The Sound The Darkness Makes - Chapter 11

Beneath the attire he had assembled for himself, Kokabiel looked rather much like a horrifically disfigured, morbidly obese fat cat. He had cobbled together a shirt and tie, a large coat, trousers that could house tree legs, and a hat that covered his head in such a way that you could only see his mouth. He was a mess of arms and legs under that coat, but you couldn’t tell. And besides, people didn’t pay attention nowadays, they didn’t care to look at you long enough to make a valid opinion. To anyone who glanced his way he was a bit fat, a bit ugly, and sure, for a long second he looked like twelve people had been pulled inside out and squashed together. Which he was.

Amy and the demon were in the city morgue, and in front of them was the body of Louis Morgan. He was riddled full of holes, there were three in his face and five in his chest. The two police officers had really done a number on this mage, but really, he had it coming. “I’ve never done this before.”

“YOU HAVE IN YOU THE POTENTIAL TO DO GREAT THINGS. ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS FOCUS. REMEMBER WHAT I TAUGHT YOU. REMEMBER WHERE TO DRAW YOUR POWER FROM. YOUR STRENGTH.” Kokabiel placed a wet hand on her shoulder, and her small fingers found one of his large ones.

She began to whisper an incantation, one taught to her by the demon many nights ago, when they began to concoct this plan. She was whispering fast, seemingly spouting nonsense, but there was a rhythm to it, an repeating intonation that made it sound almost like a song.

When the morgue attendant looked inside the room to see what was going on, she didn’t stop. Kokabiel tore the man’s head off and slammed the rest of his body to the ground. Blood spilled across the room, but Kokabiel simply unbuttoned his shirt, and jammed the man inside. There was a sickening splitting noise, but it faded quickly, and Kokabiel buttoned up what he had just undone.

“nneeeeaaaauughhh!” Louis Morgan screamed as he was pulled back into his body. “so dark so cold...”

“Hello, Louis.”

Louis stared straight up at the ceiling, and Amy leaned in so he could see her. He twitched, but spoke none the less. A living dead man. “amy you’re alive i was worried when those men came in they threatened me and they got out of my trap and they shot me what happened?”

“They killed you, Louis. Your muti failed, and want to know how.”

Louis seemed to adjust to his circumstances rather quickly, his voice slowing, but the strange, ethereal tone not leaving him. “they killed me? how would they manage that?” Louis wheezed, a grinding, horrible wheeze, but he blinked, and continued to talk. “you want to know how? why?”

“To get your revenge,” said Amy, politely. “You silly dummy. Of course to get your revenge.”

“you would do that for me?”

“We’re blood bound, Louis. You would do the same for me.”

Louis seemed to consider this, in his half-alive state. “i would, yes, yes. they had a charm on them, given to them by their sergeant. so many, hanging around their necks. the charms had to acclimatise to me, and when they did, my muti was countered and they were free to act.”

“How is that possible?” Amy turned to Kokabiel. “Charms don’t ‘acclimatise’. They either work or they don’t. There’s no inbetween.”

“who are you talking to, amy?”

Kokabiel scratched his cheek, and an ear fell off his mass. The demon looked at it, and then kicked it away, under a gurney. “THEN IT WAS NOT A CHARM. WE CAN ASSUME THAT MUCH.”

Louis screamed when Kokabiel spoke. He tried to thrash about, but his dead body wouldn’t allow him the movement. His face just twitched and his lip stammered. “what was that nooooise? my soul is on fire, it hurts so much, what was that noise?”

“That was my master. The one who helped me become what I am today.”

“hurtssss”

“IT WOULD, I AM A DEMON OF THE PIT. MY VERY EXISTENCE ON THIS PLANE IS A TRAVESTY AGAINST NATURE, AND ANY UNPROTECTED SOULS WITHIN RANGE OF MY VOICE WOULD SUFFER AND CRACK WHEN THEY HEARD IT.”

