Waves in the Comics Industry

I have a tradition of writing something about Valentine's Day every year on Valentine's Day. A couple years ago it was a drunken tirade about it on secretmonkey.net. Last year, it was probably much the same, except I deleted that old blog because it was filled with drunken tirades.

This year, I'm not going to do that, because I don't seem to care either way (Although I didn't wear my traditional black, if that means anything.) I think I just put that up there to continue the tradition. I'm actually writing about recent events and what I hope will become a new gig for me. So, here I go:

--In San Diego back in July, John introduced me to an editor for Viz Media, a company that puts out a lot of Manga books. John thought that my writing experience might help me get in as an English Adapter, basically someone who refines the Japanese translations so tehy are more suited for an American audience. I e-mailed him some writing samples back during the summer, and he said they may have something around the first of the year.

-- Last week, because I was so poor and in need of some sort of income, and because it was teh first of the year, I e-mailed him again just to stay on the radar. However, when I read his old e-mail from the summer, I saw that when he said the first of the year, he meant meant '09. Undaunted, I e-mailed him anyway. He seemed to remember me, and said he would "put me in the system," as it were. So, he said I should do a test to see if I was up to the challenge, asking me to adapt Dragon Ball Chapter 1 for 7-10 year-olds, and he sent me a pdf copy. I was excited, until I read the book. It was pretty out there. This little monkey guy was running around naked, kicking a fish, this girl was showing her ass to him and peeing in the woods. How the Hell am I supposed to make that suitable for 7-10 year-olds? And what do 7-10 year-olds read?

-- I stoppped by New England Comics to see if I could find a copy of the book to go by, but they were sold out. Michelle, who works there and I see almost every week, offered to call the Brookline store to see if they had any, and then got the idea to ask the guy working at that store, Ben (who is Asian, so it was a bit of a stereo-type) if he could help a brutha out.

-- I journeyed to see Ben, who echoed my sentiments when he saw the comic (Whoa! There's the dude's junk!" I believe were his words). I was almost thinking that I was being set up to fail. he suggetsed completely divorcing myself from the story (which was ridiculous) and concentrating on the dialogue. Also, John sent me a copy of a script from his lettering days, so I could at least get the format down. So, I was slightly better off.

-- All last weekend, I worked at this thing, and Sunday night, I sent John a copy to see if I had it down. He had some suggestions, but we couldn't talk about them until Wednesday (and here I was trying to get it out fast to show them I was a good worker). When we finally talked, I only had a limited amount of time, but he said I should change more. So, I went back at it. I'm glad I waited because his advice was sound. And finally, even though I didn't get John's final thumb's up, I sent it off to Viz on Wednesday night.

--Minutes ago, I heard back from Viz. Three e-mails, one acknowledging they received it, one asking for a resume and list of people I've worked with(!) and another saying my adaptation was good, but they're doing a lot of adapted fiction now, and it would be a good idea to take a stab at adapting it in PROSE(!!). So, I guess I have to write some prose about this little naked dude kicking a giant fish.

So, that's where I stand. This better lead to a lot of work for all teh crap I'm going through. If it doesn't lead anywhere, I'm deleting this post and no one will ever know I did any of this. No one!!!