Can’t be a hero without cubes

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I read comics in the trade collections. Sure, that puts me months behind the main stories, but the truth is I don’t have the money to spend on them, and I’m only casually interested in the storylines. There are very few comics I genuinely care about, far fewer than I read.

Anyway, one of the comics I’ve been half-following is SECRET WARRIORS, which is a sort of spy/superhero mashup, with a pack of unknown superpowered non-heroes as the operatives and Nick Fury running it all.

It’s fun, it’s shaggy in a pleasing way, and unlike some comics the story isn’t an incomprehensible mess. It also has a hero named Druid, who I liked because he has pseudo-magical powers and because he’s a fat guy.

It’s pretty rare to see a fat hero in comics. I’m not going into the history of it, but when Blue Beetle fell into a depression and put on a bunch of weight, all he needed to do was beat up an obnoxious guy and snap out of it. Easy, right?

Well, Druid was a powerful character who didn’t have full control of his powers (magic!) and who was a little insecure because he made mistakes. See, I like him even more. Then, at the end of the previous trade, Nick Fury kicked him off the team.

In the trade I read over the weekend, we pick up his story: he’s gotten the boot, goes home, sits in a chair and is all “Now what?” Then he goes home and finds one of Fury’s agents waiting for him (a guy who’s a human head on a robot body, but never mind). Fury’s buddy is one of those grizzled old commanders who doesn’t take any nonsense, and he quickly informs Druid that with spies and Nick Fury, there is no “out.” The agent sits Druid down with a stack of papers and tells him to fill out the test, it’s the same one he’s been giving to his raw recruits for decades. Then this happens: (I’ll put in a cut for the scan) Continue reading

Conan the Barbarian

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So, I went to see CONAN yesterday at the first 2D showing. I’m pretty sure you couldn’t see it any earlier in my time zone, but I didn’t go because I’m such a huge fan. I’m not. I like Conan well enough as a character, but I went so early because of convenience’s sake.

And I write fantasy, so I thought I should see it.

Well, as you expected, it’s not really what you’d call a great movie. I did enjoy parts of it, though you wouldn’t think so to read this post.

There are a few things I expect to see in a good sword and sorcery movie (assuming somebody makes one someday) Spoilers! Continue reading

Is this the French cover for Child of Fire?

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I don’t know, because it popped up while I was looking at Goodreads.

What do you think?

Randomness for 8/20

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1) Interview of a One-Year-Old Child. Video. Way funnier than it sounds.

2) Moebius did concept art for the movie WILLOW. Check out the art design that could have been.

3) Astonishing bike stunts in abandoned industrial facility. Video. Music’s nice, too.

4) Better Book Titles.

5) Everything you need to know about the video game industry in one graphic.

6) The 10 Most Brutal Moments in ‘The Savage Sword of Conan’!

7) A steampunk apartment.

New contest!

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We’re looking for a new potato salad recipe. The one we used out of Fanny Farmer didn’t really float anyone’s boat, and life is too short to make due with blah potato salad.

Please post or link to a recipe for your favorite potato salad. Entries should appear on the main blog or in my LiveJournal: Twitter responses and Facebook comments won’t count for convenience’s sake.

The winner will receive a signed copy of Circle of Enemies (once my author copies arrive). Alternately, you can ask me to send it to a third party–either an individual or an institution. Of course, it will take a little time for us to try the recipes, but hey, it’s all to the good. How will the winner be decided? Family taste test. I should warn you, my son is a picky eater.

Thank you for your suggestions. Carb heaven, here we come.

It isn’t necessarily a metaphor just because it’s not real.

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“Jerry may seem too sly and eccentric to be a metaphor, but since there is no such thing as a literal vampire, we have to assume that his presence in this landscape means something.” A.O. Scott, missing the whole point in his review of FRIGHT NIGHT

Story doesn’t matter.

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Some filmmaker friends are tearing into the quotes from a Disney exec in this article. Essentially, he’s saying that Disney is going to pull back and focus on big, expensive tent-pole movies. It’s the only kind of film that makes sense with the marketing budget they need to bring in really huge numbers of people. (Added later: this particular exec doesn’t actually greenlight films, so here’s a grain of salt.)

