My Five AnachroCon 2020 Panels

The weekend of Valentine's Day 2020 I'm going to be participating in--and even moderating--several panels at AnachroCon, Atlanta's annual steampunk and alternate history convention. Here they are, along with what I anticipate discussing:

How To Write Effective Villains-Friday (2/14) at 5 PM. I've gotten some kudos for developing my villains, be they cult leader Phil in The Thing in the Woods, the military dictator Grendel in Battle for the Wastelands, and (NAME REDACTED FOR SPOILERS) in Little People, Big Guns. I always take care to remember that everybody is the hero in their own story and few if anybody truly see themselves as evil. Hitler and the Nazis viewed themselves as heroically fighting an international Jewish-Communist conspiracy, the Soviets viewed themselves as fighting exploitative and aggressive international capitalism, Mao Zedong viewed himself as fighting to rebuild China after a "Century of Humiliation" at the hands of the European colonial powers and Japan, and Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi viewed themselves as agents of the will of God. Also appearing on the panel are Taylor S. Hoch, Lee Martindale, and Bill Ritch.

To Trope or Not To Trope, That Is The Question-Friday (2/14) at 8 PM. Given all the times I've referenced the almighty TVTropes in Myopia: Defend Your Childhood and my friend Jamie and I can actually carry on conversations in TVTropes, this seemed right up my alley. Although many of my stories use common tropes (no spoilers to say that in Battle for the Wastelands, the hero's home is the Doomed Hometown), some of my storytelling ideas do invert common tropes. I wrote a whole blog post about how Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker would have been more interesting if they'd avoided Redemption Equals Death for a certain character (and had to deal with all the awkward consequences), while I've got an as-yet-unpublished short story in which the villain, rather than destroying the hero's hometown, instead makes it a major military base. The hero's neighborhood gets eminent-domained and much of the town ends up gentrifying, creating sets of winners and losers and a much more complicated situation than just the usual hero-villain. Also appearing on the panel are William Joseph Roberts, Bill Ritch, R.A. "Rob" McCandless, and Dennis Medbury.

So You Want To Go Indie: Publishing in the 21st Century-Saturday (2/15) at 11 AM. We're living in a new world with e-readers and platforms like Amazon KDP and Createspace. To use economics teacher metaphors, publishing used to be an oligopoly (harder to get into and more money for those who do), but now it's monopolistic competition (low barriers to entry and less profit). This has led to an explosion in the number of books available to readers, but also drastically increased competition for writers even as it provides a lot more opportunities for them. Also appearing on the panel are William Joseph Roberts, Mandy Burkhead, and Cecilia Dominic.

Alternate Universe Creation-Saturday (2/15) at 1 PM. One area of my writing I've been given kudos for is my worldbuilding. My "idea files" for different projects typically involve well-developed worlds just needing people to put in them. From high school (around 2000 or so) until 2015 when my new day job required more time I was a regular member of the Internet's biggest alternate history forum, producing several alternate timelines on the site and commenting on many, many more. Even though I had site administration ban me to avoid distractions, I still blog about timelines I can read in the public section, so I'm not getting rusty. Also appearing on the panel are Taylor S. Hoch, Bill Ritch, and Cecilia Dominic. This is the first time I'm actually moderating a panel, so wish me luck. :)

How To Research Effectively-Saturday (2/15) at 3 PM. Given how I've got a history masters degree this is an area where I can put my talents to work. For those writing military fiction YouTube has demonstrations of the firing of various weapons and even footage from actual combat (like the time someone put GoPros on tanks in battle in Syria). Also it's possible to get an alumni library card for colleges you've graduated from to retain access to the library, like I have for Georgia State. Also appearing are Lee Martindale and Cecilia Dominic.

Both My Supervillain-Protagonist Stories Are Now "Wide"

Back in 2013 when I was in graduate school, I wrote two short stories featuring Indian-American supervillain Andrew Patel as the protagonist, "Ubermensch" and "Needs Must." Although I would consider myself a political conservative, I do agree with the concept of more minority representation in speculative fiction, not just on the grounds of giving children the chance to see themselves as superheroes but also because members of these groups have money to spend. Look at the success of Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino hero of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or the Muslim Miss Marvel who will be getting her own Disney show soon. When I first tweeted them out, none other than Muslim fantasy writer Saladin Ahmed retweeted the links for me.

