Popular Gods

So I just finished volume 1 of The Wicked + The Divine by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, which was pretty great. It's a graphic novel about 12 teenagers who gain the mantle of gods every 90 years (the gods come from different pantheons, and they often change each recurrence). After 2 years of 'being loved and being hated' these young gods all must die for unknown reasons. Then the cycle begins anew.

 Each god has powers pertaining to their mythology, and some gods with multiple incarnations/interpretations have multiple forms.Usually, said gods become celebrities or pop stars, because how could they not. So there's some commentary on the nature of fame in addition to the genre staples of power and responsibility, which is a brilliant contrast to the secret world approach that is ubiquitous in Urban Fantasy. It is tremendously refreshing to see UF that breaks away from the typical "I'm discovering my powers," or "I'm a monster slaying detective" molds.

 Have Wikipedia handy, because I've got pretty strong mythology game and there were plenty of references I didn't recognize. Conversely, I worried that I would miss too many of the musical references to really enjoy the series, since tunes are my pop-cultural blind spot (particularly stuff before the nineties), but I feel like I got most of them since Gillen plays it safe with references to Bowie, the Stones and the Beatles.

McKelvie's character designs are stupid gorgeous, and Matt Wilson brings some of the most vibrant colors out of anything I have ever read. It was a very nice contrast to David Aja's more subtle and abstract (but also phenomenal) approach in Hawkeye, which I also just finished up--I'm going to miss that one, even if it meant the occasional year or half-year wait between volumes. Should be mandatory reading for people who enjoy superhero books, even if you 'only read DC'.

Anyway, back to TW+TD, the only flaw it has is the main character suffers from looking glass syndrome, almost to the point of self-parody but that looks to be changing in the next volume. The first one ends with a bang, so I'm very curious to see where things go from here. Mythology folks and UF fans should check this one out.

It's nice to have a new ongoing to read now that The Unwritten, Hawekeye, and Locke & Key have all wrapped. Anybody have any other new recommendations?

Ancillary Politics

It's been awhile since I read a book that really challenged me, which probably doesn't speak highly of my reading habits, but at DragonCon I finally got to finish up Ancillary Justice, which was a Christmas gift. Once I got a firm grasp on the world, I was in for the long haul and I'm looking forward to picking up Ancillary Sword soon. It took awhile for me to get into it though, due to a constellation of factors.

The premise hooked me straight off. Here's the high concept: ancillaries are former human who are mind wiped and essentially enslaved by AIs at the behest of a conquering empire. These AI are spread across numerous human bodies, with their brains effectively serving as cloud processors. So you have collective entities with shared perception and consciousness. They often make up armies, but our protagonist was part of a starship. Breq, formerly known as One Esk, was one of many ancillaries used to control and run an enormous battle cruiser that is several thousand years old; the Justice of Toren. The challenging part is the en media res opening in a very dense universe, and a story that tells itself in both directions as it progresses. I can learn a lot on how to avoid info dumps here, but I actually found myself wishing for some more explicit exposition earlier on.

What really challenged me was the language. It’s one of those books with a lot of unique terminology, and very alien words (there is a race of aliens named the “Rrrr,”) and very rigid codes of etiquette that are explained in fits and starts, but employed throughout the book. One convention hit me harder than expected, which was the use of ‘she’ for all gender pronouns in the Empire (the culture that uses Ancillaries). Maybe I felt ‘othered’ by it, and I cling to the patriarchy tighter than I admit (that may read snarky but it’s a real possibility), but my frustrations manifested as trouble picturing characters. Now obviously, that estrangement is part of the point. At first I thought it was kind of a trite way to hint that gender doesn’t matter, but really it’s a very clever way to characterize Breq. She (I think she is biologically female) often screws up other characters’ genders. It kind of taxes suspension of disbelief that a genius AI who can read facial expressions near-flawlessly would have trouble recognizing secondary sexual characteristics, until you realize that as a collective being, Breq is thoroughly desexualized. She thought of herself as genderless, and her culture also de-emphasized gender linguistically. Conversely, most human imperials don’t give a fuck, because they can tell who is what by looking at them.

