Just Giblets

The Graveyard Book is Neil Gaiman’s latest work for children coming out in September. Now I don’t remember what it was like to be 10 or 11, but his man in his forties loved this novel. No one writes books with appeal to all ages as well as Neil Gaiman. Borrowing a concept from Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which tells the story of an orphan raised in the jungle, The Graveyard Book features a toddler who wanders out of the house and into the graveyard after his family is brutally murdered, and is raised by the spirits and others beings who live there.

Young Bod (short for Nobody) is adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Owens, a kindly couple who died childless, and watched over by Silas, a mysterious and powerful being who is neither alive nor dead. Bod learns the secrets of the graveyard, and things no living beings know. As he grows up, he begins to encounter the living from time to time, and a curiosity is sparked. All the while, Jack, the man who murdered his family, is hoping to correct his failure by finding and finishing of Bod as well.

Gaiman populates The Graveyard Book with all the sorts of mystical and fantastic creatures he is known for. Silas’ wonderful, Eastern European substitute guardian Miss Luprescu is surely my favorite, but from ghouls to witches and other denizens of the dead, there is something to astound and capture everyone’s imagination. Watch for this one when it’s published in September.

Of course, friends of mine will know I’ve got a long-standing admiration for Mr. Gaiman, and about a month ago, while attending BookExpo America in Los Angeles, I was able to meet and hang out with Mr. Gaiman not once, but twice!  The second time I even was so bold as to ask to have my picture taken with him.  It was a geeky thing to do, and I’m smiling way too hard in the photo, but at least I hvae it.  I’ve been reading Neil’s work since the 80’s when he broke into comics at DC with the Black Orchid miniseries.  Shortly after that Neil began what has become arguably his most popular work, The Sandman.  His work as a novelist began with the riotously fun Good Omens, co-written by Terry Pratchett.  He has since hit the NYT bestsellers’ list on his own with the titles American Gods and The Anansi Boys.   He has done screenplay work for such films as PRINCESS MONONOKE, MIRRORMASK, and BEOWULF.  His young adult novel Coraline has been adapted for the screen and is due out later this year.

As you may or may not know, I am in Los Angeles at the BookExpo America conference.  It’s my favorite professional conference that I attend, as it’s all about the publishing industry and books.  You get to meet and listen to tons of authors (if you so choose) and pick up tons of free books (if you so choose.)  I was really excited because I was finally (after 20 + years of admiration) going to see Neil Gaiman speak as part of a Children’s author breakfast along with Eoin Colfer, Sherman Alexie and Judy Blume.  The panel was terrific and Neil was a wonderful speaker.

So several hours later, I was in the HarperCollins booth with two colleagues for a meeting with our Library Marketing reps, the wonderful Virginia Stanley and Bobby Brinson.  We were chatting about various things (like the delicious cupcakes that HarperCollins were passing out) and hadn’t started the meeting yet, when I glanced over my shoulder and who should I see but… you guessed it, Neil Gaiman.  Well, I think I gasped when I turned back to the others and blurted out, “Oh my God, Neil Gaiman is here.”  Well, without even blinking, Virginia grabbed my arm and said, “Let me introduce you to him.”  And sure enough, a few minutes later, we were chatting.  It’s weird, I’m not usually “star-struck” when meeting authors, actors, filmmakers, etc.  I’ve gotten quite used to it through Chlotrudis and all that, but this was very different.  My heart was racing a little and I think I babbled (although Viriginia said I cam across very intelligent and composed if a little excited).  We chatted about him coming to Boston, about Black Orchid, his first work in comics, and then he offered to sign my book on the spot.  It was a lovely meeting; many, many thanks to Virginia.  He was just darling.

Karina Longworth at SPOUT reviews IRON MAN.  IRONMAN makes us hard is the title of this fantastic review.  Go take a look.

Hi. It’s Michael. Yeah, it’s been awhile. I’m the kind of person who sometimes forgets to take a moment and enjoy life because I’m too busy living it. There are pros and cons to that, but here, on a lovely spring day in Wellfleet (home of the famous Wellfleet oyster) I’ve decided to reflect upon the past month or so and say hello. It has been a particularly hectic few weeks and there’s more to come in the rest of April and May.

