Thursday, November 18, 2004
Dead of Night
It's the dead of night yet I am still not asleep. Why? I have to write.
When I was a kid, I remembered how I spent my lazy afternoons. They were spent with books and the sanctity of comic book stories. Which is why perhaps, I am fond of telling my own stories and never seem to shut up about it. I loved drawing, yes and it has been a practice for my whole life yet I find that my skills are still inadequate compared to other people. And drawing can never really capture the essence of what I want to express, and they somehow only get whimsical adventurous lined with heroes and villains in costumes. Never real people.
Yet one graphic novel changed this... and somehow, opened up the possibility of a new medium. This was the X Trilogy of Marvel comics, conceived by Alex Ross.
I will never forget that introduction (I Grew Up in the Marvel Universe) and how it dug up all the fantasies of costumed capers of my heroes yet that book opened a whole new stage for them also. They have grown up and became real people, associated with emotions and struggle we all face. As I read it, I couldn't hold back that inkling at the bottom of my soul and that it had began to bubble up again, and I felt the familiar zest to tell stories of my own. I loved that series and I still hold it close to me everyday since it changed my life forever. Some people will never even contemplate learning something from a mere "comic book" but I do, I grew up on it too.
I created stories of my own after that. Of course, fashioned after comic book stories. My first attempt gave birth to a character that people may associate me with, though most do not know of him. He was Kid Thunder and he represented adventure.
Along with him, I gave an array of companions each with their own profiles. Believe me, James and I took weeks to think up a good story. The story wasn't really good, it was the first time after all but I still throve to make it good. I found a certain joy in writing it all down because it was laying it down in letters and words instead of me telling it to a friend. But despite my efforts, it didn't turn out as good as we have expected. The structure was all wrong, plot was messed up and characters were shallow and transparent. I was discouraged time to time but I couldn't stop it anyhows. My story needed to be told.
I still keep that first story with me because after all, it will be the first out of the many and upcoming. More stories began to open to me after that. Not necessarily the same as the comic/adventure genre but instead, I have began writing a more deeper and philosophical story for which I am better known for. Isaac Matthews was born here, in the pages of the Shadowkeeper's Journal, a work still in progress.
But most of all, I realized the kind of story I wanted to tell most of all. A story that can give people the view of the world in my eyes and people with my perception while musing the facts and possibilities of the ever-changing world. A sci-fi adventure yet real in the human sense. This was the birth of GHOSTS, the story I still write and the one I hope to finish.
I don't know, I just see the world as being an infinite pool of stories and tales with each person telling it differently. Writing is now an addiction for me, I can't help it. I have to do it. It's my perrogative. From the very first time I read an adventure of Spiderman, I thought that the drawings made the story so cool but as I grew up, I realized now that it was the story, his story that was being told. So I want to tell my own stories too, not for me but for other people to know too. Maybe even make them learn a little as I have with Alex Ross' work.
It's the dead of night yet still I write
Riding the Lightning
12:03 AM
