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Year: 2014

New Animated Series About a Teen Aboriginal Superhero from Creator Jay Odjick

New Animated Series About a Teen Aboriginal Superhero from Creator Jay Odjick

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Kagagi-smallIn Ottawa, I get to talk to local game designers, local writers, local comic book publishers, local artists and novel publishers. I’m not trying to be a booster of Canada’s capital or anything, but we have some wickedly cool stuff going on around town.

This weekend, at Can-Con, Ottawa’s Literary Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Convention, I set up an interview in front of a live audience to talk to Jay Odjick, an Algonquin graphic novelist, to talk to him about being a writer and artist and about Kagagi (pronounced with two hard Gs).

Jay is a loud, hilarious, talented, self-deprecating, straight-talking comic creator who earlier in the week had been interviewed by CBC radio and afterwards tweeted “…managed to talk for twelve minutes on the radio without swearing.”

His immediate lead story about where and when he started to be a comic creator started when he was five years old and he was part of a two-man con aiming to unmask a celebrity Spider-Man to prove that it wasn’t the real Spider-Man.

Some years ago, like many comic creators, Jay made up his own superhero. But instead of being just another caped creation added to the immense pantheon of comicdom, he created the startlingly original Kagagi, based on the legend systems of the Algonquin tribe.

Central to this is the Wendigo curse (the supervillain) that is inflicting itself upon not only humanity, but those other parts of the Algonquin legend structures.

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Vintage Treasures: The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Vintage Treasures: The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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Outlaw-of-Torn-Ace-smallTruth be told, I’ve never been much of a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I think he’s a taste you acquire young or not at all, and I missed the window by not reading any ERB before I turned 25. Talk about a wasted youth.

Of course, it’s entirely possible I simply haven’t read the right book yet. If I were going to be shipwrecked on a desert island tomorrow, and I just happened to get tipped off in advance, I would probably grab a copy of The Outlaw of Torn to bring with me. I’ve wanted to read it ever since I laid eyes on it many years ago, and I’ve had it recommended to me many times by ERB fans since.

At seventeen he was the greatest swordsman in England. At eighteen his reputation as a fearless outlaw had spread throughout the land and there was a tremendous price upon his head. At nineteen he was the leader of a fierce band of more than a thousand men, from nobleman to serf, the only requirements being willingness and ability to fight and an oath to obey the Outlaw of Torn.

Who was this Norman of Torn, the fame of whose daring exploits was ringing throughout the land? Where did he come from? Was he of noble blood or was he of commoner origin?

Through savage combats the Outlaw fights his way in his love for the beautiful daughter of the most powerful baron in England to find the secret of his birth.

On the other hand, our resident ERB expert Ryan Harvey didn’t think too much of The Outlaw of Torn, calling it “stodgy and drearily artificial; it lacks the zest of the best of Burroughs’s work” in his feature review. And Ryan has rarely steered me wrong. I suspect he’d suggest a different book for my ill-fated voyage. (Of course, a true friend might also suggest a different travel agent…)

The Outlaw of Torn was originally serialized in New Story Magazine starting in January 1914, and published in hardcover by McClurg in 1927. The Ace paperback edition above was published in 1965; it is 255 pages, priced at $0.75. The cover is by the great Roy Krenkel, Jr. (Click for bigger version.)

Collecting Lovecraft, Part II

Collecting Lovecraft, Part II

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Lovecraft Ballantine Paperback collection-small

It’s almost too easy to get the complete works of H.P Lovecraft. Barnes and Noble, just for example, sells a handsome single-volume complete edition of his work (all 1112 pages!) for just $18. So why on earth would you ever want to spend your time and money collecting vintage paperbacks containing only a fraction of his complete works?

I made a half-hearted attempt to answer that question in the first article of this series, Collecting Lovecraft. Collecting is an emotional hobby, not a rational one, so trying to fathom the collecting urge purely on a rational basis is only going to get you so far. In truth, it usually boils down to something as simple as fondness for cover art, or nostalgia for the particular edition that first introduced you to an author.

Above you can see a colorful assortment of Lancer and Ballantine paperback editions of H.P. Lovecraft originally published between 1967 and 1973: The Colour Out of Space (1967), Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 2, edited by August Derleth (1969), The Shuttered Room and Other Tales of Horror, by Lovecraft and Derleth (1973), The Survivor and Others by Lovecraft and Derleth (1971), and The Spawn of Cthulhu, edited by Lin Carter (1971). Truthfully, I’m not too fond of these covers, and they don’t hold any particular nostalgia for me — they were all out of print long before I discovered Lovecraft. So why was I so determined to buy them?

