David Lee Summers's Blog, page 8

Wizards

Back in November, when I discussed the film Heavy Metal, Deby Fredericks recommended the near-contemporary animated film Wizards, directed by Ralph Bakshi. I was familiar with Bakshi’s adaptation of Lord of the Rings and I’d seen his film Cool World. When searching for interesting animated films to watch, I’d repeatedly come across Wizards. Deby’s recommendation was enough to persuade me to give it a try.

Wizards was released in 1977, the same year Star Wars debuted. What’s more, Mark Hami...

A Case of Conscience

I went to elementary school and junior high in the days before streaming video, Blu-Ray discs, DVDs, and even video tapes. I became a fan of the original Star Trek watching reruns on one of the local stations based in Los Angeles. If I wanted to “relive” an episode, the only real option was to read the story adaptations written by James Blish and published by Bantam Books. I loved these adaptations. Most just retold the stories as they appeared on the screen. Some had slightly different titles o...

The Metal Hurlant Chronicles

My wife and I received the complete series of Metal Hurlant Chronicles for Christmas this year. Each of the series’ two seasons only runs for six episodes, so we’ve already had a chance to watch the whole thing. This French television series is named for the magazine Métal Hurlant, which literally translates as “screaming metal.” Originally founded in 1974, the magazine has featured short stories in comic book format along with articles. In 1977, National Lampoon started an English language vers...

A Runaway in Oz

I received a nice batch of three Oz books for Christmas. I’ve already discussed The Giant Garden of Oz by Eric Shanower. Today’s book also has contributions by Shanower and was also published in the late 1990s, but it had a much longer road to publication. This book is The Runaway in Oz by John R. Neill who drew the original illustrations in most of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum and Ruth Plumly Thompson. In fact, Neill took over as the third original Oz author and published three novels with Rei...

The Lesser Dead

About a year and a half ago, I attended Fan Expo in Denver, Colorado. When I was not on panels, I was sitting in a row of other authors selling my books. From the author’s perspective, a lot of this time is watching fans walk by on their way from point A to point B. Occasionally, our pretty books lure someone in to browse and ask some questions and sometimes even buy something, but there is a lot of time with authors sitting together entertaining themselves. Of course, what do authors talk about...

A Wicked Movie

Back in October, I discussed Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked after seeing the trailer for part 1 of the movie adaptation. If you missed it, you can read my thoughts here: https://davidleesummers.wordpress.com/2024/10/26/a-wicked-novel/

I enjoyed Maguire’s more adult take on L. Frank Baum’s Oz and appreciated how much Maguire respected the source material in his telling. The said, I thought the material might actually benefit from the streamlining and focus a movie script might provide, in much...

Traversing the Solar System and Beyond

For the last sixteen years, I’ve had the privilege of operating the two largest telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory, the Mayall 4-meter telescope and the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope. For those who have never visited, Kitt Peak is a virtual village on a mountaintop devoted to astronomy. Not only are there telescopes, but there’s housing for staff and visiting astronomers, food service and infrastructure support for the facilities. There’s also a visitor center that runs tours of the site du...

The Giant Garden of Oz

One of my Christmas presents this year was a signed copy of The Giant Garden of Oz. Written and Illustrated by Eric Shanower and published in 1993 by Books of Wonder Press, this isn’t one of the original “famous forty” Oz novels published by Reilly & Lee. However, Eric Shanower is an author and illustrator who has shown himself to be well versed in the canonical world of Oz. He adapted many of L. Frank Baum’s Oz novels into comic book format for Marvel Comics. His own Oz illustrations clearly de...

Arkadi and the Lost Titan

A little over ten years ago, my daughter and I decided to see the movie Jodorowsky’s Dune at the local theater. This entertaining documentary told the story of how Chilean-French filmmaker and writer Alejandro Jodorowsky attempted to make a film of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune back in the mid 1970s. Along the way, he gathered up a team of writers and artists such as Dan O’Bannon, H.R. Giger, and Moebius to develop a script and designs. While the film never happened, many of these people would cont...

Revisiting the Dark Knight Returns

Recently, I began to think about the first comic book that really made me fall in love with comics as an artform during my adult years. Sure, I’d been a fan of comics through my childhood and would pick up issues here and there when I had some money or my parents would allow it. Even as I reached high school and college, I’d still pick up the occasional comic book for fun, but it was in 1986, when I was home for a break from college that I really saw how great a comic book story could be and tha...