Pixel Scroll 4/25/17 If All You Have Is A Pixel, Every Problem Looks Like A Scroll.

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(1) POTTER SCROLLS. I made a mistake about the lead item in yesterday’s Scroll. The people behind Harry Potter and the Sacred Text are not going to sit in the Sixth & I synagogue for 199 weeks talking about Harry Potter. They’re doing a 199-episode podcast – matching the total number of chapters in the seven Harry Potter books – and the Sixth & I appearance is one of many live shows on a country-wide tour. (Specifically — Washington DC Tuesday July 18th @ 7pm — Sixth & I.)

The presenters also have several sample videos on their YouTube channel that demonstrate the lessons they illustrate with Rowling’s stories.

(2) WRITER UPDATE. When we last heard from Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, she had just come out with ”Strange Monsters”, (which Carl Slaughter discussed at Amazing Stories).  Since then, she has been nominated for a Nebula for “The Orangery” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies;  won the Grand Prize in the Wattpad/Syfy The Magicians #BattletheBeast contest, which means her story will be turned into a digital short for the TV show The Magicians;  sold ”Needle Mouth” to Podcastle;  and sold “Maneaters” and “Something Deadly, Something Dark” to Black Static.

(3) WHEN IN VROME. John King Tarpinian and I joined the throngs at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena tonight to hear the wisdom and humor of John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow, and get them to sign copies of their new novels The Collapsing Empire and Walkaway.

A bonus arriving with the expected duo was Amber Benson, once part of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, now a novelist and comics writer, who also voiced the audiobook of Scalzi’s Lock-In.

Amber Benson, John Scalzi, and Cory Doctorow.

Amber Benson, John Scalzi, and Cory Doctorow. Photos by John King Tarpinian.

(4) GAME CHANGER. Hard to imagine the sff field without her, but apparently it might have happened: Rewire tells “Why Mary Robinette Kowal Traded in Puppets for Science Fiction”

A “catastrophic puppeteer injury” wouldn’t mean the beginning of an award-winning career for most people—but Mary Robinette Kowal is a different sort of someone.

… Thus began 25 years as a professional puppeteer. Kowal toured the country with a number of shows, including another production of “Little Shop of Horrors” (she’s been a puppeteer for seven “Little Shop” productions). While helping again to bring killer plant Audrey II to life, Kowal popped a ligament in her right wrist.

For most, a bum wrist is an annoyance. But for a puppeteer, it’s a catastrophic career interruption.

(5) THE CHOW OF YOUR DREAMS. Scott Edelman is back with a new Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Actually, this one’s going up a little early. I’d normally have posted it Friday — but since I’ll be at StokerCon then, where I will either win my first Bram Stoker Award or lose my seventh, thereby becoming the Susan Lucci of the HWA — I figured I’d better get it live now so I had no distractions while aboard the Queen Mary.

In Episode 35 you’re invited to “Eat one of George R. R. Martin’s dragon eggs with K. M. Szpara”.

K. M. Szpara

I was glad to be able to return for a meal with K.M. Szpara, who has published short fiction in Lightspeed, Shimmer, Glittership, and other magazines, and has recently completed his first novel. He edited the acclaimed anthology Transcendant: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, about which Kirkus wrote that it “challenges readers’ expectations in ways that few have managed to do before.”

Listen in and learn about his formative years writing Hanson and Harry Potter fanfic, which darlings he had to kill to complete his first novel, why rewrites are like giving a floofy poodle a haircut, what he didn’t know about short stories when he began to write them, the many ways conventions are like big sleepovers, the reason he was able to eat one of George R. R. Martin’s dragon eggs, and more.

(6) SCRATCHED. Like the rest of America you probably weren’t watching, so you won’t need to start now – SciFi Storm has the story: “Powerless indeed – NBC pulls show from schedule”.

From the “never a good sign” department, NBC has abruptly pulled the DC comics-tinged comedy series Powerless from the prime-time schedule, without any word on when the remaining episodes may air. The show, which starred Vanessa Hudgens, Alan Tudyk, Danny Pudi and Christina Kirk, struggled to find an audience from the start, despite the success of comics-based series of late.

(7) I WAKE UP STREAMING. Although NBC is shoveling a DC flop off its schedule, Warner Bros. is launching an entire service built around DC Comics properties.

