Combining  "Mask for Mardi Gras" with another page of panels from the Graphic  Novel Prologue, this might be my favorite of the posters kicking off  Cat-Tales 10th Anniversary tomorrow.

Why Do We Fall?

Remember this moment? Remember this question? "Why
do we fall, Bruce?"

So we can lie on the floor stubbornly insisting we haven't?

So we can sit with our aching ass on the cold terrazzo insisting that gravity is a myth?

How about repeating like a politico's talking points that it's not the floor at all and we are, in actuality, on Dancing With the Stars foxtrotting with Jennifer Gray?

No. Why do we fall? So we learn how to get up.

I recently saw a piece on the 10 biggest WTF moments in comics. Not surprising which company took home the trophy for the big #1.

In 1998, DC made the mother of all WTF decisions when they opted to change the character of Superman. This character that had stood for 60 years, and had just been killed off a few years prior to show his utter importance not only to comics but to the world, was out the door...

A change of costume or marriage status is one thing, but completely altering everything that established the character as an American icon in the first place is something else entirely.

Several readers marked this as the first pock of the disease which has consumed just about all the characters now, the first blatant sign that those entrusted to write these characters have no understanding of what defines them or of their iconic significance in the greater world outside their Thursday To-Do list.

But not me. For once, I'm going to stand between DC and the ones throwing stones, because here's the thing: as soon as they realized the ground had given way under their feet and they were falling into a deep pit with a bunch of angry bats baring their teeth and hissing bat-spittle into their faces, they changed him back. The article itself admits "the explanation to get him back to normal was quite vague, probably a result of the severe backlash of comic book fans and their desire to fix the problem as quickly as possible."

They didn't tap Wizard to call it a giant step forward in comics, they didn't embark on a PR campaign to try and convince the terminally stupid that unsweetened lemon juice tastes just like water, they didn't figure there would be a new crop of gullible half-wits who would be coming along any minute to replace the 80% of their readership heading out the door. They didn't think up even worst things to do to Superman to punish the fans for not accepting the fiasco. They got up. That's why we fall. And if we can't get our asses out of that hole on our own, we scream for help before the rest of the ground gives and we fall farther.

Remember a few weeks ago I said The Reaper is out there, and DC's attitude that it's okay to mess things up further/they'll fix it (or not) next year was horrifically out of touch with the reality that there may not BE a next year? Anyone who thought I was being melodramatic, please turn and wave goodbye to Wizard. It's gone, as of yesterday. All staff let go. If a new online magazine transpires to replace it, the focus is to be on pop culture and the non-comics media where these characters still thrive. Not print comics.

Do I have your attention now, boys?

Fantastic Four is snuffing a major character today. What makes this different from past fan-inflaming stunts is that it's the first under Disney. That means if it doesn't work out (and by "work out" I don't mean by the comics definition 'people hate it' but the definition of everyone else on the planet), then those responsible are going to be introduced to a concept that is new to them but familiar to everyone else who works for a living: consequences. You make a bad decision, you piss off customers, you materially damage a company's assets, there are consequences. I don't think it's a bad thing. It's not going to be a pleasant adjustment. Growing up often isn't. But it's pretty much the only choice the medium has if it wants to survive.

Why do fall? Well, eventually to learn how to get up. For some though, there is an intermediary step: to learn to recognize the hole, and then to accept that the hole is not the place to be.

On a lighter note, it's a big week for Cat-Tales. The Dracula spinoff Capes and Bats releases its penultimate chapter today, and there's a plot twist that absolutely nobody saw coming--but which was right in front of us the entire time. I have to admit, I was floored when I read it. Scared the cat with my gasps of surprise. We're also less than 48 hours from the launch of a new feature to make life easier for our mobile friends. Work is underway on the new chapter of Trophies, while reviews continue to come in on À Bon Chat, Bon Rat.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

How to Succeed in Comics Without Really Trying

Had a few comics-related conversations over the holidays, and particularly their similarity to theatre. Comic books, like stage productions, cannot show elaborate cinematic scenes. They suggest, and the audience (or reader) fills in the rest from their imagination. Panel 1: close up on a Bat-glove, fist cocked. Panel 2: DEMON minion lying on the floor. You don't SEE Batman attack (reminder if you haven't seen the Arkham City trailer, you haven't seen CGI Keysi Shakespeare the way it's meant to be played), you create it in your own mind, and that folks, is why fanboys are more INVESTED in these characters and these stories. We are more possessive because they truly are OURS more than something we only see in a movie or on television.

Because of that similarity, and because theatre has had to reinvent itself for thousands of years to keep entertaining in a changing world, the modern comics professional can learn a lot from the theatre world. The big one to consider today is literally the difference between a theatre that failed in the last 10 years, and one in the same city that kept its lights on and is still performing shows. The philosophy is simplicity itself:

Look on every single performance of every single show as your one and only chance to win over someone in that audience and make them a lifelong theatre goer. Someone out there has never come to the theatre before, and what they see and hear and experience tonight could be so overwhelmingly magical for them that they are hooked for life.

Look on every single performance of every single show as potentially the last straw for someone who has seen one bad show too many.

Remember The Dark Knight? That movie brought people into comic shops for the first time. They were looking for Batman. If what was in the comics DELIVERED what they wanted, some of them would have come back. (And maybe some comic shops that have closed in the last 2 years would have weathered the storm, but that's a question for another day.)

But it doesn't take a movie. It doesn't even take a cartoon. SOMEONE is be walking into a shop for the first time EVERY DAMN DAY. Every issue of every comic is a chance to win them.

Every issue of every comic is also a chance to LOSE them. There is a misconception out there that because fanboys howl and complain, because they have always howled and complained, that it's fine and even desirable, to anger, disappoint and insult them. And it isn't necessary to master or even understand the basic tenets of storytelling because a bad story will pass the time for the next 6 months as well as, or better than, a good one. There is a reason it is writers with roots in or ties to other media who are having exponentially more success than the hacks: because they understand real readers and audiences. They know that those hundred guys on forums are not representative of anything. The vast majority of readers you never hear from either way. They like it and they buy again, or they hate it and they don't.

