The Clobberin' Times Online zine of Michael O'Connell
GIMME AN "F" (#11)
This Issue's Introduction
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"Welcome to the Party, Pal!" Ah, what can I tell you? Work sucks, Bond is back, got to chill in San Diego for a weekend for Aaron’s Cali reception with him and K.C., the videogame magazine that’s supposed to be carrying the Nice Guy (and paying us) has had its first issue delayed, but at least that whole arrangement got Tim and I back to doing the Nice Guy site updates again, so that’s a good thing (damn, that reminds me…I have to come up with a New Year’s strip FAST. I’m stumped!). I’m having ZERO luck with tech these days! First, my TiVo started going bad. It started kind of freezing up and going to this “powering up, please wait” screen that it would never leave until I unplugged it from the wall. As I can’t really afford another TiVo unit (nor the expense and bother of hacking it and putting in a much larger hard drive, like with my existing one that I could save over a hundred hours of stuff on), I finally had to let it go and give in to the cable company DVR unit. Which really is a good thing. Less recording time means I can’t let whole seasons of shows stack up anymore, so I’m forced to actually watch stuff again (you’d think that wouldn’t be too hard with my having all of 3 shows that I’m down to). Plus, it records the HD stuff, and since I have an HD cable box and an HD TV, might as well be getting the most of it. Having to run the cable through the TiVo was taking the quality down anyway. So I’m finally getting full performance out of my HD, so I’m cool with it. And then the computer. Ye…gods. My PC is already a slow piece of crap. My laptop’s not much better, but now my battery in it is completely dead and won’t take a charge, so I have to keep it plugged in to use it, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a laptop. But right with speeding up on both Nice Guy and ‘Times deadlines, all of a sudden my PC started making a lot more noise. I thought it was the hard drive. So THAT’s a nice moment of panic. I did back up all my docs on DVD…back in JULY. A lot of stuff to be lost between then and now. So, as I’d been meaning to, I was forced to run out and get myself a 150g external hard drive. In case the hard drive WAS about to go, I wanted to have things backed up, and backed up regular (I could have just gotten a new internal, but there’s no way I have the time to mess with a whole O/S reinstall and software reinstalls and all that crap). So I got it home, tried my PC…and it turned on okay. Whew! Plugged in the external, started coping my whole “My Documents” folder over. That went well for about two or three minutes. And then…BAM! My computer suddenly blew. Like, with sparks. D’oh! Guess the strain of one more device on what apparently is a pretty weak power supply was too much. Greeaaaat. So the next day I was BACK at Best Buy (night before Thanksgiving, by the way) after work, buying a new and bigger power supply. Okay, it is NOT easy for me, let me tell you right off, to do anything with my PC. It’s just in a bad spot, attached to the desk on its own shelf, backed up to the wall, stuff all around it… I managed to somehow get all the cables unplugged (by feel only) AND not let them fall behind the desk where I’d never get them. And I managed to get the PC down without dropping it and get it to the floor, where I got it open and went to work getting the old power supply out (I didn’t know I only had a 300 watt one in there…), which, if you’ve ever done it, is a lot of fun, because there’s cables going from it to, like, every other component in the box, and you have to remember where everything went, etc. So made it happen, but then had a question I needed answered, and I called A.T. A.T., in turn, wanted to come over real quick after putting his kids to bed and put it all together for me. As much as I DIDN’T want to drag the man away from his family the night before Thanksgiving? MAN, am I glad he came. He had it all back together and going for me in, like, 20 minutes, something that would have taken me probably three hours. What a guy! But the computer’s still making noise, and it looks like, after all, it’s the fan on the CPU. I’ve never actually replaced one of those before… But I’ll probably have to. But hopefully not until after the holidays. I already spent too much Christmas money putting this thing back together again and making the world safe for new Nice Guy updates and CTO issues… But the silver lining here is that I finally got around to getting a backup drive, so all my stories and MP3s and pictures and art are now safe from computer Armageddon. And get this. So I’m, like, sitting on my couch putting together some Nice Guy mailings one Sunday, playing a DVD in the background. I go to pause it, and my DVD remote’s not working. Weird. So I reach for the other remote that runs the sound system to mute it. IT doesn’t work. Huh? I reach for the TV remote. Nope. Not it either. Finally tried the cable remote. Nada. As the young folks say…WTF? (Would they be ROTFL if they heard me using it?). So I went right up the cable box with that remote…and it worked, but only, like, a foot away. And it was the same thing with ALL of them. These are four different components! How does THAT make any sense? I thought maybe I had set some of my packing stuff on the remotes, and might have drained the batteries. The next day, however, I decided to try them again. Two of them were now working. Two were still only working a foot away. So I got new batteries. Didn’t change a thing. But the following day? Suddenly all four started working fine. What the hell?! Was there some kind of unauthorized nuclear testing going on in my neighborhood I didn’t know about? Did the Saoshyant invade again (Forte joke…)? Oh, well. Silver lining here? New batteries in all the remotes. Don’t have to worry about that for a long time. Especially as little as I use the TV. And to top it all off? For no particular reason, the switch on my alarm clock broke. Now it’s stuck, permanently, in “alarm” mode. You can’t turn it off. You can only hit snooze. And then reset the alarm time when you get up to stop it from continuing to go off. Yeah, I could just get another alarm clock, and I’m sure I will, when I can find the time. But this silver lining is that I’d gotten too used to just turning the alarm clock off in the morning, so this is forcing me to use the snooze again, which is a better thing. I’m in a very silver lining kind of place right now. Can you tell? But seriously, when did I suddenly become Sam Neil in Jurassic Park? Ah, well. Enough of my tech woes and my “real”
