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Deadpool 2 Super Duper $@%!#& Cut & SDCC Details Revealed

20th Century Home Entertainment has announced the August 21 release of Deadpool 2 on Digital HD and disc, including a Deadpool 2 Super Duper $@%!#& Cut,  with 15 minutes of brand-new action and jokes lovingly inserted throughout. Additionally, a series of celebratory events have been planned for next week’ds Comic-Con International in San Diego.

DEADPOOL 2 4K ULTRA HD + BLU-RAYTM + DIGITAL (INCLUDES THEATRICAL VERSION AND SUPER DUPER $@%!#& CUT)

4K Bonus Features

  • Audio Commentary by Ryan Reynolds, David Leitch, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Theatrical Version Only)

Blu-rayTM Bonus Features

  • Gag Reel
  • Deleted/Extended Scenes
  • Until Your Face Hurts: Alt Takes
  • Deadpool’s Lips are Sealed: Secrets and Easter Eggs
  • The Most Important X-Force Member
  • Deadpool Family Values: Cast of Characters
  • David Leitch Not Lynch: Directing DP2
  • Roll with the Punches: Action and Stunts
  • The Deadpool Prison Experiment
  • Chess with Omega Red
  • Swole and Sexy
  • “3-Minute Monologue”
  • Audio Commentary by Ryan Reynolds, David Leitch, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Theatrical Version Only)
  • Deadpool’s Fun Sack 2
  • Stills (28 Images)

DEADPOOL 2 BLU-RAY™ + DIGITAL (INCLUDES THEATRICAL VERSION AND SUPER DUPER $@%!#& CUT)

Blu-rayTM Bonus Features

  • Gag Reel
  • Deleted/Extended Scenes
  • Until Your Face Hurts: Alt Takes
  • Deadpool’s Lips are Sealed: Secrets and Easter Eggs
  • The Most Important X-Force Member
  • Deadpool Family Values: Cast of Characters
  • David Leitch Not Lynch: Directing DP2
  • Roll with the Punches: Action and Stunts
  • The Deadpool Prison Experiment
  • Chess with Omega Red
  • Swole and Sexy
  • “3-Minute Monologue”
  • Audio Commentary by Ryan Reynolds, David Leitch, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Theatrical Version Only)
  • Deadpool’s Fun Sack 2
  • Stills (28 Images)

DEADPOOL 2 DVD (THEATRICAL VERSION)

DVD Bonus Features

  • Gag Reel
  • Deadpool’s Fun Sack 2
  • Stills (28 Images)

DEADPOOL 2 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

DEADPOOL 2 4K Ultra HD Specifications/Blu-Ray™ Specifications
Street Date: August 21, 2018
Screen Format:  16:9 (2.39:1)
Audio:  English Dolby Atmos, English Descriptive Audio 5.1, Spanish Dolby, Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Spanish, French
Total Run Time: 119 minutes (Theatrical Version), 134 minutes (Super Duper Cut)
U.S. Rating  R (Theatrical Version), Unrated (Super Duper Cut)

DEADPOOL 2 DVD Specifications
Street Date: August 21, 2018
Screen Format:  16:9 (2.39:1)
Audio:  English Dolby Atmos, English Descriptive Audio 5.1, Spanish Dolby, Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Spanish, French
Total Run Time: 119 minutes (Theatrical Version), 134 minutes (Super Duper Cut)
U.S. Rating  R (Theatrical Version), Unrated (Super Duper Cut)

YOUR GUIDE TO FINDING THE “D” AT SDCC

DEADPOOL 2 IN HALL H
WHEN
Saturday, June 21
5:15pm – 6:15pm

WHERE
San Diego Convention Center, Hall H

WHAT
Prepare for the ultimate superhero landing as Deadpool and pals drop into Hall H for an hour of maximum effort. Expect dirty jokes, broken fourth walls, maybe some spandex and real, live unicorns! (Panel may not actually include mythical creatures.)

