Tagged: Neil Gaiman

SFWA Announces Nebula Award Nominees

  • News
  • February 20, 2012

The Science Fiction Writers of America this morning announced the nominations for this year’s Nebula Awards. SFWA members will begin voting on these with the awards announced at the Nebula Weekend, held in Virginia this May.

Novel

  • Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)
  • Embassytown, China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey; Subterranean Press)
  • Firebird, Jack McDevitt (Ace Books)
  • God’s War, Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)
  • Mechanique: A Taleof the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine (Prime Books)
  • The Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

Novella

  • “Kiss Me Twice,” Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2011)
  • “Silently and Very Fast,” Catherynne M. Valente (WFSA Press; Clarkesworld Magazine, October 2011)
  • “The Ice Owl,” Carolyn Ives Gilman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November/December 2011)
  • “The Man Who Bridged the Mist,” Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November 2011)
  • “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary,” Ken Liu (Panverse Three, Panverse Publishing)
  • “With Unclean Hands,” Adam-Troy Castro (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 2011)

Novelette

  • “Fields of Gold,” Rachel Swirsky (Eclipse 4, Night Shade Books)
  • “Ray of Light,” Brad R. Torgersen (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2011)
  • “Sauerkraut Station,” Ferrett Steinmetz (Giganotosaurus, November 2011)
  • “Six Months, Three Days,” Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com, June 2011)
  • “The Migratory Pattern of Dancers,” Katherine Sparrow (Giganotosaurus, July 2011)
  • “The Old Equations,” Jake Kerr (Lightspeed Magazine, July 2011)
  • “What We Found,” Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2011)

Short Story

  • “Her Husband’s Hands,” Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed Magazine, October 2011)
  • “Mama, We are Zhenya, Your Son,” Tom Crosshill (Lightspeed Magazine, April 2011)
  • “Movement,” Nancy Fulda (Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 2011)
  • “Shipbirth,” Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s Science Fiction, February 2011)
  • “The Axiom of Choice,” David W. Goldman (New Haven Review, Winter 2011)
  • “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees,” E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld Magazine, April 2011)
  • “The Paper Menagerie,” Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2011)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

  • Attack the Block, Joe Cornish (writer/director) (Optimum Releasing; Screen Gems)
  • Captain America: The First Avenger, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely (writers), Joe Johnston (director) (Paramount)
  • Doctor Who: “The Doctor’s Wife,” Neil Gaiman (writer), Richard Clark (director) (BBC Wales)
  • Hugo, John Logan (writer), Martin Scorsese (director) (Paramount)
  • Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen (writer/director) (Sony)
  • Source Code, Ben Ripley (writer), Duncan Jones (director) (Summit)
  • The Adjustment Bureau, George Nolfi (writer/director) (Universal)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book

  • Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor (Viking Juvenile)
  • Chime, Franny Billingsley (Dial Books; Bloomsbury)
  • Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Hodder & Stoughton)
  • Everybody Sees the Ants, A.S. King (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
  • The Boy at the End of the World, Greg van Eekhout (Bloomsbury Children’s Books)
  • The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman (Big Mouth House)
  • The Girl of Fire and Thorns, Rae Carson (Greenwillow Books)
  • Ultraviolet, R.J. Anderson (Orchard Books; Carolrhoda Books)

MARTHA THOMASES: Time, Travel, and Me

Over the weekend I started to read Stephen King’s new book, 11/22/63: A Novel. I’m not very far into it, as King writes long and I like to luxuriate in his enjoyment at having a story to tell and his great affection for his characters. And also, I have things to do.

It’s a time-travel story, and so far it’s set in 1958. I was five years old then (King was 11), and some of my memories of that time are clear. As he describes children playing in Maine, I remember what it was like for me in Ohio.

We played Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers. We played House, and School. None of us had Barbies yet, but we had stuffed animals so we could play Zoo. We made mud pies. We played Kick the Can and had squirt gun fights (see above re: Cowboys and Indians, etc.).

