Schlock Mercenary

Sandra and Keliana ushered a couple of pallets of books into the Hypernode Warehouse late last week. This is the first time we’ve taken delivery of books when I haven’t been there to crack open the first box and huff the concentrated scent of new books. Keliana Tayler, with stacks of boxes full of thousands of booksThe warehouse isn’t particularly exciting, and is downright deficient in terms of how photogenic it is. These aren’t the reasons why I do book sketching at home, but they certainly add weight to the argument. On Friday, Sandra and Keliana hauled a big stack of boxes into our front room (which is now a bit larger with the absence of a 117-year-old piano¹) and set up my signing and sketching station. Our front room, classed up with a raggedy folding table and stacks of boxes. And a popcorn bucket.I haven’t gotten started on that part of the project yet. I’ve got about three months of outline to nail down, and then three weeks of comics to script, and then I’m allowed to start work on signing and sketching. That probably means Tuesday². We’ve said that your pre-orders for Force Multiplication will ship by July 25th. The odds are pretty good that we’ll beat that date. I like having the wiggle room, though. It lets me pace myself, and my hand, which seems to wear out faster with every book release. Slow and steady may not actually win the race, aphorism notwithstanding, but it does ensure a healthy finish, and I’m quite happy to settle for that. ¹I should blog about that. It’s a poignant story, and worth more than a footnote. ²Most of the work on the outline is already done, furiously hand-written in my sketch book. I need to transfer it to a nice CTRL-C/CTRL-V medium so I can make sure all the bits are in the right order.

On its own merits, Independence Day: Resurgence suffers from a little bit of sequelitis, a lot of “bigger=better,” and felt longer than it really was despite so many cool things happening on screen. I liked it, but did not love it. The thing it did right, it did almost perfectly. The events of the first film, set in 1996, are treated as if they happened 20 years ago. It’s now 2016, and the actors who appear in both films played their characters as having aged twenty years. Which the actors actually have. Sequels almost never get to do that to this extent, and I liked it a lot. And that’s it for the “review” part of this review. If you’re just here for the movie, stop reading now. Had it not been for the disastrous results of the Brexit referendum, and the “Leave” campaign’s abuse of the word “independence¹,” I might have given this film nothing more than an ordinary review. One of the connections is far too strong for that, however. See, the thing Independence Day: Resurgence did perfectly is one of many things which the Brexit referendum underscored as a terrible failing. The film tells a story in which the old people champion a future that the young people have chosen. The older generation in Independence Day: Resurgence has spent twenty years in a world united, and is fighting to preserve it for the next generation. I don’t know what the UK’s older generation, the ones who voted “Leave,” have spent twenty years thinking, but the younger generation has spent those years looking forward with hope, not backward with fear. With Brexit, the older generation voted against the future that the youth of the UK overwhelmingly desired. At 48 I guess I’m technically an old person², at least in the eyes of the 18-24yo voters who so overwhelmingly favored remaining in the EU. I’m an old person who has changed his mind numerous times, and who looks back and is appalled at some of what I used to think³. If I’m wise, it’s not because I’m constant, unless you count “constantly learning.” Young me probably would have been won over by words like “sovereignty” and “independence.” Old me sees how connected we all are, and how every single act of ignorant distrust tears at the fabric of the future we want to build. Fellow old people: Look around. Listen and learn. That thing you’ve believed for decades may not be true anymore. It might not even have been true then. Inertia is not wisdom, and those who praise common sense are often calling for you to remain ignorant. Young people: Old people aren’t all jingoistic relics of the isolationism that has been useless since before most of them were born. Some of us want to hand you a world that is better than the one we were handed, better even than the “good old days” that we, in our more honest moments, will admit never actually existed. ¹Along with a many other words. ²There are at least two generations of people who are older than me, and who look at the number 48 and furrow their brows, scowling at me for co-opting their adjective. Sorry. I’m camping on your lawn now, but in ten years I’ll be moving into the house. ³I still hold to the “faith of my fathers,” but I am quite happy to not conflate it with the cultural baggage that so often accompanies it.

Sandra and Keliana are down at the Hypernode Warehouse awaiting a truck full of Force Multiplication. Signing, sketching, packing, and shipping are the activities that will soon come to dominate the cottage industry here. No pictures yet, because no truck yet. We’ll keep you posted.

