ANDREW’S LINKS: Bikini Jeans
To start the week out on a pleasant note for about half of you – check out bikini jeans. [via Pat Cadigan]
Comics Links
The UK SF Book News Network talked to John Higgins, artist on a graphic novel adaptation of the old splatter-horror movie The Hills Have Eyes.
Estoreal reports on representing the Jack Kirby Museum at New York’s HOWL Festival in Tomkins Square Park.
The Baltimore Sun talks to Steven Parke, who uses a photo-manipulation style to create graphic novels.
A New York Times article on reality TV wandered off into graphic novel-land, talking about a book called The Homeless Channel.
Comics Reporter interviews Chris Brandt.
Comics Reviews
Library Journal’s current graphic novel reviews start out with the fourth volume of Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! (whose first volume recently confused me), and goes on to review a bunch of other things as well.
The Indypendent reviews a graphic novel called Fat Free.
Brad Curran of Comics Should Be Good reviews recent comics, kicking off with Batman #668.
Curran, still at CSBG, also pokes his head into the world of Marvel’s all-ages comics.
At The Savage Critics, two critics unleash tag-team havoc on today’s comics:
- Graeme McMillan catches up on his graphic novels
- Johanna checks out Mice Templar #1
- McMillan is back with a look at X-Men: Emperor Vulcan #1
- and then it’s back to Johanna for Potter’s Field #1
- finally, McMillan tags back in to suplex Parade (With Fireworks) #1 to win the Intercontinental Championship Belt!
Newsarama asks a bunch of comics critics why they don’t talk about the art. (When I don’t, personally, it’s usually because I simply forgot to mention it, or because there wasn’t anything interesting to say.)
Over on my personal blog, I went nuts with a overly long comparison of two art-comics anthologies from last year: Best American Comics 2006 and An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories.
SF/Fantasy Links
Bestselling fantasy writer Robert Jordan has lost his battle with cancer, dying on Sunday afternoon at the age of 58.
SF Site continues its project to index Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology series, now including listings by author, title and volume. (As others have pointed out, this is very nice but both the ISFDB and the Locus Indices do much the same thing for larger chunks of the field.
SF Site also lists the new books they’ve seen recently.
Locus Online, coincidentally, is also listing new books seen this week.
Hank Luttrell of SF Site gently points out that Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s Stardust (recently made into a movie) was never a “graphic novel,” but simply a heavily illustrated short novel. (Of course, as required by the iron rule of the Internet, he erroneously equates that with a “chapter book,” which is actually a term for a specific level of middle-grade fiction, for readers who aren’t ready for “young adult” books yet.)
The LA Times caught up with Philip K. Dick’s children for a story about their father’s Hollywood legacy.
A Welsh church is offering a Doctor Who-themed communion service, reports the BBC.
Mundane SF reprints a recent Guest of Honor speech by MSF flagbearer Geoff Ryman.
Reviews of SF/Fantasy
Fantasybookspot has a bunch of new reviews, including this one for Mary Gentle’s 1610: A Sundial in a Grave.
There’s a new issue of SF Site, with the usual pile of reviews. Among them, you’ll find:
- Promises to Keep by Charles de Lint
- Spook Country by William Gibson
- Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin
- In War Times by Kathleen Ann Goonan
- Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
- and Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction edited by Jeff Prucher.
Also at SF Site, Neil Walsh’s “Overlooked or Over-Hyped?” column looks at David Brin’s Startide Rising and Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow.
Library Journal has a batch of SF/Fantasy reviews this week, including new books by Douglas Clegg, Julie E. Czerneda, Stephen R. Donaldson, Mary Gentle, and Jeff Somers.
Publishers Weekly’s weekly fiction reviews contains, down near the end, the usual SF/Fantasy/Horror section, covering books by David B. Coe, Joe R. Lansdale, Faith Hunter, Joel Shepherd, and others.
Eric Brown reviews several SF books for the Guardian.
Douglas Cohen reviews the August 1995 issue of Realms of Fantasy.
Big Dumb Object reviews Tobias S. Buckell’s Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin.
Visions of Paradise has the first part of a review Jonathan Strahan’s great recent anthology Best Short Novels 2007, for which I was the acquisitions editor, long ago in another country.
The Times Literary Supplement reviews The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien As Writers in Community by Diana Pavlac Glyer.
Interviews with various people
SFFWorld interviews Steven Erikson.
Yatterings interviews One for Sorrow author Christopher Barzak.
Magazine NewsAntipodean SF has put out its 112th issue, for free on the web as usual.
Free Stuff
Cory Doctorow has written a new story, “Scroogled,” about the day Google became evil.
Re bikini jeans. I wouldn't put it past anything to catch on.
I don't know why they bother with the pants!
I'd like to add, under your Comics Reviews section, that in my own blog I issue a challenge to reviewers of Suicide Squad: Raise the Flag #1 (written by ComicMix's own John Ostrander).
Ha! When the WashPost said "graphic novel" about Good Omens, I wrote them a letter. Here's my tale of what happened, plus a note about my family. Y'all can skip the family stuff if you want.