Anyway, one of the panels I attended was about fans becoming pros, and the moderator was then-Legion and 52 editor Stephen Wacker. I was the guy who had done The Legion Companion and The Best of The Legion Outpost, so it wasn't an impossibility that he'd recognize my name.

Did I go up to him and introduce myself? No, I did not. I waited until I flew home, and then I waited some more. I reached out on Monday, August 7th, at 11:03 P.M. (Comic-Con that year ran from July 19th-23rd), and this is what I said:

Dear Mr. Wacker:

I was at the San Diego Comic-Con recently, and I attended the "Fans turned Pros" panel which you moderated. Two things which you said at the panel stood out in my mind:

1) it helps if you have something published outside of comics

2) it's easier if you have a comic book which you can just get an editor to read instead of going through conventional channels

This is the part of the email where you start to regret what you've said in public! As the Legion editor, you might recognize my name. I've edited The Legion Companion and The Best of the Legion Outpost for TwoMorrows Publishing, as well as last year's Titans Companion. That's three books in three years; if nothing else, I understand deadlines. You can probably also see where this email is going. Yeah, that's right, another guy who'd like to take a crack at writing comics. Like the current Legion writer, I've started out in fandom, and I'm ready to take the next step.

Would you be interested in reading some comics which I've written? I'm talking about fully pencilled, inked, lettered, colored comic books here, not plot submissions. If you are, I can send you a package which you can read at your leisure. They take as long to read as it takes to read a comic because they are comics, so if you can read a comic book, you can read what I would send you. Either way, please let me know. I realize that you have a full schedule with 52 (among other titles), but hey, a little extracurricular reading activity has never hurt anyone!


Sincerely,

Glen Cadigan

This is where one "Hits & Misses" crosses over with another: I was actually being a little disingenuous. I didn't have actual, physical comic books; what I did have was what I wrote about in the Fifth installment of this series (collect 'em all!), which was fully pencilled, inked, lettered, colored comic books on a CD. I had taken several Marvel comics that were published back in 2001 as part of their "'Nuff Said!" month -- comics which lacked words -- and written scripts for them. Dialogue, captions, sound effects (if necessary)... I put 'em all in, then I lettered scans that I made myself and burned them to CDs. I then took copies of those discs to the convention with plans of handing them out, but as I wrote before:

"Upon arriving at my first ever Comic-Con, however, I immediately realized what a bad idea that was. There's tons of free stuff handed out at the convention, and you can see it littering the floor. Anything anyone puts into your hand is most likely to not make it any further than that point because who wants to carry all of that junk around?"

But I had the discs -- a lot of discs; I was a mini-factory the night before I got on the plane -- and I had ambition, and the discs were all I had. It wasn't like I had self-published comics I could mail him. Why not? Here's why: that requires an artist, and here's why that doesn't work:

1) Every aspiring artist thinks that they're also a writer because they have their own ideas, so they're not looking to work with writers when they can just draw their own ideas instead. (Well, about 99.9% of them, anyway.)

2) Many of them are amateurs for a reason: they can't draw at a professional level. If they could, they wouldn't be looking for a writer to work with them, they'd be working professionally. And if you team up with a bad artist, your work is lumped in with their talent (or lack thereof) and then people think that you're a bad writer. Assuming they're willing to work with you in the first place, that is.

3) Even if they can draw at a professional level and are willing to work with a writer, it's hard to find someone who will sit down and draw on a regular basis. Nine times out of ten they'll just do it when they feel like it, and what they feel like drawing when they feel like drawing usually isn't sequential pages filled with panels, it's pin-ups without backgrounds. And that's bad enough if the artist can actually draw, but when they can't, what's the point?

4) At some point, the artist will flake out. They won't finish the project for whatever reason (sometimes legitimate, but mostly not), and then you've got an unfinished product that you can't use. And God help you if you've sunk money into that project, because you'll never see it again. And all for something substandard that probably wasn't going to work, anyway? I repeat, what's the point?

