Four news items, a tweet and a trailer in this collection of clippings for today.
A.V. Club
“Grant Morrison is the new editor-in-chief of Heavy Metal magazine” – July 6
Much like an obscure background character in an old comic book who very few people remember and even fewer care about, Grant Morrison has suddenly shown up to reveal that he’s actually very important and everyone needs to listen to him if they want to have any idea what’s going on. Also, the obscure background character is actually Morrison himself, and all of this takes place in a miniature pocket universe that Morrison created, and also all of us are actually Grant Morrison. Anyway, the important news that Morrison wanted to pass on—which comes to us from Entertainment Weekly and not, for once, Morrison inserting a fictionalized version of himself into this Newswire—is that Grant Morrison has been named the new editor-in-chief of famed sci-fi/fantasy/boobs magazine Heavy Metal.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
”Projects” – Updated July 6
Ever wonder why I gripe when I come up with a new story idea? Here’s why — I already have all these and haven’t had time to write them.
These are things I’ve started, but am not currently seriously working on. I do hope to get back to them all eventually. I’m not listing short stories because there are simply too many of them; only longer works. Except for the Bound Lands, I’m also generally not listing more than one volume per new series; I’m not going to write a sequel to, say, The Dragon’s Price before I finish The Dragon’s Price.
(I’m making an exception for the Bound Lands, and to a lesser extent for Ethshar, because stories in those settings don’t need to be read in order.)
I posted the first-draft openings of several of these on my blog, and I’m linking to those where they exist.
Newsarama
Len Wein informed his Facebook followers, “Well, the secret is out. I’m gonna be doing Swamp Thing again, after the terrific response the character had in Convergence. I’m also gonna be doing Metal Men finally, one of my all-time favorite books. 2016 is gonna be a fun year.”
“DC Reveals 8 New Limited Series – Metal Men, Sugar & Spike, Metamorpho, More” – July 6
In 2016, DC will launch Swamp Thing, Metal Men, Raven, Firestorm, Katana: Cult of the Kobra, Metamorpho and Sugar & Spike. Some of the series will be written by the characters’ original creators. The list of titles and writers are:
- Swamp Thing by writer Len Wein
- Metal Men by writer Len Wein
- Raven by writer Marv Wolfman
- Firestorm by writer Gerry Conway
- Katana: Cult of the Kobra by writer Mike W. Barr
- Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life & Death by writer Amy Chu
- Metamorpho by writer Aaron Lopresti
- Sugar & Spike by writer Keith Giffen
“We want the best writers working on our characters, and these are the best writers for these characters,” said [Dan] DiDio.
Of Raven, Marv Wolfman says it’s a way to to tap into the renewed popularity of the character from the Teen Titans Go! animated series.
“When I go to comic conventions it thrills me to see all the young fans cosplaying as Raven from the Teen Titans GO! cartoon show,” said the long-time Teen Titans writer. “Because so many comic fans are boys, it’s wonderful that there’s something about her that connects with both girls and boys.”
George R.R. Martin on Not A Blog
“Buy Tor Now” – July 7
In one of the more recent developments, the Rabid Puppies and some of their allies and fellow travellers have declared a boycott of Tor Books. I say “Rabid” here because Beale is backing the boycott, while Larry Correia says the Sad Puppies are not boycotting anyone… though Correia and some of the other Sads certainly seem deeply sympathetic to the boycott. I am not, needless to say. Neither is most of fandom. Which makes this a perfect time to BUY SOME TOR BOOKS!!
…And, hey, you can even buy some AUTOGRAPHED Tor books by me. My Wild Cards series is published by Tor, as it happens, and we have signed copies of INSIDE STRAIGHT, BUSTED FLUSH, SUICIDE KINGS, FORT FREAK, and LOWBALL available through the Jean Cocteau… along with hardcovers of our award-winning anthology, DANGEROUS WOMEN, also published by Tor. You can find them all at the cinema bookshop, here: http://www.jeancocteaubooks.com/
[How’d that get in here?]
A rare photography of The Puppyslug Nebula from the Hubble Telescope.#deepdream pic.twitter.com/YjslsSlYAo
— Devine Lu Linvega (@neauoire) July 2, 2015
[Didn’t you people get the memo either?]
Mr. Holmes – in US theatres on July 17
[This trailer was released in May. I just saw it at a movie theatre last week.]
