Comic Con - Thursday, Day 1: Attack of the Panels

Today was Thursday. Much more fun. True to last year's form, I swung from hating and fearing Preview Night, to quietly enjoying the more sedate Thursday.

Okay, not really sedate. That's hardly the right word. But I spent most of my time in panels today, which helped a lot.

I'm also an idiot and I left my sim card at the hotel, which means I failed to take any photos of anything except the daily loot. Here it is, the one lone photo from today:


Yeah, I cornered the market on Scott Pilgrim stuff.

If I'd remembered to take a sim card, I would have taken photos of all the cool stuff on the con floor. Like the full-size replica Owlship from Watchmen, or the huge Castle Greyskull, or DC's enormous, ever-crowded booth.

I'd have taken shots of the costumed folk (bless 'em, they really make the con special); the Boba Fetts, Batman villains, stormtroopers, anime ones that
I don't get, and knights in full plate armour beating the crap out of each other up on the mezzanine level.

I'd definitely have snapped a few blurry pics from the 4 panels we saw today -- 2 comics-related and 2 TV-related, which seems a good ratio. The first comics panel was Stan Lee and Grant Morrison. Stan Lee is exactly how you'd imagine him to be. Exactly. Morrison was polite and reserved, and seemed happy to concede the floor to Stan's constant showboating.

The next comics panel was a dream line-up: Robert Kirkman, Colleen Doran, Matt Fraction (Fraction!), John Cassaday, Jim Lee, Mike Mignola and Morrison again. They chatted amongst themselves. It was obviously very interesting, as they're all living legends. But it could have used more Fraction. The questions from the audience were pretty lame, but that seems to be the norm.

The TV panels we saw were for True Blood (Alan Ball doing an HBO vampire series. Yeah, that was my reaction, too.) and Dexter (the best show about a lovable serial killer ever). True Blood actually looks pretty good. HBO must have spent a fortune on advertising; the show's banners are plastered all over the con. Plus, they gave us all free bags, shirts, comics and a copy of the book the show is based on! The atmosphere in the Dexter panel was electric. But hey, if anyone deserves to be drooled over by adoring fans, it's Julie Benz and Michael C. Hall.

The food in the con is fucking terrible and costs a fortune. I know the American peso is weak, but $8 for a sandwich?

I'm no longer convinced our pro passes allow us to skip the queues. I swear to God I saw people doing it last year, but maybe it only applies to certain rooms. All I can say is, I hope it gets us into Joss' panel tomorrow.

I saw Comic Book Tattoo, the new Image anthology based on Tori Amos songs, and it is gorgeous. My Under the Gun collaborator, that young rogue Josh Hechinger, has a story in there, you know. The book is as big as a house and I'd never get it home, but I'm still foolishly contemplating buying a copy.

The business side of things is not going so fantastically. Several (okay, most) of the people I was supposed to meet are not actually at the con this year. We won't actually be hanging out at Eric's booth, unfortunately, but we'll still be handing out the CAGES buttons somewhere, sometime. Er, watch this space.

I'm surely forgetting a ton of stuff, but the hour grows late, and Friday looms near.

First, A Word From Your Host

It's been a long time since I weblogged something on these intertubes. The thing is, there've been many things in the last 2 months that I've wanted to talk about on here, but the twin devils of work and after-work idleness got in my way.

Now I'm in San Diego promoting our book, and I therefore have something half-decent to blog about, and all these other happenings need to be neatly summed up in a few sentences. Like so:

- We passed the 52nd week of Elephant Words (link to Elephant Words in the sidebar over there; I'd fetch it for you, but the touchpad on this EeePC is a bitch to use). That means I've written a short (sometimes incredibly short) story every week for the past year. I never knew I could do that. My co-conspirators at EW are some of the nicest people and finest writers a guy could hope to know. I plan to continue with it.

- Speaking of anniversaries, I'm at San Diego Comic Con again, and do you know what that means? Well, considering I started this blog in order to document last year's con, I'm pretty sure that means this blog is one year old. Huzzah!

- Our book is out. Well, no, that's a lie. Our comic CAGES is being properly printed in September. But I am currently in possession of several incomplete proof copies, and they're really real books. They've got glossy covers and nice binding, and they have our names on the front. It feels warm and fuzzy.

