Dave Wielgosz, Writer, Open for Business.

Saying what I want is a skill I’m working on developing. Instead of telling people what I want, I hope that if I act in a deserving way the people around me will read my mind and give me what I want.

It’s not a terribly good system or a fair one for my friends and family.

Largely because what tends to happen is that I then do not get what I want and I become resentful. There are two primary reasons I do this. The first…boasting about what you want always felt both selfish and wildly uncool to me. You say what you want and someone gives it to you? I didn’t understand that was just a normal operating procedure for most people, an act of self-love. The other reason is that if I don’t say I want it, I’m not responsible if it never happens or if I do get it and I can’t handle it. 

 I can count on one hand the number of times that the universe came through and gave me what I wanted even though I didn’t articulate my desire out loud to the proper parties. The start of my comic writing career is the biggest of those miracles and what I’m here to talk about today.

My name is Dave Wielgosz (Will-Gus) and if you have seen my name before it is probably because I spent the better part of the last ten years as an editor at DC Comics where my primary focus was on the in-continuity Batman titles. It was a job I loved, one I took very seriously, and towards the end, I could hold my head up and say one I got very good at.

But being a writer, specifically a comic book writer, has been the great dream of my life. All through High School I made comics with my friends, I wrote they drew, and we would bring them to comic book conventions. When I was a teenager I also decided to write a novel and self-publish it. Any opportunity I could write something and then immediately share it with people? I took.

 When I was in college, I interned at both DC and Marvel Comics in their respective editorial departments. I thought by interning for both companies I would learn a lot about making comic books and hopefully have a number of connections when I graduated from school and dove into writing full-time.

What ended up happening was DC ended up hiring a number of former editorial interns as temp assistant editors after my senior year of college, to help the company transition from their longtime home in New York City to their Los Angeles office. There was no guarantee that any of us temps would become full-time and go to LA, but I was twenty-one years old, and it sounded like a great adventure.

 I was a temp assistant editor in the Batman office. The responsibilities of the job included keeping track of a comic’s production, reporting when talent turned in work so they could get paid, sending reference material to artists, providing feedback on scripts & artwork, trafficking notes on the letter proofs of the comics, and various tasks exclusive to each title. While the job was stressful, I learned so much and I enjoyed the work. When the company did move to LA, I interviewed to become the full-time assistant editor in the Batman office and got the job. I have lived in LA for coming up on nine years now because of that.

But the question on your mind…why didn’t you just start writing full-time?

 Truly I did come to love the job of editing. Helping other people tell their stories is a great gift and an excellent skill to have. But mainly…I knew I was not ready to write full-time.

I had more I needed to learn and I needed to practice more before I made that great leap. When I made the move to LA, I knew I was at DC Comics to edit, I was not there to stealth pitch myself as a writer. I had heard plenty of horror stories about editors who really wanted to write who would nag their editorial colleagues for writing opportunities and force the freelance talent they worked with to tell stories the editor themself wanted to write.  

To have people avoid thinking this was me, I didn’t talk about my dreams of writing. I would write for myself, but I focused most of my creative energy on taking improvisation classes at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater in LA and eventually putting together my own improv team to do comedy shows around town.

 This status quo lasted for three years. By that time the class of editors I had come up with were starting to matriculate, but I was not ready to do the same. As an assistant editor, I was doing a good job, but I needed more reps before I was ready to make the leap to associate editor. However, as a good employer, DC wanted to me know I was appreciated and they were invested in my career trajectory.

Discussions were had as to what else the company could do to help me achieve my career goals. And this is the part with the miracle. I had not uttered the phrase “I want to write comics” in the DC office since becoming a temp. Yet, from what I understand, then group editor now editor-in-chief Marie Javins was in the room and reminded people I wanted to be a writer, and suggested that maybe I should be given the opportunity to write something.

 The morning the story was offered to me, I got to the office early. Usually, I was the first person from editorial in the office, but that day my colleagues Alex Antone and Brittany Holzherr had also gotten an early start to the day. Before I could finish turning on my computer DC Co-Publisher Dan DiDio appeared in my cubicle.

Dan has more energy and enthusiasm than anyone I’ve ever met. That morning he had a big smile face, one I had become familiar with over my tenure at DC, it was one he had when he felt a good plan had come together. He sat down and told me about the conversations that were had amongst the more senior editors, and said he heard I had aspirations to be a writer. I nervously said that I did. Dan then said that I was going to get the opportunity to write a short story in one of that year’s Holiday anthologies.

