Tabula Rasa lj

The latest issue of The Crumpleton Experiments (gallery, review) is out. Check out the flier including a limited edition figurine of pure evil!

Having waxed lyrical(-ish) about Blood Ties, I should probably point out Eddie Campbell's latest post as a counterpoint. I tend to ignore Eddie's grumpiness, since it's usual about people and works I know little about, but in this case he is complaining about Bernie Wrightson and defending Fredric Wertham (he of The Seduction of the Innocents, and the 1950s anti-comic crusade) which certainly piques the interest.

I'm not going to argue either point (and couldn't with any authority), but I know there are plenty of people I respect who would do so.

What brings me back to Blood Ties -- and the episode '5:55' about things happening over and over again -- is, well, things happening over and over again. This is a plot we've seen before. (Buffy did a nice bit of dialogue about this in their own version.) But it's more coherent than some BT episodes, and as usual the characters are so likable they carry it off. But is it enough? Is it just 'a monster eating and regurgitating itself' as Eddie would have it? Is it simply comfort-food for the attention span, and is that bad?

Understanding most people haven't seen that specific episode or show, what do you reckon?

Comics folk in Melbourne, this will interest you. Bruce Mutard is talking about his new comic The Sacrifice on Wednesday evening.

Set in Melbourne in the shadow of WWII, this graphic novel deals with war, ideals, family and love. With a distinctive cast of characters and strong themes, this book will resonate with a broad audience.

Details are here

The photo-comic (aka fotonovel) has never received any love, but is that any excuse for Dark Horse to put the stupidest photo of Darth Vader ever on the front of their new edition?

I have no great interest in seeing the upcoming Punisher movie, having neither read the comic nor seen the previous adaptation. But I'll point you towards this blog entry from the director, which has a fabulous photo and an interesting take on it all.

If I did start reading web comics, this could be it: Batman by Josh Simmons (as found in a review on the ever-interesting seancollinsblog).

I don't read web comics, it just doesn't happen. Last night I read a perfect little thing by Owen Heitman -- I wish I could share it with you all, but it's not on-line, and so I can't.

(Or perhaps won't, since I do have a scanner nearby.)

So I guess this becomes a plug for Tango #7: Love and Sedition instead. I would put Tango up with Dee Vee as our strongest local anthology comics of the last decade or two. Hopefully I'll have something more to say about it when I've read more than the first few pages.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of girliejones, here is a review I wrote for ASif, which isn't up on the website yet. It will go up eventually, but I'm sure she's having too much fun in the meantime.

Vowels
by Skye Ogden
Gestalt Comics
Reviewed by David Carroll, October 2007

( Read more... )

I went off to Supanova on Saturday, and caught up with a whole lot of stuff. Well, I spent lots of money and met lots of people anyway. Actually reading it all will take a bit longer.

I'm not really in a good position to comment on the state of Australian comics, at the moment, but things are definitely happening. Local Act is putting out a lot of interesting-looking stuff, and there was no lack of other titles on display. For the nostalgia buffs, The Dynamic Dark Nebula and The Southern Cross are back from a very long hiatus. The strangest thing I saw was a very flashy stall selling The Dawn of Mankind. It's 'based on a true story from the perspective of religious scriptures found in some of the Semitic religions', and includes 'How to Read Comics' and an ad for 'Islamic Realm: A Path to Peace'. Also good production values, which is nice. Most of the other stuff I bought can be found in this year's section of gallery.

As for people, I ran into Naomi from our writing circle days (still producing Zeera); Chris Sequeira who is keeping busy (a collection of Pulse of Darkness may happen yet); some guy whose name I missed, but who was apparently close to the short list of the Lothian horror line; SCAR pushing their wares on an unsuspecting public; Marianne De Pierres selling her books, and various others I've mostly emailed.

One other thing: I was very impressed that they arranged the the local guys so they were opposite the signing tables. A lot better placement than in previous years when they were stuck as far from anywhere else as possible. It was somewhat odd that Nicholas Brendon was just sitting over there, mostly unattended and casually disreputable, but I guess these things happen.

