Surely nothing could really go wrong in Idiot’s Delight. Right?

Sherwood’s masterful satire accurately predicts so much of what happened in WWII that you’ll get a chill down your spine. Switch Italy for Germany and France for Poland and he gets the order of involvement in the war perfectly. The minor elements he gets wrong are not so far from the truth. His text is so powerful that he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1936 for Drama.

The technique of building the conflict of Idiot’s Delight is pure Modernism. Sherwood takes every opportunity to mock trends, imitate society, and comment on the nature of theater. The manager of the American dancers, Harry Van, constantly sits at the piano in the lounge and comments on the nature of manipulating an audience. My favorite moment in the script is how Sherwood describes the minor changes he makes to turn a Russian folk song into jazz, “Indian” music, and utter chaos.

This scene is the key to unlocking Idiot’s Delight. Anytime internationalism rises, sparks fly. If two people are holding a conversation in Italian, three people are talking in English at the same time. Characters like the Russian woman, Irene (ih-rain-uh, like Cat People), routinely flow through multiple languages and accents to ignite conflict. It’s bad enough that their countries all hate each other. It’s worse to mock their mother tongue with poor use of dialect. That’s just not proper behavior.

Like any good work of Modernism, there is a play within the play. The American girls and their singing/dancing manager put on an elaborate floor show for Germans, Italians, Austrians, French, and English alike as the planes return to the Italian military base. The show is interrupted by a quartet of troops who are greeted with a “fascist anthem” before the girls go right back into a soft shoe number. The world has changed while they focused on frivolous entertainment and civility is no longer a worthwhile commodity.

Their true biases come out. The accusations of war crimes and mistreatment flow like champagne at the bar. People are written off and lives are changed forever. Even the silly showgirls are told to change their act and step up their game as the key to success in the new world order is cooperation, not competition.

It’s rare for any play, let alone a work of Modernism, to read this well on the page. After a slow introduction–an intentional device of discomfort, Sherwood packs so much action and movement into the script that you have no choice but to engage. Seeing it performed will only add timing and music to a beautifully composed play.

Cross posted at Cannonball Read IV.

His debut novel The Martian Chronicles weaves an intricate tapestry of life on Mars for the first colonial settlers. Fahrenheit 451 is one of the most influential science fiction novels of all time, speculating on a future where information and opinions are controlled by the destruction of every book in existence. Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Halloween Tree are seminal works in the canon of youth horror and two of the best Halloween-set novels ever written.

Bradbury wrote for television, theater, and film. He composed over 400 short stories and novellas. He saw great critical and commercial success in his lifetime and used his fame to fight for literacy and libraries.

The man is an icon and he will be missed. I believe his own words serve as a fitting tribute. via Letters of Note

I discovered there was a typing room where you could rent a typewriter for ten cents a half hour. I moved into the typing room along with a bunch of students and my bag of dimes, which totaled $9.80, which I spent and created the 25,000 word version of “The Fireman” in nine days. How could I have written so many words so quickly? It was because of the library. All of my friends, all of my loved ones, were on the shelves above and shouted, yelled and shrieked at me to be creative. So I ran up and down the stairs, finding books and quotes to put in my “Fireman” novella. You can imagine how exciting it was to do a book about book burning in the very presence of the hundreds of my beloveds on the shelves. It was the perfect way to be creative; that’s what the library does.

The original artwork shows TinTin and Snowy being tracked

The current record for most expensive comic book auction is $2.16million for an original Action Comics (Superman’s debut) last November. The older the medium gets, the more attention these originals will receive.

It doesn’t hurt that comics are central in the pop culture zeitgeist right now. The Avengers just passed The Dark Knight to be the third highest grossing film of all time. Marvel announced the wedding of two gay X-Men and DC announced that the current Green Lantern is gay.

Everything old is new again and TinTin visiting the Old West is now a million dollar property.

