El Paso Comic Con is a community-based pop culture experience for all that reflects today’s fandom. At El Paso Comic Con you’ll get to indulge in all your favorite fantasy, sci-fi, and other pop culture genres, such as comics, games, film, television, and more! You’ll also get to attend panels and workshops hosted by creative pros as well as get autographs and photo ops with your favorite creators and celebrities.
The 2023 El Paso Comic Con dates are April 22-24. It will occur at the El Paso Convention Center in downtown El Paso, Texas. The hours of operation are Friday 5-9pm, Saturday 10am-7pm, and Sunday 10am-5pm. You can get more information about the event at: https://elpasocomiccon.com/
Among the guests at this year’s El Paso Comic Con are Michael Rooker, John Barrowman, Sam Jones, and Luci Christian.
Michael Rooker made his film debut, playing the title role in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. He has also starred in some of the most iconic films, such as Mississippi Burning, Sea of Love, JFK, Tombstone and Jumper to name a few. In August 2014, Rooker starred in one of the most memorable franchises in the Marvel Universe, Guardians of the Galaxy, as Yondu, the blue-skinned renegade space pirate and surrogate father to Peter Quill.
John Barowman is best known for his portrayal of Captain Jack Harkness in the sci-fi hits Doctor Who and Torchwood, and Malcolm Merlyn in the TV shows: Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow and Flash.
Sam Jones has over 70 films and numerous television shows to his credit. He is best known for his roles in Flash Gordon, The Spirit, The Highwayman, SG-1’s The Bounty Hunter and for his memorable comedic performances in Ted and Ted 2.
Luci Christian is one of the most prolific anime voice actors in North America, voicing fan favorites Ochaco Uraraka in My Hero Academia, Nami in One Piece, and Honey in Ouran High School Host Club. I know her work from Gatchaman and Bodacious Space Pirates among other shows.
I will be presenting a panel at 5pm on Saturday of the convention called How science inspires my writing. In the panel, I’ll discuss how my work in astronomy influences me and how it helps me be a better and more productive writer. My tips can help anyone juggling a love of art with a day job.
When I’m not on my panel or checking out events with the other guests, you’ll find me at booth A15 in the Vendor Hall, as noted in the map above. I hope all of you in the El Paso and Las Cruces area are able to make it to El Paso Comic Con!
I first encountered Captain Nemo at my local drugstore when I was a kid. He was in the pages of a reprint edition of the Marvel Classic Comics adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. My mom bought the comic for me. I brought it home, and read it right away. I remember sitting stunned at one of the last panels, which depicted the Nautilus disappearing into a whirlpool. I couldn’t believe that would be the end of Captain Nemo. I was delighted a few years later to catch Ray Harryhausen’s adaptation of Mysterious Island on a Sunday afternoon and discover that Nemo had survived the maelstrom and had further adventures on a remote island with giant monsters. Sadly, he again seemed to meet his end as that movie drew to a close. Since those early days, I’ve read Jules Verne’s novels and grown even more fond of the character.
When I discovered the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, I was delighted to meet an incarnation of Nemo who felt like Verne’s Nemo and, what’s more, he’d survived the events of The Mysterious Island. Since the first graphic novel, Moore and O’Neill have expanded the series quite a bit both in the number of volumes and the years the series spans. Alas, Verne’s Captain Nemo is not immortal and they imagined that he would meet an end, but they also gave him an heir in a daughter named Janni Dakkar who takes up the Captain Nemo mantel. Recently, while getting ready for Wild Wild West Con with its Roaring 20’s theme, I started looking for steampunk or related retrofuturistic fiction set in the 20s. This led me to discover the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s Nemo Trilogy. The Nemo Trilogy comics follow’s Janni Dakkar’s adventures from 1925 through 1975.
Volume 1 of the Nemo Trilogy is called “Heart of Ice” and it opens when the new Captain Nemo steals a treasure from Ayesha, an immortal woman from H. Rider Haggard’s novel She. Ayesha has strong influence with Charles Foster Kane of Citizen Kane fame. He sends the boy adventurers Tom Swift, Frank Reade Jr., and Jack Wright after Janni, who has decided to explore Antarctica. They all end up on a journey through Lovecraftian horrors.
