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21 Questions for Ty Franck

21 Questions for Ty Franck

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Ty Franck being hugged by Jen Taylor
I first met Ty Franck online, then in person at LosCon, and we’ve been friends ever since. He blames me for a lot of things that have happened in his life, but the truth is he warps the forces of space, time, and luck to create his own mini-universe with its own rules, as you’ll see from the interview below. My story of Ty that I think gives the most accurate impression of the kind of guy he is, is one he’s probably tired of hearing me tell. But it bears retelling.

Years ago he was held up at gunpoint at his workplace, after hours. Gangsters broke in, cut the phone lines, and tied up both him and another woman who was working late. Ty managed to keep talking to get the gangsters off guard, and then when they left the room, his coworker untied him and he used the company’s internet (which wasn’t connected to the phone lines) to message another office, who in turn called 911.

Yes, this is a true story, but I haven’t gotten to the most unbelievable part yet. After the police arrived and sat Ty down for questioning. The dialogue went something like this:

“What can you tell us about your attackers?”

“Well, they were armed with a Glock 40.”

“So you know guns, then?”

“No, not really.”

“But you know Glocks?”

“No.”

“So how do you know it was a Glock 40?”

“Because they were holding it about here-” Ty mimes having a gun held to his forehead “-and you could read it on the side. It said, Glock 40.”

Ty would be my first choice of friend to have around during the zombie apocalypse. I call dibs.

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Art of the Genre: What came first, the writer or the artist?

Art of the Genre: What came first, the writer or the artist?

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As I walked into the office today Ryan Harvey was talking Avengers with Kandi at the front desk, a figurine of Captain America in his hand and a smile on his face. Now, for any of you who don’t know, Cap isn’t my favorite super hero. I’m not saying I dislike Cap, but when it comes to heroes, and the Avengers in particular, my personal hero is Tony Stark, aka Iron Man.

Ryan, for his part, can’t stand Iron Man, so the office is often a place of contention between the two heroes, and with this new movie coming out the debate has been taken up a notch.

Still, there’s an interesting note about both heroes, and that is the depth in which people are vested in them. Comic book characters, by their very nature, should inspire people to both discuss and enjoy what lies beneath the costume even more than what happens while the person is in it.

Some might argue that comics are about the art, and there have been times when this was abundantly true, but the hard reality is that at their core it’s really the story that matters. In the world of comics, everything America knows and loves about its heroes was the creation of a writer, the art involved that helped galvanize their place in our subconscious a simple technicolor window-dressing that was added later to an already solid foundation, or so I would contend.

Walking by Ryan, I lifted his Captain America figure from his hand, unceremoniously dumped it in the trash, and then went into my office to write the beginnings of a tale I hope you’ll all find interesting. Now granted, I’m biased here, but since no one jumped up to storyboard this particular piece, it will have to stand on the words alone [although there are pictures… there are always pictures, because John O’Neill once told me that if you want readers for your blog you need to include lots of images because people love them… go figure.]

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Wrath of the Titans Trailer Gives Me a Chimera, But Little Hope

Wrath of the Titans Trailer Gives Me a Chimera, But Little Hope

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wrath_of_the_titansIf you were talking about movie trailers yesterday or over the weekend, chances are the subject was The Dark Knight Rises. The most anticipated film of 2012 revealed its first full-length trailer (after a teaser during the summer) on selected theater screens with Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. The IMAX six-minute prologue to the film also appeared before 70 mm screenings of Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol. I saw the prologue yesterday in the glorious IMAX presentation, and yes, The Dark Knight Rises is going to be something amazing. (By the way, Ghost Protocol is the best of the “Mission: Impossible” films, and delivers everything you want from a big-budget action movie. Here’s to Brad Bird having a great career in live-action films.)

In the middle of mad speculation and analysis from the new Bat-info Warner Bros. and Legendary Films poured on us, the studio and production company also sneake out the trailer for another of their 2012 releases: Wrath of the Titans, the sequel to the 2010 re-make of Ray Harryhusen’s Clash of the Titans.

