Browsed by
Category: Blog Entry

Win a Copy of The Annotated Watchmen by DC Comics

Win a Copy of The Annotated Watchmen by DC Comics

Comments 0 Comment

The Annotated Watchmen Leslie S Klinger-small

I don’t think DC’s 1985 Watchmen needs a whole bunch of introduction (or any). As both a reader and a writer, I’ve read, re-read, analyzed, watched other people analyze, and blogged about the seminal work by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

DC Comics has released a retrospective edition of the story that landed on Time magazine’s 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In Watchmen: The Annotated Edition, Leslie S. Klinger looks at each of the series’ twelve issues in detail, moving page by page and panel by panel. Klinger drew on critical and scholastic commentary, interviews with Dave Gibbons, and previously unseen original source material.

…

Read More Read More

Is That What You’re Wearing? Or, Books Have A Bigger Budget

Is That What You’re Wearing? Or, Books Have A Bigger Budget

Comments 2 comments

Robin HoodOne of the most common topics of conversation among those who both read books and watch movies is the difference between the one and the other. Often it’s specific things like “that’s not how I pictured the protagonist” or, “where’d my favourite character go?” Sometimes it’s more general stuff like which medium did the overall job better.

That kind of argument can go on all night, but one thing is not in doubt: No matter how much money is spent on a movie or TV show, books have a bigger budget. Look at the big picture:  In a book you can have your characters go anywhere you’d like, live wherever you’d like, and use whatever transportation you’d like and it doesn’t cost you a dime. You don’t have to have the budget to reproduce your ideas on the screen.

And this just as true for every aspect of the smaller picture, though just now I’m going to talk about what your characters are wearing. No outfit is too extravagant, too simple, too colourful or too plain for your reader’s imagination. Your characters can even wear clothing that it is virtually impossible to eat, walk, or sit down in – as some cosplayers have discovered for themselves.

…

Read More Read More

My 300th Black Gate Post: Why I Write About What I Write About

My 300th Black Gate Post: Why I Write About What I Write About

Comments 8 comments
cushing02 godzilla-2014-1108x0-c-default steve-reeves-and-sylva-koscina-in-hercules-pietro-francisci-1958 john-carpenter-bw j allen st john tarzan

This is my three hundredth post at Black Gate. This year also marks the tenth anniversary of my first post as a regular blogger. I remember when John O’Neill first invited me to be a part of this project, back when none of us had any idea where it would go — I certainly didn’t think it would last for a decade and that I’d still be around. Or that John would win a World Fantasy Award for it. Yet here the site is, ten years later and a World Fantasy Award richer, and I still can’t believe people show up to read what I have to say about Hercules movies, Godzilla, and Tarzan. It’s humbling to be part of a site with such a wealth of amazing material, great contributors, and so many dedicated and intelligent readers.

I’ve changed enormously as a nonfiction writer over these ten years, and most of the changes happened because of Black Gate. When I started my regular posts, I had only a blurry vision of the sort of blogger I wanted to be. The reality has turned out different because I made interesting discoveries about my own tastes along the way: specifically, what it is that I most enjoy writing about. I once imagined I’d write primarily about fantasy literature, Conan pastiches, and writing techniques. Now I write about monster movies, John Carpenter, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

To mark my personal anniversary, I’m going to offer an apologia of sorts — an explanation of why I write about the topics I write about most frequently on Black Gate. None of these were in the plan on Day 1, and I’m probably the person who’s most curious about how these subjects turned into my main nonfiction focus.

…

Read More Read More

Backstory Cards: for Roleplayers, Writers, and Game-Runners

Backstory Cards: for Roleplayers, Writers, and Game-Runners

Comments 0 Comment

Tim

So, our friend Tim Rodriguez came by our home a few weeks back when we were hosting a game-night. We’d thrown the doors open to a bunch of game-lovers of our acquaintance for a night of food and play, and they flocked in with their favorite games (Wari, or Oware, being the game that got the most giggles) and some very fine (I was told) single malt whiskey. (Or maybe it was double-barreled? Something. I don’t know; I was too busy making lasagna.)

