The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers has announced their Scribe Award nominees for 2013.
Acknowledging excellence in this very specific skill, IAMTW’s Scribe Awards deal exclusively with licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books. They include original works set in established universes, and adaptations of stories that have appeared in other formats and cross all genres. Tie-in works run the gamut from westerns to mysteries to procedurals, from science fiction to fantasy to horror, from action and adventure to superheroes. Gunsmoke, Murder She Wrote, CSI, Star Trek, Star Wars, Shadowrun, Resident Evil, James Bond, Iron Man, these represent just a few.
The Scribe Awards are being presented in July at ComicCon International.
ORIGINAL NOVEL
Darksiders: The Abomination Vault by Ari Marmell
Pathfinder: City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt
Mike Hammer: Lady, Go Die! by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
Star Trek: The Persistence of Memory by David Mack
Star Trek: Rings of Time by Greg Cox
Tannhäuser: Rising Sun, Falling Shadows by Robert Jeschonek
Dungeons and Dragons Online: Skein of Shadows by Marsheila Rockwell
ADAPTED NOVEL
Poptropica: Astroknights Island by Tracey West
Clockwork Angels by Kevin Anderson
Batman: The Dark Knight Legend by Stacia Deutsch
Batman: The Dark Knight Rises by Greg Cox
AUDIO
Dark Shadows: Dress Me in Dark Dreams by Marty Ross
Dark Shadows: The Eternal Actress by Nev Fountain
Doctor Who Companion Chronicles: Project Nirvana by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright
Friday was a miserable day in the New York City metropolitan area. Slashing rain, blustery winds, and c-c-c-cold. It was a day made for staying in your pajamas and just vegging out in front of the TV, watching The Dick Van Dyke Show and I Love Lucy on TVLand, popping in DVDs of the original Dallas (nobody has ever played the villain we hate to love – but do – better than the late, marvelous, wonderful Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing), and eating too much of stuff that is bad for you, potato chips being my particular poison.
So what was I doing, getting up at 6 AM so that by 8:30 I could be walking with Alixandra and Jeff to the PATH station to take the train into the city? Why was I fretting that Alix wasn’t dressed warmly enough and that her hair was wet? After all, the woman is 33, old enough to deal with inclement weather on her own. Why was I feeling sorry for Jeff, who was struggling with an umbrella that threatened to either lift him into the sky like Mary Poppins or poke his eyes out? After all, Jeff is a Ph.D and a college professor and certainly wise enough to know that an umbrella turning inside out is the last thing you need on a windy, rainy early April day.
We were on our way to Alixandra’s third sonogram appointment.
No, nothing is wrong with my daughter.
The complete opposite.
I’m going to be a grandma!!!!!
So nice to be able to tell you all some good news this week.
I’ve actually known since the beginning of February, when I sat on the first sonogram, which Alix and Jeff* had placed on the backseat of the car for me to find. (We were on the way down to see my parents.) I said, “Oh, I’m sitting on something,” and fished it out from underneath my ass, realized it was some kind of photo, and tried to hand to Alix in the front seat, saying “I don’t think I creased it,” while my daughter and her husband cracked up.
“You’re such a dodo,” said Alix. “Look at it.”
I did. And what was my reaction?
Frankly, it didn’t register for a moment.
Then I said…
“Holy cow! Is this what I think it is? Is it real?”
Which only made them laugh harder.
Me, too.
A little while ago, Jeff came by so that we could exchange sunglasses – I was at their house last night, and inadvertently went home with Alix’s pair of shades. We chatted, and then Jeff asked me about the column, and I said, “don’t talk to me about it, I don’t have a fucking clue what to write about.” Yeah, yeah, I know, nice way for a soon-to-be grandma to talk, but hey, the kid’s gonna have to get used to me. (Only kidding, I will be toning down my use of colorful language around the child, at least until he or she is three months.)
He said, “Write about the baby’s first footprints,” which is what I said at the hospital when Alix and Jeff were given a picture of the baby’s…well, first footprints. (So tiny, and, yes, all ten toes are there.)
“But it has to be comics-related.”
“Oh, well…”
“Unless you think of sonograms like a graphic novel.”
“There you go.”
