It's official: I'm going to be a published author working with @focalpress to bring "Comics for Film,Games, & Animation" to print!

August 16, 2011 12:02 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@tylerweaver

Tyler Weaver

…and  is coming out this Fall, replete with a sexy cover by the equally sexy Blair Campbell (he forces me to use “sexy” before his name and in descriptions of his work)…

I’m very excited to have two projects that are near and dear to my heart coming out this summer! If you’re so inclined, you can preorder ComicStoryworld at Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and be sure to check out Whiz!Bam!Pow! dot com each week for a new installment of the story experience!

Clicking on the image below will take you to whizbampow.com, where you can follow the instructions to download WBP’s prologue, A Linen Forcefield. Thanks, and enjoy!

Last Friday, I sent out the prologue to Whiz!Bam!Pow! backers from that long-ago IndieGoGo campaign. Along with that email came the backstory behind this new version of WBP. Here’s that bit of backstory, to give context for Friday’s release of WBP to everyone.

**

What the hell has taken so long? 

Lots.

From creative paralysis in the wake of the campaign to life doing what it does best (usually in combination), this project has been simultaneously a blessing and a curse. But, for all the tumultuous upheaval of the past year+, the largest part of the delay  has been something awesome:

I was writing a book that is being published (my first book published by a for-really-real publisher!!) by Focal Press this summer, Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld (ComicStoryworld for short, the main title’s a mouthful). It was through writing that book that I matured as a creative (writing a 350-page book covering the past, present, and future of comic storytelling in five months will do that) and found that the story of Whiz!Bam!Pow! as it existed during the campaign (multiple volumes, etc.)  wasn’t the story I wanted to tell.

I was paralyzed by it, unable to move forward. The very thought of having to revisit the project as it was during the campaign filled me with fear, anger, and resentment — all directed towards me and my own inability to finish the damn thing.

But then I did something I always do when faced with a problem (other than piss and moan for awhile): I stopped, looked back, and asked,

“What worked before?” 

I stripped the project down to its core, free of the narrative tomfoolery created over the past year and a half: the story of a grandfather and his grandson centered around the question, “what would I do if my mom threw out my comics?” I threw out notes, clippings, pontifications about the future of storytelling and how WBP could be a part of it and did what I wanted to do in the first place: tell a damn good story that means something to me.

This serialized novelette is the story I’ve wanted to share with you since 2007 in the medium with which I’ve had a year-long courtship (though one could argue it was ten years and I’m finally putting a ring on it).

A bit of backstory about this new version of Whiz!Bam!Pow! – I didn’t decide to transform the main story of WBP  into a prose piece (it was a originally a feature-length screenplay written by myself and my writing partner Paul Klein) until my last week of writing ComicStoryworld (the end of February 2012) when I wrote the behind-the-scenes case study of Whiz!Bam!Pow! for the book. I was stuck on that section, racking my brain over what I would write. Then I asked myself: “what worked before?”  Once I wrote in the case study that it was the story of a grandfather and grandson, I was committed and dove back in immediately after sending ComicStoryworld to my publisher. So, technically, this version that’s kicking off next week is only a couple months old — and better than it ever was.

**

And there you go. Can’t wait to share WBP with all of you on Friday at http://whizbampow.com/category/the-story/

On Friday, May 11, 2012, I (and the incredibly incredible Team Whiz!Bam!Pow!) launch Whiz!Bam!Pow! as a 16-week serialized story that brings together prose, radio, and Golden Age comics.

It’s been a long and winding road that I have no interest in boring you with at this point. If you’ve followed me on Twitter throughout this seemingly endless process, you get the general idea. But it’s all coming to an end. Here’s how Whiz!Bam!Pow! will go down (at whizbampow.com )

The Components

There are three main pieces of Whiz!Bam!Pow! – a serialized novella, a radio show done in the 1940s style, and a comic book done in the Golden Age style.

The Novella

The novella is the original story of Whiz!Bam!Pow!, the story that began this whole process, transformed from a first draft screenplay (which makes a great first draft for prose, by the way) into a 12-chapter novella that will be serialized in three-week chunks, one chapter a week as a downloadable PDF– free of charge.

Here’s something about the novella — I didn’t come up with the idea to transform the script into the novella until the last week of writing my book, Comics for Film, Games, and Animation (ComicStoryworld for short). So this version of Whiz!Bam!Pow! is only a few months old — there’s an entirely different novella bearing remnants of the campaign that may be released later. But for now, this is the story I want to tell. We’re ending Whiz!Bam!Pow! as it started, with the story that pushed me to dedicate five years of my life to it.

