People always ask writers where they get their ideas. It’s mostly an
indirect process, and often we don’t really know where we get our
ideas. But once in a while we do, or we can at least talk about works
that inspired us. For my current project, DOCTOR FATE, I went back to
re-read Roger Zelazny’s CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS. Zelanzy was
a master of taking elements from mythology and twisting them into
science fiction settings, and CREATURES dove deeply into Egyptian
myth. He was an extraordinary wordsmith and a brilliant writer in
many ways I’ll never equal, but jealousy aside, it was a pleasure to
re-read his treatments of Thoth, Anubis and a host of the Egyptian
pantheon set in a far future.
Got a lovely note the other day via FB, in response to my usual query to people asking to “friend” me (“”Thanks, but can you tell me why you want to friend me?”). The writer said she was a single mom, and fondly recalled me taking the time to send a letter back to her 14 year old daughter when she wrote in, talking of her aspirations to be an artist. I had sent the girl some books on how to draw (things that would show up from time to time in my office and needed to find a better home).
Now the girl was about to graduate college, having continued to focus on art, and her mother said my encouragement had a lot to do with it. I recall how good I felt about a couple of responses to letters I sent to comic companies when I was young, so I can believe it, but it made my day to hear the story.
I just received a copy of Fantagraphics’ JUDGMENT DAY AND OTHER STORIES Illustrated by Joe Orlando, a book that made me smile on many levels. Joe had singled out “Judgment Day” as his favorite story that he ever worked on—probably because it cause conniptions between the Comics Code and Bill Gaines, and Joe both hated the Code and enjoyed making trouble. But I also smiled because the reason I knew it was Joe’s favorite is that he selected it to go in the AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS issue about him that I edited. That made it the only E.C. story to ever be reprinted in a DC publication.
I’m probably overly fond of my own weird statistics, but this is a good place to share them from time to time so you can smile with me (or laugh at me—either one is fine). I tallied up 890 text pages I wrote for DC, counting letters columns and the like. Probably the most any one writer has done for the company, as far as I can tell. It’s a pretty dubious honor, but I made at least one lifelong friend among my regular correspondents and a bunch of more casual pals. I hated approving the request from the editorial staff to drop the letters pages when I was Publisher, but the argument that the velocity of the Internet had made them obsolete seemed valid.