life. On with my dork life! This Time Around Yes, no Forge. Again. And no new Forte 2000 issue. Again. However, there was a better reason this time, at least. WINDJAMMER IS BACK!!! Yes! I’m as shocked as you are! I don’t know, really, how it came about, but all of a sudden I just got this feeling that if I didn’t get back to it soon, I just never would. I started re-reading and re-editing the old chapters over time, as I wanted to get the site, at least, finally up to date, and I started getting a Windjammer art piece here and there to further inspire me. And inspire me it did. Because you have got an all-new, really large, LONG overdue Windjammer chapter right there at the tip of your mouse arrow, ready to go. First of all, I’ve been wanting to get the site updated for a long time, and get ALL the Windjammer chapters up there (only one through five were available online). Plus, the tales needing a little editing, both for content and format (for some reason the translation from FrontPage to Dreamweaver jacked up the formatting on the tales). So that’s all done, and they’re all available, and reading through all those again, as I’d hoped, got me jazzed to get back to the YEARS-old dangling Hollywood storyline. I couldn’t let poor K.C. carry a whole universe on his shoulders all alone! I could put up individual links to stuff, but why don’t you just go to the main page and click around and check everything out? There’s little (some not too obvious) changes throughout, and you KNOW you haven’t been back in a long time, so it’ll all be like new to you anyway. Like the new logo? I felt Windjammer needed one. The one very obvious change is the new Gallery page. I took all the art I had and grouped it by artist, and added several new pieces as well. I figure the relaunch of the site deserved some new goodies. Check it out! I’ll even make that link up there open up in a separate page so you can read this and keep jumping over to it… First of all, you’ve got your classic Ben pieces from back in the day, in case you haven’t seen ‘em in a while. Always fun, the Ben art, and great memories go with ‘em. Next, I got three new pieces for the world of Windjammer from now-famed Forte artist David Enciso. First, I got him to do Delight (no-brainer there). Wow. He really nailed that character, I felt (hey, keep those juvenile comments to yourself…). Something about her face, the look there…both beautiful and dangerous. And I like what he did with the color scheme a lot (I’d never seen her in color before…and had just described her costume as white. I wouldn’t have thought to use that blue, and I’m glad that he did). Great stuff. Then I thought, since we’d never gotten to see Earth Angel (from Chapter 3), I’d let him figure out what the mystery winged woman looks like. Um…good? I like how he saw her. So I thought I’d let him try the character of Baikal, too. And I gave him the description from the stories. Small, shy 16-year old Russian girl, very timid, big eyes, wearing just a man’s shirt (her long-gone father’s) that’s too big for her. I feel a sigh coming on. Okay. Does that LOOK sixteen to you? If sixteen-year old girls looked like THAT, I would STILL be flunking out of high school to this day. :) And does that shirt look too BIG to you? All in the eye of the beholder, I guess (and if you’ve seen David’s Forte women shots, you know how he often “beholds”). :) So maybe we’re kind of getting to see what Baikal would look like at, say, 26… Or maybe 36… Speaking of Baikal…I decided to pull in Timm Gillette, a guy who’s done some fun stuff on the Forte gallery before. All his women end up looking like teenage girls anyway, so I figured he’d be able to come a bit closer to what I was seeing. And he mostly did. Still looks maybe a little younger, but he definitely got the eyes right. And a beautiful piece of work, too. Though I’m getting the feeling that if I start getting any more Baikal shots, Chris Hansen and “Dateline NBC” are going to start monitoring my computer for one of their specials… Some more of the old art is up there, including the addition to this gallery of the beautiful Phil Miller ConTinuum group shot K.C. gifted us all with back in the day. Got my Jeff Moys all grouped together. I don’t think I’d had the last two Delight ones up before. I like the last one (the more facial one) especially because…well, it was free. :D He’d started a shot of her and it went wrong below the elbows and he gave up and started over, so he just gave me that one, so I just scanned the part he’d finished. Got the old A.T. art up (don’t think his original Baikal was ever posted before. Closer…definitely got the hair right, for sure, though she’s still a bit taller than I’d imagined. And always good to see the classic WJ #3 ‘Times ad up there with the big smooch). Got the Tim art going (both the very first WJ ad and the original Delight design he did that the others are based on). And put my man Mr. Webb on the job. As always, Eryck amazes and delights. You’ve seen the Hollywood flying Windjammer and the first Americana/WJ shots before (last Christmas, I believe). Everything else is new. I LOVE the airplane flyby shot! Look at that kid’s reflected eye…that’s just the sense of wonder I was hoping for. I got him to do another Delight and Windjammer smooch (specifically for the new chapter). And I felt the need for a non-romantic shot…I wanted to see AC and WJ palling around together. Something about K.C.’s tale that had AC buying a soda from a vendor gave me the idea. I could totally see these two kicking it on a rooftop, laughing and talking, having a couple of Cokes. And now, thanks to Webb, I CAN see it. I also let him jump in and design Anthem’s costume, since I’d never gotten around to doing that, and I think it turned out real well. And I also put HIM on the Baikal job. He, however, read my description (small girl, father’s shirt that was too big for her) and went to work, and when he finished, read it again and said “oops” and had totally missed the part about her being sixteen. Which I thought was great, because down the road you’re going to be seeing some Baikal flashback stuff, and now I can totally see what she looked like at that age. A fortunate error. Hey, can you hang on a sec? Chris Hansen is at the door with a camera crew… Ah, but the whole point of the art is to get people to read the STORIES…and now they can read ‘em all. Which, by the way, I invite you to do as well. It HAS been like seven years since the last chapter left off, and what, over ten since the first one? Of course, that’s a LOT of reading, and if you DON’T have that kind of time or desire, and want to read the new chapter but don’t want to be totally lost (who’s this “Jerry” guy again?), I’ve got a compromise for you. If you’ll look at the Chapters page, just before the start of #9, you’ll see a “The Story So Far” link. Wrote up a summary (and this being me, the summary is no short read, either, but it’s a lot shorter than eight chapters of my rambling) of all the stuff that’s happened up ‘til now…and put it in chronological order, too (much of the backstory of Windjammer came in Chapter Four, for example). So that SHOULD get you back up to speed, and ready for… Chapter Nine – Shane and Jerry’s Excellent Adventure, Act Three – “Hollywood Nights”. Try fitting THAT on a marquee. This chapter was actually started years ago, and has been sitting for a LONG time. I finally dusted it off and got back to it. As you might recall (or realistically might not), Shane and his roommate Jerry had been flown to Hollywood for the holidays (hey, it’s a holiday chapter in our Christmas CTO issue. Sweet!) by Hollywood legend Terrance Cross, for a celebrity-style vacation, where Terrance could further convince Windjammer to let him “manage” his career. So when the ‘Times went under in 2000, the boys were left (in luxury, at least!) in L.A., with a lot of major decisions happening for them both. So we now jump back into the middle of that…right where we left off…and Windjammer flies once more. I, for one, am very, very happy about that. I really missed this kid. Good to have him back. And thanks, to K.C., for continually inspiring me to do so with his AC stories. I finally couldn’t take the creative charge they always give me anymore and I cracked! And I hope it’s not going to be another seven years before Shane’s stories continue… And K.C.? This is the start. AC and WJ now online (with the need still, of course, for ALL the AC stories to get online, too (all 247 of them by now, right?)). Next…we’ve got to get pages up for the rest of the