MSM's Studio

Our mutual friend and professional muckstirrer, Mantlo Strange, has been sending me preview excerpts from his next guidebook to our fair city.

For decades, the Cult of Pumayyaton has been binding the ghosts of the city’s preeminent citizens to their likenesses in sculpture. If you happen to get your hands on a pilfered copy of one of their hexbooks you can usually get them to talk. Either The Hammer, Chisel and Rasp or The Cup of Quicksilver will contain the right cantrips, though the former is in some dialect of Phoenician, so you’ll likely need one of those Franklin pocket translators, and owning either one without cult initiation is likely to get your tongue turned to stone, should you be found out. Sunrise or sunset are the best times to speak with the affixed, but be prepared to listen to a whole lot of grousing about the filthy habits of pigeons and lake gulls before you get to any topic of less scatological substance.

This is a bust of Aaron Montgomery “Monkey” Ward:

You would look this rough, too, if you had to stare at this mess until Biela’s Other Hammer arrives to flatten the city:

The bust was first placed there in ’93 and it wasn’t a week before the Pumas funneled the ghost into the sculpture. About once a year, a few members of the extended Ward family sneak out on the eve of his birthday to try to at least turn the statue around so he’d be facing the lakefront parks that he’d fought so hard to establish. Thus far, all the get for their troubles are a few wrenched backs and at least one official vandalism citation. Monkey’s Turn (Feb 16th) has become an unofficial city holiday in that part of the South Loop.

Modifying my will to abjure memorial sculptures,

Mantlo Strange

(Mirrored at http://studio.michaelsmanley.com/2010/06/23/notes-on-apple-pim-functions/.)

Apple is now four versions into its “cloud” PIM service, MobileMe, and its associated mobile device, the iPhone. These have been built to integrate with Apple’s OS X PIM apps — Contacts.app, Mail.app and iCal.app — with the intent of giving users of the apps, the device and the service synchronized, portable access to their data. For the most part, this synchronization works well (modulo the usual ways you can screw up merging of multiple collections of data), though there are holes in the functionality that are, in my opinion, embarrassing for such an otherwise polished suite of tools. These holes result in the necessity of adopting third-party applications to manage PIM information. This kind of duplication of functionality annoys me. More applications means more clutter, especially mental clutter. Apple should either make these applications work so well that they are the natural choice for use (especially on the iPhone) or make their second-rate applications removable.

With the release of iOS 4, the long-suffering Notes function in the Apple PIM suite finally gets MobileMe synchronization that does not require a tethered iTunes sync. This means that the iPhone Notes application begins to actually be useful for daily users of the app. There are still strange quirks to the whole concept, such as accessing the notes in Mail.app on the desktop (notes are apparently some form of mail message), lack of even simple versioning like one finds in apps like SimpleText, and the graphically dubious yellow notebook background and Comic Sans-esque default font (which is changeable in Mail.app’s preferences, at least).

Mail.app and iCal.app also include a rudimentary to-do list function, apparently implemented as a form of iCal calendar and exposed as lists in both desktop applications. To do lists are not separately synchronized items the way notes, mail messages, calendars and contacts are in MobileMe.

When synchronizing a MobileMe account with a Mac or iPhone, multiple folders named “Mobile Me” and “On My Mac” for both kinds of items appear in the Mail.app mailbox list. In the iCal calendar list a MobileMe category appears, containing a “Mail To Do” calendar. New items can be created in any folder, though in Mail.app the display of these folders can be collapsed. By default, new items are created in the “On My Mac” folders, but they can be dragged between folders.

Where the holes appear, for me, is in the inconsistent synchronization of these items and the inconsistent access to the items between the Mac desktop apps, the iPhone apps and the Me.com apps.

For Notes data, most everything works as I would expect. Note stored in the “On My Mac” folder stay on the Mac and are not synchronized. Items stored in the “Mobile Me” folder move between platforms without much problem or delay. The major hole for notes lies in the access to them on Me.com, where they are read-only and new notes cannot really be created (as shown below, you can kind of fake it).

