Category: comic books

If She Knew What She Wants

Paul got home last night, later than expected, as there were delays in Dallas due to inclement weather–which I kind of figured would happen. I went to bed shortly after he got home as I was falling asleep in my easy chair–I’d rewatched Batman v. Superman, and was watching a really bad documentary called Aliens in Egypt, which was one of those wonderfully tacky documentaries about how the Egyptians didn’t build the pyramids, the Sphinx is actually much older than anyone thinks it is, etc. etc. etc. A tell in these things is that no one is ever attributed to anything; “some archaeologists believe” or “according to a prominent Egyptologist”. Don’t get me wrong–the theory of ancient aliens influencing the rise of Egypt is fascinating to me; when I was a kid I read all of Erich von Daniken’s books, from Chariots of the Gods on, and there are always points made that seem consistent with the theory; but there are also other points where it is obvious some stretching was made to have facts fit the theory. I’ve also read some of Graham Hancock’s books–I have a copy of his book about the age of the Sphinx somewhere, but I read the one that theorizes that the Ark of the Covenant is actually in Ethiopia and has been for millennia, and greatly enjoyed it.

I also greatly enjoyed Holy Grail Holy Blood, the book that attempted to prove that Jesus married Mary Magdalen and their bloodline still exists in France–even though I saw many holes in their logic and many logical leaps to make the whole thing hang together. (This theory was the basis, of course, for Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, so I wasn’t surprised the way so many of its readers were.)

I wound up not reading Tomato Red yesterday as I had originally planned, I did some light cleaning after I got home, and was, for some reason, really tired. I repaired to my easy chair and, feeling a little mentally fatigued, watched some television before deciding to look for something to watch, finally settling on a rewatch of Batman v. Superman. I enjoyed the movie the first time I saw it, in the theater, but I also liked Man of Steel, which seems to be a minority position. While I grew up a fan of comic books, and have gone back to them at various times in my adulthood, I am also not a fanatic, and I am always interested in seeing the characters I grew up with taken in new directions. I also love Henry Cavill; have since The Tudors, and enjoy seeing him. I also like Amy Adams’ take on Lois Lane, and found Ben Affleck to be less offensive as Batman as I feared he would be. The movie is grim, of course, a bit grim for a Superman movie; Superman the character was always about hope, and there was little to none of that in this film (Wonder Woman, on the other hand, is all about heroism and hope; which is why it resonated so much more than this one did–and I am hoping that DC Films take the hint and go more in this direction in the future).

So, what am I up to today? Well, in a moment I am going to take the recycling out, and then I am going to make another cup of coffee and repair to my easy chair so I can finish reading Tomato Red and a Faulkner short story I started reading yesterday (Faulkner wrote some mystery short stories; collected in a book called Knight’s Gambit, that I’ve always meant to read; Tomato Red has inspired me to dip back into the Southern Gothic well). Once I am finished with these, I am going to come back to my desk and finish writing the first draft of “For All Tomorrow’s Lies” and (maybe) another rewrite of “Death and the Handmaidens,” which I’ve actually renamed “This Thing of Darkness.” This, by the way, is a complete rewrite; I am retaining some of the characters, but changing everything about the story outside of the shell–a hotel bar, a gathering of people who don’t see each other frequently, and a murder victim that everyone would like to see dead. I think the reason the story never worked was the details I filled into that framework didn’t work, and I know I didn’t delve deeply enough into the main character and who she was. The revision idea I have is pretty good, I think, so I am going to try that. I also have another story I’d like to revise, called “Cold Beer No Flies”, that I think could be really good.

And so, Constant Reader, it is time for me to depart. Here is a lovely shot of one Henry Cavill, to get your day off to a nice start.

 

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Woman

I slept really well last night, yet again, which means now over a week of good, restful sleep. I’d forgotten in all the years of not-so-good sleep how addictive sleep can be; how hard it can be to come back from the wonderful, deep slumber and get back to life and reality. But I am determined to shake off the sleep and laziness today and hit my revising goals–and my cleaning goals. I started reading Cain’s The Cocktail Waitress, and I intend to get further along in it, as well.

