Monthly Archives: April 2023

April 30, 2023 · 5:23 am

Women protagonists I’ve encountered recently.

The WONDER WOMAN SILVER AGE OMNIBUS Volume 1 collects stories (by Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito) I already have, but in a large color format that makes them much more eye-catching. Just look at this sequence from Wonder Woman #114, after aliens suck parade balloons up into the air with their trucks attached —It is, as the watching bystanders say, one amazing stunt and it looks sooo much cooler in this format. The volume runs from “The Million Dollar Penny” which kicked off the Kanigher/Andru/Esposito team on the book through the story right before the Wonder Family era began. It also includes several sample letter columns, showing that yes, Wonder Girl really was popular with fans and that fans weren’t as knowledgeable back in the day — lots of questions about WW’s origins and who is that “Great Hera” person she swears by? Gale Simone’s introduction is fun, pointing out the strengths of this run, though she’s wrong to assert Wonder Woman is reluctant to kill — she has zero qualms about blowing up alien invaders or sinister foreign submarines. I’m looking forward to V2 later this year.

HOW TO BUILD A GIRL by Caitlin Moran worked better for me than I’d have expected as 1990s coming-of-age stories are hardly my thing. Nevertheless I really enjoyed the tale of Johanna, a British teenager in 1990s London reinvents herself as a hard-drinking, chain-smoking Goth rock reviewer with viciously snarky putdowns of bands that don’t measure up to her standards. Moran’s character style and first-person voice kept this fun but the pacing is off: so much time spent on the era Before Johanna takes action, then her stint in her new identity, then a sudden rush to finish, realize the moral (reinventing yourself shouldn’t mean becoming a shitty person!) and course-corrects. This may reflect that it’s the first in a series but it still lessened my enjoyment.

I was ambivalent about the return of SAGA after the “meh” previous volume but taking a break does seem to have recharged creators Brian Vaughn and Fiona Staples. With Marco gone, Mom is doing her best to keep her family going, even if it means shady dealings, while a variety of players still want her and little Hazel dead. Entertaining though if you can’t stomach gendered insults (the “c word” for women gets tossed around a lot) this ain’t for you. And while this series has never made any pretense it’s a realistic future culture, it still annoys me that suddenly the characters are tossing around “woke” as common slang which they never did before.

I KISSED SHARA WHEELER by Casey McQuiston has Chloe, a bisexual student at a conservative Christian Alabama high school, become obsessed with the disappearance of Shara, the principal’s perfect daughter and Chloe’s only rival for valedictorian (and the Most Obnoxious, Most Irritating Girl She Ever Met, so we know where this is going). That Shara’s leaving cryptic notes for Chloe and others doesn’t do anything to cool Chloe’s fixation. I enjoy McQuiston’s voice but Shara dropping her enigmatic clues came off a knock-off Batman villain ; I dropped out half-way through the book, skipped to the ending  and didn’t regret it. Keep in mind, though, I’m not the target audience so YMMV.

#SFWApro. Art by Andru and Esposito, book cover by Allison Reimold, all rights remain with current holders.

 

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April 29, 2023 · 5:10 am

A rat, a bat and more: movies viewed

RATATOUILLE (2007) is the delightful Pixar film in which a rat, Remy (Patton Oswalt) baffles his clan by turning up his nose at human refuse in favor of fresh food, preferably combining tastes or even cooking. Inspired by a master chef’s cookbook, Remy winds up as covert cook by helping a hapless kitchen drudge (Lou Romano) cook spectacular dishes, reviving the restaurant he works for. However that doesn’t suit the goals of head cook Ian Holm, nor acerbic food critic Peter O’Toole. Can Remy and female chef Jeanine Garofalo win th day?This was quite charming and like most Pixar films, great visual style. It does bug me some that like so many Disney films, father/child relationships are prioritized and Mom’s forgotten — while it’s not surprising Remy’s mom is dead (“rat” is a hazardous occupation) it’s annoying when seen as part of a pattern. “I don’t like false modesty — it’s another word for lying.”

THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE (2017) is another piece of animated fun: Batman (Will Arnett) stubbornly resists working with new commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) even though she’s a hyper-capable graduate of “Harvard for Police.” His stubborn soloing only leads to trouble when the Joker (Zach Galifianakis) manipulates him into trapping the Hoodlum Harlequin in the Phantom Zone, from which the Joker returns with the World’s Greatest Villains (including Voldemort and the Eye of Sauron) to destroy Gotham City. Can Bats reach out to his “Batman family” in time to save the day?This movie beautifully sends up both the ultra-grim, emotionally closed off Batman of the 21st century and the characterization of the Joker as Batman’s obsessed soulmate, determined to be the most important person in his life (“In 79 years, you’ve never once said you hate me!”). It also has a spectacular array of visual jokes, including obscure villains such as Zebra Man in bit parts. While I didn’t care for the Joker or Batman voices, Dawson, Michael Cera’s Robin and Ralph Fiennes’ Alfred were all great. “We’re going to punch these guys so hard, words describing the impact are gonna spontaneously materialize out of thin air.”

