Jan 27, 2010

THE iPASS

Like most Applenuts, I'd been salivating at the prospect of what we now know is called the iPad. It's not that Apple makes the best computers in the world; my iMac freezes as often as a PC does, and I too often curse that whirlygig of doom, but they make products that work at least as well as others if not better in some areas. They are also extremely easy to operate and look great, too. Really great. Where Apple exceeds all other companies is their help desk. Applecare is wonderful and better than any other tech help service I've ever had the misfortune to use.

So I was looking forward to the iPad, knowing that I'd be as excited as I was when I first saw Steve Jobs reveal the iPhone, a scant three years ago. Apple didn't have a live feed of the press conference, so I went on CNET and read the minute by minute update blog. I kept hitting the refresh key, waiting for the big thing that was going to make this the device of the century. The device that was going to change everything. C'mon, it's the next thing, isn't it? It can do everything including washing the dishes. I kept waiting, and then, suddenly, the blog said, that's it. The press conference was over. Butbutbut...

In fact, sadly, when it was all over, I felt all I had seen was the introduction of a normal iMac only steamrollered thin, or a case of Honey, I Blew Up The iPhone. The device is beautiful, but it is only the Jolly Green Giant's iPhone. Trouble is, it does a lot of what the iPhone does, but not everything. It doesn't allow multi-tasking; you can't listen to music and surf the web. It will have 3G, but it won't be a phone. It doesn't have a camera. But like the iPhone it won't let you see internet pages with Flash (the animation program, not the super-hero).

There is a lot of good here, and it's certainly not Apple's fault that speculation was turning just a really good device into the second coming, but in many ways the very things that it lacks are the things it should have had.

Who will want it? I'd say it will be popular, though not as popular as the iPhone was. I think if you were in the market for a new laptop you could do a lot worse than buying this instead and also buying the optional stand and keyboard. It does at least as much as most notebook computers and it costs less than many. Is it a book reader? I won't know that until I see it at the Apple store in a few months and read something on the screen. The Kindle and the Sony Reader use an e-ink that feels very much like real ink on a tangible book. Will this look like a computer screen and will the glare be annoying or acceptable? I'll have to wait and see. I was most anxious to hear about its book reader capabilities, and Jobs started out that section by mentioning how Kindle pioneered them, then he said the iPad would stand on its shoulders and go for something more. But the problem is he never said how it would do that. He never showed us why it was a better book reader than Sony or the Kindle. If you put a promise on the wall in sentence one, you have to use it by sentence four.

How will magazines and comics look? I really wanted to see that. I've long wanted to transfer all my magazine subscriptions to digital format, but the Kindle and company don't have color and I just can't easily take my iMac to bed with me, or to the bathroom. We currently have stacks of magazines filling each corner of the house; how great would it be to have all those mags take up a few megabytes of memory space instead without losing the great color photos? Text books are going to be put on this, as they are on the Kindle, and frankly, college students forced to carry 90 tons of books will grab this without question. For those of us into comics, I feel if the resolution is as good as they promise, this could very well take comics, which have been reduced to a fringe item, and put them back into the mainstream where they belong. But we learned next to nothing about the extent of its book reading capabilities.

I have no doubt that when my laptop goes I'll want one, but first it will have to have a much larger hard drive. It has exactly the same size drive as my current Macbook and I've filled that to capacity. Secondly, it has to multi-task. It needs to at least do everything a notebook computer does, and then more. In this case, looking great isn't enough. It has to be better than what's out there. At this moment I believe unless I have to replace my Macbook, I'll be waiting for either the second or third generation iPad when it has most of what I want.

Right now I just don't need a larger iPhone.

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Jan 21, 2010

RAINING. POURING. SNORING.

It's pouring in Los Angeles. Actually pouring. Not what LA normally calls a downpour, which is actually a sprinkling of rain. This is a downpour of, well, not biblical proportions (where cats and dogs live together) but it's way wet. Other parts of the country, no doubt, have it worse, but then they have an infrastructure designed to deal with it. When I lived in New York the sewer systems were built to accept the great deluge, arks and animals included. But LA is in the desert, a fact we often forget because our lawns are green from the water we steal from other states, and the rich and beautiful have fountains in their front yards that rival the Las Vegas Bellagio (not really, but hey, this is a blog, not a civics lecture). So when it sprinkles in LA, you get flooding because what we laughingly call a sewer system can't take much more than a starlet doing her three times a day regurgitation. Two days ago we had a tornado touch down in the southland. A tornado in Southern California. And it wasn't a special effect.

