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Uncanny X-Men, Part 3: X-Men: First Class, Volume II and First Class Finals

Uncanny X-Men, Part 3: X-Men: First Class, Volume II and First Class Finals

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I am continuing my perhaps Quixotic reread of The X-Men. I started in 1963 and am working my way up to the present, and I’m including not just the main series, but some significant cross-overs and the series that retcon some good stories.

My first blog post covered X-Men #1-20. My second post covered X-Men 21-23, some early cross-overs, and the 2006 series X-Men: First Class. For this one, I read X-Men: First Class, Vol II, #1-16, which continued Jeff Parker’s excellent story of the original five X-Men, with art by Eric Nguyen, Roger Cruz, Nick Dragotta and others.

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A (Black) Gat in The Hand: Bill Crider Reviews ‘The Brass Cupcake’

A (Black) Gat in The Hand: Bill Crider Reviews ‘The Brass Cupcake’

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Crider_BillEDITEDYou’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

If you asked me to name the nicest person I’ve encountered since becoming a writer/blogger/whatever I am, I’d immediately fire back, “Bill Crider.” I have yet to come across one person who had anything bad to say about Bill. He was always friendly, and generous with his knowledge and advice. Bill was an excellent writer of mysteries and westerns, best known for his Sheriff Dan Rhodes series.

His ‘Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine’ was a fun blog, full of all kinds of short posts about books, music, advertisements, history – pop culture stuff. I’m pretty sure that Bill would have liked A (Black) Gat in the Hand. And I think he would have contributed an essay. So, for the final entry in round two, I’m reposting Bill’s review of John D. MacDonld’s The Brass Cupcake. Swing by his blog and read some great stuff!

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Back to the Books for the Theater of the Mind

Back to the Books for the Theater of the Mind

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Johnny Dollar tradeI came to Old Time Radio late in life. My parents were born in 1940 and 1942, respectively. They remembered radio shows from their childhood, but the advent of television made more of an impact on them. During my teen years, one of our local UHF stations briefly picked up reruns of the jazz noir detective series Peter Gunn (1958-1961) in the mid-1980s and I was instantly hooked. A set of Peter Gunn episodes on VHS followed in 1989 from Rhino Records. Before long, I was hunting for Henry Kane’s well-written paperback tie-in and the goofy Dell Comic (where Pete tracks down villains trafficking in counterfeit collectible postage stamps). 2002 would bring the first DVD sets of Peter Gunn. By the time the entire series was on DVD, so was its companion series, Mr. Lucky (1959-1960); and then I discovered the imitation series, Johnny Staccato (1959-1960) which successfully blended concepts from both series before adding a healthy dose of angst-ridden method acting to the mix.

I couldn’t stop there of course, not with gray market sets of Peter Gunn‘s progenitor, Richard Diamond (1957-1960) and Mr. Lucky‘s successor, Dante (1960-1961) circulating among collectors. Eventually, I discovered a terrific, but nearly forgotten television adventure series, Hong Kong (1960-1961) and reached back to find Dante had actually preceded Mr. Lucky via an earlier series, Dante’s Inferno (1956). Having reached the end of the line for the uniquely sophisticated and stylish Golden Age of Television detective and adventure series that appealed most to me, I decided to venture into the largely unknown waters of Old Time Radio.

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Before Roomba

Before Roomba

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1899 En L'an 2000 floor sweeper

Launcher of a million cat videos, the Roomba automatic vacuum cleaner was a success from its release in 2002. The catchy name helped, and the even catchier company name, iRobot, solidified the the concept and category of the machine in the public’s mind. The firm was founded in 1990 by three, definitionally nerdy, MIT roboticists, Colin Angle, Helen Greiner and Rodney Brooks. Undoubtedly familiar with Isaac Asimov’s famed collection of robot stories – and probably frequent visitors to the MIT Science Fiction Society’s library in the student center, the world’s largest public open-shelf collection of science fiction – they plucked the name away from thousands of possible competitors, almost guaranteeing success. Admittedly, they wasted a decade on military robots, although the DoD might disagree with the verb, but their cute crawling bug now defines the category.

