Brian Olsen's Blog, page 6

Getting drafty

The first draft of Dakota Bell and the Wastes of Time, the fourth and final book in the series The Future Next Door, is done! It was a very satisfying feeling, typing the last line of the last chapter, but also a strange one – I’ve been living with these characters for almost three years now, it’s going to be strange to say good-bye to them.

But I’m not quite done with them yet! Finishing the first draft is just the first (big) step towards publication. There’s a second and third draft to go, then a round of edits from my wonderful beta readers, then one last edit for notes and final changes, then a couple of reads for typos and general proofing. Still, the hardest and most time-consuming (and most fun) part is done, and the book should be on its way to you…fingers crossed…sometime in May. I’ll keep you posted!

Apartment 3-G…sort of…

About eight years ago I was unemployed and consequently had a lot of time on my hands. I became obsessed with the comic strip Apartment 3-G, thanks mostly to the brilliant Comics Curmudgeon. For my old LiveJournal blog (Remember LiveJournal? We were so innocent once!) I stayed up many a night taking ten weeks worth of 3-G strips, whiting out the lettering, and creating my own ongoing saga. I thought it might be fun to show a slightly different path my writing once took me down, so here are all of those strips, plus, for all you original readers, a bonus strip at the very end that I never posted. Enjoy them now, before I get the cease and desist letter!

 

 

Alan Lennox on Pinterest

I’ve made a Pinterest board for Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom, with some pictures of the real world locations for some of the places in the book, plus the inspirations for Mark and Dakota. Check it out!

Love Doctor

Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of the holiday, I’m taking a look at that cosmic Casanova, the Lothario of space-time, the Don Juan of the vortex. For someone so often portrayed as either apart from, confused by, or simply uninterested in human romance, the Doctor sure does get a lot of play. Let’s celebrate love with the Time Lord by going backwards through the many, many, many loves of Doctor Who…

Missy kissy.

The Master

Let’s start with what is possibly the most significant relationship in the Doctor’s life – his love/hate affair with his eternal nemesis. The Master may have waited for a gender-swap regeneration to finally plant one hell of a smacker on her arch-enemy, but come on. This was building between them for a long, long time. Just take a look at that death scene in Last of the Time Lords – the Master cradled in the Doctor’s arms, the Doctor weeping, begging him to stay, promising they’ll spend eternity together, just the two of them…now that’s a love scene. (Should it worry me that I find  a scene that ends with suicide-by-spite romantic?) Producer Steven Moffat clearly considers the Master to be the Doctor’s One True Pairing – way back in 1999’s charity comedy spoof Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death he had Jonathan Pryce’s Master walk off into the sunset with Joanna Lumley’s Doctor. (But more on that story later…) It’s a fine line between love and hate, they say, and the Doctor and the Master have been straddling that line for a long, long time.

This picture also works for my Doctor Who/ER crossover fan-fic.

River Song

River, as you probably already know if you’re reading this blog, first encountered the Tenth Doctor in Silence in the Library. First from his point of view, at least; last, from hers. There’s a strong implication right from the start that their relationship is romantic: River knows the Doctor’s name, and the Doctor says there’s only one time in his life he could share that with someone – his wedding? His death? His series finale? We’re not told, but when River resurfaces in the life of the Eleventh Doctor the sparks really start to fly, and by Day of the Moon she’s tasting Time Lord tonsils. River’s obsession with the Doctor was programmed into her by the Silence, but I like to think that she shook that off and chose to love him anyway (there are far fewer troublesome ethical issues that way). She may or may not have married him in The Wedding of River Song – she technically married a robot, but he was inside it, after all. Whether that was the precise happy day or not, all signs point to River Song, at some point in their knotted timelines, becoming the Doctor’s wife. Speaking of…

She’s nine feet tall.

The TARDIS

Boys and their toys, huh? The Doctor’s relationship with his TARDIS has always been intimate, but the story The Doctor’s Wife took that to extremes. There had been intimations that the TARDIS was in some way or another sentient since all the way back in the third story ever, 1964’s The Edge of Destruction, but this story finally made it explicit. All that console-stroking pays off when the spirit of the TARDIS is sucked out of the police box and put into the body of Idris, an attractive young woman. Idris may not literally be the Doctor’s wife, but the bond between the two is stronger than any romantic relationship the Doctor could ever develop.

This is a deleted scene from “Some Like It Hot.”

Marilyn Monroe

The Doctor met Norma Jeane off-screen during the events of A Christmas Carol, and although he claimed to have only accidentally accepted her marriage proposal, he went through with it quick enough when he couldn’t drag his companions Kazran and Abigail away from their own romantic festivities. He must have gotten cold feet, though – when she called the TARDIS looking for him, he claimed the marriage was invalid. She rebounded pretty well – their quickie wedding happened in 1952, meaning she consoled herself by jumping right into the arms of Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.

Of course, if the Doctor really did marry Marilyn, that would have made him a bigamist when he got hitched to River. Or maybe a trigamist, thanks to…

Virgin-ish Queen

 Queen Elizabeth I

The Doctor has had many encounters with Queen Elizabeth I across multiple media, most of which are referred to only obliquely, without actually being shown. In The Chase, the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki spy on good Queen Bess with their new Time-Space Visualizer, as she apocryphally instructs William Shakespeare to write a play about Falstaff in love.