I'm sure we'll soon be getting our traditional driver standing atop his flooded car in the Sepulveda dam area story. "Maxine, the helicopter is lowering a ladder now. Can you see him? Yes, he's trying to reach for it. This is simply horrible, maxine. The water is up to the top of the window. The flashflood trapped his car in less than 1.9 seconds. Ah, there. They have him. Let's give the rescue team a special call-out for their heroism."

Anyway, I'm at home, semi-dry. Every so often I kick LD out the back door to do what she needs to. LD doesn't like to get her paws wet on a good day, let alone now. She barely steps outside then races back in with a look like "It's wet out there, you moron. Didn't you know that?" I'm waiting for a pause in the flooding to get my mail which is at the bottom of a long hill and driveway. But at least it's semi-dry here at the Wolfmanor and life, I guess, is generally pretty good. Especially as I kill even more bad guys in Uncharted-2.

Hoping you all the same.

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Jan 15, 2010

HAITI

You can use your mobile phone to text automatic money for Haitian relief. The numbers and what you'll be paying (it's added to your phone bill) is below:

Haiti Text-To-Give Numbers, via Gigaom and Mobile Giving Insider
Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross
Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee
Text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army in Canada
Text YELE to 501501 to donate $5 to Yele
Text HAITI to 20222 to donate $10 through the Clinton Foundation
Text HAITI to 864833 to donate $5 to The United Way
Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation
Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International
Text RELIEF to 30644 (this will connect you with Catholic Relief Services and instruct you to donate money with your credit card)


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GAMES GEORGE PEREZ AND I PLAY

I was sort of a Teen Titans fan back in the '60s when I was a fan. I bought the first 'almost' Titans story when the characters teamed up in The Brave And The Bold #54, and then followed them into their own book, which I stayed with until the end of the original run. During that original run, I made one of my very earliest professional sales. I co-wrote Teen Titans #18, featuring a Russian super-hero named Starfire. Later, when George Perez and I brought him into our Titans run, also in issue #18 - not a coincidence, I might add - to avoid confusion with the new Princess Koriand'r Starfire, we renamed him Red Star (saying it was the Americans who mis-translated his name back then as Starfire).

But, going back to the original 60s run, I also co-wrote the infamous never-published issue featuring a Black super-hero named Joshua (but as the story was called "Titans Fit The Battle of Jericho" fans have since assumed the character's name was Jericho, which is why when George conceived Joe Wilson, we named him that). When it was decided that the Joshua story wouldn't be published, I secretly helped write the plot for the three-part Neal Adams replacement story, and then solo wrote the origin of Wonder Girl backup that appeared in Teen Titans #22. That's the story that took Wonder Girl, who was only a computer simulation of Wonder Woman as a teenager and not a character in her own right. That story turned her into a unique character and also gave her the name: Donna Troy. That was the first of what seems to be several hundred origins of Wonder Girl.

I said I was sort of a Titans fan. That is, I loved the concept of the teen heroes getting together but I never much liked the idea of them being the sidekicks, I didn't really care for the "hip" slang-filled stories where the characters, who were just a little younger than I was, spoke like no kid I ever knew, and I absolutely hated that the later Titans stories had an adult supervisor watching over them. But I was still charmed by many of the individual stories and I loved the characters, no matter how goofy they were.

In 1980, when I got the chance to co-create the New Titans book with the extraordinary George Perez, like Smallville's "No Tights, No flights" rule, I swore to myself there'd be no current slang, no adults telling them what to do, and no sidekicks acting like, well, dumb sidekicks. For the most part, during times good and not so good, I pretty much kept to my word. The Titans were in charge of their own lives. Adults were kept to the side and had little effect on them. Indeed, the Titans and their mentors were often at odds with one another. Aside from an occasional "cool" or timeless slang like that, I used no current slang (although I admit I overused topical [read: soon to be dated] references much too much).

After 16 years and an editor whose name I've mercifully put out of mind, I approached then DC Editor-in-Chief Mike Carlin at a DC Christmas party in LA and asked off the book. I loved the characters but I wasn't happy with what I was doing (16 years and 250 some odd Titans stories was way too much for anyone), the fans weren't happy, and I needed to reinvigorate myself with different work. I asked that DC revive Night Force to write, and they agreed as long as I'd stay on for four final Titans issues, with a different editor, so we could end my run on something of a better note.

