Bits and pieces

Bit of a general round up post of some recent stuff I’ve been involved with. As part of the podcast we do a SFF book club and looking back we’ve been going now for two years. We’ve covered a whole bunch of different books, both classic works of fiction including The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, Slaughterhouse 5, Stranger in a Strange Land, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, I Am Legend, The Caves of Steel and we’ve looked at some modern SFF including Empire in Black and Gold, The City and The City, Zoo City, American Gods, Masked, The Winter King, Horns, and The Dresden Files. We’ve been lucky enough to speak to some of the authors of these great books and have interviewed China Mieville, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lou Anders and Lauren Beukes.

Our most recent selection is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card which is under the popular spotlight at the moment because a movie adaptation seems to be moving ahead. Our discussion proved to be really interesting as Scott and I came down on different sides with the novel and the author attracts a fair amount of controversy because of his views. A quick internet search will tell you more about that. Our current book club selection is a debut novelist, Mazarkis Williams, and his first book The Emperor’s Knife is being published by Joe Fletcher books, someone who is very well known in the SFF publishing business. So, if you’ve got some time over the holidays or beyond that in the months ahead and want to listen to some discussion of SFF books, check out The Book Club blog where we post new episodes.

This week we’re also recording the last Comic Book Outsiders episode of 2011 and we will take a longer break over the holidays and be back in January. I’ll end up with about two weeks off work, but I’m going to be busy with family and then I’ve got to get my teeth into some writing projects that have been put to one side in recent weeks because work has kept me very busy, away from home, and made me very tired.

I’m not one for making new year’s resolutions but I am looking forward to next year with a renewed sense of hope. Some creative projects that have been slowly gestating are starting to bear some fruit and the increased momentum is getting me excited about writing in a way that I’ve not been for a while. I think next year is going to be an interesting and creatively rich and rewarding year. So while I’m not keen to wish away the rest of December, I am looking forward to seeing what happens next.

 

DC Comics 52 relaunch – Something is missing

Just some further thoughts on DC comics new 52 relaunch. Now that some of the dust has settled and issue 3 of most titles has come out, people are starting to find out which titles they really love and settle into various camps such as Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Horror (Swamp Thing, Animal Man), Teen, and so on. I’ve recently been watching some of the Young Justice animated series and it made me think about what I think is missing from the 52 relaunch. It’s mentors and teachers. It’s books about young people learning how to be heroes from the start.

Fantasy books are full of farm boys and stable boys growing up to become great warriors and heroes. They feature an epic journey where the fresh faced nobody must overcome numerous impossible obstacles and eventually they succeed and are stronger for it. Over a long period of time they become someone other boys with dreams look up to; an icon and hero in their own right. So far I’ve not seen this from DC which is very surprising given some of their popular successes.

Peering across the street, Marvel has a school for gifted youngsters, now the Jean Grey school, where some of the most dangerous and famous X-men as now the teachers, including Wolverine. They’ve also had the extremely popular X-Men movie franchise. Just so we’re clear, this is not me being negative about DC at all because right now I’m buying more DC books than ever before and very few Marvel books. I just think there is still room for new titles from DC comics that could potentially cover areas not currently being explored.

Think about the Christopher Nolan Batman films and put to one side the actors, directors, special effects and so on. If you focus on what made the films really interesting and enjoyable, then for me it’s the story and the heart of that adventure. It’s the journey of Bruce Wayne from naïve wounded puppy to seriously dangerous and extremely threatening and scary menace of the underworld. I loved seeing him learn different skills from a wide range of different Masters. Be they low criminals and thieves, crime bosses, leaders of ancient cults or dangerous psychopaths like the Joker. I loved seeing him absorb all of those skills and all of that knowledge, learn from his mistakes, sift through the information and shape it into a weapon that he could use for his mission. Something that would bring together all of his new skills together with his fear of bats. He didn’t start out as someone who was born to that way of life, nor was he gifted with special powers, nor did he come from another planet or gain superpowers in some freak accident. This is something he chose. Something inside him broke when his parents died and the only way he knew how to cope (I’m not saying it’s a healthy or recommended way of dealing with loss!) was to become something terrifying and fight an endless war on crime.

If you look at all of the new 52 titles you could argue that Bruce Wayne is training and mentoring Damian, his son. But let’s be honest, Damian was trained practically from the second he was conceived. He is already a devious and extremely dangerous evil genius who was left to fend for himself in some of the most hideous ways imaginable. In some ways Bruce is trying to teach Damian how to be a real human being and to care rather than let him develop into an evil megalomaniac like his grandfather. So Damian is not just a kid off the street like Jason was a long time ago. He’s not even like Dick or Tim, both of who had no formal training at the start in being a crime fighter. They were trained over many year by many masters, including Batman, before each became a hero in their own right.

