Here comes the past #1: My life on the Never Ending Board

A couple of days ago I was mucking about on the internet, indulging in meaningless nostalgia, when I stumbled across a piece of fiction I wrote back in 1997.  That's right in the middle of my fan fiction phase and it was exactly as terrible as you would imagine.

But it was still fascinating, especially when I couldn't remember writing that particular bit of fiction. It was completely missing from my memories of those days, so I got to read a short story that I'd essentially written to myself, 16 years removed.

It wasn't all bad – I made myself laugh at a Prisoner in-joke. (I was 22 in 1997. Of course there was a Prisoner in-joke). And it basically made sense. But the writing was overheated and breathless, and trying so hard to be really, really clever, and it's definitely the work of somebody with some serious self-worth issues, which may still be lingering. Which is a little troubling.

But even though I'm too embarrassed to even search for all the other stuff I did at the time – which I'm fairly sure is still on the internet somewhere - I don't regret my fan fiction days at all.

There is no shame here.

I never intended to start writing fan fiction. It just happened.

There are four million people in New Zealand, but we all live on the arse end of the world, so there is bound to be feelings of isolation. I've talked before about how the internet changed everything, and made me feel like I was part of a greater community. I ended up gravitating towards the Comic Book Resources message boards, in the days when it was clad in sickly purple and yellow word balloons, and that was my first home on the web.

It didn't take me long to realise that all the cool kids were writing their own stuff in one particular section of CBR that was devoted to fan fiction, and that looked like a hell of a lot of fun, so I started doing my own stories and putting them out there in the world.

They weren't strictly fan fiction – they weren't stories devoted to Batman or Doc Savage or anything like that. The setting for all these stories was a multi-universal street that ran forever, and that just meant any character from any comic or movie or TV show or novel or song could pop in for an appearance, but the vast majority of stories that sprouted up on CBR's Never Ending Board featured the writer's own creations.

There was the Dadamerican, and Buried Alien, and Joe Grendel, and the Mighty Hank, and Wet Willie, and Merlin & Cowman, and the Scarlet Dragon, and Wheat Lad, and Goldenager, and Rydgen, and Hatman, and Sharpshooter & Snow Sabre, and Paper Bag Boy, and OzBat, and the Phantom Scribbler, and the White Knight, and Amyzon, and Typo Lad, and literally hundreds of other characters, long before I even started writing things.

The stories had only been running a few months by the time I joined in, and there were already recognisable cliques amongst posters, but the other writers - who were often indistinguishable from the characters they created - were incredibly welcoming, and I ended up writing a couple of dozen stories featuring my own creations, and it was marvellous.

I've still got a few stories I did from those days saved on my hard drive, in dusty old computer folders that haven't been opened since 2006. And there are a few that are still floating around on the web, (usually on sites that still have big, flashy nineties ads on them), but I don't think I could bear looking for them.

Because, despite the fantastic encouragement I got at the time, they really are unobjectively terrible – the first fumbling efforts at proper writing, all spat out for the world to see. The last few times I ever looked at that work, I cringed like a motherfucker. They're impossibly clumsy, and the two major influences on my writing at that time were – by some way – the Invisibles and the Doctor Who New Adventures, which were both pretty goddamn self-indulgent, so it wasn't pretty when I added my own ego to the mix.

When I do stumble across something that I wrote back then, I do see glimpses of what I was going for, but I generally failed to pay it off. Sometimes I got it right – I was so pleased with one action sequence involving a moving car and a hatchet that I have used it several times since - but in general, it's mostly rubbish.

But I don't regret spending all that time thinking and writing about those silly little stories. Most of the feedback that was produced was unhelpfully positive, but I figured out how to plot stories, and work with other writers (and their creations), and it was a great place to leech off all those youthful enthusiasms in my writing.

And there was such freedom in fan fiction writing. The ability to do whatever you want when you're not trying to please anybody but yourself was enormously liberating. The whole idea of just writing for fun - not to make money or reach a huge audience - but just for the fun of putting words together to create a viewpoint.

I was also going through a fairly difficult period in my life (again, I was 22, and we're all going through difficult periods at that age), but all of that was forgotten when I switched off and went back to J Street to add a brick to a huge wall of stories.

