Category Archives: Authors
Biff Bam Pop Holiday Gift Guide: Strange World: A Biff Bam Pop! Anthology
This holiday season, a lot of books are going to be given as gifts. Due to recent film releases, how many copies of Life of Pi, The Hobbit or Les Miserables are going to make their way under the tree? How many copies of <a-hem> Fifty Shades of Grey will be wrapped up with a red bow?
With the release of the iPad Mini, how many of those devices and other reading tablets will find themselves in the hands of readers with smiling faces by the 25th of this month? I’ll tell you the answer: lots.
Lots and lots and lots.
Well, we’ve got you covered at Biff Bam Pop! Books can be expensive and tablets need e-books to make them worthwhile. And if you haven’t already heard (or need to be reminded), our first short story anthology, Strange World: A Biff Bam Pop Short Story Anthology is waiting for you to gift to a loved one or yourself this holiday season!
You can read just how strange – and how cool – it is after the jump!
Big Ideas On The Big Screen – Phillip K. Dick In Hollywood
Words like “imaginative”, “mind-bending”, and “psychologically unsettling” are often applied to the science-fiction novels of Phillip K. Dick. He wrote stories with big ideas.
At the same time, his novels have been almost uncomfortably fertile ground for adaptation into big-budget Hollywood films – some faithfully, and some very, very loosely. And while we’re on the subject of Total Recall, let me mention Dick’s short story, “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale”. The story of a quiet, unassuming man who tries to book a virtual vacation only to find out that it’s actually happened has become a massive, explosive, ultraviolent action movie not once, but twice.
Twice.
Read the rest of this entry
Biff Bam Pop’s Favorite Couples—Guest Blogger Janice Gable Bashman On Hannibal and Clarice
Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter and Clarice Starling aren’t your average couple.
They’re anything but average.
Two diametrically opposed people who together create one of the most intriguing couples, in their own twisted way.
Who would have thought that a serial killer and a FBI trainee would become one of pop culture’s most well-known couples? And most loved.
Considering the Colloquium: Toronto specfic fans celebrate their literary love
Speculative fiction – that wonderful branch of literature that encompasses the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror and all their cross-bred permutations – is often the maligned sibling of the much grander fiction, celebrated across Canada every fall with insert-the-name prizes and black-tie galas.
The Writer or The Character?: Andy Burns Mulls Charlie Huston’s Deathlok and Jonathan Maberry’s Black Panther
A few interesting things came out of Comic-Con this past weekend, including the revelation as to one of the big projects author Charlie Huston has coming up for Marvel.
You may recall in our interview with Huston (check it out here), Charlie mentioned that he has a few large projects on the go but that he wasn’t able to disclose any of the details at the time I spoke with him.
Well it turns out that Huston will be working on a 7 issue mini-series staring the cyborg Deathlok, illustrated by Lan Medina. Unlike Huston’s novels and some of his previous Marvel work, most notably Moon Knight, which are supernatural or crime based tales, Deathlok falls right into the realm of science fiction.
I have to admit, the announcement leaves me slightly disappointed, much the same way I felt when another of my favourite authors, Jonathan Maberry, announced that he would be taking over the reigns of the Black Panther series. I’ve never read any comic relating to Deathlok, and while I’ve given Black Panther a shot over the years, nothing about T’challa has ever really appealed to me (though perhaps things will be different with the new, female Black Panther). While both authors claim genuine affection for their respective characters, I’m not sure if my genuine affection for both writers is enough to make me lay down my dollars on characters that I either don’t know or don’t care about.
Personally, in the case of Maberry, I would have loved to see him continue his take on The Punisher. His recently released Punisher MAX: Naked Kill was one of the most brutal takes on the character I’ve read in a while, a realistic depiction of who Frank Castle is. It would have been cool to see where Maberry could go with the character (and maybe we’ll see something in the future). As for Huston and Deathlok, a sci-fi comic about a cyborg just doesn’t do it for me at all.
Does all this mean I won’t check out an issue of each to test the waters? That’s hard to say, and in some ways illustrates the differences in how I approach reading an author’s work. Over the past few years I’ve had no hesitancy in picking up new novels from either Charlie Huston or Jonathan Maberry. It never matters what the stories are about; I have faith in the authors and their abilities that I will likely enjoy whatever they’re creating in their books. But in the case of their respective new comics, dealing in characters I don’t care about, I just don’t feel enticed.
