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She-Hulk Volume Four #9

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“The Big Reveal”

Okay, last month I said that the melding of /She-Hulk /and /Civil War/ was a good jumping-on point for readers who are new to the Marvel U and only care how it moves forward, not how well it continues existing traditions. I also said it might be a good jumping-off point for readers, like me, who had been with Marvel since before it became the X-Company.

So, at CW plus one month, where do we stand? Well, She-Hulk #9 makes it worth hanging around for at least one more month,anyway. For one thing, I want to read part /one/ of the story that Marvel published part /two /of a month ago in the /Two-Gun Kid /one shot. (How’s /that/ for bad production management?) But I also think there might be light at the end of the tunnel of CW, and it might not be just the headlight of the Bendis Express.

We had some good moments here. I think my favorite was the return of the patented Dan Slott “page o’ reaction shots” — nine panels of various characters commenting on whatever’s happening in the story. This time it was a series of spit-takes in reaction to the news that Jen and JJ Jr. had gotten married in Vegas, with annotations, letting us know what each spitter was drinking. It finishes on a beautiful shot of Mallory Book and Awesome Andy in a bubble bath.

The Antics at the Jameson family home were enjoyable. The usual dinner with the folks: the profanity, the awkward silences, the spider-slayer being brought down from the attic, the daughter-in-law trying to kill her husband’s father. I won’t reveal the resolution of the Jen/Jonah slugfest, but it’s very in-character for Jen, and promises to bring a lot of laughs. (Though She-Hulk and Spider-Man may not emerge as friends.)

Down-sides to the story would be the obligatory re-hash of the Spider-Man unmasking that’s been dubbed “Marvel’s Greatest Moment EVER” by a lot of people who probably don’t remember comics that didn’t have shiny pages. Even the characters in the story are sick of it — “that again? It’s been running continuously on cable for ten hours!” For me, it’s hardly a great moment. Did anyone notice that Clark Kent /also/ unmasked as Superman a couple of months ago in a flashback to the JSA story that CW is a blatant ripoff of? And Clark did it as an act of defiance, not because he’d succumbed to political pressure. Of course, Clark’s a hero, and Peter is… well, a guy who deserves what Jen’s about to hand him. Sad to say that Spidey has pretty well been given the Cyclops treatment. After all these years of adventures, he’s being shown up by real life as not necessarily a very admirable or moral character.

And, of course, Jen is still paying lip-service to her part in CW, reminding her hubby that she’s pledged to fight all of her former comrades who won’t play ball with Lord Stark. It doesn’t really ring true, though, and it still doesn’t fit Jen’s character. Even she seems not to be comfortable in the role in which she’s been cast. Might that be because the entire storyline is one big piece of miscasting, from Iron Man on down?

Oh well, next issue looks promisingly free of CW-inspired drama. We left Pug hanging with evidence that JJ Jr. is not, in fact, Jen’s true love, and JJ himself is in for a world of hurt, we know if we read the aforementioned Two-Gun one-shot. So things may be looking up.
Sadly, things aren’t looking up for She-Hulk’s companion book, /The Thing. /Like the first series of /She-Hulk, /what was meant to be an on-going series wrapped all too soon. I wonder, this time next year, if they’re be a trace of the old Marvel U. left on the stands.

She-Hulk, Volume Four, Issue Nine

Rating: 3.5
Writer: Dan Slott
Pencils: Paul Smith
Inks: Joe Rubinstein
Colors: Avalon Studios’ Dave Kemp
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
Asst Editors: Schmidt , Lazer & Stitterson
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Editor-in-Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
August, 2006
2.99
Rated T+
Cover by Greg Horn

She-Hulk Volume Four #7

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“Beaus and Eros, Part 2: Change of Heart”

Y’know, it’s funny. The friend who originally said to me, “You need to pick up She-Hulk, because it’s a lot of fun,” has recently told me that he thinks it’s gotten too silly, and thus he’s now reading /nothing/ published by Marvel. I wondered if, perhaps, /She-Hulk /had just stayed the same course which he’d once enjoyed, but he’d been wanting something to change, without realizing it. I suppose this is Marvel’s dilemma right now. Half the fans say they want the kinds of comics that attracted them to comics to begin with, and half want the envelope’s walls to be always in motion, always threatening to tear under the strain. And neither half knows its own minds well enough, so, when they get what they asked for, it isn’t actually what they wanted.