The new Teen Titans comic is not about the youngsters learning how to be heroes like the animated adventures, and in Batgirl she is already someone who has been trained and is coming back to the cowl after some time away. The closest I can probably find is Bette Kane, who in the pages of Batwoman, is being trained by her cousin. She is not given a proper costume and is being tutored by Kate, but it’s not exactly the same thing. The book is very much focused on Kate not Bette.

Some of the other titles feature young heroes but they are either accidental heroes who have to learn what they are how it all works (Blue Beetle), aliens who have crash landed and are the stranger in a strange land (Supergirl) or experiments (Superboy) being programmed to be a weapon at someone else’s behest. One of my biggest complaints about the TV series Smallville was that Clark whinged all the time. Every single episode he probably made at least one comment about wanting to be normal and he never seemed to enjoy his powers and what they allowed him to do. What I’m talking about is someone who wants to be a hero or crime fighter, who has sought it out and is pushing themselves beyond normal human limits because they have a driving need and urge that is not quenched by a normal life.

I think all of the tools and pieces are already there for a comic like the one I’ve described which is focused on a student and mentor relationship. All it requires is that DC dust off certain toys currently sat in their box and wrap them up in new clothing as they’ve done with a lot of characters in the new 52. Maybe something like this will be coming in the second wave of titles from them. I certainly hope so, because if not, I think DC are missing a trick, especially given how popular such themes are across the street in comics and at the movies.

Coming of Age

Last week SFF publisher Angry Robot announced they are setting up a YA imprint, Strange Chemistry, and Amanda Rutter, has been appointed as the editor. I am totally thrilled and delighted for Amanda because for as long as I’ve known her she has always been extremely enthusiastic and vocal about the joys of YA fiction. They could not have picked a better person for the job. This, combined with reading my first YA book, Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan, made me think back to when I was the right age for YA books and what was available.
 
When I was in primary school the only SFF books available were those to help you read which contained lots of colourful pictures and not many words. After that I jumped to books of Myths and Legends which often had beautiful paintings and sketches of the monsters like Grendal or the Green Knight from the story about Sir Gawain. After that I had to jump to borrowing my brother’s books, which were the Belgariad by David Eddings, The Lord of the Rings, the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis and there’s another series I’ve completely forgotten but will come back to me later. LOTR was a bit beyond me and at that age I quickly grew bored and was bogged down with it, but the Belgariad was probably closer to what we might call YA today. No such segment existed back then, there was just one small and quite repetitive SFF segment in my local bookshop for SFF and it was dominated by the likes of Stephen King (too old and weird for me back then), Clive Barker (far too scary) with the occasional Terry Brooks or Eddings thrown in. Once I had exhausted the Belgariad, and the Mallorian was not yet in print, I went through all of Brooks’ Shannara books.
 
The first time I read the Belgariad series I was probably ten or eleven as I distinctly remember sitting on a bench at lunch times in Middle School reading Pawn of Prophecy while other boys ran around playing football. This could explain why I never got into football and don’t support a football team. Anyway, I picked up most of the content in the Belgariad, probably missed some of the nuances but that was all right, I absorbed enough to know what was going on and who all of the characters were. I was already in love with the genre by that point and without knowing it, this was my first brush with a coming of age story which I would later read over and over again. The story was about a boy named Garion who grew up to discover he had a destiny that could not be avoided and like Luke Skywalker, and a host of other orphans, farm boys, scullions and stable hands, he discovered the kindly old man with the white beard who was always so nice to him was actually a powerful Sorcerer.
 
I’ve gone back and read the Belgariad since and on subsequent readings it has had far less of an impact. I can see what is going to happen next, I know the main character will always do the right thing and that in the end the heroes will always win. It’s a comfortable read and without meaning to sound patronising, it’s a much simpler book than I remember.

So some of that was in the back of my mind when earlier this year I read Glow, my first proper YA book and to my relief it was a totally different animal. Some adult issues were referred to in passing, or they took place off the page, so perhaps that is one of the minor differences between YA and other fiction, but apart from that I didn’t notice anything in particular. It was a SF story and like the SF I enjoy the most, it focused more on the characters and it used the SF elements as background and structure, the technology did not become the whole story. As someone in his thirties I know it was not written for me and therefore there were certain elements I felt were missing, but it didn’t prevent it from being an enjoyable read.

I was recently listening to an episode of the SF Signal podcast where they had a panel discussion on YA. One of the panellists said in their experience there are typically two types of YA. The stories that can be read and enjoyed by anyone of any age, and the teen focused stories which centre around particular issues they might be struggling with, such as eating disorders, image issues and personal confidence, social conformity and so on. They’re never spelled out that overtly, but at their core that’s what the stories are about. I haven’t read much YA so I can’t comment on that so I will defer to her knowledge.