Things can be bad enough for long enough that the most vocal and committed fans decide enough is enough. We're seeing that happen in increasing numbers, but those are the extreme cases. Every issue of every comic IS a chance to lose one of those diehards, but it is also infinitely more probable it will lose a hundred casual readers. Particularly when the actual goal is to cause maximum offense. It's not okay to know something is wrong but wait until next year to fix it. Every single issue of every single comic is an opportunity to win or lose. And like life, you simply don't know how many chances you have left. The Reaper is out there, folks, and there are major titles whistling in the graveyard, acting like it doesn't matter, they'll fix it next year. It really doesn't seem to occur to them that there may not be a next year.

It's a new year, and I wanted this entry to be an optimistic one. I want to offer more encouragement to those pros out there who honestly do seem to be trying to fix this. I know things that have been breaking for 20-plus years can't be fixed in a day, but unfortunately, that's what's required here.

There's another theatre principle: the miracle. It's 30 minutes to curtain, the paint is still wet, they're finishing off the second act costumes with a glue gun, the props table fell over, breaking the decanter we need for the first scene, the leads are having a shouting match in their dressing rooms, the fire marshall is seizing all the pyro earmarked for the end of the first act, and the ASM is locked in the costume loft. But the show goes on because even though it is f-ing IMPOSSIBLE to overcome all that in less than half an hour, we dig in and do it, because we gotta. Because we give a damn.

So maybe, just maybe, this can be an optimistic entry after all. All you guys need to do is dig in and give us a miracle. If it sounds like a lot to ask, look at your cousins in theatre who've been doing it for just over 5,000 years.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

You're a fine one, Mr. Grinch

I never watched Glee, but I was in the room recently when a friend was watching the latest episode on Hulu. On headphones, I didn’t hear a thing apart from the occasional laugh, muted. Then there was a loud one. I looked up and saw this…

I didn't have to watch the show, I knew EXACTLY what they were doing. That's The Grinch That Stole Christmas, fondly remembered Dr. Seuss Xmas tale from all our childhoods. Later my friend talked about "how well they did it" and how they "did the whole thing" - from a character wearing the reindeer antlers and dog ears pulling the sleigh to plucking the ornaments off the tree.

Friend: And just when you're thinking "There should be a Cindy Lou Whoo"...

I mention this because there is a misconception out there among some big names in comics that people are "bored" with the very elements that MAKE THE STORYVERSE WHAT IT IS. That's why there is a wail of protest every time they announce the next big stunt that will fuck up the comics for another year and postpone the return to what it is SUPPOSED TO BE. Because these core things they are changing are not repetitive and boring, they are ritual and reassuring.

Bruce Wayne is Batman. Joker is his nemesis. Catwoman is his adversary/love interest. Jason Todd is dead.
Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't write Batman.

"Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it?" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."
Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't perform A Christmas
Carol.

"Face it, Tiger... you just hit the jackpot!"

Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't write Spiderman.

"It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope." Nobody is looking for reinvention here. They got it right the first time, and that's why these stories last.

When it's right, don't reinvent, recapitulate:

Here endeth the lesson.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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You Are What You Eat

Had some interesting responses to the last blog Please Drink Responsibly, so I decided the central idea was worth revisiting from a wider perspective than writers or comic folks.

Briefly: you’re only as good as what you take into your system.  If you do anything creative, then you’re drawing on your imagination in a very special way and it is not a good idea to poison it.  Well duh, it’s never a good idea to chug poison, right?   The disconnect seems to be in recognizing the imagination can be poisoned and that these things are.  Consider an athlete who ate a steady diet of Big Macs and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day.  Would you be surprised when he failed to win a marathon?  Would you be surprised if he fell down dead at Mile-18?  Of course not, because we all get that an athlete is using his body to do what he does, and we all get that the cigarettes and junk food are not good for the whole air in/air out/blood pump/muscle flex process.  Problem is, few of us see our imaginations that way and far too many of us act like it doesn’t matter what we take into it.

First Principle: anything you do that’s creative comes from your soul – Okay, that’s a big word.  Forget the soul.  But there is a part of you that’s… better.  When you create in any medium, whether it is writing or painting or music, you hook that magical sacred part of you up to the Universe and channel something that is bigger and greater and infinite… Hell, I don’t know what it is, but it’s the reason it’s good to be alive.  Bob Fosse called it Joy.   And when it comes through YOU, you infuse it with your ideas and your emotions and your life experience and everything that makes you who you are.  It makes your story, your song, your sculpture or performance unlike anyone else’s.  And it’s your imagination – the part in all of us that first looked up at the stars instead of down at the dirt – that’s the core where all this happens.  So what you’ve got laying around in there matters.  If it’s Michaelangelo and Mozart and Dickens, great.  You’ve got more options than someone who only has Daniele Steele and Nickleback, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have a database of classics to draw on.  What is the end of the world is if you’ve got steaming piles of dog shit in there.

Now, for any newcomers to this blog, I write a metafiction series about Batman, and yet, I haven’t looked at a current comic in at least 4 years.  The reason is that the current output at DC is toxic and I won’t pollute my imagination with it.  This is more than not wanting to give DC Comics $2.95, what economists call “Dollar Votes,” in favor of making more of the same.  It isn’t about money, it’s about poison.

Someone sent me a link a while back to a website that posts scans from the current comics, and I can tell you right now that if I’d followed that link, that would have been my day.  Why?  Because if you step out of your house in the morning into a steaming pile of dog shit, that’s where your focus is going to be for quite some time.  The unpleasantness of the initial experience stays with you—in this case, my anger and disgust at whatever went on in those pages.  That’s going to come out in the writing.  Then there’s the smell that lingers: I would be aware if I used certain characters, alluded to certain ideas or events, everything would have a resonance in relation to their crap.   Now, your story should be your top priority, not an editor’s agenda, the marketing or the merchandising.  The story.  Making anything else a priority is a mistake, making their story the priority?  Hell no!  (We won’t even discuss the practice of, having cleaned off your shoe, going into a forum of people discussing the dog crap as if it’s fine French perfume:  Eau Merde de Fifi.)

Look, there are people out there who thrive on anger and disgust.  I find it doesn’t lead to creative output.  I find it leads to stuff like this:

Those who do create from those negative places, their stuff doesn’t last.  Occasionally, if the timing is just right, it will make a splash for fifteen minutes, but before too long, its popularity wanes and future generations just laugh at the goobers who found it profound or shocking. 

