This is my Boomstick (Award)

A million thanks to Italian book blog Tutto Benenella Mia Testa for not only picking me to receive a Boomstick Award, but also saying very nice and encouraging things about me in the process. It couldn't come at a better time, because frankly I've been overwhelmed with work and life since about last Fall and it's been especially tough the last couple of months to balance this blog with everything else. I never intended for sporadic reviews of James Bond novels to be the only content here, but it's worked out that way lately and that makes me sad. TBMT, on the other hand, makes me happy.

I also got another encouraging note recently from a different person - I'll share that tomorrow - so it's been a nice week and I'm going to use that encouragement to motivate me to post more often. Thanks for being patient.

The Versatile Blogger

This is a post that's way past due, but I wanted to take the time to do it justice. Artist Michael Dean "MD" Jackson was kind enough to tag me with the Versatile Blogger Award and it's a special honor. I struggle all the time with how broadly focused this blog is. Most of my favorite blogs are very specific in their subject matter, even if the subject is just "comics," but I especially like extremely specific blogs like Double O Section, Shanna the She-Devil Blogger, and Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs. I love those so much that I often think about narrowing Adventureblog's range to one genre or medium. If only I could pick just one that I wouldn't get bored with eventually.

I can't, so for better or worse, I'm stuck with a versatile blog. That's why I appreciate someone's creating this recognition and Mike's including me in his picks for it. I appreciate other versatile blogs too. I can't read too many of them before they become overwhelming, but I was able to pull five to mention from my follow list. I'll list them in a minute, but one of the other criteria for accepting the award is listing seven random facts about yourself. So that first:

1. My high-school job was bagging groceries and I was really good at it. As a result though, I'm overly critical (silently so, I promise) of baggers who can't make a paper bag keep its shape and mix items that shouldn't be mixed. Cold items don't go with non-cold items. Detergents don't go with food.
2. In college, I played the title role in The Sound of Music. I also ran the sound for My Fair Lady, which was an even more fun production. But that may have been because I had a minor crush on the girl playing Eliza Doolittle. Or her Georgia accent anyway. (She switched to Cockney for the play, but that wasn't nearly as attractive.)
3. You can get me to do just about anything if you ask me in a Georgia accent.
4. I can read ancient Greek, though I don't understand as much of it as I used to.
5. My first pet was a black cat we found at the garbage dump. He was only a few days old and we couldn't even tell what gender he was yet. We named him Muffit after the robotic daggit from Battlestar Galactica.
6. I was 10 years old when I wrote my first story. It was Star Wars fan fiction and I proved in not only the title, but also in a major plot element that I didn't know the difference between an "asteroid" and an "android."
7. My son has a live dragon living in his room. It's about two-feet long and bearded.

And now for the blogs I'm passing the award to. Mike says that the official rules call for fifteen recipients, but I'm following his example and only choosing five. In alphabetical order:

1. Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool: I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Brother Cal's already received this award at some point. That guy collects awards like mermaids collect swooning sailors. He deserves it though for being extremely prolific with posts on a variety of subjects ranging from the Cephalopod Menace to Selena Gomez.
2. Lady, That's My Skull: I came to Sleestak's blog thinking it was a comics blog, and with lots of posts on romance comics and space pulp heroines like Futura and Mysta of the Moon, it is. But it's also a lot more than that, including rants about the grocery store where he works and appreciations for Hayley Mills and of course The Land of the Lost.
3. Poplitiko: My friend Alex Ness started this pop culture group blog. Because it's a group blog (and because its theme is as broad as "pop culture," it has a lot of different interests. Just looking at the current page, I see a love letter to enjoying comics with your children; a linkblogging post covering superhero movies, Doctor Who, and Twecon; and Whatever the Opposite of an Ode is to Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson movies.
4. Siskoid's Blog of Geekery: Siskoid does tend to stick to geek-related topics, so he's not as all over the place as some of the other blogs I'm mentioning, but he has a broad range of interests from Star Trek to Kung Fu movies and he crosses genres and media types easily.
5. That F'ing Monkey: I've known blogger Ken O a long time from Steve Niles' message board, so his was one of the first blogs I thought of in creating this list. He's a huge fan of DC's The Flash and talks about the character often, but you'll also find regular posts about his other interests, especially games and booze.