To Do lists are a whole other mess. The main problem is inconsistency between “On My Mac” vs. “Mobile Me” compared to the Notes app: In iCal, the “On My Mac:To Do” calendar maps to the “On My Mac” to do list in Mail.app and this is the calendar that is synchronized over Mobile Me, just like all the other “On My Mac” calendars. While this is consistent with calendars, it is not consistent with the other “Reminder” type, which is Notes. in iCal, the “Mobile Me:Mail To Do” calendar maps to the “MobileMe:To Do” list in Mail.app. This calendar is not, as far as I able to tell, synchronized over MobileMe, which is odd given its name. Since the synchronization behaviors for Notes and To Do lists are opposite (Mobile Me Notes sync to MobileMe, but On My Mac To Do items sync), the single Mail.app preference applying to both types of items leaves users having to choose which type of item they want synced. Given that To Do items aren’t available on the iPhone at all, I’ve chosen to always have both types of items go to Mobile Me folders so that Notes always sync.

The other main issue with To Do lists is that they are not available, as far as I can tell, on the iPhone at all. They do not appear in the Calendar app anywhere that I have been able to find, though the “To Do” calendar synced from the desktop is present.

Confused? Me, too. I cannot imagine why these functions are still so unfriendly this late in the game. I’m not absolutely certain what the right thing to do for To Do lists is, but I think it may be that iCal calendars and To Do lists are either “On My Mac” and not synced to Mobile Me, or they are explicitly synced by placing them in a “Mobile Me” folder/collection in iCal. This would be consistent with Mail messages and Notes. Parallel constructions for Contacts, Bookmarks and other Mobile Me synced data would be welcome as well. And then full read/write access to all of these on the iPhone and Me.com is needed as well. I’m not sure if I want “On My iPhone” folders distinct from Mobile Me folders on the phone. The symmetry there is appealing but I think having multiple potential pools of data (local device unshared, MobileMe shared) could be confusing, though for Mac/iPhone users who do not use Mobile Me and sync only through iTunes, that might be the right thing to do.

So, where do Apple’s Notes and To Do lists work? Here’s a summary based on my experiments:

Notes created on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:Notes:On My Mac

• are available on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:Notes:On My Mac.
• are not available on Me.com.
• are not available on iPhone.

Note created on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:Notes:MobileMe

• are available on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:Notes:MobileMe.
• are available on Me.com in Mail:Folders:Notes (read only).
• are available on iPhone in Notes App.

Notes created on iPhone in Notes App

• are available on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:Notes:MobileMe.
• are available on Me.com in Mail:Folders:Notes (read only).
• are available on iPhone in Notes App.

Notes created on Me.com in Mail*

• are available on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:Notes:MobileMe (read only).
• are available on Me.com in Mail:Folders:Notes (read only).
• are not available on iPhone.

* This is only sort of possible:

1. Create new mail message.
2. Save draft and close without sending.
3. Move draft to Mail:Folders:Notes.

To-Dos created on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:To Do:On My Mac

• are available on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:To Do:On My Mac.
• are available on Mac in iCal.app:On My Mac:To Do.
• are available on Me.com in Calendar:Calendars:To Do.
• are not available on iPhone.

To-Dos created on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:To Do:MobileMe

• are available on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:To Do:MobileMe.
• are available on Mac in iCal.app:MobileMe:Mail To Do.
• are not available on Me.com.
• are not available on iPhone.

To-Dos created on Mac in iCal.app:On My Mac:To Do

• are available on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:To Do:On My Mac.
• are available on Mac in iCal.app:On My Mac:To Do.
• are available on Me.com in Calendar:Calendars:To Do.
• are not available on iPhone.

To-Dos created on Mac in iCal.app:MobileMe:Mail To Do

• are available on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:To Do:MobileMe.
• are available on Mac in iCal.app:MobileMe:Mail To Do.
• are not available on Me.com.
• are not available on iPhone.

To-Dos created on Me.com in Calendar:Calendars:To Do

• are available on Mac in Mail.app:Reminders:To Do:On My Mac.
• are available on Mac in iCal.app:On My Mac:To Do.
• are available on Me.com in Calendar:Calendars:To Do.
• are not available on iPhone.

To-Dos created on iPhone

• are not possible.

Following up on the “monstermash” silliness:

MONSTER THROWDOWN A discussion of vampires, werewolves and Louisa May Alcott moderated by Pulitzer Prize winner John Matteson on May 6that Symphony Space

Lynn Messina, coauthor of Little Vampire Women (HarperTeen), and Porter Grand, coauthor of Little Women and Werewolves (Random House), sit down with John Matteson, author of Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (W.W. Norton), which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography on May 6 at 7:00 p.m. at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space (2537 Broadway at 95th Street).