Huh. Shakespeare looks better in color, for some reason.

A sequential string of Doctors spend some time with the Virgin Queen, according to various licensed novels and audio plays – the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn pay her a visit, the Seventh Doctor makes her acquaintance, and the Eighth Doctor takes his companions Samson and Gemma to court. Of course, it’s likely that her marriage to the Tenth Doctor in The Day of the Doctor takes place before all these events, which makes me wonder at what point she finally figured out that all of these men calling themselves the Doctor were the same man who jilted her on her wedding day.

Little known fact – Queen Elizabeth was part Menoptera.

In a way, the Doctor’s relationship with Elizabeth is a sad reflection of his relationship with River. They meet out of order, only Elizabeth doesn’t know it. From the Doctor’s point of view their wedding hadn’t happened yet, but to her, it must have looked like he kept dropping back into her life to taunt her. No wonder she’s after his head in The Shakespeare Code. Worst ex-husband ever!

Bow ties are cool.

Joan Redfern

The Tenth Doctor’s already looking like a bit of a man-whore, and we haven’t even gotten to the biggies yet. The Doctor and Martha met Joan Redfern while hiding from the Family of Blood in Human Nature. The Doctor had wiped his own memory and turned himself human in what seems, by the end of the two-parter, to be a vast overreaction to the situation. Joan was a nurse at the school where “John Smith” was teaching, and the two fell in love. To stop the Family, John turned back into the Doctor, and Joan viewed the man she loved as having died. Of course, you either know all this, or I’ve just spoiled one of the best Doctor Who stories ever, but you know what you’re getting into when you read a list like this on the internet.

My eyes are up here, Time Lord.

Madame de Pompadour

The Doctor, Rose and Mickey met Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson aka Reinette aka Madame de Pompadour while on board a 51st Century spaceship with very user-unfriendly time-travel capabilities. The Doctor falls in love with Reinette, and while the whole thing is very romantic it’s also stone cold mean towards Rose. Seriously, am I the only one who thought that? I’ll get to Rose two entries from now, but so much of their relationship is spent dancing around the whole “I love you but I can’t love you because you’re a human and I’m a Time Lord” thing, and then he just flat out invites Reinette to move in with them. If I were Rose, I would have thrown Madam la Pomplamoose right back in his face when I was on that beach in Norway.

Dendrophilia.

Jabe Ceth Ceth Jafe

Jabe was a representative of the Forest of Cheem and a descendant of Earth’s rain forests encountered by the Ninth Doctor and Rose at The End of the World. The romance factor here is minimal – the Doctor and Jabe didn’t get beyond some light flirting before she went up in smoke (only Who can prevent forest fires, and he was busy). But their relationship, coming as it did in the second episode of the new series, was the audience’s first indication that this new Doctor might not be as asexual as many of his previous incarnations. Which was no doubt a comfort to…

Honey to the bee, that’s the Doctor for me.

Rose Tyler

Rose, of course, was the first companion of the revived series, and traveled with both the Ninth and Tenth Doctors. Rose had a profound influence on the Ninth Doctor, and his next regeneration seemed tyler-made for her (see what I did there?). Rose’s relationship with the Ninth Doctor was intense but not particularly romantic – she was still on-and-off with boyfriend Mickey, and had minor flirtations with secondary companions Adam and Jack. But her relationship with the Tenth Doctor quickly deepened into something more. The Doctor never quites admit to the full depths of his feelings for Rose, but he does give her his human clone as a lovely parting gift, which…is a happy ending…I guess? He still looks like David Tennant, so I’d probably settle for that too.

It’s not easy being non-canonical.

Emma

For all you obsessive Whovians, or those of you who aspire to be, let me be clear right off the bat – Emma doesn’t count. Emma was the companion of an alternate version of the Ninth Doctor, played by Mr. Bean’s Rowan Atkinson, in the 1999 charity comedy special Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death (told you I’d get back to this). The Doctor and Emma had fallen in love, and the Doctor was planning to retire so they could get married. After an encounter with the Master and the Daleks caused the Doctor to regenerate into Joanna Lumley, Emma broke things off, an inexplicably poor decision even by this gay man’s standards. The Curse of Fatal Death was written by Steven Moffat, whose crazy ideas about Time Lords changing gender or the Doctor getting married would certainly never be taken seriously outside of a comedy special.

Sepia becomes her.

Charlotte Pollard

Charlotte “Charley” Pollard was a companion of the Eighth Doctor in a series of original audio plays from Big Finish Productions. The Doctor saved Charley from the doomed airship R101 in the year 1931 and the two became travelling companions and the best of friends. Charley fell in love with the Doctor, and the Doctor showed signs of possibly reciprocating. They worked out their relationship issues in the excruciatingly boring story Scherzo, in which the Doctor was angry with her for following him into exile in a parallel universe because he had sacrificed his freedom for her but then he acknowledged his feelings and they almost had sex but then something happened and there was a monster that I think symbolized their potential child or something and I guess they decided to just stay friends? I couldn’t tell what was happening when I listened to it the first time, I’m certainly not putting myself through that again just for a lousy blog post. Charley is a great companion and actress India Fischer is marvelous, but her storyline is completely incomprehensible. After leaving the Eighth Doctor’s company, she winds up anachronistically travelling with the Sixth Doctor, towards whom she is, for some reason, much less romantically inclined.

