5) The "American Gothic" saga in Swamp Thing #37-50. This was Alan Moore's kickoff and to my mind, crowning achievement on this book that he revolutionized. Taking Swamp Thing cross country to confront the growing darkness within, we discovered a lot more about Swampy himself and in the process, Moore revealed how horror fiction can illustrate and illuminate social and cultural horrors. Add to this some superb and truly beautiful art by John Totlebon and Steve Bissette, expert use of the DC Universe and some ghastly images one cannot forget, and you have a modern epic.

6) "The Phoenix Saga" in X-Men 129-137. Made during the time when a main characters' death was still 'shocking', this epic tale of dark seduction and tragedy saw both Chris Claremont and Johny Byrne at the height of their creative powers. Claremont's characterizations were nuanced and razor sharp, giving us heroes who struggled with themselves and their own darker impulses as much as they did with the villains they faced. Byrne perfectly captured the spiralling down of Jean Grey into the Dark Phoenix with his trademark distinctive, personality revealing superhero art. To this day, I defy anyone with a heart to read it all the way through and not tear up a bit.

7) "Days of Future Past" from X-Men 141-142. It's incredible to realize this terrific story came right on the heels of the "Phoenix Saga". I guess it goes to show that when you're hot, you're hot. This was really the last Claremont/Byrne collaberation on the X-Men, and it's a doozy. This is really the progenitor of all the "dark future" stories that have come and gone in the last thirty years in comics, projecting an apocalyptic vision of a future Earth where mutants have been outlawed and must struggle to survive against overwhelming and ultimately, insurmountable odds. Featuring such shocks as the deaths of Wolverine and most of the mutants we've come to know and love, the first glimpse of a heroic Magneto and a gray haired Katherine (Kitty) Pryde as a resistance fighter.

Tomorrow, the last three in my list. Following that, I'd like to do "Best Single Issue Stories" and "Best Limited Series."

Top Ten Favorite Comic Stories (Regular Series)

I'm not very good at actually numbering these kinds of lists. I find the pressure of "ranking" a bit too distracting from the real purpose of the list, which is just to jot down the individual items in whatever list you are making. Maybe with time and more effort I'd be willing to rank them formally, but like the Oscars, I try to think that it's an honor "just to be nominated". (Insert sarcastic laughter).

1) Fantastic Four #116 - Where to begin with what I loved about this story? Well, I guess the use of Dr. Doom as a proxy leader of the FF is as good a place as any. Faced with the brainwashing of Reed Richards and the utter defeat of the Torch and Thing at the Overmind's hands, Sue Richards swallows her pride (and perhaps her sanity) and goes to the Latverian Embassy in hopes that Doom would put aside his hatred of Reed and see that they share a common enemy. It works, but only have Sue has to shame him into asserting that the demons of "fear and pettiness" do not rule him. His interplay with the rest of the team and his classic dialogue as he confronts the Overmind is unforgettable. I love stories where the protagonist and antagonist have to team up to thwart an even bigger foe, and this is pretty much the template for that type of story. Add in the Overmind, a truly Earth threatening foe, full of arrogance and the seeming inevitability of his own victory, plus appearances by both the enigmatic Stranger and Watcher, and you've got an absolutely essential story in this life long comics fans memory arsenal.

2) Daredevil 227-233, "Born Again" - Coming out at the same time, roughly, as "Watchmen", this was a searing tale, almost difficult to read in its emotional realism and tragedy. I admire writers who are able to take you and the characters down to the depths of utter despair, and then bring both of you back to the light of hope and possibility, without ever cheapening things or denying the reality of the initial descent. Daredevil's redemption here is tortuous but definitely earned; it feels believable and contextually "right" and that's due to writer Frank Miller's attention to detail and character nuance. Miller expertly uses New York as a kind of crucible where Matt Murdock's entire life is tested, burned and somehow made whole again and stronger for the ordeal.

3) Avengers #167 - 177, the "Michael" Saga - One of the great cosmic epics of all time, this story makes the list because it contains some of the elements that always seem to really grab me. 1) The overlying feeling of impending doom for the universe from a nearly omnipotent adversary, 2) the inclusion of a massive roster of heroes lined up to oppose him/her. Jim Shooter's 1978 epic (or as Stan Lee called it back then, his "magnus opus") was startling for it's time, featuring the deaths of most of the Avengers (yes, they were later revived but this was well before killing heroes off only to revive them shortly afterwards became such a popular trend. Shooter delineates all of the characters with a mastery of one who has read Marvel Comics his whole life and creates an over reaching, universe spanning story that involves some of Marvel's oldest and most powerful cosmic entities, including the In-Betweener, The Living Tribunal, and Eternity.

