Tagged: small

Marc Alan Fishman: Wizard World Redemption

Hello, everyone! After last week, I figured it’d only be fair that I give Wizard World a little hand up, since I was so quick to toss them into the gutter. Suffice to say I saw a ton of responses via Facebook, Twitter, etc. in support of my disappointing feelings at this past Wizard World Chicago. So, with all eyes from their ivory tower now squarely pointed at me*, I shall make an epic journey for Wizard, giving them the laundry list of things I’d like to see them do to reclaim their former convention glory.

Remember what started this whole shebang – comic books. Just because you can’t lay claim to the publishing giants does not mean with some delicate planning, you can’t land the amazing creators behind said publishers. Suffice to say, if you bring them, the fans will come. People love Marvel and DC. But they don’t come to the convention just because there’s a chance to see DC Direct action figures and snag some Marvel posters. More often than not? The mainstay of your crowd – the real comic fans – want a chance to meet the creators behind their favorite book. Whatever Wizard did to shun so many artists and writers? Well, it’s time to send out some apologetic gift baskets, and comp the way for the names that will draw in the most people.

And if you should be so lucky to entice a gaggle of cool creators, the next step is simple: plan a convention that celebrates the medium through intelligent discussion and good old-fashioned fun. What this means? Programming. Even in the larger convention halls, your crowd can peruse the show floor in about two hours, if they take it slow. This means that there is time in every show-goers’ schedule to enjoy something more than just spending their money.

In my youth, I recall amazingly fun panels: the Silver Age Trivia Contest, hosted by Mark Waid, the CBLDF Sketch-off, where top names like Jim Lee and Phil Hester jammed on audience suggestions for charity, as well as countless “how-to” panels where small gatherings of 50 or so fans got live demonstrations on everything from digital inking to script writing. At their core, the conventions are here to celebrate comics, not (just) corral all our cash.

Next up on the list? The non-comic stuff. Hey, I freely admit that these shows have grown to encapsulate all of Nerdtopia. And it’s cool if the show plays well with others. Comic geeks are also Trekkies, Jedis, Whovians, Vampires, and Otaku. So bring on the D-List Sci-Fi Channel celebutaunts. Bring on the retired WWE wrestlers. Create a dais of former Starfleet Captains and Wookies. Just don’t make them the sole reason to come. And better yet? Find a way to reduce the gouging. No need to pay for a show floor ticket, if you’re only there for some pictures. In the past, there was a nice area off the main floor where photo ops and autograph seekers could assemble. Do it again and you can bring back something all good shows have… a laid back traffic flow, instead of a jam of fanny packs and unwashed masses.

The last bit I’d like to touch on is something I yearn for: the promotion of the little guy. For a company like mine, these conventions are the single best way for us to gain a following. We sell books, hard, and do our best to connect to every fan that walks past our table and makes eye contact. With just a little help from show promoters (ahem, Wizard World…) we “indie guys” could have access to the fans en masse. And that could make all the difference in the world. Back when Wizard was huge, tickets came with a grab bag of materials. Offer the opportunity for indie creators to make samplers to place in these bags. Offer up panels to unknowns, who can help lead discussions, debates, tutorials, and demos. Con attendees interested in the content alone might then be converted into legit fans.

In short, Wizard World is well within the grasp of greatness. A few apologies, a few comps, and a few good planners could help take their show from the doldrums their in right now, and slowly rebuild them to be what they once were. The first step though is to admit there’s a problem. As the industry slowly crawls towards the advent of creator-owned content, the convention circuit will quickly become the single best way to connect fans to the industry. Don’t lose sight of that just because you can nab Sookie for a few autographs. We’re the reason these shows started, and dag nabbit, we’re the ones who can make them great again.

* I’m safely assuming that Wizard scours the net for mentions of their cons, and have no doubt flagged me as a ne’er-do-well on their hit list.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

 

Dennis O’Neil: Fantasize

First, check out John Ostrander’s column, found somewhere near the stuff you’re reading, and then imagine me shouting Amen into the Grand Canyon and listen to the seemingly endless echoes and finally consider this a small gloss on John’s work.