Yesterday was a lovely day. Five months into owning a new car, and I’m still not used to it, being conditioned for so long with my clunker so that I don’t want to drive anywhere–and then I get in the new car and am all, “Oh, yes, the reason I hated driving was because I hated driving that car” and everything is right with the world again. Yesterday we drove out to Elmwood to the AMC Palace 20 theater to see Wonder Woman.

And it was, indeed, a wonder.

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While I would not refer to myself as a ‘comics geek’, as that implies a level of fandom and devotion I don’t feel I am entitled to, I do consider myself a fan. I grew up with the DC Comics titles, and periodically throughout my life I’ve dipped back into comics–I have a ridiculous amount of them in my iPad at the moment that I’ve not read yet–and I’ve always managed to try to keep up with what was going on in the worlds (universes?) of DC and Marvel; I’ve always been partial to DC because that was my childhood, but at the same time I’m impressed with Marvel and what they’ve done/accomplished over the years. I saw the Christopher Reeve Superman (and later, Superman II) in the movie theater, and yes, I did come out of them thinking that a man could fly. But as good as those two films were, and as good as Reeve was in the role, there was a bottom-line cheesiness to the movies, and some of the roles were miscast (Margot Kidder as Lois Lane was a mistake; with no offense intended to Ms. Kidder, they should have gone with Kate Jackson or Jane Seymour or Pamela Sue Martin; I never believed Kidder in the role and I never believed Superman would fall in love with her Lois Lane–and that’s not even taking into consideration the absolute lack of chemistry between Reeve and Kidder). But I did enjoy them, and was happy to see super-hero movies being made. The Superman movies eventually went off the rails–the last two Reeve-as-Superman movies were terrible, and that was, I feared, the end of that. I wasn’t crazy about the Batman movies, either; they were entertaining enough, but that film series also went off the rails completely in the last two installments. As Marvel began dipping its foot in to waters of film, I liked the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, but didn’t love them; the X-Men movies were just okay (brilliant in moments, awful in others), and while I thought the reboot of Batman with Christian Bale were done really well to begin with–again, as the movies progressed they started going off the rails. I didn’t hate the rebooting of Superman with Henry Cavill as much as everyone else did; I enjoyed the movies, thought he did a fine job in the role, and even Ben Affleck, whose casting as Batman in the new world of the DC Cinematic Universe was, to me, questionable, kind of pulled it off in Batman vs. Superman. I also enjoyed Deadpool and Guardians of the Galaxy, and loved Chris Hemsworth as Thor, but the movie overall itself was just kind of meh. (I’ve not seen the other Thor movies, so can’t judge them.) The Iron Man movies I’ve seen were enjoyable, but not memorable.

But all the movies made money, which is all that matters in Hollywood, no matter what kind of critical roasting they get, and so we were bound to get more of these movies. When they announced who would be playing characters I’ve known and loved since childhood for the  Justice League movie, I wasn’t so sure–I didn’t know who either Gal Gadot and Ezra Miller were, and while I love Jason Momoa (who doesn’t?), I wasn’t so sure about him playing Aquaman. But the brief scenes in which Gadot appeared in Batman v. Superman were luminous, and that gave me hope. I really, really wanted Wonder Woman to be a great movie, because I love the character so much (and always have), and the previews looked pretty damned spectacular. Already people were posting on social media about how much they enjoyed the movie, so that was good–but I was still a bit nervous about it when we took our seats in the IMAX 3-D theater in Elmwood.

Two and a half hours later we walked out of the theater, stunned.

Not only did it exceed my expectations, but it was a great movie, from beginning to end. Origin stories are extremely hard to tell and make interesting, but we get to see young Diana as the only child on Themyscira (which was indeed a Paradise Island), and Connie Nielson was terrific as Queen Hippolyta–although Robin Wright as her sister Antiope stole every scene she was in–who knew The Princess Bride could be such a badass? (Robin Wright has always been under-appreciated as an actress–from her beginnings as Kelly Capwell on the soap Santa Barbara and The Princess Bride–and I’ve always believed she gave the strongest performance in Forrest Gump and should have at least gotten an Oscar nomination as Jenny) Chris Pine is, of course, thoroughly appealing as Steve Trevor–everyone in the cast was superb–but the true success of the movie lies completely in the hands of Gal Gadot.

