Category Archives: Nonfiction

September 6, 2024 · 4:28 pm

My baby brother came to visit

My brother Craig is performing in a production of Sweeney Todd down in Florida so as I mentioned a week ago, he came for a visit. It’s a hike by plane, but easier than when he’s on his home turf in Los Angeles. Here were are enjoying some tea at a University of North Carolina coffee shop.

Yes, he’s technically not a baby, being only a few years younger than me.

We had a great time chatting about Doctor Who, comics, family, playing with the dogs, walking and watching movies. And eating. And hanging with TYG. Wisp wasn’t thrilled to have a STRANGER in the house but she was more chill than I’d have expected.

In other cheery news, Plushie’s eye problems, which I also wrote about last Friday, turned out to be bad (eye ulcer) but thanks to TYG spotting there’s something wrong, they were treatable. He’s fine now. I’m always impressed how fast she can spot things like that.

The first week of September was a good one for writing. I’m up over 100 pages in my final proofing of Southern Discomfort so I feel I’ve accomplished something. It’s still mostly minor changes though my friend Maggie got me to do a major rewrite of one scene. So far no problems or flaws have been unfixable.

I rewrote the first chapter and a half of Jekyll and Hyde and read part of it to the writing group. The feedback was favorable, with some constructive criticism, though nothing that would be worth detailing here. I also watched a streaming performance of Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical (my brother played Sir Danvers Carew) and a 1950s adaptation for the TV series Climax.

My ideas for a Local Reporter story mostly didn’t pan out, which led to me spending lots of time trying to find something that would. It would have been more cost-effective to skip the week, but I hate doing that. And I did find and write a decent story, about transit and downtown development plans soliciting public feedback.

At Atomic Junk Shop I looked at various Batman stories from early 1969, including his last battle with Catwoman for five years (though she appeared elsewhere, like the Wonder Woman cover below).

I went to the doctor this week, a recheck of my blood iron as it was low last time. Almost certainly because I’d just given blood but nobody knew that. Happily my blood iron is good again, my cholesterol is decent (good cholesterol could be higher) and blood pressure is normal. I also did better on exercising and stretching this week than I’ve done in a while.

The four-day week, with blogging and email on Friday, continues to work well. However it is surprisingly exhausting to finish the blogging for here and Atomic Junk Shop in one day. Perhaps because it’s the equivalent of squeezing out multiple short articles, most unrelated to each other? One reason for the four-day approach was that focusing on one thing a day, when I can work it, makes me more productive. Still, overall the change has been a win.

#SFWApro. Cover by Dick Giordano. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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August 27, 2024 · 5:15 am

Jekyll and Hyde in print, on-screen and in my thoughts

I picked up Donald Glut’s CLASSIC MOVIE MONSTERS: The 9 Classic Movie Monsters from the Wolf Man to Godzilla because it includes a chapter on Jekyll and Hyde. It added a number of items to my list of things to watch but not much insight. I don’t agree with him, for example that Jekyll’s death at the end of the book represents Robert Louis Stevenson giving in to the Calvinism he was raised with (i.e. sinners must be punished) — it could be he thought that ending was more marketable or that Jekyll paying the price for his hypocrisy fit the theme, even without bringing in Calvinism. Glut also gets his facts wrong on the plot of the Richard Mansfield play — it was the rival Charles Bandmann adaptation that gave Jekyll a vicar’s daughter as love interest. Still, I may read the rest of the book eventually.

I never found Stephen King’s thoughts on horror fiction in DANSE MACABRE terribly deep but I checked out what he had to say about Jekyll and Hyde too. He does make one good point, that Jekyll’s lawyer and friend Utterson is kind of the anti-Jekyll (consciously repressing his urges, in contrast to Henry Jekyll letting them out to play as Hyde). I’m not sure I agree with King holding up Hyde as the prototype for all later Monster Within characters, though I’ll have to think about it some more. In fairness, his section is geared to someone who doesn’t know the book as well as I do.

DR. PYCKLE AND MR PRIDE (1925) was a comedy short starring Stan Laurel, pre-Hardy, as a revered scientist who turns himself into Mr. Pride, visually modeled on the John Barrymore Hyde and committing heinous crimes such as stealing a kid’s ice-cream cone in the scene above. I particularly like his version of the scene where Hyde tramples on a child — here Pride whips up an angry mob simply by taking pot-shots at a kid with a pea-shooter. The opening title card also sees the problem so many serious movies don’t, that if you split off people’s evil sides crime will run wild, evil will be free and “even saxophonists will be tolerated!”