In Volume 2, “The Roses of Berlin,” it’s 1941 and Janni’s daughter Hira has married Armand Robur, son of Verne’s famous air pirate. Armand’s airship is shot down while he’s raiding Nazi ships. Janni and her lover Broad Arrow Jack must go to a Berlin rebuilt in the image of the film Metropolis to rescue their daughter and son-in-law. There, they find Ayesha is collaborating with the Nazis. I found it quite satisfying to have a story where Captain Nemo and her crew take on Nazis along with figures from German expressionist cinema. I also loved that Moore gave us some dialogue in French and German and didn’t translate it for us on the page.
Finally in Volume 3, “River of Ghosts” Janni leans that Ayesha has not only survived the events of volume 2, but there is somehow more than one Ayesha. Janni takes the Nautilus up the Amazon and discovers an enclave of Nazis like the one in the movie The Boys from Brazil. Along for the journey is Janni’s grandson, Jack. Also along for the ride is Hugo Hercules, who was the first superhero to ever grace the comic pages. Their adventure takes to an enclave of creatures from the Black Lagoon to dinosaurs and then gives us an explosive climax. In an epilogue set in 1987, we find that Jack is happy to take up the mantel of Captain Nemo for a new generation.
I felt like this series released between 2013 and 2015 got stronger as it progressed and it proved to be a solid entry in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen saga. More importantly, it does my heart good to know Nemo’s story didn’t end in the Maelstrom off the coast of Norway. In fact, Jack Dakkar or his children could still be sailing the Nautilus through Earth’s waters today. Mobilis in Mobile!
My character Captain Onofre Cisneros was created as a tribute to Captain Nemo. The best place to learn about Captain Cisneros and his adventures is in my novel The Brazen Shark. Learn more at: http://davidleesummers.com/brazen_shark.html
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! debuted approximately two months before my third birthday, so it’s fair to say that I’ve been watching the series as long as I can remember. I loved the combination of mystery, scares, and humor that the show presented and I watched through almost every iteration until around 1979 when Scrappy-Doo was introduced. To be fair, it wasn’t just Scrappy. I felt like the show had been emphasizing the humor over the spooky, mysterious aspects. Sure, the mysteries were rarely all that challenging and you knew the monster was a villain in a mask, but sometimes that villain in a mask seemed outright creepy. A couple of years before Scrappy’s introduction, came The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt hour. Dynomutt was a goofy, bumbling cybernetic dog who worked with a superhero called the Blue Falcon. Often the Scooby-Doo and Dynomutt episodes were separate, but occasionally they teamed up and these episodes were less about mystery and more about adventure lightened with over-the-top comedy hijinx.
The original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episodes started airing regularly on the Cartoon Network when my kids were young and I discovered how much I loved the series. Just before my oldest daughter turned three, Hanna-Barbara released the movie Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, which brought the gang back to its roots and gave them a truly scary mystery to solve in the Louisiana bayou. I absolutely loved the movie. My daughter says it terrified her, but she also loves it. Even more, she loved the follow-up Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost which introduced the rock band the Hex Girls but maintained a lot of the more mysterious elements.
In 2020, Warner Brothers planned to introduce a new animated Scooby-Doo feature film called Scoob! Unfortunately, the pandemic prevented its theatrical film debut. Instead it was released as a premium home video. Based on the reviews I’d seen at the time, I decided to give it a pass. It was a new origin story for Scooby-Doo and it involved the Blue Falcon and Dynomutt. In other words, it hearkened back to the era when I thought Scooby began to veer away from the formula that made it work. Recently, I stumbled across and inexpensive copy of the film and gave it a watch.
Scoob! proved to be an interesting mix of things I love about the best Scooby-Doo series and movies and things I’m not so fond of. The movie’s opening that shows how Scooby and Shaggy meet, then how on Halloween they go trick-or-treating and get caught up in a haunted house mystery with a young Fred, Daphne, and Velma was cute. I really liked how they then gave us the classic Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! opening credits in 3-D animation, presented as a montage showing the gang growing up. This part of the film was almost brilliant.
After the credits, the Mystery Incorporated gang reveals they want to go pro and are seeking investment from Simon Cowell. Our celebrity guest star loves all of the Mystery Incorporated except for Shaggy and Scooby. This part didn’t work so well for me. First of all, the humor relies heavily on Cowell being a pop culture icon and second it sets the plot in motion by relying on the tired trope of separating our group of friends and making our heroes doubt themselves just on someone’s say-so. Still, Scooby and Shaggy go to the bowling alley to console themselves only to encounter a really cool and frightening troop of killer robots who take the forms of scorpions with chainsaws. The scorpion robots corner our heroes and all appears lost until … our characters are captured in a tractor beam and brought up to the Blue Falcon’s ship.
