comic books

three short things: the carol corps, a laptop, and galleys

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 4 Comments

It was nice to read this: “The inspiring Captain Marvel #17 pays tribute to fans and sets the stage for the future“

I’m not sure why the series has to stop and then re-start again, but it was indeed a pretty special issue of a pretty special book. And, though the writer of this article doesn’t mention it, it does matter that Captain Marvel doesn’t wear some sort of impractical peekaboo superhero costume (unlike, you know, some female superheroes). That sets a certain tone right from the start.

I talked about Captain Marvel before (at the bottom, after the part about Moonrise Kingdom).

 
Android laptop

As I said in my comment to my post about backups, my one complaint about Android tablets is that it’s entirely too difficult to back things up to external media (hard drives, flash drives).

Well, it turns out that there is a solution to this without leaving the Android world — there are Android laptops, and I’m writing this on one. 🙂 So, all the advantages of Android, plus I can easily copy to external drives.

 
Galleys and ARCs (Advance Reader Copies)

This kind of puzzled me, I admit: ” Is It Ethical For Bookstores To Sell Uncorrected Proofs?“

The questions about bookstores selling advanced reader copies are one thing (I remember record stores that sold review copies of albums, which was also a no-no), but I’ve always assumed that Advance Reader Copies were different  from galleys.

Galleys are, by definition, unfinished, and why would you give them to anybody who didn’t have some responsibility for checking and polishing them? I would think (and I invite clarification if I’m missing something) that if something isn’t final enough to sell, it also isn’t final enough to send to a bookstore to pique their interest. Would you send it to a critic to review?

I have an ARC of A Simplified Map of the Real World (which I’m not selling 🙂 ), and my understanding is that it’s pretty much the final version of the book. On the other hand, I have received beta copies of various works which I’ve read, and which I would never share with anybody.

So, what am I missing?

i got hooked on comic books by superman’s grandmother

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 9 Comments

I remember one of my babysitters when I was young. She was old, with white hair, and she came in from Long Island where she lived. She told me that her husband (as I remember it) had created Superman, and sometimes she brought some of the comic books for me to look at. This was back when old comic books were just old comic books, not valuable collectables.

I remembered her years later, when the first Superman movie was coming out. Until that point, the two men who had created Superman had received virtually nothing for their creation, because of a contract they had signed when they were very young. With the movie coming out, however, and all the money being made from tickets and toys and so on, it was rather embarrassing that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who had created the character in the first place, were living in near poverty. So, they were given a small pension for the rest of their lives.

But, thinking about this today, I went to Wikipedia and found this:

In 1964, when Shuster was living on Long Island with his elderly mother, he was reported to be earning his living as a freelance cartoonist; he was also "trying to paint pop art — serious comic strips — and hope[d] eventually to promote a one-man show in some chic Manhattan gallery". At one point, his worsening eyesight prevented him from drawing, and he worked as a deliveryman in order to earn a living.

So, it was apparently his mother who I was remembering, not his wife, and it says something about their finances at that time that she had to babysit in order to make money.

I've traced back the timeline, and it is possible that this was my first exposure to comic books. The first comic book I bought was Fantastic Four #26 ("The Avengers Take Over"), which was dated May 1964. We moved to the city in 1963, but there's no way to tell the exact sequence of events.

So, it is possible (maybe even probable) that I got hooked on comic books by the mother of one of the men who created Superman. That could help explain why the addiction has been so persistent.

storytelling lessons from the first class

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 11 Comments

I just re-watched X-Men First Class on DVD and I think there are some good lessons to learn.

There will be some spoilers.

Always remember which stuff is the good stuff.

The first half of the movie is so strong because it's focused on Erik, Charles, and Sebastian Shaw. They are the strongest characters, and their relationships with each other (or, really Erik's relationships with the other two) are by far the most complex and interesting relationships in the movie. The second half is less engaging because more and more time is devoted to the newly recruited X-Men, who are not all that interesting.

The best action scene is in the first half, too (the confrontation between the Coast Guard and Shaw's yacht and how that plays out). Way more compelling than the ending (except, of course, for the final scenes between Erik and Shaw and Charles).

