Tagged: fantasy

World Horror and World Fantasy Award Winners Announced

  • News
  • November 3, 2008

The  International Horror Guild Awards, which recognize outstanding achievements in the field of horror and dark fantasy, were announced on Halloween (naturally). The Awards, first presented in 1994, will cease to be after this year.

Novel: The Terror by Dan Simmons

Long Fiction: Softspoken by Lucius Shepard

Mid-Length Fiction: "Closet Dreams" by Lisa Tuttle

Short Fiction: "Honey in the Wound" by Nancy Etchemendy

Fiction Collection: Dagger Key and Other Stories by Lucius Shepard

Anthology: Inferno, Ellen Datlow, ed.

Periodical: Postscripts

Illustrated Narrative: The Nightmare Factory, Thomas Ligotti (creator/writer), Joe Harris and Stuart Moore (writers), Ben Templesmith, Michael Gaydos, Colleen Doran and Ted McKeever (illustrators)

Nonfiction: Mario Bava: All the Colors of Dark by Tim Lucas

Art: Elizabeth McGrath for "The Incurable Disorder"

IHG Living Legend: Peter Straub

Fantasy Award Winners Named

Sunday night at the World Fantasy Convention in Calgary, the winners for this year’s World Fantasy Awards were announced.

Novel: Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay

Novella: Illyria by Elizabeth Hand

Short Story: "Singing of Mount Abora" by Theodora Goss

Anthology: Inferno, Ellen Datlow, ed.

Collection: Tiny Deaths by Robert Shearman

Artist: Edward Miller

Special Award, Professional: Peter Crowther (for PS Publishing)

Special Award, Non-Professional: Midori Snyder and Terri Windling (for Endicott Studios’ Web site)

Life Achievement: Leo and Diane Dillon, Patricia McKillip

Review: ‘MuZz, Vol. 1’ by FSc

MuZz, Vol. 1
By FSc (Foo Swee Chin)
SLG Publishing, May 2008, $14.95

There’s a train that runs to MuZz – or, at least, it’s supposed to – carrying ideas and thoughts whose creators have lost interest in them. They’re all pretty odd and motley, as you might expect: a black whale, a phantom cat, and things I couldn’t even begin to describe.

But, on this particular train, there’s also a figure that looks like a teenage girl missing an eye. She’s Modorelin Farllee, she’s an actual human, and she’s not even dead. (Well, I don’t think she’s dead, but I don’t want to be too definite about any plot points concerning [[[MuZz]]].)

Farllee remembers nothing of her past, and wakes up on the train in such a frantic, grouchy mood that she shakes her elf guide to death and has to rely on the standard pamphlet and the advice of her fellow passengers to figure out what’s going on.

And so she quickly learns what I’ve just told you – she doesn’t believe that she’s actually a figment of someone else’s imagination, but she can’t prove that, and drops the subject. None of them are precisely sure what will happen to them in MuZz, but, for nearly all of them, it has to be better than their previous lives.

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Review: ‘Sex and Sensibility’ edited by Liza Donelly

sex1-3981535What do women want? Sigmund Freud thought he knew, but we all know about him. After a few decades of feminism, it’s become clearer that the best way to find out what women want is… to ask them.

Sex and Sensibility
Edited By Liza Donelly
Hachette/Twelve, April 2008, $22.99

Donelly is a noted single-panel cartoonist and the author of Funny Ladies, a history of female cartoonists for The New Yorker. (She also teaches at my alma mater, Vassar College, which instantly inclines me to consider her a world-class expert on whatever she wants to be – we Vassarites have to stick together.)

Donelly collected nine of her colleagues – mostly single-panel magazine cartoonists, with a couple of editorial cartoonists for spice – and asked them to contribute cartoons on women, men, sex, relationships – that whole area. Two hundred cartoons later, [[[Sex and Sensibility]]] emerged. It’s divided into several thematic sections — Sex, Sensibility, Women, Lunacy, and Modern Love — and each cartoonist provided an essay about herself and her work, which are sprinkled throughout.

