Read This: The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity
One of the neatest twists during Neil Gaiman’s run on Sandman was Lucifer’s decision, at the end of one storyline, to abandon Hell and take an extended vacation on Earth; author Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross eventually picked up that narrative thread for another DC comic, Lucifer, which ran for six years—I didn’t read the entire series, but the story arcs that I did read were quite well-done. The pair have reunited for a new series, The Unwritten, which starts off with a mundane premise—a young man whose father based the lead character in a Harry Potter-like series of fantasy novels copes with the ramifications of his fame, and not always admirably—and immediately spins it off in fantastic directions. The first five issues have now been collected as a graphic novel, Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity.
I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for a certain type of comic book, almost always published by DC’s Vertigo line, that sprinkles literary or intellectual elements into its fantasy narrative—which tend to be largely the domain of UK authors like Gaiman and Carey (see also Grant Morrison) for some reason—and The Unwritten falls squarely into this camp. Of course, you have to accept that this first volume is as concerned with establishing the foundations for a much larger narrative as it is with the individual story arc; the stand-alone story that closes out the book, which recasts the life of Rudyard Kipling in light of the magical/literary conspiracy lurking behind the Unwritten curtain, offers a glimpse at the scope of what Carey has planned. It will almost certainly be worth keeping tabs on.
10 March 2010 | uncategorized |
John Vorhaus: Do What You Love, & Don’t Leave Money on the Table
The California Roll reads like Charles Willeford skirting the edge of slapstick. It’s a rollicking yarn about a lifelong grifter who suspects that he’s now on the receiving end of a con… but, at least in the opening third I read this weekend, he still can’t resist staying in to see what’s going to happen next. Kudos to John Vorhaus for creating such an effective voice: Yes, Radar Hoverlander is an unreliable narrator, but I’m still not sure whether it’s because he might be lying to me or because he’s missing a big piece of the puzzle, and I’m sticking around until I find out which it is. In the meantime, Vorhaus has a great story to tell us about making the segue from a poker handbook franchise to sunshine noir by way of Russian sitcoms…
Half a lifetime ago, I was a recreationally professional poker player trying to subsidize my writing habit with my card habit. Given that feeding one’s habits rarely makes the best business model, that worked out about as well as you’d expect. But from the detritus of my failed poker career emerged the cottage industry of writing about poker, which endeavor at least partly subsidized my other ongoing heavy addiction of the time: beating my head against Hollywood. For years I toiled in the magazine mines, pulling down double-digit paychecks often enough to keep a tar paper roof over my head and my rattletrap Chevy Citation in o-rings and oil.
In 2003, poker got hot, like flu epidemic hot, and I parlayed my magazine cred into six poker strategy books, plus one on home poker and one on strip poker. Did I really have that much to say about poker? I wasn’t sure, but I sure wasn’t going to let the opportunity slide by, for I had no illusions. Poker was a breaking wave that likely would never break so large and shapely again. I caught that bad boy and rode it for all it was worth. We poker players (even we abortive recreational professional ones) have a saying: Never leave money lying on the table. That’s why I wrote all those poker books.
The one on strip poker, too.
Do I sound savagely avaricious? I think I sound practical. By then I’d identified the habit I was really trying to support – not poker, not writing, but just pure freedom. I’d become determined to spend my days as I saw fit, and how would that happen if I didn’t seize such opportunities as come my way?
9 March 2010 | guest authors, uncategorized |