The Megatext

Here we go.

You've got Mini-comics. A mini-comic can be a little one joke gag, or an intimate piece of self expression/autobio, or they can even be a massive, epic work of art, or all points in between. Same with webcomics. Some are little jokes, and some are sweeping epics, and most are somewhere between. And you have the slowly dying comic strip, telling their jokes or their little stories, day by day and week by week. Then there's comics. The comic book. You can have a one shot. A one time story that could be anything, big or small. My buddy Clint is the King of the One Shot, cranking out these strange, funny, surreal ideas, and then moving on to the next one. You can do a mini-series, a finite thing, three or six issues long. Tell a longer story. Something self contained. A lot comics best stories were mini-series. "Watchmen", "The Dark Knight Returns", "Maus", blahblahblah. Then there's the finite series. Even longer. Potentially more room to explore more facets of the story. Still largely self contained. Still its own animal. Again, some of comics most significant works fall into this category. "Sandman", "Cerebus", "Bone", ect. Then there's the Infinite Series. The series that just goes on and on and on until someone decides to call it quits. There's nothing wrong with the Infinite Series (despite the bad rep they've gotten lately), hell, it's been the modus operandi for comics for years. Lots of cool stuff have come out of these huge, lengthy, unwiedly behemoths. Think about it for a second. The same "Thor" comic that had all of those beautiful Kirby stories is the same "Thor" comic that had Walt Simonson's epic run. I followed the 3rd "Silver Surfer" series for over 100 issues, and some of those comics are still among the best comics I've ever read, ever (although to be fair, the incomparable Ron Lim provided the artwork for the better majority of that run...). Then there's the Universe. A bunch of Infinite Comics that all take place within generally the same place and generally the same time featuring characters that may or may not interact with each other if the opportunity arrises. Universes have gotten a bad rap lately, but they're cool things. I like the idea that Daredevil can run into the Silver Surfer. That's a goofy thought. One of the cool (or not so cool, depending on your perspective) things about a Universe is that it can give rise to the Cross Over. A Cross Over is an interaction between different Characters from different Comics. Sometimes they can be simple, short, fun little things, like "The Cosmic Norseman vs. New Super Duper Fun Comix". Or they can be big, epic, multi-month affairs that span an entire Universe, affect multiple characters and books, and have some sort of lasting impact on the overall Universe. Stuff like "The Infinity Gauntlet" or "Final Crisis" or "Unity" or whatever. There's a billion of em nowadays. Despite how much Impact a cross over has, a cross over is something that comes and goes. The comics that were involved move on with their lives. Hell, "Civil War" ruined Marvel Comics for me, but I'm pretty sure almost everything from that big, stupid Crossover has been written out. No one remembers that Peter Parker's Spiderman, Iron Man's not a Super villain anymore, Captain America's not dead. Hell, do they even still have that stupid Superhuman Registration Act nonsense anymore? Probably not. I suppose that's ultimately the problem with Crossovers. Not matter how much they try to matter, they're eventually lost in the sands of time.

And then there's the Megatext.

The Megatext is a bit of a rarity. Megatext isn't really a term anyone uses. It's one that I kinda came up with recently. A Megatext is weird, cause it's smaller than a Universe (oftentimes taking place within the greater context of a Universe), but bigger than a Crossover. A Megatext is Finite, but it's so big it can seem Infinite. I guess I should try to explain this a little better.

A Megatext is a singular story, told by a single Writer (or Writer/Artist or Writer, Artist Team) using multiple individual Comic Books to tell the story.

Got that? Well, let's throw some examples out there.

The first Megatext I've come across was created by the King, of course. Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" in my opinion is the first Megatext (or at the very least, the first one I'm aware of). "The Fourth World" is the story of the Cosmic War between New Genesis and Apokalyps told from four different perspectives, "Jimmy Olsen" (yeah, I know), "The New Gods", "The Forever People", and "Mister Miracle". "The Fourth World" was never completed, but it was intended to be a Finite thing. One giant Mega-story that ran through multiple books that would eventually come to a conclusion. And it was so damn cool when it got running. Wish Kirby coulda finished it.