The One Lovely Blog Award

Kristopher and Crew's Rodents of Unusual Size blog was nice enough to honor me with the One Lovely Blog Award. Thanks, K&C!

The idea is to pick fifteen "enjoyable and deserving blogs that you've recently discovered." It's always hard to pick just a few out of the many enjoyable and deserving blogs that I read, but the "recently discovered" caveat helps me narrow the list (though "recent" is pretty subjective).

I've divided these into categories for your convenience:

Art
1. The Artfolio of Rosh
2. Kt Shy's Sketch-a-ma-blog!
3. Kyle Latino
4. Giant-Size Geek
5. George O'Connor's Online Sketchbook

Comics and Pop Culture Commentary
6. 4th Letter
7. Too Busy Thinking About My Comics
8. That F'ing Monkey
9. Flick Attack
10. Shanna the She-Devil Blogger

Actual Comics
11. Diversions of the Groovy Kind
12. Gold Key Comics!
13. Wondermark

Humor and Writing
14. Catalog Living
15. SlushPile Hell

Certified!

Thank you very much to Siskoid who presented me with the very cool Certified Geek Award. It's a bit more complicated to pass on than the typical tag-awards you usually see, which makes it that much more special to me.

The rules for passing it on, according to the Award's Official Blog, are:

1. Go to Certified Geek and make sure that the blog you're giving it to hasn't already received the award.
2. Create a post on your blog announcing the two blogs you've decided to award.
3. In that post, include the official graphic.
4. Provide a link to the two blogs.
5. Tell why you've chosen the two blogs
6. Include the URL for the award blog (http://certifiablygeekblogs.blogspot.com/)
7. Email Jon K at waffyjon at comcast dot net with the above information, plus what category you think the blog fits in (so he can label it accordingly). If the blog fits more than one category, you should include them all (for example, if the Random Acts of Geekery were awarded this -- which it can't, because none of his blogs are eligible to win -- the categories would be comics, toys, cartoons, sci-fi, Star Trek, monster movies, etc.)
8. Contact the two blogs that you've awarded, tell them about the Certified Geek blog, as well as where they can find the post in which they were awarded. You can do this by emailing the bloggers (if that's possible) or by leaving a comment in a recent post.

The only other rule is that you can't give the award to the same blogger at the same time, even if they have more than one certifiably geek blog! However, if you have more than one blog, and each of them receives the award from different people, you can feel free to award the same blogger (but a different blog) from each of your own blogs!

So, my two awards (and this was very tough):

1. Calvin's Canadian Cave of Coolness: Brother Calvin brings the blogging in a way that puts me to shame. Not only does he blog about geek stuff more than anyone else I know, he's consistently funny and entertaining while doing it. Plus, there's that whole Cephalopod-Menace Watchdog service that he provides. He's created a world filled with geek culture and I love visiting it.

2. Bully Says: Comics Oughta Be Fun!: Bully's another prolific blogger, but what I like most about him is his focus on the fun of comics. There's lots to get angry and frustrated about in the comics world, but Bully celebrates the positive in a way that's fresh and clever instead of just "Yay Rah Team Comics." He also celebrates Keira Knightley, which proves his impeccable aptitude for discernment. For all of that, he deserves undying admiration.

Thanks again to Siskoid for the recognition and to Jon K from Random Acts of Geekery for inventing the cool award.

Great Reads

Brother Calvin has kindly presented the Adventureblog with another award, this one for being a Great Read. It's an honor for several reasons, first of which is that Calvin's blog is so dang entertaining itself.

There don't seem to be any hard rules about this one and I'm not going to make up any for myself this time either. Instead, I'm just passing this along to several blogs that I love specifically for their entertaining writing, including Cal's, regardless of whether or not I've recognized them before.