By contrast, WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING (2021) is an entry in the I Wasted 90 Minutes Of My Life On This? genre as a family find themselves sealed into their own house and begin cracking up under pressure, hunger and fear, with occasional hallucinatory sequences to weird things up. This becomes tedious fast and while not explaning anything worked when Luis Buñuel used a similar concept for Exterminating Angel, these creators aren’t Buñuel. “That’s right, I’m a good boy.”

SUMMER OF SOUL (2021) is an excellent documentary on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, footage of which languished unseen for fifty years despite a black audience in the thousands (“We tried calling it ‘Black Woodstock’ but still nobody was interested.”).This covers both the behind-the-scenes stuff (when the NYPD wouldn’t provide security, the Black Panthers stepped up), the politics, and interviews with and about the acts including the Fifth Dimension (“People thought we sounded white so we really wanted to make an appearance.”) and Sly and the Family Stone (“We couldn’t get over the fact their drummer was white.”) plus of course music from famous names (Gladys Knight, Nina Simone) and several acts whose names I didn’t recognize (they may be just as famous, of course, as music isn’t my field of expertise). “We didn’t know anything about therapy but we knew Mahalia Jackson.”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

 

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April 28, 2023 · 4:29 pm

Thwacked by Thursday!

Writing for April is now done. Despite everything collapsing on Thursday, it was overall a productive week.

Thursday I’d had a bad night of sleep, then got some bad news about a friend of mine so the day was off to a poor start. Then the dogs came down so early I didn’t have time to stretch out or exercise until afternoon. Trying to exercise with Trixie around invariably convinces her to come over and snuggle; Wisp is much the same.

(Speaking of which, here’s a short of them sharing the couch. It’s an awkward situation for me as I usually wind up having to pet them both so nobody gets jealous. this time, as you can see, I’m up doing something).But as I’ve said before, that’s the nature of “average” —  some days just by blind chance will come out below average. I recovered today, applying for a writing gig and submitting a couple of shorts, but I wound up short of my hours for the week. I’ve been over in other weeks, though, so that averages out too.

I rewrote some more of Let No Man Put Asunder, which I’ll discuss in detail next week. I did a final proof/rewrite of Obolus — formerly Paying the Ferryman — and sent it off to Fantasy and Science Fiction. I also finished rewriting Impossible Things Before Breakfast, based on suggestions from other collaborators in the Ceaseless Way anthology. Plus I began proofing 19-Infinity. As usual, there’s more that needs fixing than I thought.

And that was pretty much it. Except over at Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about the end of Marvel’s Silver Age crime cartel, the Secret Empire, and the creepy way Chris Claremont handled the romance between 14-year-old Kitty and 19-year-old Colossus.

Now the weekend, then a new month starting Monday. To mark the transition, here’s an early morning photo I took a few weeks back.#SFWApro

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April 28, 2023 · 5:16 am

The owl and the pussycat

Some of our neighbors got a new kitten this week. Meet Wylan!The fluffy toy is one we bought for Wisp, but she wasn’t interested. Wylan loves it.

As for the owl, they’re living in the tree over another neighbor’s yard. Said neighbor says it’s their home turf. The owl is the ovoid shadow near the center of the photo; I couldn’t get a better shot.#SFWApro

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April 27, 2023 · 5:30 am

I’d like belief, I’ll settle for support

For months now, America’s right wing has been on a non-stop shriek-a-thon about woke business. Budweiser has a trans spokesperson in the Superbowl ad? They’re woke! Disney markets to gays? They’re woke! Rainbow-creme oreos to celebrate pride? Woke!

In reality, of course, it’s the free market at work. Gays and trans people are a demographic that buys stuff; American corporations want to get their money. Ergo, be LGBTQ friendly, much as companies in the 1970s branded themselves as friends to liberated women.

I feel about this the same way I do politics. I much prefer politicians who sincerely share my values; I’ll settle for politicians who’ll enforce them out of self-interest. Whether Democrats are pro-choice because they believe in the right to abortion or they’re pro-choice to get themselves re-elected, it gets the same results. Part of being a voter is finding the politicians who’ll deliver the most bang for the buck, not the one who reflects your personal ideas best. It often requires compromise, but that’s politics.

