Cannot get a proper blog post goin for the life of me. It’s been since last April that I was forced into some random notes, but “have at thee then” (as m’man Thor would say). Learned this month that a Ghost Rider 2 sequel (booo!) just got signed off on, but that Marvel Studios is nickel n’ diming Sam Jackson and Mickey Rourke for possible roles in Iron Man 2 (c’mon y’all); loved Revolutionary Road for that rarely seen, all-American “hollow emptiness, quiet desperation” p.o.v.; as the wheels keep turning for my book deal, the next project to be picked up is The Masters, no bullshit; that said, keep your eyes peeled this summer for BronxBiannual.com; speaking to former Prince/James Brown/D’Angelo road manager Alan Leeds on Monday (happy belated, Alan), plus former Madhouse drummer Dale Alexander; peace to Wax Poetics while we at it; cannot find a good book to dig into, so a re-read of David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster will have to do; glad Chloé Mortaud is a black Miss France 2009, but she ain’t the first, or even the second (peace to Miss France 2000, Sonia Rolland); and rest in peace to the late French hiphop journalist Antoine Garnier. I haven’t seen the brother since a powwow at the World Bar up on the fifth floor of Printemps de l’Homme a few years ago. He will be missed…

Prediction: one day the New York Times is gonna report this story, about how the owners of a scrappy comic-book-company startup organized themselves on Facebook, and how social networking sites are slowly becoming places for like-minded entrepreneurs to meet and get their incorporations on. That said, for a few months now I’ve been one of the proud coöwners of Red Letter Comics, Inc.

Many many months back, I started a public experiment on this blog of how long it would take me to break into comics. I loved them since I was two (ask Great-grandma), and I’m really on that “all is mind,” law of attraction shit. This summer, I had to focus more energy into book #3 for the moment, but along the way, Red Letter Comics took shape. Coincidence, sun. (Nudge, wink… there are none.)

There’s still not a heck of a lot to report. Following the lead of Stephen Cardigan, officer of the Let’s Create a Comic Book Company group over on Facebook, a bunch of us (30 maybe?) threw in as little as $20 each to become shareholders in incorporating. Comics vet Tom Mandrake is involved. We all voted on a name together, and last month, Red Letter Comics won. (My vote? Zeitgeist Comics. What better name for a company created through Facebook associations? Copyright issues, sun.) The mission now is to publish one anthology of stories, featuring different characters of people involved in the creation of this joint venture. Whichever gets the most attention is what we run with for the long term, at least as far as I understand it. Which means maybe The Masters gets to see the light of day. We shall see.

Comic book artist Michael Turner died last Friday of bone cancer. He was only 37; we were the same age. I had no idea Turner suffered from cancer, and I’ve been enjoying his illustrations for at least the past four years; I’m not an avid comic reader anymore. Though I used to imbibe the things like water from the age of, like, two to 17, the only titles I buy with any regularity nowadays are the Frank Miller/Jim Lee All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder thing and Justice League of America – just the occasional superhero guilty pleasure. But I knew Michael Turner as one of the newer names I was previously unfamiliar with (he started on Witchblade, a title I never read), doing the covers of Supergirl, Fantastic Four, the upcoming Uncanny X-Men #500… Turner will be missed; he laid it down.

I mentioned last month that I was laying down my graphic novel idea, The Masters, in order to concentrate on my next book (which is going great, actually) and screenplay (which I’ve switched gears with; more later), but there’s been progress anyway of course. Through Facebook of all places, I’ve become part of a pretty serious no-bullshit proposition to start a comic book company. Stephen Cadigan up in Canada sent out a plea to everyone in a “Let’s Create a Comic Book Company” group last month. The company is being named and incorporated this month, I’m one of the co-owners, and it’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out. Especially since we’ll need around $50,000 just to get this up and running for at least a year. To be continued.

Psyche: I never give up. However… (laugh) one of my Brooklyn homies suggested weeks ago that I’ve got too many projects going on at once, and that maybe I should get around to finishing one of them. True, there’s a lot of plates spinning in the air at chez moi – the book, the comic, the screenplay, etc. – and so maybe some time management is in order; I was already thinking the same thing myself actually. So for all you fellow scribblers out there trying to balance your shit, I feel your pain – this is what I plan to do.

1. The Masters comic book project is on hold. Although this month I did make the decision that The Masters will be a graphic novel (as opposed to a mini- or ongoing series), I also decided that the plot itself will be written as a short story first, for my eyes only. I’m aware of the specially formatted comic-book scripts that help artists figure out how to illustrate the action, but as a short story writer, I came to the conclusion that even before attempting a script like that, it’s gonna help me map it out if it’s an actual short story to work from. And Superman though I am, I don’t have time this minute to pen a short story. Because…
2. … The Noir Album book is my main focus this moment. Got feedback from my agent on my sample chapter this month. All’s well, so well she wants another additional chapter so we can sew up more money for this joint from the eventual publisher when it all goes down this summer. If I get in a zone I may even hammer out the first 100 pages, just to end all possible back n’ forth and get things rolling already. Not that I’m impatient. The Noir Album, as a reminder, is a memoir of my years in Paris, with a thesis running throughout about the lives of French black folk.
   
