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.

You're a wonder, Wonder Woman: part one

I've been promising this post for a while now, but have been putting it off, knowing that it was going to be big and complicated to write. It's bugged me for years that I really really want to like Wonder Woman, but don't. At least, not as much as I want to. Pretty much every time DC announces a new writer on the series, I pick it up hoping that maybe this will be the time that I connect with the character. But it hasn't happened yet. I think I've finally figured out why, but it's going to be a long discussion, so I'm going to break it up into sections.

I think that maybe the way for me to approach this is to first figure out why I want to like her so much. I obviously have some connection to her that I want to see strengthened. And even if that connection is just untapped potential at this point, identifying it will mean that I've figured out what I want to see future writers do with her.

Let me start by saying that it isn't that she's hot. Yeah, Wonder Woman is gorgeous, but if all I wanted was to read about a beautiful woman in a skimpy costume, well, there are thousands of other options for me. So, I'm going to start with the postulate that my interest in her is more than physical.

Since I grew up reading Marvel Comics, my introduction to Wonder Woman was through the Lynda Carter TV show. But... I don't think my real fondness for the character started there. I think I liked that show because I was nine and she was a beautiful superheroine in a bathing suit. That was physical. But maybe not only that.

It's hard to separate childhood memories from thoughts I've had in later years, but it's undeniable that the main reason people still think fondly about the show was due to how honest Lynda Carter's portrayal of Wonder Woman was. She completely sold Wonder Woman as a real person and she was every bit as heroic and strong (not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally too) as Superman or any other superhero. And I think the memory of that completely strong, comfortable, confident character is what I keep hoping to recapture in Wonder Woman comics.

Several years ago, before the Wonder Woman TV episodes were released on DVD, I joined one of Columbia House's VHS clubs where every month they'd send me a new tape with a couple of episodes on it. Whenever I'd get a new one, I'd get in touch with my brother-in-law and we'd sit and watch them and laugh at the bad German accents, or the fakey gorilla suits, or especially at how sad of a character Steve Trevor was. He was especially hilarious during the IADC years when his solution to everything as head of an international spy organization was to call the police. But I'm digressing. My point is that we never laughed at Wonder Woman. As silly as the rest of the show could be, she was always an impeccable hero.

I think this touches on what Ragnell was saying about Wonder Woman and confidence. Wonder Woman should be the Sean Connery of her gender: men should want to be with her and women should want to be her. When Connery played Bond, he walked around every setting he found himself in as if he owned the place. Didn't matter if it was his office, a hotel, or the villain's headquarters, he was completely comfortable with himself. That's how Wonder Woman should be.

Not aggressively so. Not, as my friend Alex would say, "strident." Connery never had to convince anyone through aggression that he was competent. You knew it by just looking at him. Wonder Woman should be the same way.

I don't know if this is a secret or not, but men find feminine confidence incredibly sexy. The best, most iconic depictions of Wonder Woman totally get that. Yeah, she's got great hair, big boobs, and long, long legs, but so does every other superheroine. What sets Wonder Woman apart -- when she's written and illustrated correctly -- is that she's able to walk around in a frickin' bathing suit and be completely at ease. She's like Marvel's Sub-Mariner that way, only she's not a jerk about it. Sub-Mariner is another character who oozes confidence and so gets away with swimming gear as a costume. It's not the skimpiness of the outfit that's attractive; it's the way she carries herself in it.

This is why I don't care for George Perez's run on the series. It gets praised a lot for its attention to Greek mythology and its strong characterization, but Perez's Wonder Woman isn't the strong, confident heroine that I want to read about. His Wonder Woman is a fish-out-of-water. She's the new kid on the superhero block. She's wide-eyed and innocent. When Perez draws her flying, for example, she has an expression of joyous rapture. "Whee! I'm flying!" Which I guess a lot of people liked, but seems really... I don't know, girlish? to me. I much prefer this image of her flying. She's still smiling and enjoying what's going on, but she isn't so "yipee!" about it. She's more mature. Comfortable.