John cites the old how-to-write chestnut: Write what you know. Okay, first a slightly snarky hypothesis that’s not intended to insult, or even question, my pedagogical colleagues, just raise the tiniest bump in the dialogue: Maybe those who teach the aforementioned chestnut write what they know because that’s all they, themselves, can write. That’s not a knock: we’re all wired a bit differently and who’s to say that a talent for writing, if talent it be, doesn’t manifest in as many different ways as, say, a talent for music? No good or bad, just different. (Who’s your fave, Mozart or Bob Dylan? Oh – lucky you! – can you dig ‘em both?)

It seemed to me, back when I was giving this kind of matter some thought, that until recently there’s been a cultural bias against imaginative storytelling. “Realistic” (note punctuation) equals good: fantastic equals bad. So Hemingway is a good writer because he wrote about going down to the café in the afternoon to drink the good wine, and Bradbury is bad because he wrote about… Martians and stuff.

Second, a confession that, with any luck at all, will segue into an observation: Despite my having written 200 or so Batman stories, I have never waited on a shadowy rooftop for a heavily armed psychopath to arrive so I can give him such! a smack. I’ve never bent steel in my bare hands or changed the course of mighty rivers either, but I’ve written Superman stories. The Batman stories were easier and more fun.

Here we circle back to the chestnut. I think the reason I was more comfortable with Batman than with the undoubtedly estimable Superman has to do with writing… not what I know, but what I fantasize. Batman lives near my dreams: Superman, not so much. I’ve never daydreamed about having godlike powers – and let’s face it, Superman is a demigod, at least – but I could imagine, oh…running a marathon in 2:10? Punching out that bosun’s mate who clocked me solid at that bus stop in Cuba? We’re talking about feats that are difficult and even extraordinary – he was one tough bosun’s mate – but that are within human capabilities. Did you watch the Olympics this year?

Let’s revisit the chestnut one last time…No – let’s toss it out altogether and substitute a few words from Henry David Thoreau: Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

Maybe Hemingway dreamed of those cafés. And Bradbury? All those wonderful Martians…

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases Flies Back

 

REVIEW: “Friends With Boys” by Faith Erin Hicks

REVIEW: “Friends With Boys” by Faith Erin Hicks

Friends with Boys, the new graphic novel by Faith Erin Hicks (whose The War at Ellsmere I reviewed in a huge round-up month), has an oddly ill-fitting title; it’s the story of a teenager, Maggie, who is starting in a public highschool after her mother (who home-schooled her and her three older brothers — all of whom oddly seem to still be in the same school though there seems to be a few years in between her and her twin brothers and then the oldest one) ran away mysteriously. Maggie has trouble making friends with anyone, since she’s been so wrapped up in her family, but she’s a tomboy, and has been closer to boys (her brothers) her entire life. So being “Friends With Boys” isn’t really the big thing here — it’s that she’s in the company of people who aren’t family, or without her mother, or something along those lines. The title also makes her homeschooling sound more controlling or sinister, as if it were based on some controlling-young-women religion, and it isn’t like that at all.

But there’s nothing to stop Maggie from becoming friends with boys, or more than that — her brothers are friendly and supportive (if awfully rough-and-tumble) rather than over-protective, and even her father (the chief of police of their small town) is a support rather than an authority figure. Friends With Boys is somewhat the story of potential friendships for Maggie, but those friendships are with a brother and sister (Lucy and Alistair) that she meets at school, her brothers (as they work out their own conflicts), and a ghost that she’s been seeing in the local graveyard for the past seven years.

The ghost and the Alistair/Lucy friendship together drive much of the plot — Alistair, a mohawked punk, has a feud with the blond captain of the volleyball team (though, luckily, it’s not otherwise as cliched as that may sound), and Maggie is sure she knows what she has to do to put that ghost at rest. But, if Hicks has a message in Friends With Boys, it’s that things are more complicated than they look. There are several plot or thematic strands that are raised but never resolved — primarily among them the disappearance of Maggie’s mother just before the book starts — and the answers we do learn aren’t the ones we expected.

All of that makes Friends With Boys an excellent graphic novel for teens, its expected audience — it’s a story about walking out into a wider world, not entirely understanding it, making plans based on what you see — and then still not entirely understanding that world. So much fiction for teens tries to wrap everything up in one ball or another — that everything is horrible because adults, or that they can be perfect special snowflakes if they want, or some other pat explanation — that Hicks’ messy complications (and that’s without any kind of love-plot, too; how complicated will Maggie’s life get what that gets into the mix?) are a breath of cool air, like the dizzying view from a mountaintop. As this book ends, Maggie still hasn’t learned how to be friends with boys, but maybe she has learned how to be friends with her brothers, which is one step forward.

