Just posted Chapters 3 and 4 of Borrowed Time, which was the first major story I wrote starring this character. I wrote all this in 2006, so there’s been a fair amount of evolution since then.
I’m keeping all the chapters sorted in the “Story Posts” tab as I go, so hopefully there shouldn’t be any trouble in keeping it all straight. If there is, drop a line and I’ll see what I can do.
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In other news, I’ve been reading a superhero fiction anthology called “Masked”. I normally am not an anthology person, since many of them tend not to have a lineup of writers that interest me. No offense to any of the talent there is intended; I just don’t want to have to pay full book price for an anthology with one or two short stories by authors that I want to follow.
“Masked” is the exception. This is a good roster of writers, including some of the very best that have written superhero comics, and a few from other media. Let me read off a partial list: Paul Cornell, Gail Simone, Mike Carey, Peter David (accompanied by his wife Kathleen), Mike Baron, Chris Roberson, Bill Willingham, and more. So naturally, I had to pick this up, just to see how they would approach a book like this.
So I read the Chris Roberson story, “Knight of Ghosts and Shadows”, and it really is enjoyable. I recommend it. The interesting thing is that the story features a pulp-inspired character called the Wraith, who is a mysterious masked avenger with mystical abilities who fights the supernatural, and…
Oh, dear. This sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
And no, lest you get the wrong idea, I don’t think that the similarities are intentional even for a moment. Probably we were inspired in a similar direction, and hit on eerily similar ideas. It happens. I’ll admit that it makes me cringe a little when it does happen, of course. 
Does it affect plans for my own version of The Wraith? Without spoiling anything from my own work… no, not really. Roberson’s Wraith is distinct from mine in quite a few aspects. He has a different origin, different powers, a different background, a different personality, a different purpose, and so on. It isn’t apparent now, but it should be somewhere down the road once I return to my version of the Wraith. All this means is that in the future, I’ll try to avoid any further similarities now that I’m aware of them.
I actually like the version Roberson came up with, tell the truth. He does things in “Masked” I wish I’d thought of when I created my version of the character. I’d actually like to see more of that Wraith. Roberson told a good story, and that’s really what matters in the scheme of things.
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