One of the movie’s biggest surprises for me was that I actually liked its version of Dynomutt. The cybernetic dog was played straight and looked great in CG. Also great was the Blue Falcon’s highly competent sidekick Dee Dee Sykes. Less great was the Blue Falcon himself who turns out not to be the famous superhero, but the superhero’s son who has taken over the family business. Brian, the new Blue Falcon, is more interested in posting selfies to the internet than actually fighting crime. He also suffers imposter syndrome. This all could have worked well if it didn’t feel like a big movie-of-the-week lesson in how to get over yourself and become a better person.
Soon after meeting Dynomutt, Dee Dee, and the Blue Falcon, we learn that the person controlling the killer robots is none other than Dick Dastardly, a comic villain from the Hanna Barbara shows Wacky Races and Dastadly and Muttley and their Flying Machines. Dastadly was a favorite early cartoon villain, so this triggered some fun nostalgia, but I also couldn’t help but think he was just a bit of an over-the-top melodrama villain for Scooby.
Despite my issues, the movie did work for me and I actually liked it, largely because of the nostalgic elements and the way it folded together various Hanna-Barbara characters in a way that worked better than I would have expected. However, the movie fell far short of the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and especially movies like Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island and Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost. The script had several instances where it felt like was about to get really interesting, then someone told them to throttle back and inject some humor to keep it light for kids. The thing is, I think Scooby always worked best when the mystery and spooky elements were front and center and the humor existed to break the tension. Scooby works less well when the humor takes the front seat.
DC Comics gave us two series I’ve written about called Scooby Apocalypse! and Wacky Raceland. Both are more serious re-imaginings of Hanna Barbara cartoons set after a fictional zombie apocalypse. Dogs can talk because of nanotechnology and the characters were all given more realistic makeovers. In Wacky Raceland, Dick Dastardly was imagined as a pianist with a tragic and terrifying backstory. The series only lasted a short time, but it showed a version of the character that could work in a less comedy-oriented story. In effect, it seems like Scoob! would have been better if it had been more “adult.” By that I don’t mean more sex and explicit violence. I just mean more “grown-up” characters. Sure, give us Dick Dastardly on a quest for power, but make him a villain who you really worry might get the upper hand on the Mystery Inc. gang. Give us Brian, the insecure son of the Blue Falcon, but make us like him and want him to overcome his imposter syndrome. Sure, split up the gang, but give it some real gravitas and don’t give us a mind-numbing sitcom set-up.
The Scooby gang took on a life far beyond their own cartoon universe. In Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Buffy’s teammates became known as the Scooby gang because of their teamwork in solving spooky mysteries. Like Scooby, Buffy worked best when you worried about the characters but they broke the tension with humor. In that same vein, I was honored when Fred Cleaver of the Denver Post compared my Scarlet Order vampires to the Scooby gang. To my mind, that was a great compliment. You can see if you agree by reading Vampires of the Scarlet Order, which is available at: http://davidleesummers.com/VSO.html
My university was in the small town of Socorro, New Mexico. We had one small theater called the Loma, which usually showed movies a few months after their release. In the autumn of 1987, I went with a group of friends to see the Joel Schumacher film, The Lost Boys, starring Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, and Jami Gertz. I was deep in the throes of working on my physics degree and much more into movies about exploring the galaxy than about vampires. I remember finding the movie a fine diversion, but it didn’t make much of an impression on me. I missed the Peter Pan allusions and I was a little thrown off by the notion of young, attractive vampires. Since then, I’ve become more familiar with J.M. Barrie’s classic and we’ve had numerous examples of young, attractive vampires ranging from many of Anne Rice’s characters to characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I began to think this was a film I should watch again.
Because so much film viewing is migrating to streaming services, it seems a lot of stores are reducing their inventory of DVDs and Blu-rays. I managed to find a copy of The Lost Boys at my local Barnes and Noble for just $6.00. I suspect that’s less in today’s dollars than I paid for a theater ticket back in 1987. As I sat down to watch the movie with my daughter, I realized she’s almost exactly the age I was when I first saw the film. I thought it would be interesting to compare notes. Of course, she also came to the movie with a more diverse taste in film than I had at her age and there was nothing alien to her about young vampires.
