Happy Twelfth Anniversary, Integr8d Fix
My original first posts were removed due to my own Copyright concerns at the time. When I began publishing here on April 4th, 2009, I had this story, and this photograph from the cosmos, and joy that I was allowing myself the decadent luxury of writing my own Fantastic Four story, while opening the door to my own Integr8d Soul fiction concepts.
I felt compelled to try to re-capture something of the wonder I felt as a child, combined with soul-searching stories turned into adventures. Now, I realize those stories didn't have but a small slice of relatable every day stuff, and were more or less homages to the melodramatic comics style. When I included Escondido as my setting for "The Vanishing Wave"- an idea of mine long predating the Marvel Universe, which had only seen 'Iron Man' by 2009, but long after Jim Starlin's original Thanos battles in 1991 that led to people being snapped very temporarily out of existence- I really wanted to reclaim the feeling I had as a boy, running around in the yard seeing comics pages and lucidly-dreamed tv and movie sets, of my own creation, and some with my own characters. But I didn't really tell you much about Escondido, which I understood in a superficial manner. I knew how to depict Lake Hodge, but I mostly wanted to tell a surreal story involving my unique warriors from another time, and lay out some of my cosmology for my own ideas, with the Fantastic Four as an accessible entry point, as the main characters. It might be fun to see how close I came to capturing unique voices for them, in the service of telling about the Dragon's Line, characters based on a deep imagining of my wife, my friend and I, Viking explorers with occult ties.
Over the years, I ran out of those pastiche ideas- I recognized, I wanted to write these characters as a sort of Bucket List item, true, but I was not within miles of any professional opportunity to interpret them for a living. I didn't see a way into Hollywood production. Now, I wonder where these writers and producers came from. I accept I have my own wealth of original material, which doesn't come with a built-in audience, nor with expectations. If the time comes to hang big productions on original characters, I built a raft of them in the decade after my trip to California began. And between what seemed to be happening with IDW and Joe Phillips in 2016-7, and the Ciara's Haunting website in 2016 with interactive stories, and even that shoulda-got-mine deal I was offered for home recording help in exchange for playing bass in that heavy metal band, there have been spikes in creative activity, but always a sense of "I will keep it over here and develop this until it's ready."
I feel like I'm finally ready to concentrate on putting my own original material out there, and not rely on drawing in a few people who might find it in a search for the borrowed characters. If I do these right, maybe someone will care how I could interpret Marvel. I wanted to cross over from admiring them to being Me. https://integr8dfix.blogspot.com/2009/09/vanishing-wave-part-one.html, or , is where you and I can while away a few minutes reading my version of the Fantastic Four. I didn't have some new direction for a series for them- I only wrote them in a fashion similar to the King Size Annuals, where an oversized comic might tell a memorable diversion. Sometimes they would conclude storylines, and others, were just imaginative romps in a longer story. But the mystic stuff was so very hard for me to accept- so against my desire to be male and logic-driven, so to speak, and not believe in anything I couldn't readily find proof for. My wife's stunning creative ideas are in there, born of a frightening intensity in her way of looking at us. She's so apparently down-to-earth, but those stories are key to what made her so unique back then. Who else feels they've had contact with past lives, nor feels inspired to tell pulpy modern stories based on who they may have been? I mused that I could take today to pick another Marvel character, to write into Boulder, inspired by my present location. And it could tie again into the Dragon's Line. I even saw how my friend DAK's barely-explored-in-print Star God characters could be part. Yet, my story had to have my own. Underneath it all, the desire to make something original burns within me, and while I might try to perform as a normal person, I am not quite whole inside without taking up our creative ideas. It was great fun, making these things and being creative without executive interference. But what, now?
