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STUFF OF DARKNESS --- San Diego. Shit. I'm still only in the Marriott. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back on the con floor. When I was home after my first con, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my girlfriend until I agreed to a breakup. She was Canadian. You wouldn't know her. When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back onto the con floor. Been here a week now. Waiting for a panel. Getting softer. Every minute, I stay in this room, I get weaker. And every minute the retailers squat on the floor, they get stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter. Everyone gets everything they want. I wanted a sketch, and for my sins, they gave me one. It was a real choice sketch, and when it was over, I'd never want another... -=-=-=-=- "You heard of John Byrne? John L. Byrne?" "Yes, sir, I've heard the name." "...X-Men. Man of Steel. Next Men... you get the point. We have a post from the web. This has been verified as Byrne." "I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a bulge. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a gigantic bulge... and surviving... We must revamp them. We must resurrect them. Pig after pig, cow after cow, superintelligent monkey robot after superintelligent monkey robot. They lie... they lie and we have to be merciful to those who lie. Those nabobs. I hate them. How I hate them..." "We've heard enough. John Byrne was one of the most outstanding pencillers this country has ever produced. He was a brilliant and outstanding in every way and he was a good man too. Humanitarian man, man of wit, of humor. Then, he did Chapter One. After that his ideas, his methods have become unsound... Unsound. "Your mission is to proceed to the con. Pick up Byrne's path at Artist Alley, follow it, learn what you can along the way. When you find Byrne, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and terminate his books." "Terminate? Byrne?" "With extreme prejudice." -=-=-=-=- I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn't even know it yet. Days away and miles up a river of booths that snaked through the con like a long, snakey thing and plugged straight into... him. Byrne. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of John Byrne's memory, any more than being back in San Diego was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is really a confession, then so is mine. -=-=-=-=- "You smell that? Do you smell that? Mylar, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of Mylar in the morning! You know, one con we had ourselves a rush... twelve hours! When it was all over I stood up. I had signed more than 10,000 books. The smell, you know that plastic smell, it gets into your hands. Smells like -- victory." "Whatever, Claremont. Just remember, black, two sugars." "Sure. Whatever you say, Mr. Q. Right away!" -=-=-=-=- Black. Two sugars. Like my soul. Someday this con's gonna end. That would be just fine with the boys in the booths. They weren't looking for anything more than a way home. Maybe some cash, or nachos. But mostly a way home. Trouble is, I've been back there, and I knew that it just didn't exist anymore. If that's how Claremont worked a con, I began to wonder what they really had against Byrne. It wasn't just insanity and excess verbiage. There was enough of that to go around for everyone. Oh yes. For everyone. Everyone. -=-=-=-=- "Hey... let's go to the Chaos booth! Con sluts, man! Booth bunnies!" "No stopping, Dave. We have to keep moving." "Hey, baby! Shake that thing! Sign my Lady Death! Wooo!" "What's... this all over the floor?" "Drool, I guess..." "I hope." -=-=-=-=- I hope. We all hope. I hoped this was the wrong dossier. I couldn't believe they wanted this man terminated. His words on that message board... Really put a hook in me. But I couldn't connect those words with this man. They said he had an impressive career. Maybe too impressive. He was being groomed for the top spots. His run on X-Men, legendary. His Fantastic Four, groundbreaking. His Superman revamp, revered... But then, in '98, things started to slip. Seems the new management at Marvel didn't dig what he wanted to tell them. He made three requests to keep his book alive. A grown man, writing stories about teenagers from the sixties in tight clothes. Why the fuck would he want to do that? -=-=-=-=- "Where can I find your Editor In Chief?" "You came right to it, you son of a bitch !" "You're the DC chief?" "You bet I am. Everyone else went to Marvel." "Oh. Right." "Yeah, I'll take that one! And that one! And... that one!" "Who are you-- What are you doing?" "Pitches. Buying pitches for Authority spin-offs. What the fuck you think I'm doing? Yeah." -=-=-=-=- The titles flew past my ears like fish in Seattle: The Establishment... The Disestablishement... The