What comic art would you want for your collection? I could go for some X-Men The Dark Phoenix Saga original boards, myself. What about you? Sound off below.

This is why I’m not surprised by the origin of The Blue Ear. When Marvel gets the chance to do good things, they do good things.

The Blue Ear is inspired by a four year old boy named Anthony Smith. Anthony is hearing impaired and decided one day that he did not want to wear his hearing aids to school anymore. He told his mother, Christina D’Allesandro, “superheroes do not wear blue ears (the brand of hearing aid he uses).”

The Blue Ear springs into action with his super powered hearing aid

Marvel couldn’t stop there. Marvel editor Lauren Sankovith forwarded Christine’s letter to artist Nelson Ribeiro and asked if he could do something for Anthony. He took the blue ear brand, added “the” in front of it, and came up with The Blue Ear. The Blue Ear’s superpower comes from his hearing aid that lets him pick up distress calls and help people.

Ribiero has sent two illustrations to Anthony Smith so far and explains the entire experience at his blog.

I’m interested in finding out if there are any plans to expand upon The Blue Ear mythology. This story blew up over the weekend, being covered everywhere from Bit Rebels to Gawker and even TV news stations. There’s an interest in the hero and a clear use for children all over the world to learn about hearing impairment. Will they capitalize on this momentum or will this peak as a small act of kindness for a Marvel fan?

What do you think? Would you read The Blue Ear? Sound off below.

JTHM Director's Cut is a killer collection. Literally. It's in the title.

The concept is encapsulated in the title. A man named Johnny is a homicidal maniac. He kills people in horrible ways using an expansive subterranean torture chamber and some on the street ingenuity. Are you supposed to root for the killer? Nope. The victims? Guess again. The survivors? Only one, and she gets her own issue to deconstruct everything that should stop you from reading the series at all.

The key to Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is realizing that it’s an exploration of character, society, pop culture, and storytelling. Johnny is an anti-hero up to the point when he crushes someone’s skull. Then he’s just comic relief in dry satire of the over-saturation of violence in American media. Except for when that violence is against a particularly vile archetype that slips by in America. Then he’s the symbol of justice, like Batman with razor blades and surgical hooks.

If you don’t recognize how disturbing the content of the book is, you’re part of the thesis. How often are we willing to look the other way just because? Do we ignore heinous behavior from well-admired people because they’re well-admired? What about people with serious mental health problems? Do we just brush them into the basement to do who knows what as self-therapy? And can anyone actually make a meaningful impact on the world by himself? Or is a singular quest for justice, peace, revolution, or better treatment at the checkout line a lost cause from the start?

JTHM is violent dark comedy based on self-reflection and social commentary

The downside to Director’s Cut is a matter of space. The original run of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac had multiple side comics contained within. “Happy Noodle Boy” is the schizophrenic stick figure comic that Johnny himself writes in the main story. “Public Service Announcement” mocked the absurdity of the slippery slope anti-everything campaigns of the 80s and 90s and the Anne Gwish side-stories skewered the target audience of the comics. These are all represented in the collection. However, the riotously funny, Twilight Zone-esque “Meanwhile” comics were left on the cutting room floor. Now where will you get to see pinatas take revenge on a four year old after a birthday party?

The book is filled with a ton of bonus content at the end, including character bios, the history of Johnny, and Jhonen’s commentary on each issue. This is the part of my copy that is the closest to recycled material. Ink is missing and the pages fan back to the spine. While Jhonen Vasquez has a clear voice in the comics, his persona connected to his creation of the comics is hilarious. This is a man who knows exactly what he’s doing when he puts pen to paper and starts coloring shadows.

It takes a certain kind of person to get a kick out of JTHM. This collection is filled with disturbing violence, angst-ridden stream of consciousness narration, and really offensive humor. If you come in with the right perspective and know what you’re getting into, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director’s Cut can be a fun read.

Cross-posted at Cannonball Read IV.

Thoughts? Love to hear them.

