If this is true, the hearts of well over a million Doctor Who fans worldwide are about to beat just a little bit faster.
According to Slice of Scifi, Tom Baker will once again put on his mile-long multicolored scarf to reprise his role as the fourth Doctor in a 50th anniversary episode of the show, teaming up with eleventh Doctor Matt Smith. This is according to “a source close to the show.” Hmmm…
When Baker left the show back in 1981 as the series’ longest-running lead (a record held to this day), he said he wanted to put the part behind him. He was the only living Doctor who didn’t return for the 20th anniversary story, The Five Doctors. However, recently Baker came back to the role in a number of original full-cast audio adventures produced both by the BBC and by Big Finish Audio. The BBC episodes were set in contemporary time, and all co-starred other Doctor Who actors who had worked with Baker.
Is this the truth or is some well-placed hoser just jerking us around? Personally, I wouldn’t put the latter past show runner Steven Moffat – that seems to fit his whimsical public personna. But doing so would pretty much ruin the chances of Baker’s return to celebrate the 50th anniversary, and the BBC has confirmed they, and Steven, have “big plans.”
I’m not the world’s biggest Jason Bourne fan. Not by a long shot. I’ve seen and enjoyed the movies but I haven’t read any of the books. But two days ago, as I was sitting in the theater awaiting The Amazing Spider-Man (for the ComicMix Mixed Review), I saw a trailer for the latest chapter, The BourneLegacy. It’s a continuation of the series… but without Jason. As I was watching the trailer, I was thinking in the terms of my trade.
“Reboot! Reboot!”
We can argue if this is a genuine reboot or not, but let’s ride with the concept for a bit. My next thought was “why do the teevee and movie people do successful reboots of major properties, while in comics we butcher it every chance we get?” Which, by the way, is way too frequently.
Recent media reboots have included James Bond, Doctor Who, and Sherlock Holmes – the latter, twice. Other reboots have included Superman, Batman and the aforementioned Spider-Man. Only the former lacked enduring success. The Batboot was stellar, and we’ll have to wait and see about Spidey. So, of the five major characters, only one was a bust.
Allow me some jealous feelings here. To paraphrase Paul Simon (the singer, not the dead politician), after reboot upon reboot, the comics biz is more or less the same. Yes, there’s usually a solid sales bump and maybe it lasts long enough to make a difference, but that’s almost always short-lived. Is the Spider-Man marriage thing resolved? Is Jean Gray forever dead? What about Uncle Ben? Are you sure? Go ask Captain America and Bucky.
Over at DC, they’ve pressed the reboot button more often in the past 37 years than a lab monkey on an crystal meth test. How long should a reboot last before it’s deemed successful? I don’t know; we’ve never had one that lasted more than a couple years. Is the New 52 successful? Well, yes, in the sense that Dan DiDio still has his job. But they’ve only got sales figures in for the first year, and over a third of the titles have either been cancelled or have endured new creative teams. That doesn’t make it a failure, but if simply cancelling some titles and changing the crew on others is all it takes to make a character work for a contemporary audience, then we don’t need reboots.
In fact, this is the error message we get over each reboot. There’s no system upgrade here. We could have provided stability and growth by simply cancelling some titles and incubating those characters within their universes, and by changing creative teams on others – creators who will not restart history, but simply put it on an exciting path out of the woods. This may be the real “success” of the New 52. We’ll see in maybe five years or so.
The fact is, the media people haven’t pissed all over the trust of their audience. Despite public perception, most all of the pre-reboot movies and television shows featuring James Bond, Doctor Who, Superman, and Batman made money (I really can’t say about Sherlock Holmes; he seems to have made PBS a lot of money in the form of enhanced underwriting and public support). Maybe not enough to support the highest-ups’ eight figure salaries, maybe not as great a return on investment to make the stockholders happy, but in an industry where they put tens of millions of dollars on the line with each project – more than enough in each case to support a front-of-the-catalog comic book publisher – a five million dollar profit might not be a desired return on investment, but it’s still five million dollars.
Comics executives and, more important, their corporate masters need to give the four-color medium the same degree of patience and, quite frankly, they need to give their consumers the same amount of respect.
We need a comic book industry with an attention span.
Glenn and Mike were at the movies – separately – just so they could have a heart-to-heart conversation about The Amazing Spider-Man. This time, each has a fairly different opinion.
Of course, there are spoilers ahead.
Glenn: So, this is going to be an interesting exercise. I believe I could hear your teeth grinding from Norwalk…
Mike: You liked it?