While I did those final issues, they took the time to prepare a new Titans title, with new characters, to written and drawn by writer/artist Dan Jurgens. I was extremely pleased Dan was going to create a brand-new title rather than simply use the same characters I'd been writing. When George and I started the Titans, we introduced new heroes and millions of new villains. I thought anyone replacing us should do the same and make the title his (or her) own as we had done 16 years earlier. Sadly, it was probably too soon after our characters went away for DC to bring the title back. Perhaps Dan's characters would have succeeded had they waited a year or two between our runs. Unfortunately, we'll never know. Dan went off to do some little story about Superman dying, which I believe is the first or second best selling comic book story ever.

Over the years I'd been asked to write a Titans story or two. Not full issues, but small segments, and that was fine. At that point, after writing all those issues, I was not interested in going back to the book itself. It was the been there done that problem.

But despite thinking that, several years ago I came up with an idea for a Titans series I would have been interested in writing. I called it Titans-3 and it featured Cyborg, Raven and Starfire, now in their mid-20s, who, having grown up, were now all about 25 and wondering – what's next? What do I do now that I've grown up. The mid-20s are a difficult time as you've left the safety of home and are out on your own for the first time. I thought I could explore that, but before I seriously proposed it, the announcement went out that writer Geoff Johns was on the new Titans title and that he was re-developing it.

Geoff's run completely ignited the title again. And since then Geoff has virtually single-handedly recreated the DCU into a 21st century universe. He has an uncanny knack of figuring out what made the classic characters work yet also finding a way to move them forward without alienating those who loved the early versions. He is completely immersed in the DCU and totally gets why it works and also how to make it work better for today. During his run, Geoff very kindly asked me to work with him on a few issues. It was the first time in a long time that I had written more than 4-5 pages Titans pages, and I had a great time with it. And after all those years, I re-fell in love with the characters. So much so I leapt at the chance of doing the Raven mini-series last year.

But the world is cyclical and I've now re-teamed with my friend and brilliant co-creator, George Perez, to bring a new and yet old Titans story to the shops for later this year.

Back in '87 or so, George and I started the now legendary Titans graphic novel, GAMES. George drew about 80 pages before going into a small Titans block. At the same time, I was in a massive writer's block. One thing led to another and we never finished the story. But now we're resurrecting the original story, adding a bit of today's magic to it, and are intending to finish it at long last. We're using the original plot, with a few tweaks along the way, all of George's original art, done at the height of our Titans, adding to that brand-new art to finish the story, and all new dialog. As of today, I've dialogued a little less than half of it. George is drawing the final 40 pages. Mike Perkins is inking it. And it is looking incredible. And I, who had been very nervous about going back to those characters after such a long absence, am loving every minute of it. Honest to God, I want to do more.

Hopefully, the graphic novel will be winging your way in the fall of this year, 30 years after George and I started The New Teen Titans #1. And we hope you will take to what we're doing now the way you did three decades ago.

More as we continue our work on this title.

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Jan 12, 2010

RANDOM THOUGHTS

This morning, in my TV room, I was interviewed for an upcoming biography of Superman. The man who interviewed me (I don't know if he wants his name revealed) is speaking with hundreds of people connected to the Man of Steel and is putting together what sounds like a very comprehensive history of the character. As he's still my favorite comic character, I can't wait to see what he does. So when is someone going to do a major treatise on Bwana Beast?

CHUCK is back and I love it. In a time when most shows are such downers and humorless, it's great to have a show where you can sit back and just smile. It's absurd, silly, senseless and lots of fun. Hope it does well. On the other hand, where I started this season liking the new direction on HEROES, it now seems to drag on forever. from week to week I sense no forward movement. God, I hope the current storyline ends well as it began great.

Speaking of shows ending well, it took DOLLHOUSE nearly two seasons and cancellation before they got it right. The shows premise was so wrong and the people on the show so nasty(the characters, not the actors or creators) there was nobody to root for. So now, just a few episodes before the show disappears forever, they changed the entire premise. Echo is now a character you can care about (Eliza Dushku was always great but was made unsympathetic). There is a real plot (the heroes have to stop the bad guys) instead of the heroes were the bad guys. I think the original premise would have been great if Dollhouse was a mini-series where the characters begin one way and then change because of events, but series TV is about seeing characters you want to care about and wish to invite into your living room for years on end. This could have been a great "novel" TV, but not series TV.

