Visit the Geek Cave

Happy Sunday everyone! I just wanted to do a blog post on the fly to let everyone know about the Geek Cave. You can find it by clicking here---> Geek Queen Cave

It's a celebration of all things geek, from stabbing books to scissors to aliens and must have android apps. Plus, if you're also a geek, there is a chance to Guest Blog.

Hope everyone had a relaxing weekend!

Another stake in Buffy: The Vampire Slayer Comics

Hi all. Well I decided to take a break from more serious writing concepts and ideas to get back to my love of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. In particular the next 3 volumes of Season 8 I read, 5-7 but first these messages.

Shameless plug: My book The Newfoundland Vampire will be on in April 2012 and Tasha’s books (the second one I’ve read and highly recommend) are out now.

Ok so as you know I loved Buffy when it was on TV and I enjoyed the ending. The comics pick up where the show left off and these three finally reveal who the big baddie is this season, mysterious "Twilight".

Volume 5: Predators and Prey, this was a fun volume. A clever idea (and one that would probably happen if vampires were real) for vampires to become popular and slayers to become hated. I love the "Andrew" character, used to be evil, now works for Buffy and super Geeky. It was also fun to have Harmony back, for an evil vampire she is always good for a few laughs :)

Volume 6: Retreat, another excellent entry in the series. Buffy and the gang decide they have to use less magic (which is tough when your powered by demon energy ;) and go to hide out in Tibet with Oz (the Seth Green werewolf character). One of the best parts of this comic for me has been that Joss can bring back all the characters, Faith, Giles, Andrew, Spike, Oz, Dawn, Willow they all make appearances. So Oz has found a way to give his power to the earth and Buffy and the slayers (along with Williow and the magic users) do the same. Twilight finds them anyway and with no magic they fight a traditional war with tanks, guns and torpedoes! (you'll have to read it). Also Dawn and Xander finally get together and Buffy gets superpowered.

Volume 7: Twilight. Okay I can see what people were talking about when they said the story starts to go downhill. This has some strange stuff in it. I didn't mind the fact that Twilight was Angel, he's done some bad stuff as Angel (not Angelus) before but it's not explained how he became "invulernable" and having a whole issue focusing on Angel & Buffy having sex was odd (though stimulating of course :) Making Buffy & Angel "gods" of some sort and Adam and Eve, well it's something that never would have been shown on cable TV and is not one of Joss' best ideas. Despite that I still enjoyed this volume and was glad to see Spike come back, I'm looking forward to reading the end of Season 8.

On a technical note I have to praise all of the artwork, these volumes looked fantastic and overall I would certainly reccomend it for any Buffy fans. So until next week dear readers I am . . .

My stake in Buffy: The Vampire Slayer Comics

Natasha Larry liked my first guest post so much (Thanks Tasha!) I've decided to do another :) I'll try to make this a weekly thing, though anything could come up (like I'm going to be in an amateur movie where I play a Star Fleet officer and help people speak Klingon :-).

Shameless plug: My book The Newfoundland Vampire will be on in April 2012 and Tasha’s books (the second one I’ve read and highly recommend) are out now.

Enough promotion though. So like lots of people I am a huge fan of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. It is one of the only things I liked Sarah Michelle Gellar in (aside from a couple of movies, I haven't seen the newer show she did) and one of Joss Whedon’s best (and most successful) TV shows. Also like most people I was sad to see it end and delighted when Joss began doing Buffy: Season 8 in comic book format.

I thought the concept of a teen-age/adult vampire slayer was a clever one and of course her having a thing for vampires is a great twist.

The neat thing about the comics is Joss (or whomever does the writing) can do anything they want. There’s no worry about getting the actors, money, special effects or any of the other traditional show/movie constraints.

To be honest I haven’t read all the comics, I only just finished Volume 4 but I think I’ve read enough to comment on them.

Volume 1: excellent story. Great to have the whole gang back, super-sized Dawn was a nice twist. Xander is funny as always.

Volume 2: Very interesting story. I always loved the Faith character, a flawed slayer who screwed up but still has the powers. Giles recruits her to do the kind of work Buffy won’t.

Volume 3: My favorite (so far). How can you not love Xander being buddies with Dracula? Even though the Count doesn’t have a soul he sure has style! (and unique powers). Like any vampire fan I've always been a huge fan of the Count (he's in my book in a rather unique way =) and I was happy to see that Buffy hadn't really killed him during the show. To top this volume off it off Dawn gets in a fight with a super-sized robot version of herself, in Japan! A hilarious tribute to the Godzilla movies and a treat for any Buffy/anime/Godzilla fan.

Volume 4: Very good story. I have always admired Joss’ ability to make up new languages for a story (he did a great job of this for an episode of “Dollhouse” and of course everyone in “Firefly” had a unique way of speaking.) The future slayer time bubble twist was cool and I liked how we all got to travel back with Buffy to her high school days in the final dream chapter.

