I’ve been working on a new book, something which tends to send my brainmatter searching for new signals to sift through, decipher, and otherwise expand my sphere of knowledge. One such signal came in the form of a book titled From Eternity To Here by Sean Carroll. In short, it’s a book which attempts to understand and breakdown the origins, present course, and future possibilities of time. No small feat, to be sure. Add to that the fact that I’m a complete scientific layman, and what you get is one hell of a weird time. Luckily, Carroll seemed prepared for that and has plenty of explanations for the complex ideas littered throughout the book.

That said, being more creative souls rather than a scientist, most fiction writers (myself included) will tend to latch on to certain bits and pieces in books like this and obsess and run away with them, fixating and dissecting whilst sometimes even ignoring the original purpose of the information all together. While lazily flipping through the chapter titled “Recurring Nightmares,” I stumbled across Poincare’s Recurrence Theorem and that’s exactly what happened.

The gist of the theorem is, thankfully, simple enough: Given a finite amount of space and enough time, moving objects will always return to their original configuration. Seems simple. So what do I do with it? I start thinking about how that applies to the web of life that I operate within and wonder: If this is true in physics, quantum or otherwise, is it also true in philosophy? Will everything in my life at some point, given enough time, realign with an earlier configuration?

If the above is true, if relationships, social statuses, successes, and failures come full circle, does that negate any progress that you’ve made? In other words, will you always step back without having gained, step forward without complete understanding of the forces which compel you? Lots of questions which, unfortunately, I don’t have the answers too. Instead, I have guesses, the main thrust of which is that yes, it is true. Sort of.

I think that, at varying points in our lives, we’re all offered opportunities to reconnect with one another; to go home again; to reset. I think that they’re just that though: opportunities. It isn’t mandatory, you needn’t be compliant with what’s put in front of you, and you may not even recognize the opportunity (the first time around) for what it is. Likewise, I think the universe has a funny way of bringing you full circle every once in awhile in order to take stock of your life and see if you made it to where you intended to go and to review how you got there. You retain what you’ve gained but you’re presented with a perspective you may not have looked through in awhile.

There are some subtleties attached to the theory, not the least of which being, in the case of an orbiting planet which moves in finite revolutions, there are infinite points on the road it travels, even if it doesn’t wander beyond a fixed path. In this case, Carroll writes that it’s not something worth quibbling over, that, in fact, even Poincare would say it was a case where “almost” was good enough when the realignment occurs at a point close to the original. I think that’s the case here. When we’re brought back around and set to taking stock of ourselves, we’re nearly at the same starting point we began at, so close, in some cases, as to cause the two points to be indecipherable from one another. “Almost” is good enough. You’re presented with a figurative beginning point again yet armed, hopefully, with a store of experience and hard-won knowledge with which you might move forward. Whether or not it’s in the same direction or one just a tad off to the right is up to you.

Stephen King has, with great success, explored this in a direct and poignant way in a story which I won’t name here (keeping it spoiler free). Suffice it to say that a main character was presented with a situation and failed to act as he/she should have. The result was that he/she was thrust back to the beginning with hardly any recollection of what would come in his/her future, yet is shown to have acted differently in his/her past leading up to this realignment/return to his/her beginning. In other words they, in some small capacity, learned from their mistakes and would begin again with an opportunity to succeed which they’d lacked previously. Their experiences had been imprinted, if not remembered in a recognizable fashion.

Of course, taking everything a step into that direction, one has to start asking one’s self – what would you do if you could do it all again but didn’t know what you did the first time? Think you’d do the same things again or would chance come into play?

Or maybe you only know snippets. Maybe you’re the only one who remembers. Then again, maybe you’re not. Do you obsess over the fragments of dream-memory or do you simply move forward? The fun really begins, in this case, when one person tries to stick to the script while somebody else goes off the reservation.

Then what?

Ramblings of a madman here. I imagine this will require bearing out in something but it’ll have to wait. Into the notes it goes, to be retrieved in months or years when a story explodes from it. Until then, curious what you guys think: do we get a figurative do-over from time to time? A literal one at the end of the road?

Next up? How about a peak at some artwork from Awakening Volume Two?

Chapter 7 – Cover

That right there is the “cover” to what would’ve been issue 7 (which is now chapter 7). Even though we knew going into it that Volume Two was going to be hardcover only (i.e. no floppies), we wanted to keep the format seamless with Volume One. Plus, doing covers is always a good excuse for Alex to cut loose and, in a single image, help prepare you for what’s coming.

As best you can, anyway…

Item the first! Two exciting events, particularly for those in the NYC area, celebrating the release of Popgun Vol. 4 (featuring a short written by me and illustrated by Alex, Rusted: Faded Signal).  On February 16th @ 8PM, come check out The Comic Book Club, a weekly live show at The Pit, where I’ll be hanging out with Popgun editor Adam Knave and writer Vito Delsante. We’ll be whoring ourselves out and laughing it up so come hang out and have a blast!

Tuesday, February 16th @ 8:00 PM

Tickets: $5
Online: ThePIT-NYC.com
Phone: 1-800-838-3006
Questions? 212-563-7488

The Peoples Improv Theater
154 West 29th Street, 2nd Floor
Between 6th and 7th Aves.