Sometimes it really helped - on the day I found out one of my oldest friends in the world was quietly ripping me off I started writing the adventures of a Jerry Cornelius rip-off called Dr Skin, and the Therapeutic Skin Jobs (as they were super-cleverly called) really did make me feel better. That sort of writing didn't help with proper trauma, but it certainly made me feel less grumpy on blah days.

I never made a conscious decision to stop writing fan fiction, it just faded away, as things tend to do in life. I wasn't alone - nobody has written a new J Street story in years and years. I do occasionally start writing another Therapeutic Skin Jobs every couple of years or so, but rarely finish them
 
I never really gave up fiction, and have even collaborated with several NEB writers on move scripts and prose things, but that was still just writing for kicks, not for any greater consumption.

And now I've got the Tearoom of Despair, which satisfies almost all of my writing urges on a daily basis. (I did finish off another short novel last year, but I haven't written any proper fiction since then.) There isn't the charge of collaboration, or the kick of a really good story idea, but it's basically the same thrill as fan fiction writing. This writing is all for fun, not for fortune and glory, and that's the way I'd like to keep it.

We do all think less of something when we hear it is fan fiction - 50 Shades of Grey never got over being a Twilight fan fiction for many people - and there is just cause for this, because the vast majority of it is terrible.

But I think it's also a hell of a lot of fun, a great way to purge the worst habits of fiction writing and a terrific way to meet people who are into the same things as you. I've only actually meet the Dadamerican and The Mighty Hank in person, but I have made some great friends through all this silliness, (and lost a few, too. Nope Callahan! Where are you, man? Email me at bobtemuka at Hotmail!).

I don't regret spending all that time and effort on something as silly as fan fiction. It's a phase I have long moved past, and one that I'm not going to revisit all that often, but I'm glad I did it.

- Originally posted September 20, 2013

I ended up republishing all the Therapeutic Skin Jobs here on the blog, and even wrote a new one with all sorts of NEB cameos a couple of years ago. I haven't written much fiction since the kids came along, but there is always some Doctor Skin in me. Many of the people who used to write on the NEB still regularly do online roleplaying adventures together, and sometimes I go have a look. I don't know what they are on about, but it gives me an enormous feeling of wellbeing. 

A note on the future of the Tearoom of Despair

It's not going anywhere.  Horror, futility and endless buttered scones will remain on the menu.

I'm not running out of dumb things to say, and will keep doing it for as long as I can. There is always more cool shit to spotlight, and moronic shit to scoff at.

But it's a busy month ahead - I always thought I'd be a renter but we somehow bought our first home and are moving in this month, so that's a lot to deal with. And after spending the last month writing several thousand words about dusty old UK comic annuals from long ago, I need a break.

Fortunately, after 17 and a half years of near constant posting, there is plenty in the archives to fall back on, so it's another month of recycled material. See you in August, for more of the same.

Thrill-Power Countdown #1: Judge Dredd Annual 1981

If I was sent into exile on some desert island, and could only take one book with me, there is a very good chance it would be the first Judge Dredd annual. If there was ever a battle royale between actual comics, I would put my money on this book, because the Bolland cover alone would beat the snot out of half the competition, before you even get inside.

This is again Mick McMahon at his absolute finest, capturing the desperation of Mega-City One, the horrors of the nuclear ghosts of Milwaukee, and the silliness of human-sized pinball games.

The stories are all Wagner at his finest - his tale about the man's heart being taken by the state might be the first example where Judge Dredd is actually a terrifying bad guy who can totally ruin some poor geek's life by using the Law against him. (And if you fight back, they will take everything from you, except your screams.) 

The smaller stories still pack a punch - the Walter the Wobot fable is even quite good, with a young Brendan McCarthy doing a Spirit pastiche; while the Shok! story by Kevin O'Neill is genuinely exciting, and so good it was ripped off wholesale for a feature film.

It certainly helps that this is the only annual that doesn't really have any reprint at all - it's all new thrills, all the time. The only thing from an earlier age is the unpublished first episode, spiked because it wasn't far out enough, and infuriating artist Carlos Ezquerra, who had nothing to do with the character for years, before coming back as the ultimate Dredd artist

The filler material is a huge part in fleshing out Dredd's world, looking at both the creation of the character and the fictional world he inhabits, while also comparing different artist's takes on Old Stoney Face. And Ron Smith's frontispiece picture of Mega-City One at night is the most beautiful rendering of the Big Meg I've ever seen.  