I’ve heard rumors of this series getting crappy but it hasn’t happened yet. I’m along for the ride Joss, someday I’ll have to catch up with Angel and Firefly comics as well.

Talk to you all next week and feel free to check out my own blog where I do lots of movie/book reviews.

TUESDAY TIPS AND TIDBITS - The Draw of the Graphic Novel

By Gwynn E. Ambrose, author at Penumbra Publishing

Way Back When. When I was a kid, I liked reading comic books. In fact, I drew my own comic books. My mom had a friend who read romance comic books, kind of like the old strip comics in the newspaper, but in color. She left some behind, and I read those, but I liked the superhero comics better, even though they didn’t have very many female characters that weren’t villains. I loved the idea of superheroes – people that could do extraordinary things for good. I went gaga over Japanese TV cartoons way before I realized it was called anime. The Japanese animation dramatized lighting and perspective more forcefully than American cartoons, and this depth and drama fascinated me. In fact, I learned to draw people by copying the style of Japanese animation. But back then (we won’t say how long ago), it was hard to come by cartoons on TV that featured Japanese animation. This was the BC/BS TV era (Before Cable / Before Satellite), when antennas ruled the rooftops. To compound the problem, I lived in a semi-rural area. Luckily I was just close enough to a major metropolitan area to get fuzzy reception of the ‘indie’ channel that featured oddball stuff like Japanese anime cartoons. So my comic books were hand-drawn in pencil on lined notebook paper, starring characters with minimalistic facial features and big eyes.

Different Mediums and Mixed Effects. Soon I ‘graduated’ to books without pictures, basically because my sisters left science fiction books lying around, which I’d pick up and read but half the time didn’t understand or appreciate to the fullest. I was in fifth grade, so some of the adult and technological-concept content was beyond my level of comprehension. However I did find there was much more ‘meat’ to the stories in books without pictures, because there was much more room for layered narrative. But I still missed pictures. Sure, I could imagine the characters in my head, but I loved art and liked to look at amazing pictures with weird perspective and bizarre lighting to highlight characters in odd and unexpected ways. I have been known more than once to buy a book just because there was something about the cover art I admired or fell in love with. So art can have a powerful effect on the reader and shouldn’t be dismissed as inferior or ‘cartoonish,’ just for kids. Comic books can have a story depth that rivals traditional novels.

Comprehending and Interpreting. Graphic stories in the ‘typical’ comic book style present ideas in a visually defined form that is instantly comprehensible. The pictures tell you what’s going on without your having to first squint and read a couple paragraphs of words. The mind absorbs and processes visual imagery and words differently, using different parts of the brain. So writing and illustrating are a bit different from each other, just as motion pictures present a totally different medium with sequential movement and audible content added – and sometimes subtitles. Words by their nature require language skills and verbal interpretation. Pictures on the other hand are mostly visual with very little language skill involved, except to read captions and dialog.

What’s in a Name? There’s an ongoing debate in the graphic novel arena over what actually constitutes a graphic novel. Some artists and writers balk at the term, because they think it is either unnecessary or is just a fancy euphemism to dress up a medium they feel is respectable in its own right without a different label. Writer Neil Gaiman, responding to a claim that he does not write comic books but instead writes graphic novels, said the commenter “meant it as a compliment, I suppose. But all of a sudden I felt like someone who'd been informed that she wasn't actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening.” –Wikipedia.

Part of the debate is the perception that comic books are inferior to ‘regular’ literature because they are basically a comic strip newspaper style adapted to a booklet format, which by association demotes comic books to the lowest form of reading entertainment available – the newspaper comic strip or ‘funnies’ section. While comic book collectors hoard their finds, newspaper consumers line their bird cages with newspaper comic strips. Both may be printed on basically the same paper, but the comic book usually has a slick cover that is saddle stapled around the interior. And it’s in color. So a bit more cost and care goes into the production of the comic book. Plus the content is quite a bit more expanded. Whereas the newspaper may feature three frames of a specific comic strip, the comic book issue will feature several pages full of frames that serialize a short story. And usually the artist goes to quite a bit more trouble to ink and colorize comic book frames as opposed to syndicated newspaper comic strips. So where does the graphic novel fit in?

There have been many attempts over the years to coin alternate labels like ‘pictorial novel’ for books that contained narrative passages enhanced with the occasional insertion of pictures or illustrations. There’s every combination of the two mediums, from repackaged comic book content in book-bound form, to straight narrative novels with the occasional illustration. So where does one draw the line in defining what constitutes a ‘graphic novel’?