THE DEADPOOL 2 SUPER DUPER $@%!#& CUT WORLD PREMIERE
WHEN
Saturday, June 21
9:30pm

WHERE
Horton Grand Theatre
444 Fourth Ave
San Diego, CA 92101

WHAT
Deadpool drops the ultimate deuce in the Gaslamp—now with more splash! The Horton Grand Theatre plays host to the world premiere screening of the Deadpool 2 Super Duper $@%!#& Cut, featuring 15 minutes of never-before-seen footage including deleted scenes, alternate jokes and extended takes.

Tickets to the screening are available for Saturday or weekend-long Comic-Con badge holders only. Head to the Sails Pavilion at 9am Saturday for your chance to get your hands on one. A certain time-traveling psychopath let slip that there may even be a few special guests in attendance, so get those tickets early!

DEADPOOL’S SUPER DUPER DANCE PARTY
WHEN
Wednesday, July 18 (Preview Night) – Sunday, July 22

WHERE
San Diego Convention Center, Booth 3529

WHAT
Your childhood dreams (or nightmares) come true as Deadpool and his animatronic band of X-Force rejects takes up residency at the San Diego Convention Center for a series of musical performances you’ll never forget—despite your best efforts. A different Comic-Con exclusive t-shirt will be given to the first 1200 attendees each day, Thursday through Sunday. So come early and come often!

DEADPOOL’S DREAM SUITE
WHEN
Press previews Thursday, July 19 – Friday, July 20
(by appointment only, please contact PR team with inquiries)

WHERE
The Hard Rock Hotel
207 Fifth Ave
San Diego, CA 92101

WHAT
Have you ever wondered what it would look like if Deadpool and Blind Al took over the Hard Rock Hotel’s most expensive suite? Probably not, but you’re going to find out anyway!

Digital video service Vudu Movies & TV, has partnered with Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment to host a sweepstakes for one lucky Comic-Con attendee to win a stay in the Deadpool Dream Suite on Saturday evening. The suite is modeled after Deadpool’s apartment and comes fully-stocked with more half-finished Ikea furniture and pop-culture Easter eggs than you could shake a katana at. Not to mention all the (non-adult) movies the winner could ever watch, courtesy of Vudu.

Those planning to be at Comic-Con can enter to win at: watchvudu.com/deadpooldreamsuite. The official sweepstakes entry period is July 11 through July 19, and the winner will be announced at Comic-Con on July 20.

Although this activation is only open to members of the media and the grand prize winner, Vudu is also giving 15 lucky winners the extremely limited opportunity to tour this otherwise exclusive activation. Winners will be chosen by Vudu associates at Comic-Con, who will be on the lookout for Vudu and Deadpool super-fans.

The Deadpool hi-jinks continues after Comic-Con. Following the grand prize winner’s stay in the Dream Suite, Vudu will host a giveaway of select loot from the suite so fans can take a piece of the Deadpool Dream Suite home.  Visit watchvudu.com/deadpooldreamsuite to enter starting July 20th.

THE MERCH (WITH A MOUTH)
WHEN
Wednesday, July 18 (Preview Night) – Sunday, July 22

WHERE
San Diego Convention Center, Booths 4229 and 3529

WHAT
DEADPOOL 2 SUPER DUPER $@%!#& CUT (4K UHD $27.99 | Blu-ray $22.99)
Now with even more disc jokes! Pre-order the 4K UHD or Blu-ray at the Fox Fanfare Booth (#4229) or Deadpool’s Super Duper Dance Party (#3529) and receive a Comic-Con exclusive trucker hat, while supplies last.

DEADPOOL TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY EDITION (Blu-ray $17.99)
The OG, now available in collectible packaging with an assortment of limited edition party favors including stickers, car decals, temporary tattoos and a set of paper dolls that will let fans bring even their most depraved Wade Wilson fantasies to life.

WIN A SET OF DEADPOOL’S GREATEST PHOTOBOMBING MASTERPIECES
25 lucky fans will be selected each day Wednesday through Sunday to win a set of 18 Fox catalog Blu-rays with limited edition “photobombed” box art featuring Mr. Pool himself. All 18 photobombed films will be available to purchase at Walmart stores nationwide on August 7. Visit Booth 4229 and scan your badge to enter to win!

