Archive for the ‘Books and Comics’ Category

Wheel of Time Author Robert Jordan Dies

Monday, September 17th, 2007

From Cinemablend:

Sad news from the world of fantasy literature. Robert Jordan, known best as the author of the “Wheel of Time” series of books, died on the afternoon of Sunday September 16th after more than a year battling cardiac amyloidosis. The news comes from a message left on the author’s blog.

The site says, “It is with great sadness that I tell you that the Dragon is gone. RJ left us today at 2:45 PM. He fought a valiant fight against this most horrid disease. In the end, he left peacefully and in no pain.” Funeral arrangements will be posted later on the blog, and for fans interesting in sending his family their best wishes, the comments section on Jordan’s there seems to be the place to do it.

While I never got past the first chapter of the first Wheel of Time book, I know he was beloved by many, and having such a lengthy series left unfinished has to be quite a blow to his many fans. No doubt another author or a family member will step up to round off the series, but it’s still a sad day for fantasy literature. RIP.

No One Reads Fridays: Important Answers About Monsters

Friday, May 4th, 2007

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Once upon a time, Matt Groening, the creator of a show called “The Simpsons” – perhaps you’ve heard of it? – and of another, more consistently funny show called “Futurama,” was nothing more than a lowly alternative cartoonist. His weekly cartoon, “Life in Hell,” was often brilliant, and often just weird. In 1994, he produced an episode of the cartoon entitled “Important Questions About Monsters, by Will and Abe,” Will and Abe being his very young sons. It was an aptly named cartoon. There were a lot of Life in Hells about Will and Abe’s preoccupation with monsters in those days; less so later on. Presumably, their love for monsters was beaten out of them by society, as it is for so many of our nation’s youth. Damn you, society! I could be a king, if not for you!

Anyway, for my next trick, I will now answer Will and Abe’s Important Questions, just 13 short years too late! While balancing on the high wire! You won’t be able to see that part.

(more…)

No One Reads Fridays: Warren Ellis’ Desolation Jones

Friday, April 27th, 2007

I don’t review a lot of comic books, mostly because I don’t read them that often. Not out of any contempt for the medium, mind you; some of my favorite works of literature have come in graphic novel form, mostly from the mind of Alan Moore. Comic collecting just happens to be the red-headed stepchild of my hobbies: rarely receiving much money or attention, rarely noticed, and quietly suffering through years of neglect and waiting for that one glorious moment when I’ll walk into my local comic shop and drop a hundred bucks on new material. Because that’s what I do. I’ll go without purchasing comics for a year or so, and then, when I go to buy comics, I buy them by the armful. The system works.

The other reason I don’t review comics is because I actually loathe and fear most comic book fans. Wait… come back. Sit down. Now, I don’t mean you. I mean that other guy — you know, the one who writes in several pages of “corrections” to the letters column of every issue of Dark Horse’s Conan and signs his name “Lord Darkthorne.” Or, perhaps, the guy who flies into a beer-fueled rant at one in the morning on your blog, telling you to “go to a bar to get laid” because you cast aspersions on the Hulk movie. Just kidding. (Although I did tell my girlfriend of three years that I’d been commanded to go to a bar and get laid by someone on the Internet. Despite my best efforts, she didn’t go for it)

Of course, I don’t think these people are necessarily all that common, or even representative of comic readers on the whole — but all the same, I know they exist, and I am reluctant to incur their wrath. Especially if I plan to mercilessly slur the good name of Sir Warren Ellis, which, of course, I don’t. (You hear that, Lord Darkthorne? It’s going to be okay.)

Most of the comic readers I know speak of Warren Ellis the way someone might talk about Alexander the Great , or maybe Z-Man Barzell. Ellis appears to be some sort of comic-nerd Rome, in that all conversations about the medium eventually lead to him. “Do you read Warren Ellis?” my friends will ask me, bright-eyed with anticipation, and I’ll shake my head politely, smiling and wondering if I can change the subject to Lord Dunsany or Krull or something I actually know about.

Well, no more. On my last visit to my friendly local comics shop, I asked for some recommendations — anything, really. Without so much as batting an eye, the clerk asked “Have you read any Warren Ellis?” and made a frantic beeline for the shelf to pick out a host of Ellis titles for me. I came away with the first trade paperback of Planetary and the first arc of Desolation Jones, a brief description of which was enough to sell me.

To sum up the plot briefly: Michael Jones is an ex-intelligence agent and the only living survivor of The Desolation Project, a destructive medical procedure that kept him alive and conscious for an entire year while being barraged with horrific images. Now a reclusive albino junkie, Jones lives in Los Angeles, which has become a kind of “open prison” for ex-intelligence types without anywhere else to go. As the story opens, Jones is hired by Colonel Nigh to recover a valuable stolen item — a reel of vintage porn made by Adolph Hitler. This, by iteself, is more than enough; but as with any good detective story, Jones soon finds out there is far more to his assignment than he thought.