The craze began with the lead up to the 14th Annual Chlotrudis Awards. If you’re reading this, I trust you know about the Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film. For those of you who don’t, you just need to know that it’s a film society that I started up about 14 years ago to teach audiences to view films actively. This past March 30 we celebrated out 14th annual awards ceremony at the Brattle Theatre with special guest Alberta Watson in attendance. We presented Alberta with an award for her career-so-far, and she was a delightful guest. Lots of fun to hang out with, very down-to-earth, passionate about the Chlotrudis-cause, and she gave a moving and heartfelt speech to boot. We gave out a host of awards, including Best Movie to ONCE, Best Short Film to Maria Gigante for GIRLS ROOM, and our own very special Buried Treasure Award (for a film that made less than $250,000 at the domestic box office and we feel deserves another look) to 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST. Also receiving a new awards called The Cat’s Meow, was board member extraordinnaire, Bruce Kingsley, without whom Chlotrudis might have dissolved during difficult times last year. (Maria, Alberta, and Bruce are pictured left). And on top of all that, we performed not one, but two fabulous musical numbers. Hopefully they will be online soon, as will pictures from the awards.

Preparing for the awards is a massive undertaking, and one that pretty much consumes my life for weeks prior to the event. Fortunately, in recent years, friends and fellow Board members have stepped up and removed much of the burden from me. Beth, Allison, Scot… there’s no way this thing would happen without you.

Shifting into work mode, anyone who has read the paper or listened to WBUR in the past six months or so know that there are big, disruptive things afoot at the Boston Public Library. This is not my forum to talk about work, but let me just say about the BPL in general, it takes up a lot of my time, both actual and mental. On the broader subject of librarianship and careers, let me mention last week’s trip to San Francisco to attend the annual spring meeting of the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC). This was my first trip to ICOLC, which has been meeting for about 15 years, and for my job as Regional Administrator of the Boston Regional Library System, ICOLC is actually pretty relevant. Like any conference, there are moments where you wonder why you’re there, but overall, I learned some stuff, networked with a lot of great people, and really gained a valuable perspective about possibilities in my job. So while there was an emphasis on negotiating with vendors for consortial database licensing, I did get to generate some lively discussion on my favorite library topic du jour, using open source solutions in libraries. I’m still amazed at the resistance to even consider this among librarians, but it’s changing.

The trip to San Francisco wasn’t all work however, as I got to meet an online pal for the first time. Chriso is one nifty fella. He’s the drummer for a very hip band; he’s a total superhero comic book geek; he’s warm, friendly and a super host; and he’s adorable as all get out. We got together a couple of times and he showed me some different SF neighborhoods, including the Armory building where he works, the Mission District, the Castro, Moby Dick, and a couple of cool comic book stores where we spent a lot of money. We also shared some way fun conversation about the high points of the Legion of Superheroes (where I discovered that he’s my long lost comic-twin) and muxtape. Hey, you nice boys out in SF… he’s single. (I used the picture Chris took of of us because it came out better than the ones I took.)

Of course, when you’re out for nearly a week, returning to work can be hellish; and it was, but only for one day before I conveniently took off for a long weekend with my peeps (that’s hubby Scottie, and our best friends Gianna and Sarah) to Wellfleet on Cape Cod. Those of you who know me well know that the Cape (and particularly Provincetown) has been taking on a great significance in my life and may have a great impact on my future plans. Any chance to go to the Cape is a welcome one, so when a friend of Gianna’s offered us her vacation condo, we jumped at the chance. The four of us travel incredibly well together, and we’ve got a beautiful weekend to do it. True, we did spend a frightful 40 minutes or so meandering along backroads in South Shore suburbs after getting a little lost trying to find Route 93, but we took care of that and made our way to Wellfleet on Friday night. Saturday was a beautiful day, where we remarked on that oh-so Cape quality of light. It’s unique and just stunning. We spent the afternoon in P-Town, grabbing lunch, strolling and doing some shopping (both couples making some fun impulse puchases at M.G. Leather. Then we sent some time on Herring Cove Beach (we were not nude, as it was not nude sunbathing weather!) before returning home for tacos and a mini-David Lynch film festival. (We watched the European pilot for ‘Twin Peaks,’ which was pretty lame in our opinion, and Mulholland Drive.) And now it’s Sunday. What will we do today? It’s another beautiful day. We’ve got lots of movies to watch (like GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA and FOUL PLAY!) and an extra day off tomorrow. Of course, Gianna and Sarah aren’t awake yet, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Then it’s back home and the next couple of big events. Next week is the Independent Film Festival of Boston, which happens to coincide with both my mother’s birthday and my friend Mameve’s book release, just to make things even more hectic. And the week after that is the Massachusetts Library Association’s annual conference, which Gianna and I run. Maybe I’ll be able to take another moment to relax when that’s over.

With the success of such movies as SPIDER-MAN, BATMAN, and THE X-MEN, and television shows such as “Heroes” and “So You Want To Be a Superhero,” it’s no surprise that an influx of novels about superheroes has appeared, much to this comic book geek’s delight. The first of the genre that I have embraced is Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible. Grossman is clearly familiar with the superhero world in comics, and he uses that world as the setting for his novel. There are two points-of-view in Invincible, bouncing back and forth between the villainous Dr. Impossible, and the newest member of the crime-stopping Champions, Fatale.

