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A Few Words About The Order of the Stick

A Few Words About The Order of the Stick

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Dungeon Crawlin' FoolsDying is easy, the old saw has it, but comedy … that’s hard. Only — what happens if we’re talking about a world in which miracles happen to order, and people come back to life whenever a priest wants? Dying suddenly isn’t quite so easy. But comedy, real comedy … that’s still pretty hard.

Fantasy’s no more or less risible than almost anything else in life, and you can find comedic fantasy good, bad, and indifferent. I want to talk about one particular example. Lately, I’ve been rereading a lot of Rich Burlew’s webcomic, The Order of the Stick. It’s a successful, funny fantasy; impressive, since it looks like it should have no business succeeding as well as it does. It’s not just a fantasy comedy, it’s a gaming fantasy comedy. Clearly, the strip’s appeal is going to be somewhat limited.

The main characters are adventurers in a fantasy world that operates according to the rules of Dungeons & Dragons (version 3.5); inevitably a good part of the comedy comes from the characters consciously manipulating the rules of the game, and commenting on its conventions and mechanics. But there’s more to it. The strip isn’t just about the game, nor is it just a showcase for Burlew’s killer sense of humour. The comic’s run for over eight hundred installments up to this point, plus extra stories in various print collections; it’s developed a coherent story, and surprisingly sympathetic characters. It’s gone from a gag strip to a fantasy epic — a nice trick, given that the story’s told with stick figures.

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New Treasures: The Annotated Sandman, Volume One

New Treasures: The Annotated Sandman, Volume One

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the-annotated-sandmanFirst time I met Neil Gaiman was at the 16th World Fantasy Convention in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was 1990, and Gaiman was busy taking the comics world by storm with his new Vertigo title The Sandman, which first appeared in January 1989.

The next year he won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story with the Sandman story “A Midsummer’s Night Dream,” but in 1990 he was a relative unknown (for those who didn’t read comics, anyway). I remember thinking how cool it was that I could run into L. Sprague de Camp, Julius Schwartz, Bob Weinberg and Neil Gaiman, all at the same convention.

In 1999 my friend Andy Heidel, publicist at Avon EOS, sent me an advance proof of Gaiman’s second novel Stardust, the edition illustrated by Charles Vess, for review at the SF Site. I couldn’t find a reviewer, and begged Alice Dechene to do it. Vertigo liked her review so much they blurbed it on the collected edition. Which is why my wife has her name on the back of one of the best-selling graphic novels of the century — something I’ve never accomplished, and I’ve written about a hundred more reviews than she has.

Gaiman’s career has been meteoric ever since, but I still consider the 75 issues of The Sandman to be some of the best work he’s done. I’m not alone — The Los Angles Times Magazine calls The Sandman “The greatest epic in the history of comic books,” and it’s been in print in graphic novel format for over two decades. And our Managing Editor, Howard Andrew Jones, author of The Desert of Souls, says Sandman #50 was a crucial influence on his own writing, “and the one that fired my interest in the tales of the Arabian Nights.”

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Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and The Fantastic Four

Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and The Fantastic Four

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Fantastic Four 1There are two different stories about how it began.

In one story, there’s a writer-editor of boys’ adventure comics, who’s told by his boss — also his uncle — to create a new team of superheroes, a knock-off of the competition’s high-selling Justice League of America title. This isn’t what the writer really wants to do. But he talks it over with his wife. And he decides: I’m going to write the book the way I want to, without worrying about making perfect heroes. Maybe one of the leads will actually be a monster. Maybe another’ll be a teenager, the kind of character who in other books would just be a sidekick. They’ll bicker among themselves, and fight. They’ll be real people. And, in this story, that’s what the writer did; and it worked.

The other story has a veteran comics artist coming in to the studio of the second-rate company he’s working for. He finds the young writer-editor of the comics line crying because they’re moving the furniture out; the company’s about to close down. No problem, says the artist; you tell your uncle, the owner, to hold off folding the business. The artist, a veteran storyteller, knows how to make grab an audience. He starts cranking out the books, new title after new title. Superheroes are back in, so he starts doing superheroes like nobody ever did them, throwing everything he sees around him into his stories, everything he reads in newspapers and magazines, everything he ever found in history books and myths. Scientists. Mutants. Gods and monsters. In this story, that’s what the artist did; and it worked.

