Opening Shots: The Vision

"Gloves of blood."

The Vision
by Dean Koontz
(Putnam, 1977)

My earlier post on Koontz and Cain reminded me of this novel. It's one of my favorites because it applies a spare Cain-like style to a supernatural horror story. In her Koontz bio, Katherine Ramsland writes that Koontz "had noticed how many contemporary horror novels were written in a dense, baroque style, and he pondered what it would be like to cross horror with the stripped-down language of the fast-paced detective fiction of the 1930s." This "experiment" became The Vision. If only more horror novels cooked like this one.

Koontz on Cain

One of the first books I read about writing was Dean Koontz's How to Write Best Selling Fiction (Writer's Digest Books, 1982). It must have been 1984 or 1985, when I was maybe 12 or 13, and I borrowed it from the Frankford Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. I picked up a copy a while back and last night, in a post-turkey haze, thumbed through it again. I was really happy to find this bit about James M. Cain:

The Postman Always Rings Twice is as readable and poignant and relevant as it was when it first saw print. Indeed, Postman reads as if it were written last week! Cain was so in touch with the people about whom he wrote, so intimately familiar with the fears and desires of the masses in the 1920s and 1930s, that he seems to have known not only how the common man and woman talked and thought at the time, but also how they would talk and think for decades to come. I am not aware of another American writer of our century whose books have been so utterly untouched by the passage of so many years, as have Cain's.

What was true in 1982 is still true today; Cain's novels (especially his earliest) are as crisp and raw as they were during the last time America tumbled a severe economic downturn (a.k.a., The Great Depression).

And Koontz's guide is still full of excellent advice. Copies are hard to track down these, but if you can find one, I heartily recommend it. The last chapter, "Read Read Read," was a real eye-opener, because it was as if Koontz was subconsciously planting a reading list (Bester, Chandler, Ellison, Hammett, Leonard, Levin, MacDonald, McBain, Stark) in my brain that I'd follow for the next, oh, 25 years.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!

I present to you: another photographic absurdity from my childhood. Dig in!

Nerdery Update

Steve Ekstrom forced me to cough up the latest on my various comic projects, and the resulting Q&A can be found at Newsarama.com. (Possibly interesting aside: I was in the Marvel offices today when the above image, from Cable #11, was sent to Newsarama for inclusion in this Q&A.)

Well, There Goes the Workday

Google now has millions of classic photographs from Life Magazine in a searchable online database. Above: Dashiell Hammett smoking in Hollywood, circa 1937. Just one of the random gems I found in just a few minutes. Must write... must not search for photos all morning... must hit daily writing goal...

must

... stop

searching...

A Book I Want to Read Right Now, Damnit

Yesterday Bookseller.com (and the Rap Sheet) reported that UK publishing house Quercus picked up the rights to a long-lost Mario Puzo novel: Six Graves to Munich. It was published under a pen name ("Mario Cleri") just a year before The Godfather. Not only do I love the sound of this, but I'm a fan of those late 1960s Banner paperbacks, which include David Goodis's last novel, Somebody's Done For, a cool reprint of David Karp's Hardman, as well as Gil Brewer's The Tease and Sin For Me. And Puzo/Cleri novel looks just as cheesy/cool. But can a used copy be found anywhere online? Nope. Looks like I'm going to have to wait until next June to check this out... and even then, I'm sure it'll feature some sleek, perfect bestseller-y kind of cover, a far cry from the pulpy glory of the original Banner cover.

Philadelphia Confidential

Today I spent some time looking through some microfilm copies of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin from 1959. Back then, the Bulletin was Philly's top newspaper, and I figured that flipping through a few issues would give me a feel for the city at that time. Boy did it. Here are some of the headlines from a single week's worth of stories:

Woman Seized In Murder Plot
Secretary Planned to Hire Killer

Docker Chokes One Man, Beats 2d to Death
"I Gave Him All I Had" Attacker Tells the Police

Another Girl Is Slashed
She Is Cut on Head In North Phila. Street

GI Admits Slashing Debbie, 7 Others
Was Seized In Molesting Of 2 Boys

Chained to Bed in Plant, Girl Job Seeker Tells Police

Slashed to Death In Fight Over Check

Boy, 14, Kills Grandmother With Ice Pick
Victim, 82, Had Reported Him As Runaway

I had no idea that slashing was so popular in the late 1950s.

Photo from PhillyHistory.org.