And you ask where writers get their ideas.
John Ostrander has written in his column here at ComicMix several columns (and wonderful columns they are!) about the art of writing, of plot building and character development. Well, if you think about it, a sonogram is a story arc – complete with pictures! – that begins with a something that looks like a walnut – Alix’s words, not mine – and over a nine month period, follows the walnut’s journey, or metamorphosis, into full-fledged “babyhood.” You can even imagine the little walnut – I think I have stumbled upon a nickname for my grandchild, in the same way Pa Ingalls called Laura “half-pint” – quoting from Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces as he or she tries to put into words that will make sense to us who have forgotten what’s it’s like grow from a clump of cells into a sentient being…
“I had to climb a mountain. There were all kinds of obstacles in the way. I had now to jump over a ditch, now to get over a hedge…”
Or, to misquote Shakespeare…“All the world’s a page,And all the men and women merely characters…”
Alix and Jeff, you didn’t know you were authors, did you?
Just don’t call me Bubby.
*Alixandra Gould and Jeffrey Gonzalez are expecting their first child at the end of September. A Libra! He or she will need some balance with a bubby like me!
You’d think we’d have learned as a people – if you find a large humanoid form frozen in the ice, don’t thaw it out. And really don’t thaw it out if you’re cut off from humanity, like in an arctic research base, or as in this episode, a sinking Soviet Russian submarine. With The Doctor being mistaken for a spy, and an ancient Martian conqueror trying to blow up the world, things were set for an unpleasant interpretation of the term…
COLD WAR
by Mark Gatiss
Directed by Douglas Mackinnon
A Russian submarine unearths an Ice Warrior, frozen in the permafrost of the North Pole. The Doctor arrives (aiming for Las Vegas) and attempts to broker a peace between the already very skittish Russian crew and a warrior who presumes that his people are dead, and that he has nothing to lose.
Gatiss pulls off a great version of the traditional “trapped with a monster” story, wit well-timed scares, the one guy who thinks he can side with the monster, and a smattering of 80s dance tunes. Tense, exciting, and an ending that is rather a surprise. The direction is dead-on for such a film – snatches of images only, never a shot of the full beast, cause there’s no need.
GUEST STAR REPORT
David Warner (Professor Grisenko) is Evil. Or was, anywway, in the classic Time Bandits. His career in and out of the genre is considerable – he played Jack the Ripper in another time-travel classic, Time After Time, voiced The Lobe in Freakazoid! (not to mention Ras Al Ghul on Batman the Animated Series) and played Sark in Tron. His history with Doctor is equally deep. He was in fact offered the role of The Doctor in 1974, but turned it down. Since then he’s appeared in a number of audio adventures, provided a voice in the Dreamland mini-series, and played The Doctor, albeit an alternate one in Big Finish’s Unbound series.
Liam Cunningham (Captain Zhukov) is currently fighting the winter in Game of Thrones as Ser Davos Seaworth. Like warner, he was almost The Doctor – he was in the running for the role in the 1996 TV movie, eventually played by Paul McGann. He also appeared in the Titanic mini-series that brought us our first look at Jenna.
Tobias Menzies (Lieutenant Stepashin) will also be appearing in GoT later this season. He also appeared in ROME as Marcus Brutus.
Mark Gatiss (writer) has been lobbying to bring back the Ice Warriors for some years, and Moffat finally relented. He’s been busy co-writing and creating the new Sherlock series, as well as appearing in the recent series of Being Human. He’s also written An Adventure in Time and Space, the anniversary story of the creation of the series, due to be broadcast near the time of the anniversary.
THE MONSTER FILES – The Ice Warriors first appeared in an eponymous tale during the Troughton era with a number of parallels to this story, in that both feature a frozen member of the Martian race thawed out in haste. In the original adventure, the Ice Warrior Varga was played by Bernard Bresslaw, a regular castmember of the “Carry On” films. He was 6’7″ in stocking feet, and was usually paired with the diminutive Charles Hawtry, letting the difference in size provide much of the comedy. They reappeared shortly after in The Seeds of Death, mainly as a way of justifying the expensive costumes. They reappeared in the Pertwee years in the two Peladon stories. By this time, the former Martians had renounced their warlike ways. The tenth Doctor alluded to them in The Waters of Mars, theorizing in a cut scene that they may have discovered The Flood and froze it in the glacier, abandoning the planet in reponse, recognizing their threat.
