New Pulp Author Milton Davis’ new release from MV Media Publishing is now available.

Press Release:

Woman of the Woods
The new Sword and Soul novel by Milton Davis!

The latest Sword and Soul novel by Milton Davis returns to the land of Meji, the amazing world of Uhuru. It tells the story of  Sadatina, a  girl on the brink of becoming a woman living with her family in Adamusola, the land beyond the Old Men Mountains. But tragic events transpire that change her life forever, revealing a hidden past that leads her into the midst of a war between her people and those that would see them destroyed, the Mosele. Armed

with a spiritual weapon and her feline ‘sisters,’ Sadatina becomes a Shosa, a warrior trained to fight the terrible nyokas, demon-like creatures that aid the Mosele in their war against her people.

Woman of the Woods is an action filled, emotionally charged adventure that expands the scope of the world of Uhuru and introduces another unforgettable character to its heroic legends.

Learn more about Woman of the Woods here.
Learn more about the Land of Meji here.

The Book Cave welcomes novelist Sandrez (suppose to be Andrez) Bergman as they discuss his novel “Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?” on the latest podcast episode.

Listen to The Book Cave Episode 239: Andrez Bergman here.

As I was saying last week before I was so rudely cut off by the limitations of your internet-degraded attention span …

Mainstream Comics (read: The Big Two) have begun to remind me of that much-mocked TV commercial with the old woman screaming “Help! I’ve fallen but I can’t get up!”

That business seems to me to be in freefall, and only gaming the numbers so as not to scare the horses maintains the status quo, with ongoing monthlies somehow being considered successes with four-digit sell-through estimates that, as few as 10 years ago, would’ve gotten a title canceled long before things got that desperate. And the “top-selling” titles, you’ll note, are all brand extensions – all variations on, or team-ups with, batmen, wolverines, and other tried-and-trues.

Which presents a thorny dilemma.

Neither of the “Big” Two’s corporate parents wants to be in the business of putting ink on dead trees, which – though ComiXology might claim otherwise – is still the major comics delivery-system. And publishing’s a low-margin biz, and low margins are as crucifixes to Count Disnela and Baron Von Warner. But they’ve been persuaded not to drive a stake through the comics divisions’ hearts by being sold on the dubious proposition that comics are low-cost R&D for blockbuster movie and TV development.

Yet not one of the tentpole franchises from the Big Two’s studio daddies has been based on anything created more recently than 50 years ago (the 40-year old Blade being neither tentpole nor generated by Marvel Entertainment). If you’re going to be a stickler and say, for example, that X-Men’s success owes more to the ‘80s reboot than the Lee-Kirby original, okay – 30 years ago. So far the closest Hollywood has come to building a discrete film around a newer character is the alleged Deadpool movie. Since the New Mutants and X-Force titles that whelped the character are both X-Men spinoffs, however, Deadpool doesn’t really count as something that isn’t a brand extension. If Jeff Robinov’s successors don’t share his aversion to making a Lobo film, maybe then I’ll sit up and take notice.

To make matters worse, the comics themselves are not being used as a development lab, since most, if not all, of the new titles in recent years have themselves been brand extensions. (And, when films like Red and The Losers tank, the incentive to look to newer “original” Big Two titles as source material dies with them.)

If the Big Two can’t be profit centers from publishing alone, the only way Pub Ops can truthfully be a development lab is if the publishers increasingly take back control of the creative development of their comics, which they’ve completely outsourced. This, to control new product development focused less on selling comics and more on creating potential movies and TV shows. But they probably can’t do this – at least, not easily.

For one thing, The Big Two seem to be under pressure to roll back the kinds of deals that used to give Creatives limited profit participation in new characters. And in this Brave New World of self-publishing, it’s hard to find strong, seasoned talent willing to let their new ideas be Wholly Owned by the Big Two.

So how much longer can the Big Floppymeisters justify their existence? Especially when they’re completely reliant on the freelance talent … because they no longer have editors who can control the process credibly, even if their bosses were willing to redefine the role of the editor. Few, if any, of them have the chops to pick up a pencil, graphics tablet or keyboard and make the product themselves (and show the newbies how it’s done) – the way the Infantinos, Orlandos, Lees, Romitas, O’Neils, Weins, and Shooters did when they were running things.

More in the third and final installment of this rant, written from the San Diego Comic-Con, where I’ll be looking for signs of a forced-change in Talent Relations – if any – and reporting back from my maybe not-so-uniquely skewed perspective.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

You’ve watched the newscasts? Read the papers? You’re aware of what’s been happening in the courts and Congress? It is a time, perhaps, to consider wickedness.

Outside, our patch of the Lower Hudson Valley is again suffering brutal heat and if your life has given you certain prompts – if someone much taller than you once convinced you that you were a bad, bad, bad little child and you were going to be punished! – you might step outside, feel the heat and remember what you were taught about hell. Which is where evil sons of bitches like you go to roast for all eternity and that will teach you to disobey Sister Henrietta! In case you’ve forgotten.

We believe in a retributional afterlife because, among other reasons, we have a need for the world to be ordered and rational, and that means that the wicked should have to answer for their misdeeds. Obviously, not all of them do, not while they’re alive, but later…well, Christians might go to the aforementioned hell and Hindus might be reincarnated as an intestinal parasite. Hell, parasite… Something unpleasant, anyway.

We deal in villainy, we fabricators of heroic melodrama.We give our protagonists fierce, cruel, determined and formidable adversaries, mostly because our heroes need them.No need to wait for retribution after death, not in our tales, thank you. Our miscreants get retribution right here, right now. We witness their fall and cheer – okay, mostly cheer silently – because justice has been served, hot and fresh – served by our hero, who has thus demonstrated his bona fides and justified our admiration for him. Without the adversary, our hero wouldn’t have the opportunity to be super.We probably wouldn’t want to buy tickets to watch a pillar of virtue sit around being virtuous.

The craftier of our fiction writing bretheren give the bad guy a reason to be bad so there’s a excuse for him or her to be in the story. One of our greatest popular entertainers, Alfred Hitchcock, seemed to regard the villain’s motive as an afterthought.He called such motives “mcguffins” and gave this explanation of them: “The only thing that matters is that the plans, documents, secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters…to the narrator, they’re of no importance whatever.”

Far be it from me to quarrel with the master, but allow me to express a gentle demurrer, in the form of advice to beginning writers: Give some thought to your mcguffin. If it’s out-and-out dumb, it will make your bad guy look dumb and a good guy who beats a dummy might not be all that impressive.

General Zod, Superman’s antagonist in the current movie, has a terrific mcguffin, one that confers nobility. And he does not consider himself to be evil.

Do the denizens of our courts and Congress consider themselves evil? Almost certainly not. Have you ever committed an evil act? Hey, there’s a gnarly question to end on.

RECOMMENDED READING: Lying, by Sam Harris