Monthly Archives: November 2018

November 30, 2018 · 4:34 pm

33,000 and counting

I accomplished 57 percent of my November goals. That’s primarily because I underestimated the impact of my colonoscopy on my work Thanksgiving week (and for that matter my off-work activities). And yes, insomnia played a role. As I sleep great on weekends, I’d anticipated making up for lost time over the four day weekend. Instead interruptions from one source or another meant I only got one night of good sleep. Bleah!

The biggest fail on my goal list was not finishing Southern Discomfort. That one I can’t really blame on my colon, though the short work week certainly had an impact. So did the Leaf articles continuing longer than I’d expected.

But the main reason is, it’s been a long while since I read an entire novel aloud, and I’d forgotten how long it takes. Rewriting and changing the scenes is taking more work than I thought too. I’m rewriting the flow of conversation so it makes more sense, adding tension to some scenes (though some of them are simply going to be about setting and character, and that’ll have to be enough), checking formatting. Every decision then leads to more changes (well, not the formatting). Making Maria more skeptical about whether it’s really magic in one scene means she needs to be skeptical in the next scene, or I have to show her changing.

Still, when I counted up the completely finished wordage this week, I was pleased. As of today, I’m a little over 33,000 words done, out of a 92,000 word book. And next month this is my only writing goal besides the Leaf articles, which will wrap up before too long. So I should be done by New Year’s Eve. Well if the good lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise, as they say. Even if it rises, I can get it done in January, but I really want to start 2019 fresh.

And I wrote another Dr. Mabuse article for Atomic Junkshop. As I didn’t have time for even a half-hearted film review, I looked at two Dr. Mabuse songs, Dr. Mabuse by Propaganda and Dr. Mabuse by Blue System. Thanks to my friend Ross Bagby for alerting me they even existed. Below is the CD cover for one of the Propaganda versions (there are several of various lengths floating around).

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November 30, 2018 · 5:13 am

Let’s start off Friday with some cover images

I don’t think that stuff is good to drink. Art is uncredited.

Joe Kubert cover for the story of a WW II Navy officer who grew up as a feral child raised by pterodactyls. And how often does one get to say that?

Next, a couple by Powers

OMG, it’s a man with an icecream on his head! Horrifying! Luckily for the artist, the art is uncredited.

Mitchell Hooks did this one. I saw the woman’s meant-to-be-ecstatic face on lots of covers back in the day.

An eerie one by Kelly Freas.

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November 29, 2018 · 5:10 am

Sherlock Holmes: “It is easier to know than to explain why I know.”

Yep, time for another of the Great Detective’s insights into writing: “It is easier to know than to explain why I know.”

Holmes’ point was that it was much easier to make a lightning-fast deduction than to break down his chain of thought for Watson or Lestrade. I’ve often had the same experience writing: at some level, my unconscious mind knows what the story needs even if I can’t explain why it’s right. Sometimes I can’t explain what it needs, only that it’s not what’s on the page.

I think the first time I had the experience was writing my second novel. I’d had a big major fight scene midway through the book, and it was decent, but then I found I couldn’t write the next scene. My gut seemed to clench up and obstruct me every time I tried. Finally I realized it was because what I’d written was wrong. Oh, it was perfectly adequate, but there was a better alternative, if I could only find it.

Eventually I did. It was a lot better. The book didn’t sell, but it was still a better novel.

I’ve had that sense of “something’s wrong” since, though not usually as strongly. And more generally I find a lot of choices and decisions I make in writing are intuitive: choice A simply feels better than choice B. My gut is a good guide.

But unlike Holmes, not a perfect guide. In writing new drafts, I spend a lot of time thinking and studying the previous draft’s structure and pacing. And after I’m satisfied that a story feels right and the logic holds up, then I go get feedback from my writer’s group or other beta readers.

For example, when I wrote The Savage Year I thought a lot about the story’s structure, giving Diana and Artemis multiple encounters with the villain. I thought about the talismans that would make logical sense for him to hunt for. But I also trusted my feelings about the story. As I was dealing with quasi-Lovecraftian horrors, I felt the sensations the magic triggers in Artemis needed to be weirder and more horrible. So I wrote at one point about how the magic made Artemis feel like rats were running around in her stomach, and trying to climb out. Other magical efforts triggered similar unpleasantness.

Then I showed it to the group and got lots of feedback. Including that the bad guy needed to come on stage sooner and that the effects of his magic weren’t creepy enough. I took those suggestions both into account. Eventually the story sold to Lorelei Signal (unfortunately the web site’s been down so long, I wonder if it will ever come back up).