“stop it please stop it it hurts so much”

“Thing is, Louis, we know about the lengths you went to get your power. The people you sacrificed. The children, in particular. We know everything. Your predilections, as they were. And that wasn’t right. So we put you in a position to test this city’s defences, and hey, they were great, and hell, you weren’t so much. You were too arrogant to think that they couldn’t stop you. I guess i should have warned you about their protection though.”

“i trusted you...”

“Not my fault. I trusted you, until i found out the truth. So here’s what I’m going to do, and it’s a doozy.” Amy placed her hand on Louis’ forehead, and whispered another incantation. Kokabiel grinned as he recognised what she was saying. Louis fell silent, and Amy withdrew her fingers. “I’ve removed your ability to talk. I’ve chained your soul to your body, and it’s going to stay there until it rots away to nothing. You are now your own hell. You will feel every single torment inflicted upon you. During autopsy, during the embalming process. Oh, there will be embalming. No cremation for you, we made sure of it. And then, when your body rots and decays and the bugs and the insects crawl through you, you’ll feel that too. You shouldn’t have touched those children, Louis.”

Louis said nothing. And that was the point. Kokabiel stepped forward, and then he leaned forward. His deep voice was lower, close to a whisper, but still louder than anything had the right to be. “AND WHEN YOU ARE FINALLY FREE OF THAT HELL, I’LL INTRODUCE YOU TO ANOTHER.”

Amy and Kokabiel left the morgue, and entered the night. Kokabiel looked down at his protégé, and tapped his chin. “WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT TODAY, CHILD?”

“The police are protected. Their charms make no sense, so we have to make sense of them. the police don’t know though, do they? Else they wouldn’t talk such bull-shit. They truly believe those trinkets give them strength. No, the power comes from elsewhere.” Amy subconsciously imitated her mentor’s movements, and tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Their sergeant. The one who gave them the charms. He’ll know.”

Kokabiel nodded. “SO WE SHALL GET TO KNOW HIM.”

NO FUTURE FOR YOU

I have a number of plans for 2011. Not resolutions, because you give them up within a few weeks, but plans. I had plans in 2010 but got sidetracked, stuck in a dead end job with no hope for the future, mourning all the years that had come before and the events and people that had come with them... 2011 needs to be different. I need to try and be different.

The job aspect is sorted, I'm away from the cinema, I'm moving forward (I think), and I believe I have the momentum from the dying months of 2010 to carry me forward in 2011 till I find my footing with everything else.

So, what needs doing?

1) Zenith! needs to be out 4 times this year.

2) I need to self publish my first novel, and my finish my second and third.

3) I need to "contextualise" Zenith! like I always intended, working with other people in other areas to make it an event, not just a name. The launch party (there'll be one for each issue) was the first step toward that, and the concept should crystallise by the second.

4) I want to be better, as ever. And to do that... I don't know. Work harder.

And 5), I want to move out and into the city. That... that's viable now. More so than ever before. Hmm.

I want to be somebody.

What If Tomorrow God Walked The Earth?

I'm playing a thought through my head, until the thought ends; and the thought is a sentence I have in my notebook: "WHAT IF TOMORROW GOD WALKED THE EARTH?" and it's dark and it's scary and it's going to probably see the light of day in Zenith! #2.

Inspiration - Zenith! article

Below is my contribution to Zenith! #1, and it was written fast, because we needed to fill a page, and it's basically my manifesto for life, and for writing, and I thought it interesting to share it here with you. Z!#1 is actually quite close to print now. Still needing a cover...

“I’m a big fan of pretension. It means ‘an aspiration or intention that may or may not reach fulfilment.’ It doesn’t mean failing upward. It means trying to exceed your grasp. Which is how things grow.”

-- Warren Ellis.

We all find inspiration in different things. Terrifying, varying, awesome things. We find inspiration in film, and in music, and in cinema, and we take all these disparate, unconnected things and make them into something that transcends their base components. George Lucas found inspiration in the films of Akira Kurosawa, and if it wasn’t for that we wouldn’t have the Star Wars trilogy-- and depending on your opinion of the series-- that would be a terrible thing. Without Star Wars we wouldn’t have modern science fiction, hundreds of filmmakers wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing now. If it wasn’t for Star Wars we wouldn’t have films like Moon, Inception, films that have made the viewing public think and question what are considered the norms of cinema.

