journalism

The Earth-16 Comics Wire

Earth-16 Comics Wire Update

Hello Constant Readers and Listeners,

I hope that all of you have been having a happy new year. So far, this year has been all about staying committed to my goals. One of those goals involves writing. And speaking of writing, I am writing an update in regards to the Earth-16 Comics Wire.

The Earth-16 Comics Wire Podcast is partnering with the Daily Planet to produce episodes involving comic creators. The news site, which is based on the fictional Daily Planet from the Superman mythos, has become a new platform for the podcast. In addition, I am planning on posting most of my comic book reviews on the Daily Planet. However, I still plan on writing on this blog page but it will be geared towards updates on the podcast, comic book commentary that piques my interests, and comic book events/conventions.

2021 looks to be an exciting year and I continue finding more people to have on my podcast and talk about their comic book projects. I am also planning on talking to pro-wrestlers since I enjoy watching professional wrestling, whether its WWE, AEW, Impact, New Japan Pro-Wrestling, or Ring of Honor. Wrestling is awesome. I have been writing some wrestling content for the Daily Planet and plan on writing more in the comic months.

I also am planning on writing my first book. Writing a book is a process but I am taking it easy rather than rushing into the process. I have already outlined the first three chapters of the book. In the future, I plan on sharing some details of the book in the blogsite. This project has stuck with me since my second year at college and I feel that right now is the right time to start building on it. I am very excited to see this project goes.

I am also planning on doing more video game streams on my Twitch and Youtube where we can talk about anything (especially comic books) in a fun and safe environment. Also, this is a way to ward of the negativity from what is going on in our society. I am also going to be streaming some of my podcasts on Twitch and Youtube.

I hope that this year brings more awesome surprises and adventures. I plan on writing about those moments and sharing them with you on this awesome platform. So having wrote that, Let’s make 2021 and awesome year and lets look cool doing it. And as I always say….lets dream and work toward a better tomorrow!

And that my friends…is undisputed!

-Brian of Earth-16

The Earth-16 Comics Wire

A Decade of Fun and Self-Discovery

As 2019 draws to a close, I look back and realize how grateful I am. I live with people who support me and my aspirations. I have a flexible job. I live in the greatest country on the planet, the United States of America. I am in good health despite having to deal with Von Hippel Lindau Syndrome. I have a roof on top of my head and food to put on the table. I also have this awesome growing side hustle I am doing that lets me blog, vlog, and talk about comic books. Despite many twists and turns, I have to say, the 2010s was a a crazy decade but one of fun and self-discovery.

In the 2010s, I slowly but gradually developed a visceral view of the man I was becoming. During the time when the economy was in the crapper, and Justin Beiber was basically being seen and talked about as if he was the Second Coming, I wasn’t quite prepared for what this decade was going to throw at me. I was on a long road to self-acceptance, I was beginning to understand one of the true meanings of creative writing, I had to comprehend the trajectory of my purpose, experience living with a disease, meeting new people, trying new things,  moving to a different state, and learning self-love.

First off, I do not describe myself as an “Aspergian” or an “Austic” man. I see myself as someone who has to live with Aspergers or High Functioning Autism (HFA). I do not believe in the idea of labels. I am not Aspergers or Autism. Aspergers or Autism is not me. Some people who have Autism may not agree with me and may see themselves as an “Autistic” or “Aspergian” and that’s okay. I just don’t put the label before me. However, this notion has also gotten me to push aside that side of myself and even deny that I have Aspergers. I would barely tell even those who I was closest too outside my family that I had to deal with HFA. It was not until stress at my current job that the jig was up and I disclosed that I had autism. My disclosing was analagous to Superman revealing his identity in Brian Michael Bendis’ Superman #18. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life and looking back, I should have done the same in college. I write that because the people that I work with were very understanding and supportive. I have no doubt that my peers and creative writing professors back in UC Riverside would have been just as supportive if I really let them know about me. I do suspect that some could tell that there was something about me but I regretably hid that part of me.

I originally studied creative writing to help me get a career in journalism. However, I look back and I am starting to understand why the field gravitated towards me. I don’t think that it was neccesarily the career aspects that drawn me to it. It was that it was just fun to not only write but create a universe or a view of a universe through one’s lense. Creative writing has had helped me develop a vicarious view of other people’s lives and to remind myself to not see things in black and white. Plus, another reason I did it was because in my first year, several of my hallmates were doing it and they had such joy in their faces discusing many aspects of a story: characterization, plot, imagery, style, voice, theme etc. And I have enjoyed taking part of the workshops where I learned from both the professors and peers. However, that all ended around 2011 after I graduated.

As a result, I abandoned my creative aspirations and tried out careers in the education, medical, and financial fields due to not getting an opportunities in the journalism field. I wanted to work in a “real job”  and just make money. And because of that notion, all endeavors had ended with little to no success.