I don’t know if this is true for all writers, and it doesn’t need to be. Everyone’s got their own method. As long as the story works for readers (or listeners, or viewers), it doesn’t matter whether we get it by following a formula or improvising based on intuition.

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November 28, 2018 · 5:10 am

The adventures of Wonder Woman’s much less interesting brother (with spoilers)

James Robinson will always have a spot in the comics hall of fame for his work on Starman in the 1990s. His recent run on Wonder Woman (with various artists; Jenna Frison does the TPB cover) does not burnish his reputation. Admittedly I’d already read Tim Hanley at Straitened Circumstances‘ negative reviews of this arc when I picked this up at the library, but even without that influence, the best this book would get was “meh.”

Following Darkseid’s defeat in The Darkseid War, his part-Amazon daughter Grail has been killing Zeus’s children to restore him to full power. She opens with Hercules, now living quietly as a lumberjack in the northwest, then goes on to other progeny, mostly made up for this story, all butchered in one panel or off-panel. That puts not only Diana in her sights, but Diana’s twin brother Jason, given up by Hippolyta years ago. Hercules tells Diana about her brother and asks her to find him. They instantly connect but oh no, he’s secretly pissed about having been given up and he’s working with Grail! The two women battle, Jason decides he can’t let his sister die after all, Darkseid and Zeus show up and Darkseid kicks Zeus’s butt. But the JLA shows up and having lost to them before, he takes a powder.

As Hanley points out, Greg Rucka retconned out Diana’s early New 52 adventures, including the reveal about Zeus as her daddy, so why is she still a demigod? My guess would be because this arc came out after the movie, which made Diana Zeus’s daughter, but I don’t know for a fact. I also wonder if the reason we got this plotline (which runs up through #50 I believe) is because Jason was the brainchild of DC big dog Geoff Johns so it just had to be worked into WW’s story (I’d have sooner see them use Nubia or make up a new twin sister)

As Hanley also points out, this arc has remarkably little of Wonder Woman herself. One issue is devoted to Grail’s backstory. Another does the same to Jason. Although Starman did a lot of flashback issues and did them well, they focused primarily on Starman (several different bearers of the name) and the Shade (one of the more memorable supporting characters). Here we’re focused on two guest stars, and not terribly interesting ones. I don’t find Jason as awful as some people do, but he’s not a memorable character and neither is Grail.

Robinson does show us a dynamic, formidable Wonder Woman, but he doesn’t show us her enough. The character bits among the supporting cast are good, but they’re just supporting cast. And the story’s just dull. It might have been fun to see Zeus’s diverse kids, but killing dozens of people off camera is par for the course for a villain these days. There’s no real drama between Jason and Diana. And Darkseid might as well be Mongul or Thanos or any other space conqueror; there’s nothing to make me care that he’s the adversary.

Thank you Durham Library for saving me from having to buy this.

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November 27, 2018 · 5:10 am

Films that made an impression: the second five posters

Following up on last week’s post about movies that made an impression, for various reasons:

There was nothing like Blazing Saddles (1974)when it came out and I was flabbergasted. A mainstream movie that had that much profanity? And dirty jokes? To say nothing of dealing with race, and in a comedy no less. Not to mention just nuts in so many ways. As if that wasn’t enough, I first saw it at a friend’s house on a cable channel that was — get this — devoted to showing nothing but current movies, all uncut. My god, what an amazing development in TV!

Like Star Wars in the previous post, Casablanca (1942) had me walking around in a daze after I saw it (a showing while I was in college). An amazing movie with an all-star cast, a great theme song, drama, Nazis and some incredible lines of dialog (“I came to Casablanca for the waters.” “We’re in the desert.” “I was misinformed.”). Still one of my all-time favorites; I have that poster on my wall.

I never saw any blacksploitation movies when they were showing on the big screen (they were at the drive-in, I didn’t have a car) but I caught the trailer for Friday Foster (1975) on TV and immediately crushed on Pam Grier. She was probably my first big-screen crush (I had quite a few from TV) and while the movie isn’t her best from that era (I think I’d pick Coffy), it is a lot of fun. And Grier, as a news photographer, is just as stunning as she looked in the trailer.

1968’s The Yellow Submarine was a mindblowing experience (again, one I didn’t go through until college). The absolutely wild pop art animation was stylistically unlike anything else I’d seen in animation, throwing in weird stuff purely for the sake of weird (this is a plus). The score is, of course, awesome, and I think those guys they had in the lead have some real potential as singers.

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) was a movie that just left me glowing with its warmth and affection for humanity, and it’s belief that just being a good person matters. I remember after seeing it I went and found one of my friends and just hugging her and telling her how much I liked her because I was just overflowing with warmth for other people. It’s not one I can watch every Christmas the way I do some, but it’s a really charming movie.

