Category: Comics

Shameless Friend-Promotion

One of the excellent friends I made in Toronto is Kari Maaren.  A bunch of cool stuff has happened to her recently that I feel compelled to share.  (This is internal compulsion, not from her—she might be appalled/embarrassed that I’m doing this, if she notices.)

First of all, some of my few readers may be familiar with her because she has been writing the West of Bathurst webcomic (linked from my sidebar) for the last seven years or so.  In the midst of recent server troubles which eventually saw me helping her migrate the site hosting, she/the comic got nominated for an award!  Specificially, the Aurora Award, for “Best Graphic Novel – English”.

If you happened to click through on that link to the Aurora nominees, you might have noticed that her name appears a second time!  (Cue dramatic music.)

Yes, she was also nominated for “Best Fan Filk”.  (That’s a kind of music.)  Kari writes and performs geeky songs, and has finally actually recorded some and released some of her stuff on not one but TWO albums!  (Okay, so the first album, Pirate Elves in Space, is a collaboration, but it has 3 of her songs on it.)  Her album Beowulf Pulled My Arm Off even got a mention on SF Signal, a popular science fiction/fantasy/horror blog.

You can listen to her stuff at those Bandcamp links, or find her YouTube channel.  If you enjoy nerdy folk music—or think you might—you should definitely check out Kari’s work.

Anyway, that’s about it for my shameless friend-promotion.  I will endeavour to check in again soon with another movie update—we’ve started the summer season.

Neat Idea: Gotham High

While perusing SF Signal as I am wont to do, I found a link to this post by Jeff Thomas and Celeste Green, showcasing some development work they did for DC called Gotham High—essentially Batman in high school.  The project didn’t go anywhere, but they have a number of drawings that are vastly amusing.

(I know this would violate Batman canon—inasmuch as one exists—but I would assume that it was intended to be a non-canonical offshoot.)

Check it out, just to look at the pictures!

Salt / The Other Guys / Scott Pilgrim

Aha!  I have finally settled upon a naming scheme for these movie posts.  I shall use the titles of the movies themselves!  Pure genius (so long as I don’t let too many build up)!

Here, then, are my thoughts on the handful of movies I saw since my last movie post.  Sadly, the summer movie season is drawing to an end, so there’s only one more on my list to see (The Expendables).

Salt

Much like when I saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the girlfriend and I took in Salt because we wanted to see a movie and had seen everything else of higher interest.  This Angelina Jolie vehicle tried to bill itself as a thriller where nobody knew what was really going on.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite the case.

It was entertaining enough, with a number of nice action sequences, but it was largely predictable.  The sort of movie where there’s a binary choice to the truth—the “Is the protagonist actually the villain?” genre—has been done to death.  In older movies, the answer was always, “No!”  Then, to shake it up a bit, a lot of movies had the answer being, “Yes.”  And that really exhausts the possibilities.

So now modern movies try to make you think the answer is no when really it’s yes, or vice versa,  But it always works out to one or the other, so whatever you guess, you have a 50/50 chance of being right.  And if the filmmakers are clumsy about telegraphing their intent, the odds go way up in your favour.  Coupled with casting some actors who always play the bad guys, and there’s not a whole lot of mystery left.

Now, as a plain action movie it was fine, but if you’re relying on the mystery for your enjoyment, Salt may fall short.  Otherwise it was a perfectly adequate movie.

The Other Guys

The girlfriend and I took this one in to stay out of a rainstorm.  It was an extremely pleasant surprise.  Normally I don’t really like Will Ferrell movies, but his buddy cop feature that pairs him with Mark Whalberg worked really well, and is way funnier and different than the trailers would lead you to expect.

The main plot is a somewhat conventional buddy cop storyline that provides a fair amount situational comedy.  What I liked best, though, was the layer of absolutely bizarre and random humour laid over top of it.  There were jokes in this movie that were completely out of left field, that I could never have predicted.  I’m absolutely delighted when that happens.  Consequently, this movie turned out to be a lot of fun.  I’m comfortable giving it a recommendation.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

For me personally, this movie had a lot in its favour: based on a Canadian comic that I enjoy, directed by Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame, and a pretty solid cast.  I’m thrilled to say it lived up to my expectations.  Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was one of my favourite movies of the summer.

