What a way to kick off the Labor Day weekend for "Twilight" fans.
In a note posted to her official website Thursday, author Stephenie Meyer tells her readers she has decided to discontinue "Midnight Sun," her planned retelling of "Twilight" from the teenage vampire Edward's perspective, after an unfinished draft was illegally posted and distributed on the Internet without her knowledge or permission.
If I tried to write "Midnight Sun" now, in my current frame of mind, James would probably win and all the Cullens would die, which wouldn't dovetail too well with the original story. In any case, I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on "Midnight Sun," and so it is on hold indefinitely.
Meyer had originally made the only first chapter available on her site. Because the project is now virtually killed, she's made the incomplete draft available as well, but cautions that "the writing is messy and flawed and full of mistakes."
I rather my fans not read this version.... It was only an incomplete draft.... But to end the confusion, I've decided to make the draft available.... I hope this fragment gives you further insight into Edward's head and adds a new dimension to the Twilight story. That's what inspired me to write it in the first place.
This has been a roller-coaster year for Meyer, who just completed a successful concert book series but has also had to answer for some of the backlash directed at "Breaking Dawn," the fourth and final installment of the "Twilight" saga.
But fans shouldn't fret: There's only three months until "Twilight" hits movie theaters.
Randy Lewis, who has written about music for the Los Angeles Times since the 1980s, has a truly heroic music collection. Here's his thoughts on Superman taking flight in pop music through the years.
When it comes to superheroes making their way into popular music, it's hard to beat Superman. Here's a list of my Top 10 favorite instances of the Man of Steel in pop tunes.
10. “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim,” Jim Croce (1971): “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape/You don’t spit into the wind.” Timeless advice.
9. “Kryptonite,” 3 Doors Down (2000): The Mississippi rock band is more interested in the super guy’s fatal flaws than his mission to protect truth, justice and the American way (seen above).
8. “Superman Lover,” Johnny "Guitar" Watson (1976): The R&B-funk-rap set often fantasizes about super powers in the boudoir, other examples including Mario’s hyper-romantic “Kryptonite” to Eminem’s outrageously self-aggrandizing and vindictive “Superman.”
7. “So Long, Superman,” Firewater (1998): A catchy pop-punk ditty anticipating Lois Lane’s Pulitzer prize-winning commentary (in “Superman Returns”) about a world with no need for the favorite son of Krypton.
6. “Superman (It’s Not Easy),” Five For Fighting (2001): The emo crowd just can’t get with the notion of invincibility, does it?
The spell Alohomora may not be able to unlock the entanglement going on between Warner Bros.' "Harry Potter" and an Indian production company whose new film is called "Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors."
Expelliarmus! The Bollywood company hopes to disarm the WB's claims, saying that they filed the title over two years ago, and that the title (pronounced Hurry Put-ter) bears no resemblance to "Harry Potter." Really? They're really saying that? Wow.
Rictusempra! The film, that is supposed to open September 12, is about a boy (the eponymous Hari) fighting two criminals who are trying to steal a secret formula devised by his scientist father. Sounds like a "Home Alone"-ish adventure comedy that is not on a "Potter" track. But that name?
Stupify! "We confirm that we have recently commenced proceedings against parties involved in the production and distribution of a movie entitled 'Hari Puttar'," said Warner Bros. spokeswoman Deborah Lincoln to Reuters in an e-mail.
Confundus! Hopefully both sides can produce an Orchideous spell and make up. Though the titles are similar, the premises are pretty far apart and wouldn't confuse anyone. Hate to go against the little guys, but the producers of "Hari Puttar" should rethink their title. Naming their property two years ago is probably not going to sway the courts, and they could put that court money towards new promo material!
I'm working on a long article about the author Brad Meltzer, and we had a great steak dinner last night in Hollywood Beach, Fla. I grew up here in Broward County and Meltzer spent a chunk of his childhood here too, and it turns out that we bought our comic books at the same shop, a long-gone little shop called Starship Enterprises. It's pretty amazing, actually, how much we have in common. When I told him that I'm of the opinion that "Superman vs. Muhammad Ali" from 1978 is the greatest single comic book ever, his jaw dropped.
"Maybe we should just get married right now. That is my all-time favorite too." He then started rattling off the celebrities who appear in the famous wraparound cover that shows the ring-side audience watching the bout. "Lucille Ball, Jimmy Carter, the Sweathogs ..."
