The Past is What You Make of It

If you read the post What I Don't Know Could Fill a Book, you probably inferred that I'm partial to stories set in the past, and you would have been correct. The tales that particularly attract me are Victorian mysteries; historical dramas; pulp fiction; the fairy tales of such past masters as the Grimm Brothers and L. Frank Baum; the horrors of Edgar Allan Poe; the short stories of the late Ray Bradbury, whose work spanned five decades; and, of course, the plays of Shakespeare. I also enjoy true history books, especially those about the American Colonial and British Victorian eras and the Elizabethan Age. My own writings are influenced by this eclectic collection of works, and, indeed, tend to be in a vintage style and set in times past.

Does this mean I'm doomed to be a niche professional, a scribe who'll never find mainstream success and financial independence? I'm not worried: I've enough contemporary stories in a popular vein to serve as tentpoles for a career. But those generally don't interest me as much as those works that allow me to lose myself in "another country" (which the past has been called). Why is this? I think it may be because I have to live in "today" and get my fill of modern "stories" from the news. To give an analogy, people complain when there's too much tragedy or depression or "real life" in new movies because, as they say, they go to the movies to be entertained. I dip into tales of previous times because I want to get away from my own life and world, which is full of tragedy and depression. I choose to write about those times, people, and events because my tastes are slanted that way, plus it allows me to give the readers or viewers experiences they're unlikely to find in contemporary entertainment.

My preference for such literature and cinema dates to an early age. I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was almost eight years old and ever after was keen on vintage, swashbuckling adventures. After being entranced by The Neverending Story, which emphasized the magic potential of books, my mom introduced me to Tolkien's The Hobbit, stoking an interest in fantasy fiction. One of the earliest TV shows I loved was Hogan's Heroes, a comedy set during World War II.

Is it any surprise, then, that my first movie (actually a video production) was a docudrama about the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955? Of course, my choice of subject for the movie wasn't inspired by the period so much as it was by a major player in that groundbreaking event; historical fiction is only as good as the characters at the center of the story. Then, my third movie, a more amateur affair enacted by family members, was my half-hour adaptation of A Christmas Carol, based specifically on the 80s TV version starring George C. Scott. I adored the authentic setting and trappings of that production so much that it ingrained itself firmly in my mind, allowing me to write my own faithful script purely from memory.

I got into community theater after college, and not a single one of the plays I was involved with took place in modern day. Besides all the Shakespeare plays (Elizabethan Age), there was The Philadelphia Story (1930s), Dracula and Cabaret (20s), the award-winning Two Soldiers (the Civil War), and Wyrd Sisters (fantasy set on another planet). And when I got into writing and directing, I chose to script a fairy tale and adapt-direct two Shakespeare shows.

More recently, I finally started writing professional-level comic-book scripts, and my passion project, Tome of Terror, is an anthology of stories that I usually set in different time periods. Besides that, there's a medieval drama, a vintage private-eye mystery-comedy, a pulp-inspired actioner, and my most ambitious project, the thirties-set Hired Thugs. My interest in classic comic books was activated by the stories of the Golden-Age Superman, written by co-creator Jerry Siegel. I became so enamored of those, I sought out other comics of that period and then expanded my reading (especially of Superman) to the 50s and 60s. So, the "old-timey" tales of all media got a firm hold on me and led inexorably to a desire to try my hand at stories of bygone days.

Just yesterday, my reading of a book about supernatural occurrences in Wales (I'm a proud Welsh-American) inspired some ghost stories of my own, which--shock of shocks!--are not set in the here and now. But, as long as I fill these tales with engaging characters and an intriguing plot, I'm confident that they'll find an audience. The past may be another country where things are done differently, but it's still peopled by folks who put on their pants (or breeches or pantaloons) one leg at a time.

Oh, but then there were the classical Greeks. And the ancient Egyptians. And, of course, the Medieval Scots...

#comics #fiction #history #multimedia #drama