Last night, as I was watching Michael Jackson's music videos on MTV (yes, MTV was actually playing music videos again, a fitting tribute to the King of Pop) - and after being incredibly disgusted with Entertainment Tonight's shock-reporting on their "Exclusive Last Photo" of poor Michael on the gurney, being given oxygen and rushed into the hospital... I started thinking about the reasons that Michael made in appearance in the second issue of my comic book (which you can see here).

I have recurring dreams about Michael Jackson.

Now, I know what you're thinking and the initial response that you probably had - a chuckle. A guffaw. Immediately going to the sick thoughts and the bad joke. But here's what happened...

Way back in the day, I'm thinking it was probably around the time that I was six years old, I had my first experience at the Captain EO show at Disneyland. Despite my love for all things Star Wars and how overwhelmed at the coolness of the 3D show I was - I was scared to death of Angelica Houston's "witch" character. Her razor claws reaching out for me scared the crap out of me and I started having nightmares about it.

About that time, I started realizing that I was in control of my dreams and whenever I was having nightmares, I could immediately rectify the situation by inserting a new element into the dream to counter balance (part of where the premise for Only in Dreams actually came from).

So of course, that counter-balance was Michael Jackson... who would show up, stand at my side and help me defeat the evil queen so that I could continue sleeping.

But what's funny is that Michael Jackson suddenly became the go-to as my wingmate when things were getting a little scary in my dreams. "Old School Mike" (whom I've termed him, since he appears in the dreams as his old circa-1982 self) would show up and help me beat the crap out of bullys, bust ghosts, all sorts of things... he became a recurring character in my dreams as somewhat of a guardian or a protector.

When it came time to start peppering Only in Dreams with surreal imagery, I started pulling from some of my old dream journals and started thinking, "You know, how cool would it be for the main character Henry, to be a fan of Michael and to manifest Old School Mike inside the dreamworld to help the team out?" Not only would it be good for the comedic value, but then I could actually start building some of my own personal surreal imagery from my dreams into the stories.

I'm sure that my artist Chris Enterline thought that I was nuts when he read the script for issue two and I pointed out that I wanted Thriller-era Michael Jackson to appear on page four and battle a team of gladiators as some cute cheerleaders cheered him on... it was weird imagery to be sure, but then again, so are our dreams.

So Old School Mike, wherever you are now, let's kick some ass again sometime. It's been too long.