Among the movies I loved last year: Up, Up In The Air, 500 Days of Summer, Julie and Julia, Avatar, It's Complicated, The Hurt Locker and a few others I can't think of at the moment.

Yes, like 85% of America, I'm looking forward to American Idol tonight. It's one of only two "reality" shows I watch. The other is The Amazing Race. To me Idol is a talent competition and shouldn't fit into the reality category, but it is, and Race is all about how good you are at doing your tasks and not how you go about screwing someone else, which is why I won't watch Survivor.

And finally, what am I working on: Comics: I've done a Superman mini, more Brave & Bolds, the Spirit, God of War and I'm working my way through scripting the Titans graphic novel. There are some other things, too, but those are all hush-hush. Video games: Beyond the DCU MMO, I've working on several projects but can't talk about any of them yet. I'm also doing consulting work and some other stuff, too. I mention all the stuff I can't talk about so you don't think I'm just twiddling my thumbs, but sadly I'm not allowed, by contract, to talk about most of it. Am I busy? Most of the work I do is on and off, so some weeks are crowded and others are empty, so I always look for more. There is a point when I say stop, but I'm not there yet.

Now, back to the Titans.





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Jan 7, 2010

TV SHOWS I SURPRISINGLY LIKE

I actually wrote a very long post for today but because it touched on aspects of an upcoming DC press release, I realized I shouldn't post it until sometimes next week. So I'm holding off, but it also means I've got to find something else to write about.

Of late I've mentioned here and on Facebook a number of TV shows or movies I haven't liked, usually shows that were once good but in my egotistical opinion have turned for the worse (Scrubs and Heroes to name two) but I realized I hadn't mentioned shows I actually like. So before I become the curmudgeonly Ed Asner-ish blogger from hell, there's dozens of shows I actually do love to watch. even if it's more fun to write about the shows I don't like. Noel can tell you I waste far too much time either watching TV or playing games on the TV not to like most of what I watch.

At any rate I'll only mention a few I didn't expect to like but nevertheless do.

I've been loving FlashForward. Usually in continued series you get the idea that the people behind the scenes are making it up as they go along. That there is no end in sight because, let's face it, the show can't wrap up until the final episode. As much as I love Lost, that is very much the situation, although they are playing toward that now. But I still believe, at least in the early episodes, they were vamping like hell, not knowing what anything meant, only to find themselves put into the corner, like Baby, and having to deconstruct everything they'd done.

But FlashForward feels different. If they don't know where they're going, they certainly make you feel they do. Too many things have been set up that have had surprising follow-throughs, and they've been resolving bits and pieces here and there from the very beginning. Also, by dating the FlashForward to only a few months from now, they will have to answer at least some of the questions, if not most of them. That's all well and good, but what I really like about the show is that every time I start to wonder how some real person would react to what's happened in the world, they do an episode covering just that. They are filling in all the small details, the stuff most shows don't even bother thinking about. The show's attention to detail has been magnificent and the writing has been on target, emotional and suspenseful. A really great show that I was sure was just going to be another serial that ultimately didn't work. Couldn't be happier to know I was wrong.

Another show I was certain I was going to hate is The Middle. In the world of Sarah Palin I got the vibe from the early ads that it was going to be a show about "the real America." I was born in New York and I live in LA and always thought the America I lived in was part of the real America and not some blue-screen backdrop. Also, these days most people live in cities, not on farms, so don't tell me I'm not real because I get my water from city pipes and not a hand-dug well. I dislike the concept that the heartland is pure and that cities are evil. And perhaps, I sadly admit, the fact that the star is a vocal political conservative did nothing to lessen my fears.

Also, I hated the idea that the show proudly called itself The Middle, as if all other TV shows took place on the coast. I seem to recall Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Father Knows Best, WKRP, and hundreds of other shows, taking place in what is condescendingly (but humorously) referred to as the flyover states. Mary Richards never went out of her way to point up her geographical location; her's was just a show about people that happened to take place in Minneapolis. So why, I wondered, was The Middle pointing up its geographical roots rather than talking up its characters? These are the questions I asked when I begrudgingly gave the show a try (I try to see all new shows at least once, a task I fail at more than succeed).

