Links du Jour: More Draw Mary Marvel, fish souls, and a better Potter cover

Adventure

• I knew people were gonna jump onto this Draw Mary Marvel thing. I'm glad, too.

Mystery

• I'd forgotten that Mark Twain wrote a mystery novel with Tom Sawyer as the detective until Joe Hilliard recently reminded me of it. It's called, oddly enough, Tom Sawyer, Detective and you can read it online for free.
• Every time Ed Gorman writes a new column for Bookgasm, my reading list gets longer. This time it's because of his recommendation of Mystery Scene magazine, which Ed describes as "the pre-eminent news and feature magazine of the mystery field. Hard-boiled or cozy, old novels or new, movies, audio, TV … whatever aspect of mystery fiction interests you, you’ll find it in Mystery Scene. And presented in a package that’s professional, easy to read and worthy of design and layout awards." I'm getting a subscription.

Horror

• Bookgasm also has an interview up with horror/suspense writer Gary Williams who's apparently having a lot of success with a self-published trilogy about "two friends ... who uncover ancient artifacts – tools – in Florida, which are integrated into local history and ultimately linked to the Old Testament." Williams says that "the tools, however, have been contaminated and their ancient purposes mutated. As other forces seek to gain their control, the underlying purpose as to why the tools have been discovered in the present day leads to a startling revelation." He also says that reviewers are comparing him to Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, with some Stephen King thrown in.

Fantasy

• Wow. I much prefer the cover to the British adult version of the new Harry Potter book. There's also some extra text on the flaps that tell a bit more about the story: "Harry has been burdened with a dark, dangerous and seemingly impossible task: that of locating and destroying Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes. Never has Harry felt so alone, or faced a future so full of shadows. But Harry must somehow find within himself the strength to complete the task he has been given. He must leave the warmth, safety, and companionship of The Burrow and follow without fear or hesitation the inexorable path laid out for him...
  "In this final, seventh instsallment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectacular fashion the answers to the many questions that have been so eagerly awaited. The spellbinding, richly woven narrative, which plunges, twists and turns at a breathtaking pace, confirms the author as a mistress of storytelling, whose books will be read, reread and read again."

Science Fiction

• I don't know how I forgot to post about this yesterday, but here's all the info on the Star Wars stamps and other mailing paraphernalia that the post office has. I've found the Artoo mailbox in Saint Paul, too. As soon as I can get over there with a camera, I'll get a picture of it.

Kill All Monsters! update

Jason made a slight tweak to the robot's arm and inked the proposed cover, so now it's ready to go into the pitch package. The first issue's being lettered and I'm working on a cover letter for the pitch.

We're getting close.

Lost: "Exposé"

Re: last night's episode of Lost.

SPOILERS BELOW obviously.

There was a point near the middle at which I turned to my wife and said, "This is either pretty clever or the worst episode in the history of the show." Two loser wannabe characters fighting desperately for significance in a show they don't belong in. We've been wondering all season why the Lost writers would want to stick two brand new characters in the show as if they've been an important part of things all along. Yeah, I know there are lots of other survivors from the crash that don't get mentioned, but I'm perfectly comfortable with their just milling about in the background providing color. By the third season, I don't need for any of them to suddenly become important.

And I especially don't need their importance to be "validated" by an episode that goes back and re-tells the entire series from the beginning, only sticking Nikki and Paulo into memorable scenes and having them secretly discover all of the island's secrets before anyone else did. Lame.

And seeing Shannon and Boone again? Just reminded me why I didn't like them in the first place. I grew to like them over the course of the first season, but we got none of that here, just whiny Shannon and her jerk of a brother Boone.

It was nice to see Ethan and Dr. Artz again though. And Lando Calrissian makes everything better.

And by the time I got to the end of the episode, I actually liked the unexpected -- by me, at least -- ending. It turns out that it was pretty clever, because it wasn't actually trying to show how important Nikki and Paulo suddenly were. It was just trying to tell a cool little one-shot horror/mystery morality tale (a la those old EC horror comics) in the Lost universe. My assumption of what I thought they were trying to do almost ruined it for me, but what they were actually doing was pretty darn cool.

Link du Jour: The X-Files 2, Superman loves Black Canary, and the death of the Honeynut Cheerios Bee

Adventure

• There are only two things I miss about not watching 24 anymore. One is seeing Jack Bauer kick bootie every week. The other is Mary Lynn Rajskub as Chloe. When I was watching the show, she was one of my favorite characters on TV. Which is to say that I'm pretty excited that she's on the cover on the next current issue of Geek Monthly. It's weird seeing her all sexied up in the pictorial (previewed on GM's website) -- 'cause that's not what she's about for me -- but dang if she isn't pretty.
• One of my new, favorite blog's is Every Day is Like Wednesday. This post on how Superman totally has the hots for Black Canary is a perfect example of why.

Fantasy

• Scholastic has revealed the cover art for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
• The Internet is buzzing that it looks like Disney may back down on their refusal to release Song of the South on DVD. Mark Evanier has the best prediction of how this is probably going to play out.

