Tag: writing

Saga of the Swamp Things

Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing was my favorite comic in my younger, more gloomsome days. I probably liked it more than my other favorite comics at the time, Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. But Swamp Thing wasn’t the only swamp monster in comics.

“A Book’s Natural Fate”

So you’ve written a book that fits the current vogue perfectly – let’s say it’s a grimy cyberpunk novel in the mid-1980s – does that mean you’ve guaranteed long-lasting fame for yourself? Probably not. But don’t worry, a lot of your compatriots are suffering the same fate. Oh, […]

Sauron For the Win

When a writer puts a story down on paper, one version of all possible outcomes becomes the final version. The ending is part of a carefully constructed framework of theme and comment and all that good literary stuff, and it’s never going to change. For example, the evil […]

Reading Between the Lines

Like the singer/songwriter — a lank-haired warbler in patchouli-stained flannel — the artist/writer in comics is a very peculiar bird. Our logographer resembles a forked tongue, licking in two directions: to the left, where Staedtler crumbs and ink spills lie, and the right, to a boundless thicket of […]