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by The Comics Outsider
When I tell you something, you can take it to the bank. Then, it's their problem to deal with.
MOM SAID NEVER TO LIE... BUT SHE NEVER SAID TO TELL THE TRUTH
100% probability of truthiness. 
75% probability of truthiness. 
50% probability of truthiness. 
SEVEN MORE SOLDIERS?
In response to the critically acclaimed success of Grant Morrison's "Seven Soldiers," DC is at it again! Only this time, he gets seven even more obscure heroes to play with! Bookended with art by Michael Turner, and featuring art by Ian Churchill, Marat Mychaels, Dan Fraga, Art Thibert, Marc Pacella, Dan Panosian, and Stephen Platt we can look forward to the wildest re-imaginings of past DC fan favorites such as Conduit, Anima, Shadowdragon, Bob the Galactic Bum, Jamm, Prysm, and the members of the Chain Gang in early 2008!
CIVIL WAR: THE RETURN II
Citing positive fan response, Marvel has decided to create a sequel to the smash hit Civil War tie-in that brought Captain Marvel from the past to the present day Marvel Universe to become a warden at a jail filled with his old friends. The sequel will follow the same structure as the original.
In the first half of the book, Ned Leeds (deceased Daily Bugle reporter and brainwashed Hobgoblin), will be brought from the past to the future to serve as the pro-reg side's new press liaison. He will be brought forward through time due to a "rip in the space-time negative zone continuum or something" a Marvel staffer is quoted as saying.
In the second half of the book, The Sentry will renew his driver's license.
ARTISTSWIPING 1: TOO MANY COOKES
Rumor has it that Marvel was set to steal Darwyn Cooke away from DC, but the recent backlash against artists who use heavy photo reference has made them shy away from Cooke and his shamelessly lightboxed tracing, all too obvious when you compare this panel of test pilot Hal Jordan from Cooke's "New Frontier" with this shot from the 1989 Richard-Dreyfuss-is-an-airplane-pilot film "Always".
INFINITE PAID VACATION SCHEDULE, 2007
In the wake of the Infinite Christmas/Holiday Special fiasco, an internal source at DC has revealed to me several other holiday specials that were canned before they were even solicited:
Infinite Arbor Day Special
Infinite Vernal Equinox Special
Infinite 9/11 Special
Infinite Boxing Day Special
IT AIN'T EASY BEING GREEN
Guess who actually pushed the button that turned the Hulk into the Hulk? His color scheme is similar and his name rhymes with Forman Snozzborn. All this and more in the upcoming super-secret JMS Hulk title that will follow World War Hulk entitled: HULKSTORM.
ARTISTSWIPING 2: DA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA BAGMAN!
TALKIN 'BOUT THOSE CLONE WAAAARS...
Not upcoming from Dark Horse! A previously planned miniseries all about Episode 1 red shirt-equivalent Ric Olie has been cancelled by the licensing giant. "Clone Wars: Got to Get Paid" has been cancelled, with no hopes of getting back onto schedule. Reason being that not enough fans cared enough about the little-known, little-loved minor character to warrant a miniseries, one-shot, or even cameo appearance. "In the grand scheme of things, nobody really cares about this guy," said a Dark Horse Senior Editor. "Even the truly rabid fans could care less about this insignificant, worthless, loser of a character. In fact, when we asked fans about their interest in the character of Ric Olie, they said he looked like the kind of douche would hide behind non-disclosure agreements in order to get out of paying his employees what he owed them."
Ironically enough, the miniseries was meant to revolve around Ric owing money to some familiar characters in the Star Wars Universe: Bail Organa, Jabba the Hutt, and Yoda. Ric, unable to pay anyone, decides to sue them all instead. His lawyer? Chewbacca.
But now this character looks to be a forgotten failure, a minor footnote, an insignificant speck in the lore of Star Wars. But that's all right. Quote a Lucasfilm executive, "Nobody cared too much about him in the first place, either."
RESPAWNING
On the heels of the new David Hines revamped Spawn comic book series, HBO has announced that the fan-favorite Spawn animated cartoon is making a return...with a twist! Based on the success of the Cartoon Network's Teen Titans Go!, HBO has commissioned twelve new episodes featuring McFarlane's signature character. The similarity stops there however, as instead of following the kid-friendly, anime-tinged lead of TTG, the new Spawn will go another route. "Tentacle rape!" exclaimed an unnamed HBO producer. "It's going to out-Urotsukidoji, Urotsukidoji!" referring to the seminal 'classic' demon-porn anime known to US viewers as "Legend of the Overfiend." Look for the new show (with spine-tingling theme song by Japanese noise band Melt Banana) to air in early 2008.
