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Roddenberry, Scott, Emsh, & Wolfe: Hall of Famers

Roddenberry, Scott, Emsh, & Wolfe: Hall of Famers

Did you know there was a Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle? Maybe it has something to do with the Space Needle, or the underground city, or the fact that you’ve got to do something while on all that coffee.

One of the things you might be able to do on June 16th is attend their annual Hall of Fame awards. This year, Master of Ceremonies and author Neal Stephenson will be inducting artist Ed Emshwiller, teevee / movie producer/writer Gene Roddenberry, director Ridley Scott  and author Gene Wolfe. They will be joining such people as Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, Ursula K. Le Guin, Mary Shelley and Isaac Asimov.

Tickets for the June 16 induction ceremony will be available for purchase on Monday, April 30 for EMP/SFM members ($40) and Monday, May 7 for the general public ($50). The evening will include a seated dessert reception and ceremony.

Down to Earth catch-up

Down to Earth catch-up

Happy Earth Day!  Hope you’re all recycling your comics at your nearest libraries, hospitals, etc.  And speaking of recycling, here are our regular columns from this past week:

I’m going to listen to Mellifluous Mike Raub‘s latest podcasts at my Mom’s house here in the wilds of the Jersey shore area:

Mom may be reading the Sunday paper today but I’ll take Earth-friendly pixels any time; save me them trees!

MIKE BARON on writing

MIKE BARON on writing

Writers are people who have to write. They write every day. They don’t talk about it, they do it. People who don’t write every day are not serious writers. All right. Five days a week, minimum. This is about writing comic books, but it applies to all fiction.

You must know your craft, the rules of grammar, how to conjugate a verb. Don’t get nervous. Most of you already know this without the fancy labels. I see, you see, he sees. It is part of your instinctive grasp of English. Everyone needs a little book of rules. For the writer, it is Elements of Style by Strunk and White. This slim volume has been in continuous publication since 1935. It takes an hour to read and is quite droll. Buy a used copy. Do not get the illustrated version. It has been bowdlerized in the name of pc.

All good fiction, whether comics or otherwise, is built around character. We humans are mostly interested in our own kind. The more interesting your protagonist, the better your story. Stories start with people. The TV show House on Fox is a perfect example. Hugh Laurie’s character is so thorny and unpredictable people tune in week after week out of fascination with his personality. Same thing with Batman, since Denny O’Neil straightened him out. Prior to O’Neil, Batman wandered from mood to mood, often “humorous,” seldom entertaining. Denny made Batman a self-righteous obsessive-compulsive. Obsession is always interesting.

While it’s possible to grow a great story out of pure plot, sooner or later it will hinge on the characters of your protagonists. “Character is destiny” holds true in fiction as well as life. Know who your characters are before you start writing. Some writers construct elaborate histories for each character before they begin. It is not a bad idea. Start with people then add the plot. Get a bulletin board. Write each character’s name and salient characteristics on a 3 x 5 card and tack it to the bulletin board. You can do the same with plot points. You can move characters and plot points around to alter your chronology.

What is plot? It’s a dynamic narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. It’s like a good pop song. It has to have a hook. Sometimes that hook is simply the narrator’s voice. Huckleberry Finn succeeds mostly on the strength of Huck’s voice, by which I mean the way he presents words. In other words, it’s not the meat, it’s the motion. It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it. Huck comes alive through his words, which are fresh and immediate. We feel we know Huck. Same thing with Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. It’s that world-weary, cynical with a heart-of-gold voice whispering in your ear. “He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.” Chandler also said, “A good story cannot be devised, it has to be distilled.” In other words, start with character and let character find the plot.

Comic writers think visually. No matter how bad our chops, we can pretty much describe what we see in words. Some of us can even draw a little bit. I used to write comica by drawing every page out by hand – everything – all the tiny details, facial expressions, warped anatomy, half-assed perspective, all word balloons and captions. Editors and artists loved it. Why? Because they had everything they needed on one page instead of spread across three pages of single-spaced type. Some of the most successful writers in the industry write very densely. Each script is a phone book.

