Official Announcement – The Invisible Skein

The Invisible Skein is an ongoing, humorous adventure web comic dealing with Urban Legends and Conspiracy Theories. It will be written by me, with art by Amanda Hayes. The story will be told in episodic format, each episode (or issue) consisting of 36 pages. Those pages will appear once a week, four at a time, until an episode is complete.

There may or may not be short breaks between issues, but they will always be between completed issues because we won’t start posting an issue until it is actually completed.

Our lead characters are Robert and Ali.

Our first story has to do with alien abductions, but probably not in the way that you think it will.

That’s all I can tell you, but it’s not all I can show you. Take a peek at these…

Watch Out, He May Bite

Let Warren Ellis Show You His Comics

Originally uploaded by benchilada

Warren Ellis is probably my favorite comic writer.

Without question, he’s a genius. His subject matter can be disturbing, thought provoking or just down right silly. His bibliography would take page after page to list, and regular readers of mine have already seen me pushing his work, including his first novel, which just came out this week.

I first remember Warren from Marvel’s Hellstorm comic. At a time when the vast amount of books coming from Marvel were worse than they had ever been, Hellstorm gleamed with creativity.

So they cancelled it.

They gave him a book called Druid. After four issues of utter brilliance, they canned that, too.

A three issue run on Doc Strange.

A four issue shot at Thor.

Apparently the entire editorial staff at Marvel was smoking Fruit Loops.

Off for greener pastures, Warren spent the next few years creating stories of his own, some at DC’s Vertigo / Helix division, some through various independent companies. The one common amongst them all was his sheer genius.

Transmetropolitan, The Authority, Planetary, Orbiter, Ministry of Space, Ocean, Strange Kisses, Desolation Jones, Fell, The Apparat Line.

Pick a card, any card.

Warren’s hobbling around the San Diego Con right now, probably miserable.

He made an announcement earlier today that he would be taking over Astonishing X-men, following Joss Whedon.

Do I have to tell you, I can’t wait?

The Mad Brit Who Saved Comics

Alan Moore (7872)

Originally uploaded by acb

As modern comic readers, we take Vertigo Comics and all that comes with it for granted. But back in the 80’s, Vertigo didn’t exist. DC’s supernatural characters existed side by side with their spandex set, in a bright and shiny world totally unsuited to them.

Until Alan Moore came along.

Now Alan is a bit of a comics genius. He has created, among other things, The Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Tom Strong, Top Ten, From Hell, V For Vendetta and The Lost Girls.

But this was a young Alan Moore, full of piss and vinegar and probably the blood of some minor demon. He was a mad brit and DC had no idea what to do with him so they gave him what was their lowest selling book, Swamp Thing.

And what came next, was legend.

He immediately turned a third rate monster book into something truly unsettling and almost poetic. A dark, dangerous, breathing story that opened your mind and spit in it.

And it laid the groundwork for what eventually became Vertigo, introduced us to John Constantine, and brought back many of DC’s second string supernatural characters (Baron Winter, Zatanna, The Demon, Deadman, even Cain and Abel).

So next time you’re reading Lucifer, or The Exterminators or 100 Bullets, remember to say, “Thank You, Alan.”

The Elephant in The Middle of The Room

Something happened this week, in Virginia. Something terrible. I’ve spent several days trying to pull my thoughts together on the subject, because I felt that it had to be addressed. Otherwise it would just be sitting there, waiting, like that proverbial elephant.

As always, the best place to start is with the facts. At about 7Am, in a Virginia Tech dorm, Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed two people, then left the scene. Two hours later, the gunmen entered a class building and killed 31 more before taking his own life. Between shootings he tok the time to record and mail a manifesto of sorts to NBC, his way of explaining how things had come to this.

My friend DOF talks about this extensively on his blog. You should read the whole post, but there’s a piece that I’d like to share with you now.

Whenever there is a mass tragedy, there is a wave of sympathy followed by a much larger wave of speculation as to how such a thing can be prevented. Legislators will be grandstanding in front of cameras and microphones, pretending that they know the cause and the solution. TV and radio pundits will go on long after we will all wish they’d just shut up. It will be blamed on lack of gun control, too much gun control, on godlessness, or on religion gone haywire. The finger will point at television, video games, rock music, “goth”, food additives, schools, parents, drugs, alcohol. The solution will be the opposite of all those things, no matter how incompatible they are, plus more guards, more surveillance cameras, tougher laws, and above all, prayer. Lots and lots of prayer, especially in the schools.