Check out the website:
http://www.popcultureshock.com/comicbookclub

The second event is a Popgun signing extravaganza on February 24th, from 6-8pm at Jim Hanley’s Universe, with Alex Eckman-Lawn, Frank Stockton, Jeff Powell, Jason Ibarra, Vito Delsante, and Joe Flood! Come by and meet some awesome creators, grab a copy of the new Popgun released that day, and hey, maybe grab a copy of Awakening Volume One if you haven’t already (wag of the finger) or get yours signed if you already have it (tip of the hat)!

Item the Second! We just received an extremely flattering review courtesy of The San Francisco Book Review (we’re on page 12), who said “[Awakening is] near, if not at, the pinnacle of the best execution of a zombie graphic novel. It breathes death into the dead fad, and somehow, in contradiction, brings it back to life by doing so! Trust me on this.” In honor of such heaping kindnesses, I can’t resist putting up a couple of new pages from Awakening Volume Two. Alex is going crazy on this book. Bask in his glory:

The other day, feeling a little burnt out on a new something I’d been smashing away at for the past few weeks, I doubled back and finished a short story that had been sitting in a drawer, waiting to be scritched and scratched with my red pen of justice. I finished it with gusto.

The new something in question was making me a bit uncomfortable, not because of what it was about but because it was unfamiliar territory. I needed to re-orient myself, find a touch stone I recognized, a street corner near home. After looking back over my shoulder and seeing home I was ready to move forward. I was reminded of one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips. Might’ve been the last one, actually. A fresh snow had just fallen and the world was unrecognizable, full of possibilities. Calvin looked at Hobbes and said,

“It’s a magical world, Hobbes old buddy. Let’s go exploring”

So it is. Let’s go.

I’ve also got Sir James Frazer on the brain this morning, hence the title of this post. While I haven’t been reading The Golden Bough, from which the quote is taken, I have been digging through Tim Taylor’s excellent The Buried Soul, which explores the invention of ‘death’, the idea, and the development of the human concept of the soul from an archaeological perspective as some research for the post-Awakening Volume Two book Alex and I are doing. On that same count, if anybody can recommend a definitive, unexpurgated version of The Golden Bough I’d be thrilled. It seems like there are a few too many to choose from for me to be comfortable hunting and pecking through.

In other writing news, I’m pretty excited to note that I finished the first draft on my first non-comic short story in more than five years yesterday. It’s just a baby, only 4,000 words in its current state, but I’m still excited. I’ve mentioned it in interviews, but part of what drove me to write comics when I first started giving it a whirl five or six years ago was my complete distaste with my own straight fiction narrative. A lot of it, all short fiction, read more like an outline for something larger with very cold and detached direction, not unlike a script. After years of studying (not formally, just reading anything and writing comics), I decided it was time to dive back in and see where it takes me. So far so good and I think more is on the way in the coming weeks and months. I’m planning on making 2010 the year of the short…

Some miscellany for you:

Just found this last night, copies of Awakening Volume One which Alex and I signed for Lone Star Comics are available on their website. May be a fun last-minute holiday gift for the noir or zombie fan whom you hold close to your heart. For those of you new to the site, be sure to check out the Awakening Comixography by following the link here, or check out the entire Comixography via the nav bar at the top of the page.

Tweeted by Templesmith, PR Newswire points out the Top 10 PR Blunders of 2009. Some amazing stuff. And when I say amazing, I mean horrifyingly stupid.

Just watched Drag Me to Hell last night, and it was everything I would expect from a fun Raimi horror flick. The last 20-minutes were disappointingly obvious, which led to a bit of a ‘hurry up and end’ face from me but overall I was pretty happy with it. My biggest gripe was the use of CG where traditional effects would’ve matched both the feel of the movie and the history of the filmmaker much better. The same could be said for a few flicks though, (::cough:: Crystal Skull ::cough::), and seems to just be indicative of the times.

I was more enthusiastic about Quantum of Solace. What an amazing movie. Buyer beware though: if you didn’t like Casino Royale, or if you don’t remember it, you may want to stay away or refresh yourself, depending on how you felt about it. This was a direct sequel which picked up shortly after the end of Casino and didn’t explain itself for the benefit of initiates in the audience. I liked that. You rarely see movies with the same type of continuity you get out of, say, sequential fiction, picking up the story with the next ‘issue’ so to speak. It was welcome to not have to sit through 20-minutes explaining who these people were and why I should care, and more welcome that it wasn’t avoided because it was a new story but because they’d already been through all that in the first go ’round. Last I heard this new series is planned as a trilogy or quadrilogy, and I hope it’s true. Looking forward to the next one immensely.

Website note the first, if you’d like to leave a comment you have to click on the title of the entry of choice on the front page. You’ll be brought into that entry and a comment field will be hanging out at the bottom of the page. As I stumble across other quirks, I’ll let you all know.

Off to begin another short while yesterday’s cools off a bit. Happy Friday, everyone.

