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Author: Matthew David Surridge

Through the Woods and Other Stories by Emily Carroll

Through the Woods and Other Stories by Emily Carroll

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Through the WoodsAnd now for some utterly uncontroversial awards news: on April 22, the nominees for the 2015 Eisner Awards were announced. You can find the complete list here, representing some very impressive work. I’ve written in the past about Astro City, Sandman: Overture, and Saga; I want to take a moment now to write a bit about one of the other nominees. Emily Carroll’s up for two Eisners, ‘Best Graphic Album — Reprint’ for her anthology Through The Woods, and ‘Best Short Story’ for her online piece “When the Darkness Presses.” They’re both excellent.

I first stumbled across Carroll’s comics shortly before the Eisner nominations were made public. I found a copy of Through The Woods at my local library, after which I read through the short stories on Carroll’s web site. I thought both the print and online works were brilliant comics. Mostly horror or dark fantasy with a strong mythic edge, they experiment with form in order to get at the heart of their narratives. Panel designs and lettering and storytelling are all unobtrusively intelligent and quietly inventive, finding new ways to bring out the emotional textures of the tales.

Carroll changes her style and approach with each story, but maintains a distinctive voice. She moves easily from web to print, working with the possibilities of page design in both mediums in a way that feels not just accomplished but effortless. Reading through her work you’re struck by the range of approaches but also by the sense of an overall unity — the unity that emerges from a major artist exploring the themes that hold meaning for her.

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A Detailed Explanation

A Detailed Explanation

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Hugo Award Black GateThis is going to come out at some point, so I might as well say it here and now: I declined a Hugo nomination for this year’s Best Fan Writer award. I think it’s only fair to the people who voted for me to say why. Be warned, this is going to take a while. (And long-time readers of mine around these parts know that coming from me, that really means something.)

Firstly, given the nature of this post and the scrutiny that surrounds a major award, I should probably introduce myself. Hi. I’m Matthew David Surridge, a Montreal-area writer. I had a couple of longish short stories published a few years ago, one in the paper version of Black Gate and one at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I’ve been fighting some minor but debilitating illnesses for a while which have kept me from writing fiction, but luckily reading and thinking about books is still within my power, and so I’ve been blogging here at Blackgate.com since 2010.

I mostly write about books I’ve recently enjoyed. In 2014, that included posts about surrealist Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet, Elizabeth Hand’s Bride of Frankenstein tie-in novel Pandora’s Bride, a collection of short stories by Violet Paget AKA Vernon Lee, Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the medieval tales in the Gesta Romanorum, Mary Gentle’s The Black Opera, Stella Gemmell’s The City, V.E. Schwab’s Vicious, Olga Slavnikova’s 2017, Jan Morris’ wonderful Hav, Phyllis Ann Karr’s Wildraith’s Last Battle, Steven Bauer’s Satyrday, the Harlan Ellison–edited shared-world anthology Medea, Pat Murphy’s three ‘Max Merriwell’ novels (There And Back Again, Wild Angel, and Adventures in Time and Space With Max Merriwell), Sylvia Townsend Warner’s debut novel Lolly Willowes, E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros and Zimiamvia trilogy, and Patricia A. McKillip’s The Changeling Sea. I also often write about comics, and last year I discussed the Steve Ditko/Wally Wood/Paul Levitz run of Stalker from the 1970s; the first volume of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Hugo-winning Saga; Alan Moore, Antony Johnston, and Facundo Percio’s Fashion Beast; and Sage Stossel’s Starling.

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Miss Fury: Sensational Sundays 1941-1944

Miss Fury: Sensational Sundays 1941-1944

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Miss Fury: Sensational Sundays 1941-1944In 1941 comics artist June Tarpé Mills started a new Sunday adventure strip: Miss Fury. It would run until 1952, telling the wild and beautifully-drawn saga of a socialite who donned a magical black cat-suit to fight Nazis and criminals. In 2011 IDW’s Library of American Comics imprint published a selection of Miss Fury strips from 1944 through 1949, edited and with an introduction by comics historian Trina Robbins. Last year Robbins and IDW published a second volume, collecting the series from the start up to the beginning of the earlier collection, again featuring an introduction about Mills and her strip, and as well a brief selection of some of Mills’ earlier work. I had a chance to read the recently-published second collection, and was tremendously impressed.