On gay issues, I suspect a lot of business leaders are pro-gay or at least not anti-. The culture has shifted radically and gay acceptance is much more widespread than the end of the last century, 23 years ago. For all the outrage on the right, a large chunk of America doesn’t think catering to the LBGTQ market is a bad thing; it’s no longer a controversial or daring stand.

That’s part of the problem for the right — the realization that companies are not only willing to compete for LGBTQ dollars, they don’t see a downside to doing so. It’s like the old urban legend that Proctor and Gamble was openly Satanist and sneered that “there are not enough Christians in America” to cause any blowback. The reminder that outside the Republican Party the right-wing doesn’t have enough clout to force companies to change has to stick in their craw. Heck, Disney’s response to Ron DeSantis’ trying to bully it is to schedule a pride event. Conversely, Oklahoma officials talking about how they miss the days of lynching produces more outrage and criticism than a century ago.

Another issue, I suspect, is that right wingers such as Matt Walsh — who has embraced a Bud Light boycott as the great crusade of our time — know that being inclusive from self-interest leads to real inclusion. The more companies send a message of “we’re cool with gay, give us your money” the more normal and acceptable being gay/trans looks. This may be part of Ron DeSantis and others pushing don’t say gay in schools. Seeing gay teachers, gay fellow students, reading about gays makes it easier (I assume) for other gay kids to come out, and for straight kids to see gays are just like them, unremarkable and not the sick fiends of right-wing propaganda. Keeping them quiet, keeping pride symbols out of school, that works the other way. It’s the same logic by which attorney Matt Staver wants Christian schools to exclude kids with gay parents — otherwise students might meet them and learn gays aren’t monsters!

This is what happens when you build a worldview on a tissue of lies, you have to live in perpetual fear that reality will rip it apart.

 

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April 26, 2023 · 5:12 am

Cutting exposition isn’t always the smart play

First off, here’s the cover for Oh the Places You’ll Go. Still needs some added lettering of course but I think the image works for a story about traveling through maps.

Earlier this month I solicited beta readers from my writing group. Normally I’d have submitted it for feedback in one of our meetings but at 8,000 words it would take around three sessions to finish and that’s a minimum of six weeks, assuming I read every meeting. I wanted quicker. The results were helpful but showed I’d made some mistake revising from the original.

The premise is that when countries die — annexed by bigger nations, split up by secession — the passion of their inhabitants doesn’t disappear. If you have, say, a 10th century map of Burgundy, you’re within those borders and you have the knack for “traveling,” you can will yourself back there. Ditto the Ottoman Empire, the Confederate States of America, the USSR, etc.

When I read the first version of the story to the group, several points kept coming up in the feedback. It’s too talky and expository. Not enough happens once my protagonists go back into the past. A map of the future that plays a role in the plot wasn’t imaginative enough.

I solved that last problem by setting the story in 1970 so the map is our time. From the 1970 perspective a world where part of Pakistan is Bangladesh, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have broken up, etc., is radical change, and I didn’t have to strain my brain to come up with it. I worked to have encounters with other travelers and to reduce the exposition. This is one of the standard bits of writing advice, of course: don’t assume your readers need everything explained. If the story is strong they’ll wait until you explain the rules. Don’t bog down the opening with exposition. Resist the urge to explain unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Judging from the feedback, I took it too far. My betas were completely confused by some stuff that I never explained — I was hoping it would be understandable by inference — and other stuff they needed much earlier in the story than I covered it. I shall rewrite accordingly.

This is why beta reading matters. I’m sure there are writers brilliant enough to do without it, but for most of us — particularly in specfic, where readers may not know how the world operates — it’s essential. I’m so lucky to have such a cool group.

#SFWApro.

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April 25, 2023 · 5:10 am

I’m rushed for time, so a cover-art post it is!

This one by Bob Stanley just looks creepy, like the guy checkng the woman out is a total perv.Another Virgil Finlay coverHere’s a strange Ed Emshwiller cover.One by Robert Gibson Jones that makes me want to read the story.

I’ll wrap up with this Alex Schomberg cover, which also makes me curious to read the contents.

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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April 24, 2023 · 5:10 am

Undead sexist cliches about women’s looks

As the WaPo’s Monica Hesse put it after Kamala Harris became Biden’s VP pick, “I keep thinking about how, at some point in Kamala Harris’s life, she has painstakingly reviewed her office wardrobe with the understanding that the difference between “slut” and “feminazi” is a few inches of worsted-wool hemline.”

