The Guardian is running a few short stories as part of a summer reading feature, including one called “Powerless” by Chris Ware.
The quality of the image isn’t so hot unfortunately. But the brilliant Ware’s deep, visceral misery and tangible anxiety of everyday living is still there for you to experience and enjoy!
On second thought…
Legendary NYC bookstore The Strand has a terrific new bag for sale designed by the always classy Adrian Tomine.
But let’s be honest, the only way you can get away with carrying this around is if you’re one of those cute librarian-type women Tomine’s male characters often have personal/identity crises over. The irony…?
What the hell? They never really go away, do they. They just try to invade small towns and take over!
Anyways, guess we’re past the zombie trend.
- HBO’s got a new vampire series from the Six Feet Under guy that sounds fun (you’ve probably been privy to the marketing in the last month or so)
- Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series is essentially the new Harry Potter in terms of blockbuster YA series — plus there’s a movie on the way
- Park Chan Wook is making a vampire flick that’s bound to be amazing…or, at the very least, insane
- finally, movies: check out how many vampire movies are due in the next couple years
Excerpted from:
UK photographer Steve Schofield has posted on his site a great portrait series concerning fandom.
I’m not sure if that sentence is very good, but Schofield’s photographs are fascinating and weirdly beautiful.
Photos are copyright/credit Steve Schofield:
The insane surge of interest in the just-turned-drinking-age Watchmen ignited by the film’s trailer forced DC to go back to press for 300K copies. Those are big numbers for a graphic novel reprint.
“I don’t think there’s record of a trailer moving books with this velocity,” says DC Comics president Paul Levitz. “Bookscan records Watchmen selling 10,000 copies in one week. We’ve put more than 300,000 copies in print in the last two weeks. That’s a pretty amazing record for a 21 year old book.” In 2007, the title sold about 100,000 copies.
Levitz is right. A film obviously moves books. But a trailer…? Insane.
What the hell are people going to make of Tales of the Black Freighter is what I want to know.
When Will Wright and Electronic Arts released the “Creature Creator” program a little while ago to create hype for the long-awaited upcoming video game Spore, they had to have known some people would be smartasses about it…didn’t they…?
Within 24 hours of the “Creature Creator’s” release, gamers had gone creature-crazy, designing millions of critters that were all thrown into a database and shown on a YouTube channel for the public to see.
But scrolling through the database — past the three-legged sea horse, past the seven-eyed wildebeest and the half-motorcycle-half-pig — revealed something many users didn’t expect. Buried among the more wholesome attempts were two-legged dancing testicles, a “giant breast monster” and a four-legged, “phallic fornication machine,” for starters.
And then there’s this little kernel of wisdom:
“Whether it’s modeling clay, dolls or crayons, a small number of people can be counted on to use it for something vulgar,” Lucy Bradshaw, “Spore’s” executive producer, told CNN.
Truer words were never spoken. And I mean that.
We all knew this had to happen eventually, right? The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a collection of tales about the Potter universe written and illustrated by J.K. Rowling, was formerly relegated to a limited seven-copy run for charity. But now, it’ll be available to everyone.
Rowling commented in a statement: “There was understandable disappointment among Harry Potter fans when only one copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard was offered to the public last December. I am therefore delighted to announce that, thanks to the generous support of Bloomsbury, Scholastic and Amazon (who bought the handwritten copy at auction)—and with the blessing of the wonderful people who own the other six original books—The Tales of Beedle the Bard will now be widely available to all Harry Potter fans…. The new edition will include the Tales themselves, translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger, and with illustrations by me, but also notes by Professor Albus Dumbledore, which appear by generous permission of the Hogwarts Headmasters’ Archive.”
Amazon, always on top of things, already has it up for sale.