Human memory is fallible, especially when, as in this case, the two people closest to the case become estranged. What can be said for sure is this: starting in 1961, Marvel Comics, a formerly undistinguished publisher, began producing a wave of brilliant superhero comics. Most of them were written by Stan Lee, and most of the best were drawn by artist Jack Kirby — with another artist, Steve Ditko, producing two other remarkable books with Lee’s involvement. Of all the Kirby-Lee collaborations, perhaps the best was the original flagship book of the Marvel line, the first title that came in many ways to define Marvel Comics as a whole: The Fantastic Four.

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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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Worth 1000 Words: An Interview with “Comic Critiquer” John Bonner

Worth 1000 Words: An Interview with “Comic Critiquer” John Bonner

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Click Through For LARGER IMAGE!

I don’t remember who first directed to me to John Bonner’s Comic Critique of Gene Wolfe’s latest novel Home Fires.

I think maybe I saw it on Facebook.

Partly because I adore Gene, partly because I thought the medium was so clever, I immediately contacted Bonner to beg for an interview.

He was receptive. I procrastinated. After a not-so-brief hiatus, I actually sent him my questions. He answered.

Eventually, months after it all began, now that the, uh, stars are in alignment and the entrails of my oracular pig have disported themselves with a measure of amiability, I have the interview for your reading enjoyment here.

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Free Knights of the Dinner Table Online Strips

Free Knights of the Dinner Table Online Strips

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kodt-webcomicThe talented Jolly Blackburn, creator of the comic Knights of the Dinner Table, has posted an epic KoDT comic strip online for your enjoyment.

Knights of the Dinner Table is the finest gaming comic ever made. It follows the misadventures of a group of misfits from Muncie, Indiana, whose love of gaming routinely trumps normal social conventions, and occasionally even their sense of self preservation.

This latest online strip, “Not Up To Speed,” finds the gang involved in an impossibly ambitious  live-action recreation of the D-Day landing in a vast convention hall at Gary Con.

Long time readers will recognize the characters Eddie and Sara, who appear in the KODT Java Joint strip in the pages of Black Gate magazine.

The latest issue of the Knights of the Dinner Table print magazine is #180 (October 2011), making it one of the longest-running independent comics in history.

Knights of the Dinner Table magazine is 64 pages of comics, reviews and gaming fun for just $5.99. It’s available at better comic and game shops around the country, or online at KenzerCo, and it gets my highest recommendation.

Gunpowder, Treason, and Occupation: V For Vendetta

Gunpowder, Treason, and Occupation: V For Vendetta

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V For Vendetta 1I’m taking a bit of a break from the Romanticism and Fantasy posts, as I’ve got a few other things I’d like to write about. To start with, since I discussed Alan Moore’s Marvelman a few weeks ago, I thought I’d take a look now at V For Vendetta. V started as a series that ran, like Marvelman, in the early 80s in the black-and-white anthology magazine Warrior. Though the story was left incomplete when Warrior folded, in 1988 the series was republished in colour by DC Comics, and Moore and artist David Lloyd were able to finish it as they’d hoped. (Some spoilers for the book follow; also spoilers for Watchmen, oddly enough.)

A bit of cultural background may be in order here to explain V’s iconography, themes, and why the main character’s mask is suddenly turning up in protest movements in metropolitan centres. Guy Fawkes was a militant Catholic in early 17th-century England, part of a group of confederates led by Robert Catesby, who planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I. Fawkes was apprehended underneath Parliament, near the conspirators’ vast store of gunpowder. There has been much discussion since about how much England’s intelligence services knew about the plot; it seems that James’ spymaster Robert Cecil may have known about the scheme in advance, and let it proceed in an effort to capture higher-placed Catholic agents. In any event, Fawkes was tortured and executed along with seven other conspirators. The anniversary of what would have been the date of the explosion, November 5, became an annual celebration in England, marked with bonfires and the burning-in-effigy of Guy Fawkes.