- Holy expletive there are a lot of good shows on TV right now. Battlestar Galactica, Big Love, Dexter, Mad Men and Flight of the Conchords have joined forces to overwhelm me with awesomeness. Are we living in a Golden Age of television? When did this Renaissance happen?

- Dr Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog was bloody fantastic, wasn't it? I can't wait for the panel at San Diego. (It's funny; I've enjoyed watching the stunned/appalled reaction from certain corners of the internet in re: Act 3. It's a Joss show, people -- that means guaranteed pain. At this point, I'd be surprised if he didn't rip our hearts out and show them to us.)

- D&D 4th Edition is amazing. Yeah, yeah, it's culturally lame, and playing it sorta makes me feel like I'm back in high school. But I think it might be one of the best RPGs ever written, or at least the best since Exalted. And at this point, I can't afford to be choosy about culture -- I'll take any book, game or show that makes me feel that sense of wonder and awe again.

Right. Next up San Diego Comic Con International!

CAGES Is Almost Upon Us

My first book CAGES is at the printers right now. Like, as we speak. This is fairly exciting.

It also means that I'm going to be very busy for the foreseeable future. The marketing blitzkrieg is already underway -- the official website's getting redesigned (ditto the Insomnia Publications site), press releases are being put out, and I'm sending digital review copies to those worthy reviewers and bloggers who want to write about it.

So... are you a comic book reviewer or blogger? Would you like a review copy of the book? Well, why didn't you say so? Just shoot me an email at the usual place, and I'll be happy to send you a copy.

For those of you going to the Bristol International Comics Expo in a few weeks, you'll even have a chance to pick up a special advance copy of the book. Just sidle over to the Insomnia Publications table and look for a Scottish bloke called Crawford. Tell him, in these exact words, "G'day from Xander". He'll know what to do.

Thirdly (!), some more exciting news about CAGES: Australian comics superstar Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night, Fell) will be providing us with a foreword for the book. He is a scholar and a gentleman.

And last but not least, I can announce that Insomnia will be attending San Diego Comic Con again this year. Okay, actually it's just me and Mel. But we'll have a table, and banners, and lovely comics to sell. Have you booked your accommodation yet?

Okay, I lied, there's one more thing: My writing partner and all-around great guy Josh Hechinger just did an excellent interview for Sequential Tart. I swear, I would have pointed you to this even if he hadn't given me a shout-out in the interview.

Awakening: A Comic You Should Buy

Allow me to indulge in some product pimpage here.

Awakening is a zombie horror comic written by Nick Tapalansky, with art by Alex Eckman-Lawn and lettering by Thomas Mauer. It was recently nominated for an Eagle Award. It's published by Archaia Studios, who are responsible for awesome comics such as Mouse Guard.

Also? Awakening is really good and you should buy it.

Full disclosure: I met Nick and Alex at San Diego Comic Con last year. They were extremely nice and professional guys, and I remember they complimented me on my shirt. (That's the way to go if you want to flatter me, really. I heart my t-shirt collection). Anyway, they pressed their book into my hands and sold me on it with a very enthusiastic pitch. Which is fortunate, because without that experience, I'm not sure I would ever have picked the book up. Another zombie comic, right?

Not really. Awakening's not a gorefest, and it's not exactly full of scares. Nor is it a winking post-ironic examination of the zombie trope, or whatever else the kids are reading these days.

Nope, it's a down and dirty detective story where the zombies barely get any screen time. They're really more like phantoms than traditional Romero-esque flesh-eaters, and when they appear at all, it often happens too fast for us to get a good look at them. Tapalansky subverts all the usual zombie cliches: Instead of attacking in packs, they work alone; instead of roaming mindlessly, they hide in the shadows and strike like hungry wolves. Heck, their victims don't even turn into zombies, and they even occasionally run away.

So the zombie stuff is really there to lend menace and atmosphere to the overarching detective/forensics story. Much like Ellis and Templesmith's Fell, we get the sense that the town in the story is physically sick, festering with an unseen evil. It's all very moody, meditative and grim. All of which is a pretty clever device, but it might not have worked so well were it not for Eckman-Lawn's frankly beautiful art.