I believe that’s the last silent film available to see online or on DVD. Though it will go in my comedy chapter rather than silents, I imagine. Which leads to my thoughts, once again, on how to structure the book to make it as interesting and insightful as possible. Within the various topics (children of Jekyll, comedy films, gender-flipped versions) I can go movie by movie or I can focus on some major films and consign the rest to a shorter section. However “silent films” is not the chapter to make the call, as so many of them are lost films or shorts. Chapters with more variation lie ahead.

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August 23, 2024 · 4:37 pm

I would like sweeping, spectacular accomplishments. I’ll settle for slow and steady

Which is to say that while I got good work done this week I’m suffering the perennial frustration of large projects: I want them finished.

I started the final final proofing of Southern Discomfort in the form of a sample paperback printed by Amazon. Now whatever changes I make are the final ones. I’m getting great help from Maggie Prestwood in my writing group who agreed to give it one final beta-read. She pointed out some problems, several of which had occurred to me only I’d decided nah, not really so bad. This is why second opinions are good. I did not, however, get anywhere near as far as I’d have liked, maybe 40 pages into the paperback. Assuming I get my cover design on time, my schedule is still on track.

I don’t expect to finish Jekyll and Hyde any time soon so I don’t worry quite as much. And I did get good work done this week, including watching Stan Laurel in a silent parody of John Barrymore’s Hyde (above).

I got two articles in for The Local Reporter, one on the resurrection of popular local restaurant The Mediterranean Deli after a fire, a second on Chapel Hill’s new economic development director. I also got in three Atomic Junk Shop posts. One on DC’s second horror anthology of the late 1960s, The Witching Hour —

— one about the Charlton comic Career Girl Romances —

— and one on Justice League of America #61.

I also found time to get all my various tasks and errands done.

Go me.

#SFWApro. Covers by Nick Cardy (t) and Sal Gentile, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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August 9, 2024 · 4:35 pm

Jekyll, Hyde and reporting made up my week

Planning around events that don’t happen always throws me off balance.

This week my schedule included a permanent crown on Thursday, two interviews on Wednesday, one interview Tuesday. I scheduled my time accordingly, including budgeting time to get all three interviews written into stories for The Local Reporter.

Not so fast! One interviewee injured himself and had to postpone. I had to reschedule another interview because Trixie had some anal gland problems again and the schedule conflicted. And the downpour from Tropical Storm Debbie led to my dentist postponing the crown until next week. And the one interview I did get done isn’t due until next week anyway. That feels frustrating as heck. Though I did get one in from last week, about research funding at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Besides reporting my week went to Jekyll and Hyde. Watching silent films, researching them online (including the lost one I’ll never get to see), writing them up (commentary will come next week). This is stuff I can do even if my mind is distracted or working around appointments. Still I mustn’t let it eat up all my time — I picked a deadline far enough ahead that shouldn’t be necessary.

I also wrote an Atomic Junk Shop post on what Jekyll and Hyde have in common with The Stepford Wives.

In other news, yesterday Debby turned off our power momentarily three or four times … and then in the evening shut it down for five hours. Just long enough we had to throw out all the food in the refrigerator (the freezer was fine). Though at least we’d reach the “almost time to go shopping” point so there wasn’t much to throw. And we took the opportunity to really scrub out the refrigerator. So a “could be worse” moment.

And Trixie seems to have recovered nicely. She’s also way more snuggly since we cut off her mass of hair. I thought she was withdrawing with age or something; apparently it was just feeling hot. It’s good to have her curled against me again.

One thing where I’ve really fallen off is giving her and Plushie their daily exercises as prescribed by physical rehab. I’m also way off about mine, though at least I’ve been keeping up my stretches and yoga. I really have to figure out a new approach to both as standard operating procedure ain’t working.

Oh, and the Hoopla digital library has now accepted Infinity-19 and Questionable Minds so if your library subscribes, you can check them out.

#SFWApro. Firestorm cover by Pat Broderick, Infinity-19 by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with current holders.

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August 7, 2024 · 5:15 am

The more I read for research, the more I have to rewrite

Unlike my earlier movie books, all the films I’m writing about in Jekyll and Hyde stem from the same single source. That’s not the case, with say, aliens or time travel.

While my initial perceptions about ETs-on-Earth films changed as I watched and compared more films, with everything in Jekyll and Hyde rooted in Stevenson’s novel, the level of interaction is higher. Rereading the book made me see the 1932 movie version draws even more from Stevenson than I realized. Reading the script for the Richard Mansfield stage adaptation gave me a similar reaction.

