Post by Susan Hillwig on Dec 13, 2022 16:24:22 GMT -5
It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
We here at DC2 started off Omega Crisis with grand plans. At the very least, it was to be a huge celebration of our (at the time) 10th anniversary as a multi-creator fanfic universe. But as with many things, life got in the way. One of our first stumbling-blocks was the unexpected death of DC2 co-founder and artist extraordinaire Brandon Herren. He was the driving force behind the visual look of Omega Crisis, and we honored his memory with every issue, soldiering on as best we could. Trouble was, the gaps between issues became longer, and some of the spinoffs we wanted to do were never completed. Then came COVID, which sapped the wills of just about everyone across the globe.
It was in July of 2020 that I saw House Of Mystery (AKA House of Mystery) posted a tale titled “Finale”, so I contacted him and asked if that meant the site was finished. “If others want to contribute they can,” he answered, “but that’s me done and I don’t see myself going back.”
I totally understood. My own work on Weird Western Quarterly and Jonah Hex: Shades of Gray had slowed to a trickle in the past 5 years, due to both personal crises and my own growing career as a published author. I couldn’t begrudge the guy for bowing out, but I was disappointed because, years earlier, I’d written about 13 pages of material specifically for the main Omega Crisis title (basically all the Jonah Hex bits), and it was finally slated to be used in issue #7. Since nearly half of that issue was my own work already and I knew how the series overall was supposed to wrap up (sorry, kids, no spoilers yet!), I decided to take on the lead writing role for the main series, working on it between my other projects. After looking at everything Charlie had done so far and consulting with Don Walsh on a few ideas, I began plotting out what I felt was the best way to get to the wrap-up we’d all planned way back in 2015.
Charlie’s original version of #7 clocked in at 35 pages and was split into two parts: the “now” where he added in even more twists and turns to an already-massive story (some of those scenes weren’t even fully written yet, they were just suggestions of what could happen in them), and the “then” where he integrated all the Hex material I’d written years earlier. Trouble was, I couldn’t see a clear path to the wrap-up within the version of #7 Charlie plotted out. There was also the fact that Charlie had envisioned Omega Crisis being ten issues long, meaning I’d either have to figure out how to extend the story -- which was now all on me -- for another three issues, or condense it down to its most important parts and clear the board of everything else so I could get this done in the fewest amount of issues possible. For the sake of my sanity, I went with the latter option.
Mind you, I didn’t omit all of Charlie’s work, I just changed the structure. The idea of constantly switching back and forth between “now” and “then” was changed to a countdown, allowing me to retroactively add scenes to what readers already knew from previous issues, all the while not letting on to what exactly we were counting down to until we neared the end. I then looked at the scenes Charlie had fully written and figured out what would work in the new structure and what wouldn’t. The guy is a great writer, no doubt, and there’s a couple of wonderful speeches that I sadly had to leave on the cutting room floor because I couldn’t find a place for them (a textbook definition of “kill your darlings”). The bit on Mars is 100% Charlie, minus some light edits, and big chunks of his writing are still present in many of the Watchtower scenes, the New Krypton scene, and the touching dialogue between Bruce and Silver (which, I’ll be honest, makes me tear up every time I read it). My consult with Don led to the addition of Manitou Dawn and Kid Eternity to the cast, linking them to a throwaway line a few issues earlier about the Phantom Stranger battling at the Gates of Hell (and I just had to include Detective Chimp, because how can you not love a cigar-smoking, mystery-solving simian?), while my husband suggested bringing in the Spectre to deal with what was happening in Heaven. As for Cosmic Boy...well, that’s the resolution to a 15-year-old paradox created by Scott Kruger during his run on Legion of Super-Heroes, which ended not long after he “killed” Cos in LSH#6 (which you should go read if you haven’t already). There’d been a brief discussion of it during the early planning stages of Omega Crisis, but I think it got lost in the shuffle, so I took it upon myself to finally bring Cos into the story. I’m hoping you enjoyed this out-of-left-field addition!
All in all, this clocked in at a hefty 80 pages, but considering I’d make folks read at least 30 pages during an average issue of WWQ, I reckoned they might stick with me through all of this so long as I kept their attention. I certainly hope that I did, at least. If I didn’t, then please note that I’ll try to bring in the eighth and final issue at a slightly-smaller page count, though I’m not certain as to when that particular issue will hit the site: at the moment, I’m in the midst of not only writing a sequel to my first original novel, I’m also working on a book version of my long-running Jonah Hex history project. To be honest, I actually held back on posting this issue to the site because I wanted it to coincide with the release of the latter, but since that's been delayed, let's instead use this as an opportunity to celebrate the release of Charlie's first novel, Cities on Fire, which was published just a few weeks ago. We're all busy little bees 'round here, we're just not busy on fics.
As I said before, it wasn’t supposed to end like this.