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Review: ‘Fantasy Classics’ edited by Tom Pomplun

fantasy3-7944618Fantasy Classics: Graphic Classics Vol. 15
Edited by Tom Pomplun
Eureka Productions, 2008, $11.95

The “[[[Graphic Classics]]]” series most of the time sticks to a single author per volume, but not always – they’ve had [[[Horror Classics]]], [[[Adventure Classics]]], and [[[Gothic Classics]]] already, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see more along those lines. (There’s no one chomping at the bit for a full volume of Sax Rohmer or Anne Radcliffe, for example, and it’s also a way to do more Poe or Lovecraft without doing a full-fledged “volume two.”) 

[[[Fantasy Classics]]] has two long adaptations – of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and of H.P. Lovecraft’s “[[[The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath]]]” – that each take up about a third of the book, and some shorter pieces that fill up the rest. They’re all fantasy, as advertised, but they’re very different kids of fantasy from each other – many, in fact, consider [[[Frankenstein]]] to be science fiction, indeed the ur-SF novel – and none of them are much like what’s mostly found in the “Fantasy” section of a bookstore. There are no Tolkienesque elves or post-[[[Buffy]]] vampire lover/killers here.

The book leads off with a single-page adaptation of Lord Dunsany’s “After the Fire” by Rachel Masilamani; it’s fine for what it is, but basically a vignette.

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Review: ‘Jenny Finn’ and ‘The Stardust Kid’

Boom! Studios has made a name for itself as a comic book version of the Spike TV network, but this week the publisher released two new collections that step away from that formula.

jenny-finn_tpb-1-2427366The first, Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah ($14.99) is a collection of the three original Jenny Finn issues and the all new fourth and concluding chapter. The book is written by Mike Mignola and is his truest channeling of Lovecraft yet. In fact, the story closely echoes one of Lovecraft’s stories (I forget the name) about a fishing town being invaded by mysterious sea creatures.

That’s not to say the story isn’t original – it’s more elaborate and bizarre, with typical Mignola flourishes, like the constant appearance of fish that mutter, "Doom."

The narrative is simple enough – an average Joe finds himself mired in otherworldly terror and tries to fight (and think) his way out of it – but the plot never falls into stereotype and every few pages brings a new surprise.

Troy Nixey served as artist on the first three issues and perfectly captures the ethereal horror of Mignola’s script (and, thankfully, doesn’t ape Mignola’s artistic style). Farel Dalrymple illustrated the fourth chapter, and while I love his work, this probably isn’t the best project for him.

That bit of criticism aside, Jenny Finn is a great piece of haunted fun. And I forgot the best part: plenty of tentacles.

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Black Ice: The Return!

  • News
  • March 28, 2008

Black Ice, the action-adventure fantasy by Mike Baron and Nick Runge, returns today with a brand-new chapter.

Neil Kofsky drove his motorbike through an inter-dimensional portal and right onto a battleship that flies through the air.  After dueling with a Prince with an attitude, Neil finds himself (and everyone else on board) attacked by an enemy he doesn’t know and doesn’t understand.  And now ….

Credits: Bob Pinaha (Letterer), Matt Webb (Colorist), Mike Baron (Writer), Mike Gold (Editor), Nick Runge (Artist)

More: Black Ice

 

Review: Terry Brooks’ ‘Dark Wraith of Shannara’

Dark Wraith of Shannara
By Terry Brooks, Illustrated by Edwin David, Adapted by Robert Place Napton
Del Rey, 2008, $13.95

I am morally sure that the following conversation took place somewhere, among some people, before this book came into existence:

“It’s not fair! All of those other fantasy writers are getting comics based on their books!”

“Yeah! Why Salvatore and Hamilton but not Brooks?”

“What do they have that he hasn’t got? He’s at least as popular as Feist!”

I have no idea who said it, or who they said it to, but, somehow, the influence of the Dabel Brothers has led to ever more epic fantasy writers getting the urge (or maybe just the contract) to create graphic novels based on their work.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that; American comics have been a closed guys-in-tights shop for a generation now, and anything that opens that up is nice. But it is a bit weird, personally, when the two sides of my world collide quite so violently.

