Jun 28
Jules Feiffer’s TANTRUM
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From the April 16th Entertainment Weekly:
“Read It, Kid, It’s Good For You”
My all-time favorite graphic novel TANTRUM (Fantagraphics, $16.95) People who enjoy good book-length comics for adults often assume they’re a relatively recent phenomenon that sprang fully formed from the brow of Art Spiegelman or Chris Ware or Alan Moore.

I read Jules Feiffer’s remarkable Tantrum nearly 25 years ago. I didn’t get it. But it haunted me, and I knew there was something there to get. Liking it more with each reread over the years, I persuaded Fantagraphics to let me write the introduction when they reprinted it.

Written, drawn, and lettered at white-hot speed and in panels the size of a page, Tantrum, like Joseph Heller’s Something Happened, is about the compromises and fears of middle age. Leo is 42. He has a wife, a job, and two teen kids, and he wants something more. He wants things his way; he wants things to be simple; he wants to want again.

So Leo has a tantrum and, to the consternation of his family, he becomes 2 years old. Now his needs are simple: For a start, he wants a piggyback ride.

Soon we meet his family and the sinister other men who have become 2-year-olds. We watch him save an anorectic’s life. We watch where his quest for a piggyback leads him.

Feiffer, long famed as a master commentator on politics and humanity in short form, gave us, in Tantrum, something sexy, surreal, irresponsible, and utterly plausible. And undeniably adult.
-Neil Gaiman

Jun 28
Publishers Weekly Review
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Gwynedd forwarded the following review from the the June 14th, 2004 issue of Publishers Weekly - thanks!

The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy
Brown, Charles N.
ISBN: 0-06-059426-8
Eos
Paperback $15.95
2004/07

The 18 Locus Award winning novelettes and short stories selected for this solid anthology by Brown, the longtime editor/publisher of the influential SF/fantasy news magazine, and Strahan, the mag’sreviews editor, show how SF and fantasy have matured from the 1970s to the present. Standouts include Harlan Ellison’s nostalgic tale of unchanging age, “Jeffty Is Five”; Octavia E. Butler’s boundary-stretching “Bloodchild,” in which an intelligent alien race uses human beings both as pets and as repositories for their grubs; John Kessel’s poignant, semi-autobiographical “Buffalo,” about a meeting of Kessel’s blue-collar father with his idol, H.G. Wells, in 1934; and Neil Gaiman’s wistful homage to Ray Bradbury, “October in the Chair.” Gene Wolfe’s “The Death of Doctor Island” and Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Day Before the Revolution” are also fine stories, but others don’t succeed as well. The youngster who wants to fly the space-lanes in James Tiptree Jr.’s “The Only Neat Thing to Do” inevitably reflects the larger-than-life heroics of earlier genre fiction. Connie Willis’s “Even the Queen” tries to be both feminist and humorous, but comes off as a sitcom pilot, while Bruce Sterling’s “Maneki Neko” is too cute by a Pokemon and a half. The volume concludes with a list of previous winners in a wide range of categories.

Jun 19
Clippings
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Apologies if this has been on Journal and I’ve missed it in the past week or so.

Endless Nights has won the 2003 Bram Stoker Award for best illustrated narrative from the Horror Writers Association, as well as the 2003 Squiddy Award for best comics anthology from the readers of rec.arts.comics.

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Franklin Harris posted an article called ‘Sandman’ author gives lesson in writing about nothing for the June 17th Decatur (AL) Daily, about Gumshoe and other things.

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David Wade posted an interesting article about comics and faith called Holy Warrior Nuns, Batman! for Sojourners.

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Alien Online is reporting that there are Neil stories included in the Mammoth Book Of Best New Horror (15) and the Mammoth Book Of New Terror anthologies.

Jun 18

From the FG-Announce list at Yahoo:

We’re thrilled to announce that Karen Berger will be attending Fiddler’s Green!

Karen Berger is currently a Vice President of DC Comics and Executive Editor of their Vertigo line. She is recognized as an eminent, groundbreaking editor in the comics industry who has consistently recruited innovative writers and artists and nurtured original new story lines. She is principally responsible for the creation of DC’s Vertigo line, and for hiring Neil Gaiman to write its flagship title, THE SANDMAN. As editor of THE SANDMAN and other titles, she is a multiple-times winner of the Eisner award for Best Editor.

We’re looking forward to Karen’s participation in the Fiddler’s Green program.

More information on Karen Berger is available on Vertigo’s 10th anniversary website and in the January 25, 2004 New York Times article “New Jersey? Comic Book Country? Ask Wonder Woman” by Fran Schumer. There is also an interview with her by Jennifer M. Contino on Sequential Tart.

There are still memberships available for Fiddler’s Green; check the ‘Memberships’ link at www.fiddlersgreencon.org for more info.