One of the things that resonated the most listening to Warren Ellis speak in Chicago is how he consciously avoids meeting other people that he admires professionally because he’s known so many people that have been burned by meeting their idols and have been disappointed, so much so that the person’s art doesn’t hold anything for them anymore. That seems so horribly depressing.

I would imagine it would be like Zak Snyder, who’s adapting “Watchmen” and by all accounts bending over backwards to make sure that it’s true to the comic, hearing that Alan Moore called “300″ “stupid” and “racist.” Ouch.

What makes me think of this is mc chris, and how he hasn’t liked a single movie that I’ve liked this summer. Iron Man, Hulk, Dark Knight and now Tropic Thunder. I know that has nothing to do with me, but all summer I’ve read his reviews and just gone “Really? Really?”

Because Tropic Thunder is great. It’s hilariously deranged, and filled with things that I didn’t even think were possible or wouldn’t understand if someone tried to explain them to me. At one point, I leaned over to Kenzie and said “This is making me feel crazy.” In a good way.

So yeah, it’s in no way really the same thing, but I think this way and my “Hey I could meet him and we’d hang out and be best friends running through a field together in slow motion” fantasies dim a bit.

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I finally feel like I’m in a good place with writing again. Probably not doing it as much as I should, but still, it’s coming along. Almost done with the last issue of “Gifted.” Lee is back to drawing, and going to go back over the first ten pages and re-do some stuff he wasn’t so happy with now that we’re not under deadline. He’s also going to be redoing the inking, which he wasn’t that happy with either. The whole thing has been a big learning process from start to finish.

I’ve gotten some good comments, not so much in the way of specific feedback or criticism, which is nice I suppose, but that kind of thing sort of makes me nervous, like there’s something wrong with it that you just can’t put your finger on. Or that I’m crazy and I don’t know how to take nice comments about my work.

I’m still a little insecure about the end, but it’s putting itself together, which is kind of nice. The story is just sort of walking over there and I’m like “Oh, it’s over here. Okay, yeah, I can see that.”

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I may or may not go to Vegas for a trade show in the days before my birthday (sept 6 through the 9th). It’s all kinds of up in the air, which is really frustrating, but I should know one way or the other at the end of the week.

You’d think going to Vegas would be a time of celebration, not nervous hand-wringing, and yet…