I think an adult could read and enjoy a novel in the latter category, but personally I would probably want the heart of the story to be focused on something else. My angst days are a long time ago. Glow probably straddled the two categories but I can definitely see it appealing more to a YA audience as it is all about searching for answers and searching for yourself. I think it was about the main characters believing they would grow up to be one thing and then events didn’t go as they had anticipated and they had to adapt in order to survive. By the end of the book they were totally different people and they looked back on their younger selves as naïve. It was never patronising, there were no easy answers and unlike the Belgariad the characters didn’t always do the right thing. There were plenty of grey in Glow and at the end of the book it was not all tied up neatly in a little bow. I would definitely read another YA book, but right now there are so many other books I desperately want to read and don’t have enough time, so perhaps I will revisit YA when my to read pile is more manageable.

Changing Media and new technology

For the last four and a half years or so I’ve co-hosted a comics and geek culture podcast called Comic Book Outsiders. We recorded our 127th episode the other night and we spoke to an independent comic book creator, artist and writer, called Terry Moore. He’s written some incredible comics including Strangers in Paradise, Echo and his most recent series is Rachel Rising. You can listen to it here. We talk about his comics and also what he thinks about digital comics and how it will help or hinder him. Recording this episode, talking to Terry about digital comics, but also the end of a favourite podcast of mine, Geek Syndicate, made me think about the rate of change and how fast we adapt and embrace new technology.

When we first started the podcast not that many people were doing comic book podcasts and the number of podcasts in general was small by comparison to the present. At comic book conventions we even had a sign on the table which read ‘Ask us about Podcasting’. Several people came up to the table each day to ask what a podcast was and how it worked. Now most people don’t need to be told what they are and there are thousands of podcasts across pretty much every subject under the sun. MP3 players, smart phones and lots of other devices now allow people to listen to podcasts at any time. The tools to analyse where our listeners come from have grown more complex and they show a remarkable breadth of people from all over the world. In a previous job I was asked to pass on my knowledge of podcasting – editing audio and distributing it – to the business to help them with their social media strategy. I trained and taught other people, something I learned as a hobby, so that they could deploy it in a professional capacity. And all of this has happened in less than five years.

Podcasting is yet another form of entertainment which allows the user/listener to choose what to consume, where and when in their own time. TV has adapted to become similar service with various recording devices, but it didn’t start out life in that fashion. We were all locked in to schedules but not any more.

All of this made me think again about the future and the reality of where we might be in another five, ten, fifty or a hundred years with technology and specifically comics. There was a recent article in the Financial Times of all places about comics and digital comics. Someone was quoted as saying that in a year’s time we will be looking at paper comics in the same way as the music industry views vinyl. I believe this person is wrong for several reasons, a few of which I wanted to explore by looking at what might actually happen and what it would take to get to that place on the horizon.

Paper comics will be around for quite a long time in one shape or another and the collected editions – trade paperbacks, hardback, ultimate editions, absolute editions, omnibuses etc – are not going to disappear. Comparing paper comics to vinyl and music is apples and oranges, it’s just not the same.

Let’s pretend that monthly paper comics vanished and went completely digital, what would it take to get there? Reading comics on an electric reader, tablet or other, is only feasible when the screen is almost as big as the original page. You can read comics on your smart phone, but it’s awful. I’ve tried and I hated every second of it for several reasons. It’s a much more controlled experience for one as the software takes you around the page, guiding you from panel to panel or you have to zoom in and out, and it’s just hideous. There’s no flow, no movement, no time to think about what happens between the panels that you don’t see but is implied. A page isn’t a page anymore. It’s just a collection of cells like stills in a film. Turning it into a motion comic is just a horrible halfway house because it’s neither an animation or a comic book but a weird amalgam of the two that is always disappointing. Also the art was never designed to viewed on such a tiny screen and squashing it down like that doesn’t do the art or artist any justice. Don’t even get me started on single splash or double splash pages.

So ignoring smart phones, the current alternative is to view comics on a tablet. All of those that currently exist which are decent, and by that I mean those with a good sized screen, good resolution so it doesn’t look pixalated, are all fairly expensive. MP3 players are now dirt cheap and they come in a hundred colours, brands, shapes and sizes. I’m old enough to remember how expensive Walkman’s were and personal CD players back in the day, and eventually they too become cheap and cheerful. The best tablet I’ve seen for reading comics is still very expensive. The device is not specfically designed for comics and so it comes with a lot more toys out of the box which are pointless for me and I have access to all of the features in other places. So it’s a lot of something I’ll never use.

If there was a stripped down version (a Kindle or Nook equivalent for comics) with almost no other functionality apart from being able to read comics, and with a price point to match, I would buy one tomorrow and say goodbye to monthly paper comics. However, that isn’t a reality, not yet anyway, as not all comics are available digitally. We are inching towards that place, but even the big move by Marvel and DC to go day and date is just a stepping stone. No one will actually say what percentage digital sales makes up of their monthly figures but I would estimate it’s less than 20%. Also there is no Amazon equivalent for digital comic book distributors and although Comixology is perhaps the most popular, the scale compared to Amazon is very small.

