Category: Books

part two of my interview with comicmix

Posted on By Wil

The second part of my interview with Comicmix is online, wherein I say things like:

I was one of the earliest Mac adopters. I had a Mac 128K in the first few months of its release. [. . .] I loved that computer. It was portable, which is funny to say now, because it only weighed like, 20-30 pounds. It had a handle on the top, so clearly, it was portable.

And:

I don’t ever want to lose the experience of going to the comic shop on Wednesday and walking around — even if I’m only there to get two books. Spending 40 minutes looking at everything and talking to the other geeks that are there and having the owner of the comic shop say, “I know you normally don’t read this, but based on the years of you coming here I think you’d like it,” I really like that.

And:

CMix: Do you read any of the Star Trek comics at all?

WW: No.

CMix: No desire to or you just don’t care?

WW: It’s not that I have no desire. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I have a limited amount of time and I have to choose really carefully where I invest that time. If I’m forced to choose between a Star Trek comic or Criminal, I just enjoy Criminal more, so…

Um. In other words, I have no desire and I don’t care, I guess. That sounds really harsh, but . . . well, I just don’t know how to finish that without feeling like a dick. I guess that I like Star Trek a lot, but not enough to read the novels and comic books.

. . . yep, feeling like a dick right now.

Point of clarification: In the interview, I say “I’ve been reading Batman since Grant Morrison started working on it, because there are a few guys in the world that I’ll read anything by. Grant Morrison does Teletubbies, I’m there.” This makes it sound like I started reading Batman when Grant Morrison’s run began, but I’ve actually been reading Batman since around 1987 or 1988.

You can read the entire interview (part two of three) at Comicmix. You may also want to read part one. Hell, for all I know, you may want to look at a picture of a duck*. Go nuts, I’m not the boss of you.

*I really wanted to link to a SFW picture of Jenna Jameson there, but I was pretty sure I’d get letters if I did.

announcing wheaton’s books in the wild

Posted on By Wil

Based on the positive feedback from yesterday’s sighting of Happiest Days in the wild, I made a flickr group for other people who want to show off their book in its natural habitat:

Do you have Just a Geek, Dancing Barefoot, or The Happiest Days of Our Lives, by me, Wil Wheaton? If you do, this is your chance to show me, Wil Wheaton (and everyone else in the world, now that I, Wil Wheaton, think about it) where you’ve taken them.

So get creative, and show us your books!

From time to time, I crack myself up by calling myself “me, Wil Wheaton.” It’s a joke that J. Keith van Straaten and I came up with when we were doing his show together at ACME. It’s certainly funnier in my head (and on stage) than it is on the screen, but that’s never stopped me before, so . . . yeah, I’m just going to trail off now . . . . mmmpthhptt.

happiest days sighted in the wild, keeping good company

Posted on By Wil

I always tell people who are successful to take a moment and enjoy it, especially if it’s someone I know and respect, and I know how hard they’ve worked to earn their success. (Otis, I’m looking in your direction right now.)

But I’m not so good at taking this particular bit of my own advice. My sense of responsibility to my family, and the uncertain economy we find ourselves living in right now forces me to keep my head down and stay focused on whatever the next thing is. This keeps me motivated, but it doesn’t leave a lot of room to just sit back and enjoy things, which is something I think I need to do a little more often, especially on a day like today where I just feel . . . stabby.

It’s easy for me to lose sight of the thousands of copies of Happiest Days that have made the journey from my office, through my living room, and into the hands of real people all over the world, but in an effort to enjoy the good things a little bit, I present this photo of The Happiest Days of Our Lives, keeping some very good company, on vacation.

Happiest_days_of_our_lives_wil_whea

It made me really happy to see this picture, for a lot of reasons that I can’t detail without feeling like a jerk, so I’ll just say thank you to WWdN and HDoOL reader Amanda C. for sharing a little bit of her vacation with me, and allowing me to share it with you.

in which i’m interviewed by comicmix

Posted on By Wil

About six weeks ago, I met writer Chris Ullrich in Pasadena to be interviewed for ComicMix. We talked for about two hours, and he ended up with a transcript that’s so long, they’re splitting the interview into three parts.

Part one is up today, and rather than excerpt it heavily, I’ll just quote my favorite bit:

[TokyoPop] asked me if I would write a Next Generation Manga, and would I write a Wesley Crusher story, and I didn’t want to do it because it felt to me like there was no way in that equation that I could return a positive result.

Ultimately, I’m just not interested in Wesley Crusher anymore. It’s been a long time and he’s sort of frozen in amber in a certain state. I don’t have anything to add to that. I don’t have anything new to bring to it at all.

CMix: No thoughts about killing him off?

WW: No. I’m way more interested in working on my own original stuff. And there’s a finite number of time/energy/creative units that I can gather on my “collect resources” turn. I would rather put those into building my own story than into repairing the Wesley Crusher building.

There are times in my life when I wonder if I spend a little too much time gaming. I frequently decide that there’s just no such thing as too much gaming . . . then I read something like this, a faithful recreation of my actual thought process, and I think I should just step away from the bag of dice for a few turns.

Wait. Not turns. Days. I meant to say days.

Sigh.

it turns out that i get to go to comic-con after all

Posted on By Wil

I’ve been going crazy the last month or so, trying to figure out a way to go to Comic-Con. It was about as easy as getting the Babel Fish, but I refused to give up, and earlier today, I finally put the junk mail on top of the satchel.

I am actually going to Comic-Con this year!

I’ll be there from Thursday, July 24 until Saturday, July 26. I’m on a publishing panel with Pocketbooks on Thursday called “Star Trek without a blueprint.” I’ll be there representing volume three of the Star Trek manga, which I think comes out next week.

This is an exciting time for Star Trek, filled with uncertainty and opportunity. I think it’s safe to say that there’s a lot riding on the new movie, and how it fares will likely affect all of the ancillary Star Trek markets, like conventions, novels, comics, manga, etc.* I don’t know if that’s what “without a blueprint” means, but if it does, it’ll be an interesting conversation. (Of course, it could also mean that CBS is giving much more freedom to people who want to create within the Star Trek universe, rather than forcing them to adhere to a pretty narrow blueprint. That will also be an interesting conversation. My point is that it’s going to be interesting, and certainly worth the price of hotel, airline travel, and all the other expenses associated with coming to the show just to watch a one hour panel before you turn around and go right back home.**)

The rest of the show, I’ll be set up with my friend Rich and his partners in crime***, who are letting me crash their booth. We haven’t finalized my signing schedule, but once we do (and I know the name and number of their booth) I’ll update this post.

This will be the only convention I’m attending this summer other than PAX, so I’m really, really excited and grateful that Marco from TokyoPop, and Rich and his partners from awesomeland were able to help me thwart the cleaning robots.

* I remember hearing, during a negotiation for a convention some years ago, that Enterprise was doing so poorly with the fans that it had really hurt convention turnout. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I heard it so many times from so many different people, it was either a well-worn talking point or legit. If the new movie doesn’t do as well as everyone hopes, we could be hearing about the death of Star Trek again, though I’ve come to believe that Star Trek is a mighty zombie in science fiction that simply can’t be killed. There’s a good reason it’s still relevant and inspiring to legions of fans forty years after it debuted, you know.

** This statement is completely false. Except for the interesting part. It’s absolutely going to be interesting. Also, “interesting.”

***I’m not sure if Rich has minions, but if he does, I’m sure that they will be there, too. Hey, maybe I’ll fill out a minion application!