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November 26, 2018 · 12:16 pm

A traitor to humanity’s god: W.E.B. DuBois on Robert E. Lee

“It is the punishment of the South that its Robert Lees and Jefferson Davises will always be tall, handsome and well-born. That their courage will be physical and not moral. That their leadership will be weak compliance with public opinion and never costly and unswerving revolt for justice and right. it is ridiculous to seek to excuse Robert Lee as the most formidable agency this nation ever raised to make 4 million human beings goods instead of men. Either he knew what slavery meant when he helped maim and murder thousands in its defense, or he did not. If he did not he was a fool. If he did, Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel–not indeed to his country, but to humanity and humanity’s God.” — WEB DuBois

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November 26, 2018 · 5:18 am

Bright when the cause is right

Title taken from one of Carol Kendall’s books because this is some relatively upbeat stuff.

Back in January, Oprah’s Golden Globes speech led many people to imagine her running for president. Slacktivist says that misses the point of the speech: it’s not about how Oprah’s going to save us, but looking forward to the day we can save ourselves.

“When we quit believing in the possibility, we quit trying and what was once horrific becomes ordinary. That is what happens when we let hope die.”

“Why are the rich so hard toward the poor? It is because they have no fear of becoming poor.”— Rousseau

“She personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild” — Ella Fitzgerald on how Marilyn Monroe helped her break through the color line.

“The Archbishop of Canterbury and Comrade X, author of Marxism for Infants—all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel.” — George Orwell on how we shouldn’t forget that we depend on the grunts of the working class.

” If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!” —JRR Tolkien on the merits of reading fantasy

Cutting off white supremacists and neo-Nazis from GoFundMe and PayPal won’t kill the movement, but it’ll make the alt.right hurt.

The religious right did not do well this past midterm election.

Texas pastor Gavin Rogers joined the migrant caravan to witness the truth of who’s coming here (spoiler: it’s not a secret terrorist army financed by George Soros).

We don’t always punish the people who cover up for villainy. But former MSU president Lou Anna Simon has been charged with two felonies for lying about serial sexual assailant Larry Nassar.

A reminder how very radical Martin Luther King was, and is today.

When Koeberle Bull received racist message on FB from a stranger, she investigated. She may have stopped a school shooting.

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November 25, 2018 · 5:10 am

Terror, music, superheroes and libraries: this week in books

EF Benson’s “The Room in the Tower” is a classic creepy short story, so I figured THE NIGHT TERRORS: The Ghost Stories of EF Benson would be a good read. Alas, despite some true chillers, Benson’s way too wordy and detailed in his descriptions which drowns out the creepiness in most of the yarns. I can see why he’s better known for the social comedy of Mapp and Lucia as that element is where he’s at his best here, from the emotionally manipulative husband of “The Dance” to the culture-snob ghost of “Thursday Evenings” to the social embarrassment caused when a young boy turns out to be one of “The Psychical Mallards.” A mixed bag, overall.

1000 RECORD COVERS is a collection that spans the 1950s with its relatively simple Here’s My Face images through the increasingly arty and wild 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. While not well organized, it does clump them together with themes (semi-naked women, mean machines, views from airplanes) and does show how many musicians were out there I never heard of (my favorites being the Manchesters and the Liverpools, two groups obviously hoping people would pick them up thinking they were the Beatles. Light, but entertaining on the eyes.

Superman and Lois’s son Jon is the best thing the New 52 has done with Superman and Jon’s scenes in SUPERMAN: Imperious Lex (by multiple artists and writers) are a real treat, particularly the two part story in which he and his dad try to stop another world from going Krypton. However the main arc involves the power struggles on Apokolips after the fall of Darkseid, showing once again that nobody in the New 52 gets Kirby’s New Gods — this might as well have been Mongo or Tattooine or any other colorful planet in fiction for all the difference it makes.

WORLD OF WAKANDA by Roxane Gay and Alitha E. Martinez is the backstory of Ayo and Aneka, the Dora Miljae turned Wakandan vigilantes who first appeared in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ run on Black Panther. While the core love story is good, it’s hamstrung by having to retcon it around crossover events such as AvX and to lead in to Coates’ own work; like Jodi Picoult’s Wonder Woman it would have worked better if it stood on its own, say focusing on their vigilante activities dealing with local issues T’Challa’s apparently ignoring. And I wouldn’t have minded seeing more about how this relationship plays in the Dora Miljae — is hooking up with each other as common as I assume, given they’re cut off from relationships with men? Does the commander/subordinate part of their relationship raise the same issues in Wakanda it does here? As is, a bit disappointing.

