Musings on a fibreglass Owl.
On synthesizing memories into emotional arcs. Cape Fear! The Dregs #1 for free!
Good evening from under the cloudy skies of Prince Edward Island. This is your regular communication from the writing desk of Zac Thompson. It’s November 10th now. There is a lack of motivation lingering in my office..
Happy Dr. Manhattan day to those who observe.
As is a constant theme here in the past two years - I no longer have a good perception of time. Will I know what day of the week it is again? Unclear. But two weeks have passed and I owe y’all one of these things.
To be perfectly honest, I had to take a beat on the weekend and just catch my fucking breath. The Ka-Zar: Lord of the Savage Land #1 numbers came in so much higher than I had ever anticipated. I felt like I slipped and hit my head. I legit had to email my editor Sarah Brunstad to be like IS THIS TRUE!?
And it is true, somehow. By the way, this book would simply not exist without Sarah. She came to me with this and gave me the freedom (and guidance) to run wild with it. It’s not often (at least not for me) that you are empowered to redefine the lore of a legacy character while also building a whole new power set. Editors are indispensable parts of the creative team on books and I’m going to do a better job of shouting them out when I can.
Anyway, somehow we sold 72,000 copies of an eco-horror Ka-Zar book in 2021. Just… THANK YOU. Speaking of which, issue #3 is out next week on November 17th. The powerhouse team of Germán García and Mat(heus) Lopes are doing some career best work in this issue. This is the big debut of the new villain we created for the mini. He’s gross and weird. I quite like him. We also travel to a new biome known as THE BLIGHTLANDS. Nothing good happens there.
Starting this issue we’re joined by the incredible Álvaro López for a few pages. Álvaro is the inker on Javier Rodriguez & Al Ewing’s new Defenders series but he’s an incredible artist in his own right. He did the nightmare sequence in this issue and its fucking awesome. I can’t wait for people to see it. I really want to show off some art but we’ll have to hang tight for now.
I’ve managed to clear a project from my writing plate. Tried something different because I could afford the time and wrote SUPERIOR FOUR back to back to back (its only three issues 🙃). Normally with superhero books you’re rarely afforded the pleasure to really hone in on a character, spend your days diving into back issues and write a complete story before you even have to proof the 1st issue. I moved some things around in my schedule to do it this way but I really enjoyed the experience.
While I love writing superheroes... I’m still mostly working on creator owned books right now. It’s my first love and I’ve gotten to the point where I’m ahead on everything… except for one thing which I’m dedicating my Christmas break to figuring out. It’s my first creator owned maxi-series at a publisher I haven’t worked with before. For those who care it’s PROJECT TIAMAT (🙃🙃🙃). It’s currently just a 3 person book. Me, an incredible letterer I’m working with for the first time and a phenomenally talented artist who’s drawing and coloring the book (that I’m working with for the second time). Anyway, we’ll get more into this one in the new year. It’s the first creator owned book I’ll ever fully own with my co-creators(🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃). So we’re going fucking BIG for it. This newsletter is going to play a large part. It’s going to be a whole storytelling experience/world. I hope you’re ready.
PROJECT XII is now in production. It’s a historical fiction/noir miniseries based on true events. Eoin Marron is telling this story with me and I couldn’t be more thrilled to write for him (he’s at Thought Bubble from Nov 13/14 - go visit him at Redshirts Hall #99). Eoin’s work is expressive and emotive, he’s got some of the best on-the-page storytelling of anyone working in comics today. We’ve been looking for an excuse to work together on a series for years and I’m so pleased things aligned this time. We’re both busy fellas and managed to catch each other at the right time. I’m so fucking psyched on this. We’ll talk more about it come.. March.
Table of contents. It’s mostly always the same:
- Writing craft: A story about an animatronic owl.
- What I’m reading: James Han Mattson’s Reprieve
- What I’m watching aka Zank on Cinema: Cape Fear (1962), Cape Fear (1991), and Cape Feare (1993).
- The Dregs #1 for freeeeeeee.
- A playlist to get through the week.
WRITING CRAFT:
Musings on an fibreglass owl.
This week we’re foregoing the typical WRITING CRAFT stuff. I think I’m going to move that into a once a month category and into its own separate post. ALSO, I’m going to shift things to a practical step by step guide on bringing something from concept (pitch) to execution (script) using beat sheets, outlines, etc. This may surprise some people but I’m a really structured writer. I use a lot of supplemental/organizational material when I write. So I’m currently trying to organize that for y’all into something digestable. In the meantime, let me tell you about some bullshit I’m obsessed with that I somehow found a way to structure a whole issue around.
I’m not super ready to get into details about it just yet but PROJECT MAZE is a WFH book that I’m purposely writing outside of my comfort zone. It’s a little less intense than my usual fair with more of an emphasis on action and comedy (gasp!?). I’m writing this book with a more conversational tone and trying to keep things tongue in cheek. I promise this is where the fibreglass owl comes in.
Back in my childhood, there was this fairly tiny theme park called Rainbow Valley that every kid on PEI was obsessed with. It had all these strange oddities (a gift shop inside a UFO) and rides (an old fishing boat ride piloted by 13 life-size animatronic rumrunners).