Another comics post while I'm on a roll, this time for people in Perth. There is a launch of the graphic novel Vowels at Planet Books, 28 September from 6:30pm.

Melbourne comic people will want to get along to Aggressively Strange Fables, an 'underground comics and animation art exhibition', part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. It opens on the 28th at Northcote, including the launch of #7 (Love and Sedition) of the ever fabulous Tango.

• Website
• Details (pdf)

A quick note for Aussie comics people, my review of Paul Bedford's The List is up at ASif.

It has been a strange day or two for local genre news. Here's a round-up (we'll wait till the Black Sheep fiasco resolves itself, though the fact we won tickets to the movie is presumably unrelated).

Christian Read (the_christian) has just had his supplement for the Call of Cthulhu game published: Mythos Magic. Here's his note about it. The cover is by toniaw. Looks excellent.

We got an email from some nice person telling us about their comic: The List (a tale of primal rage, insanity, and violence). I don't know much more about it than that, as yet, but it looks interesting.

On similar subject and medium, I found this recently: The Canberra Heresy: The Arcane Legacy of Walter Burley Griffin. I haven't put it up in the gallery yet, because that's #2, and I'm trying to contact the author about #1. From what I've seen, it hasn't got the most coherent of narratives, but at least the title is catchy.

People in southern Sydney may be interested to know the Dymocks Miranda is setting itself up as a SF/Fantasy/comics specialist. They are taking proactive steps in that direction anyway, including reaching out to locals, imports, and no less than two MySpace pages. We must go visit and see how it stacks up.

Finally, if there's anyone in Perth or Melbourne who wants a signed Prismatic, book plates with all three signatures (quite a rarity, actually) are now available from Fantastic Planet and the Angus & Robertsons, Frankston.

I don't post much about what I've been reading, but here's some quick highlights from the last fortnight:

They Hunger, by Scott Nicholson: For those wondering about the use of MySpace, I bought this novel solely because the author turned up in my friend's list, and it looked fun. It was too; I'm not entirely sure it arrived anywhere, but it was fairly trippy on the way, with lots of texture and some distinctly weird vampires.

Blaze, by Richard Bachman: This novel had its faults, and Stephen King more or less lists them in his foreword. It doesn't break a lot of new ground, but I enjoyed it a lot.

(In related news, I hear they're considering filming The Long Walk. The result should be terrifying -- even if not, this is the best of the Bachman books, for anyone wanting to give them a go.)

Heart-Shaped Box, by Joe Hill: This had a lot of excellent stuff in it, and I can see why it has caused a stir. I do think the characterisation gets a bit sloppy at times, which is a bit sad because the detail upon which it builds is great.

(I'm not sure I blogged it at the time, but there was an article about Joe in the NY Times a while ago. The description of Stephen King's kids playing the Call of Cthulhu RPG was heart-warming. "Joe was always dungeon master. You had sanity points, and it was like, if you encountered Yog-Sothoth one too many times, you were crazy. You could only have so many adventures, and then you had to have a new character, and I thought that was brilliant.")

Hellblazer: The Red Right Hand, by Denise Mina: Denise's run on Hellblazer was a strange one. Interesting things are happening, but working out precisely what is often tricky. It gets clearer towards the end, but remains arrhythmical and odd. (DC's decision to release the trade collections out of order -- over-lapping this story with the end of Carey's run -- really didn't help.)

Crossing Midnight, by Mike Carey: I seem to be reading a lot of Carey recently, and he can juggle both street level and high-magic mythos adeptly. This comic, in which he tackles Japanese spirits, seems a bit slow to me, but has definite highlights. I'd be more tempted to buy his novels if they weren't about yet another bloody supernatural detective. Speaking of which:

Storm Front, by Jim Butcher: 100 pages in, and it hasn't really grabbed me as yet. But there are funny bits (for better or worse), and it makes an interesting comparison with the show. The actual magic is interesting, and if he can pull a coherent background out of all these unsubtle elements, he'll be doing well.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by JK Rowling: Yeah, I already talked about this one. On reflection, my feeling that she passed over too much stuff, in her determined drive to the final battle, has only strengthened. Hermione's big moment and the consequences of all those unforgivable curses flying about, for two.

