Reviews: A Distant Soil, Elephantmen, and Rocket Girl

Spent all my free time today catching up on news and writing some reviews for Comic World News. A Distant Soil and Elephantmen are both scifi comics, though A Distant Soil reads more like a fantasy and Elephantmen like a noir mystery. Rocket Girl is an indie superhero comic.

Tomorrow I hope to get around to talking about a couple movies I've seen recently: Lost Horizon and Day of the Dolphin.

Links: Joker pic, Flash Gordon news, and the Money Shot

Mystery

• I don't know Christa Faust, but we have some mutual friends, so I was immediately curious about her new novel Money Shot coming out next year from Hard Case Crime. The cover is amazing (as Hard Case covers are), but the sample chapter and the plot description are what got me: "It all began with the phone call asking former porn star Angel Dare to do one more movie. Before she knew it, she’d been shot and left for dead in the trunk of a car. But Angel is a survivor. And that means she’ll get to the bottom of what’s been done to her even if she has to leave a trail of bodies along the way..."
• Not really sure what category to put this under, but since it's a shirt that spoils the twist endings to a lot of movies and books, I'll put it here. Careful about clicking the link though. Even though most of the movies are older, there are a couple that I haven't seen yet, and you might not have either. And if you're watching the Harry Potter movies, but haven't read the books, well... you've been warned. Still, it's a great shirt and worth checking out, even if you'd have to be kind of jerk to wear it around.

Science Fiction

• Disney-MGM has some awesome ads for their Star Wars Weekends event this June. Fer instance:



• The Barbarella remake has a director and he's a good one. Now I just gotta get in touch with him about having Duran Duran do the theme song.
• Entertainment Weekly has some dirt on the Sci Fi Channel's Flash Gordon show. I'm undecided about some of the changes they're going to be making. Earth and Mongo's being connected by a wormhole instead of spaceships will take some getting used to, but it does make a lot more sense than having Mongo flying all over the galaxy under its own power. I'm glad to see that Ming will be fleshed out into a villain with deeper motivations than just Wants to Rule the Universe. I'm disappointed though that Flash and Dale are exes. One of my favorite parts of the old serial was watching them fall in love (especially with Princess Aura around to complicate the process) and I feel cheated that we're not going to get to see that in this version.

Superheroes

• I wasn't sure whether or not to link yesterday to the site with the image of Heath Ledger as the Joker from The Dark Knight. There was some question about the site's authenticity, so I just let it go. Shouldn't have though, because apparently it's for real. I've read some criticism about the makeup and how it's not accurate to the comics, but whatever. This is far scarier than anything the comics have ever been able to convey. Congratulations to Christopher Nolan, the make-up artists, and Heath Ledger. I'm still a little creeped out.
• I haven't done these comics meme things before, but I've wanted to. The Invincible Super-Blog is responsible for this one:

Writing is Hard

• One of the most useful (and entertaining) blogs for writers for the last two years has been Miss Snark's. I've only discovered it in the last few months, but I was still very disappointed when I visited yesterday and learned that she's closing it down. I'm going to miss her daily wisdom and humor, but I totally get her reasons for needing to call it done. At least she's keeping her archives open for those times when I really gotta know something.
• Maybe The Rejecter will be able to fill the Snark-sized hole in my Reader.

Link: Jericho to get closure, Eli Stone looks really funny, and I gotta read The Cage

Mystery

• Taking the sting out of Jericho's cancellation, Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment, responded to huge fan outcry by saying, "Thank you for supporting Jericho with such passion. We truly appreciate the commitment you made to the series and we are humbled by your disappointment. In the coming weeks, we hope to develop a way to provide closure to the compelling drama that was the Jericho story." No word on if that means a mini-series, a TV movie, or something else, but it's cause for hope.

Fantasy

• I'm trying not to comment on any of the promised Fall TV shows yet, because I'm still not over some of my favorites getting cancelled this season and I'm certainly not ready to start welcoming in their replacements. But I've mentioned before that I'm curious to see Victor Garber's new show, Eli Stone. Even though the premise didn't immediately grab me, it's Victor Garber. His Jack Bristow from Alias is the one guy I'd put up against Jack Bauer and not immediately know which to bet on. But anyway, any hesitation I had about the premise is now completely gone thanks to this trailer. Oh, man, I can't wait to watch this show now.
• Jason Brannon's crytozoological thriller The Cage sounds really really good. Sort of like Day of the Animals meets The X-Files. "A Wendigo, Bigfoot, El Chupacabra, The Jersey Devil (think horned horse and awfully mean), The Dragon of Bone Island and a little somethin’ somethin’ called The Beast of Exmoor" attack a small, family zoo and everyone in it.
• I liked Pan's Labyrinth pretty well, but I don't think I'd consider buying it if the special edition didn't have "animated DVD comics (one-page stories with floating captions), beautifully illustrated by Guy Davis, Jason Shawn Alexander and Mike Kaluta, that provide interesting back stories to the mythical characters Ofelia encounters in the labyrinth: The Faun and Great Toad (Davis), Pan (Kaluta) and The Fairies (Alexander)."