Back in August the New York Times published a fascinating article about Zero Freitas, the Brazilian millionaire collecting every vinyl record ever made. I don’t mean one copy of every record, I mean every single piece of vinyl with music on it in the world. He’s amassed millions so far. I distinctly remember the first time I read the piece, I nodded along and thought, “Yeah, I get it.”

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Renner & Quist at Their Very Best

Renner & Quist at Their Very Best

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Check Out Time Mark Rigney-smallSamhain Publishing has just ushered in Check-Out Time, their third Renner and Quist occult mystery from the very talented pen of author Mark Rigney.

Longtime readers of my articles will recall my reviews of Rigney’s earlier work, The Skates and Sleeping Bear, which introduced me to his oddball double act.

Renner is a persnickety Unitarian minister, while Quist is a boorish ex-linebacker. Together, this unlikely duo team to solve occult mysteries. This latest addition to the quirky and delightful series takes our heroes from their usual Michigan stomping grounds to downtown Columbus, Ohio.

It seems a long-demolished hotel is doing its best to return to existence. It currently inhabits its original location in another dimension, complete with guests and staff from past decades somehow co-existing. These guests include such celebrated faces from the past as Amelia Earhart, James Thurber, Charles Dickens, and Marilyn Monroe.

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Future Treasures: Touch of Evil by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp

Future Treasures: Touch of Evil by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp

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Touch of Evil-smallI don’t read much urban fantasy, and I think that’s a serious oversight. I love dark fantasy, and I love adventure fantasy, and both of those are found in abundance in the best urban fantasy on the market. I just need to be selective.

Maybe I can look to the market for help. Later this month, Tor will offer a handsome trade paperback reprint of the first volume of the popular Thrall Series by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp, Touch of Evil (originally released in paperback in 2006), and it looks like the kind of dark and creepy urban fantasy I would enjoy. Worth checking out, I think.

When the Thrall Queen Wants You… Run!

In the ER after a minor traffic accident, Kate Reilly s attacked by Monica Micah, the Queen of Denver, Colorado’s Thrall population, The Thrall — vampire parasites — have been preying on humans for thousands of years, using us as both hosts and food. Kate killed a Thrall Queen and became Not Prey, so by the Thrall’s own rules, Monica should be giving Kate a wide berth.

Instead, Monica wants Kate dead. Eventually. First, she wants to force her to become the things she hates most in the world: a new Thrall Queen. Worse, though Monica broke the rules,, Kate can’t: of she hides or flees. she’ll lost Not Prey status.

Not that Kate thinks seriously about running away. Too many people rely on her in one way or another: the tenants in the apartment building she owns; her brothers, her ex-boyfriend and his seriously unpleasant wife; a missing sixteen-year-old girl Kate has promised to find before the Thrall do, and Tom, the handsome werewolf who just moved in downstairs.

No. Kate’s not going anywhere. Kate Reilly is Not Prey. She’s going to fight.

Touch of Evil was originally published in paperback in 2006, and reprinted in 2009. It was followed by two sequels: Touch of Madness (2007) and Touch of Darkness (2008). Touch of Evil will be published in trade paperback on October 14. It is 352 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition.

The End of an Era: The Death of Saturday Morning Cartoons

The End of an Era: The Death of Saturday Morning Cartoons

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Your friendly neighbourhood Spider-manI’ve watched cartoons most of my life. It started with Spider-Man, Underdog and Star Trek: The Animated Series in the 1970s. In the 90s, it was Ren and Stimpy, Pinky and the Brain, and the brilliant The Tick. When my kids came along, we’d watch Gargoyles, Samurai Jack, Static Shock, and especially the great Batman Beyond together. For most of my first four decades, Saturday mornings meant curling up on the couch to share the adventures of my favorite funny animals and cartoon superheroes.

Over the last ten years, more stations have abandoned Saturday morning animated programming. Now The Washington Post is reporting that the CW, the last broadcast station with a full slate of animated shows on Saturday morning, has just done away with them.

This past Saturday, the CW became the last broadcast television network to cut Saturday morning cartoons. The CW is replacing its Saturday cartoon programming, called “The Vortexx,” with “One Magnificent Morning,” a five-hour bloc of non-animated TV geared towards teens and their families.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, Saturday morning time slots were synonymous with cartoons. Broadcast networks and advertisers battled for underage viewers. But that started to change in the 1990s. In 1992, NBC was the first broadcast network to swap Saturday morning cartoons for teen comedies such as “Saved by the Bell” and a weekend edition of the “Today” show. Soon, CBS and ABC followed suit. In 2008, Fox finally replaced Saturday morning cartoons with infomercials.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a Saturday morning cartoon viewership could grab more than 20 million viewers. In 2003, some top performers got a mere 2 million, according to Animation World Network.

Read the bad news here (and for Slash Film’s take, read Peter Sciretta’s article Saturday Morning Cartoons Are Officially Dead.)

