(1) SAG AWARDS. Genre productions were virtually absent from the 2016 Screen Actors Guild Awards except in the stunt work categories.
FILM:
Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture: “Mad Max”
TELEVISION:
Stunt Ensemble in a Comedy or Drama Series: “Game of Thrones”
(2) GUARDIANS SEQUEL. “’Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’: James Gunn Says He’s Cast the Villains and Star Lord’s Father” at Collider.
James Gunn is killing it on social media. The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 director has made himself unusually accessible to fans, especially considering he’s at the helm of a massive franchise for a studio known for its secrecy. But Gunn can pull it off because he’s managed to find the fine line between satisfying fan curiosity without actually giving anything away.
https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/693089062928932868
(3) FLIPPING BATMEN. Adam-Troy Castro has a very funny idea for “Making Batman Say, ‘Uhhhhhh, What?’”.
You know what would be really, really grotesque?
Switching Batmen and their Gotham Cities.
Imagine plopping Adam West’s Batman down in the dark and corrupt Gotham of, among other creators, Frank Miller, where half the cops are on the take and all the villains are not just colorful lunatics but mass murderers; imagine him fighting, for instance, the Joker of Scott Snyder’s DEATH OF THE FAMILY, or the one played by Heath Ledger.
Conversely, imagine the grim and militaristic Batman of ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN in the Gotham of Lorenzo Semple Jr., where all the crimes are whimsical and campy and Commissioner Gordon has all the competence of a turtle lying on his back.
This would lead to some fun scenes.
FRANK MILLER BATMAN: “There’s nothing about you I can’t fix, Joker…with my hands…”
CESAR ROMERO JOKER (Disconcerted): “Umm, what?”
or
ADAM WEST BATMAN: “I’m just an ally of this fine city’s fine, upstanding police force!”
BURT WARD ROBIN: “Gosh, Batman! You’re right!”
JIM GORDON: (Disconcerted) “Ummm, what?”
And Castro continues…
(4) LE GUIN DOCUMENTARY SEEKS FUNDING. Worlds of UKL is doing fundraising for a prospective documentary about Ursula K. Le Guin.
Jayn, who sent the link, mischieviously swears, “I have no connection with the production beyond also thinking that Le Guin deserves a documentary about her (and possibly also a Nobel Prize for Literature and the throne of an Empress.)” Well, who doesn’t agree with that?
Director Arwen Curry wrote on Facebook about a Kickstarter appeal that begins soon.
As I announced a while back, the NEH recently awarded Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin a major production grant. We’re so excited to finish filming and get into the edit room. But the NEH won’t release the funding until we raise the rest of the budget. On January 31, we will do a “soft launch” of a Kickstarter campaign, inviting friends and family to help support this important film. We hope to have a respectable sum when the press announces the campaign to the public on February 1. Can you help now by reaching out to your reading groups, your Facebook pages, and your best geek pals and asking them to ‘like” Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin? Thank you!
(5) STOKER BUST. Neil Gaiman is supporting Bryan Moore’s campaign to have a bust of Bram Stoker created in time for World Dracula Day.
As we previously reported, noted sculptor Bryan Moore has launched a Kickstarter Campaign to help fund his latest project, a gorgeous bronze bust of DRACULA author Bram Stoker, a project formed in collusion with the Dublin Writer’s Museum and geared to tie into World Dracula Day on May 26th, 2016.
And now, author and dark visionary Neil Gaiman, the man behind such works as SANDMAN, CORALINE and AMERICAN GODS is among the project’s most famous backers.
“We’re incredibly grateful for Mr. Gaiman’s kindness and generosity” says Moore, the sculptor who has successfully crowdfunded efforts to place busts of H.P. Lovecraft at the Providence Athenaeum Library in Rhode Island and Edgar Allan Poe in Massachusetts at the Boston Public Library
With 10 days left, The Bram Stoker Bronze Bust Project has raised $7,270 of its $30,000 goal.
(6) WOMEN HORROR WRITERS. A few days ago I linked to Nina Allan’s “Where Are We Going? Some Reflections on British Horror, Present and Future” at Strange Horizons, about another British horror anthology predominantly filled with male writers.
