I woke up to a strange world this morning. Strange to me at least. I guess I should back up a little bit. Several years ago, I had an idea. In and of itself, there is nothing special or unusual about this. This is what people who want to use AI to write or make art will never understand. I got an idea. The ideas are the easy part. And the period in which this idea came to me was, frankly, the most fallow period of my life in terms of productivity. Even in that barren era, the ideas were there.
I liked a lot of the ideas. It was the doing something at which I was failing. Then an idea came to me for a new story in my Siegel City series. This one would not feature Copycat or any of the previous heroes as main characters although Copycat would grow to more prominence in the story than I originally intended, it is still not HIS story but a whole new generation of young heroesβ¦plus one young woman who was desperately trying NOT to be a hero.
The trouble with this particular idea was thatβ¦wellβ¦the Siegel City yarns were all novels and short stories, but this was neither. This was a longer tale, something that would be comprised of multiple mini story arcs that would build together into a larger tapestry before finally colliding in a grand finale. It was less like a novel and more like seasons of a television series or a longform comic book.
I would have loved to turn it into a comic book, honestly. I even wrote most of the first issue for such an enterprise. But then it died off, as I am largely a one-man operation. It is possible, if not profitable, to write and publish novels and short stories on your own. But it is far more difficult to do so with comic books. In spring of , though, the evil empire called Amazon actually kind of saved me. Thatβ¦actually sounded pretty good. I would have the ability to do a longform story without having to pace it like a novel.
I could do my arcs. I could take breaks in between, if necessary. And the chapters, as a constraint of the platform, could be no longer than words.
