Scott Pearson's Blog, page 5

My Big Fat Copyright Infringement Adventure

Last August I got an email from a major textbook publisher asking for permission to reprint my story "The Mailbox" in a college textbook. This was a small, custom textbook, one of those things where the professor picks an anthology-worth of stories for a class and gets a short print run.

Of course I was happy. Other authors in the anthology included Percy Shelley and T.S. Eliot. Holy crap, I was mixed right in with the big guns. Cool. And "The Mailbox" is a special story for me. It was my first pro sale way back in 1987, when it was picked as a Tamarack Award story in Minnesota Monthly magazine. In recent years, the annual award goes to a single story along with $10,000. Back in my day, there were several winners, and we got $500 each. That $500 helped me buy my first word processor.

I couldn't afford a full-blown computer, so I got an Smith-Corona word processor, an electronic typewriter that plugged into a monitor and external hard drive. It had a monochrome green screen and a 3.5 inch floppy drive. The typewriter could be used on its own, like a regular typewriter, but when plugged into the hard drive and monitor it functioned like a word processor, with your typing appearing on the screen. When you printed from the hard drive, the typewriter served as the printer, so you had to feed each page in manually. It was an ungainly thing and kind of buggy, but it still made me feel like a real writer to invest in new-fangled word-processing technology. But I digress.

The permissions form had a couple things to check off: there was one place where you could check "gratis" and another for "fee." I thought, "Well, of course I'm going to try for a fee." I asked my boss at the day job, who'd worked in the textbook market in the past, what a per-story budget might be for something like this. He thought $300 to $500, so I figured, "What the hell," and wrote in $500. They accepted!

But I was wondering how the heck the professor came across my twenty-five-year-old story published in a magazine. I contacted the professor, who explained someone had brought it in when they were putting together the first edition of the anthology in the late eighties. Oh, that explains, wait, what now? First edition? Turns out "The Mailbox" had been in this anthology almost since it had first appeared in the magazine. Without my knowledge. That first edition had been published by a different textbook company, and then there was a second edition by the same publisher that was now organizing the third edition. The professor was apologetic, but wasn't to blame; the whole reason the college went to the textbook company in the first place was so that the company would handle permissions.

On the one hand, cool, college students have been reading my story and discussing it for nearly twenty-five years. On the other hand, this had been done in violation of my copyright, which had remained with me, not the magazine. Through the freelancer who had originally contacted me, I got in touch with the publisher's in-house rights guy and explained I had no recollection of granting reprint permissions previously and asked for him to check his records. I also tried contacting the first edition publisher, but they never responded. The current guy turned out to be an upstanding fellow. He got back to me and apologized, owning up to the fact that when they did the second edition they contacted Minnesota Monthly, and after the magazine informed the publisher that I held the copyright and that they had no current contact info, the publisher went ahead and included my story anyway.

Acknowledging that was bad judgment on their part, he said I should obviously be compensated for the second edition, and he offered me $500 for that. I replied that that would have been a nice offer up front, but after the fact it didn't really take care of business. During the course of our emails he had mentioned they had sold about 1,200 copies of the second edition. So I said how about you pay me $500 for the rights plus a token $1 penalty for each book sold. That would then be $1,700 for the second edition and $500 for the third edition. He countered rounding down to an even $2,000 for both. "Done," I said.

So, for a twenty-five-year-old story, and without paying any lawyer fees, I negotiated myself a $2,000 paycheck. I'm quite happy with that, and I'm not pursuing the first edition publisher any more, because it's not really worth my time. The odds of getting anything out of them is slim, and how much could I possibly get, anyway? My boss told me I'd outdone myself on getting as much as I did, and I think he's right. Now I'm waiting for my copy of the textbook, which I also requested. That'll be nice on the bookshelf.

Lucky 2013: A Resolution for Writing

I generally don't do resolutions. Mostly because my success rate would be, let's be honest, fairly low, and then it becomes something to feel guilty about and what a way to start out a new year, with a feeling of failure. With that in mind, I'm reluctant to label any newly turned over leaves as resolutions. But so far this year there are a couple things going on that I'm feeling good about.