Like so many classic series villains, they’ve appeared in many stories in novels and audio plays which served to greatly expand their history. The rank of Grand Marshall and some of the details of the caste system first appeared in the novel Legacy So far, little of the information we’ve seen in those expended adventured have been much used in the series, but contrariwise, little of it’s been expressly discounted either.
BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details
A MODEL THE SIZE OF A QUARTER…AN EXCELLENT DECEPTION – This is one of the first times in years where the special effects on the series were done as model work and not CGI. The Russian submarine was a huge model filled in a miasma of smoke standing in for water.
…AND AGARN’S WEARING A DRESS – I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but I am a complete sucker for the gag where a character makes a suggestion to do something, and another character is all “No, NO way, NOT happening, UH-uh”, and in the next shot, there’s the first character doing their suggestion. It was described perfectly in <a href=”
target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>this scene from Freakazoid!
“Am I speaking Russian?” The TARDIS translates languages for its inhabitants, except of course, when it’s dramatically or comedically expedient not to, like in last week’s episode.
“This wasn’t a test” – Except when it is, of course. The Doctor placed Victorian Clara in a position of danger in The Snowmen, and when she asked “Is this s test?”, he told her it was. Remember rule one – The Doctor lies.
“Jaw jaw, not War War” The Doctor is paraphrasing Winston Churchill, who we learned in Victory of the Daleks is a great friend of The Doctor.
“I reset the HADS” – The Hostile Action Displacement System is a defense mechanism on the TARDIS, last seen in another Troughton episode, The Krotons. When attacked by a threat of sufficient force, the ship dematerializes, removing itself from danger. It’s supposed to rematerialize a short distance and time from its departure point, but as is traditional, things on the TARDIS don’t always go smoothly. It’s a perfect way to get the TARDIS out of the way and force The Doctor to think on his feet, and more inventive (not to mention obscure) that simply having it break down.
BIG BAD WOLF REPORT /CLEVER THEORY DEPARTMENT –
Another theme has arisen between this episode and the last – Song. Skaldak talks about “singing the songs of the Old Times” with his daughter. It’s how The Doctor describes the call the Ice Warrior uses to summon his suit. It’s an odd choice of words, so I must assume it’s deliberate
NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – Hide. The title, and very good advice. Next Saturday.
I was something of an odd kid growing up so it may have made sense that I liked odd comedians. My memory was that I was the only person in our household who liked Ernie Kovacs; I must have been about 7 or 8 when his TV show was on. I thought he was funny and just so damn strange.
The same must be said as well for Jonathan Winters who died Thursday at the age of 87. A remarkable improviser, he could become anyone or anything. Hand him a prop or a hat and he could do four or five characters one after the other, morphing from one to the next in a heartbeat. Famously, Jack Paar just gave him a stick and Winters <a href=”
turned in character after character , including a terrific imitation of Bing Crosby.
I have a memory of Winters on The Jack Parr Show simply taking it over. Parr couldn’t get him to shut up or get off the stage. Parr was one of many many comedians or entertainers who were huge Winters’ fans. Robin Williams really owes his career to him. He pops in on <a href=”
this interview that 60 Minutes did with Winters and it’s fun not only to see the two riffing together but also for some of the serious insights that Winters gave on comedy and being a comedian.
What may be interesting to ComicMix readers is that he studied cartooning at Dayton Art Institute, meeting Eileen Schauder who would become his wife. Makes sense to me; his act often had him becoming a living cartoon.
He was also upfront about his stays in a private psychiatric hospital for manic depression which was brave and may have cost him. You could dismiss his act as that of someone too wired and a bit crazy instead of as the comedic genius it was.
There’s so many ways you may have encountered Jonathan Winters. He was an actor as well as a comedian. One of my favorite films that he made was The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming playing as police deputy that may have been related to Barney Fife. More manic but not more competent. He was also one of the few things that was watchable in the comedic gang bang, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. He was the white suited garbage man on Heft commercials who had a refined accent and pronounced garbage as “gahrbaj” – which I still use myself on occasion.