Deadline.com says DC Digital will launch with a Titans series from the guy who does the shows on The CW and a Young Justice animated series: “DC Digital Service To Launch With ‘Titans’ Series From Greg Berlanti & Akiva Goldsman And ‘Young Justice: Outsiders’”

The DC-branded direct-to-consumer digital platform, in the works for the past several months, marks the second major new service launched by Warner Bros Digital Networks — the division started last year with the mandate of building WB-owned digital and OTT video services — following the recently introduced animation-driven Boomerang. The DC-branded platform is expected to offer more than a traditional OTT service; it is designed as an immersive experience with fan interaction and will encompass comics as well as TV series.

(8) SUSPENDED ANIMATION. Digital Trends sums up “‘Star Trek: Discovery’ 2017 CBS TV series: Everything we know so far”. What we know is nobody can say when it’s going to air.

The first episode of Star Trek premiered 50 years ago, and the beloved sci-fi franchise is now scheduled to return to television in 2017 with a new series on Netflix and CBS — or more specifically, on CBS All Access, the network’s new stand-alone streaming service.

CBS unveiled the first teaser for its new Star Trek series in early 2016, and the show’s official title was revealed to be Star Trek: Discovery during Comic-Con International in San Diego in summer 2016. With the latest movie (Star Trek Beyond) in theaters this past summer, many Star Trek fans are wondering exactly how the television series from executive producer Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies) and showrunners Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts (Pushing Daisies) will fit into the framework of the sci-fi franchise as it exists now.

Star Trek: Discovery was originally slated for a January release, but the network subsequently pushed the premiere date back to an unspecified date in mid- or late 2017. Here’s everything else we know about the series so far….

(9) IT TOOK AWHILE. Disney’s Gemini Man may be emerging from development hell says OnScreen in “Ang Lee to helm sci-fi actioner Gemini Man”.

Acclaimed director Ang Lee has entered negotiations to helm the long in-development sci-fi action thriller, Gemini Man.

First developed by Disney back in the nineties, the story sees an assassin forced into battle with his ultimate opponent: a younger clone of himself. Tony Scott was previously set to helm Disney’s take, based on a pitch by Darren Lemke. Several writers have taken a pass at the project over the years, including David Benioff, Brian Helgeland, and Andrew Niccol.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • April 25, 1940 — Batman’s arch-nemesis The Joker debuted in Batman #1, published 77 years ago today.
  • April 25, 1950 — The board game Scrabble trademark was registered.

(11) LEFT ON. The London Review of Books’ Russian Revolution book review includes China Miéville: “What’s Left?”

…That person, as it turns out, is China Miéville, best known as a science fiction man of leftist sympathies whose fiction is self-described as ‘weird’. Miéville is not a historian, though he has done his homework, and his October is not at all weird, but elegantly constructed and unexpectedly moving. What he sets out to do, and admirably succeeds in doing, is to write an exciting story of 1917 for those who are sympathetically inclined to revolution in general and to the Bolsheviks’ revolution in particular. To be sure, Miéville, like everyone else, concedes that it all ended in tears because, given the failure of revolution elsewhere and the prematurity of Russia’s revolution, the historical outcome was ‘Stalinism: a police state of paranoia, cruelty, murder and kitsch’. But that hasn’t made him give up on revolutions, even if his hopes are expressed in extremely qualified form. The world’s first socialist revolution deserves celebration, he writes, because ‘things changed once, and they might do so again’ (how’s that for a really minimal claim?). ‘Liberty’s dim light’ shone briefly, even if ‘what might have been a sunrise [turned out to be] a sunset.’ But it could have been otherwise with the Russian Revolution, and ‘if its sentences are still unfinished, it is up to us to finish them.’

(12) ALT-MARKETING. Most of you know that two weeks ago Monica Valentinelli refused to continue as Odyssey Con GoH after discovering the committee not only still included a harasser she’d encountered before (their Guest Liaison!), but she was going to be scheduled together with him on a panel, and then, when she raised these issues, the first response she received from someone on the committee was a defense of the man involved. The con’s other two GoHs endorsed her decision and followed her out the door.

Normal people responded to that sad situation by commiserating with the ex-GoHs, and mourning Odyssey Con’s confused loyalties. Jon Del Arroz set to work turning it into a book marketing opportunity.