Although I had plans to write more stories featuring Patel, there wasn't a whole lot of reader interest compared to my alternate history and straight science fiction and fantasy projects. I've got a draft of a third story that actually links Andrew and his world with The Thing in the Woods in a Stephen King fashion (I got the idea from my friend Nic, overlord of Myopia: Defend Your Childhood), which I might include in a collection someday. However, that's likely all we'll ever see of Andrew Patel until we get to that future Thing sequel where he makes an appearance.

In the meantime, although I do make sales now and again (I sold a copy each yesterday, for example), the Kindle Unlimited borrows really dried up. According to one of the writing podcasts I listen to, one should stay in KU until the borrows stop coming in and then one should go wide on outlets like Kobo, Barnes and Noble, etc.

To that end, the two tales of supervillain Andrew Patel are now "wide" on non-Amazon markets. "Ubermensch" can be found on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Apple here and "Needs Must" can be found in these markets here. They are also various library markets like Overdrive, but they're not live there yet.

So if you're interested in the tales of an Indian-American biomedical engineer who read a little too much Nietzsche in college and has transformed himself into a cyborg to achieve transcendence, enjoy!

Movie Review: VENOM (2018)

The other day I saw the movie Venom with a friend at Atlantic Station right here in Atlanta, GA. Although the reviews were for the most part not very good, it did look kind of cool and he wanted to see it. I've historically been a superhero fan, although X-Men was more my thing than Spider-Man (I think I only owned one Spider-Man comic--it was part of the Clone Saga I think), so I decided to give it a shot.

So how was it? Let's find out...

The Plot

Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is a crusading journalist in San Francisco living with his fiancee Anne Weying (Michelle Williams) and covering stuff the local powers-that-be would rather not get discussed. His going off half-cocked after Elon Musk-esque Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) with information he shouldn't have costs him his job and his relationship, leaving him living unemployed in a slum.

Then a whistle-blower at Drake's company Doctor Dora Skirth (Melora Walters) contacts him about some shenanigans going on at the laboratory. Eddie sneaks in and accidentally bonds with an alien Symbiote, becoming more than human and more than a little bit hungry for live prey. Now he has to evade Drake's men and figure out what's going on, but there's more than one Symbiote out there...

The Good

*The dynamic between the Venom Symbiote, an alien predator who initially views his human host as nothing more than a "ride," and act-before-thinking do-gooder Eddie is absolutely hilarious. Seriously, I spent the last half or so of the movie laughing my head off. I can tell because I suffered a compression fracture in my spine over the summer that hasn't fully healed and consequently that hurt. Seriously, that is absolutely the best part of the movie and I'm glad the film has made so much money that there has to be a sequel. I want to see more of that.

*I like Tom Hardy's portrayal of Eddie Brock. He clearly wants to do the right thing, but doesn't really have good judgement and it costs him. And then he has his hands full trying to manage an intelligent alien predator with a really sadistic sense of humor that's sharing his body.

*I like how they took elements from the different Venom storylines to put together this one, especially since for whatever reason (rights, contracts, etc) they couldn't have Spider-Man in it. I'm not going to go into a lot of details about which plots got used to avoid spoilers, but one is definitely "Lethal Protector", in which Venom decides to become a superhero.

*Ahmed is very good as Drake. He's charismatic and seems to generally have good intentions, but he's incredibly manipulative, amoral, and downright hissable in parts. Seriously, I was mad at him at times, and not a lot of movie villains straight-up anger me.

*Eddie's job situation rings true to me as a former newspaper reporter--if someone in the community has sufficient pull with the media owner, is a big enough advertiser, etc. they have an unhealthy amount of power over what gets covered and what doesn't. What happens with Eddie is what would happen if Elon Musk were to vindictively pursue a grudge against a local reporter who challenged him, especially if said reporter went off on him without evidence to back up his claims. And given how Eddie was "run out of New York" (an allusion to the comic plot in which Brock loses his job as a newspaper reporter, something he blamed Spider-Man for) and might not have a great reputation already, he's particularly vulnerable.