ARTISTSWIPING 3: NOT EVEN YMB IS SAFE FROM THE SWIPERS!
Read the previous Comics Outsider.
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Posted by YourMomsBasement at 12:00 PM
by Pete Goodrich
Christopher Lambert is sort of a terrible actor. By sort of, I suppose we mean 'Is.' He's not much of a ladies man as his low heavy brow and massive fivehead do not make for 'Hollywood heartthrob.' Admittedly his deep, penetrating gaze is due to him being legally blind, but vision impairment is no excuse for shitty acting. For an example, please see... Christopher Lambert. Though he was born on Long Island, he was raised in Switzerland which accounts for his bizarre, unspecified accent. He's like a French Mushmouth. Take a look at his IMDB page, and you will see a slew of straight-to-video crappiness with some weird French-lookin' movie titles mixed in. This is not news. Well, except for perhaps the French films.
We all recognize that Christopher Lambert is not a star. But I think that all of us, as geeks, would agree that his finest work was 1986's Highlander. We all have fond memories of the swordfights and the romance and the tales from different eras. We knowingly forgive Sean Connery playing a Spaniard ("My name is Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez. Laddie") because he's Sean frickin' Connery, we all know that the Kurgan is just the baddest ass of all movie badasses, and gosh darn it Highlander was just plain awesome, number one and the best. We love Highlander. We remember it as being awesome.
My friends, our memories are wrong. This movie is bullshit, and does not deserve the warm place in our memories that it has. Myself, I was perhaps eleven years old when I saw this catbox of a movie. I didn't know any better then and I'll wager that you didn't either. I watched it again last night, for the first time in years and years. And I tell you this: IT SUCKED. A lot. I will admit that it was at least laughably bad, so it wasn’t the worst time I’ve had watching a movie. But for my attempt to see it as 'so bad it's good' a larger part of me was saddened to see that this happy movie memory of mine for so very long, was so very bullshit. Let us take a look, shall we?
There will be no spoiler protection added, as this movie is old enough to drink.
Problem #1: THE ACTION AND F/X
In a word: dated. I know that we are all pretty spoiled by the standards of today. Both special effects and fight choreography are greatly improved from what they had been back in the day. We can’t expect a lot of wire-fu and shit from lightly trained (I assume they were trained somewhat) American actors in 1986. But I remembered the swordfights being a lot…faster? More brutal? Better? Yes, I remember the sword fights as being better than what we get. It’s just the standard movie “And thrust and parry and swing and clash! And thrust and parry and swing and duck! And thrust and parry and…” It was not as innovative as I remembered it to be. Why did I think it was so nutty? Was it because it was in a parking garage? I cannot explain this.
And as for the F/X... Whenever an Immortal takes his enemies head, he is suffused with a weird, eldritch energy (The Quickening) that causes tearing winds and electrical energies that affect the area around him. Which means that the PA’s bust up a lot of windows and have some fun with the spark machines. The first time we see it, the Quickening is so powerful that it causes the cars in the parking garage of Madison Square Garden to break their windshields and headlights and rev their engines uncontrollably! Incredible! Not cheesy at all! Oh wait, yes it was. Big ups to whoever decided that the other perk of the Quickening process would be that a huge spotlight goes up in the background.
These criticisms are not unique to Highlander, but still one that has to be noted in order to fully explain how and why this movie is actually not very good.
PROBLEM #2: WHAT?
There are movies that are so powerfully entertaining, that they give you pause. This movie is not one of them. Take for example the interrogation scene with the police that MacLeod (false identity of Russell Nash) has to go through. They (rightly) suspect he had something to do with the headless body they find in the shattered parking garage at Madison Square Garden. Apparently they had a hard time believing that this foreign-sounding antiques dealer digs the 'rassling shows. The banter and wit exhibited here…yeah.
Garfield: Are you a faggot, Nash?
Connor MacLeod: Why, Garfield? Cruisin' for a piece of ass?
Garfield: I'll tell you what happened, Russell. You went down to that garage for a blow job. But you didn't want to pay for it.
Connor MacLeod: You're sick.