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REVIEW: “Jerusalem” by Guy Delisle

REVIEW: “Jerusalem” by Guy Delisle

Everyone has their niche, their two inches of ivory that they work over so closely with a fine-haired brush. Some niches are larger than others — project manager, superhero artist, war apologist, social novelist — but they all bind, more or less, around the edges. Some artists fight against that niche, and some embrace it.

Guy Delisle is a cartoonist — originally Canadian, though resident in France for some time — whose niche is creating books about the strange foreign cities he finds himself living and working in. First was Shenzhen (see my review), about time spent working as an animation supervisor in that Chinese city. Then came Pyongyang (see my review), in which the same job took him to that very odd, constricted North Korean capital. And then there was Burma Chronicles(see my review), by which point Delisle had transitioned to a full-time long-form cartoonist, and was accompanying his partner (a Médecins Sans Frontières administrator) to the capital of the country that wants the rest of us to call it Myanmar. (Somewhere in between, he also published two books of unsettling, mostly sex-role related cartoons — Aline and the Others and Albert and the Others — which I also reviewed.)

Delisle’s work typically has a crisp, clean line — as one would expect from an animator working in France — with a good eye for detail and enough description and narration to allow the drawing to be simple; he doesn’t try to cram everything into either words or art.

Recently, Delisle’s wife was posted by MSF to Israel for a year, and so, eventually, that experience turned itself into his most recent book, Jerusalem. It’s larger and more diffuse than those previous books, over 300 pages long, and filled with lots of small stories about Delisle’s and his family’s life in a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. (And that location is the first manifestation of what will be a major concern of Jerusalem: borders, both physical and mental, and how they interleave themselves, through walls and checkpoints and bus routes and roads and prejudices.)

Jerusalem doesn’t grapple directly with the legitimacy of the Israeli state, or of its treatment of Palestinians (or, conversely, with the actions of Palestinians and others against Israel), making it feel a bit politically naive at times. (Reading it in tandem with Sarah Glidden’s How to Understand Israel in 60 Days Or Less — see my review — would be interesting; Glidden was in Israel for a short time, on a tour, specifically as a tourist on a heritage tour designed to make her intensely pro-Israel, and intensively questioned the Palestinian situation, while Delisle lived in Israel for a year, mostly among vaguely pro-Palestinian expatriates, and lives the physical discomfort of the occupation without engaging with it on a theoretical level.)

Delisle’s job — besides writing books like Jerusalem — is a house-husband; he had two small children during that year, and just taking care of small children (even if they are in day-care part of the time) is massively time-consuming in ways that it’s hard to describe. When you wake up with a toddler, you get through the day somehow, and then wonder, at the end, what you actually did during the last sixteen hours. So Delisle isn’t as free to move around this year as he was in Shenzhen and Pyongyang — but, then again, those were shorter trips, so he had more time to immerse himself in Jerusalem (and, before that, in Burma), more time to live in those places rather than just passing through them.

Jerusalem is a discursive, rambling book, equally about daily life as an expatriate in East Jerusalem and the physical problems of just moving around so militarized and controlled a country [1] as it is about Delisle’s continuing attempts to sketch and draw and work on his cartoons when he has time away from his young children. It’s a long, looping story, circling back to those same few concerns — time to sketch, physical access, which day things will be open — and is more obsessed with time (the right day, the right time of day, enough time to do something while the kids are in day-care) than one would expect. Throughout, Delisle is an interesting and thoughtful guide to Israel, showing us the things he did and saw and thought, and what it was like to live in that place for that time. I expect some people will be unhappy at Delisle’s take on the Israel-Palestine situation — people on either end of that argument, because as much as he engages with it, he’s somewhere in the middle — but that’s an occupational hazard when you create books about your time in odd, contested, unlikely places. Delisle is always honest, and shows us what he sees and feels: you can’t ask for more than that.

[1] His partner was posted in Gaza for most of this trip, and the one crossing into Gaza is more tightly controlled than any other gate in Israel.