From a domestic perspective, a sequel to Clash ’10 feels like a weird choice. The movie had only middling box-office success, and audience reaction was lukewarm to say the best. I reviewed the movie at Black Gate when it premiered and gave a cautiously positive take of it. I would like to retract most of that review now. One of the difficulties of doing reviews of new movies or books is that reviewers’ tastes frequently change on a second visit. Some movies I shrugged off when they first came out I now love. Other films that seemed enjoyable in the theaters end up as lifeless on repeat viewings. In the case of Clash of the Titans ’10, when I returned to the movie on home video, it seemed almost unwatchable. It’s a dead fish, an inert bore. There is no imagination or joy in this thing. I didn’t want a sequel, and I can’t imagine anyone else wanted one either.

But these days, international box office makes all the difference. Clash ’10 pulled in enormous coin outside of the U.S., doing 66% of its worldwide business in foreign markets for a total gross of just a Nemean Lion’s whisker under $500 million — the eleventh highest grossing movie of the year. And that equals “sequel.”

Here’s the trailer from iTunes. Even though star Sam Worthington stated in an interview that he thinks the new film is more “weighty,” this trailer does little to raise my hopes (The YouTube version of the trailer is imbeded below the jump.)

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An Interview with Jeff VanderMeer

An Interview with Jeff VanderMeer

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jeff-vandermeerAre you interested in ominous cities covered in creeping, mysterious fungi? What about flamboyant narrators, noir and the New Weird? Yeah? Good. Sit down a spell and have a listen to a man who has written it all – Jeff VanderMeer. The two-time World Fantasy Award winner and creator of Ambergris talked a slice of time to Black Gate about music, new writers and a hep bit of miscellaneous more.

Black Gate:  What do you think are the three best, new albums to come out in 2011?

Jeff VanderMeer: That’s tough for me because I haven’t listened consistently to a lot of music. What I can tell you is that I’m really high on The Black Keys’ El Camino, and the latest releases by Ringside, Three Mile Pilot, Steve Wynn, and the Rosebuds.

Who are three bands that you “discovered” in 2011 and now can’t live without?

I really delved back into bands I already knew, for the most part. However, I can say I can’t live without Murder by Death, Black Heart Procession, and the sadly defunct Pleasure Forever.

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Long Live the Physical Book–at least for now

Long Live the Physical Book–at least for now

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jp-holiday-articleinlineSo it would seem that the death of the physical book and the physical bookstore is greatly exaggerated. According to The New York Times, bookstores are having a banner year. In part this is because some of the competition (i.e., Borders) is no longer a factor in brick-and-mortar retailing, a number of popular books (ironically including the biography of Steve Jobs, the very guy who sought to digitize and commodify the object in question) and a desire among consumers in a slowly recovering economy to give gifts that are attractive in a way that bits on a screen don’t quite emulate.

Also, content owners are, as they are prone to do, shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to digital retailing. Despite the fact the e-book readers are more affordable than ever with a growing proliferation of titles in e-book format, pricing strategies are frequently rendering physical books as less expensive than their digital counterparts, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Long live the dog-eared book, if only for another few years.

On another note, and though it has nothing to do with the normal realm of Black Gate matters, I’m sad to note the passing of Christopher Hitchens.  Right up to the end, he was one gutsy bastard.  Here’s what I presume was his last piece of Vanity Fair.

Goth Chick News: Animated, Severed Zombie Ears; It’s Gonne Be a Great 2012!

Goth Chick News: Animated, Severed Zombie Ears; It’s Gonne Be a Great 2012!

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image0042I’m so excited about this news that I almost don’t know where to start.

Back in the late summer I got wind of some tantalizing rumors about a new project from the companies who last combined animation with gothic themes; two of my favs.

Focus Features and LAIKA, the folks behind the Academy Award-nominated animated feature Coraline were rumored to be re-teaming for a new project, ParaNorman. Details were maddeningly scarce but the name, which went from “working title” to the actual title in early October, had me pulling out my best cyber-stalking techniques to learn more.

Now, just when it started to look like entertainment in my favorite genre was going to be disappointinly thin in the New Year, Focus Features opened the information floodgates and I’m spinning around the office like Julie Andrews on top of an Austrian hillside.

No, you don’t have to picture that if you don’t want to.

ParaNorman is currently in production and being directed by Sam Fell (The Tale of Despereaux and Flushed Away) and Chris Butler, storyboard supervisor on Coraline and storyboard artist on Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.  So right there is enough reason to be quivering in anticipation.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Six – “The House of Hashish”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Six – “The House of Hashish”

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hand-original1sifanmys“The House of Hashish” was the sixth installment of Sax Rohmer’s The Si-Fan Mysteries. The story was first published in Collier’s on February 17, 1917 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 22 – 26 of the third Fu-Manchu novel, The Si-Fan Mysteries first published in 1917 by Cassell in the UK and by McBride & Nast in the US under the variant title, The Hand of Fu Manchu. The US book title marks the first time that the hyphen was dropped from the character’s name, although it was retained within the text.