Love. Her.

Professor Bernice Summerfield

Benny Summerfield is Doctor Who’s original time-travelling archaeologist. She first appeared in the novel Love and War where she replaced Ace as the Seventh Doctor’s companion. After Virgin Publishing lost the rights to Doctor Who, they continued the range with original adventures devoted to Benny. Big Finish Productions began producing original audio plays with Benny stories before gaining the rights to Who, and they continue to produce stand-alone Bernice Summerfield adventures as well as the occasional Doctor Who crossover, all starring Lisa Bowerman as the Professor. Benny is a fantastic character, and Lisa Bowerman is brilliant, and she deserves multiple blog posts all her own. She’s in this one due to the novel The Dying Days. She had parted ways with the Seventh Doctor some time back, but he showed up on her doorstep shortly after regenerating into the Eighth. As he’s saying good-bye after a shared adventure with the Ice Warriors, she grabs him, throws him onto her bed, and, well…the Doctor dances. The scene ends discretely, of course, but it’s still the first depiction of the Doctor having sex. (Well, the first officially licensed by the BBC. Your Fifth Doctor/Turlough fan-fiction doesn’t count.) It’s a little odd, given their close but completely platonic friendship up to that point, but I suppose if my good friend Sylvester McCoy suddenly changed into my new friend Paul McGann, I’d be tempted too.

True love shouldn’t bruise your arms.

Doctor Grace Holloway

Nowadays, the Doctor is pretty much expected to kiss all his companions at some point – I’m surprised Mickey got away without a lip-lock. But back in 1996, when the newly regenerated Eighth Doctor planted one on his new friend Doctor Grace Holloway in the made-for-TV movie Doctor Who, fandom was outraged in a way that only fandoms can be. It’s fairly tame by the new show’s standards – he first kisses her impulsively in a moment of happiness. She later makes her feelings for him explicit, shouting the excruciatingly awful line, “I finally meet the right guy and he’s from another planet,” in response to absolutely nothing while riding on the back of a motorcycle, possibly just because the writers thought it would sound good in a commercial but probably just because this movie is terrible. They share a more romantic kiss in the final moments of the film, when he invites her to travel with him in the TARDIS and she declines for no reason whatsoever. This is another example of Grace’s motivations being unclear to me. If the Doctor showed up on my door in one of his better-looking bodies and was all, “Would you like to travel with me in my TARDIS and have adventures and also crazy space sex?”, my response would not be, “Nah, I’m good. I’ve gotta work in the morning.” I doubt yours would be either. Although actor Daphne Ashbrook has since gone on to play (quite wonderfully) a different recurring character in the Big Finish audios, rights issues have kept Grace from appearing anywhere but a couple of comic strip appearances in Doctor Who Magazine. I’m all right with that.

Madeline?

 The Second Romana

The real romance here was an off-screen one. Tom Baker, who played the Fourth Doctor, and Lalla Ward, who played the Second Romana, were married shortly after she left the show, and legend has it that the romance bloomed while the two were on location in Paris filming City of Death. Whether that romance bled into their characters’ relationship is open for debate…

She’s now married to scientist Richard Dawkins, who I’m sure loves this episode.

… but the two do spend an awful lot of the story skipping through the streets of Paris holding hands for no discernible reason.

Don’t even try it. She would tear your soul in half.

The First Romana

Whether you think there was anything going on between Romana’s first incarnation and the Doctor rather depends on whether you consider this little Christmas sketch, filmed as part of an in-house Christmas present for BBC staff, canonical or not…

I like to think so.

Does this hat make my head look small?

Iris Wildthyme

Iris Wildthyme is an eccentric Time Lady whose TARDIS is smaller on the inside than it is on the outside. Her origins are shrouded in mystery – even to herself – but in most of her recent appearances she hails from a planet in a parallel universe which may or may not be a version of Gallifrey depending on whether the Doctor has been licensed from the BBC for use in that particular adventure or not. The Doctor tends to find her infuriating although he will reluctantly admit to a fondness for her; she claims that he’s madly in love with her, and occasionally hints at a prior torrid affair. Iris has appeared in various spin-off novels and audio plays, although her first encounter with the Doctor is unrecorded. The earliest Doctor we’ve seen her with is the Third; the fact that her current incarnation (the Sixth Iris, as it were) is played by Katy Manning, the same actress who played his companion Jo Grant, lends a whole new metatextual level to Jo’s goodbye scene that I’d rather not think about.

You in the back, mind your own business.

Cameca

In the first season story The Aztecs, the First Doctor, Barbara, Ian and Susan arrive in 15th Century Mexico. After Barbara is mistaken for a goddess (long story — long, brilliant story), the Doctor is taken to the Garden of Peace, where he meets Cameca, an elderly Aztec widow. The pair are instantly taken with each other. Seriously, look at his face as he watches her walk away.