One is that I haven't purchased a pint of Ben & Jerry's yet in 2013. Now, I'm not a monk over here, I've had some ice cream now and then, but I'm not guzzling down those pints of sugar-fat goodness like I used to. Does it count as exercise when you swiftly turn your head away from the Ben & Jerry's freezer in the grocery store? I think so. Just like pumpkin muffins count as a vegetable serving. Again, not a monk.

More importantly, I'm really going at the writing this year. I've got three chapters and a synopsis done for a steampunkish novel, something that's been simmering on the back burner for years. I plan on starting to write the thing after I get some feedback from beta readers. I'm hoping to pursue this as a traditional publishing project, depending on which way the wind blows.

I finished it after I sent in my story for the forthcoming ReDeus: Beyond Borders anthology, due out in late May. Next up I will be writing another ReDeus story for ReDeus: Native Lands, due in early August of this year. The idea, as introduced in the first anthology, ReDeus: Divine Tales, is that all the ancient gods, like Zeus and such, have returned to the world and demanded worship from the descendents of their historic followers. This changes the world quite a lot, and it is in that shared world, at various points in the near future, that the stories take place.

In my story "The Tale of the Nouveau Templar" in the first anthology, I introduced Etienne Joubert, a knight of the Templar Order from 1310 who was miraculously returned to life in the ReDeus world of 2018. The story was set in the year 2026, after Joubert had settled into his new life. In the second anthology, my story "A Medieval Knight in Vatican City" returns to 2018 to tell the full story of what happened when Joubert returned to Earth. Let's just say that when he talked about it in "The Tale of the Nouveau Templar," he left a lot out. For the third anthology, I plan to give a little more screen time, as it were, to his valet, Wilkins, and his sidekick, Tony, back in 2026 or so in Manhattan.

The ReDeus books are small indie press projects, residing in the print-on-demand and e-book world. I've also got some irons in the fire for more e-book publishing this year, more news on those as they develop. I'm trying to pursue various projects across the spectrum from self-publishing to indie press to traditional, both e-book and in print. Diversifying, if you will, in this strange new world of publishing.

In addition to the above, my story "On My Side" will be in the Hadley Rille anthology A Quiet Shelter There sometime this year, and I hope to enter new stories in a couple other open-call anthologies, if my schedule allows. And so far, I've got a nice schedule, and I hope I can just keep this momentum going. I'm also planning on blogging more this year, although that's gotten off to a slow start. As I continue to develop better writing habits, however, I should also have more to talk about.

For example, I often wish I could afford to go to more conventions like the fab Shore Leave at which I've been a writer guest for several years. Then it hit me that there a number of nice local conventions that I've never gone to simply because I'm a bit of a homebody. So I took a look at CONvergence, sent them my CV, and, boom!, I'm now a guest. I'm looking forward to meeting fans and guests alike.

Quick sidenote before I sign off: the podcast I do with my daughter, Generations Geek, is now up to six episodes, the last two featuring our epic interview of our first ever guest, Star Trek and Doctor Who novelist Una McCormack. Our next episode will feature our reviews of King Kong 1933, 1976, and 2005, all three of which we watched or rewatched in a single weekend to prepare for the show. After that we will have very special guest Thomas D. Jones, astronaut, scientist, and Star Trek fan. Be sure to check out our shows on the Chronic Rift Network or on iTunes, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Just search for Generations Geek.

Okay, plugging done, time to watch one of my stories. Geek out.

 

After finally watching Caprica . . . Meh

In honor of finally posting a new blog long after I should have, I'm blogging about a show I finally watched long after I should have. For my nongeek readers, I'll explain that Caprica (2009–2010) was the prequel series to the rebooted Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009). I loved much of BSG, particularly since I accepted early on that the finale would not be satisfying. There's no satisfying way to end BSG, because the premise inherited from the original show in the seventies—that there's some connection between these far-flung colonies and ancient Earth mythology—is a nonsensical muddle, a hole out of which one cannot climb with dignity or clean pants. The new show put a couple spins on it and tried to move the inverted cups around fast enough that you wouldn't notice under which one the nonsense was hidden, but in the end it's still a big cluster of "What the huh?"

Anyway, I didn't get around to watching the new BSG until years after it was broadcast, so by the time the last DVD had spun down I already knew Caprica had come and gone in a season, so I didn't rush out to watch it. Over the last couple weeks I finally zipped through all nineteen episodes courtesy of the Netflix. I had avoided almost all details about the show, so I was able to approach with a fairly fresh sense of "What the huh?" If you still haven't seen it, I warn you I'm going to go full-on spoiler in the following comments, so you may want to avert your eyes. 

