According to this item at Howard Cruse’s blog, a group called the Library Patrons of Texas has made a list of every dirty word, racial slur and suggestive image in his award-winning graphic novel, Stuck Rubber Baby. The group’s purpose is is to encourage "local control of taxpayer-funded libraries and responsible age-appropriate selection, classification and access policies sensitive to local community standards and values."
In a spirit of cooperativeness, Howie has offered to re-do his book to suit Texan tastes. Here’s one example:
Artwork copyright Howard Cruse. All Rights Reserved. Thanks, Howard! Keep fighting the good fight!
Greg Burgas of Comics Should Be Good! (and can’t we all agree with that, hm?) dives into the musty longboxes to findRagman #4, from 1977 by Bob Kanigher and “the Redondo Studio,” and proceeds to review the heck out of it.
Bookninjainterviews Guy Gavriel Kay, author of Ysabel. Then they flip out and kill a whole lot of people, ‘cause that’s what ninjas have to do. [via Locus Online]
Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing’s twenty-fifth podcast features an interview with author Walter H. Hunt, plus publishing news and the first installment of “Ask a Writer,” with Tobias S. Buckell.
SciFi Wiretalks to Michael Swanwick about his story “Lord Weary’s Empire,” currently a finalist for both the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Hugo Award.
There’s really nothing to add to Andrew Pepoy’s news aboug The Hourglass in the Stop-Time Chronicles. I mean, really, what can you say about a super-hero tap opera? Click on the link for more details. Dang, I wish I were in Chicago for this one.
And if you want to get your full Pepoy fix, he notes " I also inked Radioactive Man #711, available at 7-11 stores starting today as a promotion for the Simpsons movie." Just look for the spinner rack beside the Squishie machines!
Doctor Impossible is a supervillain; Fatale is a superheroine. They fight, and you know who wins. The end.
OK, maybe that’s not enough.
I haven’t been keeping track, but there seem to have been a lot of novels about superpowered folks lately. I mean, besides the usual licensed products. There was Robert Mayer’s influential Superfolks back in the 1970s, the “Wild Cards” series off and on for the last couple of decades, and then Michael Bishop’s Count Geiger’s Blues in the early ‘90s, but, otherwise, there wasn’t a heck of a lot out there for a long time.
But in the last couple of years, there have been books like Tom DeHaven’s It’s Superman (which was officially licensed by DC Comics, but was a very different kind of book than the usual), Minister Faust’s From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain, James Maxey’s Nobody Gets the Girl, and others – on top of the increasing numbers of licensed books, it feels like we’re getting a lot of superheroes in prose these days.
In this article I use a variation of the ‘n’ word. If this offends you then stop reading now. The last thing I want is 50 comments from people who are offended by the word. So before you get your panties in a bunch, stop reading. You have been warned.
When did we become a nation of sheep? At what point did we decide that if enough people say something is good then it’s good? If enough people decide it’s bad then it’s bad? If enough people decide it’s hip then it’s hip?
Or in this case: if enough people decide that a man obeying a police officer’s command can be shot for doing what the officer said, then that police officer is not guilty of attempted murder.
Regardless of what you think, do you join the flock?
Last week a police officer named Ivory Webb was acquitted in a San Bernardino County California courtroom for shooting a man for getting up after telling the man to get up. No. I was not in the courtroom. No, I do not know all the facts. No, I was not at the scene. I just watched the videotape. The videotape, which CLEARLY shows Webb telling the man to get up.
CLEARLY TELLING HIM TO GET UP.
When the man goes to get up (AS HE WAS TOLD) he was shot three times. I have no idea what went on in that courtroom that resulted in this police officer getting off. I just know WHAT I SAW.
In my VERY first article for ComicMix I wrote this: Now a days you can get caught on videotape robbing and pistol whipping a little old lady in a wheel chair while she was feeding her kitten and not go to jail. All you have to do is blame it on your Dad who was never home or never told you he loved you.
Well Mr. Webb’s jury blamed it on the man who was shot – one juror saying ‘If he had just shut up and listened then none of this would have happened.”
Well, from what I saw when he was told to get up, he did listen, and he was shot.
OK, as I said I don’t know what went on in the courtroom so let’s assume that the jury was correct in their verdict. I still know what I heard: the cop said “get up” and then shot the guy when he did.
I know what I heard; I know what I saw.
A few years ago I heard a rumor that Donald Duck called Daffy Duck “A doggone stubborn nigga” in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I thought this was simply BS. I had seen the film and did not notice that and simply dismissed it. Fast forward to last week when I noticed that my TiVo had recorded Who Framed Roger Rabbit. While I was watching it this time I clearly heard Donald Duck call Daffy Duck a “A dog gone stubborn nigga.”
The LA Timesprofiles “the Dean of Science Fiction,” Robert A Heinlein, in preparation for the 100th anniversary of his birth on Saturday.
Michael Cassutt’s new column at SciFi Weekly is also about Heinlein, and gives more details of the Heinlein Centennial going on this coming weekend in Kansas City (Heinlein’s birthplace).
The Globe and Maillists and profiles Canada’s “best-kept secrets in the arts” – among them, Hugo-winning science fiction writer Robert Charles Wilson.
Approximately several hundred websites are reporting Dennis Hopper might be guest-villaining in Doctor Who next season. ComicMix is now officially number several hundred and one. It’s also being reported by the London Sun and the British magazine TV Times.
Evidently, the one-time Easy Rider star and two-time G. W. Bush supporter is a big Whoer. When the BBC discovered this, they moved with uncommon speed to get at least a cameo out of the noted actor.
The Big ComicMix Broadcast is back with a bang after the 4th with a tip on how to latch on to those Ultimate Spider-Man #100 covers, Girls gone wild in our Summer Reading Rundown and The Top Ten in the Comic Shops last month … plus the eternal question of when does a hit not sound like a hit?
Press The Button – maybe your crusty old Dell will transform into an IPhone?
There’s a thread going on over on The Engine where Warren Ellis is practicing knuckleballs with Molotov cocktails again and taking a snapshot of comic book piracy. The thread has some interesting points, and it reminds me who really made piracy popular.
Not the first comics pirate, incidentally — people have been making fake copies of comic books as far back as Warren’s Eerie #1 and, later, Dave Sim’s Cerebus #1, and it probably predates that with the undergrounds. Nor are we discussing printers overprinting copies and selling them without reporting them to the publisher — we aren’t even talking about scanners of comics, who have been doing it and trading them ever since scanners started showing up at work– in fact, the first bootleg scans I ever got were from other comics professionals, the folks whose oxen are theoretically getting gored.
No, I’m talking about the guy who made it important to pirate comics, to distribute scanned copies far and wide, and to make it cool to read bootleg copies of the Internet.
There’s really nothing to add to Andrew Pepoy’s news aboug 
Doctor Impossible is a supervillain; Fatale is a superheroine. They fight, and you know who wins. The end.
Approximately several hundred websites are reporting Dennis Hopper might be guest-villaining in Doctor Who next season. ComicMix is now officially number several hundred and one. It’s also being reported by the London Sun and the British magazine TV Times.
There’s a thread going on over on 