Although the Roomba is synonymous with “vacuuming robot,” like Apple’s iPad and iPhone, it wasn’t the first of its kind. Who anticipated it? Everybody, in fact and fiction. I’m not even going to mention images of robots pushing old-fashioned vacuum cleaners, but stick to purely automatic machines, anticipated in 1899 by the En L’an 2000 series by French artist Jean Marc Côté.

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Christmas Gifts for the Creatives in Your Life

Christmas Gifts for the Creatives in Your Life

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I don’t think it could have escaped anyone’s notice that Christmas is just about a week away. Is anyone prepared? I know I’m not (Don’t panic, Sonia.  Don’t panic). Many of you might have a creative in your life that you’re struggling really hard to come up with meaningful gifts for. I get it. It’s really tricky. I figured I would put together a small list of gift ideas that perhaps you can draw inspiration from while shopping for the difficult creative in your life.

Disclaimer: Creatives aren’t a monolith with the same tastes and preferences. This list may or may not work for you or your favorite creative. Also, as I’m a writer, I tend to gravitate towards gifts that would suit writers, but many of these would work for an awful lot of creatives.

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Rogue Blades author: Robert E. Howard Changed My Life and Continues to Inspire Me

Rogue Blades author: Robert E. Howard Changed My Life and Continues to Inspire Me

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Howard changed my lifeRecently publisher Rogue Blades Foundation announced the release next year of the title Robert E. Howard Changed My Life. Award-winning author Adrian Cole will appear in that book. Below he offers some of his memories of discovering Howard and how such affected his writing career.

Having been a big fan of Robert E. Howard’s work since I first discovered it back in the 1970s (when like many others I got hold of those wonderful Lancer paperback editions of King Kull and then Conan), I was very easily persuaded to join the contributors to the Rogue Blades Foundation project, Robert E. Howard Changed My Life.

Okay, as a title, that’s a quite dramatic statement, but in all honesty it’s certainly true in my case. At the time I first read REH I hadn’t much of an idea about what I wanted to do with my life as far as a “career” went, although I’d already started to write, my initial work inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tolkien and others. Writing was far more interesting to me than any day job could ever have been and REH added an ingredient to the heady cocktail that ensured my determination and zest to channel my creative energy didn’t fade. Inspiration added to imagination, the ultimate mix. At the time REH was enjoying not only a revival, but an explosion of interest that eventually went world wide, and I found myself swept along by it at a critical time in my own development as a writer. I knew that, whatever else happened to me, good times and bad, REH would go on being an inspiration to me for the rest of my days.

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Made For TV Movie-of-the-Week Flashback: Birds of Prey

Made For TV Movie-of-the-Week Flashback: Birds of Prey

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Birds of Prey_1

Little did I know, when I was a pre-tween, that I was growing up in the Golden Age of TV movies. I was there for original showings of Trilogy of Terror, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, The Night Stalker and even Duel. Lucky me.

One that really made an impression on me at eight was 1973’s Birds of Prey. Like Duel it looked like it had a much bigger budget than it actually had. Story involves David Janssen playing a WW2 vet from the AVG in China who is now flying a civilian version of the Hughes OH-6 Cayuse “Loach” for a Salt Lake City radio station doing traffic. After a minimal amount of establishing his character and that of his fellow veteran police officer friend, he witnesses an armored car robbery and a hostage being taken.

The excitement is non-stop from then out, an elaborate chase, as he follows the murderous crooks and cleverly improvises ways to refuel and arm himself. There are hunter/hunted reversals, rescues, and even some dignified bonding with the hostage. Eight year old me was driven wild by the impressive flying and stunt work, including trips under highway overpasses and through factories and hangars by his handy little Loach. I think the pilots had fun making this movie, it seemed pretty clear they were doing crap they weren’t normally allowed to do for obvious safety reasons.

Even though I’d only seen it once, it stuck with me.

