Google Alerts Round-up

Just a couple of ego checks today:

East Hampton Public Library makes The Brooklyn Nine a Cool Pick for Hot Summer Days...

And Jess at Barney's Book Blog (no, not that Barney) thinks Something Rotten is one of the best young adult novels she's read in a long time.

Thanks, guys!

Two Star Trek Graphic Novel Reviews

I've been in a Star Trek mood of late. Besides the theatrical reboot of the Star Trek franchise (which I enjoyed) we've been watching a lot of TNG-era Trek at home. After not giving Star Trek: Voyager much of a chance when it was in first-run syndication, Wendi and I are working our way back through the series via Netflix. We're halfway through season three, and we're interested enough to keep watching--although still not nearly as devoted to this one as we were/are to The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Jo's been watching them with us though, and she's definitely into it.

So in the meantime, in the odd days when we have nothing from Netflix sitting on top of our television to be watched at dinner, we've been pulling out our Star Trek: The Next Generation discs (we own all seven seasons) and watching the good, the bad, and the ugly among them with Jo to show her our favorite Trek. So between the new movie, on-going Voyager viewings, and Next Generation re-viewings, I've been in Trek heaven.

To further feed my recent Star Trek obsession, I picked up two Star Trek Graphic novels with promise: Star Trek: Countdown, a comic book prequel to the recent Star Trek movie meant to answer a lot of questions left on the editing room floor, and Star Trek: The Next Generation - Forgiveness, a story that mixes an adventure with the TNG crew with a bit of teleporter history. I enjoyed both, and reviews follow for interested folks. There are minor spoilers, but I try not to totally give away plot resolutions...

Star Trek: Countdown
Story by Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman
Written by Tim Jones and Mike Johnson
Art by David Messina

I enjoyed this prequel, which provides a great deal of back story for the villain Nero of the 2009 Star Trek movie franchise reboot. As the screenwriters say in their brief afterward, this prequel is more a love letter to some of their favorite characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation than anything else. That's the real highlight here: seeing TNG favorites like Picard, Data, LaForge, and Worf in their later lives. Each is woven believably and seamlessly into the Spock/Nero Vulcan/Romluan storyline. If you're a fan of TNG (as I am) you'll relish these characters in their new roles. (And you'll be happy to see they quickly undo Data's lame "return to innocence" from Star Trek: Nemesis.)

The weakest part of the story is consequently the weakest part of the entertaining new Star Trek movie; Nero's motivation to destroy Vulcan and just about everyone else in the universe is tenuous at best. Why exactly is it Spock's fault that Romulus was destroyed, when he seemed to be the only one trying to stop it? And if Romulus is on the verge of destruction, why doesn't Nero take his wife and child with him on his mission to save the planet? Well, the Romulans have never been logical, and neither is that part of the story. I'll let it pass. More interesting to me is that all the nutty, unexplained details in the movie--Nero's tattoos, his pointy staff, his almost omnipotent and clearly not-Romulan ship, and more--are given plausible, even entertaining, explanations here.

An enlightening and enjoyable companion to the blockbuster movie.


Star Trek: The Next Generation - Forgiveness
Written by David Brin
Art by Scott Hampton

The premise of this graphic novel is intriguing: one hundred years before human history acknowledges the invention of the ubiquitous Star Trek transporter, someone *else* invented it--a melancholy genius named Colin Blakeney. But no one knows he invented the transporter a hundred years early because just as he's about to test beaming himself through it a crazed protester who thinks transporters will steal humanity's souls sabotages it, and both men are beamed away to...where?

Cut to the 24th century, where the Enterprise is headed into a delicate diplomatic situation with a race essentially given a prison sentence for accidentally releasing a bio-engineered virus that killed millions of people across the galaxy. After two generations, the guilty parties are long since dead and their grandchildren long to be free of the sphere of mines that surround their homeworld and prevent them from rejoining the interstellar community. This is, of course, the moment the Enterprise picks up an anomalous transporter signal, brings its "occupant" on board--the long lost transporter genius, cast adrift as particles in space all those years ago.

Blakeney's in a kind of fugue state after the loss of his family and his invention, and, you know, floating around as data in space for a couple of hundred years. Crusher and Data walk Blakeney through his memories in a nice trick with the holodeck while a tense standoff ensues with the quarantined race and the Enterprise. The two events end up intersecting, of course, leading to a disappointingly rushed ending which sees Data do some startlingly rash things that, in 99 cases out of 100, would have led to his own nasty death and an inconvenient war between the Federation and the imprisoned planet. But everything works out in the end, of course, and everyone is forgiven--hence the title.