And she was amazing, absolutely amazing. From her first glimpse of London to seeing an actual baby for the first time to trying to figure out how to get through a revolving door to her first taste of ice cream, she managed to capture Diana’s innocence and naivete without coming across as an idiot–and that is not an easy thing to do. She inhabited the role perfectly, and the film was not shot to sexualize her or make her an object of lust–and that is all due to the superb direction of Patty Jenkins, who should be put in charge of the DC Cinematic Universe. The action/battle sequences never got boring–as they tend to do in most super-hero movies–and there were moments when I got goosebumps and tears in my eyes–the scene where she emerges from the trench at the battlefield in her uniform for the first time affected me so deeply I wanted to stand up and cheer in the theater, but settled for teary eyes and goosebumps. There were many of those moments in this movie.

I think what gets lost, what was missing, in earlier super-hero movies (and most especially in the recent two Superman outings) is that the heroes themselves are symbols of hope, and that they themselves believe in the ultimate goodness of humanity; and they have an innate sense of nobility. That’s the piece that was missing from the Superman movies; that, and the sense of fun. Wonder Woman delivered on both counts, in spades.

There hasn’t been a single super-hero film I’ve seen since the 1970’s that I would be excited to watch again on television, let alone go see in the theater again.

I would go see Wonder Woman again in the theater.

I can’t think of any praise higher than that.

Well done, DC, and everyone involved in this film. Bravo.

(I’ve Been) Searchin’ So Long

Saturday morning. After my morning coffee,  I’m going to run some errands, and then I am going to figure out what time to drive out to Elmwood to see Wonder Woman–shooting for late afternoon/early evening; that way I can get some cleaning and revising done. I’ve not done much revising this week–which is shameful (there is some harsh and ugly truths there about the need for actual contractual deadlines, isn’t there?), and so my goal is to get back on track with all of that for this weekend. I want to get another three or four chapters revised, as well as the second draft of “Quiet Desperation” finished this weekend, so I can move on to revising another short story. I’ve also started a new draft of the eighth Scotty novel, Crescent City Charade, which I am hoping to get finished by the end of the summer (Labor Day is the goal). I absolutely HAVE to get these revisions finished by the end of June, because I want to spend the summer querying agents. I honestly believe this WIP is my best work, and could be an important book.

Whether that proves to be the case or not remains to be seen, of course, but here’s hoping.

The Lost Apartment is a mess, and has been for quite some time. I can’t remember the last time I did the floors, quite frankly, and it’s getting kind of ugly down there, honestly. I mean, our kitchen floor needs to be redone–tiles have come up–which kind of makes it hard to make it look nice anyway, but that’s no excuse for not cleaning, you know? My mother would be so ashamed.

So ashamed.

So, I am going to, as soon as I finish this cup of coffee, start straightening and cleaning up down here. It looks like it’s going to rain all weekend, so I am not going to bother with the windows (which are also long overdue for a cleaning; although I could do the inside. Hmmmm, that could be a plan, actually) and definitely work on these floors. There’s some filing to do–isn’t there always–and some other organizing I need to do, but if I buckle down and stay focused (and make a fucking list) I should be able to get through everything before it’s time to go see Wonder Woman.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the movie. Wonder Woman was always one of my favorite comic book superheroes (although when I started reading DC Comics, she’d given up her powers somehow and was running a clothing boutique and dealing with social issues and was a modern feminist; in retrospect, it was one of the stupidest reboots in DC’s long history of rebooting their characters); I loved the historic Amazon character, and the rebooted non-powered Wonder Woman/Diana Prince character was more of a detective, solving crimes and trained in martial arts. Around the time the television series starring Lynda Carter started, the DC rebooted her again and made her an Amazon princess with her powers again. And the TV show was amazing. Rewatching it now shows it up for its low-budget special effects and bad writing, but Lynda Carter embodied the part so beautifully that she became iconic–and I’ve been a lifelong fan of Ms. Carter. Paul and I stopped watching Supergirl during its first season, before Lynda Carter joined the cast as the president, so I’m sure at some point I’ll go back and binge the series. (I’ve also always been a fan of Supergirl–who also went through an incredibly stupid reboot in the 1970’s; complete with new costumes and a loss of some of her powers–sometimes she had them, sometimes she didn’t; they came and went because of some kind of Kryptonite poisoned drink she was tricked into imbibing; then was killed off during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and then was brought back as something completely different after Superman was killed off in the early 1990’s. It’s really hard to keep track of all these shifts and changes in DC continuity/universes.)

