Have you been to the Beeb’s Doctor Who site lately? Worth checking out not only for the nifty countdown to the upcoming Voyage of the Damned episode guest-starring Kylie Minogue (just run your cursor over Kylie) but for its advent(ure) calendar filled with lots of fun interactive stuff, behind the scenes looks, etc. Love the jigsaw puzzle!
The special is set to run for 71 minutes instead of the usual 60, so you lucky Brits should tune to BBC1 at 6.50 pm on Christmas Day instead of 7. That ought to mean the special will start hitting YouTube ’round about 5 PM Eastern US time.
And of course you can click here for all your Steampunk Dalek needs.
Author Terry Pratchett posted a message on Paul Kidby’s Discworld News website revealing that "I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom ‘stroke.’ We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism… All other things being equal, I expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet :o)"
Pratchett went on to reassure readers that any serious consequences of this diagnosis "maybe further off than you think – it’s too soon to tell. I know it’s a very human thing to say ‘Is there anything I can do,’ but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry."
Having been enthralled by a TV movie of Pratchett’s novel Hogfather the last couple days (actually our first exposure to the author’s Discworld), we have held him very much in the forefront of our minds, and wish him and his family the best during this difficult time.
This is the time of year when people usually start to compile "best of" lists and recaps. But as 2007 has been more "the worst of times" for me than "the best of times," I prefer to look forward. After all, as Criswell once "predicted" in a hardly-memorable Ed Wood film, "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives!"
Crystal ball gazing also helps if you have the retention level of a hyperactive gnat, which I’m afraid is the case for me. I don’t tend to get worked up over details in comic books or TV shows or movies because most entertainment is ephemeral to me; I just don’t feel I need to keep all the minutiae in my head. It carries the added advantage of making rereading the same book a lot more fun to me, a constant surprise as I encounter things again that I didn’t remember from the last time I read them.
In the land of graphic literature, at least in this country, Diamond’s magazine Previews is the only consumer choice in terms of moving from baseless speculation about what may or may not happen in monthly story installments months down the line (that’s more the realm of comics "news" sites, which often busy themselves in breathlessly extolling events yet to happen to the detriment of examining current comics) to actually planning out and ordering one’s reading of choice for the foreseeable future (say, two months down the line). Time was, order forms were the sole purview of retailers. Of course, time was when Previews wasn’t the only game in town. Not that the disappearance of competitors like Capital City and Heroes World constitutes anything like a monopoly for Diamond! At least not according to the antitrust investigation, which didn’t consider comics as separate from other literature. In any case, with all the major companies sewn up with exclusives and treated as Premier customers (some pigs being more equal than other pigs), Previews is the only choice now for readers who wish to support their local retailers, as well as for publishers who want to reach audiences they can’t afford to grow on their own (even in this age of online ordering). Unfortunately, Diamond doesn’t accept every comic published into the hallowed pages of Previews, so now more than ever it pays to see what’s out there in the virtual world, but online content distribution is another column entirely.
Much thanks to Media Goddess Martha Thomases for inviting me and fellow ComicMixers to her annual Chanukah donut party on Sunday. Here are a couple of happy guests, Liz Glass and Madeleine Grace Baker.
More pictures (expandable to larger sizes, yet) on my blog.
As some of us celebrate the Festival of Lights, it’s time once again to catch up with our ComicMix luminaries and see what they’ve brought us this past week:
This column is finally up to installment #42. As you well know, that’s said to be the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything. And now that I’m 50 years old, I’m supposed to be ever much smarter than I used to be, and ever so much closer to achieving the enlightenment that’s supposed to help me understand the questions to that answer.
Don’t you believe it. It’s a good thing life is a constant learning experience, although it’s a bit disheartening that the more I live the more there remains for me to learn. I can’t be the only one who constantly feels like I’m treading water, or running in place just to keep up.
Last night many Jews began the annual commemoration of Chanukah (or Hanukkah or Channukah or Throat-Warbler Mangrove), the Festival of Lights, not to be confused with Diwali, the Festival of Light marking the victory of good over evil, and uplifting of spiritual darkness, which seems to predate it by a good many centuries. Chanukah marks the rededication of the Second Temple (after it was desecrated by Antiochus IV Epiphanes at the time of the Maccabee rebellion, a couple hundred years before that Jesus guy came along) and the miracle that one day’s worth of consecrated olive oil wound up burning for eight (the length of time it took to process a new batch). So instead of celebrating something cool like the uplifting of spiritual darkness, in the hands of the Jews the festival became the glorification of frugality, of making a little go a long way.