All in all, I enjoyed the movie more now than I remember enjoying it back in 1987. It was funnier than I remembered, poking fun at vampire tropes while also embracing them. The movie tells the story of two brothers who move to a coastal city in Northern California with their recently divorced mom. The younger brother, Sam, meets Edgar and Alan Frog who work at a local comic book store. They give him a comic about vampires as a warning about the local menace in town.
Meanwhile, the older brother, Michael, finds himself drawn to a woman named Star. She introduces him to her friends, who at first glance appear to be a troublemaking bike gang. They invite Michael to ride with them and they lead him to the ruins of an old beachside hotel, which serves as their hangout. Strange things begin to occur and it soon becomes apparent to the audience, if not Michael, that the bike gang is, in fact, a vampire coven.
My daughter and I both found the movie funnier and less violent than we expected. I remembered more bloodshed in the movie, but I may have been conflating the movie with others of the period. The young, self-proclaimed vampire hunters, Edgar and Alan Frog were definitely the show’s highlight, but all of the cast had great moments. I also had conflated the movie with a lot of Southern California-set beach movies of the time and had forgotten how much the movie’s setting reflected Santa Cruz, where it was filmed.
I’m glad I rediscovered The Lost Boys and gave it another chance. The movie’s blend of humor, subtle literary reference, and using vampires to cast a critical eye on a time and place are all things I like doing in my own writing. Even though the movie didn’t resonate with me much a the time, I wonder how much of its approach to storytelling managed to influence me. There’s no doubt the movie influenced works that came after it and I know many of those works did influence me.
I was excited to learn that my friend Bram Meehan is involved in a graphic novel project that combines monsters of rock and monsters from Hell. The graphic novel is The Gentlemen Ghouls: The Apocalypse Trilogy, which is an acclaimed high-camp horror comics series in the lurid Hammer tradition. It has just launched a 30-day Kickstarter campaign for a deluxe print and PDF edition. The comic from writer Martin Hayes and artist Alfie Gallagher was originally serialized online in David Lloyd’s Aces Weekly. The 132-page softcover collects all three volumes plus a new short story and afterword. My friend Bram serves as the graphic novel’s letterer.
Set in 1972, the graphic novel depicts London as a swirling cesspit of vice and corruption, one giant madhouse full to bursting—with David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath soundtracking the greatest battle between good and evil ever beheld by mortal man. When sinister gears turn and apocalyptic machinations play out, two aging consulting occultists, a couple of ham-fisted coppers, and a rebellious reporter must confront vampires, demons, the occasional rock star, and the Devil himself to keep all bloody Hell from coming to Earth. Three chapters each take their cue from a classic rock song, combining heavy metal with a seedy seam of seventies cop shows and occult mischief. The comic makes me think of what would have happened if Kolchak: the Night Stalker had been filmed by Hammer studios.
According to writer Martin Hayes, “I’ve always wanted to do something that would hit the big Hammer touchstones of monsters, vampires, and devil worship, and I couldn’t resist throwing in the best parts of the gritty British cop shows that we used to pick up with our extra-high aerials here on the east coast of Ireland.” Artist Alfie Gallagher adds, “we’re not going for po-faced serious horror, it’s campy glammy trashy hi-jinx with figures and symbols from horror crashing through the grubby setting of London 1972— and it’s been a hell of a lot of fun.”
Go to http://gentlemenghouls.com/ to get in on the campaign. The book is completed and ready for print and electronic distribution at the conclusion of the Kickstarter. Additional rewards include a digital publication with 50 pages of behind-the-scenes art process, original art, and commissioned sketches. Stretch goals include a sheet of six stickers and two beer mats inspired by the world of The Gentlemen Ghouls. I have already contributed to the campaign and if you enjoy monsters and rock, you’ll want to take a look.
Bram Meehan who lettered the Gentlemen Ghouls also lettered my debut comic, Guinevere and the Stranger. Lettering is an underappreciated art in comics. It’s the letterer’s job to make sure the word balloons flow naturally so you read the dialogue in the right order. You need to see the words when they’re critical, but they can’t hide the wonderful art. Bram not only lettered my comic, but he helped me develop the script, effectively serving as my editor. You can pick up a copy of my comic at: https://hadrosaur.com/GuinevereStranger.php.