ConTinuum gang. And finally…the all-new ConTinuum web page! That’s still going to take some time to get together, but this was the one thing really holding me up for getting to it. So I’ll see what I can do about getting to work on the Knightguard page I’ve had in mind (consulting with Joel, of course) and we’ll see where it goes from there. And then…Omniverse! AH ha ha ha! This is my scheming face! Okay, and there’s a LITTLE Forte for you, too, at least… We’ll start with the Gallery. This link, too, opens a new window. First, because I’m tired of doing links for every piece of new art I talk about. But second, because it’s all much easier to look at—and for me to discuss in order—as I’ve started a new “Newest Additions” section at the top, just to make it easier to figure out which stuff you probably HAVEN’T seen before. This section will always reboot a few days after the most recent ‘Times issue, FYI, and will start over with the even…um… latester art. So if you’re reading this late, my nice in-order discussion here is just going to confuse you… Let’s talk about new art! And CHEAP ART! I really hit it with the cheap stuff this time, so there’s a lot to look at. We start off, not so cheap, but not all that costly either, with a pair of works from Kevin Miller that I talked about on the board last time (as they came in just after last issue’s update). Just had to point them out again. Wow!! I love them both. That’s probably my favorite Dyna Girl shot we have (and that’s saying a lot), and I totally love the Nightsable (though I almost wish he’d kept up with his original shot that he started, with her walking into a portal, as it was looking really cool before he changed his mind). Then we’ve got Nightsable and Dyna headshots from comics pro Paul Abrams. Again…WOW. I know it’s kind of sad to fall in love with your own character (we’ve all seen that happen before somewhere, haven’t we?), but with the face on that NS, I’m pretty close. That DG one was Aaron’s birthday present, by the way. But let’s get to the cheap art! Yeah! Check out the Forte 2000 “pogs” from Brit artist David Golding! How fun are THOSE? And they only cost me three bucks and change (two pounds sterling) apiece! At that price, I just had to “collect ‘em all” and get all eight characters! I’ve got the individual ones up, but also put together a collage of all of ‘em if you want to see them together. Great guy, this Golding. He’s currently doing some art for hire for the BBC. Got a trio from this guy I decided to try (hey, you make your auctions cheap, and you don’t blatantly suck, I will try them…) named Gabe Pena. Listening to Martin’s request for more “beefcake” on the gallery, I wanted to get some of the guys in, too, so I went with Max and Vortex, in addition to the Nightsable. They’re pretty cool. I like ‘em…even if Nightsable looks slightly insane… There are more dude shots on the way, by the way, Martin, you manimist. Oh, and the sad news…Mr. Eryck Webb is officially on indefinite hiatus from art. He’s trying to focus more on his design work and less on drawing, so no more auctions for the foreseeable future. Hey, it’s not like I haven’t gotten ENOUGH from him. :) It’s just sad because I was always able to turn to him for cheap (and cool) character design work, on demand. Had a few characters left I would have liked to see him design for me. Ah, well. So, in addition to the Windjammer stuff, I had to get a couple of last Forte shots from him. I know how much he enjoys drawing both Nightsable and Tinker, so I thought it’d be fun to see them doing some girl talk during a stakeout with some coffee. For my final one from him, I decided to stick with the stakeout theme, and get a shot I’d been thinking about for a while…sort of a Forte 2000/Forge crossover. I just wanted to see the two smokers from Forte in a shot together, lighting up in the rain. So, Webb did me this very cool Seahawk/Nightshift shot. A fitting last piece from him, I think. Just the kind of storytelling art he does best, as opposed to everyone else’s standard pinup poses. I’ll miss the stories his art tells. Okay, the Gene Espy Dyna Girl shot? Long story. In short, after six months of nothing from him (while he kept putting up other auctions), I sent a note telling about my six month rule. After a half a year, I’m tired of having to worry about sending reminders and feeling like a pest, and at that point, I’d rather just get a refund and call it off for both our sakes. He, in turn, was kind of shocked at my request (I’d been nothing but polite with my 60-day check-ins, so he hadn’t know I was in any way annoyed), and a little pushed out of shape, and said he’d prefer to just “complete the agreed-upon transaction” (in other words, suggesting I was breaching a contract by asking for my money back) and wanted to move me up the list (how far DOWN the list was I after six months?!) and get it done. I had also mentioned, in my six month note, the bad spot that art buyers are in after all that time, that artists can then tend to rush the art just to get the person off their back (it’s happened to me before). He not only guaranteed he’d come up with something I’d like, but promised to throw in some prints of his existing art. Give the man credit. I’m kind of embarrassed to say that his six month mark came during a REALLY crappy weekend for me, so I was much less diplomatic than is normal for me (how would you respond if someone had been politely asking for status, and then all of a sudden demanded a refund out of the blue?). He handled it in a very business-like manner, got my art done (like, three weeks later) and threw in some very big free prints as well, as promised. The problem? The shot he came back with is…um…kind of embarrassing (perhaps we should change the character’s name to “Vagina Girl”). And really not that great, as far as my tastes go. But he obviously put a lot of work into it, and kept his word, and made good, so in appreciation of that, I accepted and thanked him. And figured I might as well put it up. Even if it probably makes Aaron cringe. Sorry, dude. But then I had a LOT of fun with these cheapy ten-buck figure shots from Jason Nantz. Great, clean line work, smooth, really cool. Especially like the Tinker. Aces. And while the final shot, the Seahawk/Nightsable one from Jean Sinclair, was not so cheap…OH MY GOD!! LOOK at that thing! Wow! This guy’s from Brazil, part of an art team duo, and a shot like that is worth SO much more than what I paid for it. American hacks are charging much more for so much less. Maybe he doesn’t understand the exchange rate… Either way, LOVED what he did with that, and I also loved that he inadvertently came up with a new Nightsable combat maneuver I hadn’t thought of! Using teleportation as missile deflection. Great idea! Way to use those experience points… I’ll definitely be getting something else from him in the future. Oh, sorry…I guess the final shot is the David Enciso Dyna Santa one, but you already saw that on the cover. Oh, and back to Eryck Webb to close this out…
I’d also gotten some more non-Forte stuff along the way
from him—some of which I’ve had for some time and
hadn’t gotten around to putting up—and you can see
that stuff in the Eryck
Webb: Other gallery. Look for the “new” tags by
them. Skip the Seahawk/Nightshift…I just wanted to put that
up in the Forge gallery as well as the Forte one. But speaking
of Forge…okay, I WAS going to save this one until I got
the final Forge chapter done, but finally gave up and slapped
it up, since I’d already used parts of it on the main Forte
Universe page. Check out the full-color Forge team shot. Sweet!!