What follows is a gritty, delightfully squalid adventure in the Raymond Chandler vein, except with a lot more pornography and lurid violence. Jones is a bitter, shambling wreck of an antihero, barely functional most of the time, but with enough raw tenacity to brutally and permanently finish most of the fights he gets into. If I could level one criticism at Desolation Jones, it might be that the titular character isn’t always quite as interesting as the throng of memorable characters that surround him. The most poignant of these is probably Emily Crowe, a beautiful ex-intelligence agent who, because of an experimental procedure gone wrong, exudes fear and revulsion, damning her to crippling loneliness and isolation. Desolation Jones is full of characters like this; tough, tragic, and vividly realized.

Most compelling of all, however, is Ellis’ sense of place. The Los Angeles of Desolation Jones is at once familiar and foreign, ringing with verisimilitude, but outlandish enough to keep the reader surprised and entertained. One trait I think Ellis definitely shares with Alan Moore is how deftly and prodigiously he throws out (and throws away) brilliant ideas; tossing off material that might constitute an entire series in the hands of another author, but is only filler in Ellis’ world.

In keeping with what I’ve often heard about Ellis, Desolation Jones is not a lighthearted romp. It’s seedy, violent, brutal, and frequently ugly. The art by J.H. Williams III is wonderfully varied and rich; sometimes deeply textured, sometimes stark and overbright, like overexposed film. Once the exposition is out of the way, the body count mounts pretty quickly in Jones, with a gruesome, heartbreaking ending that’s well-crafted and merciless, like Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest with all the dials cranked into the red.

While Desolation Jones is a little more nihilistic than I usually like my comics, I now have an inkling why everyone raves about Ellis so much. Recommended. 8/10

Eragon!

Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

Although I am not the creator of the following image, it so neatly encapsulates my feelings on the new Eragon movie that I just had to include it here. So, please enjoy.

Friday News Roundup

Friday, September 22nd, 2006

And now, all the stuff that I didn’t think was worth talking about when it first happened. You’ll probably be seeing a lot more of this, as dimfuture.net focuses more on reviews and written pieces and less on news. Because frankly, five days a week of remake and sequel news is about a week from sucking the very soul from my body, stomping on it, and calling it a very rude name.

First and foremost, fans of Tolkien can look forward to what amounts to a new Tolkien book, The Children of Hurin, compiled with loving and scholarly guesswork by his son, Christopher Tolkien. Now, if I seem a bit skeptical, that’s because I am. In my view, this represents a “new book by Tolkien” in the same way August Derleth wildly embellishing on H.P. Lovecraft’s stories comprises a “posthumous collaboration.” Don’t get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for Christopher Tolkien and his meticulous preservation and presentation of Tolkien’s posthumous works. But a work completed by your descendants once you’re dead is not a finished work by you. It is fan fiction.

All this semantic nitpicking and bluster aside, I’ll still be there, slavering like a maniac, the day this book comes out. My hypocrisy only goes so far, to quote Captain John Sheridan. Or Mark Twain. Look, whichever.

Meanwhile, everything old continues to be new again. An animated Spaceballs series is in production, resurrecting a spoof that didn’t even do all that well in 1987. This leaves me with high hopes that my dreams of a weekly Airplane! serial might finally come to fruition, but in the post-9/11 world, I guess that’s too much to ask.

Speaking of Star Wars, the latest from the rumor mill is that everyone’s favorite child star turned drunken reprobate, Edward Furlong, might be starring in the Star Wars live action series. There’s no word in English for how this news makes me feel; I’m simply going to comfort myself with the fact that it’s probably not true. And, anyway, the series isn’t coming out until 2010, so we can always assume, or at least hope, Furlong will be in his grave long before then. If this seems unnecessarily mean-spirited, I suggest you go watch The Crow: Wicked Prayer and see if you’re still such a smarty-boots. All things to everyone, run, run away!

And, while we’re still apparently talking about Star Wars, greedy, soulless billionaire George Lucas has donated $175 million to USC. That monster.

And, last but not least, there’s an interesting new trailer out for the Frank Miller comic book epic The 300 out. I want to say it looks awesome, because portions of it do look awesome. Other portions look like some kind of Renny Harlin malaria hallucination. Either way, there certainly are a lot of brawny, hirstute men bellowing at each other. If nothing else, this movie should make a great drinking game. Every time a man in a skirt roars “SPARTA!” take a drink. Hell, don’t wait for the movie, try it now. Load up some Jagermaester and make an afternoon of it. I won’t tell.

No, I don’t know whether this is a straight remake of The 300 Spartans. It seems doubtful. And the comic book it’s based on? Oh, I don’t know a damn thing about that.