In alphabetical order:

• Calvin's Canadian Cave of Coolness


• The Comics Reporter


• Lady, That's My Skull


• Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin


• Siskoid's Blog of Geekery


• Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep!!


• Title Undetermined

Thanks so much, Cal! You made my day.

The Uber Amazing Adventureblog

Brother Calvin has been so kind as to present the Adventureblog with an Uber Amazing Blog Award for being "interesting or inspiring." As I've said before, I think of Cal's blog and mine as pretty much annexes to each other, so it's nice to hear that he feels the same way. Thanks, Cal!

Here are the (slightly edited to serve my whims and idiosyncrasies) rules for the award:

It is the Uber Amazing Blog Award, a blog award given to sites that:

• Inspire you
• Make you smile and laugh, or give amazing information
• Give you something great to read
• Have an amazing design
• Possess any other qualities you can think of that make them uber amazing!

The rules of the award are:

• Put the logo on your blog or a post.
• Nominate at least 6 blogs.
• Share the love and link to the person you received your award from.

Here are my picks. I decided not to repeat anyone from the Premios Dardo Award and I've resisted the temptation to pass it back to Cal or to mention other blogs that I contribute to. Also, I've gone mostly with "inspirational" as my chief criterion.

1. Golden Age Comic Book Stories (for all the amazing art)
2. Journalista! (for excellence in link-blogging)
3. Chris' Invincible Super-Blog (for the love of Awesome)
4. NPR's Monkey See (for the entertaining thinking)
5. Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin (for his voice and dedication)
6. Kerry Callen's Blog (for the funny)

And the winners are...

Okay, so last week I mentioned that Groovy Superhero was nice enough to tag me for a blog award and that part of the deal was that I needed to tag five others. I also promised that I'd announce my picks "soon" and "soon" is now here. I'm not sure that everyone I've passed the award on to got my email telling them about it, but I don't want to drag this out any longer, so here we go.

This was really hard, by the way.

In alphabetical order:

1. Bully Says: Comics Oughta Be Fun! -- If you follow the comics blogosphere at all, you're very aware of Bully, but I know not everyone reading this does, so let me sum up. I picked Bully's blog specifically because he does focus on the fun of comics. But he manages to do that in a way that's not just blind "rah rah comics yay." He's not snarky or critical, but he also doesn't say that all comics are fun. He just chooses to highlight the ones that are. And though he acknowledges that some aren't, he doesn't spend a lot of time complaining about them.

2. Double O Section -- There are other spy blogs and sites that I also love (like the '60s-focused Spy Vibe), but this is my one-stop shop for general spy news. I'd be rather lost without Tanner's tirelessly faithful updating. I also love that he's so tightly focused on one genre. I seriously, seriously envy that.

3. Siskoid's Blog of Geekery -- Speaking of tireless. I can't tell you how much I admire Siskoid for his dedication to daily reviews along a single topic. First it was every single Star Trek episode (of all five series); now it's Star Trek comics and books. But as if that weren't enough, he also takes time to remind us of how cool a comic Rom was and to explain the bits about Doctor Who that most casual viewers don't get. And always in an entertaining way.

4. Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep!! -- When I said that I like Bully's non-complaining approach to comics, I wasn't implying that complaining is always bad. Not when it's as entertaining as Snell's approach to it. And not that that's all Snell does. Not by a long shot. Even when I disagree with him, I always enjoy reading what he has to say. Also: coolest blog title ever.

5. Title Undetermined -- My original plan was to give an award to this blog in general. It's a three-man show. Diamondrock is the most level-headed of the bunch and the workhorse for most of the posting. He's responsible for wonderful features like Thursday Night Thinking and other general think-pieces.

What originally drew me to the blog though was Azrael. I've been a big fan of his since Sword of Azrael and his mopey posts always make me smile. Sorry to take pleasure from your pitifulness, Jean Paul.

