Well, in the interval between publication of the first DETECTIVES INC. and starting the second, this one, A TERROR OF DYING DREAMS, I got to do a video version of DETECTIVES INC., and when that came about, I knew I had a lot of challenges ahead of me. The first thing I knew was that I could not afford to go around blowing up buildings. But, man, at least in comics form, I had this great opening sequence that I loved. Denning and Rainier weren’t even in it, but conceptually I knew I could make this work if I did it right. Some day, even all these years later, you might get a chance to see a version of it.

Anyhow, the details of the making of the 2 Hr. and 10 min video are in the back of this graphic album, A TERROR OF DYING DREAMS, along with a lot of photos from the video, behind and in front of the camera. So, you get even more for your money.

The main point here is that I had to come up with a new idea, something I felt was worth writing about. And that something started with domestic violence.

I did a reading of one of the key sequence between Bob Rainier, and a new character I’d developed, Dierdre Sevens, a social worker, at a charity fund-raiser. It’s the sequence in A Terror of Dying Dreams where the two reveal the painful pasts they’ve had in their relationships, and it’s a scene that people have responded to with a great deal of heart. That night that my wife, Marsha, read Dierdre’s part. After we came off the stage, people came up to talk to us about it. One woman waited off to the side until most of the other people left, and then she came forward, and spoke quietly in that tangle of voices filling the room, and quietly and poignantly spoke to us. She didn't normally read comics. She told us how much she related to what was said about men and women and any relationship between people, and how it moved her, her eyes and voice filled with pain as she revealed what had struck such deep chords in her, that had touched on truths and wounds she had experienced in her own life.".

Oddly enough, I almost lost that scene, which takes place on the Boardwalk, in Coney Island. I didn’t have enough pages to include it.

Here we were wondering how we were going to pay the rent, and I actually called Dean Mullaney, the publisher and founder of Eclipse, and said, "Dean, I’ll pay Gene out of my own pocket, if we can just get 4 more pages to keep that scene in there. This book will lose too much to me. All my life, I’ll see that book, and I’ll know its guts were cut out, the heart and soul of it so much less than it should have been." And I don’t how, but Dean found a way we could do it.

So, now you get to see it in the book. And when you read the book, you can let me know what you think about it.

And I’ll love seeing what you have to say.

And isn’t great, you have the chance to express it?

I’ve always felt that New York City and the surrounding boroughs are predominant characters in Detectives Inc. When you look at that time-lapse, continuity shot on the Boardwalk at Coney Island, I think you can see how well Gene integrated the ambiance of the place as well as what is actually there. The same with that scene above with the hooker, in midtown Manhattan, from his silhouetted figures against city scape, to his close-ups filled with shadows and hologen lights.

So, here we are in cyberspace, and anyone can come from anywhere, and no one is dictating what can be on the racks, can or can’t be seen.

We can help increase awareness that a book exists for the stores that carry it.
But we can also let you have access to that book if you don’t have a store near you.
Or, if the store near doesn’t carry anything but the most mainstream super-hero titles.