First, Del Arroz discarded any inconvenient facts that didn’t suit his narrative:

A couple of weeks ago, an invited headlining guest flaked on a convention, OdysseyCon. No notice was given, no accommodations were asked for, simply bailing two weeks before it happened, leaving the fans without an honored guest. The Con responded professionally and nicely, trying to work things out as much as possible, but that wasn’t enough for this person who took to social media, and got a cabal of angry virtue signallers to start swearing, berating and attacking anyone they could.

Then he showed his empathy by arranging a book bundle with the works of Nick Cole, Declan Finn, Marina Fontaine, Robert Kroese, L. Jagi Lamplighter, John C. Wright (“nominated for more Hugo Awards in one year than any person alive”), himself, plus the Forbidden Thoughts anthology, Flyers will be handed to attendees at next weekend’s con telling them how to access the books.

Because Jon evidently feels someone needs to be punished for the unprofessionalism of that guest. After the fans at Odyssey Con read those books, they can tell us who they think he punished.

(13) RUN BUCCO RUN. Major League baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates have a huge new scoreboard and an interactive video game to go with it.

After the fifth inning, the team debuted a new feature on PNC Park’s renovated digital scoreboard, which runs the length of the Clemente Wall in right field: “Super Bucco Run.”

Inspired by the hit mobile game, the Pirates had one of their fans running and “bashing” blocks while “collecting” coins and items on the scoreboard. Keeping with the tradition, the flag went up the pole at the end of the segment when the fan completed the challenge….

It was a genius bit of mid-game entertainment that the Pirates plan to rotate with more videoboard games throughout the 2017 season. Over the offseason, they updated the old scoreboard with an 11-foot high and 136-foot long LED board with features like this in mind….

 

https://twitter.com/Lokay/status/850423705150861312

(14) ROCKET MAN. More on the Fargo Hugo, the story that keeps on giving.

And here is Genevieve Burgess’ post for Pajiba.

The silver rocket on a base follows the exact specifications laid out for the Hugo award trophies which means that someone did their research on how to fake a Hugo. However, it does not MATCH any of the Hugo Award trophies that actually exist, which means someone did even more research to make sure they weren’t exactly copying one.

(15) FACTS ON PARADE. Yahoo! Style has a gallery of the best signs from the March for Science.

[Thanks to JJ, rcade, Stephen Burridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Jon Del Arroz, Carl Slaughter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day rcade.]

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196 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/25/17 If All You Have Is A Pixel, Every Problem Looks Like A Scroll.”

  1. OH THANK GOD A PIXEL SCROLL!

    😉 Uh, I wasn’t waiting around or anything. . . .

    ETA: 1/5th

    ETA, redux: (3) WHEN IN VROME. Jealous! Also, it’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” – not “Hunter.” I’ll appertain myself a nightcap.

  2. (12) ALT-MARKETING. John C. Wright (“nominated for more Hugo Awards in one year than any person alive”)

    … with the exception of Seanan McGuire — who also had five finalist entries, in 2013, and had essays included in two more finalist entries that year — and unlike JCW, she didn’t have to cheat to get them.

    Ah, but what are facts to a Puppy, except things to be piddled on and disregarded?

  3. I can’t exactly say I’m surprised to see Powerless get yanked. I really wanted to like it more, but it couldn’t seem to figure out what it wanted to be. In an hour-long dramedy, there’s room for a show to “find its voice” in a way that just isn’t there for a half-hour sitcom. It was basically a formulaic Wacky Office show with superheroes tacked on, and the ingredients just didn’t come together.

  4. (2) WRITER UPDATE
    My first encounter (that I recall) with Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam was “Doors” in Interzone, for me, a story that made her a writer to watch.

    (12) ALT-MARKETING.
    Somewhat apropos and a Pixel contender for the next Scroll, the thread this tweet starts:

    Iron_Spike:

    So hey, here’s a thing I learned at the con this weekend.
    During a Q&A, an aspiring artist asked a Dark Horse panel: “Does drama = sales?”

    In other words, when a creator is shitty, argumentative or controversial on Twitter, does the attention it garners earn them anything?

    And here was the reply from the panel, from a person who had access to sales numbers: no. In fact, it hurts sales. And here’s why.

    If Creator X gets shitty in public, yes, his work experiences a mild initial sales bump. But then it drops, and doesn’t recover.

    And that’s because the shitty people who agree with Creator X’s shitty opinions and cheer him on? They forget about him in a week.

    But the people Creator X hurt- they DON’T forget. And they avoid buying work from Creator X from that moment on. Because he’s a jerk.

