Friday, April 20, 2007

Links du Jour: Happy Detective Story Day, National Treasure 2, and the '80s Shazam! cartoon

Murders in the Rue MorgueAdventure
  • As a superhero fan, I love Philip José Farmer's concept that all adventure heroes share a common universe. Other fans of the idea are willing to spend a lot more time on it than I am, but it's still a cool notion. One of those fans is Win Scott Eckert who's published a collection of his essays on the subject. Ron Fortier reviews the collection here.
  • I hadn't heard that they're making a National Treasure 2, but I'm in favor of it. The first one was everything that The DaVinci Code should have been. What's especially cool is that I learned about it thanks to this story about the moviemakers' having to displace a prom from its traditional location and how they made up for it.

Mystery

  • Today's the birthday of the mystery novel. Or at least the detective story. It's the day that Edgar Allen Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" was published back in 1841. Garrison Keillor has a short, but excellent article about it and the evolution of the genre it gave birth to: from Holmes to Poirot to Spade and Marlowe to Perry Mason and Easy Rawlins. Happy Birthday, Detective Stories!
Science Fiction
  • Anyone read any of the Star Trek: New Frontier books? I gave up on trying to keep up with Star Trek novels a long time ago, but the idea of a continuing series that features characters from all the different Star Trek shows, but doesn't have to take TV continuity into account is really attractive to me. And I like the Peter David Star Trek novels that I've read in the past. Just wondering if they're as good in execution as they sound fun in concept.
  • Luc Besson was apparently frustrated by the process of making The Fifth Element, but now that special effects have sufficiently advanced, he's going to do some more scifi.
Superheroes
  • I was already done with Saturday morning cartoons when Hero High was on, but I'm still kind of interested in it's DVD release thanks to Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family's occasionally appearing on the show. Apparently, Hero High was partly live action and partly animated, and I don't know which part featured the Marvels. I hope it's the live action part, because I like cheesy superhero live action more than cheap superhero cartoons, but really either would be pretty cool. Even though there was a very cool live action Captain Marvel show when I was a kid, I'm betting that the Hero High Marvels are animated, since Hero High shared a time slot with a Shazam! cartoon as part of The Kid Superpower Hour with Shazam. Either way, I'm not buying this until I learn how much Marvel Family I'd be getting. I'd rather wait for a DVD set with just Shazam!.
Other Comics
  • Dust to Dust co-writer Alex Ness has a contest at his website for some original Peter Bergting art from the fantasy series The Portent.
Writing is Hard

  • I've found character questionnaires to be more fun than useful, but here are some if you like that kind of thing.

Stuff Nobody Cares About But Me

4 comments:

Siskoid said...

New Frontier: I read maybe the first 7 and enjoyed them a lot. I do think the cast tends to feel like a superhero group at times, especially with the security officer being made of stone. Lots of powers represented.

But it does something interesting with both Shelby and Selar, and the new characters are cool too.

Operating in a specific (made-up) sector makes this a little like what Voyager should've been (new and exciting). The first 4 books are collected as one and should either sell you on the series or not at a very reasonable price.

Siskoid said...

Oh, and I'm a fan of PJF's shared world theory as well (which made me a fan of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by extension).

Michael May said...

Thanks for the tip on the New Frontier omnibus! Sounds like a great way to check it out.

Yeah, Wold Newton and LXG definitely speak to the same part of my geek too. :)

West said...

Nice to hear about that Hero High/Shazam dvd. And yes, the Marvel stuff was animated, if I remember correctly.

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