The Strange World of Texas Politics

Only in Texas could you get a US Senatorial Primary Candidate like Larry Kilgore.

From the League of Women Voters of Texas Candidate Questionnaire:

Question 1:
Please describe the training and experience that qualify you for this office.

Answer 1:
I tell the truth that hurts while most politicians paint a rosy picture. The US Empire has a $53,000,000,000,000 deficit and each person owes $175,000 as soon as they are born. an economic collapse is coming.

Question 2:
What measures would you support to control and protect our borders and to address the presence of undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States?

Answer 2:
Texas independence! The us empire’s failure to protect Texas from illegal immigrants is costing the Texas taxpayers more than $4.7 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. 240,000 illegal-immigrant sex offenders reside in the united states – while 93 sex offenders and 12 serial sexual offenders come across us borders illegally every day. Texas can determine our own immigration policy without the us empire.

Question 3:
What policies would you support to ensure that the united States has enough energy to supply its needs?

Answer 3:
Texas independence! The us empire should not dictate energy policy for Texas. Texas has 23,507,783 people 0.34% of the world’s population; 11% larger than Australia’s. Texas GDP is 989,443,000,000; 93% of the nations have a GDp smaller than Texas. austin will do a much better job than Washington determining energy policy.

Question 4:
What are your plans to improve the delivery and financing of health care in the enough energy to supply its needs?

Answer 4:
The us empire should not be involved in heath care. The us empire takes via taxes about $6,000/Texan (including children) each year. Without that tax burden families can take care of their own health care. Christians are to help the poor, widows and orphans including access heath care. James 1:27 - pure religion and undefiled before God is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.

To no one's surprise, Kilgore is a Republican.




Thankfully, he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the primary.


"Good thing we've still got politics in Texas -- finest form of free entertainment ever invented." -- Molly Ivins

Justice League: The New Frontier review

My review of the much anticipated The New Frontier animated movie based on Darwyn Cooke's award-winning graphic novel is now available at RevolutionSF.

The excellent, near-perfect graphical look creates a quality to the project that far exceeds other direct-to-dvd animated movies. As evident from the viewing and the discussions between the contributors on the commentary tracks, the staff carefully deliberated every image and shot, even going as far as bringing in Darwyn Cooke to create new bridging sequences and consult on many story elements. In the 75 minute feature, nary a shot is wasted and most are beautifully crafted, especially the iconic 1950s-style credits sequence.
Continued...

Planet Stories Resurrects the Pulps

Planet Stories, produced by Paizo Publishing, offers reprints of mostly classic pulp era science fiction and fantasy adventure stories from Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Henry Kuttner, and Otis Adelbert Kline. Michael Moorcock (his three part Kane of Old Mars series), three books by Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax, and an anthology of stories by "today's best (and best-selling) fantasists [who] got their start writing shared-world fiction supporting roleplaying games" represent the modern era contingent of the line's first fourteen publications. The volumes include introductions by Joe R. Lansdale, Michael Moorcock, Suzy McKee Charnas, C. J. Cherryh, Samuel Delaney, Ben Bova, Roy Thomas, Ed Greenwood, Erik Moha, and Kim Mohan.

Six of the titles are currently available with the remaining nine being released roughly one a month throughout '08.






As much as I love this idea, I have to wonder how well they are selling or are expected to sell. The books are handsomely packaged and affordable, which will certainly stack the deck more in their favor. I certainly hope they do well. There is a lot of quality pulp stuff that has seemingly been surrendered to obscurity.

STREAMING VIDEO GOES RETRO ON NBC UNIVERSAL

While I applaud NBC Universal's decision to offer several of their older shows for free online, I just wish more of the shows were any good.

A full list of streaming vintage series follows:

NBC.com
A-Team
Emergency
Night Gallery
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
Miami Vice
Battlestar Galactica (1978)
Buck Rogers

SCIFI.com
Battlestar Galactica (1978)
Buck Rogers
Tek War
Night Gallery

ChillerTV.com
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
Swamp Thing
Tremors
Crow
Night Gallery

SleuthChannel.com
Kojak
Miami Vice
Simon & Simon
A-Team
Night Gallery



Outside of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Kojak, and Night Gallery, these shows, most of which were awful upon first viewing, are better served collecting dust rather than wasting bandwidth. Course now with Tek War freely available, millions of Boston Legal fans can experience the magic of mid-90s William Shatner.