First up, I reread THE ESSENTIAL DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (edited by Leonard Wolf) because the footnotes about Jekyll and Hyde’s relationship, Stevenson’s themes and the plot holes are great help to my book. The core of the reading though, is still Stevenson’s novel.

Rereading (I reread it for Questionable Minds too as Jekyll plays a large role in the plot) I find myself annoyed by people who describe it as an allegory. While yes, Jekyll and Hyde are hypocrisy and sin made flesh, they’re not mere symbols the way Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress is. They’re flesh and blood characters with distinct personalities even if Stevenson’s vague on details — what is Jekyll’s charity work? What crimes have made Hyde so infamous?. Other characters such as Utterson and Poole are clearly not allegorical.

This reread (probably not my last between now and submitting the manuscript) also has me reflecting how Jekyll/Hyde isn’t really a split personality. Up until late in the story, Jekyll doesn’t suffer a break in consciousness when he becomes Hyde — the whole point of the transformation is that he can sin without feeling any guilt or worrying about being identified (“Look, isn’t that the respected Dr. Jekyll having sex with an underage girl?”).

It does, however, make a good analogy with addiction (not an original thought, I freely admit). Like some alcoholics, Jekyll can see the transformation into Hyde has horrific effects but he can’t bring himself to give up the good parts of his double life. He even assures Utterson at one point that he can cut off his connections to Hyde at any time, no trouble at all! He can quit whenever he wants …

I bought another edition of Jekyll and Hyde because it had Vladimir Nabokov’s lecture on the book as an introduction. Alas, while he made some good points (how the all-male core cast can read “gay” in a way it wouldn’t have in 1886), the author comes off as a pompous windbag — all movies based on the novel are terrible, the book is definitely not a mystery because mysteries suck, etc. I was more interested in the afterword by Dan Chaon discussing how his son “knows” Hyde (or at least a pop-culture version of him) even though he’s never read the book or seen it adapted.

JEKYLL AND HYDE DRAMATIZED: The 1887 Richard Mansfield Script and the Evolution of the Story on Stage by Martin A. Danahay and Alex Chisholm was an invaluable discovery for its information about Richard Mansfield’s play, which redefined the story by giving Jekyll a love interest — though I imagine the movies would have done the same, even without Mansfield clearing the way.

I can see other ways Mansfield influenced the films, for example giving Hyde’s murder of Sir Danvers Carew a motive other than Hyde’s raw savagery. One thing which didn’t influence films is that Mansfield follows Stevenson in coming in in media res, when Jekyll’s use of Hyde is well under way. Most of the films I’ve seen show the mad-science moment Jekyll develops and then downs his formula.

A rival version by David Bandmann is much less interesting while a third take, commissioned by legendary British actor Henry Irving for his son, throws in an astonishing number of complications. Jekyll’s research is based on mysterious Indian secrets and tampering with them drove his wife blind. He’s also the former lover of Laura, wife of the adulterous lecher Sir Danvers Carew, and now the Carews’ butler is blackmailing her with some of the letters between the lovers. Fortunately Jekyll knows someone who can deal with a backstabbing servant …

A very specialized book but worth the time.

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders. Questionable Minds cover by Samantha Collins.

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August 2, 2024 · 4:30 pm

This week less dread, less doom

This was the week I’d hoped to have last week, one without me or any pets having to go into the doctor’s office. We did take them to the groomer’s yesterday. Here’s photos of Trixie before —

—and right before—

— and after.

Normally she doesn’t look this drastically different but we had to skip her last two scheduled appointments. Now, as to actual work—

I read a book on the various Jekyll and Hyde plays of the late 1800s which I’ll talk about next week. I then rewrote the introduction to my Jekyll and Hyde book, and the first chapter, dealing with the novel itself and the plays. I anticipated doing a lot of rewriting as I go through the book and see how different versions reflect and influence each other. Richard Mansfield’s stage adaptation, for instance (I believe that’s the one captured above) introduced a love interest into Stevenson’s largely male story. This would become standard for future film versions, though it’s quite likely they’d have added women anyway. In any case, I feel pleased with that work.

I turned in a story on University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s research funding to The Local Reporter. However my editor had a catastrophic time crunch (not her fault, trust me) so we didn’t get a paper out this week. I also scheduled three interviews for next week that I’ve been trying to arrange for a while. Over at Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about the big retcon of Batman #208 and what an interesting issue it was.