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Mindy Newell: Butterflies Are Timey-Wimey

Before I get started – or let’s pretend that I have just stopped time – just want to say regarding Martha Thomases’ column of last week:

Shit, Martha, why the fuck didn’t I think of writing that?

•     •     •     •     •

See, about two months ago I hurt my middle finger at work. It got caught between a stretcher and a door. The noted and very adorable Dr. Christopher Doumas used the C-arm to check it out. Nothing was broken – be thankful for small miracles, right? – but there was plenty of soft tissue damage, meaning I bruised the fascia, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Plus broken capillaries and such. Which caused my ahem middle finger to swell up and turn several shades of purple.

But you know how they say that soft tissue damage hurts worse than a broken bone? – well, maybe you don’t, but trust me, they do say that – so believe me when I tell you:

Goddamn, it hurt!

Anyway, I had to write an incident report, which meant I had to go to the boss’s office. The boss is from the Midwest, and, imho, the outfit that owns my ambulatory surgery center reflects that what’s the matter with Kansas? mentality. So I’m sitting there trying to write, which was extremely difficult because said middle finger was on my right hand, and I’m a “righty” – the only thing about me that is.

Just trying to use the keyboard was a pain in the ass – or finger – and I muttered “Fuck, that hurts.”

My what’s the matter with Kansas? boss looked very disturbed. Did she say, “I’m so sorry, Mindy.” Did she say, “Do you want an Advil?” Did she cluck and coo and offer other bromides?

Nope.

She said, “Don’t use that language. It’s not professional.”

I looked at her. I thought are you kidding me?

And I said:

“I’m from New York.”

 

•     •     •     •     •

I will now allow time to resume its normal linear course.

I have always, always loved time-travel stories.

Last night I was watching The Timey-Wimey Of Doctor Who on BBC America when, all of a sudden during a commercial break, I remembered a Silver Age Superboy story in which the Boy of Steel discovers the origin of Cinderella’s glass slipper – all of which inspired me to write about time travel today. Anyway, I was sure the Cinderella story was featured on the cover. But guess what I discovered when doing my due diligence?

The Cinderella thingy was only a “side-trip” in a very famous and critical-to-DC-mythology story written by Robert Bernstein and penciled and inked by George Pepp. The story was “Superboy’s Big Brother” (Superboy #89, June 1961), featuring the introduction of Mon-El – whom I’ve also always loved, but that’s a topic for another day and another column. Leaving Mon-El to hang out at the Kent home with his parents, Clark goes to school ‘cause he has a test he can’t skip. I guess it was an English class, or maybe history, or maybe even creative writing because one of the questions on the test is about the origin of fairy tales and uses the Cinderella story as an example.  Clark remembers meeting the real Cinderella in the past. I guess to jog his memory – although since Superboy has super-memory I don’t know why it needs jogging – he decides to revisit the past to make sure he’s got the details right.

Clark asks permission to get a drink of water. (The teacher says okay, which means allowing him to leave the room during a test. Try doing that these days, kids!) Changing into Superboy, he flies through the time barrier to Egypt, circa 4,000 B.C. He takes a drink of water from the Nile – ‘cause, you know Superboy never tells a lie, and this way he can honestly tell the teacher that he got his drink of water. While getting his allotment of H2O, he sees an eagle steal a sandal from a girl putting a bassinet made from reeds into the Nile. There’s a baby inside. It floats down the Nile to where the Pharaoh’s daughter is bathing. The Pharaoh’s daughter finds the baby in the bassinette, and names him Moses….

Strike that.

Superboy is about to go after the eagle when that super-memory of his is jogged once again, so he does nothing. Instead he watches as the bird drops the sandal in the Pharaoh’s palace. The Pharaoh searches for the woman whose foot fits the sandal. He finds her and makes her his queen. Aha! thinks Superboy. This is the Cinderella story he came back in time to see. Now it’s time to go back to school and finish that test.

So Clark writes up the story, but the teacher says he has no proof, so only gives him an 89. (Guess it wasn’t a creative writing class after all.) And Clark isn’t unhappy, because if he had aced it, the teacher might suspect he’s Superboy because Clark is so smart. (Huh?)

Meanwhile, suspecting that Mon-El is lying about being his brother – um, excuse me, but aren’t you the one who assumed that he was, Clark? – Superboy exposes Mon-El to a meteorite that looks like Kryptonite but is really made of lead.

