Although it's a bit far down on my current to-do list, I have a novel-in-progress called Lazarus Lives. I shared the eventual book's opening sequence with my paid patrons in December. This is its first public appearance.
Though people who've known me for a very long time may recognize some bits 'n' pieces inspired my own experiences, this is very much a work of fiction. The art teacher Mr. D is the only real-life person depicted. Here's to you, Mr. D: You made a positive difference in my life. We'll follow this one up very soon with a glimpse at what our then-young creators were attempting in the 1970s.
For now: Lazarus Lives.
LAZARUS LIVES
I had some miles to cover. Heavy snowfall had cancelled my evening flight, leaving me stranded on a layover in Detroit. I said to myself, "Steve, you've gotta get home." Man, whenever I talk to myself in that tone of voice, it never works out for the best.
I hated flying. It was fun when I was a kid, but it was just drudgery now in this brain-dead post-9/11 world. I was tired and frustrated and done. I was able to cancel the final leg of my trip. I may have implied a legal threat that did not technically exist, but I did get a refund. "Karen," you say? That's MISTER Karen to you. I made a belligerent beeline to the car rental desk, found an available sedan, and took off into the wild gray yonder.
Common sense? Never had it. Never will.
Before 9/11, my fastest route would have been via London, Ontario. Hassling with border security did not seem like the best possible waste of my time. A domestic drive from Detroit Metro to North Syracuse would take seven hours in clear weather, without pit stops, presuming the driver knew what he was doing. Yeah, factor in the flurries, the ice, and the driver's documented volatility, and we may as well double that estimated drive time.
But I didn't care. Frayed nerves had beaten my exhaustion into submission. I was awake and alert. I needed to get home. The calendar said so.
It was that damned calendar driving me on. I know it now, I knew it then. The awareness didn't matter. All I knew was that I couldn't bear to be away from home tomorrow, on the fiftieth anniversary of the last time I saw my best friend alive.
Let's not be coy about this. My friend's name was John. He killed himself, put a bullet in his head when we were still teenagers. Call me a drama queen for not ever getting over it, for still obsessing over it five decades later. That's the irony of suicide. Its memory never dies.
The rental had satellite radio, but I wasn't interested in hearing anything I didn't program myself. I plugged in my iPod--old school! Never thought I'd live to see an iPod considered old school, like an 8-track player or a stone tablet.
Then again, I never thought I'd live at all.
The iPod shuffled through favorites and obscurities, neck-snappin' segues from the Ramones to Dizzy Gillespie to the Girls From Petticoat Junction. My mind wandered--eyes still on the road, GPS guiding me, my path straight and true--but the past was present in my head. Fifty years. Damn you, John. Damn you for damning yourself.
We were an odd pair. Steve and John! Both outsiders, both intent on creating...something. I was a writer. John fancied himself a poet. His poetry was...well, let's not speak ill of the dead. But he had a gift for concepts, big ideas. All he and I really wanted to do was to write comic books.
This wasn't a common career choice among teens in the '70s. Seems weird to look back from this gleaming, far-flung future world of the 21st century and remember a time when superheroes were not the darlings of popular culture, but evidence of unforgivable nerdery. The comic book industry was dying in the '70s. John and I wanted in on it anyway.
And as much as we wanted to work for DC or Marvel or Warren, our true passion was our own co-creation: Lazarus. Lazarus! A mortal man who'd given up hope and decided to end his own life, his attempted suicide thwarted by an angel and a demon working together, Heaven and Hell combining forces to select Lazarus as an Earthly agent to act on behalf of both realms.
Corny? Man, never question the purple-prose passion of kids determined to create something of their own.
And we worked hard on Lazarus. We never gave him a civilian name; the collaborative angel and demon gave him a new identity as wealthy philanthropist Trevor Simons, who donned the dark hood and crimson cloak of Lazarus, a soul not quite damned and not quite saved. Lazarus prowled the dark and dismal streets of Eden City, guiding the worthy toward salvation, condemning the sinful to the fiery pits.
I'm Jewish. John was an atheist. But with Lazarus, our calling was flat-out evangelical.
Our cast of characters included Lazarus himself, still haunted by the ache that had pushed him toward suicide in the first place. The other regulars were the angel Becca and her sister, the demon Toxina; we implied that they were lovers. We had a recurring antagonist, Erin Settle, a beautiful but amoral billionaire businesswoman with more than enough personal wealth to buy immunity from being punished for her crimes, at least on the mortal plane. We had a super-villain, Torquemada, who was like an extreme version of Lazarus, a guy whose wife had died and now he was solely interested in declaring all people in Eden City as sinners, and bringing a deadly burning to every last one of them. We had a vague endgame, looking to conclude our epic saga with a final chapter called "Paradise Does Not Believe In Tears." We had...