The gender politics were less fascinating to me than the book’s political intrigue, which is weird because I generally prefer stories that operate on a more personal scale. Vague spoilers to follow in this paragraph only. Around midway through the book, it is revealed that Ancillaries, and other beings spread across multiple bodies, can be given a unique consciousness that exists independently in the collective being with personal agency. This allows them to advance opposing agendas simultaneously, hidden from the other facets of the collective (talk about a mindfuck). If that collective being happens to be the leader of an intergalactic empire, you can see how a mind divided against itself might be a problem.

Ann Leckie walked away with both the Hugo and Nebula for this one (and rightfully so), so I imagine most of my sci-fi friends have already read this or at least have it on their radar. But I would also recommend it to folks who are fascinated by gender stuff.

It’s encouraging to know that collective/shared consciousnesses are trending in sci-fi (as evidenced by this, Psycho-Pass, and Sense8), because it's a huge part of my book. And since you didn’t ask, the revisions are slow going, but I’m feeling good about them. It was cool to discover that I didn’t need to revise Part 1 as drastically as I thought I would. In a perfect world, Parts 2 and 3 would be done by the holidays, but since this is the first re-write for those parts, I suspect it won’t be done until the end of next spring. At that point, I will need loads of feedback, since I am serious about getting this one published.

Ant-Man Squished by MCU House Style

Last Sunday I saw Ant-Man. It was dumb but pretty fun. That's all most people need to know really, but I have reputation to uphold. If you're reading this, you want gonzo over-analysis of Marvel's Cinematic Universe.

I think it is worth noting this is the latest I've waited to see any Marvel movie since opening. It's tempting to blame flagging interest, especially after the fatigue I expressed with Age of Ultron, and that's definitely part of it, but you can bet I will be watching Netflix's offerings straight out of the gate. I think the main issue is that I was skeptical of the hero (why does this silver age chestnut get a flick before literally anybody else slated for a title?) and I heard something that made me sad: Edgar Wright's script had been scrapped. Whedon said it was one of Marvel's best screenplays ever. Lo and behold, my first thought when the flick ended was "There is a better version of this movie somewhere locked up in a desk."

Again, it wasn't bad. I'd rank it above the Thor movies, which I would describe as "earnestly watchable." Paul Rudd was a peach as always. Evangeline Lilly was hurt by a lame role (and make-up that made her look much older than she is). Douglas gave a good delivery of a very straightforward role. Michael Peña is fast becoming one of my favorite character actors, even if he was typecast as a pseudo-stereotypical Mexican friend/hood. I don't know what David Croll was going for but he didn't hit the mark. As with Lilly's character, it's mostly the fault of the script, but his manic menace and discordant sycophantry made him the most forgettable villain in the MCU to date.

You don't really watch these things for the plot or performances though. Or I don't know. Maybe you're a masochist? That's cool. Whatever waxes your ride. The ridiculous action and great one-liners delivered, even if they were trailer'd to death.

There were flashes of a film that stuck together better. Something as fun as Guardians of the Galaxy. I can't put my finger on exactly where things went sideways, but I feel like they didn't commit to the screwball comedy angle as hard as they could. The ant powers were presented in a way that was remarkably straight forward with very few laughs, which seems like a huge missed opportunity. I know Wright would have committed to that humor. Paired with his hyper kinetic cinematography, saturated with whip-cuts and graphic embellishments...(yearning sigh). But no. The need for stylistic cohesion is finally starting to show it's teeth.

It's very weird to me that Marvel is getting more cautious after the success of stuff like Guardians and Daredevil. Their comics are also wildly, refreshingly different from each other. Look at Hawkeye vs Rocket Raccoon vs. Captain Marvel vs. Ms. Marvel vs. Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vs. any Spidey or Avenger's book. There was a place for Wright's vision in this pantheon.