What we didn’t have, in our fantasies, was fantasy. Nobody did any time-traveling. No one went into outer space. There were no Ninja Turtles (or ninjas), no Transformers. There were hardly any Princesses.

When I was a bit older and could read, I liked Greek mythology and fairy tales and comic books, but hardly any of my friends did. Like them, I enjoyed Nancy Drew and The Bobbsey Twins and Cherry Ames, but I wanted more. My mom had some of her storybooks from when she was a girl, and I loved them, with their old illustrations. She introduced me to the works of Edith Nesbit,and I discovered a new way to imagine. Instead of gods and goddesses, nymphs and demons, or royalty protected by fairies, this was fantasy rooted in the real world.

Until I read his Books of Magic in which Neil Gaiman thanks E. Nesbit, I’d never met another person – besides my mom – who had read those stories. If you haven’t read The Railway Children, you’re in for a treat.

From there, my local librarian introduced me to Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. Not knowing it was a classic, I took it for science fiction and read the short story anthology, Tomorrow’s Children and from there I discovered Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and others.

Again, none of my friends were into these books. We might have shared a love of Salinger because by this point we were going through puberty and no one else could understand our intense psychic and spiritual pain. Still, I was the only one mesmerized by the explicitly alternate realities of science fiction writers.

Things are different now. There are involved fantasies for every age group. HBO offers Game of Thrones for adults, and J.K. Rowling has sold hundreds of millions of copies of the Harry Potter books. Star Wars and Star Trek and Doctor Who are cultural milestones, something every culturally literate person is expected to reference. The Avengers movie and the new Batman movie are expected to dominate next year’s box office. Sometimes it seems like half the bookstore shelves are devoted to vampires and/or zombies. And then there’s that Stephen King fellow.

I’d like to think it’s because we’ve become a more tolerant culture, one open to more different perspectives. I only know that genre fiction has brought me a lot of joy. I hope it has the same effect on the rest of the world, especially as we time-travel into the future.

Editor’s Note: That’s Ms. Nesbit up there, looking back at you.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

MINDY NEWELL: Blocked!

I’m having a good case of writer’s block today.

You know how a few weeks ago I talked about what it’s like to be a writer? One thing I didn’t mention was the awfulness of staring at a blank screen – or a blank piece of paper for those who still use a typewriter, and yes, they are out there – without a clue in the universe of what you’re going to write about.

That’s when procrastination sets in.

After a half-hour, or maybe even an hour, of sitting at the computer and absolutely nothing is coming, I suddenly realize that the bathroom really needs to be cleaned. I gather up the Comet Bathroom Cleaner and the SOS and go to it, attacking the bathtub and the toilet, the sink and the floor. I Windex the mirror. Then I decide to rearrange the shelves. Then I realize that I need to put some clean towels out.

Okay, done. Bathroom looks and smells great.

Now I’m ready.

And still nothing comes.

I pick up the pile of comics that’s lying on my rocking chair. DC’s Legion: Secret Origin #2. Superman #3. Star Trek #3 from IDW. A bunch of others. Nothing sparks my interest really. I throw them back down and go into the living room. I slept on the couch last night, falling asleep while trying to stay awake and watch The Best Of The Dr. Who Christmas Specials on BBCAmerica. The blanket and pillow are still lying on the sofa.

I fold up the blanket and put it away, throw the pillow back on my bed. I sit down at the computer again.

Fifteen minutes later I’m back in the living room. I’ve been watching Battlestar Galactica repeats on BBCAmerica and all the commercials have been driving me mad – plus it annoys me that they cut out the “Previously on Battlestar Galactica” and I’m sure they’re cutting other scenes out too. I resolve to pull out my DVDs of BSG, watch an episode or two, and then sit down and do the column. It’s only 2 P.M.; lots of time left. I put Disc One of Season Four into the DVD and sit down to watch.

Three hours later it’s 5:30.