I even enjoy this downbeat depiction of her. She's being led away in handcuffs and she's not happy about it, but she is calm and in control. There's nothing happening to her that she isn't letting happen and it gives you the feeling that indeed nothing could happen to her that she doesn't let happen. That's not true, of course. Stuff happens to Wonder Woman outside of her control all the time. It has to in order to keep things interesting. But she creates the illusion that she can handle anything. Just like Bond.

Enough about the art. Next time (whenever that is), I'm going to focus on the writing, starting with Perez and moving all the way up to Picoult. I may touch on pre-Perez, but I haven't read any of that stuff, so my discussing it will be limited to what I've heard other people say and that's going to be limited in its usefulness. In talking about the writing though, I'm reminding myself right now to talk about Wonder Woman's critical "mission" in Man's/Patriarch's World and how that's been (mis-)handled so far.

And as long as I'm reminding myself of stuff: this is a reminder to eventually talk about how all this relates to two of my other favorite superheroines: Rogue and Black Canary. 'Cause it does.

Read Part Two here.
Read Part Three here.

Update: As I've been informed in the comments: Al Rio drew the Header Image for this post, Thomas Mason colored it, and the Wonder Woman Archives owns it.

Links du Jour: Hulk and Shazam casting, a Children of Hurin review, and some really great marketing advice

I almost didn't do a Links entry today, 'cause there's not a lot to talk about. But there are a couple of timely items, so...

Fantasy

• I was pretty sure that I didn't want to read Children of Hurin out of fear that it would be more Silmarillion than Lord of the Rings. Here's a very well-written review that confirms that.

Superheroes

• Yesterday, I linked to an article that revealed the villain in the next Hulk movie. Today, a link to an article that reveals who plays him. And some mighty fine villain casting it is, too.
• It's not a done deal or anything, but it looks like there's a very strong possibility that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will be in the live-action Shazam! movie. If he even knows who he'd play (presumably it would be either Captain Marvel himself or his arch-enemy Black Adam), he's remaining coy about it. But I agree with the poster in the link who says, "The guy is the right choice for either role. He’d make a killer bad guy, having fun with it, and he’s certainly got the look to pull off Black Adam. But there’s also a decency to him that’s almost immediate when you’re talking to him, this open quality."

Writing is Hard

• I said before that I was going to have to come up with a marketing plan for Dust to Dust. The indespinsable Paperback Writer has some excellent thoughts on the subject. This is something I'll be referring to again and again.

Links du Jour: Land of the Lost movie, Lost Boys 2, and “Woo hoo, Black Canary! Whoopee!”

Horror

• The world so does not need a Lost Boys 2, with or without Corey Feldman. In fact, since I have no plans of ever seeing it, let's just pretend I never saw that announcement and that it doesn't exist.

Fantasy

• Today is Peter Pan creator J.M. Barrie's birthday. He would've been 147.

Science Fiction

• Whenever I occasionally revisit Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, it's never as good as I remembered it from childhood. But Nuno Plati reminds me that visually, Yondu is one of my all-time favorite comic book characters. It's the sail-head. Same reason this is my favorite dinosaur.
• I love Robert Rodriguez, but I'm concerned about his next couple of projects. The closest that Will Farrell should get to a Land of the Lost movie is his Marshal Willenholly character from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Yeah, Land of the Lost was kind of silly, but it wasn't meant to be and a fun, but straightforward treatment of it would be much better than a comedy. I just hope the live-action Jetsons movie is better than the Flintstones one.