To start with what is most immediately obvious: the book’s a feast for the eyes. Not only is Mills’ art spectacular, but the reproduction brings out the richness of the linework and often-stunning colours. Designed by Lorraine Turner, the book is quite beautiful. The paper’s obviously whiter and brighter than newsprint, but the colours still feel appropriate, bright and yet often detailed.

Certainly Mills’ art deserves good treatment. Her work is beautiful, with a sumptuous eye for costume and detail, as well as crisp action. The story is fast-paced pulp adventure at full blast — shadowed New York cityscapes and Brazilian jungles, fist-fights and gun-battles and aerial dogfights, violence and a surprising amount of sex and blood. It’s wildly entertaining, with characters breathtakingly broad and unlikely, easily navigating the line where the ridiculous and the awesome meet.

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High Space Opera: Jim Starlin’s Metamorphosis Odyssey and Dreadstar

High Space Opera: Jim Starlin’s Metamorphosis Odyssey and Dreadstar

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Marvel Graphic Novel #3: DreadstarRecently, Black Gate overlord John O’Neill reported the news that Jim Starlin’s comic-book creation Dreadstar was in development as a TV series. Starlin will be a writer and executive producer of the new show, which is to be developed for television by Universal Cable Productions and Benderspink. No network was announced for the series, but io9 observed that Universal’s behind a number of shows for Syfy, where a Dreadstar show would presumably fit nicely.

As it happens, I was a fan of Dreadstar when it was being published back in the late 80s. It had been years since I’d looked at an issue, though, so the news of the TV deal prompted me to dig out the old comics and go through them again. I ended up with mixed feelings. For me, at least, the golden age of Dreadstar was about twelve. But if I can see problems with the book more clearly now, I can also see what works. And I can see how an ongoing TV show makes a certain amount of sense.

To explain that I need to start by going through the book’s publishing history. This gets complicated. Before Dreadstar there was The Metamorphosis Odyssey, a painted serial that ran for the first nine issues of Marvel’s Epic Illustrated. Epic was an anthology of creator-owned work somewhat along the lines of Heavy Metal magazine. By the time Starlin’s serial ended, late in 1981, he’d also published a related story through Eclipse Comics, a painted story called The Price. (Originally in black-and-white, it would later be reprinted by Marvel in colour. The Metamorphosis Odyssey, meanwhile, was in black-and-white for its first few chapters, then switched to colour as it went on.) The next chapter of the story came in Marvel’s third “graphic novel” — a line of books which somewhat resembled softcover European graphic albums — called, simply, Dreadstar.

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Second-hand Magic, Part II

Second-hand Magic, Part II

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The Magic ShopLast week, I wrote here about the Avram Davidson–edited 1983 anthology Magic For Sale. I looked at the book’s fifteen stories, and tried to think about the nature of tales about magic stores. I thought I saw a few patterns. And then my girlfriend pointed out that she owned another anthology about magic stores: 2004’s The Magic Shop, edited by Denise Little. Having now read that book, I think it makes for an interesting contrast with Davidson’s collection.

The two anthologies have some very obvious differences. Davidson’s was published in 1983 and drew on stories from across 85 years, meaning he could select from a murderer’s row of classic sf and fantasy writers: Sturgeon, Leiber, Ellison, Yolen, Bester, Wells, Davidson himself, and many others. Little’s collection was published in 2004, and the stories were all written for that book. And you can’t help but notice that while Magic For Sale had only one woman contributor (and one female lead), 11 out of 15 writers in The Magic Shop are women.

I didn’t think there was much to choose from between the two books, on the whole, though I thought more of the humour in The Magic Shop worked. But for the moment I’m less interested in quality and more in characteristics. How did things change over time? Or did they? I thought some things are very different from book to book, some much the same, and — this was the surprising bit to me — some things only became obvious to me when I read the two books together.