But more on my path from multi-hyphenate to creatively satisfied writer in later posts. On the fourth week will be …

The Radio Show

The radio show consists of three episodes (and features the brilliant talents of Kate Dawson, Paul Montgomery, and more!)  After each three-week chunk of novella, the radio show will be released on the fourth week, filling the gap between novella chunks. Also, free of charge.

And finally…

The Comic Book

The final piece of the WBP puzzle will release after the novella is complete. More information on the comic will be released as it gets closer. This bit definitely won’t be free of charge, but pieces will show up in the novella.

All in all, we’re looking at an entire summer of Whiz!Bam!Pow!. Midway through, in July, my book will be released in bookstores and on Amazon. Near the end of writing the book, I figured that it’s my version of the “behind the scenes” of Whiz!Bam!Pow!. Both the book and WBP are the culmination of a passion for comics that has lasted for more than 20 years, and I can’t wait to share every piece with you. Oh yeah, and my WBP art dude, Blair Campbell, did all of the artwork for ComicStoryworld, creating a cohesive whole between book and project.

One last thing

For all of you who backed the IndieGoGo campaign, you’re not forgotten. You’re going to get the novella’s prologue THIS FRIDAY. And of course, your own copies of the comic when it’s ready — featuring ads for, from, and inspired by you, just like I intended in the campaign.

May 11, 2012. Sixteen weeks. See you there.

I like writing, but what I really want to do is fly. Or rather, I want to believe that someone could.

I am one of those who grew up marveling at Christopher Reeve in Superman: The Movie, enjoying Superman II, wondering why Richard Pryor was in Superman III (oh, my young naiveté) and liking Superman IV (which I still dig… in spite of being an awful movie). It was that tagline from Superman: The Movie that led me beyond a love of the film into a nostalgic appreciation for it… “you’ll believe a man can fly.” With Christopher Reeve in the cape, you did. For my generation, he was Superman. It was that little bit extra he brought to the flight, a feeling of stoic acceptance of his power yet recognizing the awesomeness of what he was doing. The fourth-wall breaking smile at the end of the film or the first flight after Marlon Brando’s crystals put him in red and blue tights… it was chill-inducing. I believed a man could fly.

But now, I see films like Green Lantern or Iron Man, and that joy is lost, replaced with a computer-generated cartoon (ironically harkening back to the days of the 1948 Kirk Alyn-starring Superman movie serial, when the flight sequences were done by a crafty switch to animation) that goes through the paces. Sure, Hal Jordan was excited by getting to fly fly, but he was a head on an animated body doing flips that I couldn’t care less about. Iron Man, the same deal. Yeah, yeah. There was a woo-hoo and a spin and stuff. Woo frickin hoo.

Flight is a human dream — the computerization of it makes it an easier reality, yes, but the true appeal of it lies in a human being taking flight. It’s that very ease of filmic flight and movie magic that has rendered its appeal and wonder inert. Christopher Reeve and the special effects crew had to work to fly. Wires, harnesses, blue screens. It all had to come together to create the realistic vision of the human dream of flight. Now, flight is reduced to a bunch of (admittedly complicated) keystrokes that remove the human element and make anything possible.

It’s like the old adage of great cars. They were made of steel, and were built to withstand anything. There was a love and attention paid to them, the work of hands on metal. Now, it’s Priuses (Priui?) and fuckall bad “pee-ushi” commercials.. seriously, Toyota. Your ad company should be tarred, feathered, and flambéed for that dreck. You want to make people buy hybrids? Don’t make commercials that cater to the asinine claptrap  of doggie acupuncture urban hipsters with nothing interesting to say.

Ahem.

What I’m getting at is that the human element has been removed and mass production of wonder has become the norm.

When was the last time you were in awe-struck wonder of something? When did you last feel that chill of “wow?” Let’s really show where the makers of current wonder-less flight films go wrong: the last time I felt that chill was when Dash ran across water in The Incredibles. It was COMPLETELY animated, but Brad Bird and his team brought the same amount of human wonder to a pixelated image that Christopher Reeve brought to Superman. The Incredibles was like a vintage car, built to last and built with pride. It was built with heart and characters that marveled at their own super heroism. We experienced their wonder and they experienced it.

Now, we’re left with vapid, half-hearted visions of flight and of wonder. Where is the pride in that work? Where is the chill-inducing hope that we could someday do that? For a film about a man with a power ring that could do anything, limited only by his imagination, the imagination in Green Lantern was sorely lacking. For a film about a genius billionaire eccentric philanthropist and weapons manufacturer, Iron Man’s first flights were anything but genius.

Maybe I’m getting older and more cynical. Or maybe I want to believe a man can fly and actually give a damn.