Interestingly enough, now as I reflect on my fandom of both Wonder Woman and Supergirl, I realize how I’ve always been drawn to fictional depictions of strong women–from Nancy Drew to Trixie Belden to the Dana Girls to Cherry Ames to Vicki Barr to Wonder Woman to Supergirl to Lois Lane (who used to have her own comic book, detailing her adventures as an investigative reporter, which I also loved), to real life women who defied the traditional role of women in our society, like Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. I’ve certainly always enjoyed reading fiction by and about women; from Charlotte Armstrong to Phyllis Whitney to Victoria Holt to Mary Stewart to Judith Krantz and so on and so forth. Do people still read Rona Jaffe? She was another favorite of mine from the 1970’s. Taylor Caldwell, Evelyn Anthony, Jean Plaidy, Helen MacInnes, Daphne du Maurier, Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson–I’ve always read and enjoyed books written by women. (This is not to say I don’t enjoy books by men; I always have, but at the same time there is a certain style of testosterone driven male novel, complete with angst, that I simply cannot abide, and the crime genre is riddled with them. I recently joked that I wanted to write a noir set in the strip clubs in the Quarter and call it Girls Girls Girls…you get the idea.)

And there are so many wonderful women writers publishing today: Sara Paretsky, Laura Lippman, Sue Grafton, Megan Abbott, Alison Gaylin, Alafair Burke, Alex Marwood, Lisa Unger, Jamie Mason, Wendy Corsi Staub, J. M. Redmann, Kristi Belcamino, Carrie Smith, Sara Henry, Ellen Hart, Donna Andrews, Dana Cameron, Toni Kelner (Leigh Perry), Carolyn Haines, Catriona McPherson, Lori Rader-Day, and Rebecca Chance–just off the top of my head; my TBR pile is filled with books by women, and there are so many wonderful women writers I’ve not gotten to yet, like Lisa Lutz and Shannon Baker and Jennifer MacMahon and Karin Slaughter–the list goes on and on forever and ever, amen. And this is just crime fiction/thrillers…I’ve not even touched on horror or scifi or fantasy or so-called ‘chick-lit.’ (Which reminds me, I really want to read some more Liane Moriarty, and I’ve not read any Jennifer Weiner…sigh.)

There’s just never enough time….and speaking of which, it’s time for me to head back into the spice mines.

Here’s a Saturday hunk for you:

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1, 2, 3, Red Light

Friday morning in the midst of an unusual cold spell for New Orleans. It’s the second weekend of Jazz Fest, and the high today–and yesterday– was merely seventy one degrees. It’s in the frigid low sixties right now; but it’s going to be sunny and clear and lovely all day; no rain in the forecast for the weekend. I have some appointments tomorrow, but am going to stop for groceries on my way home from work tonight so I don’t have to deal with that tomorrow. I’d like to make some further progress on the WIP tomorrow, as well; hope to do so today, too.

As I have said lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Alabama, primarily due to events I’ve done in that state this year (the first time I’ve ever done anything there). I have written short stories (full disclosure: only two have been published) set in Alabama, and only one book set there. Many years ago, I thought about doing a whole series of books set in Alabama, and all connected (what can I say? I was reading Faulkner) in one way or the other. I created a fictional town and county (thank you, Mr. Faulkner) and families and connections and the whole ball of wax, but never wrote any of them, of course. (I was always big on the ideas phase, not so much on the writing phase.) The town was Corinth, Alabama, and the county had the same name. Recently, as I’ve been doing research into Alabama history (when I’m between clients at work), those ideas have come back to me. Taylor, Frank’s nephew in the Scotty series, is from Corinth; Frank’s mother was from there and that’s the Sobieski connection to Alabama. My favorite short story of all the ones I’ve published, “Small Town Boy,” is also set there, and of course, when I started writing Dark Tide, my main character, Ricky Hackworth, was from Corinth–and somehow related to characters in the short story; we never know what the main character’s name is in the story, but the story focuses on his relationship with a Hackworth whose mother has just shot his father–“those trashy Hackworths.”