Oops. Your bad, Superboy.

Mon-El is really Lar Gand, a native of the planet Daxam. And Daxamites can’t handle lead. In fact, it kills them. Like the Roach Motel: once they check in, they don’t check out. Swearing that one day he will find a cure to the fatal lead poisoning, Superboy has no choice but to send Mon-El to the Phantom Zone in order to save his life.

Leading in a timey-winey, butterfly effect way to the other time travel story that added-to-the-DC-mythology big time, the introduction of the Legion of Super-Heroes (Adventure Comics #247, April 1958, by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino). And if I have to recount that story, you shouldn’t call yourself a comics fan! J The Legion traveled through the time barrier by means of a “time bubble,” which maybe was inspired by the bubble in which Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, travels to Oz. Only they don’t ask Superboy if he is a witch. They also don’t think Krypto is a witch.

It was Brainiac 5 of the Legion of Super-Heroes who, in “The Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire” revealed that he had discovered a permanent cure for Mon-El. This happened in Adventure Comics #330, March 1962, by Jerry Siegel and John Forte. This is only a year for us poor Earth-Prime Homo sapiens who are cursed to experience time in a this-way-forward linear manner, but it was about twenty centuries as a phantom for poor Lar Gand.

No wonder he went nuts.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten, Esq

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis, PhD

 

stainless-steel-rat-1-1192910

Harry Harrison: 1925-2012

stainless-steel-rat-1-1192910Harry Harrison, best known for his character Jim DiGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, and the novel Make Room! Make Room! (adapted into film as Soylent Green) died yesterday at the age of 87.

Harrison started as a comics illustrator in 1947, notably with EC Comics’ two science fiction comic books, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science, as well as a short stint on Blackhawk for Quality, and various war, western, and romance comics– even western romance comics. Harrison was one of Wally Wood’s early employers and the man who brought Woody to EC.

He also edited comics in the 50s for very small publishers. He used house names such as Wade Kaempfert and Philip St. John to edit magazines, and has published other fiction under the names Felix Boyd, Hank Dempsey, and even as Leslie Charteris on the novel Vendetta For The Saint. Harrison also wrote for syndicated comic strips, creating the Rick Random character and writing the Flash Gordon comic strip during the 50s and 60s.

Harrison is now much better known for his writing, particularly his humorous and satirical science fiction, such as the Stainless Steel Ratseries (which was adapted into a comics series by Kelvin Gosnell and Carlos Ezquerra) and the novel Bill, the Galactic Hero (which satirizes Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers). But he may be best known for Make Room! Make Room! which was adapted into film under the title Soylent Green— which (spoiler alert) is delicious.

He is survived by two children, Todd and Moira. Our condolences to his family, friends, and fans.

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Remembering Joe Kubert

  • News
  • August 13, 2012

Joe Kubert’s distinct art style was one of the earliest I recall being able to identify. It seemed such a perfect fit the DC war titles and I was always pleasantly surprised to see the occasional superhero cover during the 1960s. I didn’t really get a sense of his lengthy tenure in comics until he was spotlighted in an issue of DC Special.

Then came Tarzan. I knew of the character but had not then read Burroughs or the Gold Key comics so this was an eye-popping revelation. It was my first sustained exposure to the jungle lord and Kubert’s artwork seemed an ideal fit. Thanks to DC’s expanded reprint program through the 1970s, I was exposed to more and more of his work and recognized a true artist.

In the summer of 1980, I was briefly on staff at DC prior to beginning my career at Starlog Press and I wound up spending a lot of time in Ross Andru’s office. It was small and cramped, but he sat at his drawing board working up covers or layout covers for others. At the same, all cover art was passed under his nose and it was through his tutelage that I grasped how carefully Kubert constructed his covers and he drew for color, something I had never considered before. At first I would see the artwork and wonder where the blacks were to give the cover weight but then I would see the color guide and it suddenly made sense and worked wonderfully.

Joe and I became nodding acquaintances when I finally joined DC in 1984 and he contributed pages to Who’s Who but we never did more work together and remained friendly enough. At some point, Ðìçk Giordano asked me and Mike Gold to reread the five issues that Joe had completed of The Redeemer, a project DC ballyhooed in 1983 before yanking the project for various reasons. It was a rare treat to see stuff that no one else had. Unfortunately, the conclusion was that the time for such a work had passed and it was quietly canceled and the rights returned to Joe.