That said, the demographic is really the under-35 crowd, as it is steeped in the world of video games, anime, and indie music.  I suspect that just watching the Universal logo at the beginning is enough for you to tell whether you’ll enjoy the movie or not.  The creator of the comic—Bryan Lee O’Malley—is the same age as me, and thus grew up with all the same cultural touchstones, and that shines through in the comic and the movie.

The movie basically embodied fun, with lighthearted and entertaining fight scenes, an over-the-top cast of odd-but-largely likable characters.  Possibly the weakest character is the eponymous Scott Pilgrim (ably played by Michael Cera), but the whole point of the movie is his growth from useless slacker into a decent guy.  Getting from A to B is where the fun lies.  Highly highly highly recommended.

Fan Expo Canada 2010

Thanks to the generosity of my good friend Jenn, last weekend I attended Fan Expo.  She gave me the passes as an early Christmas/Birthday/Next Christmas present, and was in no way motivated by a desire to have company for her Fan Expo adventure or avoid thinking up other presents for me.

We met for lunch before heading over on Friday, August 27th at around 3 pm.  We thought this would be an easy task, as doors had opened for Deluxe attendees like ourselves an hour earlier, but alas, the line stretched around the entire north and east sides of the building when we arrived, and before long it was wrapping around the south side of the building as well.

Two hours later we finally got in and presented our tickets, at which time we were rewarded with wristbands, and that was it.  No swag bag or anything.  I think I’ve been spoiled by my experiences with Ad Astra and Worldcon.  I put the wristband on, not realizing that it was the sort designed not to come of without being cut, and so I was less than impressed at having to wear the damn thing when I went to the bathroom, showered, and ran errands outside of the convention centre.  Jenn had been clever enough to leave hers loose so she could slip it off.

We started on the exhibition floor, which was insanely crowded.  This was wear tons of booths were set up selling all the things I ever wanted.  GI Joe toys, classic Transformers, endless shelves of DVDs, and comics, and Star Wars everything.  And I had no money to spare.  Alack!  Alas!  But probably for the best.

We wandered over to the celebrity signing area, and were sort of appalled at the cost of autographs.  I mean, I appreciate the need for these people to make attendance worthwhile, and since the lines were quite large I guess they didn’t need to worry about demand, but still… I would have liked an Adam West autograph, or James Marsters, or Tahmoh Penikett, or Michael Dorn, but I could barely afford one, much less all of them.

I did spring for a Guild photo signed by Felicia Day and Amy Okuda, since I enjoy their work and—like many people of the male nerd persuasion—I have a somewhat mild desire to groom Felicia, albeit in a totally non-creepy way.  Really.  And Jenn and I split a photo opportunity with Summer Glau, scheduled for Saturday at 6 pm.  After that we went and got some of Jenn’s books signed by Kelley Armstrong.

At this point, we’d been on our feet for quite a while, so we wandered the floor some more before leaving a bit early.  We were rather frustrated by the poor organization for getting us in, and for controlling the flow of people.

Saturday, we arrived a bit after 11 to find a line wrapped around the building once again.  Thankfully, that line was not ours, but for people looking to buy a single day pass.  We were able to walk past them and in to the reentry doors with no problem.  There was nothing scheduled that early that interested us, so we went straight to line up for the Tron Legacy presentation to ensure we got seats.  This was, admittedly, more my interest than Jenn’s, on account of Bruce Boxleitner—Tron himself, though I better know him as Captain Sheridan from Babylon 5—being a part of the presentation.

They started letting us in early, after security confiscated all our phones and cameras, and we got some decent seats.  The presentation itself was kind of exciting.  It was hosted by Ajay Fry and Teddy Wilson from the Space channel, and first there was one of the tie-in game developers to show off the game.  Then, they brought out Tron Bruce and talked a bit before showing us the trailer and 7 minutes of footage from the movie itself—in 3D!  I don’t actually care for 3D that much, but I appreciated the effort to make the presentation seem special.  There was a Q&A thereafter, and then we were free!

