Browsed by
Author: Derek Kunsken

Reverse-Turing Testing the Editor of Black Gate, or How I Said Goodbye to My Spam Followers

Reverse-Turing Testing the Editor of Black Gate, or How I Said Goodbye to My Spam Followers

Comments 5 comments

56043582This week, my friend Marie looked at my website because I didn’t know what I was doing. You may recall that one of the reasons I blog at Black Gate magazine is because I assume no one would ever read anything I put on my personal web page.

So far I’ve been with Black Gate about three years and love it here. But I haven’t lavished the same love on my own website.

So Marie looked at it and found I had literally hundreds of comments! You can’t imagine the shock and delight I experienced for 2.75 seconds.

Until she said “I think these are all spam comments.” Personally, I thought she was suffering from sour grapes, because she didn’t have 137 comments on her posts.

“But they’re engaging with me!” I said. “They like my posts!”

“No,” said Marie (continue imagining sour grapes). “It’s almost all spam. You have a couple of real people though.”

…

Read More Read More

Reading Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Eight

Reading Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Eight

Comments 0 Comment

the-best-horror-of-the-year-volume-8-smallDespite me not being a horror writer (or much of a reader, or a movie watcher), it surprises me that about a quarter of my posts end up touching on horror in some way. That being said, I am trying to crack to horror code, to see what makes it work, mostly because I’d love to have additional tools in my writerly toolbelt, and partly because I just like to figure stuff out.

I recently finished reading Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 8 and thought I’d put my musings to paper (or electrons). In the interests of full disclosure, I appeared in her Best Horror of the Year, Volume 6 and may have gotten an honorable mention in Volume 2. That being said, I’ve got no other interest in this book — I just wanted to read the anthology and talk about it. Make of that what you will.

Now, it doesn’t take much of a definitional search to find the totally intuitive statement that horror fiction seeks to provoke shock, fear, repulsion or loathing. A bit more searching unearths the definition of weird fiction, the cousin of horror, which blends horror, fantasy and science fiction. I’m not trying to be academic or coy with my thoughts on Datlow’s 8th Best of the Year. This kind of grounding was necessary (for me) to fully take in what I was reading.

Why’s that? Ask most anthologists (or for that matter magazine editors who put 8-12 stories per month in an issue) what their concerns are, very often you’ll hear balance.

When I read a Gardner Dozois Year’s Best SF, I know he will balance space opera, with near future, with far future, with alternate history, with literary SF, with military SF, etc, etc. That is to say, like SF, horror has its own sub-genres and each one comes with its own conventions. You may be very disappointed if you read a literary SF story expecting to apply the conventions of military SF to your reading. I didn’t want my inexperience with the horror field to detract from my read of this year’s best.

…

Read More Read More

The Doctor Is In: Marvel’s New Doctor Strange Movie

The Doctor Is In: Marvel’s New Doctor Strange Movie

Comments 9 comments

doctor-strangeOK. I may have let on that I like Dr Strange when I wrote two blog posts about his early development in Marvel Comics:

Dr. Strange, Part I: Establishing the Mythos: Master of the Mystic Arts in The Lee-Ditko Era
Dr. Strange, Part II: Becoming Sorcerer Supreme and Dying in the Englehart Era.

I just watched the movie (here’s a trailer) and have to say I really enjoyed it. I’m not going to do anything spoilery here.

Nor do I have strong feelings about the change in the Ancient One other than to say I don’t care what gender the character is, but a Himalayan mystic should have stayed Asian, despite all the stereotype problems built in the Ancient One figure anyway.

But I am doing some puzzling over what kind of Dr. Strange I just saw. Doctor Strange as a 53-year old intellectual property of Marvel Comics has stayed remarkably faithful to the origin tone, no matter what decade, or what cross-over event he’s been involved with.

Cyclops and Professor X had their turns at being evil. Magneto had his turn at being good. The Fantastic Four has rotated its lineup. Tony Stark was a carefree millionaire who got drunk and lost his company. Steve Rogers became Nomad for a time.

But other than a few failings built into the character early in the game, Strange has remained pretty consistent. But this movie didn’t hit the tone I expected.