Also, a Kickstarter project has just gone live to fund two steampunk anthologies and one dieselpunk anthology. I have stories in all three books! I’ll discuss this project in more detail on Saturday, but if you want to take a look and be an early backer, it’s at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/e-specbooks/full-steam-ahead
The fairy tale “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” has fascinated me ever since I translated the story for a German literature class back in my university days. Since that time, I published a translation of the story in an issue of Tales of the Talisman Magazine. I then wrote a piece of flash fiction that imagined a vampiric version of Snow White called “The Tale of Blood Red” which appeared in the anthology Blood Sampler. Most recently, I gave Snow White a steampunk treatment and placed the story with the forthcoming anthology Grimm Machinations.
On a recent trip to a bookstore, I found the 2019 graphic novel Snow, Glass, Apples written by Neil Gaiman with art by Colleen Doran. Reading the back and then browsing the interior, I soon discovered this was also a retelling of Snow White. Not only that, it looked like Snow White was portrayed as a vampire. Of course, I picked up the book right away. In this case, the fairy tale is told from the point of view of Snow White’s stepmother, the queen. We learn that the former king went to the woods and fell in love with a beautiful young woman after his wife had died. The king marries the young woman and brings her home. There, she discovers his vampire daughter, who mostly keeps to herself. Over time, the king fades and dies, which is how the young woman becomes queen. She sees Snow White for the danger she is, orders her heart cut out and her body taken to the woods. The years pass, but fewer and fewer people cross the woods to visit the spring fair. Looking in her scrying mirror, the queen realizes that Snow White is still alive. When people enter the woods, she attacks and kills them. The queen sets a plan in motion to save her land and the fair from Snow White. She’ll create blood-laced poison apples for her stepdaughter.
You might wonder how Neil Gaiman and I would independently come up with the idea of a vampire Snow White. I would argue many of the ingredients are right there in the fairy tale. In the original, Snow White’s mother pricks her fingers and sees the blood drop onto a snow-covered, ebony window frame. She wishes for a child with skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony. Also, in the original story, Snow White’s stepmother succeeds in killing Snow White three times, only to have Snow White return from the dead each time. When Snow White dies the third time, the dwarfs place her in a glass coffin and the prince at the end wakes her, not with a kiss, but having his bumbling entourage drop the coffin, dislodging the poisoned apple piece. And, there’s also the bit near the opening where the wicked queen wants to destroy Snow White’s heart. It’s not a big leap to go from the story as commonly read to the idea of Snow White being a magical, undead creature.
It turns out Snow, Glass, Apples is actually based on a 1994 short story by Gaiman. The story along with Colleen Doran’s art has a distinctly erotic feel. This may feel like a departure from a classic fairy tale, but again, it has roots in the original story. I’m fortunate enough to have a German copy of Grimms’ tales which include notes by the Grimm brothers. They mention that some versions of the story do relay not just the wish of Snow White’s mother, but tell the story of Snow White’s conception during a sleigh ride.
I was glad to discover Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran’s Snow, Glass, Apples. The story is an interesting twist on the original and Doran’s art is lush and gorgeous, adding to Gaiman’s story. The graphic novel was published by Dark Horse Books and you should be able to find copies online or at your local bookstore. The original story appears in Gaiman’s collection Smoke and Mirrors.
My steampunk story “The Porcelain Princess” will appear in Grimm Machinations from eSpec Books. Although that version of Snow White isn’t a vampire, I still explore some of the darker, spookier aspects of the character. The Kickstarter for the book should be launching soon. I’ll be sure to keep people posted.
Earlier this year, I discovered Caliber Publishing’s updates of L. Frank Baum’s Oz and H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. A couple of weeks ago, I discovered Caliber Publishing had also published a comic book adaptation of the King Arthur story in the early 1990s. Unlike Oz and War of the Worlds, which were effectively continuations of their respective tales, Caliber’s Arthur: King of Britain is a straightforward adaptation of the Arthur story as it appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. This adaptation is written and features black and white artwork by Michael Fraley, who started his career as a newspaper sketch artist, but soon moved into graphic design and honed his writing skills to the point of earning a regular newspaper tech column.
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain is an important work. Written circa 1136 AD, Geoffrey’s work endeavors to combine aspects of Arthurian folklore and the fragmentary bits of history that suggest Arthur was a real figure into a single narrative of Arthur’s life. Later, more famous versions of the King Arthur story, such as Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur are arguably built on Geoffrey’s framework. Geoffrey’s version tells the story of how Merlin helped Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon take the form of Gorlois of Cornwall, to seduce Gorlois’ wife, Igerne. From that union, Arthur is born. He would go on to be trained as a knight and assume the throne upon the death of his father.