To line up to get our stuff back, which Jenn did while I went to the can.  So, line up to get in, line up to get out, all sort of poorly organized.  By the time we were sorted out, it was already 1:20, so we decided to take in Tahmoh Penikett’s spotlight panel though it had already started.  Apparently it had started late though, because it didn’t seem like we had missed much.  He gave a pretty interesting talk about his work on Battlestar and Dollhouse, and seemed like a nice guy.

After that, I left Jenn to watch Felicia Day while I headed back up to the exhibition floor to try and get a free autograph from Boxleitner, as Babylon 5 is one of my favourite things ever.  I had to line up to take the escalator, because they were controlling how many people were allowed on the exhibition floor.  Rumors were circulating that even people with the 3-day pass weren’t being let in to the building because it was so crowded.

After visiting the Pure Pwnage booth to say hi to the guys (who have a Gemini nomination, by the way), I got to the Tron booth a bit after 2 pm.  He was scheduled to be there at 2:30, and I thought I was in luck—there was hardly anyone there!  Then I asked, as was told the line was around the back of the booth.  And across the aisle.  And around the back of the Marvel comics booth, and along one side.

On the upside, from my spot in the line, I had a good view of the Hasbro booth, which had some pretty sweet Star Wars displays, and I could watch the Marvel preview videos.  Eventually, Jenn showed up and joined me, flitting in and out to keep me and herself entertained.  As we neared the front of the line, she decided she was in the line, too, and so we both got free Tron Legacy posters signed by Bruce Boxleitner.  Sadly, he didn’t have time to personalize them, but I’m not complaining about free.

We figured the James Marsters session would be full, so we sought out food instead.  (We later found out we could have gotten in—oh well.)  Food turned out to be another lengthy lineup.  And then we went to line up for the Summer Glau discussion session.  She seemed quite shy, but had a few good stories to tell from being on set for her various science fictional shows and movies.

Guess what?  After that we went to line up AGAIN for our photo op.  The line went all the way down one hallway and across another, and continued to grow behind us.  But our line was dwarfed by the Stan Lee line, which I don’t think was pre-paid like ours.  And once the line started moving, they were able to process us quite quickly.  Our photo op was at 6 pm, and we were done by 6:30.  I look forward to seeing the resulting photo.

And that was the end of that.

Sunday morning we met at 11 (after I had a Cinnabon for breakfast).  This time there was a significant line of people with armbands waiting to get in, so Jenn and I took a spot in the shade and waited for the end of the line to reach us.  (It is possible that we may have filled in a large gap instead, but I fell no guilt about that.

We decided to stay away from the exhibition floor, and went on the spur of the moment to a Space panel with Ajay Fry, Teddy Wilson, and Natasha Eloi, along with two surprise guests: David Blue from Stargate Universe and Ryan Robbins from Sanctuary.  They were quite funny playing off each other, had incredibly hard questions for their giveaways, and ended the event with David Blue signing Ryan Robbins’ ass.  It was an unexpectedly fun time.

From there, we went to see William Shatner speak, and not in just as he was starting.  He was in the largest panel room, so we were able to get seats, albeit far from the front.  Shatner was… funny.  Really funny.  He had tons of funny and interesting stories to tell, poked fun at his cohosts and the audience, and worked the crowd well.  This was also an unexpected delight.  However, I was not crazy enough to try for an autograph after the fact.

From there we switched rooms to see Sendil Ramamurthy of Heroes fame/infamy.  He played Mohinder on that show, one of my favouite characters of the first season, who the writers made progressively more ridiculous as the series wore on.  He had a lot of interesting observations about his time on the show, and working as an Indian actor in general.

After his show, we were pushed out of the room to line up to come back in for the Michael Dorn panel.  I went to this mostly out of curiosity, to see just how geeky a Star Trek panel could be.  It was pretty geeky, but Dorn worked the crowd well, was happy to play to his Star Trek fans and discuss Worf in detail, and had funny stories to tell from the set and the things he’s managed to do as a result of his fame—specifically, riding in a lot of military aircraft.

By this point is was 4 pm, and our day was winding down.  Jenn left at this point to do some other shopping, and I wandered the exhibition floor one last time before heading home.