Dark Tide is one of my personal favorites of my books, and I think it’s partly because it was a return to Corinth. The book wasn’t set there–Ricky leaves Corinth for a summer job on the Gulf Coast of Alabama as a lifeguard–but Ricky was from there, and I was able to draw on the rich background I’d created for the town in my twenties as backstory for the book. I also tried to do something with the writing style that I’d never done before, which was mimic the pacing of swimming strokes with the pacing of the book. I don’t know if I succeeded, but I know some of the best work I’ve done is contained inside the pages of that book–there’s one particularly creepy scene where Ricky is swimming in the bay and he has this feeling that there are carnivorous mermen down in the depths of the bay beneath him as he swims, and then imagines it as he strokes through the calm morning waters. I also really liked the character of Ricky; he’s grown up relatively poor and motherless (the reader never knows what happened to his mother), and thinks back to how he is treated by the richer kids, how he is picked on for his suspected sexuality, how deeply closeted he is, and how he met, at a swimming camp his father could barely afford to send him to at the University of Alabama, he met and fell in love with someone who basically changed his life and helped him see that he wasn’t a freak. I loved the character of Ricky, and Dark Tide also is one of few novels I ever wrote that has a big twist that flips the story completely–there are hints, of course, I would never cheat–and I am very proud that I pulled it off.

The book was originally conceptualized and titled as Mermaid Inn. When I was a kid, I used to read comic books voraciously; I sometimes wonder how I found the money to buy as many comic books and kids’ series books as I did (I tend to suspect, now that I am in my fifties, that I was a great deal more spoiled as a child then I thought I was). DC Comics used to publish two comics that were more horror/mystery related than super hero oriented; House of Secrets and House of Mystery. EC Comics, which deeply influenced Stephen King, was no longer around by the time I was reading comics, so these two comics–with secret and mystery in their titles, which is what drew me in to them–were the first horror I read, and I loved how the stories always had a big twist at the end (and come to think of it, that’s the way I write horror, which is probably why I don’t sell any horror short stories). There was one issue that was completely devoted to a story called “Bloody Mermaids,” and I remember it to this day. It was an interesting tale; a scholar who was fascinated by the legend of the mermaid was determined to find one and thus prove they were real. He comes to an old inn along the seashore where mermaids have supposedly been sited over the years, only is horrified to discover that rather than beautiful and kind sea creatures, the ones who inhabit the sea at this place were monsters who feasted on human flesh and blood, and only come out at night; kind of like sea vampires. At the very end he finally finds one, he is horrified by the truth of what she is, and she knocks him out and is ready to drink his blood when the sun starts to rise and she has to flee back to the safety of the water. And the narrator–both comics had them–said something along the lines of ‘be careful what you wish for, the reality of what you seek may be something you don’t want to see.’ The story always fascinated me, and it inspired me to create a story of my own.

dark tide

 

The engine of my pickup truck made a weird coughing noise just as I came around a cruve in the highway on the Alabama Gulf Coast and I saw Mermaid Inn for the first time.

My heart sank.

That’s not good, I thought, gritting my teeth. I looked down at the control panel. None of the dummy lights had come on. I still had about a half tank of gas. I switched off the air conditioning and the stereo. I turned into the long sloping parking lot of the Inn, pulling into the first parking spot. I listened to the engine. Nothing odd. It was now running smooth like it had the entire drive down. I shut the car off and kept listening. There was nothing but the tick of the engine as it started cooling.

Maybe I just imagined it.

Hope springs eternal.

I took a deep breath while sitting there, listening closely to make sure.

The last thing I needed was to spend money on getting the stupid old truck fixed. Maybe it just needed a tune-up. I couldn’t remember the last time it had one.