Winters, being a cartoon himself, also voiced cartoons, voicing Grandpa Smurf. Among the others were Tiny Toons Adventures (where he once voiced Superman!) and Fish Police – based on the comic book – doing Mayor Cod.
One of the most surreal (and with Jonathan Winters, that’s saying a lot) series of appearances was on Mork and Mindy where Winters was the son to Robin William’s Mork. As you may recall, Mork was an alien and his race aged backwards. It gave Williams a chance to work with his idol. It must have been easy to script; just point the two of them in a general direction and turn them loose.
One of Winters’ best known characters was Maudie Frickert who looked a bit like Whistler’s Mother and talked like Mae West. Maudie appeared everywhere, on all the variety shows, on the Tonight Show (Johnny Carson’s Aunt Blabby was, shall we say, a “direct descendent” of Maudie), and any place on TV that you can think. She had a career of her own. Maudie was just one of several recurring characters that Winters created.
When Jonathan Winters died this last week, all those characters, all those voices, died with him. They still live on videos and I encourage you to check YouTube and other places on the webby-web for them. He was an original, an antic mind, and with his death the world is a little less funny at a time when we need a few more real laughs.
For the fourth consecutive year, the Pulp Factory Awards were presented at this year’s Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention.
These awards are given to the best in new pulp fiction and art published during the previous year as voted on by the 111 members of the Pulp Factory; an internet group made up of pulp writers, artists, editors, publishers and dedicated fans.
Writer William Patrick Maynard and artist Rob Davis once again co-hosted the award presentations, handing out the sculptured trophies done in the shape of a quill pen set against factory-like gears.
The pen represents both writers and artists, the gears paying homage to the assembly-line production of the old pulps of the 1930s.
This year’s winners for the best in fiction and art for 2012 were:
For Best Pulp Novel – THE LONE RANGER – VENDETTA by the late Howard Hopkins, published by Moonstone Books.
For Best Pulp Short Story – “The Ghoul” by Ron Fortier from the anthology, “Monster Aces,” published by Pro Se Productions.
For Best Pulp Cover – Joe Devito for THE INFERNAL BUDDHA published Altus Press.
For Best Interior Illustrations – Rob Moran for THE RUBY FILES published by Airship 27 Productions.
This year’s preliminary nominations and final ballot represented a total of twelve New Pulp Fiction publishers.
The Pulp Factory membership congratulates all the winners for their exceptional work.
With the mighty C2E2 upon me and my li’l company, we were at an odd impasse. Due largely to biting off more than we could chew – an new issue of the Samurnauts containing a transforming motorcycle exo-suit, zombie cyborg pirates with jetpacks, steampunk Samurnauts, and an attack on the Crystal Palace of the 19th century World’s Fair – it would seem Unshaven Comics would hit a con floor without a new book to pimp. Now, working in our favor is the fact that C2E2 is a huge show, and last year, we did not have Curse of the Dreadnuts #1 (which we’ve had only since August of last year). So, at very least, for the folks who haven’t caught us elsewhere, there’s still something new to be had.
But what about all those who have seen us?
Well, at our weekly Unshaven meeting, I uttered words I truly never thought I’d utter. “Boys… it’s time we sold merch.” You could practically hear the thunder clap in the background. Kyle started crying. Matt bit his lower lip, and balled up a heavy fist… a stoic grimace crawled across his embittered maw.
For a good long time, Unshaven Comics was about one thing: original comic books. While yes, we have custom t-shirts (which we don’t stock or hock willy-nilly), and yes, our first few cons had us pelting the crowds with packed-in stickers… we’ve never been much for outlaying a table chock full of non-comic bric-a-brac. Not that we have anything against those that do, mind you. Simply put, we have always felt as a company that our best foot forward was, is, and will always be the comics themselves.
This year however, we have a new goal in mind. Money. And lots of it.
Not for nefarious purposes mind you. Our big goal is to get to Valhalla next year. Or as it’s more commonly known… San Diego Comic Con. And for three Chicago boys to get out west (with our very awesome wives) to party with Michael Davis? It takes scratch. And now, we’re back to the topic at hand. Our master plan? Expand our empire beyond the shores of books, to offer a myriad of crap that might appeal to our slowly growing fan base. I write this to you, not in hopes of shilling mind you; I write it because it’s a leap of faith for a small business owner trying to make sense of group of people I claim to belong to.
