About Me - Page 3

My mom pointed out to me that Frank Cho and Brandon Peterson, two of the greatest talents working in the comic book industry today, were going to be doing a seminar at my local library at the end of the week. I knew that I had to attend, but I couldn't attend empty-handed. I had a script but… it wasn't a comic book and, somehow, I didn't think that they would be interested in a screenplay about my life. Either way, I had one week to decide if I was going to step up to the plate swinging or not.

Being the packrat that I am, I have a copy of almost every script that I have ever touched. I began vigorously digging through my old archives when I came across a rejection letter from none other than Marvel's editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada. I noticed two things instantly…

1. He spelled my name wrong. Twice. We have the same first name.
2. In the letter, Mr. Quesada told me that my writing was excellent, but the script itself needed some polish, and that I was welcome to resubmit after I found the diamond in the rough.

Where there's a rejection letter, there's a script. Unfortunately, he was right and the script was horrible. I wrote it back when I was still trying to learn animation and ended up forcing it into a comic formatting when I got the bright idea to apply at Marvel. Nevertheless, I had a starting point.

The script was called H.E.R.O. - Human Evolution Research Organization and I had one week to completely overhaul it.

The final product wasn't my best work, but at least it wasn't my worst work. Within the week's time, I had completely rewritten the entire script from start to finish.

The seminar came and went, it was incredible. They were witty, informative, and all-around nice guys. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my wheelchair anywhere near the autographing table after seminar. The lines were just too long. And on top of that the fact that I had just been in my wheelchair for three hours after spending the last few weeks laying in my bed recovering from pneumonia. My body was not equipped to sit in that chair for that long.

I couldn't allow this to be a failure. In two days was the Baltimore Comic-Con. I put my pain on the back burner, rented a wheelchair accessible van, grabbed a few friends and attended my very first comic convention.

As a geek, it was Valhalla. I met some incredibly talented people, and I got to spend some time with Mark Wheatley, who I had only known through e-mail and phone correspondence for a few months. He had always been a great help and encouragement, still is actually, but something happened while I was at his booth that I will never forget…

Being my first convention, I was slightly… terrified so, obviously, I went to my comfort zone and introduced myself at the Insight Studios booth. Mark was honestly the only person that I knew there and, at that time, I barely knew him. As if a first meeting wasn't awkward enough, I strolled right up as he was engaged in a conversation with Robert Tinnell.

Not only was I treated like family, which would have been more than sufficient to make my first convention memorable, but I was treated like a professional. Me… a nobody kid with no credits under his belt. Wow. I'll never forget how Mark introduced me to Robert. I won't go into exact quoting because it's been a few years now and I'll probably get it wrong but the general gist of it was "This is Joe, he's a writer and can do… everything. Literally." I remember that because it threw me into a daze.

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