Okay, this is bullshit. Mike is going to kill me, and I’m being really, really unprofessional here.

Back at the computer. Maybe I should write about Christmas Eve.

Drove down to my brother and sister-in-law’s with the parents, Alixandra and Jeff. The plan was to be at my brother’s in time for the start of the Giants-Jets game, which started at 1. Alix and Jeff were supposed to pick me up at 10; they got to my house closer to 11. The radio was turned to NPR and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me (which is one of my favorite shows on NPR) was on, and surprise! surprise! – Neil Gaiman was the guest. Haven’t seen Neil in too many years to count, so it was fun to listen to him play “Not My Job” and answer questions about Will and Kate – he nailed them, and so won Karl Cassel’s voice for some guy from Chicago’s voicemail; no, it wasn’t you, Mike.

Settle down at my brother’s to watch the game. First half – well, let’s not talk about that – except for Victor Cruz!!! What a runback! What a catch! Then the second half – Gaints come alive. And then it’s deep in the fourth quarter, it’s a long game, it’s 4:18 – New York is leading by 6 – the score is 20-14 – and FOX switches to the Eagles-Dallas game because of “NFL rules.” Chaos reigns! I throw a hissy fit, I yell at my brother, “I told you should have gotten the NFL Network!” while he cursed and ran for a radio. Jeff, always a calm in the center of my storms, suggests streaming it on the computer. I think, “what a great idea!,” so I run to my sister-in-law’s computer and hook into ESPN.com. No visual, just real-time audio, so I might as well go back and listen to the radio with the rest of the family. But I stay long enough to hear the Gaints make a safety. And between the time I left the computer and got back to the rest of the family, there was an interception, a touchdown – and I still don’t know who made it – and Tynes hit a field goal. 29 – 14. And Corey Webster intercepted to end the game.

Go Giants!!!!

Still don’t know what the hell to write about.

Oh, I know.

Gave my eleven year-old niece Isabel the original Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld maxi-series by Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn and Ernie Colon along with the Amethyst mini-series by Keith Giffen and the late Esteban Maroto… oh, yeah, and me! She was delighted and wanted to sit down and start reading right away – but her mom (rightly so) said no, not now. This could get me writing about the continual ignorance of the comic book business when it comes to attracting young female readers; I mean, Amethyst was back in the 80’s, and the honchos are still trying to figure it out? Some things, as the saying goes, never change.

I could tell you about how we all stuffed ourselves on an introductory course of smoked salmon, white fish, and smoked trout on various breads and crackers served with bloody mary’s, followed by a dinner of tender romaine hearts with baby cherry tomatoes in a vinaigrette dressing, braised beef tenderloin in a garlic and horseradish sauce, roasted cauliflower with parmesan, latkes (potato pancakes, as I mentioned last week) and fresh grilled squash with red onions sprinkled with honey; followed by an upside down orange polenta cake served alongside a Carvel “Frosty the Snowman” ice cream cake.

What else could I write about? Don’t feel like saying anything about politics this week. Well, I could talk about the House Republicans trying to block the extension of the payroll tax cut and how they had to cave and how the “orange man” sounded like a fool when he tried to make it a Republican victory, but, nah, just not in the mood.

I give up.

Sometimes the block wins.

TUESDAY: Michael Davis

 

MINDY NEWELL: Happy Christmas! Merry Chanukah! And Festivus For The Rest Of Us!

As a nice Jewish girl, I’ve always loved Christmas and Chanukah and Festivus for the rest of us.

We lived on a “not quite” cul-de-sac that had an island in the middle of the street. On that island was a huge old fir tree, and every holiday season all the “cul-de-sac’ers” would decorate it for Christmas. Yep, it was “National Brotherhood Week” on Hodges Place – I always wondered if the street was named for Gil Hodges of the Brooklyn Dodgers. I doubt it – this was on Staten Island, not Brooklyn – but it would make a nice story, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, my brother and I didn’t feel cheated in mid-December – like every snotty, young, selfish Jewish kid, Chanukah meant eight days of presents. And latkes ; potato pancakes for the uninitiated. But truth to tell, we also thought the story of the oil in the Temple miraculously burning for eight days was pretty cool, and the candlelight was so pretty. My brother and I didn’t lose on Christmas either.