It’s the stuff that comes from the good place that lasts:  from a sense of play, loving what you do, loving the characters, loving the process of creation and being excited to share it all with an audience—it’s that love and joy that is infectious.  Love of the characters, celebrating them, holding up the essence of what they are supposed to be, what we’re all supposed to be...  The stories that last have always been about the same things: heroes, redemption, coming of age, going home, the power of love.  We tell the same stories over and over again because they are true, because they are universal, because they resonate in our core.   And that’s where we connect as human beings.  That connection, that’s everything.  That’s why we do this. 

The people I talked to after Please Drink Responsibly are not in comics.  They are in another industry that is broken in ways nobody fully understands, but where everyone recognizes that something is profoundly wrong.  Look, I don’t know if any one artist can hope to fix a broken system, but we are all in the business of “making a hat where there never was a hat.”   Who’s to say we can’t?  It starts with making that connection.  And to make it, we’ve got to detox, folks.  We’ve got to stop taking in poisons and polluting our imaginations with the artistic “product” of people writing comics or making music the way Pumpkin the Pekingese takes a dump.  If you’re one of those saying they read/saw/listened to such-and-such “and of course it sucked LOL,” stop laughing.   “Of course it sucked” means you knew better before you took that thing into your head.  You went right past the surgeon general’s warning and you took that poison into your system anyway.  You are what you eat. 

All that said, Cat-Tales had a fabulous week.  Electron 29 posted its final chapter, which means it is now available in one complete download as ebook or print-quality pdf.  As if that's not enough, Book 5 is ready!  That's the compilation of Cat-Tales #51-59 including fan favorites Riddle Me-Tropolis, Vault, War of the Poses, Armchair Detective, Not My Kink, Do No Harm AND alternate-reality game fodder I Believe in Harvey Dent - all that in one compact ebook download - or, naturally, print-quality pdf.   Just in time for Christmas.  Meow.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Please Drink Responsibly

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There is something profoundly wrong with people who don’t like Dickens, but even they allow that A Tale of Two Cities has one of the greatest openings in the English language. The Great Gatsby opens well too, and is also one of the rarest of rarities: a spot on perfect movie. AMC has a collection of films called “Essentials,” films from Casablanca to Close Encounters of the Third Kind that everyone should know. They are part of the collective vocabulary. They are required for cultural literacy. In literature there’s the Five Foot Shelf. In music, it’s Synchronicity and The White Album, South Pacific and Into the Woods. If you seek out what’s good in many fields, you feed your imagination and will be a better artist for it.

That’s the positive side. The flip side is also true. Imagine a professional athlete that ate nothing but Big Macs and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Would any of us be surprised if this guy failed to win the New York marathon? For that matter, would any of us be surprised if he failed to finish and fell down dead at Mile 18? No, of course not. Because this guy who uses his body to do what he does has been pouring poison into it.

If you’re a writer, an artist, a musician, a composer, a creative in any field, then your imagination is the bread and butter machine. Since you’re also a human being, it is the most magical and sacred part of you. That alone is a good enough reason not to flood it with poisons, but I’m talking about something beyond just being human. I am talking about being a creative. The imagination is what stretches beyond the literal and mundane and the goings on in your digestive tract. It is what connects with something higher and better, and channels a little piece of the infinite when you make something that wasn’t there before. If you pollute it with garbage, the result will be the artistic version of that wheezing pathetic “athlete” gasping his way through the race.

No, I do not read comics anymore. It’s more than not giving DC even $2.95 worth of encouragement for something that is truly bad, it is declining to live on a toxic waste dump. It is refusing to take poison into my imagination. Not only is it bad for me, it’s going to be bad for anything I write.

You are what you eat. And drink. We’ve all seen the creative output of the drunk drivers out there, professional and amateur. It’s time for those of us who are not three sheets to the wind to start staging some interventions.

But let’s return to the Best of Times, because there is a new artist to welcome to the Fan Art Gallery, and she’s certainly kept her imagination fueled with the best of raw materials. Check out the beautiful work of Anya Uribe, an absolute master of feminine curves, color and form.

The Virtual Visitor Center is decked out for the holidays. In Second Life, as in Cattitude, as in Real Life, Cartier wraps itself up in a bow for Christmas. More information on the Cat-Tales website, or residents may teleport directly to the Visitor Center.

Random Equinox even has an update for his spinoff fic: Don't Fear the Z.  And as if that wasn't enough, we had two lovely developments over the Thanksgiving break: The Macy's parade was good enough to open with Aviator Snoopy, providing yet another opportunity for the slow-witted to realize that the inspiration for the Catwoman abomination--the virtual SIGNATURE of the new direction that failed to grasp anything that defined Catwoman and got absolutely everything wrong--was, in fact, based on a cartoon dog. How symbolic do you want it? They didn't understand anything at all about Selina, right down to the CAT in Catwoman. A symmetry such as makes the angels weep, if it wasn't so effing sad. And, finally, the forum's running gag of Batman's Black Friday Protocol finally has some artwork:

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

( . )( . )

I’m pretty sure the most popular entry in this blog is the one from late April: Women Lacking Complexity—For SCIENCE! about blogger Jen McCreight’s initiative Boob Quake.  Wow, who would have thought it?  The most popular blog was about tits. 

Yes, there are two big issues looming when it comes to women and comics.  Seriously, that’s not a rhetorical flourish, there are two.  Let’s deal with the D-cups first, because there is a reason they go on the cover.  Men like breasts.  A couple months ago, Warner Bros posted screencaps to Arkham City, the sequel to the Arkham Asylum computer game. 

The gullible souls who bought into the Brubaker/Cooke scam and continue to think flat-chested and short hair are the hallmarks of a dynamic empowered woman started frothing at the mouth:  Look at those breasts!  How can it be!  It is the goggle-whore costume we have all been trained to defend as practical no matter how nonsensical the word is as applied to any costume in any comic including the one this displaced.  It is black and not purple, she has no long flowing hair cascading luxuriously out the back of her cowl, how can she have breasts that can be seen without special lenses?!  It does not compute.  The horror, the horror!  How dare they defame the good name of Catwoman by giving her a figure men will enjoy looking at!