That's a dandy comeback. YOU ARE THE BURN MASTER! Well Officer Garfield then flies off the handle and pops MacLeod one in the face, so our hero then gets up and starts pounding the bejesus out of a police officer in a police station. Which yes, is a little ridiculous…but more ridiculous is that they let him leave right after! I guess a sketchball who was found fleeing the scene of an unexplained murder can get away with that shit in the 80’s. But how? I know not. A bit of a plothole with this scene, which also ties in with the largest minus this movie has going for it being that Connor MacLeod is kind of a dick.
PROBLEM #3: CONNOR MACLEOD: KIND OF A DICK
I understand why he was dropping so much attitude in the police station. Makes sense, if you want your hero to be tinged with a little anti-heroism, you give him some snappy patter and a disrespect for authority. Whereas Highlander went whole hog, and just made him an utter prick. I'll admit I felt bad for him in olden times when he got kicked out of his village; but everything about 80's MacLeod was just plain Dick. One could say that it was centuries of longevity that led him to his cold, cynical attitude.
But on the other hand, Connor MacLeod is a pretty creepy asshole throughout this movie. In the origin flashbacks I suppose one could forgive it as “It’s the 1500s! Of course he’s going to treat a woman as an object! Where’s Braveheart?!” Which I suppose is fair, and his relationship with his wife in olden times is actually shown to be quite happy and uncreepy. There’s some weird male wish fulfillment going on in one bit with his Old Wife in the 1500's. After sex wife Heather MacLeod replies “You can do that to me forever if ye like me lord.” One supposes that line was there for ironic purposes, but watching it...just plain weird.
And then in the 80’s, MacLeod has become a weird, stalker dick. It is incredible that his behavior in this movie actually manages to win him the girl. I guess she could not resist his magnificent jutting brow. Forensics examiner/ancient sword expert (I shit you not) Brenda Wyatt has been investigating traces of ancient sword metal she found at the site of the first battle of the movie. MacLeod’s ancient sword metal. He follows her to the bar for…no good reason. He mumbles something at her telling her not to follow him…although he had just followed her to the bar from the crime scene. He looks intensely creepy as he does so. And of course, as any rational individual would do she then starts to follow him into a shadowy alley. IT IS PERFECTLY LOGICAL THAT SHE DOES THIS. He of course grabs her from behind and puts her hand over her mouth because he sensed the Kurgan was lurking nearby, but I bet he would have done that even if the Kurgan wasn't there.
Later on, she goes to his office to try and get more insight into MacLeod, who then unleashes his powerful pimp powers!
MacLeod: Can you cook?
Brenda: …yes.
MacLeod: I think we should have dinner.
And she says okay, and invites him over. To her house. Where she would then cook dinner for him. And when he comes over, he starts going through her stuff. To be fair, it was all a clever ruse on Brenda’s part as she had hidden a pistol and a tape recorder in a box on her bureau. In her bedroom. Away from the dining room where presumably she would have taken him for dinner.
And finally in the “WTF? Why does she dig him?!” category, is the scene where he proves to her that he is in fact an immortal. By putting an ancient blade in her hand, and forcing her to stab him. And then they fuck. And keep in mind, throughout all of this he has fixed her with a gaze that I am sure he intends to be "intense and smoldering," but in actuality is more the "psycho looking dude on the bus’' variety. Yet still, he gets to nail her and then lovingly caress her 80s bangs. And Brenda of course ends up chained to a billboard by the ol' Kurgan as bait for MacLeod, and the circle of objectification is complete.
All movies ask for a little suspension of disbelief, but I kind of get the sense that Highlander expected us the viewer to just shut up and eat the shit they shoveled at us. I found the "Immortals who can only be killed by beheading" stuff to be more believable than the love story, which got equal screen time. It's not something you'll notice when you're a preteen and just learning about girls in the first place, but twenty years later this shit sticks out like a sore thumb.
But don't hate me for this, I admit there are good things in this movie too. The Queen soundtrack is brilliantly hilarious. Apparently they were so moved by the love story between Connor and Old Dead Wife Heather they wrote the song “Who Wants To Live Forever” just for the movie. This is notable only because it’s fun to sing along with the music whenever it comes up again later in the film, which is often. You can’t go wrong with a Queen soundtrack; sometimes it’s what tips a movie over the top from godawful to awesome. You can see which side I feel this movie is on, whereas Flash Gordon is only made more awesomely bad by the Queen soundtrack.