Context: I had Jury Duty on Wednesday. We’re done now. We reached our verdict at around 5 pm after deliberating for about an hour, and with that done, all the sequestering and no-talking stuff is done too. The judge gave us permission to speak freely about the case. The defendant was charged with “possession with intent to distribute.” The defense claimed that he was going to use all 250 doses of meth himself. The prosecution claimed that this was actually unheard of. They also pointed out that, according to the law, even if he only planned to share, not sell, and was going to share just one dose, that’s still intent to distribute.¹ When arrested, the defendant did not have all of the other paraphernalia of drug distribution in the car with him. Just 25.681 grams of chunky, uncut methamphetamine. Distribution would require baggies and a scale, and a full operation would be evidenced by cutting agents, a client list, and some wads of $20 bills. I’m getting to the metaphor soon, I promise. The prosecution suggested that these things would likely be left at a facility, where they could be used in secret on a large flat, stable surface, exactly like none of the surfaces found inside the car. The absence of the other stuff in the car simply meant they hadn’t found the facility yet. (They never found a facility, and whether or not they looked for one never came up from either team of attorneys, which seemed WEIRD to me, but maybe these things go missing all the time.) The metaphor: In closing arguments the defense attorney said “if you’re going to bake a cake, you don’t leave all the ingredients at home, and then go shopping for an oven.” It’s cute, but okay, stop. If you’re going to bake a cake, some of the things you need are re-usable, but some are consumed with each cake. You go shopping for the stuff you run out of. A digital scale is the sort of thing that is very sensibly left at home when you go shopping for the key consumable ingredient in your business. That was my exact thinking when she broke out the oven metaphor. Literally, the moment she said “oven” my brain said “your metaphor works better against you² than it does for you.” During jury deliberations I found that pretty much all of us had that same thought. The point being, if you’re going to use a metaphor, you go shopping for the one that isn’t pointier on the end you’re going to hold it with. Same rule if you’re shopping for swords, probably. ¹ I see the logic in that law, but I can also see how it can easily be abused in its application. That said, I am not a lawyer, even if I am now a part of the system. ² I was pretty disappointed³ with the prosecuting attorney for not reversing the metaphor during his rebuttal. I’ll grant that it is possible that he trusted That One Juror Who Said He Is A Cartoonist to make the reversal during deliberation. Lawyers trusting juries to be clever seems like a stretch, but trusting me to fix a broken joke is a slam dunk. ³ Technically, I did not go to court today to be entertained by the attorneys. I went to court FOR GREAT JUSTICE and that’s usually only entertaining on TV.

It started with a discussion of logic gates, and the futile attempt to map the seven gates onto the seven deadly sins. Sloth was invoked. At some point we (Otter, Ubersoft, and Will) began to wonder whether logic gates could be mapped onto animals. The output of that was this picture of a baby hippoxnortamus. “Hippoxnortamus” is fun to say.

We just got word that our pallets of Force Multiplication: Schlock Mercenary Book 12 will be arriving sometime “in the next week or so.” If you want your copy shipped soon, now is the time to place your order. A great many of you have already placed your orders, and are reading this and asking what OTHER book you can maybe order. Well, as it happens, my friend Bob has a book out! You may remember Bob from his guest-review of Hardcore Henry. That’s his blog style, and while it’s not the same as his literary voice, the snark does shine through. Death by Cliché is Bob Defendi unchained. It is the story of a game designer who attempts to sneak out of the worst role-playing session ever, and ends up in the game itself, starting with a room “lit by flaming brassieres.” This may be misleading. Death by Cliché is not full of puns and dad jokes¹. It’s a funny, frightening, poignant, and exhilarating exploration of a world in which RPG clichés and sloppy game design are the governing principles, the unseen hands pulling the strings. UPDATED TO ADD: My 21-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son both grabbed copies² from Bob last night. Five hours later—FIVE HOURS LATER—they both got grouchy when we insisted that it was time for lights to be out so the old people in the house could go to sleep. Which is to say that my review may not have gushed to the level that this book deserves for some readers, including a junior majoring in illustration and a junior-high student majorly invested in Minecraft. ¹There are puns and dad jokes in the book. I won’t lie. They’re there. Not everywhere, but there. Usually as the set-up for something that is actually funny. ²He only meant to give us one copy of the book at Writing Group on Thursday, but he had a stack, and my children, even the adult ones, can be grabby.

