comics

So I did something at the last La Mole Comic Con…

/ Ricardo Victoria / Leave a comment

I haven’t updated much the blog lately, because I’ve been busy with a certain book which is now also available for preorder at Barnes & Noble) and with grant applications that are really important for my day job (and my finances). But last Friday I took the day off to go to Mexico’s main Comicbook convention: La Mole.

La Mole is our equivalent to the SDCC and until last year, they were affiliated to the SDCC (shenanigans by a third party got said affiliation suspended until further notice) and they usually bring heavy hitters from the comic industry and pop culture. This year they brought Kevin Eastman, Jason David Frank, Jock and several other Marvel artists of which I’m afraid I can’t recall all their names (an apology).

So Salvador, the friend who did the art for my book’s cover, decided to do a limited print run of the cover art as a poster (only 25 copies), a hundred bookmarkers with a QR code to take the recipient to the Amazon preorder page and put them on sale along the rest of his art, in his stand at the Artist’s Alley part of the event. He also added the cover to his portfolio that he presented to Marvel, so let’s wish him luck. Given that it was a limited run, he signed it… and invited me to sign them as well. It’s the first time I do something like this. I even created a special signature for that (can’t use my legal one for… well legal reasons). My wife, as usual, had her camera at hand and took photos of the event, including one that Geoff, my editor, wants to use as Author Photo. I dunno… I was expecting to use something more epic, with a sword, like Ned Stark saying “Winter is Coming”. But hey, I dug my own grave on this one.

Anyway, here are some pics of the event. Don’t judge me, please. I’m not camera friendly.

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15032019firma_ricardo-30

Yes, this is the new Author’s Photo. The tongue as sharp as a sword I guess. What I was thinking?

The Reveal: “Tempest Blades. The Withered King”.

/ Ricardo Victoria / 3 Comments

Well, here it is, my book’s cover is finally done. And the book is for preorder too. But first the cover.

cover reveal TBWK

Pictured: Fionn, Gaby, and Alex, my main characters, trying to clean up the mess that someone else created. Some reunions can get really chaotic.

It’s amazing isn’t? I mean I can’t stop staring at it. It’s widely different from what I had pictured at first, but that’s the great thing! I get to see my world through the eyes of one reader. Because yes, Salvador Velázquez, the Mexican graphic artist who worked in this awesome art piece read the whole book to try and get the right feel for it.

I consider myself lucky for many, many reasons in life (like having a wonderful wife and great friends). But in this case, I think, without wanting to sound as I’m gloating, that I’m also as a writer. Usually, when a writer gets to be published, the editor sends the design brief to the artist, the artist does their interpretation of said brief (which is not the same as the actual story) and you get a cover done. Most of the time it works but not always, as in that fight between a cover artist and an author that was neither good or kind. Others the author if they have the skill, work on the illustrations as well, like Tolkien. Sometimes if you self publishes, you buy a premade cover or hire an artist and result may vary. And occasionally a writer gets to work directly with the artist and a good rapport and communication surges, becoming friends, which is my case with Salvador.

I was lucky that my publisher, Artemesia Publishing, allowed me a certain degree of liberty when it came to the cover design and illustration. And me, being the control freak I am, took the opportunity. In another blog entry, I will showcase the development and evolution of the cover art, with added comments from Salvador (given that it will be a long post, it will take some time to put it together). Lest suffice to say that I spent the last months, chatting back and forth with Salvador, trying to get his vision and my ideas to mesh together into the fantastic illustration you are seeing above. I have to give it to him as he was patient enough to listen to me rambling about how a bow should be used or asking about references while leaving his own imprint on the piece. I think that something that helped is that both of us have a design background* (and since I will be overseeing as well the editorial design of the cover) so we shared a common language and understood how and why to ask something.

This is the cover, all put together with the synopsis in the back. The final cover design and assembling were done by my wife, who is not only an amazing photographer but also a talented editorial designer who is starting her business creating covers for authors like me. Trust me, it might look easy, but the level of skill required to make sure everything is correct right to the last millimeter is staggering. I still have a lot to learn from her if I want to improve the covers for Inklings Press.

perf5.500x8.500.indd

The synopsis reads:

Fionn is the wielder of a legendary Tempest Blade, and he is blessed – or cursed – by The Gift. Though his days as a warrior are long over, his past leaves him full of guilt and regret. Life, however, has other plans for him, when he agrees to help a friend locate a missing person.

