It has become a habit of mine, when surfing the web, to just cut-and-paste articles that I’d like to read later on and file them away in one of the folders on my desktop. Reviewing these things that I’ve saved, I came across these two entries that were both posted last March.
The first one is from Neil Gaiman’s blog (March 08, 2009), where he talks about the death of his father.
My agent, Merrilee, told me last night that the first time she met him [Neil Gaiman’s father], at a signing in New York, she said to him, "Neil is doing so well. I bet you must always have known he'd be a success."
"Actually," he told her, "I thought I'd probably be supporting him for the rest of his life. Well... he wanted to be a writer."
And I thought, the best thing about that is I never knew.
The other entry is an interview with Joe Quesada on the Times Online (March 21, 2009). Towards the end of the interview Mr. Quesada, talked about his most personal story “DAREDEVIL FATHER”, which he dedicated to his dad, Jose Luis, who died from lung cancer.
“The idea for Father came to me many, many years before I wrote it, about the time I was doing Daredevil with Kevin Smith. It grew into a story about how the actions of our fathers can have an impact on the kind of men and women we grow up to be. My father was a really gentle and tolerant guy. He allowed me to be an artist during an era when every child of an immigrant was supposed to be a doctor or a lawyer. My dad said, ‘Yeah, go be an artist. It’s pretty cool.’
“I happened to write the story in a hospital by my dad’s bedside. I sat there for a week and wrote the entire story. When I was done the next day he passed away. It was cathartic because he was awake the entire time and just sat there for a week and saw me do what I do for a living.”
I guess I unconsciously filed those two articles away because March was my dad’s death anniversary.
I thought about how lucky they were to have their fathers see them succeed in their chosen field, to succeed in what they were most passionate about. Makes me wonder what their fathers said about their work. Did their dads praise them or critique them?
I remember one time, me and my dad were watching TV and a commercial for the new Toyota SUV came on. It showed a bunch of aliens climb into the car and they took it for a ride in outerspace.
I found it amusing.
My dad didn’t.
I asked him why he didn’t like and he said the commercial didn’t make sense, that if they wanted to say the car can fit a lot of people then there must’ve been another way of showing that.
Which makes me wonder what he’d say about the TV commercials me and Brandie have done in the past couple of years.
Our Sunday ritual with our dad used to be: go swimming at the Plaza, lunch by the pool, go to Greenhills to borrow LaserDiscs, do the groceries at Unimart, then go to Filbars to buy our weekly fix of comics.
My dad didn’t read comics, but he loved reading. I guess he was just happy to see us reading something on a regular basis and was more than willing to nurture that habit.
For my college graduation gift, I asked me dad if he could fund my trip to the San Diego Comic-Con and he did.
Before leaving for the convention, I thought it would be best if I brought along some sort of portfolio. What was meant to be a couple of sample pages became a full-blown anthology called COMICS 101, my very first self-published comic book. It contained stories from me, Brandie, Mark, Bow, Taps, Arnold and Gerry.
When I got back from the States, we distributed it in the local comic book stores and probably sold 500 copies.
I recently found my dad’s old attaché case, the one he always brought to work. I opened it and was greeted by the smell of an old medicine cabinet. It was in that case that he secretly kept his medication, not telling anyone he was diabetic.
The scent mixed with that of dried ink and crumbling paper. I found his favorite pens, notebooks, and a letter I sent him when I was at the San Diego Comic-Con.
In the letter, I thanked him for sending me on that trip, that I met some editors and gave them copies of my comic book, but there were a lot of moments when I was too shy to approach some editors and felt bad about that. I’ve seen my dad conduct business meetings and close deals and told him that I still had a lot to learn from him.
I can’t really remember if he said anything about COMICS 101, but I know he kept a copy of it on the bookshelf beside his bed.
When dad died in 1999, I was a freelance writer who only had three comic books and a couple of magazine articles under his belt.
My most recent comic book work, TRESE, was picked up by a publisher last year, is now distributed around the country, has been reviewed in newspapers and magazines and has sold a couple of thousand copies. I wonder what would dad say about that?
Would’ve been nice to hear him say …
I'm not sure what he’d have to say about our work.
And I am left wondering.