How bitchin’ cool does the new Max look in color, huh? You’ll
also, as you scroll down, find a new Paragons section. I’d
been having him do some designs for the new Paragon team members,
over time. Didn’t get to them all before he quit art (almost
did…just needed a couple more), so figured I’d at
least put up his Knightmare redesign (too Spawn?) and his designs
for Import, Helix, Diamond Fist and Blaze. Some really cool stuff.
And you’ll also notice a new Omniverse section, too, as
I put him to work on both Tag (thought a rethink was in order
for the (fingers crossed) relaunch) and Paradigm. I was planning
to get a Tag & Dream Girl duo shot from him (didn’t
have him redesign her because I liked what David Enciso did with
her so much), but missed my window. Oh, well. The ConTinuum section
just adds the new stuff you’ve already seen in the Windjammer
gallery. And a note on Forte 2000 stories, by the way. Keep in mind that when we add them, they kind of jump all over the place, time-wise. So when you see a new one come up, you might want to take a sec--just to orient yourself--and look at the Adventures page and look where the story's at in the timeline. Just a helpful tip.
Windjammer Musings NOTE: If you have any plans to re-read all the Windjammer stories, I’d go ahead and just skip this section, as there will be spoilers within. Or, if you just don’t want to hear me ramble. Warned, you have been! MMMmm! Now that I’m back into the world of Windjammer, and have gone back and re-read all the stuff myself, just thought I’d talk about the tales thus far a little bit. And what I like and don’t like about them. CHAPTERS ONE AND TWO Um…they were okay. I remember, clearly, that the first ConTinuum deadline had snuck up on me, and I felt like I was forcing the first chapter. I really didn’t have a feel for the character yet. Granted, I did like the setup. You start right off with action (something notoriously missing for later Windjammer stories), and the whole getting-out-of-jury-duty thing was fun, setting the tone for the idea that this was a super-hero with problems we could all relate to. I also like the whole TV thing…where the TV picked up what was going on, and we cut to different people in Windjammer’s life, reacting as they helplessly watched (even some he doesn’t know are IN his life yet…I did like being able to introduce both Nathan Carthage and the castle guy, both of whom are big parts of the total Windjammer story arc, but will have to wait some time to truly take their place in the tales), which let us not only meet them but see how they felt about him, too. The whole Planet Hollywood idea was fun for me, just because, having lived in Phoenix, I’d been that that PH a number of times. The first pair were fun, and there was a lot of action, but still… They didn’t quite feel right to me. I was forcing the characters to say and do things. Probably because I didn’t know them well enough yet for them to come to life. Of course, this is a problem with TV shows and comics, too. You go back and read early issues or watch a pilot episode, you tend to cringe a little, realizing they don’t always ring true with what eventually comes to be. CHAPTER THREE However, something happened with Chapter Three, and it seemed to happen right out of the gate. I don’t know WHAT happened for sure (maybe I was just in a better writing place by that time), but the final chapter of the first trilogy suddenly felt RIGHT. All of a sudden, I seemed to know who Windjammer was. And he, and other characters, big and small, suddenly started speaking and acting on their own. You all know what I’m talking about, and what that feels like when it happens. It’s the best feeling ever for a writer. You, like the readers, don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen. Characters suddenly do things you didn’t expect them too. I remember, when I was just trying to get the chapter done, and Windjammer was chasing Delight across the city, she suddenly flew into a mall (my regular mall in Scottsdale when I lived there) and he followed. I remember thinking, why the hell did she just do that? I was getting ready to get to the final scene, and was well on my way, and she suddenly screwed up everything! But she did it, and I let it happen, and it turned into one of my favorite scenes in the series. It wasn’t only a very fun chase, one that added a lot of comedy to the tale, but it led to the big moment where Windjammer stands up at the third floor railing and realizes that thousands of people below are cheering him. It was his first moment of feeling like a real hero. I even wrote it to a piece of music (the fanfare from “Forrest Gump”). It was great! Plus all the stuff between him and Delight totally defined their characters for me as well. By the time they finally raced out of the mall, heading toward my final scene, I was so damned happy that those crazy kids had gone in there. The final scene was the big collision in the sky that led to the big kiss in the back seat of some guy’s convertible. This was important for me. As you can read on my intro on the “Chapters” page on the site, Windjammer and Delight had started out as a couple of characters in an 8-page sample script I wrote when I was trying to get comic work. I just loved the idea of this whole hero/villain, Romeo/Juliet thing, and the nice symbolism of them—like regular young people—ending up making out in the back seat of a car. When coming up with a ConTinuum character, I had thought about this Windjammer guy, and his potential, and had chosen him as my hero for my city. And he was just so tied to Delight from his beginnings in that comic that I just had to bring her over, too. And for three chapters, I’d been waiting to get to the big kiss scene that the characters had originally been born for. By the time I got to it, I really felt I knew them both, and I really liked how their flirty scene came out, one that ended up setting up for bigger things with her and him down the road. By the end of this chapter, I finally felt like I knew the character, and his world. And I was ready to go. CHAPTER FOUR Speaking of his world…Chapter Four was “Shane’s World”, my first big-ass Windjammer chapter. There was a reason for that title. I’d had the first story arc to throw out a bunch of the people and situations in his life, but now wanted to explore them more. We knew he had a roommate named Jerry who wrote plays and knew he was Windjammer. We knew he knew some deaf Mormon guy named Porter who apparently used to be a hero for a little while. And we knew some stuff about Shane’s life, but we hadn’t really gotten to see him LIVE his life, as the first three chapters were so focused on plot. So I knew the follow-up chapter needed to really flesh everything out and fill the readers in. Really introduce them, properly, to “Shane’s World”. First I wanted to get into his non-Windjammer life a little, so we started with him on the first day of a new semester, showing his college student