Monthly Archive: July 2007

Shore Leave report

  • Uncategorized
  • July 18, 2007

I spent the past weekend at Shore Leave, a wonderfully relaxing convention with a heavy emphasis on Star Trek and other media. I was a last minute addition to the guest roster, taking the place of fellow Mixer Bob Greenberger who had a sudden family emergency.

Among other things, this meant that I took over Bob’s traditional "Trailer Park" panel, giving a rundown of various upcoming movies. The roster of films (and one TV show) in more or less chronological order:

I also got to see the masquerade, where writer of stuff Peter David, wife Kathleen, daughter Ariel, and friend Marina Olsen won best of show for the above presentation, "Beauty and the Beast(s)". I got to spend time with a number of writers and enthusiastic fans. And I capped off the convention by appearing with Peter and Keith DeCandido in the infamous "Mystery Trekkie Theater 3000" where we proceeded to dissect the TNG episode "Conspiracy".

All in all, a very enjoyable convention, right up until the point Sunday night when my hard drive directory got erased, and I spent the next 36 hours recovering it– which is why this recap is two days after I expected it to be done. The gods just don’t want me to really relax…

ELAYNE RIGGS: Nothing common about it

  • News
  • July 18, 2007

elayne200-6762509The older I get, the more Einsteinian I become in my concept of time. It’s like I’m watching a vehicle moving at light-speed, Dopplering like crazy, when it’s all I can do sometimes to make it from point A to point B. I’m just a 20th century gal in a 21st century world.

Which isn’t always a bad thing. I retain a viewpoint that I honestly think is foreign to many around me, one that relies greatly on the ideas of common sense and common courtesy. Don’t spend more on your credit card than you have money to pay it off. When you’re out to dinner, stack your plates in a way that makes them easier for the server to handle. If you’re responsible for someone who can’t care for themselves, their needs supercede yours. Behind the wheel, do everything you can to facilitate traffic flow, don’t do anything that distracts you from driving, and always let aggressive drivers pass you so you’re well rid of them. Don’t do anything in public that will cause discomfort to others around you, unless they’re more politically powerful and intending you physical harm. Listening is more important than talking. (Okay, I don’t have that last one down quite yet, but I’m working on it!)

Two of my conclusions after almost fifty years on this planet come down to "sex is private" and "violence is abhorrent." I don’t know why people who wish to regulate media keep pairing the two, as the former affirms life while the latter negates it. And to tell you the truth, while I’m not that big on regulation myself, sometimes I think it may just be needed in certain circumstances. Because, once again, I see so few people around me any more exercising common sense and common courtesy.

While it’s true that societal mores, like language, are an ever-evolving phenomenon, it’s not that difficult to suss out what might discomfit the majority those around them — if they cared to. But selfishness often wins out over courtesy. So while a kiss on the lips may be quite continental, no matter who’s kissing whom, when that public kiss turns into major gropage or heavy petting it’s time for the participants to think about getting a room. As my mom is fond if saying regarding the romance novels she reads, "I prefer the ones that stop at the bedroom door."

Or the bathroom door, for that matter. Bodily functions are nothing of which to be ashamed; neither are they anything to show off. If you’re planning to go beyond a simple exchange of saliva, do consider a more intimate and less public venue, one with doors between you and the general public. That goes for feeding your baby straight from the source as well. But hey, maybe that’s just me. I see enough fluids around me as it is, I don’t really want to deal with other people’s. It’s beautiful, it’s natural… it’s private, mmmkay?

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Science-Fictional-Type Links & Things

  • News
  • July 17, 2007

crooked-6051795

Fantasy Book Critic reviews Warren Ellis’s first novel, Crooked Little Vein.

BestSF has reviewed a few magazines this week:

Don D’Amassa’s Critical Mass has new reviews on the Science Fiction page, including Blake Nelson’s young adult novel They Came From Below, Robert Charles Wilson’s Axis, and Charles Stross’s Halting State.

D’Amassa’s Fantasy page also has new reviews: Steph Swainston’s The Modern World, Charles Stross’s The Merchants’ War, and others.

And D’Amassa’s Horror page has new reviews as well: Scott Thomas’s Over the Darkening Fields, the new Tales from the Crypt #1, and more.

Nader Elhefnawy, at Tangent, goes off on a dumb Christopher Hitchens quote from Atlantic Monthly to the effect that SF has a “dearth of sex.”

Elhefnawy also had an essay at Tangent about Michael Moorcock and censorship.

The Space Review has published a transcript of the talk, and the following question and answer session, given by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin at the recent Heinlein Centennial.