Once Ricky arrives at the Inn and gets settled, he finds out the lifeguard from the summer before disappeared, and the longer he stays, the more he realizes that things in Mermaid Inn–and the nearby town of Latona–are not what they seem.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Crystal Blue Persuasion

A gloomy Monday morning with the threat of rain hanging over our heads; needless to say, the chill in the air and the gloom weren’t exactly the right combination to get me leaping out of bed this morning, ready to get to work and face a new week with good cheer and optimism. It is astonishing to me how little I actually managed to get done this weekend; part of it is because I wasn’t sleeping well; I don’t function on little sleep and so am trying to mix up the sleeping assistance since it’s no longer working. Heavy heaving sigh.

I didn’t get started on my taxes this weekend, which is terrible. I really need to get going on that; it’s not fair to my accountant to make her wait until the last minute…although I suspect it doesn’t take her very long to actually do my taxes, to be honest. It’s such a tedious chore, though, tallying up my expenses. It does make me feel rather homicidal, to be honest. But it generally only takes me a couple of hours to get it all done…maybe if I get a start on it and do a bit every day I can get it finished this weekend and be done with it. ’tis a thought.

While I was cleaning the house this weekend–I am really looking forward to doing the deep clean that this weekend’s cleaning was a preparation for–I also started doing some researching for some book ideas I am currently sitting on. I always do this; it’s also an interesting way to learn about my own past by finding out historical stuff about the places I am from or have lived. I learned some really interesting Alabama history this weekend by doing that; I also found some really interesting criminals on a website–The Most Notorious Criminal from every country in Alabama, which was fascinating. I am also interested in Kansas history, and found some interesting things there.

I also got the first issue of a new comic book series featuring the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew: The Big Lie.

Rebooting the Hardy Boys as a hard-boiled/noir style comic book is a great idea, quite frankly; just as the rebooting of Archie comics as a dark, moody noir style television show was a great idea. I’ve read all of the original Hardy Boys mysteries in their blue-spined editions; I’ve not kept up with the various reboots/restarts over the years. The premise of the comic–that Fenton Hardy was a police detective who was fired and accused of taking bribes and being corrupt; and then was murdered–and his sons are the prime suspects–is quite clever; plus making the two brothers not quite as close as they were in every other iteration was also quite clever. I am looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.

I doubt that the original series will get revised again; in the 1950’s the earlier books started being revised; I think all of the originals were eventually revised before the series was sold off in the late 1970’s. Those books are still in print and still sell, even though they are kind of archaic and incredibly dated now…I’ve always wanted to write a Hardy Boys book. Maybe once I have an agent…

And now, back to the spice mines.

Fernando

A chilly morning in New Orleans. It’s been in the fifties the last few days, but no worries, Constant Reader: the new car has an astonishingly powerful heater (something I am also not used to) and I no longer have any fears about my drive to the Frigid Territories North of I-10 anymore. (The Buick’s heater was erratic; which was fine for New Orleans–not so much for anywhere north of I-10.) Today I have some errands to run, and then I am going to try to get that essay finished in draft form today so I can edit it tomorrow. I also want to finish reading my Pelecanos novel; I am not taking it with me to Kentucky so if I don’t finish it this weekend I most likely never will. I’ll also probably finish reading Gore Vidal’s Empire today or tomorrow; I only have one chapter left so I may take it to the easy chair with me to finish today so I can start reading something new–non-fiction, most likely–in the bathroom.

Today, though, I am going to talk about the new CW show, Riverdale, which debuted this past week.

I will admit I went into the show wanting to like it. I grew up with Archie comics; despite the sweet nostalgia the comics had–they were really throwbacks to an imaginary 1950’s kind of teen life that never really existed in truth, the same kind of imaginary world created by shows like Leave It to Beaver and The Andy Griffith Show; worlds that never existed yet people always feel nostalgia for (which is a topic for another time). I won’t deny that as a kid I kind of thought being a teenager was going to be like an Archie comic book, and was vastly disappointed when it wasn’t. When the comic books went through a sort of ‘reboot’ (a term I am really tired of, frankly, but in this case it actually fits) a few years back and made news, I downloaded some of the new comics to my iPad, and was pleasantly surprised with the update.