Anyway, Tim brought some new Backstory Cards to playtest. Most of us (including me) who volunteered to playtest with him hadn’t role-played in, well, ever. Or at least for years, the fog of memory obscuring most of the details.

. . . But since we were just testing the cards for story-potential and not playing an actual game, it seemed to work out well enough, and pretty soon we were all, like, a gaggle of giant fungal glow-in-the-dark monster crabs running around ravaged urban landscapes bringing down mobsters. You know. Like you do.

And sometime in all the chaos, Tim may have mentioned something about a new Kickstarter project.

…

Read More Read More

The Secret Origin of Ultron

The Secret Origin of Ultron

Comments 8 comments

Avenges-67-August-1969-cover

With the entire world counting down to an imminent and inevitable event that may shake the entire world and light up Twitter like nothing previous – no, not a Trump impeachment, but the premiere of Avengers: Infinity War – an Avengers robot column may be the only thing to soothe and distract the hordes long enough for the rest of us to stock up on survival gear, water, and dark chocolate.

For that I need to go back one movie to Avengers: Age of Ultron. Every good comic historian knows the origin of Ultron. He’s introduced in the pulsating pages of Avengers #55 (August 1968) as Ultron-5 and his back story is laid out in delectable detail in Avengers #58 (November 1968). Some indefinite time in the past Hank Pym – Ant Man, Giant Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, pick one – was noodling around in his workshop tinkering with “a crude but workable robot .. A faltering step on the path to synthetic life!” For reasons never explained, the robot turns itself on and its brain evolves from infant to adult in a matter of magnificent moments, giving it more daddy issues than all the Miss Golden Globes titlests combined. He, now definitely a gendered he, blanks Hank’s memory while he spends time off-page continually upgrading his body so that when readers get their first glimpse he introduces himself as Ultron-5.

NOTE: This article was updated on September 21, 2018 for a vital correction. See the addition of the Ultimate Ultron below.

…

Read More Read More

2000AD’s The Complete Futureshocks, Volume 1

2000AD’s The Complete Futureshocks, Volume 1

Comments 1 comment

the-complete-future-shocks-volume-1-small

In my ongoing study of comic history and the craft of comic storytelling, I’ve looked at the history of 2000AD, Alan Moore’s Halo Jones, and the density of comic layouts, in part because as a novelist and short story writer, I’m trying to learn things from other story forms. And comics have a lot to teach me about pacing, conciseness and story density.

And in no place are stories more dense than in 2000AD‘s Futureshocks. These are stories that range in length from 1.5 pages to 4 pages (basically 6-20 panels). Luckily for me, 2000AD is issuing a collection of their first 5 years of Futureshocks in The Complete Futureshocks Volume 1, and they sent me a review copy.

The Complete Futureshocks Volume 1 is over 300 pages of comics, which by my rough count is about 80 individual stories ranging in length from 1.5 – 4 pages, with a few rare ones that stretched across two issues and totalled 6-8 pages.

What did I learn from all these very brief science fiction stories? A few things.

…

Read More Read More

March Short Story Roundup: Part 2

March Short Story Roundup: Part 2

Comments 7 comments

Cirsova 7-smallThe past month saw a bumper crop of new short fiction arrive in my mailboxes, digital and physical. This time out, I looked at Cirsova #7, Swords and Sorcery Magazine #74, and the bonus story I forgot to read for my review of Tales from the Magician’s Skull.

I love Cirsova. When it first appeared two years ago, I was impressed with what I saw, and ended my review of its first issue with these words:

If this is what the first issue looks like, I expect future ones will blow me away.

Subsequent issues have upheld that initial promise, but I found this particular issue’s heavy dose of space opera and sword & planet tales not to my liking. I’m too easily bored by rockets and rayguns these days.

#7 commences the proceedings with “Galactic Gamble” by Dominka Lein. It opens with a line that demands more funny than is delivered by the story:

Rasmuel lost his keys on the asteroid Zalima-46. 

Space gangsters, space monsters, and even a fight in a pit did not manage to make this one a winner for me.