Glenn: Most of it, yes.
Mike: Jeez. I found only the last third the least bit tolerable. What did you like about it?
Glenn: The casting, for starters.
Mike: The casting was fine. But it was in service of a director who put everything he learned in community college up on the screen.
Glenn: Andrew Garfield won me over very quickly, with a naturalness that Tobey Maguire never quite seemed to have. Emma Stone could have carried the film even if she didn’t look just like a John Romita drawing.
Mike: The direction was amateurish and the script was worse. They’re lucky this wasn’t an adaptation of an Alan Moore story.
Glenn: I’m curious – what marked this as amateurish to you? The action scenes played fine, the character scenes worked to the actor’s credits – although I think the film may have trod a bit too much to the sort of aspirational stuff out of a Aaron Sorkin script… of course, that might have been a subconscious reaction to Uncle Ben Bartlett.
Mike: Gwen is the nexus of all coincidences. Her dad just happens to be a police chief in charge of the Spider-Man beat. She just happens to have an after-school job that gives her seemingly complete access to all areas and secrets of one of America’s largest high-science development companies – at 17 years-old – where she just happens to work for the arch-villain, who just happens to be the lab partner of the hero’s dead father.
Glenn: Yes, there’s a bunch of coincidences jammed there. But she was a science geek in the comics, just at the college level, and her dad was a police captain.
And yes, Connors and Richard Parker also happen to work for the upcoming big bad villain, too.
Mike: And all that was spread out over several years’ worth of comics. Here, this was all crammed into two hours – although, to be fair, it seemed like much longer. There’s coincidence, and there’s really bad storytelling. This is really bad storytelling. I really wanted to like this movie. Unfortunately, we knew two best actors weren’t going to make it out of the movie alive. There most certainly is such a thing as a great remake. The classic versions of Maltese Falcon and Wizard of Oz were both remakes. The Amazing Spider-Man is in absolutely no danger of joining this crowd. A remake has to answer the question “Why bother?” This movie, like the Superman remake, didn’t.
Glenn: Two best actors? I mean, we knew that Uncle Ben had to die. I can see a few reasons for retelling the story. For one thing, the effects work has improved a lot in places – the web-swinging in particular. Although the Lizard… well, you don’t always get it perfect.
Mike: Yeah, and we knew the Titanic was going to sink. But the latest movie was about a lot more than the sinking of a boat; ASM wasn’t about anything we hadn’t seen before. Why didn’t they show us Spidey actually using his powers? The webbing thing was fairly cool, but outside of that we rarely saw him in action. He’d be on the ground and there’d be a quick cut to him stuck to the ceiling. Web-slinging through the Manhattan cityscape? Nope; it was mostly long-shots or Peter’s point of view. You don’t have to get the villain perfect, just menacing. Certainly the Goblin looked less-than-stellar in the original.
Glenn: Just out of curiosity, did you see it in 3-D?
Mike: No, 2-D. Which doesn’t address a single one of my storytelling and direction complaints. You rarely saw Spider-Man being Spider-Man. Not even if he pops out of the screen and eats the popcorn out of your lap, 3-D has nothing to do with storytelling. Certainly not in this movie. It doesn’t come close to the Sixth Avenue shots in the first movie. Talk about your John Romita influence…
Glenn: The action sequences, web-slinging, etc. worked for me in 3-D. The Lizard – well, it’s a giant lizard. Hoping for emotion in a lizard’s face is going to be an uphill battle, no matter what insurance company mascots teach us.
Mike: You don’t have to get the villain perfect. Certainly the Green Goblin looked less-than-stellar in the original. But the Lizard looked like the Hulk had pooped out a baddie.
Glenn: Of course, there’s a point. How many times can Spider-Man lose his mask in this film?
Mike: About as often as they want the 12 year-old girls to go all Beatles over Garfield. Who, by the way, looks about 30. Did they cast Garfield and Stone because Dwayne Hickman and Tuesday Weld looked too young?
Glenn: Yeah, college age would have been easy to believe. High school?
Mike: And Peter, Gwen, and obviously ol’ Lizzieface certainly weren’t New Yorkers in the least. Flash might have been, Ben and May and Stacy certainly were, but the three leads seem like they never even visited New York. Conners had been there longer than Peter has been alive.
Glenn: I don’t think the Lizard was a poor choice of villain. Curt Connors was played well… except for that “must turn evil” bit, and even there, it played in character more than Doctor Octopus’s character turn in Spider-Man 2.