[Thanks for these stories goes out to Rob Thornton, Hampus Eckerman and Will Reichard.]
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Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic puppy!
Those deep dream images are weird as all hell
::snicker::
Aaaaah, three of my old favourite comics: Metalmen, Metamorpho and Swamp Thing.
Life is good.
I love the Deep Dream images enough that I’m trying to get my brain back into its CompSci thinking mode enough to understand _everything_ about what they’re doing.
My God! It’s full of puppies!
Ideas are easy. Executing them…that’s the rub
“What do you mean it didn’t work?” The warden raged.
Voice trembling, sweat rolling from his massive forehead, the senior guard replied “I mean it didn’t work. This idea sir … bullets don’t phase them”
Indignant, the warden would not be daunted by facts “Did you offer it a blind fold and a cigarette?”
The senior guard’s eyes flashed confusion, astonishment, fear before finally settling on disbelief “It declined the blind fold, sir. And this idea, doesn’t smoke. Said it’s bad for his health.”
The warden let out a dry chuckle, “Well, maybe cancer will kill it. Too bad that isn’t quick enough for the bosses. Try again.”
“But sir, we have. The cyanide didn’t work, nor did hanging and the electric chair just made it feel all warm and tingly. Give it up. This idea will just not be executed.”
I didn’t know Heavy Metal was still published. This will be worth a look for sure.
Chris
That’s wonderful!
Those deepdream images are slowly becoming the wallpaper of all my devices.
I’ve seen a Deep Dream rendition of the Sergeant Pepper cover. Everything that looked like at all like an eye to the neural network was amplified to be an eye. It was … deeply disturbing.
Grant Morrison isn’t in the continuity anymore. John Ostrander killed him off in “Suicide Squad” .
Jon Meltzer on July 8, 2015 at 8:01 am said:
One word: Hypertime.
[evil grin]
What is deep dream?
@cmm:
They made that extraordinarily disturbing puppy nebula image above.
Count me as one of those astonished to hear “Heavy Metal” was still being published.
Okay I hit the Google. Deep Dream is some kind of neural network-simulating thingie that Google has made (is developing) in order for computers to be able to tell what they are “looking” at in a picture. when they let Deep Dream run wild and look at random photos and pictures, and lay on the images it “finds” in the pictures, you get stuff like the above.
Whatever you do, avoid the gifs of the Deep-Dreamified acid trip scenes from Fear and Loathing. Especially if you are susceptible to flashbacks.
Count me as one of those astonished to hear “Heavy Metal” was still being published.
Kevin Eastman has done a tremendous effort (and sunk a lot of his TMNT money) into keeping Heavy Metal viable. It remains a very worthwhile read, especially with their influx of European comics and creators that you don’t see much over here.
Looks like Heavy Metal is going to get a lot weirder going forward. 🙂
Tough to go “cold puppy”, isn’t it?
Wow, that Puppyslug Nebula is creepy.
‘Pixie Scroll’ is unexpectedly whimsical! As if all the news is being delivered by pixies! On scrolls! Adorable!
Edit: Oh. Right. Oops. Pixel Scrolls are cute too! And it, like, scrolls, so, pun!
Glenn
Yep; cold puppy is way harder than I thought.
Fortunately I have Wimbledon to sustain me, otherwise I would be pacing up and down, muttering to myself….
Soo…. who’s feeling all nostalgic on account of that vintage computer in the first panel?
Heavy Metal still publishing? Too bad Möbius is gone. HM introduced me to his art and for that I’m grateful.
Wow. I had scrolled down past the image before it had posted, but now that I’ve seen it, it makes me feel bad for the poor slugs who got tarred with the puppybrush. Those are definitely some Creepy Puppies, regardless of their mirth or medical condition.
In uglier news, Pat Cadigan is being attacked again by Benjanun Sriduangkaew.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Cadigan/status/618867186522791936?p=v
So if you start seeing negative rumors flying around social media about her, do take note of the source.
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz has also been targeted again. If you’d like to show some support for people that actually work to make SFF a positive and welcoming space, both of them would be a good place to start.
@XS:
That’s disgusting. A rich, powerful, privileged internet stalker is savagely attacking an ethical, kind person afflicted with cancer.
Liz Williams has caught some fire, too. RH has tweeted a private email of Williams’ and said it was a veiled threat to publicise her real name.
(Hm… I think I’m going to stop calling it a dox. Pat Cadigan has a point.)