My interest in the movies is starting to shift from intrinsic interest to this kind of morbid curiosity. I'm waiting for the moment when the gravy train goes off the rails. This wasn't the movie to do it, and Civil War, with the introduction of Sony's Spider-Man, will be a shot in the arm. But after that? Cummerbach's Doctor Strange is going to be tough. It is very difficult to make magic mainstream. Most magical fiction is the strict domain of book nerds and D&D dorks. Harry Potter managed to break through, but Game of Thrones and the Lord of the Rings (films) have marginalized it with more grounded stuff, like sword fighting, sex, and politics.

It hurts me to say this, but I would rather things go to hell with Doctor Strange than with Black Widow or Captain Marvel, because I can imagine some smarmy studio suit pounding his fist on the boardroom table, shouting "See? Nobody likes female comic book characters!" That guy can go fuck himself, preemptively. Black Panther would also be a very bad point for Marvel to drop the ball. Even worse than the lady-led films. At least nerd audiences can rally around Katniss Everdeen, whereas the only black superheroes we have are Anthony Mackie's Falcon, and Cheedle's War Machine who have both been relegated to sidekick status. (Falcon makes a fun cameo in Ant-Man tho).

When things inevitably go to hell, it won't be supernatural plots, or female, or black superheroes at fault. It will happen because they've made like twenty of these things, and people have moved on, or moved back to whatever was trendy before tights and capes movies.

No twist ending here. Fans of Marvel, heist movies, or Mr. Rudd should go check it out. Less dedicated fans can afford to give this one a pass with Civil War right around the corner.

What it Means to be a Magician

I finished Magician's Land a year ago now, and I can tell you that Lev Grossman's three books on twenty-something spellcasters are my favorite trilogy. Books, movies, whatever. These are the stories that are closest to what I want to write myself. I'm still not sure I've nailed this, but I think I could write about it in circles for years, so it's going up now.

My wife, my dad and a few of my best friends gave up on it after the first book, and I can't think of any people whose literary opinions I hold in higher regard. And usually, their critiques sway my opinion somewhat. Not so here. Rather, I felt compelled to try and share what I found in them that felt so profound. So if you've given up, read on. At the very least, you'll get to see how things play out. Needless to say, stop here if you still want to read them, or if you're waiting for the SyFy series (please be awesome), because this will spoil EVERYTHING.

The grander the scope of a fantasy novel, the harder it is for me to engage with it. I grow distant from the tale once it becomes more about politics and history than individuals. One man is a tragedy, while a hundred is a statistic and all that. Call it narcissism, or blame it on my ADD baby, but I need characters I can project myself into with personal problems I can relate to. Nations and empires, or even lineages spanning eons like Lord of the Rings tax me, because the character's personalities feel secondary to the world. I only found Dune and A Song of Ice and Fire more palatable because of their use of close POVs.

Maintaining that kind of human-driven drama is something I wrestle with in my own writing, because long-form fantasy seems to gravitate toward tropes and trappings of epic scale.

Star Wars and Harry Potter come closer to what I'm after, without the black and white reductionism. They have an epic scope, but at heart, they are family dramas that deal with about three generations of people. By the end, the Potters and Weasely's are one family, as are the Skywalkers and Solos (even if you discard the now non-cannon EU, the sentiment is there), and they are a mircocosm for the world they live in and shape. The main characters are broadly drawn, but the supporting cast is eccentric. Both invite us to project our own relatives and acquaintances onto those people, and fall in love with them all over again.

The Magicians finds an arc that is even more personal, with a cast of characters that hones closer to real people. I've been spoiled by a charmed life. As an only child with two incredibly successful parents, the only baggage I've really had to carry are the huge expectations I've created for myself by looking to their example. So there is something that resonates even more strongly with me than family drama: the pursuit of personal growth.