Mike:. It was in character for the original comics version that evolved over decades. In a two-hour movie (that played like an eight-day bicycle marathon), it was almost campy. At least Alfred Molena had the chops to pull Doc Ock off. I’d seen scarier villains on Doctor Who… in the black-and-white days!
Glenn: One thing that did work for me was the more naturalistic interactions between characters. Garfield and Stone clicked here in a way that Maguire and Dunst never quite did; for that matter, Garfield seemed more natural with everyone – Sally Field’s Aunt May, Martin Sheen’s Uncle Ben, Denis Leary’s Captain George Stacy, and even the crooks.
Mike: I agree, but those moments were brief. ASM wasn’t about the one-man Greek chorus, and that’s good. It’s about a 17 year-old, but only at times did they allow themselves to go there. Tell me. Did you like this movie as much this morning as you did last night?
Glenn: No, but I’ve had a morning that would make Pollyanna grumpy.
Mike: Did anybody applaud at the end? At my screening, absolutely nobody applauded. Not a one. Virtually everybody who wasn’t in the comics business left before the end of the credits.
Glenn: A decent amount of applause, nothing like the roar at the end of Avengers.
And I have to wonder how this plays in the rest of the country, since Spider-Man is really such a New York character.
Mike: That didn’t hurt the development and the success of Marvel Comics, which was almost entirely New York based for decades, and largely remains that way today. There was nothing particularly New Yorkish about the movie. It could have happened in Cleveland or Phoenix.
Glenn: There’s that same moment in this film that came in the first Spider-Man where New Yorkers pull together to help Spidey out.
Mike: New Yorkers like to think they live in the only city that pulls together in a crisis. It’s human nature. It’s what’s kept humans alive as a species. And wolves.
Glenn: Sadly, it didn’t work nearly as well as it did in the first one, mainly due to a big logic problem. There’s a helicopter right above him. Why doesn’t he just hitch a ride on that?
Mike: By the end of the movie I think only Flash Thompson didn’t know Peter was Spider-Man – and he was the one guy who should have figured that out, given all the scenes where Peter used his powers against him.
Glenn: Flash, despite his name, has never been that quick. And Aunt May – well, I don’t know if she knows or not.
Mike: I was never certain what Aunt May understood, except getting over her husband’s death right quick. Oh, and the costume really sucked. Seriously. Cirque du Soleil should stick to cribbing Mummenschanz.
Glenn: One of the nicer bits between Peter and Aunt May is there’s a lot of unspoken subtext there, with her obviously knowing there’s something Peter’s not telling her, but not knowing quite what – maybe that Peter’s suddenly going in for rough trade or something.
Mike: Sally Field handled each scene quite well; not once did I think “Flying Nun!” But together the movie made May Parker seem schizo.
Glenn: Was there anything you liked about this movie?
Mike: Denis Leary, both his performance and the way they handled his character.
Glenn: Agreed.
Mike: This movie will do well opening weekend because opening weekend lasts six days and has a major holiday in there. But I don’t see it conquering the world. I can understand Garfield wanting to be in Avengers 2. He wants to be in a good super-hero movie.
Glenn: I’m still thinking Sally Field is too young to play Aunt May, but that’s purely a construct that carries over from the comics that has almost no logical basis. Of course she shouldn’t be old enough to be his grandmother, but still.
Mike: You’re absolutely right – if May was Ben’s husband and Ben was Richard’s brother, then Sally was the right age. In the comics Aunt May was born sometime before Barnabas Collins. I should point out I liked this movie more than most of my companions. One, who’s about 17, said it was the worst movie he ever saw. Ric Meyers (who thought less of this than I did) and I replied in unison: “You’re still young.”
Glenn: And ironically, my companion is one of the surliest bastards in comics and prose (David A. Mack, the killer of the Borg) and he enjoyed it even more than I did. This may be the rare film where I can’t easily say in advance whether or not a particular viewer will enjoy themselves.
Mike: Yeah, well I give it a thumb’s up – where the sun don’t shine.
Glenn: I give it a thumb, index finger, and pinky up. Which makes for a very tough review. But hey, kids, go and find out for yourselves.
“All you can do is open up the throttle all the way and keep your nose up in the air.”
First Lieutenant Meyer C. Newell
P-51 Mustang Fighter Jock
Separated from his squadron, shot up and leaking hydraulic fluid somewhere in the skies over Burma
What is the measure of success? What is the measure of failure?
In the previous three columns, I’ve told you a little bit – well, quite a bit, actually, about early failures in my life. And for a very long time I let my, uh, lack of success, hold me back, drag me down. That old albatross had a permanent nest on my shoulder. The Fantastic Four may have visited the Negative Zone, but, guys, I lived there.