Goth Chick News New Horror: The Boy Who Drew Monsters

Goth Chick News New Horror: The Boy Who Drew Monsters

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The Boy Who Drew Monsters-smallWhat seems like a million years ago, while digging through stacks of used books at my local library sale, I discovered a tattered copy of Zenna Henderson’s collection of creepy tales, The Anything Box (1977). Within those pages, I found what is today one of my top 10 favorite short stories of all time, “Hush.”

It is the classic literary scare relying on the terror of lurking things that cannot be seen, rather than the in-your-face-violence of things that can. “Hush” tells the story of an ill little boy whose fevered brain gives life to the horrors in his imagination, which in turn, stalk his unwitting babysitter… naturally.

Eerie little kids with large, soulful eyes staring at you from someplace they shouldn’t be – frankly there is almost nothing more frightening, if you ask me.

Flash forward to October, 2014 and a new offering from the New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child, Keith Donohue — where once again we have a creepy little kid trapped in his own world, and whose solitary imagination blurs the lines between fantasy and reality.

Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, ten-year-old Jack Peter (“Kip”) Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. When Kip takes up drawing, his parents, Holly and Tim, hope this new creative outlet will help Jip to combat his introversion, agoraphobia and occasionally violent tendencies.

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Four Books on Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA)

Four Books on Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA)

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Miles Cameron
Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) have already filtered through into Fantasy as authors get sucked into their research — reference Miles Cameron who fights about as much as he writes.

So there are people among us that know how to use historical weapons, that can wield a real sabre, not the bendy car aerial sports variety, have fought in plate armour, jousted, even.

Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) have already filtered through into Fantasy as authors get sucked into their research — reference Miles Cameron, who fights about as much as he writes. HEMA is also going to pervade Urban Fantasy since… well swords in the city.

And reader expectations are going to raise the barrier.

So, here are some books to help you make sense of it all…

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New Treasures: The Brothers Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard

New Treasures: The Brothers Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard

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The Brothers Cabal-smalllI’ve been following Jonathan L. Howard’s career since we published his light-hearted sword & sorcery tale “The Beautiful Corridor,” about a young thief named Kyth hired to penetrate a deadly tomb, in Black Gate 13 — and its sequel, “The Shuttered Temple,” in BG 15.

His first novel was the highly regarded Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (2009), followed by Johannes Cabal the Detective (2010) and last year’s Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute. In the latest installment, he teams up with his brother, an affable vampire, to take on an occult conspiracy with a monstrous army.

Horst Cabal has risen from the dead. Again. Horst, the most affable vampire one is ever likely to meet, is resurrected by an occult conspiracy that wants him as a general in a monstrous army. Their plan: to create a country of horrors, a supernatural homeland. As Horst sees the lengths to which they are prepared to go and the evil they cultivate, he realizes that he cannot fight them alone. What he really needs on his side is a sarcastic, amoral, heavily armed necromancer.

As luck would have it, this exactly describes his brother.

Join the brothers Cabal as they fearlessly lie quietly in bed, fight dreadful monsters from beyond reality, make soup, feel slightly sorry for zombies, banter lightly with secret societies that wish to destroy them, and — in passing — set out to save the world.*

*The author wishes to point out that there are no zebras this time, so don’t get your hopes up on that count. There is, however, a werebadger, if that’s something that’s been missing from your life.

Jonathan’s most recent novels are Katya’s World, and Katya’s War, the first books of The Russalka Chronicles. Read Jonathan’s article on writing the Johannes Cabel series and his interview with John Joseph Adams. Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute was published by Thomas Dunne Books on September 30. It is 338 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $11.99 in digital format.

The Dungeons (and Dragons) of My Life, Part One

The Dungeons (and Dragons) of My Life, Part One

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B1 In Search of the Unknown-smallThe Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game has been a part of my life since I was a wee lad. My first DM was my father, who was patient enough to walk his eight-year-old and five-year-old sons through the a few introductory sessions. After that I was hooked, but I realized I wanted to be the one “behind the curtain,” controlling the game. And so my odyssey began.

Herein I’ll detail some of the D&D campaigns that I’ve run over the years, starting at the very beginning.

1978

I was eight when I ran my first adventure. My players were my younger brother and a friend from school. I took them through B1: In Search of the Unknown, the module included with the basic D&D box set.

Wow, what a rush. I was hooked from the start, controlling this awesome new game that stretched our imaginations. Even though it’s been more than thirty years, I still remember the cool tricks and traps. Especially the chamber of pools, the teleportation rooms, and the young red dragon I placed in one of the dungeon storerooms just for fun.

After that, they explored B2: The Keep on the Borderlands. I believe I did a TPK (Total Party Kill) in the first session when the players allowed a chaotic cultist to accompany them into the caves. It was very sad (for them… I secretly chortled).

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