I really had hoped the Iranian cleric that started the whole Boob Quake thing would have woken those silly women up.  Because if you buy into the idea that boobs are bad and there is something wrong with men who like them, then you’re standing with Fahas Ahardtime Acceptinghalfthehumanrace-majad.  That doesn’t strike me as very enlightened or feminist, ladies, but hey, you don’t see the problem with the whore either, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. 

For those who aren’t irrevocably committed to the doctrine of Men Suck, let’s briefly revisit why the male of the species like the breasts.  I’m sorry Notting Hill fans, there is a reason and it’s not “because they’re stupid.”  It’s because we’re primates.  For a long, long, long, long time, the male approaching a female for mating purposes is looking at a rump.  Now fast forward a few million years.  We're all walking upright. What in the general vicinity of the new eyelevel looks like that? There’s nothing perverse about it.  Men notice cleavage.  Put it on the cover, they’ll notice your cover.  That’s not an automatic sale, but it gets their attention.  What you do then is up to you.

Which brings us to the second issue when it comes to women in comics: who they are as opposed to how they look.  Let’s start with a quote from a creative writing forum, which was sent to me after the recent blog on Fridging:

“As it was explained to me by a comics professional years ago at a convention panel on the topic, the vast majority of comic writers are men who simply don't understand women. Since they don't understand women (and earn more by churning out stories as quickly as possible), they save time by reducing women to cliched roles as either the girlfriend or the victim.”

I include the elaborate provenance – that this is something told to a reader in a con/panel situation—because there is always the possibility that it is simply not true.  That it was given in the context of “Look, we don’t serve up all these rapes and murders because we’re sad little trolls who can only feel like men by bringing down women.”  If that was the tone of the panel, then this could have been presented as a simple expedient.  Rather than debating if there is any palpable difference between murder of Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis and the murder of Duncan in the Scottish play, the above quote diffuses the situation quickly without controversy by playing into the widely held preconception of comics writers as arrested adolescents.

The irony is if that's true and not an invented excuse, it’s completely unacceptable.  Women are 53% of the population.  You can’t be a professional writer in any medium and “simply not understand” half the human race.  You’re going to embarrass yourself, embarrass the idiots who hired you, and you’re going to fail—over and over and over.  So let’s cut these guys a break and reveal the key to writing women that both men and women in the audience will love.  Then everybody can do it and that removes "I don't understand lumpy people" as an excuse.  The following has been said elsewhere, but never as well as by the late Harold Ashman:

“In every classic musical, one of the first three songs belongs to the heroine.  She comes downstage, often sits on a convenient planter or bale of hay, and sings about what she wants from her life.  And the audience falls in love with her… and they spend the next three acts rooting for her to get it.”

It is, honest to god, that simple.  And that complex.  Start with what she wants.  If Cattitude succeeds where others have failed, it is because it is grounded in what Catwoman wants from stealing: a restoration of the love and safety she felt as a child, which she came to associate with the wealth and comfort she knew in her parents’ home.  I cannot accept that the ability to pee standing up somehow short-circuits the ability to understand that simple human motivation.  What we want is seldom a function of gender.  The best art and jewel thief in the world comes from privilege and not poverty because the root associations make sense.  If any man wants to step up and explain what in his anatomy would screw with anything that shampoo simple, I would be fascinated to hear it. 

Food, shelter, love, freedom, a sense of self-worth.  None of them have anything to do with reproductive plumbing.  If you “simply don’t’ understand” women, then you simply don’t understand people and if that’s the case, you have no business writing at all. 

Now, if you don’t get a particular subset, join the club.  Twilight fans, the gals who take the Sex and the City bus tour, the Real Housewives of anywhere… Don’t ask me, fellas, I’m as confused as you are.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Fat is Flavor

Chef Josh Grinker recently blogged a list of “Things Chefs Don’t Want You To Know.” The explanation for #1 (There is butter in everything) began like this:

In every culinary school in America, they hammer home the same three-word mantra to students day after day, year after year, until it’s like a little voice in your brain that guides virtually every culinary decision you will make for the rest of your career: 'Fat is Flavor.'

Now, this isn’t a cooking blog, and if there are any nutrition proselytizers out there who want to make the case for their fat-free, salt-free, gluten free, lentil and tofu roulade being just as tasty as a deep dish with pepperoni and sausage from Giordano's, they can lump it. Because there are two key elements in Grinker’s statement which are the gateway to serial success or—in DC Comics’s case—serial failure.

First of all, the three little words are true. I could spend a day perusing the Good Eats clips on youtube for Mr. Science-style demonstrations explaining that reality molecule-by-molecule, but again, this is not a cooking blog. The point is, regardless of what you say on the convention floor, no matter what you put in the press release or tell the columnist from IGN, and no matter what would be convenient for you personally or professionally, no matter what creates a political pain in the ass for you personally or professionally, the bedrock principle on which you base your decisions has to be TRUE. One example off the top of my head: readers like the theme rogues. You can accept that and build your one year arc around Croc, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Joker, Harley Quinn, Riddler, and Two-Face and be on your way to the hit of the decade, or you can reject it, stage a parade of faceless mobsters and serial killers, and then grouse that grumble that you’re never as popular as that other guy.

Assembling the list of wrong ideas DC has about life, the universe, and everything would be a daunting task, and not necessarily a productive one. Because the second key in Grinker’s statement is that repetition of the founding principle(s) until it becomes an instinct. There are some major figures out there who are so consistently wrong in everything they say and do, they’ve definitely got the instinct mechanism working, it’s just based on faulty base principles.
From "Bruce Wayne is the mask" to the fallacy of Millerism, they have core ideas, those ideas just happen to be wrong. But there are others who have no little voice leading them in any direction. They go from mediocre to pretty good to clinically insane, from really bad to slightly above average to “oh hell, the syphilis got to their brain.” That is the mark of a writer, editor, or manager who is stumbling blind. They have no root principles, so every choice brings them back to square one. They’re a ping pong ball in a wind tunnel, and whatever gusts hit them last will determine where they go next.

