora movie or zero budget 80s sci-fi flick. (Prime in particular seems to have quite a library of the hokey and bizarre.)

There's an adage that goes around writers I know sometimes, to pull people back down to Earth. Usually accompanied by a hearty fist planted on a pub table, or a quaff of a pint: "just tell me a fucking story." It's not much of an adage, granted, but that's rather the point. Cut the bullshit. Eschew your formalism, stop showing off. Just tell a fucking story. And I get it. At the end of the day, the job is to entertain. And there's so much joy in the craft itself- making a thing that flows from one satisfying story beat to the next, that ticks like a clock to an end which pulls a tangle of threads together into something taut and clean.

But, personally speaking, that's rarely enough for me. I'm always searching for something in a story- whether it's one I'm writing or one I'm consuming. I think I have almost a superstitious belief, somewhere in my subconscious, that a story might, just might, unlock some secret of the universe. That it might make the world make a little more sense. And for some warped reason, in that same part of my primal brain, I'm convinced that this sort of occult knowledge is more likely to be hidden in shlocky movies than 'good' ones.

That's where we get strange people making strange art, often left to their own devices to explore unwieldy ideas to unexpected conclusions. Scripts throwing in seemingly superfluous ideas because a writer read an interesting article over the weekend, and went "fuck it, let's see where this goes." Then, by folding it into a story, having to finish the thought in a way that makes sense. To themselves if not to anyone else. There's a searching to that which feels noble to me, and it's oft given me raw material to bounce off for my own work. It's also how we've gotten the Tetsuo the Iron Mans and Rocky Horrors of the world, and I wouldn't want to live in a world without those.

You can treat pulp paperbacks as religious texts. B-movies as gun fu grimoires.

Worst case scenario is spending an hour and a half cackling at something unhinged.

(This brain dump brought to you by a week of 12 hour writing days, after which staring at more words on pages is the last thing I want to do.)

I don't think I have any comics out this week; but a few that came out since my last letter that I'd like to highlight:

Detective Comics 1088 came out the week before last. I wrote the backup, which is beautifully drawn by Chris Mitten, and is about Lazarus Pits. It was a fun one to do- I love a chance to do a deep dive on these concepts that are often slightly glazed over. What does it feel like to be reborn? How does it feel for that spark to reenter a soul? How does it hurt, specifically?
My thanks as ever to Ram V for having me along. Someone pointed out online that I've now written the backups for over half of this run. They've been a joy. I like writing short stories, and this has just been 8 pages a month, dancing around Gotham, being drawn by some of the best artists in the business. One more to go this month for the Gotham Nocturne finale, and we're out.

Poison Ivy #25 came out last week, and I contributed a story with my Coffin Bound art team of DaNi and Brad Simpson. One of my favourite art teams to work with, it very much felt like getting the band back together- especially as the story felt very 'us'. A rogue Mi5 agent, obsessed with Ivy, and those who attempt to prevent him committing a terrible act. About as happy an ending as you'd expect from li'l ol' us.

Also last week: Moon Knight Annual #1. Being asked to write Moon Knight, albeit for a brief sojourn, was a quick "yes" from me. This one was very much Declan Shalvey's fault after he took me drinking with Marvel editors. The story was inspired by reading about Ancient Egyptian bas; a part of the human soul that would escape from the body during sleep to roam the realms between life and death. As a bird with a human head. With Marco Renna, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Cory Petit.

I finalized and sent in two scripts last week; one for a DC project I believe should be announced and solicited this month. This is the one I've been quietly working on for over a year, and one I always look forward to writing the next chapter of. I sincerely love this book, and can't wait for you to see it.

The other was Nightwing #122, which is issue 4 of my run with Dexter Soy. It's hard to believe we're only a month-and-change out from the release of our first in October.

Speaking of which, I'm doing an AMA on r/DCComics this coming Thursday, at 1pm PST. Should be a fun time. I got a lot of questions last time I did one of these, so I'll carve out time to stick around and try and answer as many as I can.

I spent today finalizing the second draft of a pitch for a character I've written before, but have always wanted to do more with- so hopefully this gets it over the line. Tomorrow I return to the script mines. Wish me luck.

A lot about work in this one, but sometimes it fills up your whole head and keeps creeping up your nostrils even when you're trying to sleep. Next week I'll try and write about something else a little more, cos I'd like to use this space to think and write about other things, rather than just be trapped in an ouroboros of my own comics input and output. There lies navel gazing, and that's bad for the soul.

This has been thedeadairchannel.

Dan Watters