I really don't know how to describe the art and do it justice. It's like Templesmith and McKean had a love-child. Scribbly lines, wild ink spatters and off-kilter photo-collage are the norm here, and while this sort of style is currently popular and much-copied, Eckman-Lawn seems to be approaching a real visual technique of his own. Characters fade in and out of silhouette; in and out of reality. They appear flat and vaporous in one panel and lavishly painted in the next. Swirling patterns and scraps of newsprint fade in and out of the pages, subtext literally rising to the surface.

And the double-page spreads: Just gorgeous. Ditto the covers and the pages with closeups of character faces. The latter often feature elaborate haloes of design elements around the characters' heads, like crazy sunbursts of emotion.

Basically, it's stylish, gorgeous to look at, and a creepy-fun read. Best of all, there's a hardcover collection coming out in June. And if you're not already convinced, well, go check it out for yourself at the official site. All you have to do is email Nick, and he'll send you issues 1-4 as ebooks for free. That, folks, is how you market a comic book.

My New Favorite Blog Of All Time

Thanks be to Boing Boing for bringing to my attention the wondrous blog known only as 'Got Medieval'.

Not only am I capable of spelling the word 'Medieval', I also have more than a passing interest in matters relating to the Middle Ages. I even harbor a secret dream to (don't laugh) retrace the steps of the First Crusade from France to Jerusalem, using only land-based transportation. Sure, it'd take forever and cost a fortune, but how cool would that be?

Even if you're not much of a medievalist, this blog is hilarious. I highly recommend this post on chainmail bikinis, so very timely now that Gary Gygax has passed away. You could follow that up with a post about testicle-biting beavers, and cap it all off with pictures of monkeys doing funny things.

(Incidentally, 'Monkey Butt Trumpet'? Best band name ever.)

Hell, just read the whole thing.

Gary Gygax Died

God dammit.

Gary Gygax, legendary co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died this morning aged 69.

This is seriously sad. I remember perfectly my very first games of D&D: It was the Yellow Box starter set, and I was all of about 12 years old. I DMed (narrated the story), and my two younger brothers played the heroes (Lordan the priest and Sneak the thief, if memory serves). Later I introduced the game to my school friends, and I've been playing various RPGs on and off ever since.

But D&D was the first game to really crack open my mind and show me all the infinite possibilities of shared narratives. If anyone back in 1979 could have predicted World of Warcraft, it would have been Gary Gygax.

(It's also worth mentioning that Gary had an incredibly bizarre writing style unlike anything I've ever read. Not only was his prose purpler and more esoteric than Lovecraft on an absinthe bender, Gary, an anthropology student, loved to pepper his work with the kind of arcane terminology found only in leatherbound Medieval tomes. Thanks to Gary, an entire generation of impressionable youth grew up knowing what a 'philtre', a 'wight', a 'catoblepas' and a 'glaive-guisarme' are.)

It's hard to overstate the influence RPGs have had on my writing, and on my understanding of narrative in general. It's even harder to overstate the influence they've had on video games and popular fantasy.

Levelling your Gnome Rogue in World of Warcraft? You can thank Gary for that. Playing Legend of Zelda on your Wii? Gary again. Watching the Lord of the Rings on DVD? If it wasn't for Gary, those elves and dwarves probably wouldn't look like that.

I don't know what else to say, except: Thanks, Gary. You'll be missed.

Boing Boinged!

I got Boing Boinged.

It's not the first time, but even so, it never gets any less cool.

So if you're one of those people who accidentally clicked my name instead of the article link... Accidental Hello! I'm a writer. This is my blog.

Wait, don't go! We can totally discuss things.

So how about that plant-human hybrid article? I actually stumbled across it last night while researching material for my latest Elephant Words piece, which is based on a photo of a mushroom seller.

Interestingly, the comments section there on BB has turned into a pretty heated discussion about genetic engineering in crops, due to the segment of article that Herr Frauenfelder selected for quoteage. I say 'interestingly' because that wasn't the bit that interested me at all. I was more intrigued by the caterpillar-mushroom hybrid stuff later in the article, as you'd have guessed if you read my story.

Anyway, welcome to you random clickers. Stay awhile, why don'tcha?

Video Mixtape: Under The Gun

If you read Josh Hechinger's blog (and you should, if only to marvel at the crazy amount of work the guy churns out), you'll have noted that he and I are co-writing a hitman romantic comedy comic called Under the Gun.

He recently posted a very cool Youtube mixtape of his influences for the series. I thought I'd respond in kind.