I mentioned there's a misunderstanding in ASM #71. Quicksilver, like Spider-Man, wants to clear his good name, as he has recently been associated with X-Men: Days of Fu---no, he's recently been manipulated, along with his sister, Wanda, the Scarlet Witch, and the Toad (a more pitiable character than the one made famous by Ray Parks). I could write at length about Wanda Vision, and could hardly believe I was so busy while that was the most popular tv show in the country! I have some history with the ersatz Captain America from Georgia, too, currently appearing in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. So, there's lots of things I could try for clicks, but I've never studied how to move my material up the search engines further. I'm pretty much here as either an FB link or what I imagine is a deep dive, possibly driven by searches turning up the images I appropriate.
so, a Marvel pastiche, like on Day One? A visit to some old comic book, like Amazing Spider-Man #71? A drawing of my friend, Mary, who just celebrated her birthday, drawn to become one of the Stuckwayze, who I want to make part of my first true animations? I even have The Search for Complete Disappearland, and its childlike characters, which I could dig up on YouTube and re-draw in something more sophisticated than MS Paint.
Or, I could write about the past life as Arthur, a teacher and healer, the son of Lyron, who overcame the tragedy of his childhood and lived, with Dawn Bird Song, the dancing priestess, in a setting not unlike the Shambhala Temple waiting me here in Boulder?
Should I write about this area of the world as the original place where my revised Clay Reece Sunstrike- originally based on my friend, David Holt, born here in Colorado- lived before he was taken to Kolpar, the distant future?
If I wrote about Arthur, wouldn't he be thinking of Lyron, his father, and the stories of the Dragon's Line, and wouldn't he have a vision, there in his setting probably two hundred years or so, past, of what you see, when you look from the direction of the mountain pass- timeless, part of his Wild West level of steam-age technology- towards what appears to be a modern city, sprawling out before the foot of the Flatirons? Would he see the strange apparition of the masked people still on the trail, and as a healer, marvel at the evidence of a futuristic pandemic? And- that story could fit over onto Be Chill, Cease ill, which has been collected once (and you can buy that form, here -because it's all-original and wouldn't need any Marvel characters? (I once pictured Count Dracula in Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World, so I don't want you to think I only have comics on the brain.) Probably.
I know this site will likely see a visit to the original Superman newspaper funnies, and those two Spider-Man comics I mentioned that seem to tie to my Butterfly world. Wow, things seem to tie heavily to that fictional setting. I will probably mention the custom comics, too, that are part of my interview with David Anthony Kraft. I just signed the contract to bring that interview to Back Issue Magazine. They were premium comic books, licensing Marvel characters for stories published outside the main run of the monthly 'four-color' comics- probably seen by far more kids than the usual Marvel output. DAK is the guy who, in addtion to writing for Marvel Comics Group, wrote for items like newspaper supplements, giveaway promotions, and foreign markets that reached the kinds of kids who did not become lifelong comics readers. You don't have to be one, to enjoy what he worked on for Marvel in the 1980s. He also wrote She-Hulk, so we'll talk about that one day, too, before she becomes a household name. Or even turn this column over to talking about video games. I don't know how many bloggers are doing it, or if they are over on Tumblr and Twitch, but in addition to my present affection for unwinding with Dig Dug and Galaga, Angela Dawn's way into Minecraft and likes what she sees LaurenZSide doing with Sims 4. I don't suppose I felt like I had time to contribute to a constant blog, but, I took the morning off, finishing classes at 1:30 am. I wrote about new ideas for my song "The Touch" instead of teaching. And I dawdled on a fun search for the oldest issue of Iron Man I really, really want, the first appearance of Firebrand, written by Archie Goodwin for issue #27 in 1970. It's such a change of pace from another battle with the Titanium Man and Crimson Dynamo, which are in my two oldest Iron Man comics somewhere, #21 and #22. (I also have the Giant Sized Annual which that year, reprinted classic battles.) I want to note that Eddie March, the first black man to be asked to stand in as Iron Man, appears in those as well as #27, where he's present for the launch of a community center. It's got some real twists. I don't have it yet, I'm waiting to see if I score on an offer I made that would land a 6.0 to 7.0 grade copy for about $20 total). Between that issue and ASM #93, I have the appearances of the two black characters who were asked to stand in as my two favorite Marvel heroes, Spider-Man and Iron Man. That could be a column all its own. Robbie's role in #71, too, would mark a neat trilogy of issues I could discuss where Marvel was making steps forward with presenting Black people, equally- even if they could not yet be tapped as the stand-in for those stalwarts. A few issues with Hobie Brown as Spider-Man and Eddie March as Iron Man would've been truly amazing, especially for 1970! That's the year we get our first Black hero, Jon Stewart, as Green Lantern over at DC. He's chronicled in my podcast from last summer, marking the passing of Denny O'Neil. So, Iron Man #27 would be great to have. Like with Gwen vs. Spider-Man, I feel an opportunity was missed to give a hero an antagonist who is in his or her own way as interesting and valid as Spidey and Shellhead. Firebrand's anti-capitalist, and I wish that had remained the gist of his character, rather than flattening him out in other hands as another colorfully-designed goon. Just like Gwen got flattened into Another Girlfriend, opening the door to her doom. And again, I like the idea of a character doing something that upsets the authorities, but is possibly more pro-social than appearances. Stories of Eddie March as Iron Man, Hobie Brown as Spider-Man. If only I could fit them into my original characters, whose stories I wanted to tell. This was always a creative workspace, not always polished in presentation.