The evening will be introduced by Ron Hogan, of Beatrice.com, the well-known literary blog, which is presenting the event. The discussion will explore their mash-ups of Alcott’s classic, Little Women. Both authors will address the challenges they faced reworking the text. Alcott’s own work, published under various pseudonyms, included many sensational elements such as spies, murderers, drug addicts and mummies, and Matteson will explore whether inserting vampires and werewolves into the beloved story would be truly anathema to the author.

In writing Little Vampire Women, Messina insists that she was just following Alcott’s lead. Messina says, “I found the inspiration for the book in chapter eleven, when malaprop-prone Amy calls her Aunt March ‘a regular samphire.’ ‘She means vampire,’ corrects Jo. I was absolutely stunned to see the word vampirein Little Women. I knew vampires weren’t a modern creation, but it still surprised me to realize that they were mainstream enough in the 1860s that Louisa May would drop it into a book.”

Grand, on Little Women and Werewolves says, “Bronson Alcott, Louisa May’s father, was a staunch vegetarian who forbade his family to eat meat and preached ‘without a flesh diet, there would be no blood-shedding war.’ The family obliged Bronson in this, as in all things, but once Louisa May’s writing put her in a position of financial comfort, she ate a great deal of meat. It is quite fitting then, that carnivorous werewolves have been added to the very novel which had put her in the situation to eat all the meat she craved.”

John Matteson says, “With a teenage daughter in the house, I have been alternately intrigued and scandalized by the vampires-in-literature craze. But Louisa May Alcott herself loved writing thrilling tales, and I think it’s nice for people to know that Alcott fans can enjoy something more lurid and exciting than the proper folding of pocket handkerchiefs.”

The event will be held at Peter Norton Symphony Space’s Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater on May 6 at 7:00 p.m. Symphony Space is located at 2537 Broadway (at 95th Street). Tickets are $10 and available through SymphonySpace.org.

Lynn Messina is the author of four novels, including the best-selling Fashionistas, which has been translated into 15 languages and is in development as a feature film. She attended Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied English Literature. She lives in New York City.

Porter Grand, a Cleveland native, holds an AS in liberal arts, a Bachelors degree and a Doctoral in Theology. She has worked, among other jobs, as a waitress, bartender, carnival barker, go-go dancer, shampoo girl, welfare caseworker and Reference Librarian, and now writes daily in her Huntsburg, Ohio, farmhouse.

John Matteson is a Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York. He is author of Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (W.W. Norton), which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. He is currently at work on a biography of Margaret Fuller, also to be published by Norton.

For further information please contact: Karen Linwood on 347-267-4125 or karen@linwoodpublicity.com

I expect there will not be as many leather trenchcoats, shiny blades and sickly green lights as in Underworld, but I remain open to being pleasantly surprised. If anyone is in NYC on May 6th, please do let us know who wins.

I enjoy investigating little splinter subgenres of fiction. Movie novelizations were probably the first niche I dove into, having read copies of WarGames and Goonies into tatters in junior high. Then the punk years: cyberpunk, splatterpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, biopunk, slipstream/new weird, urban fantasy: I dove into most and came up stinking. I spent a little while in grad school compiling lists of books of poetry and fiction written by celebrities — with science fiction written by former Star Trek cast members a further speciation — which generally made me sad for our culture*. I recently wasted a late night looking up all of the novelizations of USA Network crime shows written by Lee Goldberg and his family (which led to a whole long investigation into previous TV series books, ending in a bitter auction battle to get a rare Rockford Files paperback, which I lost). There’s a potential subgenre of books written by characters of TV shows that seems promising, though so far I have only identified one volume.

I should say I enjoy cataloging these weird ghettos more than actually visiting them. The gimmick usually gets old right quick, like William Shatner’s lounge act, or anything by Seth Macfarlane.

The gimmicky fiction craze that has most recently caught my attention is what I’m calling “monstermash” fiction. This blight upon English was torched off by the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies**. I’d heard of the book and considered it a one-off fluke, until my parents — who live closer to President Lincoln’s Boyhood Memorial than they do to any fast food chain and so are unwillingly afflicted, by dint of geography, with all kinds of Honest Abe news*** — alerted me to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter****. The terrible engines of collective intelligence at Amazon.com then opened my horrified eyes to an entire raft of novels coming out that take canon literature and infuse it with horror or science fiction tropes, taking advantage of out-of-copyright works and basic popculture literacy. This is fiction that calls to memory the evil that is filk music. This is what you get when you strand only a handful of century-old characters in the public domain. This is professional fan-fiction.