Christmas Eve was when my mom took me, my brother, an done friend each into Manhattan for our annual visit to Rockefeller Center and the Christmas Tree, then to skate on the Rockefeller Center ice rink, then to Radio City Music Hall to see the movie and the Christmas show, then to walk down Fifth Avenue to see the fantabulously animated window, and finally to then meet up with our Dad at Macy’s, where we would all bundle into the car for a trip through the tunnel and home.  And once at home, bathed and tucked into bed – with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads – dad and mom would hang Lord & Taylor’s, or Saks Fifth Avenue, or Bloomindales or B. Altman ‘s (yeah, I’m that old) shopping bags for Santa to fill – I guess jolly ol’ St. Nick was kosher, but real stockings were trafe.

So here’re some suggestions for your shopping bags and/or stockings, trafe or not. Some political – hey, it wouldn’t be my column with at least one political comment, would it? – and some not.

  • The full collection of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, beautifully drawn by various artists such as P. Craig Russell, Mike Dringenberg, Glenn Fabry, Frank Quitely, and Bill Sienkiewicz.
  • 1000 Comic Books You Must Read, by Tony Isabella. A wondrous collection that takes you through 70 years of comics, and if you don’t find something in this chock-full-of-‘mazing stuff that wets your whistle, you ain’t a comic fan!
  • Loading up your stocking with everything you need to enable you to enact your basic right as a citizen of the United States – to vote for the candidate of your choice. Republican governors are attempting to disenfranchise the vote to those they consider “undesirable,” i.e., those they fear will vote for President Obama and/or the Democrats. 34 states have already loaded the registration process with so much debris it makes it nearly impossible for many to do what nearly 40,000 American deaths and casualties gave to the Iraqis and Afghans – please, don’t let those deaths be in total vain. Whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, a Libertarian, a Communist, or something altogether different: VOTE, goddamn it!
  • If you’re a fan of the original Law & Order, and you have roughly $700 dollars to spend, consider the boxed Complete Law & Order DVD Collection. (Hmm, I just checked on Amazon, and it’s selling there for the bargain price of $450.99, a 36% savings.) Check out Michael Moriarty, George Dzunda, Chris Noth before he was Mr. Big and Mr. Julianne Margulies, Dan Florek as Captain Donald Cragen before he moved to the Special Victims precinct and S. Epatha Merkeson as the luminously jaded Lt. Abigail Van Buren. See the fascinatingly different styles of D.A. Steven Hill, Fred Thompson, and Dianne West. Watch Sam Waterson’s hair turn grey. And mourn the premature passing of the one and only Lenny Brisko – Jerry Orbach.
  • And speaking of L & O, for you video-gamers out there, I just read, it was either in Entertainment Weekly, or, believe it or not, TV Guide, keep your eyes out for Law & Order: Legacies, in which you’ll have the choice of being either part of the Law or part of the Order as you hunt down the criminal and aim for justice.
  • Fly to the second star to the right and then straight on to morning. Get tickets to see Cathy Rigby as Peter Pan. You’ll be in Neverland.
  • A donation to your favorite charity, be it a couple of dollars in the Salvation Army red bucket or $1000 to Oxfam.

With our troops “officially” coming home from Iraq – my girlfriend is in the Army and she knows soldiers who have gotten marching orders to Baghdad to help protect the nearly 20,000 “diplomats” who will remain in the Emerald City Otherwise Known As The United States Embassy, it’s time for you to really understand how the fuck we got involved there in the first place.