I admired and respected his work and the school, which by then was feeding the comics companies’ voracious need for talent. I then learned he was doing work for overseas publishers and I really wanted to see them. Thankfully, several, such as Abraham Stone made it over here and I distinctly recall one San Diego show, I actually waited on line for something like an hour or longer to buy a copy and have the blank first page graced with a Kubert sketch. I watched as Joe made small talk with the fan as he knocked off a flawless head shot of Sgt. Rock or one of his other characters. When it was my turn, he perfunctorily opened the book, said hi and asked what I wanted then looked up. Recognizing me, he broke into a big grin and was very pleased I had waited in line. The patience was rewarded with a wonderful full figure Tarzan.

We’d see one another at cons through the years, chatting ever so briefly since he was usually surrounded by fans, friends, and other professionals he had worked with through the years. As a result, I was delighted to hear we would both be at the Grenada Convention in 2010. For several days, we would share meals and conversation, with Joe talking to me about the early days of comics and chatted with Deb about the general world. He was good natured, usually sketching when he wasn’t eating, explaining he couldn’t help himself. Despite the language barrier, he expressed his appreciation and enthusiasm for the work of artists, shyly showing the master their portfolios.

We last saw one another, the usual handshake, smile and quick “how are you?” at Baltimore Comic-Con last fall. I was looking forward to seeing him again at the show next month. And then I received the word that he had shockingly, unexpectedly, passed away yesterday after a brief illness.

Joe broke in at the beginning of his teenage years. He worked his way up, improving his craft with every passing year. Long after he retired from editing at DC and then as the work from the majors dried up, he continued to write and draw graphic novels that essentially took over from where Will Eisner left off. Look at his output over the last 20 years and it’s an incredible achievement for any creator let alone the final chapter of one man’s career. Works like Yossel and Fax from Sarajevo are must read volumes. There’s still a bunch of work out there that needs to be translated and brought here so we can enjoy fresh Kubert for a little while longer.

He rarely had a cross word for anyone, always smiling and being as encouraging as possible. His legacy is certainly one of the broadest of any creator thanks to not only the generations of graduates but his own kids, Adam and Andy, who continue to push artistic boundaries.

The likes of Joe Kubert won’t be seen again and we’re all the poorer for it.

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Mindy Newell: A World Of Pure Imagination

Charlie Bucket lived with his mom and his grandparents in a dirty, downtrodden industrial city that used to be a thriving center of commerce, with factories making cars and furniture and steel and zippers and paper clips. The citizens of the city were happy to work in the factories, because they were well-paid and had wonderful benefits thanks to their unions, and all their kids were able to go to college because of the money they were able to save and the national student loan program. But then all the factories moved to China and Vietnam and India and Malaysia because the CEOs of the companies who owned the factories needed more money for more corporate jets and limousines and private islands and new mansions with elevators for their cars, and the people in China and Vietnam and India and Malaysia didn’t have unions that forced the CEOs to give wonderful wages and pesky pensions and hardy health insurance to their slaves…uh, I mean, employees.

So all the factories in Charlie’s city closed – except for one, Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Charlie’s father died because he didn’t have health insurance, and Charlie and his mom got kicked out of their 3 BR, 2 BATH, RMS W/VU apartment overlooking the harbor because the Social Security money which they depended on had been privatized, and when the market crashed, there went the monthly checks for Mrs. Bucket and Charlie. They had to move to a little, tiny house that was really too small for the two of them, and then Mr. and Mrs. Bucket’s parents came to live with them because their homes were foreclosed after the mortgage securities crisis, so things were really crowded in the little house.

Charlie tried to help out by delivering newspapers, which is how the family found out that Mr. Willy Wonka, sole owner and proprietor of the one factory left in town, had hidden five Golden Tickets in the wrappings of his Wonka Bars. The five people who found the Golden Tickets would not only win a lifetime supply of Willy Wonka chocolate, but also be taken on a private tour of the factory.

Four of the tickets are bought and found by Klaus Rave, a man who looks just like the chief pig in Animal Farm; twin brothers named Donny and Cain Coke, who are very rich and give money to philanthropic organizations like Success For All Amerikans and The Birthright Society; Alice Coltrane, a girl with a sassy, big mouth known for making hilarious barbs; and a boy named Pablo Rico, who saved up all his Social Security money after his father died and used it to go to college. But he doesn’t like women too much.