Overall, it was a fun experience wrapped in boredom and frustration.  It had an extremely commercial vibe about it, unlike Ad Astra or Worldcon or other book-oriented events, and all our 3-day pass guaranteed was getting to the exhibition floor—everything else we had to pay extra for or line up for.  As a result, there were a number of panels that we missed because we were lining up for something we wanted more.  I’m not sure I’d go back again, unless one of the following comes to pass: a) they have a guest that was a must-see for me, b) they seriously improve their crowd control and access issues so I don’t spend half my time in lines, or c) I have a ton of money to blow on the exhibitors.  If I can optimize the fun stuff though, then maybe….

Worldcon: Day 5 Recap

NOTE: I tried to post this yesterday, but my web host seemed to go down.  Hence, this is a day late.

The morning started off with sleeping in a bit—there were no 9:00 AM panels that grabbed our interest more than sleep did, and so it was at 10:00 AM that we hit up the “Movements in Fantasy” panel, which talked about the rise of literary movements within the genre.  Among the key points discussed were that such movements are usually only identified after the fact, often arise from a group of like-minded authors reading each other’s work and responding to it (usually pre-publication), and need a defining work to kick them off and an ideologue to promote it.  Interesting and entertaining stuff.

At 11:00 AM, my girlfriend went to the “On Editing” panel featuring David Hartwell, while I went in search of autographs from Charlie Stross, Julie Czerneda, and John Scalzi.  I was happily successful, and they were all very warm and friendly, though due to the lines for each, it meant I could only get to “On Editing” for about the last 5 or 10 minutes.  What I saw of that panel was good—Hartwell is a very entertaining and engaging speaker.

After lunch, we took in the panel on “Hard SF: Is It What You Do, or How You Do It?”, which explored whether the definition of the genre is fixed in the rigorous application of science, or in the appearance of the rigorous application of science.  They did admit that hard SF could still incorporate “magic” technology, but otherwise no one held forth a conclusive answer, which, I suppose, it not terribly surprising.  Interesting, but after an hour the audience ran out of questions and a lot of ground had been covered, so it ended early.

We did a brief run through the Dealers’ Room again, though thankfully did not spend any further money, and then we went to a reading by Robert J. Sawyer.  He’s a generally entertaining reader and pretty genial guy, and he entertained us with a reading of his story “Mikeys” and a prose poem (not in that order), and then I got him to sign my copy of the Distant Early Warnings anthology I’d been collecting signatures on all weekend.

Next, at the request of the girlfriend, we went to a reading by George R. R. Martin from his forthcoming and eagerly-anticipated book A Dance With Dragons.  Fans of the series (which has been optioned by HBO, and a pilot episode is currently in production) seemed to enjoy it, and I thought it was okay—a little too descriptive and verbose for the kind of reading I’m into these days, but I could see why he has a huge fanbase.  I will no doubt pick up this series when I’m back into reading big books.

And then it was the closing ceremonies, which were brief and too the point, handing off things to the Melbourne Worldcon organizers for next year.  It was surprisingly well-attended, and a sort or sad send-off back to the real world.

Almost.

After successfully acquiring dinner at Le Steak Frites, we hung out back at the hotel for a while, before heading to the Dead Dog party at the Consuite at the Delta.  It was surprisingly packed, and we ended up in some long and varied conversations with some very nice people before heading back to our hotel after 11:30, because I seem to have come down with the plague.

Or a slight sore throat.

I’m not sure which.

Anyway, that was the Worldcon.  Once I’m back in Toronto, I may do a wrap-up post of my thoughts about it, post some pictures, and possibly update these posts with panelist names and such.  Yesterday, however, was about seeing a bit of Montreal.

Worldcon: Day 4 (Part 2)—The Hugo Awards

Sunday evening was the main event—the Hugo Awards presentation.  Before that, being human beings of a hungry sort, we decided to seek out food.

This proved to be more problematic that we could have imagined.  We first decided to go back to Le Steak Frites, but found them to be booked full until 8:30 or later, which was no good, since the awards started at 8:00, and, well, we didn’t want to wait that long.  It seemed to be full of Con people, and perhaps there were officials being dumped there, and such.  So we went back to the convention center to try a restaurant there, only to find that was full.  We had had trouble finding a place that was open near the convention center the evening before, so we decided to go back to our hotel and try the restaurant there.