According to Geoffrey, Arthur goes on to unite the British people to confront the Saxon invaders who have begun to take over much of Britain. Once the Saxons are defeated, Arthur marries Guinevere and then begins a series of military campaigns in the lands surrounding Britain. When Roman envoys come to Arthur to demand tribute, Arthur decides to use the forces he’s assembled from the British Isles and Western Europe to conquer Rome itself. He leaves Britain in the care of his nephew, Modred. While on the Roman campaign, Arthur learns that Modred has married Guinevere and claimed the throne of Britain for himself, setting up the final tragic battle at Camlan.
Fraley’s comic adaptation includes notes about the story, which I found interesting. He points out that Geoffrey would have been steeped in Biblical tradition and he tells a story that eschews the more magical aspects of Celtic lore in favor of a story that reads like it could have been part of the Bible. The giants in the History of the Kings of Britain resemble Goliath more than Ysbaddaden Chief Giant of the Celtic Arthurian tale Culhwch and Olwen. Fraley also suggests that Arthur’s conquest of Rome may have been inspired by Geoffrey’s desire to give Arthur a story as epic as Charlemagne’s. Fraley talks about this European quest moving into the background of later stories. I’ve long suspected that later writers, who didn’t see a Roman conquest by Britain in any other history and who wanted to tell a moral tale, transformed much of that quest into the quest for the Holy Grail.
I thought Fraley’s book Arthur: King of Britain was a good adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth. The black and white art supported the story well and his notes gave me new insight into the story. If you’re a fan of comics and Arthurian legend, you can find the five-issue series collected as a graphic novel in both digital and print formats at Amazon.
When I wrote my novel, Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires, I planned to set part of the story in Arthurian times right from the beginning. I decided to use Geoffrey’s version of the story as my template for my story’s background. You can learn more about Dragon’s Fall at: http://davidleesummers.com/dragons_fall.html
Geoffrey’s version of the Arthur story has also influenced my science fiction. His version of Arthur’s final battle with Modred, inspired the final confrontation between Manuel Raton and Mary Hill in my novel The Pirates of Sufiro. There’s a reason the strategic pass where the novel’s climactic scene happens is called Camlan. You can learn more about The Pirates of Sufiro at: http://davidleesummers.com/pirates_of_sufiro.html
Finally, if you’re interested in those early Welsh Arthurian folktales, I recorded my own retelling of Culhwch and Olwen. You can learn more here: http://davidleesummers.com/cando.html
I will be attending MileHiCon 54 in Denver, Colorado, which will be held from Friday, October 21 through Sunday October 23, 2022 at the Denver Marriott Tech Center. You can get more information about the event at https://milehicon.org.
This year’s toastmaster is Kevin J. Anderson, who has published more than 175 books, 58 of which have been national or international bestsellers. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, as well as unique steampunk fantasy trilogy beginning with Clockwork Angels, written with legendary rock drummer Neil Peart. Anderson is also the owner of WordFire Press, publisher of the collection Maximum Velocity: Best of the Full-Throttle Space Tales that I co-edited with Carol Hightshoe, Dayton Ward, Jennifer Brozek, and Bryan Thomas Schmidt.
The author guests of honor are Travis Heermann and Ken Liu. Author, filmmaker, screenwriter, poker player, poet, biker, Travis Heermann is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, an Active member of SFWA and the HWA, and the author of the Shinjuku Shadows series, Ronin Trilogy, The Hammer Falls, and other novels. Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote the Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (starting with The Grace of Kings), as well as short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He also authored the Star Wars novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker.
I will be on several panels throughout the weekend. My schedule is below. When I’m not on panels, you can find me in the dealer’s room. I’ll be sharing a booth space with author Adam Gaffen.
Friday, October 21
4:00pm, Evergreen F: To See New Earths– I’ll introduce Kitt Peak’s planet-hunting detector, NEID, and discuss its role supporting NASA’s TESS mission, hunting for Earth-like planets outside the solar system.
