A long time ago I heard of someone who said "Ideas are cheap." What he meant was that many people have similar ideas, and that actually carrying out those ideas successfully is what matters. As an example, back in 1989 when I was in school I drew a parody comic of Tom and Jerry where they beat each other up pretty bad, blood and everything. This was before The Simpsons and Itchy and Scratchy. However, my little story stayed in my school sketchbook while the Simpsons went on to be seen by millions of people.

Which brings us to my latest case of "I thought about something like that!" About two years ago I had this idea of a Poison Ivy story, that would be seen from her point of view, starting with the events that cause her to become the villain she is today. We would see very little of Batman in the story, and he would come of as this omnipresent threat that was always hidden yet felt. I imagined I'd do away with many of the more hokey comic elements and try to make the story more realistic, etc. So yesterday I'm at the library and I find a graphic novel called "Joker", written by Brian Azzarello and drawn by Lee Bermejo, and there before my eyes is a story that has the same kind of approach I had imagined! To be clear, I'm referring to the things mentioned earlier, the actual plot of "Joker" is different of course. Also, after reading Joker I felt like what many basketball players must have felt like in the 90s playing against Michael Jordan's Bulls. Out of my league! Anyway, this journal entry is meant to be two things, venting about my latest run in with ideas that I thought were very original but ended up being not so much so, and second, a recommendation to those of you that like dark, intense graphic novels with great writing and incredibly insane artwork to check this book out. It is truly amazing.