Gaby and Alex never expected to become heroes… until they met Fionn. As an ancient evil arises and consumes the land, Fionn must help them to master their own Gifts and Tempest Blades.

Together the three of them, and their friends, will chart a course aboard the flying ship Figaro to save the planet. Will Fionn’s past be an anchor, or will he overcome the one failure from his former life before time runs out?

In a world where magic and science intermingle, anything is possible.

Including second chances.

Anyways, this is the cover. The back blurb is not on it because I wanted you to admire the art and the custom made logo Salvador and his girlfriend did for me. You can give them a better look at these promotional banners:

Banner TBWK Fionn

The Greywolf

Banner TBWK Alex

The Inventor

Banner TBWK Gaby

The Dreamer

While “Tempest Blades. The Withered King.” will be released on August 20th of this year, you can preorder my book (so weirdly satisfying to say that) here**:

http://mybook.to/TempestBladesWK

Preorders help writers too -actually, they help a lot, more than you can imagine- so I will be deeply thankful if you go and get a copy for yourself. And let me know what do you think when you get your copy after August 20th.

Thank you.

*Design, like many other fields such as engineering and medicine, has different specialties and different skills. Yes all designers, know how to draw. But one thing is to draw a product -like in my case, and I admit I’m not that good- and another to draw a custom made illustration or develop a marketing campaign. Yes, you can cross-pollinate abilities -my wife, a graphic designer, and photographer, is teaching me about editorial design and photoshop- but it takes time to get good at them. See my point about editorial design.

**I just hope that by the time you see this, Amazon has updated the cover image for the ebook version, that’s why the link will take you to the paperback version.

Archery doesn’t work that way.

/ Ricardo Victoria / Leave a comment

Here is a little secret not so secret: I actually know how to shoot with a bow. A recurve bow to be precise. While I’m not practicing it anymore due the lack of shooting ranges in my hometown, I did practice archery for three years, while I was doing my Ph.D. at Loughborough University. I had the fortune that a friend of mine was my archery instructor as well as a fellow comic geek. So back in the day, we used to chat about how bad comics, movies, and tv shows get wrong the basics. I will share a few of those chats here from time to time because I’m that kind of annoying guy and this is my blog and not yours.

For context, I’m an industrial designer with an engineering background and my friend Birm is an actual engineer that has worked in a couple of big gigs. At the very least, we think we know a bit of physics.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

A lot.

And I say this as a big Green Arrow fan. Let’s explain why.

Me: Birm, have you seen those comic images where the archer is doing acrobatics on the air while shooting his bow?

Birm: Shooting whilst jumping? Nope, can’t say that I have.

Me: They say that an image tells more than 1000 words… *shows picture above*

Birm: That’s more like it, In real life, Green Arrow would then be flat on his back.

Me: so many Brokeback Mountain jokes here.

Birm: *roll eyes*

Me: Anyways, here is a second image.

Birm: Oh good grief.

Me: What?

Birm: Do comic book artists know nothing of momentum?

Me: Considering that they work with a fictional world where a super powered alien can catch a girl in mid-air without splitting her into thirds and thus automatically killing her, I would say that No, they don’t.

Birm: That’s because Superman alters his own gravitational field dammit. It can be explained away by pseudo-science, but ‘Word of God’ states these guys have no powers.

Me: I take that you have been watching the same argument on ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and reading TV Tropes.

Birm: Why yes, yes I have done both of those things.

Me: I guess we are going down a whole new level of geekdom

Birm: Well TV Tropes provides an excellent resource for giving names to things.

Me: Also provides a good way to lose years of productive life just by browsing it. Anyways, what is more, possible to do, the previous image or this?

Birm: Shooting whilst on a motorbike is possible, with a sufficiently skilled driver.

Me: well Dinah is a skilled driver so that is not a worry (except when she is in an awful mood). Now flying bike must present the same momentum issues than before, then again we are talking about a universe where Batman could just breathe in space just because he is BATMAN.

Birm: This is true, regardless of what the situation is, simple mechanics specifies that momentum must be maintained, so firing a projectile pretty quick in one direction will lead to a force in the opposite direction.

Me: Basic Newton’s law: to every applied force there is a reaction of equal value but opposite direction or something like that.

Birm: Yup.

Me: In a normal shooting we don’t feel it as our weight overcomes the force that an arrow could generate, however, the bow does get affected, as we explained in last month’s column about how to hold a bow.

