The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (www.iamtw.org) is pleased to announce the nominees for the 2014 Scribe Awards, recognizing excellence in the field of media tie-in writing: books based on movies, TV shows and games. The winners will be announced and awards presented in July at a ceremony and panel discussion at the San Diego Comic-Con.
Best Adaptation (Novelization) [[[Man of Steel]]] by Greg Cox [[[Pacific Rim]]] by Alex Irvine [[[47 Ronin]]] by Joan D. Vinge
Best General Novel (Original) [[[Murder She Wrote: Close-Up on Murder]]] by Donald Bain [[[The Executioner: Sleeping Dragons]]] by Michael A. Black [[[Mr. Monk Helps Himself]]] by Hy Conrad [[[Leverage: The Bestseller Job]]] by Greg Cox [[[Leverage: The Zoo Job]]] by Keith R. A. DeCandido
Best Speculative Novel (Original) [[[Fringe: The Zodiac Paradox]]] by Christa Faust [[[Supernatural: Fresh Meat]]] by Alice Henderson [[[Star Wars: Kenobi]]] by John Jackson Miller [[[Supernatural: The Roads Not Taken]]] by Tim Waggoner [[[Star Trek: From History’s Shadow]]] by Dayton Ward
Best Short Story
“The Dark Hollows of Memory” (Warhammer 40,000) by David Annandale
“Locks and Keys” (Shadowrun) by Jennifer Brozek
“So Long, Chief” (Mike Hammer) by Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane
“Savior” (After Earth) by Michael Jan Friedman
“Redemption” (After Earth) by Robert Greenberger
“Mirror Image” (Star Trek) by Christine M. Thompson
Best Young Adult [[[Kevin]]] by Paul Kupperberg [[[Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2]]] by Stacia Deutsch [[[The Croods]]] by Tracey West
Best Audio Book [[[Dark Shadows: The Phantom Bride]]] by Mark Thomas Passmore [[[Dark Shadows: The Flip Side]]] by Cody Quijano-Schell [[[Blake’s 7: The Armageddon Storm]]] by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright
The IAMTW was created seven years ago by Max Allan Collins and Lee Goldberg and has over 200 members, all professional, published authors who write books based on movies, TV shows, and games. To find out more about the Scribe Awards, and lists of previous winners & nominees, visit
On a recent jaunt into the social media interwebs, an old foosball buddy of mine asked that I help him discover the creepy, crazy, wacky world of comic book conventions. By proxy, I assume he also means sci-fi cons, pop culture cons, and possibly the auto show. In any event? Todd Burrows, I got your wonderfully tattoo’ed back. Consider this your introduction and survival guide all rolled up into one easy to read article. Forgive me though, this ain’t Buzzfeed, so don’t expect 10 glorious animated gifs for scrolling.
Let us assume you’re not a comic guy, but this whole comic thing is mildly intriguing to you. Perhaps a person you used to know back in high school is now a small indie publisher, and you think it’d be neat to see him again. Perhaps that publisher from time to time uses his or her friends in model reference shots, and you think that maybe you’d like to see yourself as a superhero or nefarious villain. And maybe, just maybe, you think dipping your toe into the waters of these new-fangled cons would be a good way to know if all your intrigue is just a waste of your time. I know, that’s a lot of supposition. But I digress. The question is simple: Why Go To A Comic Con?
It’s inclusive.
Since the first time I’ve stepped onto a convention floor, I’ve never once felt on the ‘outside’ of the industry. Once your badge is flung around your neck – be you a complete noob or a working professional – you’ll find most every con filled with folks in the exact same situation. In the pair of decades I have considered myself a fan, I’ve not once found a fellow con-goer not willing to lend an opinion, give a bit of backstory, or make an education recommendation on a good read. It can be daunting, no doubt, to jump in head-first to a world you think you don’t know. But lucky for you? Comics have permeated TV, movies, and pop-culture now for so long, there’s little to no chance you haven’t been introduced already without even knowing it. (more…)
In last week’s column, I raised the issue of how many women are invited guests at comic book conventions. As you can see, of the four shows I selected rather randomly (the criteria was that I wanted to go to them because I had heard good things), not a single show had a guest list that was more than ten percent female.