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. All I know is that I can’t wait for Charlie Huston’s My Dead Body, the final Joe Pitt Casebook (due out this fall), and Jonathan Maberry’s second Joe Ledger novel, The Dragon Factory (out in 2010). Of course, if I need anything to read by either author in the meantime, I’ll know where to look.
Maybe.
Biff Bam Pop Exclusive – Andy Burns Talks To author Charlie Huston Part 1
About a month ago I had the chance to talk with Charlie Huston, who in the span of a few short years has become one of my favourite authors. He’s the best-selling creator of the Joe Pitt Casebooks, The Hank Thompson trilogy, and has also been doing his fair share of work in the Marvel Universe, including a run on Moon Knight that helped bring the character back to prominence. We had an excellent conversation about his novels, including his tour de force The Shotgun Rule, but seeing as how the San Diego Comic-Con is upon us, I thought today would be a good day to post the comic talk Charlie and I had. There’s lots more to come, but in the meantime here’s some Moon Knight reminiscence (which came at the tail end of our conversation) and teases to whet your appetite.
Andy B: I came to your Moon Knight run relatively late and I’ve just been catching up. How did you wind up working on Moon Knight?
Charlie Huston: (Marvel) were actually looking for someone to work on their licensed novels, you know, Wolverine the novel, blah blah blah, and they sent out general queries to agencies and my agent asked me if I was interested because he knew I was kind of a comic book guy at the time. I was not interested in ‘that work at all, but I did say I would be interested in an actual comic. You know, they didn’t even know I existed, let alone read my stuff, they were just looking for writers. So they read my stuff, liked it, we talked and some characters were mentioned and kind of out of the blue they mentioned Moon Knight, and it was this light bulb moment for me because in all the characters we talked about that I had dug when I was a kid, I had somehow completely blanked on Moon Knight. I had been a big fan, really just the Doug Moench stuff when I was a kid. I had never the read any of the stuff from the late 80’s, early 90’s. I didn’t even know there has been another Moon Knight series. And that was it. I pitched my take on the character. I was very lucky to be pitching to Axel Alonso and Joe Quesada because I used a lot of sports analogies and talked about an athlete past his prime trying to get back in the game, and it turns out I was talking to two of the only guys at Marvel who give a shit about sports.
Andy B: And you finished up your run on Moon Knight…
Charlie Huston: Well I finished Moon Knight ages ago. It’s been years. I finished my run writing those scripts probably a good year before they finished actually publishing them. So that feels like ancient history to me. I stuck around…
Andy B: You did the co-plotting thing…
Charlie Huston: I did the co-plotting with Mike (Benson), but really Mike Benson’s run is his run. We would get together in a cafe and talk and break story but that was basically it. He might send me a script to look at and give a couple notes, but that was really him.
Andy B: So what do you have come up with Marvel next?
Charlie Huston: You know I’ve got a couple things in the works but they haven’t announced them. I wrote a 7 issue mini-series that’s done and there are 5 issues of art that have been finished, but the artist, who is tremendously talented, is also quite slow. They wanted to get a bunch of art work done before they started publishing it so that they wouldn’t have delays. They keep waiting for the window when they want to announce it. They’ve got to be announcing it at Comic-Con. They told me they want to start publishing in November and a catalogue is going to come out sooner or later. But I told them I’d keep my mouth shut.
Andy B: Sure.
Charlie Huston: Right now what I’m working on for them is a 12 issue run on one of their larger characters in main continuity. It’s supposed to start in November or December and I’m working on the fifth script right now, but they don’t have an artist assigned. But again, their catalogues come out so they’ll have to say something.
Andy B: I’ll have to keep my eyes open.
Charlie Huston: It should be soon. And then I did a couple short stories. There’s a Deadpool jam and I did a short story in that. And there’s a Shang-Chi collection coming out and I wrote something for that. And then they’re also doing a Punisher jam. Axel emailed me and said “Hey, are you interested in doing a Punisher jam” and I was like “that would be fun”. I had a quick idea that I cranked out and then he said, “Hey, maybe you want to do a Deadpool” and literally within a week he had asked me if I wanted to do three short stories and I just pumped them out. It was kind of weird. And that’s it for now. The thing that I’m working on, the 12 issue run, is kind of a monster. It’s a 12 issue arc but its not two separate storylines, its a single 12 issue storyline. I don’t think I’ll be doing too much comic book wise while I’m working on it.
Thanks to Charlie Huston for his time. You can check him out online at www.pulpnoir.com. Look for part 2 of our interview coming soon.