Thus far, I have uncovered*****:

• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
• Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
• Little Women and Werewolves
• Little Vampire Women — I want to see these last two novels fight, like in Underworld.
• Emma and the Werewolves
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls
• Mansfield Park and Mummies
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim
• The Undead World of Oz — Another subgenre, the revamping of the Oz books, which was quite popular in comics in the 1990s.
• Vampire Darcy’s Desire: A Pride and Prejudice Adaptation — Jane Austen prequels and sequels are a subgenre on their own, but there are at least two novels out there with Darcy as a vampire.
• Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers – A Canterbury Tale — Oh look, a word from the author.
• The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies — Yo! PhD students! Right here! Built-in parallelism between the deaths of empires and the stories told within them!
• Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter — Maybe historical figures as monster hunters is a sub-subgenre? I recall a story on Usenet, back in the Jurassic, called “Jim Morrison, Space Cadet” or something similar.
• Android Karenina — Oh, finally. Some science fiction. And a pun. That never happens.
• Jane Bites Back — OK, now my head hurts. A send-up of Austen novels and vampire novels in the form of an Austen vampire novel. Western culture is dead to me.

Notice the strong bimodal distribution in cover art quality. Half the books are trying hard to look like Penguin Classics, which you just know is going to screw up the textbook budget of countless college sophomores. The other half look like they were drawn by that dude you knew in the dorm who played a lot of D&D and wore a fedora everywhere.

Think of this list as your own little “Here Be Monsters” map, so you know where not to go, or at least have a warning to boldly ignore. Me, I’m going to go dive into this supernatural Western stuff I’m reading so much about.

* Except maybe Sam Shepard’s stories and maybe the occasional Peter Ustinov novella, which is too pretentious for words, isn’t it?

** Conveniently intersecting the popular zombie subgenre, which was dead on arrival. Get it? Dead on arrival! Ha! These jokes are free, folks.

*** Of which there is more than you might imagine.

**** See the nod there to the Whedonverse, which is a whole subgenre unto itself? The whole monstermash subgenre is reliant on you, the reader, getting the joke. I see a PhD dissertation in someone’s future.

***** Uncovered in the sense of lifting up a rotten log in the woods and exposing lots of nasty things to sunlight.

This is what happens when you make middle managers do all their reviews in one week.

A bit of snark at the tail end of winter: Title-O-Matic

Sadly, many of the titles generated by the page can be found in any mid-sized office environment. It’s like Pokemon for sad children.

The Twitter integration makes it social. I will entreat venture capital offers only in the 8 figure range or higher.

The freshman class of “Atlantic Fiction for Kindle Short Story” ebooks has been released into the wild. Being a fan of a) the Kindle, b) The Atlantic (though moreso in former days than lately) and c) short fiction, these would appear to be cultural products aimed directly at my demographic. And so, being as good a simulation of a consumer as I can muster, I read them.

First, a note on the price. Seriously, four bucks for a short story? Someone at The Atlantic seems to have forgotten what century they are in. A subscription to One Story costs only $1.50 per tale, and those folks know a good bit about selling individual stories. Reading the scant reviews of the Atlantic stories so far, it is clear that there’s a bit of downward elasticity to be played with here.

The Atlantic is well-known as one of the last mass-markets for “literary” fiction, and the stories published thus far pretty much fit the mold of what you’ll find in the magazine. They are all steadfast in their realism (with the possible exception of Buckley’s story, which has some tall tale genes in it). There’s very much a white, upper-middle class sensibility here, not so much in the characters’ status (at least not always), but in the cultural context that the stories present.

“Cynara” by Christopher Buckley. For my money, this is the most successful of the stories thus far. Buckley tells an almost-contemporary seaman’s tale, full of boasts and wild adventure, curses and intoxication, strong women, lucky sailors and doomed landlubbers, and the love of your boat. There are some wink-wink, nudge-nudge bits where I wish Buckley had dialed it back a bit (one character’s scoffing at the chance to invest in Starbuck’s before it was big reminded me too much of a throwaway gag from That 70s Show). Not to spoil things, but the ending probably deserved to be a totally separate story, as there was a perfectly good denoument in the scene previous, with the narrator and his friend making their choice to head home.