But the end is coming, I promise you.
~ Susan Hillwig
We here at DC2 started off Omega Crisis with grand plans. At the very least, it was to be a huge celebration of our (at the time) 10th anniversary as a multi-creator fanfic universe. But as with many things, life got in the way. One of our first stumbling-blocks was the unexpected death of DC2 co-founder and artist extraordinaire Brandon Herren. He was the driving force behind the visual look of Omega Crisis, and we honored his memory with every issue, soldiering on as best we could. Trouble was, the gaps between issues became longer, and some of the spinoffs we wanted to do were never completed. Then came COVID, which sapped the wills of just about everyone across the globe.
It was in July of 2020 that I saw House Of Mystery (AKA House of Mystery) posted a tale titled “Finale”, so I contacted him and asked if that meant the site was finished. “If others want to contribute they can,” he answered, “but that’s me done and I don’t see myself going back.”
I totally understood. My own work on Weird Western Quarterly and Jonah Hex: Shades of Gray had slowed to a trickle in the past 5 years, due to both personal crises and my own growing career as a published author. I couldn’t begrudge the guy for bowing out, but I was disappointed because, years earlier, I’d written about 13 pages of material specifically for the main Omega Crisis title (basically all the Jonah Hex bits), and it was finally slated to be used in issue #7. Since nearly half of that issue was my own work already and I knew how the series overall was supposed to wrap up (sorry, kids, no spoilers yet!), I decided to take on the lead writing role for the main series, working on it between my other projects. After looking at everything Charlie had done so far and consulting with Don Walsh on a few ideas, I began plotting out what I felt was the best way to get to the wrap-up we’d all planned way back in 2015.
Charlie’s original version of #7 clocked in at 35 pages and was split into two parts: the “now” where he added in even more twists and turns to an already-massive story (some of those scenes weren’t even fully written yet, they were just suggestions of what could happen in them), and the “then” where he integrated all the Hex material I’d written years earlier. Trouble was, I couldn’t see a clear path to the wrap-up within the version of #7 Charlie plotted out. There was also the fact that Charlie had envisioned Omega Crisis being ten issues long, meaning I’d either have to figure out how to extend the story -- which was now all on me -- for another three issues, or condense it down to its most important parts and clear the board of everything else so I could get this done in the fewest amount of issues possible. For the sake of my sanity, I went with the latter option.
Mind you, I didn’t omit all of Charlie’s work, I just changed the structure. The idea of constantly switching back and forth between “now” and “then” was changed to a countdown, allowing me to retroactively add scenes to what readers already knew from previous issues, all the while not letting on to what exactly we were counting down to until we neared the end. I then looked at the scenes Charlie had fully written and figured out what would work in the new structure and what wouldn’t. The guy is a great writer, no doubt, and there’s a couple of wonderful speeches that I sadly had to leave on the cutting room floor because I couldn’t find a place for them (a textbook definition of “kill your darlings”). The bit on Mars is 100% Charlie, minus some light edits, and big chunks of his writing are still present in many of the Watchtower scenes, the New Krypton scene, and the touching dialogue between Bruce and Silver (which, I’ll be honest, makes me tear up every time I read it). My consult with Don led to the addition of Manitou Dawn and Kid Eternity to the cast, linking them to a throwaway line a few issues earlier about the Phantom Stranger battling at the Gates of Hell (and I just had to include Detective Chimp, because how can you not love a cigar-smoking, mystery-solving simian?), while my husband suggested bringing in the Spectre to deal with what was happening in Heaven. As for Cosmic Boy...well, that’s the resolution to a 15-year-old paradox created by Scott Kruger during his run on Legion of Super-Heroes, which ended not long after he “killed” Cos in LSH#6 (which you should go read if you haven’t already). There’d been a brief discussion of it during the early planning stages of Omega Crisis, but I think it got lost in the shuffle, so I took it upon myself to finally bring Cos into the story. I’m hoping you enjoyed this out-of-left-field addition!
All in all, this clocked in at a hefty 80 pages, but considering I’d make folks read at least 30 pages during an average issue of WWQ, I reckoned they might stick with me through all of this so long as I kept their attention. I certainly hope that I did, at least. If I didn’t, then please note that I’ll try to bring in the eighth and final issue at a slightly-smaller page count, though I’m not certain as to when that particular issue will hit the site: at the moment, I’m in the midst of not only writing a sequel to my first original novel, I’m also working on a book version of my long-running Jonah Hex history project. To be honest, I actually held back on posting this issue to the site because I wanted it to coincide with the release of the latter, but since that's been delayed, let's instead use this as an opportunity to celebrate the release of Charlie's first novel, Cities on Fire, which was published just a few weeks ago. We're all busy little bees 'round here, we're just not busy on fics.
As I said before, it wasn’t supposed to end like this.
But the end is coming, I promise you.
~ Susan Hillwig