The following quote by Jim Jarmusch encapsulate my own approach to creativity and creation: “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery-- celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from-- it’s where you take them to.”

It’s not about what you steal, it’s about what you make from it. If you steal an idea, change a name, change a setting, and it reads like you’ve stolen it then you won’t ever get the satisfaction, the true feeling of accomplishment, that comes with creating a work of art. You become a thief. But if you find something that inspires you, you allow yourself to be taken on this amazing journey by your inspiration, and end up in a place you never dreamed of visiting before, then that… that is what this is about. That’s what we, as writers, as artists, as photographers and thinkers, that’s what we strive to do.

It’s not stealing if you make something from it. It’s stealing if you steal, and keep it stolen, and do nothing with what you’ve stolen but change the details. But to create something from the ashes of an idea that has come before. Yes. That is what we’re in the business of doing.

So find something you love. And make something new from it. Take an idea and build and build until you’ve created a monument to the old idea, something shiny and bright and for the future. We must attain for the highest echelons of creativity or we’ll dwell in the muck and the shit that comes with stagnation and repetition. Hollywood is going that way, adapting comics and books and songs and sonnets into half-arsed celebrity infested schlock-- No. No, this needs to end. Create an idea that is new and terrifying and gets you noticed. Be scary. Be great. Be different. But don’t perpetuate this cycle of diminishing returns. Reach for unseen heights.

And then, obviously, when you’re rich and famous remember us here at Zenith! and give us some kind of cut for old times’ sake. We’re all friends here, aren’t we?

Morrison On Moore

In an interview for Comic Heroes, Grant Morrison, in his infinitely terrifying forward-thinking, pre-empts Alan Moore's criticism of his working on an updating of the Watchmen concept for DC.

Alan Moore has said previously that DC (and Marvel too, he doesn't keep his criticisms focused solely on his former major employers) keeps going back to the well, that the industry right now is creatively bankrupt and devoid of new concepts; Grant Morrison (and I love him for this, I really do) has said on the nature of [comic book] stories:

"They're designed to be told over and over again. If you were an Aboriginal kid or a tribal shaman, that's what you'd do, you'd participate in the recycling of old stories, the 'revamping' of characters and scenarios, the explaining away of plot holes. Some to the job with more skill than others, but if you work with Marvel, DC or other companies' pulp fiction characters, you're basically repainting pictures of the ancestors on cave walls."

So yes. That's brilliant, that's true. We reverberate stories through time, through word of mouth, through anecdotes. Resident Evil 4: Afterlife, a continuation of the semi-popular film series, retcons the previous three films within the first... fifteen, twenty minutes of the opening act. Removes so many plot points that it's a completely different beast, though still completely recognisable. Memetic story telling, perhaps? It's how children tell stories in the playground, how we tell our friends about last night. We change details, we make ourselves look better, or worse, and we continually change what has come before. Recycling, revamping.

God, I love it when Grant Morrison makes sense. I mean, I love him all the time, I love his work because it's challenging and different, but when his thoughts come together in this perfect form of... coherence... it's all the better.

And I know that I've been bitching and moaning about Alan Moore the past few posts, but that doesn't mean I'm not a fan. His latest (and apparently final, barring League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) comic book series, Neonomicon, is a complete mindfuck of a read, and I intend to pick that up whenever I can. Though, that being said, I don't know if #2 has even been released yet. I should probably check that out...

Who Betters The Watchmen?

I've been thinking about Alan Moore a lot recently. I picked up the first issue of his new magazine "Dodgem Logic", and it was interesting, very much so, and it's help put Zenith! in position again, in my head. Underground magazine publishing, yes. But that's not what I was thinking about. I was thinking about Watchmen, his opinions on the comic book industry since Watchmen, and my own opinions on Watchmen and similar works.

