Open Letter to Tony Harris: Why you fail at things.

Dear Mr. Harris,

Let's get silly.
You are in this mindset so let me join you.

You have a problem with your marketing campaign.  You have caught a bad case of Pedes Terminus, or shooting yourself in the foot.  Your recent rant on what ranks a true comic geek has hit the intertubes and the response has not been positive.

What were you thinking?  You called working Cons your office.  That's what it is, your work place.  Why are you trying to throw people out of your office who want to buy your goods?  The artists you share your office with at the cons shared a beginning like you.  Getting your stuff out there is hard to do.  It is a life time achievement to land a job at the big publishers, where millions upon millions of people will see your work.  Every person who walks into a con is a potential customer to you and everyone else.  Why would you dismiss anyone who walks through those doors?

Why is it that you think only women are the ones who make costumes to go to cons and get attention, but you don't mention anything about men doing that?  Maybe it's because we're all too busy fapping our virgin selves at the women showing some skin.  This is the bigger issue.  Yes there are women who come to cons in cosplay and some of them don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the characters they are portrayed as.  There are men and women who do know every detail and minutia of the characters they are playing.

There is nothing wrong with either.

The idea of "Faux Geek" is false.  Do you like something?  Do you think about it?  Does it get you up to do things about it?  You are a geek.  This is true for someone who doesn't know anything about Emma Frost, but sees an image of her and wants to wear the costume; the same as it is true for someone who details and logs every date and time The Doctor travels to. They took the time to look at images and create a costume.  They got involved with an artists work.  That's amazing.  They may not know origin stories or birth dates of characters, but they know your work.  Why isn't that amazing to you?

There's an appropriate saying: "Every comic is someone's first."  Apply that to the cons.  Every con is someones first con.  So what if they "DON'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT COMICS!"  Everyone starts somewhere.  Everyone has that first hit of inspiration from a comic that gets them going.

Mine was Retro Girl.

Not actual cos play I saw.

At FanExpo in Toronto, many moons ago, I saw someone cosplaying as Retro Girl.  It was fantastic.  She had the goggles, the cape, the hair in a pony tail.  This girl had done her homework.  Did she know who she was playing and the story behind her?  I have no idea.  It doesn't matter.  What matters is this:  I went out and I bought the first issue of Powers.  This triggered off a chain reaction.  My friend saw me reading it and said: "If you like that, you'd really like Rising Stars."

Sold!

Picking up an issue of Rising Stars led me to see a comic named: "The Adventures of Barry Ween: Boy Genius."

All that, because of a woman in cos play.  What didn't come to my mind when I saw her was: "Oh man, I hope she knows the whole story behind her, or that's an insult to Powers fans everywhere.  How dare she promise me the moon and stars as Retro Girl."

Why you think that they shouldn't come to cons or even be considered a geek is Greek to me.

We know you're above drawing women in a sexualized way in comics.  Lar DeSouza said in a U-Stream broadcast: "Unfortunately, the only question asked about breasts in comics is: How big do you want them?"  It's good to see that you agree with that ideal.

Until I found this set of tig ol' bitties you drew as a cover.

I hope you got fat on your earnings, because if the geek community speaks (all of us,) you may end up feeling hungry for the next little bit,

Waiting for Joshua

There is a popular saying: "The worst part about an ass kicking, is waiting for it to happen."

I sit here again, late at night, stewing over the weekend.  Monday is the 5th and an important day.  I feel like Caesar.  I've been scheduled to see the man who's going to direct the next few months, years and possible life time.

I've gone through all the emotions and have beat myself like washing a sweater against a rock.  Reading and research can only fill in small holes, but the biggest fear of all still comes back to basic human fear: the unknown.  I have the nerves of a hockey player before a big game.  Someone who fiddles with their laces, because they just don't know what to do with their hands.

I'm nervous like a sky diver about to fall out of a plane; going from safety to tumbling tumult.  It is all the extreme of human emotions.  You go from fear, to anxiety, to readiness to exhilaration.  At least there will be answers.  The monsters under the bed will fade when the lights come on. 

I hope.

Am I getting more sleep?  No. 

