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Author: Derek Kunsken

Rebirth: DC’s Corrective Reboot

Rebirth: DC’s Corrective Reboot

366074__SX640_QL80_TTD_The last time I blogged about a reboot, the word may have given people hives. But don’t reach for your anti-histamines yet. Well… keep them handy. Your reboot allergic reaction may not be triggered by a Corrective Reboot.

What the heck’s a corrective reboot? Well, it’s like corrective lenses.

I reviewed comics for weeklycomicbookreview.com from 2008-2010. I covered mostly DC, with a fair chunk of Dynamite (I love me my John Carter of Mars, The Lone Ranger, and Kato). I read Superman and Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, but my favorite DC titles seemed to be Red Robin (Tim Drake), Batgirl (Stephanie Brown, mentored by Barbaba Gordon AKA Oracle) and Dick Grayson as Batman. I guess, looking back, I like it when sidekicks make good.

Shortly after I stopped reviewing, DC did a reboot called The New 52. Some of the continuity was preserved, but some wasn’t. As… counter-intuitive as that sounds, the result was that about ten years was shaved off of all the DCU and we lost some sidekicks and some relationships.

For example, prior to the New 52 reboot, enough time had passed for four Robins to have swung about in scaled Underoos (Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne). And of course, many of the DCU’s greatest buddy relationships (or romantic ones, in the case of Green Arrow and Black Canary) had time to form.

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Superheroes in Prose: A City-Smashing Interview with the Editors of the New Anthology Tesseracts Nineteen

Superheroes in Prose: A City-Smashing Interview with the Editors of the New Anthology Tesseracts Nineteen

Tesseracts Nineteen Superhero Universe-smallGet a load of this: Superheroes! Supervillains! Superpowered antiheroes. Super scientists. Adventurers into the unknown. Costumed crimefighters. Mutant superterrorists. Far-future supergroups. Crusading aliens in a strange land. Secret histories of covert superspies… and more! All in a Canadian setting.

This is the call for stories that went out in 2014 for the anthology Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen by EDGE Publishing which is launching this month. Its editors are Claude Lalumière and Mark Shainblum.

Claude has edited thirteen previous anthologies, including Super Stories of Heroes & Villains, which was hailed in a starred review by Publishers Weekly as “by far the best superhero anthology.”

Mark Shainblum co-created the comic series Northguard and the bestselling humor book series Angloman, which later appeared as a weekly strip in The Montreal Gazette. Mark also collaborated on the Captain Canuck daily newspaper strip. I caught up with Claude and Mark for an e-interview.

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Headshots and Cusswords, Baby: The Return of TV Executive Jay Odjick to Indie Comics!

Headshots and Cusswords, Baby: The Return of TV Executive Jay Odjick to Indie Comics!

Jay Odjick isjay1 a Canadian graphic novelist who in 2014 became the Executive Producer and lead writer for the animated TV series Kagagi: The Raven, which was an adaptation of his own indie graphic novel. His TV show about a teen native American superhero is running on APTN in Canada and FNX in the USA and other foreign markets have shown considerable interest.

In the fall of 2016, Jay will have a new graphic novel coming out called The Outsider, and the 12-page The Outsider #0 is available for free download right now here. I caught up with Jay this week to talk about his return to comics.

Thanks for the chance to talk Jay! What’s the concept pitch for The Outsider?

It’s just your average run of the mill post-apocalyptic, ultraviolent, exploitation/grindhouse, Western with a dash of fantasy, gonzo Saturday morning cartoon on acid. Y’know, one of those old yarns!

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Running with the Post-Apocalyptic Dogs: An Interview with Comic Creators Sam Sattin and Chris Koehler

Running with the Post-Apocalyptic Dogs: An Interview with Comic Creators Sam Sattin and Chris Koehler

LEGEND_issue 1 cover_koehlerIn May, Z2 Comics is going to be publishing Legend, a new series by writer Sam Sattin and artist Chris Koehler. I had previously interviewed Ian McGuity for his Z2 release Welcome to Showside and so when I saw the early news on Legend, I knew I wanted to have a chat with Sam and Chris.

Welcome to both of you and thanks for the chance to chat!

Sam and Chris: Thank you so much for having us. Black Gate magazine for life!

I read an advance copy of Legend. It’s strikingly different and I’m buying into the school that describes it as “Post-Apocalyptic Homeward Bound.” Can you give our readers a sense of what Legend is and what you were trying to do?

Sam: I love the idea of Legend being referred to as a “Post-Apocalyptic Homeward Bound.” But I also like describing Legend as a “Post-Apocalyptic Watership Down… meets The Walking Dead… and/or Game of Thrones?”

The thing that I love so much about Watership Down — along with other Richard Adams books, like The Plague Dogs — is how it employs myth. A much overlooked linchpin of Watership Down‘s success is its reliance on a religious text, one which turns a story of rabbits journeying from a home threatened by human development into a story of prophecy and redemption.

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Canadian Steampunk: Chatting with Anthologist and Editor Dominik Parisien

Canadian Steampunk: Chatting with Anthologist and Editor Dominik Parisien

Clockwork-Canada 2In December, Black Gate editor John O’Neill scooped the world with the cover of Clockwork Canada, Dominik Parisien’s newest offering as an anthologist. Dominik is best known as a poet and writer, but also for his editorial work with the Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and Saga Press. Exile Editions is launching Clockwork Canada this month and I wanted to chat with Dominik about his intriguing vision behind this anthology.