I have a lot to say about this film, in large measure because it did some surprising things, and it did some difficult things, and almost everything it did was done well. That stuff merits discussion. It’s worth holding off on a lot of it, however, because there would be spoilers, and one of the things I loved most about this film was that it surprised me several times. There were a couple of plot points that I called well in advance—tropes that have too much narrative force to be denied, even in subversion—but that didn’t sully my satisfaction with the story. Let’s start with this: Warcraft clears my Threshold of Awesome, and if I lose geek cred, or a measure of one of the other credibilities I enjoy, by having had more fun watching Warcraft than I had watching this year’s superhero films, so be it. You can read the rankings for yourself. As of this writing the furries are winning at movie (Kung Fu Panda 3, Zootopia), and video games are runnering up (Angry Birds, Warcraft, Ratchet & Clank.) Superheroes are making a good show of it, but through a combination of retreads, joyless slogs, and shaky-cam, they’re the ones losing geek cred. My biggest concern with Warcraft, at least going in, was how the trailers suggested that female orcs would be depicted as green-skinned, sexy humans with cute, pouty tusks, while the males were big and scary. That attractive lady-orc in the trailers (played by Paula Patton) is not really an orc. The orcs consider her an abomination, and I’m not spoiling much, because we get that reveal the moment she shows up on screen. The actual female orcs are still kind of built like humans, of course, but those lady-orcs most resemble human males on a solid regimen of steroids and gym memberships. With not-as-cute-but-still-pouty tusks. And my point here is that the creature design made sense, and kept me rooted in the story. On top of that, the orc characters were so very well rendered that I simply accepted them as people, rather than CG, was able to let them get on with their movie. I very much liked how magic was used in the story. I have no idea what the current rule set is for magic use in the World of Warcraft game (I haven’t visited Azeroth since Warcraft II¹) so I can’t speak to whether the film was true to the game’s rules. It was, however, true to the rule set for good storytelling. There were limits to it, there was a cost, and as its secrets were peeled back there were story-critical reveals that were heaps of fun. World of Warcraft players will probably catch dozens of nods, cameos, and Easter eggs. They might also rage-quit over the mistreatment of their favorite whatever. None of that had any bearing on my enjoyment of the films. I caught a couple references, and liked them a lot, but they worked fine without context, too. And I guess that’s what amazed me the most about this film. It does not assume that we have any knowledge of the universe². Characters are introduced and developed from scratch, and there were a lot of them to keep track of. ¹Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, which was released in 1996, and which I may have noodled around in as recently³ as 2005. No, I have not played WoW. ²Well, almost none. From the outset it looks like most other Tolkien-derived western fantasy settings: “monsters and magic in Medieval Europe.” There’s far more than just that going on in epic fantasy these days, which is part of why reading new books is so cool. ³So, not very recently. Eleven years.

My friend Sal, who was among the first comics industry professionals I met, is fighting cancer, and a bunch of us are getting together to help out. This Saturday I’ll be at Dragon’s Keep in Provo, Utah. I’m bringing books, miniatures, and art supplies.