    And in retrospect? This is absolutely true. Creators who make a point of being unapologetic public shitlords stall out. I’ve seen I happen.

    But not gonna lie, it’s satisfying as hell to hear the numbers back up my from-a-distance perceptions of their career-compromising behavior.

    I expect what’s true for comics is just as true for books.

  6. @Mike

    After the fans at Odyssey Con read those books, they can tell us who they think he punished.

    Ouch!

  9. 4) A serendipitous injury, for us fans of her SFF.

    12) Rewriting events and history to suit a narrative. I’m shocked at the gambling going on in Puppyland.
    Is it financially viable to keep the outrage machine going for the same group of people? If the pool is large enough, I suppose its possible, but I don’t think there are enough “Core Puppy readers” to support a clade of Puppy writers in perpetuity, no matter that they think that they are the true majority of SFF Fandom. As far as them actually reading the books…well, I’ve bought books that I haven’t read for months afterwards, just because of the teetering TBR pile…

  12. Is it financially viable to keep the outrage machine going for the same group of people?

    Perhaps. Arroz has come to it lately, might be bring fresh fans to revitalise the pool?

  15. As someone who watches Powerless weekly, as it reminds me of Better Off Ted set in the DC universe, that’s not surprising. I’ll miss it but the first episode it’s been a countdown to it getting pulled.

  16. I think Powerless had been getting better. They never did quite figure out how to best use the whole idea of being in a super-powered universe. Most of the time their plots could be from a Dilbert comic strip with some DC Comic stickers added to the edges.

  17. @11 – Perhaps they should move to Venezuela to experience first hand the hunger, political oppression, unemployment and disaster of a modern communist State. That should be exciting and wonderful!

  19. Jon Del Arroz then asked ‘what is truth when there’s marketing to be done?’ and washed his hands. Which is good. After giving out so much excrement, without regard to facts, no doubt his hands were aswarm in fecal bacteria. Hygiene is important, people!

  20. (4) GAME CHANGER

    Bad luck for puppets, good luck for us?

    I know she’s back to doing puppetry as well now, which has to be one of the more unusual career combos around.
    I finished the final book in her Glamorist History quite recently. “Austen with magic” is quite a specific itch, but if that’s your thing then I very much recommend them.

    (8) SUSPENDED ANIMATION

    Given all the casting and production news we’ve had, this silence about an actual air date is a bit ominous.

  21. (12) Well, if Jon Del Arroz can’t make a living as a novelist, may I suggest another career for him: White House Press Secretary. He’s sure got a knack for alternative facts and propaganda.

    (I would hate to see Melissa McCarthy be out a gig though.)

  22. airboy:

    “Perhaps they should move to Venezuela to experience first hand the hunger, political oppression, unemployment and disaster of a modern communist State. That should be exciting and wonderful!”

    That would be impossible, they would have to go to Cuba instead. Venezuela is a socialist state, not a communist one. Of course, they could go to thriving socialist Bolivia instead. And if they wanted to see how a capitalist state would look, they should go to Honduras.

  23. Powerless just felt like bits and pieces of better shows glued together, with superheroes added in and a cast that deserved better. Alan Tudyk’s clueless evil boss character was basically a cheap knockoff of Michael Scott and Jack Donaghy, for instance.

  24. It’s a sad puppy thing: beating someone off with a Hugo Award. That’s all they think about.

    NESFA says that the Ellison biography A LIT FUSE will be released this week, or Real Soon Now.

  25. Is it financially viable to keep the outrage machine going for the same group of people?

    The key is to make sure the people you offend are those who wouldn’t have bought your book anyway. Tricky but not impossible – eg. anyone writing a book with a gay protagonist is probably okay mocking conversion therapy.
    However, few people can carry this off successfully since they are not really approaching this carefully as a marketing strategy, they are just saying stuff they are thinking.

  26. @Soon Lee

    I expect what’s true for comics is just as true for books.

    Probably so. I remember when I was in high school and a teacher told us that you don’t ever want to meet your favorite authors. They’re apt to be unpleasant people in person, but even if they’re just ordinary it’ll still spoil your mental image of them.

    I’m not sure that’s entirely true, of course, but Twitter certainly makes it a lot easier for vast numbers of people to see an author’s worst side. Rationally, we’d just ignore that and focus entirely on the content of the books, but it’s hard to be that rational all the time.