3. Yes, there’s a screenplay. Amazon delivered my Final Draft software a few weeks back, and I’m (finally) steadily transcribing my 13-year-old unpublished novel into a movie. Writers are some starving-artist motherfuckers generally, and I’m not real into that. Hollywood is where the bucks are if you do this for a living. Joan Didion, James Baldwin and Dave Eggers all have screenplay credits, yeah, but I know like 10 people personally off the top of my dome who’ve sold scripts, folks like Bönz Malone (Brooklyn Babylon), Scott Poulson-Bryant (Murder on the Soul Train), Cheo Hodari Coker (Notorious), my old law school classmate Brian Koppelman (Ocean’s 13) and more. So my first draft will be done by July. Then: rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

Juggling, juggling, juggling projects. Fiiiinally bought Final Draft software today so I can get cracking on my first screenplay this summer. I’ve got two stories in mind already, adaptations of short stories I’ve published before in anthologies. But I haven’t forgotten about my comic book project, The Masters; far from it. To the right you’ll find more fine artwork by the guy who’s (most likely) drawing this miniseries or graphic novel, Mshindo Kuumba I. To recap, The Masters are folks like you and me who’ve achieved a certain level of spiritual mastery that in turn enhances them with superpowered abilities. My monthly progress for April involved a simple roundup of potential publishers for the book. Following personal advice from Sin City creator Frank Miller, I don’t plan to offer The Masters to comic powerhouses Marvel or DC. Instead, my list of potentials looks more like this, in no particular order:

1. Top Cow Universe
2. Wildstorm
3. Dargaud (they’re French, they’re putting out a Paul Pope project)
4. Image Comics
5. Vertigo
6. IDW (John Byrne is drawing FX for them these days)
7. Dark Horse Comics

Month number four is coming to a close, regarding my year-long plan to bring a comic book into the world full-grown from the head of MML (that’s a Zeus reference, sun). But lately I’ve been pouring energy into my next book The Noir Album, and getting inspired to gear up for my first screenplay this spring. So there’s a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on, but this month, I did manage to give names to all my main characters. Visiting NYC last month for a quick second, I nabbed my old copy of The X-Men Companion vol. 2 from pop’s closet for inspiration, a collection of interviews with writers and artists of The X-Men circa the 1980s (Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Terry Austin). Recap: my comic is entitled The Masters and involves twentysomething spiritual Masters raising consciousness. The artist on The Masters (cash willing) will be Mshindo Kuumba I., whose artwork is above; all rights reserved.

So. We got:

• Christian Max. The Masters centers largely around him. Christian’s a 25-ish spiritual guru who travels the world giving forums, appearing on Oprah like an Eckhart Tolle. On his world tour, he slowly encounters others who have achieved spiritual mastery (and superpowers in the process).
  
• Sun Weaver. Born to a black dad and a Korean mom, Sun fronts a rock band called Fingerpop. She’s got really big hair. According to her lyrics, it’s like she’s the next messiah, but of course (wink) it’s only rock n’ roll.
  
• Basma Khélifaoui. She’s a French-Algerian who Christian meets in Paris, leader of the French faction of Humanity’s Team, the real-life spiritual activists organization.
  
• Punch Isigny. A whiteboy more knowledgeable about hiphop you’re not likely to find, though he also dipped his toes into the pool of Eastern mysticism and fell the fuck in.

Been a month since I updated about the progress on my comic book project, set for 2009. Well it’s got a tentative title now – The Masters – and in a major development, I’ve pretty much nailed down an artist: Mshindo Kuumba I.! His artwork graces this post at right; all rights reserved by Mshindo and all that.

Mshindo is holding it down in North Carolina right now, but he used to rest his head in Brooklyn once upon a time. I got turned onto his art through the cover artwork of local independent artists like Supa Nova Slom and my close homeboy Mrk Drkfthr, and I tracked Mshindo down through MySpace. Where else? His only reservation in being the George Pérez to my Marv Wolfman (Teen Titans reference for the geeks out there) on The Masters is that he be paid; hardly a reservation, but he’s been jerked before working pro bono. No problems there. If I get paid, he gets paid, and I’m gettin paid or I ain’t doin it.

No more progress made on the plot of this thing, but I’ll put in more work once my book proposal is done this month, and it looks to be winding up. So far, The Masters is about a group of superpowered, twentysomething spiritual Masters raising consciousness. The bad guys are the Landmark Forum. (Just kiddin.)