*I liked how the film handles the relationship between Eddie, Anne, and Anne's new boyfriend Dr. Dan Lewis (Reid Scott), who happens to be a gigantic fan of Eddie's news show. Their interactions are pretty funny and it show the essential decency of all three characters. Anne still cares about Eddie despite what happened earlier (seriously, even an alien monster takes her side on the issue), Eddie respects Anne enough not to resent her new boyfriend and never once thinks about letting his alien "friend" cause him harm, and Dan sincerely tries to help Eddie (whom he thinks has some kind of conventional illness) rather than get territorial. And Anne has some surprisingly bad-ass moments for someone not really established as an Action Girl.

*An alien monster has a character arc. Seriously, he (it?) does.

The Bad

*The movie takes awhile to get going. Things don't really start getting fun until around 1/4 to 1/3 into the film. They could have tightened things up a little bit, although I have no specific suggestions about what to cut.

*As David pointed out after the movie, some of Dr. Skirth's actions in regards to helping Eddie get the dirt on Drake don't make a lot of sense. For starters, Drake's lab is probably full of security cameras, so sneaking him in isn't going end well.

The Verdict

I'll give this an 8.0, barely. The sheer hilarity of the Venom-Eddie interactions outweighs a lot of the issues the movie has.

Movie Review: Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

At long last, the event initiated in the post-credits sequence of the original Avengers film, helped along by the post-credits scenes in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Thor: Ragnarok and a glimpse of the tyrant's machinations in the first Guardians of the Galaxy has come. The Mad Titan Thanos has come to Earth. The Infinity War has begun.

The Plot

Mere minutes after the ending of Thor Ragnarok, Thanos makes his big move. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) manages to escape to Earth, arriving not long before the first of Thanos's generals. Thanos has already captured several of the Infinity Stones, super-powerful elements forged in the Big Bang, and now he intends to get the rest of them. Ranged against him are the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the survivors of Asgard, but that might not be enough...

The Good

*The movie moves along quickly and brings in the various characters from the previous films in an organic and intelligent way. Although some of the early reviews I've read claimed the movie was "overstuffed," I never got that vibe at all. It all made sense.

*Thanos's motivation are pared down and less silly than in the comics. Not going to go into detail for reasons of spoilers.

*Thanos (Josh Brolin) in general is a very impressive character, rather than merely being a monster sitting on his throne and getting failed by minions repeatedly as he was in the earlier films. He's as strong (or stronger) than the Hulk, as clever as Loki, and utterly ruthless and driven. He's also capable of quite a lot of pathos for a genocidal space god.

*I liked Vision's (Paul Bettany's) interactions with Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen). He's a genius-level AI, but he's also two or three years old. Some social clumsiness is to be expected.

*We visit Nidavellir, a world of space dwarfs who forged the Asgardians' weapons. That's a nice nod to Norse mythology.

*A character who has been away for quite some time makes a return appearance and has a major role to play in the story. Again, not going into detail for reasons of spoilers.

*There are some well-done fight scenes. Not going to go into details for reasons of spoilers, but my favorite is a battle on Titan.

(There's a theme going here, in case you haven't noticed.)

*Peter Dinklage plays a minor role and I liked it.

The Bad

*The Black Order (who in the films refer to themselves as "the Children of Thanos") don't really have distinct personalities. I didn't even get their names--the wizardy one that Tony refers to as "Squidward" I think is referred to by Thanos later as "Ebony Maw," but that's it. I like the idea of a villain having his own personal posse (in TVTropes they call this the Quirky Miniboss Squad, although that's a little too goofy for this crew) of actual characters, but this was a failed opportunity. They'd be better-developed if Marvel had used some of its previous baddies instead of killing off all but Loki and Baron Zemo--say a single Ultron-bot survived, Thanos' underlings rescued/captured him, and instead of those demon-beast things, it's an army of Ultrons in Wakanda complete with a smart-alecky James Spader voicing them all.