No date was given for when the shows will become available.

Win a Stealer of Souls

RevolutionSF is giving away three (3) autographed copies of Elric: Stealer of Souls. You can pry a copy of your very own from our steely grasp. Here's how you do so.

Send your name and your address to RevolutionSF's webmaster. And then you're done.

We will select three names from that batch, and then you will have the classic heroic fantasy delivered right to your house. You don't even have to talk to another human. (Elric would prefer it that way.)

Visit RevolutionSF for more details.

This collection reprints the ORIGINAL Elric stories as they first appeared (sans later edits and modifications) in the order in which they were published. The book also offers several interesting Elric tidbits such as magazine covers to some of the first appearances, an early map of Melnibone, the first lengthy review of Stormbringer, and a bunch more.

As if that weren't enough, the collection is lavishly illustrated by World Fantasy Award winning artist John Picacio (cover artist to Geek Confidential. Perhaps not his best known work, but I had to get a plug in somewhere).

If you'd rather not take your chances at RevolutionSF, Moorcock and Picacio will be signing Elric: Stealer of Souls at Austin Books (in Austin, TX *natch*) on Saturday, February 23, 4-7 PM.

This is a little creepy **UPDATE**

The creepiness ends. The fake Irving Klaw page has been removed by MySpace administrators.

This is a little creepy

While doing some research on my grandfather, I ran across his MySpace page! The fact that Irving Klaw has been dead for some 41 years would seem to make this impossible.

[Irving Klaw's] death remains the stuff of family legend.

Labor Day weekend, 1966: A 55-year-old Irving Klaw awoke with pain on the right side of his abdomen. A family friend, a doctor, diagnosed him with appendicitis. Since the ailment was in its early stages, the physician told Irving not to panic, but suggested he pack a bag and check into the hospital. Stubborn to the last, Irving decided to go to work. Later that day, he was found dead from peritonitis. At least according to my mother.

My cousin Ira Kramer, son of Irving's sister Paula Klaw, tells a different story. Irving, who had been under treatment for an ulcer, visited the same family friend, who told him to just take some antacids and not to worry. Later that day, he was discovered dead from peritonitis.

His son Arth has another theory: He believes Irving woke up with the pain, took some antacids, and went to work. Irving Klaw hated doctors.
(Reprinted from my article "The Notorious Irving Klaw", The Austin Chronicle March 10, 2006)

If it all wasn't strange enough, I ran across this:

On one level, this is all very flattering but on another it is just creepy.

Showcase Presents: Enemy Ace

The latest DC Showcase book came out this week. Lately, the Showcases have been more mainstream--lamer Superman Family and Batman material--rather than the idiosyncratic stuff they'd been slipping in earlier, like Elongated Man, Metamorpho, and House of Mystery. Enemy Ace makes up for the lull. 

The reason isn't the Kubert stories, which of course are great and make up about 350 pages of the book. Instead, the secret treasure is the last 150 or so pages, dating from the mid to late 70s, which offers other artists' takes on Robert Kanigher's von Hammer. Artists like John Severin, Russ Heath, Howard Chaykin, and Neal Adams. Severin is great as always. Chaykin doesn't come off very well in this reproduction. It's been interesting to me to see how art in more recent Showcases suffer from the lack of color more than the older stuff; I bet Chaykin's less detailed expressionistic art is great in its original colored form. 

Joe Kubert's Enemy Ace will always be in print or near to it. This obscure never seen the light of day material is why the Showcase series exists, as far as I'm concerned. 

Red Shirt's Lament

I realize that this is more of a Friday thing, but I just couldn't wait.

From those wacky YouTube folks comes the aptly-titled "Worst Job in Starfleet:



Some days I'm ever-so-glad that people out there clearly have too much time on their hands.