Here's the description of the book:

In Comics for Film, Games, and Animation Tyler Weaver teaches you how to integrate comics storytelling into your own work by exploring their past, present, and future. You will explore the creation of the unique mythologies that have endured for more than seventy years, and dig into the nitty gritty of their creation, from pacing and scripting issues to collaboration. Finally, you'll gain a love and appreciation of the medium of comics, so much so that you won't be able to wait to bring that medium into your story toolbox.

As part of the book, I'm putting together a companion website at comicstoryworld.com, and want to include a list of independent artists and creators as a resource for transmedia producers looking to create comics for their properties. Hopefully, this will help to create new teams to make cool stuff!

If you'd like your name, Twitter handle, and website added to this list (which will go public sometime this summer), please provide the info in the comments field!

Twenty minutes ago, I hit “send” on an email with the subject line “The Book is Here!”

On August 18, 2011, I posted an article on this site called 400 Pages of Scribbles, which announced that I was writing a book about comics and transmedia entitled Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld.  Since I wrote that article, I’ve logged countless hours of writings, churning out page after page of writing on comics history, transmedia, cautionary tales, case studies, interviews, and ideas. I’ve conducted interviews with some insanely cool people (whom I’ll share in a moment), and have had some wonderful life experiences.

But now, the book goes from being an “action” item to a reactionary one. It’s in the hands of my publisher, and I’ll admit, I’m terrified. I’ve never done this before, so there’s a sense of another “leap of a precipice” (which I adore) and unease. There is the — as Anne Lamott so awesomely put it — endless static from the writer’s internal radio station, K-FKD (K-Fucked). Every writer tunes in. It’s the always-on, public access shit channel we all have to struggle to avoid. It’s that trainwreck of Real Housewives of Fuck-All Who Knows Where mixed with NASCAR wrecks and Harrison Ford running away that compels us to watch, to listen, to the “the world is caving in, they’re going to take my book away from me, I’ll never write again, but thank you for the Oscar nomination” chatter of K-FKD bullshit.

Halfway through the process, on December 15, I wrote another post, 10 Lessons, suitably, on the lessons I’ve learned while writing the book. All of them still ring true, but I’d like to add a few more:

Shit Will Happen

Interview subjects will ignore you. Your life will blow up and reassemble in the same second. You will realize you forgot to write a chapter three days before the book is due. You have to keep going.

Take Time To Think

When you are writing, words will become a jumble. Ideas will coagulate into an interminable blobby mess with designs on the destruction of a small town. Sometimes you just have to stop, think, and refresh. You’ll get more done than if you prattle on about shitty ideas and your shitty writing and your shitty shit. Just stop, refocus, and get back to it.

Eat Well

Shamrock Shakes are brilliant, and they are especially brilliant for augmenting with intoxicating elements. But they’re shit. Chicken nuggets are wonderful, but, alas, they too are  shit. Eat salads, eat well. You have to be healthy, because guess what? Deadlines don’t give a blobby coagulate mess of shit about your health. You have to take care of yourself to deliver.

And now, I get to wax nostalgic. Writing this book has been the most satisfying, frustrating, and rewarding experience of my life. It’s been wonderful. It’s been hell. I have to thank a few people:

To all of you who I had the fortune to interview — Denny O’Neil, Henry Jenkins, Alison Gaylin, Ron Fortier, Stephanie Buscema, Christy Dena and Roberto Orci — thanks so much for taking the time. It was a pleasure to get to know you better, and you enhanced the book beyond belief.

To my Whiz!Bam!Pow! collaborator and artist extraordinaire — Blair Campbell –  who stepped in at the last minute to make one of my crazy, totally transformational ideas come to fruition, thank you. You fucking rock.

And last, but certainly not least, to my awesome technical editor, Mike Elrod. We started our writing careers reviewing Fringe and Supernatural and finally got the chance to work together. He was a madman in getting forty chapters edited through multiple iterations over the course of a month, and his guidance radically changed the book for the better. You too, fucking rock.

And with that, I’m going to breathe. In a few weeks, I’m going to give an update on what’s next for me. Until then, thanks a million for indulging my progressively manic musings, tweets, and status updates.

Today, I declared major writing operations done for the project. There’s a lot of work left to be done. Rewrites, reformatting (including a massive reformat that makes the book so much better), a website to further grow, more interviews to conduct and transcribe, tables of contents to be built, abstracts, section headers and the final piece of writing, the introduction and conclusion to frame the book. I’ll be writing those the night before I turn it in. I’m sure I’ll be in both an introductory and conclusive mood. The night after will be consumed by the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

And now I’m starting to look towards the future and what’s next for me. The first thing: a few days off. Three or four. Nothing special. Nothing spectacular. Just days off and away. Then…

Whiz!Bam!Pow!

Will finally be completed. I’ve always looked at ComicStoryworld (the short version of that mouthful of a book title) as the “Behind the Scenes” of Whiz!Bam!Pow!. Plus, my author’s bio on the book (publishing in July) says that Whiz!Bam!Pow! is already out. Nothing like incentive.