The decision to stay on just one or two planets without a bunch of space battles was a good one, but what they then did on those planets left me, for the most part, wondering what they were thinking. The BSG characters were generally well-rounded people with flaws, but most of them were decent people. Caprica, on the other hand, is populated by a lot of unlikable characters with hands dirtied by various moral failings that make for a bleak show. One of the colonies is portrayed as having a mafia-style culture, like that Star Trek episode where someone left a book on Chicago mobs behind and influenced an entire culture to wear cool retro suits and use lots of ammo. In addition to the mobsters, you've got monotheist terrorists blowing up trains for reasons. I'm not really sure why. One of them plans to convince the polytheists that there is only one true god by killing people and uploading digital avatars of them into a virtual heaven, because that will prove...uh, well, I'm not really sure how that will prove anything beside the need for lots of memory on their servers.

The show almost has the air of a bad pitch meeting. It's Sopranos meets the Matrix...plus high school girls who dress in sexy outfits! I suppose they were trying to appeal to a younger demographic, but instead it just makes older viewers feel creepy watching the show. Caprica's set about fifty-eight years before BSG, which is apparently before they invented consistent character motivation. Characters lurch from one extreme to the other in ways that are convenient for the plot twists. One of the more consistent characters, the wife of the man who builds the first Cylons, was helped by apparently receiving only one direction: "Let's do that again, but more brittle!"

The daughter of the man who builds the first Cylons is a terrible teenage brat, but also a computer genius who revolutionizes realistic responses from avatars by essentially amassing data from the cloud (the same as Google's doing). She's killed in the terrorist bombing in the first episode while running away for reasons. She lives on in her avatar, who ends up loaded into a Cylon memory chip. They intercut between a hulking Cylon and the young actress in a tight skimpy dress, creating some really awkward moments when her father is staring at the Cylon.

All these plot elements are tangled together but just as the show was gaining some steam in spite of itself, Syfy pulled the plug. I like to think it was because they realized the show was born out of the same drunken meeting as when they decided to change their name to "Syfy." Now I'm ready to watch Blood & Chrome, the follow-up movie that bridges the gap between Caprica and BSG, set during the First Cylon War. I haven't paid much attention to reviews yet. How was it?

The Birth of Generations Geek: A Father/Daughter Nerdcast

Back in July I was thinking about podcasts. As in, "I should have a podcast." I'd been noticing how many of my writer friends had podcasts, and it seemed interesting and challenging and, yes, another part of my "online platform" as we say in the pub business. But what would the podcast be? It seemed like if I started one it could be called A Writer You've Never Heard Of. Now, With a Podcast. Now that I reflect upon it, that's not a half bad name. But, no, I wanted something more.

Then somehow I thought of doing a podcast with my fourteen-year-old daughter. We share a healthy geekosity, and I figured we'd have fun. And we would call it Generations Geek. That night, after I got home from work, I asked her. She thought it sounded cool. So we were united geeks. We would make it happen. But how? And when? I found a website that hosted podcasts, with certain limitations, for free. Free is good. After all, I work in publishing. And I was already going to have to buy some microphones.

So, when? I ordered the mics. Started thinking it would be cool if we could get one show online before we went on vacation at the end of July, before we went to the Shore Leave convention the weekend of August third. But I quickly realized there was no way, with everything else going on and getting ready for vacation, that we would have time to make an episode. Okay, then we would focus on it when we got back.

Other things started happening. I posted about the podcast online, and was contacted by John Drew of the Chronic Rift Network. He liked the idea of the show and invited us to be a part of the network of geeky podcasts on CRN. I jumped at the chance. I was already having second thoughts about the fine print of the free podcast website I'd been thinking of using, and Chronic Rift and the other podcasts on the network are done by a bunch of great people and already have a following. That would give our new show a leg up.

Because I couldn't imagine having the time to get an episode done before Shore Leave, I came up with the idea of doing a Generations Geek panel at the convention. I pitched it, and it happened. Here's a shout out to Allyssa Holmgren, Lisa-Michele McMullen, Susan Olesen, and Jen Rosenberg who all joined us. It was fun and the other perspectives we gained from everyone were interesting and really added to the panel.