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Second-hand Magic, Part I

Second-hand Magic, Part I

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Magic For SaleAt a science fiction book sale not too long ago, I picked up an anthology from 1983 called Magic For Sale. There was something irresistibly appropriate in buying the book second-hand: edited by Avram Davidson, it’s a collection of stories for the most part precisely about the magic that lies within the second-hand. About purchasable goods with something in them beyond cost and explanation. About shoppers who find more than they expected. About supernatural bargains, each with its own twist.

Mostly. It’s actually difficult to find a plot description that fits all the stories in the book. Many involve strange old shops (that may or may not be present when a shopper returns), but many don’t. Most involve somebody buying something, but several are about decisions not to buy, or even simply about a customer escaping a shop more-or-less intact. Virtually all involve magic, except one or two that are, at least superficially, science fiction. So in some ways it’s quite a mixed bag.

And then again, in other ways it isn’t. Tonally, the stories feel quite similar, which might be a function of Davidson’s tastes as editor. But it’s interesting to wonder how much the similarity has to do with the nature of the book’s theme: the moment of transaction, the buying (or not) of the odd and dangerous. The way that the unnatural enters everyday life. Often, in horror and dark fantasy, critics like to talk about the “irruption” of the supernatural into the real; but the relevant definitions of irrupt have to do with something breaking in by force, and that’s exactly what doesn’t happen here, in most cases. Mostly, these stories are about making deals, and whether a character chooses to accept the deal they’re given, and what happens as a result. Mostly. One way or another, certain themes tend to emerge.

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Peter Watts’ Rifters Trilogy

Peter Watts’ Rifters Trilogy

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StarfishUsually I write here about books I’ve read and enjoyed. It’s really quite selfish: thinking about a good book extends the pleasure I get from reading it. This post, though, is a little different. I’m going to write about a science fiction trilogy in order to work out why I don’t like it more than I do. These are good books, even excellent books. But something about them didn’t grip me the way I would have thought they might.

The books are Peter Watts’ Rifters trilogy: Starfish, Maelstrom, and ßehemoth (that’s a Greek beta at the start of the last; for ease of typing, I’ll stick with the English B from here out). Starfish was Watts’ first novel, published in 1999, and Maelstrom followed two years later. Behemoth was split into two volumes for print publication; B-Max (Betamax, I suppose) was published in 2004, Seppuku in 2005. All these books are available for free on Watts’ web site.

They’re extremely well-written. The plot’s tight and fast-moving, the characters are multilayered, and the prose is both concise and, when it needs to be, beautiful. And they’ve got some potent themes, about power and science and the nature of humanity. I came away from them very impressed. And also somehow dissatisfied, for no reason I could put a finger on. So I will write about them here, and see if I can articulate for my own satisfaction what it was that I missed, and whether it was something in the books or something in myself in as a reader.

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Redwing in Flight

Redwing in Flight

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RedwingThere’s a new anthology out that I want to talk about, partly because of what it is and mostly because I think it’s quite good. But you shouldn’t trust me on this. I’m going to be honest, in that I’m going to write what I think about the book, but what I think may be shaped by my connection to it: my girlfriend, Grace Seybold, is the editor. So.

The book is called Redwing, and it’s available as an ebook at Amazon and the Kobo store. It’s officially published by Grace&Victory Publications, a micropress consisting of Grace and graphic designer Victoria Feistner. There are ten stories in the book, all science fiction and fantasy, mostly by new or up-and-coming writers.

Redwing is entirely Grace and Victoria’s project; I had no input on it, and did not read any of the submissions until I read the final product after it was published. When I did, I was impressed. Any anthology’s going to be a mixed bag, but I thought the book did what good anthologies do: create a kind of overall feel in which the tonal variety of the stories becomes a strength, while still developing an identity as a whole. Anchored by some stories that I feel are stand-outs by any definition, Redwing seems to me to be an excellent small-press production.