*There's a lot of telling and not showing with the nasty things Thanos does before the movie begins. It might have been better to make Infinity War a trilogy instead of a duology, with the events on Xandar, Knowhere, and Nidavellir as the first movie (there might be ways to get the major characters involved there--say the Guardians are on Xandar and the Asgardian refugees at Nidavellir when Thanos does his thing), this as the second, and the events of the upcoming second film as the third. This would make it especially clear Thanos is the biggest and baddest of them all and ironically make this film, probably one of the darkest MCU films, a Hope Spot. Here's how I would have done it, but beware spoilers.

*The whole thing I felt was kind of underwhelming. Maybe I went in with overblown expectations, having read reviews or spoiler-free comments describing people shrieking in the theaters and the like, but still.

*The film has a pretty significant body-count of major characters, but I can sense a major cop-out coming in the second film.

The Verdict

Don't get your expectations inflated and you'll enjoy it better than I did. 7.5 out of 10.

Book Review: The Sentinels: When Strikes The Warlord (2006)

I met Van Allen Plexico a few years ago at DragonCon through my friend James R. Tuck. I've since kept up with him through Facebook. I've tried my hand at superhero (or more specifically supervillain) fiction with "Ubermensch" and "Needs Must," but Plexico has written a series of superhero novels, the Sentinels series. What follows is part of a deal for his help promoting the audio version of "I am the Wendigo," let the record state, but it's an honest one.

So here's my review of the first one, When Strikes The Warlord...

The Plot

Earth is under threat from the villainous Warlord, a world-conquering supervillain. Standing in his way are a combination of superheroes, some seasoned veterans and others newbies still exploring their powers. But the Warlord has allies and minions of his own.

Who will triumph? Well, you'll have to read the book. :)

The Good

*Although the book does not seem to be primarily a comedic work, there are some lines and situations that are straight-up hilarious. The appearance of minor super-villain known as "The Wombat" made me laugh out loud, something that rarely happens in a book. There's other humor as well that's more subtle, including a villain(ess) who lampshades the trope about improbably skimpy female comic-character costumes.

*The character Francisco, though initially a sycophantic Igor figure for the villainous Warlord, has a lot more initiative and is in control of a lot more than he initially seems. Giving a villain a servile minion is kind of a cliche, but Plexico elaborates on his character quite a bit. That's one of the more creative elements in the book and I approve.

*The story flows well and has some good description.

The Bad

*There are some aspects of the story that could have been developed better if they'd been introduced earlier. For example, the villainous Warlord has got several lesser superhumans--most of them villains, but at least one a hero he's misled--working for him, but they aren't really developed as characters. The most interesting one--the misled hero, as opposed to the goons--is only in one scene. He seems like he could have an interesting back-story, but we don't see a whole lot. Perhaps he can get his own Sentinels story? Mr. Plexico himself said the story gets more complex as the series goes along, so this might be a positive, not a negative, for some readers.

*The humor doesn't really kick in until the later part of the story. And the humor, when it comes, is really funny--see my above comment about the Wombat. If the humor had started from the get-go, it would have been a much stronger book.

*One character is amnesiac and remembers little about his pre-superhero past--think Wolverine from X-Men. However, that's not introduced until well into the book. I think it might be the first scene from the character's point of view, in which case the later introduction makes sense, but it might then have been better to have his POV earlier or have it referenced in another character's POV so it's not so jarring.

The Verdict

A good, quick read for when one is exercising with one's Kindle, but could be better developed. Check it out on Kindle Unlimited if you're not up for buying it. Definitely going to read the second book. 7.5 out of 10.

FREE Supervillain-Protagonist Story on Thanksgiving and Black Friday

For Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2016, I've made my short story "Ubermensch" FREE. Those of you interested in superheroes, supervillains, villain-protagonist stories, and diversity in speculative fiction (lead character Andrew Patel is Indian-American) should take a look.

(Alex Claw has illustrated many of my Amazon stories, which can be found here. I think "Ubermensch" is the best cover. Here's his DeviantArt account if you're looking for an artist.)

And now for some background you might find interesting. I first started writing "Ubermensch" sometime in 2011. I published it independently on Amazon in early August 2013, with the sequel "Needs Must" appearing just under two weeks later. I've got a lot of potential stories to tell with this character, as the fact I've made it a series on Amazon indicates.

