Characters who will be popping up in GAME OF THRONES next season

As yet another season of Game of Thrones draws to a close, pop culture sites have already started seeding the soil of fandom with news items on the next season. 

Despite the fact that this series is based on books that you can read, people like to read press releases and gossip about what is coming next season and what will actually make it from page to screen.

Luckily, Mr. K. happens to have a source willing to slip him some click-bait-y tidbits about...


New Characters You Can Expect in Game of Thrones' Next Season!

1. Profane assassin/street-thug
2. A bureaucrat at some non-governmental organization in Westeros/Braavos/Mereen who is going to make it difficult for a character to get what they want
3. Dragon Food
4. Attendant who points out to Daenerys that conquering is easy, but ruling is hard
5. A member of a conspiracy to kill the king/queen/lord/religious cult leader
6. The leader of a crazy new religious cult
7. That guy who we spend 5 minutes with so we can understand that this new mystical threat is pretty threatening once it kills him
8. Ramsay Snow's dog trainer
9. Someone whose existence threatens Cersei
10. Someone who Cersei is going to f*** over
11. Someone whose death will make Jon Snow sad
12. Someone whose death will show us that Arya/Sansa/Tyrion/Hot Pie has crossed a line
13. A seasoned British character actor whose gravitas is supposed to make up for the fact he doesn't have much to do or say
14. Yet another guy playing the Mountain
15. Darth Maul
16. An attractive prostitute who is going to make out with someone else attractive as a lead character monologues about how power corrupts or their childhood was awful or how power is hard to maintain
17. Dragon Poochie
18. Someone you start to like in spite of yourself, until you remember that they die halfway through DANCE OF DRAGONS
19. A hard-drinking old man who has a secret past
20. Victimized peasant
21. Victimized peasant woman
22. Victimized peasant child
23. Dead peasant family
24. Indie band dressed as troubadors who play the third song that ever was written in Westeros
25. Rex Hamilton as Abe Lincoln

On Selling My Comic Book Collection, Part 2

In my last post, which was way, way too long ago, I wrote some about the road that brought me to the selling of my comic book collection. Now I'll pick up with part 2...

When I first started entering my comics on Lonestar Comic's website, it was in part just curiousity. Were my comics actually worth anything? Or were they just random packages of paper, taking up space....

The answer is that they were worth something, but very few of them were worth anything much. A few of my G.I. Joe comics were worth between 50-100 dollars, as they came from late in the Marvel run and had not been collected. But most of the comics were worth maybe half or a quarter of what I paid for them, if I was lucky.

But I wasn't looking to get what I'd paid for them. I was just looking to free up space, to remove clutter, to have one less box to move the next time I changed apartments. And if I could pick up spending money while I did it, so much the better.

So I started the purge. First to go were a large chunk of the comics I had purchased since going off to college. I sold off a ton of Nu/New Marvel and countless DC reboots and "new" takes on iconic properties. I can't say I really felt anything at them going. I'd enjoyed many of them on the first read-through, but very few had ever earned a re-read or even a second thought.

Then, on a visit home, I started culling the old collection: the crappy to mediocre '90s comics that I had cut my teeth on: Spider-Man's clones, Wolverine without a nose, GI Joes fighting Transformers... I felt a small nostalgic twinge (and I held on to the first few comics I had purchased), but I never read them. They gave me a warm fuzzy feeling when I thought of them, but they just took up space in my parents' house and I didn't really enjoy the actual things. Goodbye to those.

At this point, I started cutting deeper and deeper. I said goodbye to reprints of stuff that had been reprinted in better editions and poor condition Silver Age comics that I'd purchased just to feel like I was a serious collector. These I felt more uncomfortable with letting go, but whatever the problems of the comic book market today, it's relatively easy to get quality reprints of everything from Ditko and Kirby monster comics to Flex Mentallo (!).

I'm not going to claim that there weren't moments of sadness as I did this. But this wasn't like the little kid in Puff the Magic Dragon saying goodbye to his imaginary friend. These were things that brought me very little joy, except in the abstract or in my memories. Other people wanted them and other people might enjoy them. And in return, I would get money to spend on creating new memories or received trade credit I used to get comics I had never read.

And as I went through my collection, I rediscovered the comics that I did enjoy. And even as I said goodbye to a large portion of my collection, I remembered the joy they had given me at the time I bought them.

Selling off my comics, strangely enough, made me more interested in reading comics than I had been in ages.