Imagine my surprise when I saw it flipping through Amazon Prime. I thought everyone had forgotten about this one, even though every time I came across David Janssen I remembered it.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Norbert Davis goes West(ern)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Norbert Davis goes West(ern)

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Davis_DeadMansBrandEDITED

You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Wasn’t sure what to write about this morning. I went on a mini Sword and Sandals kick and recently finished Scott Oden’s Men of Bronze, and Howard Andrew Jones’ Desert of Souls (reviews coming, time willing). I’ve played a lot of Conan Exiles the past few months (when I could) and I definitely want to do a post on that. It’s Minecraft on Steroids (now THERE’S a post title!). My Game Night group dug into Shadows of Brimstone earlier this year and that was a lot of fun (not as brutal as Descent). And my son and I are revisiting Star Wars Destiny (a neat card/dice game).

I’ve continued to work on what I hope will be the definitive Max Latin (Norbert Davis) essay. Though, to be honest, there isn’t really much competition for that honorific. His Latin stories are even more woefully neglected than Davis himself is. Being in a Davis mood, I decided to get Black Dog Books’ Dead Man’s Brand. Davis is best known for his screwball hardboiled comedies (a style that didn’t get him many sales to Cap Shaw, famed editor of Black Mask).

But he wrote for several pulp genres, as well as for the higher-paying slicks. This collection includes eight solid westerns from the pulps, including Dime Western Magazine and Star Western. There’s a good introduction by Bill Pronzini, and in the afterword, Ed Hulse talks about the lone movie adapted from a Davis story (there’s further proof of the under-valuing of Davis’ work).

Maybe I can talk James Reasoner or Duane Spurlock into doing a much better essay on Davis’ westerns than I could possibly ever hope to write, but I’m just going to talk about the first story: “A Gunsmoke Case for Major Cain,” which appeared in Dime Western in October, 1940.

We don’t learn all the details right away, but the story opens with a young girl named Missy trying to crawl under a covered wagon while her drunken uncle (Pops Reese) whips her with a quirt (a short-handled riding whip with a braided leather lash). The coffee she gave him was too hot and burned his tongue. That’s the kind of guy he is. Well, that, and he’s taking her to the town of Cranston to sell her to the local boss – presumably to become a whore in his saloon.

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Silas P. Cornu’s Dry Calculator

Silas P. Cornu’s Dry Calculator

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Henry A. Hering Adventures and Fantasy 1930 cover

Digging through the vast, deep landscape of popular culture is very much like being a working paleontologist. Fragments of bones are everywhere, both on the surface and accessible through spadework. Unbroken samples are rare finds, interesting enough in and of themselves but truly valuable only if put into context.

Also as in paleontology, trying to create a proper history grows exponentially more difficult every time a new site is opened. The older metaphor of an evolutionary tree of life that leads to a single branch labeled Homo is now obsolete; modern practitioners see more of a bush with a tangle of branches whose origins are obscure.

The origin of science fictional ideas matches this entropic march toward disorder. Fans of SF once proudly hailed the writers in the field for coming up with fantastic ideas, notions, gadgets, and futures that could be boasted about to their snobbish mundane friends. Years of historical research into the subject make me wonder sometimes if any sf writer ever had a truly original idea.

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Yes, Everyone Can

Yes, Everyone Can

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thewallpaperco3

This is one of my favorite pieces of art. I found it ages ago at thewallpaper.co.

Good morning, Readers!

I had an argument with a friend the other day, and it’s kind of stuck in my throat a bit. Permit me to indulge myself and get all my thoughts around the issue out. It always helps to write it out. You’re all basically my therapists.

Jokes aside, the argument centered around the idea that not everyone can (as in should) be a writer. He says not, I say absolutely they can, and should if they so desire.

Now, this isn’t an argument about whether people have the time or the will to become writers. That is a separate issue. If the assumption is that they want to, then they absolutely can, and absolutely should.

His argument was something around talent, that just because someone can string a few sentences together, it doesn’t make them writers. Their story ideas may be garbage. They may not be able to spell all that well. They can’t adequately turn what’s in their head into something understandable on the page.

In a way, I suppose, he’s right.

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