No one is as consumed with the Harry Potter series as the author herself. Rowling spent seventeen years working on the seven mega hit novels. As she reveals in Pottermore, she even created what she calls “ghost trails”–side plots for major characters that didn’t even come close to making the final edits of the books. Her universe is so well-planned and researched that she sometimes forgets these side stories are not common knowledge.

Diagon Alley is filled with life in Pottermore

These are not random little tidbits being thrown out to earn money. For one thing, Pottermore is a free website that anyone can join. No, these are fully developed ideas that Rowling very easily could have turned into additional books. She already did that with The Tales of Beedle the Bard and Quidditch Through the Ages. Pottermore is fan service of a unprecedented scope.

Pottermore is an interactive online community with gaming elements. It’s not quite an MMORPG as I predicted when it was first teased, but it’s close. You explore all the various settings of the novels chapter by chapter. You interact with objects to find additional information and stories from J.K. Rowling.

Brew potions to earn points for your house in Pottermore

The only rule in Pottermore is that you have to follow the story in order. You can’t jump to the final chapter until you’ve explored the entire first novel. The locked features open in a specific order. Once content is unlocked, you can always go back and explore further.

I would not consider myself a big Harry Potter fan by any means. I read the books (to a point) and saw the films (all but the last three on TV or DVD). I am, however, having a good bit of fun exploring Pottermore. It’s a clever supplement and one that will only keep growing as they add on the rest of the series book by book.

So are you joining Pottermore? Sound off below.

What has happened to the throne in Blood Kin?

This is a shame. Blood Kin otherwise has an interesting story to tell. The three men were so isolated by the previous leader’s regime that they didn’t even know a revolution was brewing. They spend the rest of the novel finding out just what, exactly, their beloved employer did to result in a bloody coup. Their lives are forced together in uncomfortable ways as the new president boards them in the same room without access to their friends and families.

Worse still, Dovey has a beautiful voice. She has a great eye for detail and isn’t afraid to go for unpleasant details if they’re the easiest way to get the image across.

I have the rolling pin in my hand–it is time to creep up on the abalone and surprise them with a death blow She watches me walk the length of the kitchen toward the darkened pantry; I tiptoe the last few steps for dramatic effect and then crouch above them. Three I kill before they contract, but the last realizes what is coming and stiffens. I will have to throw it out.

If the only issue was the unvarying voice, Blood Kin would be a better book than it is. Unfortunately, the characters become obsessed not with the intriguing mystery of the shift in leadership but the fate of their lovers and wives. They use those relationships to learn more about the coup, true, but everything focuses on the romance. It becomes all consuming in the novel. It might be more realistic for the trapped men to worry about their loved ones, but it does not make for a particularly compelling book when a revolution is happening.

Blood Kin by Ceridwen Dovey had the potential to be a great novel. Unfortunately, the misguided structural conceit and the focus on romance over the main narrative drags it down.

Cross-posted at Cannonball Read IV

Thoughts? Love to hear them.

In Corridor by Robin Parrish, the rules of the game never stop moving or adapting.

Are Troy and Victoria likable characters? No. We never learn enough about them beyond personal tragedy to gauge that. They’re more developed than foils, but not anywhere near as developed as your typical sci-fi survivor/last one archetype.

But are they empathetic? Goodness, yes. We believe Troy’s desperation and Victoria’s panic because Robin Parrish keeps them in the moment. If they have time to talk, it’s fleeting. Time is constantly ticking away and Troy will not live long enough to meet Victoria in the flesh if he does not keep running. The novel only works as well as it does because the two leads are believable. We can connect to their emotional states because the stakes are obvious.

Corridor does suffer from an overly episodic structure. The rules of the environment may shift within a task, but the look, style, and details do not change beyond the initial presence of danger. The only time the parameters of a really well planned alternate universe grow is when Troy moves into another room.