Courtesy of Better Book Titles

Growing up I had everything in the world, but once I hit my teenage years I was terribly unhappy. That's everyone to an extent, but I think I was madder about it than a lot of people. I confused my expectations of myself with my expectations of life. It's not hard to see how a frustrated teenager and young adult could transmute a lack of fulfillment into perpetual dissatisfaction, or assume happiness is inherently frivolous. Quentin was also an only child born to well-off parents (though they never really "got him") and on top of that he was told he was a genius his entire life, (up to the beginning of the books). He was raised on fantasy books and wanted to be the hero. But he couldn't do magic for real, and he didn't have the girl, so everything sucked. But even when he could do magic, and he did get the girl, and he discovered the beloved fictional land that shaped his boyhood was real, things still weren't right.

I like to think I was never that petulant, but I came close enough to recognize the same root problem: we were waiting for the world to make us happy instead of doing something about ourselves. Sounds simple, but it took me years to figure that out and I'm still trying to do the work. I guess that's why I was more willing to be patient with him. I get why he's an asshole. His acerbic voice and aimless but incredibly fervent ambitions struck a chord.

Despite being a cautionary tale, The Magicians outclasses standard "be careful what you wish for" stuff because it never loses sight of why the wishes were worth pursuing in the first place. It's not about scoring points, or putting line items on your CV, but about figuring out how your dreams can make you better, and getting it wrong--a lot.

The first book just hints at that broader message. If you have to read just one, the is the one to read, but I think stopping there takes a hard heart, or at least, less patience for very believably flawed people. He is not as sensationally fucked up as Joe Abercrombie or GRRM's characters, who I think hold broader appeal because they are more distant from reality. You don't have to deal with masochistic boy-kings and schizophrenic berserkers on the daily. Quentin is just kind of a prick and everybody has to put up with pricks.

The Magicians closes with him going back to Fillory, the magical land from the books of his boyhood, even though it ended up being horrifying, and later empty, because it cost him his lover. I read that as hopeful; maybe I can still find something to love about magic. Maybe I was wrong about myself. But "hopeful" isn't closure, and recognizing so many of Quentin's flaws in myself, I wanted to see how this played out.

The Magician King I think, is the weakest link of the trilogy. This one is really Julia's story, told in the middle of Quentin's, and while it's deeply compelling, it fits oddly into the arc of the other two. I think it taxed the trilogy in ways Lev could not anticipate when he started out with just one novel.

We come back to old Q at the end, and it's an important turning point: for the first time, he is subjected to true unfairness. He is viciously punished for doing the right thing. What happened to Alice hit him harder, but it was also his fault. Here, he saves magic. All the magic, in every world, and in response he is stripped of his crown and exiled from Fillory. Why? Because fuck Quentin Coldwater. That's why.

How a person reacts to punishment for doing the right thing is the truest test of their character. In Magician's Land, we finally get to see if Quentin passed. Given the veins of despondence shot throughout the series, I was afraid. I expected something brutal. Which is why the last book is truly magical. Quentin becomes a good person. Not all at once, but rapidly.

Even though his friends have seemingly abandoned him, he keeps fighting. He begins by swallowing his pride and seeking a job at Brakebills, a college he initially loved but came to resent. When he is fired for doing something risky, he acknowledges it and takes it in stride. When he hypothesizes a fantastic cause for his estranged father's death, and turns out to be wrong, he carries on instead of moping. And when he is presented with a terrifying opportunity to correct his gravest mistake, he seizes upon it.

It works, but doesn't go as planned. He rescues Alice and she hates him for it. She was utterly consumed by magic and disconnected from the world, in a blissful state of power. When he brings her back, gives her emotions, and taste buds and a body again, a life with meaning, she is livid. The first Quentin would go "this is bullshit," and give up. This Quentin keeps trying and manages to remind her that being a human beats being a selfish monster; I mean, talk about epic role reversals. At the end, things aren't perfect between them, she flat out tells him "we're not dating." Given her actions at the end, I think that they might pick things up again, but even if they don't, Quentin is just happy to have rescued her from madness.