The anthology’s editor Mark Morris posted a response on Facebook. He begins with this argument:
Keeping with this morning’s theme of British horror, there’s an interesting article here on the state of British horror by Nina Allen, in which she raises, yet again, the subject of gender parity. With regard to THE 2ND SPECTRAL BOOK OF HORROR STORIES, I’d like to say this:
First of all, it’s not a ‘Best Of…’ anthology, as she claims, but an anthology of original horror fiction.
Secondly, she criticises the book – and by implication my editorship of it – by pointing out that of its nineteen stories only three are by women.
I’ll answer this observation by stating what I’ve stated several times before – for me, the most important thing when editing an anthology is to get the *best stories possible* for it. I don’t care whether those stories are by men or by women. I’m not driven by having to fulfil particular quotas as regards sex, race, level of fame or anything else. All I’m interested in is selecting the very best stories out of all the ones that are sent to me. And if the twenty best stories (in my opinion) were all written by men one year, or were all written by women, then those are the ones I would select. (And would no doubt be damned for it).
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- January 30, 1933 — The Lone Ranger debuts on Detroit radio.
- January 30, 1991 — Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs premieres.
(8) NO DAY IN HISTORY, EVER. At Ancient Origins, which thrives on such things, an architect has presented a radical new theory about Stonehenge.
Could the prehistoric Stonehenge megaliths once have been the support for a wooden, two-storey roundhouse, a venue for feasting, speakers and musicians? That’s the theory of an English landscape architect who designed a small model of what she has in mind and is looking for money to build a 1:10 scale model of the structure.
Sarah Ewbank says the fact she is not an archaeologist has freed her from preconceived notions and allowed her to approach the matter in a fresh way.
(8) TODAY’S CHEERY SCIENTIFIC THEORY. More sound and therefore more depressing is Scientific American’s report about emerging evidence for a transmissible Alzheimer’s theory.
For the second time in four months, researchers have reported autopsy results that suggest Alzheimer’s disease might occasionally be transmitted to people during certain medical treatments—although scientists say that neither set of findings is conclusive.
The latest autopsies, described in the Swiss Medical Weekly on January 26, were conducted on the brains of seven people who died of the rare, brain-wasting Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD). Decades before their deaths, the individuals had all received surgical grafts of dura mater—the membrane that covers the brain and spinal cord. These grafts had been prepared from human cadavers and were contaminated with the prion protein that causes CJD.
…Neither study implies that Alzheimer’s disease could ever be transmitted through normal contact with caretakers or family members, the scientists emphasize. And no one uses cadaver-derived preparations in the clinic anymore. Synthetic growth hormone is used for growth disorders, and synthetic membranes are used for patching up in brain surgery.
(9) A FEW BRICKS MORE. “Beautiful LEGO: Wild!, a New Book Exploring Natural Brick Wonders” at This Colossal has a gallery of photos.
LEGO-based artist, author, and curator Mike Doyle (previously here and here) has collected another impressive set of LEGO masterpieces in his lastest book Beautiful LEGO: Wild! by No Starch Press, a book that explores natural wonders from undersea landscapes to a family of sea otters produced from over 3,500 LEGO pieces. Unlike Doyle’s last book which featured sculptures depicting sci-fi horrors and ghoulish nightmares, this book collects the works of several dozen artists who capture natural scenes from our planet’s Animal Kingdom and beyond.
One of Doyle’s own pieces that appears in the book is a new piece titled Appalachian Mountaintop Removal (2015), a work composed of more than 10,000 pieces that directly references the act outlined in its title. Mountaintop removal is a form of coal mining affecting the Appalachian Mountains that levels mountains, poisons aquifers, and damages surrounding wildlife indefinitely. You can learn how to help the destruction of these natural resources as well as view more of Doyle’s massive lego sculptures on his blog here.
(10) GRRM ON HUGO NOMINATIONS. George R.R. Martin encourages people to nominate for the Hugos at Not A Blog.
What you nominate is, of course, entirely up to you.
But please, NOMINATE. I have been beating that same drum for a decade, and this year it behooves me to beat it even louder. Nominate the stuff that you enjoyed best last year. Let your own individual voice be heard.
Yes, I have recommended some stuff I liked, in older posts below. And I will be doing more of same in the near future. But remember, that’s just me saying, “hey, I liked this, you might like it too, take a look.” No one should ever nominate anything just because someone else tells them to.
