The word from Perrtyon

I lived a while in a town called Perryton, Texas. My dad had been transferred to be second-in-command of a Halliburton camp after spending 13 or so years running the Lamar, Colorado camp. Right in the middle of high school I'd been uprooted and plopped into a whole new scene. It was a jolt to find my haircut was "I think...all right" in the words of the assistant principal, after studying it for a few moments. I did get sent home for wearing flip-flops to my school picture though.

All the same, I jumped in and did my thing. It was there, in fact, that I started back in trying to write superhero stories. I'd been on a long jag writing a superkickass novel about an FBI agent who finds out he and many other government types were in facts addicts to a drug that blotted their memories and made them tough as nails. It had no ending, really. It was a series of revelations that continually ate its own tail. Yes I still have it. No you can't read it.

The hero of that book, Jim Kendall, has a date to re-enter my universe, though. Older and much more grizzled, he will turn up in Shades and Angels. Way way way down the road. See, I've written the next story arc after THE FAIRER SEX already and it's so damn big Jim Kendall will be plenty grizzled by the time the spotlight hits him. These things happen.

I used to obsess about the character waiting room, that place fictional folk go when they're not needed or wanted. Jim Kendall sits there staring daggers at The Blob, the villain from a very tall pile of comics I wrote and drew as a little guy (and destroyed as a slightly larger guy in a fit of pique that involved my frustration at sucking at drawing). "I used to be the only guy John would write about," grizzles Kendall. "Hell for a while he did a story every week." "Cry me a river, fed," snaps The Blob. "My job was to lose to a guy with a neck and head that looked like a phallus. He didn't even speak English! I lost to a heroic cypher all day long, dropped through a trapdoor built into the room of police headquarters from a dang spaceship!"

A length of sandy blond hair flits across Kendall's shoulder. "Do you flick your head to check if your hair is still there?" growls Kendall. Psychron winks and points a red-gloved finger at Kendall. "At's funny brah. Yeah." "Aren't you the least bit angry about being marooned here?" demands The Blob. "Thomas won't even describe the damn room."

"It is what it is," shrugs the young hero. "I like to think I'm one of the dots in the sky whenever Jeremy or Carter draws the Freedom City skyline."

"I've been here every day you have, ever since that PH Factor story got finished in college." Kendall reseats himself busily, telegraphing his utter disdain for having Psychron's mullet on him. "You haven't gone anywhere. You're just as forgotten as we are."

"But you are somewhere, brah. You aren't nowhere. This is the on-deck circle. Damon Magnus walked out of here a while back. He's back in the game. Be patient. You only aged when Thomas suddenly decided you should be older, not because time means a thing here."

"Hey," adds The Blob. "Besides, you seen what Thomas does to characters? That Mr Way guy, I wouldn't wish that stuff that happened to him on old penis-head, even."

"Fair point," sighs Kendall. "Still, why all this dialogue now? Why do we get a few minutes in the dimly-reflected glow of a blog post?"

"News blog in Perryton did a write up on him and he's feeling nostalgic, brah." Psychron produces a link to it. He bats Kendall's shoulder with the back of his hand. "Just enjoy it while it lasts. After all, he thought of us, didn't he?"