So, while you can, you might want to thank your fathers for making you what you are today and if you love them, tell them exactly that.
The first one is from Neil Gaiman’s blog (March 08, 2009), where he talks about the death of his father.
My agent, Merrilee, told me last night that the first time she met him [Neil Gaiman’s father], at a signing in New York, she said to him, "Neil is doing so well. I bet you must always have known he'd be a success."
"Actually," he told her, "I thought I'd probably be supporting him for the rest of his life. Well... he wanted to be a writer."
And I thought, the best thing about that is I never knew.
The other entry is an interview with Joe Quesada on the Times Online (March 21, 2009). Towards the end of the interview Mr. Quesada, talked about his most personal story “DAREDEVIL FATHER”, which he dedicated to his dad, Jose Luis, who died from lung cancer.
“The idea for Father came to me many, many years before I wrote it, about the time I was doing Daredevil with Kevin Smith. It grew into a story about how the actions of our fathers can have an impact on the kind of men and women we grow up to be. My father was a really gentle and tolerant guy. He allowed me to be an artist during an era when every child of an immigrant was supposed to be a doctor or a lawyer. My dad said, ‘Yeah, go be an artist. It’s pretty cool.’
“I happened to write the story in a hospital by my dad’s bedside. I sat there for a week and wrote the entire story. When I was done the next day he passed away. It was cathartic because he was awake the entire time and just sat there for a week and saw me do what I do for a living.”
I guess I unconsciously filed those two articles away because March was my dad’s death anniversary.
I thought about how lucky they were to have their fathers see them succeed in their chosen field, to succeed in what they were most passionate about. Makes me wonder what their fathers said about their work. Did their dads praise them or critique them?
I remember one time, me and my dad were watching TV and a commercial for the new Toyota SUV came on. It showed a bunch of aliens climb into the car and they took it for a ride in outerspace.
I found it amusing.
My dad didn’t.
I asked him why he didn’t like and he said the commercial didn’t make sense, that if they wanted to say the car can fit a lot of people then there must’ve been another way of showing that.
Which makes me wonder what he’d say about the TV commercials me and Brandie have done in the past couple of years.
Our Sunday ritual with our dad used to be: go swimming at the Plaza, lunch by the pool, go to Greenhills to borrow LaserDiscs, do the groceries at Unimart, then go to Filbars to buy our weekly fix of comics.
My dad didn’t read comics, but he loved reading. I guess he was just happy to see us reading something on a regular basis and was more than willing to nurture that habit.
For my college graduation gift, I asked me dad if he could fund my trip to the San Diego Comic-Con and he did.
Before leaving for the convention, I thought it would be best if I brought along some sort of portfolio. What was meant to be a couple of sample pages became a full-blown anthology called COMICS 101, my very first self-published comic book. It contained stories from me, Brandie, Mark, Bow, Taps, Arnold and Gerry.
When I got back from the States, we distributed it in the local comic book stores and probably sold 500 copies.
I recently found my dad’s old attaché case, the one he always brought to work. I opened it and was greeted by the smell of an old medicine cabinet. It was in that case that he secretly kept his medication, not telling anyone he was diabetic.
The scent mixed with that of dried ink and crumbling paper. I found his favorite pens, notebooks, and a letter I sent him when I was at the San Diego Comic-Con.
In the letter, I thanked him for sending me on that trip, that I met some editors and gave them copies of my comic book, but there were a lot of moments when I was too shy to approach some editors and felt bad about that. I’ve seen my dad conduct business meetings and close deals and told him that I still had a lot to learn from him.
I can’t really remember if he said anything about COMICS 101, but I know he kept a copy of it on the bookshelf beside his bed.
When dad died in 1999, I was a freelance writer who only had three comic books and a couple of magazine articles under his belt.
My most recent comic book work, TRESE, was picked up by a publisher last year, is now distributed around the country, has been reviewed in newspapers and magazines and has sold a couple of thousand copies. I wonder what would dad say about that?
Would’ve been nice to hear him say …
I'm not sure what he’d have to say about our work.
And I am left wondering.
So, while you can, you might want to thank your fathers for making you what you are today and if you love them, tell them exactly that.
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