Now, my idea for a vengeful Gwen as (I'll tell you Later)- at least at that point we are talking about an Integr8d Soul character! I admit, it'd be fun to put that character up against Spider-Man...in more than a few thin for-fun synopses. If I could also bring in Hobie to be portraying Spider-Man at that same time, he could be the one to end up in Gwen's crosshairs, and Peter and Spider-Man could clearly appear to be in one place at the same time again, furthering that deceptive alibi that Peter Parker realizes he must drop if he's ever going to marry Gwen Stacy. You can't secretly be a superhero, especially one wanted by the police often, and share a bedroom with a partner. Though anyone trying will likely be deeply disappointed.
I wonder if I haven't hit upon an element, writing here, that should be used creatively in my own work? I have this character, Owl Hawk...but I wouldn't want to temporarily replace the white character with a black one, only to way-lay the black one. Why do that in a novel, when the previous character doesn't have a nine-year claim to the identity?
But see, I am thinking of spending my time writing my own characters, like Owl Hawk. This was part of the purpose of the exercise: come back to my own work with a strong sense of what gave that early YA work, its feel, while embracing a new generation.
One thing's for sure. I was calling my books in the 2000s, TRANZ-Rupture. In the intervening years, Transgender has become a prominent public conversation! So I may not just call the books Tranz now. They had some cross-dressing shamans, but I am tardy-to-the-party creating a transgender character. That's an oversight sure to remedy itself.
Me, I'm still sitting here, daydreaming now about Hobie Brown using his Prowler gear with his Spider-Man costume, to defeat the Beetle! But at this point in the story, Hobie's already suspicious that Spider-Man used him when he impersonated Spider-Man in Amazing #87. I don't know if there's a great way for him to reprise that role, as Peter has no further use for the deception. Why did he need that? OH, let's say Amazing Spider-Man #87, for an issue with no villain, has a great dillema!
But while I want to capture the exciting pace- in mostly prose, yes, and then one day, a movie, but definitely a hybrid with some cool superhero art, meanwhile- I can deepen the characters. You have to be careful about deepening the logic of your dramas, because truthfully, people do often behave outside any credible motivation, it seems.
And I have a short story about kids, one of whom is obsessed enough at his age to physically go play that he has an alter-ego. I shouldn't forget The Cultivator!