Food was only being served at the bar, and was not especially cheap or appetizing.  So we set out again, thinking maybe of the nearby Dairy Queen, before ending up at Eggspectation, where I had a satisfactory panini sandwich.  After all that questing, we were running a little later than expected, but still arrived at about 7:55 PM, where we had to sit toward the back of the massive Main Tent, as it was quite full.

The Hugo Awards ceremony was generally well-run.  There were a few tech mis-cues, and a few times we had to wait slightly long before somebody came out or got to the stage, or whatnot.  None of the speeches were unnecessarily long, and so the evening went by quickly and pleasantly.

The results can be found here, at the official Hugo Awards site.  It was nice to see Neil Gaiman win for The Graveyard Book at the Worldcon where he was Guest of Honour.  David Hartwell also won Best Long-Form Editor, and he was Editor Guest of Honour, and also damned entertaining.  I enjoyed all of the winners, and felt a little bad for the “losers”, many of whom were my first choice, but it was a fun and exciting evening overall.

After the awards ceremony, we did one more panel, from 10 to 11 PM, called “Young Turks”.  It featured a few writers who were basically emerging as forces to be reckoned with, and because the audience was small enough, it became a sort of cooperative Q&A whereby they talked about why they wrote, how they got to the point they were each at, techniques and tools they had found helpful for their writing, and the like.  For a panel so late, and day 4, after the Hugos, it was a pleasant surprise to have such an engaged and active set of panelists, and such a fun and interesting panel.  Kudos to them for pulling it off.

At that point, we called it a day.

Worldcon: Day 4

The fourth day of Worldcon was also a big one, and quite full.

We started at 9 AM once again, with a panel on “How Not to be a Jerk Online”.  I went to this because John Scalzi—whose blog and work I am a fan of—was one of the panelists, and I suspected it was a topic he would hold forth entertainingly about.  I was right, although the other panelists (whose names I will call forth in a later update) also had excellent and amusing contributions.

The next panel I wanted to see was “Deities and Demigods”, because I wanted to snag panelist Paddy Forde to sign a book I had, but alas, it was cancelled.  That did leave me free to join my girlfriend at another panel I was interested in, on “English-Canadian Small-Press SF Publishers”, which was an illuminating and honest look at the business and economics of small press publishing in Canada, with the attendant advantages and disadvantages.  Kind of interesting and depressing.

Next was another panel on “The Singularity: O RLY”, which was pretty entertaining, although with my own reading in the area and the panels I’ve been to this weekend, I may be singularitied out.  I did get a signature from Peter Watts after, though, and had an entertaining conversation with him about genetic algorithms as they might be applied to FPGAs that was punctuated him him being mind-boggled when he noticed my {Terror} t-shirt form Dr. McNinja.

Then it was lunchtime, followed by spending too much money in the Dealer’s Room, where my girlfriend bid on a print in the art show, and I bought a Con t-shirt, another book, and ended up subscribing to OnSpec.

The next panel we saw was “Which Histories Get Alternates?”, wherein the panelists discussed why so many alternate histories focussed on the same events (eg. American Civil War, WWII, etc.), and partly concluded that it was needed because the audience had to have strong familiarity with the events in question to understand how it is alternate.  A list of other types of alternates was also volunteered by the audience.

Then it was on to “Economics of Star Traders”, which discussed whether it could ever be worthwhile to have trade between planets, first in a relativistic universe, then opening it up to FTL-capable universes.  Some interesting ideas bandied about.

We were pretty exhausted by panels, so we wandered around a bit, outside, before heading back so I could get some books signed by Robert Charles Wilson.  Then it was in search of dinner, about which I will complain in the next post.

Worldcon: Day 3 Recap (Part 2)

After a quick lunch, my girlfriend had hoped to take in the panel on “Montreal Local History”, but it was apparently cancelled.  I headed to “Building Realistic Worlds”, but it was so full that there wasn’t even space to stand at the back of the room, so I went to my other option, “How Are We Getting on Towards the Singularity Then?”.  This was also quite full, but I could still find room.    It was a decent panel, exploring the different ways we are approaching the Singularity (or not).