This is, without a doubt, the best annual ever produced, setting an astronomically high bar that all the later annuals never quite reached. I've had my copy of this since the 80s and it is beat to hell, with the names of family friends written in big blue marker on the inside pages, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. If all my other comics vanished, I would still be happy with this, the best comic book I've ever owned. 

Thrill-Power Countdown #2: 2000ad Annual 1986

I'm 10 years old when I see this annual appear in the bookstore at the Stafford Mall in Timaru. It's only the second annual I've ever seen in the flesh. It costs $4.95, which is a drokk-tonne of money when the regular prog still costs around 55 cents, but it's worth every cent.

Belardinelli's artwork on the Ace Trucking Co story that opens the annual has never looked more beautiful, with a neon pastel colour scheme that could not be more 1985, and is all the more memorable for it. Ian Gibson's art on the Dredd story also has a strangely vibrant sheen to it (although it is yet another smuggling into Mega-City One story - this time it's coffee).

Strontium Dog has Johnny Alpha being a cold and hard bastard, which he just uses to hide his wonderfully soft heart (and it's drawn by Ezquerra, so it's legit Dog); and Cam Kennedy has been the definitive Rogue Trooper artist for some time, but rarely works in colour on the character, and that bright blue skin really shines on the thick, glossy paper.

The 1986 annual also has the best reprint of any of them, collecting together the Shako storyline form 2000ad's early days, and is just page after page of people dying in gory and inventive ways. My favourite is always going to be poor old Jimbo, the local drunk, who gets the giant polar bear shitfaced, and Shako likes the little guy, but gets so wasted he sees two Jimbos, and one of them has to go!

I'm 10 years old and this book is one of the biggest and most concentrated bursts of pure thrill-power I ever get in my entire life. It might have been 10 times as expensive as the prog, but the pages still fizz with energy when I crack them open again 40 years later, and that's truly priceless.

Thrill-Power Countdown #3: Judge Dredd Annual 1982

It was no surprise that Bolland quickly found success in the United States with his clean lines, but it's also little surprise that Mike McMahon never gained a foothold. Too abstract, too warped, just too weird.

But there is a generation of British comic readers who will follow McMahon wherever he will go - and he does go to some places - because he was once doing stellar work on Dredd every week in the prog, and producing the achingly wonderful artwork for this annual.

The fatties of Mega-City One have never been so beautifully outlandish, and the art on The Vampire Effect is nothing short of brilliant - the villain is a white void that just eats everything, but McMahon's use of shadow and colour makes it a visceral and genuinely scary strip.

There are flaws in this diamond of an annual - it's always nice to get a Mean Machine solo story, but Robin Smith's art looks especially stilted when surrounded by McMahon's efforts, while there is a terrible Walter the Wobot story (to be fair, almost all the Walter The Wobot stories are terrible, even when they occasionally get Bolland on the art).

But this is early 80s 2000ad at its best, and its best is McMahon. He would go on to the stunning abstractions of Slaine and Howler and the occasional Batman, but his annual work is the pinnacle.

Thrill-Power Countdown #4: 2000ad Annual 1988

They don't need to threaten Tharg on the cover - killing the alien editor of 2000ad is my idea of a good time, not a threat - because the 1987 annual is just an absolute monster of a book. Many of the annuals have peaks and troughs of quality, but this one really seems like a complete package of thrills. 

There is Carlos Ezquerra on Strontium Dog, and Kevin O'Neill on Nemesis, and Brendan McCarthy with a more down-to-earth Judge Dredd effort from the mind expanding artist, (although it's yet another annual plot that is more than a little familiar, with glamorous female perps turning out to Wally Squad).

And the 1988 effort is also packed with more O'Neill and Dave Gibbons, with reprints of the Ro-Busters story about Hammerstein's adventures on the front line of the Vogon war.  It's beautiful artwork with a story that actually hits harder now than it did in other times - all that Vogon stuff felt quite dated for a while, but now seems scarily topical.

It doesn't have any of the very best stories in this run of annuals, but the overall book has a pleasant feeling of completeness, or getting everything you could possibly want from mid-1980s 2000ad, and just a little bit more.