He’s giving thanks to the Aztec god Quetzlbadonkadonk.

He is admiring himself some fine Aztec booty. The Doctor inadvertently proposes to Cameca (he misunderstood a local ritual), and although he’s a bit thrown by how quickly things have gotten serious, there’s a suggestion that his unease is more because he knows he can’t stay with her than that he’s actually disturbed by the prospect of marrying her. Cameca helps her beloved escape into the tomb in which the TARDIS has been sealed, even though she knows it means saying goodbye.

That bastard’s got a girl in every segment of time.

She says farewell, giving him a brooch to remember him by. He’s not happy about the situation – here he is after she departs.

I never even had time to tap that Aztec.

Romana subtext aside, this is the only real on-screen romance for the Doctor in the classic series, and William Hartnell makes the most of it. He shows genuine feelings for Cameca, but knows that a relationship is impossible. If he didn’t have a granddaughter and two humans to cart around, I suspect he would have been quite content to spend the rest of Cameca’s life with her before resuming his wanderings. I wonder if the Eleventh Doctor still has that brooch?

Cameca was the first on-screen romance for the Doctor – but she’s not the last entry in this list.

There are no pictures of Patience, but isn’t this pretty?

Patience

We know the Doctor had a family. The very first episode introduced his granddaughter Susan; the Second Doctor mentioned a family, long lost, to Victoria; and the modern series has had him mention being a father and a husband (in tones somewhat too serious to suggest he’s talking about any of the ladies above). So the question has always remained – who was the Doctor’s first wife? Who was the mother of his children? Who was Susan’s grandmother?

The TV series has never answered this question, but the licensed original novels have. Sort of. Pay attention, this gets complicated. Way back in the ancient days of Gallifrey, there was a ruling triumvirate of legendary Time Lords – Rassilon (played most recently by Timothy Dalton), Omega (from The Three Doctors) and the Other (don’t bother, he’s never mentioned on the TV show).

The Time Lords were cursed by the sisterhood of witches known as the Pythia to be forever barren – no more children would be born to them. Rassilon invented “Looms,” great machines which would weave fully grown Time Lords from genetic material, as a way to perpetuate the species. All Time Lords since then were born from these Looms with the bodies of adults but the minds of children – the Doctor, the Master, Romana, everybody.

When the Doctor first stole his TARDIS and fled from Gallifrey, he had no family in the conventional sense – no wife, no children, no grandchildren, just a House of cousins woven from the same Loom. His first trip in his new ship took him to Gallifrey’s ancient past – something expressly forbidden by the Time Lords’ laws. He landed in a time of great civil unrest, and rescued a young girl named Susan. Susan was the last child born on Gallifrey, and, although they had never met, she insisted that the Doctor was her grandfather. He didn’t understand why, but sensed a connection between them, and fled with her in his stolen TARDIS.

A couple of regenerations later, in the novel Cold Fusion, the Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric encountered an injured Time Lady in an ancient TARDIS. Not knowing her name, they called her Patience. Turns out Patience was the wife of the Other and the grandmother of Susan. In this and other novels, we gradually learn that the Other, in order to escape the persecution of Rassilon’s reign, hurled himself into a Loom, where he was ripped apart, his genetic material eventually being reconstituted as the Doctor. Patience recognized her husband, just as Susan had recognized her grandfather so long ago, even if he had no memory of his prior life.

Or…maybe not. The tie-in novels written in the time between the classic and new series are confusing, to say the least. The writers were trying to bring a sense of mystery back to the Doctor’s origins, so everything was ambiguous, nothing was stated conclusively. The account of Patient’s origin I’ve given here is the most common interpretation, but by no means the only one. And, of course, the new series has contradicted most of this story – we’ve seen plenty of Time Tots, including a young Master and (maybe?) the boy Doctor. We’ve also now witnessed, in a scene that had this fanboy jumping up and down for joy, the First Doctor’s first flight in his stolen TARDIS, and Susan was most definitely there by his side. No Looms, no Other, and probably no Patience.

So the Doctor’s first love remains a mystery, but our favorite Gallifreyan heartbreaker has had no shortage of potential partners since then. Happy Valentine’s Day, and may both your hearts be filled with love! Sexy, sexy Time Lord love!

The Doctor Who Scavenger Hunt!

I’m a massive fan of the long-running British science fiction show Doctor Who, and if you are as well, then you might have caught some Whovian Easter eggs I’ve slipped into my stories. I did this for my own amusement, but I thought it might be fun to turn it into a contest. Who doesn’t love a contest?

Here’s how it works. In (almost) all of my books, there’s one character who shares a name with a character from Doctor Who. In Doctor Who, the character appears in one and only one story. (Story, not episode – they may appear throughout a multi-episode story.) In my books, the character is referred to by full name, first and last, but does not actually appear on-page.

