Shamless Plugs

Three new Klaw pieces to mention:

My review of Iron Man is up at RevolutionSF.

The film never forgets that Downey and his CG suit of armor are the stars. Downey deftly portrays the womanizing Stark -- a bit of an asshole both in the comics and on the screen. He smirks, flirts, and fights like an American James Bond. Downey's Iron Man is one of the best Marvel character-to-screen transitions to date.

Continued...

The latest edition of "Graphica Nexus" appears at SF Site.

A medium and not a genre, comic books differ little at the creative writing level from movies and plays. If "one professionally produced dramatic script" allows for membership then there should be no debate about comic book writers. The technical variances between these types of scripts is negligible. Is a playwright or a screenwriter less of a "real" writer because someone else enacts their words? This is no different then an artist envisioning a comic book script? It's not.

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And lastly, Steampunk with my original essay "The Steam-Driven Time Machine" should either be on the stands or out any day now.

Some twenty years later, pop culture has embraced steampunk. Publishing, film, and even the Internet embolden the term as a branding tool. Nary a week goes by without Boing Boing (www.boingboing.net), the venerable group blog, posting about some sort of steampunk inspired gadget, cartoon, or essay. A search of their archives generates almost 1500 articles. Subjects vary greatly: laptops, keyboards, watches, Transformers, planes, Car Wars, submarines, and so on. Many articles showcase functioning modern technology using steampunk methods and materials. Others present actual working machines from the 19th century. Images presenting artistic depictions of steampunk, paintings, sculptures, architecture and the like. Reinterpretations of popular shows such as Star Trek and Star Wars litter the listings. Original short films featuring steampunk tropes offer many amusing and sometimes exciting diversions.

Continued in Steampunk.