My February Comics

Here's what is on deck from me at Marvel this coming February (my birthday month, coincidentally). Your eyes are not deceiving you; there are five issues here, all in one short month. This makes me seem ridiculously prolific -- but honest, these were written at different times over the past year.

PUNISHER: FRANK CASTLE #67
Written by DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI
Penciled by MICHEL LACOMBE
Cover by DAVE JOHNSON
“SIX HOURS TO KILL, PART 2: FIELD DAY”
W.C. Fields once mused that he’d rather be dead than play Philadelphia. Well, if you cross paths with Frank Castle, you’ll be able to have it both ways. Castle has been injected with a slow-acting poison that will kill him in less than hours—but don’t think he’s going to spend them moping around. As long as blood is still pumping through his rock-hard veins, the Punisher plans on killing as many dirtbags as possible. But the Philadelphia underworld isn’t going to roll over so easily. Neither is the top-secret black bag ops unit that dosed Frank. And don’t forget the Mayor of Philadelphia, who only sees one way of saving his already-shaky political career: killing Frank way before his six hours are up.
32 PGS./Explicit Content ...$3.99

DEAD OF NIGHT FEATURING WEREWOLF BY NIGHT #2 (of 4)
Written by DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI
Pencils & Cover by MICO SUAYAN
Jack Russell is in serious trouble. The police have made him their prime suspect in a brutal murder...and they don’t even realize the full moon turns him into a vicious, blood-thirsty predator! But Jack is innocent – at least as far as he can remember – and with the clock ticking and the authorities on his trail, he goes looking for answers...and redemption! It’s a gruesome, grisly MAX take on one of Marvel’s horror legends, by Duane Swierczynski (IMMORTAL IRON FIST) and Mico Suayan (MOON KNIGHT)!
32 PGS./Explicit Content ...$3.99


IMMORTAL IRON FIST #23
Written by DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI
Penciled by TRAVEL FOREMAN
Cover by PATRICK ZIRCHER
Danny and the Immortal Weapons from the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven begin to discover the shocking, shameful secrets of the Capital City of Hell. But what does it mean for K’un-Lun, and for our world? And how will each of them overcome the absolute worst and most terrifying enemies they’ve ever faced? It’s kung fu super hero horror action by Duane Swierczynski and Travel Foreman!
32 PGS./Rated T+ ...$2.99


CABLE #11
Written by DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI
Pencils by JAMIE McKELVIE
Cover by ARIEL OLIVETTI
“WASTELAND BLUES,” PART 1 OF 2
Deep in the future, Cable and the now seven-year-old mutant messiah find themselves in the middle of humanity’s last stand. And humanity loses! Cable is forced to timeslide into an uncertain future, hoping to find survivors, or food, or water… anything. But the longer Cable and the girl wander, the greater the devastation. As they fight to survive out in the barren wastelands, the girl starts to ask Cable the tough questions he’s been dreading—namely: who am I, and why do some people want me dead?
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$2.99


Finally, February brings a brand-new mini-series, announced here for the first time (and of special interest to Cable/X-Men fans):

X-MEN: THE TIMES AND LIFE OF LUCAS BISHOP #1 (OF 3)
Written by DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI
Pencils by LARRY STROHMAN
Cover by ARIEL OLIVETTI
"Memories of the Monster"
By now you know that Lucas Bishop—former cop, renegade X-Man—refuses to rest until he's killed the so-called "mutant messiah." But do you know why? To answer that question you have to look into Bishop's past…which actually means jumping 50 years into the future, when his parents barely escaped a nuclear holocaust, only to land in the most brutal "mutant relocation" camp in the world. There, a young Bishop first heard the horror stories about the green-eyed monster that ushered in the the downfall of mutantkind, and swore vengeance -- embarking on a life-long, time-hopping mission that begins here, in this special three-part mini-series. You haven't heard the "Messiah Complex" story until you've heard Bishop's side of the story…
32 PGS./Rated T+… $3.99

The Clown

People often ask me why I write such dark/weird stuff. And I've never had a really good answer... until now. Just stumbled across this photo of myself, at what? Maybe a year old, if that? I'm in my bedroom at 4738 Darrah Street, which was the middle room. And on the wall behind me is the clown my father painted.

This was no ordinary clown. If you click on the photo to see a bigger version, you might notice the shelf the clown is holding with arms that come right out of the fucking wall. Arms that could conceivably drop the shelf and reach down for that innocent toddler sitting there with a dazed expression on his face.

People, I grew up thinking those arms were going to come out of the fucking wall and grab me.