Dark Wraith of Shannara, unlike most of the recent epic fantasy comics out there, doesn’t adapt anything; it’s a brand-new story set in Terry Brooks’s very famous (and very bestselling) world of Shannara. For continuity geeks – and aren’t we all that, about something? – this takes place soon after the end of the novel The Wishsong of Shannara, and involves much of the cast of that book. Wishsong is the third of the original Shannara “trilogy:” they’re nothing like a trilogy, despite being three books about members of the same family published relatively quickly and all having the word “Shannara” in the title, but fantasy fans will call any conglomeration of three books a trilogy if you don’t stop them with heavy armament.

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D&D Co-Creator E. Gary Gygax: 1938 – 2008

  • News
  • March 4, 2008

Chances are if you love comic books, sci-fi, fantasy and other great things like these, you’ve probably also played Dungeons & Dragons at one time or another as well. I’m not embarrassed to admit I used to play it quite a lot and before the days of the sophisticated computer and console games we have now, it was a great way to get together with a bunch of friends, roll the 20-sided-dice and kick some Beholder butt.

So, it’s sad news today to report that Gary Gygax, co-creator of D&D, co-founder of Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) and generally regarded as the "Father of the Role-Playing Game" has passed away. The news was first reported on the Troll Lord Games Forums but now has spread across the Internets with postings at various other sites. Plus, his Wikipedia page has also already been updated.

Born on July 27, 1938, Ernest Gary Gygax took his love of Avalon Hill wargames and his passion for the works of Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, and other great sword and sorcery authors and created D&D. He also co-founded Tactical Studies Rules, the company that published the game.

After D&D, Gygax went on to create the Dangerous Journeys and Lejendary Adventure RPGs, as well as a number of board games. He also wrote several fantasy novels. Over the years, Gygax became an icon to gamers and developed a huge following of fans, even appearing as himself in an episode of the show Futurama.

ComicMix’s own Glenn Hauman had a personal connection to Gygax.

"I met Gary a few years back, and he was a complete gentleman," said Hauman. "Ironically, he died on GM’s Day, a day created by various role-playing aficionados to pay tribute to the one who holds your character’s life in your hands. Gary’s influence on the gaming industry is immeasurable, and he will be dearly missed."

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Oprah Brings It

  • News
  • January 26, 2008

Not that it’s necessarily geek news, but fantasy writers beware! Using your eighth-grade trauma to inspire your superhero’s journey? Think again!  You can’t mix fiction with non-fiction, or you will get a taste of Oprah’s wrath. Well, let’s be honest. That’s if you claim that you actually were that superhero, and while we all know you’re prancing around in those blue-lined yellow action hero underpants on your own time, at least you’re not on national TV saying that it’s real, or bouncing on couches, like some numb nuts out there.

Today in 2006, James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, was ripped into a million little pieces by Oprah when it was found that a detail in his so-called autobiographical experience was shall we say, embellished. Let that be a lesson to all writers out there: when presented with the golden calf of Oprah’s Book Club, tread lightly. No detail shall be exaggerated, no recollection blurred, lest her wrath be set upon you and your stories. 

Manga Friday: The Leopard Who Walked Like a Man

  • News
  • January 11, 2008

This is another complicated bit of backstory: in 1979, Kaoru Kurimoto started a series of epic fantasy novels about a warrior-type named Guin who woke up amnesiac with a leopard mask permanently affixed to his face. There are at least a hundred and eighteen novels in the main series, plus some unspecified number of “side stories.” (I don’t know what makes them “side stories,” either.) One of those “side stories” was adapted into a manga series, and collected into three volumes. Now Vertical is in the middle of publishing the manga based on the side story based on the main story of the leopard-headed warrior named Guin. (Who lies in the house of Bedlam, Elizabeth Bishop would add.)

The first two volumes are out in English already; the third is scheduled to follow in March. And I read those first two volumes today (Thursday), to let you, the manga-starved hordes of ComicMix, know what they’re like.

And they’re OK.

Hm. You probably want more than that, right? All right. Guin is your standard post-Conan mightily-thewed barbarian type, with impossibly bulging muscles and a big sword he whips out and swings around phallicly at the appropriate moments. In the manga, his leopard “mask” looks just like a head – the jaw moves, the eyes move, and the whole thing is disconcertingly too small for his overmuscled body. Also in Conan fashion, he’s hacked his way to being king of a civilized nation, marrying the beautiful princess along the way. (Unlike Conan, though, the princess is not exceptionally enamored of her husband.) (more…)

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