In the year 2011, I worked as a substitute instructional assistant for children with special needs. While the position was rewarding, I knew that I wanted to do something creative. Although I was promoted to a full-time instructional assistant in 2012, I did not last long in the position since it was not really for me and got let go. I was back on as a substitute but left around 2013 to move back with my family in Los Angeles. However, the most reward aspect of that experience was that it, along with watching Smallville (mentioned from a previos blog post), had positioned me to slowly helped me accept my autism.

While working as an instructional assistant, I also decided to pursue a career in the medical field by studying sonography. However, I had zero interest in the filed and I failed physics, which was a pre-requisite for the program.  Apparently, I did learn my lesson from my previous experience taking chemisty from my first year in college; I was legitimately not a science guy. While I was in physics, I paid very little attention and bombed two midterms. I did do some studying, but I was not getting the material. I ultimately did not take the final and abandoned the class on June 2013, the same time I left to go back home in Los Angeles.

After struggling financially, I took several computer programming courses and decided to get back into journalism. I eventually found a job working at a credit union which was emjoyable since it was near the beautiful beach of Santa Monica. As a result of that, I thought I could pursue a career in accounting. While I did manage to get an accounting job in addition to taking several courses, I ended up getting fired due to incompetence on the job.

It did not take me too long to rebound back to employment. I have gotten a new job which is the place I currently work at now and it has been a good experience. There is a great amount of customer service involved in this job but it has also helped me learn how to communicate well with others in a tactful and vicarious manner. The position is also great since it allows me to leave earlier than 5pm. As a result, I have enough time to do my side hustle and pursue freelance journalism.

Those experiences, although most have lead to failure have taught me that I am a creative and that I needed to realize that the world owes me nothing. It did not matter if someone was chosen over me to get a position, if I had all the qualifcations under the sun, or if I was not liked for who I am. Only I owe myself all the love and support that I need; the rest can (or doesn’t have to) fall into place.

There were other experiences that had me take a hard look at who I was becoming. Around 2014, I joined a Toastmasters in Santa Monica called Club 21. I learned a great deal about public speaking and also the importance of listening. It was there that I slowly started to embrace my creativity and a sense of myself. I learned that I was not afraid to go infront of a crowd and speak.

Another huge moment in this decade was learning that I also had a rare condition called Von Hippel Lindau Disease. This disease can cause tumors to develop on the eyes, brain, spinal cord, pancreas, kidneys, and reproductive organs. So far, I have had several surgeries but I have been doign very well. I have doctors that look at my case periodically to make sure that I am on track. I also learned a valuable lesson when it came to worrying about this diease from a brain surgeon. He told me that I need to focus more on my “why,” or my purpose. It made a lot of sense. My purpose, my reason for living should be my focus over even the seemingly scary things in life.

Moving to Arizona was one of the craziest things that happened to me in this decade. I didn’t think I would ever move out of California but I did. If I were to steal the Doctor’s TARDIS and go back in time to tell myself from 2010 that six year from that year, he would be moving to Arizona, he’d laugh his ass off. And that move was amazing. It was a scenic drive as my family and I drove through the desert from Los Angeles and through Riverside County. Other experiences included going on several stops for food. One funny experience involved my cat crapping in her travel carrier and me having to clean her up as well as the carrier.

After settling in Arizona, I have also learned about self-love and how integral it is to ones life. This goes back to accepting myself for who I am: a man who has Aspergers and Von Hippel Lindau Disease and yet is creative, gregarious, intelligent, and awesome (did I mention handsome to all you ladies out there? *Laughs!*) But yes, I have been learning how to love myself more by listening to myself and even learning to say “no” to some people. Even as a Christian, I had to understand that if I am to love God and Jesus most high, I need to also love myself because God made me.  And self-love also taught me to not blame others or anything else for my failures or mistakes. I am the reason for my failures and mistakes. No one else.  Furthermore, self-love reminds me to never look back into the past but learn from it and move on.

And this decade was also where I discovered how much love and passion I have for comic books, Star Wars, pro-wrestling, and anime. I eventually ended up going to my first comic convention in Los Angeles where I met Hayley Atwell, the actress who played Agent Peggy Carter from Captain America, and got her autograph. Three years after moving to Arizona, I started to go to Pheonix Fan Fusion where in 2019 this year, I met Ray Park who played Darth Maul, Amy Jo Johnson, who played Kimberly the Pink Ranger, and comic book writer Christopher Priest. Later that year, I also met actress and gamer Felicia Day.  My passion for comics made me start this very blog, the Earth-16 Comics Wire (Previously known as the Boy Wonder Press) and the Flashcast podcast with the DC Comics Geeks Nation.