So, twenty years into creating original characters and bold concepts all our own, the question is, what's the way forward? It's not, surely, to simply sit back and recount comic books written before I was born. Butto come to grips with my inspirations? Yes. So, I'm exploring ideas right before your eyes, while telling about fifty year old comics. I also drew a lot of original art, though often times, it was copied by eye, a swipe, of something competent, depicting the characters. Happy Anniversary, Integr8d Fix Blogspot. I am surprised you were kept around to outlast your Pastiche Fiction idea. You helped me find my voice and explore how I was made made into who I am. 4/4 was a good date to start telling these stories. I used to keep a Spider-Man blog, too, and maybe I'll dig it out for the heck of it. But I've got a lot of original stories to tell. They've been here, all along. Maybe I should trust in them, first, even if I hang on to them and don't publish them here, keeping this blog more for my interactions with other authors, like David Kempf or Danielle Proctor Piper or Matt Curry. I did get this idea from the name, Silverthorne. A meme about creatures and Zodiac signs gave me a pun, the Elven Bishop, but I don't know who he's fooled around and fell in love with. (Maybe that is my transgender character?) A photograph from Parker Reed gave me the location name, Silverthorne, which is growing into a legendary people (maybe to replace the old Dome Tribe idea in Vado Bujinka?). Maybe that photograph of his wild wolf needs to be my true take off point into a direction of the future. I don't know, y'all, can I bear to turn out more fiction for free on here? I just hate rejection, but it might not turn out to be so bad a deal. So, let's close this out. Silverthorne, good, I'm in a wilderness area that could inspire those stories. Thanks for coming with me on this journey. C Lue Disharoon
I felt compelled to try to re-capture something of the wonder I felt as a child, combined with soul-searching stories turned into adventures. Now, I realize those stories didn't have but a small slice of relatable every day stuff, and were more or less homages to the melodramatic comics style. When I included Escondido as my setting for "The Vanishing Wave"- an idea of mine long predating the Marvel Universe, which had only seen 'Iron Man' by 2009, but long after Jim Starlin's original Thanos battles in 1991 that led to people being snapped very temporarily out of existence- I really wanted to reclaim the feeling I had as a boy, running around in the yard seeing comics pages and lucidly-dreamed tv and movie sets, of my own creation, and some with my own characters. But I didn't really tell you much about Escondido, which I understood in a superficial manner. I knew how to depict Lake Hodge, but I mostly wanted to tell a surreal story involving my unique warriors from another time, and lay out some of my cosmology for my own ideas, with the Fantastic Four as an accessible entry point, as the main characters. It might be fun to see how close I came to capturing unique voices for them, in the service of telling about the Dragon's Line, characters based on a deep imagining of my wife, my friend and I, Viking explorers with occult ties.
Over the years, I ran out of those pastiche ideas- I recognized, I wanted to write these characters as a sort of Bucket List item, true, but I was not within miles of any professional opportunity to interpret them for a living. I didn't see a way into Hollywood production. Now, I wonder where these writers and producers came from. I accept I have my own wealth of original material, which doesn't come with a built-in audience, nor with expectations. If the time comes to hang big productions on original characters, I built a raft of them in the decade after my trip to California began. And between what seemed to be happening with IDW and Joe Phillips in 2016-7, and the Ciara's Haunting website in 2016 with interactive stories, and even that shoulda-got-mine deal I was offered for home recording help in exchange for playing bass in that heavy metal band, there have been spikes in creative activity, but always a sense of "I will keep it over here and develop this until it's ready."
I feel like I'm finally ready to concentrate on putting my own original material out there, and not rely on drawing in a few people who might find it in a search for the borrowed characters. If I do these right, maybe someone will care how I could interpret Marvel. I wanted to cross over from admiring them to being Me. https://integr8dfix.blogspot.com/2009/09/vanishing-wave-part-one.html, or , is where you and I can while away a few minutes reading my version of the Fantastic Four. I didn't have some new direction for a series for them- I only wrote them in a fashion similar to the King Size Annuals, where an oversized comic might tell a memorable diversion. Sometimes they would conclude storylines, and others, were just imaginative romps in a longer story. But the mystic stuff was so very hard for me to accept- so against my desire to be male and logic-driven, so to speak, and not believe in anything I couldn't readily find proof for. My wife's stunning creative ideas are in there, born of a frightening intensity in her way of looking at us. She's so apparently down-to-earth, but those stories are key to what made her so unique back then. Who else feels they've had contact with past lives, nor feels inspired to tell pulpy modern stories based on who they may have been? I mused that I could take today to pick another Marvel character, to write into Boulder, inspired by my present location. And it could tie again into the Dragon's Line. I even saw how my friend DAK's barely-explored-in-print Star God characters could be part. Yet, my story had to have my own. Underneath it all, the desire to make something original burns within me, and while I might try to perform as a normal person, I am not quite whole inside without taking up our creative ideas. It was great fun, making these things and being creative without executive interference. But what, now?