The more I think about it, the more Megatexts I've started to come across. Paul Pope's "THB" is a Megatext. There was the regular THB series (still not completed...damnit), as well as a number of ancillary THB comics that supplemented the greater THB story, such as "Escapo", "THB: Parade", and a variety of other big and little comics. One story, one creator, multiple books, multiple points of view. Megatext.

Mike Allred's "Madman" saga is a Megatext. Frank Einstein debuted in one of Allred's pre-Madman anthologies. Then he became Madman in "Madman", and we've seen close to a dozen different Madman comics since then from "Madman Adventures" to the Madman crossover with Superman to Madman becoming a regular character in the Madman spin-off, "The Atomics" to the recent "Madman Atomic Comics". Again, lots of comics, one story, one creator.

What got me started on this thought process, of course, was Grant Morrison. Pope and Allred, I don't think were consciously trying to create a Megatext. In the case of Allred, Allred moved between a bunch of different publishers (uh... lessee, Tundra, Dark Horse, Oni, and Image off the top of my head. Didn't he self publish for a little while?). I think Pope was just kinda like me, stabbing around in the dark, experimenting with different stuff. But Morrison. Morrison has been experimenting with the actual concept of the Megatext for awhile now. I think it started with "New X-Men". "New X-Men" wasn't a Megatext, but it was the first real stab at one. "New X-Men" was a Finite series within the greater context of a long running Infinite Series Franchise, namely the X-Men. Morrison's run was a singular thing, referring to the past X-Men works without being controlled by them. It's one big story, but it's a story told from many, many different angles. Throw in the veritable army of artists that worked on the book during Morrison's run, and you begin to get a very Megatext vibe. Morrison's first real Megatext was "Seven Soldiers". The story behind "Seven Soldiers" was the war between the Sheeda and Human History. But it was a story told across a string of books, each one with a different perspective, and artist, and protagonist. And again, it took place within the greater context of the DC Universe, featuring a bunch of pre-existing or re-imagined characters, but it was its own self contained story. Morrison has done the same with his Batman run, which has run across the regular long running "Batman" book, bounced into "Final Crisis", dovetailed into both "Batman and Robin" while simultaneously running through "Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne" and now morphing into the (extremely exciting) "Batman Inc."

So, why am I wasting your time with this excessive dissertation on Comics and blathering about some vague concept that I made up about a couple of months ago? There's a point. Bear with me.

When I started, I was making a Universe. That was the point. I was not making a Universe cause I wanted a Brand, or cause I wanted to score a licensing deal with some Underwear company (although I would wear Cactus Joe Underoos in a heartbeat...), or cause I wanted to "Beat" Marvel and DC. I created a Universe cause it was fun. It was cool. I loved Marvel (back then), I dug DC. I wanted to do my own version of that. Why not? At least I had my own spin on it. It started as a mesh of Super Hero comics with Slasher film Monsters, then I took that and combined it with Hannah-Barbera and William S. Burroughs to get this cooky, surreal, actiony, funny, odd, horror thing. But I got caught up in Universe building, over and over again. I gotta do this comic, cause I need to create these characters to present this end of the Universe. I gotta do that comic to present this little corner of the Universe. I need a Superman. I need a Batman. I need a Spiderman. It's not weird enough. It's not actiony enough. Actiony is not a word, by the by. I was just throwing out ideas with no substance, no direction. I was throwing crap at walls to see what would stick. And no matter how many times I would create something new, it was often hollow. Where was it going? I didn't even publish a lot of the stuff I did. "Sickness Valentine" sits in a pile in the corner of my studio. "Cogs in the Machine" never got finished. I've got the reductions for an entire book ready to go, but it'll never see print cause it didn't work. I hate to say this about it, but "SDF: Pulp" didn't work. It was a noble effort, it was a cool experiment, and there was some cool stuff in it (Issue 2 is an absolute must-have in my opinion), but it didn't work. The Cactus Joe story was going nowhere (slowly) and Bad Jack didn't work. Bad Jack was gonna be my Donald Duck or my Batman. And I tried really hard to make him work. But he didn't work. Like so many of my experiments and attempts, it just didn't work.