Unsettled Places, by George Morgan. OK, this is mainly for completion, as you're probably not too interested in Aboriginal urbanisation. But I did like this quote: "While most of their male colleagues were off conducting hairy-chested feats of ethnography in remote areas, women broke the new ground of urban anthropology".

Otherwise, I can report The Fly commentary is very good thus far, and we've decided Dead Zone S4 is our next slab-o'-tv to get through.

Shades of Hipflash, perhaps. This description of Zero Killer sounds an awful lot like Zero Assassin (better piccie here).

Congratulations to clockwork_hands, who has just come runner up in a Japanese international manga award (via abc_articulate).

Since I've only recently managed to add The Arrival to my comics gallery, it was about time I did this one too: Wormwood Gentleman Corpse. Good stuff.

As you may have noticed, the gallery is somewhat scattershot in its inclusion of various things, particularly local creators in overseas markets (and much else, I'm sure). I was even taken to task by someone for not including them at one point. Oh well, at least they were watching.

Speaking of such things, I only wander into google analytics occasionally, but apparently 70% of my traffic to the TR site as a whole is from search engines. Not sure if that's normal or not. I guess that is still ~300 real people a day.

(Hey, these reports are kinda interesting. On May 30 we had 79 people visit because of Chris Pritchard, up from about 1 or 2 a day. Who's he? A murderer whose crime was blamed on roleplaying.)

Several other reports have confirmed most of the action at the Con was between the events, but there were a couple yesterday that were worth a look. I saw Stephen Gleeson's talk on Blacksmithing (providing the only (more or less) interesting photos I took), and the discussion on alternate cultures as a basis for fantasy (opposite the panel on Dark Fantasy, which was one of several annoying conflicts among related subjects).

I was interested in the alternate cultures panel because of my still bubbling interest in writing a 'weird history' epic. If 'Lian Hearn' gets away with it because she speaks Japanese and has toured extensively, what would be my excuse? There was also an interesting discussion on the use and abuse of the Australian landscape.

Whenever I'm in Melbourne I duck into Minotaur and grab any local comics that haven't made it up to Sydney; among other things this time round was the next Something Wicked issue, Something Weird. But I didn't need to go that far, since I bought a couple at the con — The Arrival has officially been declared as literature, so I'm reclaiming it as a comic. I made up for my tardiness in this regard by getting two, one for the nephews and one for me.

A couple of weeks ago, Eddie Campbell mentioned he'd done a portrait of Nick Cave for the cover of a magazine. Well, I couldn't resist that, and so it is mine:

( Read more... )

I've also been refreshing my knowledge of S2 programming (the sidebar on my lj style has been updated) and am preparing to fend off all the eager youngsters who want my position on the AHWA committee. Well, I put in an acceptance of nomination form; from there, we shall see.

If I told you about the review I wrote today, for Rocky Wood's Stephen King: The Non-Fiction, would that be meta-meta-meta-non-fiction?

It's been a more or less productive weekend: more than usual, less than actually productive. Our Ravenloft game was scuttled by a combination of a medieval fair and food poisoning -- not experienced by the same person -- so we played Vampire: Prince of the City. Kyla's winning streak is becoming lengthy.

I've been updating the website for the new book (we have hit Copper status on rpgdrivethru, putting us in the top 7.5% of products, which seems good for a coupla days), and various comics, including the funky CAB: Collaborative Auto-Biography. My date for wrestling with myspace draws ever closer. First I might have to wrestle for the right not to be subjected to Nova FM at the office.

ETA: cashews! I have eaten my first nuts in 15 years. So far so good...