Comic Cons have slowly grown to appeal to a wide berth of those who would claim themselves nerd. And while my first convention was peppered with a retired wrestler, D-list sci-fi celebrity, or some sundry less-than-comic-related minutiae, now it’s simply par for the course to include it all. And with that expansion has grown a fan-base that is not driven by comic book lovers alone. As Unshaven Comics continued to add shows to our yearly calendar, we’ve come to note that it’s the expanded “non-comic fan” that is coming to our table. Beyond Kyle’s vaudevillian show to get people to stop, our pitch for the Samurnauts has slowly showed us that the appeal may travel beyond the boarders of the panel.
The Samurnauts as a concept was built, tongue firmly in cheek, to be merchandisable. Given it’s roots in our childhood – one built by intellectual properties that started out as toys – we thought it’d be a hoot to pay homage with a series that took itself serious even if we couldn’t pitch it without a smirk. And every show we went to, came with it the crack of the crowd. “Where’s the posters? The stickers? The tee-shirts?” We’d scoff, smile, and sell them the book. Faced now with the notion they’ll say “I have it. So now what?” we might as well let them leave with a bag full of Samurnik-naks. No?
For all intents and purposes, this is an experiment. The sundries we plan to offer are all custom designed. They are lovingly made. They are produced with vendors who have a passion for their products. In other words? We’ve found people who love their sticker/buttons/posters/tee-shirts as much as we love our comic books. If people buy them? All the better. If they don’t? We’ll have a ton of great pack-ins when the next issue hits the con floor. See you there. Bring a few bucks.
Television has been blessed with the reinvention of two icons. Carlton Cuse (LOST) talks about the choices he made in rebooting PSYCHO as BATES MOTEL, plus David Goyer (DARK KNIGHT, MAN OF STEEL) and his cast share the challenges faced on reintroducing the masses to Leonardo Da Vinci in DA VINCI’S DEMONS (premiering tonight at 10pm ET on Starz). Also, Robyn Schneider (@robinschneider) talks the latest DOCTOR WHO and the CW bails on THE CULT.
Our columnist Martha Thomases has spent the past two weeks in Japan with her son, Arthur Tebbel. By all reports, they’ve had a swell time. Here’s some of it, in her own words and pictures:
Kyoto is a city I have always wanted to visit. The traditional Capitol of Japan is known for its beauty and history, its cultural importance. Naturally, the first place I went when we arrived was the Kyoto International Manga museum. The building, a former elementary school, has a collection of more than 300,000 volumes, as well as a great deal of original art. In addition to the permanent collection, there are special shows as well. This is the current show. Not really graphic story, but an assortment of panels by international artists. I am embarrassed to say that the only name I recognized was Mike Mignola.
Everywhere you look, there are books. The shelves on the walls are higher than you could possibly reach.
The permanent exhibition shows the history and techniques of the form. This, I believe, is the “Biff! Bam! Pow! Comics Aren’t Just for Kids!” of Japan.
Here is some original art, I think. Really pretty stuff.
They consider cosplay to be part of manga. This is a current exhibit linking these two powerful cultural exports.
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The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers has announced their Scribe Award nominees for 2013.
THE MONSTER FILES – The Ice Warriors first appeared in an eponymous tale during the Troughton era with a number of parallels to this story, in that both feature a frozen member of the Martian race thawed out in haste. In the original adventure, the Ice Warrior Varga was played by Bernard Bresslaw, a regular castmember of the “Carry On” films. He was 6’7″ in stocking feet, and was usually paired with the diminutive Charles Hawtry, letting the difference in size provide much of the comedy. They reappeared shortly after in The Seeds of Death, mainly as a way of justifying the expensive costumes. They reappeared in the Pertwee years in the two Peladon stories. By this time, the former Martians had renounced their warlike ways. The tenth Doctor alluded to them in The Waters of Mars, theorizing in a cut scene that they may have discovered The Flood and froze it in the glacier, abandoning the planet in reponse, recognizing their threat.