Look at me. I'm so scared, I don't even realize that I have some kind of wrapped gift in my hands. I'm not thinking about gifts or toys; I'm thinking about the clown. That the moment I turn my head even a few inches to the left is the moment it's going to come out of the fucking wall and grab me.

And check out the clown's face. This is no jolly entertainer. This is a crazy man on a drug/booze bender who decided to slap on some facepaint and scare the living crap out of whomever he encountered.

I know my Dad meant well. Instead of buying some lame kiddie furnishings, he took the time to create this one-of-a-kind image on the wall of his first-born son's bedroom. Maybe he thought it would be funny. Maybe he thought the clown would become my imaginary playmate. Or, maybe he dropped one too many tabs of LSD in Vietnam.

Still, I suppose I do owe my career to my Dad and that clown. Because at the heart of everything I write, beneath the plot and characters and dialogue and rest of that fancy nonsense, down at the most primal level, there is only this:

There are clowns.

And they have arms that can come out of the fucking walls and grab you.

Two Months Until Six Hours

Wizard Universe.com just posted some sneak peeks at Michel Lacombe's art for Punisher: Frank Castle #66, the first issue of our story arc, "Six Hours to Kill." You'll be able to read the whole darn thing January 21, 2009.

A Quantum of Free Time

Over a week without a post? Lame, I know. But I've been hit with a couple of deadlines at the same time, and most days, the thought of slapping a few extra words into this little white rectangle seemed about as appealing as crawling across a few extra inches of broken glass. I mean, it's no big deal, I'm already bleeding... but there's no pressing need, either.

Ever since I became a full-time freelance comic book writer/novelist/whatever, I've tried to hit a daily goal, and it is this: five comic script pages and at least one thousand words of a novel/fiction. The daily emails, proofreading, corrections, edits, Q&As... that's all extra. At the core of my writing day are those five script pages, and those thousand words (which is about four pages of double-spaced typed text).

I figured if I could keep that up, I'd be on fire. Five script pages x four days = twenty pages, which is just two pages shy of a full comic script. And one thousand words a day x 30 days x 2 months = first draft of a decent-sized short novel (60,000 words).

So do I hit my daily goal? Well...

I've found that my fancy "daily goal" plan doesn't factor in what I call the "recharging my batteries" factor. When on deadline, I can write like a demon for a few days, back to back. I might crank out as many as 10 script pages, or 2 or 3,000 words of fiction. But if I try to push it that an extra day, my brain refuses to give me anything useable.

And that's the problem: I'm still a creature of deadlines. I do work ahead, and I do manage to hit my daily more often than not. But my brain really doesn't kick into high gear until the clock is ticking. Which works... until I experience something like the last two weeks, when there were several clocks ticking all at once -- each slightly out of phase with each other -- and the noise made me want to leap from a church bell tower. Scripts aren't due a week at a time; sometimes, I need to produce two in a given week. When this happens, there is no time for recharging batteries. There is no try; there is only do.

All I can say is: thank God I love the doing.

Secret Dead Blog Recommends: Once Were Cops

Ken Bruen's novels are the closest thing we have to hardboiled poetry. Once Were Cops, his latest knockout standalone, muscles it even further in that direction, to the point where you're not sure where novel ends and poetry begins.

You can see it the moment you open the book. The pages aren't dense with paragraphs; there are shotgun-pattern blasts of sentences, dialogue, and sometimes, single words. You don't read it so much as let it assault you.

Ken's genius is that he packs so much meaning into each little pellet of birdshot.

He only describes something when he means it, not when he wants to fill out a graph or a page. He breaks out the dialogue so that you can really hear it, not breeze by it. He drags you into some psycho's world, and damn if you're not there, listening to him mumble in your mind.

Ken happens to be blogging this week at Moments in Crime, St. Martin's Minotaur's house blog, and in a post earlier this week, he revealed a bit of his process:

Like my novels, I actually write much lengthier entries and then root out all that sounds off.

I read it aloud and if it doesn't have that jagged tone of real speech, bin it.

Ken bins only the filler, never the killer. Once Were Cops has a beautiful twisting plot that never telegraphs its punches, as well as a collection of unsavory and sadistic fuckers that you somehow compel you to stay with them, no matter what unsavory and sadistic things they do. (And God, what they do in this novel...)

I can't recommend this one enough.