Was I being unfair? Should I be more systematic?
The short answer is, “Yes.” There are lots and lots of shows, and somewhere, there must be a few organized by people who want to celebrate the work of women as much as the work of men. More commercially, there must be some shows that want to attract convention-goers interested in comics that represent multiple points of view, because there is money to be made.
Closing them on my browser so you can open them on yours, a list of various things that I haven’t had time to write full posts about. Here we go again…
We also understand that Jesse Eisenberg has been cast as Lex Luthor in the sequel to [[[Man Of Steel]]]. Furthermore, we understand this is the retcon origin of his hatred of Superman:
I am a bit amazed that looking back at this article from Publisher’s Weekly on The Best Comics You’ll (Probably) Never Read, a few of them have actually come out. Does this mean that eventually we’ll even see D’arc Tangent #2? (Not a chance.)
A blacksmith recreated Thor’s hammer. And you know what? It’s %$#@! heavy. Twenty pounds hollow– think of a bowling ball on a stick. Fill this mock Mjolnir up with metal and it would weigh two hundred pounds. The Mighty Thor, indeed.
And in a moment of international good will from the Olympics, here’s Nina Paley’s Euro Heroes.
What else is out there? Consider this an open thread.
When Brooklyn Nine Nine won the Golden Globe for best television comedy on Sunday, my first thought was, “That’s the end of that.”
I mean, I love the show. I thought the episode that came after the Globes on Tuesday was really funny (although I don’t want to see any romances develop within the department. None. At All. Ever.).
But now I know that other people like it. It’s not cool anymore.
You may ask yourself, “Why does a woman who is 60 years old care about what is cool?” And you would be right. I have long held the belief that no one can be cool once he or she has children (exception that proves the rule: David Bowie). My colleague, Mike Gold, disagrees, telling me that his daughter’s friends think he is. I suspect they do think he’s cool – for a parent.
There is something ridiculously satisfying about being the one of the only people who likes something. It’s a secret that you share with only a favored few. I have felt the way about Peter Bagge, back when John Holmstrom first published him. Once he started working with Fantagraphics, I still liked his work, but felt let down that I had to share him.
Comics fans are especially bad about this, in my experience. I can remember several times when I would go to a comic book store, select my choices (mostly superhero comics) and go to the cashier, only to have him (always a him) tell me I had terrible taste and shouldn’t shop in that store. This never happened to me at any other place I shopped, not even at Pat Field which, before Sex and the City, was far too cool for me.
And so, I can only conclude that comic book fans are more rigid in their idea of exclusivity than even the fashion police. It’s almost enough for me to enjoy some schadenfreude about comics fans being squeezed out of the San Diego Comic-Con, except that I am one of them.
Speaking of which, if one wants to continue to enjoy one’s super-cool object of joy, one should hope it catches on enough to become uncool. Yeah, Firefly was awesome and I want to be a brown-coat until I die, but what I’d really like are more episodes which we would have had if the ratings were higher.
Which brings us to a useful definition, found in this article. Key quote: “The great video blogger Ze Frank once said, ‘Being cool is about not participating in traditionally enjoyable experiences and creating the illusion that happiness can be found in alternative, less enjoyable experiences. The degree to which other people around you try to emulate your alternative lifestyle and fail determines how cool you are. You’re only as cool as people wish they were.’
“‘Cool people starve themselves, get neck tattoos and listen to bands the rest of us have never heard of. These things are not fun, and they are not popular, and that is exactly the point.”
Coolness is not something one can achieve by trying for it. I was never cool, because I was always too enthusiastic about my pleasures. That’s okay, I’d rather have joy than admiration or envy.
Personally, I question how much longer tattoos can be cool. Eventually, people’s mothers will have them.
REVISED COLUMN SCHEDULE FOR THIS WEEK:
LATER TODAY: Michael Davis
SATURDAY: Back to our normal schedule with Marc Alan Fishman!
Well, 2014 is six days old, and though I’m not too maudlin about it, I’m glad 2013 is over. It wasn’t my worst year ever – that was pretty much 2006, though 2009 does come close, for reasons that I’m not going into here because some things do have to stay off this page – but 2013 was the year I lost my father. No, he isn’t dead, but he is gone for good, and this is how I know.