To set this up, I include the back-cover blurb:

Welcome to an alternate Canada, where steam technology and the wonders and horrors of the mechanical age have reshaped the past into something both wholly familiar yet compellingly different. These fifteen supercharged all-new tales reimagine Canadian historical events, explore alternate Canadas, and gather inspiration from the northern landscape to make us wonder: what if history had gone a different way?

Experience steam-powered buffalo women roaming the plains; join extraordinary men and women striking out on their own or striving to build communities; marvel as giant rampaging spirits are thwarted by a miniscule timepiece; cringe when a great clock chimes and the Seven O’Clock Man appears to terrorize a village in Quebec; witness a Maritime scientist develop a deadly weapon that could change the course of the American Civil War.

Anachronistic technologies, retro-futuristic inventions, alternative history, fantasy, horror, historical fiction, and other branches of speculative fiction all culminate in this uniquely Canadian search for identity.

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The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories: An Interview with Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-Winner Ken Liu

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories: An Interview with Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-Winner Ken Liu

ken Paper-Menagerie-his-rezKen Liu has so far been principally known for his short fiction in science fiction and fantasy, although The Grace of Kings, the first novel in his Dandelion Dynasty trilogy, has been released by Saga Press. Ken’s short fiction has been nominated for tons of awards, and he won the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. Recently, Saga Press also released his short story collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (which John O’Neill covered here, and about which BG blogger Amal El-Mohtar said “I have never been so moved by a collection of short fiction.”)

It features some of Ken’s most impressive work, although he’s written so much that he could have filled a few more collections of similar quality and size without any trouble. The collection contains: “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species,” “State Change,” “The Perfect Match,” “Good Hunting,” “The Literomancer,” “Simulacrum,” “The Regular,” “The Paper Menagerie,” “An Advanced Reader’s Picture Book of Comparative Cognition” (previously unpublished), “The Waves,” “Mono no aware,” “A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel,” “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King,” and “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary.”

I managed to catch up with him to e-talk about The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories.

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Superhero TV: Arrow

Superhero TV: Arrow

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The Arrow. I’ve been told by the ladies that he is easy on the eyes.

Over the last several weeks, a Canadian cadre of Black Gate‘s bloggers have formed an Alpha Flight of super-bloggers to right the wrongs of the world, especially where such wrongs take the form of you not knowing about every superhero TV show we can talk about.

This is going to be my last post in this huge comic event, and to cap off my contribution, I wanted to dig into the CW’s Arrow which has been running since 2012 and is into its fourth season. It has the same producers as The Flash and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (also running on CW) and CBS’ Supergirl, and they occupy the same universe (multiverse in the case of Supergirl).

Green Arrow is not a new DC property, dating back to 1941. Green Arrow was a Robin Hood-themed character cast in the same mold as Batman, so much so that he also started as a millionaire, had a kid sidekick, and an Arrow Car and an Arrow-Plane.

In fact, there wasn’t much to separate him from Batman for much of his early years, which begs the question of, if you’re looking for Batman, why not just buy a Batman comic?

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Superhero TV, Part V: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow

Superhero TV, Part V: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow

dc legendsheaderIn the finest tradition of superhero cross-overs, Black Gate is doing a blog cross-over (collect them all, including the foil cover variants!). In Part I, I talked about Supergirl.

In Part II, Marie Bilodeau waxed eloquent about The Flash. Our cross-over continued with Part III by John O’Neill talking about Gotham, which led to an exciting cliffhanger in Part IV when Violette Malan covered Agent Carter and then made a daring escape by flying off to Spain!

Some of these blog posts are sure to become collector’s items, so check them out now!

Welcome to Part V of this Black Gate blog cross-over, where I take a weird look at DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.  I say weird because I have two strong feelings about this show, and I’ll use those feelings to structure this post.

The first feeling is, I wouldn’t watch this show on my own. The second feeling is that my 11-year old son and I never miss an episode.

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Superhero TV: Watching Supergirl With a 10-Year Old

Superhero TV: Watching Supergirl With a 10-Year Old

supergirl - 1

From my point of view, Marvel has been dominating the superhero movie business. Doing my best to raise a better nerd, I’ve showed the best movies to my son (Avengers, Cap, Iron Man I and II, Ant-Man, etc). I’ve heard good things about Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter, but I’m not sure if I’d enjoy it with no superheroes. So what’s left for Papa + Boy + popcorn movie night?

I’ve been hearing great things about DC TV: Arrow, Flash and Supergirl. Arrow comes with a PG rating and my son hasn’t been desensitized to violence yet, so I parked that one and all the bullet casings used in its filming.

Then I thought: should I start with the Flash or Supergirl?

I knew he would love the Flash. That’s a no-brainer. Even talking about someone who can run faster than the speed of sound is something that gets his heart tripping. But, thought I, if he loves the Flash, what happens when I show him Supergirl? Will he feel it’s a step down?

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Space Gods: From Tin Foil Hats to Marvel’s Eternals

Space Gods: From Tin Foil Hats to Marvel’s Eternals

Eternals_Vol_1_1
Kirby’s ever-energetic and inventive art.

In 1968, around the time that 2001: A Space Odyssey was in theaters, booksellers had Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, by Erich Von Daniken. It was such a big seller that I had no trouble acquiring a second-hand copy for 25 cents in the mid-1980s, and even as a thirteen-year old, I couldn’t make it more than a few pages into its soft-headed nonsense.

Von Daniken’s thesis of course was that the pyramids, Stonehenge, the Nazca Lines, and so on were beyond the abilities of previous civilizations, and required visiting space visitors to explain their existence.

Part of Von Daniken’s “evidence” is that the artistic styles we see in previous civilizations are better explained as ancient peoples depicting the space suits of their alien visitors. Big toke time.

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