Other than, mostly little stuff. Some information for McFarland. Some editing on the Ceaseless Way collaborative anthology. Applying to various cons. Paying bills. Nothing on Savage Adventures or Southern Discomfort. Not a stellar week but it still felt good to write without breaking the work up between vet visits.

#SFWApro. Art by Gil Kane, all rights to image remain with current holder.

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July 19, 2024 · 4:33 pm

I fought the week and the week won

This was definitely the least productive week since I switched to the four-day week. Sooner or later, a bad week was going to happen.

It started early Sunday morning when Plushie threw up on the bed. I took them downstairs so TYG could wash the bedclothes then we decided the simplest thing was to keep them downstairs with me. I thought I could drift off to sleep but every time I tried, Wisp got in my grill. I think she’d have been willing to curl up next to me on the couch but Trixie was there, so …

I slept well Sunday night but I was still tired Monday, when I worked on a Local Reporter article. Oh, and took Trixie back for another appointment for her butt (doing great, thank goodness). Plus I spent more time than I’d thought I’d need formatting the draft of the Ceaseless Way anthology, making sure that all the contributed stories use the same typeface, paragraph layout, etc. That took longer than I thought — it’s been a long time since I had any sort of editorial role on a group project.

Then I had another bad night of sleep. Tuesday all I could manage was to read The Essential Jekyll and Hyde and jot down some thoughts about the book. Wednesday I had Plushie’s eye appointment (he’s also doing much better) and a contractor in the morning. I figured I wouldn’t get a chance to build up creative steam so I made it a day to do errands, paperwork, tasks. Then the contractor postponed so I could probably have done some good work after all.

Yesterday I was zonked so I worked on Savage Adventures. On the plus side, it’s the first time I think my prose is coming together. That feels good.

And I have two blog posts up at Atomic Junk Shop. One about the strange ideas DC came up with at the end of the Silver Age, such as Dolphin, advertised above. Another is about love comics, which were successful on the spinner racks longer than I realized.

And I did get a first draft of my chapter on the Stevenson novel. That’s good too. And yes, all the bills and other tasks I got done Wednesday instead of writing were necessary. Still, not getting anything done on Southern Discomfort or Let No Man Put Asunder frustrates the crap out of me.

#SFWApro. Cover by Modest Stein, all rights to image remain with current holder.

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July 12, 2024 · 3:49 pm

A bad week for our dogs. Challenging for us, too.

Monday morning, TYG discovered Trixie had bled onto the bedsheets. We checked her over and found bleeding from her butt. We were able to score a same-day vet appointment and they confirmed her anal gland had ruptured. They did whatever you did to fix that and sent me home with Trixie and some antibiotics.

She did not enjoy her vet trip.

The bottle of meds had a leak or something because there was nothing in it when I got it home. I picked up a replacement Tuesday. Fortunately Trixie made a full recovery almost as soon as they fixed her gland. Yay.

Yesterday TYG became convinced Plushie’s glaucoma had suddenly gotten worse. I took him to the vet today to check his eye pressure (TYG’s workweek has been insane which is why I handled the dog stuff). TYG was right — it’s elevated. They sent us home with directions to increase the dosage of some of his drugs. It worked, yay! However it’s still upsetting every time life reminds us Plushie will not be the world’s first dog with Wolverine’s healing factor.

Despite all that, I did get a full week of work done. Partly because with Jekyll and Hyde under way, I’m doing research reading which helped me make use of my time waiting at the vet. I also did some research reading for Savage Adventures and proofed another chunk of the book.

I did some good work on Southern Discomfort, cutting a couple of scenes based on writing group-feedback and going through to eliminate the excessive use of “but” (way too many compound sentences) and “just.”

I wrote an article for The Local Reporter on policing stats in Carrboro, one of the local towns in the Triangle. At Atomic Junk Shop I wrote about Marvel’s art in 1968 — much as I’m a DC fanboy (and find a lot of Marvel’s writing in this period mediocre), the visuals at Marvel are amazing. This simple but effective splash page by John Buscema, for instance—

— or John Romita’s shot of Spidey here.

I also blogged about several random Silver Age stories from the same period.

I did not get any work done on Let No Man Put Asunder. It would have taken more creativity than I could focus. Overall, though, the 4-day week continues its effectiveness.

Oh, and here’s a link to a Con-Tinual panel on character conflict in comics.

Send positive thoughts for our dogs, if you would be so kind.