1970 Marvel, Fresh IdeasI could pick today to finally detail Quicksilver versus Spider-Man, a fight I vaguely remembered in Digest form standing in a Kroger in those days where sighting a Marvel Comic would break my tedium, even if I knew I could ever ask for very few indeed. Joe Robertson has a larger role, in that he must stand in for J Jonah Jameson, who's hospitalized after fainting, but is really just a victim of his own emotions putting him in terrible shape. Good- Spider-Man ended #70, thinking he had killed JJJ! His luck really turns aroung in this issue. Plus, he faces the sort of antagonist I've noticed I've favored in the only three issues of Amazing Spider-Man I've collected in comics form in years. They each- Pietro Maximoff, Gwen Stacy, and Hobie Brown, aka The Prowler seen in a new character in the Miles Morales spider-movie- are good guys brought to blows with Spider-Man over the general understanding of him as a criminal. I just noticed this pattern in ASM #71, 91, and 93, American comics from 1969 and 1970 that I added to my collection in decent condition. I gave more for Amazing 93 in 2021 dollars than I did for sometimes three deliveries of comics, back in 2009 San Diego! This Quicksilver appearance, though, was special for not only being a long-lost comic of my childhood (yes, I never had it, only the memory of the fight upon the wall and Spider-Man hiding beneath the marquee as Quicksilver raced down the side of the theater). I bought it before Christmas, so I would have something of that sort I'd want, but I didn't really celebrate Christmas vividly in 2020, so, I opened it for my birthday. A Very Good copy in terrific shape, a $34 comic. A sign we were doing OK there, saving in Georgia for a move to be determined. An opening to strenous temptation via retail therapy!
If I wrote about Arthur, wouldn't he be thinking of Lyron, his father, and the stories of the Dragon's Line, and wouldn't he have a vision, there in his setting probably two hundred years or so, past, of what you see, when you look from the direction of the mountain pass- timeless, part of his Wild West level of steam-age technology- towards what appears to be a modern city, sprawling out before the foot of the Flatirons? Would he see the strange apparition of the masked people still on the trail, and as a healer, marvel at the evidence of a futuristic pandemic? And- that story could fit over onto Be Chill, Cease ill, which has been collected once (and you can buy that form, here -because it's all-original and wouldn't need any Marvel characters? (I once pictured Count Dracula in Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World, so I don't want you to think I only have comics on the brain.) Probably.
I know this site will likely see a visit to the original Superman newspaper funnies, and those two Spider-Man comics I mentioned that seem to tie to my Butterfly world. Wow, things seem to tie heavily to that fictional setting. I will probably mention the custom comics, too, that are part of my interview with David Anthony Kraft. I just signed the contract to bring that interview to Back Issue Magazine. They were premium comic books, licensing Marvel characters for stories published outside the main run of the monthly 'four-color' comics- probably seen by far more kids than the usual Marvel output. DAK is the guy who, in addtion to writing for Marvel Comics Group, wrote for items like newspaper supplements, giveaway promotions, and foreign markets that reached the kinds of kids who did not become lifelong comics readers. You don't have to be one, to enjoy what he worked on for Marvel in the 1980s. He also wrote She-Hulk, so we'll talk about that one day, too, before she becomes a household name. Or even turn this column over to talking about video games. I don't know how many bloggers are doing it, or if they are over on Tumblr and Twitch, but in addition to my present affection for unwinding with Dig Dug and Galaga, Angela Dawn's way into Minecraft and likes what she sees LaurenZSide doing with Sims 4. I don't suppose I felt like I had time to contribute to a constant blog, but, I took the morning off, finishing classes at 1:30 am. I wrote about new ideas for my song "The Touch" instead of teaching. And I dawdled on a fun search for the oldest issue of Iron Man I really, really want, the first appearance of Firebrand, written by Archie Goodwin for issue #27 in 1970. It's such a change of pace from another battle with the Titanium Man and Crimson Dynamo, which are in my two oldest Iron Man comics somewhere, #21 and #22. (I also have the Giant Sized Annual which that