So, until every publisher (indy, small press and mainstream) has day and date for all of their monthly comics, and until the balance between digital sales and paper is more even, or it leans more heavily towards digital, and until there is a device that is very easy to get your hands on that is cheap and specifically bent towards comics, or it has inbuild tech that was added with comics in mind, paper comics are not going anywhere

I estimate paper comics will be around for at least another 20 years and that is probably being conservative. As a point of interest the first Walkman was developed in 1979. The first portable CD player in 1984, but I would argue it took another six years or more before they were readily available and enough me-too versions existed that the price came down across the board. The first portable MP3 player was on sale in 1997 and it was 2001 when Apple release their first iPod. The two largest comic book publishers, Marvel and DC, have just gone day and date with all of their titles, so this is really just the start of the journey and it’s going to take years before all of those requirements are met. Then there’s the fans themselves, the retailers, the conventions and getting sketches and signatures and a whole host of other elements.

I really believe a physical comic will always exist in some form , even if, to go back to the beginning, it exists like vinyl today, which is a collectors item for older music, and certain bands release special limited editions of their new albums on vinyl, such as Radiohead.

Where is Wonder Woman at 70?

Next month marks the 70th anniversary of the first appearance of Wonder Woman. She is one of DC comics Trinity, that is their best of the best, biggest, toughest and, in theory at least, most popular flagship characters. Like all comic book characters with such a long history, Diana has gone through many iterations over the decades and has been in the hands of dozens of writers, artists and editors. As well as comic books there have been animated versions, thousands of tonnes of merchandise, and of course the famous 1970s TV show starring Lynda Carter. There have been several attempts to develop a live action movie, but none have taken off. The most recent was going to be written and directed by Joss Whedon (who is currently directing The Avengers for Marvel) but sadly Whedon and those in charge couldn’t agree on the direction for the project so it was shelved. Earlier this year there was an attempt to develop a new Wonder Woman live action TV series. It was so badly received, and quite frankly utterly awful, that it was cancelled and mercifully never went beyond the pilot. One of the many reasons it was so poor is that those who developed the show didn’t understand the character. You don’t have to be a slave to the details but if you miss the heart of the character it will always die an early death.

Over the years I’ve known several women who wear Wonder Woman clothing because of what it symbolises to them and they only knew about the character from the TV show. They’ve never picked up a Wonder Woman comic book and have no real interest in doing so. The Wonder Woman symbol is not quite as well known as Superman’s shield, which has become synonymous with hope and the tenets he upholds, but her symbol is a cultural icon. If you ask people what Batman stands for they will be able to tell you something about his endless war on crime and his thirst for vengeance. If you ask them about Superman they might cite the phrase ‘truth, justice and the American Way’. Ask the same person what Wonder Woman stands for and you’re likely to get one of several responses. Either it will be a blank stare, or you might get something about girl power, or more accurately something about a message of equal rights and equal opportunities for women.

In the hands of a poor writer Wonder Woman becomes a blunt instrument with which they bludgeon readers over the head about issues in society. Topical issues should and can be part of a comic book story, where appropriate, but it should never be the entire story. It’s a comic book, not a political lecture on human rights violations. Equally those who make her into a cold hearted and brutal warrior, to make a point about her being able to stand toe-to-toe with male superheroes, to show that she is just as capable as them at beating up the bad guys, is doing the character an enormous disservice. She is an elite warrior but also a symbol for peace and love. She is a powerhouse who possesses great physical strength, but she’s also capable of great compassion and kindness. She is a leader and a battlefield general that was trained to fight, almost from birth, but she is also a warm and caring woman. Ignore any part of that and you end up with something hideous, hollow and probably callous.

Wonder Woman might be the most popular female superhero in comics, but despite that, there is an imbalance. DC comics recently relaunched all of their ongoing monthly mainstream comics, which are predominantly superhero titles. There is an ongoing monthly Wonder Woman title, but just the one. Taken from DC comics own ‘The New 52’ web page, there are 4 Superman related titles and 11 Batman related titles, but only one Wonder Woman ongoing monthly. To maintain full disclosure and to be fair to DC comics, I should point out that Wonder Woman is a member of the Justice League and will therefore feature in that comic, but so are Batman and Superman. Justice League is a team comic book and even though she will have some time in the spotlight, it will be shared with the other well known characters. Given all of that, I feel that there is a serious imbalance by only having one Wonder Woman title.

If you look on DC comics website they have a list of 30 essential graphic novels. These are best-selling titles that are great places for newcomers to get a flavour for DC comics and also appropriate for older fans looking to expand their knowledge. Five of them are solo Batman titles, two are solo Superman, and four or five others feature both characters in a team up or Justice League scenario. Four of the team books feature Wonder Woman, but there again there are no solo books. I realise this is a slightly different point, as the list only contains best-sellers, but it does indicate an imbalance in public opinion as well. I believe some writers have captured Wonder Woman’s essence incredibly well and there are some great stories, but they just aren’t selling as well as other titles.