Superheroes

• Wizard has a great round-table discussion on the topic of Green Arrow's upcoming proposal to Black Canary. They have comments by everyone from Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams to Andy Diggle and Tony Bedard. It's a pretty comprehensive look at a complicated subject and, as you'd expect, not everyone agrees. A couple of interesting things from Green Arrow's history that I didn't know: 1) though Chuck Dixon's always been vocal about not particularly liking Ollie, it was DC editorial and not Dixon who decided to kill Green Arrow back in the day, and 2) Judd Winick was always supposed to have followed Kevin Smith as Green Arrow writer, but DC thought they needed a "buffer" to keep fans from eating Winick alive after Smith, so they brought in Brad Meltzer.
• This report from a comics-movie roundtable is heavily skewed towards movies based on Marvel Comics, but that's to be expected when three of the four panelists are Thomas Hayden Church (from Marvel's Spider-Man 3), Zak Penn (who wrote the X-Men movies), and Marvel EiC Joe Quesada. But while it may not be balanced, at least it's got some interesting news about the villain from the new Hulk movie. Hint: he may not be a snowman, but he's certainly abominable.
• As a Christian, I find the idea of Spider-Man's lending a hand in treasured Bible stories to be absolutely hilarious. Especially the bit where the Hulk helps to part the Red Sea.
• Grant Morrison points out one of the wonderful possibilities to come out of 52: "We all wanted to do something new with the multiple Earths so what you've already seen in 52 is simply the tip of the iceberg - each parallel world now has its own huge new backstory and characters and each could basically form the foundation for a complete line of new books. If you like the ongoing soap opera dynamics of New Earth, you can watch Mary Marvel turning to the dark side as her skirt gets shorter and shorter, or you can buy the Earth 5 line of books featuring more iconic versions of the Marvel Family." I hope so, Grant. I hope so. 'Cause honestly, I'd read both. There's much, much more in the link. Easily the best of Newsarama's "exit interviews" of the 52 creative team.

Stuff Nobody Cares About But Me

• Speaking of exit interviews, there's a really nice one with Lauren Graham at TV Guide. She talks very candidly about Gilmore Girls and why it's ending, as well as her plans for the future.
• One of the reasons I don't talk much about TV shows here is that I TiVo them all and watch them at my convenience. That means that I'm not up on the latest spoilers and whatnot, but I'm also not at the mercy of TV programmers when it comes to my schedule. I'm perfectly happy with that trade off. And, apparently, so are a lot of other folks, which is totally screwing up the Neilsen ratings, because they aren't doing a great job of taking TiVo and other DVR systems (not to mention iTunes) into account. The article in the link paints a gloomy picture, as if TV is dying as a medium, but reality is that the measurement system is just going to have to take a few years to catch up to new trends, at which point everything will balance out. Interesting article.

The Comic Book News Network

So, I was visiting my friend Gary one day and we were talking about comics. He had ESPN on the TV for background noise, so during a lull in the conversation, I watched a few seconds.

Now, I am not at all a sports fan. I enjoy going to games the same way your average person enjoys going to Spider-Man movies, but try as I have, I just can't make myself care about stats or who's moving to what team. I'm doing good to name even three guys who play for any of Minnesota's four professional sports teams. To me, folks who are more into sports than that are nerds, plain and simple.

So I voice that opinion to Gary who's something of a sports nerd himself, though not a hardcore one, and he agrees with me. As supporting evidence, he explains that we're not watching ESPN, but ESPNews, one of ESPN's nine affiliated channels (not counting ABC). And we're not watching the NFL draft as I'd first thought. We're not even watching the pre-draft show. We're watching the warm up to the pre-draft show, and I'm thinking, "Holy crap, how do nerds this hard make it out of high school alive?"

And, because Gary and I are comics nerds, we start talking about how comics and graphic novels are becoming more and more accepted today in popular culture, and how it's not inconceivable that one day we might be able to watch a Comic Book News Network on cable. And because we're hardcore comics nerds, we start trying to figure out the programming for our fictional station. (Hey, I escaped high school alive by being bigger than everyone else. I can't explain how Gary did it.)

Since most cable news channels repeat the same news over a period of time, we figure that we really only need about 12 hours of new programming a day. A lot of the day would be spent keeping up with comics news and interviewing publishers and creators. For instance:

• The Marvel Show (1 hour)
• The DC Show (1 hour)
• The Manga Show (1 hour)
• The Dark Horse/Image Show (1 hour)
• The Indie/Alternative Show (1 hour)
• The European Comics Show (1 hour)
• The Newspaper Comics/Editorial Cartoon Show (30 minutes)

We could also have specialty programming, like:

• The comic book movie news/interview/review show (1 hour)
• A graphic novel review show (30 minutes)
• A comic book trivia game show (30 minutes)

And how about shows that feature reviews of comics from various time periods, as well as interviews with creators and experts on those periods?