 I paused for a couple of seconds and asked Dan “Is this okay? Am I taking away an opportunity from someone else?”

Very matter of fact Dan said, “Only if you do a bad job.”

He kept his smile and walked out. I immediately ran to both Alex and Brittany’s respective cubicles to make sure they heard what had transpired. They confirmed I was not having a hallucination. I was going to write a DC Comic.

 Writing that story changed my whole life. I am a student of pop culture and listen to an immense amount of interviews with creative people I love. Those interviews taught me something important, getting the creative goal you want does not make all the problems of your life go away.  I committed to enjoying my experience writing the story because I knew there was a chance I would fear ruining the opportunity so much that I didn’t allow myself to enjoy it. And part of enjoying it was going to get help for my personal issues so I didn’t turn this story into the magic bullet that was going to save me.

 The story was tough to write, I learned that editor Dave and writer Dave didn’t always coexist at the same time. Despite giving notes to a lot of different writers, I still had to get the same notes from my incredible editor Alex Antone. And I took every single note, I didn’t fight, I knew that was not the path forward. Notes are good for you, if you take them the right way, great things happen. I surrendered my ego and got a solid first story because of it.

“The Devil You Know” was a team-up between Robin (Damian Wayne) and Solomon Grundy, they had to take down Professor Pyg. It was drawn by Christian Duce, colored by Romulo Fajardo JR, and lettered by Tom Napolitano.  The people who had decided I should get the opportunity to write the story felt I had done a good job, I could and would write again.

 Nonetheless, it was a first story and I got a lot of necessary stumbles and lessons out of the way. The second short story I wrote? I made a huge leap forward. My confidence was higher, I had a better understanding of the amount of pages allotted to me and my vision was clearer.

 For the next few years, I got to be one of the rare people who got to have their cake and eat it too. I was still dedicated to editing the best comics I possibly could but I also got afforded more writing opportunities from DC that I always leapt at. But then there was a shift in my final two years. I was wrapping up editing a slate of projects I really loved and when they were done…I didn’t want to edit another DC Comic. I felt whole about my editorial career. I had proven all I wanted to prove. But the hunger to continue to write was more powerful than ever. In March of 2023, I ended my run as an editor.

 So I have taken the stories that DC was kind enough to let me write and I am sending them to various publishers letting them know I am open for business as a writer. I want to be a full-time comic writer, that’s the great dream of my life. And I’m letting you know that too. The universe gave me what I wanted once without me asking, I need to take that gift and run with it as far as I can.

I left social media a few years ago to deal with some personal issues, and I know it’s time to come back. Not only because I feel very confident I’ve resolved said issues but because…creators have to advocate for themselves and their work. Also, I have never spoken about those projects I wrote for DC online before. That’s something I want to remedy. I love those stories, I want to talk about them and I want to convince you to check them out.

 Over the next four weeks on this newsletter, we are going to talk about all seventeen short stories I wrote for DC, what I learned from pitching them, writing them, and collaborating with the art teams and editors I worked with. Here’s how the schedule is going to break down:

· Week 2 (10/5/23): Short Story Week 1 Superman, I wrote five about the Man of Steel.

· Week 3 (10/12/23): Short Story Week 2 The Flash, I wrote three about the Scarlet Speedster. (Barry Allen, I know Wally West is the Fastest Man alive, folks.).

· Week 4 (10/19/23): Short Story Week 3 Green Lantern/Green Arrow, I did two stories about each of these Emerald Champions.

· Week 5 (10/26/23): Short Story Week 4 Aqualad, Frankenstein Agent of S.H.A.D.E, Chronos and Robin. I did two stories about Jackson Hyde and one for each of the other characters.

I am excited to talk about the work I have done and the work I will be doing. This is going to be a space for positivity, I hope, getting to create for a living…it’s a gift. And one I want to share. Hopefully, I can provide some insights, share some lessons I learned along the way, and at the very least give you something positive to read every week. Welcome to my journey as a writer.

I have said a lot. Please join me again next week as I talk about the first, and I still argue the best superhero…Superman…and the five short stories I was lucky enough to get to tell with him.

Be Safe!

--Dave Wielgosz