Then the Christians came along and, within another few centuries, had converted massive populations and co-opted their festivals so that Midwinter (the winter solstice) practices became part of Christmas, which grew and grew into a general celebration of plenty and excess and cheer (except for those people who insist on missing the point by suggesting Santa is a "bad role model" because he’s fat and jolly; no no, can’t have any happy large people around during the months when it’s customary to fatten up to stave off cold and hunger!). And you know, given the choice between a whooping it up over how fortunate one is to have enough to eat and how dire one’s circumstances are that one has to burn the midnight oil for a week — well, let’s just say it’s easy to see how one can become so popular it’s no longer solely Christian or even pagan but practically secular, where the other is forever relegated in the public consciousness to second-place status and an excuse to teach lessons in multicultural inclusion.
It’s snowing, albeit gently, here in the Northeast, and the temperatures are definitely of the stay-indoors variety, so why not do what I’ll be doing, catching up on ComicMix columns from this past week?:
One of the things I mentioned in a previous column is how frustrating it is to many readers that reviewers have so many negative things to say about comics and so few positive ones — one of the reasons being, of course, that it’s simply easier (and, for many, more fun) to slag on someone else’s hard work than to praise it, to pick at the missteps rather than examining the story as a whole. I still suspect this ties in with why so relatively few reviewers discuss the art in a comic book; as they’re writers, it’s easier to concentrate on just the writing, which one can then proceed to negatively nitpick to one’s own standard of personal amusement, rather than learning about how to talk about the main thing that separates comics from prose work, from movies, from just about any other form of entertainment. But I digress.
I’ve had the first four issues of a comic book series in front of me for months, wanting to talk about them. This was before the series even debuted in the US, and now the first two issues have already appeared in stores. And with one thing and another in my crazy life, I haven’t had the time nor the wherewithall to actually sit down and review anything. And it’s become, as these things do, rather an albatross ’round my neck that I haven’t gotten to it. After all, a wonderfully talented, amazing woman who happens to edit the books sent them to me in good faith that I’d get to reviewing them sooner or later. And after all, wasn’t I the one who did over four years’ worth of weekly reviews on Usenet, covering at least a dozen comics during some of those weeks? What, besides life’s vicissitudes, was preventing me from sitting down and doing this review?
Sooner or later we all have to face our own procrastinating natures. For me, the approach of the year’s close and the feeling of community that means so much to me in this industry prompted me to finally get down to it. After three introductory paragraphs, naturally. Has the time finally come for me to say a few words about The 99 from Teshkeel Comics? Well, yes and no. I’m not going to do a structured, formal review per se, but discuss the series more in terms of its inspiration and ideas.
Comics folk are known for their generosity year-round but, as the seasons turn and the nights turn colder, the spirit of giving seems to kick into overdrive.
Out in Portland, OR, Floating World Comics is all set to hold their Spacenight tribute to Bill Mantlo on Friday, December 6 (coincidentally, the birthdays of at least four comic book creators of which I know). As many people are aware, in 1992 the longtime Marvel mainstay was struck by a hit-and-run driver and suffered a closed-head traumatic brain injury from which he has never recovered, so as you can imagine the medical bills are formidable. If you can’t make it out to Oregon, you can always donate to the Spacenite – Bill Mantlo Fund via the above link. The Oregonian has more information about the event. And of course you can still order Mantlo: A Life in Comics from David Yurkovich’s Sleeping Giant Comics.
And the Hero Initiative blog features a very touching story about the latest recipients of that organization’s largesse. As Laura Gjovaag says, read the whole thing including the comments, "Then go to CBGXtra.com and click on the banner ad to donate a dime to HERO." Or more, if you can spare it!
I find it nothing short of astounding that ComicMix columns continue to get stronger as the year goes on. Here’s the past week’s worth of what’s shaping up to be a great legacy of reading:
Have you been to the Beeb’s Doctor Who site lately? Worth checking out not only for the nifty countdown to the upcoming Voyage of the Damned episode guest-starring Kylie Minogue (just run your cursor over Kylie) but for its advent(ure) calendar filled with lots of fun interactive stuff, behind the scenes looks, etc. Love the jigsaw puzzle!
Author Terry Pratchett 
This is the time of year when people usually start to compile "best of" lists and recaps. But as 2007 has been more "the worst of times" for me than "the best of times," I prefer to look forward. After all, as Criswell once "predicted" in a hardly-memorable Ed Wood film, "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives!"
Out in Portland, OR, Floating World Comics is all set to hold their 