There’s only one ticket left, and Charlie is sure he is going to find it. But then it is announced that an eccentric millionaire who claims to wear magic underwear bought the final ticket. His name is Mingus Wilbur Rosary.

So Charlie is among all the other onlookers as Klaus and Donny and Cain and Alice and Pablo are greeted by Willy Wonka and led inside the magical, wonderful, chocolate factory.

Inside Willy Wonka has them all sign a contract before the tour can begin. There is lots of small print on it, and everybody grumbles, but they all sign it, because Klaus and Donny and Cain and Alice and Pablo and the eccentric millionaire whose name is Mingus Wilbur Rosary really want to get inside and look around.

The factor is full of mind-blowing, mouth-watering, stomach-rumbling marvels like a real chocolate river, tasty flowers and mushrooms, and even delicious wallpaper. Wonka’s workers – considered the luckiest people in town, not only because they have a good job with benefits and a guaranteed pension, but also because they work for Willy Wonka – are all hard at worker. Willie Wonka warns his guests not to touch anything unless he says it’s okay, but Klaus and Donny and Cain and Alice and Pablo and the eccentric millionaire whose name is Mingus Wilbur Rosary ignore him, and one by one, they disappear.

Klaus gets sucked into the chocolate works, after falling into the chocolate river from which he was trying to drink. Donny turns into a giant blueberry after chewing on a piece of Three-Course Dinner Gum, which was still in the experimental stages. Cain falls down a garbage chute that is for the “bad eggs” in the Chocolate Golden Egg Sorting room. Alice opens her big mouth and makes some sassy barbs about Wonkavision television, and finds herself stuck in a TV land where there are no commercial breaks and she can’t go to the bathroom.

The eccentric millionaire whose name is Mingus Wilbur Rosary sneaks into the Bubble Room and tastes the Fizzy Lifting Drinks. He starts to float up, up, up, and is nearly whisked into an exhaust fan on the ceiling. But he starts burping to let out the fizz and floats back down to the floor.

The tour is over. Willy Wonka says goodbye to the eccentric millionaire whose name is Mingus Wilbur Rosary, but before he can leave, the eccentric millionaire whose name is Mingus Wilbur Rosary demands his lifetime supply of chocolate. But Willy Wonka tells him he has violated the terms of the contract by tasting the Fizzy Lifting Drinks, and snaps out the signed contract to emphasize this.

But suddenly the eccentric millionaire whose name is Mingus Wilbur Rosary pulled his own contract out of his magic underwear and flaunts it in Willy Wonka’s face. He revealed that Klaus, Donny, Cain, and Alice are all actually employees of the eccentric millionaire whose name is Mingus Wilbur Rosary, and they have actually worked together, through the lawyers of the Success For Amerikans Organization and The Birthright Society, to have become the primary shareholders of the Chocolate Factory, with the eccentric millionaire whose name is Mingus Wilbur Rosary as Chairman, President, and CEO.

“We are moving the Chocolate Factory to China, Vietnam, India, and Malaysia,” said the eccentric Chairman, President, and CEO of the Chocolate Factory whose name is Mingus Wilbur Rosary.

“You can’t do this!” said Willie Wonka.

“I can, and it’s already done. Look around, Mr. Wonka.

Willy Wonka looked around. All his workers were gone, and men in black suits and dark sunglasses were supervising other men in overalls as they took down and broke apart the Chocolate Factory.

“And you, Mr. Willy Wonka, are out of a job.”

Artwork courtesy of The Daily Share.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

 

John Ostrander: Redshirts

I love to read. I have ever since I was very small. I startled my parents when I started reading the milk cartons and cereal boxes aloud when I was in pre-school. I love it when a book sweeps me up and takes me wherever it is set. The genre doesn’t matter – fiction/nonfiction, history/memoir, sci-fi/fantasy, mystery/western – just tell me a good story and I’m yours. If I don’t have a good book to read somewhere around the house, I get a little hinky.

If the author wastes my time by not telling me a good story, I get a little irate.

Fortunately, John Scalzi tells a very good story with his new novel, Redshirts (Tor books, hardcover). Tells a very funny, engrossing and ultimately thoughtful story in a novel that includes three codas at the end. Tells a story that will strike very close to home for Star Trek fans, especially those of the original series.

SPOILER NOTE: I’ll give some things away about the plot as this review goes forward. Can’t discuss the story without talking about the story but I’ll try to give away as little as I can. This is as much warning as you’ll get.

The story is set in the Universal Union, mostly aboard its flagship, the Intrepid, and Ensign Andrew Dahl is happy to be posted to it – until he notes something odd. There are all these away missions and the command crew, the captain, the chief science officer, and the astrogator are assigned along with some low level member of the crew. Like ensigns. There’s just about always a fatality but not among the command crew although the astrogator can get hurt really bad but recovers within a week. Odd, to say the least.

These moments come and go but, when they come, it’s as if the crewmembers aren’t really in control of their actions. As it turns out, they’re not.

Turns out that, in an alternate universe/timeline, they’re all characters in a cheesy Star Trek knockoff TV show and their lives are being controlled by a bunch of hack writers. Dahl and an intrepid group of fellow Intrepid redshirts have to travel backwards/sideways/whatever in time/space/dimensions/whatever via a means familiar to Star Trek fans to somehow stop these writers (mainly the head writer) from probably killing them for cheesy dramatic reasons, usually just before the commercial break.

The story owes something of its concept to the wonderful movie Stranger Than Fiction (my favorite Will Ferrell movie and maybe my only fave Will Ferrell movie) and acknowledges that but also, to my mind, owes its tone to an equally wonderful movie, Galaxy Quest, which it doesn’t acknowledge. There are flaws: many of the characters are identified only by their last names and are more a collection of characters traits then characters. On the other hand, that may be deliberate since the book satirizes that way of creating support characters on TV and indeed elsewhere. Take a character trait from column A, column B, and column C and provide a name and – bingo! – instant character. To my mind, they also sounded quite a bit alike but what they said was often funny and entertaining. I just had trouble telling them apart sometimes.

The book is clever and light which makes it great for summer reading. It doesn’t get particularly deep until the three codas that follow the end of the story proper. They’re like three short stories using minor characters in the main book. Here Scalzi plays more with the concepts brought up in the main story. I can see why they are separate – the tones wouldn’t work in the primary narrative but they’re very worth reading and add a great deal to the overall book.

Recommended. It also makes me very sure that I never want John Gaunt to find a way to meet me. I’ve done too many nasty things to GrimJack all in the name of compelling narrative and I think he would hurt me bad. So – shhhh! Don’t tell him where I live.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

FORTIER TAKES ON ‘DRAGON KINGS OF THE ORIENT’!

  • News
  • August 4, 2012
ALL PULP REVIEWS by Ron Fortier
DRAGON KINGS OF THE ORIENT
By Percival Constantine
Pulpwork Press
177 pages
This terrific, fast paced fantasy action thriller is the second in the Elisa Hill, Myth Hunter series and even better than the first; no small feat.  Elisa Hill is a hunter of lost artifacts made famous in ancient lore.  Along with her mentor, Max Finch, and the Japanese kitsune, a type of were-fox changeling, Asami, she finds herself caught in a titanic contest between ancient oriental deities and a roguish creature of legend known as the Monkey King.
It is through this fabled half-human, half-simian being that they discover the four Dragon Kings are about to unleash their centuries old plot to dominate the world and make all mankind their slaves.  This they will accomplish by their powers to control the oceans of the world and wreaking havoc wherever necessary to force the various countries of the world to bow to their commands.
Now only Elisa, her two companions and an agent from the super secret Freemasons society are all that stand between total disaster and salvation. But can even these unique characters prove strong enough to win the day?
In this age of the popular urban fantasy genre, we seem to be inundated with more and more series featuring sparkly vampires, sexy witches and zombie private eyes.  Enough for this reader to yell, “Uncle!”  Constantine’s “Dragon Kings of the Orient,” packs more wall-to-wall action than any of ten of those other wimpy titles combined.  Being an American teacher in Japan, he has a unique, personal perspective on the Far East and its culture and uses it to great advantage in this rousing adventure tale. 
In the past, he has offered us other series but none of them can hold a candle to this one. Elisa Hill is a truly original, fun character and I hope we get to read many more of he exploits along with those of her truly remarkable supporting cast.  People, this book is a solid must read!

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