4) The Avengers 185-186 "The Yesterday Quest" Wanda and Pietro Maximoff (Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch) have always been two of my favorite Marvel characters, and this three part mini epic finally addressed the long standing question of their true origins. Set on Wundagore Mountain, the story by David Michelinie expertly wove in all sorts of seemingly disparate Marvel elements and characters like the High Evolutionary and the Knights of Wundagore, the demon Chthon, Bova the Cow Woman, Morded the Mystic, SpiderWoman, the Avengers, and Miss America and the Whizzer into a personal history that against all odds, seemed to make sense despite it's complexity. John Byrne's art was at its top form here, and I can still taste the Swanson's TV dinner (chicken and mashed potatoes) I ate when I read Part One (absolute proof of quality in my book).

250 words

Ernest Hemingway once said that he "hated writing, but he loved 'having written'."

I think most of us that fancy ourselves writers can totally empathize with this sentiment. While it's enormously satisfying to be able to sit back and admire a piece of work you're particularly happy with, the process of creating it itself is almost always a tortuous trudge through laziness, lack of inspiration, and self doubt. Most of the time having the idea for a piece is the first and most difficult step, but almost equally hard is forcing yourself to sit down and start clacking away on the keyboard. I guess 'thinking' about writing is kind of fun, but actually have to work out the nuts and bolts of how your piece is going to be structured, what kind of tone you are going to use, how long it will be, etc. is a lot more like actual WORK, and thus, not nearly as fun.

Unfortunately, that's the only way to transform a thought into a written expression, so we're all stuck with it.

I have suffered from this conflict for most of my "writing" life; the joy and excitement of the inspiration for something, followed quickly by abject ennui and frustration when it comes to physically creating the work. To be fair, real life isn't always very helpful. You may be totally buzzed about heading home from work after having a great idea, anxious to commit it to paper (or cyberspace) but in the meantime, you have to fill up your car with gas, stop at the grocery store, pay some bills, do your laundry, fix something to eat, vacuum your carpet, take out the garbage and a million other "must dos" that pop up on a daily basis. All of these things are at war with the creative impulses, and all of them must be factored into your writing regimen. Compound these conflicts with the fact that all of these activities (in addition to your regular job) have the accumulated effect of making you tired, thus even less willing or able to commit ideas to screen.

This is usually the part of the essay where the author begins to suggest ways to counteract the problem. Unfortunately, in my experience, there really aren't many. You just have to do it. That is, you have to find a way to do all of those things and still write, because those other things are obviously important and are things that the whole world must contend with. But, if you've chosen to call yourself a writer, you've got the added burden of negotiating the arduous path of the practical with the imaginative, and there just isn't any easy way out.

You've got to find time. You've got to make the time. You've got to be prepared to lose sleep, skimp of meals, ignore phone calls, run the car on empty, let the laundry and dishes pile up and let the grass grow a little. As Maria Ouspenskaya spoke in the great 1940's film, "The Wolfman", "the way you walked with thorny, through no path of your own...". You probably didn't choose to be a writer, you just WERE. And it isn't easy.

I'm a horrible poster boy for time and/or resource management. I'm naturally lazy anyway (like, I suspect, a great many writers) and even in the best of times, I would always find a reason to not do the second step in the "imagine/write" sequence. I was tired, something good was on TV, I'd get into long conversations with someone , I had too many things to do. All of those were good enough reasons not to write, but if I'm truly committed to being a writer, they can't be good enough. I've got to dig in somehow and find a way to enforce some self discipline. I'm in my mid forties now, and if I'm EVER going to be serious about making writing my life's work (not just in financial context, but in a passionate, "life's work" sort of way), I have to find ways to get around all of these obstacles.

Today, I'm going to try a new way. Someone told me that they know a writer who commits at least one hour a day to writing, regardless of whatever else is going on in their lives. I think that's a great idea. It's one I've resisted for a while, rationalizing that that type of 'scheduled' writing is too mechanical and doesn't speak to the natural ebb and flow of creativity, i.e. 'ok, what if at my appointed time for writing I don't have anything to say?' That's ultimately a poor excuse, though. There's nothing stopping me from writing LONGER and MORE OFTEN than once a day for an hour; this is just a goal to write at LEAST that much. And if I don't have anything particularly original to say at 5:15PM on a Tuesday, for example, well, so what? The enforced scheduling might prompt me to be creative and cobble something interesting together the way having to "crunch" before an assignment deadline did in the past. More than likely most of the time I won't have anything tremendously interesting or original to write, but the very task of writing itself will be beneficial, if nothing else, a metaphorical "muscle stretching" to keep myself in practice. And that 'stretching' might come in very handy when/if I truly get inspired to write something that matters somewhere down the line.

So, here I go. I'd like to try for at least 250 words a day, which isn't much, ultimately; along the lines of a single double spaced eight by eleven inch page of typing paper. I've decided that whatever else I am in this life, I can be a writer when/if I apply myself. I guess it's just the "applying" part that I need to work on and hopefully, this is the start of that labor.

Into the breach...