He’s also saying that, for this kind of movie, audiences don’t care that much about the story. They like the big budget spectacle, and if the story doesn’t hold together, well, that’s a secondary consideration.

Frankly, I find it hard to refute him. He points to ALICE IN WONDERLAND (which made a billion dollars?? Really?) and I point to TRANSFORMERS. The writer of the article brings up TRON: LEGACY, which had lots of spectacle, a crappy story, and which failed at the box office, but honestly, we can all point to the reasons any individual movies drew (or failed to draw) a big audience after the fact. Everyone thinks they can Monday morning quarterback surprise hits and flops, but no one can predict it reliably.

Personally, I’d love to know what’s driving the success of those movies, but I haven’t seen them. I watch some of them on DVD when they hit the library, but in the theater? Not so much.

However! There is an ongoing TV series that a lot of people really enjoy with plenty of spectacle (on a TV budget), a large and enthusiastic fanbase, and really awful stories. I mean, dumb stories that don’t make any sense at all, or that seem spackled together with bullshit and “Hurry past, don’t pay attention here”. And that’s DOCTOR WHO.

I quit the show when I realized that too often the “stories” were an arrangement of emotion-tugging moments with only the most spurious connection to each other. A really good story will evoke powerful emotions, but if that can’t be managed, the moments themselves can be strung together (“My friend is in danger!” “This is worse that I thought!” “You don’t scare me, Villain Of This Episode!” “Thank goodness you have been safely rescued, Friend!” “Oh, I stare stonily at the terrible cost of battling evil!”). Even without the context of a sensible, well-crafted story, those moments can force emotional responses from our well-trained brains.

Isn’t that what these big “tentpole” movies are doing? They mix spectacle with specific emotion-tugging moments (cue long-withheld hug from father), and if the story makes sense, well, that’s just a little extra gravy.

That’s how it seems to me, and as a person who creates (and tries to sell) stories, this is something I need to figure out.

Look what arrived late last night!

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Isn't it sad that this is the best picture I took?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s influence on urban fantasy

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Urban fantasy tropes go way back to the pulps and comics of the early 20th century. Weird Tales was publishing hard-boiled PIs vs. supernatural horror very early, and Dr. Occult (among others) appeared in the comics in the 30’s. But pretty much all of it was marketed as horror.

When the horror boom collapsed in the 80’s, people started calling their horror “dark fantasy” to separate it from the serial killer and splatter punk stuff. At the same time, Charles de Lint was doing his thing, and War for the Oaks made its big splash.

I have no idea why it got the name “urban” though, except maybe from urbanites’ bias that city=modern and rural=the past.

But I don’t think the genre hit its stride until Buffy came along. I mean, there were people writing it before, but Buffy seemed to have a powerful effect on the readership. Readers who loved the shows began snapping up the books.

What’s more, BtVS showed how powerful and effective paranormal romance plots could be, and it enshrined the new story structure of the UF, which was a break from the de Lint style. That was:

Horror fiction + protagonist with agency = urban fantasy.

It seems to me that the genre has sort of backed into the crime thriller format (I’ve said “mysteries” before, but that was stupid of me. Mystery novels are usually extended series of interesting conversations. Thrillers have more violence, and it’s the thriller that UF has emulated.)

Once the protagonist gets juiced up the vampires and werewolves become more like thriller-ish super-criminals, and the protag no longer flees in terror. That just pushes the story toward this:

Awful event -> What caused this? -> investigation <--> violent clashes <--> plot twists | (until finally) extended climactic battle.

Which is a classic thriller style.

I’m not an expert in any of this, but this is how it seems to me.

Day camp for daddies

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Per my son’s long-standing request, he is in day camp this week. It’s spendy but not too too spendy, and his best buddy is there, so we’re letting him hang out all day with other kids.

Which means that this stay-at-home parent and writer has an opportunity for some extra work time.

It’s also an opportunity to follow interesting blog posts into the comments, or to open lots of interesting articles from links on Twitter, or visiting Facebook for some unknown reason, or reading webcomics, or… The list is nearly endless. Plus I have dinner to make, laundry to fold, and composting to do.

I’ve often said the Internet is a temporal gas: it expands to fill the free time you have. Therefore I’m turning off my internet and starting work (jeez, it’s already past 11 am! I meant to post this an hour ago.)