In my mid-thirties I was divorced and living with my parents. Alix was two or three. She was sleeping in a portable crib, I was sleeping on a cot in the den. And then one day – sometime in my late thirties, I think – I was driving with my father in the car. I don’t remember where we were going; I think he was driving me to an appointment with one of the numerous psychiatrists and therapists I had seen in an attempt to “figure out what was wrong with me.” Oh, that was fun, let me tell you. One doctor put me through a round of physical tests and blood work to see if there was a physiological reason for my “blues.” (Tests came back. I was perfect.) Another doctor gave me his trench coat, telling me to cover up my legs because he was getting sexually excited. I went to a therapy group for newly divorced women; all I remember of that is the woman whose husband regularly beat the crap out of her. “Jesus, honey,” we would all say, “get the hell out of there.” She would just start to cry and go on and on about how much she loved him until the hour was up. We never got to talk about anything else. There was one doctor who talked to me for five minutes and gave me a prescription for Valium, the drug of choice in those days for women on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I took one Valium, fell asleep for 18 hours and dumped out the bottle. A week later I got a bill for $500.00 for “services rendered.” I called him and told him I was sending him $50.00, and just try to take me to court. Never heard from him again.
The best, though, was the shrink who was an Orthodox Jew. He told me that the only thing wrong with me was that I wasn’t married, so “I should stop dating the goyim, marry a nice Yiddisher man, and have lots of babies.”
Anyway, back to that day in the car with my dad. We weren’t talking much, just bits here and there. Suddenly my dad started talking about a mission he had been on during WW II. It had been a bombing and strafing mission somewhere in Burma, the objective being to destroy the latest installment of the railroad the Japanese were building – see The Bridge On The River Kwai for reference. They had met a lot of resistance, and on one strafing run my father’s P-51 got hit up badly. One of the hydraulic lines was hit, and he couldn’t keep up with the rest of the squadron on their flight back to the base. They had to leave him.
“Wow, Daddy, what did you do?” I asked. (The answer is above.) And then he said, “Know what I’m saying?”
And the light bulb suddenly clicked on over my head, just like in the old Looney Tunes cartoons. “Thufferin’ Thuccosthasth!” I said. “I do!” (No, not really. I mean, yeah, the light bulb went on, but I didn’t suddenly start sputtering and slovering like Sylvester the Cat.)
I’m not saying that all of a sudden my life was a bed of roses and that everything was hunky-dory. No. Quite the opposite. It took finding the right therapist. It took swallowing my pride and starting on an anti-depressant. But mostly it took a lot of hard work, a lot of tears, a lot of self-recrimination. Most of all, self-forgiveness.
These days I wonder. All my failures – but were they really failures? Weren’t they just part of the pattern that’s made me who I am today? And any failures, any successes that I continue to experience will just add to that person who I will be tomorrow, next week, next month, next year or in a decade.
These days most people would say that my life is a success. Well, I don’t know about that, but if it is, it didn’t happen without failures, some my own, some caused by outside factors. For instance, two years ago I got laid off. (Yes, Virginia, registered nurses do get laid off these days.) It sucked. I cried. I ranted. I worked at a couple of hospitals I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to. (Well, maybe I would.) But I also went back to school and finished my BSN, opening up new doors for me.
As for my other career, the one in comics? A lot of people in the comics industry have commented and complimented me on my “ear for dialogue,” my ability to get into the heads of the characters I have written. Maybe that wouldn’t be true if I hadn’t lived the life I have lived. I probably would never have submitted a story to DC’s New Talent program. I wouldn’t have written When It Rains, God Is Crying, or Chalk Drawings with a certain mensch who goes by the name of George Pérez. I wouldn’t know Mike Gold or Martha Thomases or Len Wein or Karen Berger or Neil Gaiman. And I wouldn’t be here writing this column.
Black and White.
Stop and Go.
Yin and Yang.
Success and Failure.
The ups and downs of life.
TUESDAY MORNING: Can Michael Davis Possibly Still Be Black?
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Can Emily S. Whitten Possibly Be Talking About Deadpool?
At a convention I was at some years past I was having dinner with, among others, Howard Chaykin and Joe Rubinstein. Howard is always an interesting dinner companion; whether you agree with him or not on a subject, the conversation is going to be interesting. I didn’t know Joe Rubinstein much before that – except by his talent – but he raised a serious point with me. Joe knew about my late wife, Kim Yale, and her death and what he was interested in seeing coming from me was a story or stories about how you cope with the grief and the mourning that comes with the death of a loved one. It’s an interesting challenge and, while I’ve had some ideas about how to do it, I have yet to answer it.