life. And we got to meet Jerry, through Shane, this time, and experience their friendship and home life. I also got to use his conversation with Jerry to follow up on that promise made in the first story arc, which had ended with Terrance Cross wanting to make Windjammer a star. Couldn’t just leave THAT hanging too long. We found out the details, and the offer made to Shane to fly him out to L.A. for the holidays (which, by the way, was me setting up his excuse to be in L.A. for the big ConTinuum game I was going to be running at Comic-Con…), which nicely let me suck Jerry right into the trip (with his wanting to be the one to write the screenplay for the proposed Windjammer movie). I can’t recall, at the time, if I knew just how big a part Jerry was going to be in that upcoming story, but this was the scene that set that all up. Porter. Porter Scott. Anthem. This was a touchy area. I had always been in love with the idea of Windjammer having a mentor. He was fatherless, you see, but I had this notion of sort of a surrogate father—and a Mormon one, since I wanted to make use of my Mormon knowledge (14 or less) from my experiences in Phoenix with Emily and her family—who had had powers himself…but very briefly. I had this whole backstory jotted down…both Porter’s backstory, which then joined with Windjammer’s, leading to Windjammer’s first real introduction to the world (he was already getting well-known when the Planet Hollywood thing went down. My first story was not actually HIS first story…). So you had Porter. Got powers, decided to try some heroing, briefly and in secret…he ended up a local folk legend instead of real news. But he met Shane, and started shepherding Shane along, teaching him—on several levels—what it meant to be a hero. I don’t know why this was so important to me, but I just loved the idea of this guy who got gifted with amazing powers, just got started, and then lost them, and ended up being a guide for a young guy who actually DID become all the things the other guy could have been. And I wanted it to be a guy who was okay with that. But, as I said…touchy area. The idea of ConTinuum and its six heroes was that they were the FIRST six heroes in the world. And here I was suddenly throwing in someone who was, technically, the first actually super-hero. I seem to recall K.C. wasn’t too thrilled with the idea, for that very reason (and understandably). But I couldn’t let it go, it had become such an important part of the overall Windjammer story. So I tried, in the telling of the origin of Anthem—which led to the origin of Windjammer—to get the idea across that this was a man who COULD have been a hero. Who did a little, was very, very briefly known, but then saw his powers go away, right as his protégé hit the world scene and erased any MEMORY of the first guy. That the Windjammer appearance and subsequent happenings were so dramatic that they captivated the world and made them so obsessed with this young guy that he was all they could see. So I tried for that…and hoped that I pulled it off without causing too many ConTinuum world ruffles. I loved writing Porter and his family. Just these really great folks that served as the perfect big-family-that-Shane-never-had. I had a blast getting to know Porter’s wife and all Porter’s daughters, and the relationships they each had with Shane. One of the things that was important to me with Windjammer was showing that we are all the sum of the people that exert influence in our lives. Maybe it’s our family, maybe it’s that special teacher, maybe it’s your best friend. In Windjammer’s case, the theme here would be “no dude is an island”. This will become more important (way) down the road in the Windjammer tale. We will see differences between him and others—others with extraordinary gifts like he has—and how having voices in his life like Porter and the Scott family, like Captain Bonilla, like his mother, like Jerry, will prepare him for what’s to come (there’s big stuff coming). Really enjoyed getting some action in with all the exposition, which I hope worked in flashback mode okay. Doing so let me tell the whole origin much quicker than I otherwise would have. It got the basic info across without me having to go minute-by-minute. I also liked seeing him in his first Windjammer outing, and how panicked he was and how clearly he had NO idea what he was doing. That’s another thing I like writing about Windjammer, too, showing a hero who’s still very new at this and has to figure it all out as he goes, just like any of us would. He pulled if off okay. And I got to tell the semi-tragic tale of the man who could have been Anthem. I like Porter. He’s a really good guy. A fitting father-Shane-never-had, I think. And we had a couple of interludes, too. One in Siberia (huh?) with the water girl named Baikal. Wish I had time to go back and rewrite that whole scene (needs help), but I still had fun with it, and with throwing in this girl who makes you go “What the hell was SHE in the story for?”. Yes, you’ll see. Eventually. I’m such a tease. It’ll all makes sense when I reach the probable end of the whole Windjammer story. When we’re all, like, 80. And perhaps even more confusing was us cutting back to Delight, and what she went through. I liked stepping into her life instead of just seeing her “onscreen” with Windjammer, and getting in her head a little. But then more than ME got in her head. What’s up with the weird vision thing? Did she, like, go to the future? Or get a vision FROM the future? And what the hell happened to Washington D.C.? And who was the guy behind her that she never saw that signed her death warrant? What happens to her in the years to come to lead to whatever this is? We just don’t know! Well…I do. :D Just another hint that my need to always think big reaches my Windjammer writing as well… CHAPTER FIVE Another big one, and another one I’d been itching to get to. First of all, the stories, again, needed some action, and it came in the form of what I hope was kind of an exciting and very movie-like armored car chase across the city. No super-villains (got to be stingy with those in a world that just got its first supers, after all), just some bad guys with guns. Pretty tense scene that put Windjammer to the test, and made him kind of question if he was doing all this right. But I let Captain Bonilla give him a talking-to and let him know that he was, and why. And I got to use the fly-by over the gathered college crowd to give us another feel of what it’s like to be a famous and cheered super-guy. And then I went and made a big writing no-no. It is just NOT a good thing to suddenly introduce a major character in flashback. But I did it. I felt I had to. I was on a schedule here, needing to get to the big Hollywood thing, and I didn’t feel I had time to do this properly. But for reasons that were going to come up later in this chapter, I needed for Shane to have a girlfriend. And I couldn’t just throw ANY girl in the mix. If she was