  27. Meetjng a writer is not always a “Max, he’s wearing a dress” kind of happening, and the only really tough kind of encounter I experienced was Keith Laumer at a Philcon, where he hit Gardener Dozois with his cane for having long hair. Because.

  29. (12) Delarroz’s insistence on throwing contradictory facts out the window while relentlessly reshaping others to fit his narrative is at least consistent. I’m glad he’s found some nice friends to play with.

  30. Venezuela is a cautionary tale of how someone with a huge grudge can ruin the fun for everyone.

  31. And then, of course, there’s the Libertarian paradise called Somalia. Weak-to-nonexistent government and everyone has a gun….

  32. I think Venezuela is an example of what happens when you give dictatorial power to an idiot who believes hard problems have simple solutions, mostly involving using force. Donald Trump is the same kind of idiot–proving it’s not a left-right thing–but he doesn’t have the dictatorial power. Yet.

  33. you don’t ever want to meet your favorite authors. They’re apt to be unpleasant people in person, but even if they’re just ordinary it’ll still spoil your mental image of them.

    China Miéville was the nicest man. Granted, it was a reading/signing, when authors should be on their best behavior. When I congratulated him on his Hugo (I think he may have joked that it was Schrödinger’s Hugo) he told me a little bit about the ideas for filming The City & The City. Then I had to move along. But that little tidbit was such a thrill for me, random babbling fan #47.

  34. China Miéville was the nicest man.

    ….wait, are you offering that as a counterexample or agreeing your mental image was spoiled?

    (Interesting to see what’ll be done with The City & The City — ‘teaching’ the audience to see the two cities would be a great trick if they could manage it.)

  35. @James Moar ‘teaching’ the audience to see the two cities would be a great trick if they could manage it.

    Anyone who lives in a city already does that trick – it’s just that we don’t think about it most of the time. (I’ve seen so many people read The City and The City and talk about Belfast or Jerusalem or Sarajevo, but it’s very much about London and Paris and New York too.)

    But yes – not to be a total ass about this – it will be very interesting to see how they film it. It’s the kind of challenge the right director could really rise to.

  37. (6) I liked Powerless – almost. The most recent two episodes were by far the best because they actually started to use the universe instead of just reference it. But it never quite gelled as a show. It could have been much better, but it was too cautious about the setting.

    (12) Ug. Rewriting what happened to fit your own narrative, Arroz, won’t change the facts nor change the minds of people who are paying attention. Indeed, it will only make things worse in the end.

    Speaking of convention disasters, does anyone have a summary of what the heck happened with SpoCon? I don’t need details, but I’m hearing all kinds of rumors and I would like a little fact, since rumors are often worse than reality.

  38. aren’t Canada, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, etc etc … you know, all those countries that rank well ahead of the USA in health and happy citizens … mostly socialist countries?

  40. @clif

    aren’t Canada, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, etc etc … you know, all those countries that rank well ahead of the USA in health and happy citizens … mostly socialist countries?

    Vox.com (no, not Vox Day) 🙂 ran an good article titled “Denmark’s prime minister says Bernie Sanders is wrong to call his country socialist.” Denmark is a social democracy, not a socialist country.

    Years of right-wing propaganda here in the US have caused us to think of social programs as being part of socialism, but that’s a big mistake in my view. Marx and Engels used “Communism” and “Socialism” interchangeably, but the best definition I’ve seen goes something like this:

    Socialism teaches that private employment is a form of slavery. No one should ever be “employed” by anyone except the government (or possibly approved non-profit organizations). But it’s okay to own private property and even land.

    Communism is socialism that outlaws private property as well as private employment.

    In practice, most socialist governments have contented themselves with nationalizing the very largest companies, but still allowing employment by smaller enterprises. One should keep in mind that this is a compromise, not the ultimate state that they want.

    A social democracy, on the other hand, simply gives the state a big role in helping people who can’t help themselves. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. are all the sort of programs that make the US a social democracy. It’s a capitalist, free-market system that pays a tithe for the public good.

    All rich countries today (minus a few petro-dictatorships) are social democracies. The main difference is how generous the social programs are.

    So Bernie Sanders isn’t really a Socialist; he doesn’t actually want to nationalize anything. Instead, he’s a Social Democrat–like the rest of the Democratic Party in the US. He just wants to make the social package more generous.

