Blog

Well, I guess it is time to admit it.

Given all I'm trying to do right now, I'm going to be missing some blog posts.

I'll still post as often as I can, but a daily dose of my wit is unlikely. (Some would argue the daily dose of wit was unlikely when I was committed to daily posting, too!)

This next week is going to be particularly busy. I've got to finish my submission for the Alpha Omega APAzine, my sister just informed me I've been drafted to draw giant farm animals for the pre-school choir's upcoming program, I've got a few commissions that I have GOT to finish (you know who you are... many apologies, folks), along with the ever looming Crimson Scarab premiere, and, well, something's gotta give.

I'm not disappearing, though. In fact, I think, for the most part, you won't even notice the missed days. I'll try not to make them two in a row, anyway.

The fact is, as long as I'm doing something worthwhile, I don't mind missing the blogs. Now, if I just got sick of doing them, or lazy... well, that would be something else entirely.

It is all about the creative outlet for me. As long as I'm doing something, that creeping feeling of no forward movement doesn't set in. That's a good thing.

So, fret not, folks. I'm still here, and I'm sticking around. Besides, seven days a week of me? That's a little much for anyone.

Wondercon is taking place this weekend.

Its a comic book convention in San Francisco, in case you were wondering.

No, I'm not there. Maybe I'd like to be, but no.

Generally speaking, Wondercon doesn't get a lot of huge announcements from Marvel and DC. Those are being saved for what I would think are considered the Big Three of the Cons - The New York Comic Con, The San Diego International Comic Con, and Wizard World Chicago. New York is in April, Chicago is in June, and San Diego is in July.

(On a side note, Wizard World Chicago is usually in August. Traditionally, it has been the show that the biggest announcements in comics are made. With it taking place now a month before Comic Con International, I expect that to change. I would guess that San Diego can now be expected to make some really major announcements. Good news for me, since I hope to be there!)

Where was I? Oh, yeah - usually, there aren't huge announcements made by the Big Two of the comic book industry at Wondercon. Teases? Sure, but straight out answers? Not so much.

And, thus far, the news flowing out of Wondercon is pretty much par for course this year. There was one huge thing that I heard, though. DC is planning a Who's Who update.

For those of you who don't know, Who's Who in the DC Universe was a 26 issue set of biographies of the characters that were released in 1985.

It was followed up with updates in 1987 and 1989, spun off to a Star Trek comic Who's Who, and a Legion of Superheroes Who's Who later. A final update was created in the 1990's, but was made up of packs of loose leaf pages and binders, as opposed to comic book form.

And, that was it.

I love these, though. Well, the comic book versions, anyway. I never got into the binders. They are just entries with an image of the character, telling their powers, personal information, and history. So simple, but so much fun.

As a matter of fact, I'm getting ready to send off a set of these comics to a book binder so I can have them conveniently in hand like an encyclopedia.

As I said, though, they haven't had an update in almost 20 years! As much fun as my originals and updates are, they are hopelessly out of date. Characters have died, resurrected, and died again since then! Other superheroes are completely different people now!

I NEED AN UPDATE!

At Wondercon, a fan asked straight out about a Who's Who update, and was greeted with a plain "Yes" as an answer.

Woo hoo!

Of course, with my luck, it'll probably be in loose leaf form. Still, I'd take that at this point.

No word as to when these can be expected, but I would guess it will probably be shortly after then next huge event in DC, Final Crisis. That way, they can be billed as a roadmap of sorts for the new DCU.

I'll type at you later.

I debated a lot about writing this. It is a very personal sort of matter, something that I've had to deal with for a long, long time.

And, it is a little bizarre.

And, possibly, a little creepy.

Now is the portion of the blog where I break into the joke, where I reveal my love of the song Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident) by John Michael Montgomery (despite my hatred of country music), or I talk about why I shower in the dark, or some other such inconsequential nonsense that is part of my character but doesn't really affect anything.

Only, this isn't one of those kind of postings.

You know, it is amazing, even now, how hesitant I am to type about this. I actually find myself pulling my hands away from the keyboard every once in a while.