The Contra Costa Times has an article on the huge science fiction collection at the University of California-Riverside.

Ben Bova’s regular column in the Naples News is devoted to talking about his own Campbell Award-winning novel Titan, Campbell himself, and science fiction in general.

The Salt Lake Tribune looks at the interesting phenomenon of Christian fantasy novels.

Neth Space is annoyed that so many titles begin with the word “the.”

SF Scope reports on editor and author Gardner Dozois’s recent quintuple bypass heart surgery. Details are few, but it sounds like he’s recovering pretty well – I certainly hope so, and send him all best wishes. (In happier Dozois news, he recently turned in a new original anthology, tentatively entitled Galactic Empires, to Rome Quezada of the SF Book Club, and I’m sure that book will be another winner.)

Cory Doctorow has another one of his periodic essays at Locus Online this week, all about different kinds of visions of the future.

The soul-searching about reviewing on blogs continues unabated into a second week, as Larry of the OF Blog of the Fallen explains why he reviews.

Similarly, Patrick, of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, has a long post about reviewing, book giveaways, and blogging.

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Shatner’s Raw Nerve

  • News
  • July 17, 2007

william_shatner-6294262He’s been captain of the Starship Enterprise and a partner at a Boston law firm.  He’s shilled for websites and arrested bad guys.  Now William Shatner is going to be a talk-show host, like Jay Leno or his buddy Henry Rollins.

Variety reports that the Biography Channel has ordered 13 episodes of the show, called Shatner’s Raw Nerve.  They say the show "will explore life’s most intriguing questions and unearth his guests’ strange and unknown stories."

E3 Gaming Con Secrets Revealed!

A new week for the Big ComicMix Broadcast and some good scoops fresh out of the top-secret E3 Gaming Con, as well as a peek at the future of DC’s The Brave and the Bold and your wallet at war with tons of new comics and DVDs out this week – we are guessing you will surrender on this one! Then we toss out a few more San Diego tidbits and even subscribe to that X-Files 2 movie rumor!

The truth is still out there – but you have to PRESS The Button to get it!

LA Times claims comic book funk

  • News
  • July 17, 2007

In an op-ed piece in today’s Los Angeles Times, Tim Cavanaugh traces the disconnect between comic book’s influence on mass media and comic book’s actual sales.  He starts out on this up-beat note:  "Dying media don’t come much dying-er than monthly comic books."

He goes on to decry the "cloying, creepy, did-I-accidentally-enter-a-porn-shop vibe" of many comic book stores, and the cautiousness of most publishers.  He talks to Tom Spurgeon and Peter Bagge.

Like so many others, Cavanauagh suggests that the web may be the solution.  Stay tuned.

Slices of Galactica Pie

  • News
  • July 17, 2007

battlestar_galactica_40-5095423In what is certain to be received with shock and awe, the vaguely innovative Sci-Fi Channel is going to precede the November 24th broadcast of the two-hour Battlestar Galactica teevee movie Razor with a bunch of two-to-three minute "mini-sodes" (their term, not mine) that will "provide background and context" for the movie special and, no doubt, help round-out their DVD release.

The micro-story will revolve around the first Cylon War and a young William Adama (Nico Cortez). The gumball-sized mini-sodes will be broadcast on Sci-Fi in October and November. Consult your local listings for time, but don’t be too surprised if you discover nada en detalle.

Remember, while watching, you can blink, but don’t dare sneeze.

Tintin is racist, Batgirl is sexist, Punisher is black…

  • News
  • July 17, 2007

tintin-7796366

Department of “Shoulda Seen That Coming”: in the UK, a government minister issues a stern warning that a particular book, Tintin in the Congo, contains “hideous racial prejudice,” and that no right-thinking Briton should ever, ever read it henceforward. Result? Sales increase immediately by 3,800 percent. (Forbidden Planet International has a longer story on the complaint, including the fact that the Commission on Racial Equality – and isn’t that a nice Orwellian name? – demanded that Tintin in the Congo be banned.)

The Beat is not happy with the final cover for Showcase: Batgirl. (And there’s no reason she should be.)

Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog remembers the halcyon days when the Punisher was, briefly, a black man.

Media Life Magazine thinks that Zudacomics is a really swell idea and the most wonderful thing since sliced bread – but they also think that comic books are “almost an industry,” so I’m not sure if we should believe them.

The Chicago Sun-Times looks at DC Comics’s new teen-girl-focused Minx line.

Bookgasm reviews the newest reprint trade paperback of the Fables series, Volume 9: Sons of Empire, written by Bill Willingham and illustrated by Mark Buckingham and others.

