Broken Frontier

Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines … It seems as though everywhere I look in every part of my life the clock is counting down. There are two major dates on the calendar that are rushing towards me: this week the organization I work for is hosting its 50th anniversary convention and late this week our first child is due.

Clearly this is crunch time for Jason Berek-Lewis!

Somewhere in that mix there is another hidden deadline. In some ways I feel that this just might be the beginning of the end of my quest to be a published comic book writer. I work full time in the Australian media and for me, comics were always intended to be an aside. But as of next week my number one priority in life becomes our child, my wife comes second, work comes third and reading, creating and writing comics comes a very, very distant fourth.

Minutes To Midnight is the title of a song by Australia’s greatest (in my humble opinion) rock band, Midnight Oil. The song was off their landmark 1984 album Red Sails In The Sunset and refers to the Doomsday Clock which counted down the minutes to nuclear annihilation in a war between the Soviet Union and the United States Of America (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock). Now I am in no way trying to equate nuclear holocaust with the birth of our first child, but I suspect becoming a father may have that type of impact on my dream of writing comics.

As it is, between work and being a husband, I am finding it hard enough to balance my time to ensure I get a few hours each week behind the keyboard to write this column and to focus on my comic book projects.

With this in mind, comic book projects has sort of become comic book project. I doubt that the indy spy book that I have been working on for about one year will move ahead. The first mini series isn’t doing so well, so the publisher (understandably) isn’t keen to commit to a second series. At the moment I am focusing on one book only. A friend of mine who is based in the USA and who owns a very small comic book studio/ publisher has kindly offered to publish a 2 maxi sized issue series based on one of my properties.

Against my sharpest instincts I have created something entirely new for the project. Well, the project has been in my mind for a while, and was inspired by my love of Underworld and Underworld: Evolution, so it is not entirely new. However, before this offer came along all I had committed to paper was a two page synopsis. Suddenly I find myself needing to come up with detailed character descriptions so that the publisher, who is also an artist, can start working on concept sketches.

I am enjoying putting flesh on the bones of this story. I feel that I have come up with some pretty cool villains and two unusual heroes. I believe the story will feature plenty of action, some monstrous bad guys and … well … plenty of violence and gore. This is a horror book after all, although I think of it more as an action/ superhero tale in the vein of Blade, Hellboy or the previously mentioned vampire vs lycan (werewolf) movies.

One of the coolest things about the story is that I am using some heroes that I developed way back in 1999/ 2000; they have been sitting in my mind for a long time so I am thrilled to finally see them headed for the page.

However, the coolest thing is that a friend of mine, someone who I have never seen, met or spoken to outside email and message boards, has offered to fund and publish one of my properties. I am thrilled that at the end of the process this story will join with Tiki’s Phayrie as my only published work. I am proud that both stories are wholly my own.

The clock may be counting down and shortly after this column is published my life will change forever. Almost everything will shift and life will become uncertain, filled with endless wonderful opportunities. Yet, no matter how many diapers pile up, no matter how little sleep I get and no matter how engrossed I become in being a Papa, some things will never change.

My love of story will live forever.

Next: Never Ending Story.