Posts
Short Story, Sell Out, Signing, Stuff
The first thing I have to report is that having sold out of issue one of Captain Britain and MI-13, we’ve just sold out issue two as well! So a second edition of that, with a Black Knight wraparound cover, will soon be on its way! That makes a total of five covers for two issues, which can’t be bad.
I’ll be signing any of that, and anything else, from 1pm this Saturday, the 21st., at the Proud Lion comic shop in Cheltenham:
And here’s the lovely Bryan Hitch cover to issue five:
And an interview about where we go from here, complete with a couple of pages of preview art from issue three:
http://www.marvel.com/news/comicstories.3984.Very_British_Vampires
Now, onto the main business of this blog. As editor Jonathan Strahan has just revealed:
http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/2008/06/16/eclipse-two-2/
I have a short story, ‘Michael Laurits is: Drowning’ in the second volume of his ongoing SF anthology series, Eclipse. The book is out from Night Shade in October, and will be launched at the World Fantasy Convention in Calgary. I’m honoured to be in the company of writers like Nancy Kress, Peter S. Beagle, Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter. This is the second of three SF short story sales I’ve made to anthologies this year, the third of which I haven’t told you about yet. I’m gleeful.
The wonderful cartoonist Laurie Pink has recently let me achieve what had been a secret ambition by turning me, and also comic artist Mike Collins, into cartoon characters. Paul and Mike have already had several single-panel outings, and now there are a couple of full page adventures, of which my favourite is 'It's All About the Word Count'. They can all be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Cornell&w=57021227%40N00
I do like the word ‘crinkle’. I hope that, in future years, these characters may become famous, and it will be an odd little urban myth that I was the basis of one of them.
Speaking of literary SF, I was recently tagged by the great artist John Picacio on his blog, to carry on this latest internet meme. Here’s how it goes: ‘to participate, you grab any book, go to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and blog it. Then tag five people.’ So, I chose Kim Stanley Robinson’s challenging and serious climate change novel, Forty Signs of Rain (reads like a bestseller, treats science seriously, left me with such mixed feelings about whether it was great or lacklustre that for possibly the first time in my life I couldn’t honestly deliver a verdict, but I adore its aims), and the fifth sentence on page 123 goes thus:
‘He was the kind of scientist who habitually displayed an ultra-pure devotion to the scientific method, in the form of a relentless scepticism about everything.’
Which, oddly for a line for this mean, does rather sum up the tone of the novel. So onwards, I tag the following five bloggers, selected to take this out of the SF heartland now...
Tara O’Shea: http://taraljc.livejournal.com/
Calapine: http://calapine.livejournal.com/
Simon Guerrier: http://0tralala.blogspot.com/
D’Israeli: http://disraeli-demon.blogspot.com/
Mark Roberts: http://itcamefromdarkmoor.blogspot.com/
There we go. My part in the chain is done.
My friends at the BBC Archive have relaunched their site, featuring lots of lovely online content, including Andrew Martin talking expertly about ‘the bits between the programmes’, that is idents, trails, etc.:
Here’s a new interview I’ve done about my upcoming Fantastic Four miniseries, True Story:
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080612-CornellFF.html
And the downloadable Doctor Who fanzine Shooty Dog Thing has reached its sixth issue:
http://brax-zine.blogspot.com/
Until next time, Cheerio!
Labels:
BBC,
Captain Britain,
Doctor Who,
Eclipse,
Fantastic Four,
Laurie Pink,
SF
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Fantastic news. I only hope I get my copies of issue 1 and 2 this week so I can catch both get into the story and catch up.
By the sounds of some of the conversations on this blog it sounds like my kind of thing - I like things where magic is employed as well as SF and stuff.
Oh for the record my fav Classic SF Writers are Jules Verne, HG Wells and Edger Rice Burroughs. I'd love to see someone do a comic book series based on 'The Land That Time Forgot' or 'Things To Come' granted the latter would seem a little dated now - but the story is kind of universal to any age I think.
Crinkle's one of those almost-onomatopoeic -but-not words isn't it? "...words that sound like things would sound like if they made a noise" (Terry Pratchett) Gloaming too....
Anyway, I'm not making a Flickr account purely so I can comment so I'll say this here (you'll pass the message on, right?):
Laurie Pink, those cartoons are brilliant.
I've long held similarly mixed feelings about Kim Stanley Robinson. I used to live in Davis, where KSR also lives**, and he once came to speak to my Literature of Science Fiction class. So he's a nice guy, and a local guy, and everyone agrees he's a total genius, so I'm pretty much obligated to love his stuff, right?
And yet I still think the award-winning, ground-breaking Mars series (Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars) would have benefitted enormously from the addition of a plot.
*California; a town near Sacramento; home to UC Davis, where I went to school.
**One of our Local Authors! We also used to have Peter S. Beagle, until he moved to Oakland.
Still no CB? You're killin' me!
Well I agree with rocko on KSR's Mars... no enough plot/characters for me, as for the book you quoted I don't think it's translated in french and as I said I am not sure I would want to try it.
I am quite curious about your fantastic four's story, it reminds me of the Ellis's planetary issue with an escaped from fiction, it was a nice idea but not fully developed for me. Lot of potential.
Nice interview, curious to see how you use Blade.
On what you said of the british heroes after reading issue 2 of captain britain I start to think what french heroes could be, I would be curious of what you would thought on this ^^.
You sure keep busy.
