Comic Con Detox (and the Godzilla Encounter)

The Godzilla Encounter Building

It's three days afterward and I'm still going through an annual event of mine - the San Diego Comic Con Detox.  I table frequently at Comic Conventions to promote my (independently released giant monster) comic Kodoja - but this is the only convention a year where I walk through the main doors on the fan side.

This is my third year attending SDCC and I'll probably remember this year for two things: (1) it was the year my tastes were actually mainstream, with both Pacific Rim and Godzilla having a large Comic Con presence and (2) it was the year I feel I became a Comic Con 'veteran'. 

For the first item, the experience of having my (Giant Monster / Tokusatsu) tastes was both rewarding and frustrating.  Rewarding to look around and see Pacific Rim props / posters / t-shirts, Godzilla posters and prints peppering the convention floor, having an actual Godzilla panel (!) for the upcoming film, and of course the viral/marketing off-site event The Godzilla Encounter. Frustrating for those very same reasons - by those things being current movie properties AND being visible to the public, that means there are way more people that know about them and way more demand.  Meaning, I actually have to fight people to get to events or get stuff! It was (and still is, after the fact) a bit of culture shock.

For the second item, I don't know what it is but the third time around the Con flicked some sort of switch in that I felt I knew my way.  I know the quickest way to get across the floor in minimal time, I know how to get to the panel rooms quickly, I know good places to eat downtown...but even more importantly I know how to make my own schedule. I'm sure there are cyborgs out there that can do it, but for me it's impossible to stay on the Convention Floor for too long without getting exhausted - you need breaks from the floor and from the SD Convention Center. It's the Circadian Rhythm of Comic Con, and it took me a few years but I finally mastered it. But the main attraction while I was there was....

THE GODZILLA STUFF

As you probably know by now, the Godzilla panel was great and included a nice Gareth Edwards anecdote, as well as some teaser footage that revealed a Mantis-Meets-Alien monster and some pretty impressive destruction, as well as the tease that this Godzilla will be HUGE in terms of actual creature size!

As for The Godzilla Encounter, it was as good as it gets (when you consider it was a free, viral-marketing event created by the studio).  Part living, breathing Godzilla museum and part interactive ‘ride’, the first part of the exhibit recreated a Tokyo City block and peppered it with all kinds of Godzilla stuff – a Godzilla suit, overturned police car, gorgeous wall murals, special ‘code puzzle’ clues you solved with your phone to reveal Godzilla concept art for the film, and – the point of most discussion – a room with all kinds of Godzilla toys and a few one-of-a-kind Godzilla concept art statues that may or may not look like the final monster in the film. 
Unfortunately the time there is limited – sirens went off and everyone got ushered to a control room where actors / scientists were tracking Godzilla.  The situation worsened and everyone was ushered onto an ‘elevator’ that began it course to the roof only to experience a massive wave (presumably from Godzilla stomping around nearby).  Everyone is ushered out on the ‘25th floor’, a recreated office building floor looking out into a rainy city.  After a brief few seconds, Godzilla appeared and stomped right to left.  Just when it seemed he was gone, Godzilla proceeds to slowly raise his head and look right at you before stomping off to the right again.  Crisis averted! The best things in life are free, and this definitely qualifies – it was the most enjoyable thing about Godzilla’s presence at Comic Con.

This statue is one of a kind in the world... but is it the new Godzilla?

ABOUT THE DETOX

San Diego Comic Con is the closest thing in reality to a Twitter feed, only it bombards all of your senses instead of just one.  Information is updating every few seconds, everyone's vying for your attention, everyone's promoting themselves, and no matter where you are or what you're doing, you get the weird feeling you're missing something out there that's better than what you have going on. Even if you acknowledge this and try to manage your intake, after a few days it starts to feel natural.  Again, there is *always* something going on. Even if you don't act on information when you find out about new events, they are going on regardless and they affect you in terms of how you think.  And when you're heading home Sunday night and all of that just stops after four days of it, the effect is jarring.  It's almost like everyday life is trite.  Now of course this isn't the case, but for a brief period you have to recover from the insane pacing before you resume the normal pacing of your life.

Needless to say I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend full of rest and time to read all the comics and books I purchased!