The rooms are defined by color on a very basic level. White is light, orange is fire, and green is plant life. Parrish could have delivered a more compelling world by playing against these expectations. Why does blue have to be water and ice? It could have been space, depression, fear (shivers, as if from cold), blood, or something unrelated to add more challenge to Troy’s tasks. The rooms themselves are menacing and imaginative, but the linear relation to common associations is perhaps a bit too plain.

Corridor is being marketed as Hunger Games-ish in content, which is sadly a poor reflection on Parrish’s intentions. He did not set out to write a great commentary on modern society or teach a lesson about the fleeting nature of fame or the harsh reality of war. His goal wasn’t even to create a strong and self-reliant protagonist. He wanted to make a twisted game come to life in the world of science fiction and he succeeded.

A better parallel would be Cube, where there is no guarantee that anyone will survive the ever-changing environment. There is an internal logic to the structure of the challenge. It’s just not the most direct logic. The guiding force is obvious in hindsight and acts as a strong denouement at the end.

Robin Parrish subtitles the novel A Mythworks Novel, implying some kind of series to come from Corridor. It’s hard to imagine where he would take it. Will it be a collection of related novels in the same universe? As close to a continuation of Corridor as possible given what happens in the novel? Or will it be some kind of exploration of the limits of YA science fiction? All of these seem possible given how Corridor works. If the books stay consistent in quality, it’ll be worth exploring future books.

Thoughts? Love to hear them.

The subject is Battle Royale versus The Hunger Games and I’ve been trying to write about it for real since January. The reason it’s taken so long to get here is simple: reading The Hunger Games completely reversed my thinking on the subject. I wouldn’t dream of writing a real critical piece without actually reading the source material, but that doesn’t mean I don’t start to think of arguments based on research and what I know for sure.

The issue at play here is one of plagiarism versus parallels. How can we tell if intellectual theft has occurred when the core of the idea has been around for centuries? It’s a tricky topic because it places the intentions of the author against the finished product that can easily take on a life of its own.

I can firmly say that I do not believe Suzanne Collins intentionally did anything wrong. I’m willing to take her at her word that she has not read Battle Royale or seen the film. The inspiration she cites–reality TV, the Iraq War, the Vietnam War, and the myth of Theseus–add up to the story she told. Do I think that, at some point, she might have heard about the popular Japanese property? Is there a chance it influenced her on a subconscious level? Yes.

But that’s no different than any other writer. We experience things–life, media, reviews, theories–and they eventually come out in unexpected ways. If she didn’t set out to steal ideas and approached the story in such a radically different way, she didn’t plagiarize Koushun Takami’s work.

Do similar bold, graphic, representational covers mean the stories are the same?

The threat of brutal death delivered under the public eye has been a common literary and cinematic device for decades. Shirley Jackson famously played up the random victim of public spectacle in “The Lottery.” Running Man, both Stephen King’s novel and the film, predicted the kind of reality TV content that became enough of a cultural zeitgeist to inspire modern writers to criticize the form with televised murder again and again. Both versions of Death Race as well as Videodrome take the spectacle further, punishing anyone who tries to silence the system with mandatory participation in the games. Even Series 7: The Contenders predicts teenagers being thrown into these games with the inclusion of a high school student in the “win three seasons to earn your freedom” kill or be killed reality show. Did all these films and novels steal from each other? Or did the creators all arrive at a similar concept to explore vastly different issues?

The reason The Hunger Games and Battle Royale get lumped together is children. Specifically, they’re the two most recent novels/films to have children fight to the death for public spectacle. On paper, the similarities are damning. Here are boilerplates for the two novels. See if you can tell which is which.

#1:

In a post-apocalyptic future where all of the world’s major societies have fallen, the government has decided to keep the people in line by having entire classes of students fight to the death on a live broadcast. They are randomly assigned weapons in an ever-changing arena filled with traps that punishes those who break the rules or fail to pay attention. The winner is the last child standing, who is taken on a whirlwind publicity tour to show the power of the government. However, in the latest game, two students team up to beat the system and hopefully make it out alive.