  • Want to know what made Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda tick? Buy The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. The best book I’ve read on the rise of the terrorist organization and its megalomaniacal leader.
  • Next read about the fucked-up U.S. politics that led to 9/11 in Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.
  • Or check out Bob Woodward’s trilogy, Plan of Attack: The Definitive Account of the Decision to Invade Iraq; State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III; and The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006 – 2008. It’s amazing how freely people spoke to Woodward, including President Bush. And you’ll wonder how these people slept at night.

As for me? What do I want for Christmas, Chanukah, and Festivus for the rest of us? Oh, say, it’d be nice to part of the 1%, wouldn’t it? C’mon, you know you’d like it, too. I’m joking. (Or am I?) A guarantee that President Obama will have a second term, this time with a Congress that’ll work with him instead of demonizing everything about one of the smartest men to ever hold the office. Barring that, a Presidency for Hillary – and yes, I know she said she’s done with politics after winding up her term as Secretary of State. To write Wonder Woman again.

Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.

Yeah. I like that one.

Ho, Ho, Ho!

TUESDAY: Michael Davis

AUCTION SITE INVITES CREATORS TO PARTICIPATE TO HELP ARTIST AND WRITER!

AUCTION SITE INVITES CREATORS TO PARTICIPATE TO HELP ARTIST AND WRITER!

  • News
  • December 1, 2011

http://magick4terri.livejournal.com/


Beloved editor, artist and writer Terri Windling is in need, and we are asking for your help in a fundraising auction to assist her. This auction will combine donations from professionals and fans in an online sale to help Terri through a serious financial crisis.

Terri is the creator of groundbreaking fantasy and mythic art and literature over the past several decades, ranging from the influential urban fantasy series Bordertown to the online Journal of Mythic Arts. With co-editor Ellen Datlow, she changed the face of contemporary short fiction with The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and other award-winning anthologies, including Silver Birch, Blood Moon and The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest. Her remarkable Endicott Studio blog continues to bring music, poetry, art and inspiration to people all over the world.

Terri Windling and her family have been coping with health and legal issues that have drained her financial resources at a critical time. Due to the serious nature of these issues, and privacy concerns for individual family members, we can’t be more specific than that, but Terri is in need of our support. As a friend, a colleague and an inspiration, Terri has touched many, many lives over the years. She has been supremely generous in donating her own work and art to support friends and colleagues in crisis. Now, Terri is in need of some serious help from her community. Who better than her colleagues and fans to rise up to make some magick for her?

Through the next 18 days, we’ll be posting personal offerings from the likes of Neil Gaiman, George R.R. Martin, Wendy & Brian Froud, and many more! Besides bidding on these beautiful items, YOU can also post your own skills, services, arts, crafts, or whatever else you’d like to offer for auction! Please see our complete About Us page for FAQ about Terri, the auction process, and other ways to get involved. Thank you!

MARTHA THOMASES: Black Friday Is Not A Superhero

Today is Black Friday, the day when it is our patriotic duty as Americans to go into a spending frenzy. For all our talk about family values, we think it is more important to forgo the conviviality of the Thanksgiving table so that we can stand in line to buy things.

Originally I had thought to write a column full of gift suggestions for those of you who want to introduce your family and friends to the joys of graphic storytelling. There are terrific books for a variety or ages and tastes and interests. I have my favorites, but I don’t know the people on your list, so my recommendations may not apply. That’s what the comments section is for.

Instead, I want to talk about you, Constant Reader. You and your needs.

Some people like to shop. Some people like to shop in crowded chain stores, the kind you find in your local mall. I am not one of those people. I don’t like walking around with a list of names, trying to figure out what to get. I’d rather sit at home, and imagine people getting things for me.

Here are some things you, as a fan of comics, might not yet know you want. Feel free to print this up and leave it where your loved ones can find it.

For example, do you know that your love for the combination of words and images on paper makes you a connoisseur of fine art? This book showcases the career of Barbara Kruger, one of the most influential (and entertaining) of late twentieth century feminist artists. This book provokes me and makes me feel exalted, all at the same time. Would that all gifts were so accomplished.