He also becomes a dragon and then, briefly, a god, which is, you know, freaking awesome.

I love the way Lev does magic. Sure, the study and theory might be a little mathematical; not sufficiently subjective, (which was Robert's gripe), but when it actually goes off, wow is it cool. I can't decide whether the fox transformation or Quentin's first spell cast is my favorite scene of magic, and the probability-shifting card game that starts the third book is great as well. The first appearance of the beast, and Reynard's rape of Julia are both as terrifying as they need to be, which is no mean feat.

One of my favorite scenes in the whole trilogy is in book one, where Fogg speculates as to why certain people can use magic. His hypothesis is that magicians are inherently unhappy. Which made a lot of sense to me. Maybe I just liked it because I can be a broody sumbitch, but there is logic there. You won't try to change the world in earnest unless you feel like there is something wrong with it. I was bothered by the implied corollary, however. Once you find happiness, or worse, in order to find happiness, you have to break your staff, bury it fathoms, and drown your book. Prospero could have done better.

Quentin's story is a journey to another conclusion: you can keep your magic, and have happiness too, as long as you work on yourself in tandem with the world. Find your magic, find a goal, and use them to figure yourself out. That's what it means to be a magician.

Half Life 2 and Black Mesa: Subtlety Between Shootouts

This was originally supposed to be about Black Mesa but it turned into a bit of a ramble touching on emergent versus linear storytelling.

A friend once asked me what my favorite video game stories were. I went to grad school for that, and it's my job description, so I wanted to impress. The first couple titles that sprang to mind weren't terribly unusual. I think I said Final Fantasy 6, The Last of Us, Arkham City, and Gunpoint, all for different reasons. If he asked me now, The Witcher franchise would vault to the top of that list, followed closely by Wolf Among Us, and Tales of the Borderlands. Again, pretty standard stuff. I did manage to throw him one curve ball though.

"Half-Life 2."

"...Really?"

Yup. The story is unfinished (and sadly looking like it might stay that way), it has a silent protagonist (which I hate), and on the surface it looks like your standard re-telling of War of the Worlds, right down to the tripodal alien war machines. But there's more happening behind the scenes. Or maybe between the scenes is more accurate.

If you rush to the next firefight or puzzle, you'll miss out on ambient dialog and broadcasts that flesh out the plot. The writers are humble enough to not cram their tale down the player's throat. Instead of saying "OMG this is so important, the fate of the universe depends on you!!" they let the level design and mechanics make you fear for your life, feel oppressed, and then in the quiet moments, the game gives you little glimpses of what went wrong, and how bad it really is.

The cliff notes version of Half-Life 2 is that Earth has not only been invaded, but already conquered by an alien collective called the Combine. As befitting their name, they genetically remix every race they conquer to refine their race of super soldiers. The entire world is now an Orwellian police state and the bulk of humanity has been penned in old cities that have been redistricted and augmented by the Combine's sci-fi tech. You start out in a bleak Eastern European metropolis called City 17, and its aging already-dystopian architecture, is merged with the Combine's pristine, geometric tech is a great juxtaposition. There is, of course, a resistance, and you do, of course, join and lead it. That's all you really need to know.

Now here are the cool details you can miss: the Combine have set up 'inhibitor fields' that prevent us from breeding, but promise our race will have 'genetic immortality' and travel the stars, which, would actually be compelling carrots for a lot of people. But they put chemicals in the water that make the populace forgetful and docile. The alien species they've introduced as biological weapons (and maybe crude terraforming tools) have ravaged the environment. It took them only 7 hours to completely dominate the planet, and--oh yeah: this is all your fault.