Man, was I wrong. Yeah, the show takes place in Middle America, wherever the hell that really is, but it's not about that at all. Like most other good shows, it's about the family and this family is funny whether they live on the crust or in the creme filling. The cast is solid and the stories have the ring of truth to them...in a very sitcom way. Which is more than acceptable in a sitcom. This is a much funnier and better show than I ever expected it to be, and considering how much it had to do in order to get me not to hate it, I'd say this is one of the good ones.

Modern Family was a show that, because all the critics loved it from day one, I was sure was going to be preciously written and be smart but not funny. I must say up front I am not a fan of The Office, another show that the critics lavish their favors on. I've always had a problem with shows that use embarrassment as its center; you have no idea how many I Love Lucy's I've turned off in my life, and the Office is based on being embarrassed by what its characters do.

The first episode of Modern Family almost confirmed my suspicions. It was okay, but it seemed contrived and designed to make you think it was a better show than it was, and it seemed to be so politically correct it sent up warning flares. I disliked the breaking the fourth wall bit. I didn't like it in "The Office" and I was sick of it long before this show premiered. But I stuck with it and the show turned me around. Once again, the characters are interesting and often different from what we've seen. The stories are also surprising, but what is more surprising is that at the end of the day the characters seem to actually care about each other, as if they were a real family. And not always in a sitcom way. I've gotten to like these people, even if I couldn't stand them in real life. Their relationships work, and the humor mostly comes from a feeling of reality rather than contrivance. But one word of warning, the show teeters on the precious scale so the writers have to really watch out. But as long as they keep balanced and funny, this is another of the good ones.

That's it. I like a lot more but as I said I thought I'd mention just a few shows I didn't expect to like but do. What are your surprising favorites?

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Jan 6, 2010

ME, PART ONE

I have very few memories of my early days when I was an impressionable kid. Oh, I remember playing stickball on East 2nd street in Brooklyn, NY, running to catch a ball, missing it a lot but catching it often enough that I was on the street teams. Age wise, I was right in the middle of the kids living there but generally played ball with the older ones. I had several close friends at the time and several others who weren't quite as close. One was named Miles, and I can't remember how he spelled his last name. It was something like Shlosberg if memory serves, and it rarely does. He lived directly across the narrow courtyard of my four-family apartment building in a private house, so I could see his window through mine. My other close friend was Garry (or Gary, I do not know if I ever knew how he spelled it) and he lived down the block a bit. I seem to remember another friend living across the street, and the name Joel comes to mind, but for all I know I just made that up. Sorry for that. If someone knows anyone who lived on East 2nd street in Brooklyn in the early 1950s and know who I am talking about, let me know. I moved out in '58 and never saw any of them again. When I went back to the area a few years later, those kids were gone, too. Are they alive? I sure hope so.

I remember going over to Gary's place to watch TV. I think Gary's father worked in the toy business. He had tons of toys and a bigger TV than my family's 10-inch black and white set. We were watching Howdy Doody which, back then, was on Channel Four. I also used to love Captain Video, the Flash Gordon movie serials they ran on TV, Popeye, and the cartoons of Farmer Brown and Farmer Gray, which I believe was the same cartoons only renamed. But I could be wrong there. Anyway, Howdy Doody, a totally inappropriately named kid's show, was about a cowboy marionette and his friend, the real life "Buffalo" Bob Smith. I met Buffalo Bob once at a toy trade show but he was swamped with other folk about my age, and we only spoke for a minute. But when I was a kid I loved Howdy Doody, and Clarabelle The Clown, who never spoke a word, at least until the last words of the last show, and Mr. Bluster, who I seem to recall was the Doodyville Town mayor. Kids were brought on stage to sit in what was called The Peanut Gallery. I have no idea where they filmed Howdy Doody (nor back then would I have known how the show got to be on my TV) but though I would have liked to be in the Peanut Gallery, I don't think my parents ever tried to arrange it. For all I know it was filmed in Hollywood, or even in Manhattan. By the way, I'm sure that "Woody," Tom Hanks' marionette character in Toy Story, was somewhat based on Howdy.

Anyway, one day we were watching Howdy Doody, and normally we would get up to change the channel (before there were remote controls, don't forget) to, I think, Rootie Kazootie, another stupidly named kid show, but this one was shown on channel 7. For some reason we were both being lazy and we left on channel 4. What appeared after Mr. Doody's program was something we'd never seen before called The Adventures of Superman. Unlike Howdy and company, this was a show with live actors and not puppets. But the guy in the tight clothing with the cape and the letter 'S' on his chest could not only fly, but he could outrace a bullet and bend steel in his bare hands, or so the opening of the show told us.