The new ongoing Wonder Woman title is being written by Brian Azzarello and he has described it as a horror comic. That is to say, this is not a slasher comic with vampires or people being chased by a maniac in a hockey mask. To clarify, Azzarello has said in interviews it will be horrific only in terms of what the Greek gods get up to as they interact with the modern world. The gods are capricious beings that play with people, plot and scheme to their own ends, and to them people are objects to play with and do with as they wish. Peering across the street, I would guess that it is similar to what the Norse gods get up to in the Marvel universe where Loki is a dangerous and sneaky adversary who causes all sorts of problems. He was the main threat in the first Thor movie and is also the lead villain in The Avengers movie due out in 2012. This indicates those storylines can be interesting and broad enough that they appeal to a mainstream audience, so there is a thirst for this type of story if it is done well.

In her own comic book Wonder Woman will be caught up in the middle of the games the Gods are playing and will have to deal with the fall out from their plots. She will be facing powerful beings that have the power and capacity to cause her serious harm, which will put her in genuine peril.

So the Azzarello written comic book covers the mythological side of Wonder Woman, effectively dovetailing nicely into her origin and it involves her dealings with the gods. But for one of DC comics Trinity characters I think there should at least be a second ongoing monthly comic book which focuses on other more human and earthly aspects. For example a second title could look at how she is perceived by the general public. This aspect is being touched on in several DC titles including Action Comics (Superman as an alien outsider and an unknown quantity), Aquaman (a bit of a joke and misunderstood superhero), JLA (Batman as a myth) and so on. How does the average person on the street see Wonder Woman? What does she mean to them? There is also the fact that she is a powerful superhero in the twenty first century, a role model and an icon, in an era where fame and celebrities dominate the media. Also she doesn’t wear a mask, which makes it a bit more difficult to have a secret identity. I guess I’m more interested in the character and her role in today’s society than exploring her origin, which is being covered elsewhere.

I’ve often looked at comic book characters and thought about which ones I would like to write and which I think could write. There are some that I would actively avoid, not because I dislike them, it’s more about not understanding or being able to relate to them. I like reading about Superman but at the moment I don’t have a single Superman story floating around in my head. Some characters are easy choices because I understand them, or I’m very similar to them on some level. But every now and then a character sneaks up on me and I find myself drawn to them. I never thought Wonder Woman would fit into that category but there she is. And now the ideas are rattling around my head.

I sincerely hope DC comics does all it can to promote and improve Wonder Woman’s profile because I think she is a very interesting and special character that deserves more attention.

Review | Orcs: Forged for War

Orcs: Forged for WarCreating comics is a very tricky business. It has as many pitfalls and traps for the unwary who venture into the industry as I’m sure the publishing business does. Getting the right artist to match the writer and the genre is vital. Not only because it has to be a truly collaborate process, but if one of the elements is not working, the whole will suffer as everything is on the page. With a novel the author spins their magic to help you conjure up the visuals in your mind, but with comics there is less tell and a lot more show. That’s a roundabout way of me saying that I thought this was fun, but there were a few problems and it didn’t really gel as a whole.

I’ve not read any of the Orcs novels by Stan Nicholls but I am aware of them and I like the idea of writing from the perspective of other side. Lord of the Rings from the viewpoint of the Orcs, as it were, where they have their own culture and expanding society, only to have a rag-tag group of rebels, haunted trees that walk like Triffids, and creepy albino immortals start killing them. Or something like that. I’ve seen Joe Flood’s art before and it’s fair to say it has a cartoon style, and indeed, he describes himself in his own biography as a cartoonist. So that is not a negative comment in the slightest and he graduated from the prestigious New York school for Visual Arts in cartooning. His artwork is very clear and tight, the bright colours really help bring it to life and he does an incredibly good job with making all of the Orcs in the squad look different. However, I don’t think his art is a good fit for the story. The genre itself is another issue which I will come back to.

As I mentioned I’ve not read any other work by Nicholls but I would assume the themes in his Orcs books are fairly adult, given the content of this story. That’s the first problem. If this was an all ages comic, one aimed at a young audience, but it was also written in such a way that adults would also enjoy it (like a Pixar film where there are little nods and jokes for grown ups) then the art style would be perfect. However this story has lots of brutal violence and a sadistic villain who tortures people on the page, and it quickly became very clear to me that this was intended as a story for adults. As I mentioned the artwork is quite bright and colourful, which made it even more jarring with the wholesale murder, impaling, dismembering and so on. I would not feel comfortable giving this comic to anyone less than a teenager because of what is shown (hearts being ripped out for example), not implied, referred to or mentioned in passing.