Science Fiction

• Looks like the second X-Files movie is on it's way.

Comics

• I've always thought that someone should make a cartoon in which all the breakfast cereal characters crossed-over with each other. Breakfast of the Gods is the next best thing.

Links du Jour: Nothing Better, the business of writing, and Garfield's not funny

Comics

• Tyler Page (Stylish Vittles) has been serializing his latest work, a college drama called Nothing Better, on the web for free in hope that it'll drive interest in a trade paperback collection. The first volume of that collection is now available for pre-order, so if you've been enjoying the comic online, now's your chance to get your very own copy. If you haven't tried it online yet, click the link above and check it out. Or, you can take my word that it's really good stuff.
• Everyone knows that Garfield isn't funny. Smoking Tree goes the extra step to explain why.

Writing is Hard

• I don't mind thinking about the business aspects of writing so much. I just don't like actually managing them. Paperback Writer has some great tips about how to do that with the least amount of pain, particularly in regard to tracking expenses for tax purposes.

Kill All Monsters! cover idea

And lest we forget about the other comic I'm working on, here's an idea Jason Copland did for the cover of Kill All Monsters!. I'm getting goosebumps, this thing's so close to being done.

Update: Change "goosebumps" to "tears of joy." I just looked at Jason's completed pages and I'm actually getting emotional here. He nailed every scene; every facial expression; every everything. You guys, this is going to be so good.

Dust to Dust to be published by Moonstone

I've been teasing about Dust to Dust for a little while now, but I've just been given the okay by the publisher to start talking about it in detail.

I co-wrote it with Alex Ness, founder of Pop Thought and a genius with high concepts and plots. He came up with the idea for a one-shot ditty about a tough, old Jesse James fighting a young, green Machine Gun Kelly in the streets of an Oklahoma ghost town. Emphasis on "ghost."

I was fortunate enough that he asked me to take his idea and plot outline and make a comic out of it. Lead's gonna fly.

A local guy named Joel Vollmer is illustrating it and Moonstone is publishing it. It's too early to know exactly when it's coming out, but we're hoping to see it on shelves later this year. That's all I wanna say right now, though I'm sure I'll figure out more to talk about later. I need to come up with a personal marketing plan (as opposed to supporting whatever official plan Moonstone has) for this thing, which'll be an adventure all its own. It's a really fun book; I just need to figure out how best to let people know about it.

Links du Jour: Galactica spoilers, new Stargate series, and the Harry Potter cast

Adventure

• In the back of DC's weekly 52 series, they've been running these two-page origin stories of the various DC superheroes. At the end of each one, they give a short list of "Essential Storylines" of the character. Every Day is Like Wednesday has been reviewing not just the storylines, but the lists themselves, and adding other essential material to it. It's cool reading if you've ever wanted to know more about a particular DC character, like I have about Zatanna (it's the fishnets).
• I totally missed that Shang Chi: Master of Kung Fu appeared in last month's issue of Wisdom. Gonna have to go back and get that one.
• Today's Quentin Tarantino's 44th birthday.

Fantasy

• Though Emma Watson made fans sweat a little, they can rest easy now. Watson and the other two main Harry Potter actors have all signed on to complete the movie series.

Science Fiction

• Geek Monthly has a nice recap of a couple of interviews that Battlestar Galactica co-creator Ron Moore has given lately. As Geek says, "It is clear that he is thinking of an endgame for the franchise, but won’t say for sure if season 4 will be the final voyage." There are a couple of spoilers about Season 4 there, some clarification about the Season 3 finale, and story details about the direct-to-DVD movie coming out this fall. Good stuff for BSG fans.
• Looks like there's a new Stargate series in the works: Stargate Universe.
• I'm too old to have grown up with the Transformers, so I don't have an ingrained fondness for them, but I now have a reason to be excited about the new movie: Hugo Weaving is voicing Megatron.

Other Comics News

• Man, I wish I lived in New York so I could go to Autism Awareness Day at Shea Stadium and hang out with Kyle Baker and a mess of other comics professionals and journalists. Sounds like it's going to be a blast and for a fantastic cause. If you live in the area, check the link for updates about ticket prices, because they're cheaper if you get them in advance.

Links du Jour: Draw Mary Marvel, what makes a superhero, and plushy Fone Bone

Light day today.

Adventure

• Fantasy casting doesn't usually interest me, but dang if The Braxcave hasn't done a nice job with a hypothetical Alpha Flight movie. I even like the idea of Chris Jericho playing Sasquatch.
• It seems like every time DC does something questionable with one of it's girl superheroes, artists start creating their own versions of the character in an attempt to hold on to the elements of the character that are being neglected in the comics. Not that I'm complaining, 'cause it's led to some fantastic art. Looks like Mary Marvel could be the latest.
• Quick Stop Entertainment has a great article (actually a review of Peter Coogan’s Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre) on defining the superhero genre and determining what makes a character a superhero. It's a long piece with lots of examples, but it's interesting reading. Boiled down: super heroes are people with costumes, code names, and defined missions who exist in modern day settings. The setting, according to the article, is vitally important. It's the reason that Batman is a superhero, but Zorro isn't. Or that Green Lantern is, but Flash Gordon isn't. The article also makes exceptions for people like Zatanna or Rogue who may lack some of the defining characteristics, but are considered superheroes because either their creators or the characters themselves obviously intended for them to be. It goes to show that the superhero genre is next to impossible to define, but they make a fascinating job of trying.