On selling off my comic book collection...

So, about a year, year and a half ago, I decided to start selling off my comic book collection.

I've been collecting comic books since I was probably about 5, starting with G.I. Joe, moving on to Spider-Man and Wolverine, then finally onto the Silver Age stuff and collecting specific artists and writers (Morrison, Steranko, Kirby, Moore, Ellis, etc.). I kept buying regularly through college and, while I lived in Chicago, I kept a pull-list at Comix Revolution, then Graham Crackers (both great stores, in their own ways).

By the time I moved to Los Angeles, I had about three long boxes and 5 short boxes of comics with me, and another 6 long boxes back at my parent's house in North Carolina, roughly amounting to about three thousand comics or so. I never really bothered counting or keeping track, though I could usually tell you where to find a specific item in my idiosyncratically organized collection.

As I was preparing to move out to Los Angeles, I started selling off old textbooks and a large portion of my music collection. I had finally realized that 90% of those textbooks were never going to be of any use to me, and even the few books that might be, for some minor point of reference, could be reserved through the library or borrowed. And I had already burned copies of most of my CDs.

I had already quit my office job in the Loop. And though I had savings, I found that you end up doing a lot more (and spending more money) when you don't get home from work too tired to do anything except watch TV. Once or twice a week, I'd go to Beck's Books or a record store near Belmont and Broadway, and usually walk out with $15-20 (at least). Anything I couldn't get rid of, I gave to Open Books, a wonderful Chicago-based charity.

I was cutting down on moving expenses (somewhat) and bringing in pocket money. By the time I moved to Los Angeles, I was down to about two full bookshelves worth of books, mostly sentimental items, important reference works, or things I hadn't read yet.

After the move to Los Angeles, I realized how much stuff I still had. I kept winnowing down my CD collection further and further (since I was still looking for a job, filling the gap with the occasional temp assignment). And I realized, after the movers delivered some of my comic boxes already opened or ruined, that I wasn't re-reading most of those floppy pamphlets at all. I'd read them once, enjoyed them, then filed them away with the other issues of GENERIC SUPERHERO CHARACTER.

It was about this time that I stumbled back across Lone Star Comic's online website, which includes a buying site that allows you to inventory your collection, as well as get a quote for the items they're looking for. And given how OCD I am, I couldn't resist the urge to verify the value (or lack thereof) of my collection, as well as the size and completeness of it. It was almost like a game...

Tomorrow: Part 2, in which I talk about parting with all these treasured possessions, and how it wasn't as sad as I thought it would be...

Sci-fi tropes that need to be banned for 50 years...

I had a serious post half-written about how I'm somewhat tired of the sci-fi genre. And then I realized it would probably be more helpful/fun to make a post of sci-fi tropes/plot devices that need to be banned for at least the next 50 years.

Clearly I'm not a governing body with any kind of authority, so, think of it this way. If you are writing something in which any of the following things are used, just think twice about it. Are you really writing something that original?

1. Despite being the distant future, America still exists pretty much like it does now, both geographically and sociologically.
2. Despite being the distant future, America's main political/military rivals are still exactly the same as they are today.
3. Despite being the future, the one world government is run suspiciously like a US-style democracy, and most of the leaders seem to be white and/or male.
4.  Despite being the distant future with high technological advancement, the roles of men and women are exactly the same. If they are being disputed, it is in the same way they are currently being disputed.
5. Mankind has encountered only one alien race, and they are monolithically united in fighting us.
6. The morality of totally wiping out a sentient race is never questioned, or only by a straw man.
7. Mankind is technologically set back by a disaster. It responds by adapting SCA/medieval political units, with no alterations.
8. When mankind loses technology and forms a quasi-utopian pre-Industrial society, no one ever requires internal medicine or modern pharmaceuticals.
9. Despite major technical advances, including mass teleportation, mankind still relies on 19th/early 20th naval tactics for warfare. Especially in space.
10. The Nazis/Confederates win World War II/the Civil War.
11. The Nazis/Confederates win World War II/the Civil War with the aid of time travelers/aliens/dragons.
12. A quasi-fascist strong man is the only one who can save the Future US/Earth from a major threat. Anyone who questions him is completely wrong.
13. Except for uniforms that look like Iron Man joining a SWAT team, average soldiers are completely the same as the stock types from a World War II movie.
14. Sexual relations and mores are exactly the same as they are currently.