(Although mine's not quite as cool, because he already took that damn perfect Killers song.)

An early scene from The Killer, starring Chow Yun Fat:



Scene from The Big Hit:



Rock You Like A Hurricane - The Scorpions:




Warning: If you are not actually Josh Hechinger, this post might make little or no sense to you. In which case I advise you to back away slowly. Or, hey, stick around if you want to. It's your call.

Oscars for Dummies

Is it just me, or are the Oscar nominations really bloody awful this year? For Christ's sake, the list includes Surf's Up, Transformers and Elizabeth.

And fucking Juno got nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay?

Look, I've seen Juno, and that screenplay deserves to be fired into the sun, not nominated for an Oscar. Transformers may have been a shit film, but at least the script didn't jump out of the actors' mouths and clobber you over the head with its desperate relevance. Juno is basically a poor man's Knocked Up, except that Knocked Up was actually, y'know, funny.

At this point I'm sort of hoping the strike holds on until just after the Oscars. That way I won't have to suffer the craven image of ex-blogger Diablo Cody on my TV screen.

On a cheerier note: Holy shit, Brendan McCarthy now has a blog. The man's a stark raving genius, and you should check that link out right now. I mean, seriously: unicorn chicken eyes!

Shout-out numero deux goes to my friend Luke's new blog, soon to be full of designy goodness. Welcome to the blogosphere, mate.

Right. Less than 24 hours until I get on the plane. Mel and Austin: Save me one of those minty hot chocolates.

Kill For Art

This is the most interesting slice of random news I've read all year.

Of course, once you've read that article, you'll want to go look at his Flickr set.

And after you've read that, you'll most likely want to check out this...

...which may very well lead you down a long and twisted path of trying to found out whether you really can mix deadly bits of ground-up glass into wheatpaste. And so on and so forth.

You have been warned.

Home, Alive

Back home now, after more than a month away. I was without internet access for a week, and it hurts more and more each time. Can we hurry up with the Technological Singularity already? Okay.

I detoured to Sydney on the way back for my US visa interview. It was even more nightmarish-citizen-processing-farm than you'd expect. Two-and-a-half hours of queue up, surrender your possessions, metal detector, security questions, sit down, watch looped film, wait in line, security questions, shuffle to next room, take ticket, wait in line, surrender your forms, wait in line, digital fingerprints, take ticket, wait in line, interview, and then you wander out of the building, dazed and blinking in the middle of a hot Sydney lunch hour. I passed the time by thinking loud subversive thoughts and chatting with my fellow processees.

Xmas is coming. The novel is still in my head, ticking and whirring and rattling at the bars. CAGES is cooking along, and my Elephant Words pieces are feeling like fun again.

And hey, look! A friend of mine made a cool new vlog post: http://www.sequential-one.com/blog/?p=1393

21K

Oh yeah. Read the yellow typewriter and weep: 21675 words. I am now less than 1 day behind schedule.

Incidentally, this brings the total wordcount for my novel proper to over 50 thousand words. That's, like, a lot of words.

That is over half of a real goddamn novel.

To celebrate, here's some lame linkblogging:

• Award-winning SF writer visits and reviews new 'Creation Museum', $27 million worth of drooling, retarded, Bible-thumping schlock. Plus, cavemen versus dinosaurs!
• Tired of arguing with the 'climate change skeptic' in your life? The BBC has a handy list of rebuttals for you to use.
• It's funny because it's true.

Sorry about that. But what did you expect -- real content?

Now: Bring on 30K!

Election Called, Plus a Quiz

'J-Ho' (as the lovable Mr Clayfield insists on calling him) has finally called the election.

In lieu of anything better to do, I took a 50-question test (link courtesy of dual masterminds Xander and Nico) on my Australian political leanings.

My results are here.

No surprises, then. It's actually a pretty good test, and I recommend it if you need a quick guide to which political parties are on your side, and which represent the death of all hopes and dreams.

Until next time, let's all read some Matt Taibbi: Living God of Journalism, and start working up our righteous rage.

Fun With Politics

A political post! Huzzah!

Feast your eyes on these here links...

• Google is now following the Australian election. Add feeds, check out your electorate on Google Maps, or watch Youtube posts from all the major parties. Fun, huh?
• I know this guy, and he's alright by me. Let's follow his election coverage, shall we?
  