(For the record, I have reached out in the past to professional artists when I had money in my pocket, but they weren't interested. (And I'm not talking about Big Name Stars here, either.) They could get work from legitimate publishers, so they weren't going to take a chance on me. And if they did, what if a better opportunity came up with one of the big boys? They'd leave me in the lurch, that's what. So I wasn't going to take a chance on someone who had a long way to go to get up to professional level only to have them flake out and abandon the project once it got too hard.)

All I had were the discs, and my hope was that if one arrived in the mail, common courtesy (or curiosity) would make him pop it in his computer and take a look. I believed then (and still believe now) that scripting is a separate discipline from plotting, and it's one where a lot of people who have ideas don't make the cut. If you can script at a professional level, the ideas will follow. If you have ideas, it doesn't automatically follow that you are proficient with words. Maybe you are, anyway... or maybe you're not. As I say, it's not a given.

To get back on track here, I crossed my fingers and hoped that he'd respond. When he didn't, I figured, that's it, I took my shot.

But I gave up too soon because on Tuesday, September 26th, at 8:32 A.M I did get a response. I didn't know that at the time -- I discovered the email later that day. I'm not comfortable reprinting something here that was intended for my eyes only, so I'll paraphrase: he apologized for taking so long to reply, thanked me for asking first, and said he was happy to read complete comics, so go ahead and mail them to him at DC.

It wasn't a no. So many times in publishing, it's a no, if they even answer at all. It was an opportunity, and I was excited. I believed that if he actually read what I sent him, I had a fighting chance. (And yes, I knew that there were holes in my plan, but I was still hopeful.) I was ready to dash off an email thanking him for the opportunity, but decided to wait a day. I didn't want to seem overeager, or potentially say something stupid in my enthusiasm. So I elected to savour my good fortune in a sea of bad and lay in bed that night excited about potentially breaking the fan-to-pro barrier. I was taking nothing for granted, but I allowed myself one day to be happy.

The next day I did what I always did back then: I headed over to Newsarama to check out the comic book news. And right at the top of the page was the breaking story that Stephen Wacker had just left DC for Marvel. I was stunned; only twenty-four hours earlier he had told me that I could snail mail him a package at DC, and now he didn't work at DC anymore.