A lot of people aren't clear on how Half-Life 1 and 2 are connected, especially since many people jumped on at HL2. That's unfortunate, because the connection between the games is in my opinion, the coolest part of the lore. At the beginning of the first game, Gordon performs a science experiment at Black Mesa research facility that opens portals to an alien planet. A hostile army of aliens invades, and the military is called in to kill everyone and everything involved. Gordon of course, kills them better, goes through the portal to the alien planet, and kills the leader of their alien army, Nihilanth. In the process, you free a race of enslaved aliens and thwart an invasion on Earth. Yay! Awesome right? No. Turns out Intergalactic assassinations have huge consequences. By killing Nihilanth and crippling his army, you paved the way for the Combine to sweep in and conquer Earth. Nice job, slick!

Then there's the G-Man: one of the most enigmatic characters in all videogame-dom. He's pasty, suited man who speaks like one of the supernatural denizens of Twin Peaks, has a talent for appearing and disappearing in impossible places, and the ability to freeze space=time. At the end of the first game, after you've committed your "one-man genocide," he offers you a job. The terms kind of suck: you don't know what work you'll be doing, and if you refuse, he strips you of your guns and leaves you to inevitably die fighting hordes of aliens, avenging their comrades. If you accept, he puts you into suspended animation until Half-life 2.

The original Half-Life has not aged well, but fortunately, a dedicated team of modders and programmers called The Crowbar Collective have remade Half-Life 1 practically from scratch. It is known as Black Mesa Source, and you should buy and play it. Consider that endorsement an imperative if you have yet to play Half-Life 2, provided you have patience for somewhat dated graphics. Incidentally, I discovered that my threshold for old graphics is Source 2. It is just realistic enough for me to feel immersed, which is a testament to the engine considering it's now a full decade old.

Why bother with Black Mesa? Well, it also has that slow burn. The beginning of the game is arguably a fist-person survival horror affair, that ramps up into some of the most intense firefighting of any shooter you'll play. And there are puzzles throughout. Most of them are very basic, some are jumping puzzles, but they provide enough variety to break up the bouts of action. The fights themselves, in fact, are like improvisational puzzles. Unlike most modern shooters, where you have a regenerating health bar, you have a shield and a health bar that can only be restored with items. I miss this trope, because it allows the designers to exhaust you. To chip away at your sense of security, and thrust you into fights where you feel the weariness and desperation of your avatar.

The level "Surface Tension," may be the best I've played in a shooter. You start by storming a dam in one very intense firefight. Immediately after that, you must ward off a helicopter with a laser weapon. Then you flush yourself down the dam, and navigate an incredibly claustrophobic cliff face as more soldiers try to kill you. The helicopter returns, but you can ground it permanently with a new laser-guided rocket launcher. Most games would call it a day there. But you are just getting warmed up. You have to escape a tank; a rare firefight where your only chance is to run. Then you must navigate a warehouse, rigged with dozens of trip mines and ordinance, Entrapment style, in one of the most nerve wracking sequences you will experience in any game ever. Then the tank catches up with you and you have to take it out with an environmental weapon. Finally, you have to kill an alien giant with a mortar as it shakes the tower you are standing on--this last part was pretty badly glitched, regrettably, marring an otherwise incredible experience. But the game is still in early access, and the developers are actively engaged in fixing up the title.

Both titles excel at immersion because they commit. They trap you in first person the entire game and there is a single linear path that you must follow through the levels. At Georgia Tech, I remember a lot of the teachers and my fellow students felt that videogame storytelling was hobbled by cinematics, set pieces, and linearity. It was regarded as "a legacy approach to storytelling," inherited by analog media. When you look at drek like COD it's easy to empathize with that complaint, and when you see just how creative you can get with something as simple as Twine, it's hard to not want games that take that versatility a step further (I think Tell-Tale has successfully made themselves the sovereigns of that dimension).