...We had nothing.
No, that's not quite fair. We had ideas, and maybe we even had a little talent. But we didn't have discipline. We didn't have the ability to get shit done. I'm sure some teens did have that ability. These teens did not.
It was snowing harder now. As I passed Cleveland, I seemed to be the only driver on the road. My visibility was diminished, but I could still see the emptiness in front of me. Um...I meant the literal emptiness viewed through my windshield, the solitude of sharing the highway with Old Man Winter and no one else. It wasn't, like, an existential statement.
Though I guess that would have applied as well.
Neither John nor I had the artistic talent to pull off our creation's graphics...a pretty important point if you're working in a visual medium like comics. Initially, I think we hoped a publisher would connect us with an artist, like the next Neal Adams or Paul Gulacy, and we'd all be on our way to newsstands, Shazam awards, and eventual stardom.
Then we met Darlene.
Darlene was like a freaking unicorn in the '70s: A girl who was into comic books. Unheard of! We met her in art class, hit it off, discovered our mutual interest in superhero storytelling, and we were off to the freaking wacky races. Darlene could pencil and ink, she could paint, she could letter, and--sorry, John!--her poetry was pretty good, too. She was the one who convinced our art teacher that the three of us should work on a comic book as our group project. The crush I developed on her was instant and absolute.
I didn't tell her that, of course. By then, she was already with John. They would sneak off to hold hands, make out, share a cigarette, make out some more. It's what teenagers in love do. Or so I assumed.
As an art project, something we had to get done rather than merely dream about doing, Lazarus began to take shape. Darlene's talent made our efforts look better, and our writing skills developed just so we could keep up with her. We managed to complete just enough of Lazarus to present as our senior art project, which earned...a B. I'm biased, sure, but I think it was clearly A+ work. Our teacher didn't share our appreciation of panelology, I guess.
Then: Graduation. John got me a summer job working with him at 'Wichburger, Darlene bagged groceries at Rocky's Supermarket, and we all hung out as often as possible, my three's-a-crowd status be damned. Nothing could separate us! Nothing but...college.
I went away to Buffalo State, an English major with an eye on joining the campus radio station. Darlene had an art scholarship at a private school downstate. John did not apply to any colleges. He was done with school, emphatically, irrevocably. We all vowed to keep in touch. And we did. Until, y'know, what happened...happened.
As the snow kept falling, I knew I needed to take a break. An all-night donut shop in Ashtabula had remained open even amidst all of this lake effect tsuris. A pit stop, more coffee, a French cruller, and more coffee seemed the perfect pick-me-up. And yeah, I started to doze within minutes of setting my weary carcass into the booth.
I jolted awake. The donut shop was gone. I was in North Syracuse, at 'Wichburger, the fast food joint where I worked with John one single last, lost summer, fifty years ago. I pinched myself. I rubbed my eyes and pinched myself again, with enough force to make me flinch. I wasn't dreaming. The North Syracuse 'Wichburger closed in 1983; the building was later leveled and there's a goddamned Chik Fil-A there now. The whole 'Wichburger chain went belly-up by the late '80s. I could not possibly be at a 'Wichburger outside of a dream or a delusion.
This was neither.
I got up from the booth, borderline panicking. I headed straight to the rear exit door, knowing that I ferchrissakes shouldn't, knowing what I would find even though I knew I didn't want find it:
A cemetery. The cemetery. The cemetery that sprawled behind 'Wichburger back then. It sprawled behind goddamned Chik Fil-A in the present. It was where John was buried.
It was also where we'd created Lazarus.
John and I were 14 when we met as freshmen, a little more than three years before senior year brought Darlene into our lives. Two years before I discovered pot; John had a head start on me there. "Head start?" Ugh. The pun was unintentional.
We had the same freshman homeroom, the same freshman English class, the same freshman art class. Our freshman art teacher Mr. Dean had been a huge fan of '40s and early '50s Captain Marvel Adventures comics when he was a kid, and he encouraged his students to bring in examples of popular art and pop culture that meant something to them. Kids brought in rock ‘n’ roll albums and 45s, teen novels, baseball journals, posters, fan magazines, what have you. Esther Simon brought in a copy of Leaves Of Grass. Sandy Wilkins brought in a Bible. Don LoCastro brought in a recent issue of Penthouse; Mr. D asked him to put that away, please.
John and I brought comic books....
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I compiled a various-artists tribute album called Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and it's pretty damned good; you can read about it here and order it here. My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.
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