I won’t recap or rehash how the company reinvented itself and made itself actually topical and modern and fresh and expanded its audience; there are plenty of articles out there about this and everyone can access Google, plus I would just be rehashing the information and might get some things wrong. But it’s a world with which I am very familiar–Archie, Betty and Veronica, Jughead, Hot Dog, Dilton Doiley, Reggie, Big Moose and Midge, Big Ethel, Miss Grundy, Principal Weatherbee, Pop Tate–and they also added a gay character several years ago, Kevin Keller (I bought the mini-series he featured in)–which would have been not only unimaginable as a kid but would have made an enormous difference in my life. So, I was kind of interested when I heard that Greg Berlanti (responsible for the DC television universe, and did a great job) was developing a TV show based on Archie called Riverdale, which would feature all the known elements of the comic books, give them a modern twist, and also make it dark and brooding; Archie meets Twin Peaks, is what it was described as. (I did watch Twin Peaks, and loved Season One; it lost me about an episode or two into Season 2.)

But I was also afraid it would be awful; just as I was afraid Arrow and The Flash would be. I am very happy to report that it was, in fact, not awful.

All the old elements of Archie are there: Pop Tate’s Choklit Shop; Betty’s unrequited passion for Archie, who only sees her as his best friend; Archie and his music; Josie and the Pussycats are even there. The script was flipped a bit in having Veronica no longer wealthy AND new in town; her father has been jailed for embezzlement and fraud, and she and her mother–originally from Riverdale–have returned to escape the glare.

But the show is structured with a noirish sensibility; the way the show is shot is absolutely gorgeous, and the bright colors also give it a comic book like feel at the same time. There is a murder mystery at the heart of the story; who killed Jason Blossom? And everyone in Riverdale seems to have had a reason to kill him, or is hiding something. It’s very soapy, yet very well done.

But, for me, the strongest part of the show is the appeal of the young cast–the older characters aren’t as well developed, but I’ll give that time. A. J. Apa is appealing enough, and of course, he is very nice looking; really, that’s all that’s required of Archie: good guy, kind of bland and a bit oblivious to everything around him, appealing. Archie never had abs before, though.

It’s extremely well cast; all of the young actors are appealing, the dialogue is snappy and clever (Veronica gets the best lines and I think is going to be the breakout character/star), and it was also fun to see former teen idol (and star of Beverly Hills 90210) Luke Perry as Archie’s father; in a nod to Twin Peaks, Madchen Amick is cast as Betty’s mother.

Usually, pilots have weaknesses that are corrected in the series; I detected none in Riverdale, and I was immediately caught up in the story. I liked it a lot, and am looking forward to continuing to watch.

S. O. S.

I was incredibly tired all day yesterday; so much so that I’m surprised my eyes weren’t crossed most of the day. This is to alert you, Constant Reader, that I did not read another short story yesterday, and so have nothing to offer you this morning. But to give myself a little bit of credit, I’ve done much better this Short Story Month than I have in previous years, so that’s something. And in reading these stories, I’ve also learned a lot about the craft and art of writing short stories, and I’ve also had to think about that as well–so this is the first time Short Story Month has actually had the desired effect on me. So I am counting this as a win, no matter what others might think. So there.

I depart on Monday for a trip to the frigid North to visit my family, and then on the way back, as I previously mentioned, I am doing the Murder in the Magic City weekend event in Birmingham and Wetumpka before returning home to New Orleans a week from this Sunday. I don’t have anything pressing to work on while I am gone–still, taking the MacBook Air just in case something comes up (despite hating to work on it), but hoping nothing will. I hope to do some reading–I’m taking four books with me; including an Ace Atkins and a Michael Koryta and a Laura Lippman–and I also have a lot of comic books on my iPad to catch up on as well.

I also think I am starting to come out of the post-book(s) malaise a bit; I woke up this morning with a great idea about the essay I need to write, and am very hopeful that I can bang that out today and tomorrow so I can not worry about it this weekend. Huzzah!

I am also going to try to read Ace Atkins’ story in Mississippi Noir for tomorrow.

And on that note, I am going to get my day going. I am going to run some errands before going into the office–another late night of bar testing looms–and then after tomorrow, my vacation starts, so yay!