There's been some good discussion of this question ("what is the good stuff?") over at Bunny Ears & Bat Wings, in response to my guest post.

Some things do need to pay off.

As I talked about in the post about Chekhov's gun, not everything needs to pay off, but some things do.

Sebastian Shaw praises Emma's beauty, and then sends her out to freshen his drink (like "a good girl"). Her resentment at this is obvious, but it's never referred to again.

Two of the CIA men talk about getting information about Shaw through "a back channel," indicating that somebody on Shaw's team is really working for them, but this is never referred to again either.

What messages are you sending?

In general, and especially because this is a movie that uses mutants as a metaphor for real minorities, the final good/evil breakdown is unpleasant. Of the X-Men, who ends up on the good side of the ledger? All the generic non-ethnic white men. Who ends up evil? The Jewish guy and the two women. And, of course, the Black guy died early (google "the black guy dies first" to get some idea how predictable this is).

Think through what you're saying.

Throughout the X-Men movies, Charles and Erik debate how humanity and mutants could, or could not, co-exist. Erik always asserts that humanity will try to wipe mutants out. Charles always holds out hope. The events of the movies always show that Erik is right, but the movies never acknowledge this. I gather there will be more sequels, so maybe at some point one of the students will say something like, "Yo, professor, we like you, and we're learning a lot at your school, but, dude, you really need to wise up."


I'll throw in one more.

Sometimes the geeks are right.

Comic book enthusiasts sometimes get worked up when the movies take liberties with comic book stories and characters. I'm pretty relaxed about that, since I realize that changes need to be made, for a variety of reasons. The main thing I want is for the movies to get the characters right, even if the story-lines and relationships are altered.

That was one of the pleasures of the first X-Men movie: it got the characters right (so I didn't really mind the idiotic story). And when I heard that this movie would have Emma Frost (The White Queen), I had high hopes. Emma Frost, at her best, is one of the best characters I've ever read in a comic book. A former villain, still capable of cruelty, she is smart, sarcastic, witty, and complex. (I have a character who is somewhat inspired by her, in fact, though both are really the daughters of Angelique from Dark Shadows.) In the movie, as one critic pointed out, Emma has two characteristics. His words were "bosomy" and "sullen," and that pretty much says it.

What a lost opportunity. At one point, Emma Frost was supposed to appear in the last movie, played by Sigourney Weaver. That might have been something to see. But, of course, a strong female character like that might not have fit that well in such a boy-oriented movie as this one, where the two main female characters spend most of their time trailing along after the men. When Raven says she's been Charles's pet all those years, she's pretty much nailed it – and her solution is to switch her allegiance to Erik instead.

Which is also quite different from Mystique in the comics...

But don't get me started.

movies and comic books

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 7 Comments

A few short things today. If you haven't checked since a week ago, scroll down for two mid-week posts (a character meme, and some nice words about A Sane Woman).

1. In this post, I talked about the comic book storylines and characters that were being cut short for the big general reboot at DC Comics. Based on this article at the AV Club website I'm not the one one who thought that both Batgirl and Secret Six were pretty special.

Oh, and the resolution of "Scandal Savage’s love triangle with cosplaying stripper Liana and newly revived Female Fury Knockout"? She rescued one of them from Hell, and the other from a fundamentalist nutjob, and then, unable to choose between then (and having been reminded by one of her teammates that they are not heroes and don't have to play by the rules), she married both of them.

I suspect that polygamous lesbian marriages are only allowed in mainstream comics when 1) the characters are villains, and 2) the book has already been cancelled and all the continuity is about to be wiped out anyway.

2. I think Johnny Depp has finally managed to find a movie to star in which I will never see. A remake of The Thin Man? With possible musical numbers? (And, though this wasn't mentioned, I'm sure with considerably less alcoholism.) Ah, no thanks. Johnny, I like you a lot, but, sir, you are no William Powell, and your co-star, whoever she ends up being, is no Myrna Loy.

3. Jody Moller had an interesting post, and one comment she made has stuck with me: "Who are your favourite Authors? No doubt they are the ones you are aspiring to be like."

