COMICS LINKS: Wired Pennies

Comics Links

Wired has a long article about the creators of Penny Arcade, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik.

Rick Geary presents: The Comic Con Murder Case, a short online comic.

Comics Reporter interviews Nick Abadzis, cartoonist of Laika.

Greg Hatcher of Comics Should Be Good thinks about history and comics and ends up daring DC Comics to just reboot their entire line already.

Comics Reviews

The Toronto Star reviews Scott Chantler’s The Annotated Northwest Passage.

The LA Times reviews Adrian Tomine’s upcoming graphic novel Shortcomings.

Brad Curran of Comics Should Be Good reviews Countdown to Adventure #1.

From The Savage Critics:

• Graeme McMillan on Local #10
• McMillan on The Last Fantastic Four Story
• Diana Kingston-Gabai on World War Hulk: X-Men #3
• and Jog on Batman Annual #26

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing reviews DMZ: Public Works.

Edward Champion reviews Warren Ellis’s novel Crooked Little Vein in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

SF/Fantasy Links

The 2009 World Science Fiction Convention will be held in Montreal, Canada. Neil Gaiman will be the author Guest of Honor.

SF Site has indexed the contents of the first twenty-four annual volumes of Gardner Dozois’s annual Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology, by author, title and volume.

Reports from Worldcon:

• Alma Alexander: Friday/Saturday, Sunday
• K.J. Bishop (note: contains no reference to the Worldcon or SF, but she is in Japan, which would be a huge coincidence)
• Jay Lake

And reports from Dragon*Con:

• Peter David
• Justine Larbalestier

Neil Gaiman visits the Great Wall of China and learns that giraffes are forbidden to drive cars there.

Reviews of SF/Fantasy

Fantasy Book Critic reviews Karen Miller’s The Innocent Mage.

SF Site has a new issue, including reviews of:

• Elizabeth Bear’s Undertow
• Precious Dragon by Liz Williams
• Charles de Lint’s Little (Grrl) Lost
• Adam Roberts’s Splinter
• Orson Scott Card’s new novella-as-a-book, Space Boy
• and Philip K. Dick’s classic Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Book Fetish reviews Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Devil May Cry.

Ideomancer reviews Tobias S. Buckell’s Ragamuffin.

Douglas Cohen reviews the April 1996 issue of Realms of Fantasy.

Interviews with various people

Ideomancer interviews Tobias S. Buckell.

Awards

A number of awards were presented this weekend at the World Science Fiction Convention in Yokohama; the most important, the Hugos, have already been posted here.

The Chesley Awards, for excellence in SFnal or fantasy art, given by the Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists (ASFA):

• Best Cover Illustration – Hardback: Stefan Martiniere (for Pyr’s edition of River of Gods by Ian McDonald)
• Best Cover – Paperback: Daniel Dos Santos (for Ace’s edition of Moon Called by Patricia Briggs)
• Best Cover – Magazine: Renee LeCompte (for Fantasy Magazine, Summer 2006)
• Best Interior Illustrations: Omar Rayyan (for Cricket magazine)
• Best Unpublished Color: Stephen Hickman (for “Galadriel’s Harp”)
• Best Unpublished Monochrome: Donato Giancola (for “Red Sonya”)
• Best 3-D Art: Laura Reynolds (for “Ice Dragon”)
• Best Gaming Related Illustration: Todd Lockwood (for “Dragons of Fearum”)
• Best Product Illustration: Eugenio Caballero & William Stout (for Pan’s Labyrinth)
• Artistic Achievement: John Jude Palencar
• Best Art Direction: Irene Gallo (Tor)

[winners via SF Awards Web]

The Prometheus Awards, from the Libertarian Futurist Society:

• The Prometheus Award for Best Novel: Glasshouse by Charles Stross
• The Prometheus Hall of Fame Award: (tie) It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis and “True Names” by Vernor Vinge
• Special Award: V for Vendetta directed by James McTeigue, screenplay by the Wachowski brothers

[winners via SF Awards Web]

And the Hugo Awards, voted on by the non-lazy segment of the membership of this year’s Worldcon:

• Best Novel: Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge [Tor, 2006]
• Best Novella: “A Billion Eves” by Robert Reed [Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2006]
• Best Novelette: “The Djinn’s Wife” by Ian McDonald [Asimov’s July 2006]
• Best Short Story: “Impossible Dreams” by Tim Pratt [Asimov’s July 2006]
• Best Related Non-Fiction Book: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B Sheldon by Julie Phillips [St. Martin’s Press, 2006]
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro. Directed by Guillermo del Toro [Picturehouse]
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Who – “Girl in the Fireplace” (2006) Written by Steven Moffat. Directed by Euros Lyn [BBC Wales/BBC1]
• Best Editor, Long Form: Patrick Nielsen Hayden
• Best Editor, Short Form: Gordon Van Gelder
• Best Professional Artist: Donato Giancola
• Best Semiprozine: Locus ed. by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong and Liza Groen Trombi
• Best Fanzine: Science-Fiction Five-Yearly ed. by Lee Hoffman, Geri Sullivan, and Randy Byers
• Best Fan Writer: Dave Langford
• Best Fan Artist: Frank Wu
• John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (Not a Hugo): Naomi Novik

[official site: The Hugo Awards; nomination counts PDF; voting breakdown PDF]

Podcasts

Adventures in SciFi Publishing has brought forth its 31st installment, including an interview with Grey author Jon Armstrong.

Magazine News

Locus’s September issue, featuring a Guy Gavriel Kay interview, is in the mail.

SF Crowsnest’s issue 166 has just been posted, with a number of articles, movie and book reviews, and more.