There's this great interview with Alan Moore by Adi Tantimedh over at Bleeding Cool (click to read) that also played a hand in the way I'm thinking right now. Talking about how DC have offered Alan the rights to Watchmen back if he gives them permission-- perhaps a blessing?-- to work on sequels, prequels, all the terrifying marketable machine bits that would make them a whole lot of money. But the fans, as much as they love Watchmen (for some right reason and some wrong) wouldn't enjoy a Watchmen sequel. They wouldn't. If you've even got a passing knowledge of comics, you know that Watchmen is this pure thing, this nigh-untouchable project that cannot be continued, extended, whatever. I don't care about film adaptations, really. I don't think they damage the source material. So what if they changed elements? Philip Pullman once said that: "every film has to make changes to the story that the original book tells — not to change the outcome, but to make it fit the dimensions and the medium of film." and that's perfectly fine, in my opinion. You have to make the film the distilled version of the book-- how else can you get the story out in the best way?

But I digress.

History Lesson: Alan Moore assumed he'd get the rights to Watchmen back in the 80s. But DC never let it out of print, it's always been available, so that never came about. A lot of shit happened between then and now, and so we're in this weird position where Alan Moore is divorcing himself from the comic book industry and his old friends (he's fallen out with David Lloyd over the V for Vendetta adaptation, and now he's fallen out with Dave Gibbons over the Watchmen film) because of this project from the mid-eighties.

I think Alan Moore insults the industry when he makes himself out to be the pinnacle of literary artistry. I get bored of that. He was good, in his day, but what has he done that became as big as Watchmen or V for Vendetta (which I don't actually like)? Sure, his Top Ten projects have been big, but they're not on the same scale, are they?

A few quotes of interest from that interview that kind of anger me:

"I could ask about why Marvel Comics are churning out or planning to bring out my ancient MARVELMAN stories, which are even older, if they had a viable idea of their own in the quarter-century since I wrote those works."

Because they were good? Because they stand up? Because a whole generation or two has heard of the Marvelman stories, the epic stories that Moore, Steve Bissette, Neil Gaiman and co. worked on and want to experience them for themselves? How is that unfair? Since I started reading comics, since I really got into them in my teens, I've wanted to read Marvel/Miracleman. Since I read about the legal troubles between Gaiman and Todd McFarlane I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I mean, this is important stuff. This is British comics that made a difference. And they've been locked in legal limbo for years and I want to read them. Sure, I would prefer to have the originals in my hand, but if Marvel are going to reprint the Moore/Gaiman runs, why shouldn't I leap at that chance? Stop ruining my enjoyment, Alan Moore.

"Just simply get some of your top-flight talent to put out a book that the wider public outside of the comics field find as interesting or as appealing as the stuff that I wrote 25 years ago. It shouldn’t be too big an ask, should it?"

This is something I intend to talk about below, but I thought I'd share it here first...

"They must have one creator, surely, in the entire American industry that could do equivalent work to something I did 25 years ago. "

Is it wrong that I find this to be horrifically arrogant of him? Like there was a Golden Age of Comics that started and ended with Alan Moore, and no one else can compete? I've enjoyed comics since. Yes. But the thing is... when was the last time there was a comic book written that had the same literary, mainstream punch as Watchmen? Or Maus, for instance? Maus won a Pulitzer! Sin City could count, but I feel like that was more of a maxi-series, and the film was what made people pay attention.

The eighties were good, no doubt. We had so many transcendental series come out-- Moore's Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Miller's The Dark Knight Returns as well as his Year One. Those were epic series that changed the face of the comic book industry. But when has anything changed the face of the industry since? In the 90s it was the domain of Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison, with The Preacher, Transmetropolitan and The Invisibles being the go-to for alternate comic book that shift the paradigm. In the 2000s we had Ex Machina, Y, The Last Man, Top 10 and Tom Strong, but... they don't work like I want them to work in the structure of this conversation.

But they weren't the same, I don't think. 12 issues. A maxiseries. Not a 80 issue opus... I'm talking stories that are complete in their entirety within twelve issues. That's not a thing anymore, is it? Grant Morrison came close with All-Star Superman, which I love, but I think I disqualify that in my head because it's Superman. It's not original. I want new content, I want something that makes me think and makes me fall in love with it like I did James Robinson's Starman.

