Two-Fer Tuesday #16

It's Tuesday, which means another Two Fer Tuesday.  If you're not acquainted with the rules, I use a random number generator to pick a page and paragraph to pluck two sentences from.  Let's see what we get this week.

Page Number:  112
Paragraph Number: 7

Kind of a gross one.


He grinned evilly and then tore a page from the book.  To Emma’s horror, he wadded the page up and swallowed it.  

That's one way to add fiber to your diet!  Fun fact: the bully in the story is named for this video game.

Tomorrow I honor the Everyday Hero who saved my life (I mean that literally, not metaphorically)...

A Book Expo Anyone Can Attend

I'm doing my first big promotional event this weekend.  It's a book fair, but unlike Book Expo America or Comic Con or any of that you don't have to go to New York or San Diego or even outside your living room.  You see this book fair is entirely online, which is why it's called the eFestival of Words Virtual Book Fair.

All you need to do is go to the site and sign up for an account, which is FREE.  So no cover charges, no stamps on your hand, no passes to dangle around your neck.  It's pretty easy.  All you need is a computer with web access.  And if you didn't have that, you wouldn't be reading this right now, right?

I will be involved in three panel discussions.  The first is Saturday (August 18) at 6pm.  It's on female heroes in literature, a panel I came up with since obviously my book deals with that topic.  Despite that I came up with the topic, I will not actually be moderating the panel.  Anyway, the esteemed Michael Offutt is also supposed to be involved with that one.

Then right after that I get to stick around for the panel on dystopian books.  That runs from 7-8pm.  So lucky you, you can chat with me for two straight hours!

Sunday at 1pm I'm also supposed to be involved in a panel on short stories.  In case you didn't realize it, I have a book of short stories in paperback and Kindle.  So I think that qualifies me as an expert on the topic.

The fair begins Friday, but you can join the site at any time.  Besides the panels there are other discussions, also games, and so forth.  And as I said you don't need to go anywhere, so no worrying about air fare, rental cars, taxis, motels, or any of that stuff.  It goes pretty much all day Friday-Sunday, so you can probably fit a few minutes in somewhere to visit with some great authors.  Here's a link to the program for the weekend.  You may have to be a member of the site first to see it.

Anyway, please show up for at least my panels.  It'll be pretty embarrassing if no one shows up and I have to talk to myself for three hours.  If you can't make it for the whole time, drop by for a few minutes at least.  Come on, what do you have to lose?

Thursday Review: Batman Knightsend

Red Robin in Kingdom Come

OLD BUSINESS:  Andrew Leon was first to guess E "None of the Above" which while it's a double negative meant that Dick Grayson had at some point been all of those characters--not at once.  The trickiest one was Red Robin, which Wikipedia assured me was the persona he created in the "Kingdom Come" series, something I confirmed myself last night.  The current Red Robin is Tim Drake, the third Robin.  BTW, is Red Robin the only superhero named after a restaurant chain?  Anyway, Dick started out as the first Robin in 1940, then they grew him up so he could be Nightwing, and then he's also subbed for Bruce Wayne as Batman a couple of times, most recently after Bruce "died" following the "Infinite Crisis" series.  Now you know...and knowing's half the battle.

Maurice Mitchell of Geek Twins won the $1 participation prize.  Now will he split it with the other Geek Twin?

Congratulations!

NEW BUSINESS:  Last week I rambled incessantly about the Batman Knightfall series from the early 90s.  So now I'm going to talk about the follow-up saga, the Knightsend series.  Again I might mash it up a little with the novelization I read before the comics.  The good thing about the novelization is that it also included the middle section, which it called Knightsquest or something.  For some reason they reprinted the Knightfall series (in two volumes) and the Knightsend series but not anything in the middle, that I could find.  Maybe they did long ago and it's out of print?  Whatever.

So in Knightfall if you remember from my babbling, Bruce Wayne gets his back broken by the evil new villain Bane.  Bruce then picks a former assassin named Jean-Paul Valley to take over.  Jean-Paul makes a sweet new Batsuit (flamethrowers!) to kick Bane's ass.  Hooray!

But all is not well in Gotham because Jean-Paul is mentally unstable.  Meanwhile, at least in the novelization, Bruce Wayne meets this therapist who has some kind of weird supernatural power that helps his crippled back a little.  She gets kidnapped so he goes off to find her.  Ultimately she uses her power to fix his back, but loses her mind in the process.  (Yay?)  It's slightly less believable than in "The Dark Knight Rises" where a guy punches Bruce's spine back into position and leaves him hanging for a month or two to recover.