dating my boy, it had to be someone that I liked, and that, hopefully, the readers would like. So as I waded into this flashback, the tale of how Shane and Renee met started coming together for me. And I thought it was kind of fun. I wanted her to be very different from him, personality-wise, and someone that wasn’t all that impressed with him right off. I figured a guy like Shane had girls checking him out all the time (dashing, good-looking kid that he is), so I like the idea that he ran into a girl that clearly didn’t seem to care for him. Which would make him not care for HER very much. And that’s the point where, of course, you need to force these two people to spend time together, which I did with their both being cast in the same play (I also liked being able to explore what the life of a drama major is like, too, which helped me understand Shane more. Bonus). Come on, this is classic Hollywood stuff. Two oil-and-water people bicker a little, dislike each other, then, when an on-stage kiss has to happen, they suddenly realize they dig each other. Fun moment. So I managed to get them together, and get them happy. Which made Shane’s life happy. It sure would be terrible if something come along and screwed all that up, wouldn’t it? Heh. Delight returns. I knew she was coming back, and I knew Shane was going to have to be seeing her in L.A. later in the Hollywood story, and the whole reason for Renee was to 1) complicate the hell of things for Shane and 2) put Shane in a position of decision, which, I figured out early on, was always fun. Indecision is kind of at the core of his personality, self-doubting and self-torturing guy that he is. And also…if you had this totally hot blonde that had powers like you digging you major, where would the downside be? That’s where Renee came in. Shane is a very good guy, very loyal, wanting to do the right thing. Of course he’d never think of sneaking around on the girl he was with. But what if the other girl filled so many needs in his life and made him feel less alone in all the weirdness he was going through? And what, additionally, if the girl suddenly became a lot more than just a hottie he smooched? What if he, and the audience, actually cared about her? A lot? So I set out the make both parties do so…and I also set out, I’ll admit, to make people cry. There is NO greater victory than that as a writer. This chapter was meant to rip people up. And I knew just how to do it, too. So she suddenly appeared again, and I immediately liked how emotionally confusing the moment was. The last time they’d seen each other, it was flirty and fun. And they had a connection. And she tried to pick up right where that left off with him, planting the big kiss on him again and assuming he’d be very happy about it. But many things had changed for Shane since then, and that started becoming evident to her. There was tension now. But she kept trying to seduce him (confident in her skills at that), and when he rejected her, her personality REALLY came out, and she nutted on him and lashed out. This was really in character for her…I could really feel her reaction, and her interpretations of his actions, using them to feed her own insecurities and fears and crap self-image. No fun smoochies this time. They got in a fight (the powerless kind), and she stormed off. But he found her in that tunnel, crying. Vulnerable. Scared. All those parts of her she’d been hiding from him with her sexy smile and skimpy costume. And we got to get to the truth…that she hadn’t come to just “hook up”. She was scared (mostly from what happened to her last chapter), she was alone, and she needed him. Badly. I loved turning things from sexy flirty to volcanic outburst to raw emotional intimacy. And then came the backstory. The tale of the little girl with the doomed self-image and the loser junkie mother who had finally had a good day in her life, thanks to a prize at school. Who rushed home to tell her mother. Who found her mother on the bed, not moving, and who knew, keep down, what had happened, but tried to pretend it away like children to. Who tried to make macaroni and cheese dinner to make it all go away. And then who finally had to face the reality that her mother was dead, and there was no one to turn to, and she was all alone…and didn’t get found in there until three days later. WOW I love happy stories, don’t you? That was tough to write! It hurt! And as I found out, it hurt the people who read it, too. A lot. Sweet!! THAT cemented it for him…his suddenly desperate feelings for her, his need to take care of her, to be her hero when no one else in the world had ever been. They connected in that very, very emotional scene (I needed a nap AND a drink after writing it…), and it led to him telling her about the offer to come to L.A. He hadn’t truly made up his mind yet…he still felt he had a choice. But now with her begging him to—and the weird dreams he was getting that seemed to be drawing him there (and all the ConTinuum heroes were getting them…thanks to pre-Con-game intros they were getting via e-mail from me…)—he felt he had no choice, and for better or worse (and “worse” is what he was feeling, thinking of Renee, thinking of how much he just wanted to keep hold of his normal life, thinking that these dreams meant that he might be crazy), he made his decision. Windjammer was going to Hollywood. I liked this chapter! I don’t think I’d ever written anything like it before, something that emotional and heavy. It was a big stretch for me, me testing my writing limits, trying new territory. I really felt good about it. About the Jam and Delight stuff, yes, but also about the interlude that ended it, another teaser of things to come. I’d have to say that that closing interlude, brief as it was, ended up being one of my favorite things I’d ever written. Not sure why. It just felt good. It was another of those moments when I’d just had a simple plan—Nathan Carthage shows up again (to remind us that he’s comin’, somehow, and I hadn’t forgotten about him), gets a costume that a young costume-maker put together for him, and then blows her up, to show what a scary and heartless bastard he is. Started out simple…but then I started writing. And suddenly, this costuming girl came to life. She was a sweet and fun and really likeable girl. I loved what she’d done with her life, and was very interested in her life. And I came to realize I was going to be pretty pissed off when this prick killed her. And I hoped readers would feel the same (and he killed the cat, too! Jerk!). I don’t necessarily like a lot of the stuff I write. I tend to feel that it’s fine for all of us to share, for fan fiction purposes, but would never make it to any kind of publication. Something about this bit made me go, wow…I could picture that being in a book. Very satisfying chapter all around. CHAPTER SIX A thankfully short chapter from me after a couple of biggies. For a reason. The deadline was on me again. Chapters six and seven were