Or as Deborah Tannen put it, there is no neutral feminine appearance. A man can put on a suit that says nothing but “I’m wearing a suit” or “I’m going to my job.” A woman’s appearance is taken to mean something: if she’s businesslike and non-sexy the meaning is not “I’m going to work” but that she’s a frigid bitch, asex, or a frump who doesn’t know how to dress. As I discussed in a previous post, women have been fired for not looking good but  they’ve also been fired for looking too sexy.

Women are judged by their looks in a way men never are. It’s fine for men such as Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich to have opinions without being even marginally attractive, but women?  If they aren’t pretty their opinions don’t count. Thus a longstanding attack on feminists going back to the days of the suffragettes is that all feminists are ugly. This is bad in itself but it’s also bad because it implies they don’t care about men’s opinions.  For example, UK businessman Demetri Marchessini declared in 2005 that women who wear trousers must be hostile to men because “they are deliberately dressing in a way that is opposite to what men would like. It is behaviour that flies against common sense, and also flies against the normal human desire to please.” Yes, god forbid women dress in a way total strangers don’t approve of. But that’s a common assumption.

Trying to live up to the standards of guys like Marchessini is a rigged game. Look too pleasing and that’s grounds for not taking a woman seriously or blaming her for her rapist’s actions. As noted at the link, it doesn’t matter what her reasons were: she looked good for work, for a date, for a date with her husband, because she wanted a one-night stand (going out looking for sex does not mean she has no right of refusal — it’s still rape). All that matters is what the rapist, the cops, the judge and the jury think of the way she dressed.

If the woman isn’t naturally attractive and she’s making an effort to look good, that’s a black mark against her too. Women are supposed to be natural beauties, like the songs that celebrate how the singer’s girlfriend doesn’t wear lipstick or makeup. Sure, a little effort might be acceptable — they’re supposed to look good for guys, after all — but trying too hard? Using botox or plastic surgery to look better than she really is? ROFL, how pathetic she is! It’s the “few inches of hemline” rule again.

Case in point, I remember an article about the foot damage caused by high heels and the doctor kind of rolled his eyes about how yeah, it’s bad, but you just can’t stop those crazy women from being fashionable. No concession that pop culture mocks women wearing “sensible shoes” as either frumpy, lesbian or both.

I think this partly ties into the ideal of the “low maintenance” woman. If she’s just a naturally good-looking woman who’s not making any real effort — she’s nice, easy-going, not worrying about her diet, and not going to make any demands of him. As one writer put it (Foz Meadows I think, but I can’t find a link to confirm it), if the guy accepts the woman’s appearance is natural, he doesn’t have to think about what’s behind the pleasing surface It’s easier for him, just as it’s easier if a woman comes from PIV sex without any added effort on the guy’s part (as discussed in The Technology of Orgasm).

Women can be judgmental about men’s looks but society doesn’t approve of them looking at men purely as eye candy and not considering their feelings.

For more on misogyny, check out my Undead Sexist Cliches, available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with current holders.

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April 23, 2023 · 5:15 am

Theatrical mysteries and a second-rate superhero: books read

RUDDY GORE: A Phryne Fisher Mystery by Kerry Greenwood has the Honourable Miss Fisher (“honourable” is a courtesy title for children of aristocrats) attending a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore when two cast members drop dead; how can a self-respecting Aristocrat Detective look away? This feels like a deliberate throwback to the Golden Age of mystery fiction, but with a more liberated female lead (sexually liberated too) and better roles for people of color; despite those assets, it didn’t engage me. I might catch the Miss Fisher TV series sometime though.In SMOKE AND MIRRORS: A Magic Men Mystery by Ellyn Griffiths, the theater is a British Christmas pantomime in 1951 which brings magician Max Mephisto to Brighton as part of the cast. This reunites him with a local detective inspector he knows from WW II (the “magic men” unit — based on alleged exploits by stage conjurer David Maskelyne during the war) just in time to help investigate the brutal murder of two local kids. Does it have anything to do with the murder at another pantomime years earlier? Is there a fairytale MO to the killing or is that just coincidence? I picked this up because there’s a long tradition of magician detectives (DC’s Mysto, the Great Merlini and others) but this  one didn’t work for me either. Griffiths does, however, do an excellent job on the period setting, from sexism to homophobia to the insecure life of performers to England slowly crawling out from a decade of rationing.

DAREDEVIL: The Man Without Fear by Stan Lee and multiple artists collects the first twenty issues of Hornhead’s comic. It’s one of the weaker books of the 1964-1966 though it’s mand ch superior to earlier weakest links such as Ant-Man’s series.