Do you think you have the most embarrassing family in the world? Would you like to be shown otherwise? If so, I can’t recommend enough My Favorite Year, a fictional account of what it must have felt like to be Mel Brooks working as a writer for Sid Caesar. I love everything about this movie, including Bill Macy and, especially, Joseph Bologna.

You know how everyone says the best holiday gift is peace on earth? If you say this and you mean it, you should let everyone know you want this calendar from the War Resisters League. Bold graphics, good politics, and amusing history trivia make this a great deal for an even more great cause.

You’re welcome.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

Review: “Neverwhere” 15th Anniversary Edition

Imagine the BBC fifteen years ago, before the current explosion of science fiction and fantasy fare. It was a dowdy set of channels, working on the cheap, and not being necessarily accommodating to the needs of its shows. Instead, they often said we have a hole for X, please take your concept and make it fit.

While their schedules were not entirely devoid of genre fare, it came few and far between with offerings like [[[Neverwhere]]], which aired on BBC Two and was written by Neil Gaiman, in the flush of his success in America with Sandman. He met with producer Lenny Henry during England’s annual Comic Relief event and they began talking about a story. Lenny imagined a society below London and that was enough of a spark to get Gaiman going.

He conjured up a fully realized fantasy world and used the character of Richard Mayhew, a thoroughly typical citizen, who does a good deed and is rewarded with being plunged into this realm. The story of Neverwhere has been told and retold, first as a BBC miniseries, complete with 1996 novelization by Gaiman, and then, years later, a comic book adaptation from Vertigo. There’s been a steady stream of talk of a film version but it remains trapped in a realm of its own called Development Hell.

The BBC at the time treated it like any of its other broadcasts, giving the fantasy a budget fit for a situation comedy and then insisting it be produced in thirty-minute installments coupled with the even odder demand that it be shot on video not film. The result was an unsatisfactory event that has left Gaiman and fans demanding a Redo.

Instead, the BBC is releasing a fifteenth anniversary DVD edition of the miniseries on Tuesday. They had a Region 2 edition around for some time now but this is a first official release in the States. (more…)

Comics Round-Up: More Random Books

I have not read as many books as I wanted to this year, nor have I written about as many of the ones I did manage to read. (I didn’t manage to save as much from the flood as I would have liked, either; it’s a low-batting-average kind of year.) But the year is not over, and I can catch up on one of those fronts very quickly, viz:

I’ve devoted several thousand words over the past few years to the “Best American Comics” series — see my posts on the 2006 and 2007 and 2008 and 2009 editions — so perhaps I’ll be forgiven for not diving as deeply into the Neil Gaiman-edited 2010 edition. (Particularly since the 2011 book is out now, all shiny and new, so this is terribly old news.) Each editor shifts the material somewhat — Gaiman’s volume leads off with a long excerpt from the Jonathan Lethem/Farel Dalrymple/Gary Panter Omega the Unknown, the first Big Two story in the series, which feels significant — but the core of each book is very similar, drawing from the same group of major mid-career “alternative” cartoonists, from Gilbert Hernandez (here represented by a story done with his vastly less-prolific brother Mario) to Ben Katchor to Chris Ware to Peter Bagge to Bryan Lee O’Malley to C. Tyler to Robert Crumb. As usual, the series editors, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, picked a hundred notable works from their year — September 1, 2008 through August 31, 2009 — and sent those to Gaiman, who chose from them (and, possibly, from a few things he discovered on his own) to make this collection. Gaiman’s introduction makes it clear that this isn’t the “best” comics of the year — nor even the best “American” comics of the year, whatever that may mean — but it is a big collection of a lot of very good comics (and a few clunkers, though precisely which ones are clunkers may be a matter of personal taste) at a reasonable price. The whole series is a great way to discover what’s going on over on the more interesting, less punchy side of the modern comics world, so I recommend this book, as I do its predecessors, for people who like stories told in comics form, though probably not for the kind of people who like the things that draw in the crowds of maladapted boy-men every Wednesday. (more…)

MINDY NEWELL: SuperGod – Thus Spake Zarathustra

I came home from work on Friday to find a package had arrived from Amazon. It was Supergods, by Grant Morrison. I had first heard about the book while reading the Rolling Stone interview with Morrison, which I mentioned last week. Between that interview and all the hoo-hah about Action Comics Vol. 2 #1, both my own reaction and those in the media, I had to read it.