He’s right, of course. Everyone will be looking for something to blame this on, something to point a finger at. The issue will be politicized, the drums will start beating.

And it’s all hooey.

Because people don’t want to place the blame where it really belongs. With us.

Seung-Hui Cho was just a kid. A kid with some mental problems, difficulities communicating. A troubled soul. He had problems with kids. He had problems with teachers. He had problems with religion.

At some point along his downward spiral, someone should have reached out, pushed past his defenses. A peer, a teacher, a counsler, a family member, a spiritual leader. Somebody should have made a connection with this kid before he became a monster.

Make no mistake, that is what he became. A monster. A despicable creature that destroyed hundreds of lives.

But it didn’t have to be that way.

How many more monsters are out there, waiting for their moment of fire? How many more of these creatures have we already made? Can they be reached? Can we do anything to prevent more monsters from being forged?

Don’t misread that. I’m not talking about getting rid of video games or violent movies. I’m talking about making a connection, treating those that are different then us as human beings. Being nice.

Once again, DOF sums it up well…

I suggest kindness.  Just random acts of kindness, small words of encouragement to others at unexpected times for no reason at all.  It won’t prevent events like this from happening.  But it will shine a light against the darkness.  Kindness is our most powerful rebellion against tragedy.

People You Don’t Know But Should # 1 – Robert Morgan

I’ve always been a fan of hard boiled detective novels. (Hence the reason that I do most of my own writing in that genre.) For nearly as long, I’ve been a fan of horror stories. Vampires, monsters, ghosts and goblins, I love ‘em all.

So, on the rare occasion that the two genres cross, I collapse into a puddle of pure fanboy glee. It doesn’t happen often. The Night Stalker was close. The X Files had some of the right ingredients. A couple of little known movies like “Gotham” and “Cast A Deadly Spell” are wonderful.

But the best has always been the Teddy London novels.

Know, you ask, who the hell is Teddy London?

In the 1990’s, C.J. Henderson, writing under the name Robert Morgan, produced a series of paperback original novels that featured private eye Teddy London working his way through mysteries involving vampires, mummies and even C’thulu. They’re hard to find now, of course, but anything worth reading is worth the hunt. Try your local used book store. You won’t be sorry.

Hey, There’s Already One Of Those…

Ahem…..

As several folks were so nice to point out, even before I had posted my first entry, yes there is already a blog entitled Parenthetically Speaking out there on the great and wonderful World Wide Web. In fact there are several of them.

Believe it or not, (and I’m sure many of you won’t), I knew that.

I, too, know how to use a search engine.

As I’m sure you’re aware, titles get re-used all the time. Sometimes for remakes or re-imaginings of an idea, sometimes for entirely different ideas. (The first example that comes to mind is “The Island”, two different movies with the same title, both awful, but with no other real connection.)

This is like that.

I could have used a different name, but I like (Parenthetically Speaking) and I happen to think it best fits both my style and the subject matter.

So there.

What, Where’s The Who….?

Okay, what the hell, where am I?

And thus you discover one of my largest character flaws (no, not my ego. I said one of…). I call it Short Obsession Span, or SOS for short. You see, I’ve got a lot of obsessions. Lots and lots. They tend to go in cycles. I’ll be obsessively interested in Doctor Who for a couple of months. Then I’ll move on to Sherlock Holmes. Or Marvel Comics. Or James Bond. Or Babylon 5. Or Stephen King. Or Charles Dickens. Or…

Well, you see the problem. None of these obsessions ever really disappear. I still love Doctor Who, for instance. It’s just not what’s on my mind at the moment.

So having a blog dedicated entirely to one obsession may seem like a good idea at the time, but trust me, not so much. Hence the conversion of “The Coming Storm” into “(Parenthetically Speaking)”. Now I’ll be able to rant and rave about whatever happens to be on my mind instead of being locked into a particular format.

My posting will probably still be erratic. I work full time, I’m writing a novel and my wife likes to have at least a little of my time.  So my free time is somewhat limited. Still, I’ll try to get something at least moderately interesting up here at least once a week.

Just don’t go holding your breath.