…

Read More Read More

By Crom: Arthurian Elements in the Conan Canon

By Crom: Arthurian Elements in the Conan Canon

Comments 10 comments

ConanArthurian_GuideCoverJohn Teehan, in The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy: Volume One, challenges the reader to think of their favorite contemporary fantasy novels. And we’re talking Tolkien-onwards here, not just the past few years. Then he gives a list and says it would be difficult to think of a book that didn’t have any of the five themes on the list. He is making the point that the Arthurian legend, largely brought to popular culture by Thomas Malory, was an interweaving of those five themes. High fantasy epics like David Eddings’ Belgariad still follow this path.

I immediately thought about Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales and how they didn’t really emulate this pattern. Or so it seemed to me. My friend Deuce Richardson immediately pointed out two stories that did significantly incorporate these elements. So, I decided to go back to the very beginning and take a good look at “The Phoenix on the Sword”: then, do a less detailed survey of the following stories.

So, here we go!

Characteristic One – Commoner who is Really a King

Well…we’re definitely 0 for 1 right out of the gate. I think of Shea Ohmsford, who is a descendant of Jerle Shannara (Terry Brook’s Sword of Shannara) or Belgarion in Eddings’ previously mentioned Belgariad). They have the lineage of kings (or great sorcerers) in their blood. And they rise up to perform great deeds or rule kingdoms.

…

Read More Read More

Too Wide Sargasso Sea: Hammer’s The Lost Continent (1968)

Too Wide Sargasso Sea: Hammer’s The Lost Continent (1968)

Comments 6 comments

lost-continent-1968

Hammer Film Productions’ fantasy-adventure The Lost Continent is an adaptation of the works of William Hope Hodgson. Or it is to me, anyway. The credits say it’s based on the 1938 novel Uncharted Seas by Dennis Wheatley, but my eyes don’t lie: what Hammer put on screen is the nearest any movie has come to capturing the aura of Hodgson’s weird tales of the slimy terrors of the deep and the unknown horrors lurking in the Sargasso Sea.*

The Lost Continent arrived during the final phase of Hammer’s golden age. The company had moved out of its original studio at Bray and was now shooting at Pinewood and Elstree Studios. The feel of a unified family was starting to fray, and Hammer’s best in-house producers would soon depart. But producer Michael Carreras, son of studio head James Carreras, was still around and pushing Hammer to make larger-scale adventure films. Although Carreras was one of Hammer’s most prolific producers of horror movies — he produced Terence Fisher-directed classics like The Mummy, Dracula, and The Curse of the Werewolf — he never had any personal fondness for the Gothics. He saw lavish adventure and fantasy films like She (1965) and One Million Years B.C. (1966) as Hammer’s future. The Lost Continent was meant as an extension of the success of those movies, although it sometimes veered into horror.

Carreras was also an occasional director, and when The Lost Continent’s original director Leslie Norman (X the Unknown) fell sick early in production, Carreras stepped into the director’s chair. Carreras also wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym Michael Nash, the name of his gardener.

…

Read More Read More

The Robots of Mahlon Blaine

The Robots of Mahlon Blaine

Comments 2 comments

Mahlon Blaine, Cowering Nude With Robot detail

Mahlon Blaine was born in 1894 and was blind in one eye. People have been writing his biography since the 1920s and that’s about all they can verify. He provided the cover art, a faceless figure carrying a sword and spear, for Sir Hugh Clifford’s The Further Side of Silence. When asked for a few words about his life, he provided these:

Mahlon Blaine has illustrated these Malayan dramas with the magic of his own experience. A New England Quaker descended from staunch old New Bedford Whalers, Mahlon Blaine went to sea at fifteen and sailed before the mast in one of the last of the old wind-jammers. Then under steam he commuted from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic, to the Mediterranean, to the Arctic to all of Kipling’s Seven Seas where a merchantman seeks cargo. It is such eastern ports as Macao, Port Said, Hongkong, Pearl Harbor, that have given him his gallery of wicked, twisted Oriental faces and the museums of the world that have been his art schools. He has sailed up the Congo to make a collection of African masks, rescued fellow countrymen from jails in Indo-China, and nosed into many a Malay river for strange cargo and shipped many a Malay crew. He thinks that Sir Hugh Clifford has an uncanny knowledge of native psychology and can substantiate many of the stories by his own experiences.

Not one word is true, except possibly for the last sentence and “he.”

…

Read More Read More