originally supposed to be one big chapter, but I knew I didn’t have the time. So I decided to reimagine it a little and turn it into a prologue for the big story arc to come. A story called “Shane and Jerry’s Excellent Adventure”. The Hollywood story. Windjammer has themes. One of them is choice versus destiny, whether we’re drawn into what happens in our lives or if we can guide events with our own choices, good or bad. Another one is fame. We all—us ConTinuum scribes—had different things we wanted to focus on with our characters and cities and such. Granted, all of the heroes were going to end up pretty famous (being the first supers in the world will make that happen). But I wanted to explore, with Shane, more than fame. I wanted to explore CELEBRITY. Not just the ooh and ahh and the cheers of the fans who think you’re swell for saving that busload of nuns. I mean serious celebrity, the paparazzi hounding you kind, the everyone-wanting-a-piece-of-you kind, the making-you-a-millionaire kind. All the temptations—the money, the powers, the women, the adoration. These are things that would come with being one of the world’s first supers. These are also things that so many people lay awake at night dreaming about. But not Shane. Shane was a simple guy. A good guy. A moral guy. Which is what made the idea all the more fun. Could even the purest of heart resist the whole world being handed to them on a platter? I wanted to do a few things here. First and foremost, I really, really wanted to take the readers on a journey, and make them feel like they, themselves, were being led into this unimaginable world of Hollywood celebrity. To feel like they, too, were being wooed, and brought into the secret place that they could only read about in People Magazine and see on cheesy celeb programs. I wanted to make them feel like they were really there, experiencing it all, being seduced, too. I prepared myself to make it seem (I hoped) as real as possible to them. I also wanted to be able to show all the temptations from a couple of different angles. By bringing Jerry into this, and making him a commodity as well, though his writing, I was able to hit this a couple of ways. Jerry’s a great guy, don’t get me wrong…but he’s also not Shane. Temptations that wouldn’t work on Shane could really work on him. I wanted to lead them both down the path, in their own separate ways. Jerry could see his dream of being a powerful Hollywood writer come into being, and experience the power, the draw of money, the availability (finally in his life) of unnaturally beautiful women. Shane, on the other hand, still would have temptations…but his would be different. His would be feelings of responsibility, the world’s need for him. And also, in Delight, his need for someone who could understand him (Renee still doesn’t even know about the Windjammer stuff), and his need to take care of this girl that he became so dramatically connected to. And I also wanted to make this L.A. tale a very powerful test for the friendship of Shane and Jerry—pals since they were kids, ones that seemingly nothing could come between. Could their friendship survive what lay ahead? I wanted to know. Chapter Six ended up great for me because I got to finally get Renee out of flashback and into real time, with her showing up and saying good-bye to Shane before his trip (the origins of which he’d had to fib to her about). I got to show some of their really nice relationship, and how much he cared about her, and, best part, have her suddenly go back on her own boundaries and call him her boyfriend at the worst possible time. I got to make Shane nauseous with guilt. Heh. Love triangles kick ass. But I also got to finally get his Mom, Lana, into the story properly. I like Lana! She’s a really cool lady. I got to show her relationship with her miracle-of-nature son, and let her express all her fears about him going to Hollywood (as she’d been there herself before he was born, former soap actress and all). And have a tender mother/son moment with him. It felt good to finally “meet” her. And the airport scene was the perfect capper to this intro, the first taste of what was to come. The jet. The doting Cross employees treating the boys like royalty. The first-class treatment. It was the promise that I planned to keep in the chapters to come, the beginning of a long and extraordinary journey into the mystical realm called Hollywood. CHAPTER SEVEN And I liked how the arrival happened. The limo. The driving down the PCH to Malibu. The reactions of the guys to being in the middle of all that. The private beach house (and fancy cars) that were all theirs for the duration. I loved putting in all the little details of the house, and the amenities available to them. It was all like a dream come true, and the boys were definitely down the rabbit hole. I tried to make it feel as real as I could, make the readers feel like real Hollywood insiders themselves, like this is how it really might happen if it happened to them. I liked introducing Ash Gibson, too, Terrance Cross’s cute and spunky (and level-headed) personal assistant, a good guide for our boys. She was a fun character to come up with, and I had all kinds of questions about her…where she’d come from, how a girl her age (not that much older than the guys) rose to such a position, what about her made her handle it all so well. Had a good time letting those three have a nice talk. And a better time after she left, and the guys were alone, and it really all sunk in…where they were, what was happening, and what may lie ahead in the two weeks to follow. I loved the scene at Terrance Cross’s house, too. Here was another character that was just serving his purposes in the first story arc, but suddenly, he came to life for me, too. What a great guy! I felt like I was being invited into his famous home myself. I liked how he’d cleared out the house so Windjammer and Jerry could relax and be there in secret without worrying, and loved how these three guys all had buffet-style dinner together (since the chef wasn’t allowed to be there). Loved the scene in the “stogie room”, with Terrance telling what felt like authentic Hollywood stories to me. I think he came off pretty genuine, a guy who’s part of the whole movie business but deep down is still just an average Joe at heart. I liked his speech to Shane, which subtly pushed him further into the idea that this wasn’t something he could avoid. Windjammer WAS famous now, and there was no turning back, and he now had to just hang on and let it happen. With Terrance’s help, of course. I felt like the descent into Tinseltown had gotten off to the right start. Not in Kansas anymore. No sir. The seduction had begun. CHAPTER EIGHT Wanted to start right off showing a little passage of time, what life was like for the guys on their trip, and how much things had already changed. Did so with the opening scene with Jerry talking (from the Ferrari) to the hottie rich co-eds on their horses. Days ago, average college dude who couldn’t get a date. Now, turning down party invites from amazing girls that think he’s the bomb. Liked that scene, how it showed Jerry starting to change, and showing him still really appreciating what was happened. Liked the Peter Gabriel “Big Time” touch as well. Ah, but the Planet Hollywood appearance. That’s what I really wanted to get to. A scene designed to be Windjammer’s first taste of SERIOUS celebrity. And with serious celebrities, no less. Do have ANY idea how much fun I had writing dialogue for the likes of Arnold, Stallone, Bruce Willis and the like (and Sam Jackson! Sweet!)