- Nick

Welcome to the All New! All Different! NickTapalansky.com!

Well folks, it finally happened – the site is up, running, and full of awesome. I’ve spent the last two years updating upwards of three blogs (two on MySpace, one on Blogger) and at some point recently I realized, hey now, that’s a bit silly. For those of you wondering why those hotspots of the interweb haven’t been updated in over a month, this site is why. This is going to be your one-stop shop complete with all sorts of pretty cool stuff to check out, like:

1. Full chapters and Behind The Scenes artwork from Awakening Volume One and Volume Two – just check out the Awakening Section in Comixography.




2. Previews of upcoming stories, like Rusted: Faded Signal and Perhapanauts: A Grim’s Haunt, also in the Comixography.




3. Some of my scripts, for the curious, over in the Scripts section.




4. There’s even a Trailers section which, right now, is housing the trailer for Awakening Volume One!

And all this stuff is just the beginning – I’ll be updating more regularly here, including new comic previews as I have them and more Behind The Scenes stuff.

Update those bookmarks, kids – it’s about to get exciting. To keep up with all my in the moment musings and site updates, why don’t you go ahead and give me a Follow on Twitter too. I’ll do my level best to keep it interesting for you.

Thanks for popping in – be sure to tell all your pals where the party’s at.

- Nick

OUR TOP STORY…

One more official Halloween Signing Tour stop to go! Everybody in the NYC area, head on down to Jim Hanley’s Universe on 33rd Street on Wednesday, October 28th from 4-7pm to grab your free signed art print, which was created exclusively for the tour, with every copy of Awakening Volume One brought in to be signed or picked up at the store. Then, sign up for the exclusive Halloween preview of Awakening Volume Two debuting at 12am Halloween morning.

Jim Hanley’s Universe is located at 4 West 33rd Street in Manhattan.

THE TOUR THUS FAR…

The other three stops on the tour have been great! Thanks so much to everybody who’s come out to hang with us, talk comics, and celebrate the zombie season. It’s been unreal. Special thanks to the stores who hosted us, Brave New Worlds in Philly, PA and Upstate Comics in LaGrangeville, NY.

For anybody who couldn’t make it to these stops or who can’t make it out to Jim Hanley’s this Wednesday, you’re in luck. Folks in the Albany area can catch me hanging around the Albany Comic-Con this Sunday, 11/1. We may not have any prints left but you can defitnitely grab a copy of the book, or bring yours to be signed, and I might even have the sign-up sheet still available for the Volume Two preview…

And don’t forget, all you folks who’ve got the book but can’t make it out to a signing stop, there’s still time to send a photo with you and your copy of Awakening Volume one to AwakeningComic@gmail.com and get access to that same Volume Two preview. It’s the entire first chapter and it’s definitely our best yet.

AWAKENING IN THE PRESS…

Alex and I got to catch up with Tim over at Robot 6 about the signing tour, sticking it out with Archaia, and defining existential horror. Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments – Talking Comics With Tim – Awakening

Also, for anybody who’s happening on this and isn’t familiar with Awakening, the entire first chapter will be going up on Newsarama tomorrow for free! Keep an eye out and watch the Twitter feed for an update when that goes live.

That’s it for today, I think – I’ve got all sorts of things I want to get down but, for now, I think sleep is what’s going to happen instead. More next time.

- Nick

GET TO YOUR LOCAL COMIC SHOP WEDNESDAY TO GET YOUR COPY OF AWAKENING VOLUME ONE!!

The countdown is OVER and we’ve FINALLY arrived. Thanks so much to everyone for sticking with us through the roller-coaster getting here. I’m pretty confident it’ll go much smoother from here on out.

Be sure to come by booth #2635 and say hello to myself and Alex as well as the rest of the Archaia crew. We’ll have Awakening Volume One on hand for you to check out and Alex and I will be happily signing all week (Alex gets in on Friday for all you folks who want to touch true greatness).

Alex and I are also participating on a panel on Saturday, 7/25 with the amazing Chandra Free (The God Machine), Matz (The Killer) and… SPOCK?!

5:30-6:30 Archaia: New Titles— Come hear about the great titles Archaia has in store, including Awakening (with writer Nick Tapalansky and artist Alex Eckman-Lawn), The Killer (with writer Matz), and The God Machine (with creator Chandra Free). Then: You’ve watched him for three seasons on NBC’s Heroes playing Sylar and on the big screen as Spock in the new Star Trek movie, but what do actor Zachary Quinto and his colleagues at media production company Before the Door Pictures have to do with Archaia? Find out exclusively at this panel, which will feature Quinto, Corey Moosa and Neal Dodson of Before the Door Pictures, plus appearances by top-secret special guests with additional announcements! Room 5AB

See you on the left coast, me scallawags. More release news, signings, and all that fun stuff next week.

We love you.

- Nick
www.NickTapalansky.com

And, failing that, you can always get your existential horror fix on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qJQB68NkP0

Now then, on with the show:

Watch. Love. Pre-order.

http://www.amazon.com/Awakening-One-Nick-Tapalansky/dp/1932386483/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246374754&sr=8-1