And of course the best part of Highlander- the only truly enduring good thing in this movie- is the character of the Kurgan. Clancy motherfucking Brown trumps all, and if the movie had been all about him and his quest to behead a sleazy Christopher Lambert I would go back in time to see the movie twenty times. He does the crazy/menacing thing so very well. The scene where he terrifies Brenda into submission (not kidding) by going on a crazy joyride down the streets and sidewalks of NYC is just amazing, and the bit where he steals an old couples station wagon and goes for a crazy drive with her clinging to the hood…well, that’s just great stuff.
So what have I learned from this little exercise?
1) I might be totally wrong. This one film spawned 4 sequels (another one getting ready for video as we speak), a TV show, several novels, a comic book, and one terrible animated series. So you know, if majority rules and popularity is what counts then I am totally wrong about the movie sucking. So…yeah. I’m not wrong.
Hey, I’ll admit that the mythos as a whole has grown to the point where it’s bigger than the movies. And that’s cool. I used to like the TV show a bit. But I used to say that the only good Highlander movie was the first one and after last night I know that is simply untrue.
2) When Rob Liefeld stole this concept for his own long ago and rightly forgotten idea of ‘The Externals,’ I thought it was bullshit that he so blatantly copied one of the more interesting elements of the film franchise. It’s still true. I just wanted to remind you of that.
Your mileage may vary of course, but I think the past twenty years have elevated Highlander to a level that it really doesn't deserve. If anything, this movie needs a remake. With better actors, FX, fight choreography, and script. Don't believe me? Go watch it. Go on, watch it. Let me know what you think. But beware! You might end up shattering a favored childhood movie memory as I have. It's not the biggest thing to lose, but I know that it sort of bummed me out when I realized how bad this was. Shit, now I'm afraid to go back and watch Flash Gordon.
Our previous Look Back In Anger: 1996
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Posted by YourMomsBasement at 09:30 AM
Once again, YMB's team of investigative infotainment reporters have managed to discover spoilers for a super-popular TV show, this time the second half of the first season of NBC's big, hit TV show Heroes...
Budget concerns have forced the show to abandon its plan to have Hiro fight a dinosaur armed only with a samurai sword. At first, they planned to replace that fight with him fighting a crocodile, but then that was deemed to dangerous. Instead, he will fight Bindi Irwin, the eight year-old daughter of the Crocodile Hunter, in a crossover promotion with Discovery Kids.
Hiro is not expected to survive the encounter.
The heroes will be thrown for a loop when painter of the future Isaac, being a tempermental druggie artist, decides to change mediums, causing massive delays in the heroes being able to get the information they need from his visions.
The problem?
He takes up sculpting.
In marble.
With a chisel.
Heroes will start to suffer from the same NBC stunt casting that ultimately hurt ER and Will and Grace. When Linderman is finally revealed he will be played by none other than 80s sitcom star Bronson Pinchot. A production assistant told us: "It seemed like a good idea at the time. Get Balki for the part, have him do a funny accent. Give the show a little humor injection. But now that we're filming it... damn, was this ever a mistake. We should have gotten Cousin Larry."
Catchphrases, catchphrases, catchphrases! Along with the now famous "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World", and "Are You On the List?", expect your favorite Heroes characters to spout out "Bring it On!", "Imma Blow Up Your Face!", and "You Want to Stick That Where?"
The show's creators will continue their practice of subtley naming characters as Hiro meets new heroes "Sue Permann", "Juss Tisse", "Goodguy McSaint", and villainess "Eve Ill".
Ali Larter will take her clothes off in an upcoming episode. Due to the magic of "strategically-placed shadows" and "carefully-situated foreground objects"... you're still not gonna see anything.
Hiro will disappear into the past again. This time, when he comes back, he will return as a skilled swordsman, a perfect speaker of English, and lead singer of Wyld Stallyns.
Due to a busy schedule at DC, artist Tim Sale will no longer be able to provide the actual art for Isaac's in-story comic book. He will be replaced by comic book bad boy Pat Lee. The change in the look of the art will be explained within the context of the show by having Isaac suffer a stroke.
Our infotainment reporters last brought you spoilers for season three of "LOST."
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Posted by YourMomsBasement at 08:30 AM
by the YMB Staff
YMB was cleaning up the basement last week and found something... Wizard issue number 65. Their "year-end spectacular" for 1996. As we begin 2007, YMB thought a look back to the state of the industry a decade ago might be worthwhile.