Making Comics (Scott McCloud)

I finally(!) got around to reading 'Making Comics' by Scott McCloud, one of three books of his that really examine comics as a storytelling style. I love books like this - ones that are less 'how to' and more of an examination of the art itself - what makes comics unique? How can we get the most out of the medium? What are the avenues of new ideas we can walk down as we explore the format?

Something every good article on recording music tells you is 'if you want to make great records, you need to listen to (and then compare your audio to those) great records'.  Strive for perfection of the art, and even if you get 'only close' you've probably made something pretty cool.  So is the same with comics - you want to study the best to influence what your original thoughts, put lots of work into it and see what happens. This book encourages that sort of thinking.

Each of these books that make me want to try new things as I forge ahead with the Kodoja story... which is the point of the whole thing right? It's all part of making your own story as 'your own' as it can be. The book seems intended more for the 'Writer + Artist' person who makes comics, but even being 'just a writer' (I have a hard time succesfully executing a stick figure) it's awesome. Having a thorough vocabulary in terms of how we process things as a reader can only help me as a writer.

The book takes the general tone of 'I can't say how you should tell your story, but here are a bunch of ideas that might inspire you as you walk your path', which is very zen. The examples are great - they show a technique and then really break it down and talk about it. You don't just see the difference between, say a borderless low-perspective panel and an eye-level perspective panel with a border, you talk about every difference and how it makes you feel as a reader.

The first thought when I read a book like this was 'well hold on, I write a Giant Monster Comic. I'm not playing with format like Acme Novelty Library and I'm sure as sh*t not writing The Sandman here, so what does it matter?' And anyone else who reads it might think the same thing - oh I just write a superhero comic / zombie comic / etc. But in a way, that makes a book like this more essential - the more well-defined the genre is that you're a part of, the more beneficial it is to understand different paths to new angles at that genre. As the book points out, Jack Kirby did a lot of things that refreshed a 20-year old superhero genre (at the time) and broke new ground with waves and waves of ideas on visual storytelling.  The superhero genre was quite mature at the time, yet new ideas propelled new directions.

Or, take the NBA Slam Dunk Contest - it spent most of the 90s in a stagnant place where a lot of the criticism centered around 'all of the dunks being done' or there being 'nothing new'... until Vince Carter showed up in 2000, shook the whole contest up with an array of never-seen-before dunks and set it on a course of continued innovation tat hasn't stopped yet (with some aids like automobiles, glow-in-the-dark basketballs and teddy bears hanging from the rim, admittedly). Only a few of us will ever create something so revolutionary it turns the storytelling world in a new direction, but the point is to experiment and continue to work new angles - you never know what's going to work until every angle gets explored.

One other nugget is in the picture above - I've long been a proponent of this concept but this is a great way to put it. Just because you've decided to sell out, that doesn't mean anyone's going to buy! Stay true to you and create what you want to create.

The Art of Balance

If you're reading this then you probably know I write a kaiju story in comic form called Kodoja.

But no story out there is just one type of story, you know? More so, what makes everyone's story unique are the little things that make that story *yours*. Individual stories within the same franchise have individual flavors because of the storytellers: Godzilla (the original) is entirely different than Godzilla vs Hedorah to fans of the genre.

To that extent, every story you tell is more than a story: it's a balancing act of all the individual stories you're weaving into the whole.

Kodoja is of course mainly a Giant Monster story, but for me it's a balancing act: there's a political element, a character interaction element and a Lovecraftian element (I say this to anyone who will listen at conventions - it's not all the way there yet, but it'll reveal itself a bit more as we go along). Maybe this isn't the case for other people, but for me it can be a struggle to get the balance and the calibration of the parts right. I might write for a little bit and really get into the Lovecraft angle and before you know it I've written a mini-Lovecraft story.  Which is super-cool (tentacles and sh*t!), except this is a story that's centered around giant monsters! The goal is to keep the Giant Monster as the main driver of the story and if I veer off too much in one direction I may change the flavor of the story entirely.

I view stories as one of those carpenter levels you use for Home improvement tasks: you have to balance things on three different angles, and only when you do it are things on the level. There are times when I think that balancing act is harder than any amount of smarts or detail you can put in a story (similar to how I think it's harder to write a tight, incredible pop song than it is to endlessly noodle around on an instrument for 4 minutes). I don't want a political story, I don't want a Lovecraft story, and I don't want a character interaction story: I want a Kaiju story that incorporates those three elements equally. And I'll devote tons of energy (and rewrites) to get that balance right.