But I maintain that She-Hulk, like /The Thing/ and /Knights 4, /is still a very satisfying book for those who truly want to be able to play in a Marvel Universe untainted by the trends of big guns, dig damn deaths, and photo-realistic art laid over scripts lifted from /Law and Order. /Issue Seven did what I ask of a comic: It made me laugh out loud, it made me like the characters (even Eros, whom I’ve never really liked) and it threw out some satirical moments I could really appreciate. All the while, it showed me guest stars and cameos that reminded me that old friends are still around, and it stayed true to the characters as they’ve been established.

I mentioned that this issue made me like Eros. Actually, I felt this issue gave Eros a clearly defined character for the first time since… well, ever. I’ve read all his Avengers appearances, and a smattering of others. I always felt he was mostly a one-trick pony. He’s the guy that makes women fall in love with them, and loves to play. He’s a cleaner-shaved Hercules. He’s not much more than that here, but the impact of such a character on the people around him is more fully realized than it’s ever seemed before. We really delve into how it might feel to have someone manipulate your emotions. We get to laugh and not take it too seriously, but we also get to share the anger of someone like Jen that what she thought was real actually wasn’t.

We get to see what it’s like for a mother and wife to be hit with a spell that makes her want to be unfaithful. We get to see how Eros’s antics polarize his colleagues – the men are pretty much on his side, the women are pretty uncomfortable. Except that Tigra admits that she’s had a fling with him, and Cap put his responsibilities as a role model ahead of Eros’s plight, and Hank realizes that he should /never/ be involved in any discussion of the treatment of women, and Jan, breaking the mold as always, says, sure, she’ll stand up for him. (Probably not because she’s still a victim, or has no sympathy for a woman who’s been ill-used, but because she realizes that the good and the bad need to be balanced. After all, lest we forget, Jan once took advantage of someone’s emotional breakdown to trick him into marrying her.)

As always, the story is made by its nice, little touches: Jan being the one of the Avengers who notices and is disturbed by Jen’s submissiveness with John Jameson (’cause Jan knows a bit about submissiveness, and how it can make a person go wrong) ; a male Hydra agent still being madly in love with Eros (daring, given Marvel’s current mixed-message policy about gays); Starfox playing video games while standing trial; Stu the archives guy, speaking for part of comics fandom, saying that he doesn’t want to see all that sex-stuff filed in his long-boxes.

All in all, great fun, and a great break from everyday life. We need comics like this, and we need them to keep coming. Oh, and if you’re still looking for envelope-pushing but still want the kind of respect for comics history that She-Hulk brings, let me make an unashamed plug for /Young Avengers. /Like /New X-Men /(and by that I mean the ones from 1974. Remember, I’m old), it builds on a classic foundation, but has space to go its own direction without stepping on the toes of its predecessor.

Now, let’s see if She-Hulk can make /Civil War /at all entertaining….

She-Hulk, Volume Four, Issue Seven

Rating: 4.5
Writer: Dan Slott
Artist: Will Conrad
Colors: Avalon Studios’ Dave Kemp
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
Asst Editors: Schmidt , Lazer & Stitterson
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Editor-in-Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
June, 2006
2.99
Rated A
Cover by Greg Horn

REACTION: A vs X #0 from Marvel Comics

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The tell-off. It’s one of our favorite dramatic devices, isn’t it? It’s so satisfying. Great tell-offs which come to mind include everything from Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence to Louise Jefferson telling off the snotty bigot-of-the week; from Flo telling Mel “Kiss my grits!” to James T. Kirk telling Khan to… Oh yeah, he just said “Khhhhhaaannnnnn!”

But we knew what he meant, and we loved it.  (And wow, I just dated myself!)

But there’s a problem with most tell-offs, excepting Thomas Jefferson’s… they don’t actually accomplish a damn thing.  In most cases, they don’t even make us feel better. They may seem satisfying, if you don’t think too hard; but in truth…? Telling off someone, be it a co-worker, family member or friend, creates animosity and hurt feelings; it damages relationships and often makes working or living together impossible. Really, it’s something from the realm of wish-fulfillment fantasy (“I’d like to tell him off!”) that has no place in practical reality.

So should it really be one of our favorite dramatic devices?

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My Latest Work – Waste of Space: “Mayor Golth”

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As part of the Farpoint 2012 Opening Ceremonies, Prometheus Radio Theatre performed the second episode in my series Waste of Space, a sitcom about four evil geniuses sharing a run-down shack in the woods.  In this episode, alien invader Golth, stranded on Earth when his unit lost funding for their invasion, has been tracked down by the wife and friends of the human whose body he took over when he arrived.  Surprise! – the drunk he met in the woods was the Mayor of the nearby town of Connorsville.  BSG’s Kate Vernon guest-stars as the Mayor’s wife, and True Blood’s Kristen Bauer plays his lover, a young councilwoman.

