Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 09/13/24
Absent Friends Edition
Everyone here in Administration is emotionally drained, following a series of announcements and bad news over the past few weeks. In response to the inevitable march of time that makes fools of us all, we have instructed the Bureau of Research and Development to begin working on a pill or a serum that slows the aging process down to manageable, incremental steps. The working plan is to help people live to about 120 years of age with no loss of memory, flexibility, or libido. They have assured me they are on top of it, but I have my doubts. I’ve been asking for a death ray to obliterate my various enemies for years now, and I don’t even have a working prototype in my office. I suspect they are humoring me in the hopes that I’ll just forget what I asked for, but the joke’s on them. I write everything down, so I won’t forget it. I just need to find that particular notebook, and then they’ll rue the day that they laughed at me behind my back!
ArmadilloCon Report
My “home base” convention was excellent this year, marred only by there not being enough hours in the day to see everyone and do everything. This year, I shared a table with my good friend Adrian Simmons, head honcho over at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, which worked out very well for both of us. We had a place we could retreat to between panels, and we made a number of sales from the near-constant stream of people who stopped by to shoot the breeze. Win-Win-Win.
One of the big things that was discussed by many (because I kept bringing it up) was the “aging out” of fandom, and in particular, authors and readers. Several fans, pros, and con runners, as well as myself, are thinking about a means to create more opportunities for authors and readers to interact with one another. The influx of new fans in our spaces is a great thing, but as these new fans bring their interests to the fore, it’s coming at the expense of spaces for traditional publishing, book collecting, writing, literary criticism, and so on.
My idea was to create a way for small groups of authors to show up at other venues, outside of regional conventions, and engage with readers and fans in libraries, coffee shops, schools and universities, etc. If they won’t come to us, because they don’t now about regional conventions, for instance, then we ought to be able to come to them as easily as going to a show. More on this later, but if you are interested in participating in the conversation, send me a note and I’ll add you to the list.
Blood & Thunder Ebook is Live!
Right on the heels of a successful crowdfunding campaign to have Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard translated into Portuguese comes the announcement that B&T is now available as an eBook, thanks to the efforts of Ståle Gismervik, one of the behind-the-scenes guys in Howard Studies. This is long overdue, something that people have asked me about frequently over the years. Enough moving parts at the Robert E. Howard Foundation Press have lined up to make this happen, with much rejoicing from the fans who have been waiting, well, not patiently, but about as patiently as fans tend to do anything. Can an audiobook be far behind? If y’all want me to read it, then yes, it’ll take a bit. But I’m willing to work on it. In the meantime, you can get to the good stuff, at a very nice price, by following the link: Blood & Thunder on Amazon.
More Podcastery
I realize that for some of you, a two-hour discussion of the merits of Indiana Jones may not be your jam. Perhaps this podcast, all about television from the 1980s, will be more to your liking? Featuring myself and the redoubtable Joe Crowe, one of my favorite people to hang out and talk pop culture with. Give it a listen, if only to experience my recitation of the intro to Tales from the Darkside.
John Cassaday
Back in the early 1990s, I was a young, self-disenfranchised hotheaded punk with dreams of literary greatness or a contract at Vertigo comics, whichever came first. There was a regional convention in the Metroplex called the Dallas Fantasy Fair, and it was, frankly, legendary, in its ability to bring all of the then local talent together with some serious A-List creators. Into this heady mix we all marched, still rabid fans, but with an eye towards doing more, making our mark on the world of comics.
I made lifelong friends at those shows, which happened twice a year for years. The reasoning for this was that Easter and Thanksgiving, while being big family holidays, might not line up that was for a lot of the convention-goers; remember that this was before the Millennium, when comics were still kid’s stuff and collecting action figures and playing D&D marked you as a nerd, or worse. Having someplace you could go to escape from your family was critical back then.
A lot of exceptionally talented folks were a part of my creative journey. In addition to my friends from Waco: Billy Haney, Shane Campos, William Traxtle, Rob Kelley, and my oldest friend, John Lucas, I got to meet and befriend a number of young creators including, but by no means limited to, John Picacio, Fernando Ramirez, Tim Czarnecki, Chris Gronland, Rick Klaw, Martin Thomas, Shannon Wheeler and of course, other working professionals like Bill Willingham, Bill Williams, Keith S. Wilson, Joseph Monks and Hart Fisher. And, of course, there was John Cassaday.
We were all in various stages of creative development, including Cassaday, whose artwork was impressive right out of the gate. He came on so fast, if you blinked, you missed it. One minute, it was “Hey, have you seen the stuff Cassaday is drawing now?” and the next it was, “Oh, John’s got this new book called Desperados that looks frickin’ amazing.” Years later, in 2002, when John Lucas told me he was moving to New York City, because that was where the comics were happening, he added, “Cassaday said I could stay with him until I find a place, get some work, you know.”
