Things Are Tough for Batman

Batman Garage Sale with Adam West from Adam West

Places I Think I Will Be Over the Next Few Months

5/15: Smartish Pace/Barrelhouse Launch Party, Baltimore MD
5/17: Maine Comics Arts Festival, Portland ME
7/11: Books & Blooms, Boothbay ME
7/23-26: San Diego Comic-Con
9/19-20: BangPop!, Bangor ME
10/3: Bangor Book Festival, Bangor ME

I'm going to be in New York, Massachusetts, and Michigan at various times over the summer, so there might be more to come. And if you're a bookseller or convention organizer interested in a reading/signing, drop a line...

A History of Daimon Hellstrom, Son of Satan

Over at FearZone, Gemma Files has posted an interesting history of Daimon Hellstrom--better known as the Son of Satan.

"But it wasn't until horror author Alexander Irvine (whose brilliant first novel, A SCATTERING OF JADES, crossbreeds GANGS OF NEW YORK with the Aztec patheon to truly Apocalyptic effect) undertook a HELLSTORM: SON OF SATAN miniseries for Max Comics that, in my opinion, Daimon finally hit his stride--and that was in 2007."

She goes on in some depth about my story, but even if she hadn't, this is a witty and smart look at a character who has had quite a strange and varied history.

Onion AV Club on Daredevil Noir

"The Marvel Noir line has proven an unexpected hit for the company. Sticking classic superheroes in out-of-continuity miniseries saturated with the lowlife atmosphere and doomstruck moral shadings of 1940s noir novels and films was a bizarre idea, but somehow it struck just the right chord with fans, who ate up Spider-Man Noir and X-Men Noir. Now comes Daredevil Noir (Marvel), and whether or not it proves as popular as its predecessors, it’s definitely the best-executed so far..."

Read the rest, in which I am described as a "science-fiction novelist and occasional comics dabbler," here.

Baltimore Reading at Metro Gallery May 15th

Smartish Pace/Barrelhouse Release Party
May 15th, 2009 8:00pm-1:00am
LOCATION: Metro Gallery, 1700 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21201 (1 block north of Penn Station)
COST: $10 (includes magazine)

From the Smartish Pace web site:

Readings by Matt Anserello, Lucy Biederman, Maggie Glover, Reginald Harris, Alex Irvine, Aaron Poochigian and Mark Wisniewski. Readings from 8:15 PM to 9:15 PM and for 20 min. between sets of the three bands (TBA soon). This is a joint bash with our friends from Barrelhouse, the first-rate kick-ass DC literary magazine. Cost includes a copy of the new Smartish Pace or Barrelhouse & all the merriment you can stomach. Metro Gallery is one block north of Penn Station providing easy transportation for DC folks. We look forward to seeing you Friday, May 15th! 21+ event.

The Next Thing You Bookmark

Should be the World Digital Library. Just sayin'. L worked on some of the translations of the French-language items, and this is going to be a great resource. Also a time-sink without peer. Pictured: a German woodcut of Aesop's Fables.

Daredevil Noir #3 Solicit and #4 Cover

“LIAR’S POKER,” PART 3 The Bull's-Eye Killer is on the loose in Hell's Kitchen, and every corpse draws Daredevil deeper into the brewing war between Wilson Fisk and Orville Halloran, the Man Who Would Be Kingpin. Guided by the unerring accuracy of his senses, Daredevil plunges toward a confrontation with Halloran -- and a devastating revelation. Sometimes the truth does not set you free.




Also, here's a thoughtful review of #1 from Earth-2.

Whole Lotta Madame Bovary

Wow. 4500 pages? Transcribed by a team including teenagers and an oil prospector? And no smut?

Anyone searching the new site for "naughty bits" scissored by the publishers will probably be disappointed. Although Flaubert was furious that his text was altered to try to avoid a trial, the censored passages are hardly more explicit than many of those that remained. For instance, the celebrated sequence in which Emma Bovary and one of her lovers make love in a carriage with the blinds drawn as they trot through the streets of Rouen is barely changed in the various manuscript versions.

Seriously, 4500 pages? I can't decide whether this makes me despondent or grateful for my lack of French.

Pleistocene Park

Man, would I love to see this:

But in recent years conservationists have set their sights on the more distant past, when Europe's forests and meadows were replete with elephants, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses and big cats. Some ambitious conservationists are now advocating a return to norms of wilderness that date back to the Pleistocene era, more than 11,000 years ago.

The megafauna from that period, which had a dramatic impact on the environment around them, are a vital, missing part of Europe's ecosystem, argue proponents of Pleistocene rewilding, as the movement is known. Elephants, for example, keep forests from growing too dense. Large predators increase the survival odds of their prey by thinning the weak from the ranks. Importing Asian and African beasts similar to the ones that roamed prehistoric Europe would increase biodiversity and restore a natural equilibrium, with the biggest mammals once again at the top of the food chain.

Pics from Buyout Launch

Courtesy of Sam Cousins. Are there others out there?