Science Fiction

• This could also have gone under Superheroes, but I'll keep it here. I really liked DC's 52 series, but one of my regrets about it is that I wanted more Adam Strange, Starfire, Animal Man stories. DC read my mind and launches Countdown to Adventure this August.
• Lucasfilm has released a look at the art from its upcoming Clone Wars CGI series.
• My local theater had a showing of the first Terminator movie on the big screen last week. Seeing Linda Hamilton even as the whimpy version of Sarah Conner made me less excited about FOX's upcoming The Sarah Conner Chronicles, but maybe my prejudice will ease off between now and next January when Chronicles kicks off.

Superheroes

• If you read superhero comics at all, you're aware that Mary Jane Watson's first words to Peter Parker were, "Face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot." But if you're like me, you don't know the context of where that line came from. I've been confused for years about why those would be the first words out of someone's mouth when she's meeting you for the first time. Fortunately, Comics Should Be Good helpfully recaps the story for us.
• Fox and the Franklin Mint have teamed up to release a limited edition Silver Surfer quarter to promote the new Fantastic Four movie.
• I gave up on Heroes about six episodes in and decided that if I was missing out, I could always catch up on DVD. Well, now the DVD is scheduled for release on August 28th and I'm still having a hard time mustering excitement for it. Some of my friends tell me that it got better as the season progressed, but I haven't yet read a thorough review that acknowledges the show's early flaws and explains how it corrected for them. I need convincing.

Other Comics

• The winners of this year's Glyph awards honoring black comics creators and characters have been announced. I'm definitely going to have to give Stagger Lee a read.

Writing is Hard

• Bestselling author Brad Meltzer shares some tips for getting published. Some of it's old news if you already read agents' blogs, but there's some good, new info too, like the caveat to Miss Snark's "Query widely" advice where Meltzer suggests you only query ten agents at a time in case you decide to rework your query letter after the first go-'round.
• Another good advice list. This one on developing effective writing habits.
• I suck at titles, so any source of ideas for them is welcome. I totally want to write a comic called Stab!

What I learned from Barnes & Noble and The Mark of Ran

Today has sucked. Way too busy, so no time for a big links post. All I got for ya is a pirate novel update.

I've had Paul Kearney's The Mark of Ran (the first book in his Sea Beggars series) on my To Read list for a while now, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. Yesterday, a friend sent me a link that linked to this announcement on Kearney's message board: "Things have been rather busy as regards the future of the Sea Beggars series. I'm sorry to say that sales of both books have not been brilliant, both in the UK and the US, and so both the UK and US publishers have decided to pull the plug on the series. In the conventional sense, there will be no more books..."

He goes on to talk about his plans for the series and his feelings about the publishing business and it's heart-breaking. It also adds to my thoughts from a couple of weeks ago about the viability of publishing a pirate novel.

My friend's reason for sending me the link was to get me to go buy The Mark of Ran and review it here in hopes that if enough people did that, maybe we could get some kind of buzz going for it and save the series. And because my friend asked, I was happy to scoot over to Barnes & Noble on my way home last night and pick up a copy. Only guess what? No copies. Which is really the problem, isn't it?

It's not that the book's sitting on the bookstore shelf and no one's buying it. It's that the bookstore didn't buy any copies. Or, if it did, they didn't sell so now they've been sent back to the publisher. It sucks.

And it again brings up the question: considering how popular the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are, why aren't pirate novels selling? The closest answer I can come up with is that there's no crossover appeal. Just like everyone who likes the Spider-Man movies doesn't go looking for their nearest comic book store, people who like Pirates of the Caribbean aren't necessarily going to go looking for novels that are similar to it. First of all, the novels wouldn't have Jack Sparrow in them, and Jack -- or Johnny Depp anyway -- is the big attraction with the Pirates movies. Sure, there's a small group of pirate fans (like me) who'll eat up whatever piratey goodness you put in front of them, but they're a niche market.