Thrill-Power Countdown #5: 2000ad Annual 1985

There are stories by Alan Moore peppered throughout the early annuals, and most of them are funny, and all of them are clever, and none of them match the melancholic mood of the ABC Warriors tale in this annual.

It's one of the few stories that Moore did with Steve Dillon, and he really should have done more. Dillon was a terrific action artist, but could do moroseness even with the expressionless face of Hammerstein, and the painted colours of John Higgins give the whole story a dreamy vibe that retains the sharpness of reality. In another universe, Steve Dillon could have done a wonderful Watchmen.

And the story is not a silly joke, musing on the red planet blues - robots aren't troubled by it, they say - and on how colonisation of a distant world can sometimes bite back.

The rest of the annual is fairly standard for the time, which is still a level of quality rarely seen in comics - there is some Ezquerra Strontium Dog, but it's reprint.  The Dredd story about smuggling an illegal substance into the city feels like one we've read a dozen times before, although Ian Gibson still draws the hell out of it.

The most interesting thing outside the Moore/Dillon/Higgins (and the only 2000ad annual cover Mike McMahon would do) is a Slaine story that looks slightly to the future of the strip, where the warped one goes all Time Killer, but it's drawn by Belardinelli, and his Elfric is not nearly as sexy as Glenn Fabry's. It's an interesting detour into the roads not taken, although it's not as good as the sad robots on Mars.

Thrill-Power Countdown #6 Judge Dredd Annual 1991

This was another annual I ached to read at the time, but wouldn't get to until years later, and there was one major reason for this - it had the first meeting between Judge Dredd and the Strontium Dog. 

They were always going to clash, because they were the two biggest names in the comic, and they were always going to fight as soon as they met. Even if Johnny Alpha is a legally mandated bounty hunter in the future, that mandate does not extend to the streets of MC-1. And despite being a veteran of a war against genocide and subject to ongoing and endless prejudice, Johnny is a bit more laid back than Dredd. He'll still gun down the scum who deserve it, but he also likes to have a beer and a game of poker with the lads.

So they immediately start pounding the crap out of each other, and it's all drawn by Colin McNeill at his most fuzzy painted phase. Alpha comes out slightly ahead, and Dredd promises they will meet in a rematch - they will soon bust heads in Judgement Day - but one thing is certain. Alpha and his old pal Wulf Sternhammer look supremely cool in sunglasses and dark suits, a few short years before Reservoir Dogs made that look groovy. 

Johnny and Joe have met a few times since, and have come to some kind of arrangement, but will also never be fiends.  That's all in the future, but there is also a strange story in this annual that harks back to the past and it is deeply weird to see a Jonathan Livingston Seagull piss-take in the 90s, even if it is with a dog vulture. 

But there is something of the future on the cover - Jamie Hewlett only did a tiny amount of Dredd, but managed to capture the mania of Mega-City One citizens like few others, and his glorious anarchism will find a mass audience in the future with the Gorillaz. Those cartoon musical misfits are bigger than Dredd in the real world - they just are - but you can bet your butt that if they did clash, Joe Dredd would come out on top. 

Thrill-Power countdown #7: Judge Dredd Annual 1985

What is the best thing about the Judge Dredd 1985 annual? There are a few to choose from.

Is it the way you could go through the Arms Buyers Almanac 2106 and pick out what heavy sci-fi guns and equipment (as rendered by Ian Gibson) you would buy if you had a few spare hundred creds?

Is it the reminder that a nuclear bomb could go off at any moment in Mega-City One and hundreds of thousands of people can die in horrific fire, and it's all part of a short one-off story? 

Is it the reappearance of Judge Giant's first and last air-strike, one of the most action-packed panels in all early Dredd?

Is it more of our man Gibson on Judge Anderson?

Is it the idea that the mutated killer Cursed Earth spiders of an earlier Dredd era just were not big enough, so Dredd now has to face off against GIANT mutated killer Cursed Earth spiders?

Is it the stark red of the cover, one of Carlos Ezquerra finest?

Is it the fatties literally eating an entire vehicle in the finest example of competitive eating?

No, of course not. It's this caption from the fatties story, which as recently noted on the Tearoom of Despair, is truly one of the greats:

Sometimes a great story needs a brilliant artist, or a terrific twist. Sometimes it just needs to point out how fucking stupid human beings can be.