Won't you join us in a little trip down memory lane? We'll go dancing in the dark. We'll go walking through the park and reminiscing...
So, what was happening in 1996?
Well, in the greater realm of film geekdom, Star Wars buzz was slowly building. New trading cards and action figures were out. Later in 1997, the original films would be re-released and then Lucas would announce the production of the first new Star Wars film in more than 15 years.
In superhero movie news Kevin Smith was announced as the scribe for the new Superman film. The hype around "Batman and Robin" with new Batman George Clooney was building. Chris Columbus (who would later direct Harry Potter) was attached as the director of a Fantastic Four movie. And principal photography on the big screen version of "Steel" was completed. Each one a smash success.
*Ahem.*
In comic news, in January 1997, a new series called Thunderbolts was just about to launch. They'd already appeared in an issue of Incredible Hulk and the buzz was building on these new heroes. Of course, fans were also about get one of the last truly great surprises in comics when it turned out the Thunderbolts were actually a disguised Masters of Evil, taking advantage of the lack of heroes in the Marvel Universe after the battle with Onslaught. Given the sieve-like leaking during Marvel's latest event, Civil War, one wonders if such a shocker could be kept secret in today's world of the Internet and gossip mongering. Probably not.
DC had announced The Kingdom, a monthly book to follow of the heels of the hugely successful Kingdom Come miniseries. Written by Mark Waid, with input from Alex Ross, and interiors by Gene Ha, the book would start bringing elements of the future-set miniseries (like villain Magog) into the current DCU. The book never happened, of course. The Kingdom eventually saw life as a crossover event in 1999 that introduced Gog and Hypertime, but with no input from Ross after the creators had a falling out. Meanwhile, later in issue 65, Wizard covered a Ross art gallery show where you could buy interior pages of Kingdom Come for $500. $500!
Wizard continued their issue with a look forward at 1997 by highlighting eight artists to watch for in the coming year. Where are they now?
Michael Turner does covers and work for the big two and runs Aspen Comics. Jeffrey Moy works in video games. Steve Skroce did storyboards for 1999's The Matrix. Jim Calafiore has a secret project at DC after working for years on various X-books. Lee Moder will be drawing a new Painkiller Jane book after a hiatus away from comics following his work on Stars & STRIPE. Cary Nord draws Conan the Barbarian for Dark Horse after getting his big break in 1996 drawing Daredevil. Ian Churchill has drawn Uncanny X-Men and Supergirl. And Carlos Pacheco is on DC's flagship Superman title with Kurt Busiek.
Wizard then looked back at the year that was, highlighting the ten biggest stories of 1996. Where were you when you found out about...
Marvel's Heroes Reborn stunt? (The Avengers and Fantastic Four sacrificed themselves and were relaunched in a pocket universe.) Rob Liefeld leaving Image? (Lee and Liefeld had gone back to Marvel for Heroes Reborn and Liefeld left Image in September.) The rising star of writer Garth Ennis? (A little book called Preacher from Vertigo.) The success of Marvel's Onslaught crossover? (Psst, it was Professor X all along.) Kingdom Come blowing away expectations? (With an epic throwdown between Superman and Captain Marvel.) Self-publishers joining up with larger studios? (With books like Strangers with Paradise looking for safety under Wildstorm's Homage banner as the industry slumped.) Superman getting married? (Just in time to coincide with TV's "Lois & Clark"). The rise of comic-themed toy lines? (From newcomers Toy Biz and McFarlane Toys.) The end of the Spider-clone Saga? (Thank God. Even if they had to bring back Norman Osborn to do it.) And the unexpectedly not so awful Amalgam event? (A decade later and people still want more Spider-Boy.)
If you were like most comic geeks a decade ago you were maybe in your local comic shop and found out about them from the grumpy store owner, or possibly you were walking to class and heard about it from your buddy who reads comics and takes it all a bit "too seriously", or, if you read it in Wizard, you were probably on the crapper.
Ah, 1996... when Spawn #1 still guided for nearly $20.
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Posted by YourMomsBasement at 11:30 AM
by Daniel Harvey
Paul Malmont and his debut novel, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, made quite a splash in 2006. The work made the cut on many of the "must read" lists of the summer -- from the Village Voice to US News & World Report -- and its popularity shows little sign of slowing. It earned Malmont a spot on Kirkus Fiction Spotlight 35 Hot Debuts list. When he's not exploring American Mythmaking in prose Malmont works as a copy director at a leading interactive ad agency in New York City (he and I are coworkers). He lives with his wife and children in Brooklyn.