But my professors and peers were chasing an even more elusive whale: truly emergent storytelling. This describes systems that would effectively improvise valuable (emotionally potent) stories in the course of play, as opposed to taking you down a number of branching corridors. I was a member of the project group that tried to develop that kind of gameplay. It's been long enough now that I can admit it felt like a bit of a bust. With the crucial exception of tabletop roleplaying, I haven't found a system that creates meaningful narratives on the fly. I know you can find good RP if you find the right people in the right MMO, but what results is effectively collaborative fan fiction. The onus of storytelling is on the player rather than the system.

Other than failing to leverage the 'affordances' of digital media, the backlash against linear stories is that they are didactic; you are forced to engage with the world a specific way that elicits a specific emotional response. I think that only becomes a problem when you feel the strings tugging you, because that breaks the immersion. If you are leaning into the strings though, it feels a bit like flying, or riding a roller coaster. Yes, I would love it if Gordon Freeman spoke, and I'd be ecstatic it if you could speak for him and make choices... but when I played, I wanted to know what happened next rather than the ability to do things differently.

I guess there are two main takeaways I'm trying to convey here: you can make familiar linear stories compelling with enough experiential immersion, and squeeze in some meaningful subtlety,even when paired with huge scripted action scenes. That and the Half-Life franchise rocks. Here's hoping Valve comes back to it some day.

CCSD 15 Hall H Postmortem

So. I've reviewed what I could of the Hall H news and trailers that came out of Comic Con.

Star Wars wins. Hands down. The behind the scenes video was beautiful, even if it doesn't tease too much about the story (which may actually be for the best). That impromptu live concert for panel attendees also sounds (ha) incredible.

Batman V. Superman had a much stronger showing this time around. The shots of Bruce in Metropolis amidst the destruction were really compelling. Interesting to know he has at least one dead Robin under his belt. I doubt we'll see Tim or Dick due to the number of Justice Leaguers who will already be making cameos. Carrie Kelly is a possibility, just because of Snyder's hard-on for all things Frank Miller. Wonder Woman seems suitably bad-ass, and I am still very curious about those Superman soldiers. The Suicide Squad trailer had a cool aesthetic, but it came across as kind of soulless and dry. If there was ever a DC movie that needed some levity, it's this one, and they have the cast to exploit it.

The leaked Deadpool trailer on the other hand is looking pretty good. Almost a "here's how you should have done it" to Warner Bros. I think it does a good job of capturing the "I can't tell if this is just dumb, or so dumb it's smart" vibe of the comic character. Post PG-13 big brand superhero movies are also just a rich vein to tap; think Kick-Ass with a bigger following. Even if the thing is a bomb, I think Fox will be pleased with the opening weekend results. Almost guaranteed that critics won't get it, but a lack of artistic acclaim hasn't hurt Transformers or Fast and Furious. I was less wowed by their X-Men stuff, even though the last movie was arguably the best yet, and Wolverine 2 was better than Wolverine 1.

Weird that Marvel sat this one out. Despite their fairly big media push, I am not feeling the hype-train for Ant-Man like any of their recent films. A Comic Con nudge may have done it some good. Something to tease Doctor Strange and Ms. Marvel would have been nice too, but you can't always get what you want.

In terms of smaller stage stuff, ConMan is looking like a lot of fun. The Battleborn, Halo, and Assassin's Creed "play this game in real life"-style installations made me sad that I wasn't there.

That's my 2 cents, having not been there. People who attended, am I missing anything huge?

Rekindling Library Romance

Working at a bookstore killed my relationship with public libraries. Well, that and college libraries. Seeing fresh releases, and hearing all the positive buzz about big deal books fostered a compulsion called tsundoku; the acquisition of so many books that one has no hope of reading them all. (I do the same thing with PC games, as do many others; a practice my friend Jose suggests we call Steamdoku. I agree. Digression over!) College, in turn, made me associate libraries with doing research or serious work.