Saturday, October 22
11:00 am, Conifer 2: Cryptozoology in Art and Fiction– Cryptids remain ever popular. Our panelists will discuss what they are, and how they show up in art and fiction of all forms (books, movies, television, comics, etc). On the panel with me are Daniel Dvorkin, Jon Black, Lou J. Berger, and Matt Bille
2:00 pm, Evergreen F: The Year in Science– Panelists cover the science news that most caught their attention over the past year. Courney Willis will serve as moderator. Also on the panel are Carolyn Collins Petersen, Daniel Dvorkin, and Ka Chun Yu
4:00 pm, Conifer 2: SF&F Poetry– SF&F is not just prose. Our panelists will discuss all things poetic in the SF&F world. Stace Johnson will moderate. On the panel with me are Mary Turzillo, and Reese Hogan
5:00 pm, Conifer 3: Writing Effectively For Comics (So You’re Not Murdered by your Artist or Letterer)– Writing for comics is very different than writing for prose. Learn from our panelists how not to make things harder for yourself, your letterer, your artist, or your editor. Jason Henderson will be moderating. Also on the panel are Karen Bjorn, Travis Heermann, and Sumiko Saulson
Sunday, October 23
2:00 pm, Evergreen F: Mapping the Universe– Kitt Peak’s DESI instrument is engaged in a five-year mission to make the largest 3D map in the universe. How does it work? What are some things we’ve learned along the way? And what do we ultimately hope to learn?
The first superhero I remember is Batman as portrayed by Adam West in the 1960s. I loved that show and would watch it obsessively. I remember begging my parents for a toy Batmobile. I even built a toy Batcave out of a Styrofoam box insert. The show was my gateway into the world of comic books. Anytime I had enough spare change, I would buy an issue of Batman or Justice League from the corner drug store and read it over and over until it fell apart. In my high school years, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight would be one of the first series I would collect seriously. I still have my original copies. As with any canon that has been around for a long time, I love going back to the beginning to see how the story was originally conceived.
DC Comics has been pretty good about collecting omnibuses of its early material and I recently picked up Batman: The Golden Age Volume 1 in its digital format. Over the years, I’ve owned replica editions of Batman’s first appearance in Detective Comics #27. I also have the Joker and Catwoman stories from Batman #1 collected in anthologies. That noted, this is the first opportunity I’ve had to read Batman’s first 19 appearances in Detective Comics along with the first three complete issues of Batman 1 through 3. The omnibus also includes Batman’s appearance in New York World’s Fair Comics.
Batman first appeared in May 1939 as The Bat-Man in issue 27 of Detective Comics. Right away the first panel introduces to wealthy socialite Bruce Wayne and his friend Police Commissioner Gordon discussing the Bat-Man. Gordon soon gets a call and he and Wayne rush to a murder scene. The Bat-Man makes his first appearance on page 3, cutting a figure that’s still recognizable to readers today. The pointy ears on his cowl are a little longer and stick out a bit more to the side than they ultimately would. His eyes are more slit-like and his cape seems a bit more wing-like. By the end of the issue we would learn that Bruce Wayne is the man in the bat mask. The Bat-Man’s hyphen would mostly disappear by Detective Comics #30.
The first of Batman’s famous rogue’s gallery, Dr. Hugo Strange, was introduced in Detective Comics #36. Batman’s sidekick Robin would make his first appearance in Detective Comics #38. In that issue, we’re given two pages of origin story followed by Robin fully entrenched as Batman’s sidekick. This issue was followed by Batman #1 in April 1940, which introduced us to both the Joker and Catwoman. To me, no one has yet matched Jerry Robinson’s original Joker design for sheer creepiness. I was also fascinated to see that the sexual tension between Batman and Catwoman started almost right at the very beginning.
What’s perhaps most interesting in these earliest issues is what’s missing. There’s no Batmobile. Batman just drives around in an ordinary sedan. He does have a very cool bat-shaped plane, though. There’s no Alfred the Butler and no Batcave. While Batman is very grim in the earliest issues, he starts smiling more, like he’s taking delight in bringing criminals to justice.
I’ve recently been researching the early part of the 1930s for a story I’m writing. There was a definite fascination with gangsters who were romanticized into figures who stood up to authority and were sometimes seen as Robin Hood-like figures who took money from the rich. It’s interesting to see how Batman emerged at the end of that era as the Great Depression came to an end and the United States watched World War II unfold. Instead of a Robin Hood, Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson gave us a rich guy who did what he thought was right, even if he skirted the law. Batman and Catwoman not only flirt with each other but they almost flirt with the idea of becoming a Bonnie and Clyde, but ultimately, Batman does what’s right and remains on the side of justice.