To win, simply name the character, the book, and the Doctor Who story they appear in. If you’re the first to get it, I’ll immortalize you on the contest’s permanent page forever and send you a copy of any book you like, in any format you like (any type of e-book, or paperback). It doesn’t have to be one that’s out yet – if you’d like to wait for an upcoming release, I’ll send it to you as soon as it’s published.

The best part of this contest is, like Doctor Who, it’s never ending! Or at least, it won’t end until I stop writing. I’ll keep putting these names in my books, and you can keep looking for them!

As of now, the books you can search are Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom and Caitlin Ross and the Commute from Hell. Dakota Bell and the Wastes of Time will also be eligible, once it’s released.

There are two books of mine that don’t have a Who character – This Is What He Should Have Said, and Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny. This Is What is a bit too short to get one in there smoothly, and Mark Park had a character who wound up getting cut from the book before release. So to make up for this glaring omission, I’ll add in a BONUS question! In Caitlin Ross, there’s a character who doesn’t quite fit the rules of this contest. He or she is mentioned without ever being seen, but we don’t get his or her first name, and the matching Doctor Who character appeared in more than one story. This character does appear in Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny, where we learn his or her first name – which does not match the Who character’s. Name this character, the not-quite-matching Who character, and any of the Who stories that character appeared in to win!

You can email me your answers at brianolsenbooks@gmail.com, or send them to me through my Contact page. Happy hunting!

My Ding-A-Lings

I’m a comic book fan. A big comic book fan. A life-long comic book fan. Richie Rich, Archie and the Justice League taught me to read. I think it’s safe to say that my writing – no, scratch that. I think it’s safe to say that my world view has been significantly shaped by comics.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to get all serious. I just want to establish my deep love of the medium before I start making fun of it.

If you read comics in the seventies or eighties, you may remember that the most powerful weapon heroes had at their disposal was not their great strength, their nifty gadgets, or even their pure hearts. It was their supply of Hostess snack products. A series of advertisements running in just about every title featured DC and Marvel superheroes using Twinkies, Cupcakes and Fruit Pies to defeat their nemeses. These one-page comics were written and drawn by the regular artists of the main series, so to a kid like me, there wasn’t much difference between Superman beating Lex Luthor with a punch or with a processed chemical snack. It was all canon. Batman has Twinkies in his utility belt? Sure! Why wouldn’t he? I sure would, if I had one.

Some of the bad guys in these strips were the normal arch-villains the heroes would face in their own comics every month, but some were original to the advertisements. Let’s take a look at one such match and relive the glory days of comic/snack synergy with this gem, which probably ran in a bunch of comics but which I found in The Invaders #25, cover dated February, 1978. (These Hostess ads were uncredited – some sources I’ve found give the writer as Marv Wolfman and the penciller as either John Buscema, Sal Buscema, or Bob Brown.)

Thor in “The Ding-A-Ling Family”

I thought Ding-A-Lings were a Drake’s product…

Don’t hurt your eyes by trying to read that – an excruciatingly detailed panel-by-panel analysis follows…

Yeeeeeeee-haw!

Damn, those are some brave hillbillies. They’re not just taking on Thor, they’re ready to take on all the gods of Asgard. They’re pretty hard to faze, too – they’ve arrived there “by some mysterious quirk of space and time warp” (whatever the hell that means), so presumably they did not expect to suddenly find their trailer floating in a cosmic void next to a viking ship filled with gods. (I’m surprised their trailer is space-worthy, being made of plywood and tinker toys.) But rather than huddling in a corner, weeping and soiling themselves, they hurl themselves out into the vacuum of space, ready to take on all comers. (Or maybe they did soil themselves – I have no idea what that glowing brown blob floating between the ship and the trailer is. Did the Asgardians just empty their divine privy? Is god poop radioactive?)

In case you need a scorecard, Thor’s the hot blond (just like in the movies). The woman is Sif, his occasional girlfriend. The guy with the beard is Volstagg, although whoever miscolored his beard seems to think he’s Odin. Volstagg isn’t a real Norse god, by the way. Well, none of them are real, but he’s even less real because he doesn’t come from mythology, Marvel Comics made him up. He’s fat – that’s pretty much his whole shtick – so I guess he’s the go-to Warrior Three if you’re booking a Hostess ad. I’m not sure who the guy with the hat is – at first I thought it was Heimdall, but Heimdall’s hat is pointier. So some generic Norse god. He was probably pretty excited to be given a line in this story, even if it lacks the dramatic oomph of the other gods’ dialogue. “…and then some.” I guess it’s slightly better than “Yeah!” or “Ditto!” or “You go, Volstagg!”

I’m not entirely sure why the gods are flying a wooden viking ship in “Thor’s Asgardian orbit.” I’m not entirely sure where “Thor’s Asgardian orbit” is, for that matter, but wherever they are, I think it’s safe to say they did not expect to be attacked by the cast of “Hee-Haw.”

Good night, John-Boy.