Look, things do change in this world. One of the major reasons the Titanic went down is because everything Captain Smith knew was wrong. It was based on based on 30 years of experience, but on that ship on that voyage in those waters: wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. But here’s the catch: other things do NOT change. There is a reason the term is bedrock principles. Some things simply are, they are constants, they do not alter. “You know how you cook a great steak? You slather it in butter, throw it on the grill, paint it with more butter.” Because fat is flavor. The principles of storytelling do not change. Going home. Coming of age. Sin and redemption. The hero. The power of love. They are hardwired into us, just like our taste buds process sweet, sour, bitter, and salt. Can a new voice come up with something startling and creative and unprecedented? Absolutely. Can they invent a fifth taste? No. No, they can’t. Can they make it so we don’t like sweet anymore? No, no they can’t.

Find the true bedrock principles, repeat them until they become a little voice in the back of your mind shaping every decision you make, and you might just rock the world. Insist that fat isn’t flavor… well, enjoy your empty restaurant.

Meanwhile, the Cat-Tales kitchens are bustling these days. Electron 29: Chapter 4 is out. Compilations of Books 1 through 4 are out in ebook formats for Kindle, Sony, Nook, iPhone/iPad/iPod, and pretty much everything as well as new print-ready pdf editions. Individual Tales 1 through 50 are also available, and several have new covers showcased here, here, and here. The last ten tales (through #60) will be out - both individually and as the Book 5 Compilation - in time for Christmas. New installments of both spinoffs: Capes & Bats by Wanders Nowhere and Don’t Fear the Z by Random Equinox are in the pipeline and may actually be out by the time you read this, and an amazing new artist is soon to debut in the Fan Art Gallery. And oh yes, Batcatfever will kill me if I don't mention that the forums have been quietly devouring the latest snippets from Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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The Fallacy of Fridging

This is dedicated to the ones who scream “Fridge” if anything bad befalls any female character in any context… 

The Overthinking It Flowchart of Female Characters
from Overthinkingit.com

Fridging, for the happily unenlightened, is taken from the title of an essay "Women in Refrigerators" which deconstructs female characters who are killed, raped, or otherwise brutalized... but mostly killed and decapitated so their heads can be left in the hero's refrigerator.  The complaint--and it's a fair one up to a point--is that the women and their deaths are just plot devices.  It's not the story of their deaths, it's the effect their deaths have on the hero.

Of course the same can be said of Duncan or Hamlet's father, but nobody ever bemoans king-snuffing. 

Look, I know these Fridge-Screamers are good people, most of them, and they’re honestly trying to help, but the fact is, they are the problem, not the writers. These well-meaning souls seem to think they are educating the rest of us by dissecting women’s roles in fiction in the ways shown here. In their minds, it’s writers putting women in these categories that keep them from being full and equal human beings alongside the men. We who might actually enjoy these outings are like savages worshipping a radioactive idol, not realizing that the glow we find so fascinating is bad for us.

Well, sorry, fact is, the Fridge-Screamers are the ones who have a faulty understanding. Because the thing that keeps these women from being full and equal human beings is that THEY’RE NOT. They’re not real! They are CHARACTERS. Characters in stories are going to repeat certain patterns and fit into certain roles. You accept that in order to experience the story in the same way you buy a ticket to a movie. It is literally the price you pay to get in on the experience. We could play this same stupid game with the men, because they too have a role to play in any story. But we don’t dissect them for 180 kinds of imaginary subtext simply because they have testicles—and that is the only thing that is keeping them on a higher shelf than the women. The women aren’t as real because of these analysis matrices taking everything they say, do, or wear out of the context of the story and run through the defensive paranoia filters of every silly blogger out there who read the syllabus for a women’s studies course one time and imagines she has amazing new insights.

Look, there are misogynist trolls out there masquerading as writers, as editors, as movie directors. They are not hard to identify. That seems to be the problem, actually. Sally Sophomore doesn’t feel like an enlightened intellectual pointing to the sky and saying “It’s blue.” On the contrary, there is a predisposition to reject the obvious simply because everyone can see it. “All you people, the peasants, you think the sky is blue because that’s what your eyes tell you. You’re not as wise and wonderful as me. I am one of the elite who can appreciate the particular un-blueness that so eludes your simpleton mentality.” While Sally is harmless (annoying as hell, but harmless), she does contribute an awful lot to the noise pollution that keeps real issues from being discussed. That’s a pity, but hey, that’s the Internet.

It is Monday, so a brief CT update is order. I really don’t know where to begin at this point, which probably explains the diatribe on Sally. I guess Electron 29: Chapter 3 would be a good start. That’s out! I don’t usually release stuff over the weekend, and I know how it slips by a few readers when I veer off schedule that way, but the way things are going, I can’t be that choosey about when things get done. Anyone who misses an update, hey, there’s the newsletter, the forums, Twitter, ffnet author alerts, and this paragraph. If all that escapes ‘em, DOUBLE CHAPTERS NEXT TIME! Woohoo! They can have a Cat-Tales readathon.

Anyway, one of the main reasons for the big time crunch is the ebook conversion. The Book 1 compilation as well as all the individual B1 tales are done, and Book2 is so far along that it will probably be up on the website by the time you’re reading this. That brings us up to the present, but things don’t line up for the future by themselves: writing on chapter 4, conversions of Book 3, prepping the fan art gallery for a new artist, all these things are in the pipeline, along with one other treat I’m trying to arrange by Christmas… *stops and takes a deep breath* …which is why I can’t afford much blog time to shout out to all the Purple Catwomen at New York Comic Con...

The forum's own "Glitch2" as Eddie in this one

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldofrandsom/5063929074

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwick/5066797000/

...Let alone recap “Why men like boobs” for the new crop of terminally confused whackadoodles. I’d like to, along with a few other issues that cropped up over the summer, but the Tales come first, and the commentary on non-tales matters comes second. Today we got Overthinking It out of the way. It’s a start…

That said, Kitty can really use an extra set of hands. So… I’m thinking it might be time to get an intern again. Since we now have a virtual visitor center in Second Life, I’d prefer an SL resident. If you’re interested, stop by the Cat-Tales Visitor Center in Second Life and send me a notecard. If you’re not in SL, you can send me a PM through the forum, but I’m giving preference to SL people on this one.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Cleaning out the Hell Mouth (Not a Metaphor)

Writing is a more complicated process than most people think.  Many readers certainly come to the conclusion that there is a lot of me in my Selina, and of course there is.  It doesn’t stop there, however.  There’s a lot of me in Bruce, in Alfred, in Eddie and Harvey, in Talia, Whiskers, Sly, Luthor, Ivy and Ubu.  All the characters come out of the 9th circle of the Dee brain. 

