Tending the Garden in Your Noggin
Thoughts on the growing of plants and new comic books
I was never a plant guy before. At all. Couldn’t keep anything alive for more than a hot minute. Didn’t matter what it was, how inhospitable an environment it hailed from or how difficult to crush out of existence it was reportedly said to be. If it was green and required some form of basic human care, I could fucking kill it. But in the last year, as the world has succumbed to plague and pestilence, I’ve suddenly found myself successfully adding plant after plant after plant to the inside of my house. Amidst the murderer’s row of challenges spawned by these goddamned Wither Years, I’ve endeavored to make my immediate surroundings as alive as possible. Thankfully, as with everything else in this mortal life, there’s an app for that.
Planta has become my right hand man in all matters related to plant-based life support. My Race Bannon of the bush. My Short Round of seedlings. My Kato of kudzu. With the Planta app by my side, instructing me every day what to water, what to fertilize, what to prune and clean and whisper sweet words of gentle encouragement to, my living to dead ratio among green things has improved dramatically. I’m not saying there haven’t been some unfortunate casualties along the way (RIP pineapple pal, you were taken from us way too soon), but in the last year I’ve managed to go from one little green guy on my desk to 27 plants of various shapes and sizes growing throughout the house.
Amidst the murderer’s row of challenges spawned by these goddamned Wither Years, I’ve endeavored to make my immediate surroundings as alive as possible.
From the Coleus in the kitchen to the Flamingo Flower on the coffee table to the Silver Inch Plant and Bird of Paradise in my office, these new household additions are all equally loved citizens in my personal island nation of Krakoa, yet they each require their own unique care. Different watering and misting schedules. Different types of dirt and pots and fertilizers. Different amounts of light. Some need to bask in the direct spotlight of the sun every day in order to thrive. Others do best hunkered down brooding in the shadows. And they all grow at wildly different speeds. Some as slow as sweet-fuck-all. Others exploding overnight in all directions like leafy fireworks.
Tending this garden throughout my living space every day has helped me immensely, not just from a peace of mind standpoint, but I’m convinced from a creative one as well. As the houseplants have prospered, so too has the other garden I tend. The one where gods and god killers grow. The Garden of Nerdly Delights inside my head.
Like their earthly counterparts, the plants inside my greenhouse of the mind also grow at radically different rates, some taking several years before they even begin to flower, others sprouting from the ground right before your eyes and instantly reaching for the clouds magic-beanstalk style. Some need the harsh light of your focus every day to bring them to life. Others have to take root in some dark forgotten corner of your mind cave where they can slowly spread over the walls like a wave of iridescent fungi. The job is to keep them all alive and nurtured and growing at the pace they require. And to recognize when it’s time to harvest and when the fruit’s maybe not quite ripe for the picking just yet. Unfortunately there’s no app for that job, that I know of. You just gotta go with your gut when it comes to this garden. And these days, my gut tells me it likes how my brain garden’s latest crop is shaping up.
As the houseplants have prospered, so too has the other garden I tend. The one where gods and god killers grow. The Garden of Nerdly Delights inside my head.
The first new fruits from that garden will be headed to market this December, in the form of a couple of debuting Marvel series, AVENGERS FOREVER and KING CONAN. As I believe will become clear pretty quickly, AVENGERS FOREVER is a series that will be weaving together different threads not just from my overall AVENGERS run but from nearly every significant touchstone of my previous 16 years writing for Marvel Comics. At the same time, I think it’s also one of those proverbial “jumping on points,” no matter how much or how little of my AVENGERS you’ve been reading these last fifty issues. AVENGERS FOREVER features covers and interiors by the incredible Aaron Kuder, who I’m getting to work with here for the very first time.
With KING CONAN, I get to reunite with Mahmud Asrar and Matt Wilson, the amazing art team from my 12 issue “Life and Death of Conan” story that heralded the Cimmerian’s return to Marvel Comics a couple years back. I’ve had this next story lined up ever since that one ended. In truth, you could say it’s been growing in the garden for very many years. In interviews I’ve always said that I haven’t gone through my career with a list of characters I wanted to write, which is true. I’ve always just gone with what situation or series or story felt right in the moment. But if I did have such a list, Conan would be one of the only names on it, and he’d be right near the top. I’ve had Conan stories growing in my brain ever since I first discovered his adventures as a kid prowling the dusty back corners of a used bookstore in Jasper, Alabama. So just one run on CONAN THE BARBARIAN was never gonna be enough for me.
In this new KING CONAN story, we meet up with a Conan whose beard is greying and whose spirit is restless, as a king, as a barbarian born to wander and as a father. All three of those roles come crashing together into one tale that takes us from the throne of Aquilonia to an island of vultures and dark magic at the very edge of the known world. Along the way, King Conan runs up against the Serpent ring of Set, a curse as old as Acheron, red apes from the lava hills of Khitai, and a horde of undead sailors with salt-cured skin hard as barnacled chain mail. Not to mention the confrontation that King Conan himself will come to call the toughest, most gut-wrenching battle he’s ever fought.
Those new series will be coming your way monthly in addition to my regular duties on AVENGERS (issue #51 of which in December features Dr. Droom and his new Multiversal Masters of Evil on a hunt for Deathloks). So that’ll be three Marvel series for me as we head into the new year, with a fourth series still yet to be announced. And that’s in addition to the… I’m gonna say four different creator-owned series currently springing from the noggin garden, in different stages of completing their growth cycle. Then there’s the other huge project that I’m working on this week that’s not a comic book at all.
So I’d say the garden is thankfully doing well, both inside my head and surrounding my work desk. Thank you all for your part in allowing me to live off the fruits of my gardening. It is as ever much appreciated.
Here you can see those fruits all heaped together, after 16 years of full-time harvesting. This is what one copy of every comic book I’ve ever written looks like. In other words, I now officially have a six box career.
And here’s all those comics in trade paperback and hardcover form. As shelved in a place of honor inside the Jason Aaron Presidential Library, AKA my guest room, AKA my mom’s room whenever she visits.
Newly Unearthed Footage of My Face
Hey, kids, here’s me sitting in my office, talking about comics with my face, with the fine folks from the Legion on Zoom podcast. I really appreciate the joy and excitement these guys show for all things comics. They’re worth a listen. Even if you gotta listen to me to have to hear them too. Can’t have roses without the thorns.
This has been Beard Missives, direct from the succulent face of Jason Aaron.
This week’s newsletter has been brought to you by candy corn. Candy. Motherfucking. Corn. That’s it, that’s all. Deal with it.
May all your gardens be overflowing with the greenest of green things. Be safe. Be loved.
Jason Aaron
KC, October 8, 2021
The garden was a vague pool of shadows, where feathery bushes and low spreading trees waved darkly in the starlight. Conan’s wary soul felt the aura of waiting menace that brooded over it. He felt the burning glare of unseen eyes, and he caught a subtle scent that made the short hairs on his neck instinctively bristle as a hunting dog bristles at the scent of an ancient enemy.
“Follow me,” whispered Taurus, “keep behind me, as you value your life.”
—Robert E. Howard
“The Tower of the Elephant”
Southern Bastards? Yes/No/Hiatus?