Five Years Later
Reflecting on the Pride where I said what I said, and started working at DC
It was at the end of Pride Month 2019 that I made one of the most important and valuable decisions in my professional career… I wrote a blog post, and I went to Palm Springs.
My working relationship with Marvel Comics ended on a sour note. Feeling like the right thing to do was to lay out what I believed was poor behavior on their part, I wrote about the experience on my tumblr.
I hit Publish, then drove to my friend Ronnie’s house to get in his car for a long weekend trip to the desert. “I just blew up my career and talked shit about Marvel,” I told him. He asked if I wanted to chat more about it, and I said no. The days leading up to releasing the post had included plenty of conversations with friends and editors about the decision, my only need at that point was to steer clear of what the streets were saying after.
We made it to Palm Springs in record time, and I basically clomped around in high heels in a big house with exquisite air conditioning for the next four days. If you ever decide to potentially blow up your career on the Internet, I suggest being surrounded by people who know absolutely nothing about your profession and being in temperatures so high that it’s literally too hot to touch your phone.
Four days off social media and two hundred pictures in short shorts later, I came back home to a phone call from a DC editor, offering me my first writing opportunity. Literally, I was sitting in my car that I’d parked at Ronnie’s, peeling a parking ticket off the windshield and getting the rundown on DC’s company-wide event called “Infected” and the tie-in one-shots that I could take a stab at writing.
Before I got too excited, I had to tell the editor what I had just done. “I understand if this means we can’t work together,” I said to the guy. The DC editor read over the tumblr post, and in words I wish I could remember exactly, he basically said that the situation I laid out on tumblr seemed very specific to an experience, and that it didn’t seem indicative of my reputation as a freelancer at large.
“Let’s proceed like everything is fine, and I’ll let you know if that changes.”
My first thing at DC was a story about Shazam being his worst, most evil self.
There have been plenty of times in the past five years where I've replayed that decision in my head, over and over again, wondering if I was being short-sighted or acting irrationally. At one point in the pandemic, I thought: “Oh, that was as good as it got for me… what a great ride.” To have worked on an X-Men book and released a ballsy memoir in the same year as I started making artwork for my favorite musician… who could ask for more?! I’ve always been grateful for the opportunities I've had, but I can admit that I took for granted the notion that they wouldn’t stop coming.
Too many of my friends have heard me moan about various insecurities, fears that Iceman, my special blessing of a project, would become the only item in my parenthetical, which would be more and more of a bummer given that I doubt Marvel wants to keep a comic in print that’s got the stench of its writer badmouthing the publisher. I was scared that I’d be coming out of the pandemic always known as “The guy who did Iceman.” For someone who believes he’s still got his best ideas ahead of him, it was getting painful to think that something from five years ago would be the career-defining work.
How easily I forget that I was once shaking off being known as “The guy who edited The Walking Dead.”
Or how for years I had to prove I was more than “the guy who draws Li’l Depressed Boy*.”
“Working in comics is all about reinvention,” an artist friend once told me. “You have got to keep coming up with reasons for why people should pay attention to you.”
It has been five years since that offer to write at DC Comics came in. In those five years, I have been able to work on some of my favorite characters (Wonder Woman! Plastic Man! Aquaman!), reinvent existing characters (Gotham Girl!), create some new characters (Drummer Boy!), and be entrusted to do the thing I have spent the last decade freelancing trying to prove: that I can write and draw comics worth a damn. Superman: The Harvests of Youth has been a lifeline in so many ways (something I’ve documented plenty of times online), but it has become the project worthy of sitting next to Iceman in the parenthetical. As of today, I found out the book is celebrating another reprinting here in the states, and is finding a whole new audience with its Spanish language edition. Even this past month, I was on two panels at ALA to continue discussing Superman: The Harvest of Youth’s impact with a librarians from all around the nation.
When the going got tough, I really did start to think that maybe I overreacted with Marvel, that maybe I was just a mid writer who got self-important, and I deserved everything that happened. Even seeing Steve Orlando’s take on Bobby Drake kind of hit me: the world has turned and left me here. With five years distance and experience working for nearly every publisher in the industry, I can certainly see there were two sides to my story, but also no. I wrote a good (occasionally great) comic under bad circumstances.
The editors at DC Comics have been methodical in putting me on projects that make sense and disprove those dark thoughts. I’m becoming a better storyteller with each new gig, and I’m happy to report the next couple things on the horizon make me completely giddy as both a creator and a fanboy.
What’s truly special about the five-year mark is that I’m ending Pride 2024 announcing that I get the chance to work on one of DC’s most popular LGBTQIA+ characters: Jon Kent, son of Superman. I can’t share too many details, but this September, readers will get a chance to see me and Nicole Maines tell a truly special story that falls in the middle of their Absolute Power event. I’ve been able to have in-depth conversations with Mark Waid about story, and I finally get to work with Kathleen Wisnescki, an editor I admired when she was in the spider-offices at Marvel.
Absolute Power: Super Son will be out in September, and it’s a frickin’ feast.
This post is a tad late because I decided to wait until I wrapped my latest annual trip to Palm Springs with the girls, and reflect the tiniest bit more on the person I was and have become. Now you get cute pictures of me thriving and embracing the journey to date.
Thank you past me, for being brave enough to put it all on the line, and thank you DC, for treating me like a human being and allowing the world to see me for who I am.
*The Li’l Depressed Boy is one of my most cherished experiences, and has brought some of the bestest friends into my life. It would be an honor to be known just for that project, but I went to college FOR writing, so a bitch wants folks to recognize that she’s an all-rounder, okay???
I discovered you through LDB, and I'm so happy for it! It's been a great joy to watch your career bloom and blossom over the years! I'm really digging the work you're doing these days. ❤️
Yessss growthhhh