New Commons art!
My friend Michael Visnov wanted to experiment with a new pen he bought, so he worked up this ink beauty of Rain with one of her best friends.
At this point, maybe I’ll start mailing him pens just to keep him on a roll.
Do Your Best Work
Years from now, when you look back at what you’ve done in your career, what will you value the most? The friendships, accomplishments, and growth, of course. But sometimes it’s the little things that carry the most weight.
Such as the time, back in my trade-journalist days, when I was walking off the show floor at the big home-video convention and happened upon one of my creative heroes. He was sitting by himself in a small, out-of-the-way booth at the edge of things—just him and a stack of comics to sign next to a taped-up piece of paper with marker scrawl on it that said: “Today only! Stan Lee!”
I was scandalized that nobody else was there (this was during Marvel’s lean years and way before the movies got going). I told him what a fan I was and asked him to sign a Hulk comic.
At that time, nobody foresaw the IP empire that would be built from the brilliance of the Marvel crew over the years. And if Stan Lee were alive today, he’d be in one of the biggest booths, with a crowd of people queued up to meet him.
So it’s something to keep in mind: do your best work, the work that inspires you. Because you never know what it might become a long way down the road.
And treat your memories, souvenirs, and keepsakes right. You won’t believe how happy you’ll be to dig them out of a banged-up cardboard box one day in the future.
The Beginning of Happiness
One of my favorite Vonnegut quotes is from Mother Night: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
I’d add that when we go looking for the past, we find it, so we must be careful about how we look.
I was going through my boxed-up comic collection, which my brother had been storing for me, and I came upon an Avengers issue I recalled reading when I bought it, in 1976, sitting at our dining-room table. I have no idea why I remember that, but it occurred to me that way back then, I couldn’t have known I’d revisit it in 2022 in a two-bedroom apartment in Chicago, just shy of three decades passed since I was last in that house, and my dad gone nearly six years.
I uncrumpled some of the newspaper I balled up when packing this stuff almost 30 years ago, after my parents sold the place. There were pages from three papers in there, and this one is from the January 25, 1994 Philadelphia Inquirer.
My dad did all the puzzles in ink. This is his careful, precise engineer’s block printing. I print in all caps, too—I got that from him, I guess—but not as neatly as he did. The cryptogram answer is a George Santayana quote that I feel like he left for me to find: “Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.”
I suppose so. It’s the beginning of something, anyway.
But it brings to mind another favorite quote, this one from Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
No—it isn’t, is it?
Hi, Dad.
Got your message.
Time Enough at Last
After 31 years of teaching middle-school science, Commons fan Linda Artruc is doing retirement right.
Image credit: Paul Artruc
Some Fancy Pencil Pushing
Artist Michael Visnov has outdone himself with this model sheet of Commons characters. From left: Truitt, Brill, Po, Rain, Ken, Paul, Zach, Annie, and Porter.
Some 50 years after we met, this guy and I are still making stuff up and putting it on paper—me with a keyboard and Mike with a pencil.
It’s an absolute pleasure to work with a friend.
And Then There Were Three…
Think you know what awaits in the worlds beyond this one?
Think again.
After seven years of The Journeyman standing alone, The Margins and The Catalyst are now available for pre-order on most major platforms. See the entire Commons series here.
Cover Reveal: The Catalyst
Lo, the cover of Book 3, The Catalyst, is revealed—and the brillance of designer Dan Fernandez shines yet again. I’m shooting for books two and three to be released in e-book and print by the end of August.
Cover Reveal: The Margins
The cover of Book 2 (The Margins), by wonder designer Dan Fernandez, is finished. Now a print proof is winging its way to me, and at 700-plus pages, it’ll double as a self-defense accessory. (My first marketing campaign: read this, or I’ll hit you with it.)
Up next: the cover for Book 3 (The Catalyst), which is edited and ready to go once the design’s approved.
It’s not that far off now; hoping for a late summer release for both of them…
A Sneak Peek
…at the promo copy for the next book in the Commons series, The Margins:
“I think I did something. Something someone really bad was counting on me to do. And I think you helped me.”
Ray-Anne Blair isn’t buying it. She just wants Paul Reid to forget about the imaginary place he says he needs to return to—and to stop calling her Rain.
Everyone wants something. Jeremy Johns wants to do well at his job, but the new office is strange. So is his boss, Mr. Truitt. Annie Brucker wants to understand how she ended up back with her abusive ex. Her son, Zach, wants to know if he should trust whatever it is that talks to him from the dark of his closet, something so heavy it makes the floorboards creak. Jonas Porter, Audra Farrelly, Po the silent monk, and Charlene Moseley want to know where their prospective Journeymen have disappeared to—though the answer might spell the end of all existence.
Welcome to The Margins, a place that shouldn’t be but is, thanks to Paul and the others. They thought they’d won. Instead, they played right into the hands of someone who anticipated their heroic act. Now realms are crossing over, the universe is collapsing, and it’s up to those who created the danger to overcome it.
It won’t be easy, but why would it be? It’s The Commons.
Image credit: Dan Fernandez
Distancing Dispatch
It’s 82 degrees outside, and we work with the windows open. It’s supposed to go back down into the 40s in a couple of days, but for now, it’s shorts weather.
And mask weather. But it was already that, no matter the temperature. Most people walking past wear everything from kerchiefs to surgical masks. Some are clearly homemade offerings, which earn extra respect from me. One guy, strolling with his wife and little girl, looks like an Old West train robber. Another looks like Bane.
We leave to get steps. In front of the building next door, somebody’s done up the sidewalk with a chalk activity walk. We’re supposed to follow a snaky line, skip, hop like a bunny, and take advantage of safe spots to avoid falling into lava.
We greatly appreciate the effort but cross through at a normal walk, as if none of it is there. We like when others get creative; we just usually refrain from participating. In that way, nothing’s really changed.
At the end of the day, a couple in the building across the street play a duet out their window, serenading two friends who stand on the sidewalk with their dog. It’s a perfectly respectable rendition of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” I can’t see them clearly through the combo of our screen and theirs, but from the sound of it, I think the woman’s playing a ukulele. And her harmony is pretty damn good. After the friends move on, she starts into R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine),” but her heart isn’t in it, so she fades to a stop. Or maybe it’s just that it hits too close to home.
More people pass the window. I find myself thinking of the Gena Rowlands line from A Woman Under the Influence: “All of a sudden I miss everyone; I don’t know why.”
Only I do know why.
And I want them all to make it.
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