Using more cartoony and less detailed or photo-realistic artwork in comics for an adult audience is not a new approach, but personally it pulls me out of the story and I find it extremely jarring. I have more trouble believing and buying into what I am seeing and therefore I’m unable to connect to the characters or their experiences. Powers by Brian Bendis and Mike Oeming is another example, a very adult (violence, swearing, sex) comic about cops tackling superheroes in a world where people with powers are common. There again, I really like the stories but I’ve always struggled with the visual side of Powers because of its quite blocky simplistic art style, which is why I think I might enjoy the TV series (if it goes beyond a pilot) a lot more than the comic.

Fantasy comics in general are not that popular in comparison to other genres, such as superheroes, crime, horror and so on. There are some characters that are worldwide household names, like Conan or Red Sonja, who have been able to sustain an ongoing fantasy comic for decades. But in comparison to other genres fantasy comics are few and far between. DC comics recently dipped their mainstream toe back into the fantasy comic book waters with Demon Knights, written by Paul Cornell, which mixes DC fantasy characters with figures from medieval folklore. That’s one comic out of 52 new ongoing monthly titles. They also have one western comic too, which shows you how popular that genre is as well.

The story itself in Orcs: Forged for War was interesting and I enjoyed seeing events from the viewpoint of the Orcs where their world is being invaded and polluted by humans. The magic is being leached out of the world because of the destruction and it has become a war for survival. I really liked the fact that the Orc squad were infantry. They were essentially front line squaddies who are not told why, the orders come from the top and they are only told what they need to know. They are expected to follow orders but when those orders don’t make sense, seem unnecessarily risky and dangerous, it makes for some interesting storytelling.

For fans of Nicholl’s Orcs books this is a great addition and for those unfamiliar with his work you can read it without feeling as if you are missing out. If the artwork aspect doesn’t bother you then I think you will enjoy this a great deal, but for me the different creative aspects didn’t gel together well on this comic book.

Gardeners and architects

Most writers would probably agree that they fall into one of two camps, although I am sure there are exceptions that fit neither. Gardeners are writers who have a seed of an idea and they let it grow organically and essentially write by the seat of their pants.

Dean Koontz is a gardener who has described his writing process as the following. He writes down the core of an idea on an index card when it comes to him and then he puts it away in a drawer with a stack of other ideas. When he’s finished writing one book he opens the drawer and goes through the index cards, picks one out that catches his eye, and then just starts writing with no planning. An unusual quirk is that he writes a chapter over and over again, maybe 20-30 times, until he is completely happy with it, word for word, before moving on, so I suspect his first draft would end up being much further along the editorial process compared to a lot of other authors. Stephen King operates in a similar unplanned way, although he describes it as uncovering a fossil, and dusting off the dirt to reveal the true nature of the bones underneath. Once done he then goes back and revises it, but he doesn’t plan it out ahead of him.

Architects are the opposite. They have most of it laid out ahead of time and they don’t fly by the seat of their pants. They might have milestones, or bullet points, or thinking in terms of architecture, they have the steel frame of the building, and the writing process fills in the interior, the stairs, walls, ceiling, doors etc.

I’ve always been an architect. I once tried the gardening approach and it was a bit of a disaster. The seed of the story was not that bad, but the finished project was fairly boring and disjointed because it wandered off into weird areas that sometimes went nowhere and sometimes connected to the main spine of the story. It was a bit of a mess.

Since then I’ve stuck to my original approach. Build a wireframe, have the start, middle and end laid out, plan beats along the way, create a bit of a bible in terms of characters and where necessary, world building. Parts of the idea develop over a long period of time, others come to me while making notes and transferring scribbles on scraps of paper into a structured document on Word. Other parts and details come out in the actual writing, but I never go in with nothing. Once the structure is ready, then and only then, do I start the process of writing a first draft in full. I also tend to keep going right through to the end before coming back to revise in detail. Although I often go back one chapter, perhaps two, to tweak it before going forward again to make sure it feels like an organic continuation. I’m sure the first chapter still ends up being a fair distance away from the last chapter, but that will come out in the next revision. The architect approach seems to work for me and I’ve been much happier with the final product, something that is more cohesive and tighter.

Another good thing about the architect approach is that I find there is still a lot of room for creativity and surprises. It’s not so rigid that I am simply joining the dots, because that would be tedious to write and therefore tedious to read. I am sometimes surprised how I get from A to B and B to C, and that often requires a rejig of some other parts of the story, so it is developing organically, but it’s always within the bounds of a structure.