Steve Gerber 1947-2008

A modern comic book genius, Steve Gerber, 60, died from complications surrounding pulmonary fibrosis. As a stalwart of 1970s Marvel Comics, Gerber penned long runs on Daredevil, The Sub-Mariner, Omega the Unknown, Defenders, Man-Thing, and his seminal creation Howard The Duck. The zany concept of a humanoid duck trapped in a man's world was originally a throw away idea in [Adventure Into] Fear #19, but later developed into the groundbreaking satire of almost everything American in the 1970s. Howard even ran for president (unsuccessfully) in 1976.


It was his work on Man-Thing and Defenders that warped.. er.. impacted my pre-teen psyche. His combination of fantastic and topical intertwined with goofy and terrifying fascinated me like no other comics. In my 2007 review of The Essential Man-Thing Vol.1, I wrote:

[On Man-Thing Gerber] produc[ed] a spate of often goofy yet engaging stories centered around the empathic swamp creature with no personality of its own, who guards the Nexus of All Realities. Within this framework, Gerber littered these far-out adventures with an intriguing supporting cast – including the first appearance of Howard the Duck – exploring Seventies politics and alternative culture with humor and particular insight.

Gerber left Marvel in 1978 over a creative dispute centering around Howard The Duck. He later wrote some notable series such as Nevada, Sludge, and Destroyer Duck. In recent years he had made a triumphant return to Marvel with his work on an excellent Howard The Duck mini-series. (How could one not chuckle as God diagnoses Himself with a tripolar disorder?) Over at DC he created the thought-provoking Hard Time and was currently writing the Doctor Fate segments in Countdown to Mystery.


The list of characters that Gerber created or co-created reads like a who's who of the obscure and strange. A partial list (besides the ones previously mentioned):

Angar the Screamer
Doctor Bong
Foolkiller
Starhawk
Thundarr the Barbarian
Wundarr the Aquarian
Silver Samurai
Headmen
Korvac
Madrill

Steve Gerber was a singular talent with a unique world view. His humor and outlook will be sorely missed.

New Weird contest

Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, editors extraordinare, have announced a contest to promote their new anthology, The New Weird.

Tell us your “new, weird” story–something strange (but entertaining and either PG-rated or with the naughty bits blocked out) that happened to you or you witnessed in the last couple of years. Hopefully some of these will be bizarre but also uplifting, although that’s not a requirement. It’s more about…hey, this world we live in is an odder place than we might think. All of those stories in The New Weird from China Mieville, Clive Barker, K.J. Bishop, Steph Swainston, Jeffrey Ford, Jay Lake, Pual Di Filippo, Michael Moorcock, M. John Harrison, and others–they’re not strange; the world is strange!

And the prize is pretty damn cool...

The three winners, chosen by Ann and me, will win ONE COPY OF EACH ANTHOLOGY WE EDIT BETWEEN NOW AND 2010, PERSONALIZED. Yes, that’s correct. You will get a copy of The New Weird, Steampunk, The Leonardo Variations (Clarion charity anthology), Fast Ships/Black Sails (pirates), Best American Fantasy 2, Best Horror 2009, Last Drink Bird Head, Mapping the Beast: The Best of Leviathan, and various other anthologies currently in the planning stages. Heck, we’ll even throw in the first couple issue of Weird Tales with Ann as fiction editor. We also reserve the right to give out honorable mentions, said HMs to receive a copy of the NW antho.

For official rules, visit Ecstatic Days.

Visionary Will Eisner Quote

In The Ten-Cent Plague, the forthcoming book about the 1950s comic book scare and the next book I'm reviewing for The Austin Chronicle, author David Hajdu reprints this paraphrase of Will Eisner from the Philadelphia Record, October 13, 1941:

The comic strip, he explains, is no longer a comic strip but, in reality, an illustrated novel. It is new and raw in form just now, but material for limitless intelligent development. And eventually and inevitably it will be a legitimate medium for the best writers and artists. It is already the embryo-- Eisner apologizes a little for the trite phrase-- of a new art form.

I always respected Eisner as an artistic visionary but this was 1941! Wow! Sterling North's "A National Disgrace" (Chicago Daily News, May 8, 1940), which begins "Virtually every child in America is reading color 'comic' magazines-- a posionouas mushroom growth of the last two years" was still very much in the public consciousness, making Eisner's pronouncement even that much more amazing. It took over fifty years, but damn if he wasn't right. And thankfully, he did get to see some of the realization before he died.