(The debate continues, by the way. Today, Sunday, National Pubic Radio – NPR – devoted a segment of its “Studio 60” program to the reboot, with two interviews: the first with a comic book shop owner in Brooklyn, and the second with Jill Pantozzi, who herself is a redhead and in a wheelchair. Jill wrote an absolutely brilliant and terrific Op-Ed piece for Newsarama about the transformation of Oracle back into Batgirl, entitled Oracle Is Stronger Than Batgirl Will Ever Be. You should check it out.)

Anyway, back to Supergods. The subtitle is “What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, And A Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human.” I’ve only read the introduction, and browsed through it, and already I’m enthralled.

Now granted (no pun intended – or maybe it was), Morrison is not the first to write about the mythology, the übergeist – I think I just made up that one from a combination of Yiddish and German – the collective consciousness of humans creating heroes to reflect themselves, their darkness and their light, their trial and tribulations. If you didn’t have to read it in college, you learned about Joseph Campbell and The Hero With A Thousand Faces from George Lucas through a little thing called Star Wars. But as one of the preeminent contemporary writers of superheroes, I can’t wait to really sit down and read it.

I think about God a lot. When I was a little girl, I had this recurring dream. I was somewhere in the middle of a field. It looked like the field in “Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth, complete with the farmhouse at the top of the hill. Of course it was a dream, so it was a totally warped “Christina’s World.” I was standing there, and it was blue skies and sun. All of a sudden the sky was black with clouds. There was an absolutely huuuuge clap of thunder and a lightning bolt, and suddenly God was standing before me. Well, all I could see was the bottom of his long, black Supreme Court Justice robe. I craned my head up and back and up and back and the robe went up and up and up beyond the sky. Then God bent over, and I could see His face, and it wasn’t happy. His long white hair and beard mixed with the grasses of the field, and He looked at me with stern black eyes, and just shook his finger at me as if to say, “You’re a bad, bad girl, Mindy.”

I don’t know why I dreamed that dream. Probably got punished by my mother or my father for something I did that I don’t remember. Talk about Jewish guilt!

God and theology continued to fascinate me as I grew up. I didn’t go to Hebrew school, wasn’t bas-mitzvahed, and I got kicked out of Communion class for asking the rabbi how the Jews could be so sure that Jesus wasn’t the Son of God, and saying that maybe we just screwed it up. (I asked a lot of questions that the rabbi didn’t like, like the time I asked him if Jonathan and David were maybe more than “just friends.”) But I read all the stories from the Old Testament that my brother brought home, and I read bits and pieces of The New Testament. I devoured movies like The Robe and Quo Vadis, and brought the books home from the library. My favorite though was, and still is, Ben-Hur.

There’s a line in Ben-Hur towards the end, when Esther and Judah Ben-Hur are taking his mother and sister from the Valley of Lepers to see Jesus. Judah’s mother is afraid, and Esther says, “No need. The world is more than we know.”

I know it was only a line in a movie, but I think the writer got it right.

Like Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, maybe the world was created by God because he’s a writer, and that’s what writers do, create, and we’re just the four-color two-dimensional characters in his comic book. Like Alan Moore’s Promethea, maybe we create the world out of our collective consciousness. Like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, the world is nothing but a dream set in motion by Morpheus.

Maybe there’s an obelisk on the Moon, just waiting to be discovered.

TUESDAY: Michael Davis

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