First of all Thanksgiving was actually really good. My wife and I spent the day at her mom's house with her brother and sister in law. My own parents stopped by to pick up the munchkin and also hung out for a while with the whole family. It was really cool being there with everyone just swapping stories and generally having a grand old time. There was a football game on that was actually really good, can't remember who won, didn't give a shit to begin with. If it isn't hockey or auto racing these days I'm just not into it. So in spite of all the depression my wife and I were feeling leading up to the day we enjoyed ourselves greatly and I'm super, super glad we did it. :)
Now for the crazy part.
I'm a big Kevin Smith fan, mostly recently when my wife first found "An Evening with Kevin Smith" on youtube and I stumbled on an interview he did with Jim Lee for his Fatman on Batman smodcast. The first kevin Smith movie I ever watched was Dogma and since I have always not liked the church I became an instant fan. I then ran the gamit of movies pretty much in reverse until I had seen all of the Jay and Silent Bob flicks he had made. Never watched Cop Out or Red State or Reaper but I still count myself a fan despite that. But I digress, I'm not the biggest Batman fan by any stretch of the imagination. Granted, I love the Arkham video games (I own the first two and have beaten both more than once) and I always enjoy watching the animated series (man boner for Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamil!) but I have never read a single Batman comic book ever in my life. I do read New 52 Catwoman and he makes appearances in that but that's about it. But when I listened to his most recent FoB smodcast and I heard him and Paul Dini talk about a new show called Shadow of the Bat I was thrilled. The basic premise was Bruce Wayne in Prep school and they bounced ideas off of one another about how the show would progress and what characters would be in it. However, when I read the tagline for the show it went; "The best non-batman show you will never see!" So despite all of Kevin and Paul's bluster they apparently decided not to go anywhere with the project.
FUCK THAT!!!
I almost IMMEDIATELY pulled up Open Office and started typing up dialogue based on their ideas as well as a few creative changes I had made on my own. I decided that instead of waiting for them to make something out of this for t.v. or web that I was going to turn it into a web comic and draw, write and publish the thing on my own. I wrote up two chapters of dialogue, called it Shadow of the Bat in homage to Kevin and Paul and drew up a couple of character sketches for young Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne. I'm also going to draw up Harvey Dent next followed by Jack White, Dr. Hugo Strange and Talia Al Ghul who will round out the main cast. For those interested in my drawing style this is Selina Kyle below:
And this is Bruce Wayne:
I must be nuts. First of all I'm basically stealing his idea and while I do intend to inform Kevin of my creation and even send what I have to him I still think I've lost my fucking mind. This dude has already written comic books for DC under the Batman monikor and let's not forget his forays into just about every form of media imaginable. Movies, television, webseries, podcasts and comics both online and in print. What's he going to think of what I've done? While I highly, highly doubt he's going to berate or slam me in any way I'm starting to think I may be pushing the limits of my creativity. I'm not on par with this cat in anyway, I can't hold a candle to his skills and this is for me brand new territory. How can I hope to do justice to his grand idea? One that even he decided couldn't be done?
As far as I'm concerned I've passed the point of no return long ago. The only direction to move is forward and follow through on my plan to create this comic and show it to him and wait for whatever he says. I'm expecting one of four reactions: None, in which case I go forward without knowing what he thinks of it. The polite rejection, in which case I set what I've done aside and move on to my own work. The hey this is great but we're already working on it could you please not? in which case I enthusiastically breathe a sigh of relief and continue to be the fan that I am. Or last but not least Kevin might say something like: "If you don't fucking do this I'm going to cut your nuts off and feed them to you." in which case the pressure is on to create a comic that lives up to the initial expectations that I've laid out before him.
Yeah its official. I'm certifiably insane.