So I stopped checking out libraries. But is that really a problem? If I buy so many damn books, why would I go to a library ever again? Well, precisely because I have so little time to read any more. Stick with me.

When I broke up with libraries, I also let myself believe that their selections were hopelessly outdated. I pictured collections consisting of James Pattersons gone by two years and yellow paged paperbacks that have somehow held on since the sixties. Maybe I did it to help justify my buying compulsion. Or maybe that's an accurate assessment of the Pasadena Public Library. I don't know anymore, and it doesn't matter because the Burbank Public Library is freakin' awesome.

There was one category of bookstore purchases that were always out of my budget: audio books. Before you roll your eyes, or rail about how real authors must read on paper to keep notes, keep a couple things in mind. A) I have a full time job. B) working out feels like a waste of time. C) driving feels like a waste of time. Audio books help me fit more fiction into the cracks of my life.

Burbank has a ton titles in audio form. And lots of stuff by authors I would like to read, but never buy, or think to seek out when visiting a Barnes & Noble. This is the real benefit of libraries. Getting books for free is nice, but finding books you would never encounter under other circumstances is really what makes the difference.

Perusing the audio book selection reminded me that I love Joe Hill and I love William Gibson. From Hill, I picked up Heart-Shaped Box. It's a story about an aging rock star with a menagerie of messed up detritus who buys a ghost. It's my workout book, because it is brutal enough to distract me from the task at hand. I mean, this fucking guy. He knows how to hurt characters (and by extension, readers). People drone on and on about how mean GRRM and Joss Whedon and even Jim Butcher (really?) are to their characters because they kill people or beat them up. Bull. Shit. A quick death or cracked ribs are so much kinder than what you can do. Even maiming pales in comparison to the emotional trauma you can inflict with a single brutal line or revelation. That's something Hill borrows from dear old dad, but I greatly prefer his work. His stuff is also more concrete, pairing physical violence with psychological, or using one as a metaphor for the other. He has sharper, darker teeth, and his narratives feel more complete and cohesive. They may be more traditional, but I like his beginnings, middles, and most of all his endings.

On a related note, I finished up Locke & Key, and it is fantastic. I can't think of a comic book series that does a better job of capturing the angst that is 15-18 years old. The finale is great. Again, brutal. Again, fairly traditional, but it will make you genuinely sad, balancing very tender moments with some very sharp sticks, with great heroism interspersed (not so much with the laffs), and most importantly, you will have a sense of closure. Would love to read more short stories and side stories that leverage the universe's concepts, but happy to see Bode, Kinsey, and Tyler's tale come to a satisfying close.

Back to the bounties of the Burbank Public Library, I've picked up The Peripheral from William Gibson to listen to while driving. It's been a long time since I've read anything by him, so I forgot how much of an impression he made on my writing still. This book feels a little more accessible than the super-slangy cyberpunk of his Sprawl trilogy, but it still has that great environmental/conceptual mystery quality that typifies his work. You are thrust in a world, and by about midway through the book, you have a handle on the setting, but you still have to work out all the mysteries of the plot. I highly recommend it to Sci-Fi fans, and already gifted it to one person.

Very strong central premise about communicating between adjacent time streams, but it also focuses on post-humanity, and long-game evolution of telepresence technologies. Think Ghost in the Shell, dialed back a couple notches, with less emphasis on an ephemeral cyberworld, and a deeper examination of being able to inhabit other human bodies. There's also some stuff in their about drones and gaming. Very high concept cocaine.

The library also has a fairly extensive collections of movies, including some new releases you can rent for a dollar. Seeing how Blockbusters are a thing of the past and Redboxes are scratched to hell or have the wrong discs half the time, that's super convenient.

Moral of the story? Do yourself a solid and check out your local public library. You may be pleasantly surprised. If not, you will have restored an old librarian's faith in humanity.