…

Read More Read More

WTF Did I Just Read? Grant Morrison’s Nameless

WTF Did I Just Read? Grant Morrison’s Nameless

Comments 0 Comment

nameless_612x929Grant Morrison is one of the most successful and famous comic creators. His comic writing career started in small press when he was just 18 years old, and graduated to Marvel UK and the world of 2000AD in the 1980s, with some work with Marvel and DC as well.

From the mid-1990s onward, he’s been consistently working on big projects for big publishers. My own first experience with him were the early 2000s New X-Men series from time to time, but then intensively through the Batman R.I.P. and Batman Reborn arcs.

I was very, very impressed with the creepy insanity he was able to channel in Batman and Robin while Dick Grayson was Batman. Serious creep factors.

But that wasn’t why I read Nameless, a recent series of his through Image.

…

Read More Read More

Wreaking Carnage Everywhere: Marvel’s New Horror Comic

Wreaking Carnage Everywhere: Marvel’s New Horror Comic

Comments 0 Comment

309462__sx640_ql80_ttd_carnage_vol_2_1_perkins_variantI’ve been thinking about horror again, as a genre. I’ve been trying to read some Cthulhu stuff; I’ve reread some Image and Marvel horror comics; and I’ve also recently read Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year #8. Lots to mull over.

And a newer Marvel series I read was Carnage, the first 11 issues, by writer Gerry Conway, artist Mike Perkins and colorist Andy Troy.

Carnage is new territory for me. I’m not much of a post-Ditko Spider-Man reader, and I was slightly too old in the 90s to cotton to those incarnations of Venom and Carnage. So, fast-forward to 2015 and 2016 and me catching up with Venom Space-Knight and Carnage.

If you’ve never met Carnage either, he’s an offspring of that symbiotic black suit that Peter Parker returned home with after the original Secret Wars. The symbiote went on to have its own stories sans Spider-Man by covering a new host.

In the early 1990s, a darker character was needed, so they had the symbiote…. fission… to create a new symbiote that wrapped itself around psychopath and homicidal sadist Cletus Kasady. Carnage played villain for a while and then disappeared with only some minor surfacings until this new series in 2015.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of a series centered on a serial killer. How much can you do with a single serial killer? I decided to give it a try anyway, and was very pleasantly surprised, and in fact, Carnage is turning into one of my favorite Marvel titles.

…

Read More Read More

The Flaw in Everything: Warren Ellis’ Karnak the Shatterer

The Flaw in Everything: Warren Ellis’ Karnak the Shatterer

Comments 0 Comment

karnak2cov-e50d0It’s the best part of the reading experience to run across a story with a new voice. Warren Ellis, of The Authority and Transmetropolitan fame, has assumed various voices, but I love his newest one: the narrative perspective of Marvel’s Karnak the Shatterer, a character associated with the Inhumans.

The Inhumans, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, have been around since The Fantastic Four was in double-digits. Some of you may recall that Karnak is the one with the big head and the super-effective karate chops because his special talent is finding the structural flaws in things.

(Although, to be accurate, Karnak isn’t technically an Inhuman because was never exposed to the Terrigen mists — bring that up at a dinner party for a No-Prize!)

Over the years, Karnak’s powers and perceptions have expanded to include seeing the flaws in arguments, concepts, and people. His greatest achievement is finding the flaw in death, thereby returning from the dead.

It may sound a bit blithe to say it that way, but Karnak’s philosophical viewpoint has been strengthened over the years and bears some thematic resemblances to people like Iron Fist’s warriors of K’un-Lun or the Ancient One (of Dr. Strange fame).

The Inhumans of course, have been increasing in their importance in the Marvel Universe. I’ve seen internet theories that Marvel is downplaying the X-Men while up-playing the Inhumans, because Marvel doesn’t hold the X-Men movie rights.

…

Read More Read More

A Tremendously Disappointing Re-Read: The Soaked-in Misogyny of Piers Anthony’s Xanth

A Tremendously Disappointing Re-Read: The Soaked-in Misogyny of Piers Anthony’s Xanth

Comments 13 comments

Xanth Piers Anthony-small

When my life is super-busy, I tend to reread books that won’t invite my brain to start analyzing to see what I could learn. I reread Edgar Rice Burroughs’ biography, and recently, I thought I’d reread Piers Anthony’s Xanth series.