One of the details I do share with Selina is a hell mouth closet.  It is not a metaphor, it is – or was – all too real.  Last week, I cleaned it out.  Again, this is not a metaphor.  This was a very real exercise in sifting through clutter, throwing out stuff, and sneezing a lot.  I am happy to say I have a hell mouth no more.  Yay for the nice walkable path down the center of the storage bins, which could be thinned a little more if I want to spend a month on ebay, but I don’t.  So for now, we’re good.

Except for one thing: comics.  All the comics remain out here in the non-closet world.  Those from the closet and those that were never returned to it after being pulled for reference in this fic or that.  They’re going to be here for a week or two.  Some to be filed or refiled, some to get broken down into smaller boxes.  Some will be going into their first box from the land of “stack and drawer”   It’s going to be interesting.  When it’s over, there’s another smaller closet I have my eye on (not a hell mouth, we’ll just call it Jersey).  Once the comic boxes are arranged, I’m hoping to purge its contents and put the boxes in there. 

What does any of this mean for Cat-Tales?  Well, there could be an upswing in silver age influence if I get to reading as I work.  I don’t think Selina will be cleaning out her hell mouth again.  She says once was enough for that kind of thing.  So long as Catwoman has one and only one origin, she sees no need for more than one voyage of discovery into that closet.   That just leaves the sneezing.  Some character sneezing his head off could have enormous comic relief possibilities, but it’s unlikely I’m ready to see the funny since it was only about 72 hours ago I was the one doing the sneezing.  Still, one of these days, somebody… probably Oswald.  Heh.

So that’s the art follows life side of the equation.  Life also follows life, and there is going to be some metaphorical closet cleaning too.  Because the long, hot summer is drawing to a close and not only are we a little backed up on Cat-Tales, there is a certain backlog on blogging.  I’m hoping to get them all out of the way in a few quick entries. 

You have been warned.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Harvey Pekar Dead at 70

One of the real annoyances with the fustercluck that is DC Comics of the last decade-plus is the scope of their wrong ideas.  It wasn't just a particular writer here or a specific storyline there.  It was an all-encompassing atmosphere of WRONG, a virtual monsoon where ALL decisions and attitudes were doomed to fail because they were built on core principles that were faulty.  

A perfect example was Will Pfeifer's passive-aggressive attempt to paint any alterntaive to the East End goggle-whore excrement as boring.  It went something like "Panel 1: Selina pours coffee.  Panel 2: close up on the handle."

Telling example, as that cup of coffee is certainly an emblem of real life, an aspect of storytelling which eludes the year long crossover crowd.  "Realism" is not making everyone a psycho, a pedophile, a prostitute, or a serial killer. Realism is drawing those links between the fictional creation on the page and the living people reading it.  Bruce Wayne shaves in the morning.  It doesn't negate the fantastic larger-than-life stuff, it grounds it in something we can all relate to.

Harvey Pekar is dead at 70.  He wrote the autobiographical comic American Splendor, but more than that, he saw potential in the comic medium to tell stories beyond pulp horror and fantasy.

Pekar felt that the medium could be put to wider use, and he played with panels as a storytelling vehicle for more than a quarter of a century.

Without men like him, we'd be nowhere.  Without those who stretch and explore, who fiddle with the dials and see what something can actually DO beyond whatever we've been doing, without those guys, we'd be absolutely nowhere.  We'd still be in the trees.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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The week... Oh for Bast Sake! NOW WHAT?

Okay then, so much happened in Cat-Tales last week I didn’t even manage to get a blog out. I had another chance to play my friend’s Lego Batman game, and as Classic Catwoman, I opened a can of whoopass the goggled pretender—not once but many times, shocking my friend with the violence of a purple cat crossed. It would have been a very cute and entertaining entry, but nobody got to read it because I was more than occupied prepping for the big rollout over the weekend. In case you haven’t seen it:

• The website got a makeover, including some spiff video wallpaper that did not shoot or edit itself.
  
• Armchair Detective and Not My Kink are out for Kindle and Mobi. 
  
• Cat-Tales opened a virtual Visitor Center in Second Life (otherwise known in these parts as the TBA that ate Tokyo).
• Shane Sahr, the rockstar bartender at Seattle’s famous Tini Bigs Martini Bar, released a quartet of Cat-Tales Cocktails that are too sinfully indulgent to be believed. 
  

Now, that’s a lot to get ready, particularly when one of my clients had a press thing and needed a little extra web-work himself. Pulled it off though, got everything together, produced the triple launch without a hitch. Got some nice screenshots of the visitor center, got a new headshot of myself as a pixilated person IN the visitor center, got pictures of the criminally indulgent Cat-Tales Cocktails that should have you all on a plane to Seattle just to order one of these babies. I was all set to get up this morning write up a killer entry about the whole thing when…

Sean Hayes… dressed as Spiderman… singing Don’t Rain on My Parade

Picture a close-up on Chris with a strange little twitch above her right eye. "That’s… Sean Hayes… That’s… Radio City Music Hall… That’s…"

I’m a theatre-gal, folks. Remember
Reputation?  It takes a certain kind of mind to come up with an idea like "Cat-Tales: An Evening with Catwoman", and that’s a mind who’s spent an awful lot of time backstage. I’m also hip deep in comic book superheroes. Sean Hayes hosting the Tony Awards, covering Streisand, dressed as Spiderman, that’s not something someone like me can me can just IGNORE!  For the love of God and Stan Lee, that’s like… for 30 years we’ve all assumed the ’66 Batman was lightning in a bottle, a product of time and place that, if there is justice in the universe, should never be attempted again. But Sean Hayes? Don’t Rain on My Parade? CAMP LIVES, folks. Superhero Camp is alive and well and heading for the Lunt-Fontane.