We (Glenn, Alix, Jeff, and Meyer Manuel) were visiting my parents on New Year’s Day. I had brought my father up to an apartment from the nursing home division; my parents live in a continuous care adult community. We were having either a late lunch or an early dinner, and one thing about my dad, he hasn’t lost his appetite. He eats everything put in front of him, even eggs, which, in fact, he actively disliked. Anyway, my brother made a joke about how there’s nothing wrong with Daddy’s appetite and how, even when he was in a coma last year, somehow if we put food in his mouth he ate it. We all laughed (a sad, kinda bitter laugh, I think), and then all of a sudden my mom started coughing. She kept coughing. Hard. And all of a sudden I realized she wasn’t just coughing, she was choking.
I went to give her the Heimlich, but Glenn had realized what was going on the same time I did and got to her first. It took a couple of too many abdominal thrusts for comfort, but it worked, thank God. Mom sat down, cried just a little bit because she was really scared there for a moment (of course), drank some water… and I realized that my dad had just sat there during all this and continued to eat – no, wolf down – his french fries. He had been completely unaware of what was happening to his wife of nearly 66 years, of what had nearly happened. All he knew was his french fries. He was just staring at wherever it is that he stares at and eating his french fries. “That is not my father,” I thought. “My father is gone.”
So, so long, 2013. I hope the door hit you on the ass on the way out.
And hello, 2014.
What would I like to do this year?
Like Marc Alan Fishman, my fellow columnist here at ComixMix, I’d like to get back to the comics shop this year. Unlike Marc, I stopped going because of the financial blues I’ve been living with for the last couple of years, and I dream of the day I have real discretionary income in my checkbook register again. I’m making inroads, but sometimes the dream is overtaken by the nightmare, if you know what I mean.
I’d like to get off my procrastinating ass and talk to Editor Mike about a story idea that’s been floating in the back of my head for more than a couple of years. It could encompass all sorts of genres if I’m a good enough writer – a little bit of soap opera, a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of thriller, a little bit of romance, but not a little bit country or a little bit rock n’ roll. It can address a bunch of issues like racism and politics and evolution and love and hate and family and madness and sanity. That is, if I’m a good enough writer, which is the fear that keeps me procrastinating.
I’d like to stop thinking that my dreams are merely the flights of fancy of some crazy woman and act on them. Like, what the hell, why not work into a script the story of my father and his sharing a bottle of Scotch with Lord Mountbatten in Burma during World War II to Dreamworks and Steven Spielberg, whose father was a chief mechanic who was responsible for keeping those P-51 Mustangs flying the Hump in the C-B-I theatre during the war? The worse that could happen is that I hear nothing.
Or write it up as a short story and submit it to, oh, I don’t know, where do you submit a war story these days? The web is my best bet, but exactly what site? I’ll have to buy a current copy of Writer’s Digest.
Or maybe I can do in comic form after all, only then I have to find an artist. God, I wish I could draw and just do my own stuff; the toughest part of being a writer only (only a writer?) in a visual medium is seeing everything in your head so clearly but not being able to translate the whole picture onto the page.
Did I ever tell you that artists amaze me?
I’d like to go to San Diego this year. Yep, I’ve never been to the San Diego Comic-Con. I can hear all the groans now from those who have walked the floors of the convention center, hear all the complaints about how it’s not about comics anymore, that it’s now a marketing tool for Hollywood. But I don’t care. I’d like to experience it at least once. I’d like to go to some panels and I’d like to star gaze just a little bit (but not collect autographs because autographs have never interested me) and I’d like to see people I haven’t seen in too many years and I’d like to go to the beach and watch the sun set into the Pacific Ocean instead of rising up out of the Atlantic.
And I’d like to write Wonder Woman again, and do another Lois Lane book. I’d like to sit down over a cup of tea (I don’t drink coffee) or a glass of wine with Gail Simone and meet Kelley Sue DeConnick and hang out with Martha Thomases (I want to pick up knitting again, Martha!). I’d like to be on a panel about women in comics at a convention and talk about the harassment going on and challenge some of these jerks in person – you want me take me on, you’re welcome to try, assholes.