In closing, This decade was an adventure and one I would never forget. It was a helluva decade. I’ve started to learn how to accept myself for who I am. I have no idea what the 2020s will bring but I am certain that it is going to be full of adventures and happenings worth writing about. Heres to a good decade to all in the multiverse!

 

-Brian From Earth-16

The Earth-16 Comics Wire

My First Time Back In Journalism: A Journey Towards Getting Back on Track

It has been four years since I wrote an article for a publication but, as of September of this year, I finally decided to return to my long-lost love: journalism.

When I attended college a decade ago, I decided to pursue journalism and writing. I’ll admit, it was Clark Kent who inspired me to become a journalist and a steward of the truth. I believed in the freedom of the press and its power to hold governments and others accountable for their actions. I was writing for the school newspaper and getting constant feedback from peers. However, when 2008 came, the economy took a dump and that was when things started to change.

After graduating in June 2011, I could not land a journalism job.  I tried to knock on doors to get employment at the local newspaper near my university. Nothing happened.

Like so many millennials, I had to settle for a job that was unrelated to what I studied for. I will admit that back then, I should have thought outside the box and started a blog or kept in touch with my professors and friends from my creative writing classes. But I was too caught up with the crap economy that I ended up taking a job as an substitute instructional assistant for a school district.

It was here when my love for journalism, or writing in general, began to fade. I accepted the jaded fact that I wasn’t going to become a journalist or write ever again due to the dwindling opportunities.  The jadedness (obviously, not a real word) got more worse when someone who I considered close told me that I would suffer if I decided to pursue journalism further. I gave up.

However, there was a little sliver of my inner writer left inside of me.

That small part of me still championed writing clear, crisp, and shorted sentences. That part of me still motivated me to consult Strunk and White’s Elements of Style whenever I was on the verge of writing a long and wordy sentence like this: I was always in a bind, never thinking before doing something that could possibly be beneficial to one person yet potentially detrimental to my state of being. See what I did there? Yeah, I guess I tried to hard. Anyway, that part of me still loved reading books and the news. As I write this, I believe that my inner writer had to be dormant for a while. And with that, I had the opportunity explore other avenues.

For awhile, I tried to medical field but long story short, I flunked a community college physics class. This was not my first go at the medical field. During my first year in college, I tried so damn hard to pass chemistry but I got a “F” for my efforts. As for that position as an instructional assistant? I decided to quit since it was not for me and moved back home to my family to continue my journey. Next, I tried to go for computer programming; it got boring staring at a computer screen and putting my fingers through hell trying to compose code when I should have been composing an article. However, I did some short internship stints at two local community newspapers where my inner writer was reignited but burned out after they ended. Then I gave accounting a shot and thought that I would become a CPA. I confess that I failed my first accounting class but unlike my failed medical endeavor or my quest to become a journalist, I was not going to give up. I took the class again and passed and then passed the second class as well. I felt like I was on a roll and even got a job as an accounting clerk at a local state office but, a year after getting that job, I was let go.

After three months of questioning why I got let go from my job, some people in my family reminded me of what my true purpose was. When my older brother came by to visit me and my family, we just started talking about the news again. My interest slowly evoked. But I had to ask myself: Is this what I really wanted to do?

That was when I decided to go to a journalism networking event and after that event, I am happy to say that I am once again, back to doing journalism. Right now, I am a freelance writing and I am doing my first assignment in four years. I know in my heart that this is something I want to do and no matter what anyone says, I know that I will do it.

The current assignment is a fun one and it involves a lot of investigation and research. I am not going to go through too much detail about it but let’s just say that I am looking forward to talking to people from different walks of life. I am looking forward to telling their stories and sharing them with the audience like I did back in my creative writing classes in college.

My internships back in Los Angeles were also helpful in giving me the experience I needed to continue pursuing journalism; this was something I should have done as soon as my internship stints ended. This reminded me of what Walter Mosley, the author of the book Devil in the Blue Dress, said: “If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day. The consistency, the monotomy, the certainty, all vagaries and passions are covered by this daily reoccurrence.”

I have to water the plant of writing everyday or it would whither and die. I have to be committed and I have to stay committed. I have to eat, breath, and sleep writing.

A non-fiction creative writing profossor ingrained this into my head when he wrote candidly about my writing performance. I would forever value his advice because it was true.

As I start on my first assignment in four years, I am going to expect a lot of challenges. I am going to see some victories and some losses. There will be no gains without any pains. I know that I can succeed and I will.

I want everyone reading this to realize that there is no shame in following your goals. Whether it is in a good or bad economy, whether a close friend, loved one, or whoever encourages you or discourages you, or…whatever. You are in control of your future. Not the outside influences. What matters is that a bad economy, fears, someone, or whatever someone says cannot dictate how we live our dreams and how we pursue them.