Two of the people also depicted in that spectacular cover by Neal Adams are Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, the creators of Superman. Siegel is a key part of Meltzer's new novel, "TheBook of Lies," which hits stores Sept. 2. Meltzer is fascinated by the fact that Mitchell Siegel, the father of Jerry, died in a robbery just months before his teenage son created the most famous bulletproof hero in American pop culture. Meltzer melds that story with, believe it or not, the biblical story of Cain and Abel. "I know, it sounds crazy right? You can imagine how thrilled my publisher was," Meltzer said with a grin. Meltzer can make any mystery work, as far as I'm concerned; not only did he write bestsellers such as "The Tenth Justice" and "The Zero Game," he penned "Identity Crisis," which is one of the finest and most deftly written comic books you'll ever read.
Expect to hear a lot more about this new book in the weeks to come. I'll be posting the feature on Brad in the weeks to come. In the meantime, check out the compelling trailer for the book, which you can find at Brad's website. It features Joss Whedon, Christopher Hitchens and other pals of Meltzer's.
And if you want to check out that brilliant "Superman vs. Muhammad Ali" cover, it's after the jump.
-- Geoff Boucher
Cover of "Book of Lies" courtesy of Grand Central Publishing
For those who have wondered what Alan Moore is thinking, not just on the upcoming "Watchmen" movie (only 195 days left!), but "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and other titles, then "The Mindscape of Alan Moore" is probably for you.
We say probably because we haven't seen it. But we have seen this:
Wow. Do we really want to be inside the mind of Alan Moore? Could we handle it? Sites like Comic Book Bin have put out the word that the Shadowsnake Film DVD is coming Sept. 30, and they are excited about it.
The documentary won a special recognition award for creative achievement in documentary filmmaking at the San Francisco World Film Festival. The film's website is not up yet, but you can be sure it'll get traffic once it's functional.
Those who aren't heavily into comic books may not know him, but just as an interesting individual with different ideas about what we might think are mundane things, Alan Moore is really someone you should learn more about.
T.J. Kosinski, one of our talented interns this summer here at The Times, wandered around Comic-Con International a few weeks ago and interviewed some of his favorite comics creators. Here is his third guest post.
Like the undergound comix scene in those roiling days of the 1960s, the burgeoning online comics sector is a wide-open frontier now making up its own rules and picking its leading voices. I'd say one of the strongest players at the moment is Act-I-Vate, the webcomics collective with about 30 creators on its roster. It's both smart showcase and wild laboratory, providing consistently updated (and thoroughly interesting) comics to readers across the Web for free.
Two of the member creators are Joe Infurnari and Molly Crabapple. Infurnari is a writer and artist who values the benefits of creating comics strictly for the Web: “Going digital is great to get yourself to a wide audience. If I write something, [someone] can place a link to it on MySpace and it gets 60,000 hits. That sort of exposure can’t be done by handing out postcards or just talking to people.”
Infurnari is working on his latest webcomic, "The Transmigration of ULTRA-Lad!" It's a reverse-Shazam sort of story in which an old man transforms into a teenage superhero. The aesthetic of the webcomic is great. The story is told on "pages" that have the browning, battered edges of a vintage comic book (one that was not stored in a Mylar bag) and the art is a shadowy valentine to super-hero artists such as Mac Raboy and Wally Wood. Infurnari also has The Process, which had been nominated for an Eisner Award. One interesting dimension of Infurnari’s The Process is how tailored it feels to the Web. The website that hosts the comic is meticulous; even the table of contents is intricate. Infurnari took this approach seeking “an interactive experience.” He explained that “with the Web, I can control how the audience absorbs material. The whole thing is an immersive design. My goal is to teleport the viewer into the world of the story.”
Readers should check out The Process, not only for the tremendously detailed artwork, but for Infurnari’s surreal narrative. It’s self-described as “a journey and exploration through a personal ‘pleroma,’ an imaginary landscape populated by strange, wondrous creatures and archetypal characters." The Eisner nomination for Best Digital Comic speaks to the ability of Infurnari to relay his strange inner visions to a wide audience.
Photo from a 1970s issue of Starlog, used with permission from the magazine.You can find Starlog on the internet here or subscribe to the print edition here.
There was an intriguing post last week on Neil Gaiman's journal that suggests that the usually black-clad teller of tales is by now on a monthlong trek through the hinterlands of China on a story safari:
Tonight I'm home, sitting on the sofa with my daughters who are watching the Olympics. This morning I went out and bought lots of lightweight, quick-drying clothes and other useful travel things, with my assistant Lorraine. (At one point during the clothes-buying part of things Lorraine helpfully said, "Boss you're still wearing their pants. Why don't you go back into your own?" Which seemed like a sensible idea, so I grabbed my jeans and headed back to the changing room, overhearing the sales lady saying, "Is he a professor?" and Lorraine's reply of, "He's a writer. It's the same thing.")