(11) VOX DAY ON HUGO NOMINATIONS. On the other hand, Vox Day told Vox Popoli readers when they can expect his Rabid Puppy list.
The Rabid Puppy List of Recommendations That Is Most Certainly Not a Slate, Much Less a Direct Order From the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil will be posted in February.
(12) PREMATURE VICTORY PARADE. Meanwhile, Randy Henderson may have been up late scrying his crystal balls, judging by his post “Important Update: All the Awards I’m Going to Win in 2016!”
It’s award nomination time! AND THANK GAWD, I don’t need to ask you fine folks to nominate or vote for me or anything, because I already know all the awards I’m going to win this year. The people behind the people behind the scenes have told me I’m a shoe-in. So here’s the list. Don’t be jealous.
2016 Hugo for Best Novel Idea about Use of a Hugo: “Condom demonstration prop in sexual education class for cyborgs“, submitted by Randy Henderson, author of Finn Fancy Necromancy…
And after that, he plans on winning every other award in the field….
[Thanks to Will R., Jayn, James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]
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The SP4 set up means that Kate P et al end up doing the hard work of collecting nominations, while Vox can run through the comments and pick out plausible stuff for a slate. The distinction between Sad & Rabid will be very fuzzy i.e. some Sads who nominate nothing in common with Rabids, then varying degrees of rabidness up to people voting the full Rabid slate.
@Greg H
My short take — I will just nominate what is elegible that I think is good enough. I have not even looked at those lists and don’t care to contribute to them.
re (8)a
My words. I have no words.
re (11)
One thing to reflect on here. How many times over the last year have we heard strident, deeply offended defenses of even suggesting that author X was benefiting from a slate, usually from the authors who’d gotten on or even partially organized a slate? A lot, right? Think John Wright’s precious hand-wringing about the anyone even suggesting such a thing.
I mention this because the order seems to provide maximum benefit for both sides. Whatever chickenshit would-be Sun Tzu Beale will market as a Xanatos gambit (side note: there needs to be a mocking trope name for would-be Xanatos gambits and their makers) can be constructed, I assume partially from the recommendations and partially from whatever Castelia is publishing this year. Beale has his little boys flood SP4 with his recommendations.
And when SP4’s time comes around, Ms. Hoyt and Ms. Paulk, will nominate something more relevant than the collected musings of Qrpyna Svaa, and stare at us all wide-eyed with shock, just shock, that anyone would suggest they’re Beale’s catspaws, and they will do this by pointing to the support the RP nods got from Beale’s supporters. They can be relevant, have a united front with Beale, and by the standards we saw this year, claim to not be moving in lockstep with him and be very offended at anyone suggesting otherwise.
Reading the Facebook account of that anthology uproar.
Even women he approached directly did not submit any stories.
Short of going into their files and taking the stories, just what was Mr. Morris supposed to do?
@C. A. Bridges: BTW I feel it would be silly for any author to withdraw from consideration simply because a slate exists that refuses to remove them on request, when it’s clear the only reason they’re on the slate is an immature attempt by the slaters to try to manipulate voters. Hopefully no one does that when the slates come out, if slaters do something idiotic like listing people as if it were a “gotcha!” to anti-slate folks.
/more rambling 😉
If anyone gets tired of all these decent books that deserve awards, I’m shamelessly plugging my selfpub YA science fiction slush pile reject which just went live on Amazon, and is free as an e-book until I think Wednesday, maybe Tuesday.
I’m just going to do my damndest to ignore the slates completely. I’ll nominate what I know and like, and if that overlaps with any slate, well, that’s the slate-makers’ problem, not mine.
Same for the voting, if I can manage it. That . . . may be slightly more difficult, as writers/artists react to being nominated (anyone who actually thanks a slate-maker is going to make me grimace, at the very least), but I’ll try anyway. Good work is good work, and now that I’m not being blindsided, I can concentrate on that. Well. As best I can.
@Charon: I love that cover! Great job finding an artist.