So when Knightsend begins, Bruce goes to see one of his old masters, a nasty broad named Lady Shiva, to help get his groove back.  In the comics this requires him taking on increasing numbers of ninjas while in the novelization it's a bit more tame.  She eventually makes Bruce have to kill someone, though he only fakes that part of it.

Meanwhile, Jean-Paul is rampaging through Gotham with the help of a crooked cop instead of Commissioner Gordon.  Jean-Paul's gotten to the point where he no longer cares if he kills people or not.  He adopts more of the Rorshach philosophy that bad guys deserve whatever they get.  Though I don't think Jean-Paul breaks anyone's head open with a cleaver.

Annoying Robin (Tim Drake, before he became Red Robin) tries to keep an eye on him, which isn't easy since Jean-Paul locks him out of the Batcave and refuses to let him go along anywhere.  (Kudos to him!)  Eventually Bruce comes back and finds out what Jean-Paul is up to and decides he has to force Jean-Paul to give up the Batman mantle.  Which isn't going to be easy.

There's a big fight then that's a lot more epic in the comics than the novelization.  Nightwing and Robin (and even Catwoman at one point) join Batman in fighting against Jean-Paul.  They manage to do some damage and for some reason Jean-Paul's suit turns from blue to red, something I used when I repainted a kind of shitty Azrael figure I bought online.

Blue Jean-Paul Batman is on the left and right front.  Red Jean-Paul Batman is on the right back.  Crappy old Batman is front and center, getting beat down by Bane.

In the end, though, it isn't fighting that really solves the problem.  Instead, Bruce finds a way to reason with Jean-Paul and get him to see the error of his ways.  That might have been disappointing if you were expecting a fight to the death.  But I suppose it was supposed to connect to when Bruce fought all those ninjas and faked someone's death because according to him death isn't really necessary.

I didn't really like this story nearly as much.  As I said last week, it seemed like poor Jean-Paul had been set up for failure from the start.  Also, the new Batsuit was awesome.  (Again, flamethrowers!)  We go from that back to the boring old tights and cowl?  Yuck.  But I guess a lot of people wanted the old Batman back because they don't like change.  Though really I'd say when you present the other option as a crazy Frenchman you've pretty much rigged the contest. Which may be what happened with New Coke versus "classic" Coke, or I think Rusty Webb said that at one point.

At least until 2003 Jean-Paul carried on as just regular Azrael.  In two weeks we'll talk about him a little more and the many parallels between him and my own Scarlet Knight.

Needless to say I didn't bother cribbing any of this for my stories.  I mean, the whole thing was pretty lame to me.  Even the title was lame.  Knightfall was a decent pun, while Knightsend is nothing.  Actually if you look at it, you could misconstrue it as "Knight Send."  Send what?  Hurm.  If they were going to end anything, couldn't they have "killed" Robin again?

Anyway, the comics were OK, though the outcome was preordained.  At least it gave me some closure.

BTW, I remember at some little comic book shop around Flint I went to with my brother in his search for Star Trek customizable card game cards, someone had drawn a picture of the old and new Batmen.  Except they'd replaced Bruce Wayne and Jean-Paul with Beavis and Butt-head and captioned it "Butt's End."  I thought that was pretty funny.  Huh huh, butt.

Monday is a special announcement, cue ominous music...

Superhero Trivia Question #4

It's the second Wednesday of the month and so today is the superhero trivia question.  I'm taking these from 1001 Comic Book Trivia Questions by Rich Meyer.  If you have a problem with the question or answer, it's his fault.

This one is a multiple choice question, so you've got a 1-in-5 chance of being right.  Here we go, hands on buzzers:

Which superhero persona has Dick Grayson NOT adopted at some point in the DC Universe:
A.  Robin
B.  Red Robin
C.  Nightwing
D.  Batman
E.  None of the Above

Answer in the comments.  First one to get it right gets a $5 gift card to Amazon in their email or Facebook.  If you aren't first, never fear!  One respondent will be selected by random number generator to receive a $1 gift card.  Yes, you can give $1 gift cards.  Buy yourself a cheap eBook or MP3 or use it to get a dollar off something else.  The winner for this will be announced tomorrow.  The same person cannot win both gift cards because while that would be more convenient for me it wouldn't really be fair for everyone else.