There was no real theme to the place. It was this a family owned business that was named after Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1919 book of the same name. Most kids who grew up on the island know the park well. Rainbow Valley closed in the mid 2000s and became a national park (woo!).
I tell you all this because there was one attraction in particular that truly blew my mind when I was a kid. It was this talking owl. It lived inside a tree and would come out as you walked by and it talked! Not only that but you could have a conversation with it! I loved seeing Mrs. Sleepy Owl.
As a kid, I had no idea how this owl could talk with me. It wasn’t just simple casual phrases (it was a full blown conversation!). Later at like age 12, I realized there was a camera above the Owl and someone sitting somewhere else talking into a microphone. That realization kinda shattered the whole experience of the place for me. Sounds silly but the whole park came down with learning Mrs. Sleepy Owl was a hoax! It was this break in the illusion the place cultivated and I remember feeling so betrayed by it.
So how does this relate to PROJECT MAZE? Well, I needed to channel something to that effect in the third issue of this series. It was this moment where the plot called for seeing behind the curtain of what’s happening up until that point. A really loved the idea of someone in a room, speaking for a fake little woodland creature. So I scripted a whole issue around that conceit. My feelings about the whimsy of the park and how I felt when the illusion shattered went right into the script. Channeling my memories through the prism of the story created a strong emotional attachment in the narrative. Which I guess is the point of what I’m saying.
When it comes to writing, you want your characters to really feel something. You also want to write “what you know” but that old adage can mean so many things. If you can structure memories or experiences into strong emotional narratives you can also synthesize them into your work. Filtering your memories through the characters or plot. Maybe that’s obvious but I guess I would just say, nothing is too stupid/weird to pull from. The things that make you strange or odd are usually the things that will make your writing unique. If they’ve lingered with you for a long time, chances are good they’ll linger with others.
What I’m Reading:
Reprieve
I’m about halfway through James Han Mattson’s Reprieve. The novel walks a fine line between literary fiction and horror. It’s a gory story about a full-contact escape room called Quigley House where the actors can attack participants, but the participants can't retaliate until they're given permission to do so. Rumor has it that contestants are hit with sharp objects, shock wands, and dowels. However, the place is always booked up, because if the contestants collect all the envelopes they need and make it to Cell Six without calling the safe word — "reprieve" — they win $60,000.
The novel is set in the 1990’s and really goes to great lengths to make each character feel distinct, nuanced, modern, and fully fleshed out. It lingers in the small details of the contestants lives and takes its time to get to Quigley House.
I’ve never really read anything like it. So far I find it a profoundly powerful musing on otherness, racism and identity all filtered through these big moments of horror. If you recently dug Squid Game but wanted more time to get into the characters heads - this would probably scratch that itch.
ZANK ON CINEMA
CAPE FEAR (1962) - A classic Hollywood noir that had always eluded me. I’m thrilled I finally had the chance to take it in (it’s now streaming on the Criterion Channel). The film takes place in Georgia and follow lawyer Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) who’s stalked by Max Cady (the incredible Robert Mitchum). Max is fresh out of prison for rape and blames Bowden for his incarceration. What ensues is a game of cat and mouse. The intimidation of a fucking crazy man following you and your family stands the test of time. While some aspects of the film haven’t aged well, Mitchum’s performance is absolutely haunting and truly hard to shake. Highly recommend folks check this out.
CAPE FEAR (1991) - Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake largely follows the same plot. It swaps out Gregory Peck for Nick Nolte and Robert Mitchum for Robert DeNiro. The results are… varied. Nolte is fine but a little more unhinged than Peck. It’s sometimes hard to buy his performance but when he freaks out - you can’t take your eyes off of him. DeNiro’s putting on a weird accent and it seems like a lot of his scenes are dubbed with ADR. So a lot of the tension just doesn’t land. That said, the final showdown and climax of the remake is absolutely stunning and well worth your time. It apparently took them 4 weeks to film it and it shows.
CAPE FEARE (1993) - The timeless remake. A parody on the remake that is absolutely pitch perfect. For the longest time this was the definitive version of this story to me. Sideshow Bob gets out of prison and vows revenge on Bart. It pays homage to the film in some blisteringly funny moments and skewers some of the stupider elements of the remake with insane accuracy. It’s stunning how much they pack into a 20 minute episode.
THE DREGS
We’re coming up on the five year anniversary of The Dregs #1. The Dregs was my first creator-owned series. Co-written with Lonnie Nadler, drawn by Eric Zadwadzki and coloured by Deen Cunniffe - the series follows a homeless man who decides to find a missing person in his rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.
I owe my whole career to this book.
You can read #1 for FREE, right here, right now.
Later!
That’s it for this week. Be good to one another. Carve out space for yourself and take some time to log off if you can.
Here’s a playlist to get through the week:
Until next time,
Z - 11/10/21
Must've gone to Rainbow Valley a half dozen times during the week we stayed in PEI when I was 13. When we moved out this way, I was hoping to revisit and was bummed out to see it was gone.