And I’d like to say thanks to everybody who read my column in 2013. Thanks to everybody who wrote in response here on ComicMix and on Facebook and the League of Women Bloggers. Thanks for all the different opinions and the discussions they engendered.
And thanks to Mike Gold and Glenn Hauman and Adriane Nash and everybody at ComicMix who continue to let me open my big mouth right here, every week, every Monday, for better or for worse.
When I had to go to work in an office everyday, I would try to save up my vacation days so I could take off the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Ostensibly, I did this because my kid had no school and needed daytime attention.
But, really, I did it because I wanted to go to the movies.
The holiday season usually sees a flood of new releases, either to amuse those home-bound kids or to qualify for the Academy Awards. A lot of the Oscar-bait is scheduled for nation-wide release when the awards will actually be presented, and they just open in a few theaters to get by the rules. Since a lot of Academy members live in New York, we luck out.
There are altogether too many Jews in my borough for me to indulge the traditional Reform observance of Christmas (Chinese food and a movie), but I hope to celebrate the end of the year with my people (by which I mean, movie geeks).
Here’s what I’m anticipating most.
Inside Llewyn Davis Not since Bruce Springsteen teamed up with Pete Seeger has a project seemed so much like it was designed specifically for me. The Coen Brothers explore the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s. I expect it to be my neighborhood, my music, my sense of humor and my reasons for moving here. And then I expect to be sad because none of this is cool anymore.
American Hustle I’m not a huge David O. Russell fan, but I like a movie with a lot of cute guys in it, even when they have bad hair, bad clothes and bodies fattened for art. However …
Out of the Furnace, which isn’t supposed to be as good, is also on my list because it’s Christian Bale being his cute self, along with a set of very very masculine, serious co-stars. Come to Mama, boys.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire I’m late to this. It’s been out for a month, and I still haven’t gone. Loved the books (although I thought the last one had a weak ending), loved the previous movies, love the clothes and love Jennifer Lawrence and Elizabeth Banks. I wish the two would remake Thelma & Louise.
Saving Mr. Banks My husband and I were both huge fans of Walt Disney (politics aside) and Mary Poppins. John liked to opine that without Mary Poppins there would be no Star Wars. I read the Travers books to my son, and they are big fun, so I see no reason not to sob like a baby through this entire film.
Frozen See above about Disney. We would often observe that, unlike so many filmmakers who went for a kids’ audience, Disney (as a studio) tended to have much better scripts. This looks like it follows in the path of what I think of as the Broadway musical animated movies (Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin) and that’s a good thing.The Wolf of Wall Street Martin Scorsese is one of my all-time favorites. In this film, he seems to be treating Wall Street traders as if they are gangsters involved in organized crime. Sounds right to me.
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues How much did you love the first one? Not as much as I did. When I go to SDCC, I try to walk around the park near the water, looking for roving bands of news teams.
Kill Your Darlings The first famous author I ever met was Allen Ginsberg. He had given a poetry reading at a nearby university, and came to our commune for dinner. Since I was just a girl, he ignored me just about completely. Still, I’m eager to see him portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe, because it’s about as far from Harry Potter as one can get.
Her I really like Spike Jonze movies. Because of him, sometimes I wander around muttering, “Malkovich Malkovich Malcovich.” So I’m curious to see what his future is like.
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom Sadly, this will now seem like an elegy. A friend of mine who has to go to film festivals as part of her job saw this a few times back in the spring and said it was always fantastic. And it has Idris Elba. Yowza.
In celebration of the Milestones show at Geppi Entertainment Museum, we present this piece, originally published in the San Diego Comic-Con International Souvenir Book 2013.
Twenty years. Daaaaamn.
I spent a lot of time hanging around Milestone when they were first starting up. I was working around the corner from their 23rd St. offices at a digital pre-press house, where DC Comics was getting their painted covers scanned and separated. And I’d worked at DC and knew a lot of the folks there informally, and Milestone in those days was a very informal place. There was no standing on ceremony, if you wanted to show up and pitch in, you could just do that. And I did, bringing over lots of fonts for typesetting on a Mac and helping out with little production things here and there— I couldn’t do much because of my full-time job, but they were a start-up, which meant they worked after 5 PM a LOT. But even as busy as any start-up can get, you could go in and sit in the editor-in-chief’s office and talk— although, to be fair, that was Dwayne McDuffie, a man who had the laid-back confidence that you can only get from being the size of a small mountain. Of course, that didn’t mean you couldn’t push back— I remember asking him after Hardware #1 came out how he really felt about work-for-hire.