If you read the story, please leave an honest review, good or bad. I've got a cover made and a fourth (but not a third) story written for a four-story Andrew Patel collection. If and when it goes up, it will tie Andrew Patel and his world in with my Lovecraftian novel The Thing in the Woods. But I'd like to know if there's sufficient interest first.

Here's the cover for the planned collection for those who'd like to know more:

Alex did this one too.

FLASHING STEEL, FLASHING FIRE and "The Long Tail"

This really would have been better as an addendum to my last blog post on my writing and "the long tail," but it was late and I needed to go to bed. I looked over my sales figures for the last few years and saw that the principle of The Long Tail applies to my short-story collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire.

When I published Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire in July 2014, I sold 21 copies that month. Over the next five months, I sold eight copies at a rate of zero (August) to three (September) per month. That's over one-third of the premiere month's numbers in five months. In 2015, I sold 14 copies at a rate of zero (three separate months) to four (February) per month. No sales in 2016 so far, but when you combine the non-premiere months of 2014 with all of 2015, the "tail" has already exceeded the "head." And there's still most of 2016 left.

So if you've self-published anything and your numbers have crashed after the first month or two, don't worry. One or two sales per month over the course of years will add up in the long run.

Of course, if you plan on making a living--or at least more than, as Marko Kloos put it, "beer money"--doing this, you'll need to have a lot of product. One book earning $10 in royalties per month is $120 per year, but ten books earning $10 per month is $1,200 per year. And with that many books available, odds are you'll be earning more than $10 per month in royalties anyway. People who buy one book from an author are likely to buy other books, after all. My story "Ubermensch" is a superhero story, but people who bought it also bought Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire despite the complete lack of superhero stories in it. Moving outside of my own work, people who've bought my friend James R. Tuck's supernatural Robin Hood story Mark of the Black Arrow also bought his hollow-earth blaxploitation story Champion of Hollow Earth.

So as my friend Jeff Baker put it (and he learned the phrase from somebody at LibertyCon a couple years ago), if you want to make bank, "churn and burn."

Visit Where Your Story Takes Place, Or Why Google Maps Isn't Everything

I spent most of Saturday 12/26 (Boxing Day for you Commonwealth types) taking MARTA around Atlanta to do some research for two of my writing projects.

The first project is a short story entitled "Actions Have Consequences," which will feature my supervillain protagonist Andrew Patel. It will be part of a collection featuring "Ubermensch," which introduces him and his nemesis Silverbolt, the second story "Needs Must," and a fourth, "New Friends, Old Enemies."  The second is a novel entitled The Atlanta Incursion, the sequel to the teen Lovecraftian novel The Thing in the Woods I'm currently shopping around.

"Actions" features some gang members pursuing Patel around Atlanta. The action starts in East Point, so I took the train down after eating lunch at Peachtree Center. I soon realized the limitations of Google Maps--although I had used it to map out some buildings, I soon realized I'd gotten a lot of the detail wrong. Downtown East Point is more spread out, much more like Griffin, the town where I had my first newspaper job, than Atlanta or another larger city. It would be difficult for Patel to run down an would-be assassin without too many inconvenient witnesses. Fortunately there's an area that's built up enough for the scene to work, so I was able to get away with just tweaking it a bit. I also discovered the big pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks connecting downtown to an industrial or ex-industrial site, which I'll work in there somehow.

I later took the train over to the East Lake MARTA station, where I planned to have Patel and a friend make a long run down Howard Avenue for downtown Decatur after the train is delayed. I found the station sat squarely in the middle of a bunch of single-family homes and was well-attended by MARTA police. It's also right by the city of Decatur's water tower. That whole area is not going to be having gang shoot-outs, at least not ones that don't get squashed immediately. I thought about having the final confrontation take place around the King Memorial MARTA station instead, but the whole area is surrounded by lots of brand-new apartments. That's not the kind of place where gun battles are going to be allowed to happen either. I'll need to think about how to deal with that.