And the redneck stereotypes keep on coming, by cracky. Grandma Ding-A-Ling, who I think might actually be Spider-Man’s Aunt May on vacation with her secret second family, seems to be the brains of the outfit – presumably less inbreeding in the older generations. Besides her we’ve got Pa, Ma, Auntie, Sister, Brother, and Cousins Bee and Bye – so who’s the guy with the gun? Uncle? Grandpa? Uncle Grandpa? I guess when you’ve got an atomic shotgun (available now at Wal-Mart), you can be whoever the hell you want. And since we’re indulging every cliche short of dueling banjos, I suppose he could be referring to the same person more than once… He might want to get a better bead with that shotgun, though, because right now he’s lining up Sister for a faceful of atomic buckshot.

In any event, if a family like that is holding you down and they plan to “hornswaggle” you, things are looking bad. Squeeeeeeeeeeal like a pig, Thor!

Eat hammer, bitch!

It would appear that Thor has just smashed Sister Ding-A-Ling in the face with his hammer. Verily, Thor dost not fucketh around.

Bee and Bye Ding-A-Ling have a “cousin-power secret weapon.” If it’s the power to cling to muscular blonds with big hammers, then I have that power too.

Get it? Bye and bye? Bee and Bye? See what I did there?

Luckily Sif also has a secret weapon – her ears, and she heard Bee and Bye describe exactly how to beat them. So…the Norse gods keep Hostess Fruit Pies in stock on their magic space viking ship? Okay, if I can buy the atomic shotgun, I guess I can buy that. But why did Sif take the time to unwrap all the Fruit Pies and arrange them neatly on a tray? This isn’t Top Chef, there are no points for presentation.

Does Bye pronounce the little “restricted trademark” symbol? Bee and Bye call each other “cousin,” even though they seem to be identical twins. Ah, well – it’s not like the gods can throw stones about the whole inbreeding thing.

The fruit pies aren’t the only things making my mouth water, Bee baby.

Aunt May is PISSED! Volstagg and Sif are so excited, they speak in unison. And is it me, or are Bee and Bye kind of hot in this panel? Look at those arms! (Oh…it’s just me?)

So a happy ending for everybody. Except for all the Ding-A-Lings Thor killed with his hammer two panels ago. And the generic god from the beginning, who I guess was ding-a-linged off-panel.

And that was the last anyone heard of the Ding-A-Ling Family…until now! Yes, the Ding-A-Lings made their triumphant, unequivocally canonical return in the pages of Dan Slott’s and Mike Allred’s Silver Surfer #7 (November 2014). Dare we look? We so dare!

You have no idea how excited I was when I saw this.

The Surfer is exploring the universe with his human companion Dawn Greenwood. That’s her in the ladybug print dress, about to get forcibly hitched to Pa. The Ding-A-Lings have upgraded their trailer over the past few decades, and now it’s a proper space-worthy vehicle, cracked windows notwithstanding. And…oh my goodness…be still my heart. Bee and Bye have two more cousins just like them. And one of them is blond! Look at the size of their feet! I…I need to sit down… Just read it yourself until I catch my breath.

Atomic shotgun wedding. Brilliant.

Mm. Yeah. Right there. Work those silver pecs.

The moonshine! No, wait, the fruit pies.

Is a potato a fruit?

Yes, a Marvel superhero just won a fight by throwing fruit pies at his opponent. Thank you, Slott and Allred.

Y’ALL SHALL NOT PASS!

So is Ma dead? Did Thor kill her?

I don’t need a ring if one of those cousins is available. I’m just saying.

Big, rich, and stupid. Are any of these guys on OkCupid?

And there ends the saga of the Ding-A-Ling Family. For now. (Probably forever.) (If you’re not reading Silver Surfer, by the way, you should be. It’s brilliant.)

Stars of mainstream continuity they may now be, but let us never forget this family’s humble beginnings. Take us out, Odin.

I made this.

 

Blasts from the past

I’ve been reading through my old Livejournal and Blogger blogs, archiving them to my desktop in case they someday go away forever (beware the perils of not owning the site that hosts your content!). A lot of my posts are just me making fun of various old comics, but some of them I think are worthy of keeping alive. So, I’ll probably be re-posting some old stuff. They’ll all be new to this blog, but if you’ve been following me for a while some of my upcoming posts may look kind of familiar. I’ll put a nice new spit ‘n’ polish on them, though, just for you! Stay tuned…

Web site redesign

I’ve spruced up the joint! I’ve completely redone the website for 2015, ditching that old, generic WordPress theme that made it look identical to a million other websites. In addition to the cosmetic changes (pretty!), I’ve completely revamped the Books pages, with much more information, downloadable sample chapters and easier purchase links, I’ve cleaned up the Newsletter, About the Author, and Contact pages, made the Sidebar and Menu easier to navigate, and even added a Works in Progress page, where you can keep tabs on what’s coming your way in the months to come.

I think it looks pretty great – what do you think? There’s always room for improvement, and I’d love any feedback you might have to offer.

Happy New Year!

Ten Thoughts on So Dear to My Heart

So Dear to My Heart (1949) is the fourteenth feature film from the Disney studios, and, like Song of the South, it’s a mixture of live-action and animation. The animation only makes up a small portion of the film, though – early drafts had no animation at all, and the cartoon segments were added mainly due to a requirement in Disney’s distribution deal with RKO. But enough background – what did I think?