So what did work?

The Clown and Penguin stories, in general, always worked (and yes, I'm aware that I just said that the stories in "SDF: Pulp" didn't work. That was an issue of simplicity and a lack of space to tell the story properly. It wasn't the characters' fault.). And the reason why they've always worked is because I'm invested in these characters. The Clown is essentially me, and Pengy...somehow Pengy makes everything work. Don't ask me how he makes it all work, he just does. I know the general direction the story is going, and I've got new ideas for Clown stories. Always. And we've seen so much evolution with the character over the years. In "Pulp Horrorshow" the Clown was a solo act, a grim and gritty, bad ass, tough guy out for revenge against the Ortex Coporation. In "The Watchdogs" and some of the issues of "Truth or Consequences Monthly" we started to see Cactus Joe as a more traditional Superhero. In the rest of "TORCM" we saw the Clown as a Man-on-the-Run, desperately trying to escape from Ortex and even Angels from Heaven. Along comes "Super Duper Fun Comix", and suddenly, the Clown's got friends, and he's kind of a normal guy (well, again, considering he's essentially me, the term "normal" is a bit of a stretch), even though he's still fighting Monsters and Demons and stuff. That was where Pengy came into the picture, and like everything involving Pengy, it was an accident. But it was an accident that worked better than I ever imagined. From there we moved to "SDF", and what I like to call the Violent Sitcom period, where the Clown and Penguin try to live a simple life in a quiet town only to get attacked by Demons and Robots and Mutants every time they turned around. It was cool. It worked. But it was also a little bit of a rut. Kinda like a sitcom. I did some stuff to break up the monotony like "SDF: the Great Race" and a couple of issues of "New Super Duper Fun Comix" and the Cosmic Norseman cross over. Then along came "The Hot Fudge Sundae Adventure Club", and it was like, Whoa Baby! Now we've got something. A nice ensemble cast. Exciting locales. Strange Adventures. HFSAC works. Big time. I'm 11 Issues (well, Issue 11 is at the Printers...) deep, and I'm still going strong. I can probably go to Issue 30 with the ideas I've got right now. And I'm always getting new ideas. But me being me, I couldn't just do HFSAC. Oh no. Gotta keep building that Universe. Gotta keep trying new books and new characters. Gotta keep slamming my head against that damn wall.

Until I had a realization at the end of 2010. I'm not building a Universe. I'm building a Megatext.

Click.

After that, it all started to make sense. My story is not the story of the TORCverse. The TORCverse is the setting. The TORCverse is the context. But the story I'm telling is actually the story of Cactus Joe the Clown and Pengy Penguin. Or as I call it, "The Ballad of Clown and Penguin". And it's a cool story. A big story. A story with many, many different facets. All the old stories are a part of it (I need to collect those in trade sometime), and "The Hot Fudge Sundae Adventure Club" is part of it, and "SDF: Pulp" (flawed as it was) is part of it, and "MONSTER KING" is part of it. The book I've got at the Printers right now is part of it. It's a story about two guys going toe-to-toe with the entire Universe. It's my story. It's their story. It's TORC Press.

And you don't gotta read the whole thing. That's the cool thing about a Megatext. You didn't have to read "The Forever People" to enjoy the "New Gods". You don't have to read "Escapo" to enjoy "THB". You didn't need to read all of the "Seven Soldiers" books to enjoy any of the individual issues. You didn't have to read "SDF: Pulp" or my new Mystery Book to enjoy "The Hot Fudge Sundae Adventure Club".

BUT, the other neat thing about a Megatext is that if you do read the whole thing, you get this big, beautiful tapestry of a story. And that's something only Comix can do. And I love it when Comix can do something nothing else can do.

Viva la TORC Press.