Birm: Yeah, the main principle behind it is that the bow is creating a force forwards which is transferred into the arrow. Some of this force is dissipated into the arrow but there is still a lot of force trying to force the bow forwards. This is why a lot of recurve archers use a finger sling, instead of trying to hold onto the bow they just let it drop and let the sling hold it, so the forward force is allowed to throw the bow forwards a little and is then dropped in the downward direction.

Me: And in a normal shooting we are flat footed so our legs transfer the effort towards the floor.

Birm: Yup, what happens on these images it’s not possible to do this with a longbow, you have to hold on and use your weight and stance to dissipate the force, which isn’t possible when you have nothing to brace against.

Me: Something that is lacking on these images. Basically, in these instances, Ollie or Clint would get pushed backward.

Birm: Hmm, I’m not convinced about that, I think they would get pulled forwards.

Me: Following the bow and the string vector?

Birm: Yeh, the bow enacts a force forwards of the archer, which is what is transferred into the arrow to make it move, the rest of the force is then transferred into the limbs and down into the grip resulting in a net force forwards, it’s usually up to the archer to provide a rearwards force to counteract this.

Me: So if you shoot while jumping you might as well use a pointy hat and become another arrow.

Birm: Yeh, pretty much.

Me: Arrowman!!! The Amazing pointy vigilante… or circus act. You know? I think the problem has its roots on the gunplay from action flicks.

Birm: Yes, it’s possible to shoot guns whilst firing through the air but they operate on completely different firing principles.

Me: Well they do still have the recoil, so you still get pushed backward isn’t?

Birm: The problem with a bow is that your arm is at its full extension already so there’s nowhere for the force to go to.

Me: But in movies, people shoot a gun at full arm extension. I guess the issue is that it looks cool, regardless of how possible it is and with archers, the problem is even bigger as there are just a handful ways to make the look cool in a comic. In a film/tv/cartoon is easier due to the fluidity of the movement, the speed and the dramatic moment, think Legolas in LOTR, Green Arrow in Smallville and JLU or Robin Hood in the Costner movie (and yet there the writer takes a lot of liberties).

Birm: Depicting the action of firing a bow is difficult in comics as you either show the bow at full draw which looks dramatic, or you show it with an arrow flying off it, which looks a bit rubbish because it looks like the archer isn’t doing anything. That’s why you have silly things like Legolas in the LOTR films, sliding on a shield down a staircase.

Me: I guess this is one of those cases where we might have to cut some slack to the artist and allow suspension of disbelief as in comic format it would be hard to do it unless the bow has some magical properties like the one you are trying to build and the FX of the arrow would do all the job.

Birm: It’s definitely a case for suspension of disbelief, it’d be pretty difficult to take an archery based superhero seriously if they fell flat on their face every time they fired an arrow.

Me: It would make comedy gold though… or it would be a bit sad as the BBC Robin Hood show.

Birm: I still think that would be comedy gold.

Me: I can’t stop picturing someone doing that.

Birm: That would be brilliant.

Me: Human Arrow, the acrobatic archer/arrow, he shoots himself to stop crime.

Birm: Priceless.

Me: Let’s call a major publisher, we might get lucky if we pitch this. Maybe even a movie deal with Will Ferrell as Human Arrow.

Remember, in real life -and as a writer, if you have an archer in the story- you need a good shooting positioning to make it realistic. And don’t drink while using a bow unless you are planning to share it with us.

A review: Wonder Woman

/ Ricardo Victoria / Leave a comment

As a fan of DC Comics from childhood to the date, getting a good DCEU movie has been a grueling process. I liked BvS, although it was a flawed movie. Suicide Squad was bad and Man of Steel has some controversial details. So Wonder Woman had a lot on her shoulders if this DC project was to succeed. Did it work?  Read only if you don’t mind SPOILERS.

I will put it this way, at risk of sounding like hyperbole: I haven’t seen such a great origin superhero movie since the first Iron Man movie and for DC, since the first Superman movie. Wonder Woman is so great that she alone has proved that this shared universe has hope. And it did it in the most logical way, by not talking about the shared universe, but concerning itself to tell a character story first and leave the shared universe out, aside from the framing device that amounts to less than 5 minutes of the total run. In that regard, WW does what the earlier installments of the MCU did (and have lost as they have become more formulaic and the universe more expansive), take the best elements of the characters long history (75 years for Wondy) and distillate them into a character study of growth and learning. Yes the background is the codifier for ‘War is Hell’, WWI which was the clash between old war strategies and new weaponry, but at the end of the day is the story of a heroine coming to terms with the fact

Yes the background is the codifier for ‘War is Hell’, WWI which was the clash between old war strategies and new weaponry, but at the end of the day is the story of a heroine coming to terms with the fact that she can’t save everyone as much as she wishes and there is not a single cause for the woes of humanity. But that doesn’t make humans irredeemable, just fallible. Thus the role of a heroine like Diana is to inspire humans to be better, to learn, grow and forgive. And the only way she can do that is by learning to do those things herself. In that way, she becomes better than her parents or her half-brother.

