Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

I remember my brother giving me a copy of Another Fine Myth to read when I was young. At the time, I believe it was the first comedy fantasy that I had ever read. I was hooked on the Myth books for a long time, and even picked up one of those massive paperback anthologies of the first few novels a year or two ago.

I also remember trying to write a book like the Myth novels when I was a kid, but the work itself is probably better left forgotten…

Robert Asprin, 1946-2008

On May 22, 2008, Bob passed away quietly in his home in New Orleans, LA. He had been in good spirits and working on several new projects, and was set to be the Guest of Honor at a major science fiction convention that very weekend.

I was reading through issue 00 of Doorways Magazine (free from Wowio – link at the end of the entry) when I came across this little gem from Gary A. Braunbeck.

Doorways: It’s been said before, by you as well as others, that your work isn’t easily definable—you often overlap horror, dark fiction, sci-fi, and even fantasy and mainstream fiction, as well as writing stories that fall easily within those boundaries. Where do you feel the majority of your work belongs, in terms of general category?

Gary: The more I write and publish, the less I care about categorization—categorization is purely a marketing tool, a necessary evil that mid-list writers like myself—in my case, barely a mid-lister—have to accept and deal with. I was exceptionally pleased when Leisure decided to drop the word “Horror” from the spines of their books and replace it with, simply, “Fiction.”

He then goes on to talk about how he advises his writing students to “forget genre” and instead just tell the story as it should be told—which is great artistic advice, even if it’s a bit dicey commercially.

I, for one, have been disappointed making the rounds of my local bookstores and discovering that none of them have “horror” shelves. Instead, the horror titles are mixed in with the rest of the “fiction” section. The marketing reality of this is that if I’m looking for new horror—which, as someone working on horror manuscripts, I am—then I pretty much have to already know the title and author of the book I’m looking for instead of browsing or looking at a “new horror” section. Especially since my local book stores tend to fill over half of their floor space with the fiction section, making just general browsing a day-long activity. This is unlike the Science Fiction or Mystery genres, where I can walk over and take a look at one to two shelves of “New Science Fiction” and “New Mystery” and acquaint myself with what’s recently published.

Instead, I have to depend on outside resources like, well, Doorways Magazine, for a start, and those nifty cardboard standees at the front of Barnes & Noblesse Oblige. I’ve scanned those standees, by the way, and based on them, here’s the ideal back cover blurb for your latest horror masterpiece. You will adjust your plotlines accordingly.

The streets of [London/New York/Paris/Romantic Western Urban Locale] are dark and mysterious. Real mysterious. Not just episode-of-”Monk” mysterious, but, like, mys-teeer-ious. Life is dull and grey for [reporter/student/other career that involves words] Jane Merkinson [or insert favorite name of your choice]. Little does she know that soon her boring, comfortable life will be ripped asunder as a dark, sexy [vampire/vampiress] leads her into the blood-soaked, sensuous underworld of the undead.

“I loved it!” – generichorrorsite.com

“Breathtaking!” – welovevampirehotties.com

“A sleek and sexy thriller!” – Entertainment Weekly

“Please, please, pleeease give me Anne Rice’s old contract!” – The Author

You know geek conversations. Whatever your particular fandom, you’ve had them. Whether it’s who would win in a fight between Superman and Scud the Disposable Assassin or who would win in a match between 1970-era Joe Frazier and 1999-era Lennox Lewis, you’ve had this kind of conversation.

Here’s my favorite geek conversation ever – newly supplanting my previous favorite, the ethics of destroying a Death Star filled with otherwise innocent private contractors and full-time support employees. Ladies and gentlemen: Evil Monkey’s Guide to Kosher Imaginary Animals.

Mermaid – A: “No, for the obvious reasons.” EM: “What if you marry one? Is that kosher? Will a rabbi marry you?” A: “Kosher is a term about eating, not about sex.” EM: “I’m not talking about sex–I’m talking about marriage!” A: “If the mermaid is Jewish, the rabbi will probably marry you. But only if you’re Jewish too. But you’ll definitely have to find the right rabbi…”

Priceless.

Thanks to Boing Boing, I find my way back to ElfQuest.com – where WaRP Graphics has started the long process of posting every page of ElfQuest online for free reading. The second wave is about to go up, but the first wave contains – among other things – the first full story arc of the original series, Journey to Sorrow’s End.

It’s ElfQuest’s 30th anniversary this year, and last year DC Comics let go of them. They’re one of the longest-running indie comics on the scene, and I discovered they’re selling merchandise through CafePress.

I had problems with how DC handled their property. The “manga” reprints hacked the original art apart and re-ordered it, slathering it with a liberal dose of digital screen tones, and the only way to get the comic as it originally appeared was in overpriced “Archive” editions. Add to that the lack of promotion and the fact that the movie adaptation fizzled shortly afterward, and it seems like DC just didn’t quite bring its A-game.

There’s nothing wrong with CafePress. I still have a store with them, myself. But it still feels odd to see an indie comics institution of 30 years using what is usually thought of as a beginners’ merchandising outlet.

ElfQuest was a big part of my artistic development. It was the first outlet that made me realize that character design was more than just how people looked, but could also be used to reveal the inner life and monologue of a character. It was the comic that kept me interested in comics as a storytelling medium at times when the mainstream output failed to engage me. A lot of my sense of visual storytelling still comes from tricks I learned from Wendy Pini’s sequential art, with its use of cinematic angles and animated frame layouts that mimicked the time-flexibility of film.

And to top it all off, my first actual audience for any one of my short stories was an ElfQuest fan club (or “holt”).

I’m happy to see ElfQuest going online, and hoping that now WaRP will be able to bring back an audience for the comic. I know I’ll be tuning in every week and re-acquainting myself with what still remains my favorite comic.

I’ve slowly become addicted to Wowio. The three free PDFs a day is a nice thing already, but when you add to it the fact that their catalog features some hard-to-find material and some ridiculously expensive books all as free downloads, it’s a very difficult website to ignore.

And if you do a bit of searching, you’ll find things you’ve heard about, but never picked up. Like, say, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, by Winsor McCay. I hear McCay’s work cited all the time, but I’ve never really stopped to pick it up. Today I logged in to Wowio to discover Rarebit, along with three more volumes of work by the influential cartoonist.

I’m currently talking with Wowio about distributing some of my work as well as It Came From Airport Security. We’ll see how well that goes. But when you’re looking for a cheap read, it’s hard to beat free.