The work is part post-modern pastiche and part loving homage to pulp adventures of the 30s and 40s. Rather than featuring the characters often found in these sorts of guns-blazing, two-fisted romps Malmont turns the spotlight on their authors including Walter Gibson (aka Maxwell Grant creator of The Shadow), Lester Dent (aka Kenneth Robeson creator of Doc Savage), H. P. Lovecraft (mastermind behind the Cthulhu Mythos) and Ron Hubbard (yes that Ron Hubbard). In the story they contend with successes, failures, and betrayals both personal and professional all the while being inextricably drawn into a chaotic world of asian assassins, horrofic things that go bump in the night, lost treasures and curses and more.
DH: Hey there!
PM: Hey
DH: I've got a ton of questions and notes for you. Some less formed than others but I think good material for a conversation anywho.
PM: OK. Then let's get started.
DH: Do you see a synergy between the plight of the characters to breakthrough and your own struggles as a debut author?
PM: To some extent - I paralleled my characters' hopes and dreams to get into the slicks, or the top tier of pulps, to my hopes, as a working writer, to be able to write something more exciting than the things I get to write on a daily basis - concept docs, marketing pitches, ad copy, etc.
DH: You're a writer writing about writers. Do you see that as a post-modern device, perhaps even a necessary one for today’s audience?
PM: I think that level of Meta-ness is an essential element of the book that lifts it from a pulp museum piece to the level of some kind of literature. I think that the convention works particularly well in this case because it's satisfying both to fans of pulps/thrillers/genre, and those seeking something a little more thoughtful - but no less fun.
DH: Was Kavalier & Clay an influence on you? Have comparisons been drawn in reviews? If so, has does that make you feel?
PM: Well - I had actually been working on this before I read K&C. But I was thrilled at the reception Chabon's work received and it certainly encouraged me to keep going. I think what his book revealed (again) is that there is a broad audience out there that cares about the geek stuff and good writing. It showed how mainstream the fringe has become. Anytime anyone compares to me to a good writer it's a nice compliment. Several comparisons have been to Alan Moore which is great because I really love his work.
DH: That's an interesting comparison -- especially in regards to work like League of Extraordinary Gentleman
DH: How did you arrive at the big idea for your story?
PM: I had always wanted to tell a story about the pulps in an unconventional way. At one point I thought about writing an "autobiography" of a pulp hero. Anyway - I had made a short film about magicians and the subject of Walter Gibson, Orson Welles, and The Shadow came up and I started thinking about telling a story about the three of them. Once I started to think about that, well then I had to include Lester Dent. Then L. Ron Hubbard and so on... And all of a sudden it's not just a story about Walter Gibson - it's a top-to-bottom overview of the whole Pulp Era.
PM: Then the plot came in two ways...
DH: Which were?
PM: It had to begin with the death of Lovecraft, and end with the Chinatown Unity Rally - both real events.
DH: Why those two events?
PM: Because they seemed ripe with dramatic possibilities. Trying to connect the two events - now that was work! The Unity Rally in particular represents the end of the Tong wars and the end of the Chinatown that was so prevalent in the pulps.
DH: Was there something more than a sense of the exotic or the shock of the new that made Chinatown and the broader culture so prevalent?
PM: In fact I think it was our very American fear-of-the-other that led to the racist portrayals in the pulps known as the Yellow Peril. There was explicit government policy, in the form of the Chinese Exclusion Act to prevent Chinese from assimilating more easily into American culture.
PM: I knew I had to address the Yellow Peril in the pulps - but I wanted to do it in a way that made sense to contemporary audiences and sensibilities.
DH: Zhang Mei was one of the more dynamic characters -- I'm assuming created from whole cloth by you -- in the story. At times depicted as hero, other times villain
DH: Did you ever feel that you were in danger of retreading that "fearful" ground?
PM: Yeah - in some ways I consider him not even an antagonist or villain - but the anti-protagonist. All I could do was try to create a character as real as possible and explain his motivations, and then hopefully people would understand that I was trying to subvert the whole Yellow Peril trope.