Ok, this is just a start. If you have more suggestions, leave them in the comments.

I couldn't agree more...

From page 24 of Fear & Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson:

... Back to Chicago; it's never dull out there. You never know exactly what kind of terrible shit is going to come down on you in that town, but you can always count on something. Every time I got to Chicago I come away with scars.

I'm doing well these days, but that sums up a lot of how I feel about my time in Chicago. And that's why I'm moving elsewhere at the end of the summer.

Cleaning out backlog of articles to read...

"We often have a way that we think we’re going to correct ourselves in the work that leads us to deny the talent we’re assigned or the subjects we’re assigned or the style we’re assigned. That’s certainly been true for me and I often see it with young writers"

from an interview with Mary Karr.

Earlier in the interview, she talks about how George Saunders initially was trying to be Raymond Carver, until his friends convinced him that the weird stuff was what he should be writing.

I swear, this is not the All-Lost, all the time blog

even though the next post you'll see will probably be a write-up about tomorrow night's episode.

But after that, I promise to write something non-LOST related, even if it's just a long-overdue screening log. I also read Otto Friedrich's City of Nets, about Hollywood in the 1940s, and I think it has some interesting things to say about economics and entertainment. Or maybe a piece on the man-child in American comedy? And maybe some thoughts on popular genre authors and their weaknesses? I don't know.

So non-LOST fans, please stick with me. And LOST fans, you'll still have stuff to read. I might have a post comparing LOST to X-Men, a few more archival episode write-ups and a fun exercise I call Kenneth Branaugh's... LOST (look through the older blog archives and you'll see how it works).

Information wants to be free: 19th Century edition

Apparently there's been some blogosphere dust-up lately about Chris Anderson's Free: The Future of a Radical Price, because, on the one hand, it's really easy to download an entire band's 30 year discography in a few minutes without having to put on pants these days, while, on the other hand, Wired still expects you to pay for subscriptions. Or something like that. This is a freshman blog, and the older bloggers keep pushing me into lockers or sending me to look for a pool on the roof when I try to join the discussion.

But, you know what, I'm reading Perry Miller's The Raven and the Whale: Poe, Melville and the New York Literary Scene right now. First of all, so far, it's much more interesting than the title might suggest. The New York literary scene in the 1830s and 1840s was filled with a lot of people arguing over what American literature would look like. And their arguments, as most arguments do, quickly became confused with political debates and, more importantly, a lot of personal insults.

So far, the whole thing strikes me as very similar to the message board flame wars that you encounter on nerd sites or those weird blog community rivalries (like, remember gawker vs. n+1? jeez, that makes me feel old). But instead of pretentious twenty-something bloggers or Green Lantern fans, these were august men of letters who were trying to help out Hawthorne, Poe and Melville. Or sink them.

Then maybe David Denby is wrong, these kind of poisonous fights for status in tiny communities are nothing new. The only difference is that now, it's easier for everyone to watch two geeks try to slap each other and roll their eyes.

But before I get totally distracted by my own snark, what is most interesting in terms of our time, is the difficulty of copyright in those days. While the fact that Poe and Melville and Hawthorne were perpetually fighting to keep the wolves from their door is nothing new, the arguments over copyright/literature piracy are also surprisingly current.

Once again, you have one side claiming that copyright is the only thing that would help encourage artists to pursue their craft without facing starvation. On the other side, people are arguing that if the best will still be able to support themselves if they are good, and copyright only encourages mediocrities in rent-seeking.

That's all very simplistic though. Because the copyright people also (generally) wanted literary protectionism that would encourage American writers (and implicitly keeping out European works). And yes, that was partly argued as a fear of European decadence infecting American readers.

While the copyfight people were, with the benefit of history, basically saying, "yeah, Poe and Melville and Hawthorne? Nobodies. Charles Lamb, now he's where it's at." Oh, and that creating art was something that only already rich people should indulge in.

So both historical sides are very problematic. And the problematic angles of both sides seem to be lurking underneath the current arguments too.

Up next: An argument that Hollywood is a best case scenario for commercial art. Also, speculation that Roger Corman and his ilk are the future of professional film-making (for better or worse).

"You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies"

Read The Stars My Destination tonight. 

Alfred Bester wrote a great sci-fi novel that just stretches well past both his era and our era.

I find it so humbling and disappointing to find something so great. Because now there is one less great thing to find and one more thing to match myself against.