Barnes & Noble did have a whole display of pirate books right on the main aisle between the front entrance and the Starbucks in the center of the store. All of it was non-fiction. You'd think that Mark of Ran and Crystal Rain would've gone nicely on that display, but nope. And honestly, I'm not complaining. I'm just making an observation that I can hopefully learn from. I don't blame Barnes & Noble. Obviously, it's in their best interest to sell books and for whatever reason, they don't think that pirate fiction, even old pirate fiction that they publish themselves, will sell off of that display. I don't get it, but I accept it.

And part of accepting it means that I've got to lay off Le Corsaire for now. It's time to think about something else as a first novel. 'Cause like I said before: lots of other ideas.

Tarzan Finds a Son

As my buddy Joe told me when I reviewed it, I hit the wall with Tarzan Escapes as far as Weissmuller Tarzan films go. The first two were imaginative and fun, but by Tarzan Finds a Son, the fourth in the series, it looks like the producers have found a formula and are just replaying it over and over: Tarzan and family live happily in the jungle until "civilized" folks intrude to drag someone back home with them.

In this case, the "someone" is a baby whom Tarzan and Jane found when a plane crashed near their home. They raise him as their own, but the boy's relatives soon (okay, five years later) come looking for him because (like Jane in the last movie) he's heir to a fortune.

But even though it's formulaic and features the first appearance of Boy, a character I always thought was a stupid idea growing up (he's sort of like Tarzan's "Scrappy Doo," though I guess to be fair that Scrappy was really more like Scooby's "Boy"), I actually enjoyed Tarzan Finds a Son a lot. Part of it was knowing what to expect. Tarzan Escapes took me by surprise with how watered down it was from the first two installments, especially Tarzan and His Mate, but with my expectations lowered, I was able to get into Tarzan Finds a Son as the juvenile, Saturday matinee fare that it was designed to be.

To help me see it through a child's eyes, I watched it with my own five-year-old boy. As I've mentioned before, David's a big animal fan and he's recently been getting into Tarzan comics and had watched a few episodes of The New Adventures of Tarzan with me, so I knew he'd enjoy this one. It was especially helpful that he and Boy are the same age. David identified with the baby elephant in the movie more than any of the human characters, but he loved giving the play-by-play anytime Boy was getting chased by a lion or a croc or whatever other trouble Boy would get himself in. He was genuinely worried about Jane at one point -- almost to tears -- and I've never seen him giggle as hard as he did during the climax when a shrewdness (yeah, I know it's weird, but that's the term; look it up) of chimpanzees on elephantback attacked a village of cannibals. He absolutely loved that part. And so did I.

I also liked how Tarzan doesn't seem dumb in this one. Or at least how Jane doesn't treat him like a child. She disagrees with him about Boy's fate, and acts on her conviction that she's right, but unlike Tarzan Escapes, she doesn't seem to have the attitude that Tarzan would agree with her if only she could explain it to him in simple enough terms.

Also, Boy's not nearly as obnoxious as I remembered. Maybe he gets that way later in the series as he gets older, but he's actually cute and charming in this. I hope that the rest of the series gets away from the formula plot, but I'm actually looking forward to watching them now. Tarzan Escapes was certainly the wall of the series, but once you're over it, it's not bad on the other side. Just different.

Links: CBS fall schedule, Elephantmen: the puzzle

So, yeah. I only have a couple of links in my folder, so I think I'll just put those up and spend the rest of my time reading stuff for tomorrow.

Mystery/Scifi/Action/Stuff Nobody Cares About/Whatever

I was seriously considering writing a full post on Jericho because of how much I've fallen in love with the show the last few months. It started off "okay" in the Fall, but not great and I admit that when it came back in the Spring I let a few episodes stack up in TiVo before I dug into it again. In other words, I wasn't exactly sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for it to return. And apparently, neither was anyone else. Even though it's been an amazing show in the second half of the season, the winter hiatus killed it. And the finale was a great cliffhanger too. Between this and Drive, I'm starting to hate TV. I hope Skeet Ulrich finds another show quickly. The world needs Skeet Ulrich TV shows, even if it doesn't know it.

In that same link above, CBS also announces that The Unit has been picked up for another season, which is excellent news. I don't think it's as strong a show as Jericho had become in terms of the plot's direction and consistently making me anticipate the next episode, but the missions are always exciting and I love Scott Foley even more than Skeet. And The Unit's finale was an even bigger nailbiter than Jericho's was.

Also in that link: The Class has been cancelled, but Rules of Engagement has been renewed. I laughed harder at The Class than Rules, and I liked its plot and characters better, so I'm sad to see it go, but I'm glad that I'll be able to keep getting a weekly dose of Patrick Warburton and Megyn Price. Oliver Hudson was just starting to get comfortable in his role towards the end of this season too, so it'll be nice to see if that continues. David Spade's character needs some attention in the writing department, but Spade's doing a good job with what he has to work with.