Moore and Lloyd used that imagery when they created V For Vendetta. They had planned, at the suggestion of Warrior editor Dez Skinn, to create a comics series focussing on a pulp-era gangbuster figure. As they talked over that idea, it turned into a near-future adventure series, following a heroic anarchist out to overthrow a fascist totalitarian state. They used the iconography of Guy Fawkes as the visual inspiration for their hero, dressing him in 17th century garb and a smiling mask, and began the series with the destruction of the Houses of Parliament that the historical Fawkes couldn’t accomplish.

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Kimota! and Marvelman

Kimota! and Marvelman

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Kimota!I’m going to take a break this week from the Romanticism and Fantasy posts, because I’ve just finished a fascinating book, and I’d like to talk about it. It’s not a new book, and it’s not a fiction book. It is in fact mainly a collection of interviews about a comic-book character who hasn’t seen print (officially) in almost twenty years. The book is called Kimota!, and the character has been known both as Miracleman and, originally, Marvelman.

The Marvelman situation is difficult even to describe. Briefly: created in the mid-50s as a British knock-off of Captain Marvel (then the world’s most popular super-hero), the last story of Marvelman’s original run was published in 1963. The character was revived, with his backstory radically re-imagined, by writer Alan Moore for the British magazine Warrior in 1982. Warrior went under before long, but in 1985 Marvelman’s adventures continued, still written by Moore, now published by the American company Eclipse Comics. A few years later, Moore left the book, selecting Neil Gaiman as his successor. Gaiman projected three story arcs; roughly one and a half saw print before Eclipse folded in 1994.

From that time to this, the character has mostly remained in limbo. Marvelman’s the ultimate cautionary tale about the difficulties of copyright law. With every change of publisher, with every change of creator, the question of who owned what grew more complex, more debateable. Two years ago, Marvel Comics bought the copyright from Marvelman’s original creator, and began reprinting some of the character’s old adventures. That’s nice, in many ways, but it’s the Moore and Gaiman work that people have been waiting to see, and waiting to see completed. It may be a while before that happens.

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Star Trek: Where No Comic Has Gone Before

Star Trek: Where No Comic Has Gone Before

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star-trek-1And here I had grand ambitions to write a quick post or two about some recent magazine acquisitions tonight. Instead I’m dropping all that to tell you about a comic book I’ve never even seen (and is reportedly already sold out). Blame Tor.com, where I stumbled across this story.

Now I know you saw 2009’s Star Trek reboot, staring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, and directed by J.J. Abrams. Whether you loved it or hated it, I’m pretty sure your mind went the same place mine did after exiting the theater: Huh. I wonder how that fresh crew of punks would handle The Doomsday Machine. Or that nasty Klingon captain Kor from “Errand of Mercy.” Is that Quinto guy even old enough to grow a beard for  a “Mirror Mirror” remake?

We’ll have to wait until at least 2012 to see how (or even if) J.J. Abrams chooses to answer those questions in the coming sequel. But now IDW, the company behind the excellent Star Trek: Year Four comic series, has teamed up with Star Trek writer/producer Roberto Orci to launch a new comic that explores those very questions.

From the IDW website:

The adventures of the Starship Enterprise continue with the new cast from the film as they embark on missions that re-imagine select stories from the original television series, along with new threats and characters never seen before.

Under the creative direction of Orci, fan-favorite Star Trek writer Mike Johnson and artist Stephen Molnar bring this alternate universe to life and begin the countdown to the highly anticipated Star Trek sequel. The series kicks off with a dramatic new envisioning of The Original Series second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” The conclusion of this reimagined episode will be available in October. In November, the adventures of the new Enterprise crew continue with a new take on the classic episode “The Galileo 7,” as Mr. Spock finds himself in command of a stranded shuttle crew fighting for survival.

Yeah, that sounds pretty damn cool.  IDW has already announced that a second printing, with a variant cover, will be available soon. Worth a trip to the comic shop, anyway. I’ll be the guy in line in front of you, haggling for a free mylar bag.