Marvel publisher Martin Goodman was all about duplicating what worked (a common view among many comics professionals); Daredevil, acrobatic and inspired by tragedy (his father Battling Jack Murdock, was killed by the Fixer for refusing to throw a fight) was modeled on Spider-Man while either the X-Men or the Avengers were supposed to be the next Fantastic Four. Bill Everett, however, had major problems meeting deadline on Daredevil #1. Instead Marvel rushed out either X-Men or Avengers to fill the slot instead. The “or” is because while it’s been widely argued that Avengers #1 was whipped up at the last minute, I’ve seen counter-arguments they were in the works well ahead of time.

There was more backstage drama after DD debuted: Wally Wood, a legend at EC Comics, did some or all of the plotting, as was standard at Marvel. When he didn’t get credit for it, he walked.

All this is more interesting, at least to a comic-book nerd such as myself, than Daredevil itself. While it boasts are and plotting by multiple talented artists — Gene Colan, Wally Wood, John Romita — it’s still a mediocre book. We have the standard disability cliches where Matt Murdock figures his pretty secretary could never love a blind man (it has to be pity!) and Matt apparently knows no other blind people in New York. A largely uninspired Rogue’s Gallery including the Organizer (as names go, that one really, really needs to go), the Masked Matador and the Plunderer.

Stan Lee’s dialog makes me think this wasn’t a book he cared about the way he did Fantastic Four and Spider-Man. Matt’s heightened senses often turn into some kind of magic, where he can sense evil or unrest. The dialog is never as sharp as Peter Parker’s. Plot elements get dropped abruptly, such as Matt leaving the firm so Foggy can move into a smaller, more affordable office. There’s also a ridiculous plot in which Foggy tries to impress Karen by pretending he’s Daredevil; it’s laughable though not as bad as when Matt pretended to be his own brother. I’m not sure which of the creator’s gets the blame, but there’s more than enough to go around.

That said, there are some great stories such as DD’s battle with Sub-Mariner, and some that are fun (I’m fonder of Stiltman than he deserves).

#SFWApro. Covers by Wally Wood, all rights remain with current holders.

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April 22, 2023 · 5:15 am

Norse gods, Arabs, Maggie Smith and San Francisco mysteries: movies and TV

The first Thor movie drew on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the second on Walt Simonson’s 1980s run, and now THOR: Love and Thunder (2022) draws on Jason Aaron’s work but to much less effect. Christian Bale plays Gorr, the God Butcher, dedicated to destroying all deities after his own gods laugh off his pleas to save his dying daughter. When he reaches Asgard’s Earthly colony, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) understandably object to genocide and get surprise support from terminally cancerous Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) whom Mjolnir chooses as a second Thor (“Call me the Mighty Thor!”).

That’s all the ingredients for a great Marvel movie but as with Ragnarok, Taika Waititi piles too much humor onto it, as if he were terrified we’d start taking it seriously. This made it a slog for me to finish despite the presence of Sif (Jaime Alexander), the Guardians of the Galaxy and Kat Dennings’ Darcy. ”Maybe your arm is in Valhalla.”

Continuing my viewing of Howard Hawks’ work brings me to FAZIL (1928) starring Charles Farrell as an Arab prince whose instant connection with a free-spirited Parisienne leads to marrying in haste, then repenting in leisure as it turns out his misogyny and her independence are incompatible. This culminates in what’s meant to be a tragic suicide pact but looks more like murder, as the dying Fazil takes his wife’s plea they never be parted as an excuse to slip a poison needle into her. Not a winner. “If a woman wants a man to do as she wishes, she must be worth it.”

After a terrorist attack, Maggie Smith invites her fellow survivors to recuperate at MY HOUSE IN UMBRIA (2003), including sidekick Timothy Spall, a mute girl, a grieving lover and a widowed general; when the girl’s uncle Chris Cooper shows up Smith gets the itch to seduce him, mixed with a worry he’s not the right caregiver for the girl. The cast performs well but the movie feels like it’s just going through the motions of being serious drama. “Hell is where people like you wake up.”

The fourth Season of MCMILLAN AND WIFE (click for my reviews of S1, S2 and S3) doesn’t do well by Susan St. James as Sally, wife to the San Francisco police commissioner: one episode makes her unusually ditzy, another couple have her as little more than a cameo. This presumably reflects St. James having a kid in real life, reflected by pregnancy on-screen and a baby in the final episode (though we never see the boy and don’t even hear him). The mysteries are the usual fun, even so, with great guest casts, but without Sally everything feels off (I won’t be catching the final season sans St. James, when it was just McMillan). “Every McMillan since 1837 has been married in San Francisco except three — one was hung as a horse thief, one died on the Titanic, and one moved to … New York.”

#SFWApro. Cover by Simonson, all rights to image remain with current holders.

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