It turned out, years later, that Dwayne wasn’t really sure why I was there. We knew each other, and he’d seen me around various comics offices and conventions and the like, but at the time, for some reason he thought I was Walt Simonson’s assistant. The point is, he didn’t care— you wanted in on what they were doing, you were in. Everybody had something to contribute.
The thing about Milestone, and this was a big one, is that it wasn’t a “black” company, even though everybody outside the office thought of it as such. It was a “people” company. Didn’t matter whether you were as dark-skinned as Derek Dingle or as pale as Matt Wayne, a guy even paler than me and that’s going some. Everybody there wanted to make comics— although there was a lot less of the feeling that people wanted to grow up and become Julie Schwartz. Milestone came from knowing that there was a different kind of story to tell, a story that had been neglected in everybody’s straight white male superhero stories, stories that might as well have taken place in 1960’s Riverdale. Milestone showed an entire generation of readers that there were strange new worlds just on the other side of town, and took you there.
More importantly, Milestone broke the monolith of minority character stereotypes in comics, that there was more to the characters than just being black or hispanic or gay or whatever. Icon, Hardware, Rocket, Static, and Wise Son were all black, but they all had different points of view— which just hadn’t happened much in comics before that; heck, I’m having a hard time trying to think of comics before Milestone where two black characters showed up together for any extended amount of time. Is there a minority version of the Bechdel Test? Let’s make one right now and call it the Milestone test: A comic passes if (1) there are at least two minority characters in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something besides a white person. And if you have to tell the reader the character is black because it’s in his name– Black Lightning, Black Manta, Black Goliath, Black Panther, Black Racer, Black Vulcan– it’s not really a black character.
But the most amazing thing is that, in many ways, it’s not as big of a deal anymore. You can put Static Shock on TV and people don’t look at it as pandering to connect with the urban audience, he’s a character. And for that alone, the work done by Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Robert Washington, Matt Wayne, Ivan Velez, Michael Davis, John Paul Leon, Mark Bright, Trevor Von Eeden, Andrew Pepoy, Janet Jackson, Jimmy Palmiotti, Noelle Giddings, Janice Chiang, Steve Dutro, Mike Gustovich, James Sherman, Joe James, John Rozum, Steve Mitchell, Joe James, Chriscross, Prentis Rollins, Derek Dingle, and so many others… well, it’s a Milestone worth celebrating.
On November 15, Reddit users discovered a mysterious website called Survivor 2299 that had cryptic text, messages buried in its code, and a clock counting down to December 11. With clear aesthetic references to popular post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland video game series Fallout, gamers got excited. It’s been more than three years since game publisher Bethesda released the previous installment in the franchise, and all signs pointed to Survivor 2299 being a precursor to the fervently anticipated announcement of a Fallout 4 release date. But on December 6, I was among a number of gamers disappointed as Survivor 2299 was revealed to be a hoax. Dashed hopes aside though, I was left wondering how a community that’s generally considered quite savvy was fooled by (or at the very least, enticed to seriously consider) a hoax that lasted almost a month. The answer I’ve landed on: we’re steeped in pre-hype hype.
Naturally, the debut of a major product or entertainment property is going to be preceded by marketing efforts to make consumers excited for its release. To get the best day one numbers possible, Apple and Warner Bros. spend a considerable amount of money making sure everyone and their brother know exactly when the latest iPhone and Batman movie come out. But while these companies and others like them may’ve once been content to start their marketing push just a few months before a product launch, they now begin tantalizing consumers much earlier, and with much less information.
I blame the teaser trailer. A few quick shots strung together or fifteen seconds from a single scene may not be enough to communicate what a movie is about, but it’s more than enough to make people start tweeting about how badly they want to see something. And if boosting anticipation is the goal, releasing a teaser weeks or months before the full trailer accomplishes that goal handily.
