Meanwhile at TWC - Hickman writing Icon Book?

Through some digging from Hickman's Formspring and previous interviews, I was able to piece together a possible future book for Icon. Check out what I had to say...

Does this mean that the creator owned projects that Hickman was working in the past year will be released by Marvel through the Icon imprint? It would certainly be a smart move on their part, having all of a creator’s work under one roof. And now we also know that creators can release graphic novels through Icon, which is what Bendis is going to do with Takio.

 I love doing these kind of articles. Although I have to say, I am somewhat surprised that it hasn't gotten more attention. Places like Robot 6 and Bleeding Cool usually link back to pieces like this. 

Bike Patrol

For all the bad stuff I say about living where I do, there's something that I am thoroughly impressed about. The city of Valencia, where I live, has a public system of bicycles.

Yes, you read that right. Public transportation bikes.

You pay a minimal yearly fee (18 euros), and you can use public bicycles to get around the city. There are stations peppered throughout the whole city where you can park and take them out, and when you are done, you leave them at any other station. The whole thing, aside from the yearly fee, is FREE for people to use as many times as you want. The only catch is that you have limited time of 30 minutes to make your trip. If you run over that, they charge you 50 cents, or an extra euro if you go over the hour. This is easily avoidable because 1)Valencia is pretty small and you can get halfway across with those 30 minutes and 2) You can park the bicycle and take it out again for an extra 30 minutes as many times as you want.

The system was implemented earlier last year, and it was a HUGE success. The public bikes have become another common part of the urban landscape. I have been using it almost since the beginning, and I looked like a weirdo at first (people would stop me and ask me about the service while I was riding it) because no one else was using it. As the weeks and months passed, more and more people started joining up, and they are easy to spot because the bikes have a distinctive dark purple cover. Now, it is a common sight for me, when I ride a public bike, to see every person around me is also riding one.

It's a relatively cheap, alternative transportation system. It's not without its faults (sometimes it's hard to find a bike or where to park it), but it has worked out incredibly well for this city. I know for a fact that more cities are beginning to implement it (when I visited London in September, I saw that they had them too), and I hope the idea really takes off. If you want to read more about the system here in Valencia, you can go to their website.

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Batman, Inc.

This week was my turn to choose, and rather than a character, I went ahead and chose a concept: Batman, Inc. I think the writers will be able to turn in some fun concepts and it expands our pool a bit, by allowing us the possibility of creating new characters. For example, in my story Tilting at Windmills, I created a new character: 

BRUCE WAYNE: Hidalgo has proven more than capable of handling his region. 

BRUCE: He’s young, idealistic, and impulsive but ready and eager to fight for the greater good. Does that remind you of anyone? 

ALFRED: I could think of one or two men I have known that fit that archetype, yes.

Now I can sit back and enjoy the show. I really want to see what other people come up with this week. 

Meanwhile at TWC - Free Comics Review 01/26/11

Another week of free comics! I normally enjoy getting to read stuff for free, and while there's usually some good stuff there, for this week's column I got re-read one of my favorite comics ever. That's right, the first issue of Nextwave is up for free on the Marvel app, along with a bunch of other ones. In my review, I wrote...

I don’t want to say it’s better than Watchmen, but Alan Moore threatened to release Glycon if Marvel continued to publish it. And that’s why it was canceled. 

Which may or may not be true. You all better go ahead and read it! It's free, so you don't have any excuse!

Meanwhile at ThoughtBalloons - Doctor Strange

Possibly one of the hardest characters to get right, and I can say I am completely happy with my output this week. Doctor Strange is a character that suffers from perpetual support-character syndrome, always showing up in other people's stories, but rarely in his own. I think I committed the same mistake. While he is by no means a guest character, in my script Blood Magic, he appears along a bunch of other people.Take a look...

DR. STRANGE: Magic is governed by a set of rules, as old as the universe itself. To prevent exploitation, no mortal but the Sorcerer Supreme has full knowledge of them.

DR. STRANGE: The most paramount rule to all magical beings is this: to grant something, you must get something in return.

I did like the script in general, but it feels more like a New Avengers script than a solo Doctor Strange one.

Just like the Movies

Movies in Spain are sometimes released much more later than in the rest of the international markets. Sometimes it's a couple of days, weeks, and in the worst case scenario, months. Such is the case with Red, the comic book adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name by Warren Ellis and Cully Hammer.

The film is going to be released here this past week, January 18th. In the international markets, it was released back in October. What this means is that, this week, January 25th the DVD for it will be released in the UK. (Remember that the European Union has all the same coding, so that film would definitely work in my player).

Therefore, I have two choices: I could either spend twenty bucks, go to the movie theater, where I can only experience the movie once AND I have to listen to it in Spanish. Yes, with dubbed voices, I don't even get to hear the original voice acting (for some stupid reason, they won't release here with the original voice acting and subtitles, it's all dubbed). When you have people like Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, and Morgan Freeman, their voices are a key part of the movie. The other choice is to wait an extra week, order it online, have it delivered to my door, and watch it at my leisure as many times as I want it.

Which choice would you make?

Past Perfect Continuous in Passive (Aggressive) Form

From my Twitter account:

Look, English Language, I like you a lot and I use you every day, but have you considered streamlining some of your useless tenses?

For example, the past perfect continuous in passive form? No on uses that! We might has well get rid of it, right?