• And lastly, here's a link to my absolute favourite Australian political blog. It may not be pretty or polite, but neither's the truth.

Now that all that's out of the way, what's missing? What's the one last thing that needs to be done?

Oh yeah: John Howard needs to call the fucking election already.

Field Trip

I'd say it was worth the hour-long drive to Brisbane.

I'm talking, of course, about the Sherpa Chicken dish at the Himalayan Kitchen restaurant in Fortitude Valley. If you're ever in the area and hungry, I highly recommend it.

But the Writers Festival panel was good too.

With Bryan Talbot, Shaun Tan and Eddie Campbell in the one room, there was something like 70 years worth of collective comics industry talent on display. Eddie Campbell proved to be funny and charismatic, and was basically responsible for leading the discussion. (Well, it certainly wasn't being led by the inept moderator, who looked and acted like he'd wandered in there by accident. At one point -- and I shit you not -- he interrupted Bryan Talbot to ask, "So Shaun, you just won the New South Wales Premier's Book Award. Was that... good?")

As it was, a lot of the panel was wasted on getting the clueless audience up to speed on just who these authors were and what they'd written; and much of the rest was spent examining the fairly silly question implicit in the panel's title ('Does the Literature of our Time have Pictures?'). The 'argument' over graphic novels versus literature wasn't much of the sort, with Talbot taking the moderate position, and Eddie Campbell jokingly advocating for a complete overhaul of the standard nomenclature ("Just use made-up words. Call them something different every time.") The audience questions -- all two of them -- were pretty facile (That old chestnut "How is a comic like a film?" made its mandatory appearance).

But there were some gems in the rough, with Talbot and Campbell making fun of the slapdash way that mainstream journalists cover comics, and Tan describing the process of doing background design for Pixar. And at the end of the day, I got to shake Talbot's hand and tell him how much I enjoyed Alice in Sunderland.

In all, it was a rewarding evening. And if you're ever in the neighborhood, just remember what I said about the Sherpa Chicken. Delicious.

An Outing

Okay, so I'm definitely going to this tomorrow:

Does the Literature of our Times have Pictures?

Eddie Campbell, Guy Delisle, Bryan Talbot and Shaun Tan.
Hear four of the world's most renowned graphic novelists talk about the rise and rise of the medium and the ideas and issues that propel their work.

It should be fun, though I'm the only one in my group who actually knows who these people are. Doubtless, my colleagues will spend some of the driving-to-Brisbane time frantically flicking through my copy of Talbot's Alice in Sunderland.

I'll let you know how it goes.

All My Idols Are Insane

I was reading this excellent 1978 speech by Philip K. Dick, and it had me nodding along in agreement, enthralled by the power of the great man's ideas.

Right up until the bit where he says the year is actually 50 AD, and we're all living in the Bible, hallucinating these last couple of millennia.

And it got me to thinking: A lot of my idols -- the people whose art has had the biggest influence on me -- were/are completely insane, by any reasonable standard.

In the 'still alive' category there's Grant Morrison, who travelled to Tibet to have a UFO encounter experience, wrote himself sick with a flesh-eating virus, and who has publicly stated that humanity is only a years away from making first contact with a fictional universe.

Then there's Alan Moore, who smokes 60 joints a day, worships a snake-god, and conducts rituals in a magic cave he had excavated beneath his house.

Further back in the 20th century, there's Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who for much of his life was too afraid to sleep at night, lest he be carried off by the flying anteater-bats from Pluto.

Lovecraft was good friends with Robert E. Howard, who would write all night in the belief that there was a barbarian standing behind him ready to behead him if he stopped, and who shot himself in the head following the death of his mother.

And, of course, there's my favorite author of all, Cordwainer Smith (not his real name), a world-renowned professor, psychological warfare expert and military advisor to Kennedy, who also happened to believe he was lord of an interplanetary empire.

This is not about me deriding these artists. This is me saying, where can I get some of this crazy? Because it looks like a lot of fun.

As the Tick said, "Sanity is a one trick pony -- all you have is rational thought. But when you're good and loony, the sky's the limit!"

Welcome

If you're a new reader arriving here via the links at Tom Spurgeon's excellent site The Comics Reporter, then Hello. It's nice to meet you.

I'm an Australian writer who, wait, where are you going? Don't leave...

Damn.

Well, easy come, easy go.