Anti-Disestablishment... Anti-Redisestablishement... Monarchy... Bureaucracy... Parlimentary... Parlimentary-Funkadelic... Oligarchy... Paternity... Hospitality... Planetary -- wait, scratch that -- Aristocracy... Hypocrisy... Hip-Hopracy... Diplomacy... Redundancy... My head was swimming. My ears hurt. My stomach growled. We had to get out of here. -=-=-=-=- "Did you find an EIC?" "There's no fucking EIC here. Let's just get going." "Which way?" "You know which way." -=-=-=-=- An e-mail came right as I was nearing my target. "There has been a new development regarding your mission which we must now communicate to you. Months ago, a man was ordered on a mission which was identical to yours. We have reason to believe that he is now operating with Byrne. The Bullpen was crediting him as 'X' for his family's sake. They were told he was cancelled. Then they intercepted a letter he tried to send his wife: SELL THE HOUSE Mackie -- he was with Byrne. God, no. -=-=-=-=- "Smack 'em with your Man-Thing, man, smack 'em with your Giant-Size Man-Thing..." "Who are you?" "I'm a journalist, man, a publisher! I've covered comics since '91. I was there for the boom, I was there for the bust, and pretty soon I'll be there for the next boom, man! I've got fifty copies of Next Men #1 to unload." "Who are all these people ?" "It's Byrne, man. These are all his fans, his children, as far as you can see." "Could we, uh, talk to Mr. Byrne?" "Hey, man, you don't talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. He don't listen to anyone these days anyway. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a writer-penciller in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he'll, uh, well, you'll say hello to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you, and he won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say 'You can't spell "Ultimate" without "I AM"! It's been done! It's superfluous!" -- I mean -- the man's a genius. A god. I mean..." "I need to see him." "Hey, uh, don't go -- don't go without me, OK? I want him to sign my X-Men 137." -=-=-=-=- Everything I saw told me that Byrne has gone mad. Artist Alley was full of listless bodies: former Image jockeys, Indie kids, teetering Golden Agers... If I was still here, it was because he wanted me that way. It smelled like slow death in there, sweat, ink. This was the end of the road alright. -=-=-=-=- "What do you want, Gareb?" "What do I want? I want to know why. Why? Why would a nice guy like you wanna kill a genius? You know that the man really likes you. He likes you, he really likes you. He's got something in mind for you. Aren't you curious about that ? I'm curious, I'm very curious. You curious?" "No." "Here he comes. Here he comes! Hey, man! Hey! Sign my book, would ya? Sign it--" "Begone, worm. I tired of you. I have something I need to read. I need to read this to our friend. Are you listening, friend?" "Yes. I'm listening." "I want you to really listen. Heed to these words:
"Oops. "Do you know what the man is saying, man? Mr. Assassin-man? Do you? This is dialectics. It's very simple dialectics. One through nine, no zero issues, no fractions -- you can't revamp the immortal, man, you know. It's neverending! If you know the numbers, you can play the game. He is not that innocent, see? Not that naïve. Oh no. He's showing us all how to play the game! We'll be rich, man! We'll be in heaven!" -=-=-=-=- On the way here, I thought that the minute I looked at him, I'd know what to do, but it didn't happen. I was in that booth with him for days, not under guard - I was free - but he knew I wasn't going anywhere. He knew more about what I was going to do than I did. If the editors back in the Bullpen could see what I saw, would they still want me to kill him? More than ever probably. And what would his people back home want if they ever learned just how far from the X-Men he'd really gone? He broke from them and then he broke from himself. I'd never seen a man so sketchy, so poorly inked... -=-=-=-=- "Byrne?" "Yes... Yes, my friend. I've drawn horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a hack. You have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not use the pen as I do. Who do not, day after day, draw little men in tight clothes. With their bulging arms and... other bulges. Horror! Horror has a bulge... And you must make a friend of that bulge. That bulge is... your friend. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. Fear those bulges, if you must!" -=-=-=-=- They were going to give me a mini-series for this and I wasn't even on their payroll anymore. Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pencil away. He wanted to go out in the Top Ten, not like some poor, addled, old-timer, ranting about some book instead of drawing one. Suddenly, I had an urge for nachos. Nachos. -=-=-=-=- "The bulges. The bulges..." ---
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