i'm the self-inflicted
mind detonator
i'm the one inflicted
twisted and animated
im a twisted
you're a twisted
im a twisted
firestarter
- Jimmy Eat World, "Firestarter"
(apologies to Prodigy)

"Now Leaving Smallville"
Don't worry. My Smallville fever's finally broken.

It's not that I don't still love the show, it's just that I feel a lot more calm about it now than I did, say, 36 hours ago when I started registering for Smallville message boards under the name Duk-El of Krypton. All things considered, I'm glad to be back to normal, relatively speaking.

It's all a little hazy now, but I did some things as Duk-El I'm not particularly proud of...

My assertion that where you fall as far as the Clark & Lana vs. Clark & Lois debate may very well lay at the heart of the meaning of life is certainly one example -- especially since that's such a Chuck Austen approach to life, and I so want to be Kellian in my day-to-day dealings.

To say nothing of the fact that Duk-El was seriously looking into creating a music video for Wilco's version of Woody Guthries' "Airline to Heaven" utilizing clips of Clark flying from the show. He really thought this would work, because if you start playing the song at the exact moment in "Crusade" when the ringing in Clark's ears stops, he takes off into the sky at the same moment Jeff Tweedy starts off singing "There's an airline plane that flies to heaven everyday." Contrarily, if you start the song when Lex's pilots first notice Clark on the radar screen, that syncs pretty perfectly, too, because just as Lex is reaching for the Kryptonian artifact that's floating away from him, Tweedy sings "take your ticket in your hand before it is too late."

It should be noted that Duk-El also thought it might be cool to make a video of "My Flying Saucer" (also on Mermaid Avenue Vol. 2) using various clips of the spacecraft that bore the Last Son of Krypton to earth, but he wasn't nearly as enthused about this idea as the other.

Worst of all, however, I think Duk-El was on the verge of writing fan fiction, and a greater indignation I can hardly imagine. That said, the whole horrible ordeal did leave me with an idea for a Smallville spec script -- which I would only write for sample purposes, mind you. I won't go into specifics, but let's just say it includes the Smallvillification of one of DC's other strange visitors from another planet and it's entitled "Manhunt".

I want to thank everybody who stuck by me and suffered through my intense obsession, most notably Brent Jones, Part II, to whom Duk-El sent frequent, half-coherent Instant Messages that ranged from emphatically typed Remy Zero lyrics to constant claims that the ways of earth were strange, including an odd episode where he pretended my high school class ring was having an adverse effect on his psyche while desperately trying to persuade Jones to ditch school and "take a walk on the wild side".

This doesn't happen to normal people. I just know it...

"Home is Where the Ducks Are"
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I miss my comics. And as much as I miss my comics, I also miss my comics.

I'm talking about the Little Black Duck here, which I had to leave behind for the same Pontiac Vibe space concerns that left my entire run of Black Panther in the same Kansas City basement that I lived out my senior year of high school. I've been thinking about my crudely illustrated and self-indulgent graphic novels for three reasons:

1) I'm watching The O.C. right now (blame Jeffries) and Seth's just decided to write a comic book about his high school exploits.

2) When I told my mom about my possible internship, she asked if I was going to show anybody at Marvel my stick figures and I told her that I had to leave those behind, and now I'm wondering if she's fished 'em out of a box and is reading them right now. I don't want her reading that scene where the Little Black Duck tries to suffocate Baby Bloomsday with a pillow and think that it's based on my rare Chelsey-sitting gigs. Actually, now that I think about it, that particular volume's probably propping Tuffy Tuttle's kennel door open right now, but the points still valid -- I don't want my mom to know how warped I am! And why do people always suggest I show the Little Black Duck to seasoned comic professionals? I love LBD, but it just ain't up to publishable standards, folks!

3) My book club's been reading Greg Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, and I just made the green-skinned witch connection.

The Little Black Duck always existed in a tapestry of patch-work mythology where I could mix established characters like Batman or Harry Potter with my motley crew of original (read "hackneyed") characters. The Duck grew up in Narnia, but went to college in Wonderland, making brief trips to Never-Neverland and, of course, Oz. Now the character of Tin was supposed to be based not only on my roommate Justin, but also on the Tin Woodsman of Oz (though I later decided it was short for Tin Soldier and made his origin almost identical to that of Johnny Five from Short Circuit) and that was the only Ozian flourish I really thought about, with the exception of the twister that takes the Little Black Duck to Oz and the ruby goulashes he uses to leave. It just occurred to me that the character of Erin Turtle could be seen as a cognate for the Wicked Witch of the West, which was never my intention, but as I look back on it, seems to work out pretty cool.

I mean, the choice to make her green was based on the fact that the only difference between one of my uni-ball penned stick chicks and another tends to be her color, and green seemed like an appropriate color for a girl surnamed Turtle (Lark Voorhies not withstanding). And the only reason I made her a witch was because Tuttle had a Harry Potter fixation, but then again, what girl in that dorm didn't in the woebegotten spring of 2001?

(Oh my god, Seth's giving Summer all of his original sketches of her character... I think I'm gonna cry or have a conniption.)

All this to say that I'd always thought that I "created" a green witch all on my own, and the fact that one existed not only in the context of popular culture, but in the very pages of one of the texts from which I was borrowing points to (a) my sheer obliviousness, (b) the existence of the collective unconscious, or (c) my sublimation of L. Frank Baum's principal antagonist, which I guess is really just a mix of (a) and (b).

And as I continue through the pages of Wicked, I think I'm going to feel a real urge to explore the life and times of the wicked witch of my west. But it's an urge I'm just going to have to suppress, because those days are behind me now and I don't have any pens...

"Intern About is Fair Play"
I've mentioned this to a couple of people already, but I just thought I'd float this out there for everybody:

My dream of being an intern at the House of Ideas is dead.

It seems you absolutely positively have to get school credit during an internship at Marvel Comics, confirming once and for all that not only is my English degree failing to help me score a j-o-b, it's actually standing in the way of getting non-paying gigs that may or may not lead to my absolute dream job.

Don't worry. I'm over it.

I'm over it, and I'm back up and running. The Monarch has his hands in many sinister soups. I've just taken step three in a 37-point plan to publish a Spider-Man story, and apparantly I'm about to regale the inter-web with tales of my listless wandering on the fringes of the funny book trade in a forum where such commentary (read "bitching and moaning") might be appreciated.

I may be on the cusp of success, or I may just be in my grandmother's guest room. I got to tell you, it sure feels a lot like my grandmother's guest room.

Duk-El can fly. Lenar Clark's still earthbound...