Fantasy

• Jeff Smith's showing the prototype for a new Fone Bone plush toy. Hopefully it's the first in a series.

Links du Jour: Mummy 3, film noir, and downloading comics

Adventure

• The Mummy 3 is in the works. Looks like Jet Li will be the bad guy and it's being written by Smallville's Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, which is all fine. Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, xXx) is directing and that's okay too. I'm just concerned that Stephen Sommers' producing credit means that we'll still get cheap, video-game-quality special effects for it. But maybe that's Cohen's call and I just don't know enough about how movies are made. Actually, if it is Cohen's decision to make, I'm very happy about that because the effects in his other adventure movies have been pretty darn cool.

Mystery

• In his review of the new releases of Double Indemnity and the 3-volume Film Noir Classic Collection, Stanley Crouch of The Slate also gives a nice overview of the film noir genre and why it became so popular in the late '40s.

Horror

• Sometimes I wish I lived in LA. Then I could go to the Elk's Run release party to celebrate the collected edition of this excellent graphic novel.

Science Fiction

• Siskoid's Blog of Geekery should be called Blog of Awesomeness. He's been reviewing every episode of Star Trek, including the cartoon series, and is up into the movies now. I'm hoping he keeps it going through Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and the others. He also sprinkles in plenty of comics posts for variety. This is a blog I'm going to have to go back and read from its beginning.
• Grant Gould's got another Learn to Draw installment on StarWars.com. This one on drawing R2-D2.

Comics

• There's a conversation going on right now about the ethics of downloading comics for free. Tom Spurgeon summarizes my feelings on it exactly.

Writing is Hard

• Just discovered a cool site called First Writer with lots of advice and resources for beginning writers. They help find agents, publishers, contests, magazine markets, and lots of other stuff.

Stuff Nobody Cares About But Me

• Men in Trees has been renewed for another season. Yeah, it's a girly show, but it's got great dialogue and interesting characters. I like it as much as I liked the first couple of seasons of Gilmore Girls, and that's a lot. (In that same link, Lost and Grey's Anatomy have also been renewed, but those are news to nobody.)

Tarzan Escapes

I liked the first two Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies so much that I was sure I'd also enjoy the third, Tarzan Escapes. Not so much though.

The plot's pretty simple, but that's not the problem. The plots were simple in Tarzan, the Ape Man and Tarzan and His Mate too. In this one, a couple of Jane's cousins have come to the jungle to bring her back to England so she can claim an inheritance that they hope to share. They're not as mercenary as that makes them sound; they really do love Jane. Unfortunately, they hire an unscrupulous guide to help find her, but don't realize that his motivation for doing so is to capture Tarzan and show him off as an exhibition.

There are a couple of cool parts in the film. Tarzan immediately dislikes the guide and there's a nice tension between the two of them through the movie. You get the sense that Tarzan's starting to learn his lesson about civilized folk and their disregard for the jungle. But even better than that is the fancy treehouse that Tarzan and Jane have built. It's very Swiss Family Robinsion, but long before Disney made that film. Putting aside for a second that it means Jane is domesticating Tarzan, it's an undeniably cool place to live.

But I can't leave Tarzan's domestication aside for too long, because that's one of the big problems I have with Tarzan Escapes. The Weissmuller films obviously take a very different approach from the Burroughs novels and that's okay, but I'm starting to not like how they're portraying the Ape Man. It was fine for a while that he could only speak in grunts and monosyllables, but by the time Tarzan Escapes rolls around, he's been with Jane for a while and you'd think that an intelligent person would've picked up more English. He hasn't though, and I'm guessing that he doesn't for the rest of the series.

It makes Tarzan look stupid. Jane talks to him more like a pet or a child than her husband. You never doubt that she loves him or that the jungle is exactly where she wants to be, so it's not like she's being condescending. She genuinely struggles to communicate with him, like she's not sure that he understands. And frankly, neither are we. Tarzan should be a guy who's very presence communicates with you on a primal level and lets you know that you do not want to mess with him. Bad things may happen to him, and it's okay to empathize with him when they do, but he's not supposed to be an object of pity like a defenseless kid who gets picked on at the playground.

Another problem I have with Tarzan Escapes is that they re-use a bunch of footage from Tarzan and His Mate. Not just shots of Tarzan swinging through the jungle or stock footage of animals, but whole battle sequences and fight scenes. You definitely get the idea that MGM realized it had a hit property and figured it could just hack out whatever and still make money. They even frumped up Jane's costume into a one-piece mini-skirt.

At least they spent some dough on the treehouse.