Grossman does a great job getting into Dr. Impossible’s head. After coming so close to conquering the world so many times, sent to prison, escaping, and repeating the cycle again and again, it’s interesting to see what motivates this super-genius to keep going. It seems that super-villainy is just hard-wired into his head. He’s got one more idea up his sleeve, and when the opportunity presents itself, he does the expected: busts our of prison, rebuilds his weapons and tries to take over the world.

Having disbanded a few years ago, the Champions come together again due to the mysterious disappearance of the best and brightest of their members, CoreFire. He was the most powerful of them all, unbeatable and charismatic, so when he seems to be missing for real, the Champions, Blackwolf - the Ultimate Crimefighter; Damsel - First Lady of Power; Elphin - Warrior Princess; Feral - Savage Street Fighter; Mister Mystic - Man of Mystery; and Rainbow Triumph - Teen Idol with an Attitude, feel duty bound to reunite and solve the mystery. To their ranks, they add a couple of newcomers; Lily, a mysterious, superpowered outcast from the future, and Fatale - the Next Generation of Warfare. It’s understandable that Grossman choses Fatale to be the readers’ entry into the superhero world. She’s new to the game, having received her powers after a freak accident destroyed most of her body and being transformed by new technology into a cyborg agent. Fatale is thrust into the glamorous world of the superhero elite all the while feeling she must constantly prove herself just to stand among them.

While the book is an entertaining read, and I do recommend it, I think the problem with using Fatale as one of our narrators is that when the finale arrives, and she is not a part of it, the reader is left on the outside looking in, when it would have been nice to have our point of view in the midst of the action. It’s like being sidelined for the big finish, and it’s a little distracting. Still, Grossman’s world is certainly representative of our own if it were populated by men and women with extraordinary powers.

The A.V. Club has a great interview with Joss Whedon, creator of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the television series turned movie, Firefly/Serenity. I’ve been trying to get Joss to come to the Massachusetts Library Association’a annual conference for the last couple of years, but other than a couple very curt e-mail message from his assistant’s assistant, haven’t had any luck yet. Don’t you think Joss would rock at a library conference? He has created the hippest librarian ever in Buffy’s Watcher, Giles. (Okay some might argue - myself included - that Oracle/Barbara Gordon/formerly Batgirl is the hippest librarian ever.)

Recently Joss has been doing some comic book work, including a new “season” of Buffy in comic form, and for Marvel, Astonishing X-Men. Over the past year or so, Joss has also been working on the movie version of Wonder Woman, something that had me brimming with potential excitement (with Joss on board, the movie’s gotta get made!). Of course, anyone who knows anything about movie development knows it can be hell, and even if you’re Joss Whedon, there are times when you’ve just got to throw in the towel. Apparently the Wonder Woman people just didn’t buy Joss’ concept for the film and after a lengthy period of frustration, Joss decided to give it up and leave the project.

Surprisingly, upon reading this interview with Joss, I think I might be happy that he’s leaving the Wonder Woman film. Here’s an excerpt from the interview where he discusses his concept:

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing that sort of exemplifies my feelings. The idea was always that she’s awesome, she’s fabulous, she’s strong, she’s beautiful, she’s well-intentioned, she thinks she’s a great big hero, and it’s Steve Trevor’s job to go, “You don’t understand human weakness, therefore you are not a hero, and you never will be until you’re as helpless as we are. Fight through that, and then I’ll be impressed. Until then, I’m just going to give you shit in a romantic-comedy kind of way.”

Now, I try to reserve judgment on a film or any sort of entertainment until I actually see the finished product, and perhaps if Joss had ever made the Wonder Woman film I would have loved it (a good chance of that, actually, since I do enjoy lots of his work). That said, and as an avid reader of the Wonder Woman comic, that concept sounds like a really bad idea to me. Still, I guess we’ll never know, and I suppose it would have been nice for Joss to prove me wrong and make something really cool for the WW movie.

Anyway, fans of Joss should definitely check out the interview.

Do you know who the lovely lady pictured at left is? (Okay, I’m betting that the title of this blogpost gave it away.) Who here has thought of Helen Slater recently? Well, as the proud owner of the SUPERGIRL DVD, I surely recognized Helen Slater’s name when it appeared in this Newsarama blogpost. Helen Slater and several of her films are surely some of my guiltiest pleasures, in fact, I challenge you to find anyone who has seen and for the most part enjoyed, all of Helen Slater’s first five feature films: SUPERGIRL, THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN, RUTHLESS PEOPLE, THE SECRET OF MY SUCCE$S, and STICKY FINGERS. After that (okay, some might say sometime in the middle of that) Helen’s film career took a downward turn, but I just found out that she has been doing some respectable television work of late, including episodes of “Seinfeld,” “Will & Grace,” “Boston Public,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and “Crossing Jordan.” Now Newsday.com reports that Helen may play Supergirl’s aunt in upcoming episodes of “Smallville!” How cool is that?