Harold Osler: A good point. There are a few things that help:
Solicit more stories still. He said he solicited from “a dozen or so” female writers (Also said his slush pile was 800+ stories. You can figure out the math there for yourself – I also wonder how many male writers he directly solicited, but he doesn’t say. Was it also 12?), of which only two responded with something other than “too busy” (And too busy is often legit, as I understand it). So why not solicit 24 next time? 36? What possible harm could there be? He actually gets too many great stories and has to winnow down? Not exactly a problem most editors mind having.
Explicitly say in the open call guidelines that you are interested in stories by women and minorities. I know a couple of editors who have said that just adding that one sentence to the guidelines (And not, note, “We prefer stories by…”, but just “We welcome stories by…”) has made a difference in how many submissions come from women and minorities.
A lot is up to female writers and people who want to encourage female writers, but an editor isn’t helpless.
Jim Hines weighs in on SP4.
He correctly identifies that the suggestion of strategic voting is where they depart from a clean recs list. Later he says:
He’s right on the first part, but I think the second is optimistic. There’s nothing wrong with being hopeful though.
@Vasha Thanks! Brian Allen at Flyland Designs asked me to spread the word that he’s definitely interested in more covers. I was a little concerned about not having my brown characters turned into blondes and he assuaged all my anxieties.
@Charon D
Your FAQ made me chuckle. Good luck!
@Mary Frances: Mostly same here re. nominating. I wouldn’t change what I nominate based on something being on a slate! And for the final voting round, if I nominated someone, I’d vote for them; how high, of course, depends on the other works. Granted, I’d look askance if the person were thrilled to be on a slate, but somehow I can’t see that happening this year, at least for my nominees. Ann Leckie, for example, won’t be thanking any slaters. 😉
On the other paw, other slated works are another thing entirely. I’ll tackle it on a case-by-case basis. I mostly reject slates & slated works, but I’m not a robot! (Part of my point above that I wish any would-be-manipulator slaters would grasp.) So “X on slate” might not mean I reject it out of hand, but it’ll hurt its chances of making my ballot. I really, really hate slates. But again – case-by-case basis.
@Charon D: The FAQ made me chuckle, too. I like “rest assured my book contains absolutely no nonconsensual sex” – LOL. I’m omitting the rest of the paragraph to encourage people to read the answer.
Punitive slating just isn’t going to work. True, a number of people (call them group A) last year decided, on principle, to put all the slated works under “No Award”. Group A, as far as I know, is not made up of complete idiots, and if they see (for example) John Scalzi appearing on the slate, they will know it’s an attempt at sabotage and act accordingly.
Another group of people (call them group B) last year read all the nominated work and voted under “No Award” everything they thought wasn’t worth considering for a Hugo Award. Group B, to which I have the honour to belong, will spot any works of genuine merit included on the SP list and will, presumably, vote accordingly….
The trouble is, it’s sort of hard to see who’s in group A and who’s in group B, because the overlap between “stuff that was on the slate” last year and “stuff that legitimately deserved to go under No Award” was damn near total. (Some people on the SP side seem to be convinced that all the opposition was in group A and nobody in group B actually exists. Having felt myself all over carefully, I believe this not to be the case.)
[ticky]
I’m fortunate in that I asked for one paper copy of the MAC2 progress report for the household, and MAC2 put the PINs on those envelopes in December. I’ve already made a good chunk of my nominations with no reference to puppydom at all.
@Steve Wright,
It has been pointed out a number of times that if all the voters were in group A, then “Guardians of the Galaxy” would not have won as it was on *both* the Sad Puppies & Rabid Puppies slates. But “Guardians of the Galaxy” won last year’s Hugo for BDP(L), therefore
I can clearly not choose the wine in front of memost of the voters were in group B.It has also been pointed out a number of times that most(?) Puppy supporters don’t let facts get in the way of a frothy argument.
@Charon D: love the cover and the faq!
Bananatos Gambits
Xanadoofs
@Charon D: …even if Amazon gets bought out by alien space squid who decide to only publish books by people named Phil
Dammit, who told?
P.S. Great book cover and FAQ!
I’m sure John Scalzi announcing ahead of time that he would decline any nomination may have put a crimp in annoyance slating.
The original Rabid discussion was to nominate a bunch of random crap, but I think they might go with stuff that’s supposed to make the SJW’s head explode as both Sad and Rabid Puppies are fond of saying. So Related Work would be things like SJW Always Lie, Safe Space as Rape Room and that Declan Finn puppy-biting thing.