That was the beginning of Lucas and Cassaday’s adventures in NYC. Cassaday had been working on Captain America (the book was a response to 9/11) and was about to start working on the Astonishing X-Men with Joss Whedon. Thereafter, whenever I talked to Lucas, he had a story about something he and Cassaday did, or a place they went to, or something cool that happened last night. New York City is a big place, and both of them were rightfully enchanted with it, but there was something reassuring about knowing that Lucas wasn’t up there by himself in the big city; in fact, there was another person who understood where Lucas was coming from, because he’d been there, himself. There’s a commonality to Texas that connects everyone here. I think it’s barbecue.
Cassaday never lost his small-town humility. He was the same person, no matter how stratospheric his career went. His checklist of books is incredible and enviable; you don’t get much bigger than Astonishing X-Men and Star Wars. Here’s a clip of Cassaday at Metropolis Comics during his Art of Star Wars Exhibit. One of the most well-known artists in the business, but he still has time for this:
Cassaday died quite suddenly on Monday. Details are sparse, and not likely to emerge anytime soon. He was found, unconscious, and rushed to the hospital. He never woke up. He was fifty-two years old.
I’m strung out, watching my longtime friends grieving and not able to do anything about it. I hate that I’m never going to see him and talk to him again. We had a number of shared interests in pulp fiction, 1940s cliffhangers, old movies, and of course, classic comics. You can read more about his amazing career here: John Cassaday’s Wiki page.
I’m gratified to see so many people from the world of comics posting their favorite Cassaday stories. It’s kind of like a digital wake. I am also pleased to note that his impact on the comics field is noted in all of these posts. It’s not an overstatement to say he was one of the most important comic artists in the 21st century. His sense of design, storytelling, and composition were unique, and I always thought of him as equivalent to Jim Steranko in relation to his place and time, pushing the visual idea of what a cover or a splash page could look like. Really graphic, modern, clean design. Retro Pop Art.
No one drew like John Cassaday, and that was the least of his gifts to everyone who knew him. Rest in peace, Buddy.
Howard Andrew Jones
The New Sword and Sorcery community was rocked by the recent announcement that Howard Andrew Jones has terminal brain cancer. Howard, a Harold Lamb scholar and damn-fine fantasy writer, has been a tireless and unapologetic champion of classic adventure fiction for as long as I’ve known him, which is about 25 years. He has written rpg game books from Green Ronin and Paizo, in addition to his own series of picaresque sword and sorcery novels. His longtime association with Black Gate was where I first met him. In addition to penning a new sword and sorcery series, Jones has been the editor of Tales from the Magician’s Skull since the magazine’s successful Kickstarter.
Howard is the very definition of a mensch. He’s always been a solid guy to know; smart, funny, kind, and gracious. I was so glad he and John C. Hocking made the pilgrimage to Cross Plains, Texas, this year for the annual Robert E. Howard fan gathering. It was great to see him in person after so many years. I loved seeing everyone interacting with him and telling him complimentary things about his books. But what I’ll cherish the most was this:
Getting to playtest the forthcoming new Conan RPG from Monolith with these luminaries was so much fun (and honestly, it was even more fun, since I didn’t have to run the game!). This ‘frivolity’ isn’t something people like us get to do very often—that is, gaming together in the same room. We’re too scattered, and at shows and conventions, we’re all too busy. Getting to unplug, chitchat, and lark about with dice and pencils and in my case, an accent, was awesome, second only to the first time I did something like this in Cross Plains, coincidentally in anticipation of the release of the previous Conan RPG from Modiphius.
Man. I just rewatched the above clip and realized that Todd Woods was one of the play testers at the table. Todd passed away in 2022.
You need to tell people how you feel about them. Don’t wait. Do it now. It’s too easy to lose track of people and then before you know it, they’re gone.
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Note: we apologize for the absence of the weekly report in last week’s update. When Admin and Bunker Ops decide to head out into the field, it puts all of us under pressure to keep the bunker going in their absence.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (in theaters)
The ghost with the most is back, haunting adult Lydia and trying to pick up where they left off. After all, she was his runaway child bride, n'est-ce pas?
“Fan Service” is now an ugly, derisive term, which is deeply ironic, since fans have been demanding to be serviced for over 20 years, now. Watching fans complain about getting the thing that they asked for is akin to watching a child yell at his mother for putting too much ketchup on his plate next to his chicken nuggets. “I wanted another movie just like the one you gave me, only different!”