The next panel we both went to was “Online Magazines Represented HERE: A Good Market”, in which several people who work in various capacities at online fiction magazines discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the format.  Advantages were mostly in the negligible cost of distribution and international reach, but the downsides were the lack of a business model and combatting obscurity—how does your magazine get found among everything else online?  The panelists were all good and played off each other well.

Then there was a panel on “How to Pitch Your Novel… and how not to”, which was good at offering practical advice from publishing professionals on how you can get someone to look at your novel.  Thankfully, I had encountered most of the information before, so it seems like my research into publishing in the field has been successful.

Next up was a panel titled “Aunts in Spaceships”, which my girlfriend was interested in seeing.  She was hoping it would more be about why aren’t there more characters with extended families (or families at all) in SF literature, but it was concentrated more on older women characters, and became something a chance for the panelists and audiences to list examples of such characters.  Given that it was a 90-minute panel, and wasn’t quite what we were looking for, we ducked out a bit early and visited the dealer’s room again.

At 6:30, there was a short event, featuring author Karl Schroeder and his Tor editor David G. Hartwell talking about the process of working together, and how their relationship and working approach has changed over the course of working on 7 novels together.  It was really interesting, and actually felt like it ended too soon.

Then we went looking for dinner, but found a large number of places were closed, so we ended up going to an Italian place that was fine, but a bit slow because they were overwhelmed with other Con-goers.  As a result, we were late getting back, and missed the first hour of the Masquerade costume show.  We saw a few minutes of it, but I was interested in another event, “Gaiman Reads Doctorow”.

As an experiment, Cory Doctorow is releasing his next short story collection as a self-published Creative Commons title, and using it to explore a number of different ideas a business models, including a free audiobook read by friends (in this case, Neil Gaiman, star of the Worldcon), print-on-demand, and high-cost hand-made limited editions.  Gaiman read quite well, as he is wont to do, and then they both fielded questions after the recording was done.  Gaiman and Doctorow were both gracious, funny, and passionate speakers, and I felt the event was well worth missing the Masquerade.

The last event of the night was a fireworks display that we could watch from the top floor terrace of the convention centre.  The fireworks were not part of the Worldcon (it was for the Festival of Fire, I think, being a South African entry), but it was a nice way to end a very long day.

Worldcon: Day 2 Recap (Part 1)

This was a long day, very full of delightful things.

The morning started early, as we went to line up to get tickets for the Neil Gaiman signing.  We arrived at about 8:30, and (thankfully) the line was still pretty small then.  We got moved around a little bit, but by 9:10 they started handing out the tickets, seeing no reason to keep us all there until 10.

At that point, some food and hydration was the order of the day, and so a visit to Tim Horton’s—where they had the blueberry glazed donut for sale, much to my delight—was in order.  There, in the line, we chatted with another Worldcon attendee, just as we had in the Gaiman lineup and on the way over to the convention centre.

After that, we hit up the dealer’s room, since there were a few things I had hoped to acquire for signings later in the day.  I was disappointed that I couldn’t find Karl Schroeder’s The Sunless Countries, but since he is a Toronto author, I’m certain I’ll have other opportunities to get a copy signed in the coming year.

Next up was a panel on “Relativism and the Superhero” (I don’t remember the panelists names right now, but will look them up later).  They panel was interesting and well-balanced, talking about how heroes and villains have gone from straightfoward all-good or all-evil to more grey and ambiguous states, with a focus on comics.  All the panelists had thoughtful things to say, and shared the stage well with each other, so it was fun.

At noon I got a few other things signed by Schroeder, and then we (being me and the girlfriend, not me and Schroeder) hit up some lunch.  This meant we kind of forgot the panel she wanted to see, on “Legal Systems, Past and Future” was starting at 12:30, and so we arrived a bit late.  The last bit (well, hour, I guess, which was most of it) was sufficiently entertaining though, with the panelists and audience having a good set of questions going back and forth.

After that, despite having a plethora of intriguing options to choose from, we decided to actually go outside, which meant walking back to the hotel, running some errands, and napping.  Then, we had to head back to line up a second time to actually get our stuff signed by Gaiman.

But that is a story for the next post, as is the rest of day 2.