“Shovel Kings” by Edna O’Brien. The longest of the stories, I believe. It felt the longest, at least. Concerned with the observation of a working-class Irish immigrant to England, by someone apparently of less hardy stock, the story is ultimately one of frustration and futility, as Rafferty (the observed Irishman) fails to ever escape his upbringing and life of grinding labor. Lovely in its words, reading “Shovel Kings” is like looking at a hyper-realistic painting of a rock in a field, or perhaps a dying mule next to a rock in a field. Sometimes that’s the kind of poignancy you need.

“Beast and Bird” by Jennifer Haigh. A sort-of immigrant story, set prior to WWII, regarding the introduction of a Pennsylvania Polish farmgirl to Upper West Side Jewish culture. The lead character is passive almost throughout, again doing more observing than acting, and ultimately expelled for something she didn’t actually do. The ending is a bit muddied, with references to the Holocaust that confuse the resolution (did they throw her out to make room for the refugee nephew, or did she assume that later?). As with most fiction of this sort — the serious, literary, realistic story — the sentences are well-constructed, even pretty in places, but the overall significance of the story eluded me.

“A Regular Couple” by Curtis Sittenfeld. A trend in contemporary fiction that I am much disliking is the inclusion of any character’s brush with fame due to some media-driven scandal. Too often, that tactic feels like a Law & Order “ripped from the headlines” episode. While that may make for the occasional compelling junkfood TV, very rarely does it add anything of depth to a story, and often it leads (like Buckley’s Starbucks detail) to a sense of artificialness, stale right out of the box. In this story, the narrator has in her past the notoriety of being attached to a Kobe Bryant-like trial (as a defense attorney), which is meant, somehow, to reflect on her strength as an independent woman, but just adds to her miserable nature. Sadly, there is no one else in the story to sympathize with. All four characters in this honeymoon-from-hell/high-school comeuppance fantasy are shallow, disaffected, unpleasant jerks. That each one is a jerk in a unique way does lend the story some merit, but I lost all patience with the author when a glaringly telegraphed reversal takes place near the end. No pithy self-observation by the narrator could save the story after that. By the end, I was tired of them all. If I wanted to spend an extra hour with jerks, I’d have gone to work on time that day.

Will I keep buying these stories? Probably, due more to my sickness as a completist than anything else. Even if stories don’t completely work for me as a morsel of entertainment, I enjoy dissecting them to see what works and what doesn’t. I do wish they’d drop the price, though.

Because some pinch-faced, technocratic gnome-duke at Amazon is operating under the assumption that all us Kindle users are solitary, cave-dwelling loners who never recommend purchasable items to random strangers on the Internet, I cannot link directly to the individual stories in the Atlantic series themselves. But I can, because I am one of those horrible “computer nerd” types like the hackers what imposed all the pornography and viruses and pharmaceutical mails on your precious electronic brain device, I was able to concoct this specially-crafted link to the set of them all at once:

• Atlantic Fiction for Kindle

Just because you don’t own a hideously expensive talking book toy, that doesn’t mean you must miss out on the rapturous bliss of non-paperbound storytelling. Official Kindle Brand Literature Transmission Softwares are available from the more loving and graceful elves at Amazon in the left-hand column of this page here for the vile Windows and Blackberry devices, as well as the blessed iPhone and (soon, we hope and pray and dream) Macintosh machinery. Enjoy.

I’ve uncovered one last chunk of 15-year-old fiction that I once tricked someone into publishing. The Heat is a set of rather short fictions (I’m still rather Joycean about what I’ll allow to be called a proper story) set during a particularly hot summer on a midwestern college campus. A piece of unsolicited advice for aspiring writers of fiction: If you find yourself writing fiction that is set anywhere near a college campus, particularly the one you’re associated with, you should take that as a sign that it is time to go find somewhere else to live.

Don’t ask about the dragon. I don’t know, either.

The Heat

Books

Here, I’m not so proud. I didn’t hit my usual goal of 50 or more books in a year, and looking back over what I did read, I read a lot of crap. Resolution #1 for 2010 is to read better books. Also, read more short stories. Favorite books of the year are probably Spaceman Blues and Olive Kitteridge. Anything with a (K) signifies that I read the book on the Kindle, which I plan to do a lot more in 2010.

