Soraya writes...

Hi! Hope all is well and that Rain of Ghosts is selling well (I'm reading it on my tablet and it's awesome so far!) anyways a question I've wanted to ask for a while now was is the title for The Usual Suspects in season one of Young Justice in reference to the movie?

Thank you!

Harlan Phoenix writes...

I finished Rain of the Ghosts earlier today and to cut to the chase, I absolutely loved it. I spent a lot of my early teens reading middle school and up fantasy series like Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, or His Dark Materials and Rain of the Ghost felt right at home with the tone of those stories (maybe slightly less so with His Dark Materials, but eh). In a weird way, Rain of the Ghosts was laced with a lot of pleasant nostalgia for me despite being a brand new property in your body of work. I have two young nieces and Rain is the exact heroine I would love to see them grow up on. When they're much older (being a toddler and baby respectively), I more than intend to raise them up on Rain of the Ghosts when they're old enough to relate to Rain and empathize with her journey. After all, they'll need something to read when I'm not watching Gargoyles with them.

As mentioned in my Mecha-Nation review, your heroes are really among the best in animation (and, now, general all ages fiction!) and Rain of the Ghosts continues that trend. I absolutely adore Rain as a protagonist and even though I'm a decade older than her I can definitely relate to her fears of a future locked in stone. 'Bastion was an incredibly welcome return to your love of WW2 iconography and his backstory, and his scene with Rain near the end was nothing short of adorable. Charlie brought a lot of welcome humor and awkwardness to the story that only emphasized his strength as a friend to Rain. It's a solid cast and I am very eager to see their next adventures.

And Opie may tie with Matrix as my favorite character you've ever written. I adore Opie. And Ariel definitely fascinates me and I like to imagine she, Owen, and Mercy Graves have the most intense poker games ever.

All in all, it's a lovely book that took me back to a time that makes me feel warm and fuzzy but with the added benefit of your personal style. Though I love all of your writing, there's something nice out of getting an original property amidst the more common adaptations. It's why, as great as Young Justice is, I felt a bit more connection to Mecha-Nation. It's a truly underrated comic that I'm sad we've yet to get more of and though it was Victor Cook's brainbaby, your voice really did come through and presented genuinely intelligent themes in a charming Saturday morning guise.

So I felt a nice connection to Rain. I've been a fan of your work essentially my whole life and with Rain, I feel like I'll be able to instill the Weisman love to the next generation of my family because, quite frankly, I'm a big enough dweeb to immensely value that. I'm with Rain for the long haul and am endlessly happy I've gotten to read it. Here's hoping some more of your ideas find their way to fruition and, in the mean time, here's to Spirits of Ash and Foam and Star Wars Rebels. I am very excited for both of them.

Now to shamelessly exploit your errors for attempted personal gain.

RAIN OF THE GHOST TYPO CONTEST

For my stab at finding a typo, I'm going to point out an anomaly with your tenses. Though your italicized thoughts for the characters are all in present tense (as thoughts should be!), there's one instance where this isn't quite so.

Second full paragraph, page 171, which reads as such:

"Here!" He guided her hand. [i]All those video games were finally paying off...[/i]

My tags note the italicized portion of the paragraph, i.e. the final sentence. I was hesitant to make this my entry, since the possibility of it being a stylistic choice is always there (and I didn't recall seeing it in your proofreader notes on the site). But after leafing through and comparing it with the other italicized thoughts throughout the book, it doesn't feel consistent with them and sounds more in tone with Opie's narration than Charlie's internalized gratitude.

Therefore, my submission to the contest is the final sentence of the second full paragraph of page 171, specifically the tense created by the use of "were."

Alex Y. writes...

I finally got Season 2 Vol. 1 of Gargoyles for Christmas, and I plan to add volume 2 to my collection as soon as I can(I am so thrilled that Disney finally released it! It made me so angry for the longest time because this was a show I really wanted on my shelf, not just for myself but for my nephew as well, he likes Gargoyles and I am always happy to expose him to quality family programming). Listening to you and the crew talk about the show is just so great because I can tell how much you all enjoyed working on it, and it really reminds me how much this show means to me. It helped get me through one of roughest patches of my life. It helped feed my imagination and wonder at the world during a time where I was becoming bitter and jaded(I was only thirteen at that). Next year marks the 20th anniversary, which is so amazing and I definitely plan to celebrate and I hope you are too, because it deserves to be celebrated and remembered. I guess I really just wanted to say thank you for being a part of something so wonderful, and thank you for enriching my childhood.

Rain Fan writes...

Whose voice do you imagine when writing lines for Rain, Charlie, Bastian, Opie, and Julia?

Anonymous writes...

I think you once hinted that you "didn't get enough episodes" to do a musical episode of The Spectacular Spider-Man. Was a musical episode part of your 5 season plan? And if so, which season did you plan to include it in: 3, 4 or 5?

Anonymous writes...

Who hired Lobo, the Light?

Mabeth King of Scots writes...

Could you clarify how human magic works in the gargoyles universe

btgr writes...

Something I just want to let you know:

Ever since I've watched the Disney movie Frozen, I can never take any DC Comics ice villains seriously anymore. It's all because of the constant use of ice puns.

GoldenAgeTeen writes...

Hello! I have a question about Earth-16
1. What is the time difference between Qurac and America?
Thanks again!

Tupka writes...

I have a question about Ivy Town - namely, where is it? In the comics, it's been thrown around a lot. It's been in Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, if not more.

I'm asking because in Darkest, Mal gets from Ivy to Happy Harbor in roughly an hour. Unless he used zetas somewhere in between (to Providence, for example), that narrows it down to RI, or the borders of CT and MA.

Anonymous writes...

It was mentioned that there was to be a Red Tornado arc in season 2 but that it was cut because there wasn't enough room for it with only 20 episodes. I was just wondering if the appearance of Red Volcano in "Runaways" had anything to with the planned Red Tornado arc - as in, was Red Volcano involved in events surrounding the planned Red Tornado arc which happened 'off-screen'?

Anonymous writes...

In "Beneath", it was clear that Devastation had gone "toe-to-toe" with Wonder Woman, but had never met Wonder Girl. My question is, has Devastation ever met Troia (as of "Beneath")?

Anonymous writes...

In "Beneath", Nightwing said that Psimon had been in a coma since his last encounter with Miss Martian. Was he referring to the events of "Image", or a battle that happened sometime during the 5 year gap?