Publishers Weekly reviews a number of comics this week, including House by Josh Simmons and the first volumes in two maanga series, Gin Tama and War Angels.

Dana’s Marvel Comics Reviews, at Comic Fodder, hits the week’s high points, starting with New Avengers # 32.

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DENNIS O’NEIL: Do You Believe In Magic?

  • News
  • July 17, 2007

Here it is Tuesday evening and we’re still debating. Should we go to the 11:59 showing of the new Harry Potter flick at the local 21-plex or catch one of the early showings in the morning?  Pros and cons on both sides.  But we will see the movie within the next 24 hours; count on it.

Although I’ve enjoyed the previous films, I can’t call myself a Potter fan.  I haven’t read any of J.K. Rowling’s novels, though I love Ms Rowling’s bio: single mom writing in a café becomes hugely successful author, celebrity, and megamillionaire within about a decade, without becoming a robber baroness.  But Marifran’s read the books.  Oh yes indeed.  And so have daughters Meg and Beth.  So I’m pretty up on the Hogwarts scene and when the final volume in the series arrives in a couple of weeks, I expect my conversations with my wife to be conducted in monosyllables until she reaches the last page and learns Harry’s fate.

I’m surprised that these things are so popular, as I was surprised at the resurgence of interest in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings saga and the huge success of the movies made from Tolkein’s trilogy. The reason is, I thought we were past believing in magic. 

Oh, sure, you don’t have to actually believe in something to enjoy stories about it.  But we do have to be able to accept it on some level. It helps the willing suspension of disbelief your English teacher told you is necessary to the enjoyment of fiction if you can allow that what you’re being told about exists, or could exist, or at least might have existed. Hero stories are about as old as civilization, and the tale-tellers always supply a reason why their protagonists have extraordinary powers.  In classic Greece, for example, and later in Rome, superpowers were explained by their possessors either being gods, or half-gods, or children of gods, or gods’ special pals.  Then plain ol’ magic, origin unknown, was used to rationalize superhuman feats in folk tales like those in A Thousand and One Nights. 

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Dial S For Shadow

  • Uncategorized
  • July 16, 2007

shadow13-4916169Over here on ComicMix, we’ve been talking about The Shadow a lot recently – prompted by Denny O’Neil’s fine columns and Robert Greenberger’s first-rate interview with Shadow pulp reprint editor / publisher Anthony Tollin. Without belaboring a point, I’d like to refer you to another remarkable effort concerning comics’ most influential icon.

There’s this really great site called Dial B For Burbank. It’s operated by “Robby Reed,” who had previously run an equally amazing site called (wait for it) Dial B For Blog. I bet you thought I was going to say it was called Dial H For Hero; no, that trademark was owned by some publisher. Dial B For Blog had all kinds of wonderful articles about comics, my favorite being an in-depth look at classic letterer / logo designer Ira Schnapp, inventor of most of DC’s logos and house ads from about 1940 until the mid-60s. Schnapp also lettered title cards for silent movies and chiseled the words on the front of the New York Public Library. Robby also did some amazing production work, much of it of a satirical nature – to wit, the Adventure Comics cover shown here, with the genuine Ira Schnapp logo intact.

dbb169-3206293Let’s just assume “Robby Reed” is his real name.

More recently, Robby shifted his attention to The Shadow and launched the aforementioned Dial B For Burbank. All the effort, all the research, all the amazing production skill we saw on B For Blog is here… and more. Robby also added a 10 part video documentary called The Shadow Knows covering all aspects of The Shadow, from the pulps to radio to comics to the movies to television. He might have missed the short-lived newspaper comic strip; there’s only so much you can squeeze into 124 minutes.

Uncovering rare photographs and selecting some of the best artwork from George Rozen, Edd Cartier, Jim Steranko, Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta and others, his documentary pretty much gives you the full story – not only of The Shadow and his pulp creator Walter Gibson, but of his many predecessors, successors, and imitators. Interviews and voice-overs from such folks as Gibson, Tollin, and Shadow performers Orson Welles, Bill Johnstone, Brett Morrison, and Alec Baldwin abound.

shadow_poster_t-7633484It’s a stunning effort. All the more stunning: it’s free.

You can download it from the Dial B For Burbank website; each of the 10 chapters in a quality sufficient for quality DVD burning, or in a lower-resolution QuickTime version.

If he sold this effort for, say, twenty bucks on DVD I would give it my highest recommendation. For free, well, heck, he’s not going to pay you to watch it, so that’s as good as it gets.

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