Am I sleeping better? Yes.

It has come to the point where I'm sure the surgery will happen.  The tone and language of doctors has changed, yawing on a wave of reconsideration.  My choice, the "no wrong answers," my decision has been made by unknown quantities.  The ship is listing to one side now.  I don't know if it was always listing that way, or just rolling with the waves.  I hope it doesn't sink.  I hope my one man empire doesn't crumble.

Beware the ides of March, or at least the quarters of March.  A lot can happen in a day.  I hope for no surprises, or secrets lurking in the shadows.  The thing I know for sure is: I'm going to get my ass kicked. 

How and for how long still needs to be written down.

There is one benefit to being awake, when even the street sweepers have gone home.  I get to look out my window at the sky.  Sometimes my problems just don't seem big at all.  We are all hurtling through space at the same velocity and in the same direction.  If there were any way to link all the people on the planet, it's that we're all going the same direction.

If there's anything we share it's that.  We all sleep under the same moon and we all catch ourselves looking up at it sometimes.  We all walk on the same crust and we all have the same thoughts looking at the moon.  Thinking like that makes it less scary, but a little more melancholy.

There is still so much to do and see.  It just depends on how bad my ass gets kicked.

Until then, just sit back and stare at the sky.

Fearful of my Future.

I sit here late night staring at my screen.   I'll share what I'm feeling these days.  Venting is better than keeping it tucked in.

I haven't had a full night sleep in weeks.  The skin under my eyes are dry and cracking.  I flip between moments of fear, optimism and worry.

 It overwhelms me sometimes.  I'm running.  Something is chasing me and I can't see anything in front of me but trees.  Every breath in is like pulling a rasp over my lungs.  My sweat sticks to me and chills.  Perspiration leaves a trail of despair through the forest.  I'm easy to find.  The snow crunches beneath my bare feet.  It numbs what should be pain, but I can't feel it anymore.  I vault myself past trees, their bark sloughs to the ground like skin off old bones.

 I don't know where I'm going.

I can't stop moving.  Each moment to stop and breathe, it gets closer.  I can't see it, but it whispers in my ear.  It is always moving towards me.  It is relentless as it chases me.  It doesn't stop and I'm getting tired.  My leg is bruised.  It feels like someone has sewn a tennis ball between my hip and my leg.  It makes running hard.

There is no shelter.  There is only room to run.  It's patient, it knows it can take its time.  It just has to wait for me to get tired.   It can wait a day, it can wait a year, it doesn't matter.  It can pick up my trail again when it wants.  Keeping pace with it is winning, but I get tired and have to stop to catch my breath.  Balls of acidic phlegm build up in the back of my mouth.  My mouth is too dry to spit.

It is getting closer.  I can feel it.

I can stop to fight it.  It's a stop gap, hacking off a piece to sate it; then back to running.  It buys time.  It will keep tracking me down.  Waiting until I can't run anymore.  There is no shelter here.

--30--

What does it all mean?  I don't know.  I find myself trying to figure out what I should do.  This decision of doing surgery/treatment or just leaving it be is insane.  I'm angry, but I can't be angry at anything except myself.  The thing I'm angry at is microscopic and a genetic makeup of me.  My body has already attacked itself.  It's getting better at landing the punches.

The choices are do the surgery.  Have a long and complicated recovery, with a high chance of therapy afterwards.  They can find nothing and they'll still want to do it.  They can find some more cells and then will have to do it.

Or do nothing.  I can roll the dice and hope I get lucky.  Optimism hasn't visited too often.  I'm cynical and angry, which is a bad combination.  Most of the time, I want to be left alone.

This is me trying to share what's going through my head.  Trying to help you and myself understand what's happening.  Is it a plea for help? No, because there's nothing anyone can do.

March 5th is the day.  I lean towards surgery right now.  That will be followed by a treatment of Interferon, depending if everything comes black clear or positive.  If it's positive, then I will get napalmed with chemicals.  If it's negative: only scorched.

Let's go on this journey together.  I don't know what's going to happen.  I don't know where I'm going.  I just know I'm tired. 

I feel ancient.