DH: You mentioned that bridging those two events together was a work... tell me about the role research played in the work
PM: Well - I had Lovecraft on one end, and the Chinatown Unity Rally on the other - and then there were things I knew I needed to get in in order to pay homage to the pulps - settings like broken-down waterfronts and warehouses, tramp steamers, lost islands, trains, etc. so I had to look for something to connect them all, and that became the lost gas from WWI. Now that was inspired by an article I had come across which hypothesized that a Dutch steamer, the Orang Medan, which had been found adrift in the 40's with the crew all dead in horrible positions, was the result of an accident during the black market trade in WWI chemicals.
PM: Research to me is great and is one of the reasons I think I love the web. Research to me is a very hypertextual experience. Each door opens two more interesting ones.
DH: Correct me if I'm wrong, but you've actually met Gibson?
PM: You're wrong and I'm correcting you. The only Gibson resource I had when I was writing the book was a magician by the name of Tony Spina who used to run Tannen's Magic Shop here in NY. He knew Gibson well and gave me some great help. Now that the book is out, most of the Gibson fan club - people who knew him, wrote the articles I used for research and such, have checked in to let me know what I got wrong and right... and wrong.
DH: Tell me about your relationship to the pulps. What first hooked you? What maintained your interest?
PM: I first found one of the Bantam reprints of Doc Savage - Man of Bronze in 1976 at a school book fair... those Bantam reprints had amazing covers by James Bama which are totally iconic and the depiction of Doc Savage. So I'm reading it, and it's about the 30's, and not at all what I expect, in fact it's even better. And my dad tells me there's a whole bunch more of them and tells me about the pulps. And he gets me the Orson Welles Shadow broadcasts. So I was sunk from then on.
DH: Does that mean you have a lot of pulp ephemera cluttering up your mom's basement?
PM: I don't really have a collection so-to-speak because I could never find or afford pulps out in Pennsylvania.
DH: "Never find or afford pulps" seems so painfully... antithetical to the whole point, right?
PM: I know - they cost 10 cents in 1937. Two months ago in Chicago at the Windy City Pulp Convention where we introduced the book - I paid $150 for a copy of The Shadow.
DH: Which issue?
PM: The Golden Vulture of course! A gift for my editor.
DH: well played.
DH: In the story the characters debate "what's real" and "what's pulp" -- what guidelines for creating a convincing reality did you put in place for yourself?
PM: Simple. To use as many facts as possible. The more realistic it was - then the more permission I could give myself to go pulp.
PM: Truthful is a better word than realistic...
PM: But, y'know, it's just a fun fiction with some facts sprinkled throughout.
DH: Are there moments where you felt the two impulses collided? Moments where you thought they complemented one another well?
PM: Well - the one time I didn't know whether or not it would work and if I was going too far was when one of the characters appears to come back from the dead.
PM: And I think it works really well with the Tale of the Sweet Flower War.
DH: Zombies are always fair game.
PM: Yeah - but it was hard and took a lot of work before I felt it really worked in a way that played fair with my own rules.
DH: Agreed. The earlier introduction of "The Watchman" helped that succeed I think.
PM: Yeah - that episode really shows the audience where the book is going. If they're still with me after that section then I think I've got 'em 'til the end.
DH: The characters talk about eras of pulp, the hierarchy of pulp, and most importantly "who is pulp." Who do you feel is pulp today?
PM: Chuck Palahniuk, the late Patrick O'Brian, Max Allan Collins, Charlie Hughes, Geoff Johns, Frank Miller.
DH: Geoff Johns? Some members of the community here are gonna get a kick out of that
PM: Yeah - I've read a couple of his Flash scripts and they're brilliant - even before they become comic books.
PM: Also -forgot to add J. J. Abrams (lost) and Joel Surnow (24)
PM: 24 is probably the biggest pulp in the culture right now.
PM: A direct descendant of G8-And His Battle Aces, or The Spider.
DH: I have to confess, as much as I had a geekgasm about The Avenger reference in the story (which I think was really just brilliant by the way), if you had managed to get The Spider in there...
PM: Well - the guy who created and wrote The Spider - Norvell Page - is a real colorful character in his own right. Maybe someday...
DH: What do you see in your future? Novels in a similar space? Moving this story into other media -- say film?
PM: Well, I'm still pursuing the roots of that type of masculine American mythmaking so I'm going back a little further in time for my next book. Then I'm hoping to return to visit some of these characters again during WW2. But not all of them. And some new ones.
DH: Sounds great. Just make sure you leave time to help me with those concept docs and marketing pitches.
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