Also I've decided on what I call the "Andrew Leon Rule" where the same person cannot win the trivia question each month.  So if you win this month you won't be eligible to win the $5 for another 3 months (until November).  But you can still win the $1 participation prize.  Craig Edwards is disqualified for winning June's question and Briane Pagel is disqualified for winning July's question..

Good luck!!!

Tomorrow the winners will be announced and I'll ramble on about the clash of the Batmen, Knightsend...

Two-Fer Tuesday #15

It's Tuesday, which means another Two Fer Tuesday.  If you're not acquainted with the rules, I use a random number generator to pick a page and paragraph to pluck two sentences from.  Let's see what we get this week.

Page Number: 86
Paragraph Number: 9

(NOTE:  I've switched over now to the final draft I gave my "editor" which was single-spaced, so the page numbers and such are a bit different)

This one is stylin':

Sylvia began to comb Emma’s hair; she clucked her tongue at Emma.  “You realize the ‘60s are over, right?”

(If you take off the zits, that is pretty much how Emma looks at the start of the story.)

Tomorrow is the Superhero Trivia Challenge.  Win $5 if you have the right answer!  And this one is going to be multiple choice so you have a 1 in 5 chance of being right.

Superhero Trivia Question Poll: The Runoff!

Grumpy Bulldog says get out & Vote!

Most of last month I had a poll to ask when is the best time to have the Superhero Trivia Challenge question.  Unfortunately we had a tie with 3 people voting for 9am and 3 people voting for 9pm, which are extremely opposite each other.

So now for the next week there will be a runoff election.  On the right is the poll, with only those two times remaining.  It's up to you, the people, to decide which time you want questions to post.  Both are Eastern Standard Time, so if you're on the west coast or in England or something you might not want to vote for 9am EST.  I'm just saying.

BTW, the question for this Wednesday will still be at noon EST.  This question is multiple choice, so you have a 20% chance of getting it right even if you have no clue about superheroes or comic books.  (If you want better odds, start boning up on your Robins.  There's a hint for you.)

So get ready at noon on Wednesday and vote in the poll on the right.  Remember, if you don't vote you have no right to complain later.

Tuesday is still a Two-Fer.  Hooray!

Thursday Review: Batman Knightfall

By now you've probably already seen The Dark Knight Rises and you've maybe even read my review of it.  So now I think I can talk about the story that at least partially inspired the movie without feeling like I'm "spoiling" things for people.  Though really when I talk about the Knightfall comic book series I might mush it together with the novelization I actually read first.  There are some things in the novelization not in the comics and vice versa.

Anyway, even though until 1993 or so I'd read exactly one Batman comic in my life (it was this one where he fights some hockey player guy; somehow a tattered copy of it ended up in my closet along with part of a '60s Superman comic where he goes back in time somehow) for some reason I became obsessed with the Knightfall story.  Not obsessed enough to actually BUY any comics.  I mean back then I was like 14 and the only money I had came from mowing my grandma's yard (10 big ones!) or if I embezzled my lunch money, which was maybe another $5.

Which actually makes me wonder where the hell I'd even heard what was going on in Batman comics in the first place.  I mean this was before Al Gore had invented the World Wide Web so I couldn't even go to Wikipedia and read about it.  It was probably from going to Waldenbooks (remember when that was a thing?) or the used book store.  Though now that I think of it, I remember they ran a story on it on "Today" back when I still watched that on occasion.  That might have been what got me started.

Anyway, I think what fascinated me was the idea of the hero LOSING.  And not losing because he sacrifices himself to save a bunch of people or something like that but losing because the bad guy actually outthinks and outmuscles him.  In other words, the bad guy actually bests Batman.

So when I got around to reading the novelization (I realized later the writing is crap but the story is good), I fell in love with it even more.  The basic story goes that in this crappy Latin American island prison called Santa Prisca is this guy named Bane.  He breaks out of prison and goes up to Gotham.  He finds out from his minions (three dudes with goofy names:  Bird, Trogg, and Zombie) that Batman is all the shit in Gotham.  Bane does a little studying on the Batman and comes up with a brilliant way to destroy Batman.  [Incidentally, the full backstory of Bane is in the "Vengeance of Bane" comic that I'll review in a couple of weeks.  Because I can.]

The first thing he does is stage a raid on Arkham Asylum where most of Batman's old foes are: the Joker, Two-Face, the Riddler, and so forth.  (But not the Penguin, who was in Blackgate Prison I guess.)  Batman manages to catch a few of the crazies during the raid but the worst ones get free.

