Tony Harris, the award-winning comic book artist of Ex-Machina, Starman, and many DC/Marvel series, has taken a passionate stance on the subject of cosplay at conventions. Harris posted a long rant on his Facebook page admonishing women who he believes cosplay just to get attention at conventions. He accuses them of not really being fans, choosing costumes just to show …
The challenge of translating a novel from another language is balancing the style and tone with the literal text. Lean too far towards literary flourish and you’re radically altering the content of the book. Stay too true to the literal text and you lose the nuance of wordplay in the original language that probably can’t carry over directly. The English …
I recently had the pleasure of chaperoning a group of advanced high school theater students to a production of Tony Kushner’s little seen play A Bright Room Called Day. I’ve known for years about the problematic text (and even saw a production or two before), yet had neither a reason or desire to read it. This one black box production …
I’m a huge William Faulkner fan. His novel The Sound and the Fury had a huge impact on my reading habits when I entered high school. The shifts in form and style resonated with me even if it took a few readings to put the whole thing together. Faulkner was one of the key American authors working during the Modernism/Interwar …
Remember that terrible Brandon X situation I wrote about last year? An American man, crossing the border into Canada, was charged with child pornography for having manga images on his computer. Though the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund could not say exactly what the manga was, they reassured me earlier this year that the images were nowhere near the more …
It took me a long time to realize that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel Watchmen is one of my favorite books. It was a slow realization born of careful analysis and frequent returns to the material. For the uninitiated, Watchmen is a superhero murder mystery. In an alternate version of America, the country won the Vietnam War. President …
Sexuality. Religion. Racism. Language. Violence. Politics. Fear. Occult. These are just some of the reasons why libraries and school systems across America have been pressured to ban or restrict books from patrons, usually children. Yesterday, 30 September 2012, marked the first day of the 30th Annual Banned Books Week. This week long celebration is all about the books that some …
How to Make Webcomics is not a book you’re going to pick up as a casual read. It’s a well-planned guidebook to all the big technical topics that come into play when you want to launch a webcomic. Brad Guigar (Evil, Inc), Dave Kellett (Sheldon), Scott Kurtz (PvP), and Kris Straub (Starslip Crisis) break down everything you need to know …
When I learned that Felicia Day was running a romance fiction book club called Vaginal Fantasy Book Club, I didn’t pay much attention. I’m not exactly the target demographic for romance fiction. What I know about it–the paperbacks with dreamy, scantily-clad models on the cover–doesn’t appeal to me. Give me some Modernism or a thick tome of genre fiction and …
As announced on Stephen King’s own website, the famed horror author will be releasing a sequel to 1977′s The Shining on 24 September 2013. The book will be called Doctor Sleep and it’s all about Danny. I was skeptical at first. For one thing, I’m not a big fan of the original novel. I think King spends a bit too …
To boldly procrastinate where none have procrastinated before. Check out the latest Food Don’t Go Stale in Space today.
You’d be surprise how often people think this is writing something new. No, changing names/places is not the same as writing something brand new. I can’t just copy/paste out the details in a review and have a new piece that makes any sense. Neither can authors. Wait… Never mind. Copy/Paste for everyone! Wave of the future! Full comic right here. …
The year is 1936. The location is a remote ski lodge in the Italian Alps, formerly the Austrian Alps. An entrepreneur is struggling to keep his hotel in business. Just when his manager tries to tell everyone to clock out early, a group of varied international tourists all show up at once. There’s a British honeymooning couple, an American burlesque …
Ray Bradbury, one of the all time great authors of speculative fiction, passed away today at 91 years old. Where most genre authors are known for one great work, Bradbury goes down in the record books with several iconic titles. His debut novel The Martian Chronicles weaves an intricate tapestry of life on Mars for the first colonial settlers. Fahrenheit …