But what goes into the fiction categories? I’d assume that VD would push his Castalia House stuff again. Is there product to fill the categories this year? I haven’t been following their output.
@Kurt Busiek: LOL. BTW are you riffing on the name game song? That’s what it made me think of.
@Kendall – I finished Dungeons and Drag Queens. It’s not good. I have a fairly high tolerance for the absurd, but even then I want coherent world-building. This doesn’t have that. I’m also pretty tolerant of gross-out humor, but there was so much in this that it bored me. But, hey, I can add it to my list of books read this year that don’t fit my usual reading preferences. Next up for that list will be a few Westerns.
However, in the meantime, I need a palate cleanser. Or some brain bleach. Something.
@Jack Lint: Okay, don’t create their slate for them. 😉
Presumably Beale will put out his list, then flood SP4 to match. I think he loses the impact if SP4 is independent.
I liked “Tuesday with the destroyer…” – not sure it’s hugo winning and it’s a take off of the Tuesday with Morrie books, but it was pretty effective story telling. If RP/SP slated works can’t be detected at 10 paces due to functional illiteracy, at least that’s an improvement over last year.
I’m looking for JCW works to dominate again, even if they weren’t published in 2015.
Beale will be Beale, I’ll nominate and vote for what I want and ignore the troll.
@k8: Hahaha, thanks for the report and, uh, sorry? 😉 Well, I guess variety is always (sometimes) good (bad).
Re. Westerns, if you want crossovers at some point, I haven’t read them but A Night in Sixes and The Curse of Jacob Tracy looked interesting to me, as someone who’s . . . decidedly not into Westerns.
I’m pretty sure they were already creating their slate when they published those things.
While I don’t claim to be able to read the RP strategy, I don’t think it at all impossible that they have given up on the SP, because the SP are actually interested in winning awards and will make nominations with that in mind, and that doesn’t fit VD’s plans.
(PS: this was a response to Kendall. About five things seem to have been posted while I was writing it.)
@Kendall – Variety can be good, but I do this in part because I see it as part of my job to be aware of the wide variety of reading preferences out there. I’m being fairly methodical about it this year. My good intentions don’t always last, though. The last time I failed was when I burned out after reading multiple Amish Christian Romances in succession.
Just going for belittlingly dismissive. But that works too.
“…banana-fanna fo fanatos…”
I suppose there’s also Xanatics, Xans and Spamatos Gambits (for the frequency and dishonesty).
@Jack Lint
For short fiction, I expect they’ll draw heavily from the Pournelle anthology Castillia printed at the end of last year.
Xanadoh! Gambit.
My Best Professional Artist list is way too long, like 17 names. Some are so different it’s tough to compare them, and I suck at saying X is better than Y when I like them both a lot. I know it’s just personal taste, but I’m curious how people take a list of great stuff and cut it down to size.
I thought about skipping well-known artists, especially if I believe I nominated them in the past. But they’re still doing amazing work, plus some are always overlooked. (Seriously, why has Jon Foster never been nominated?) So this doesn’t feel fair to me.
There’s no helping me, really. It’s just frustrating. There are worse Hugo problems to have. 😉
Also frustrating: Artists, please make an eligibility page for awards on your site, and keep it updated. Not only do most artists not have this, many don’t even list publication or copyright dates. One artist had an award-eligible list . . . from the previous year (sigh).
@k8: Heh, mix up the Amish Christian Romances with the Secondary World Drag Queen Fantasies, so you don’t burn out on either one! 😉 I imagine they’re quite different.
More seriously, I applaud you reading widely. I’m way too SFF focused (though SFF can include western, romance, drag queens, etc.). :-/
@Kurt Busiek: I like ‘em all, maybe especially Spamatos Gambits, which made me LOL.
Oh, I do get tired of the “I don’t even notice gender, it just so happens the good stories are all by men” argument. And while it’s great that Mark Morris made an effort to solicit some stories from women, Nina Allan is talking about more than just his anthology here. It’s the pattern that’s troubling and needs to be considered, not just one data point.
@ULTRAGOTHA
Not being one myself, I wouldn’t know for sure, but my impression was that many writers are concerned with telling their stories, and having them sell well, rather than a single minded focus on writing bestsellers. Writing bestsellers tends to involve figuring out what the market wants, and to some extent catering to that, which is something that e.g. John Scalzi or Charles Stross do openly and successfully.