#2:

In a post-apocalyptic future where all of the world’s major societies have fallen, the government has decided to keep the people in line by having randomly chosen children and teenagers from all over the country fight to the death on a live broadcast. They are trained to use randomly selected weapons in an ever-changing arena filled with traps that punishes those who break the rules or fail to pay attention. The winner is the last child standing, who is taken on a whirlwind publicity tour to show the power of the government. However, in the latest game, two children team up to beat the system and hopefully make it out alive.

Do twisted men controlling a youth bloodbath mean Battle Royale and The Hunger Games are permanently linked?

In Battle Royale, Koushun Takami writes a deeply satirical novel of the Japanese government’s efforts to force children to stay in school until they graduate. The Battle Royale program is instituted as a scared straight program. Until truancy rates drop, each month, a different classroom full of students will be taken away to fight to the death. The program has no effect on the education system. Families are scandalized and Battle Royale only happens to keep the people in line with government thinking. Fight against them and you will be executed for interfering.

Takami writes a unique series of third person episodes. Once the children are in the arena, their individual stories are told one after the other. You’ll see who lives, who dies, and what they are thinking about the program, their classmates, and what they’ve accomplished with their lives. Some children choose honor through suicide, while others hope and pray that maybe the government will see the light and free them. Still others have been forced into the game to punish them for winning in the past or being uncontrollable wards of the state. The result is a gut-wrenching novel of absurd violence and biting satire that will haunt you for years.

Suzanne Collins takes a very different approach in The Hunger Games. The entire story is told from the perspective of Katniss Everdeen, a poor teenager in a mining district. She has learned to hunt with a bow and deadly force for her family’s survival. Here, the games exist to remind the districts that the Capital controls every aspect of their lives after a failed rebellion years before. Only two children are taken from each district–one boy, one girl–and Katniss volunteers at 16 to save the life of her 12 year old sister. Katinss is buffed, polished, painted, and prepped to be a reality TV icon for the greedy Capital. She becomes a favorite to win the Hunger Games because she surprises the controllers of the game with a shocking display of archery skills. Her prep team plans a story arc behind her back, allowing her fellow district tribute to declare his love for her the night before they enter the arena.

Collins’ first person prose is a trick used to engage a younger reader. Katniss feels real, so you’re willing to follow along with the absurdity of the concept. Collins is not aiming for satire, but a tangible understanding of the ravages of war. The children are the focus so the YA audience can empathize with their struggle. They are trained to fight to the death by a government obsessed with controlling people to parallel the power-motivation for war. The lens of reality TV, the fancy futuristic technology, and the romantic angle exist only to soften the blow of the violence.

Are forest settings and fighting children enough to cry plagiarism?

The Internet makes life immediate. These grand parallels between a Japanese property that never received a proper US release and a blockbuster YA trilogy pop up because you can search “novels like The Hunger Games” and have Battle Royale pop up as a result on Google. IMDB is even a major player in the phenomenon. You can search for a plot detail and find hundreds of films that may or may not be connected beyond a shared keyword.

With seemingly all the information in the world available in a few seconds, it becomes easy to let cynicism rule in the wake of coincidence. You can find this superficial parallel in an instant. Therefore, it must be [insert assumption here].

I fell for it since The Hunger Games was released. Someone actually told me it was Battle Royale for teenagers. I read the Wikipedia page and couldn’t see any alternative. Suzanne Collins stole one of my favorite modern novels and whitewashed it for a younger audience. I was determined not to read the novels because how could they possibly hold up to the original.

I was wrong. The approach, the style, even the narrative are so different that I felt foolish for ever questioning the merits of The Hunger Games. There are discussions to be had about the content of the book and the film. Is that level of violence really appropriate in a YA novel? Does Collins push her war allegory too far into a specific political ideology? Does adapting the trilogy into a series of films glorify the level of violence that Collins is criticizing?