I'm not sure this is true, at least I don't think it's true for me. If I have a "favorite" writer, it's Thomas Pynchon, and I don't think I write like him, and I'm pretty sure I've never tried. But then I remembered the single biggest influence on my writing, which is Robert Altman. I guess I'm trying to be my favorite movie director instead.

And I'm not the only one. Magnolia was clearly P.T. Anderson's attempt at making his own Nashville, as I talked about here. And I just watched Michael Winterbottom's movie The Claim, and he was clearly making his own McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

It's a pretty good movie. It's no McCabe and Mrs. Miller (what is?), but it has a lot going for it. The biggest weakness is the actors. The main actresses (Sarah Polley, Nastassja Kinski and Milla Jovovich) are so strong that the lead actors, who are competent but not exceptional, just can't keep up.

proving my point, unfortunately

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 2 Comments

Proving the point I quoted in my last post ("Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of by the folk."), DC comics, the home of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, etc., has announced that in September all of their titles will start again with new first issues, and apparently with all existing continuity thrown out the window. Again.

This happens periodically with both major comic book companies, because the continuity becomes too convoluted over time (and too impenetrable to new readers, and too different from what's in the movies). So, for example, it appears that Hal Jordan will be back as Green Lantern, as he was in the movie, despite the fact that (I think) Hal has been dead for a while now in the comics.

So, the Batgirl whose adventures I've been enjoying so much (Stephanie Brown) will apparently cease to exist, and the original Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) will be back. And, most upsettingly, Secret Six will apparently cease to exist in any form. Feh.

Amusingly, Wonder Woman, who was just rebooted last year, with all previous continuity thrown out, is being rebooted again as part of the general reboot. One big change last year was finally allowing her to wear pants. Now, based on the ad I've seen, she's back to her original look ("I'm a fierce Amazon warrior princess, and I've come to fight evil in Man's World. Wearing a one-piece bathing suit.").

And, of course, all of the new continuity will be temporary, just as it is when a major character dies. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, is dead at the moment, I believe. His teammates are mourning him, so apparently they're the only ones who haven't figured out how temporary this will be. Colossus was dead (absolutely, definitely) in the comics until Joss Whedon, superstar writer, indicated that he'd like to write an X-men book and bring Colossus back. Suddenly, the big guy wasn't so absolutely, definitely dead after all.

So, am I going to go out and write fan fiction about Stephanie Brown's Batgrl, or the Secret Six? No, I have better things to do. But I do understand the urge.


Speaking of the better things I have to do, once again I'm working on two projects at once (as recommended on the excellent blog Maggie Madly Writing – it was nice to find out that I'm not the only one who works this way).

The mystery stories are mostly done, for now, but there are a few things still to be added (a couple of floor plans, an epilogue), plus rewrites and a possible book. However, right now I'm working on the second draft (I think of it as the second first draft) of Throwing Stones. I'm already getting some really good feedback from a great group of readers.

One reader is lagging behind a bit, however, but she's got very good reasons. In addition to having a novel to finish, which I knew about in advance, she's also got a book contract! So, everybody should go visit Sonje Jones and congratulate her on this wonderful news. I can't wait to read On the Chase.

selected shorts

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 6 Comments

Just a few quick things.

  1. A friend posted this on Facebook: "Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of by the folk." (Henry Jenkins, director of media studies at MIT). I've never written any fan fiction, and I haven't read very much either, but I think there's something to this.
  2. In the News: "Lesbians Told They Can't Hold Hands at Gertrude Stein Exhibit"
  3. From the New Yorker: The Pope's Tweets
  4. I'm interested in learning more about e-publishing, from the author's point of view. How difficult is it, how many different formats do you have to have for different kinds of readers, how easy or difficult is the conversion process (and what formats can you convert from, are there options to proof after conversion? Given all the typos I see in e-books, more than conventional books, I'm worried that the conversion processes introduce errors. I know the different websites (Amazon, etc.) offer information, but each only offers info about their device, and (of course) they emphasize the easy parts and downplay the difficulties. So, I'm interested from an author's perspective. Thanks for any suggestions or info.