I don't have a great deal to report this week, except to say that I have completed reviewing the proof copy of Jack Manley
and approved it to go up on Amazon. Now I'm just waiting for Amazon to
set everything up, which could take anywhere from another three to five
days to complete. I had thought that it would be available by now, but
I suppose that the wheels of commerce can turn only so fast. I'll have
all of the details next week, I'm sure.
(Addendum: No, it's up already! Expect a social media blitz tomorrow!)
WHAT ELSE I'M WORKING ON
I have been deeply immersed in About Time Vol. 2 (by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood), a deeply exhaustive guide to Doctor Who during the late 1960s. The About Time
series spans seven volumes so far, and is a brilliant mix of insightful
critiques, cultural touchstones and hardcore nerd-facts. It's an
amazing piece of work, and should be the first stop for any serious
Doctor Who fan looking for a guidebook to the series. (The second stop
should be Philip Sandifer's brilliant Tardis Eruditorum blog and book series. It's just as good as About Time, but utterly different in all the right ways.)
Every
time I read this book it makes me desperately want to do the same thing
for the Marvel Universe. The universe portrayed in Marvel Comics is a
wonderful, fascinating thing, and easily my favourite work of fiction. I
would really love to write a series of guidebooks that covers the
breadth and scope of the Marvel Universe in detail, but the prospect of
doing so seems impossible.
The first reason for this is a
function of my own skills as a writer and an analyst: I'm not
particularly good at picking stories apart and examining their themes.
On top of that I have little experience with the cultural context that
the early Marvel Comics were created in. I'm not American, and I
certainly wasn't alive during the 1960s. I really wouldn't feel
comfortable making authoritative statements about these kinds of things,
so if I do pursue this project I won't be providing the level of
insight given by Miles and Wood.
The second reason that a series
of Marvel Guidebooks would be nigh-impossible to create is the sheer
weight of the Marvel Universe. We're talking thousands of comics
spanning from 1939 to the present day. To do the project in the style
of About Time, I would have to read them all before I begin
writing. It's just about possible that I could read the entire Marvel
Universe before I die, but that would still leave a very narrow window
for me to write the damn things. And there are more comics coming out
every week, mounting and mounting up. It never ends!
The only
way I can see to do this is to tackle it in a piecemeal fashion. The
first book, for instance, might cover the first two years of the Marvel
Universe proper (1961 and 1962), taking into account only the
information contained in those comics. The next book would incorporate
the comics from 1963, the next the comics of 1964, and so on. Each
volume would be a snapshot of the Marvel Universe at a certain point in
time, and taken together they would chronicle the development and
expansion of that universe both internally and externally. It sounds
like something I would have a blast writing, but it also sounds like a
life's work. I'm going to tinker around with it for a while, and see
how it comes out.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading
The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
About Time Vol. 2 by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles
What I've Been Watching
Speed Racer
What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii
No comments:
Post a Comment