And then there's Doctor Polaris.

When Kalinara beat me to awarding Diamondrock, I figured I'd recognize one of the other fellas instead. I might should've chosen Azrael, but then I would've been denied the glory of reading this. It's nice to see such humble acceptance of praise.

Congrats to everyone and thanks for making Internet Time a Special Time.

The Award-Winning Adventureblog

Groovy Superhero - who is so very groovy - was nice enough to present me and the Adventureblog with the Premios Dardo award. Between Groovy's email and some Googling, I've learned that "Premios Dardo" is Italian for "Prize Darts" and that it's basically a fun, chain award that lets recipients recognize other blogs that they feel are "unique voices and visions on the Web." It's also a way to "promote fraternization amongst bloggers of all sorts" and - according to another recipient - to show "affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web." I can totally get behind all of that. Thanks, Groovy!

The rules are:

1) Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog.

2) Pass the award to another 5 blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgment, remembering to contact each of them to let them know they have been selected for this award.

So, I've got some thinking to do. There are so many blogs that I love, it's going to be next to impossible to pick only five. I'll announce my picks soon though.

Bits and Pieces

Couple of quick items as I try to get caught up on news. I wasn't caught up when I headed into vacation and being gone didn't help.

The International Horror Guild announced its annual awards recently, giving me at least one new book to read: Conrad Williams' The Unblemished. I need to check and see if I have Lewis Trondheim's graphic novel A.L.I.E.E.N. in my review pile somewhere and either need to bump that towards the top a bit if I do, or request it from the publisher if I don't. I love First Second Books, so I'll be surprised if I don't have it already.

Kazu Kibuishi has some great wallpaper available from his upcoming Amulet graphic novel. If this image is any indication, it's going to be a beautiful book.

Links du Jour: Flash Gordon casting, Jungle Girl, and the Terminator franchise lives

Pirates

• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has been moved up a day to a Thursday night release.

Jungle Tales

• Dynamite Entertainment is starting a new comic series called Jungle Girl. I love the jungle hero genre, so I'll definitlely be giving it a look. My only apprehensions are that the Frank Cho cover they're showing a) has some wonky anatomy going on, and b) looks completely interchangeable with any of his covers on Marvel's Shanna the She Devil. Still, I liked Shanna and it's a jungle comic. And it has dinosaurs. Worth checking out.

Horror

• Skottie Young has posted unlettered pages on his site from his Monster of Frankenstein backup story in Legion of Monsters: Werewolf by Night. I'd somehow missed that this story existed, but I went out and bought it after seeing these pages.
• A Dutch producer has acquired the rights to the Hammer studio's library as well as the ability to produce new movies under the Hammer name. According to Sci Fi Wire, "the plan is to produce two to three horror movies or thrillers a year."

Fantasy

• Just noting that the title to this anthology is an oxymoron.
• The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announced the winners of the Nebula Awards over the weekend.

Science Fiction

• The Sci Fi Channel has cast more actors for this summer's new Flash Gordon series. Gina Holden (Blood Ties, Final Destination 3) will play Dale Arden, Jody Racicot (also from both Blood Ties and Final Destination 3) will play Dr. Zarkoff, John Ralston (Life with Derek) will play Ming, and Anna Van Hooft (that one episode of CSI about the foot-fetishist fireman-impersonator and the reality crime show) will play Princess Aura.
• FOX has picked up The Sarah Conner Chronicles, which means that it'll be really good, but will only last six episodes. Also: NBC has picked up the Bionic Woman remake show.
• In other Terminator-related news, a new film development company has picked up the rights to the Terminator movies and plans to "quickly put together" a new trilogy sans Arnold Schwarzenegger. That just screams "quality," doesn't it?

Superheroes

• Chris's Invincible Super-Blog has infected me and now I'll also be hunting back issue bins for a copy of World's Finest #187. How can you not want to know what happens next? Thanks a lot, ISB.