Book-A-Day 2018 #191: Mickey’s Craziest Adventures by Lewis Trondheim and Nicolas Keramidas

Let’s say there was a little-known Disney comic: Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories: Mickey’s Quest, which was published somewhere obscure for most of the 1960s and entirely forgotten since then. And let’s say there was a serial in that comic, called “Mickey’s Craziest Adventures,” a single page a month for almost that entire decade, with an ongoing story of a crazy caper involving Mickey and Donald and their supporting casts.

We can say all of that.

It’s not true, though it seems like it could be. Writer Lewis Trondheim and artist Nicolas Keramidas are telling that story here — “re-presenting” the “surviving” forty-four of the original eighty-two pages of that serial. But Mickey’s Craziest Adventures  is actually by the two of them, it was actually created new this century, and all of the “missing pages” are gaps because this is the way they wanted to tell and present the story.

Telling roughly half of a story that’s already designed to be madcap and full of random zany adventures does make it even faster-paced and more random, obviously. That would be the point. Trondheim and Keramidas want to make some moments, and vaguely sketch the larger shape of an already pretty shaggy-dog plot, and not worry about how it all fits together and whether any of it makes sense.

So Pegleg Pete and the Beagle Boys team up, first to steal a new shrink ray that Gyro Gearloose has invented, and then to use that ray to shrink and steal Uncle Scrooge’s fortune. (This all happens off the page, and is discovered afterward — even in the “full” version of the story that doesn’t exist. Trondheim is making this an story that bounces from one moment of high action or comedy to another, and then leaving out half of those moments.) Mickey and Donald set out after them, through jungles and oceans and deserts and snowy mountains and the moon, usually being chased by something large and hungry. In the end, they retrieve the fortune and capture the villains — without a lot of fuss, and mostly by happenstance.

What we have here are forty-four comics pages, full of running around crazily, with funny dialogue and cartoonish monsters, drawn lovingly by Keramidas and given a pseudo-aged Ben-Day dots look by colorist Bridgette Findakly. Every page is zany and fun.

If you’re hoping for a single coherent story, though, you will be disappointed: that’s not what Mickey’s Craziest Adventures is here to provide. If you want forty-four crazy pages of Trondheim and Keramidas, you are in luck.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Steve Ditko: 1927-2018

Stephen J. Ditko, one of the most iconoclastic comic creators of all time and creator or co-creator of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, the Question, the Creeper, Shade the Changing Man, Hawk and Dove, Starman, Stalker, the Odd Man, Squirrel Girl, and his most personal creation Mr. A, has died at his home at the age of 90.

Famously reclusive (there are less than five known photographs of him) and fiercely independent, Ditko was found unresponsive in his apartment in New York City on June 29. Police said he had died within the previous two days. He was pronounced dead at age 90, with the cause of death initially deemed as a result of a myocardial infarction, brought on by arteriosclerotic and hypertensive cardiovascular disease.

There may be no better way to get a flavor of his impact on the field than the 2007 BBC documentary In Search Of Steve Ditko, hosted by Jonathan Ross:

Our condolences to his family, friends, and fans.

 

Book-A-Day 2018 #188: Royal City, Vol. 2: Sonic Youth by Jeff Lemire

Any self-respecting family story needs a flashback. Whether it’s a Ross Macdonald novel finally explaining just what horrible thing happened twenty years ago in Canada or a family saga that stops in the middle of Chapter Two to explain just how Sadie McGuffins first came to the Maritimes from Scotland as a teen domestic servant so many years ago, before too long the narrative needs to roll up its sleeves, dive into the past, and dramatize the things that are still casting a shadow over the present-day cast.

(It’s even required if a family story has no connection to Canada, though I’m not sure if that’s even possible.)

Jeff Lemire’s currently ongoing comic Royal City is a family story. And this second volume, Sonic Youth , is the big flashback — to 1993, when Tommy Pike was still alive.

(See my post on the first book, Next of Kin , if you’re not familiar with it.)