The project will be rolled out over 8-10 weeks starting at the end of March/first of April.

And then…

That’s As Much As I’m Going to Plan

There will be some book promoting when it’s released in July, a continuation and expansion of my writing secret identity, hopefully some consulting, and finally, the next project: a novel.

The rest? My plan is to live life and make good shit.

In short, it’s a lot of fucking work. And I don’t get to write “fuck” at all, so forgive the fuckiness of this writing. Fuck fuck fuck…

To relax, I’ve turned to simplicity. Yoga and meditation are great (a mental lifesaver that reminds me that the only constant in life is breathing — until you’re dead), and so are video games (stress relief while saving the world). Video games fulfill an inherent need to be rewarded. The very act of writing is an exercise in short-circuiting a deep rooted need for a reward system; instead of gold stars and “A” grades, I seek only awesome head shots.

But my ultimate relaxation is in coloring books. A box of crayons and things that beg to be filled in. It helps me think, it helps me short circuit over-thinking (in a fascinating paradox). It just forces me to do something.

Over the past several few months, I’ve been around kids a lot more than I ever planned on. I’m not what you would call a “kid person” by any stretch of the imagination, but I can’t help but enjoy seeing the fruits of a kid’s artistic labors. Dinosaurs that are colored with no sense of logic, no sense of line. Just color vomit on a page. They don’t care if it’s good. They care if it’s fun.

I color as a way to help me short-circuit that logic of “constantly between the lines” that becomes deeply rooted from your first multiple choice test. I color as a way to “just do,” to not care of it’s good, but to relish in the work in front of you. I color as a way to finish things; coloring book pages beg to be completely colored before moving on.
And, when I inevitably return to the work at hand, I can approach it with a clear mind, with a somewhat retuned imagination, one that isn’t afraid to go outside the lines (indeed, the very presence of lines in coloring books is what makes them fun — it’s all about creating within chains (as Nadia Boulanger said), and knowing when to break free of those chains to add surprise and color); a clear mind that won’t stop coloring in those blank book pages with words and ideas, rocketing towards completion.

Instead, I thought I’d do a list of my ten favorite things right now, and maybe revisit it every six months to see if any have survived the half year. So this is kind of a recommendation list, kind of a “things that make me happy” list. Links will abound where accurate, and bear in mind, these are in no particular order.

1.) A happy, simple relationship.

I’m very happy, and I’ll leave it at that.

2.) Coloring Books

To alleviate massive brain blocks thanks to the mindfuck nature of some of the writing I’m doing for Comic Storyworld, I’ve regressed into simple coloring books and a box of Crayolas. I spend at least half an hour a day coloring dinosaurs and cute bunnies. When I find dinosaurs eating cute bunnies or cute bunnies eating dinosaurs, my life will be complete.

3.) Orson

My dog. He is settling in (a bit too) well to the solo-dog life, though is making new friends — two greyhounds and a schnauzer (thanks to the aforementioned awesome of Number One) — he’s my rock and my best friend. Even though I still have to pick up his shit.

4.) Books In Stock

The used book store in Wooster, Ohio. It’s my little slice of old-book heaven, where I cave into my obsession with vintage crime paperbacks.

5.) SoMar Wine Bar

My second office, where I usually spend at least one afternoon a week sitting, drinking, writing, and/or chatting. To add coolness, it used to be the first comic book shop I ever went to.

6.) Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84

My current reading obsession. I still have no clue what’s going on, but I love the uncertainty. It’s like a David Lynch movie.

7.) Mark Waid & Paolo Rivera’s Daredevil

Hands down, the best comic being published today, and the first one I would recommend to non-comics readers. Waid brings wholly entertaining stories to the book every month, with impeccable art from Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin. Other favorites: Art Baltazar & Franco’s Tiny Titans (which is now cancelled, great move DC) and Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo’s Wolverine & The X-Men.

8.) Deus Ex: Human Revolution

The first Deus Ex game changed my life. I spent hours in front of the computer being immersed into the world of JC Denton and company. The prequel, Human Revolution, brings me back to that feeling with an amazing, engrossing story and bad-ass action. Also recommend: Batman: Arkham City for further bad-assery.

9.) The GOP Primary

I love politics because I have a love of vaudeville. The circus freaks are out to play. It’s like watching a trainwreck of hair gel and whiny high school girls. Pure comedic gold. The Daily Show must be giddy.

10.) Instagram

Completely hooked on this app. Simple, brilliant.

And here’s 11 Things I’ve Stopped Caring About:

Email, Social Media, Job Searching, Soul-Searching, Over-thinking, Winning, Losing, The Past, Houses, Buffets, and Puppy Periods.