And y’know what? I’m fine with it. Perhaps the most resilient aftereffect of Miller on the Bat mythos and comic books in general is this overblown seriousness. Maybe it’s not as corrosive to the soul as the other stuff, but it is every bit as damaging to the genre as a whole. It simply isn’t necessary to take this all so f-ing seriously 24/7/365.  It is permissible to lighten up and have a little goddamn fun, and by NOT doing so, a lot of people who would be fans are shoo'd away - because unlike the fanboys who keep enabling this crap, we demand our our entertainment make us FEEL GOOD. The new Brave and the Bold cartoon gets that.  The DC vs Marvel guys on YouTube certainly get it.  Hell, even the uber-realistic Nolan movies get it.  Look at Liam Neason’s face when Bruce finally makes his costumed entrance in Batman Begins. They get it.  They ALL get it.

Perhaps that's why Batman can thrive in movies, in cartoons, in games, and (humbly) in prose fiction, in everywhere EXCEPT the comics medium where he began, is because those guys are the only ones locked into this mindset that Batman is a serious-fucking-business. Maybe if we can just get them to unclench, to embrace the lip twitch and all that it implies, there’s hope.  If not, we can just keep showing this:

and get days of free entertainment watching them try to prevent their heads from exploding.  That could be fun too.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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This week in... Screw it, a love letter to Remidar

Don’t let anyone get away with saying comics aren’t an art form – and that includes the faux intellectuals who will sometimes allow that the stuff in that museum in Brussels is art, but not the lowly American stuff and certainly not anything pertaining to *sniff* superheroes.

The art of the comic is in the created colloid of words and visuals to create a new thing that is more than the sum of its parts.  I got my first taste when Thundering Monkey began using Poser to illustrate his favorite Cat-Tales moments.  Then Dorothy Rose got me into the hard stuff when she took the first paragraphs of A Girl’s Gotta Protect Her Reputation to create a graphic novel-style prologue for the CT series.  That brings us to last week’s addition to the fan art gallery.  This breathtaking jewel from Remidar:

That, my friends, is the work of a true artist.  See, for me, the art begins before pencil is touched to paper.  It begins with the sensibility that chooses that precise psychological moment.  “Just me, down here, with the bats.”  That’s just… damn.

And that’s why this week, rather than make a big todo about the reception of Chapter 5 (which Joker is trying to take all the credit for, btw, despite the fact that it’s the messages on Selina’s voicemail generating all the buzz), I’d like us all to take a moment and drink a virtual toast to our favorite artists. 

Words and pictures, guys.  Words and pictures.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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This Week in Cat-Tales

Gave the first tour of the TBA. That was beyond exciting. I was hoping to actually ANNOUNCE said TBA at the end of the month, but it’s already the 28th (how the hell did that happen?!). Right now, it’s looking like some technical issues may delay it another week or so, but still, it’s exciting to have it in sight. And speaking of technical issues, I’ve about had it with this laptop acting up. I was planning to put off a new ‘puter as long as possible, since it will probably necessitate a move to Windows 7 and experience has shown it’s best to give any new MS operating system a loooong time to work out the kinks. But now I’m having second thoughts. I’m looking at traveling a lot more again in the future, like I used to, and a RELIABLE laptop is a necessity. Apologies to Eddie, but any computer where start-up is a GREAT BIG QUESTION MARK is not desirable.

Anyway, back to CT. Finished the pre-conversion edits on Cat-Tales #55: I Believe in Harvey Dent, which means it is now available for Kindle and Mobi Readers, as well as the ever-popular printable PDFs. I also finished work on Chapter 5 of Don’t Fear the Joker, which is now out for beta. The first reader got back to me already, the other… eh, might be a few days yet. But it will be ready soon.

And that concludes the catch-up on Cat-Tales. We just have time for one quick catch-up from the mailbag backlog. Check out this Original Comic Art Marketplace at Thrillist.com

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Women Lacking Complexity - FOR SCIENCE!

I’m several weeks behind on the fun links, pics, and video clips from the mail bag, so we’ll be getting caught up for a while. This one has to take precedence as it is time critical. The event is April 26 and women lacking complexity will want a few days to prepare (read: shop) for Boob Quake 2010.

It began with the kind of story that gets bloggers in a lather: some Iranian cleric spouting the kind of idiocy guys like that are always spouting. In this case that women dressing immodestly corrupt men, provoking God’s wrath and bringing earthquakes. Jen McCreight, one of the wittier bloggers, ran with it. Monday she declared she would test the claim on April 26 with Boob Quake. After all, if…

Postulate: Boobs >> lust & adultery >> godwrath >> earthquakes
Test: Bring on the cleavage and see how much movement we can get on the Richter scale.

That was Monday, and today there’s a Facebook page with about 10,000 participants already signed on.

My delight in this is twofold: ( * ) the celebration of women’s sexuality fused with all the fun and sass that is so central to a proper depiction of Catwoman, and ( * ) Remember the pseudo-intellectual, faux-enlightened dipshits that went along with the Balent-bashing as if there was something degrading and wrong about a beautiful woman in a comic book being drawn with big breasts? They are now in a delightful position where they can either get with the program or side with the Iranian clerics. Win-win for the rest of us, particularly those of us who bounce.

Gentlemen, remember, you too have a part to play on Monday. We show off the goods and you are duty bound to look, enjoy, and try to, y’know, be corrupted. Remember, it’s for science.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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From the mailbag: Just trying to help

I don't think it's betraying any confidences to reveal that some of the fans who email me have a less-than-flattering opinion of today's comic reader.  The general consensus is that anyone who would part with actual money for /insert the atrocity of your choice/ needs to be told things that, in our day, were considered too obvious to mention.  To that end:

Do not...

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Vancouver, Domino’s Pizza and You (know who you are)

Okay, who watched it?  This is supposed to be the Cat-Tales blog, and we’ll get to that in a second.  But first, who watched the closing ceremonies? 

For anyone who missed it, it began with what I can only described as “Previously on the Vancouver Winter Olympics…”  Lights up on those 3 raised prongs, with the fourth stubbornly in its Opening Ceremonies position of stubborn unraised stuckage.  Out comes what my stagehand friends are already dubbing “Techie-Clown”, who takes a hammer from his toolbelt and gets the thing into position, and on we go.

That’s just awesome.  It’s having the sense of humor to say “OOPS” on the big stage.  The world was watching, we dropped the ball big time, and we’re the first to laugh at it.  How can you  not love that? 