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Neal Adams does the ComicMix Big Weekend Broadcast

Neal Adams does the ComicMix Big Weekend Broadcast

The weekend is here – and the ComicMix Pop Culture Buffet is wide open with healthy servings of sold out Marvels, stuffed bookshelves from DC, a sprinkling of Michael Ian Black, Neal Adams laying claim to Batman, farewell to Rourke & Tatoo and a bit of hard love from the guy we loved as Lamont Cranston, "clutching forks and knives, to eat the bacon…"

Lots of Wonder Woman from the 40s and the black-and-white 50s, revisit one of Superman’s various deaths, and we put some uncomfortable music to the Dark Knight. All this and all that, by pressing this button:

Happy 70th Birthday, Daffy!*

Happy 70th Birthday, Daffy!*

It was seventy years ago that Tex Avery’s masterpiece Porky’s Duck Hunt premiered in theaters, featuring the world premiere of a certain bouncing black duck that we all dubbed as Daffy. It was also the first cartoon that Mel Blanc did the voice of Porky Pig.

Mike’s wife Linda would never let us hear the end of it if we didn’t pay tribute to her favorite character of all time. So, for your dining and dancing pleasure and after a brief ad, here’s a colorized version of the very first Daffy Duck cartoon, Porky’s Duck Hunt

* Okay, the film premiered on April 17, 1937, so it’s a few days late. You expected respect at this date in the game?

 

Spidey site live

Spidey site live

The Spider-Man Week in NYC site has gone live!  Sony’s site features an interactive map, countdown clock, events listing, links and pretty much all the bells and whistles you’d expect.  Spider-Man Week officially begins on Monday, April 30.

And yes, there’s a link to Free Comic Book Day.  Looks like this is one year where it absolutely paid off to link FCBD to a comic book movie opening!

The Super-Duper Friends to the rescue!

The Super-Duper Friends to the rescue!

Sometimes you just have to have faith that something fun will turn up by day’s end.  Found this one yesterday making the blog-rounds:

Yes, it’s got a political point of view.  So does breathing, nowadays.

Who’s a Trekkie?

Who’s a Trekkie?

Well, not Doctor Who — but Freema Agyeman, the actress who plays the Doctor’s current assistant, Martha Jones, certainly is:

And apparently, Star Trek had an impact on Christopher Eccleston, too…

Hat tip to Sailorboy for the initial photo.

Persepolis film bows at Cannes

Persepolis film bows at Cannes

The lineup for the 2007 Cannes Film Festival has been unveiled, and Marjane Satrapi’s much-anticipated Persepolis, based on her graphic novel, will be among the films competing.  Here’s a shot of Satrapi, who currently lives in France, from last year’s festival, flanked by actress Chiara Mastroianni and "Persepolis" co-writer/director Vincent Paronnaud:

Also selected were Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof and Michael Moore’s new documentary Sicko.  Separate films, we’re certain.  The festival will take place from May 16 through 27.

MARTHA THOMASES: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

MARTHA THOMASES: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

The horrific events this week at Virginia Tech have elicited the usual pompous political rhetoric about the evils of Hollywood entertainment – violent video games, rap music, movies and television are to blame. “Our kids are being trained to be murderers,” thunder the politicians. “They learn to shoot at their enemies instead of reasoning with them. They become calloused by this violence, which dehumanizes others. Let us regulate this evil, lest our children slaughter us in our beds.”

Except that’s not how it works. If the media were that effective, we would all be effective code crackers, physically fit from our active lifestyles, enjoying out fabulously large New York apartments. That’s what the non-violent media teaches.

I’ve been a non-violent activist since high school, where I regularly risked expulsion by distributing an anti-war magazine. I dropped out of college for 18 months to work with the War Resisters League, and I now serve on the Board of Directors for the A. J. Muste Institute (http://www.ajmuste.org). Doing this work, I’ve met a lot of people who are deeply and thoughtfully concerned about popular culture, and think it degrades people. After decades of rational and reasonable conversation, I need to disagree.

In Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence, author (and sometimes comic book writer) Gerard Jones examines why children enjoy playing at violence, and why it can be a good thing for them. If I may grossly over-simplify an entire book into a few sentences, he says that children play to work out their feelings, including anger, frustration and helplessness. It’s far better to pretend to kill the monsters with rayguns or laser beams than to hit another kid because he’s got better stuff in his lunchbox than you do.

Kids aren’t the only ones who feel this way. As a human being and a New Yorker, I face frustration dozens of times a day. The traffic lights are slow, the tourists don’t know how to walk down a city sidewalk so other people can pass them, my neighbors don’t clean up after their dogs. I think about killing them all the time. Because I’m an adult, and because I understand that actions have consequences, I don’t do these things. Instead, I watch Kill Bill or read Punisher.

I also understand that other people have feelings. This understanding did as much to shape my politics as anything else – I saw people on television, dying in Viet Nam, realized I didn’t want to die, and the people I saw, even the Communists, probably didn’t want to die, either. From there, I could see that the people making the decisions to go to war weren’t the ones fighting, but they and their friends were getting rich.

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