For The Atlanta Incursion, the protagonist is a student at Georgia State University. I found via Google Maps there was an apartment complex near the Garnett MARTA station one stop south of Five Points, the station I got off at when I was a student at GSU. So I (briefly) stopped at Garnett. The station is jammed down amid taller buildings and I couldn't find any apartments. There's the Atlanta jail, some courthouses and police buildings, and a lot of people loitering around. I don't think anybody actually lives there. And a lot of the buildings are run down. Probably most students--especially my protagonist--wouldn't really want to live there even if there were student housing available.

As a result, I needed to make some fixes. One fix was pretty simple--just change where the character was going when he had a PTSD episode. The other fix required changing a scene more substantially--instead of taking the train from Five Points to Garnett, he's walking through campus.

So let this be a lesson in writing research for you. If you're writing about real-life places and you're able to visit them, do so. You might avoid some obvious missteps.

Movie Review: ANT MAN (2015)

Last night I saw Ant Man with some of my church friends after an illness-induced delay. So here's my review, a few days behind schedule...

The Plot

Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has just been released from three years in prison for stealing from an unethical former employer. Unable to find a job to pay child support for his daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson) due to his record, he slips back into crime alongside his motormouthed former cellmate Luis (Michael Pena). Luckily for him, he's soon recruited by former superhero Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and his estranged daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) to stop the machinations of Pym's former protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll). Cross is on the verge of rediscovering the technology that allowed Pym to become the first Ant-Man, and he has designs on selling it to some...questionable people.

The Good

*I didn't have very high expectations for the film because, like many, I viewed the Ant Man concept as kind of ridiculous and not especially effective as a superpower. However, the film proved me wrong. Being able to shrink to insect-size is very useful for breaking and entering, plus they go with the proportional size/strength thing (like Spider-Man?) to make Ant-Man a very effective combatant. And Cross's modern Yellowjacket suit is even more impressive than the 1980s gear Pym provides Lang.

*In that vein, the scenes where Lang is shrunk to approximately insect-size are incredibly entertaining. Rats, dancing club denizens, a friend of yours taking a shower, and ants become a lot more dangerous when you're that small. And when Lang and Cross do battle, environments like the inside of a suitcase or a toy train set prove to be fascinating battlegrounds.

*The film shows the ability to integrate different genres into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Although most of the films so far have been superhero movies, Ant Man is a heist film in the way that Guardians of the Galaxy is a space opera and Agents of SHIELD is a spy show.

*The acting is great. I liked Rudd as the well-meaning Lang and Douglas as the sometimes cranky Pym. Stoll does a good job as the ambitious, resentful Cross and I liked Lilly's Hope. But the best one of them all is Michael Pena, who steals the show as Luis. Luis is absolutely hilarious and I definitely like how the climax worked him and his other small-time crook buddies into the film. I do hope we end up seeing him again.

*There's a lot of good humor in the film, and not just from Luis. Thomas the Tank Engine gets put to some interesting uses, while let's just say there's more to a particular keychain than meets the eye.

*Although I initially thought the tie-in with the Avengers was kind of forced, it did lead to an entertaining battle between Lang and Falcon (Anthony Mackie). If you're going to send somebody to an old building to retrieve something you left, always, always make sure your maps are up to date. :)

*A possible Fate Worse Than Death for those who end up "shrinking uncontrollably" is foreshadowed, but it ends up happening to two completely different characters than what I expected. Good job at misdirection. And according to different sources, it might have happened to a third character as well. That's a good thing, because it allows the character to potentially be brought back for a later movie.

*There are two credits scenes to watch for, a mid-credits scene foreshadowing later developments in the Ant Man series and a post-credits scene that sets up Avengers: Civil War. Knowing what I know about the fate of Tony Stark's parents in-universe, I think I know what will trigger the conflict between Captain America and Iron Man.

*Like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the film touches on serious political issues, but not in a ham-handed way. Winter Soldier discussed the dangers of excessive government surveillance and trying to pre-empt every possible threat (something that was hijacked by some very dangerous people), while Ant-Man shows how easy it is for an ex-con who can't get a job to slide back into crime. Had Lang not encountered Pym, odds are he would have become a full-time criminal and likely come to a stickier fate.

