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RUNNING WITH SCISSORS

It started simply enough. My wife and I were relaxing one evening watching one of my favorite Northern Exposure episodes, "Burning Down The House." One of the subplots to the episode included Joel, the displaced New York doctor, having a nagging feeling he recognized his chimney sweep. Days later, flipping through a now out-of-date Golf Digest, Joel realizes where he recognized the chimney sweep from: he was Larry Coe, former finalist at the Masters', who blew his chance at winning on a routine four foot putt. Disgraced at his failure, Larry packed-up and changed his identity, moving to Alaska to start life over. The obligatory (and figurative) light bulb flashed over my head - what if it was a super-hero, not a professional athlete, had done a similar thing?

And with that, SHORT-STACK: TALES OF A SUPER-HUMAN PLUMBER, began to move from an idea to a project. The following Sunday afternoon I sat and scribbled down the characters and arcs to complete the story. Just an outline with the major plot and subplot points laid out, nothing too exciting. And there it sat on my pile of ideas for a week or two, but never too far from the top of my thinking.

Then things began to get a little interesting. This was in the beginning of January 2006, a time of snow here in Colorado. I had gone into work early one Friday to shovel snow and had gotten out of work early, meeting a friend in Boulder, then going back home, to Lyons, the small town of fifteen hundred about twelve miles north of Boulder we both live in.

Upon getting to town my buddy and I stopped for lunch and a couple of drinks at Oskar Blues, makers of such fine craft beers as Dale's Pale Ale, Old Chub Scottish Ale, Gordon's I.P.A., and Ten-Fidy Imperial Stout. We sat at the bar and ate, drank, and caught up with one another. At some point I looked at the person sitting next to me, feverishly scribbling lines onto a drawing pad. I casually looked over and saw a terrific Batman sketch - and my heart jumped for a second.

I mean, really, I was in a town of fifteen hundred people and the guy next to me, at the bar, was drawing Batman! Too good to be true I thought, so I struck up a conversation with him. He seemed really into comics, and even more importantly, seemed really interested to draw comics. Conversation shifted to favorite artists and writers and everything seemed to being going well. We were really clicking. Could I be so lucky? The conversation kept going, and after a bit, I dropped I had a story I was working on, and would love to find an artist, if he was interested. We chatted some more and he seemed genuinely excited by the idea. By the time I left the bar that night I had found a collaborator for the story. I left chalked full with excitement.

Excited might be the wrong word for it. I was beaming. Exuberant. That week I polished off the first draft of what would be SHORT-STACK Issue #1 and gave it to my would-be artist. I could not wait to get the ball rolling.

And then, nothing. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into two months without so much as a character sketch. Needless to say, I was beyond disappointment. I confronted the artist, who I had become very friendly with, and all was clear - he had not done a thing regarding the comic other than to talk about it, while I now had the first four issues done in first draft form. I told him to get lost and a host other things that may not be suitable for print here.

And that was that, I was back to the drawing board, or writing without anyone at the drawing board once again. That is, until I had a new idea for getting an artist...

That’s all for now,

Jay