David Brin is a veteran science fiction writer with real chops, and artist Scott Hampton's painted style is extraordinarily effective--especially in the scenes with ships in space. (The Enterprise-E has never looked so majestic.) Besides the hurried ending, I also wish there had been more time to explore Dr. Crusher's infatuation with her new patient, briefly alluded to by the perceptive Counselor Troi.

I also have to scratch my head--again--at the timing of the story. For continuity reasons I can only assume were mandated by the studio/publisher, this story takes place at the same time the Dominion War is raging on at the other side of the quadrant. The Dominion War may have drawn in the Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, the Cardassians, and the Breen, but for some inexplicable reason it hasn't drawn Starfleet's biggest, baddest battleship--the USS Enterprise. The reason in TV continuity was clear: TNG was over, and the Dominion War was Deep Space Nine's fight to win or lose.

To pretend the Enterprise was simply always dispatched to some other place in the war (and off screen) is one thing, but to make it *part of the story* that the Enterprise is held *in reserve,* to "handle urgent matters elsewhere" is preposterous. Really? The flag ship of the fleet, running errands in wartime? Absolutely unbelievable, yet Brin has to waste a two page spread explaining it here, when it's totally unnecessary to the plot of his story. Again, it's not his fault. The Powers That Be pulled this nonsense one of the TNG movies too, if memory serves. Why oh why could they not have just made this adventure set in the nebulous post-history of DS9? Surely there's nothing in this that has any bearing on galaxy-wide continuity. Again, a head-scratcher--just a die-hard fan's minor quibble with the higher ups.

Overall, an enjoyable return to the Enterprise of The Next Generation.

Return of the Horta!

Check out the word verification I had to type in to submit my last Blogger comment:


Too funny. For those who don't know, this is a Horta:

It's a silicon-based life-form from Star Trek: The Original Series. NO KILL!

Torchwood: Should we bother?

The new season of Torchwood hit the BBC this week, and the Twitterverse responded favorably--as did a few of my friends I trust with this kind of stuff. Wendi and I enjoy the new Doctor Whos, and we love us some Captain Jack Harkness (above) who's the lead in the Torchwood spin-off. But we didn't make it far into the first season of Torchwood before bailing--it was just too silly and stupid. Then we heard that season two wasn't so bad, and now season three has (apparently) started off with a bang. io9 even asks if Torchwood is finally becoming better than Doctor Who!

Yeah, okay, the last few regular-season episodes of Davies' run as producer on Doctor Who were a disappointing mess, but still, the Davies/Tennant years are pretty fabulous TV overall. (And I really like the Next Doctor special Davies wrote that came out recently.) But Torchwood better than Doctor Who? Hmm. Perhaps we'll have to Netflix season two of Torchwood so we can watch season three with some preparation. But I can guarantee you I'm not going back to season one of Torchwood.

And as io9 says, all bets in the Torchwood versus Doctor Who contest are off when Steven Moffat takes over Doctor Who next season. I can't remember a more anticipated coming of a new producer to a show. My sincere hope is that he's able to mix what Davies did--build compelling characters and relationships over time--with what he already does best: incredibly kick ass stories. Up until now, Moffat has been able to toss in an incredible, Hugo-worthy story here and there as one of the writers for the show, but will he be able to bring it regularly when he writes far more of the episodes? There are hundreds of thousands--nay, millions?--of viewers who have their collective fingers crossed. And I'm one of them.

In the meantime, perhaps Davies' redirected attention to Torchwood can elevate it to watch-worthy. It would be lots of fun to have two can't-miss Whoniverse shows to watch. Maybe we'll give Torchwood another shot.

Concession Stand Man

Found while cleaning up my office files: The Adventures of Concession Stand Man, a comic I drew and published in the University of Tennessee Daily Beacon when I was an undergraduate. Concession Stand Man began as a doodle over a couple of summers working the concession stand at the dollar movie theater in Knoxville, Tennessee, and evolved into an ongoing character I would draw panels for among friends. Later, when I worked in the production department at the Beacon, I worked up five official strips and ran them one summer session week when I was sure very few people would actually read them.

Here's the first strip, where I try to pack in as much info and jokes (such as they are) as I can. WAY too much copy in that last panel, but I was learning. (You can click on the strips to see them larger.)

In strip two, I get in some topical humor--jokey titles riffing on current movies--and some concession stand in-jokes. I like the establishing shot of the theater and the lab coat on the mad scientist, but again, WAY too much copy in that last panel.