There are some obvious tropes and twists in the film that a keen-eyed writer can see a mile away (mainly the Godslayer weapon misdirection) but those don’t affect the story negatively since they don’t matter, this is the journey of Diana, not a journey to beat a villain. It is a personal journey of discovery. I would say that it is a ‘coming of age’ story enveloped in the superhero cape. It explains the jaded views of Diana during BvS (and how the introduction of Superman and Batman brings her out of her funk). The ending is a bit cheesy, 90’s level of cheesiness. But you know? That’s ok. Superheroes can be cheesy.

I loved the small details that added to the movie: the take on Diana’s origins (both classic & New 52), the foreshadowing of the New Gods, Bruce Wayne’s touching detail, Diana’s day job… all were perfect.

The real gem of the movie is Gal Gadot. She IS Wonder Woman as much as RDJR is Iron Man or Hugh Jackman is Wolverine (yes I know, Linda Carter is also WW). She embodies the character like a form fitting glove. The way she portrays Diana, from naive to jaded, from hopeful to in the midst of despair, from peace lover to the greatest Amazon warrior ever is a testament to her range and love for the character. Wonder Woman is a complex character as she predicates peace but is a mighty warrior. Gal Gadot makes you believe that there is no contradiction there.

Kudos to Chris Pine, he gave us a very human Steve Trevor, a regular man deciding to do the right thing even if he was scared beyond his guts. He conveyed several emotions with just his face. And his chemistry with Gal Gadot sold an otherwise common love relationship in a way that is heartbreaking in a good sense.

In general everyone did a great job (even if a few of the characters are paper thin). The movie took advantage of a great cast (of special note is Robin Wright as Antiope. She was incredible in the few scenes she appeared).

Music wise, the soundtrack does it work, the theme of Wonder Woman that premiered in BvS is back to great effect. I love the heavy guitar riff. It’s regal, action packed and iconic. Of the DCEU characters’ themes, is by far the best.

The only weak point of the movie is the photography in certain scenes (mostly some combat ones where the CGI a la 300 is too obvious). However, I doubt it is due Paty Jenkins but more an issue of the in photography style that DC and WB have chosen for the DCEU that owes more to Snyder’s vision. When Jenkins introduced her own style, it was magnificent like with Themiscyra.

One of the parameters I use to measure how much I like a story, in general, is what I call the ‘yearning factor’. Do you know when you finish a story and are left with this bittersweet feeling, a good melancholy vibe that makes you yearn for more stories about that particular character? The need for more to the point you imagine your own extra adventures? The feel to watch the movie over and over because it makes you warm inside? That’s what I call the yearning factor, the need to get more of the story. And WW has it in spades, which is good because given that it aims to be part of a shared universe, will serve an extra hook for watching more about this universe and her role in it.

All in all, this is one of the best superhero movies ever made. I know it sounds like hyperbole, but it is. And it is fitting that one of the members of the Trinity of DCU can claim such stake. If someone can teach Superman and Batman a few things is Wonder Woman. This is a movie about belief and trust, but in story and outside (the trust that WB gave to Patty Jenkins is something that Marvel should examine for once). And it is great that we have now a female lead superhero movie that also works as a positive role for many girls and women around the world. It was about time. And as usual, it had to be Wonder Woman the one to show the way, as it befits the ambassador of Themiscyra and demi-goddess of truth and peace.

Watch it if: you enjoy good superhero films, you like DC comics, kick ass women, Wondy or Gal Gadot. And if you still have hopes for the DCEU project.

Don’t watch it if: if you don’t like DC comics, you don’t like the in-house photography style, you don’t like female superheroes or like the idea of a female director showing how it is done. (but if that’s the case, you shouldn’t be reading this blog either).

Grade: 6 out of 5.

Desirability: I loved the film but my wife liked it so much that even she has agreed we put the preorder of the blu-ray as soon as is possible.