? I had such a blast! I like the press reaction, too, them going out of their minds when Terrance suddenly brings WJ out. I could totally imagine them doing that. And the visual of crowds gathering by the hundreds outside as word spread, trying to get a glimpse of this miracle of nature. This was his baptism into fame. I hope it felt genuine. I really enjoyed using Bruce Willis, having him casually asking WJ if he was planning to move to L.A., putting that panic in Shane’s mind (is that what he was being groomed for?). My hope is that it—and the celeb usage—came off believable and not just cheesy. I tried. Particularly with the whole Demi/Maria/Arnold moment, which cracked me up. There was no turning back, now. Terrance had presented him to the world. And the world kind of owned him now, whether he liked it or not. And more moving forward on the Jerry seduction. Enter Connie, from KnightCross’s script department, an impossibly hot blonde that, for some reason, was all over HIM. Loved using Spago, because like any wannabe-film-business-guy, I’d heard stories about the place for years and always dreamed of a big lunch meeting there. Jerry got to live it for me. I did my research on the place, too…right down to the menu (God bless the internet). We learned, here, that it wasn’t just Windjammer that was big news. The way Terrance was being so secretive about his big project, and the unknown young writer he was using for it, people started talking. Jerry’s name, we found out here, was floating all over town, much to Jerry’s surprise and amazement. Jerry Lowell had officially arrived, folks…and it looked like, more than that, he had a really hot babe in his corner as one of the perks. A fact that was cemented at the party that night in the Hills, where he was having what I thought was a really fun conversation with Quentin Tarantino. LOVED writing that. I thought it was pretty “in character” for the guy. I tried to hear his voice and see his body language as I was writing it. Just another “definitely not in Phoenix anymore” moment for Jerry, and one I liked. And one with an even happier ending. Hmmm. What was this Connie up to? While the final scene with Shane alone at the house went on too long, it was necessary. He’d gone out after the Planet Hollywood thing and actually found the café from his dreams, and now knew the dreams were real. He was scared to death. Of that, and of what was happening to his life, as he sat there looking over the starting proposal from Terrance that was going to erase his old life and make him a world-wide (and very rich) superstar. Alone and afraid, confused and tormented, he kept looking at the phone number Delight had given him back in Phoenix. He’d been putting off calling her. She was another big decision he had to make. But lost as he was, he suddenly needed her…and his doubts, his guilt about Renee, all of it, finally collapsed. And he called her. And the chapter ended with those words—“And she was there twenty minutes later.”—that hung in the air…for seven years. CHAPTER NINE Well, you’ll just have to read this one yourself. But it was a long time coming. As I said, I’d actually started it and left it on the hard drive, years ago. But finally, somehow pulling the right amount of inspiration, I jumped back into this story, and into his world. And I gotta tell you…it felt great. The “Hollywood Nights” chapter has been in my head for so long, it was great to get it out. And it was extra fun to write because it HAS been so long…this was all still taking place back in ’96, and if you check your calendar, you’ll find that was a decade ago. I had to hit the net and do a lot of research from the “era” (how old does it make you feel that ’96 is an “era”?), of the places we visit in the chapter, of music used, of what certain celebs were doing at the time, right down to trying to figure out who played at the L.A. party for Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve that year (which, it turned out, was a BITCH to do) and what colors the wall of the Viper Room were before the renovation that took place AFTER ‘96. But I loved it. I really enjoy that part of writing. So not just hours of writing, but hours of research, went into this (much of which you probably won’t even notice, but I needed it to be as authentic as possible. Yes, I actually tracked down Michael Douglas’s home in Brentwood, and got a satellite view of it). It was worth it. Very satisfying getting something off my to-do list that’s been there so long—not only writing this, but getting the other stories all edited and up on the site, a site that is now, finally, complete and ready for more. And there IS more. I have a pretty detailed breakdown of the whole Windjammer “saga”, and there are things I can’t wait to get to. You’ll start getting more hints of it as we go along, and all the pieces will finally start fitting nicely together. BIG stuff coming. And the first of the big stuff, of course, is the next chapter: Chapter Ten: “Burn, Hollywood, Burn”, the chapter that takes place during the events of the Con game, which means I get to write all the other ConTinuum heroes. Which also means that I have to go back, after all this time, and re-read the other ConTinuum stories so I have those characters down. Poor me. Hey, that sounds like something of an excuse to get to putting those other stories up on their own sites on the web while I’m doing it… Hmm… I hope this is the beginning of a proper return
to Windjammer, and to my place in the ConTinuum universe (so I
can try to catch up with K.C.!). And, I hope, the first step toward
getting that whole ConTinuum site up and going. Out of the ‘Times,
onto the web, I say! Like to be able to share this stuff with
a lot more people. Hey, I know my one fan in the United Arab Emirates
(yes, I actually got Windjammer fan mail a few years ago! Wow!)
will be down with that. Next Time...On "The 'F' Word"... No promises. We’ll just see how it goes. I just started making my New Year’s Resolution list, though (I haven’t done that in about three years), and there’s a lot of ‘Times and Forte-type stuff on it. So I’m hoping to make this a productive year. Be nice to start of the first CTO issue of ’07 with some good stuff. We’ll see where the creative wind takes me. See you then, and Meeeeeery Christmas! Michael O’Connell
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