Aha! Look at the evolution between day two and day three! I'm using a much bolder line for my panels, cutting down on the copy (somewhat) and doing something more creative with the panel construction. Diagonal lines! Woohoo! I'm also not connecting all the panel corners, a look I still like. The silhouetted Concession Stand Man was an attempt to be artsy combined with a cover-up--my drawing of him was poor, so I decided to fix it by doing a negative image of him. I'm also giving the narration boxes shadows. I like too the "OOF!" voice bubble.

But the real stretch for me here artistically (such as it is) is the image of Concession Stand Man doused with butter in the last frame. My figures until that point had all been of roughly the same size and pose, with minor variations in arm and leg movements. That last panel was my first real attempt at a more realistic (such as it is) representation of his figure.

In strip number two I get even more open with the panels, leaving plenty of room for the Mad Scientist's villain solioquy. There's much I like about this strip--in particular, the hanging Concession Stand Man and the hint of a stone wall in the first "panel," which I'm insanely proud of. Because the strip was only running for five days, I knew I had to wrap things up quickly, and I turned it into a joke about the action happening "off stage." Even the Mad Scientist asks, "How come I never saw it happen?" Can't touch this, of course, was a more timely joke.

The final strip of the week, and, as it turned out, the series, as I never did more official Concession Stand Man strips. Finally a REASONABLE amount of text--although probably still too much. And another topical joke, a riff off the Hannibal-Lector-behind-the-glass scene from "Silence of the Lambs." I even tried to reproduce the warden's bad toupee. (Such as it is.) I remember another of the cartoonists, a guy who also worked with me in the production department at the paper, being supportive of my primitive efforts and complimenting me on the suggestion of bars in the prison scene in the last panel. At least I was trying to be minimalistic. Or perhaps it's just that I knew I couldn't really draw anything and so I just had to hint at it.

After the strip ran, I went back and redesigned the first panel, trying to simplify it. This one never ran, but I still have it in the files. I use the diagonal panel again, and cut out half the text. It's still a bit busy and cramped in that middle section, but it's better. I like the darker lines too.

And I had begun redrawing the second panel too. Still too much copy, but better. But this is as far as my cartooning career went.

It was cool to find these and remember all the fun I had with it, particularly as I just read "Adventures in Cartooning," a really excellent book about drawing cartoons put out by The Center for Cartoon Studies. It's making me think about turning some doodles into real cartoons again.

You know, in all my free time.

Lunch Break

I thought I'd take a minute to gloat about show you the view I enjoy every day when I walk to lunch. Gorgeous, no? That's the main cluster of buildings (mostly studios) at Penland School of Crafts. I work in the oldest building on campus (the original school building) about a quarter mile down the road.
There's a grassy knoll just across the street from the dining hall and sometimes artists display their work out there. Yesterday it was this beautiful dress made out of grass. As soon as I find out who the artist is I'll update this post. Here's a little closer view.
And here's the view on the way back to my office.
Imagine the walk with a belly full of shrimp Creole, French bread with garlic butter, tropical fruit salad (pineapple, mangoes, etc.) and a salad made with greens picked that morning from the Penland garden and you have a pretty good picture of a typical lunch break for me. Don't you want to come take a class? Alan and I are both on local standby for classes this Fall - Letterpress for him and Color Theory for me. Our fingers are crossed. . .

Celebrating the Fourth a few days early

Penland School of Crafts always does things their own way--including holding their Fourth of July Parade and fireworks celebration a few days early. It was a delightfully crisp and clear evening--the kind of night that reminds you why you moved to the mountains in the first place. Sunny, 71, a picnic blanket, a bottle of wine, kids off amusing themselves, and no bugs. It was practically heaven.

The parade approaches.

The jewelry studio forms a human ring, complete with sparkling diamond setting.

The glass studio tooted on glass horns and flutes, rang glass bells, and wore glass adornments.

The basket-weaving class spritzed everybody with water, as they do their baskets.

One of the kids camps got into the act too, winning "Most-Patriotic."

It's the 60th anniversary of Penland's founding by Lucy Morgan as a trade school for women, and this group built a twelve foot tall puppet of her that waved regally.

In perhaps the most bizarre entry of the evening, the Thai jars pottery class offered a tribute to the recently-departed King of Pop...

Including a choreographed pottery dance--with once glove apiece, of course.

The Penland gardeners are all about the love.

And there's Jo, who was supposed to be helping us be official parade judges but instead found her way into a wagon being pulled by our friend Stacey.

The drawing studio sent a queen with a crown of pencils.

And the silk screen class made up t-shirts and a banner for the occasion.

A great hat from one of the photo students. (Love that jacket too...)

Penland Fourth of July...yeah!