I don’t think that comics, as a medium, deals well with death. It’s become a plot device, a sales gimmick, since we all know the character who has died is going to be back. I was staggered at the time of the Death of Superman storyline and by the number of people I knew who contacted me and breathlessly asked, “Is he really dead?” I pointed out that DC had too much money to lose from Underoos alone to let Kal-El stay dead.
Sure enough, Superman got better.
I will say that DC dealt well with the aftermath of Superman’s apparent demise in the World Without Superman follow-up storyline. There was real feeling, real emotion, by individuals and by the general population. And life went on without Superman.
That’s what happens. Your world ends; life goes on. The one you loved doesn’t come back. You cope however well or badly. You recover or you don’t.
I’m not saying that killing off a character can’t be effective or shouldn’t be done. When I was doing Suicide Squad over at DC, I was something of a literary mass murderer. I killed off lots of characters – mostly villains. I even killed off my own GrimJack character and brought him back albeit in a different, cloned body. I then reincarnated him somewhere further down his own timeline and, eventually, killed off that incarnation as well. So, how is that different, you ask.
Reincarnation doesn’t give you back the same body; it gives you a different one. The resiliency of the Doctor Who series rests on the title character’s ability to regenerate or reincarnate. Completely different actor, very different personality traits. There is change. That’s the difference and a key one.
Over at Marvel, the Pearly Gates is a revolving door. Captain America dies; oops, he got better. (Okay, it was really a “time bullet” but it was sold as the death of Captain America.) His teen sidekick in WWII, Bucky, dies in action. Oops, no, he gets better decades later. Both “deaths” generated interesting stories but is there anyone who really thought that the original Captain America wasn’t coming back?
Actions have consequences and death does as well. Grief should be shown; tears should flow. One of the major flaws, for me, of the first Star Wars film is that Luke barely sheds a tear at the death of the only parents he’s really ever known but then gets mopey about a mentor he’s known only a few days. Whereas, in the Harry Potter films, especially the later ones, when a character dies we see real grief and sorrow. It matters to the characters and therefore matters to us. And, yes, Harry dies and comes back to life but that doesn’t change my argument. His death grew out of the story and was, in fact, demanded by it; it was the way to resolve the story. That includes his resurrection. My gripe is with deaths that simply are “events” and meant to push sales.
Death in comics is too easy because resurrection is too easy. It doesn’t mean anything most of the time. It’s a cheat. Life – and death – doesn’t work that way. If death doesn’t mean anything, does life?
Spoiler Warning: In reviewing the second series on the BBC series Sherlock, I may discuss some plot points. If you haven’t seen it – and you should – and you want to remain unspoiled on plot twists, best skip this.
By the time I was ten I had read all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I love the characters, I love the settings, and I’ve watched many of the movie and TV incarnations of the world’s most famous detective. Basil Rathbone was my initiation to the cinematic Holmes and, for a long time, he was indelible. My major gripe with the Rathbone Holmes movies was that, with only the exception of one or two, they were all set in the era in which they were made, the 30s and 40s, and had little to do with the actual stories. I wanted the gaslight and the London fog; I wanted the deerstalker cap and the horse drawn carriages and the steam locomotives. The era was as important to me as the characters.
So – as you might guess – when I heard that the BBC was doing a new Holmes series (simply called Sherlock) and setting it in contemporary times, I was not keen. I would have given it a miss except that I learned that one of the co-creators was Steven Moffat (along with Mark Gatiss). I’ve loved Moffat’s work on Doctor Who as both writer and show runner; bright, intelligent, witty writing with vivid characters and real heart. I couldn’t resist looking at the new show and I was so glad I did.
The first series was brilliant and it absolutely worked. The creators obviously know the source material and respect it. In the original Conan Doyle stories, Dr. Watson is a former Army doctor who was wounded in Afghanistan. In the update – Doctor Watson is a former Army doctor who was wounded in Afghanistan. (How times don’t change.) In the original, Watson wrote up his adventures with Holmes as stories published in magazines. In the update, he writes them up as part of his blog.
The series is aided immensely by the two leads – Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Doctor Watson. In case you don’t know, Cumberbatch is slated to play (if rumors are correct) the villain in the next Star Trek movie and Freeman will be Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. The chemistry between them as Holmes and Watson is terrific.
