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Posted on 10.26.09 by Wolven @ 11:44 pm
Comments on this: just one. Add your own.  Wolven here again. I'm back from the wilds of a future time where the southeast portion of the United States is the desert it only pretends to be in our present autumn months, and the cities of Atlanta, Charlotte, and Birmingham have the beaches they've always wanted. From the considerable effort I was having to exert to follow the rule "never read your own press," I gather that people had… Feelings, one way or another, about my premier piece, here on Need Coffee. And that's good, because we're going again, and this time I want to talk to you about something you dang kids don't talk nearly enough about these days: Novels. Now don't get me wrong, we talk about Fiction all the time here. We talk about Important fiction all the time, too. Comics, music, movies; all of these are deeply important. But, just for a little while, let's talk about some books, and let's talk about the writers of those books. Categorized as: Books
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Posted on 10.16.09 by Widge @ 6:04 am
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own. For today's kickoff, a bit of what I did while in Baltimore for the Poe Bicentennial as part of my 32 Days of Halloween special trip. Here's a walkthrough of the Poe House there in Baltimore, which was open for a viewing of Poe's "body" on October 7th ahead of the funeral that took place the Sunday following. I give a brief...well, brief...on what you're about to see. There's some annotations and such in the video to help explain what the heck is going on. Enjoy. Direct link for the feedreaders. For still shots of some of the items inside as well as some exterior shots of the Poe House, check out this gallery on our Facebook page. And, you know, become a fan while you're there. It's painless. Honest. For the official site of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, who runs The Poe House, you can find them here. Categorized as: Books
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 Wolven, while he works in his monstrous lab concocting his follow-up to his Magic in Comics post, offered up this archival interview he conducted with author Hal Duncan on September 14, 2006. Hal Duncan is the author of Vellum and Ink, both discussed below, and also Escape From Hell!, which came out last year. Wolven: 1) For the record, what is your name? HD: Hal Duncan. W: 2) Many would say that "modern magical practice," as spoken of by people like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Phil Hine, and those others counting themselves as "modern magicians," rests in an idea of the manipulation of language as a way to manipulate concepts and thereby dictate perception and interaction with the world. HD: a) I think it would have to. I'm an atheist, nihilist, existentialist, materialist, when it comes down to it, albeit with an idiosyncratic view on materialism which doesn't preclude the irrational, the indefinite and the downright chaotic, so any theory of magic that requires a spiritual / material distinction, that posits it as an appeal to supernatural entities or incorporeal agents active in a "higher" realm, doesn't hold water for me. If magic were to exist, to me it would have to be a natural phenomenon. Categorized as: Books
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Posted on 07.15.09 by Widge @ 3:27 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own. Okay, so we told you about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (of which there's a deluxe edition coming out in October), the novel that featured the original Jane Austen text, embellished with zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith. Now Quirk Books is following it up with...well...just watch. Categorized as: Books
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Posted on 06.25.09 by Greg Hyatt @ 6:39 pm
Comments on this: 4 so far. Add your own.  What if Gene Roddenberry and Stan Lee had an ugly-ass baby? ScottC's Note: Everyone, please welcome guest columnist Greg Hyatt. When asked to describe himself, this is what he said: "I was sent from the distant future to prevent a devastating war between humanity and bionic Civil War re-enactors, Stranded in the past after the completion of his mission, I currently resides in Kansas City where I enjoy superheroes, '80s cartoons and New Wave music." There have been Star Trek novels for decades. And in the nineties, Marvel Comics made sure their characters were everywhere. We got animated series, action figures, trading cards, Pogs, and novels. Marvel also had the Star Trek license in the nineties. Which means not only did we get a line of Trek comics, we got special issues like Star TreX and Star Trek: The Next Generation/X-Men: Second Contact. And that second title is where Star Trek: The Next Generation/X-Men: Planet X comes in. The novel is a sequel to the comic, which takes place moments after the end of the film First Contact. The crew of the Enterprise-E didn't make it back to their time on their first attempt. They were actually thrown back to the then-present Marvel Universe where they teamed up (after a brief battle) with the X-Men. There are problems with the timeline and Kang the Conqueror asks (orders) the two groups to repair them. Of course they do and the Enterprise crew returns to their time. (After all, you can't alter the status quo even slightly in a licensed product!) Categorized as: Books
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