Lemire is either writing for the trade or his publisher (Image) is matching the books to the plotlines — either way; the first book was one “chapter” of this story, introducing everyone in the present day, and this whole second volume is set in 1993, in what the back cover calls “the last week of Tommy Pike’s life.”

This isn’t a spoiler for anyone who’s read the first book: we all know Tommy is dead, he know he died in 1993, and we basically know how he died. But now we get to see him alive, when we only saw him as a ghost or a memory in Next of Kin. The parents circle the main plot this time but are less connected to it, which is only to be expected in a story about teenagers. It’s all about the four Pike siblings: aimless recent grad Patrick, hell-raiser Richie, secretly pregnant Tara, and thoughtful, clearly doomed Tommy.

Tommy’s been having severe, debilitating headaches — more and more often, complete with hallucinations. He sees a doctor, has a scary giant machine scan his head, gets the “there’s something here that we need to explore more” speech, and is given a prescription for pills to take when his headache is bad. He’s told to absolutely avoid any drugs or alcohol wile taking those pills, but he’s only fifteen, so that shouldn’t be a problem, right?

But that weekend is the big blowout party — with most of the teenagers in town, in an abandoned factory outside this decaying industrial town. All of the Pikes will end up there, eventually. And will Tommy take other intoxicants on top of his medication?

Well, we know he dies, don’t we?

Lemire is telling a single longer, complex story here: it’s being broken up into single-issue comics and then collected into these books for cash-flow and market-need purposes, but it’s clear that Royal City has an overall shape and structure behind it. Unlike some creators, he’s not spinning out a single issue of complications at a time, or even one plotline. It’s difficult to say, at this point, how long that will be, but I’m confident that Lemire basically knows — he may have already written the last scene; he strikes me as the kind of writer who might do that.

I try to avoid predictions, mostly because I turn out to be wrong more often than not. But I don’t think we’re done with the flashbacks in Royal City. The next volume might return to the modern day (or maybe not), but I’m sure we’ll return to 1993 eventually, to see what happened after Tommy died.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Book-A-Day 2018 #186: Paper Girls, Vol. 4 by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang

So there’s a time-war, right? People further up the timeline (the “kids”) are trying to fix things they don’t like in history, and people closer to our time (the “parents”) are trying to keep history as they experienced it. It’s not entirely clear if they really are two subsequent generations of the same population — or, actually, if that concept even makes sense in the context of a time-war to begin with. But one group is “younger” and the other is “older.”

This is a universe where time is infinitely malleable, so each change rewrites the timeline until it’s in turn rewritten by the next change. But maybe the people in the middle of the time-war know what the changes were, so they can keep reverting them, like some transdimensional Wikipedia edit war.

Well, maybe not infinitely malleable — there’s at least one zone where time travel can happen spontaneously, which is the kind of thing that a writer may later mention was caused by some sort of “wearing out the tape” metaphor, that the successive time-changes actually start to break down the fabric of space-time itself.

That explanation hasn’t happened yet. It may never happen. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see it.

Four tween girls, all out delivering newspapers early in the morning of November 1, 1988, were in that zone, and have been jerked around that time-war for four volumes now. (I’ve written about the first three volumes: one  and two  and three .) They’ve been to “our time” and to prehistory, and in this volume they make it to Y2K land, where the time warriors are using stealthed battle mechs to fight it out in the sky, for no apparent reason other than it is Really Cool.

It’s a comic book — Paper Girls, Vol. 4 , written by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Cliff Chiang. It’s an action story mostly about women, which is nice. And it’s pretty smart and twisty so far, though a cynical reader (such as me) may wonder if there are actual answers to the mysteries — the thing about a time-war is that you can always wipe out one set of explanations with another (better, we hope) one at any time.

So, this time, the girls get back to the early moments of The Year 2000! and the two sides are battling in giant robots — something we haven’t seen before. Why?

Why not?