• The Golden Age show (30 minutes)
• The Silver Age show (30 minutes)
• The '70s show (30 minutes)
• The '80s show (30 minutes)
• The '90s show (30 minutes)

That takes us up to 11 hours without even thinking hard about it. And because I don't want to think hard about it, I'm filling the last hour with re-runs of The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Shazam/Isis, and any other comics-based show I can think of (live action or cartoon; superhero or otherwise).

Oh, and once a year, we'd totally steal Tom Spurgeon's idea about doing a Shawn Hoke-hosted draft of graduating students from comics-focused art schools.

Links du Jour: Infinite Shrek, Spider-Man 3, and Lushbians

Swashbuckling

• A commenter was nice enough to give me some more info on the Captain Alatriste movie: "Alatriste is done and released, at least in Spain, South America, Mexico and several other places. You can get the DVD (region 2) at DVDgo.com. It has shown at a few festivals in the U.S., but there is no scheduled release date here." Thanks! I'll be keeping my eyes open for US release dates, and Amazon's going to send me an alert when it's available on Region 1 DVD.
• Last week I mentioned that Antonio Banderas as Puss 'n Boots was the main reason I'm going to give Shrek 3 a look. It looks like I may soon be able to enjoy him without having to also endure the annoying ogre. Not that Dreamworks won't ask me to do that some more too.

Spies

• Mike Myers is planning another Austin Powers movie. God help us. My five year old son is learning that -- no matter how funny it was the first time -- you can't just tell the same joke over and over again and have it stay funny. Maybe he and Mike Myers should have a conversation.

Mystery

• ABC and the Lost producers have a schedule now for doling out the remaining episodes of the series. Basically, they'll be doing three more, shortened seasons of 16 episodes each. That sets the series to end in 2010. Earlier this year, Damon Lindelof was saying that they wanted to quit at four-and-a-half seasons. This new plan pads that out to about five full-length seasons (the equivalent of three full-length and three shortened ones). That means we'll get some filler, but I'm okay with that.

Fantasy

• I like talking animals. I'm not what you'd call a fan of the genre -- hell, I didn't even know it was a genre -- but I grew up watching Bugs Bunny and Disney cartoons, so of course I like talking animals. Didn't know there was a whole award program specifically for them though.

Superheroes

• Clio Chiang is one of my favorite artists and now she's got some superhero sketches up on her blog. That's her version of Gambit and Rogue illustrating this post. And that's exactly how I like to see Gambit and Rogue. Him: all flirty cockiness. Her: having none of it. Worst thing that ever happened to that couple was their going past flirtation into an actual relationship. Sam and Diane, man. Sam and Diane.
• They finally went and made it official. It's been true for years, but now it's right there in the title: Wolverine and the X-Men. Coming soon to a Saturday morning near you.

Writing is Hard

• I saw Spider-Man 3 over the weekend. I don't know if I want to write a full review of it, but the short version is that I was pretty disappointed. One of the reasons is that Venom just felt kind of forced into the whole thing. There was a great story in the film, but it got crowded out by the Venom parts. And here to explain why is Sam Raimi: "I had worked on the story with my brother Ivan. Primarily, it was a story that featured the Sandman. It was really about Peter, Mary Jane, Harry and that new character. When we were done, Avi Arad, my partner and president of Marvel at the time, came to me and said, 'Sam, you're not paying attention to the fans enough. You need to think about them. You've made two movies now with your favorite villains and now you're about to make another one with your favorite villains. The fans love Venom. He is the fan-favorite. All Spider-Man readers love Venom. Even though you came from '70s Spider-Man, this is what the kids are thinking about. Please incorporate Venom. Listen to the fans now.'" Worst advice ever.

