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I kept packing. I wasn’t visiting Chicago only for the comicon. I was thinking of moving back there. My superheroine adventure, coupled with some bad life decisions, had forced me out of Chicago the first time around. Since then I’d cleaned up my act as a webcomic creator. My weekly strip, “Average Chloe,” wasn’t all alone and lonely in the big nasty internet universe anymore. I’d joined an independent comics syndicate and now I sold my webcomics through online comics aggregators. My numbers, though small, were growing. That part was good.
I’d boosted my career by taking unfair advantage of my situation with Eric Wood. He was the CEO of Fantastic Comics. Eric lived the life of a successful New Yorker, and I lived it with him. We went to tasting events, late-night clubs, and special invitation-only premieres. We occasionally partied like rock stars. Plus, totally in the long-time tradition of the comics business, Eric offered me work at his company merely because we were lovers.
I leapt at the chance to draw a conventional comic book series featuring Swoonie, an American-style “magic girl” heroine. She was supposed to lure girls away from only reading manga and back to reading regular comic books. Little girls liked pretty pictures, and as they grew up, they wanted more. Swoonie was a delightful character for girly-girls. In my hands she also had a mission in life beyond looking pretty. I enjoyed doing the art, and everybody seemed happy with what I produced. Drawing Swoonie helped my name recognition, too. Win/win.
Last week, the scripter, Steve Lubbers, told me that Eric wanted him to kill off Swoonie. We had a big meeting, Steve, Eric, and me.
Eric said he was canceling the comic due to low sales. I argued, but Eric was adamant. Eric insisted Swoonie herself must die.
“But why?” I asked.
“She killed a man.”
“It was in self-defense, not on purpose,” I said, thinking about when I’d feared I’d killed a man.
“We can’t have heroes killing people,” Eric reiterated. He was like stone.
“They did it in a recent superhero movie and all the fans were appalled,” Steve said, in support of Eric.
“I saw that movie,” I said. “After twenty minutes of smashing buildings, they came up with a no-brainer ending.”
“We’re not here to criticize the competition,” Eric said, his frown showing his impatience. “Personally I don’t care if the CP Comics movie heroes destroy the entire universe. All I’m concerned with is this company.”
Eric had never made a truer statement. Although he sometimes acted as if he had a heart under his well-developed chest, the truth was he loved his job more than anything else in the world. I glanced around his plush office and wondered why I bothered to argue. I was a mere lowly beginner.
I turned to Steve. “Do you want to kill our heroine? The fans won’t like it.”
Steve, the suck-up, shrugged. “If Eric says it has to happen, then I’ll write the ending that way.”
“With no possibility of reviving her in a crossover to another title?” I pressed.
Eric weighed in again, loud and clear. “She’s going to die. Let it rest.”
I didn’t know where to look, I was so angry. This was wrong. I wanted to keep arguing with Eric, but he was laying down the law, not discussing it. No help from Steve. He wasn’t about to make waves over a lost cause.
Eric’s motive I wasn’t so sure about. He was the boss of Fantastic Comics. He could keep Swoonie alive and merely cancel the comic. Why kill her?
Eric’s adamance reminded me about a visit a couple of months ago from my former roommate from Chicago, Sarah Manning. After he ducked out early for a meeting, Sarah had spoken her mind. “He’ll never love anyone but himself. You deserve someone who’s crazy about you.”
“Eric and I understand each other,” I said. “We’re right for each other.”
“How can you believe that, when he ditches your luncheon date to run off to a meeting he could easily have postponed—you know how meetings are, and anyway, he’s the boss. He’s only interested in one thing.”
I looked down at my breasts, nicely displayed in a low-cut designer top Eric had bought me to show off his gift of a sapphire pendant. “Two things, actually.”
Sarah strangled a laugh. “Okay, fine, there is sex involved. That is one hell of a jewel dangling between your assets. Don’t shoot me, but sex is not enough to sustain a relationship. Hasn’t your mother ever told you that?”
I raised an eyebrow. “My mother? You must be thinking of some earnest suburban mom from a television sitcom. My mom is the anti-mom, remember? She’s entertained by my failures.”
Sarah’s expression turned serious again. “It’s still bad?”
I sighed. “I guess we’re doing better. She doesn’t complain that I’m wasting my time on my art career anymore.”
“Are you hoping to marry Eric?”
“No.” At her enquiring look, I said, “Reasons,” and shrugged. I didn’t want to tell Sarah how often it seemed that I would dress up and meet Eric for a late night dinner and a glamour event, and then we’d come home and have sex, and that was all I saw of Eric until the same scenario repeated the next night. We never talked. We never sat around his expensively decorated co-op and enjoyed the waterfall in the main room. Why had he built such an elaborate home if he hadn’t planned to spend any time in it? For show? Who was he trying to impress? He’d made it. He was a big deal in the comics world.
I could have given myself credit for changing Eric’s life. Being together could have made him so happy he accepted all invitations because he wanted to show off having found the right woman at last.
Nah. It wasn’t that wonderful.
Sarah ended our reunion with an offer. “If you ever come back to Chi-town, and you actually have an income, we could be roommates again.”
“Why didn’t we work as roommates, anyway?” I wondered aloud. “Too young and selfish?”
“Check. Also, too busy looking for Mr. Right. We went through them like there was a time limit on dating. Like they weren’t making men anymore and we had to grab at whatever we could.”
Sarah and I parted with hugs, and I forgot all about her warning until the debacle with Swoonie. It brought home the unpleasant truth that I had no control over the character I had lived and breathed for months. Usually, an artist drawing a strip for Eric’s company was expected to generate story ideas. Not with Swoonie. For this strip, Eric told Steve what to write and then Steve sent me a detailed script. I'd been grateful for solid direction at first, since I had no prior experience drawing superheroine action or comic books.
Before the cancellation meeting, I’d had a warning, but I hadn’t acted on it. Eric had specifically insisted on the scene in which Swoonie killed a villain. I was not happy about it and softened it as much as I could—until Eric called me from his office and ordered me to change Swoonie’s expression when she pulled the trigger of her magic star gun. “Make her look happy. Make her enjoy killing him,” he insisted.
“But she’s only acting in self-defense. She doesn’t want to kill him.”
“Toughen her up. Draw her smiling.”
We argued over it, but finally I had to draw the comic the way the boss wanted. As I did, I seriously asked myself what the hell I was doing drawing for The Man. What had come over me this past year? Why had I gone along with Eric on his creative ideas instead of insisting on my own? Why had I let him assign a scripter to the series, when it was supposed to be my series? What was I doing drawing corporate comics?
“I’ve sold out,” I told my girlfriend, Ardis Tenniel, in a phone call. “I’ve become compromised as an artist.”
“Quit,” she replied. “Do it now, before it’s too late. Before you get into the habit of ignoring your own moral choices in favor of earning a steady paycheck.”
That was where it lay before I started packing. Eric had jerked me around over Swoonie. I didn’t like being treated like a serf. “Draw this,” “Draw that” didn’t sit well with me, and somehow Eric and I never had the conversation to resolve that issue. Which was only an issue for me, not him. As far as Eric was concerned, the bar hopping, premiere-going, and late night sexing were all fine. I like sex, and I even like dining out seven nights a week, but our relationship wasn’t personal, somehow. I didn’t even know how or when to tell Eric I was dissatisfied and might walk. Our life together didn’t give us opportunities for talking seriously, and for reasons I hadn’t examined, I didn’t have the courage to baldly come out with it while we were busy doing something. Which we always were. The relationship wasn’t working for me anymore.