And why do the future people speak a jarring horrible pseudo-leet-speek jargon — both the younger side of the “parents” generation and all of the “kids” generation? And why do the older parents speak standard English? And are the group that speak in an alphabet that looks very vaguely Korean yet a third generation, or just an offshoot from the two warring sides we sort-of know?

(It’s Cool! And distancing! And futuristic! But mostly Cool!)

We are twenty issues and over four hundred pages in at this point, and answers are still thin on the ground. One begins to suspect the whole point is to depict a time-war where everything changes continually, so there can be new stunning reversals and surprises into the future forever.

I’d take Paper Girls‘ occasional feints at an undertone of “look how your adult life turned out — not what you wanted, huh?” more seriously if they connected — to each other, to the main plot, to anything. More and more, it feels like a collection of moments loosely arranged, with a common theme and set of characters, like a Tarot deck than can be reshuffled and dealt out, over and over again.

They’re still good moments, true. The characters are well-developed and as real as any people in modern adventure comics. And Chiang draws all the strange technology and people as solid and believable. So I might just be back for the next book.

But I do expect that we’ll be talking about Paper Girls issue #50 before too long, with a brand-new shocking revelation that’s completely different from the shocking revelations in number 40, 30, and 25. And that it will stay in that mode as long as people keep buying it. And I’m getting to an age where I don’t like encouraging behavior like that anymore.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Legends of Atlantis Sends DC Super Hero Girls Under the Sea

BURBANK, CA (June 28, 2018) – The students of Super Hero High dive deep into their latest adventure as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and DC Entertainment bring you DC Super Hero Girls: Legends of Atlantis, the newest feature in the popular, groundbreaking universe celebrating young girls. The journey with the toughest class of female DC Super Heroes will be available on Digital ($14.99 SRP) and DVD ($19.98 SRP) on October 2, 2018. Special bonus content on the release includes the 44 minute previously-aired television special, “Super Hero High.”

It seems like an uneventful day at school until the powerful Book of Legends is suddenly stolen from Super Hero High. In order to uncover the mystery, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Supergirl, Bumblebee and the rest of the Super Crew must journey through the depths of the ocean to Atlantis. There, the girls encounter Mera and Siren, the ocean-dwelling thieves, who prove to be a formidable match. In order to recover the stolen tome and return it to its rightful place, DC Super Hero Girls must band together and use their collective powers to successfully get back to land…and back to class!

From Warner Bros. Consumer Products and DC Entertainment, the DC Super Hero Girls universe encourages young girls, ages 6-12, to explore their own powers and strengths through original content, including all-new films, webisodes and TV specials. The franchise offers young fans inspiration and encourages teamwork, friendship and empowerment. DC Super Hero Girls: Legends of Atlantis will connect with fans throughout the world via waves of digital content, including DCSuperHeroGirls.com, the DCSHG App, YouTube Channel and Instagram, as well as a global licensing and merchandising program.

DC Super Hero Girls: Legends of Atlantis features some of the top voice actors in the industry including Grey Griffin (Wonder Woman), Tara Strong (Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy), Anais Fairweather (Supergirl), Mae Whitman (Batgirl), Teala Dunn (Bumblebee) and Stephanie Sheh (Katana) as they join forces to portray the youthful versions of some of the world’s best known Super Heroes.

Cecilia Aranovich Hamilton and Ian Hamilton direct from a script by Shea Fontana.  Jennifer Coyle serves as producer with Sam Register as Executive Producer.

“TheDC Super Hero Girls return to fight new villains of the deep in the all-new movie DC Super Hero Girls: Legends of Atlantis,” said Mary Ellen Thomas, WBHE Vice President, Family & Animation Marketing. “This exciting new adventure continues to spread the important message of female empowerment to young people – everywhere!”

DC Super Hero Girls:  Legends of Atlantis – Extra Content

  • “Super Hero High” TV Special

BASICS

Digital & DVD Street Date: October 2, 2018

Run Time: 72 Minutes

DVD Price: $19.98 SRP

Digital HD Price: $14.99 SRP

Digital SD Price: $14.99 SRP

ABOUT DIGITAL

On October 2, 2018, DC Super Hero Girls: Legends of Atlantis will be available to own for streaming and download to watch anywhere in high definition and standard definition on favorite devices from select digital retailers including Amazon, iTunes, PlayStation, Vudu, Xbox and others. Also on October 2, 2018, DC Super Hero Girls: Legends of Atlantis will be made available digitally on Video On Demand services from cable and satellite providers, and on select gaming consoles.