So now Batman has to go around chasing after all these bad guys at the same time.  Needless to say this gets pretty tiring.  After one of these battles, Bane watches the Batmobile and figures out which neighborhood it's going to.  Then he deduces that Bruce Wayne is the Batman.

From there he busts his way into the Batcave, where Bruce was trying in vain to get a little shut eye.  There's a somewhat anticlimactic battle between them, where Bane just whoops the hell out of Batman.  Finally, he lifts Batman up and then brings him down over his knee, breaking Batman's back.  In the novelization it says at the last second Batman is able to turn a little so his spine isn't like completely severed.

To add insult to injury, Bane takes Batman into Gotham and then chucks him into a crowd or something.  In the novelization it's kind of funny because he takes Batman to this street corner where there's only one old lady who witnesses him declaring himself the king of Gotham.

So there you go, our hero has lost.  Batman is defeated, and pretty handily too.  Of course like many comic book villains before him, Bane made the mistake of leaving Bruce Wayne alive instead of just killing him.  I mean it probably would have gone differently if he had killed Bruce before he could tap a successor.

Probably the biggest contrivance in this whole storyline is that Bruce doesn't tap Dick Grayson (Nightwing, formerly original Robin) to replace him.  Instead he picks this Jean-Paul Valley guy, who was an assassin known as Azrael.  [I'll talk more about him in 3 weeks.  Again, because I can.]


Anyway, so Jean-Paul becomes the new Batman.  He has problems like he doesn't know how to drive well, he hates Robin (score one for him!), and he struggles with Batman's whole not killing thing since Azrael was an assassin who obviously killed people.  Also when he tangles with the Scarecrow and gets a whiff of fear gas he starts to go nuts, thinking he hears this phony St. Dumas (the patron saint of the Azrael people) talking to him.

But thanks to going crazy he designs a new Batsuit that is wicked cool.  I have him standing right on my desk as I'm typing this.  The new Batsuit was designed more like the Azrael suit, which is more armor-y or kind of robotic-looking.  It has these cool dart guns and even flamethrowers.  Yes, flamethrowers!  Instead of a cape he has all these kind of partitions that form wings.  The problem at least with the new Batsuit (AzBats as some people call it) is that it's really top heavy.  To get him to stand on a stand I took from the Nite Owl II Watchmen figure I bought I have to bend his knees to give him more balance.

And here reenacting Knightfall are my Batman action figures.  You have old Bruce Wayne Batman on the ground with Bane standing over him.  To the left is the new Batsuit Jean-Paul designs.  This was the latest (and most accurate) figure.  To the right are two older versions of AzBats that I bought at some point.  The little blue one I got in about 1996 as part of a Legends of Batman two-pack along with Viking Batman (not pictured).  The red one was part of some set I bought online that included the old Batman on the ground there, regular Superman, and "Superman Red" which was part of a cheesy late 90s plot where Superman was some kind of energy being.  Anyway, the AzBats figure in that set actually had a blackish cape and head, which made no sense since that was never how it was depicted in the comics.  So I repainted it red, which sort of matches how he looks at the end of the Knightsend series.  Also, for the Bane figure I bought a Legends of the Dark Knight version from the mid-90s but the head was really stupid-looking (it had long hair and the mask didn't look right) so I chopped off his head and then online I found a replacement head from the newer figure (in the same set as the AzBats on the left) that you could only get complete if you bought all six figures in that set, which would have been a lot more expensive.  His pants should really be black and the tubes bright green but the hell with that.  So that should give you an idea how deep my obsession with this is.


Anyway, with his kickass new suit, AzBats goes out looking for Bane, even though Bruce Wayne told him not to.  There's a climactic fight, where of course the new Batman wins.  Hooray!

Except you know that Jean-Paul's reign couldn't last.  I mean they made the dude crazy and gave him a French name.  So they pretty much set him up for failure right there.

Anyway (yet again) I loved this storyline.  As I said at the beginning, I think it was a different way to look at things.  Also, though, Bane was a great villain in the comics.  He was not only really strong but he was smart too.  One of the many things that disappointed me with "Batman & Robin" was that they made Bane this idiot henchman for Poison Ivy.  I suppose a lot of the problem was being super strong it was hard in 1997 to cast someone who could look the part.  (That and Joel Schumacher is a moron.)  I mean back then if you wanted someone with lots of muscles they couldn't really act.  (See Bane's co-star Ahhh-nold Schwarzenegger for an example.  Or Lou Ferigno in "The Incredible Hulk.")  Of course nowadays with computers you can make a regular-sized guy look huge, which is how Mark Ruffalo can be the Hulk in "The Avengers."  At least in "The Dark Knight Rises" Bane gets his balls back, even if you can only understand half of what he's saying.