I really like it when I get the chance to properly say “thank you.” On Thursday I discovered, after walking around the Phoenix Convention Center, that my barely-bruised-but-no-seriously-I-smashed-it finger was swelling up just enough to put pressure on a nerve. This was resulting in severe hand pain, plus a pulsing conduit of fire that played merry hell with the neurochemicals I depend on in order to be happy. With my slightly swollen hand hanging by my side I was miserable and depressed to the point of being almost non-functional. My friends suggested that maybe I should get a sling, and this seemed like a great idea, except that I was in an unfamiliar place, in a hotel, and was deeply depressed. I scraped up just enough presence of mind to talk to a hotel staffer who was doing crowd control around the elevators. Her name was Erica. Erica put out a call to see if the hotel had any slings. When they did not, she hailed a cab for me, and handed the cab driver a voucher that would get me to CVS. She handed me another voucher which I could use to summon a cab to get me back to the Hyatt once I had what I needed. The cab driver, a very friendly man whose first name I can’t remember the spelling of, and whose last name was Singh, zipped me over to the CVS pharmacy, and told me exactly what to say when calling for pick-up. At CVS I found what I needed, strapped my arm into a sling, and began feeling better inside of about two minutes. Rather than call for pickup I walked the four blocks back to the hotel, and I arrived happy in spite of the blistering heat of the Phoenix afternoon. I left a thank-you message for Erica at the desk. One of her aides (apparently she is a staff member with an office, and aides) left a message for me the next morning, but I didn’t get it until late Friday night, and Erica had gone home for the weekend. Monday morning, before I hailed a cab to Sky Harbor, I checked at the desk to see if Erica was back in the office. She was, and she very enthusiastically greeted me, asking if we could get a picture together. I agreed, and then I took it up a notch by drawing a picture of Erica as an airborne, first-aid-kit-carrying superheroine. It kind of made her day, but really *I* was the one whose day was being made. I like getting to properly say “thank you.” I collected my luggage and hailed a cab. The cab driver looked familiar. “Did you drive me to CVS on Thursday?” “You are Mister Tyler?” (close enough.) “Yes!” I shook his hand in both of mine and thanked him. Once aboard I said “this time around I will get to pay you for the ride myself,” and he laughed. I may have overpaid him a bit upon arrival ($40 for a $15 flat-fare ride,) and that’s no substitute for being able to draw a picture, but it would have to do. I don’t like being injured, and I don’t like needing to ask for help from complete strangers, but once the crisis has passed (my hand no longer hurts my brain now) I very much DO like being able to express my appreciation for that help to some new friends. It is Monday, and the serendipity of this morning’s departure has set a pretty high bar for the rest of the week. I got to say “thank you” to Erica and to Mr. Singh, and I’m still smiling about it.

I’ll be at Phoenix Comic Con this weekend. My schedule is pretty light, and I don’t have a permanent seat in the exhibition hall, so I may be difficult to catch up with. Difficult, but not impossible: Thursday

As much as I enjoyed this movie, I am very much ready for a superhero movie in which the story is not about how we react to the existence of superheroes. Apotheosis makes for a good story, and that’s why we have gotten so very many films that deal with it, and quite a few of them have been excellent, including this one. X-Men: Apocalypse clears my Threshold of Awesome (no shaky cam! Not even during the scene where all but the pure in heart would have said it’s okay to shake the camera) and as far as I’m concerned it is a worthy successor to X-Men: Days of Future Past in pretty much every way. Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, and James McAvoy all turn in stirring performances, and the newcomers (new to me, anyway) held up their end of the stick with the sort of heroic aplomb that is required when a story about actual absolute power is being told.

The Angry Birds Movie is better than it has any reason to be. Lots of movies pull this off, but this movie manages to turn a mobile puzzle game into delightful cinema. That divide is huge, the chasm that must be cleared is—no, I’m not going to use that metaphor. The slingshot joke is low-hanging fruit. You can all see it coming, and the film deserves better than a metaphor pulled from the bottom branches of the tree. That principle, “don’t settle for the low-hanging fruit,” is what makes The Angry Birds Movie so delightful. The story follows a predictable form, and there are tropes that simply must be present for the story to flow, but the filmmakers were not willing to settle for simply filling out the forms and making it pretty. And I’m not talking about “exceeding low expectations.” No, this film is what happens when a storyteller who takes pride in their work seeks to exceed their own expectations. For me, The Angry Birds Movie is the second surprisingly enjoyable video game adaptation this year. It gives me hope—actual hope, complete with giddy anticipation—that the Warcraft movie can clear the “better than it has any reason to be” bar with the same amount of air.¹ The Angry Birds Movie clears my Threshold of Awesome, and yes, if you look at my list, I did, in point of actual fact, have more fun during that film than I did during Captain America: Civil War. ¹If there are pigs in the Warcraft movie, I want that movie to clear the bar, then sail across the screen and knock down their houses­². ²THERE I got it out of my system.

You may now begin preordering Force Multiplication: Schlock Mercenary Book 12. Here are some links for clicking!