So gardening is really not for me. Then something unusual happened a few weeks ago. I recently started co-writing a comic book project with Pete Rogers. I’ve known Pete for a few years and although we share hobbies and interests, and a passion for comics, our backgrounds are quite different so we come to stories from a very different perspective. We both had several ideas, which were seeds, and we pitched them to each other before deciding on one project to co-write. We then had a couple of brainstorming sessions, where we planned some of the main beats, and it was a lot more enjoyable than either of us had anticipated. We were able to head off problems before committing and writing ourselves into a dead-end. We spotted flaws and tweaked them on the fly, dodged clichés, bounced small ideas off each other that were then fleshed out and made bigger and better by the interaction.

This idea would not have been as strong as it is now if I had been working on my own, and although I’ve never received much benefit from a writing group, I can see how wonderful it must be to work in a writing pool on a TV show. The interaction with Pete has switched on other creative parts of my brain that were dormant and it’s spurred me on with my other writing projects and reenergised me. Working on this project has certainly given me a new perspective on gardeners and their approach to the creative process.

At heart I am still an architect but the idea of co-writing projects in the future is not nearly as daunting and is a lot more appealing than it used to be.

Manhattan in Reverse

Manhattan in Reverse

A collection of short stories from the master of space opera. Peter F Hamilton takes us on a journey from a murder mystery in an alternative Oxford in the 1800s to a brand new story featuring Paula Mayo, Deputy Director of the Intersolar Commonwealth’s Serious Crimes Directorate. Dealing with intricate themes and topical subject this top ten bestselling author is at the top of his game.

Before talking about the book itself I should mention I’ve only read two Peter F. Hamilton books (The Dreaming Void and Mindstar Rising). Both of those were in the last year, so my review is slightly coloured by my lack of in depth knowledge about the different series and various universes he has created. I have a vague awareness of some, and although I  know certain characters like Paula Myo, I’m sure the stories in which she features mean a lot more to long time fans. There are also a couple of significant moments in a few of the stories, but there again I missed out on their impact as I don’t know the whole story.

I think an existing fan will get a lot more from this book of short stories as most of them tie into his Commonwealth novels, but a couple of them are completely standalone. On the other hand, the book is fairly slender in comparison to all of Hamilton’s books, so it will give new fans a taste of the type of story, characterisation, technology and ideals that are typically explored in his novels.

The first, Watching Trees Grow, is a very curious story that is essentially a murder mystery across the centuries. It follows a dogged investigator who refuses to give up and as advances in technology provide him with extended longevity and more tools to  analysing the evidence and question the suspects, he still struggles to find an answer. The irony of how the crime is solved was not lost on me and I enjoyed the universe Hamilton had created in this story where the Roman empire still exists and major families rule.

My favourite story was probably ‘If at First…’, which is a time travel story about an idea I’m sure many people have often pondered. If you were able to, would you go back to an early stage in your life and fix some of the mistakes of the past? Or perhaps relive your life again up to the present? A mad man is taken into police custody claiming that a famous tech guru, a Steve Jobs type, has done just that and his success is because he invented a time machine and has been reliving his own life with knowledge of the future. It sounds ridiculous and like the ravings of a lunatic. The suspect is a known stalker of the tech guru and coupled with that he was caught breaking into one of the tech company’s offices, it’s an open and shut case. It also sounds like a case for mental health services and yet there is something there that doesn’t ring true and the detective in charge decides to dig a little deeper.

My second favourite story was the last one, Manhattan in Reverse, which to me actually felt like a bit of a western for all its SF framing. It deals with a wild frontier, a new planet full of unknowns and an attack by savage locals on the new arrivals for no apparent reason. This puzzle that is causing all sorts of problems for colonists and no one is quite sure what to do next. The simple solution would be to wipe out the problem with a big laser and not worry about it, but Paula Myo is not someone who thinks like that. She is known throughout the galaxy and her reputation has taken a bit of a knock. This simple job is pitched at helping her curry some favour with the right people so she is not shuffled off to a dark corner and forgotten about for the rest of time. The story still featured the now familiar technology I read about in the Dreaming Void, but here it was just a tool to help Paula with a very particular job. I wasn’t bogged down by some of the detail like I am in the novels, so for me it was a very light and refreshing read by comparison.

As with any anthology or collection of short stories, some are better than others and some more memorable and engaging. One of the stories was incredibly short and it was specifically written to be less than a 1000 words. It showed me what could be done with very little space and it was a feat when this whole book was a quarter of a normal Hamilton novel!

Overall I think this book is a great primer and a good jumping on point which gives you a good flavour about Hamilton’s style and approach to stories, characters and science fiction.

DC Comics 52 Relaunch

For those who missed it, DC comics relaunched 52 new ongoing monthly comic book series. This has been called a reboot by some, a relaunch by others, but the short version of a complex story is, this is intended to be a new jumping on point for new readers. So that could mean people who’ve never read a comic before but saw one of the comic book films or watched some of the animated stuff. Or it could be someone who has always wanted to get into comics but was intimidated by starting at issue 334 or felt uncomfortable trying to navigate through a comic shop to find some help. I think DC comics had to do this for a number of reasons, the most important being that mainstream superhero comic book sales were in decline. They were losing their audience for a variety of reasons and if they wanted to stay in publishing they needed a major shake up. I’m being very specific by saying ‘mainstream superhero comic books’, because comics themselves have never been broader in terms of genre. Some non-superhero comics are doing very well and some non-mainstream superhero comic books have been growing their sales figures over the last few years. So, was DC comics relaunch a success?