When we got home, it was time to kick it into high gear. I hooked the microphones up to our basement computer, which seemed the perfect, quiet place to record the podcast. They weren't working the way I expected them to. Aahhh, I needed a newer version of GarageBand. But not the latest version, which wouldn't run on the older computer. So, figure out the latest version that will run on it, find a cheap deal on line, order the software. Install software. Software starts, software crashes. Fiddle with the situation for many hours over many days. Eventually have to give up. Because . . . 

Meanwhile something else had happened. John from Chronic Rift had asked when we'd have our first show ready. I wasn't sure, so we'd just decided on announcing that show would debut in September, and we'd set a specific date when we got closer to wrapping up the first episode. No problem, I thought. But after agreeing to that, I remembered that the kid was going for a week-long camping trip with friends, then going to my mom's for a week, then starting school with a four-day field trip. So, suddenly, we wouldn't be recording until the second weekend in September. For a show due in September . . .

So, forget trying to work out tech problems with older basement computer. Plug the microphones into our main computer and get recording. Which we did. Then we played it back. Pop, pop, pop. Every plosive, letters like p and b that are created with a burst of air, was exploding onto the mics. We needed pop filters, little screens that diffuse the burst of air, so that we could talk without exploding. But you can spend 20 or 30 bucks or more for them, more than I want to spend after our family vacation, and they're pretty much all made to mount on proper mic stands . . . which is not what we have. We have little plastic microphones on plastic bases. 

A little online research showed how to build your own pop screen for a few bucks apiece. OK then. Rush out, buy supplies. Get building. Do some recording. Pops gone! And before we know it it's the next to last weekend in September, and we simply have to finish recording and editing and get the thing in to John. We're finally getting the hang of it, having fun talking. The kid records some keyboard noodlings in GarageBand for a theme and for between segments, and I edit like crazy. And it came together. Give it a listen. We call episode one "Rise of the Planet of the Geeks." We talk about going to see Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen, all the cool movie trailers we saw before Raiders, and the kid's binges on Star Trek series. If you enjoy it, please like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and do other cool stuff just because you're in a good mood.

Reminiscences and Synchronicities: Ray Bradbury, 1920–2012

Last Wednesday morning, June 6, I learned of the passing of Ray Bradbury the day before. My eyes misted . . . and I was surprised by the depth of my reaction. Sure, I'm a fan, have been so for well over thirty years, but it's not like I knew the man. I'd never met him. He'd lived a long life and had been in deteriorating health, so his death was no shock. Nevertheless, I felt his loss keenly and had a difficult time concentrating on my work because of my sadness.

 

I posted this on Facebook:  "I have long liked to call them the ABCs of science fiction: Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke. Asimov had his clever plots, Clarke his big ideas, but Bradbury…Bradbury could make you weep for the loneliness of a sea monster, the sadness of an automated house left empty after a nuclear war. He was always the most emotional of the ABCs; most of his work was steeped with nostalgia and melancholy, even when he looked forward into space, onto Mars. There was always great loss in his stories, and now he has become our great loss. It’s a lesser world without him."

 

That was part of it, surely. But there was more that I hadn't even remembered yet. On my lunch break I grabbed the science fiction issue of the New Yorker that I'd just picked up over the weekend. And there was an essay by Ray, perhaps the last thing he'd written. It's called "Take Me Home." It was an emotional read, steeped in the beautiful sadness of so much of his fiction and magnified by the circumstance of his death. I think it was reading about his childhood that got me thinking more about when I started reading his work and when I began to realize I wanted to be a writer.

 

I remembered reading essays by Ray on how he became a writer, and how he dedicated himself to his craft. He'd organized all his ideas by writing them on 3x5 index cards and filing them. When he wanted to write a story, he could pull out a card and dig in. I went right out and bought my own 3x5 cards and a file box and followed his model. Now I was getting at the heart of my reaction to his loss. I wasn't just a fan as a reader, I was a fan as a writer, and he'd been a profound influence on me in those early years of scribbling stories down, then typing them on a typewriter. It was such deep part of my birth as a writer that I'd forgotten about it, much as you don't think of the foundation below you as you move from room to room in your house.