You can listen to the recording of this live performance here.

Review – Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson

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Flashback to high school – Nineteen-eighty… something. War games were catching on. There were role-playing games in the wake of Dungeons & Dragons, then only about five years old; there were those bookcase-packaged strategy games from Avalon Hill, and those trays of maps and cardboard chits from… was it TSR?  I bought a lot of them.  Rarely played them. Then came to my high school the first L.A.R.P. (Live Action Role-Play) I ever encountered.  I think, though I can’t swear, that it was called Chaos. Or Kaos? It involved stalking opponents through the hallways of the school and attacking them (theoretically, of course for these were math and science geeks doing the attacking.)

I don’t remember what form the attacks took.  I do remember writing an editorial in the school paper about “Chaos.” We’d done a news article about it in the same issue. (I was the news editor for the paper.) I was somewhat disturbed by quotes from one enthusiastic player to the effect that the simulated killing was more of a rush than sex. This quote coming, I’m fairly certain, from someone who, at sixteen or so, had firsthand knowledge of exactly neither.  (Nor, I quickly point out, did I have… much… firsthand knowledge of such things at the time either.)

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Lessons Learned: Self Publishing – Part Two

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Last week, I discussed my experiences with production and distribution as a self publisher / small press.  Obviously (or maybe it isn’t obvious!) the job isn’t done when the book is created and made available for sale.  There’s a lot that has to happen to let potential readers and listeners know that your book exists.  Also, since I focused so heavily on distribution last time, I neglected to mention some things about the pre-distribution steps involved in actually creating the book itself, its cover, its contents and its overall presentation.  (You’re right — I’m not going in order! I warned you that this would not be a formal presentation!)

So… Marketing.  You’ve written and produced a book.  It’s available for sale.  Now what?  The big publishers in New York spend more than you make in a year on promotion for a single title.  (I understand from those who’ve been there that they spend it wastefully, but they spend it.)  That’s not an option.  They buy ads in print media, they send reps to book fairs and to meet with buyers for large chain bookstores.  You might get into book fairs.  I haven’t tried.  But I doubt you’ll get a meeting with the buyer for Barnes and Noble, and you won’t get on the shelves at the local B & N (or at any other chain store) without going through corporate.  You can get your book on the “shelves” at Amazon, but so can everyone else.  Amazon is probably not going to meet with you about giving your book special treatment.  (I say “probably” because I never know what seemingly impossible thing Amazon is going to do next!)

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Lessons Learned: Self Publishing – Part One

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Taking a break from reviewing, I thought maybe I could (or should?) share some information that’s in my head.  It may be of benefit to some.  It may be stone useless.  As always, the reader decides what’s useful.  (I hope eternally, at any rate.  Please don’t let anyone tell you what information is useful to you! If they try to do so, at the very least be skeptical.)

See, I’ve been doing a lot of panels lately, at Farpoint and Mysticon.  Some of them were just entertaining at best, some imparted useful information, and at a few it was clear that the audience came wanting to learn something, came with questions they needed answered.  Since con panels tend to be, more than anything else, a collection of people with very healthy egos, talking about themselves (I am no exception as a panelist), sometimes those questions don’t get answered.  That fact, to paraphrase the great Ricardo Montalban, tasks me.

Information should be free, and information should be shared.  If you possess knowledge, that knowledge is, like your DNA, something that’s only placed in your keeping for a season.  You can do at lot with it, but it’s not, and never can be, yours.  When people tell me I should charge to share what I know, I dismiss them.  I should (and do!) charge to employ what I know.  That’s my contribution: how I use what I know.  Anyone can learn the things that I’ve learned.  Many have.  Some have gotten richer than I by using that knowledge.  More power to them.  Their genius earned them a reward.  Most people, though, don’t use knowledge very well.  I believe anyone who shares what he knows freely and only charges to use his knowledge won’t go hungry.

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Reflection: Farpoint 2012

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No review this week.  My brain is simply too fried to evaluate.  What I’ll write about instead is the thing that fried my brain, that thing being an event called Farpoint 2012.  Farpoint is a regional science fiction media convention.  “Regional” because it primarily draws its attendance from Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic area, although it occasionally pulls in members from as far away as Texas, California, Canada or even Germany.  It’s not a Dragon*Con or a San Diego ComicCon, which pull heavily from all over the U.S. and even the world.  It’s smaller, more laid back, and built to stay that way.