• Territory, Emma Bull (K)
• Dark Light (The Engines of Light, Book 2), Ken MacLeod
• The Region of Lost Names, Fred Arroyo
• Devil Bones, Kathy Reichs
• Terminal, Andrew Vachss
• Another Life, Andrew Vachss
• War for the Oaks, Emma Bull (K)
• Patriot Acts, Greg Rucka
• Deja Dead, Kathy Reichs
• Fatal Voyage, Kathy Reichs
• Grave Secrets, Kathy Reichs
• Spaceman Blues, Brian Francis Slattery (K)
• Bare Bones, Kathy Reichs
• Monday Mourning, Kathy Reichs
• Break No Bones, Kathy Reichs
• Bones to Ashes, Kathy Reichs
• Kingdom Come, J.G. Ballard
• Rusty Nail, J.A. Konrath
• Dirty Martini, J.A. Konrath
• Fuzzy Navel, J.A. Konrath
• The Caryatids, Bruce Sterling
• City of Tiny Lights, Patrick Neate
• Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Jeff Lindsay
• Palos Verdes Blue, John Shannon
• Black Dogs, Jason Buhrmester
• Liberation, Brian Francis Slattery (K)
• Electric Literature #1 (K)
• 206 Bones, Kathy Reichs
• On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner (re-read)
• Walking Dead, Greg Rucka
• Turn Coat, Jim Butcher
• Caught Stealing, Charlie Huston (K)
• Six Bad Things, Charlie Huston (K)
• A Dangerous Man, Charlie Huston (K)
• Heart-Shaped Box, Joel Hill (K)
• Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout (K)
• Deadly Decisions, Kathy Reichs
• Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri (K)

Comics

Resolution #2 for 2010 might need to be “read fewer comics” if only to save shelf space. Best new comic read in the year has to be The Walking Dead. Biggest waste of time, Air. Best discovery: Comics on BitTorrent. Yes, I am a few years behind there.

• Jack of Fables Book 4: Americana
• The Walking Dead Book 1: Days Gone Bye
• The Walking Dead Book 2: Miles Behind Us
• Fables Books 1-10 (re-read)
• Fables Book 11: War and Pieces
• Exterminators Book 4: Bug Brothers Forever
• Hellblazer: The Family Man
• Godland Book 3: Amplified Now
• Northlanders Book 1: Sven the Returned
• The Vinyl Underground Book Two: Pretty Dead Things
• Time2 Book 2: The Satisfaction of Black Mariah
• The Programme Book 1
• The Programme Book 2
• House of Mystery Book 1: Room and Boredom
• Locke & Key Book 1: Welcome to Lovecraft
• The Walking Dead Book 3: Safety Behind Bars
• The Walking Dead Book 4: The Hearts Desire
• The Walking Dead Book 5: The Best Defense
• The Walking Dead Book 6: This Sorrowful Life
• The Walking Dead Book 7: The Calm Before
• The Walking Dead Book 8: Made to Suffer
• The Walking Dead Book 9: Here We Remain
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus 6
• Local
• Watchmen (re-read)
• Powers Book 12: The 25 Coolest Dead Superheroes of All Time
• DMZ Book 6: Blood in the Game
• Abe Sapien Book 1: The Drowning
• Wanted
• Criminal Book 4: Bad Night
• Hellboy Book 8: Darkness Calls
• BPRD Book 9: 1946
• Hellblazer Special: Chas The Knowledge
• The Witching Hour
• Serenity Book 1: Those Left Behind
• Serenity Book 2: Better Days
• Why Hate Saturn (re-read)
• Sandman Mystery Theatre Book 7: The Mist and The Phantom of the Fair
• Omega the Unknown
• Weclome to Hoxford
• The Nightmare Factory
• Wasteland Book 1: Cities in Dust (re-read)
• Wasteland Book 2: Shades of God (re-read)
• Wasteland Book 3: Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos
• Strangehaven Book 1: Arcadia (re-read)
• Strangehaven Book 2: Brotherhood (re-read)
• Strangehaven Book 3: Conspiracies
• A History of Violence
• American Flagg! Definitive Collection Book 1
• American Flagg! Definitive Collection Book 2
• Storm Front Book 1: The Gathering Storm
• BPRD Book 12: The Warning
• Hellblazer: The Roots of Coincidence
• Essential Man-Thing, Volume 1
• Essential Man-Thing, Volume 2
• Beowulf adaptation
• Echo Book 1: Moon Lake (re-read)
• Echo Book 2: Atomic Dreams
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus 7
• Cowboy Bebop Volume 1
• The Question Book 1: Zen and Violence
• Scalped Book 4: The Gravel In Your Guts
• House of Mystery Book 2: Love Stories for Dead People
• 100 Bullets Books 1 – 13
• Young Liars Book 1: Daydream Believer
• Young Liars Book 2: Maestro
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1910
• Rex Mundi Book 1: The Guardians of the Temple
• Ted McKeever Library Book 1: Transit
• Ted McKeever Library Book 3: Metropol
• Dylan Dog Case Files
• Desperadoes Omnibus
• Fables Book 12: The Dark Ages
• Northlanders Book 2: The Cross and the Hammer
• Madame Xanadu Book 1: Disenchanted
• The Walking Dead Book 10: What We Become
• Solomon Kane Book 1: The Castle of the Devil
• Emberley Galaxy
• Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter
• Kabuki Books 1-4 (re-read)
• The Gunslinger Born
• Kabuki Book 5: Metamorphosis
• Wasteland Book 4: Dog Tribe
• The Umbrella Academy Book2: Dallas
• DMZ Book 7: War Powers
• Locke & Key Book 2: Head Games
• Air Book 1: Letters from Lost Countries
• Nocturnals Book 2: The Dark Forever and Other Tales
• Dark Entries
• Astro City: The Dark Age Book 1: Brothers & Other Strangers
• The Extremist #1-#4
• BPRD Book 11: The Black Goddess
• Scalped Book 4: High Lonesome
• Alan Moore’s Wild Worlds
• Echo Book 3: Desert Run
• Hellblazer: Scab
• Jack of Fables Book 6: The Big Book of War
• Checkmate: Fall of the Wall
• The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home
• Hellboy Books 1-8 (re-read)
• Tumor #1-8 (K)
• The Dark Tower: Treachery
• Hellboy Jr (re-read)
• Abe Sapien: The Drowning (re-read)
• Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus (re-read)
• BPRD Books 1-11 (re-read)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 Book 1: The Long Way Home
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 Book 2: No Future for You
• All Micronauts Comics (CBZ)
• Miracleman #1-#24 (CBZ)

