Post by HoM on Jun 7, 2007 7:42:44 GMT -5
A few words before we begin, and also, a spoiler warning to past DC2 issues.
Doctor Occult #1 has been a long time coming. Very long in fact, and I apologise for the major delay. What with my ongoing commitments, be them The Question, Batman, Action Comics, or whatever one shot or annual I create, it’s always taken a back seat to everything else.
Well, no more.
Rereading James Robinson’s run on Starman, I rediscovered the love I had of the lyrical nature of his writing. The way each character’s dialogue just flows so perfectly out of their mouths, the narration, the verse, everything about Jack, Ted, the O’Dares and the Shade just seems so perfect.
That’s the kind of writer I want to be… And I think I might be able to do this with Doctor Occult. I think I might be able to write something I can be very proud of, without it being [all] about superheroes and capes and the Joker and all that stuff. Yes, we’ll see superheroes, but not the kind of superheroes you’d expect.
I realise that, in my eyes, some of my best stuff was written with a character no one much cared for. The Question, for instance, was never the most liked character, but I made him my own, and I loved writing him in the Quarterly series. I took my time with it, and I crafted a piece of prose I was very proud of. But then, as I rushed to get it out, I think the quality became lacking, and eventually, I didn’t like what I was doing.
So I killed him.
Anyway, Doctor Occult’s story begins in The Flash #9, the epilogue reprinted here:
“You did the hero thing again Richard.” The red haired man takes a sip from his scotch and shakes his head. “Always looking for an excuse aren’t you?”
“Yeah well Jimmy… I had to do something.” Richard Occult sits opposite the man in the dark bar, both of them in the same shadowy booth that Occult resides in most nights.
“And you did it well. How was everyone?”
“I left before the kid woke up, but Zazazel is back in hell, where he belongs, and I’ve given the kid a clean bill of health. They have my number, and this Doctor… He makes house calls.”
“That was a poor one.”
“I know.”
“And your own personal demons?” The man looks at Occult and shakes his head slightly.
Occult downs the shot glass and then smiles slightly. “Vintage scotch takes the edge off his words.”
“I don’t understand you, Richard. You’re friends with some of the most powerful beings on this plane of existence--- and many other!---, but you don’t exorcise him. Or remove your brain tumour. Which I must say… Is getting big. You’re not going to last much longer. Little over a year by the looks of it…”
“We both know the reasons I don’t exorcise it. One, my soul is so intertwined with it I could risk begin exorcised by mistake, and then he’d have complete control and come on, you’d have a mighty big trouble taking me down, wouldn’t you, and maybe HE wouldn’t let it, hmm? And if I exorcise it, it becomes corporeal. Physical. Real. And then it’d be unstoppable for even you. Deadly. It’ll die with me and thank god that’s soon.”
“I can’t touch it.” Jim places his hand on Richards’s head and grimaces. “Damnation.”
“Richard shakes his head. “Now then, why are you here? You only visit on the anniversary of your… Death. And this… This isn’t your death date.”
“Something’s coming and I’m forbidden to act.”
Richard turns and grimaces. “EXCUSE me?”
“I’m forbidden to act because… He decrees it. A crisis is coming, Richard.”
“How do you know?”
“The Spectre knows all.” Jim erupts in a blinding white light, red hair and flesh melting away and then finally, once the light clears a man whose skin is a glowing white, stands clad in green, an empty look in his eye. “And one of your new friends is going to die.”[/quote]
Foreboding stuff. Throughout the tale, Richard Occult has been showing signs of not being quite right. Originally, the story was to involve John Constantine
, but then there were other plans for him, and I had to change my plans fast. Enter: Doctor Occult. And I screwed him up. I really didn’t use him well, and I wanted to fix him. In his next appearance, I went about doing that, so from yet another epilogue, this time from The Flash Annual #1:
He stands in the darkness of the night, his red uniform wet from the rain. He looks up at the massive statue erected in honour of his close friend and smiles. He’d had a good run, but it has to end sometime, doesn’t it?
“Barry.” He turns, a man emerging from the chairs from earlier. “I think you might be right.”
“Who?” He squints, trying to see who the man who’s speaking. “You?!”
Dr Occult grimaces. “You might be right.”
“You… You look terrible!” Barry motions towards the magician, and helps him sit down.
“Thank you for being honest…” He coughs into his hand, black ooze left on his palm. “But I’m not joking, I think there might be more to this than there seems.”
