Category: Books

The final part of my three part interview with Comicmix is online.

COMICMIX: Okay, Wil, as a writer and reader of comics, what makes a good story to you?

WIL WHEATON: Comics are a visual medium, so the artwork is extremely important to me. There are tremendously talented writers who occasionally get paired up with artists whose art I don’t like. And I won’t read those books.

There are artists and writers who collaborate together. Matt [Fraction] gives Casanova artist Gabriel Ba as much credit for Casanova being awesome as people give Matt for making Casanova awesome. Ed [Brubaker] does the same thing with Criminal. And I think that says a lot about the importance of a good team-up. I’m lucky.

I’ve gotten to work with some great artists when I’ve done manga for TokyoPop.I don’t know if the stories I’ve written would have the same emotional impact with the reader with different art. That really, really important combination of peanut butter and chocolate is really important to making comic books great.

Um. Wil? How about you answer the goddamn question?

What makes a book — just a standard book — very good, is the story and the dialogue and the interaction of the characters. So what makes a comic book great is those ingredients all put together, matched up with good pacing and really good artwork. A lot of the Alan Moore comics have all these wonderful elements that make reading comics fun, too. Top Ten is like playing “Where’s Waldo,” because after you’ve read the story you can go back through and read it again. Or if you read Watchmen and see the issues, there’s the Rorschach issue that’s in the middle where it mirrors itself — that kind of stuff. A book like Sin City that uses positive and negative space really creatively, that’s a great book, too.

Of course, I should disclaim all this stuff. I recently wrote that I was worried about the new Star Trek movie being good, and I was vilified by Star Trek fans for having the temerity for expressing an opinion about this. Like I don’t deserve to have an opinion about this.

This is the end of about 2 hours of me and Chris talking, and this final part feels rambling to me, which is probably how I felt when we’d talked for about 2 hours. I got to talk about technology a little bit, though, which was kind of cool:

CMix: What about the one piece of technology you can’t live without?

WW: The technology I can’t live without? Does encryption count as technology? It would have to be encryption. Think about the Internet without encryption. Absolutely no shopping online at all. None. Ever.

Not a single financial transaction would be possible without encryption.

Sure, there are things that I like that are fun. But can’t live without? I could not live without encryption — and to make it clear, I’m talking about open source public encryption. R.S.A. standards.

Yay standards! Yay for stating the obvious! Yay for Neil Gaiman writing Batman next year!

Oh, my favorite part of the interview is when I go on and on about my creative process. It’s really too long to excerpt, but I promise it’s worth the effort to go read the whole interview at Comicmix.

See what I did there?

It’s so weird to have this great week working on Criminal Minds that I can’t talk about in any detail until October. I have no mouth, and I must scream, you could say. How about I just give up one little non-spoilery thing, and nobody tells on me, okay?

At the end of the shoot, I was thanking a lot of the people I worked with for making it such a great experience. Every single one of them told me that they wished I worked on the show every day. I guess the feeling was mutual.

So, yeah, that made me feel pretty good. If you get a chance to work on Criminal Minds, I highly recommend it.

Now, to business:

Tomorrow, I’m heading down to San Diego for an abbreviated stay at Comic-Con. Here’s my schedule:

• On Thursday, I’ll be on a panel called Star Trek Without a Blueprint: How books and comics keep expanding the boundaries of the Star Trek universe. We’ll be talking about the future of Star Trek publishing in room 32AB from 4:00-5:00. I’ll be on the panel with Andy Mangels (moderator and Star Trek author), Margaret Clark (executive editor, Pocket Books), Andy Schmidt (senior editor, IDW) and Star Trek authors Kevin Dilmore, Dave Mack, Scott Tipton, and Dayton Ward.
• The rest of the time, I’ll be with my friend Rich Stevens at the Dumbrella booth, which is number 1335. MC Frontalot is going to be there, too, so if you’re looking to fill that final square on Nerd Bingo, come and see us.

Oh. I guess it would be useful to know what I’m taking with me to sign and sell, wouldn’t it?

In addition to some 8x10s from Star Trek and Stand By Me, I’ll have copies of The Happiest Days of Our Lives , which I’m kind of hoping will sell out.

I’ll have a few copies of Dancing Barefoot and Just A Geek. I’ll also have a few copies of Volume 2 of the Star Trek Manga. I won’t have any copies of Volume 3 of the Star Trek Manga, but it’s just been released, so I’m sure you’ll be able to pick up a copy somewhere. If you bring it to the booth, I’m happy to sign it for you.

Finally, I will have copies of this year’s Chapbook, which is called Sunken Treasure. What’s that, you say? You don’t know what that is? You don’t have time to click a link, you say? Well, my lazy friend, allow me to show you part of the author’s note:

Every summer, I make one of these limited chapbooks and take them with me on the inevitable summer convention tour. In the past, I’ve pulled material from whatever I’m working on, as sort of a fall preview, but this year the book I’m working on is so top secret, I’d have to print the chapbook on self-destructing paper, and while that would make it a very limited edition, the costs associated are kind of prohibitive.

So for 2008’s limited edition chapbook extravaganza, I’ve put together the first ever Wil Wheaton Sampler. With the help of my editor Andrew, who is a former ninja warrior and recreational time traveler, I’ve pulled together things I like from all three of my books, my blog, and this groovy collaborative fiction project I play with called Ficlets. I’ve also included, for the first time anywhere, one of the scripts I wrote for a sketch comedy show at the ACME Comedy Theater.

I am really proud of Sunken Treasure, and I think Andrew (my friend and editor) and I came up with something really special. I only sold about a dozen of them at San Jose Super-Con (there really weren’t that many people there this year) and since I’m not welcome at the Creation convention in Vegas, the only places you can get copies of it will be Comic-Con and PAX. I’m anxious to get these little books out into the wild, though, so I hope you’ll tell everyone you know, for a grand total of 150 people (you guys can coordinate this, right?) to come by the Dumbrella booth and check it out. It’s so weird to make something I’m so proud of, and only get to share it with a handful of people so far.

I don’t know if I’ll be particularly motivated to post while I’m away. I’ll likely be posting all sorts of things to Twitter, including where I am and when I’ll be signing. There will also be pithy observations about my fellow geeks, so you don’t want to miss that. Erm, provided I can avoid the fail whale, that is. Ahem.

The Internet is quiet as hell lately. I feel like I’m talking into an empty tube, so thanks for reading and commenting; it makes me feel a little less like a crazy old man with no pants standing on the corner ranting about the weather.