Alternate Kalamazoos
Monday, July 31st, 2006
As I have been telling anyone who will listen, the story in Rapid City is based on the years I spent in and out of the music scene in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Kalamazoo is a really great town, exactly half-way between Detroit and Chicago. It seems to have a very special allure for those who have spent time there. If you pay close attention to Rapid City, you will see my own theory as to just what that allure is.
Bryan Charles, one of my K-town homies and a brillinat writer, just published his first novel. It is called “Grab Onto Me Tightly As If I Knew The Way“, and it is just fantastic. Go read a review for the details, or just trust me that it is incredible.
There are several Kalamazoos. Readers of super-hero comic books should be familiar with this kind of thing.
There is the real one. The one that is actually on the ground in Michigan. Then there is the romanicized, slightly fictional, one that exists in memory. Then there is the one that Bryan has written about, where the street names of the streets and the places are the same, and the people and events are just one or two details removed from the actual.
Then, a few steps down the ladder, is Rapid City. My very fictional version of Kalamazoo.
It is really cool for me to see the differences and similarities all of these versions.
And this is the part that I thought was really cool. One of the big revealing moments in his book is a confrontation with a certain character at a rock club in downtown Kalamazoo. The big climax of issue one of Rapid City is based on a confrontation that I had in a rock club in downtown Kalamazoo. It’s the same club. And, I suspect, that antagonists in each version are based on the same person.
Wierd how things work.
And, congratulations Bryan
Possibly Related Posts:
- Rapid City: B-Sides Wins Gold for Adair Printing
- In-Store Signing with Matt Bowers
- RC in NYC.
- 24 Gone.
- 24 Hours of Comic Insanity