Congrats on the sell outs, and the anthology spot. And from now on, the password shall be "Crinkle."
Hell comes to Birmingham
Surely it resides there fairly regularly :)
Awesome news about issue #2 selling out! Having a first issue sell out is fairly normal since everyone tends to check them out. When the second issue disappears within a week of its release, now that's something!
I'm already anxiously awaiting the third issue and can't wait until we find out the fate of Captain Britain. Unlike what seems to be many on this blog, I didn't get into Captain Britain until Excalibur popped up. But what do you expect from someone living in the center of the US? Now I've been spending lots of money getting the UK Captain Britain trades being released that are reprinting the original adventures of Brian. Betsy Braddock was originally a blonde?!
Kudos to you Paul for your excellent story, and a special shout-out to Leonard Kirk for an awesome job on the pencils. What an awesome team!
Adele, I'm sure Laurie will see that here. And I tell you what, a mate of mine, who's started reading your blog, directed me to that Who Bathroom Reader tirade on the SFX Forum: what a bunch of loons! Night: I really liked the Mars trilogy, and loved The Years of Rice and Salt, it's just this one I'm unsure about. Rocko: it might still be in your local comic shop. Sold out just means that Marvel sent them all out, and got none sent back, because the shops have either sold them or are sure they can. Nic: well, I haven't thought very much about it yet. They'd be mythic heroes, going into the French side of the Arthurian mythos. That'd be for the second year of the comic, I hope. Thanks, Jeremy, and about Betsy... it's a really long story! Cheers.
Yeah involving her going blind for a bit.
Betsy (and not Besty as I just typed - George Best as a superhero perhaps, another skrull?) is now part of the Exiles team over in New Exiles.
One thing I am looking foreword to about reading these comics is the mythology. It would not be fair to say that I'm a King Arthur nut.
I am however a lover of myths and legends.
Love Greek Mythology, Norse Mythology as well as our own Myths and Legends here in the UK.
Loved the stories of Robin Hood as a kid and still do - I pretty much enjoy most spins we have seen on King Arthur and Merlin over the years too.
So in closing I wish these comics would hurry up lol.
I have issue two saved - but issue one is one am waiting for.
I also enjoy some of the history surrounding the creation of Dracula. Vlad the impaler - my kind of guy. I've always had a soft spot for shish kebabs.
Someone reads my blog? Meep.
I loved KSR's Mars trilogy I need to find the time to reread it sometime soon. Not sure "plot" is the right word, after all it's history.
I'm on them as soon as they hit the shelf, even got the second printing yesterday. I'm just saying CB's not back by issue 5 if the cover's an indication? Ahhh! What'd Alan Davis say about this?
Perhaps his disappearance at the Siege Perilous is the key...he first vanished from there in the original story, fleeing from the attack at the lab. In that story, he seemed to actually go to another dimension when he crashed there, and if memory serves, it was after a fairly brutal bike crash. I'm going to conjecture that something like that is what we saw in #1.
Brian's abilities have always been based on absorbtion of certain mystic forces into raw power, a result of his own Otherworld biology. From the old amult and big stick and then his costume, then back when Merlyn still had the energy matrix that spread across the Omniverse, he was able to gain his power from that. maybe the Skrulls forming the big powerful mystic chain from every piece of magical pieces they could find will result in a big huge power bank for my main man.
Jeremy, Betsy was a blonde back in the day but her hair turned purple off panel between the old stuff and Alan Moore/Alan Davis run (Japer's Warp). She either dyed it or it's a manifestation of her psychic abilities. Where those are concerned, it's been accepted that she's a mutant. I've always known better- she is half Otherworldian, after all.
Congratulations also on the comic on the Doctor Who website today! Unfortunately, it's blocked to those of us not in the UK :( .
I love all these theories people are coming up with, Rocko. And sorry to hear that, Mark. I'll blog about the comic shortly.
I read your DW comic on the Beeb's site this morning - return of the Slitheen? They just DO NOT learn, do they?! :D
Great news.
Both issue one and two are in the post to me as we speak. So hopefully I will be all caught up by middle of next week.
Can't wait.
After this though I will not miss another issue. Set up a standing order with the shop to insure I get them soon as they come out.
Thanks, you two. And no, that is the nature of the Slitheen, I feel.
Freakin Dr. Who is the awesomeness. I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with this guy named John Frank who has the best stories about working over there for the show. I'm going to have to check out this fanzine!
Loved the two issues of CB so far.
Eagerly awaiting FF: True Story. It' like a mixture of two of my favorite things: Marvel comics + Thursday Next novels.
Thanks you two. Never heard of John Frank. And indeed, Jasper Fforde was an inspiration, so he gets a namecheck in the miniseries.
he wrote "dimensions in time" :)
Hi Paul! My name is Ashley Mcloughlin [age 14] and I am a huge fan of your work! I really love your series 1 episode Father's Day and your series 3 2-parter! I am a huge fan of Doctor Who and run, and make my own online, Doctor Who magazine [which can be found at www.mdwm.co.nr] I really enjoy making it and have quite a few exclusive interviews [Clayton Hickman, Mark Morris]. The magazine is made by kids, for kids and I was woundering if MDWM could interview you about your work in Doctor Who? We would really love to because it would be very interesting for our readers! We are a non-profit magazine so we couldn't pay you for the interview [if you said yes]. Please contact us at mdwm@live.co.uk
AShley Mcloughlin....
www.mdwm.co.nr
Of course, I'd love to! I'll be in touch.