Hey, Burl Ives is in this, yay! Oh, goddamn it, so are those irritating kids from Song of the South. Jeez Louise, Walt, weren’t there any other child actors you could get on the cheap? I appreciate loyalty, but come on. This is the third picture for Bobby Driscoll and the fourth in a row for Luana Patten. She’s not that cute.
Welcome to Fulton Corners, Indiana, in the year 1903. Well, that may be the precise setting of the film, but really we’re in Disney-fied Americana. Main Street, USA, at the turn of the century. A general store, horse-drawn wagons, lots of open space for kids to play in, and the train’s arrival at the tiny depot the biggest source of excitement for miles. This is the first real appearance of Walt Disney’s idealized old-time America in a feature, but get used to it – you’ll be seeing it again and again.
Dan Patch, the famous racehorse (or a reasonable facsimile) stops briefly in our little town, led off the train to stretch his legs. This inspires our hero, Jeremiah Kinkaid, known as Jerry and played by that awful Song of the South boy I wished so much ill upon, to one day own a champion racehorse of his own. Good luck, kid! We also meet Tildy, played by the so-adorable-you-want-to-punch-her Luana Patten. Tildy is Jerry’s friend – or maybe his cousin? I’m never clear on this. Our other two main characters are Jerry’s Uncle Hiram, played by Burl Ives (in his first major film role), and Jerry’s Granny, played by Beulah Bondi (who I am unfamiliar with, but who is amazing). Tildy hangs out with this crew all day and night, but she doesn’t seem to be related to them.  Unless she is? She mentions parents, but we never see them. She refers to Hiram as “Uncle” but Granny is explicitly not her grandmother. But Hiram also calls Granny “Granny” so maybe “Uncle” and “Granny” are nicknames as well as relationship indicators? It’s all very confusing. Disney movies always seem to have some little inconsequential plot point like this that I spend way too much time thinking about. Details matter, people!
Finally we get to the meat of the movie (so to speak). Granny’s sheep give birth, and one of them, a black lamb, is rejected by its mother. Jerry takes the lamb as a pet, despite Granny’s objections, and his dreams of owning a champion racehorse are replaced with dreams of his little lamb, whom he names Danny, becoming a champion instead. I know there’s no racial message intended here, but there’s something about the black lamb, particularly Granny’s warnings – “I know the nature of them black sheep, especially a ram. He’ll be into everything.” – that makes me uncomfortable. Casting Song of the South boy doesn’t help.
The incidental music in this film is a little heavy-handed. Every single line is underscored, the slightest motion is accompanied by a dramatic chord. “Jeremiah!” (Duh-duh-duh!) His head whips around! (Dum-dummmmm!) Granny scowls! (Bum-bum-ba-bum!) Close-up on the lamb! (Tweetle-dee-dee!) Jimmy smiles! (Doot-doo-do-doo!) Granny softens! (La-la-la-laaaaa!) STOP TELLING ME HOW TO FEEL!
The animation sequences are gorgeous, but they’re sort of shoved into this movie – they’re meant to be springing from Jerry’s imagination, and they mostly consist of advice for animated Danny the Lamb from a Wise Old Owl, who comes from a series of postcards Jerry has in his scrapbook. (Oh, let me interject to say that Jerry is really, really good at scrapbooking. His scrapbook is to die for, even before it comes to life as a cartoon. If this were set in the present he would be majorly internet-famous on Pinterest.) The songs are a lot of fun, particularly “Stick-To-It-Ivity,” which features an animated Robert the Bruce getting advice from an animated spider which inspires Robert to get off his lazy ass and go and slaughter some more Brits. My pride in my heritage might have caused me to find the spider’s cliched Scottish appearance and dialect offensive if it hadn’t looked so cute when it did the Highland Fling.
Most of the movie consists of Danny the Black Sheep getting into exactly the kind of trouble Granny predicted, and Jeremiah apologizing for it. Danny destroys Granny’s living room, Granny’s yard, Granny’s screen  door, Granny’s rocking chair, plus the town general store for good measure. Granny shows remarkable restraint in not serving up a plate of her famous Black Lamp Chops. I keep going back and forth as to whose side I’m on, but ultimately I decide that the lamb is pure evil and his destruction is completely on purpose, so I’m on his side.
Jerry and Tildy go to the swamp to look for bees – long story – and they find a complete cow skeleton, stripped to the bone. An entire cow skeleton, just lying there on the ground. Tildy is freaked out, since she’s been warned again and again about how dangerous the swamp is and also WHAT THE HELL LIVES IN AN INDIANA SWAMP THAT CAN SKELETONIZE A COW but Jerry is all, “Whatever. I’m following a bee. You can come or not.” I wish I could say it’s bad-ass, but coming from Jerry it just reads as slack-jawed vapidity. “Huh, yeah, a cow skeleton, that’s OH LOOK ANOTHER BEE!”
Little Jerry’s an asshole, by the way. He’ll be all doe-eyed one minute to get his way, but he’ll tear your fucking head off if you come between him and his lamb. Tildy goes to feed Danny, who escapes and disappears into the swamp. Jerry rips Tildy apart for feeding him, chews Granny a new one for not keeping better watch, and then denounces God for taking his lamb away. It’s…kind of awesome. My liking of this kid is growing faster than Annette Funicello’s sweater size. (That’s a Mickey Mouse Club joke. Look it up, kids.) Granny – and the narrative of the film – aren’t down with the blasphemy, and she gives him a severe spiritual smack-down. Jerry relents, promising God that if He returns Danny, Jerry will abandon his dreams of winning a blue ribbon at the County Fair. (That’s been the main plot of the movie this whole time. Sorry I haven’t mentioned it before.) Granny is touched by this, and when Danny is found, she tells Jerry that she promised God that if Danny was found, they would go to the Fair, and since she’s older she’s the one who has to keep her promise. As an atheist, I don’t really get the whole religion thing, but that seems like a dubious doctrinal lesson for a parental guardian to impart. It’s okay to break your promise to God, as long as it was a really, really cute promise.
They go to the fair, and Danny doesn’t win the blue ribbon. I’m really hoping he’ll go on a rampage and raze the whole ring to the ground while Jerry screams and cries and blames everyone else for his problems (and really, their behavior throughout the entire movie thus far suggest that’s exactly what should happen), but alas. They take their loss with dignity, and the judges give him a special award, a big pink ribbon. It feels a little “Everybody Gets a Medal Day” to me, but the movie seems to think it’s a happy ending, so who am I to argue? All in all, So Dear to My Heart is basically a harmless bit of fluff. It’s a shame the animated sequences haven’t been lifted out and shown separately, as they’re the best bits of the movie, but there are worse ways to pass an hour and fifteen minutes. If you’re curious about the genesis of whitewashed Disney America, this is a reasonably inoffensive place to start.