year, reprinted classic battles.) I want to note that Eddie March, the first black man to be asked to stand in as Iron Man, appears in those as well as #27, where he's present for the launch of a community center. It's got some real twists. I don't have it yet, I'm waiting to see if I score on an offer I made that would land a 6.0 to 7.0 grade copy for about $20 total). Between that issue and ASM #93, I have the appearances of the two black characters who were asked to stand in as my two favorite Marvel heroes, Spider-Man and Iron Man. That could be a column all its own. Robbie's role in #71, too, would mark a neat trilogy of issues I could discuss where Marvel was making steps forward with presenting Black people, equally- even if they could not yet be tapped as the stand-in for those stalwarts. A few issues with Hobie Brown as Spider-Man and Eddie March as Iron Man would've been truly amazing, especially for 1970! That's the year we get our first Black hero, Jon Stewart, as Green Lantern over at DC. He's chronicled in my podcast from last summer, marking the passing of Denny O'Neil. So, Iron Man #27 would be great to have. Like with Gwen vs. Spider-Man, I feel an opportunity was missed to give a hero an antagonist who is in his or her own way as interesting and valid as Spidey and Shellhead. Firebrand's anti-capitalist, and I wish that had remained the gist of his character, rather than flattening him out in other hands as another colorfully-designed goon. Just like Gwen got flattened into Another Girlfriend, opening the door to her doom. And again, I like the idea of a character doing something that upsets the authorities, but is possibly more pro-social than appearances. Stories of Eddie March as Iron Man, Hobie Brown as Spider-Man. If only I could fit them into my original characters, whose stories I wanted to tell. This was always a creative workspace, not always polished in presentation.
Now, my idea for a vengeful Gwen as (I'll tell you Later)- at least at that point we are talking about an Integr8d Soul character! I admit, it'd be fun to put that character up against Spider-Man...in more than a few thin for-fun synopses. If I could also bring in Hobie to be portraying Spider-Man at that same time, he could be the one to end up in Gwen's crosshairs, and Peter and Spider-Man could clearly appear to be in one place at the same time again, furthering that deceptive alibi that Peter Parker realizes he must drop if he's ever going to marry Gwen Stacy. You can't secretly be a superhero, especially one wanted by the police often, and share a bedroom with a partner. Though anyone trying will likely be deeply disappointed.
So, twenty years into creating original characters and bold concepts all our own, the question is, what's the way forward? It's not, surely, to simply sit back and recount comic books written before I was born. Butto come to grips with my inspirations? Yes. So, I'm exploring ideas right before your eyes, while telling about fifty year old comics. I also drew a lot of original art, though often times, it was copied by eye, a swipe, of something competent, depicting the characters. Happy Anniversary, Integr8d Fix Blogspot. I am surprised you were kept around to outlast your Pastiche Fiction idea. You helped me find my voice and explore how I was made made into who I am. 4/4 was a good date to start telling these stories. I used to keep a Spider-Man blog, too, and maybe I'll dig it out for the heck of it. But I've got a lot of original stories to tell. They've been here, all along. Maybe I should trust in them, first, even if I hang on to them and don't publish them here, keeping this blog more for my interactions with other authors, like David Kempf or Danielle Proctor Piper or Matt Curry. I did get this idea from the name, Silverthorne. A meme about creatures and Zodiac signs gave me a pun, the Elven Bishop, but I don't know who he's fooled around and fell in love with. (Maybe that is my transgender character?) A photograph from Parker Reed gave me the location name, Silverthorne, which is growing into a legendary people (maybe to replace the old Dome Tribe idea in Vado Bujinka?). Maybe that photograph of his wild wolf needs to be my true take off point into a direction of the future. I don't know, y'all, can I bear to turn out more fiction for free on here? I just hate rejection, but it might not turn out to be so bad a deal. So, let's close this out. Silverthorne, good, I'm in a wilderness area that could inspire those stories. Thanks for coming with me on this journey. C Lue Disharoon
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