Which is one of the things I find interesting about the book: its status as a creation of a small press. I’ve heard a lot about how self-publishing through Amazon and similar venues is now a viable choice for authors, but Redwing’s proof that changes in the market are also making things easier for people to found ‘micropresses.’ In this case, a micropress consisting of two people. Grace is a writer — with stories in venues including Tesseracts 12 and This Is How You Die — and a freelance editor; Victoria is a professional graphic designer, who has sold some stories herself. Between them, they have the skillset necessary to package a book. And so they did. Let’s take a look:

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My City’s Heroes (Part 2 of 2)

My City’s Heroes (Part 2 of 2)

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The Jam: Urban Adventure #1Not long ago, a friend of mine went on patrol with a super-hero.

Real-life super-heroes have become a kind of small-scale trend, and not long ago Montréal got one of its own. Lightstep is a decidedly 21st-century hero, according to reports a vegan “queer radical feminist” who “prefers to be referred to using the pronoun ‘they.’” Lightstep also maintains a Tumblr where they discuss subjects like non-violence and Derrida. My friend Sophie, a webcomics artist and blogger, spent a night accompanying Lightstep on their rounds. She writes about her experience here.

Like a lot of ‘RLSH,’ Lightstep’s approach (so far as I can see) is less about adventure than about simply helping people. Lending a hand when needed. Doing things for their chosen community. As I write this, the first post on Lightstep’s tumblr talks about non-violence as theatre, which seems appropriate. Sometimes heroism comes from keeping a positive attitude, and inspiring that attitude in others. Sometimes the helping hand makes a difference out of all proportion. Which seems to relate well to Montréal’s most famous fictional super-hero.

The Jammer was the creation of cartoonist Bernie Mireault (a regular artist for the print version of Black Gate; John O’Neill profiled Mireault here). Clad in a modified Sears thermal jogging suit (his sister added a hood), Gordon Kirby wanders around Montréal helping people at random. He gets involved with domestic disputes, private eyes, and a sect of would-be assassins. And Satan decides to take him down because he’s just too darned happy all the time. Originating in the 80s as occasional short stories, in 1992 Tundra published the first issue of The Jam: Urban Adventure as an ongoing comic. After five full-colour issues, the book shifted to Dark Horse and reverted to black-and-white. With issue nine it moved to Caliber, and took on more of the feel of an anthology, as Kirby’s adventures increasingly became frames for various short stories — a Jam in a completely different sense. The final issue, number 14, came out in 1997.

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My City’s Heroes (Part 1 of 2)

My City’s Heroes (Part 1 of 2)

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My Life in HockeyThere’s a post I’ve wanted to write for this site for some time. I wasn’t sure exactly how to approach it, but I knew the general subject. I’d thought it’d fit here because it would be about myth and heroes. About stories and storytelling, and about the importance of story. In the wake of recent events I’ve come to feel the time has come to finally write that post. So here, on the shortest day of the year, are a few words about legends; about those that bear a torch through the longest darkness and inspire us to follow them. About heroes, in reality and in stories. And about the Montréal Canadiens.

Jean Béliveau died on December 2 at age 83. He played for the Montréal Canadiens hockey franchise for eighteen full seasons, and won the Stanley Cup ten times. He was the team’s captain from 1961 until his retirement after winning the Cup in 1971. I’m not going to get into his career statistics — though they are impressive, enough so to put him in conversations about the greatest player of all time — because the numbers aren’t really the reason I’m writing about him here. I’m writing about him because beyond being a hockey player, he was, by any measure, a legend. And what I mean by that is that beyond the facts of his career, he was — is — a man about whom stories are told. And these stories have a common theme.

As I write the first draft of this post, I have the live broadcast of his funeral on TV; it’s being carried in both French and English. I’m seeing figures from beyond the world of hockey: past and present Prime Ministers and Premiers of Québec are filling Cathédral Marie Reine-du-Monde as, amid the grey of a major snowstorm, a crowd lines the street outside. Commentators are recalling stories about the man. The most telling stories aren’t about Béliveau’s remarkable scoring talent. They’re about his grace, kindness, and instinctive nobility: the guidance he gave to other players, the charisma of his presence, even simply the man’s smile and the time he gave freely to perfect strangers. As much or more is said about the man’s life after he retired from hockey as it is about his career. This is not surprising to me. I’ve been hearing Jean Béliveau stories all my life.

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