“Science fiction media” because those attendees come to Farpoint to celebrate the fandom which develops around TV shows and movies rooted in speculative fiction, fantasy and the supernatural.  We used to call them “Star Trek Conventions,” but that’s far too narrow a description for what Farpoint and many gatherings of its kind have become.

This was our nineteenth Farpoint.  I’ve been involved in some capacity for all of them.  This year I was co-operations manager with my wife Renee.  I think we worked a bit harder on the planning and execution that we intended or wanted to, but the result was a successful event that everyone seemed to enjoy.  Our attendance numbers aren’t in, but they hovered somewhere around 700 people.  That’s a good, healthy turnout for this convention.  A lot of well-intentioned friends frequently approach me with sentences that open, “You know, you could pull in a lot more people and make a lot more money if you…”  And I’m sure all the ideas which finish those sentences are wonderful.  The thing is, making more money would be nice, but growing much bigger isn’t really Farpoint’s goal.  Farpoint’s goal is to maximize people’s enjoyment, and part of the way it does it is by not being over-crowded.

It was nice, however, to see the convention reaching its peak attendance earlier.  Friday night the registration desk was mobbed with people picking up their pre-purchased memberships, and our opening ceremonies and Friday social were the best attended they’ve ever been.  I got the impression that people were just more excited to get to the con this year, resulting in them taking time off work and leaving earlier.  It was a nice atmosphere, and it made for an appreciative audience for the evening’s entertainment.  Gentleman Jim made a first-time appearance with us, performing (very well!) a mix of songs, including tributes to our celebrity guests for the weekend.  We presented the Volker-McChesney Award for service to fandom to a dear friend, Melissa James, who’s an integral part of Shore Leave, a summertime event similar to Farpoint.  We auctioned off donated items to raise funds for the Julien Fleming Fund and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and then my own Prometheus Radio Theatre hosted a variety show of music and comedy.

The Boogie Knights, Jonah Knight and Insane Ian provided the music, and I hope I’m not delusional when I say Prometheus provided the comedy.  My friends Renfield and June offered us a short adventure in the lives of two space-based hired guns and their trusty robot, and then we presented an episode of Waste of Space, a sitcom about evil geniuses that my son Ethan and I developed.  Kate Vernon from Battlestar Galactica and Kristen Bauer from True Blood were out special guests.  Sadly, Kate’s onscreen husband, Michael Hogan, missed his connecting flight and couldn’t be in the play, but the audience and the cast still had a blast.  Having your celebrity guest star (Kristen) miss a cue and tell the audience it’s because she’s having such a good time listening to you is not only funny, it’s very good for the egos of part-time actors.  I hope to have that show posted soon on the Prometheus Radio Theatre podcast feed.

While the Pack Ratz oversaw their annual Karaoke event, Vic’s Place, I threw a launch party for my latest book, Unfriendly Persuasion.  I sold a case of books, which doesn’t suck.  I understand our vendors in the dealers room also had a pretty successful evening of sales.  I know at least one said she’d made back the cost of her trip that first night.

Saturday I sat on four panels on New Media and authoring topics.  All were well-attended, which I was happy to see, as I was beginning to fear Farpoint needed to offer less programming.  The most successful panel seemed to be a discussion on self-publishing which included Aaron Rosenberg, Glenn Hauman and Marianne Petrino-Schaad, with some assists by Don Sakers.  We couldn’t possibly give a complete primer on how to self-publish a book in an hour (especially since we’re authors, and mostly want to talk about ourselves!) but we answered a lot of great questions from the audience, and I think we hit the high points.

Michael Hogan had arrived safely late Friday night, so all of our guest Q & A sessions and autographs went as expected.  More and more lately, our Farpoint actor guests are electing to make extra money by signing autographs and selling pictures throughout the day.  That means that there’s no scheduled “autograph session,” and thus no long lines.  It seems to be a pretty good system.
Saturday night’s cornerstone is always the Masquerade, where our costumers put together often screamingly funny presentations to feature their handiwork.  Sometimes there are duds, but not often.  These people are serious about their costuming, and serious about being funny.  I spent the time staffing the Con Hospitality Suite, and I’m told I missed one of the best shows in years.  Fortunately, there’s video.  I must see the Green Lantern entry put together by Don Sakers, Renfield and June and my son Ethan.