“You mean…”
“Kid Eternity isn’t a metahuman in the terms that you use. He’s linked to the underworld, both heaven and hell… that’s how he can summon dead heroes, dead villains, you understand?”
“You’re not going to draw me a diagram, are you?” Barry laughs slightly, and Richard Occult smiles.
“Yes, well… to remove his powers would mean removing a link created by a higher power… And very few people can do that… So it’s not just the task of removing a metagene, which, in all honesty, I could do in my sleep. A few words here, a bit of a spilling of virgin blood, quite easy…” He coughs again, his throat red and raw.
“What’s wrong with you, Richard?”
Occult grimaces. “I’m dying… But that’s a story for another time Barry… I’m telling you now, I’m spending my last months searching for whoever did this, you have my word, ok? I’ll find out who crippled Eternity and who’s playing games with us.”
“You really don--”
“You don’t know what Jay Garrick did for me, Barry, and frankly, that’s also a tale for another time… Now I might not be at a 100% like I used to be, but if I’m going to waste away for the next year, I want something to keep me occupied, and model trains don’t do it for me anymore.” He stands, and takes out a small sigil from his coat pocket. “We’ll meet again, you and I.” He smiles and vanishes in a black and red flash, leaving Barry Allen alone, thinking.
Could Jay Garrick still be alive?
That was the mission statement for Doctor Occult: ‘Til My Dying Time, a miniseries written by me, with covers by Borize.
I finished writing #1 two weeks ago. And things changed. This wasn’t a miniseries, this was an ongoing. There were so many possibilities for this book, unlike anything on the site, bar the tales in House Of Mystery #1 (follow the link for the Doctor Occult tale). I wanted to experiment again, and not be bound by the unwritten rules that we all have for writing Action Comics or Batman. Doctor Occult could be unlike anything I’ve written, and I think it is.
Each story arc is named after a classic rock track, and for the first year, you’ll be viewing my love of Led Zeppelin (I changed the original title of the mini, “’Til My Dying Time”, to fit this theme, therefore, “In My Time Of Dying”). Next year, or ‘season’, we might delve into my love of Pink Floyd or the Who, but who knows if there will be another twelve issues after the initial run? Depends on how well the book is received!
Anyway, thanks for bearing with me, and now, have at it!
Doctor Occult #1 has been a long time coming. Very long in fact, and I apologise for the major delay. What with my ongoing commitments, be them The Question, Batman, Action Comics, or whatever one shot or annual I create, it’s always taken a back seat to everything else.
Well, no more.
Rereading James Robinson’s run on Starman, I rediscovered the love I had of the lyrical nature of his writing. The way each character’s dialogue just flows so perfectly out of their mouths, the narration, the verse, everything about Jack, Ted, the O’Dares and the Shade just seems so perfect.
That’s the kind of writer I want to be… And I think I might be able to do this with Doctor Occult. I think I might be able to write something I can be very proud of, without it being [all] about superheroes and capes and the Joker and all that stuff. Yes, we’ll see superheroes, but not the kind of superheroes you’d expect.
I realise that, in my eyes, some of my best stuff was written with a character no one much cared for. The Question, for instance, was never the most liked character, but I made him my own, and I loved writing him in the Quarterly series. I took my time with it, and I crafted a piece of prose I was very proud of. But then, as I rushed to get it out, I think the quality became lacking, and eventually, I didn’t like what I was doing.
So I killed him.
Anyway, Doctor Occult’s story begins in The Flash #9, the epilogue reprinted here:
“You did the hero thing again Richard.” The red haired man takes a sip from his scotch and shakes his head. “Always looking for an excuse aren’t you?”
“Yeah well Jimmy… I had to do something.” Richard Occult sits opposite the man in the dark bar, both of them in the same shadowy booth that Occult resides in most nights.
“And you did it well. How was everyone?”
“I left before the kid woke up, but Zazazel is back in hell, where he belongs, and I’ve given the kid a clean bill of health. They have my number, and this Doctor… He makes house calls.”
“That was a poor one.”
“I know.”
“And your own personal demons?” The man looks at Occult and shakes his head slightly.
Occult downs the shot glass and then smiles slightly. “Vintage scotch takes the edge off his words.”