 

The next day I started re-reading The Martian Chronicles. I don't have any idea how many times I've read this seminal work over the years. I think I first read it in elementary school, checking out a library edition hardcover. The paperback I currently own is a tie-in to the 1980 NBC miniseries that Ray famously called "boring." I truly love this book, and found it just as moving now as I remember it. I also continued reading various obits and blogs during the week, and somewhere saw a reference to The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition. I'd never heard of it.

 

How could that be? I searched it online and found it was a signed limited edition of 526 copies. No wonder I hadn't come across it in the bookstore. It included previously unpublished Martian stories as well as two previously unpublished screenplay versions by Ray. Oh, how I wanted it. But it was originally published at $300, now selling for $1,000, and I'm sure those prices will go up. I was frustrated that there were works of Ray so inaccessible to the majority of his fans. I emailed the publisher, practically begging them to consider a reprint. Their reply informed me that they only had the rights to that limited edition so a reissue was unlikely. More sadness.

 

Over the weekend we visited my mom and her husband. Shortly after we got there he handed me a few DVDs: "You want these?" One of them was thirteen episodes of The Ray Bradbury Theater. I gladly accepted, and look forward to watching them. I may have caught a couple of episodes back in the day, but mostly these will be new to me. Which reminds me that there are a number of Ray's novels and short story collections that I haven't gotten around to reading. I will savor them.

 

Yesterday I finished The Martian Chronicles. The last story is "The Million-Year Picnic." I was sitting there in my cubicle in Minneapolis, Minnesota, anticipating the ending (which I won't completely spoil for anyone who hasn't read it), but there was something I'd completely forgotten. A family has gone to Mars to escape the wars on Earth, and one of the children is worried about their old home. "What about Minnesota?" he says. His father responds, "No more Minneapolis." That added a certain haunting note to the story for me.

 

Thanks, Ray. You'll be missed.

 

The Weird Scheisse that Happens to Me at Signings

Had a great signing for Writes of Spring tonight at a Barnes & Noble. That link is to buy from B&N, but if you live in the Twin Cities and feel like picking up a copy, please consider popping into Once Upon a Crime Mystery Bookstore, the Raven-Award-winning independent bookstore behind the anthology.

Even though there were about seventeen of us contributors, we managed to pull in an audience that outnumbered us. It's always a shame when the audience is so small the writers could beat them up. Judging by the number of books I signed for people, we also sold a fair number of copies.

As soon as I arrived in the store, I had checked the shelves for Shattered Light, the Star Trek: Myriad Universes anthology I'm in. There was one copy on the shelf, so I grabbed it and plopped it down on the table in front of me when I sat down. I figured there might be one person in the audience like myself who reads both mysteries and Trek, and maybe I'd bag a sale.

We all said a few words about our stories in Writes of Spring, then got down to signing books for people. As the crowd began to thin out, a guy came up to the table and spotted Shattered Light. He tapped the cover. "This is your story in here?" I told him that it was. I was thinking, Cool, I'm going to sell a copy of Shattered Light at a mystery event! He leaned in a bit. "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

Now that was different than what I expected. "Sure," I said, wondering where this was going. Was he going to ask where I got my ideas? How I got a chance to pitch for the book? How to get blood stains out of a carpet? Instead: "On Margaret Wander Bonanno's site she has a story about her book Probe . . ."

"Yes, she does," I said. Most fans of Margaret know how her novel Probe, a sequel to Star Trek IV, got hijacked from her after she ran afoul of arbitrary licensing approval problems with Paramount, leading to it being ghostwritten.

"How was your experience working on your novel?" Ah, well, a fair enough question. I said my experience was fine, and that I was working with a different team than Margaret had, both at Simon & Schuster and at Paramount. He was glad to hear it, and thanked me for talking with him. Off he went, without purchasing Shattered Light. My hope for a sale had turned into a discussion mostly about another writer's experience from twenty years ago!

Now I need to make it clear--especially in case this guy happens across this blog--it's totally fine that he didn't buy my book, and it was fun talking with him. For all I know, he could already own it. What's funny to me is the difference between what I imagined was going to happen and what did happen. That's what made this a fine example of the weird scheisse that happens to me at signings. Like the time at Shore Leave I got seated next to a Girl Scout selling cookies. Who do you think moved the most product?

Hint: Not this guy. Scheisse.