The Traditional Comic Strip. The traditional comic strip consists of two, three, or four frames or boxes that pictorially represent a scene or moment or idea. Each frame usually contains a picture drawn of characters doing something, with bubbles for dialog lettered inside. The dialog is typically very short, only a few words to fit inside the bubble. Sometimes a caption will be attached to the frame either above or below or in some other way incorporated into the frame. The series of two to four frames creates a pictorial narrative for a short-short scenario or joke with a setup and a punch line.

The Traditional Comic Book. One camp differentiates the graphic novel from the comic book by means of binding (book binding rather than saddle stapling) and story completeness, while maintaining that a graphic novel is in the same boxed picture frame format with bubbled narration. Traditionally comic book editions, while presenting an ongoing series in more or less complete mini-story, are far shorter than graphic novels. There have been many sources of content for graphic novels and comic books over the years, and often publishers of comic books would cross over to the other medium and ‘bundle’ several issues as a graphic novel, mostly to get more mileage of the same content already published.

The Novel With Pictures. My preference is to differentiation between various media based on content quantity and presentation. While the typical comic book is a glossy cover saddle-stitched around a large format booklet consisting of approximately 24 to 32 pages, a novel can be hundreds of pages and lend itself to a more complex story with many more opportunities to showcase stellar art.

I further differentiate between illustrated novel and graphic novel by the content itself. If the pictures are the predominate feature and take precedence over the narrative, then it’s a graphic novel. If the narrative, the story itself, takes precedence over the illustrations, then it is an illustrated novel. Of course this is simply my personal take. You can call it whatever you want, as many do, but however it’s labeled, the mix of illustrated story provides a rich reading experience. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

No Rules. The great thing about all this is that there are no rules. Artists and writers can put their book in any format or mix of formats that suits them, as long as the technology to mass-produce it for the reading public is economically available. As electronic book representation becomes more sophisticated, the possibilities of doing new things with traditional fiction will expand. Currently there are digital formats available for comic books, the most popular being CBR/CBZ file formats that allow digital pictures to be viewed within a software application like Comic Rack. An app called Comixology allows viewing in a web browser. Marvel and other larger comic producers have begun making their digital collections available online for a subscription fee.

Whether you choose digital or printed, a graphic novel can be a thing of awe and beauty, illustrating the mind’s concepts in a way that adds drama outside the realm of reality. And isn’t that the whole point of literature – to spark the imagination and take readers on wondrous and fabulous journeys?

If you haven’t read a graphic novel yet, now’s a good time to start checking them out. The variety of subject matter has no bounds. With graphic novels, your imagination can visit the playground of talented artists and writers to go places you’ve never been before but will surely want to visit again and again!

Gwynn E. Ambrose, author at Penumbra Publishing

In Brightest Day: My Tribute to Hal Jordan (Part One)

Despite the fact that Darwin’s Children rings of X-men lore, my writing is actually more inspired by the DC comic book universe than Marvel. Don’t get me wrong, I love Stan ‘the Man’ Lee but Marvel’s superheroes don’t have the same iconic appeal as DC’s.

            Hulk smash!... but he isn’t a symbol.

            Superheroes should become more than man… they are supposed to be ideas. To be the change they wanted to see in the world.

            No one defines this iconic transcendence more than Hal Jordan-the first Earthling to serve in the galactic brotherhood of protectors, the Green Lantern Corps. 

Before I prattle on about Hal, I’d like to discuss the creation of the universe, superhero bling, and the birth of fear.

            In the beginning a powerful group of Guardians watched the galaxy explode in a sea of light. Figuring it needed protecting, they decided to set up the headquarters of their rule in the very center of the galaxy on the planet of Oa-sector 0.

            It was here that the central power battery was created, at which time, at reservoir of green willpower, fueled by every sentient being in the universe, was stored. 

The Guardians decided that green was the color of courage, and thus the most important part of being a Green Lantern, a member of the corps they set up and charged with the protection of the galaxy.

            This emotional energy was then transferred to a personal lantern for each of the members of the corps to carry with him/her/it that would charge each member’s power ring. These rings had to be charged every 24 hours. No matter where one of these galactic peacekeepers were, they could summon the lantern to charge the ring.

            The ring allows the Green Lantern to do anything…

            Anything he can imagine, and the stronger his will, the more powerful the Lantern. The beauty was that in order to put on the ring, the lantern had to be chosen by the GALAXY… and to charge it, one had to swear one of the most famous oaths in comic history:

In brightest day

In blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight

Let those who worship Evil’s might

Beware my power… Green Lantern’s Light.

           

            Next week I will talk about why Hal Jordan was the most powerful hero in the DC Universe, and introduce you to what the oath means, and why Frank Miller said, “He used to need a ring… he used to need a lantern...”

            It will all make sense next week…

            When I tell you about Parallax.