Michael Crichton, RIP

Not a good couple of months for mystery/thriller writers (or their fans), I've got to say. First James Crumley, then Tony Hillerman, and now Michael Crichton. Oddly enough, my first Crichton wasn't one of his thrillers, but his non-fiction collection, Travels, which I read just after my senior year of high school. It absolutely fascinated me, and almost made me wish I was pursuing a life of medicine (despite the fact that the sight of blood makes me dizzy) and/or traveling the world instead of wasting my time pursuing an English degree. I was a fan of Jurassic Park before the movies, and have my review from the La Salle Collegian to prove it. I also remember being embarrased when the father of a friend of mine pointed out that the author's last name was pronounced "cry-ton," not "crick-tin."

Last night I picked up Zero Cool, a Hard Case reprint of a early Crichton novel (published under the name John Lange) and was again knocked out by how good Crichton was so early in his career. I'm pretty sure he wrote these early thrillers while in medical school. (Which is depressing to a guy who has nothing but a bunch of partial manuscripts to show for his undergrad years.)

I'm sad that we're not going to be seeing any new Crichton books, but grateful for the ones we have. I wonder how Travels holds up, nearly 20 years later...

Swierczy Annotates: Immortal Iron Fist #19

Okay, so we're going to try the annotation thing. Got my copy of Immortal Iron Fist #19 cracked open; let's see what jumps out at me.

(Obligatory Spoiler Warning: This annotation might give away some plot points. So read the issue first. Seriously. It'll make this so much cooler.)

Pages 1-3
The Thunderer's Army vs. the Ch'i-Lin in 1878.
Just want to note, for the record, how much I love Russ Heath. I first encountered his stuff in the pages of the Warren horror comics, and never dreamed I'd have the chance to work with him. That is all. Please pardon the gushing. (But c'mon; look at that Ch'iLin running through the snow on page 3! How freakin' cool is that?)

Page 4
Danny takes a call.
Part of the genius of Travel Foreman is his small, intricate, action-packed panels. At the bottom of this page Travel added an extra panel or two to show Danny on his way to Harlem, and I had to recalibrate the captions. But that was totally fine with me, because the sequence is so much better for it.

Page 6
Danny's students turn on each other.
As originally conceived in my beatsheet, this was going to be about the students attacking Danny and Luke Cage. Who couldn't really fight back because... well, their attackers were kids. But my editor, Warren Simons, wasn't totally sold on it; at the end of the day, he argued, it was still a bunch of kids attacking two of the toughest MFs in New York City. So I brooded for a while, and came up with what you see here. This is what a good editor does: forces you to come up with something better.

Page 8
Enter the Weapons.
In my very first draft of my very first Iron Fist script (#17), I had the Immortal Weapons (Fat Cobra, Bride of Nine Spiders, et al) at Danny's birthday party. I wanted to reassure longtime IF fans that I was definitely keeping the Weapons around. But Warren suggested we wait on revealing them, and I'm so glad we did.

Also: those terse descriptions are a tip o' the mask to Matt Fraction.

Pages 9-10
Ch'i-Lin vs. Danny and the Weapons vs. the Students
I try to give Travel an action-packed spread whenever possible, because he's so damned good at them.

Page 14
Zhou talks his master.
I based this page on some conversations I've had with some of my previous bosses. (Seriously.)

Page 15, Panel 2
Danny talks to Ernst.
Finally... at long last... Iron Fist fans everywhere can enjoy a topless shot of the very hirsute Ernst Erskine. (As Simon and Garfunkel once said: "I'm just tryin' to keep the customer satisfied.") I was also dying to bring Ernst back for a little cameo; I don't think he has much time left on earth.

Page 17, Panel 2
Orson escapes the Ch'i-Lin.
Some readers have asked if Orson started using heroin because of the Ch'i-Lin; I think it was for a bunch of reasons... including the Ch'i-Lin. Check out the nice detail Travel includes in the second panel here: the very, very faint imprint of the dragon on Orson's chest, like it's ready to vanish for good.

Page 18, Panel 9
Searching Zhou's apartment.
Another great Travel extra here: one of Dog Brother's dogs, sniffing around. Not scripted; wish I'd thought of it.

Page 19
Nadine and Danny.
In my beatsheet, I had Nadine sneaking up on Danny with a needle. But that seemed a bit implausible, even though I love me a good needle scene. So I went with coffee. I'm a big fan of using ordinary household objects (dental floss, paperclips, coffee) as murder weapons.

Page 20, Panel 3
Nadine.
Very nice bit of lettering here.

Page 20, Panel 7
Zhou and Nadine.
When my wife is being sweet-yet-sarcastic, she calls me "my love." So yes, I partially based the Iron Fist Slayer on my wife.