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

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July 5, 2024 · 4:05 pm

A short but productive work week

Despite some distracting doomscrolling over the Supreme Court’s bring back the monarchy decision I had a good work week. Short, as my four-day week got chopped down to three for Independence Day, but I made up for that by not having any Local Reporter work (though they did publish an article I finished last week, on a local veterans memorial).

(For visuals, here’s Wisp and Snowdrop greeting each other from a few days ago.)

I reread Southern Discomfort and I think my beta-readers were right, the conversations in some sections do drag on a little too long. However it’s not a massive trim-all-scenes problem, just a problem for a few scenes, so it’ll be relatively simple to fix. I also went over the street references, making sure that I identify locations consistently — and wouldn’t you know, a magical trap at the Peachtree/Blake intersection is later identified as King Street. Next week I clean it up (I spotted a couple of other details that need fixing along the way), then I get it into paperback for a final proof. Phew — much less work than I thought.

I resumed work on my second draft of Let No Man Put Asunder. That one did suffer from the doom-scrolling and I didn’t get anywhere near as much as I’d hoped done. However I am working on it again after missing all last month, so that’s a (small) win. I continued proofing Savage Adventures and began some reference reading for my new Jekyll and Hyde film book.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I looked at Gardner Fox’s last story for DC Comics, introducing the tragically lonely Red Tornado, a favorite of mine. Fox defined the Silver Age and the Justice League for me. While his replacement on the book, Denny O’Neil, tried to add more characterization, it’s very bad characterization.

Superman doesn’t shrug off things that way, neither do WW or Green Lantern. And every Leaguer knows “someone steals scientist’s machine” is a prelude to trouble.

I also look at Arnold Drake leaving DC and the Doom Patrol dying. Plus several other books that went under, such as Plastic Man and Hawkman.

#SFWApro. JLA art by Dick Dillin, whose style embodied the Bronze Age JLA much as Mike Sekowsky embodied the Silver.

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June 28, 2024 · 4:30 pm

Though I’m working efficiently I didn’t get enough done

My first month of my new four-day work week gets a thumbs up. I’m more focused, more productive, and I seem able to work longer hours — Monday I put in a 10-hour day due to waking up way early.

Unfortunately I got nowhere near what I wanted accomplished. The huge town council meetings Carrboro had to wrap up for the summer consumed a lot of time, as did writing about them; Monday was entirely devoted to Local Reporter stuff. That includes Carrboro’s plans to charge for public parking, a local development controversy, and a local charity facing loss of its two business locations (or as I put it in the alliterative title “Carrboro philanthropy faces Fidelity foreclosure“).

Good stuff, my editor loves me and that’ll be a good-sized paycheck for the week’s work (I also got in next week’s story). However I’d planned to focus on fiction Tuesday and the long hours Monday left me too wiped. It was Savage Adventures the rest of the week.

That’s the other reason this month was unproductive. As I said last week, my book on the Doc Savage series simply isn’t polished enough, ergo it takes more editing. I’m officially pushing it back to October (hopefully early October) before I release it through Behold the Book. That will allow me to proof less of it next month and devote time to other stuff.

Nothing on Let No Man Put Asunder. Nothing on Southern Discomfort. I do not want to repeat that next month, and I will not.

Other stuff just ran into bad luck: my cover artist was traveling overseas this month so asking for updates didn’t seem appropriate. And I would almost certainly have gotten some fiction done yesterday but the housecleaners arrived early in the morning which made our schedule nuts in various ways.

My exercise schedule is once again shot, simply because I had a lot of extra dog care. Which, as I hope I’ve said before, is fair — it’s a lot easier than TYG having to handle all the IT stuff on her job — but our pets insist exercise is some kind of signal for them to come snuggle. Hard to do vigorous exercise at the same time.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop, I blogged about the outside influences shaping comics in 1968, the beginning of Wonder Woman’s Diana Prince years, and Stan Lee’s insufferably preachy Silver Surfer series. Quite aside from being heavy-handed in the writing, a guy who found planets for Galactus to destroy is hardly the pure soul Mephisto claims he is.

Though John Buscema sure makes it look purty.

To leave on an up note, someone checked out one of my books via Hoopla and I had some sort of sale on Amazon. I haven’t got the data yet (Amazon’s very unhelpful with that) but whoever you were, thank you! I hoped you liked whatever of mine you read.

#SFWApro. Art by James Bama, Mike Sekowsky and Buscema, all rights remain with current holders.

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