Each series has consisted of three ninety-minute episodes and the first series ended in a cliffhanger. Holmes had confronted his nemesis, James “Jimmy” Moriarty; Watson has a vest full of explosives strapped on to him and Holmes has three snipers homed in on him. A complete death trap! How will they escape?
The second series updates/adapts three of the better-known stories in the Holmes canon: A Scandal in Bohemia becomes A Scandal in Belgravia, The Hound of the Baskervilles becomes The Hounds of Baskerville, and The Final Problem becomes The Reichenbach Fall.
The first introduced Irene Adler, The Woman in the Holmes canon, an actress who went up against Holmes over some compromising letters involving the royal family and she proved to be a complete match for the sleuth. In the remake, she’s a dominatrix who has compromising photos of a (female) member of the Royal Family on her cell phone. When Holmes calls on Adler, she greets him in the nude which leaves the Great Detective somewhat flummoxed and he can’t deduce anything from her because she isn’t wearing any clothes.
Oh, and Holmes himself winds up in the Royal Palace wrapped only in a bedsheet. This is not your great-great -grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes.
The Hounds of the Baskervilles deals with a possible spectral hound from hell threatening the life of Holmes’ client. The episode, The Hounds of Baskerville has that element but also brings in secret military testing and conspiracies. Changing “Hound” to “Hounds” is not just clever; it really ties to the secret at the heart of the mystery.
In the original “The Final Solution,” Doyle attempted to kill off Holmes by having him plummet down the Reichenbach Falls with his arch-enemy, Professor James Moriarty. In this new version, Moriarty is out to destroy his enemy and his enemy’s reputation. It also ends with what appears to be Holmes’ fall to his death although the very final shot of the episode reveals Holmes still alive. The question that needs to be answered is – how? Hopefully, that will be answered in the third season of Sherlock whenever they get around to making it.
Performances throughout are first rate, as are the production values. It doesn’t make the series perfect. They get out of the first season’s cliffhanger by having Moriarty getting a phone call and walking away. Not satisfying. I also found the conceptualization and performance of Moriarty (by Andrew Scott) too over the top. It was Moriarty as Heath Ledger’s Joker. I don’t mind a different interpretation that works, such as Lara Pulver’s Irene Adler, but Moriarty as giggling sociopath didn’t work for me.
And I have a concern. As I’ve said, the writing on this series is very clever and, for me, enjoyably so. There’s such a thing, however, as being too clever and that’s the trap into which Sherlock could easily fall – and that would be a more deadly trap than anything Moriarty could devise. The series so far has skirted the edge of it but it could easily step over and, sometimes, you don’t know how far is too far until you’ve gone too far.
All that said, I think this incarnation of Sherlock Holmes to be one of the best ever, constantly and consistently entertaining. It has intelligence and it has passion and it captures the essence of what made the Holmes stories work. The changes make us see the stories in a fresh way. I’m looking forward to the next season – which will be whenever our two main actors come back from Middle Earth, where no one has gone before.
The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers co-founders Lee Goldberg & Max Allan Collins are pleased to announce the 2012 nominees for the Scribe Award, honoring excellence in media tie-in writing, and the naming of author Kevin J. Anderson as this year’s Grandmaster for his lifetime achievement in the field.
Anderson is the author of more than one hundred novels, adding up to over 20 million books in print in thirty languages. His work includes the STAR WARS “Jedi Academy” books, three internationally bestselling X-FILES hardcovers, the Superman novels THE LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON and ENEMIES & ALLIES, many novelizations (SKY CAPTAIN & THE WORLD OF TOMORROW, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, etc.) and, of course, the ten globally bestselling DUNE novels he has co-authored with Brian Herbert.
He has won or been nominated for numerous prestigious honors, including the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and a New York Times Notable Book prize…and now he can add IAMTW Grandmaster to the list of his extraordinary achievements.
The awards will be given at a ceremony in July at this year’s Comic-Con convention in San Diego.