I first read the first novel, A Spell for Chameleon, in grade six and reread it maybe later in my teens. I remember it being charming and punny, but my memories were pretty dim. I was also wondering if I could recommend it to my 11-year old son after he finished with the Percy Jackson opus.

A Spell for Chameleon is about Bink, a person who lives in the North Village of the land of Xanth, where every plant and animal is magical and every person has a single magical talent, everyone except for Bink. If he doesn’t find out his magical talent, he’ll get kicked out of Xanth upon turning 25.

…

Read More Read More

Thinking about the Evolution of Marvel Comics’ Star-Lord

Thinking about the Evolution of Marvel Comics’ Star-Lord

Comments 8 comments
Marvel_Preview_Vol_1_4
Marvel’s conception of Star-Lord for the 1970s and 80s.

I’ve been doing a bit of thinking lately about puzzling characters in comics and how they change over time. In the last couple of weeks, I decided to reread they comics I’ve got around with the Marvel Universe’ Peter Quill, also known as the Star-Lord.

Now, for those who’ve been living in a hole for the last decade, or for those who only know Peter Quill from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, Peter Quill made his first appearance in 1976 in Marvel Preview #4 (a black and white magazine), under the creators Steve Englehart and Steve Gan, who envisioned him as an unpleasant, introverted jerk who would go on to grow into a cosmic hero.

I love that arc, and wonder how much it was kicking around then. Around the same time, Jim Starlin wanted to do something similar with Captain Marvel, but Marvel didn’t give him the character, so he did it with Adam Warlock (see my thoughts on that in my series on Adam Warlock I, II, III).

Star-Lord didn’t reappear until Marvel Preview #11, this time under Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin (the team that would later moved over to Uncanny X-Men from #108 to #143, famously creating the Hellfire Club, the Phoenix Saga, and the Days of Future Past).

Under Claremont, he wasn’t the introverted jerk, but a straight-faced loner, traveling the space-ways. I haven’t read the Heinlein juveniles, but it sounds like Claremont was aiming for that kind of bland square-jawed adventurer, and that persona stuck in Star-Lord’s appearances through the 70s and 80s.

…

Read More Read More

Reading Burroughs’ Biography as a Writer

Reading Burroughs’ Biography as a Writer

Comments 4 comments

PorgesAbout eight years ago, when I was struggling to get my short stories published, I picked up the two-volume biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs by Irwin Porges. I think I’d been looking for some communion with a writer I’d enjoyed as a teen; I got that and more, including a reassurance that I was on the right track.

Now, it’s difficult to discuss Burroughs in any setting without dropping some pretty big caveats. Burroughs was a product of his time, and it wasn’t a good time. By way of example, he wrote A Princess of Mars in 1911, a time when women and minorities could not vote in Canada, and a time when Jim Crow laws in the United states wouldn’t be repealed for another 50 years. His great white male hero appeared in most of his popular stories and his depiction of anybody who wasn’t white was rife with stereotypes and/or condescension.

…

Read More Read More

DC’s Continuing Rebirth

DC’s Continuing Rebirth

Comments 3 comments

Green Lanterns - Rebirth (2016) 001-002Rebirth still sounds a bit weird to say, like I’m saying DC was born in Kenya or something. In reality, I’m continuing from my last post which started my look at DC Rebirth, what I’m referring to as a corrective reboot.

To recap: DC seems to be explaining the discrepancies of the last 5 years (called the New 52) by saying that there’s a plot afoot and everyone in the DCU got their memory reprogrammed. This is comic books, so I’m ok with suspending belief over that one, because I’m intrigued as to who would be powerful enough to fiddle with the memory of everyone in the DCU and why they would do it.

So in the last two weeks, DC has unfolded more of Rebirth through a series of one-shot issues designed to propel readers back into the regular monthlies, some of which have already started under their “rebirth” banners. Here are the seven one-shots:

Batman Rebirth: Bruce gets a new helper. I don’t know yet if he’s a sidekick or not. That will roll out in the coming weeks. The fact that this new hero is a black guy certainly helps with diversity of voices DC will have to tell stories.

I liked the thematic concern too. This issue was about what superheroes do and why they keep going on when villains keep returning, changed, grown, more powerful. These are central questions to the central conceit of the superhero. I liked the hopeful answer.

…

Read More Read More