It's Back to the Battle Today

OPENING MONOLOGUE

Hello there from Poland.

I’m keeping this intro short because this week is slipping through my fingers. The holiday lull in editing work has officially ended as of last week, and things are already piling up.

This week I’m looking at the fallout of an old story I published in 2003, my thoughts on a short story from Stephen King’s Night Shift, and more.

Today's reading

• “MegaPorn 2003”

• King and Ladders

• From a Buick Too

• Let’s go

“MegaPorn 2003”

Back in the early 2000s (we can say this now, right?), I was an infrequent writer for the pop culture website Slush Factory. Eagle-eyed readers will remember that I wrote about Slush — specifically its amazing message forum — in the Substack era of this newsletter.

There were two articles I wrote at Slush that got quite a bit of attention for all the wrong reasons.

I attended MegaCon in Orlando in 2003 and offered to write an opinion piece for Slush. I attended the year before and had an absolute blast meeting people like George Perez, Eddie Campbell, Brian Michael Bendis, and Alex Robinson. But either I was in a grumpy mood or the show had transformed into something horrific:

I had two modes when it came to journalism. It was either straightforward journalism (as I understood it, at least) or it was gonzo. This one was the latter. It was also surprisingly angry.

(And not good, if I’m being real about it.)

MegaCon was owned and run by CrossGen, a comic book company that, for a couple of years at least, looked like it had a shot at putting a dent on Marvel and DC’s market share. CrossGen was owned by millionaire Mark Alessi and it was headquartered in Tampa. Because of the “synergy” between CrossGen and MegaCon, CrossGen had a Doctor T. J. Eckleburg-like presence on the convention floor. They had the largest booth space, and there were CrossGen banners everywhere.

What no one knew at the time was that CrossGen was struggling. 2003 would be CrossGen’s last time running MegaCon before filing for bankruptcy in 2004.

(All of this info is important, I promise.)

We’re getting to the part where this article got me into trouble.

What surprised me the most about MegaCon 2003 was how many adult performers there were. To be clear, I don’t have any problem with them, or porn in general. South Tampa, where I lived, had a shockingly robust porn scene, and I had been on the set of the two porn shoots in Davis Islands by mere happenstance. Yeah, it was a weird time in my life.

I couldn’t wrap my head around the disparity between family and adult entertainment and how flagrant it was at a comic book convention, especially when so many kids were around. The adult entertainment booths weren’t separated. I mean, they always manage to shove all the comic book artists — the lifeblood of the industry — into a darkened corner, why couldn’t they do the same with the adult performers?

You could literally go from a booth selling Disney comic books to, let’s say, Aria Giovanni signing naked photos of herself.

The article was published in the first week of March, a few days after the convention.

The night it was published, I was writing at a Starbucks in South Tampa when I got an email from Brian Jacks, the owner and editor of Slush Factory. He was asking for my phone number. A few minutes later, my phone rang.

This was the first time we had ever spoken in real life. And he was a nervous wreck.

Alessi had reached out to him earlier about the article. He wanted it taken down. He was threatening legal action. It was a horror show. Alessi’s main issue with the article was the focus on the adult entertainers. He claimed there weren’t any at MegaCon and that they were committed to keeping it a family show.

I can remember pacing back and forth outside the Starbucks. I wasn’t as nervous as Jacks was, but I felt terrible that my story was making his life miserable. And I was really frustrated with Alessi. I could understand problems with the article in terms of tone or the writing style, but Alessi was arguing against facts. I even had pictures.

We discussed the possibility of taking the story offline, and then, when the adrenaline wore off, we talked about life in general. I think we were both in a better mental state by the time the call ended.

I never heard anything else after that, and the article was never taken down. That wouldn’t have been so bad, though, as the article didn’t have any inherent value. It didn’t do anything but stir the pot. Why did my opinion even matter?

If I had to guess, I think CrossGen was struggling with the burden of running MegaCon by 2003, which had to be an endless money pit. Someone decided to open up the floor to other industries as a way to make more money, and I think I’m the idiot who pointed it out.

(In a weird way, MegaCon 2003 was ahead of its time in terms of how pop culture started blurring. Within a decade, even the biggest comic book conventions would move away from comics to become entertainment shows, welcoming new industries and celebrities from all walks of life.)

I honestly think CrossGen thought that no one would notice.

Unfortunately, other people saw what I saw.

And that brings me to my next Slush article, where I made my dumbest mistake and learned my biggest lesson.

I’ll save that one for next week.

King and Ladders

There’s not a lot to be said about Stephen King’s first collection of short stories that hasn’t been said before. Instead, I want to focus on my favorite short story from this collection — one that’s stuck with me for most of my life.

At first glance, "The Last Rung on the Ladder" feels like an anomaly, a bittersweet work of short fiction stuck inside a collection of horror stories. But I’d argue it’s one of the book’s scariest and most haunting stories.

"The Last Rung on the Ladder" is about a successful lawyer, Larry, whose younger sister, Kitty, had recently taken her life. Told from his POV, he tells a childhood story about living on a farm in Nebraska and this one fateful day when they were climbing a tall ladder in the barn and jumping off a crossbeam into a haystack.

Naturally, things don’t go as planned.

The flashback, once in context with the story’s framing device, reveals how this event brought them to where they are now. It’s the story of two people visualizing each other through the wrong end of the telescope to horrific results.

(I’m paraphrasing “visualizing each other through the wrong end of the telescope” from Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence and her short story “Roman Fever,” which is an idea I’ve been delighted with ever since I read those stories. In fact, I think Age of Innocence might be a top 5 novel for me.)

The story is also an example of what I call “mail horror” because the final shock stems on the idea of receiving a message too late. Mail horror is a big title for something I only have a few examples of, including Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (the postal service as an accomplice to systematic murder) and Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” (death from experiencing the dead letter office). It’s worth mentioning that Melville’s story is significant in King’s novel Bag of Bones.

(Seriously, if you haven’t read “The Lottery,” “Roman Fever,” and “Bartleby the Scrivener” you are missing out on some serious gold.)

Another reason why I love "The Last Rung on the Ladder" is because I took a “Horror in American Literature” class at the University of South Florida. I signed up without hesitation when I saw it listed in the course catalog. I remember showing up to class that day like it was Christmas morning. But I grew concerned when the professor, an short elderly woman, walked into the room. She wasn’t what I imagined (but honestly, I couldn’t tell you what I imagined). By the time the class was over though, I was in love. She was so incredible.

(I’m sorry for not being able to list her name, but I can’t remember it. I just spent about 45 minutes going through 1994-1997 USF course catalogs online to find it with no success.)

Her main deal was that the class would not be reading or discussing anything supernatural. “There’s no need to make up monsters,” she said, “when man has proven to be the most terrible monster of them all.” You see what I mean? Incredible!

The reading list for the course was great. Just a whole smorgasbord of books I had never heard of. The only title I had already read was King’s "The Last Rung on the Ladder.”

From a Buick Too

I love buying used books, especially if there's something personalized inside of them, like notes, library cards, or even doodles.

Here's a recent find that made Stephen King’s From a Buick 8 even better.

I hope Kerry and Matt are doing well.

Let’s go

I know a lot of people who are feeling overwhelmed at the moment. Sometimes, I’m even one of those people. But this is a reminder that airplane rules still apply — put the oxygen mask on before helping others. You’re no good to anyone if you don’t take care of yourself first.

Thanks for reading.