What shouldn’t be the driving force of discussion is claiming The Hunger Games rips off Battle Royale. It’s an oversimplification of two tightly-executed novels that deserve better. Comparative analysis would be appropriate, but not diatribes on who stole from who or why you refuse to read one because of the fans of the other.

Fiction is not a zero sum game. You can like one, both, or neither. You can even make the argument for how similar the properties are. Reducing a discussion of literary/cinematic merit to “you stole my toys so I’m going home to cry to Mommy” is a disservice to whichever property you prefer.

If The Hunger Games and Battle Royale teach us anything, it is the value of cooperation. Shared goals can be achieved even in the face of extreme opposition if you are willing to actually work together. You might not achieve everything on your own, but you can make more progress with a partner than you can on your own. If the novels themselves are not a case for accepting the cultural cache of both novels, I don’t know what is.

Thoughts? Love to hear them.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) had a table set up in the main hallway of the MangaNEXT convention. They had stacks of raffle tickets, artwork, pins, and pamphlets to raise awareness and raise money for this very issue. I spent a little bit of time talking to the workers at the table throughout the weekend to find out what was happening.

Brandon X, as he’s being called, is facing serious legal trouble in Canada over comics. Specifically, he had a collection of manga on his laptop. Customs officials in Canada asked to see his cellphone, iPad, and laptop. It is within their rights and jurisdiction to search electronic media at customs. When the customs official saw the wide-eyed child-like style of manga, they interpreted it as child pornography. The CBLDF is not releasing the names of the titles in question, but they plainly state that these were not pornographic titles.

The logo for the CBLDF's work on the Brandon X case

There are a few takeaways from this incident. One, it is not isolated. Comic artists Tom Neely and Dylan Williams had books they were carrying over the US/Canadian border confiscated last May due to allegedly obscene material. One book featured two first year art students kissing–they looked too much like children–and the other book featured dark humor bordering on horror used as satire–naughty things with corpses. The books were seized and shipped to Ottawa to be examined for an official ruling on whether or not books already published in Canada were obscene material.

The second point is the nature of obscene material. It’s not enough at the US/Canadian border to explain how the wide-eyed characters of traditional manga art are not children. You have to prove, in context, the age of the characters. If they do anything even remotely romantic in nature (like kissing, as Neely and Williams learned), you will face problems caused by the allegedly obscene content. It’s not just child-like characters that can raise eyes of customs agents. Anything that can be deemed obscene–violence, sex, depravity of any kind–can result in legal problems.

The third point is a major one. Until last weekend, I had no idea this happened. Comics are comics, book are books, and so long as they’re published legally, there shouldn’t be a problem, right? Obviously, I was wrong.

Is this image from The Initial of Sarah obscene because of the lack of context?

What about the volumes on extreme horror and B-movie advertising that accompany me on all but weekend excursions? Are those obscene too? What about the webcomics in my bookmark folder or the archives of my own comic work? Some of those characters look like children even when they aren’t. Would I be facing obscenity charges if I crossed over into Canada today?

What we have with the story of Brandon X are two ways to help change this situation. First, you can give everyone you know a heads up about this issue. Share the CBLDF site, this post, or any information you find on issues of content censorship gone haywire. Knowledge is power and this subject is under-represented all over the place.

Second, you can consider joining to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The money won’t just be going to Brandon X’s trial costs. It’s used for all aspects of their work. The goals of the CBLDF are to fight censorship and raise awareness of censorship issues facing comic creators and fans alike. The funds are split between legal and educational efforts. Memberships start at $25. You can also donate directly to the CBLDF for a minimum of $5 or purchase donated items from artists and writers in their shop.

The case of Brandon X is not an isolated incident. Unless we work to raise awareness of censorship issues and fight against genre bias, he won’t be the last person to get in trouble for owning a comic book.

Thoughts? Love to hear them.