EXTRA: JOHN CECIL
CHANGES SOMEONE'S LIFE

[Editor's Note: We canned the Letters page last week, because no one had written in for a really long time, and it was getting kind of moldy and trying to climb up on the couch to steal the remote. And then this arrived for John Cecil, and we had to break our new policy of never running letters again, no, not in a million years.]

---

Dear John:

My name may look vaguely familiar to you; if so, it's 'cause I wrote for Savant way back in the day, about a year ago. And despite that and my own massive ego, I can safely say that your column about wannabe actors was the best thing I've seen on that website. Ever.

I say this for two reasons. First, because I too have been burned by would-be artists who are always "working on character designs," which sucks.

But second, and more importantly, because of Pittsburgh. My dreams of writing comics have, in fact, always been about superheroes and the Big Two companies. Make of that what you will; I've come to terms with it. I went to the Pittsburgh Con this year, my first major convention, starry-eyed, with good ideas, several plot treatments, full scripts to go with the treatments, just to show that I was Someone To Be Taken Seriously.

I made it into the ExpoCenter, and was immediately a shattered and broken man. I bought an entire run of Grant Morrison's Animal Man to replace the one my girlfriend nicked and slunk back to Baltimore, tail firmly lodged between my legs, resigned to going permanent in my temp job, extending my lease, buying some Ikea furniture, starting a fight club, and dying a beaten man at the ripe old age of 29.

Your column re-energized me. I know you don't give a crap about my personal problems as enumerated above, but I also know that I would have given a limb to have someone respond strongly to something I had written. So I'm telling you this, because I would want to be told this.

I've already cleared my slate for this weekend. I'm going to go home, re-work what I've already got, dust it up, get some big fucking FedEx mailers, and send the damned things to the Right People. Then I'm going to start working on something a little smaller scale, that maybe I'll actually be able to move to publication with.

I want to do all this. I will do all this. And it's all your goddamned fault.

Thanks.

-Matt Terl

---

John Cecil deeply appreciates Matt's words, and urges more of you to write in when you feel the need.

---
DOWNLOAD CURRENT ISSUE:
---