The Final Countdown For A Real Slobberknocker

We are closing in on the final moments for A Real Slobberknocker #2 on Kickstarter. We had a flurry of recent activity which has put us past the second stretch goal of $3k, so every backer will receive a curated indie comics PDF bundle featuring an array of genres.

My next real goal is $3,564. That’s the amount we raised with the first campaign. I would love to surpass that, even by only a dollar. The benefit of doing a series on Kickstarter is that anyone that missed the first one can pick up everything to date, so we’ve managed to this this far with 35% fewer backers than the last time around. There are still about 60 people watching the campaign so hopefully when those notifications go out that the campaign is ending, more will jump in the ring.

I took another look at the script for issue #3 over the weekend. I haven’t touched it in months and I knew I had to make some edits so I finally cracked it open again. The beats in that final issue hit all the marks I was hoping for when the idea first struck me a few years back. It captures those emotional moments that come from fantastic wrestling matches. While I’m excited for readers to dig into the second chapter, the third is our finale and if you have ever had even a passing interest in pro wrestling, you’re going to love it.

This renewed vigor came at a good time for me this week as I hit a wall with Clean Up Crew. I’ve been trying to put the pieces together for that story for awhile now and it just wasn’t clicking. I added and changed elements of it and it felt like I had all the right components. The problem was I was no longer interested in it. I lost the spark that made me so excited about this story in the first place. It had morphed into a story I could tell, but not one that I wanted to tell.

I went back to the drawing board one more time. Started a brand new file and wrote the basic points that made this story something that has rattled around in the back of my mind for 20 years. There are a couple adjustments, but the heart of the story is there and that interest was piqued once again. I saved the file and will not look at it for another week or so. Let it simmer for a bit and then after the dust settles on this Kickstarter campaign, I’ll revisit and knock it out.

I have been unplugged from the overall pop culture news engine so I am delightfully surprised when new things suddenly show up. I learned that a new Jurassic World movie was coming out this summer because a trailer dropped the other day. I had no idea the franchise was even continuing. I don’t seek out spoilers or behind-the-scenes photos and it’s lead to a more enjoyable experience overall.

That brings me to This is the Tom Green Documentary. I had no idea this existed and then saw some friends talk about it online. The film, directed by Green himself, did a good job explaining his rise and subsequent disappearance. There was a lot I didn’t know about Green and his work before he showed up on MTV and it was impressive to see all he had done up until that point.

What I was also surprised by was how little I remembered from the MTV show. I watched that program religiously when it first came on. It was just the right amount of weird for a teenage James Ferguson. It fit right in with my other comedy interests like Conan O’Brien. Despite that, the only thing I could recall was a passing memory of the video for the Bum Bum Song.

I often wonder about this. I’ve talked to some folks who can instantly rattle off lines from books or movies like they read them yesterday and that’s just not how I think or remember stuff. Despite Tom Green making an impression on me as a youth, I struggled to remember much about his work at my current age.

This is why I’ve been enjoying revisiting books in particular that I read when I was younger. I read most of the Wheel of Time series back in high school and reading it again last year was like experiencing it for the first time.

Am I alone in this? Or do you have core memories associated with key media from your youth? I can still quote the entirety of Ghostbusters, but I think that was because it was one of a handful of VHS tapes we had growing up so I probably watched it a hundred times.