Stuff Nobody Cares About but Me

• Lady, That's My Skull has coined an ingenious new word: "Lushbian, n., a woman who usually acts heterosexual but becomes all kissy-face with other women when they are all really drunk." You know you know one.
• This is why I don't get into anime. The Sci Fi Channel is starting a new feature called Ani-Monday. Great, says I. It'll be a chance for me to try out some anime from the ground floor instead of trying to jump into the middle of some ongoing series. But just look at some of the titles they're opening with. Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society is a perfect example of how inaccessible these things are for new people. It's obviously a continuation of the Ghost in the Shell series, but which part is it? None of them are numbered so that you know what to go back and watch. They never are. Or if they are, it's like another Ani-Monday offering: Street Fighter II V. Are you freaking kidding me? And people say that comics are hard to jump into.
• Why, oh, why didn't I know there was a 2007 Keira Knightley calendar when it could've done me some good?

New Adventures of Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and the Undersea Kingdom: Part III

Now that I've finished all three of them, it's time to wrap up my reviews of these three serials.

The New Adventures of Tarzan stayed pretty strong throughout. Like I said last time, they had a great storytelling engine that let them keep it going as long as they wanted without its getting tiresome. The character of Ula Vale stayed kick-ass through the whole thing and managed to save Tarzan and the men a couple of more times before the end. Seriously, I want to write an Ula Vale novel and I'm going to buy this serial on DVD mostly because of her.

The only major criticism I have is that they ran out of story (or maybe budget) about five minutes into the last chapter. They shouldn't have because of that story engine, but they did and they had to fill the last ten or fifteen minutes with the movie-serial equivalent of a clip show. Basically, Tarzan and the cast have a big party to celebrate their victory and retell the whole serial to the other guests who weren't along for the adventure. Lame, but if you think about it as a long epilogue to an otherwise great tale, it's okay.

Flash Gordon stayed strong throughout. I'm buying it on DVD partly because Jean Rogers is beautiful, but mostly because it's such an amazingly faithful (considering the state of movie effects at the time) adaptation of the comic strip. It is absolutely tons of fun and if Netflix is correct, the first disc of the sequel, Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars should be arriving today. I'm betting I end up buying it too. This has got me way excited to see what The Sci Fi Channel does with the franchise.

Unfortunately, Undersea Kingdom never did get better. For all the good stuff like Crash's dressing up like a robot to infiltrate Unga Khan's headquarters or his getting tied up to the front of a floating tank and rammed into a city wall, there was something awful like Crash and the girl reporter's announcing their engagement at the end when there wasn't the teensiest hint throughout that they were even interested in each other. It's like they had to get engaged because that's what heroes and girls do in the movies, nevermind the fact that the writers completely forgot to lead up to it at all. I'd dearly love to see Mystery Science Theater's ripping into a couple of the episodes (they did the first two in Season Four, but they're not available on DVD as far as I can tell), but that's the only way you'd get me to revisit this one.

Read Part I of this review.
Read Part II of this review.

Links du Jour: Alatriste the Movie, a new Betty Ross, and another Tarzan gone

Adventure

• Holy crap! They're making a Captain Alatriste movie and it stars Viggo Mortensen! And it's in Spanish! (And so is the website, but it's pretty easy to navigate and the trailer is worth the effort.)


• We just lost a Tarzan recently when Herman Brix died, and now we've lost another. Gordon Scott played Tarzan in six different movies in the late '50s. I didn't think I'd seen any of his until I dug around a little and found out that he was the Tarzan in one of my favorites: Tarzan's Greatest Adventure, which features a 29-year-old Sean Connery as one of the villains. Unfortunately, that and most of Scott's others aren't available on DVD right now. He was 80 years old and died of complications after a heart surgery. There's a very nice obituary in the link.


• Related to Gordon Scott's passing, I also got an email from artist David Burton about a fundraiser he's doing to help offset Scott's funeral expenses for his family. According to the email, "I had originally planned on this to help actor Gordon Scott with his living expenses. But unfortunately I wasn't able to get things up and running in time due to a flood that killed our phone service (and thus internet) for nearly two weeks ... To honor him I created a site at Cafe Press. I wanted to let everyone know that I've heard from Mr. Scott's niece, Jane Tyler and she would like my help. This is the official announcement that everything sold at my Cafe Press site will help his family with funeral expenses. Unfortunately time is of the utmost and we need anyone who's interested in helping to visit the site and make a purchase. All profits from this site will go towards helping his family. Or if you would like, donations are being accepted at this address, please make all checks and money orders out to Jane Tyler: Gordon Scott/P.O. Box 335/Germantown, MD 20874." I don't know Mr. Burton, so obviously I can't vouch for him, but my personal belief is that he's legitimate, which is why I'm posting this. So... not telling you to give, but if you're moved to, now you have the information.