Over the years, the art of comic books has become more polished as has the writing. Still, it’s fun to go back to the beginning and see how these characters started. Much of what makes them popular now was right there at the beginning, but many things we take for granted took years to develop. I’m grateful Adam West and Burt Ward invited me into this expansive world many years ago and while I follow other comic series more closely now, I still like to check in and see what Batman and Robin are up to from time to time.
Last month, between Las Cruces Comic Con and Bubonicon, my wife and I took our daughter back to college. A big part of the back-to-college ritual is the trip to the nearby big-box store to stock up on supplies for the school year. While doing that, I’ll inevitably pop into the video section to see if there’s a release I’ve missed. This year, I found Constantine: The House of Mystery. It featured Matt Ryan reprising his role of John Constantine, a character from DC and Vertigo comics. It also featured one of my other favorite DC characters, the magician Zatanna. I decided it would be worth picking up.
Constantine: The House of Mystery
Upon closer inspection, I noticed the headline over the title, “DC Showcase Animated Shorts.” Sure enough, the disk proved to be an anthology of sorts, featuring a Constantine story, a Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth story, a Losers story, and a Blue Beetle story. My only complaint about this is that aside from the Constantine story, all the other stories had been released before. Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth had been released as a special feature on the Justice Society: World War II Blu-Ray I purchased a year ago. After a little digging, I found out the other two shorts included with House of Mystery had been previously released as well, but I hadn’t seen them. Still, I could imagine a fan of DC animation being disappointed that this disk contained mostly previously released material.
I like anthology movies and TV series. They provide an opportunity to sample many kinds of stories and tell tales that aren’t really suited to a full-length movie or TV series. I found many early favorite authors by watching the credits of The Twilight Zone and seeing whose stories inspired the episodes. So, given the fact that three of the four shorts on this disk were new to me, it was a nice treat. The Constantine story, House of Mystery, is set after Justice League Dark: Apokolips War. At the end of that movie, the heroes won, but Earth was left a wasteland. Sorcerer John Constantine sends the Flash on a mission to reset time so the world can be made right again. However, the godlike superhero Spectre pulls Constantine out of time and drops him into the House of Mystery. In the comics, the House of Mystery title was itself an anthology comic where people would go into the House and literally anything could and did happen. In this case, Constantine finds himself tormented by demons who take the forms of his closest friends. Constantine’s only hope is to find a way to break out of the house and break the cycle of torture and torment. His solution is well grounded in the comics. My only issue with the short is that they slightly redesigned Constantine from Apokolips War to House of Mystery and they use both versions, so it can be a little jarring when they swap back and forth.
Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth provided a good introduction to the character, which was good, since I’d never read the comic before. It opens on a post-apocalyptic Earth as our title character is trying to free his friend Prince Tuftan of the Tiger Kingdom from captivity. As they flee Tuftan’s original captives, they find themselves captured by the Gorilla Kingdom and forced to go on a quest to show which of them can earn the title of the Mighty One, a revered figure from the Gorillas’ past. The story has a nice twist ending, when the Mighty One’s identity is revealed.
Losers was a comic set during World War II. The Losers themselves are a unit of military outcasts sent on dangerous missions. In this story, they find themselves marooned on an island populated by dinosaurs. However, it turns out the dinosaurs aren’t the island’s biggest secret. Perhaps not surprisingly, the story had a lot in common with Jurassic Park. Still, there were some nice twists and turns and it made me interested in learning more about the original comic.
Aside from John Constantine, Blue Beetle was the character I knew best from his time as a member of the Justice League International, which ran in the 1980s. Blue Beetle himself is the millionaire Ted Kord who fights crime in a beetle suit and flies around in a beetle-shaped craft. In the DC universe, he’s effectively a more lighthearted version of Batman. To that end, the animated short was made to look and feel like animated cartoons of the 1960s and 70s. Blue Beetle tries to stop a diamond theft and learns that the villains plan to use the diamond in an emotion-controlling machine. It’s all a lot of fun and probably my favorite of the shorts on the disk.
All in all, I enjoyed the four shorts and would love to see more anthologies of short films from DC, but would prefer them to be all new material. If you’ve already seen the three shorts that have appeared on other disks, you may prefer to stream the Constantine short separately through your favorite service rather than buy the disk.
David Lee Summers' Web Journal 