Book-A-Day 2018 #182: Young Frances by Hartley Lin

I don’t want to oversell my expertise here: I’ve never worked in a law firm, and my professional work is generally marketing to attorneys within companies rather than firms. So I may be just saying that one thing I’ve never experienced personally matches another thing I’ve never experienced personally. [1]

But Hartley Lin’s Young Frances  is a remarkably nuanced, detailed, smart look at the pressure cooker that is a major Big Law firm, smart about office politics and full of off-handed details about both how bruising and all-consuming it can be and about how it used to be so much worse. Ever more exciting, that’s not the point of Young Frances: that’s the world she lives in, and the work she’s doing and trying to make meaningful, but the story of this graphic novel is about her personally.

Like all of us, her work life is not her whole life — but it’s a huge piece of that life, and influences everything else. She struggles with insomnia, and worries about what she should do with her life, and has a complicated friendship with her roommate Vickie, a gorgeous actress on the verge of a huge career breakthrough. In lesser hands, Young Frances would be a “quarterlife crisis” book — yet another story about someone young and aimless.

But Frances Scarland is not aimless. She just doesn’t have much confidence in her aim, and wonders if the life she’s building for herself is worth what it costs. We all wonder that, at least now and then, and I think most of us are not as confident as we look, either. She’s a hard worker, focused on details, and cares about what she’s doing — and she’s also embedded in an organization that is designed to bring in large groups of young, hard-working people every single year, run them ragged, and then spit out most of them within three to five years. A big law firm is a brutal place to work, even if you’re not an attorney — maybe even more so, since shit proverbially flows downhill. Frances is support staff, a law clerk: she’s very far downhill.

But firm politics also lead to alliances and schemes and favoritism. At the beginning of this book, Frances is given the kind of thing that can pass for promotion in an organization like that: asked to support another practice group and given more work as others are let go. So she’s soon working mostly for the chilly rainmaker Marcel Castonguay, head of Bankruptcies — and he seems to favor her, to want to further her career.

But the core of Young Frances is that question: is this her career? Is this really what she wants to do, or is it just what she happens to be doing now? How does it affect the rest of her life? And does any of that matter?

Her roommate Vickie pulls her in other directions — sometimes frivolous, work-shirking ones, sometimes scarily major, change-your-life-entirely ones. Frances Scarland needs to decide who she is and what she will do. Like all of us do. And, like all of us, it’s not a one-time decision: every day is another choice, another step in one direction or another.

Lin tells this story in quiet comics panels, three tiers to the large pages and a precise semi-ligne claire style. This is a book full of words — these are lawyers and their support staff, with a subset of actors! — but his open pages and crisp lettering makes it all flow smoothly and evenly throughout.

Young Frances is simply astonishing as someone’s first book: Hartley Lin has arrived, fully-formed, as a mature artist with a strong story to tell and a deft hand at handling characters. We’re only halfway through 2018, but this will be really hard to beat as the debut of the year.

[1] ObligatoryReference: “So, what you’re telling me, Percy, is that something you have never seen is slightly less blue than something else you have never seen.”

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

#FairUseFriday: Jeeves & Wooster!

As part of our campaign to highlight our ongoing battle against Dr. Seuss Enterprises (and we hope you can help us out) we’re highlighting examples of art that wouldn’t exist without fair use.

Here’s one from Roger Langridge, well known for his work on Snarked!, The Muppet Show, Mugwhump the Great, Popeye, and Doctor Who, doing his own version of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories.

According to Roger:

The rights issues are a bit confusing: this particular story is in public domain in the USA, but (apparently) not in the UK, so I’m not sure if a book is even a possibility. Nevertheless, I’ve adapted it as a comic (originally published in 1916 in the Saturday Evening Post under the title “Leave It to Jeeves“) to show what I could do with it if given the opportunity.