"Just simply get some of your top-flight talent to put out a book that the wider public outside of the comics field find as interesting or as appealing as the stuff that I wrote 25 years ago. It shouldn’t be too big an ask, should it?"

It really shouldn't, no Alan.

Brian K. Vaughan has done some amazing stuff recently, the closest it comes to counting. Ex Machina was superb, a planned maxiseries that recently came to an end. Same as Y, The Last Man. Focused. Painstakingly created. Ex Machina is closer to what I'm thinking than Y, because there was one, consistent art team on that (Tony Harris, tying close to Starman with that, yes) whilst Pia Guerra traded duties with Goran Sudzuka on occasion. Garth Ennis is working with Darick Robertson on The Boys, another planned maxiseries... another finite end...

(And what is it with these specific writers working on these projects? Darick Robertson worked on Transmetropolitan, Garth Ennis on Preacher and now The Boys... Brian K. Vaughan on these maxiseries, too...)

...but do they make sense like Watchmen did, in the context of this conversation? I think Warren Ellis does the most promising work in that field, his projects, such as Ocean, Ministry of Space, Orbital, short, complete works that are beautiful and amazing. He's given us Planetary, but that has ties to the Wildstorm universe so I don't think I can count it-- even though it is the tightest of the projects to be considered. Global Frequency is the inverse of the idea, with one writer and a selection of amazing artists, twelve issues of loosely connected stories. I love that book, but it's not the same. But these titles don't reach the heights established at the heights of the eighties. They don't sell as many copies as Watchmen, they don't make the same amount of money. People aren't scrambling about to scream about them in the daily press. They should be, sure, but they should be something more. Something amazing and ascendant.

I want to see a comic, twelve issues, one complete story, like Camelot 2000, like Watchmen, something that inspires generations. Where would we be without Watchmen? I don't think the comic industry could have lasted without that shot in the arm. But at the same time, we shouldn't be dragging our heels and holding onto the past like we insist on doing. We need to prove Alan Moore wrong, because he's not what he used to be.

I think if Geoff Johns wasn't writing for DC... I don't think his work would be as good. Brian Michael Bendis does good work on Powers, and on Scarlet, but again, not the same. Mike Mignola is my hero and doing something that should become a modern folktale with Hellboy, but it's so far pushing ten trades and promising more, so it's not the 12 issue shape I was talking about. I want something to make us think, and sure, we get that with ongoings, and minis and maxis, but we need to make sure Alan Moore isn't right else we'll be stuck in this horrific rut for the rest of our lives.

Kavalier and Clay

"The Escapists", by Brian K. Vaughan, Steve Rolston, Philip Bond, Jason Shawn Alexander, Eduardo Barreto and et, al, is one of my favourite comic books of all time. It's a perfect package, the kind of project I turn to when I'm down in the dumps, needing inspiration. It's so horrifically meta, but not in that overbearing Alan Moore way, or the Grant Morrison method of creator imposition... this isn't Vaughan as Vaughan talking to the reader, it's Maxwell Roth, a character that is so real that you can't help but be dragged along by his story. I loved it, picked it uop from #1 because it was, umm, $1 (and I'm only human) and the Frank Miller cover, whilst it did nothing to represent what was going in on the inside, drew me in. I loved the art from page one, I loved the writing, and there have been very few books (if any) that have actually competed with it's position in my heart. The way in which the walls between comic books and real life blur is beautiful; this is heroism, but not super-heroism, about human weakness and wanting, and, God, have you been paying attention to me these past few years? This is the writing I want to do.

Anyway, I digress. I went about The Escapist mythos in completely the wrong order. I read the comics first, the Dark Horse "The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist" and then "The Escapists" after that, but that was stupid. I understood most, if not all, of what I was reading, but then I realised that I needed to read what spawned this character, I needed to know the subtext to it all...

I finally got the chance to read the source material, Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" this week. I'm not going to review it, or rant on about how you should read it (you simply should), but I am going to say that I found the novel engrossing, and I read it over a few days, only stopping to sleep and work. If I didn't need to do either of those things I would have been done in a day.

I loved this book. And so should you.