So I now have lots of new, light, easily washed clothes, many of them grey or white, which means I will spend much of the next four weeks feeling like I am in disguise.
I don't know if I'll be able to post while on the road -- I'm going to be very much off the beaten track doing research for the next big project, and a lot of time I'll be on foot in rural China...
The next big project sounds mighty interesting. Gaiman also said in that post that he is in talks with publisher HarperCollins about making his first novel, "Neverwhere," available for reading for free online, as was done with his book "American Gods" this past February. "Neverwhere" could be everywhere as soon as September, he wrote, and it will "be done in some different ways" than the "American Gods" approach.
In other Gaiman news, the Los Angeles Times recently had a well-done piece on the stage production inspired by his unsettling 1995 graphic novel "The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch."
T.J. Kosinski, one of our talented summer interns here at The Times, wandered around Comic-Con International a few weeks ago and interviewed some of his favorite comics creators. This is the second of his guest posts.
To me, Paul Pope is a comic-book rock star. He's been called "the Jim Morrison of American comic books" for the delirious poetry he creates with his words and brushstrokes.
The creative mind behind Vertigo's riveting "100%" and the Eisner-winning "Batman: Year 100" is now pushing his art off the page and into toys, design, electronics and even wallpaper...
Yes, that's right, he is extremely busy.
In the past year, Pope designed exclusive screen-print posters for Diesel, worked on a clothing line for DKNY Jeans, released a monograph entitled "Pulphope," illustrated the cover of "Pop Gun: Vol. 2," and recently premiered his first action figure.
Then there's the icing on the cake: a reissue of Pope’s long out-of-print "THB" series is scheduled for sometime in 2009 with “a lot” of brand-new material, he says.
Scott Timberg is a good friend of the Hero Complex who writes insightfully about authors and literature for the Los Angeles Times. He recently interviewed Michael Chabon for a Q&A that appeared in the Sunday paper recently, but due to space considerations, it was edited down. Here is the full, "director's cut" version.
Michael Chabon is well known as the author of novels such as the coming-of-age tale "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," the exuberant, Pulitzer-winning "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" and "The Yiddish Policeman’s Union," an alternate-universe story that just came out in paperback and recently won the Nebula Award.
But Chabon has long harbored a related passion, which has run alongside and sometimes overlapped with his novels: to make the literary world safe for genre fiction and to expand the notion of what a serious work of fiction can be. "Entertainment has a bad name," begins the book’s opening essay, "Trickster in a Suit of Lights." "Serious people learn to mistrust and even revile it. The word wears spandex, pasties, a leisure suit studded with blinking lights."
The pieces in "Maps and Legends" range far and wide, including one on Chabon’s hometown of Columbia, Md. (a planned community that reflects some of the writer’s concerns), and memoirish pieces that give the background to his novels.
The heart of the book, though, concerns his crusade to save comics, science fiction, fantasy, horror and detective fiction from condescension.
He wants to move past the ambivalence of the Moderns — whether novelists, poets or surrealist artists — who played with pop elements such as popular songs or comics but did so behind what Chabon calls "the line of irony."
I spoke to Chabon from his home in Berkeley about a process by which sophisticated writers are kept in the genre ghetto and readers are scared away from novels and stories they might otherwise love.
Timberg: Let’s start with some of the pulp or genre writers who have spoken to you over the years and perhaps inspired your own books.
Chabon: There are so many. Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, Ross Thomas, Ursula K. LeGuin, Frank Herbert, Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury, Jack Kirby, Steve Gerber, Alan Moore. And there is a whole list of borderland writers — John Crowley, Jorge Luis Borges, Steven Millhauser, Thomas Pynchon — writers who can dwell between worlds.
Growing up, Geoff Boucher always wanted to be a mild-mannered reporter working for a major metropolitan newspaper....or maybe a wookiee. He came to the Los Angeles Times in 1991 and, after years covering crime and local politics, he switched to the Hollywood beat covering film and music. Now he's the paper's go-to geek.
Also contributing:
The Legion of Super-Bloggers here at the Hero Complex includes Yvonne Villarreal, a Times staffer whose earliest memory of wanting to be a journalist stems from watching broadcast reporter April O'Neil on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles television series; Jevon Phillips, a Times staffer who specializes in our favorite television shows, especially "Heroes" and the frakking brilliant "Battlestar Galactica;" Denise Martin, another Times staffer, who has an undying passion for "Twilight" and anyone ever enrolled at Hogwarts; and Gina McIntyre, a Times editor who learned her craft by watching too many slasher films.
What a way to kick off the Labor Day weekend for "Twilight" fans.
