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Formic Wars: Silent Strike #5

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Today the last issue of the second arc of Formic Wars hits comic shops. I’m proud of this issue. The art by Giancarlo is incredible. This concludes the First Formic War. There is a still another war before Ender Wiggin is born. It’s called — can you guess? — the Second Formic War. Fans of Ender’s Game know that war well, or at least know some of what happens in the war. It’s at the end of the Second Formic War that  Mazer Rackham defies orders and fires upon the queen’s ship, killing her and ending the war. That’s not a spoiler, folks. We’ve known that all along. It’s in Ender’s Game.

In any event, Scott Card and I are excited about telling that story. As all Ender’s Game fans know, the asteroid Eros will play a critical role. That’s where the Formics set up a base from which to orchestrate their invasion of Earth. Should be fun.

Here’s a description of and credits for issue five.

Writer:  AARON WILLIAM JOHNSTON, Orson Scott Card

Artist: GIANCARLO CARACUZZO

Colorist: JIM CHARALAMPIDIS

• The Shocking Conclusion To The First Formic War, A Prequel To Orson Scott’s Card’s Science-Fiction Classic Ender’s Game.

• The Formics Fight To The Bitter End. But Is It The End?

• The Hegemon Of Earth Is Revealed!

Remembering my grandfather on the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor

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My paternal grandfather, Stan Johnston, was a survivor of Pearl Harbor stationed aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. And yes the Navy had a ship named the Enterprise. It boldly went where no sailor had gone before.

Sadly I didn’t know my grandfather very well. He and my grandmother divorced when my dad was still in high school, and when I was a kid we didn’t visit him that often. My memories of him are few, and they mostly involve him taking me by the shoulders and looking down at me with deep regret in his eyes, as if he wanted to be closer to us grandkids but didn’t quite know how.

I also remember the smell of smoke. Grandpa Stan was a smoker, and whenever I enter a home where the scent of cigarettes has buried deep in the upholstery of the furniture, I think of him.

He wasn’t a perfect man. He married five times and made quite a few mistakes in his life. But at some point he made my grandmother (whom I love dearly) a very happy woman, and for that I owe him something. My dad also loved him deeply, despite my grandfather’s flaws, so I wish I knew him better than I did. He died while I was serving a mission for the LDS Church in Venezuela. By then I had matured quite a bit, and I’d like to think that I would have made more of an effort to know him had he survived a little longer.

He was very young on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pear Harbor. I know little about his experience, but this morning my dad sent me this account.

Seventy years ago your Grandfather Stan was being bombed and strafed at Bishop’s Point on the island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii.  He gave an interview to a local paper about that morning.  He spoke on how he and others were on shore duty, responsible for opening the submarine gates each morning so that ships could enter and leave Pearl Harbor.  Around 7:30 that morning he and the others were in the mess hall having breakfast.  When they began hearing explosions they grabbed their rifles and ran to open the gate.  Bombs dropped all around them.  He said that Japanese fighters strafed then at “telephone pole” height.  I asked him later what they did.  He said that they fired their rifles at the planes when they could, but that they mostly threw themselves down on the pavement and tried to dig foxholes is asphalt with their fingers.  He also said that each time a bomb landed near them they were lifted of the ground and slammed back down.

I asked him how many times that happened.  His reply?  “Too many.”

So today I salute my grandfather, whom I didn’t know well but who, for at least a few terrifying moments in his life, fought to protect every freedom I enjoy seventy years after the fact. When I see him again, I’ll shake his hand for that. And then we’ll find a good place to sit down because we’ll have  a lot of catching up to do.

My dad the poet

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My dad wrote a poem yesterday and sent to me. I asked if I could post it, and he graciously agreed. If you don’t know my dad, you’re missing out. He’s an amazing guy. Extremely intelligent and very loving. A great grandfather to my kids. It was his love of books that motivated me to read a lot as a kid. Westerns, mysteries, thrillers, war histories. My dad reads it all. He’s also a walking encyclopedia when it comes to the Civil War or the Second World War. If there was a version of Jeopardy in which all of the categories were about the Civil War, my dad would have dominated, and I would have been raised as a child of privilege from all the winnings.

Dad also was in the military at the tail end of the Vietnam War. He thankfully was never thrown into action in Vietnam, but he saw plenty of action as a military police officer and criminal investigator after the war in Germany. If you ever want to hear a crazy story about soldiers doing stupid things and getting arrested for it, talk to my dad.

But enough gushing. You came for the poem. I happen to like it a lot, partly because Dad wrote it, but also because it moves me and prickles at the heart, which all good poetry should, I suppose. Enjoy.

 

Old Soldier’s Lament

The battlefields are still and green,
No longer torn asunder;
Where blood once flowed in rivulets,
And cannons boomed like thunder.

The earth fills our foxholes now,
The shrapnel rusts away;
Earth’s marks of war are fading,
But our scars are here to stay.

Our heads are gray or balding,
And our legs no longer run.
Our bodies stooped and aging,
And our turn has nearly come.

That time comes so swiftly now;
The veil grows thinner still,
The sounds of war will fade away,
When we rest upon the hill.

Our memories leave us laughing,
Weeping, waiting in kind,
For the time we step beyond the veil,
To see comrades left behind.

Each day we lose a brother,
To fill the ranks afar,
Beyond this earth and clouded sky;
Past a bright distant star.

They have waited very long for us,
To join their ranks once more,
To march together side by side,
But not this time to war.

By
David R. Johnston


Formic Wars: Silent Strike #1

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The second arc of Formic Wars begins this month with issue one of Formic Wars: Silent Strike from Marvel. It hits comic book stores on 21tst, I think. The official solicit is below:

The all-new prequel to Orson Scott Card’s science-fiction classic Ender’s Game returns! With 44 million people killed by the toxic gas the alien formics unleashed in China, the only hope of a counter-agent lies with Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police safely retrieving a sample. Meanwhile, young asteroid miner Victor Delgado has snuck aboard the formic mothership in hopes of taking it down alone…and boy is he is for a big disappointment.

This is an action-packed issue with amazing art by Giancarlo Carracuzzo. Enjoy.

Speaker for the Dead Hardcover

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Marvel has compiled my five-issue adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s novel Speaker for the Dead into a beautifully bound hardcover. This project was a thrill to work on since Speaker is one of my all-time favorite novels. If you haven’t read it, I strongly advise you to do so. It won the Hugo and Nebula Awards the year it was published, and for good reason. Here’s a link to Orson Scott Card’s site where you can read more about the novel.

Credits for the adaptation:

Writer: Aaron Johnston

Penciller: Pop Mahn

Penciller (cover): Giuseppe Camuncoli

Editor: Jordan White

Formic Wars Covers

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The covers for Formic Wars have been amazing. A lot of artists have contributed, most recently Billy Tan, who did the pencils for issues three through seven. They droop my jaw. I wish I could make huge framed posters of them and put them in my living room. But something tells me my wife wouldn’t go for that. They might scare off guests. There is a burning helicopter and melting human flesh, after all.