Fantasy

• David Yates, who's directing the upcoming Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, has just signed on to also direct the next Potter film: Half-Blood Prince.

Superheroes

• You know, even though I knew that the new Hulk movie was going to have all-new everything, it never occurred to me that that meant I was also going to have to give up Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross. I'm not complaining that Liv Tyler is the replacement; just expressing my unjustifiable surprise. I like Liv, but I've had a crush on Connelly ever since someone pointed out to me how much she looks like Julie Adams.


• Geek Monthly has an interview with Greg Weisman, writer of next year's Amazing Spider-Man cartoon.

Stuff Nobody Cares About But Me

• Gilmore Girls is done. At least they saw it coming and made a season finale that'll also act as a series finale. And honestly? They were running out of ideas. Better to let it go now while it's still good and halfway believable.

Reading List

So, after my mini-freak-out yesterday I went to Amazon and quickly decided that it's not a great resource for what's current in the marketplace. I absolutely love Amazon and it's my primary source for buying books, movies, and music, but for browsing? Not so hot. Nothing is categorized by genre and there's not an easy way to search for, say, recent pirate fiction. There's not even a great cross-referencing section so that I can find books similar to ones I already like.

Take Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell, for example. I mentioned it yesterday because it's got a pirate theme to it, even though it's set on another planet. Amazon will show me other books bought by people who also bought Crystal Rain, but that's of limited use. Those recommendations are all for other scifi books. Not at all what I'm looking for. You can also search for other books with particular Key Phrases, but those tend to be proper nouns or what Amazon calls "statistically improbable phrases." "Pirate fiction" isn't a statistically improbable phrase.

A little more useful is the Customer Tags feature, but if I search that for "pirates" I get 229 items including Pirates of the Caribbean movies and a book called The Alphabet of Manliness. There are also reference books, pirate dictionaries, The Goonies... but it's hard to drill down to what I want.

A quick Google search for "pirate novels" was also unhelpful. There's actually a book called Pirate Novels, so I got a lot of links for that. Wikipedia has an entry on Pirates in Popular Culture, but of the six books they list, only three of them were written in the last decade: a Tween series, a self-published print-on-demand deal (not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not a good indicator for what publishers are currently buying, you know?), and a series that looks absolutely hilarious but isn't at all like what I'm trying to do. Of the six books on Wikipedia's Pirate Books page, the most recent was published in 1988 (although that one sounds very much like what I'm trying to do with Le Corsaire).

After reading yesterday's post, my friend Shara suggested that I also search LibraryThing, which is a great idea. Searching their tags is going to be a little easier than searching Amazon's because there aren't any movies and CDs to filter out, but it'll still be challenging.

All is not lost though. I went to Barnes & Noble yesterday to do some browsing. I checked out the Young Adult and the Fantasy/SciFi sections to see if there's anything new there that looks like me, but there isn't. What I did see though, in the Fiction and Literature section, was something that reminded me of an Arturo Pérez-Reverte book, and everything clicked for me.

Comparing myself to Pérez-Reverte is pretty frickin' arrogant, so let's just say that he's the guy that I dream of sitting next to on a bookshelf. I may never be that talented, but he's writing exactly the kind of stuff that I want to write. A little swashbuckling, a little mystery, a little fantasy... I've already got The Club Dumas and The Flanders Panel at home, so I left the store with a copy of Captain Alatriste. And that reminded me that there is actually a sub-genre that's doing what I want to do. For the last year I've been Wish Listing what I call Historical Mystery titles off of Bookgasm. Stuff like Napoleon's Pyramids, The Conjurer's Bird, The Poe Shadow, and The Historian. And as I'm perusing my Wish List to remind myself of these books, I also remember that if I want something specifically pirate-themed, there's always The Mark of Ran. And, of course, Crystal Rain.