And if I need to laugh really hard, I still have The Office and Scrubs.

Science Fiction

I mentioned this at Comic World News, but it's pretty cool so I want to share it here too. Image Comics is putting out a jigsaw puzzle of one of the covers of the Elephantmen comic. Even if you don't read the comic, you have to love this image of a trenchcoated hippo walking through the rain-soaked streets of a cyberpunk city.

Comics reviews

I've had a busy morning and it may interfere with Links today, but I'll see if I can get caught up. Also, I'm having to dig out my Phil Jimenez issues of Wonder Woman and remind myself why I quit reading it before I can finish part two of the Wonder Woman article. I'm pretty sure it had to do with Trevor Barnes, but I don't remember if it was a good reason or not. Need to revisit it.

In the meantime, I just posted some genre comics reviews at Comic World News, so please go check those out. I review a mystery/crime comic (The Killer), a fantasy comic (Eberron: Eye of the Wolf), and four scifi comics (Gødland, Retro Rocket, Blind Mice, and Fireblast).

Links: Lost pirates, Han Solo candy bar, and that Mary Jane statue

Pirates

• Just when it doesn't look like Lost can get any better, Grant Gould goes and offers reasonable speculation that it may involve pirates now.
• And speaking of pirates, Disneyland is offering lots of Pirates art and merchandise in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Mystery

• Looks like there's a new Hawaiian Dick mini-series in the works called Screaming Black Thunder. Good news for fans of pulp mystery, tiki, and horror.

Horror

• Just because Rachel Weisz isn't coming back for Mummy 3 doesn't mean that her character, Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell, isn't. She'll just be played by Maria Bello (A History of Violence, World Trade Center). I'm going to miss Weisz, but I don't know Bello very well. Maybe I'll like her.

Fantasy

• Today is L. Frank Baum's birthday. He would've been 151 years old.

Science Fiction

• You know you've always wanted to know how to make your own Han Solo chocolate bar.

Superheroes

• There's a large brouhaha going on in the comics blogosphere over this statue. And it certainly deserves some hullabaloo. The problem though, as this blogger points out, is that "while it is undeniably offensive, there are too many opinions on why for it to be of any use." For instance, a couple of bloggers find the very notion of Cheesecake demeaning to women and want to prove it by calling for illustrations of men in cheesecake poses to show how ridiculous it looks. My problem with that is that there already is a male equivalent to cheesecake, so there's nothing particularly insightful about turning the tables. Also, I agree with Kady Mae that Cheesecake itself isn't the problem: "Cheesecake has a certain playfulness, a certain light-hearted mischief to it that pandering lacks ... The subject of cheesecake is always a person." That fits girlontheleft's description of Adam Hughes' concept drawing for the statue: "MJ looks cute and human and a bit goofy, and I can imagine she's just teasing an unclad Spidey who's just out of frame." In other words, it isn't that Mary Jane is in a sexy pose that's the problem with the statue, it's that -- unlike Adam's version -- she doesn't appear to be in on the joke. Her eyes are lifeless and her smile is uncomfortable, as if everyone around her is laughing and she's pretending to understand why. Those features, plus the elongated body make the statue look like it's not based on the Hughes drawing, but on a Michael Turner re-imagining of the Hughes drawing.
• The colorist of DC's upcoming Black Canary mini-series is showing the covers to all four issues and there's at least one, huge spoiler amongst them. Go take a look before someone gets wise and makes him take them down.

Stuff Nobody Cares About But Me

• It's official. Studio 60 is done.
• I talked before about how TiVo and other new ways of watching TV are screwing around with the Nielsens and advertisers. According to the New York Times, it looks like the networks and advertisers are getting smart: "'They have control,' (ABC 's executive vice president for marketing Michael) Benson said of viewers, 'and we’re not going to fight that. We want to make it easy for them to get what they want, where they want, when they want.' At the same time, ABC and the four other big broadcast networks are working on methods to hold the attention of TV viewers throughout the commercial breaks that interrupt the shows they want to see ... One way that many networks hope to engage viewers during commercial breaks is by wedging original content into the blocks of advertising time, so that viewers will anticipate seeing something fun if they sit through a few ads." I'm all for it. I don't mind watching commercials at all as long as they're entertaining. In fact, I'll often rewind the TiVo and watch one that catches my eye as I'm fast-forwarding through it.

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.