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For years, I've nurtured the conceit that my life is a comic book. Note the use of the word 'conceit' there - I don't actually genuinely think I'm actually in a funnybook: it's just a sort of model that helps me conceptualise my life. I think of things that happen in my life as being, roughly, story arcs, and often muse on the events by imagining what the lettercolumn for that issue would be like. Obviously this is after the event, though occassionally I have fun imagining what the 'next issue' box will read. But I've not made much magical use of the concept, which is a bit of a waste. Until now.
I had one of those 'eureka' moments, you see. I was thinking about the fact that we often refer to writers and artists we personally look up to as our 'pantheon', a term borrowed from religion and which generally refers to an assembly of gods and godesses. It suddenly occurred to me - if you're imagining that your life is a comic, why not invoke the spirit of various writers and artists to push your life in a more interesting direction? Obviously you couldn't get them to write the book (unless you were waaaaaaay too rich), but you could create fictional advertising campaigns, interviews, lettercols, even threads, if you so wished - all the surrounding paraphernalia of the comic world - to call the invoked writing/art style into existence. You could even get a mate who's good at copying art styles to draw pictures of you and your friends in the style of the artist you're invoking.
It's an interesting idea, and one I've decided to go with. So I've decided that, effective from the start of April (bit of retroactive enchantment going on here too, y'see), my life is being written by Grant Morrison (who else?) and drawn by Frank Quitely. Suddenly the weirdness of my life during April makes sense. For one thing - I met this girl who was a lot like one of my exes in almost the exact same circumstances as I met said ex, and nearly got involved with her, but didn't. What could it all mean? It's just Grant making a little nod towards previous continuity, of course - but saying that he's gonna write this in his own way. One of my oddest, most fucked-up friendships has came under some major internal pressure lately - in exactly the way Grant would address it, were this a comic he was scripting. And I seem to keep running into people who look like Quitely people a lot lately - skinny arms, but gorgeously rendered. Very odd.
One of the other odd things about this idea, though, is that you wind up examining your life to see who was 'writing' it before. By my reckoning, there have been two major creative runs in my life, not including the current Morrison/Quitely arc:
1) January 2000-November 2001 - Ellis, with, initially, Philip Bond, then Jimenez for the latter part of the run. I figure Ellis would have to have been writing my life at this point, since it was when I was doing my writing course and it involved a lot of travelling around, writing stuff, and being moody or on drugs. The changeover to Jimenez's art style occurred around spring 2001, when things got slightly more serious in my life and the people I knew seemed, spontaneously, to be a lot more shiny and well-muscled than in the previous, Bond-drawn era.
2) December 2001 - January 2002 - a year long Ennis/Dillon run. I base this pretty much on the fact that (a) I met a lot of Irish people during this period, and (b) most of the 'stories' during this time involve drinking in one way or another. Indeed, what I see as the Ennis takeover point coincides with my decision to have a pint of Stella after a six-month straight edge experiment. How much more Ennis can you get?
February and March this year were pretty much fill-in issues: Disappointing and with no sense of direction. Probably written by Austen or Lobdell or some such. Drawn by Ashley Wood. 'Nuff said.
Is this all making sense to people, or do I seem more like a nutter than usual? Has anyone ever tried something like this before - maybe with movies, or more traditional literature? And does anyone have an idea of who's writing/drawing their life at the minute? I mean, LVX23 and Tzaddi have to be written by Moore, for starters... |
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