If you ever buy the paperback reprints of the series (I had to buy at least one used because it was out of stock or just really expensive on Amazon) it comes in two volumes.  The first volume deals with Bruce Wayne being broken and the second volume deals with Jean-Paul kicking Bane's ass.  What sucks though in volume 2 is a sizable chunk of it is actually a flashback to when Bruce's Batman fought Two-Face.  That seemed kind of dumb; why didn't they just put that in volume 1?  I think too the story in the comics might not have been quite as epic as I'd built it up to be in my own brain, but it still makes for fun reading.

And you know if you just saw the movie, you might want to see how the original went, right?

If I ever publish the entire Scarlet Knight series, the sixth story (which incidentally is my favorite) is largely inspired by Knightfall.  Part of it is set in an alternate future where an aging Emma gets whupped on by a new breed of Black Dragoons.  One of them severs her spine so that she's left paralyzed.  Her daughter Louise then hears "the Call" to become the next Scarlet Knight and like Jean-Paul she struggles with the superhero gig and her predecessor's legacy.  Though unlike him she isn't crazy, so she's got that going for her.  Maybe its close relation to Knightfall is why I like it?  Hurm...

Next Thursday I'll ramble about the Knightsend saga, which was a battle between the Batmen.  Who wins?  Um, duh, who do you think?  Then after that are the two Vengeance of Bane comics.  And the week after that a post on Azrael.  Then after that a post on the Batman: Venom series.  So basically I'm dedicating all of August's reviews to stuff relating to Knightfall and indirectly to "The Dark Knight Rises."  (Because I can.)

In the meantime, Tuesday is another Two-Fer...

Comic Captions #2

It's the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's time for Comic Captions.  The last one was on July 4th, so maybe you didn't notice it.  The premise is simple:  I take a page from a comic book, clear out the word bubbles, and then the fun is writing something to replace what was in the dialog bubbles.  It's like a Mad Lib or a meme.

Here's this month's selection from Batman issue #8:

 

OK, now here's my stab at it:

BATMAN:  I AM...a copyright lawsuit waiting to happen.

Get it?  Because he's wearing a robot suit like Iron Man.  Yeah, no one said it has to be GOOD.

Now you try in the comments.  And don't cop out by saying, "Oh gee I can't think of anything."  Just go with the first thing that pops in your head.  What are you, chicken?  Bawk bawk bawk...and if that doesn't work I'll triple dog dare you.


Tomorrow I ramble on about the Knightfall series that inspired the recent Batman movie...

Two-Fer Tuesday #14

It's Tuesday, which means another Two Fer Tuesday.  If you're not acquainted with the rules, I use a random number generator to pick a page and paragraph to pluck two sentences from.  Let's see what we get this week.

Page Number: 11
Paragraph Number: 9


Things are a brewin' here:

Ian turned to go, but then quickly changed direction again to look towards Dr. Brighton’s office.  “Has he given you any trouble?”

Is she in trouble?  Hurm...

Tomorrow is August so it's another edition of Comic Captions!

Dog Days of Writing

I haven't done a lot of writing related posts this year.  I'm just taking a minute or two to post my semi-annual progress report.  There's not a lot to talk about really.  I've only written two stories this year, both replacement stories for the second book of a series.  They came out to less than 150,000 words altogether.  That might seem good until you compare it with 2010 when throughout the whole year I wrote almost one million words.  That was pretty epic.  Last year I got off to a really slow start, struggling to finish a couple of things.  Then I picked up some momentum in July and then in August hit on a new idea that carried me through the rest of the year, so I guess things could pick up.

But mostly this year I've been more focused on editing stuff, for the obvious reason that signing with a publisher meant I had to do some editing.  Then of course I decided instead of trying to edit the second one to just rebuild it entirely.  Which then involves more editing.  And then I read this other story I'd written a while ago.  I'd tried to write a sequel in the fall of 2006 and spring of 2007 but neither one had turned out very well.  (They quite frankly sucked ass.)  Finally, five years later, I thought of how to do it better.  So hooray.

There you have it.  How are your writing goals coming along?