This is a rough time of year for me. In less than a week, the third (Is it only the third? Is it already the third?) anniversary (which is far too festive a word to use for this) of my father's death will pass. And, I, for one, am tired of his visits.

Threw you there, didn't I?

Yeah, well, you should try to be on my end.

Now, before you start getting really concerned for my well-being and personal sanity, let me explain. After all, this is Therapeutic Thursday (cheaper than counseling!).

I know I'm not being visited by my father. My father has gone on to his eternal reward in Heaven, thanks to his acceptance of God's gift of grace through his Son's death and ressurection.

Instead, I have dreams in which my father is manifested by my own mind.

And, yeah, they come every year about this same time. Usually only one dream, but just enough to rock my world for a while.

What does this manifestation of my father do in these dreams that warrants my decidedly gruff opinion of wishing the visits would stop? Hmm... before I get into that, I need to give a little background.

I loved my father, love him still, but I've never been under any illusion that he was more than human, with failings and weaknesses while on this earth. Unlike what you hear about a lot of people from their family after a person passes, I did not ret-con his life to an idealized thing.

My father did some great things, and some bad things. He did his best most of the time, but his idea of the "best" wasn't necessarily really the "best."

Picture it: Spring, 1988. A young boy, 12 years old, comes home from school, about 2:30 p.m., talking about a report he is to do for a class about his future career. The boys love of drawing and art dictate that the report should be in that direction, and the boy is excited having chosen to write about his future career as a comic strip artist.

His father, from some place of love, I'm sure, decides that it is time to set the young boy straight about the difficulty of such a career quest in the real world and the boy's actual ability. I'm sure that father only attempted to try to protect his son from future hurt... but that did not come across.

Instead, the "talk" shatters the boy, rocking him to the core, knowing his father had no faith in him. It is only amplified, when, at 3:15 p.m., before anything can be smoothed over, the father leaves for work... leaving the crying child with his mother.

Within 45 minutes, a boy goes from pure joy and hope in his future to completely knowing there is no hope. 45 minutes to the loss of that innocence. And the father never, ever really understood what he had done.

Sure, the boy continued to draw, but not with the same joy.

He would shortly change his mind, decide to focus on science with thoughts toward eventually working at NASA. Then, a few years later, God would call him into ministry, but without a specific direction. He would go to college, with plans to major in Christian Studies and minor in English. It is during orientation that his father asks him why doesn't he minor in art, since he was into that.

The boy, in a completely impulsive decision, tells his advisor that he wants to double major in Art and Christian Studies. He knows that he is behind where he should be, in skill level, since art had become a hobby for him, a thing to do in free time but not worked at, but he can't resist this glimmer of encouragement from the same man that shattered his dreams five years earlier.

It was a pretty good decision, since the area of ministry he was called into depended on him becoming more serious about art.

Now, I didn't tell you any of that to evoke a "poor Billy" response. I've dealt with this, and that isn't why I told you.

I told you because, likely thanks to this event, the manifestation of my self-doubt has, since my father's death, taken his form. And, once a year or so, I get an entirely unpleasant visit in my dreamscape from my self-doubt, clothed in my father's skin.

Yep. And, yeah, it is messed up.

I won't go into the details of the dreams, because, frankly, I don't remember them. They are whisps at the edge of my consciousness that I cannot retain. What does stick, though, are the words of Father Doubt.

I have had one dream this year, over the past weekend, and, hopefully it will be the last. At least, I hope, for the year, because, regardless of knowing that this is not my father, it still hits me hard and I need time to recover.

What kind of message did I receive this year? Well, it does change a little each year, but this year, my fake father basically said, "Okay, Billy, I think its time to just put away all these dreams of yours and get a real job, with real benefits, so that you can have some sort of future."

I put quotes around it, but it was more of a paraphrase.

It sure didn't help that I've been sick this week, either. It never rains but it pours, right?

Nevertheless, feeling better today, I move forward, dismissing the self-doubt, regardless of the form it takes, and press on.

But, honestly, I can do without another visit.

Seriously.

I'll type at you later.