Then there’s Domino’s Pizza.  I was in (ironically) a pizza shop the other day and they had CNBC running.  Fourth quarter earnings from Domino’s Pizza are through the roof.  There’s this thoroughly depressing chart depicting fifty companies with the same basic type of customer in terms of income, geography, etc.  For the last 6 quarters, they’re all doing pretty much the same thing: down, down, down, down, and down.  No real surprise there.  Then, last month, there’s this one red line on the graph whose head pops up while everybody else goes down.  Domino’s.  WTF?  Domino’s?  Really?  Domino’s pizza?   Yep.  You know why?  The “we were making a really stinky product” campaign.  The “We were the only ones not admitting and now we are and we’re fixing it” campaign.  Domino’s own CEO came right out and said they were doing everything right in terms of corporate identity, advertising, logistics, business model, staffing—everything right except THE PRODUCT.  They problem wasn’t the advertising, the economy, or the staff, it was as fundamental as the crust, the sauce and the cheese.  They admitted it and then they fixed it.  Reward:  record profits.

I’m just sayin’. 

Okay, enough of that crap, back to CT.  It was a really good week for the Tales.  Chapter 3: Gallows Humor was released, and Jokers fans were pleased to see that even though this was laughing boy’s first major appearance since The Dark Knight, Cat-Tales Joker is still very much Cat-Tales Joker  (Accept no substitutes, Kiddies!  HAHAHAHAHAAAA!  Discontinue use if you experience sudden bouts of sanity or develop normal skin pigmentation.) 

IMO, the landmark Joker escapades in other media occur when Big J is trying to make a point.  From driving Jim Gordon crazy (to prove that all it takes to turn anybody into him is one really bad day) to the TDK Joker’s blow up the other ferry challenge (Milleresque attempt to prove everyone is just as corrupt, ugly and morally bankrupt as he is), the cruelty and carnage is not cruelty & carnage for its own sake.  It’s to make a point. That’s not something our CT Joker excels at.  He just doesn’t have the attention span, most days.  I’d say that’s a big reason he’s come to rely on Harley more than he ever planned to: she carries the one.  In Gallows Humor, he did have a point to begin with, but as BenRG noticed, he started having so much fun, the whys behind it got away from him.  Silly ass. 

Anyway, the chapter was very well received, and Jacker’s first foray into another rogue’s theme seems to have been sufficiently creepy.  The other development last week was that I finally got around to swapping out the old artwork on the website.  For those who aren’t aware, “Wanders Nowhere,” the CT insider who pens the Capes and Bats spinoff, is a fantastically talented cgi artist.  Last year he made a virtual Gotham City and allowed me to take a bunch of snapshots of our favorite feline in situ, prowling the rooftops as nature intended.  Those pictures have been sitting here on my harddrive for at least 6 months, waiting… waiting… waiting.  Finally I got around to popping them into place.  It’s nice to have a more realistic Catwoman up there, just to help with that division between The Post and Reality. 

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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This Week in Cat-Tales

I’d say the biggest public development for Cat-Tales fans last week was this fantastic Just-in-time-for-Valentine’s Day piece by DC artist Dustin Nguyen, that JoannaC chipsnopotatoes brought to our attention (sorry about that, Chips):


i can't stay long by *duss005 on deviantART

DC Pros, wherever you may be, that’s what pleasing readers looks like. Just in case you were wondering about that strange reaction beneath the image, where the DA readership wracks up 30 pages of enthusiastic commentary on the couple, the costume, and the twitch-smile, where they’re setting record numbers of favorites, Facebook shares, Diggs, and downloads. Your predecessors experienced this – well, not the Facebook part, obviously, but the lack of rocks and rotten eggs hurled at their heads. That’s the result of making the audience happy instead of alienating them. It’s actually a pretty good feeling, just in case you want to try it some day.

But back to Cat-Tales, eh? Our own Thundering Monkey released the picture for his Batverse calendar:


Poor Harley.

And me? Nothing visible accomplished this past week, but an extraordinary amount happening behind the scenes Some work done on the TBA, and I got some unexpected help and support on that project from someone who I haven’t seen in months. Some of you guys are so kind and generous, it’s just unreal.

That said, the TBA is now officially a no deadline affair. For the best of reasons: A friend and client’s book is now officially speeding towards publication. He has battled with the crap economy and he has won. YAY. That does create a fair amount of RL work for me which takes precedence over the CT stuff. But of all the reasons I don’t mind postponing a CT project for a few weeks, this is the best. A man of ideas getting his ideas out there into the world to rise or fall on its merits, that’s the alpha and omega for people like us. That’s how the system is supposed to work, and every time it actually does, the sun shines a little brighter, the birds sing a little sweeter (which is nice for us and it really annoys the life-is-shit Miller crowd, so win-win)

Anyway, that’s the week in review. Today, I can finally return to writing the chapter. Meow and Huzzah.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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When you wish upon a star...

I was once a little girl who went to the movies and saw that big, gilded storybook opening at the start of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.  I grew up with all those classics where, political correctness be damned, a Prince Charming arrives in the final reel to right the wrong, slay the dragon, save the princess and generally bring about the Happily Ever After. 

As I grew up, I’ve become as cynical as most adults about those childhood tales, but every few years the godspark of great storytellers weaving great stories worked their magic.  The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Toy Story (Yes, I knew it was more Pixar than Disney), Wall-E (Ditto)… I was pixie-dusted all over again.  But losing myself in a great story is different from still believing in the fairy tale rescue of a Prince Charming.  Until today.  Prince Charming is wearing mouse ears…

First look: Marvel Comics' 'heroes will be heroes again'
Marvel superheroes are leaving the dark side.

After seven years of grim and grimmer story lines, including a superhero "civil war" that pitted Iron Man against Spider-Man and the death of Captain America, Marvel Comics will usher in a more optimistic "Heroic Age" approach in May.

"Heroes will be heroes again," says Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada. "They've gone through hell and they're back to being good guys — a throwback to the early days of the Marvel Universe, with more of a swashbuckling feel."  --Full story, USA Today 

Anyone who wishes to believe Joe Quesada, the man who mandated the Peter Parker/MJ split (since y’know, happiness isn’t realistic), that this sudden appearance of a storytelling sensibility in a medium where it has been lacking for more than a decade has nothing at all to do with the new player in town, have I got a deal for you.

Chris Dee
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