“I don’t understand you, Richard. You’re friends with some of the most powerful beings on this plane of existence--- and many other!---, but you don’t exorcise him. Or remove your brain tumour. Which I must say… Is getting big. You’re not going to last much longer. Little over a year by the looks of it…”
“We both know the reasons I don’t exorcise it. One, my soul is so intertwined with it I could risk begin exorcised by mistake, and then he’d have complete control and come on, you’d have a mighty big trouble taking me down, wouldn’t you, and maybe HE wouldn’t let it, hmm? And if I exorcise it, it becomes corporeal. Physical. Real. And then it’d be unstoppable for even you. Deadly. It’ll die with me and thank god that’s soon.”
“I can’t touch it.” Jim places his hand on Richards’s head and grimaces. “Damnation.”
“Richard shakes his head. “Now then, why are you here? You only visit on the anniversary of your… Death. And this… This isn’t your death date.”
“Something’s coming and I’m forbidden to act.”
Richard turns and grimaces. “EXCUSE me?”
“I’m forbidden to act because… He decrees it. A crisis is coming, Richard.”
“How do you know?”
“The Spectre knows all.” Jim erupts in a blinding white light, red hair and flesh melting away and then finally, once the light clears a man whose skin is a glowing white, stands clad in green, an empty look in his eye. “And one of your new friends is going to die.”[/quote]
Foreboding stuff. Throughout the tale, Richard Occult has been showing signs of not being quite right. Originally, the story was to involve John Constantine
, but then there were other plans for him, and I had to change my plans fast. Enter: Doctor Occult. And I screwed him up. I really didn’t use him well, and I wanted to fix him. In his next appearance, I went about doing that, so from yet another epilogue, this time from The Flash Annual #1:
He stands in the darkness of the night, his red uniform wet from the rain. He looks up at the massive statue erected in honour of his close friend and smiles. He’d had a good run, but it has to end sometime, doesn’t it?
“Barry.” He turns, a man emerging from the chairs from earlier. “I think you might be right.”
“Who?” He squints, trying to see who the man who’s speaking. “You?!”
Dr Occult grimaces. “You might be right.”
“You… You look terrible!” Barry motions towards the magician, and helps him sit down.
“Thank you for being honest…” He coughs into his hand, black ooze left on his palm. “But I’m not joking, I think there might be more to this than there seems.”
“You mean…”
“Kid Eternity isn’t a metahuman in the terms that you use. He’s linked to the underworld, both heaven and hell… that’s how he can summon dead heroes, dead villains, you understand?”
“You’re not going to draw me a diagram, are you?” Barry laughs slightly, and Richard Occult smiles.
“Yes, well… to remove his powers would mean removing a link created by a higher power… And very few people can do that… So it’s not just the task of removing a metagene, which, in all honesty, I could do in my sleep. A few words here, a bit of a spilling of virgin blood, quite easy…” He coughs again, his throat red and raw.
“What’s wrong with you, Richard?”
Occult grimaces. “I’m dying… But that’s a story for another time Barry… I’m telling you now, I’m spending my last months searching for whoever did this, you have my word, ok? I’ll find out who crippled Eternity and who’s playing games with us.”
“You really don--”
“You don’t know what Jay Garrick did for me, Barry, and frankly, that’s also a tale for another time… Now I might not be at a 100% like I used to be, but if I’m going to waste away for the next year, I want something to keep me occupied, and model trains don’t do it for me anymore.” He stands, and takes out a small sigil from his coat pocket. “We’ll meet again, you and I.” He smiles and vanishes in a black and red flash, leaving Barry Allen alone, thinking.
Could Jay Garrick still be alive?
That was the mission statement for Doctor Occult: ‘Til My Dying Time, a miniseries written by me, with covers by Borize.
I finished writing #1 two weeks ago. And things changed. This wasn’t a miniseries, this was an ongoing. There were so many possibilities for this book, unlike anything on the site, bar the tales in House Of Mystery #1 (follow the link for the Doctor Occult tale). I wanted to experiment again, and not be bound by the unwritten rules that we all have for writing Action Comics or Batman. Doctor Occult could be unlike anything I’ve written, and I think it is.
Each story arc is named after a classic rock track, and for the first year, you’ll be viewing my love of Led Zeppelin (I changed the original title of the mini, “’Til My Dying Time”, to fit this theme, therefore, “In My Time Of Dying”). Next year, or ‘season’, we might delve into my love of Pink Floyd or the Who, but who knows if there will be another twelve issues after the initial run? Depends on how well the book is received!
Anyway, thanks for bearing with me, and now, have at it!