In my novel Jonas Lee is a sci-fi and comic book enthusiast. Of course, there's a lot of me in that character as all characters in the book and I'm sure can be said the same about other authors and with the characters they create.
One of my dilemmas that I tucked away in the back of my brain was whether to give Jonas a favorite comic book series/Superhero that he liked. You would think the obvious answer would be YES! However, the market now is saturated with Superhero movies. I haven't collected comics in ages. Initially, when you think comic book you think Superhero and I wasn't thrilled about trying to create an original Superhero type that Jonas followed. There's enough great comics out there as it is and since I haven't collected in awhile I doubted I could come up with anything that wasn't already circulating.
Additionally, there's also some great made up (and parody) comic book/Superheros in Movies or TV Series. I was a fan of of the Jimmy Neutron movies and TV series. Sheen is one of the great characters on there that is a fan of the Superhero ULTRALORD (which is a parody character of ULTRAMAN), and collects all the action figures, cards, and quotes him. And in one episode even shows off his ULTRALORD underwear.
Bottom line: I didn't think I was going to be able to come up with a Superhero comic book character that would be fun, cool, or original. So why bother? I decided I was just going to have him discuss comics in general with no specific mention of a comic book.
BUT IT KEPT NAGGING ME! All during the writing of my novel and typing out these scenes and interactions and moving the plot along, that tiny detail kept scratching at the back of my brain. I told myself long ago I wasn't going to take the easy way out of anything with this novel series. So that damn comic book detail was driving me nuts like The Tell-Tale Heart beating beneath the floorboards!
If you've read any of my bios or know me personally, you would be aware that I am a paranormal enthusiast. Many years ago I created The Paranormal Society of Texas (PST). Our slogan was: PST...We have secrets to tell! The idea was to investigate popular ghost legends around Texas to let people know which ones would most likely lend to a real encounter and those that aren't, so you wouldn't have to waste your time going to check it out. There's a lot more to PST but that's for another blog.
I had created a website for PST with many pages and one of those I had named TALES FROM THE CAMPFIRE. On that page I was going to put a lot of lesser unknown tales and legends of places in Texas that we hadn't gotten around to investigating.
Now, back to the time as I'm getting close to completing my novel, I was walking down the hallway and a group of my employees were huddled around gossiping. I stopped and jokingly mentioned that it looked like they were gathered around a campfire telling ghost stories. AND THAT'S WHEN IT CLICKED!
OF COURSE! Jonas didn't have to be a fan of a Superhero comic. He could be a fan of a horror comic! DUH!!!! My brother and I were fans of the the DC comic Weird War Tales while growing up.
I not only figured out my comic, but also get to use some of my unpublished ideas from PST which is a little poetic in a way.
So a new comic book series was born that Jonas would be a fan of: TALES FROM THE CAMPFIRE!