Go to his site to read the full 20 page story. And give us your favorite examples of fair use in the comments!

Harlan Ellison: 1934-2018

“For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”

A legend has passed. Harlan Ellison, Grandmaster of the Science Fiction Writers of America and member of the SF Hall of Fame, died in his sleep overnight. He was 84 years old. His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of journalism and criticism covering literature, film, television, print, and the life and times we live in.

In the next few days, you will hear many stories about Harlan. Listen carefully. Many of them are true. A proper retrospective is coming from us. We’re big fans of his work, and have interviewed Harlan in the past.

For me, he was one of two people to whom I dedicated my first published story: “To Harlan, who taught me that anyone who can write, should write.”

To get a sense of the man, here’s the trailer to the documentary Dreams With Sharp Teeth:

To get a sense of his writing, read his writing, dammit.

Our condolences to his wife, Susan, and his many friends and fans.

 

Book-A-Day 2018 #178: On the Camino by Jason

Why does someone go on a pilgrimage in modern Europe? The obvious reason would be religion, but that’s rarely the central purpose these days. It’s not part of general cultural life for Christians — not the way the hajj still is for Muslims — and many of the people who make those journeys aren’t particularly Christian to begin with.

But pilgrimages continue. People find a reason to walk, and find something for themselves at the end of the walk. The Norwegian cartoonist who works as “Jason” trekked the 500-mile Camino de Santiago in northern Spain in 2015, soon after his fiftieth birthday. And he made a book out of it, On the Camino . He doesn’t say why he went; it’s not clear he knows, or has a single “why.” And he doesn’t tell us what he found out, for the same reason.

What he does is tell us the story of the trip, placing us in his head and shoes for that month-long walk, and to let us feel what it was like to be Jason on the Camino. (Well, his real name is John, and that’s what he tells people his name is in the book. But you know what I mean.)

It’s all told in a very Jason way: matter-of-fact, almost affectless, with animal-headed characters moving through a world depicted fairly simply. He works entirely in black-and-white for this book as well. Jason himself is at the center of the trip, obviously, and is the viewpoint the entire time. This is what he saw and did in thirty-three days of walking, told like a Jason graphic novel. He even gets in his abrupt shifts of points of reference, as when he sees a giant slug on the trial — first drawing it “giant” and then it’s actual size.

The story is inherently different from Jason’s fictional works: there’s no twists to the plot, obviously, and he can’t throw in genre elements for complications or interest. On the other hand, how do we know this is all true? We think it is because Jason tells us so, and because it has the everydayness and banality of real life — but that’s justification rather than proof. That’s the case for any non-fiction story, of course: how can we believe the teller and the tale? If there’s no reason not to tell the truth, we assume it is the truth — we’re all lazy, both as storytellers and listeners.

Jason is an introvert, most comfortable alone — as you would expect from someone who spends his life sitting in a room to think up stories and draw them — and much of On the Camino, starting from the very first page, is his struggle to be more open, to come out of his shell and engage with the other pilgrims and the locals. He has no gigantic epiphanies — we wouldn’t expect them from Jason, anyway. His hopes aren’t dashed, either, which would be more in keeping with his fiction.

Instead, he walks. He meets some people, and runs into some of them repeatedly. He has some good conversations and interesting thoughts while walking alone. He also has blisters and bedbugs and food that doesn’t agree with him. Every life and journey has good and bad, yes? It’s a cliche even to mention it.

And he tells that story, in his four-panel grid, with his stone-faced characters with animal heads — this is a Jason book, and it looks like one. He will not tell you what to think of it in the end; he’s never told you what to think of any of his stories. But you can take the trip with him. I think it’s worth the time.

(Note: this book does not credit a translator. And, in the story, “John” speaks English much of the time. So my guess is that Jason translated it himself, or wrote a text for this edition in English. I think I’ve found the original French edition, Un norvégien vers Compostelle , published only four months before the US edition.)

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.