So now I just have to start reading them.

Links du Jour: Iron Man armor, Wonder Woman villains, and "Oh, Mighty Isis Isis Isis Isis..."

Superheroes

• The big news is that Entertainment Weekly has a look at the red-and-gold Iron Man armor from the upcoming movie. Dang, that's beautiful. I don't even like Iron Man and that makes me want to see this movie yesterday.
• There's a longish Wonder Woman post in me wanting to get out. I know that because I keep talking about her and I find stuff like this rundown of obscure Wonder Woman villains fascinating. I completely agree that Circe is way overused in Wonder Woman comics and I wonder if maybe whatever it is that keeps writers from exploring the rest of her rogues gallery is the same thing that keeps them from realizing her full potential as a character.
• One of my favorite shows as a kid was Isis. It was a live-action Saturday morning show that ran alongside the live-action Shazam!. The two shows even crossed over occasionally. I remember having a huge crush on JoAnna Cameron, who played Isis. Anyway, rumor has it that the entire series is being released on DVD July 24th.

Stuff Nobody Cares About But Me

• Okay, she's not talking about me, but the fact that there's a MySpace user named I aM iN lOvE wItH yOu MiChAeL mAy!!~*♥*~ is still pretty funny.

My genre (or "I need stuff to read")

Speaking of marketing, Lit Agent X has a great post on the subject as it relates to prose. The whole thing is worth reading, but this bit especially stood out to me: "Knowing where your book fits into the marketplace is very important. Good writers are readers. For fiction, you should read as much as you can in your own genre."

Which got me thinking about what my genre really is. For the last few years I've been of the opinion that genre doesn't matter; that I should just write the story I want and let the marketing people figure out how to label it. The problem with that view is that it's extremist. If I don't figure out how to attract an agent or sell my book to a publisher, there won't be any marketing people to put labels on it. A more balanced approach -- and I'm a huge fan of balance -- is to be aware of the kind of people who'd be interested in my book, but not to the point that I feel constricted by a bunch of creativity-stifling genre "rules".

To that end, Lit Agent X has a follow up post to the above in which she says, "You should know where your book fits into the marketplace. I'll believe you if you name two or three books that truly would be on the same shelf as yours. I won't believe you if you compare your book to Catcher in the Rye, 1984, and Harry Potter. Comparing your work to bestsellers or classics that don't have much in common with yours won't serve you.

"But if you list three recently published authors/books and I know them all or I can quickly look them up, then I get a better sense of where your book fits and I know you're savvy enough to see your book as a product on a shelf sitting next to similar products."

The problem is: I don't know any recently published authors or books who's stuff my work-in-progress might sit next to on a shelf. Tobias Buckell maybe? But not really. Le Corsaire has a fantasy element to it, but it's very much set in a version of our world, rather than a completely fantastic one.

I haven't exhaustively researched this to know if they are or aren't, but if no one's currently writing anything remotely like my book, does that make me avant-garde or just really, really out-of-touch? Some superficial similarities between my book and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies make me suspect that it's the latter. Considering how popular the Pirates movies are, why is no one publishing books about pirates and supernatural creatures? It can't be that they're too derivative, because though the artiste in me rebels against that label, the publishing industry certainly wouldn't. I mean, look at all the Harry Potter and DaVinci Code look-a-likes and tell me that publishers are afraid of cashing in on a hot fad.

Here's something else that tells me how out-of-touch I am. Lit Agent X says that "good writers are readers." And I am a reader. But I'm reading old Conan novels and re-reading Burroughs and Robin Hood. Those are fun, but they're not teaching me anything about the current marketplace. I need new stuff to read. Hell, maybe there is a whole pirate-fantasy sub-genre that I don't know about because I've been too focused on the classics. I don't want to be the literary equivalent of the guy who quit listening to any music released after Boston's last album.

So, that's my mission for this week. I'm going to start surfing and searching Barnes & Noble for new stuff to read that looks like it might be in my genre. And if there's really nothing out there, I need to rethink whether Le Corsaire is a marketable first novel. 'Cause Lord knows I've got other ideas.