What Am I Reading?

I am drowning in books. I’ve usually got two or three going at once, and my “to read” pile covers my entire dresser and takes up a good amount of space on my Kindle app. I’m going to use my blog like my own mini-Goodreads from time to time and post some thoughts on the books in my library. Here’s what I’m reading now, what I’ve recently read, and what’s up next. I’ll limit each to three, or this would be endless.

So what are you reading?

Reading Now

The Indie Author Power Pack: How to Write, Publish & Market Your Book

by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant, David Gaughran, and Joanna Penn

A bundle of three of the top self-publishing how-to guides: Write. Publish. Repeat., Let’s Get Digital, and How to Market a Book.  I snatched these up when they were collected and put on sale. I’m only a little ways into the first of the three, but I’m already learning a ton. I listened to an interview with Joanna Penn today and I’m particularly eager to get to her book.

Sky Pirates! (Doctor Who: The New Adventures #40)

by Dave Stone

A series of Doctor Who paperbacks from the 90s that picked up where the original series left off. I  mostly never got around to reading these first time around, although this is one of the few I did. I’ve been working my way through the series, and am about two pages in to a re-read of this one. I remember being vaguely confused by it, but maybe it’ll work better for me now that I’m more familiar with the new companions.

Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #38: The Year of the Doctor

An in-depth look at the production of the various Doctor Who fiftieth anniversary programs. What? I like Doctor Who. A lot. This is the kind of thing you can read in short bursts, so it’s my current bathroom reading.

Recently Read

Orbs

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

I met Smith at New York Comic Con in October – well, by met I mean I saw him on a panel and then waylaid him on his way to his signing session. He was the only panelist who had started as a self-published author, and I wanted to thank him for his great advice. He was very nice and very encouraging, so I immediately decided to check out his book. I’m so glad I did. Really fun, really strong end-of-the-world sci-fi. If that’s your thing – and it’s definitely mine – check it out.

Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

by Anton Chekhov

All right, I didn’t read the whole thing. I’m directing a reading of an adaptation of his novella “An Anonymous Story,” called Story of an Unknown Man. Being the good and conscientious director I am, I needed to read the source material. I was already a Chekhov fan, so I expected to enjoy it, and I did. I’m glad I had the excuse to pick it up.

Redshirts

by John Scalzi

I picked this up on a whim at Comic Con. It takes place on a familiar starship (almost, but not quite, the Enterprise), and tells the story of a group of lower-level officers who begin to realize the horrible fates that inevitably befall any of their crewmates who are unlucky enough to be selected for an away mission with the bridge crew. It’s hilarious and the central conceit of the book goes a lot deeper than you’d think. A must-read if you’re a Star Trek fan.

In the Queue

The Martian

by Andy Weir

A recommendation (and gift) from my brother. I don’t know much about it – a guy gets stranded on Mars – but I’m looking forward to checking it out.

The Dark of Twilight (Twilight Shifters #1)

by Kate Danley

Kate Danley’s new book! Kate’s a dear friend, I read everything she puts out and I’m never disappointed. Sexy werewolves! Who doesn’t like sexy werewolves?

Yes Please

by Amy Poehler

At Book Con this year (not Comic Con – a different Con), I got to see Amy Poehler interview Martin Short. It was just as great as it sounds. I probably would have gotten this book anyway, because I love Amy Poehler, but that interview put this on my radar.