*I liked the historical tie-ins in the flashbacks to the 1980s at the beginning of the film. SHIELD is meeting at the Triskelion building we first see in Winter Soldier, which isn't complete. Howard Stark and Peggy Carter of the WWII generation are still in charge and the organization seems more U.S.-centric rather than the one run by the multinational "World Security Council" we see in The Avengers.

*There's a whole subplot that I suspected in hindsight was a product placement for Baskin and Robbins. Given how I like B/R and how it wasn't obvious, that's a plus in my book.

The Bad

*I saw the movie at a drive-in theater and for the first part was sitting farther away from the radio. Although some actors' voices were easy to understand even with that, some I couldn't really hear until I moved. Obviously some actors/characters are softer-spoken than others, but that could also indicate issues with the sound mixing. After all, I don't think the characters who were harder to hear were this way for reasons of plot/character (think Roose Bolton in A Song of Ice and Fire, where being very soft-spoken is a major part of his characterization).

*There's some continuity issues with the television series Agents of SHIELD, also part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The show depicts a certain criminal organization as largely gutted, with its dregs controlled by a former low-level agent intent on using it to further his personal grudges ("closure"). Given the nature of the group it could be that the villains in Ant Man are independent of the ones in Agents and they might not be aware of each other or are even at war. However, some throwaway line like, "These suits will be useful in dealing with so-and-so" could explain the internal situation within the group.

*There was a bit later in the film where I remember checking Facebook on my phone, which could indicate a dull moment.

The Verdict

A delightful end to Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 9.0 out of 10.

New Comics Podcast: THE FANBOY AND GEEK GIRL POWER HOUR

The other day I learned that my friends James R. Tuck and Danielle Tuck have got a new podcast, THE FANBOY AND GEEK GIRL POWER HOUR. The podcast is focused on comic books and comic-book-related pop culture (that latter bit I didn't initially notice). I'm not a major comic-book junkie even though I'd seen the recent Marvel and DC movies and own Gareth Hinds' Beowulf and Watchmen graphic novels, so I didn't initially think I'd like it.

Well, I was wrong. The banter between the two of them was really engaging and they brought up a lot of interesting topics. I'd thought it might be them talking about comics I'd never read or wasn't interested in, but they made discussions even about those really interesting.

Some highlights of the first two episodes:

*Discussion of Image Comics as a company whose creators ultimately own their intellectual properties. Image just produces the comics in exchange for a cut. In contrast, DC and Marvel own the IP and hire people to write stories for them. If I had a hot IP, I'd be more willing to work for Image (or Icon, Marvel's creator-owned imprint) because I tend not to want to let go of my ideas. Image Comic even has a page of submission guidelines. Hmm...

*Some thoughts on the representation of women in Mad Max: Fury Road vs. Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The most damning indictment of Michael Bay for objectifying women comes in how two different movies handled Rosie Huntington-Whitely. In Mad Max we can see that she's actually a very capable actress and despite the nature of her character she's NOT objectified. However, in Dark of the Moon she's mostly there to be looked at, and how they introduced her is particularly obnoxious.

(And to make matters worse, she and her male co-star have no chemistry at all, even though they're supposed to be lovers. I was not a fan of Dark of the Moon and not a fan of her replacing Megan Fox as the franchise's female lead, no matter what offensive comments Fox made. I'd thought Huntington-Whitley wasn't a good actress and was simply chosen for her looks. Mad Max proved me wrong--she's not just eye candy and she really can act. If the writers give her something to do and the director puts in the effort, of course. George Miller clearly did in Mad Max; Michael Bay clearly didn't.)

*Discussion of the adaptation of the Kingsman graphic novel into the Kingsman: The Secret Servicefilm and some commentary on some stuff that didn't work. I really enjoyed The Kingsman, but I admit I thought they took a joke at the end of the movie too far. I wasn't as offended by said joke as much as James and Danielle were, but it went on for far too long. It was funny at first, but then as the joke progressed, it just got crass.

*Discussion of the Old Man Logan comic (Marvel) and the rebooted JLA (DC). There was also some criticism of Man of Steel that I didn't agree with and some concerns about the upcoming Batman vs. Superman (that it would be too GrimDark) that I did.

So if you're a comics fan, a film fan, or a cultural connoisseur in general, check out this podcast!