Other Comics

• It's been a while since anyone has been crazy enough tried to introduce a whole, brand new superhero universe to the marketplace. Conventional wisdom is that only Marvel and DC can do the superhero universe thing successfully anymore. This latest go at it should be interesting to see.

2006 Nebula Award nominees

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have announced their nominees for the 2006 Nebula Awards.

Novels:
The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner (Bantam Spectra, Jul06)
Seeker byJack McDevitt (Ace, Nov05)
The Girl in the Glass by Jeffrey Ford (Dark Alley, Aug05)
Farthing by Jo Walton (Tor Books, Jul06)
From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes (Golden Gryphon Press, Sep05)
To Crush the Moon by Wil McCarthy (Bantam Spectra, May05)

Novellas:
Burn by James Patrick Kelly (Tachyon Publications, Dec05)
"Sanctuary" by Michael A. Burstein (Analog, Sep05)
"The Walls of the Universe" by Paul Melko (Asimov's, Apr/May06)
"Inclination" by William Shunn (Asimov's, Apr/May06)

Novelettes:
"The Language of Moths" by Chris Barzak (Realms of Fantasy, Apr05)
"Walpurgis Afternoon" by Delia Sherman (F&SF, Dec05)
"Journey into the Kingdom" by M. Rickert (F&SF, May06)
"Two Hearts" by Peter S. Beagle (F&SF, Oct/Nov05)
"Little Faces" by Vonda N. McIntyre (SCI FICTION, 23 Feb05)

Short Stories:
"Echo" by Elizabeth Hand (F&SF, Oct/Nov05)
"Helen Remembers the Stork Club" by Esther M. Friesner (F&SF, Nov05)
"The Woman in Schrodinger's Wave Equations" by Eugene Mirabelli (F&SF, Aug05)
"Henry James, This One's For You" by Jack McDevitt (Subterranean #2, Nov05)
"An End To All Things" by Karina Sumner-Smith (Children of Magic, DAW Books, Jun06)
"Pip and the Fairies" by Theodora Goss (Strange Horizons, 3 Oct05)

Scripts:
Batman Begins by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer (Warner Bros., released 17 Jun05)
Howl's Moving Castle by Hayao Miyazaki, Cindy Davis Hewitt, and Donald H. Hewitt (Studio Ghibli and Walt Disney Pictures, U.S. Premier 10 Jun05. Based on the novel by Diana Wynne Jones.)
"Unfinished Business" by Michael Taylor (Battlestar Galactica, Dec06)
"The Girl in the Fireplace" by Steven Moffat (Doctor Who, BBC/The Sci-Fi Channel, Oct06 (broadcast 10 Oct06))

Also awarded by the SFWA is the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy:
Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier (Penguin Razorbill, May05)
Devilish by Maureen Johnson, Razorbill (Penguin Young Readers Group, Sep06)
The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner, Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins, 2006)
Midnighters #2: Touching Darkness by Scott Westerfeld (Eos, Mar05)
Peeps by Scott Westerfeld (Penguin Razorbill, Sep05)
Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer (Harcourt, Oct06)

Winners will be announced at the Nebula Awards Weekend on May 11-13 in New York City. Check the link above for more info.

Great Curve: Liefeld and Squiddies

I wasn't going to post about this because they're not actually thought-out articles, but what the heck. I just put up a couple of posts on The Great Curve. One's about how I like Gail Simone's work much more than I dislike Rob Liefeld's. The other's just another mention of the Squiddies.

Squiddie Nomination

This is kinda cool. I've been nominated for a Squiddie Award under the Best Comics Reviewer category. There's some nasty competition there, which means that it's nifty just to be listed with them.

Full list of nominees for that category:

BEST COMICS REVIEWER
Bob Agamemnon
Chris Allen
Alan David Doane
Tony Isabella
Randy Lander
Sean Maher
Michael May
Alex Ness
Paul O'Brien
Tom Spurgeon
Dave Van Domelen
David Welsh

A full list of all of this year's nominees can be found here.