WonderCon 2013 and.... Crime Fiction?

Wondercon was this past weekend - at some point I considered having a table there for Kodoja, but settled on taking it in from the floor via one-day pass and being a fan. It was my first WonderCon (though I've been to SD Comic Con before and exhibited at APE San Francisco).  While it's only in its second year in Anaheim, I was impressed - it's smoothly run, really big (compared to every con that's not San Diego or New York) and chock full of vendors, panels and plenty of other good things.

While the stuff I expected to enjoy was great, it was the pleasant surprise of the day that reminded me why I love going to conventions. I reached my spending budget by 1:30 but wanted to stay around for some panels that started at 6:00, and after walking the floor for a bit I became eager to do something other than walk the floor.  The strategy became "find a panel that's at least moderately interesting, even if it's not something you would have earmarked a few hours ago", and before you knew it I was in attendance for a panel on crime fiction.  The goal was to detox from the craziness of the floor and rest my legs a bit, but it didn't take long before the panel was riveting.

It wasn't necessarily riveting because I love crime fiction, either - crime fiction isn't really 'my thing' though I have read some books I liked. It was riveting because one of my favorite things is listening to people talk about The Thing That They Are Passionate About.  Whether it's Godzilla, fly-fishing, car repair or identifying baseball talent it's always a treat to listen to someone who is an expert in something to talk about that thing.  It not only provided interesting insight into the creative process (which as a writer and musician I always enjoy learning from), I walked away with a few things to look for to read or check out - influences you might expect (but were new to me) like Weegee to Edgar Allan Poe, Isaac Asimov and and Robert Heinlein - not what I expected from a crime fiction panel.

It reminded me of my first exposure to excellence - a little pocket book by Jack Nicklaus where he talked about how he plays golf, strategy, mental approach, etc.  I played golf competitively as a junior, and reading this book the first time as an eleven-year-old was mind-blowing; Nicklaus was unlocking a new way for golf to be played, a next-level way.  When you're eleven it's some serious sh*t! While it influenced my golf game, more importantly it influenced learning - and ever since I always listen to experts regarding their subject of expertise. What started as a way to rest my legs and chill out from a busy convention day turned into an awesome experience and a great way to get exposure to new ideas. And oh yeah better believe I'll be checking out panels this way from now on!

Vinyl Inspiration and Record Shops

I do everything I can to make the creative workspace a dope, nurturing environment - it contributes to what (thankfully) has been a lack of writer's block for a really long time. The guitar, keyboard, drum machines (for the music stuff) to tap on if the "music idea" well dries up, kaiju figures to stomp around, movies, videos, posters... all kinds of good stuff.

But over the years, nothing has come through as much as records. I have my share of mp3s, some CDs too. But it's vinyl that drives the majority of inspiration.
- Sometimes the record, art and music all contribute to an idea.
- Sometimes just gazing at the album cover opens up the imagination and brings me back to a time before videos, when you'd put a record on the turntable and listen to both sides doing nothing other than staring at the art, lyrics and liner notes (and trying to figure out who the artist really was using those sparse clues).
- And of course there's the music, which in many cases exists only on wax.

With records being the inspiration, record stores (and swap meets) become portals in a way.  I hit record stores as much as possible (and do a podcast to this effect called Soul Traveling) and with all the record stores I've been to one thing holds true: you never know what you're going to get.

Whenever I walk into a record store for the first time, I make a point to just walk around for a while.  I size up each of the sections - is there a large jazz section? Soul? Rock? Is there a large dollar bin? (If so I follow my "CTA Rule" = "dig through the dollar bin until you come across the Chicago Transit Authority LP", which is in every dollar bin. That's my cue to stop.) What type of stuff is in the soul section - do they specialize in 80s, 70s stuff, what? What is the owner playing on the store loudspeaker for everyone? I soak it in, get the vibe... and after that start digging.  If you're thorough enough and stay in the store long enough it speaks to you and reveals where its strength lies - plus it happens every time. You may walk out of the store with a stack of rock records, soul, death metal, who knows? But you'll figure out the store's true identity and get records in line with it.

Some of my favorite ideas started with music (before Kodoja was a comic it was an album the band did, with a sparse story attached) and those musical ideas trace back to the grooves of a record.