Someone asked me to put more of my life's philosophy in my work.
I thought, "That would be a problem."
My philosophy comes from comic books. I don't like reading 'the great books.'
You know, Miller, Rimbaud, Joyce, Haruki Murakami, Rushdie, Steinbeck. All that bullshit AKAB and Roy like to read.
My bullshit is Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Brian Azzarello, Brian Michael Bendis, Grant Morrison, Mark Buckingham, Mike Carey, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, and my own shit.
Yeah, I read my own work, and am impressed by my own writing. Or rather, how my writing actually get published or turned into movies and TV shows.
I still get a kick out of it.
I mean, I'm a kid who was raised in a swamp. And I'm pretty good. I can actually make a nice living out of writing stuff. I love the idea, and I love the reality of it all. It's not really conceit. Well, maybe it is. Who cares?
Anyway, my philosophy. My philosophies are mostly what I've read in comic books. It is my guiding light in life.
Spider-Man was all about power and responsibility. The Sandman was all about dreams and the human condition. If you want a nice summation of the human situation in a page or few pages of pictures with words, read Gaiman.
Moore is about taking an idea and infecting it with LSD-laced cancer. I have a similar creative process which I like to call fractalisation. I take one idea and fractalise it until it is so fucking complicated, and sometimes sophisticated, that it works.
Moore has a more advanced method. His ideas are all simple, compared to Gaiman, but the excellence in his execution is so fucking mind-blowing, I have to take my hat off to him. Even though he worships the Roman snake deity Glycon - a claim he has denied as a hoax. And is irrelevant in judging his work.
V for Vendetta is about people's power and a utopian anarchist society. Real people's power. I'm sorry that I am constantly being direct about my political or rather anti-political beliefs, but. Wait. Hold up. I am NOT sorry. I have an opinion. So suck my dick. I know where I live.
Watchmen is just an homage to the comics industry, but with a perspective so rich and fantastic that I believe it is THE MOST IMPORTANT LITERARY WORK IN HUMAN HISTORY.
Ellis and Ennis? Transmetropolitan and Preacher. Respectively. Transmet is about the powers of journalism and the responsibilities each one of us has in shaping the world around us.
Some people are surprised that somebody who loves V for Vendetta and Transmet can actually go against the opposition. Publicly. Well, reading comic books, I know the difference between the real thing and an idea of the real thing. An image. At least, that's how I see it.
Preacher, meanwhile, is the ultimate novel about Americana. THE best. Written by an Irishman. And people say Malays and Malaysians are paradoxical.
Azzarello and Bendis? THE BEST DIALOGUE WRITERS EVER. The best. Simply the best. Their work is an ideal I try to achieve.
I do not know any of these people personally. I'm sure if I do, I would like some of them. And I would hate some of them. I mean, Mark 'Fables' Buckingham might be a jerkoff and Mike Carey, even though he wrote Lucifer, could be a devout racist motherfucker.
I don't know. What I do know is that I love their work. And I would be so lucky and honoured if some day my works would be on the same shelf as these guys.
Sure, there could be some setbacks in my life, but hey, Gaiman's earlier work, which are now out of print, were horrendous - according to him. And he is glad to see them no longer on the bookshelves.
As for now, everything is a go ahead. I am moving forward. And I don't let other people dictate how I am. Which, not surprisingly, was a major problem in the past.
My dalliance with comic books has a great deal to do with that. It has been a wonderful transformational journey. And I am glad that I kept my childishness all the way.
As Gaiman wrote, Omnia mutantor, nihil inherit. Everything changes, nothing is truly lost.
