El Gorgo!

El Gorgo! is a comic inspired by the wonderful comics produced during the Silver Age. The story is about a super-intelligent gorilla luchador that also plays in the world’s greatest surf rock band “Gorgo-A-Go-Go” when he’s not battling the forces of evil and going on sweeping cosmic adventures.

This is a comic created by friends of mine named Mike McGee and Tamas (Tom) Jakab. They’ve created a magnificent character that is a true homage to the types of comics Jack “King” Kirby developed throughout his amazing career. Mike and Tom are a real inspiration to me because they’re doing this book for the sheer, simple love of it. They’re providing it for free on their website along with making it available in printed form. And the best part of all is that they’re finding an audience.

Mike and Tom both imagined there would be minimal interest in the book. Not because it deserved minimal interest (because it doesn’t… it’s amazing), but just because comics is a tough business, and printing a full-color comic book is so expensive that the price of purchasing El Gorgo! (for potential readers) seemed to indicate they’d have a hard time unloading the copies they did print. But that has NOT been the case. They’re nearly sold out of their first issue, and it’s happened at such a rapid pace that they’re strongly considering a re-print. It’s hard to convey how impressive something like that is, but Mike and Tom have been going about El Gorgo! in the perfect way. They’ve provided it for free on a very entertaining, user-friendly website to build a strong buzz for the comic, and now that it is available to order they’re reaping the benefits. I really couldn’t be happier for these guys.

You can find out more about El Gorgo! (and read the first issue of the comic for free!!!) here: El Gorgo!

Please take a look and lend your support to this fantastic creation.

From the website:

El Gorgo is the world’s greatest Luchador. He is a gorilla. He also is the world’s greatest surf-guitarist. And he writes historical fiction. And he’s a scientist. And he fights crime. And he goes on adventures. Sometimes he sleeps for a few seconds.

Living in a Dream World

I haven’t written anything on here for a while. I blame Fantasy Football. And that isn’t a joke. I am an unabashed fanatic when it comes to American football. There’s one particular team I root for, but I’m supremely interested in the goings-on of each and every franchise. I’m always visiting Yahoo! Sports, SI.com or ESPN.com to gain bits of information about players, teams and coaches. I visit blogs, much like this one, dedicated to football. It’s actually quite ridiculous when you think about it.

But I love it just the same. I can’t get enough of football. I love everything about the sport–except perhaps the amount of money the men playing it receive. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with an athlete earning millions of dollars to play the sport I love and they excel at. I only have a problem with them making tens of millions of dollars.

But I digress, a huge part of my football jones is playing fantasy football every year. I think of myself as a fairly knowledgeable person when it comes to sports of any kind, but Fantasy Football has brought my knowledge of football to skyscraper-level heights. I know more about the third string wide receivers of a team I have no rooting interest in whatsoever than I know about my family tree. And that’s no exaggeration! I’m not one of those types of people that starts dozens of fantasy football teams every year, but when I do get my two teams started (two is the ABSOLUTE limit after a six team fiasco years ago) I dedicate massive amounts of time to scouring the internet for news about the players I have, the players my opponents have, and even the players that NEITHER of us have because if some obscure player breaks out and has a nice season (statistically speaking) you want to be the guy that picked him up and used him to claim victory.

During football season I probably dedicate nearly as much time to fantasy football as I do to the craft of writing. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s undoubtedly true. I also dedicate copious amounts of time to watching football and sports news programs on television. It all adds up to create my least productive time of the year writing-wise.

The problem is that this year–as I’ve mentioned–is going to be my most productive year yet as far as getting my work out there for people to see. I have writing assignments lined up at this moment, and I’ve found myself putting them off from time to time as I minimize the Word document so I can spend a few more minutes tweaking my fantasy football rosters. This is a serious problem.

However, I think the first step in solving any problem is realizing it’s there. At times in the past I’d put everything I was doing with my writing on the backburner whenever an interesting or enjoyable distraction crossed my path and thought nothing of it. Fantasy football is something I really enjoy participating in, but I know that to be a successful writer I need to take a step out of the fantasy world and move back into reality.

As hard as that might be…

Working hard or hardly working?

In the past I’d usually answer with the second option. Even though I’m pretty much a nobody when it comes to the world of comic books (or fiction writing in general) I’d still find excuses not to write on a daily basis. I think I’ve always realized that the only way to make yourself a successful writer is to, y’know… write stuff. Even if it isn’t anything particularly great, at least you’re practicing your craft. And if you have the opportunity to showcase that work, even if it’s rejected, you’re still getting (hopefully) valuable feedback that you can use to improve.

But as I said, I’d still find excuses to put it off.

But that is not the case now. I am now officially in the “working hard” camp. It’s not that I’m doing anything all that groundbreaking either. I’m just actively pursuing my goals now. I think in the not-so-recent past I was always looking for something to distract me from what I wanted. But I’ve recently discovered that that’s no way to live your life. If I want something I have to go for it and I have to be relentless in my pursuit.

I’ve made some small progress towards my goal of writing comics over the years. I’ve been published, I’ve established relationships with proven creators, I’ve worked hand-in-hand with upcoming talent with goals similar to mine. I haven’t broken through the glass ceiling yet, but I’m chipping away at it. I think I was content for a long time with rapping gently on the glass with my knuckles in the hopes that somebody would be a pal and offer to let me in. But now I know I have to throw myself at the ceiling as hard as I can. I have to sacrifice my body to break the glass. It hurts throwing everything you have into something that has no guarantee of working out the way you’d like it to. It hurts like hell. I’ve experienced my fair share of disappointments while I struggle to make my mark on the comics industry.

But this year will be a banner year for me. I’m slated to be published three times this year. I’m sure some of you (if anybody reads this) are thinking that’s not very impressive. And you could very well be right about that, but the simple fact is that I’ve never been published more than once in any calendar year. So it is a big deal to me, and I think that’s the whole point. I’m making progress a little bit at a time and I’m starting to see the results. My goal is to progress a little more each year until I’m finally able to do what I’ve always wanted. I want to write for a living, and I’m going to work as hard as I can to accomplish that goal.