Logo of the once mighty, all-knowing Newsarama, oracle of the comic book industry. I didn't know what to think; I didn't know what he was thinking. Why would he tell me to send him a package at DC if he already knew he was leaving for Marvel? Did he know? How could he not? Once I recovered my equilibrium, I decided to send him another email. Later that night, at 8:51 P.M., on Wednesday, September 27th, this is what I wrote: Hi! Assuming that you get this email, is the offer still open to send them to you at Marvel? Glen I mean, what else could I do? I was already out there on a wing and a prayer... I might as well keep on flapping my arms and hope that I could fly. On Wednesday, September 27th, at 8:51 P.M. (note the exact time), I received the following instantaneous autoreply: This email account is no longer active. If you need to reach The DC Comics Editorial department, please send your email to Dan.Didio@dccomics.com. Thank You. Well, so much for that. DC didn't waste any time shutting down his email address. Easy come, easy go, right? What I still couldn't understand was why would he tell me to mail him at DC if he knew he wasn't going to be working there anymore? Was he only potentially going to Marvel, and then things changed? I didn't have any answers, only whiplash. But I was worked up. I'd also been instructed that if I needed to reach DC Editorial, I should send an email to Dan.Didio@dccomics.com, so that's what I did. I took my time, I read it over and over again, and on Friday, September 29th, at 10:42 A.M., I sent the following: Dear Mr. Didio: To quote Charlie Brown: AAAAARRRRRRRGH! After a long wait, on Tuesday I finally got a DC editor to agree to look at some comics which I had scripted. I'm talking fully pencilled, inked, lettered, colored comic books - the whole shebang. Turns out, he was happy to do it. The next day, I head over to Newsarama and find out that he now works for Marvel. I repeat: AAAAARRRRRRRGH! Won't you please take pity on a poor fool like me and let me send them to someone else in your fine organization? Can you sympathize with someone who finally got his foot in the door, finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel, only to have the football snatched away from him just one day later? I realize that you have bigger problems now that he's gone, but think of the karma that you will receive in return for rescuing me from the limbo where I currently reside. Can't everyone use some more good karma? In closing, I would just like to say, boy, what a difference a day makes. Thanks, Glen Cadigan I didn't hear back. I didn't think that I would, but it cost me nothing to send that email. The archives at Newsarama don't exist anymore, but Archive.org has a snapshot of their front page from October 4th, and about two dozen articles down from the top (two higher than ROBERT DOWNEY JR. IS TONY STARK (The news has broken - Tony Stark will look a whole lot like Robert Downey Jr. in the upcoming Jon Favreau-directed Iron Man film due to start filming in February...) I wonder how that worked out?) there exists the headline STEVE WACKER SAYS GOODBYE and if you click on the link, it actually works! To summarize: A snapshot of the past, courtesy of The Internet Archive. He gave two weeks notice; DC didn't show him the door right away, but let him work there for the rest of the day. He "...used the time to make a couple calls, pack my stuff, and download as much information as possible to the new editor..." He also says, "...the opportunities at Marvel were too good to pass up and I thank [Dan] Buckley and [Joe] Quesada for even talking to me in the first place and having patience as I worked my way through the decision making process (which involved me changing my mind 3 times in the last hour)." So maybe he didn't know which way the wind was blowing when he answered my weeks-old email. But boy, did I wonder what was going on for a long time afterward. I understand that he had a lot going on and I was a low-to-no priority -- I get that -- but put yourself in my shoes: the door is opened by a DC editor, and the very next day you read on Newsarama that he's now a Marvel editor. If my memory still works, I waited for him to get settled in at Marvel and sent him another email there. I followed Marvel's email convention (some combination of first name and last name @Marvel.com) but didn't get a response. Not even an autoreply saying "no such user" or "no such address" or however it would be worded: nothing. I don't know if I guessed right or not, but I didn't hear back. So why didn't I just go ahead and send him the package at Marvel? Well, a few reasons. The first is I no longer had confidence it would do any good. There was a possibility on the table that he knew he was going to Marvel and kinda jerked me around, and that possibility wasn't zero. I mean, fool me once, right? So I wasn't eager to look like a fool a second time. The second was these were all Marvel comics that I'd scripted and lettered. Publishers have policies about unsolicited submissions, and that might be too close to home. At DC, they can read Marvel comics all day long because they're not their characters, but Marvel might be different. Although these were printed Marvel comics, so how could I accuse Marvel of stealing my ideas? They were their ideas... copyrighted, even! What was I going to do, say that their ideas were actually mine? But mostly I was demoralized. A couple of years later I did manage to break the fan-pro barrier (that would be "Hits & Misses" Part 3), and I used the author copies I received (after having to ask for them) to send to other editors, hoping to get work. Well, that was about as useful as sending a CD to Stephen Wacker at DC. All I got for my efforts was wasted money on postage. And now Stephen Wacker is the new editor-in-chief at Marvel. I don't wish him any ill intent; I don't think he remembered me five seconds after he hit "Send" so I don't suffer from any delusions that he'll remember any of this today. (And they shut down his DC email account ASAP, remember, so he won't have a record of it.) Looking back on it now, I almost thought I imagined the whole thing when I searched my email for WACKER and nothing came up, but I was able to narrow down when he made the switch and manually zipped through the latter part of 2006 until I saw WACKER appear, so don't always trust the search feature in your email account. I'm just glad I'm not losing my mind and imagining things. There's a part of me that can't believe all of this happened twenty years ago. Somewhere I hope there's a parallel universe where he stayed at DC, read my CD, threw some work my way and things worked out. Maybe it would've been just another dead end, but maybe it wouldn't. I know nothing good happened in this universe where I'm still tilting at windmills, and I know that it was always a longshot that maybe wouldn't have worked out (I'm not completely delusional, just optimistic), but it'd be nice to think that somewhere there's a Glen Cadigan whose dreams came true, and while he was still young enough for it to matter.