 

M*A*S*H Re-View

The kid (aka Ella, my fourteen-year-old) has been on a M*A*S*H kick lately. She discovered the show last year on a DTV broadcast station while staying at my mom's place in the country and then was very pleased to find it running on TVLand on our cable system. She's about the age I was midway through the show's original run.

She's loving the show, and I've been enjoying seeing it again after all these years. I was a dedicated viewer when it was first run. I went as geekily far as to get a martini glass to drink from while watching; since I was a kid, I drank soda from the glass. Did I mention I was geeky?

We came across the DVDs on sale at B&N this week, so we picked up season one and have been watching them in order. Starting right at the beginning has been incredibly interesting. I'd completely forgotten that the character of Spearchucker Jones had carried over from the film; they let the character go after eleven episodes. I'd also forgotten about the character of nurse Margie Cutler, played by the future Mrs. Kotter, Marcia Strassman, who appeared in six episodes.

But what's really amazed me is the character of Radar. First-season Radar is much like the character in the film (the only main character to be played by the same actor), and noticably different from the character he became. First-season Radar accepts a drink from Hawkeye in the Swamp; in later years, Radar would get drunk drinking too many Grape Nehis. First-season Radar appears in a faux documentary in just his boxers, striking poses; in later years such "nudidity" would have been unthinkable. 

I'm loving this Radar, and it's unfortunate that they decided to play up the naive country boy angle as the series continued. That put actor Gary Burghoff in the awkward position of a man approaching forty trying to act like a gosh-gee-whiz teenager; later on when they did let him show his age, it was almost too late, and seemed forced. No wonder Burghoff grew weary of his role.

For now, however, I'm basking in the nostalgia as well as the fun of watching Ella watch the show. It's always nice when the kid likes something I like.

Why The Interwebs Are So Cool

The other day I was listening to the great internet radio station A Fistful of Soundtracks. When I fired it up they were playing a cut from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, composed by . From that they cut to "Rock & Roll High School" by the Ramones. I thought that was pretty cool, so I tweeted about it, calling it "cool musical whiplash."

After a little while, I got retweeted by @JimmyJAquino . . . the dude who runs A Fistful of Soundtracks! He even commented, "Maybe 'Whiplash' should be the new name of one of my Fistful of Soundtracks blocks."

All that is already conclusive evidence of how cool the interwebs are, but there's more. Jimmy then tweeted me again, saying, "Hey, you did some Star Trek fiction for Pocket Books." He must have followed the link on my Twitter page to my website. So I replied about that. Fun. Geeking out on the interwebs. But wait, there's still more.

A few days later he tweeted that he had ordered Shattered Light so that he could read my novella. He also sent a link to a blog he'd written about the soundtrack to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. So I read the blog and posted a comment. And I had generated a sale of my book by listening to internet radio. 

That is a fun chain of events, all made possible by the interwebs. And here's another Twitter-related story. I follow the fabulous comic, actor, and impressionist @KevinPollak on the Twitter. I've been a fan of his and his Jim Kirk impression for years, and have also immensely enjoyed his internet talk show, Kevin Pollak's Chat Show. But now he's started a podcast called Talkin Walkin, in which he speaks only as Christopher Walken. It's hi-freakin'-larious.

Anyhoo, I listened to the first Talkin Walkin and tweeted that, without going into details, Kevin Pollak owed me a pair of pants. Well, damn, if I didn't get retweeted by Pollak, with his added comment, "Too kind. True, but too kind."

The interwebs are cool.

Zombies! A Comic Book Review

The 2011 ten-part crossover Infestation from IDW Publishing is basically a zombie story. I loves the zombies, as The Walking Dead knows, but I generally find crossovers to be a forced conceit. Nevertheless, I'm often drawn in by their epic geekiness, and what drew me into this one was my long-standing love of Star Trek.

IDW's original series CVO (Covert Vampire Operations) serves as the wraparound, bookending two-issue entries from four disparate franchises: Transformers, Star Trek, G.I. Joe, and Ghostbusters. Fortunately, they didn't just grind all these different meats into one loaf (Eew!), and end up with the Ghostbusters running through the corridors of the Enterprise. Instead, the magic/sci-fi nature of the CVO universe made a good launching pad for the creation of a zombie/vampire/extradimensional Overmind portal thingie, which sends alternate versions of the bad guys into the multiverse, dealing with each franchise on its own terms.