That being said, if one is going to do a follow-up to a beloved film after decades, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hits nearly everything on the “Do It Right” checklist. About the only thing missing is five more minutes of Michael Keaton doing his schtick.
The time jump is pitch perfect; I don’t have any notes. Where everyone ended up at the beginning of the movie makes perfect sense. They made good use of the most memorable and iconic bits and pieces of the original without the wink and nod that so many other movies do. There were a few well-worn plot points that have become pretty commonplace in recent years, but I think they managed to address stuff like the “mysterious boyfriend” cliché and resolve it differently and it works fine, largely because it’s not the central plot.
I wish Tim Burton was a more consistent director; I literally break 50/50 on his movies. I either love them or hate them. There is no middle ground. In this case, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice won me over, thanks to all of the returning veterans having not lost a single step in the ensuing years, and the casting of Jenna Ortega as Winona Ryder’s daughter, thus passing the torch and cementing her position as the Spooky Goth “It” Girl for her generation to obsess over.
Chimp Crazy (HBO)
A new documentary series about the owners of chimpanzees and the great apes who allegedly love them, from the same people who brought us Tiger King.
I’ll admit; at first glance, this looks like more of the same. The person they are interviewing has, um, a unique style all her own, like Joe Exotic. Images of primates in cages. Bodycam footage that suggests violence and chaos. Should be fun to watch, right? People are so wacky.
Well, yes, they are, but Chimp Crazy isn’t fun, at all. The chimp owners in the doc aren’t eccentric enough to be an Internet sensation, and there’s nothing funny about looking into the eyes of an animal that shares 98% of its DNA with us through a cage. I love the great apes. I love them especially when they aren’t being hunted or kept as pets.
While we gleefully watched as more than one tiger tried to bite Joe in the ass, Chimp Crazy doesn’t show the violence that these apes are capable of. The bloody aftermath crime scene photos are horrible enough, and not even digital blurring can obscure the horror of the woman who got her face torn off by a chimp. I’d argue that the digital blurring made it worse, because there’s a suggestion of what happened, and your mind fills in the rest.
This was a hard watch for me. I don’t like PETA, but I really hate animal cruelty, and I get visibly angry when I see great apes in the hands of private citizens who insist on treating them like rambunctious babies. It’s particularly frustrating because baby chimps and most monkeys are cute in that way that triggers a dopamine rush and trips that protective instinct in most people. You want to hold them and hug them and feed them, but it’s always without the considering the various consequences of raising and caring for a wild animal in your damn house. Smart, yes, incredibly so. Capable of expressing emotion, learning sign language, and all of that. Also tribal, territorial, aggressive, and unpredictable. What could possibly go wrong?
Chimp Crazy shows you everything that can, and has. The documentary centers on Tonia, the blonde woman seen in the trailer, and all of the shenanigans she gets up to playing cat-and-mouse with PETA’s lawyers, the film crew, and the authorities. She speaks in malaprops, which is kinda funny, but also a little sad. The friends and family of the chimp owners that the film crew interviewed were all quite savvy and were able to identify exactly why these people do what they do. The answer isn’t very satisfying since there are upwards of one hundred less expensive, less dangerous, less time-consuming ways to fill the void in their lives without impacting an endangered species, starting with offering to babysit a human child instead.
Bunker Ops noted the careful juxtaposition of Tonia, who seemed intent on achieving some level of fame, and the actor Alan Cumming, who ends up in the documentary because he co-starred in the movie Buddy (1997) with Tonka, the same chimp that Tonia is dead-set on keeping, despite everyone’s best efforts to take him away from her.
Oh, and Tonia’s eventual comeuppance? It never happens. At least Joe Exotic went to jail. When you see Tonia’s eventual fate and her jaw-dropping reaction to it, you’ll wonder why you even bothered to watch the series in the first place.
While reading your remarks about aging, I was reminded of the 1986 movie Tough Guys. Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas play a pair of old gangsters who are released from prison after serving decades-long sentences. Younger criminals make fun of them, but not for long. Just because somebody's got some snow on the roof doesn't mean they're harmless. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092105/
Thanks for another trip inside the bunker. I usually come to you for things that are inspirational, educational, REH-ish, or just plain fun. This one took me the other direction as John Cassaday's passing hit harder than I expected, especially right before 9/11. I loved his work on Planetary and Astonishing X-Men, but the Captain America he gave us after 9/11 was just what this long-time comics fan wanted to see. The same heroes that got us through tough times since WW2 did their best to put our feelings and emotions into words and images in a way that only comics can. It wasn't a time for funny books and kid comics, but it was a time for comics to be there for us and they delivered. I was never able to meet him in person, but I'm grateful for what he gave to this stranger.