But the pre-hype hype hasn’t stopped there. A movie’s teaser trailer may be the first advertising general audiences encounter these days, yet within recent years studios have caught on to a way to create buzz for films even earlier, and amongst a more targeted demographic: the San Diego Comic-Con panel. Movies don’t have to be completed for studios to start talking them up to crowds at the show. Heck, some films are even promoted there before going into production, with simple information like casting announcements taking the starting position in the hype parade once occupied by the teaser trailer.
Not surprisingly, this mentality of conventions being the place to start generating hype goes beyond movies. Video game companies reveal far-off game release dates to fans at E3, the event that is to the gaming world what the San Diego Comic-Con is to comics. And of course, Apple’s new tech announcements are so anticipated that their press conferences are treated with the reverence of a convention, complete with save the date cards and the promise of live streaming for those who can’t make it. With an already assembled crowd representing the people most likely to enjoy a forthcoming product, why wouldn’t companies capitalize on the fact that a tiny tidbit is enough to get die-hard fans eagerly anticipating things they won’t be seeing for months?
Actually, to be fair, I should point out there is a movie studio that wouldn’t start up their hype machine at Comic-Con nine to twelve months in advance of a film release like so many others do. Marvel Studios starts even earlier. By announcing titles in the third phase of the plan for their cinematic universe, they’ve managed to create hype for films that are still years away from theatrical release. And though it seems unnecessary to start parceling out information years in advance like this, I have to admit I’m already pumped for Ant-Man and will probably only get more excited about it with each hype-bolstering move Marvel Studios makes until the movie’s 2015 release date.
Now if only Bethesda would take a page from Marvel’s book and give me a real Fallout 4 date to look forward to, even if it’s not in this decade.
The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story by Vivek Tiwary and Andrew C Robinson, with Kyle Baker. 144 pages. Dark Horse. Available in both hardcover and electronic editions.
This week, I’m kvelling all the time. The Fifth Beatle is finally in the stores.
Let me explain. About a dozen years ago, I met Vivek Tiwary and we quickly became friends, even though it’s only recently I’ve pronounced his name properly. We met because we had friends in common, friends who inspired us to do some good, in Vivek’s case quite amazingly. (Really, watch the video at the link. It’s wonderful.)
Community service is all well and good, but what really bonded us was comics. We are totally geeks together. We would walk around various conventions (both Book Expo and the San Diego Comic-Con), sharing the kind of fangasms such events inspire. I even helped him take his young son around.
During these walks, and on other occasions, we would often talk about his various projects, He was working on turning Green Day’s American Idiot album into a theatrical musical, and he was working on a screenplay about Brian Epstein. Vivek is quite passionate on the subject of Epstein, the Beatles’ first manager. He first looked tried to find out about him 21 years ago, when he was in business school. There was hardly any information. Over the decades, he pulled the story together. Vivek had a lot of experience as a theatrical producer, but film was a new medium for him. He had written a screenplay, but getting it made was an arduous process.
Why not make it into a graphic novel while you wait, I suggested.
And so he did. He found Andrew Robinson to collaborate on the art (and I introduced him to Kyle Baker, who drew the hilarious scene in the Philipines), and off they went. Thanks to my ComicMix co-columnist Michael Davis, we got the book to Dark Horse.
Vivek didn’t fall into the trap that catches too many writers from other media, including me. He doesn’t cram the page with words. He knows how to let the pictures tell the story. He trusts his artist to convey the pace, the emotions, the energy of the story. Andrew doesn’t let him down. The likenesses are evocative without being overbearing. People who knew some of the characters in real life tell me he nailed the body language as well as the bodies. The use of Beatle lyrics is lovely.
There is a rhythm to the story that is like a great rock’n’roll song. You get caught up in the energy when you read it the first time, and then you can’t get it out of your head.
And now, you have the book in your hands. You’re welcome.
The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (www.iamtw.org) is pleased to announce the nominees for the 2014 Scribe Awards, recognizing excellence in the field of media tie-in writing: books based on movies, TV shows and games. The winners will be announced and awards presented in July at a ceremony and panel discussion at the San Diego Comic-Con.