Overall I would say it was a success. There were a few missteps, such as poor treatment of some, not all, female characters, stories that didn’t work, and a few missed opportunities, but on balance the response has been very positive. I don’t want to go over the bad again, as it’s been discussed at great length by people online, but I will point out that it’s interesting to note some titles have already announced new writers. This is at a point where issue 2 of some titles have only just come out. I’m sure all of the creators went into a title with the best interests, and remember DC signed off on the initial storyline, but some of them have just really worked for various reasons. Static Shock, one of the teen focused books read like a science lesson about electricity. It was dull, despite the explosions, and the dialogue was stilted. Marc Bernadin is the new writer who will be taking over from issue 5. I’m a fan of his work so I might revisit the title now that he is coming on board. The first issue of Green Arrow was so two dimensional, full of exposition and by the numbers I wasn’t gripped by any part of it, and this is coming from a fan of the character and the writer! A new writer was announced after only one issue had been published. There’s something unique about Green Arrow and his attitude, because no matter how big or powerful they are, he will never, ever back down. I hope the new writer highlights this aspect of the character when they take over.

Ok, that all sounds too negative. Focusing on the positive, I went in with a shortlist of titles that I was really looking forward to and I’m pleased to say they have all proven to be excellent. There were also a few positive surprises along the way, titles I didn’t really have any interest in, but when I read them I found I was really into the character. Titles like Deathstroke, Batwing, Men of War and Justice League International.

In my opinion, and because they suit my particular tastes, which I appreciate not everyone shares, the following were the best and most interesting titles as part of the relaunch.

Batwoman
Red Lanterns
Aquaman
Animal Man
Resurrection Man
Batman
The next interesting hurdle DC need to effectively tackle is their trade paperback policy, that is their collected editions. Normally a trade is about six issues and like novels in the publishing world it first comes out in a hardback form and then a couple of months later a paperback. Sometimes titles jump straight to paperback, sometimes it takes much longer between hardback and paperback. It’s been very odd and inconsistent in the past, and as much as people might like or want to, it’s not financially viable to get all of the comics every month from a local shop. Trades are cheaper and for me they make a comic series infinitely easier to re-read and transport. Digital comics are playing their part too, for those without a local comic shop or those who prefer to read on their digital reader of choice. The move to release all 52 titles in paper and digital on the same day is a bold move, but there again it needed to happen as other publishers had been doing it piecemeal. DC have led the charge and while digital comics make up a small percentage of sales, it has the potential to reach a whole new audience. People who would never dream of going into a comic shop but want to read comics.

Once the initial rush and the PR news cycle is over and the mainstream media lose interest, and I’m sincere in this, I really hope that the monthly sales numbers of DC comics are significantly higher than before the relaunch. More readers mean more variety and creativity, new lifeblood for the comic book audience and potentially new talent and new voices in the future. I don’t think the DC relaunch saved comics, they were always going to exist in one form or another, but I believe this bold move has certainly put a big old spotlight on the industry at a times when it needed a jab in the arm to get people back into the comic shops.

A new beginning

Hello, and welcome to my blog. This is going to be a real mixed bag with all sorts of different posts. I have bits and pieces all over the internet and some of those will continue but this blog will serve as a collection point for all of those plus other stuff.

Previously I’ve written book and comic reviews on my own book review blog, then I joined up with Mark over at Walker of Worlds before it went on hiatus, and I briefly stopped over at Floor to Ceiling Books. Since I’m still an avid reader and always have one book on the go, I will be continuing to post book reviews, but they will be on here from now on.

Since July 2007 I’ve co-hosted a comics podcast. We focus on comics beyond the mainstream superhero titles, as well as genre TV, movies and geek culture in general. Comics are a big part of my life, I’ve been reading them for over 20 years and I love the medium. Like many comic book fans I started in a familiar place with superhero titles but since then have gone on to read across a broad range of genres. Since I’ve always got at least one comic on the go, I’ll be posting comic reviews here as well. I’ll also post links and updates about the podcast which we’re still doing.

Attached to the podcast is a SFF book club for listeners, where we alternate between an older or classic work of SFF and then switch it up to a new modern book, something from the last ten years. So I’ll mention that on here from time to time as well, so please join in with that if you like the current selection or send in suggestions for the future.

On top of that I’ll be posting more general stuff, posts about my current writing projects (at the moment I’m nearing the end of the first draft of an original fantasy novel and I’m working on 2 comic book projects), and anything else that is on my mind.