Clark Kent the journalist and the superhero known as Superman can attest to that.

 

 

 

 

The Earth-16 Comics Wire

The Story of How I Chose to Become A Writer

When I was little, I always enjoyed writing. I can remember creating a newspaper that centered around the crayfishes in my fourth-grade classroom. Obviously, there was only one paper in syndication because only I wrote it and only I read it. A couple years later, my love for essay writing is developed well into the closing days of my eighth grade year in middle school. However, this craze was later suppressed due my focus on pursuing the sciences in high school and aspiring (not really because I only wanted to to do it for the money) to work in the medical field. This suppression would only last for almost my entire high school career until I became fixated on improving on my writing in my 12th-grade AP British literature class. It was there that my love of writing underwent a resurgence. My love of writing even became more obvious when I took an college English course at University and wrote several essays including one related to Kafka’s work the Metamorphosis (A book I highly recommend to anyone). And it was the year after that I decided to pursue writing.

Now many people have supported me on my mission to become a writer while I have also had my share of detractors or doubters. But I guess that is the beauty of pursuing your dreams isn’t it?

In his book, “No Is a Four Letter Word,” pro-wrestler Chris Jericho narrates that as a kid growing up in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada, he wanted to be a pro-wrestler and a rock star. Like anyone else pursuing a goal, he had his supporters and he had his detractors. And for this detractors, he had this brilliant quote that I am now trying to live by:

“You see, I NEVER thought I was too small or not talented enough to do what I wanted to do, and I didn’t appreciate anybody who felt differently. The way I saw it, you were either with me or against me in my quest for fire, and if you were against me, well, you were a muttonhead and I really didn’t have any use for you anyway.”

-Chris Jericho

Jericho mentions that many people doubted that he would be successful as a pro-wrestler due to his short height and average stature. However, about two decades later, the man becomes the first ever undisputed WWE World Heavyweight champion and from there on, has a stellar career in pro-wrestling. In addition, he also cultivated a stellar career as a rock n’ roll musician. How many people could say that? Apparently, Chris Jericho can and it was because he believed in himself. The dude followed his goals.

I feel that is where I am at in the beginning of the third decade in my life. My twenties were a decade of exploring the different avenues I could go into but would very likely have some to no success. Although deep down, I knew that I wanted to be a writer, I have tried my hand at several careers at the urging of others.

Medical field? As I have mentioned before, I have heard that the money was good but, due to my somewhat lack of patience…the poor patient would have a sense of bad bedside manner and report me to the medical board. Goodbye medical license; it was nice knowing ya. School teacher? Going back to the lack of patience…the kids in my class would be so thrilled to have a substitute teacher. I like kids but…not in the classroom.  Accountancy? Well…I’m okay with crunching some numbers but who wants to be counting money all day? Besides, I did have a civil service finance job that only lasted a year when I thought it could have lasted me more than two. Yeaaaaaah. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we? Computer program? Boring. Though coding seems to be integrating in most fields. So, I guess it could be useful. But as a career? I couldn’t handle spending hours on end staring at a computer screen doing nothing but endlessly putting in code after code. ‘(No shade on computer programmers of course.)

I want to go into writing because I feel that it is what I can do. It is a gift. It is a hobby. It is a way of escape. It is my superpower.

After going through several careers (or learning about them) during my twenties, I ultimately decided to settle on being a writer. If I did not have a desire for those things  have mentioned then, there was no way I was going to have a desire for those things now.

Now, if you were to ask me the billion dollar question , “why become a writer?” I would tell you: “that’s a good question…”

Well along with the things I have mentioned in the first paragraph, I was inspired to become a writer after watching the Christopher Reeve Superman movies as a kid. Sure I wanted to be Superman but, I also wanted to be Clark Kent. As a kid, I desired a pair of glasses and wore some toy red rimmed glasses emulating the mild mannered reporter. I pictured having my name on a byline and in the second year at college, it eventually it happened at my college newspaper. It was a huge accomplishment. However, I had hit some rough patches during the year 2008 which I would prefer not to mention. All I can say is that it affected my aspirations as a writer and that was when more detractors came. As I heard their voices, the seeds of doubt grew into my nogin and that was when I began to go aimlessly from career to career after college graduation. It wasn’t until post civil service finance job that I really did want to pursue writing. Why else was I not thriving in those other careers?

I need to believe in myself that I can pursue this ancient yet awesome and adventurous field. I may not be in the ranks of Hunter S. Thompson, Mark Twain, Erest Hemingway, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin or F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I know that if I at least dream about my goals as a writer and pursuing them, I know that I will succeed. And I know that I can go to sleep knowing that I made the decision to pursue my dream as a writer.