“The House of Hashish” starts off with a wonderfully atmospheric opening with Dr. Petrie keeping a lonely nighttime vigil in the now abandoned shadow-filled wharf-side Joy Shop with only the sound of lapping waves and the incessant squealing of rats to accompany him. From a window, he watches Nayland Smith approach an old beggar woman and overhears their conversation. The old woman claims to have twisted her ankle and begs Smith to help her to the rooms she keeps in a wharf-side warehouse. Smith obliges and, of course, walks into a ruse as a dacoit leaps upon his back and quickly wraps a cord around his neck and begins strangling him. Fearing he is witnessing his friend’s death and helpless to stop him, Petrie is flabbergasted to see Smith’s apparent twin arrive to the rescue. Smith’s double beats off the dacoit and hurls the man into the Thames.

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I ask for Black Ice, and all I get is Angry Birds

I ask for Black Ice, and all I get is Angry Birds

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It's like a how-to guide for living in the present!
It's like a how-to guide for living in the present!

The year which we have so long awaited is finally upon us. 2013. Finally, our dreams of a cyberpunk-style distopia can be fully realized. Let’s do a rundown, shall we?

Corporate personhood? Check! Finally, the mega-corporations have revealed the iron fists beneath their velvet gloves! Pharmaceutical companies are now pursuing legal actions allowing their salespeople to basically say whatever they want to under the premise that the corporations are exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech. Can Second Amendment rights be far behind? This is like manna from heaven to those of us longing to live in a cyberpunk-fueled future.

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Art of the Genre: Redheads hate clothes!

Art of the Genre: Redheads hate clothes!

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Nope... you're wrong, this is Jirel of Jory, but nice try.
Nope... you're wrong, this is Jirel of Jory, but nice try.

I walked into work today, a holiday themed hot chocolate in my hand and was greeted by Kandi as usual, although her normally blonde locks were now blazing red. Granted it was eye-catching, perhaps even stunning, but as I looked at her from my office I couldn’t help but wonder what the obsession was with redheads… especially in fiction.

I picked up my phone, buzzed Ryan next door and hear the distinctive Black Hole Soundtrack ringer.

“Hello?” says Ryan.

“Hey,” I reply. “Did you see Kandi?”

“Yeah, why?”

“What did you think?” I asked.

“I thought she was channeling some Christina Hendricks,” he answered.

Exactly! Kandi turned from Barbie to Firefly’s Saffron in the course of a night, but she still had something going for her that the bulk of fantasy redheads don’t… clothing.

You see, redheads don’t like clothes… At least that’s what I was brought up to believe. I’m really not sure why this is considering that in my forty years on this planet every single redhead I’ve known was intelligently required to wear clothes because their freckled skin would burn a nice shade of crimson in less than five minutes if exposed to the sun.

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Steampunk Spotlight: Victoriana RPG update

Steampunk Spotlight: Victoriana RPG update

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jewelempireA couple of weeks ago, I began my exploration of steampunk – one of the most popular subgenres in speculative fiction today – with a review of the upcoming board game Kings of Air and Steam, currently being funded through Kickstarter. (There’s still about another day before the deadline to pre-order a copy at a huge discount.)

Kings of Air and Steam focused on the more mundane aspects of the steampunk setting – shipping merchandise by airship and railroad. There’s certainly a lot more to steampunk than that and one game which embraces the more fantastic end of the spectrum is Victoriana RPG.

What is Victoriana?

Picture a traditional fantasy adventure setting, such as those made popular by Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons, complete with elves, dwarves, sorcerers, undead, monsters, and so on. Now advance that world about 500 years, from the classic Middle Ages setting into the Victorian era. That is, essentially, the basis of Victoriana.

I favorably reviewed the Victoriana core rulebook and several supplement books in Black Gate #15 (now also available in Amazon Kindle format), but they’ve come out with three new sourcebooks since then. How do these new supplements stack up? If you really want to explore the world of Victoriana, these are definitely what you’ve been waiting for, although you will need at least the core rulebook to get started.

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