Ugh, should have known Liz Williams would be in line to catch that flak.
All the more reason for people to know and understand where this new round of awful is coming from.
Oh lord, that Requires Hate person is just toxic.
I do not appreciate the habit of abusers to appropriate the terminology of abuse victims to try to justify and obfuscate what they are doing. Requires Hate, who has admitted to being one of the wealthy elites in her country*, has a lot of nerve claiming some sort of victim status in order to distract from her abominable abuse of innocent people.
*She reminds me of that woman from an elite Korean family who delayed an airline flight and physically attacked an airline steward on a plane her family owned for serving nuts incorrectly warmed.
Explicitly identified Tricia Sullivan and Mixon, too. Basically she seems to just be running down a list.
And apparently posted a bunch of emails with someone’s legal name too and said they were helping out whatsisface who released her real name? She’s deleted those tweets, though. (Not sure if hilarious or awful or both that she publicised legal names while complaining about her legal name being publicised.)
2015 World Fantasy Awards ballot has been announced. Congrats to all the nominees, and commiserations to various puppies, as clearly the conspiracy to not recognize you goes ever deeper :p
(Not sure if hilarious or awful or both that she publicised legal names while complaining about her legal name being publicised.
Lifestyles of the overprivileged extremely rich? I’ve occasionally run into people who seem to think that having money means they can ignore rules that apply to the rest of us, and sometimes it looks as if they don’t believe anyone outside of their (probably small) circle of associates exists. (There was the idjit who parked his Mercedes on the sidewalk by the ATM at a local shopping center, said sidewalk being clearly edged in red and marked ‘No Parking’.)
Dang. It occurs to me that in the post-Roundup era, checking the email notifications box may be practical.
RH reminds me of the importance of a simple rule: don’t be too much in love with destruction. There are times – a lot of them, in fact – when getting to justice and peace requires tearing down obstacles. It reminds me of something written by a man who went off to war with twenty of his friends and classmates and saw only two of them manage to survive with him:
War is not the point. War is an awful, hideous, ghastly means to other ends. That’s true both of actual war, and of social conflicts we may (or ma not) choose to cast as war. And furthermore, in real life we are seldom (to put it mildly) fighting Sauron.
Snowcrash:and commiserations to various puppies, as clearly the conspiracy to not recognize you goes ever deeper :p
That rabbit hole goes deep, I tell you!
@Bruce Baugh
+Everything
Tolkien did indeed have a greater understanding of war than most of the loudest, jingoistic MilSF crowd combined.
@Meredith
Yeah, that’s what it looks like. Sadly, there will be those that take the bait and assume she’s forthright about how “terrible” those other writers are being to her.
On the upside, some of her clique have actually called out her doxxing threats and attempts today. That’s a nice change of pace.
I know TNH isn’t popular (for what I understand are very good reasons, although I saw Racefail in 09 and ran very fast in the other direction because my cope was not doing so well at the time, so I’m taking that on faith), but RH has spent quite a lot of time referring to her in tweets, retweeting stuff aimed at her etc., while complaining that TNH (who she’s preemptively blocked) is harassing her. Its quite an unpleasant show.
She also continues to complain that Will Shetterly hasn’t been doxed, which leaves me with: ???? Since his real name is public… Is she wanting a real dox? With address, social security number etc.?
@P J Evans
My favourite are people who drive expensive cars into disabled spaces and then run to the cash machine.
@Bruce Baugh
Very apt.
@XS
Really? Who? I see someone called Rose Fox told her off for the real name thing, but I don’t know if they’re a usual suspect or not.
Meredith: Just to note the human complexities, Teresa and Patrick have been friends of mine for a long time now. There’s stuff they say that makes me think “oh boy…I’m just going to sit this one out”, and I’m quite sure they sometimes think that of me. Friends do that. 🙂 If I saw an opportunity for some useful commentary, I’d make it; otherwise, I focus on the great qualities they have and the neat things they do that improve life for me and others.
I’m in strong agreement with most the criticism made about her responses to Racefail. But, well, it’s been said, and endlessly repeating it seems unlikely to help. And I’m in even stronger agreement with criticism of RH.
@Meredith
That’s one of the usual suspects. A few other people she hasn’t blocked yet(and she’s blocked almost everyone standing up for themselves or others that I’ve seen) have emphatically said “don’t do it” as well.