Seriously, has anyone here used the past perfect continuous in passive form in any case outside of learning about it?

(for the record, an example of that one would be "It had been being mended". And yes, that is grammatically correct)

While preparing for my upcoming course, I've been going through the darker annals of the English language, and sometimes you find things like this that make you scratch your head. It's a tense that is never used, to the point that just looking at it feels wrong. While it technically must exist, I can't even think of a sentence where I would use this in an organic way. Bonus points to whoever comes up with a proper use for it.

Are you a Wizard?

With news of Wizard magazine reportedly closing down, I figure this is a good time as any to tell this story. 

When I was around 13 or 14, after I had just moved to the United States, I used to read Wizard magazine. At this point in my life, I had read some comics, but I was in no way an aficionado, just odds and ends that my dad would buy me. I knew all of the popular characters, and read plenty of mainstream stuff, but I was still very entry-level in my reading. I think I accompanied my parents to Winn Dixie (that's a supermarket), and in the magazine rack I saw a familiar figure sticking out (probably Spider-Man, this was around the time the first movie came out), and they bought it for me. Inside, I think there was a big piece on the Ultimate universe, as well as some info on upcoming movies, and some "Top 50" characters of all time. 

In any case, for the next year or so, every time I would accompany my parents to the supermarket, I would look through the magazine section. I wouldn't buy any current comics (I had no idea where to find a comic book store at that time), but it was interesting to me to read about them anyway. I particularly remember a piece on the Milligan-Allred X-Force that made an impression on my mind. The prize guide in the back puzzled me to no end, though I enjoyed going through the names to see what caught my eye. After some months of reading, I actually wrote an email to the editor, answering a question that I think was about what franchises from other media I would like to see in comics. I figured some poor intern had to read through my poor English (remember, I had lived in the U.S. for about year at the time), and deleted it from their inbox.

Apparently, they actually published it in the magazine. 

To this day, I have not seen the actual letter printed on it, nor do I remember what I actually wrote. I didn't even know that they had printed it, until one day, months later after I had sent it, and after I had stopped buying Wizard, some like-minded fan sent me an email (I guess they published my e-mail too), just striking up conversation about the comics he was reading at the time. I remember he told me in what issue they printed it, but to be honest, I'm afraid to go back and look at it. Like I said, my English was probably definitely very poor, and my knowledge of the industry in general and the comic books published at the time was laughable. Some day, someone might even find it, recognize my name and ask me about it. But until then, I'm probably better off avoiding it.

In any case, I stopped reading Wizard around that time, with my interest going in other directions like video games, music, and girls. When I went back to comics, dedicated websites like Comic Book Resources were already in full bloom, and buying the magazine was a waste of money. I was snarky about it on Twitter but I guess Wizard could still be useful if it attracted kids like me in the magazine stands of markets, stores, and so on like it did with me.

The Batman Wears Prada

Sometimes I get stupid crazy (or crazy stupid) ideas, with no idea where they come from. Other times, it's much easier to pinpoint. Take for example, what I was tweeting earlier today...

The Batman Wears Prada, with Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and Anne Hathway as Selina Kyle, a young college graduate that now works for him.She must cater to all the wild & ridiculous demands from Wayne ("why does he need so many capes?") which eventually drives her to seek revenge.

(See what I mean about stupid crazy?) 

 It's a confluence of things. Just earlier this week they announced that Anne Hathway would play Selina Kyle  (Catwoman) in the third Nolanverse Batman film. Last night, together with my wife we re-watched The Dark Knight for the first time since we saw it in theater. And now The Devil Wears Prada is on TV (not that I'm actively watching it, since I have music and headphones on) but it's what kicked off the thought process.

But at the same time, while the idea is kind of silly, it could provide for a nice basis of the Selina/Bruce relationship. Imagine Selina Kyle does start working for him (remember that Lucius quit at the end of TDK), and slowly gains his trust, but the whole time she was just planning of robbing him blind. I could actually see something like that in the Nolan version of the Batman universe.

In Defense of Video Game Music

I remember in the past laughing at the people that said they would listen to video game music. There are levels of nerdiness, I thought, that just seem far beyond my reach.

Well, that wall was shattered today, as I just listened to an album of 100% video game music. Not only video game music, but 8-bit music in the style of classic video games of yesteryear. In my defense, though, it was by Anamaguchi, which by all accounts is the best of its genre, and it was the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game Soundtrack (that's a mouthful, isn't it?). I was a bit reluctant at first, but there's several factors that convinced me...

1 - They are usually instrumental, or at least with very little in terms of lyrics, which means that it worked great as background music that doesn't distract you too much when you are doing other tasks like writing and reading.

2 - They are short. I have a short attention span for music. Songs better be entertaining, catchy, and above all, they must not overstay their welcome. Which is not to say that I dislike old songs, but if you repeat the same verse/chorus more than three times AND you are not The Ramones, you better have a damn good reason for making me listen to your song for five minutes. 

3 - Unifying themes. I'm a sucker for themes and movements across different songs, as they give unity to an album (something lost on many artists), and work perfectly to transition from one song to the other. I understand this is probably a side effect from video games when they have recurring characters with their own theme song.

In any case, I'll probably sample a few other albums of this kind, see how much I enjoy it, or if this was just a fluke.