What’s even cooler is that I have discovered that Helen has her own website, and that she has released not one, but two CDs as a singer/songwriter/pianist. Also, in keeping with her heroic origins, Slater and Jake Black, a comic-book writer from “Smallville” magazine, have submitted a Supergirl pitch for DC Comics. Now that’s something I’d love to see.

Yeah, he’s a NYT best-selling author, and he’s the rock-star of comic book writers, but what does having a piece in Time magazine mean in the zeitgeist of popular culture? Neil Gaiman’s got his first Hollywood film adaptation of his writing, the fantasy novel Stardust. Time discusses the potential for Neil’s level of fame to be on the verge of exploding… moving from that level of cult appeal to a more mass appeal. It’s so strange, because on some levels, Neil’s popularity seems enormous already, yet in a way, by its very nature (and despite a few best-selling novels) stemming from comics and living in the fantasy genre, some might label it cult appeal. Well, I’ve been a fan of Gaiman’s since his “Black Orchid” miniseries for DC, and predictably, I’ve had a bit of a crush on him as well. In addition to his talent, he’s awfully cute. But whether you’ve read his work or not, if you’re a blog reader and you haven’t checked out his journal, you probably should. It’s one of the better ones. I wonder how he does it?

Okay, I’m going to get a little geeky fanboy on y’all with this post, but this week’s batch of comic books was so kick-ass I just felt the need to write about it a little. Specifically, a comic called “Birds of Prey.” “Birds of Prey” follows the story of Barbara Gordon (ex-Batgirl) and her field operatives, generally female superheroes who work with her to stop crime. If you’re wondering why the former Batgirl just doesn’t go out into the field and stop crime herself, you need a little bit of background.

Back when Barbara was still running around in tights as Batgirl, she ran afoul of the Joker, who shot her, damaging her spine and paralyzing her legs. Not one to give up, Barbara used her past experience as a librarian (and is that not the coollest thing?) she became Oracle, a master of the information highway, hacking into ultra-protected, secure, government sites, linking the world’s superheroes and providing them information, and monitoring newsfeeds from around the world among many other things. Since the wheelchair did cut somewhat into her mobility, she relied on trusted field agents to help her with her mission.

“Birds of Prey” tells Barbara’s continuing story, along with that of her operatives, among whom are Black Canary, Huntress, Lady Blackhawk, Catwoman, Manhunter, Big Barda, and many, many more. For the past several years, “Birds of Prey” has been under the authorial guidance of Gail Simone, who took a book that already had a small, devoted following, and turning it into one of the mainstays of superhero comics today. A rare comic that thrived with a largely female cast. Under Gail’s assured hand, “Birds of Prey” was guaranteed to be a fun, well-constructed read.

This latest issue, #108, was Gail’s farewell to the book. Gail is moving onto bigger things (one of DC Comics’ flagship titles, and one in need of her assured touch — “Wonder Woman”) but her affection for Babs and her friends is all-too evident. In wrapping up a multi-issue storyline, Gail puts the control of the Birds of Prey team into question, as Oracle’s long-time rival, Spy Smasher attempts to take over the operation. Oracle stands up to Spy Smasher, putting aside her insecurities in a rough-and-tumble fight where she calls upon her training as Batgirl, and the rigorous upper-body workouts she has continued to put the beat-down on her rival. Then, to insure that Spy Smasher doesn’t get any ideas for revenge, Oracle’s many friends (and the two double-page spreads Gail’s terrific artist, Nicola Scott renders for this moment are a fanboy’s dream) make a lovely appearance of support. After only being gone for handful of issues, the appearance of Black Canary, Barbara’s staunchest ally and one of her closest friends is both nostalgic and a testament to the legacy Gail leaves with the title. The book ends with an emotional moment whereby Barbara reconnects with her humanity, and her need to help others and reaches out to a troubled teenager code-named Misfit.

So, the fans of “Birds of Prey” bid you a sad farewell, Gail. You’ve provided us with year’s of entertainment for which we appreciate. You’ve taken some mainly ignored, sometimes mistreated characters and let them truly come into their own and shine, allowing them some much-needed time in the spotlight to build them to new levels. While it’s sad to see you leave the Birds, I am beside myself with the thought of your “Wonder Woman.” Onward and upward as they say. As for the Birds, after a short run by Tony Bedard, a writer I am not overly familiar with, Sean McKeever takes over. I’ve enjoyed Sean’s work on “The Inhumans” mini-series, and the X-Men title, “Mystique.” I’m looking forward to his take on Barbara and her pals. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.