At Masqeurade half-time, Marty Gear auctioned off a meet-and-greet session with the lovely Kristen Bauer, again to benefit our charities.  Now Marty is our elder statesman.  His fandom career began in 1953 at WorldCon, where, just fifteen, he was taken under the wing of E.E. “Doc” Smith, and got to watch the Hugo Award ceremony from the balcony with John W. Campbell, Robert Heinlein, Sprague DeCamp and Isass Asimov.  Marty impresses the hell out of all of us.  He also loves vampires, has a very large library of bad vampire jokes, and can’t resist a pretty face.  The fact that Kristen’s pretty face so often is seen complete with fangs made Marty very enthusiastic about this meet and greet opportunity, as did his ceaseless devotion to raising money for our charities.  So Marty opened the bidding at a nice high figure himself, then waited.  Apparently, the audience, probably hit by our still-tough economy, didn’t bite.  So Marty dug into his supply of vampire jokes and decided to outlast them.  A frenzy erupted.  Audience members began passing a box to collect a matching donation.  Rumor has it Peter David threw his platinum card at the stage.  Kristen, meanwhile, made a grand performance, trying to figure out a way to hang herself from the chandelier to end her suffering.  The masquerade stage hands, dressed, traditionally, as ninjas, supplied a ladder.  Marty got his meet and greet, and our charities split over $700 for his and Kristen’s efforts.  (And that was only one of the items sold!)

Saturday ended with a Ten Forward dance, deejayed by the Pack Ratz.  They do a fantastic job picking the music mix, and the dance floor was packed.  I understand my son Christian impressed the crowd with his moves.  He certainly doesn’t get them from me!  Ten Forward is really loud, and I’m not really young anymore.  I spent a good deal of it sitting in another room, talking to Nobilis and Michael Jan Friedman about the merits of various publishing strategies.

Sunday is our most laid back day.  More Q & A, more autographs, more panels.  Attendance is usually a little less.  I was very happy to see more than a dozen podcasters show up for our podcasting roundtable, however.  New to our company were Jay Smith and Keith R.A. DeCandido, and we had some very good discussion about the changes the last year has brought to our endeavors.  Lauretta from Constellation Books was kind enough to add all of the Firebringer Press titles to her selection.  Constellation is an excellent, independent book store in Reisterstown, and Lauretta has begun working the local conventions.

We end every convention with a dead dog party, the name describing the state of the committee.  After the attendees have gone home, the committee, staff and some of the guests gather to eat, (the first time in three days some of us have done that sitting down!) wind down, and deconstruct the con.  There wasn’t actually a lot to deconstruct this year.  We talked about next year’s 20th anniversary event, and Peter David, T.A. Chafin and Bob Greenberger made plans for their next “Mystery Trekkie Theatre,” to be presented at Shore Leave.  I finished the evening chatting with my cousin Dave, Michael Hogan and two very nice young ladies, Alicia and Stephanie, who were big BSG fans and had flown in to see him.  (One also joined our staff, ably assisting with the huge amount of video that must be shot throughout the weekend.)

Not an objective review by any stretch of the imagination.  It’s my event, after all.  It was a weekend well-spent, however, if it did distract me a bit from being able to do an actual review this week.  This coming weekend, I’ll be attending MystiCon in Roanoake as an author/podcaster guest.  They’ve got me scheduled for quite a few panels, and I’m looking forward to it.  Let’s hope I can maintain my energy level for one more weekend of cons!

Live365 and the DMCA

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Well, gang, it looks like Prometheus Radio Theatre will be dumping — more correctly be dumped BY — Live365. I’ve just received a threatening e-mail from their legal department, warning me to make our station “compliant” ASAP or have our broadcasting account suspended. What crime have I committed? Gasp! I’ve broadcast 16 tracks in a row by the same artist! This is a violation of the DMCA, and the RIAA has apparently lodged a complaint against us with Live365.

I’ve explained to them that we are an artist-owned station, which is supposed to make us immune to that bit of the DMCA. Perhaps they’ll see it that way, but I’ve been through enough BS with Live365 this year that I’m not willing to talk to them much more, particularly when they invoke the name of the infernal RIAA. Frankly, I’d like nothing better than to sue them for violating my First Amendment rights, but I’m sure some clever government-lover will explain to me that I have no rights in this case. (So why should this case be any different?)

And, because this has put me in a bad mood, I’ll snipe out the fact that the DMCA was signed into law by one of the sacred Democratic Party who’s supposed to swoop in and save us from fascism in 2008. This is just one of the many reasons that I don’t see any reason to prefer one party of special interest toadies over another.

I did take SOME small satisfaction in pointing out to the legal eagle who contacted me that he’s using AVG Free Edition to screen his e-mails against virus (it says so at the bottom) and AVG Free is not for use on corporate-owned PCs being used in a business environment. Throw the RIAA at me will you? I’ll see your music Nazis and raise you one visit from the BSA!