Who's Who In The CBU Update 2008
Who are... Park and Barb?
Barbara Lien-Cooper writes the comic GUN STREET GIRL at Panel 2 Panel, was an original founder of Sequential Tart, is the managing editrix of the 2004 Eisner award-winning print magazine COMIC BOOK ARTIST, and was named by Mark Millar (The Authority, Ultimates, Wanted) as one of the three most promising new talents in the next wave of comics writing.
Park Cooper started writing about comics at the now-defunct DC FANZINE website.
Science Fiction Double Feature
By Park Cooper
Aw, MAN. Felt kind of sick and so took a nap. While asleep, I had the most freaky dream in which I wrote this sort of psychological-horror HOSPITAL drama.
--Me talking to people about the medical aspect to Half Dead
--Barb talking about House and about how good this one Christmas episode of Chicago Hope was that we saw one time, which we never ever watch except one time because we saw that Andre Braugher from Homicide was on there, but then the next time we watched it it wasn’t interesting so we stopped
--how they show Scrubs every freaking day now and I stopped and tried watching it a little because Michael J. Fox was guest-starring and I was interested in seeing him play a role in those little spaces of time while his meds were kicking in
--maybe some episodes of the BBC’s Cracker, which yes I know is not in a hospital
--ALL of that and more teamed up and combined in my head to make for me writing this really tense and nightmarish yet not supernatural hospital drama.
I would have said, prior to this, that non-supernatural hospital drama was not, as Aykroyd says in one or both Blues Brothers movies, a genre that we have done, do now, or will ever do. But perhaps my brain took that as a challenge.
I was going to write about this book I got from the library today, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, by David Pringle, which is sort of ridiculous and yet at the same time sort of old-school cool seeing as how the list only goes up to 1984, I mean the YEAR 1984, which was right before the book was published… but this made me sit up and look around and say, holy cow we have a lot of books and things around here.
Barb brought Under The Full Moon home from the library, a two-volume manga about, well… there’s a young man who’s a vampire, and his childhood friend is half-vampire, half-werewolf… however, since those genes are all mixed up, his friend actually turns into a woman during the full moon, not a werewolf. Fortunately, the first guy is kinda bi-omni, so their parents decide to marry them off to each other. However, the one who actually changes, like Detective Orcot in Pet Shop of Horrors, feels a bit disturbed by all of this, since he’s been thinking of himself as straight all these years, since this new change just started happening recently…
Uh-huh. It’s yaoi meets Ranma in this mystical story of pretty-boys. Hate it or love it, it sure does have a lot of elements that certain girls love in their manga, and yet you can’t one hundred percent call it a gay story… that’s just the part that the author clearly enjoys the most.
Of course, the reason why Barb brought it home is because it’s publisher is the comparatively-new Broccoli Books, but I’m the one who reads the whole thing through. Well, at least you know – even a straight man can read this all the way through (only two volumes, folks).
Speaking of “really secure in his masculinity,” I recently found out that I like something by CLAMP. That’s right, CLAMP, that cadre of four female artists from Japan that create manga. I’d tried their work once before, and never found it to my liking. But darned if I didn’t find the one for this household – XXXholic of all things. Why is it called this name that makes it sound like it’s about someone addicted to porn? (It’s not, by the way.) I do not know. Maybe the Xs are meant to be as in “X, The Unknown,” as I believe the old movie called it. In any event, it’s a supernatural manga with a high ratio of spooky and a good deal of mythological torque, so it’s certainly the series for me – topping even the soap-opera-y Alice 19th (yet another title that sounds like it has a predilection for the barely legal but doesn’t).
Okay, enough of this. Back to science-fiction. Which is very hard to not call sci-fi, which Barb says is demeaning to the genre, although she does it too. I feel we’re losing touch with the science fiction novel as novel… or some of us, anyway. Maybe I just mean that I think the comic-book community should be spreading out to enjoying more prose books, too. Maybe I just mean ME. Yes, ME, that’s right, ME, now that I’m done with my dissertation, maybe I would like to read books besides those that sound like they were written by Clive James on a bender, you ever think of that?
Ahem. I sound like Regie. Academia can do that to a person.
But look at this list – some of the things on this list are only on here because I’ve seen the movie based on them, not read the book. Barb said that should count. (PS – warning – Pringle’s 100 Best Novels sometimes gives away the endings of the books he lists too much. Caveat Emptor.)
1950 The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury. Book on tape, from when I had a total of an hour commute to and from work every day. Also met the author (see previous episodes of The Show).
1951 The Puppet Masters by Robert A Heinlein. Saw the movie with Donald Sutherland. Not bad at all, but not as good as you’d expect an American movie to be. Too earnest, somehow.
1951 The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. Saw the movie, on TV, when I was very young. Loved it.
1953 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Read the book in high school, just because I felt like it. Who wants the movie, really?
1953 More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. Probably a big influence on Stan Lee and the X-Men, but it’s hard to prove. Read this in college, as an undergraduate, because I sensed that these things were true.
1957 The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. Saw the movie, Village of the Damned, and also Children of the Damned. And also These Are The Damned.
I haven’t read it, but I’ve already ordered Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss (1958) from Amazon with a gift certificate I got for Christmas… I read about it in The Mammoth Guide to Science Fiction, which I bought from Half-Price books for a dollar recently.
1962 A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Read this in college, as part of a course, during my M.A. work.
1963 Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Read this in… high school? College? Because I wanted to. Kind of depressing. Better than Slaughterhouse 5, though.
1965 Dune by Frank Herbert. Read this… in high school? Can that be right? I think so. The series saved me during various long family car trips. Wrote a paper on it while getting my MA, too… on a computer that is no longer accessible, unless I pay bucks to get it fixed.
1966 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. If you read the short story it’s based on, it counts. Ripped off for the Rhino as well as Homer Simpson.
1966 The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny. If you read the short story it’s based on, it counts. What impressed me more than the dream stuff was that they had cars that you just programmed in the location and it drove itself. Now THAT’s the future.
1968 Nova by Samuel R. Delany. Read this, while gearing up for my dissertation. Pretty good. I would compare it with Fred Pohl’s Heechee saga plotwise… Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is better, though, as is Neveryona.
1969 The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. Read during high school? My, that’s precocious of me…
1974 The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. I think this one might be better than Left Hand. “Buy me, buy me!”
1975 The Female Man by Joanna Russ Put “Park Cooper” or “Barb Lien” in google with “Joanna Russ” and you get 6 webpages total. I think The Two of Us is a better book, though, characterization-wise… and The Adventures of Alyx, for that matter.
1980 Wild Seed by Octavia Butler. Bah. It’s okay, but her style is better than her results on this one. Her Patternmaster series feels horribly dated to me. Try her two Parable books (especially the first one), or Kindred.
1985 Neuromancer by William Gibson. I dunno what to say. The future is just about here and it’s not even as cool as Snow Crash, let alone Neuromancer. But, then, living in a cyberpunk world is only cool in increasing relation to how much money you have.
Barb’s comments on the list: “God, I haven’t even read that Angela Carter book! I’m so bad!”
That’s such a funny note I think I’ll end on it.
I want to do more interviews in this column, but I don’t want to do any more webcomics-creator reviews (unless they’ve now successfully moved into print), and I’ve already interviewed everyone I know anyway. If you’d like me to interview you, please write to me.
http://www.halfdeadcomic.com/
http://previews.diamondcomics.com/default.asp?t=1&m=1&c=6&s=40&ai=12306
http://www.wickermanstudios.com/
http://www.panel2panel.com/gsg-archives.html