One of her newish defenders, a big name on Tumblr who has been problematic herself under the guide of social justice, has admitted that she’s done wrong and apologized for her own abuses today, using RH/WF/BS as a bad example of how she was acting.
None of the long-term diehards have spoken up though. They’ve just gone along with her or have kept silent.
And yeah, seriously. Who doesn’t know to steer clear of Will Shetterly at this point?
@Bruce
I’m really uncomfortable with the level of vitriol going towards TNH on twitter right now, or the twisting of her words beyond all recognition. She seems to be coping fine, and I hope she is, but its pretty bad. RH being an idiot and posting up the real name, email and livejournal ID of someone else (her first name and livejournal ID are still up, too) seems to have defused some of it (hard to be outraged on someone’s behalf when you see that sort of hypocrisy in real time, I guess), but I hope it hasn’t been at a cost to the other woman.
(Hey, isn’t it funny how almost every person RH has tried to send her attack squads to has been a woman..?)
(Hey, isn’t it funny how almost every person RH has tried to send her attack squads to has been a woman..?)
She’s staying true to form at least.
@XS
fangirl[jname]? I think she equated her oppression with BS rather than her behaviour. Unless you mean someone else entirely!
ETA: Its basically been a bunch of women, plus Shetterly and Chuck Wendig (I am confused about that one).
@Meredith
Yes and, sadly after rechecking, yes. Well that’s disappointing. But at least it seems like a start.
I haven’t followed the Wendig thing at all but I can confirm that one of Tumblr’s biggest issues is to go from 0 to Burn The Heretic in seconds. People get labelled as pedophiles simply for shipping the wrong Sherlock character on top, for example. Throw in people like the above mentioned whipping up crowds of both the well-meaning and the rage addicted and it gets nastier.
And the targets are typically women or other vulnerable groups. If it isn’t Gamergate/MRAs/Puppies, it’s so-called allies looking to righteously slam someone for being insufficiently pure.
And now I’m sad again.
You have to be trying desperately hard to twist a threat out of Mixon’s letter. And all this leaking of emails and private Facebook chats and…just…it’s frickin’ SF fandom! Nobody’s got launch codes! What are people DOING?!
…Sigh. I wonder if it’s a sunk cost issue for some at this point. You put so much effort into defending someone that it’s probably much easier to ignore their excesses because otherwise you have to deal with being wrong and having helped someone like RH hurt people and maybe admit you were played and it just gets easier to push on ahead then to slog back all that way.
I admit, I’m flabbergasted by how many supporters she still has after the Mixon report, though. I mean, you’d think I’d know better, but apparently I don’t.
What the what? That letter is from 2015 and in that same Twitter thread she’s complaining about the other side “dragging this on and on?” For real?
What’s with these people and their utter lack of shame and self-awareness?
Winterfox isn’t the only one with self-awareness issues. Her followers are in lockstep with her in painting Pat Cadigan’s direct and frank defense of herself as “creepy”.
https://mobile.twitter.com/benjanun_s/status/619038556971905024
Sadly this isn’t something that just goes away when you ignore it; that’s how RH got away with so much for so long while her targets were left with no support. So if you see anyone spreading this poison about her or WF’s other targets, please speak up.
This is Liz W. Thank you for your comments, everyone.
My email stated “we know who (RH) is, but – I hope obviously – she will not be doxxed by us. (‘Us’ being Laura Mixon’s report team).
I’m not sure how one gets from an explicit statement that someone will not be doxxed to the assumption that they will be , but the sky of Miss Hate’s world has always been a different colour to that of the rest of us.
For the record, the report team is against doxxing, will not be retweeting the doxxing info, and did not gain any information from RH’s stalker: her identity was established through legal and publicly available channels and we were not given any information from her personal friends. We did not contact her stalker at any point, we do not know who s/he is, and would have been extremely skeptical of any information emanating from such a source.
I thank everyone sincerely for their concern and for their good words about me.
Should any bad rumours about me start flying around, people are welcome to ask me directly about them.
I have talked to the little rage-monster herself––i.e., tweeted directly to her on Twitter, which is the only way I know of to make contact with her––about her statements. No direct answer, just a screen-cap of my tweets to her, which are public and which I stand behind.
I may have cancer but I ain’t feeble. I won’t throw the first punch but that doesn’t mean I’m easy to intimidate.
PS: I thought if someone blocked you on Twitter, you couldn’t see their tweets. I can see hers just fine.