Movies

This was my first year with a NetFlix subscription, which I clearly did not use to its potential. I’m coming up on 200 movies in my queue, which should take about 6 or 7 years to get through at this rate. Favorite movie of the year was Beowulf and Grendel, which I much preferred to the CGI cartoon that Zemeckis directed. Del Toro’s Spanish movies were a close second. I only saw two movies in the theater, Watchmen and District 9, and neither was really worth the trip. Resolution #3 is to not let NetFlix discs sit around the house so long this year.

• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• Instinct
• Serenity
• Children of Men
• No Country for Old Men
• Batman: The Dark Knight
• A History of Violence
• Unforgiven
• Watchmen
• Stardust
• Mirrormask
• Sunshine
• Cowboy Bebop (entire series)
• Beowulf (Gaiman/Zemeckis)
• District 9
• Beowulf & Grendel
• Grey Gardens (1975)
• Pan’s Labyrinth
• The Devil’s Backbone
• Hellboy
• Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
• Hellboy: Sword of Storms
• Hellboy: Blood & Iron
• Pretty Baby
• Hercules (1983)
• Fargo
• Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince

Unless I am too impatient to wait for a collection, I generally avoid single issues of comics. I prefer a whole story in one package, not paced out across months (which also constrains story structure, usually to a 5-act drama form). Currently, Stumptown is the only series I am picking up in individual issues. This is a good time to be a “wait for trade” kind of comics reader, as many old series are finding a second chance in omnibus editions. My favorite of these this past year have been the American Flagg! volumes and the Ted McKeever Library. Nearly everything I enjoyed in the 80s and 90s is now available in cheap, durable editions, often including stories that I never found during original publication (the new hardbound volumes of Larry Marder’s Beanworld are my favorites like that right now).

The other night while trying to fall asleep, I began to list comic series that I would like to see collected. Be aware: comics nerdery here.

1. Ted Slampyak’s Jazz Age Chronicles: This was an early Caliber Comics series, and while most of it is available online at Graphicsmash, the navigation there sucks and I always feel like I’ve missed something. Slampyak’s work deserves big, clear print, anyway. There are some individual storyline TPBs of this out there, but they are rare these days. This is one I wish Desperado or Tranzfusion, who have been reprinting old Caliber titles (including Negative Burn, hooray!), would pick up. To be honest, I’d really enjoy a DVD of every Caliber Press title, the way they made one for Deadworld a few years back.