I never got that vibe from Butler’s work. Can’t picture her thinking “A trilogy about aliens interbreeding with humans—I bet that would sell like hotcakes in Topeka”.
@Lenora Rose
The dozen or so he solicited directly were from writers he was especially keen to include so I think they’d have had a better chance than the slush pile. One he did get from those approached was included. The slush pile was also 80% or more male.
I concede he doesn’t mention direct solicitation of male authors or their hit rate though.
Further improving the submission pool seems to be the key here though. I’m minded of the all male Clarke award shortlist from a couple of years back that was selected by an 4/5 female panel. They noted that a lot of the best submissions from women were fantasy.
@L Maybe they should do an anonymised selection..
Related to Best Professional Artist: Is anyone familiar with David G. Stevenson’s work? He appears to be an (the?) art director at Random House, but he’s credited for the jacket design and illustration (based on a photo, which is credited) for Zero World by Jason M. Hough. I love the art and the overall cover design, but I can’t find a web site for him.
Maybe his illustration is a fluke, as art director, and normally he doesn’t do illustration. Or maybe he does it 10 times a year; if so, I’d like to see his other work, but had trouble finding it (but I can find credits for him as art director).
BTW, I don’t know from that if it’s a Photoshopping of the photo or illustrated with the photo as a reference (it sounds & looks like the latter, but I’m no artist).
Anyway, why worry about having an 18th person on my long list. I’m hopeless, yeah. 😉
No more spam from me for a while; time for dinner. 😉
@TheYoungPretender
(side note: there needs to be a mocking trope name for would-be Xanatos gambits and their makers)
Xanatosser Gambit?
@Posmaster
Sounds good – Henley proposed Xanadoh! Gambit up the thread. Both are good.
I have ignored SP4 and hope to continue ignoring it. (And VD is so tiresome, I’d rather clean my oven than guess at his cunningly cunning plans for 2016.) Puppy buffoonery wasted enough of my attention in 2015. I resist letting it waste any more.
What I hope we see, in the wake of the events of 2015 and the record-high Hugo vote participation, is record-high participation in 2016 Hugo nominations, followed by high participation in the Hugo vote, and by the ratification of the approved amendments to the Hugo rules aimed at making the nominations process harder to manipulate in future years.
If those things occur, I hope it will mitigate any imminent or future attempts by a person or a faction to dominate the nominations.
Wouldn’t the Xanadoh! Gambit be the one where you win, then wind up regretting it?
Octavia Butler’s
is currently a free download on Amazon UK, for those who would like an e-version.
@Steve Wright
“Colourless Green Pixels Scroll Furiously?”
Once we go the linguistics route, we cannot escape this one:
Scrolling pixels can be dangerous.
Xanadus gambit involves Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly, ELO and rollerskating.
For Greg Benford’s 75th:
Across the Sea of Scrolls
Great Sky Pixel
Hives of Light
Hivescape
Petrea Mitchel has a very important point about gambits. Jack Lint has suggested a far more enjoyable gambit.
Per earlier discussion on the apostrophe, “Xanadoh!” needs one:
Xanad’oh! Gambit
Though one might consider “Xanax Gambit” and those who create them “Upjohnnies” or a variant thereof (“Upjohnnie-come-latelys”?)
“Xanax: Sedative
It can treat anxiety and panic disorder.
Controlled substance–Can cause paranoid or suicidal ideation and impair memory, judgment, and coordination. Combining with other substances, particularly alcohol, can slow breathing and possibly lead to death.”
Xanadus gambit involves Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly, ELO and rollerskating.
And this differs from VD’s so-called Xanatos gambit how?
Maybe they should do an anonymised selection..
Well, that certainly worked when orchestras started using using screens during auditions. The number of women employed went way up, even though I’m sure up until then symphonies, with their 90/10 split, were sure they were just hiring the best people for the job.
I’m sticking with Mike Gambit, who was a pleasing presence in The New Avengers back in the mists of time. Naturally, Steed was indisputedly the guy in charge, but I infinitely prefer my Gambit to the feeble attempts by VD to persuade people that his multiple screw-ups are intentional.