  41. @Robert Whitaker Sirignano

    beating someone off with a Hugo Award

    Sounds like an output of the Chuck Tingle title generator.

  43. @1: The embedded video is bull; valuing one child above another is exactly the mistake Petunia’s parents made (that Petunia, the vid claims, swore she wouldn’t make).

    @14: Burgess claims the rocket used followed the Hugo specs, but the pix in previous Pixels show a much shorter and wider rocket than the spec she links to. Is all of that really the angles of the pix?

    @Robert Whitaker Sirignano: the special edition copies of the Ellison bio were packed for mailing on Sunday. The regular edition is coming a lot sooner than Real Soon Now.

    Piling on @Greg Hullender: the teacher was a long way beyond “not entirely true”. There are stories of classic disappointments of worshipful attitudes (see Ellison to Asimov as told in Dangerous Visions) and stories of plain rudeness (often from specific authors known to be … brusque), but most of the authors I’ve met have been fascinating to talk to; SF authors in particular tend to have all sorts of worldbuilding material that couldn’t reasonably be explicit in the books, or that are not in the books yet. (I remember Cherryh telling us about the snobbery of putting milk in coffee on Cyteen, and Stross mentioning that an upcoming book would be “Bob and Mo break the marriage counselor.”)

  44. Jon Del Arroz and the authors contributing to his effort could have done something in support of OdysseyCon without premising their project on lies.

    The con did not treat Monica Valentinelli “professionally and nicely” after her decision to drop out. It posted comments on the con Facebook page that it later retracted and apologized for. A con representative also made Valentinelli’s emails public without her permission, and these were retracted as well.

    These facts are not in dispute Con co-chair Alex Merrill acknowledged Valentinelli was mistreated in an official post by the convention on its Facebook page:

    I personally wish to apologize for the mishandling of our response to Monica’s concerns. It has never been our intent to minimize any guest’s complaints. Odyssey Con is an all volunteer organization staffed by people who have many strengths, but not all of us are great communicators.

    I have already reached out to Monica to personally apologize for the email response she received from one of our ConCom members and for the subsequent posting of email chains publicly. This exchange was not an example of Odyssey Con as a whole, which is run by fans, for fans. I hope to have a continued dialogue with you all.

    I wish that Del Arroz and the other authors found a better way to promote their books than sleazy, agenda-driven dishonesty. They complain about “virtue-signalling” all the time, but what they’re doing here is asshole-signalling.

  45. Chip:
    There are a couple of books I’ve waited for (some for a good few years), and Tony Lewis informed me on FB that the books were at hand. I’d ordered around November of last year. Come to think of it, there were a few I paid for and never got….

    No LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS joke to be made here, though the Ellison bio in hinting that there will be stories. Though, if you were so inclined, you could link to Wikipedia and find the stories that have been published and do a partial review of the non existent volume.

  46. @Soon Lee re. Iron_Spike’s post: Interesting and fits with what’s in my own head (e.g., I’m unlikely to ever forget some of the names of the more egregious Puppies & their publisher). Thanks for posting/linking it.

    @IanP: “Sounds like an output of the Chuck Tingle title generator.” – ::snort::

  47. I’m one of the three or four people who watched Powerless from the beginning.

    But then, I grew up watching George Reeves jump out of windows, and I’ve been reading DC comics off and on for nearly 60 years. I have a compulsion to watch all DC television series.

    Overall, Powerless is an abysmal show. The real problem is that they seem to forget that it’s set in the DC universe, and instead have written a very juvenile and brainless office comedy. (The few times it has been good, were the few times that they actually interacted with the DC heroes and villains.) I’m not surprised they pulled it now, with May sweeps starting this Thursday (on what was its next scheduled air date). I do hope they show the last two episodes sometime (or make them available online)–I was looking forward to seeing Adam West play the chairman of Wayne Enterprises in the s/e/a/s/o/n/ series finale.

    I wish they’d stayed with the original premise–having it set in an insurance office that has to deal with the fallout from the fights between superheroes and supervillains. That had more promise.

  49. The Del Arroz thing:

    The only thing sadder than a Sad/Rabid Puppy is an irrelevant nobody who ASPIRES to be one.

    This isn’t about the Puppies, this is about Del Arroz’ desperation for relevance, even among that pathetic cohort.

    Any time he goes into his shtick, just imagine Chester, the little dog from Looney Tunes, with Vox Day as Spike the Bulldog:

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