First up was Transformers. I gotta admit right off that I never "got" Transformers. They're trucks, they're robots, they carry operatic grudges . . . it just doesn't grab me. So reading about zombified robots (uhh . . . what now?) fighting in Las Vegas isn't my cuppa. I read it, but it just confirmed that I don't get it. Perhaps it was nice and shiny for robot fans.

Next up was Trek. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a few security guards take a shuttlecraft to the Calibus colony only to discover it's infested with zombies. The blend of horror elements and Trek worked fairly well. They continued the thread started in Transformers that the infection is a cybernetic/human hybrid, and, fortunately for our heroes, they meet some uninfected robots who can assist them. Unfortunately, these robots look a little like oversized Mac SE/30s with arms and legs, a choice that perhaps was supposed to be amusing, but is just silly and disruptive to the serious tone of the zombie story. The retro cover options featuring Original Series uniforms we're the coolest, but the story itself is set following Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Moving on to G.I. Joe: I'm old enough that the G.I. Joes I had were basically regular, well, Joes, not superagents, and it was before the franchise developed its archenemies in Cobra, so I'm a little in the dark on the backstory here, but it was a pretty good tale, perhaps the best of the franchise stories. And it was set in an underwater lab that added another layer of excitement as cybernetic zombies began taking over the place. A captured Joe ends up having to fight with the Cobra agents against the common enemy; it's an old bit, but was used effectively.

Up next was Ghostbusters. The writing veered between nailing the beloved characters from the movies (well . . . at least the first movie) and trying too hard to nail the beloved characters from the movies. When they brought back the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, it really felt like forcing together a bunch of references instead of writing a fresh story. Which is too bad, because zombies are a great fit in the supernatural Ghostbuster universe.

The second CVO title brought it all home, literally. After the diversions across the multiverse, the evil force of the zombie Overmind is back where the whole thing started, with the soldiers of Covert Vampire Operations. This comic has some interesting stuff going on, with its blend of science and magic, and it seems to have a fairly arcane backstory. The artwork is particularly good and creepy. The story gets wrapped up while introducing some important changes to the CVO storyline.

If I rated the pairs of comics in order from the best to my least favorite, I think I would say CVO, G.I. Joe, Star Trek, Transformers, Ghostbusters. As a miniseries . . . I don't know. The crossover is forced, and you could drop out any of the franchises without losing anything from the overall story. 

Meanwhile, Infestation 2 is in the works, this time involving CVO, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dungeons & Dragons, Groom Lake and Bat Boy (yeah, that's what I said), G.I. Joe, and 30 Days of Night. Instead of zombies, it has Lovecraftian monsters, and apparently there will be actual crossover of characters. I think I'd rather just read a Lovecraft comic.

Androids! A Comic Book Review

I recently got around to reading a couple of big comic book series, 2010's eight-part Dust to Dust, an authorized prequel to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? from Boom! Studios, and 2011's ten-part crossover Infestation from IDW Publishing.

I liked Dust to Dust well enough. It certainly looks good, taking its visual cues from Blade Runner. At first I was disappointed by the story, which is about an agent assigned to track down and "retire" some runaway androids. Hmmm, sounds familiar. As you get further into it, however, it distinguishes itself a bit.

First off, the agent, calling himself "Charlie Victor" is openly an android. There's a scientist who becomes involved, Samantha Wu, who's trying to find a cure for the "Dust," the radioactive waste that has killed almost all animals and is causing plenty of health trouble for humans as well. Exposure to the Dust gave another human, Malcolm Reed, the ability to sense emotions; conversely this makes him able to recognize the void of emotion displayed by androids. The androids themselves are former soldiers from World War Terminus, focused on avenging themselves upon humanity.

Although it inevitably covers some of the same ground, questioning what it is to be human and android, the set up allows for a lot of backstory on the characters and, through them, more details of how the world became of Androids/Bladerunner came to be. There are a number of plot twists, and the action is well drawn. Any fan of the novel or film will probably find it entertaining enough, but it's not going to blow your mind.

Still, it whets the appetite for the long-awaited Blade Runner sequel which apparently Ridley Scott will dive into after the Alien prequel Prometheus.

Next post: Zombies!