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You've heard of direct-to-DVD, so why not direct-to-comic-book? This collected volume of issues 1-5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight is the official 8th season of the Emmy-winning TV series, written by show creator Joss Whedon and packed with every surviving character from the series (plus a few that you thought didn't make it). Only Angel and Faith fail to make an appearance, both of whom show up later on (Angel in his own after-the-series comic and Faith in the latter half of season 8).

On the more meta side, I'd just like to say that this is an idea whose time has come. There's no good reason not to spin a TV show off into a comic once new seasons are no longer practical (due to viewership, actor availability or what have you). It's much cheaper, so the audience size is not an issue, and I think Season 8 really demonstrates that a comic book that is not only canon, but considered a part of the core continuity of the series will find its market.

Read on for the specifics (with no serious spoilers).

My first exposure to his work was in the pages of superhero comic books such as The Authority and Planetary. Ok, there's a pigeon-hole. Problem is, there are more. He's also written the hybrid tale, Transmetropolitan, which is a darkly comedic and highly cynical near-future tale of a suspiciously Hunter S. Thompson-like gonzo journalist. Well, that certainly pegs him as the run-of-the-mill black-and-white comics writer, except for the fact that Transmetropolitan is from Time Warner's DC Comics' Vertigo line... not exactly the niche one would expect.

Outside of comics, Ellis has collaborated on a never-aired TV series called Global Frequency which was based on his science fiction graphic novels of the same name. His first effort in the world of historical fiction was the graphic novel, Crecy, which traces the events of the battle of Crecy which, along with two other battles, established the supremacy of the English Longbow in medieval warfare.

As you can see, tracking down what it is that Warren Ellis writes about is a little difficult. There are, however, many common themes and he has a style which invites comparisons to some of the greats of the New Wave science fiction of the 1960s, especially with respect to Harlan Ellison's acerbic wit. Vulgarity, unorthodox sexuality and violence are often interspersed with an analysis of the human condition that borders on the post-modern but isn't quite introspective enough to become lost in its own deconstructive naval-gazing. He's also prone to the abuse of pop-cultural cliché in unexpected settings. His series, Planetary, for example is something like The X-Files in a world of super-heroes and mad science, but every issue is written as if it were the story that immediately follows a film or comic of some other genre. There is the issue about giant monsters on a Japanese island, now all dead. There's an issue about two cops that could have come straight out of any of a dozen action films from Hong Kong in the 1990s, but one of them has died and become a vengeful ghost. You get the idea. It's the story you don't hear after an otherwise interesting genre story.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Overall: This is a list of some of the best bridge books available today.

Bridge is one of my favorite card games. It combines the fast-paced play of hearts with an auction phase that is unrivaled in card-games. If you enjoy a complex and fascinating game, bridge is definitely the game for you. In the time that I've been playing, I've read a number of excellent books, and also some bad ones. I'll try to help beginners out by reviewing some of the books out there.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Old Man's War by John Scalzi (published in 2005) is the first SF book I've read in a little while. I've just had other things to do, and this is exactly the kind of book to break the fast with! An awful lot of people are comparing this book to Starship Troopers, the 1950s classic by Robert Heinlein (not the travesty of a movie from the 90s). That's a fair comparison, but I'd like to throw a few more comparisons in there. It shares Gun With Occasional Music's twisted vision of an altered future and Altered Carbon's dim view of the ethical maturity of mankind. As a military SF novel, and as a dark, but subtly optimistic view of mankind's future in the stars, it's one of the best I've read.

A word of warning, however. The story, at first, seems to be about how these 75-year-old soldiers will be altered so that they can be productive combatants. Like many elements of the story, this is only the beginning. Don't be disappointed when the answer is presented early on, and relatively matter-of-factly. The real story is in following our hero, John Perry, as he learns to be a soldier in a galaxy that is both more dangerous and more strange than he could have imagined.