2. Phil Hester’s Fringe: Not in any way related to JJ Abrams’ X-Files re-tread on FOX, Fringe was another Caliber title that never got a chance to be finished, either in individual issues or in short form in Caliber’s anthology series. There is a three-volume collection of Hester’s The Wretch that is quite nice and comes from the same era. I’m happy to read most anything Hester put together, especially if he does the artwork as well. I don’t know what you’d call this story. Sort of a dystopian science-fiction love story with psychic hooker nuns, I guess.

3. Bill Widener & Starlen Baxter’s Go-Man: Another Caliber title that got squashed in the little black-and-white collapse in the late 80s. There was a half-hearted attempt to finish the series off in the Caliber anthologies. Go-Man had all the hyper-media savvy of 20 Minutes Into the Future (the real reason Max Headroom was invented) and Mister X.

4. Miracleman: This is on many lists, I imagine. If Image, who supposedly owns the rights to this title now, were to publish everything that was available — including the special issues outside of the main series — in one of those obnoxious “absolute” editions, I would finally buy one of them. In the end, Miracleman is more about religion than superheroes.

5. Rom: Spaceknight: In the late 70s, Marvel Comics licensed a bunch of toys and created comic series around them that actually interacted with the mainstream Marvel continuity. In some cases, like with ROM, the comic’s popularity far outlasted the toy’s shelf life. The ROM toy was junk, a hunk of gray plastic with some red LEDs and a basic sound chip. The comic, though, lasted 7o-odd issues plus some annuals and the occasional appearance in other titles. Marvel has a line of “Essentials” books that provide a ton of comics on the cheap. I think ROM, with its Lensman-esque Spaceknights, the small-town sci-fi and horror, would be perfect for that kind of bulk, black-and-white treatment.

6. Micronauts: A couple times in my life I have owned complete sets of the Micronauts original series and annuals, the X-Men crossover mini-series (bleah) and second series. I even had copies of the high-quality reprint editions. Both times I sold them in some misguided need to clean house. The characters show up in trademark-skirting form on occasion at Marvel, and there was a half-assed attempt to revive the brand a few years ago. Somewhere, there is some myopic licensing corporation holding on to the rights to these stories, thinking that they have more value locked up than out in the world. One of my favorite memories from childhood was getting my copy of Micronauts #33 in the mail the day we left for a vacation trip and reading it over and over every night and in the car.

7. Shogun Warriors: I actually still have these in original issues, as well as the wrap-up story in an issue of Fantastic Four, but they are 30 years old now and fragile, and so an Essentials volume would be very useful to me as I mine the stories for the series I have been meaning to pitch to Marvel, The Further Adventures of Illongo Savage. It will be huge, I’m telling you. Warren Ellis was going to use something from this title in Nextwave but as far as I can tell, he didn’t. I would be more charitable than he planned to be, I suspect.

8. The Epic Comics Wild Cards miniseries: Supposedly this already exists, but I have never found a copy, and while the original issues are occasionally available on eBay, they are almost always in this awful condition where opening the books causes pages to fall out, due to the crap glue used to bind “prestige” books back in the early 90s. I would like these to complete my obsessive collection of Wild Cards books. This was another title I sold off in one of my giant collection liquidations. Stupid rent.

9. Milestone Comics: Despite what’s on this list, there are not many superhero comics I enjoy. I was, though, a big fan of DC’s Milestone comics. I liked everything from the imprint-wide design sensibility and color palette, to the subtle continuity between titles that showed up quickly. They weren’t all great, but I would buy Blood Syndicate TPBs for sure. I guess these could get reprinted, if the characters are actually getting merged into the main DC continuity. I vaguely recall seeing something with Icon in it recently.

10. Impact Comics: Another DC experiment that got cut short. Actually, I would like to see some archival editions of all the old Red Circle characters. These have been/are making another comeback, and like Milestone, will be or have been incorporated into the DC Universe. I’m not really in favor of that kind of thing. While sometimes it pays off (the Charlton Comics “action hero” characters obliquely begat Watchmen, for example), mergers are usually destructive. If you’re a story completist like me, as characters get entangled you start heading down the rabbit-hole of trying to find out more about the characters’ stories, and soon, if you’re not careful, that means you’ve been tricked by the publishers into buying things you didn’t actually want. This is why I avoid the main Marvel and DC continuities and am annoyed by crossovers between companies.

I’m sure a few more nights of sleep failure could produce many more titles for this list. I’m interested in other series that people would like to see reprinted.