MASK OF THE RED PANDA by Gregg Taylor and Dean Kotz adapts what I gather is a radio neo-pulp series about the title protagonist and his female chauffeur/sidekick Flying Squirrel as the tackle various supernatural threats. This was fun, but the ease with which they take out magical threats undercuts the tension and I’d have liked Kit to be a little more competent.

LIBRARIES: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles looks at the history of libraries both public and private (pointing out that in many eras a library was an accessory demonstrating Great Man status) and the perennial problems such as how to find the books you want (the prototype of the current indexing systems triggering angry protests that it put too much work on readers), whether a library should collect Everything or The Best Stuff and the risk that concentrating books in one place as Alexandria did makes losses inevitable. Interesting but a bit too eclectic for a first look at this topic.

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November 24, 2018 · 5:10 am

Librarians, Dungeons and Dragons, mad science and cartoons: movies and TV

The fourth and final season of THE LIBRARIANS has the team coping with not only a new wave of magical threats but the need to tether the Library to reality (a ritual that will put more responsibility on Flynn than he’s ready for) and the return of Flynn’s original Guardian, Nicole (from the first Librarian TV movie, Quest for the Spear), immortal and very pissed off. The usual fun, though while the ending (involving banishing the Library and the dystopia that results) was good, it wasn’t great (possibly because I’ve seen too many stories where a last minute bit of time travel resolves everything). “They say you can kill a man but not an idea — but I did just that, I killed the idea of the Library!”

Right-wing Christian Jack Chick became legendary for his bizarre “Chick Tracts,” comic strips showing how watching Dark Shadows or playing Dungeons and Dragons would damn your soul to Hell. The short film DARK DUNGEONS (2014) is a comedy fantasy that takes the latter premise literally: two nice young Christian college women are seduced into playing D&D (“People have tried to get those RPGers off campus, but they’re just too popular!”), after which one of them turns to Satanism to get real magical power while the other snaps under the strain. Fun, but the elements it adds to the original don’t all work, from errors (clerics don’t cast magic missile) to making Debbie as ignorant about Christianity in the end bit as she was in the Tract, even though she’s now written as Christian. And throwing Cthulhu into the mix felt like they didn’t have enough faith in their premise. Still, I did enjoy this. “I am proud to announce that more people have decided to become homosexuals this year than ever before!”

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) didn’t lighten the purging phase of colonoscopy prep as much as I expected so I didn’t laugh as much as I usually do. Still, it’s never a waste of time to watch Frankenstein descendant Gene Wilder reanimate dead flesh, Marty Feldman robbing a brain depository (“It was someone called … Abby Normal.”), Teri Garr showing off her knockers (it may show a generational gap that while I think of this as her big role, TYG thought of Mr. Mom), Cloris Leachman gets outed as Victor’s ex (“He was my — boyfriend!”), Peter Boyle tap dances and Richard Haydn and Kenneth Mars round out the cast. “Tonight we shall hurl the gauntlet of science into the frightful face of death itself!”

THE TOP 10 FORGOTTEN CARTOONS OF ALL TIME doesn’t live up to its billing; the cartoons are perfectly entertaining, but they’re not better than lots of other obscure ‘toons I’ve seen (as four of them come from the 1930s Rainbow Parade series, I wonder if rights to that series influenced what was picked). Still, I did enjoy watching a rabbit trying to wear out a hound dog the night before a hunt, honeymoon couples going “Dancing on the Moon,” an RCMP-clad Cupid uniting two squabbling neighbors, the Toonerville Trolley comic strip coming to life and the rough-hewn mutt Dog Face protesting against being a pampered pet. The weakest was probably the one I was most interested in, Ub Iwerks’ (Disney’s partner in Walt’s early career) “Happy Days,” about a group of kids going fishing. “If he’s a real burglar, I’m Seabiscuit — wait, I am Seabiscuit!”

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November 23, 2018 · 4:17 pm

That was a shorter work week than I anticipated

I knew I wouldn’t get anything done Monday due to my colonoscopy. And obviously not Thursday or today, because holiday! But I figured I’d have two productive days Tuesday and Wednesday.

Not so much. The subtle whisper of “you know you’re not getting much done this week, so what’s the point?” snaked into my brain. I got some Leaf articles written and they were actually interesting (“How to Become an Interpol Agent” and “How to Become a Freelance Model,” for example). And that was about it.

So nothing much more to say about the work week.

To make this post slightly more interesting, here’s a map from Harvey Comics showing how all their characters from the Silver Age — Richie Rich, Casper, Wendy, Hot Stuff — coexist in the same enchanted valley. I wasn’t a huge fan of their comics as a kid (though looking back, I read my share) but I still find this oddly interesting.

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