Here’s a hunk for you, Constant Reader.

Rock a Little (Go Ahead Lily)

Happy Twelfth Night!

It rained all night, the temperature (as threatened by meteorologists) dropped, and it looks grim and dreary outside today. I got another good night’s sleep last night, and feel rested this morning. I am about to get my second cup of coffee, and cut into our first King Cake of the season. Woo-hoo! I do love me some king cake! Tomorrow I am on a panel about villains at New Orleans Comic Con, which should be a lot of fun; and yesterday I finished editing, and turned in, the next J. M. Redmann Micky Knight novel, The Girl on the Edge of Summer. Now, I have some more things to get done this weekend, and then I am sort of free from the constraints of deadlines; I have to write a piece for the Sisters in Crime newsletter, and I have an essay due by the end of the month for another book. I am also heading to Kentucky at the end of the month. Yikes! Oh, January.

Last night, before watching another episode of the oddly compelling Ray Donovan, I read a Daphne du Maurier short story I hadn’t read before; “Escort,”, from the Don’t Look Now and Other Stories collection. I recently got a copy when I realized that this collection had several stories in it I hadn’t read; her collection Echoes from the Macabre is my usual go-to for her short fiction. The problem has always been, for me–and I could be wrong–but her short story collections seem to all be named for stories that were also in Echoes from the Macabre, and in fact, several of the stories in this collection are also in that one. But there are some stories I’ve not read–which is why I decided to go ahead and get this one.

There is nothing remarkable about the Ravenswing, I can promise you that. She is between six and seven thousand tons, was built in 1926, and belongs to the Condor Line, port of register Hull. You can look her up in Lloyd’s, if you have a mind. There is little to distinguish her from hundreds of other tramp steamers of her particular tonnage. She had sailed that same route and traveled these same waters for the three years I had served in her, and she was on the job some time before that. No doubt she will continue to do so for many years more, and will eventually end her days peacefully on the mud as her predecessor, the old Gullswing, did before her; unless the U-boats get her first.

She has escaped them once, but next time we may not have our escort. Perhaps I had better make it clear, too, that I am myself not a fanciful man. My name is William Blunt, and I have the reputation of living up to it. I never have stood for nonsense of any sort, and have no time for superstition. My father was a Non-conformist minister, and maybe that had something to do with it. I tell you this to prove my reliability, but, for that matter, you can ask anyone in Hull. And now, having introduced myself and my ship, I can get on with my story.

We were homeward bound from a Scandinavian port in the early part of the autumn.

I’ve talked before about how, when I was a kid, I not only was an avid reader of mysteries for kids and novels and history but comic books as well. The EC Comics that Stephen King read and was influenced by when he was a kid were no longer around, but I read DC’s House of Secrets and House of Mystery, and Gold Key comics used to produce Mystery Comics Digest bimonthly; collections of stories from three different comic books they used to produce, and the digests rotated between the three titles–and they also included new stories, too. The three titles were The Twilight Zone, Ripley’s Believe It or Not (which I loved to read in the daily paper, too), and Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery. These stories were creepy and had elements of horror in them; there were almost always big surprise twists at the end. I loved these, and read them over and over and over again.

“Escort” reminded me very much of those digests. I also love du Maurier–she’s one of my favorites, as Constant Reader is already aware–and she also specialized in twists in her grim and dark short fiction. This story is set in the early days of World War II, and the captain of the ship falls ill–probably appendicitis–and Blunt has to take over control of the ship. A German u-boat shows up, and they play cat-and-mouse for a while…until a freezing cold fog drops down over the sea, and an escort ship shows up–and that’s when things get strange.

The story is very well done; du Maurier is quite the master at the slow build and the sudden burn, but this isn’t one of her better stories. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good story–it’s just that stories like “Don’t Look Now” and “The Blue Lenses” and “The Birds” and “Kiss Me Again, Stranger” have set the bar so high that it would be impossible for any writer to consistently match the brilliance of those stories. It is definitely worth the read, and there are other stories in this collection I’ve not yet read, either….which is really lovely.

Huzzah!

And in honor of the story, here’s a sailor: