Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Danger Will Robinson! Alarums and excursions! Better watch out, better not cry, better not pout…Beware! Mayday! Here there be dragons! Detour, there’s a muddy road ahead…
Okay, enough of that.
What I’m warning you about is the ending of The Bourne Ultimatum, now playing at a multiplex near you, recipient of good reviews, maker of serious bucks and, in the opinion of residents of this house, a pretty good popcorn flick.
The Washington Post profiles Hate! cartoonist Peter Bagge, focusing on his current work for the magazine Reason.
Comic Book Resources infiltrated a Comic-Con panel with Matt Wagner talking about 25 years of Grendel – and they report back what they learned.
Wizard interviews Mouse Guard creator David Petersen.
Heidi MacDonald video-interviews Scott McCloud, creator of Making Comics (and, of course, Zot!).
The Orange County Register talks to Kevin J. Anderson about Slan Hunter, the novel he completed from A.E. Van Vogt’s outline and incomplete draft.
Forbes quotes from a USA Today interview with J.K. Rowling, in which she mentions that she’s already working on two non-fantasy projects – one for children and one for adults.
Jennifer Fallon loves Wile E. Coyote, and doesn’t care who knows it. (She also lists Chuck Jones’s very interesting rules for Roadrunner cartoons, which show just how much of a brilliant formal exercise those shorts were.)
But Wouldn’t It Be Cool? lists nine reasons that he reads SF.
The Philadelphia Inquirer uses the Harry Potter hook to look at Christian fantasy. (The Washington Post has a similar story today as well.)
Nine MSN News promotes the Australian writer John Flanagan and his series for young readers, “Ranger’s Apprentice.”
Tech Digest asks and answers: what is steampunk?
SF Signal has posted the final lists for their Harry Potter Outreach Program, designed to drag Potter readers (kicking and screaming, if necessary) over to the SF/Fantasy shelves and get them to read more stuff that they’ll like.
Adventures in SciFi Publishing’s 27th podcast features an interview with Sarah Beth Durst, author of the new young-readers novel Into the Wild. (And some other things, like another installment of “Ask an Author” with Tobias Buckell.)
In honor of Daniel Radcliffe’s roving eyes, today here’s a picture of what Emma Watson looks like on a regular movie screen, and what she looks like in IMAX 3-D. Quite a difference, eh? (And if you want to see the photo I almost used here — which is probably not safe for work, and presumably is from Daniel Radcliffe’s stage work in Equus earlier this year in London — it’s here. The caption would have been something like "Hey! That’s not Hermione!")
NPR interviews Arthur Levine, J.K. Rowling’s American editor.
The Philadelphia Inquirer profiles J.K. Rowling.
The Guardian profiles Christopher Little, Rowling’s famously tough agent.
My god, even Eddie Campbell has gotten into the act. Must everyone in the whole wide world write about Harry Potter?
The San Jose Mercury News, running a bit behind, files the standard Harry Potter story (interviews with kids, librarians, and booksellers; lots of impressive numbers; thumbnail history) that everyone else was doing last week.
KansasCity.com thinks the Harry Potter readers will be writing their own fantasy novels in six years. (So, agents, if you start getting a flood of boy wizards in 2014, remember that Kansas City called it first.)
Newsday, from bucolic Long Island, New York, gets a bunch of people to recommend other fantasy books for Potter readers.
Now that the movie’s been released, the articles are slowing down a bit, so Harry Potter Mania! will probably go on hiatus for a week or so — but you can be sure that local papers all over the country (and around the world) will be ready to run inane local stories on the 21st, when Deathly Hallows is published. (So, for now, enjoy another picture of Daniel Radcliffe taking note of his co-stars…accomplishments.)
The Hindu Business Line interviewed the CEO of Penguin India to learn about Harry Potter plans in their country. (Which are, honestly, not all that different from anyone else’s.)
AZ Central, not wanting to be left out, talked to some local booksellers (local in Arizona) about their Harry Potter plans and filed Standard Harry Potter Publication Story #3.
SF Scope puts on its reading glasses to parse a long Nielsen report on Harry Potter sales across many media. Short form: it makes a lot of money.
The Washington Post profiles Arthur Levine, J.K. Rowling’s US editor. [via GalleyCat]
Publishers Weekly’s Book Maven blog tries to spark some discussion, and create yet another version of the fabled list of books that teenagers won’t be able to stop themselves from reading, in the wake of yesterday’s big New York Times article about Mr. Potter.
I should warn you about these link-lists: Mondays tend to be longer than usual (since there’s a lot of content that goes up on the weekend, or early on Monday), and the beginning of the month tends to be longer than usual. Since we’re just past both of those things, this is going to be a really long one…
Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist reviews Dragons of the Highlord Skies by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
A.N. Wilson reviews Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go in the Telegraph.
SF Crowsnest reviews a whole bunch of things this week:
Effective next Monday, the Washington Post will be rearranging its comics page adding the strips Agnes and Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, as well as the "offbeat panels" Brevity and Speed Bump. In order to make room for these new comics, the Post will be dropping the panels The Flying McCoys and The Other Coast, as well as three strips — Broom-Hilda, Cathy, and Mary Worth — all coincidentally featuring women of A Certain Age.
The dropped strips and panels will still appear on the Post’s website, but considering how, a mere five years ago, they loved Cathy Guisewite enough to conduct a lengthy interview with her, many comics readers are perplexed about the move.
Jeff Smith does all the PR work so we don’t have to: His latest blog post links to all the mainstream (i.e., outside of the comics press) coverage given to the premiere issue of Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, including articles from Entertainment Weekly, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Washington Post and Las Vegas Weekly.
Vegas baby, Vegas! You know you’ve hit the big time now, Jeff! The second issue goes on sale in comic shops today.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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