*GRANDMASTER*: KEVIN J. ANDERSON
*GENERAL FICTION / BEST ORIGINAL NOVEL*:
ROYAL PAINS: FIRST DO NO HARM by D.P. Lyle
MIKE HAMMER: KISS HER GOODBYE by Max Allan Collins & Mickey Spillane
BURN NOTICE: THE BAD BEAT by Tod Goldberg
*SPECULATIVE FICTION/BEST ORIGINAL NOVEL*
STAR WARS: KNIGHT ERRANT by John Jackson Miller
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS – FORGOTTEN REALMS: BRIMSTONE ANGELS by Erin M. Evans
SUPERNATURAL: COYOTE’S KISS by Christa Faust
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: THE SHARD AXE by Marshiela Rockwell
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE PRICE OF FREEDOM by A.C. Crispin
*BEST ADAPTATION GENERAL OR SPECULATIVE*
CONAN THE BARBARIAN by Michael Stackpole
CRYSIS LEGION by Peter Watts
TRANSFORMERS: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON by Peter David
COWBOYS & ALIENS by Joan D. Vinge
*BEST YOUNG ADULT*
ME & MY MONSTERS: MONSTER MANNERS by Rory Growler (Ian Pike)
THE SMURFS movie tie-in by Stacia Deutsch and Rhody Cohon
THUNDERBIRDS: EXTREME HAZARD by Joan Marie Verba
*BEST AUDIO*
MIKE HAMMER: ENCORE FOR MURDER by Max Allan Collins & Mickey Spillane
DARK SHADOWS: THE LOST GIRL by D. Lynn Smith
HIGHLANDER: ALL THE KINGS HORSES by Scott Andrews
DOCTOR WHO: THE MANY DEATHS OF JO GRANT by Cavan Scott & Mark Wright
Celebrate the 100th anniversary of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic creation.
San Diego, CA (May 18, 2012) – Joe Kubert is one of the most lauded artists in the history of comics, a true living legend. He has been a vital creative force since the 1940s and remains so to this day. He has had defining runs on Hawkman, Enemy Ace, Tor, Sgt. Rock, and many others. Among his career highlights is Tarzan of the Apes, and Kubert’s rendition could arguably be called the definitive comic adaptation of the Ape-man.
“To have the Tarzan stories I drew commemorate the 100th anniversary of a strip I fell in love with as a kid is the thrill of a lifetime,” said Joe Kubert, writer and artist of all the stories in this Artist’s Edition.
This Artist’s Edition collects six complete Kubert Tarzan adventures, including the classic four-part origin story. Each page is vividly reproduced from the original art and presented as no comics readers have seen before. For fans of Kubert and Tarzan, this new entry in the Eisner-winning Artist’s Edition line must be seen to be believed!
2012 is the centennial year for Tarzan. Created by master storyteller Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan is instantly recognizable to countless fans around the globe. Other notable creations of Burroughs’ include John Carter of Mars, Korak, Carson of Venus, and At the Earth’s Core.
“I first read these comics when I was 10 years old, and they remain some of my favorite stories ever,” said Editor Scott Dunbier, “this is Joe Kubert at his absolute best.”
What is an Artist’s Edition? Artist’s Editions are printed the same size as the original art. While appearing to be in black & white, each page has been scanned in COLOR to mimic as closely as possible the experience of viewing the actual original art—for example, you are able to clearly see paste-overs, blue pencils in the art, editorial notes, and art corrections. Each page is printed the same size as drawn, and the paper selected is as close as possible to the original art board.
JOE KUBERT’S TARZAN OF THE APE: ARTIST’S EDITION ($100, hardcover, black and white, 156 pages, 12” x 17”) will be available in stores September 2012.
About IDW Publishing IDW is an award-winning publisher of comic books, graphic novels and trade paperbacks, based in San Diego, California. Renowned for its diverse catalog of licensed and independent titles, IDW publishes some of the most successful and popular titles in the industry, including: Hasbro’s The TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE, Paramount’s Star Trek; HBO’s True Blood; the BBC’s DOCTOR WHO; Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; Toho’s Godzilla; Wizards of the Coasts Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons; and the Eisner-Award winning Locke & Key series, created by best-selling author Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez. IDW is also home to the Library of American Comics imprint, which publishes classic comic reprints, and Yoe! Books, a partnership with Yoe! Studio.
IDW’s critically- and fan-acclaimed series are continually moving into new mediums. Currently, Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Disney are creating a feature film based on World War Robot, while Michael Bay‘s Platinum Dunes and Sony are bringing Zombies vs. Robots to film.
The 2011 Nebula Awards, presented by the Science Fiction Writers of America for excellence in the field, were presented last night in a ceremony at the Nebula Awards Weekend, held in Arlington, Virginia. Walter Jon Williams was Toastmaster, and Astronaut Michael Fincke was the keynote speaker. Connie Willis was honored with the 2011 Damon Knight Grand Master Award for her lifetime contributions and achievements in the field.