We sat transfixed. Do I remember what episode it was? No way. I seem to recall something aboard a ship at night, but though I recently bought the entire series on DVD, I can't seem to find it, so the boat imagery might have been a scene from the comic I bought immediately after the show, after they announced that Superman was based on the copyrighted character appearing in Superman magazine and Action Comics monthly. I do remember Gary and I running from his home to the corner where there was a candy store that sold comics and buying our very first book: Action Comics. I also bought a copy of Superboy.

That was the beginning.

If you're interested in reading more of this haphazardly written autobiography, let me know.

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Jan 5, 2010

HEROES

I keep watching HEROES even though I stopped liking it all the way back to season 2. I kept thinking they had it so right in season 1; they were playing with characters, showing how ordinary folk are changed with powers. No matter how big the story got - the fate of the planet was at stake, remember - it still came down to saving the cheerleader, a personal and smaller story we could follow and care about. Season 2 seemed to forget the human angle as they went with a not so compelling storyline. The show kept getting involved with its own continuity. I can't imagine that many people cared HOW the heroes became HEROES, and once we learned it came from experiments and solar eclipses or perhaps it was something else (who can keep track?) my attitude was, so what? Seen that all before. What about the characters? Forget them?

This season began so promisingly. They were centering on the characters again - although I'd have preferred it if every season was an entirely new cast with an entirely new set of problems - and seemed to briefly recapture what had made the series work in the first place. Even the carnival subplot was interesting... at first. But after their winter hiatus they came back yesterday with two episodes that very much highlighted the problem the series has: nothing is going on. We don't have an inkling as to what the Carney folks are up to, or even a reason to think it's going to be deadly (and therefore a threat) except for their ominous attitudes. It could be that they really do want to find their own place to live and wish for everything to be nice. But the point is there is nothing going on week after week. There is no big forward movement. The characters, as well done as they might be, have little reason to be doing anything. And, honestly, I'm bored when I shouldn't be. This show began with a new attitude on the very kind of material I've written for decades. I wanted it to be good, to show us new paths we could take, but instead we've gotten a show that is about "so what?"

At this point in the season we need to know what the threat is, or even if there is a threat. We need to have an inkling that something big is going to happen and our heroes need to discover what it is and need to stop it, help it, or become part of it. But we need to know there will be a payoff more than our possible baddies recruiting other special folk. The series this season has the feeling of marking time where in the first season it felt like it was rocketing along week after week, with a goal in mind, whether there was one or not.

I don't think Heroes will be renewed as it's very much a "who cares" show right now. The shame of it is it doesn't have to be. They could have kept up the breakneck speed of season 1. They could have had season arcs that meant something. Look at the best genre shows and you'll rarely see a marking time episode where nothing big happens: Battlestar, Babylon, Dr. Who, etc. were/are fast paced genre shows that you have to keep up with. Heroes has become a show that you need to slow down in order to let it catch up.

Your thoughts?

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Jan 4, 2010

KEEP WATCHING THIS SPACE

It's a new year and my resolution is to update this site regularly.

We'll start with a book my friend Bill Warren wrote. It's a complete update of a two-volume wonder he wrote many years ago called Keep Watching The Skies. The original books were a thorough compendium of every SF-horror movies done in the 1950s. It was page after page of text and an incredible resource of information. The new book, just released, is even better as it's graphically more interesting to go through. There are lots of photographs, including many in color, with a beautiful dust jacket by artist Kerry Gammill (who I worked with for years on various comics), and Bill rewrote every entry to make them even more interesting and entertaining. This isn't necessarily a book you read in order, but browse through, find a movie you might remember loving as a kid, or seeing the title you find too irresistible to ignore (and SF and horror movies of the 50s had some pretty bizarre titles). The thing is after you read one entry you find yourself reading the next, even though you never heard of that movie.

The book is a great read and should be on every one's book shelf. You can order it by clicking here: Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties, The 21st Century Edition

Dec 16, 2009

SCRUBS

Watching the latest episode. ABC brought that hilarious show pretty much intact from NBC. Only thing they forgot was the humor.

All Contents ©2008 Marv Wolfman. All Rights Reserved