And with that, the dust settles on another convention… that being C2E2 2012. Unshaven Comics met its stated goal of 10% growth in number of books sold versus last year. Each of the Unshaven Lads met their specific goals as well. Matt completed all of his commissions by end-of-day Sunday (including a brilliant mash-up of Doctor Who and Breaking Bad). Kyle met his sales goals, and nabbed a swanky tee for a special someone.
I myself had a power lunch with an industry vet, a power diner with the same vet, and have since sent out a dozen follow up e-mails to various vendors and associates we met during the con… all to hopefully promote our site and company out on the interwebs. We ultimately sold 254 books to both returning fans and new ones; We officially sold out every copy of Samurnauts: Genesis we brought. Suffice to say, I’m left looking back at C2E2 2012 as a positive step forward for my little operation. Yet, here I sit, with a small knot on the back of my neck. The same knot that urps me after every con.
What is that feeling exactly? Well, it’s a complex one. In its essence, it’s the feeling that we’re only a single interaction (gained through perseverance, dumb luck, or both…) away from being discovered. It’s no surprise for those who know me that I am a people-person. I know when to interject the perfect joke to get a crowd roaring. I know when to shake hands, and follow up. Yet somehow, faced with people I truly want to talk to… I stammer, I mutter, and I plain come across like the dope I secretly think I am under the swagger and phony facade. Whether it’s true or not, I’ve always felt after a con that I’ve taken one step forward, and two steps back.
Case in point? Not 10 seconds after picking up our Artist Alley badges, Matt and Kyle were happily chatting with Scott Snyder. Here’s an author I’ve written more good words about than the bible does Jesus (so I think… I’ve not read the new testament yet, but I hear good things.), and the best I could get out? “I really like your stuff, man.” I mentioned I reviewed several of his books on this site and www.MichaelDavisWorld. He looked back at me, and shyly admitted “Wow, that’s cool. Didn’t see those…” And off he went into the sunset. In my mind? I hit him with a great joke. He laughs. We talk about plotting, and characterization. We swap e-mail addresses and phone numbers. “What are you doing tonight, Marc? I thought maybe we could continue this at dinner or something?” Flash forward, and I’ve made a new friend. Maybe he’ll take home one of our books, and let those big wigs he knows that “these kids know what they’re doing.” And with that, my Scrubs fantasy ends.
How about another instance? Dan DiDio, Bob Wayne, and several DC editor-types at one point or another walked past our table in Artist Alley. Kyle, ever fearless, jumps right into the pitch. Every time, our book is handed to them. A page flip. Then another. Kyle finishes his pitch. We look on, with pupils glassy and wide like kittens. “Thanks. But, uhh… we’ll have to pass.” A knowing smirk is shared between the titans of industry, and seconds later they are at the next table, shaking hands, laughing boisterously. Kyle shrugs it off, and pitches on. With the next fan that joyously says “Hell yes! I’ll take it!” Kyle has already forgotten the previous encounter.
Meanwhile, I sit and stew in my own juices like a pot roast in the slow cooker. For every fan that came back to us ready to buy their next book, or new fan who couldn’t wait to throw down their cash – even before the pitch was finished – I can’t help but feel like we missed the big fish. The book was in their hands. Before them, the blood, sweat, and tears of all our Unshaven nights, and weekends laboring. And it obviously wasn’t good enough.
Today on Facebook I was messaging a friend who writes for another comic site with aspirations of his own on “getting known” and “making it.” I asked him how his weekend went. “I had dinner with Scott Snyder, and then with some Marvel editors the next day…so, pretty good I guess.” All that, and he’s younger than me. Color me green. It’s been that childish chase since the very first con when I clutched all three ashcan copies of my first (terrible) book, waiting to be discovered… to today, from behind my own table where I hope our ever-growing fan base will one day hurtle us forward. And here it feels like everyone else around me is so much further along.
Now, before you start up your comments on what a negative nelly I’m being, let me be clear: I’m elated at the success I’ve enjoyed thus far. Since truly pursuing this industry as I have now… I’m a columnist at a great site, alongside industry veterans and legends alike. Furthermore? I’ve dined with those same legends. Multiple times. My company has seen increased sales in our books every year we’ve been in business (suck it, DiDio.). We successfully launched a kickstarter that bore us a live-action Samurnaut to walk the show floor, which has created real brand awareness. All that, and I’ve maintained friendships with my two brothers from other mothers for 20 years, with no sign of stopping. And our next issue will be done in a handful of weeks.
I know that the future is bright for Unshaven Comics… even if I’m dragging a storm-cloud of doubt over my head.
If this is true, the hearts of well over a million Doctor Who fans worldwide are about to beat just a little bit faster.
