BUYING COMIC BOOKS ALREADY ON MY SHELVES: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Read what’s in front of you. It’s a hell of a lot easier. Easier than what? It’s far easier than climbing into the loft and moving crates of comic books around to get at the stories you hunted for. This is a problem with comic books…
   By the time you discover a story, take interest in a tale, you see the saga in question was released over twelve issues…no problem…back in the Early Jurassic. Ah. Some problem. If this is a cult comic book and not a popular mainstream one, good luck finding issue #blah of Too Much Tea Man™.
   He’s never appeared in a collected edition. The notorious issue #blah, coming between #5 and #8 in the series was a double-length comic with a fucked-up printing of dozens instead of more than dozens: a sad state of affairs, given the death of a major character in that issue.
   The company sent me 23 copies by mistake, if anyone is interested.
   I found it easier reading those rival superhero stories about Too Much Coffee Man™. By coincidence, it’s quite hard to get hold of issues #6 and #7 in that series.
   Time passed. The Jurassic is no more. We are floundering in the Digital Age, now. And yet, we’ve discovered a way to farm trees more responsibly. Physical products are still a thing. So there are more collected editions out there than you can shake a NO-PRIZE at.
   Archival copies. Reprints. Restorations. Anthologies. Super collections. Omnibus editions are omnibus editions for a reason: you need a horse-drawn double-decker bus to cart them around in.
   I decided I had enough spare shelving to store chunky versions of classic stories on. Stories that, for the most part, I’ve already read. Some of the omnibus editions on my hit-list contain comic book works I haven’t read. There’ll be a story segment before the tale I’ve tackled and another leading away…
   This is the episodic nature of comics. What does my spree of purchases lead to? Two things spring to mind. In several cases I am buying stories reprinted in a much larger format. Also, with duplication…what plans do I have for the material already on my shelves?
   The larger format means I don’t take smaller faded stories away from my bookcases and slide massive restored tales into position in place of the same old material. I can’t. There’s a fear that a few of these books are going to be too deep to fit even the deepest bookcase.
   I can, and do, restructure bookshelves when reorganising after a buying-spree. All the shorter books cram in there under a low ceiling. And I make a new roof for the taller books that land on my doorstep. This is the boon of adjustable shelves.
   But books that jut way out off the bookshelf are a problem whether down next to the floor or up nearer my passing face. I will now briefly pause this blog in aid of a rapid study of the premises. Books as hazards. Let me see… 

*

Cracking an ankle on a low-flying hardback book or accidentally brushing your teeth off the spine of a novel at high altitude…these whimsical pursuits are not for me. Or you. My immediate problem was the hallway leading to the books.
   One day, I’ll clear that hall. And, on that day, I’ll fill it up with more stuff that must be moved around, made ready for recycling, or just plain dumped. It’s classed as moderately difficult terrain today. Passable with a low-level dose of mountaineering prowess. Grade two on the Alpine Indoor Exercise Evaluation chart. Let’s leave it at that.
   A check of the shelves spread across the upper level of the house tells me…I have a lot of shelves…tells me that I own hardly any tomes, volumes, grimoires, codices, palimpsests, folios, or plain old books that jut out far enough to cause hazard to life and limb.
   Hardly any.
   These books do exist. But they exist around the corner, out of sight if not out of mind, and I must advance forward to access the mighty tomes. I can’t physically walk past from left to right or right to left. Yes, I double-checked.
   So. I can’t trip up or take an unseen swipe to the head from the side. But this may all change with the arrival of massive archival volumes of comic books. Massive? Bigger than the usual collections.

*

I leaned to my right to inspect a bookcase already frothing with comic book BRICKS. Call it research. These omnibus editions. What to say of those?
   They are tall, some, and wide of shoulder, others, but no comic omnibus there threatens to trip me up as I head to bed. Luckily, if I did trip…I’d land on soft covers. Unless returning from that direction…which is always a risk as I need to head yon way if I want to access the door.
   Pesky considerations of visits to the bathroom and kitchen and the outside world aside, I think I am doing quite well on the book front. Or…I’ll do quite well until the volumes of mass collection arrive.
   Then, I think I’ve had it. The only thing that’ll save me is an empty bookshelf that I can’t walk past, left to right and back again. Luckily, I have a spare waiting in just the right place. But now I must face another consideration.
   Not the old material. The duplicate stuff. If I can’t give the old stuff to friends, I can hand the comic books to charity. That is easy enough to take care of. No. There’s the impractical aspect to the practical business of consuming large tomes.
   Yes. The other problem arises. Where to read mighty books? There’s just enough lack of space here, at the computer, to rule out the so-called space here at the computer. So it’ll have to be the bed. Never read books on the stairs. That’s a top tip.
   And never read books at the top of the stairs. That’s an even topper tip.
   Will the new arrivals fit in? It’s not the size of them, but the sheer bulk. When I think of the books in my library, I tend to think of them in terms of tonnage. How high is the tonnage? To that, we must add the weight of the shelves.
   Yes, I could buy the comic books digitally. Stan Lee was very positive about digital comic books.

The experience of reading a printed comic book will never change, but now, thanks to the digital age, there are many different ways to enjoy the same story.

    And I choose…the physical copy. When in doubt, choose violence. It’s better than choosing more doubt. But I chose book violence long ago. Few things are more dangerous inside a household. Gas. Electricity. Fire. Asbestos.
   Okay, loads of dangerous things are more dangerous than books are. What are you doing with asbestos in your house? Get that fixed.
   Dangerous pursuits? Not checking the position of a switch when changing a bulb. Never get dressed in a hurry at the top of the stairs. That’s the place the irate husband is heading for, after all.
   I’ve learned the hard way that books, like guns, are heavier than they look. The worst culprits have glossy covers. They slip and slide and wriggle, trying to escape from the tidy stack in your hands. Art books are often built for reading on large tables. Those are the awkward books, designed for the size of a hand humanity has yet to evolve. Dust jackets don’t help out.
   He somehow garrotted himself with the topmost book in the stack being transferred from library one to library two, officer…yes, we think the ultra-glossy cover contributed to the disaster…
   Naturally. Being ambushed at the ankles by an oversized tome starring the prints of Hokusai...was also a factor. Strange to think the only book he held firm in his grasp was YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. Irony.
   I’ll borrow from Krivitsky. 

Any fool can commit a murder, but it takes an artist to commit a good natural death.

    My death at the hands of many weighty tomes…could only go down on the legal paperwork as natural. I see a point in my future, not too distant, when the books arrive. You try to stagger the deliveries, but I suspect they’ll arrive in a great trembling rush of air preceding the cataclysmic depositing of the unearthly stack upon my doorstep.
   And then, I’ll most likely cop it as I try to fill the available shelving. I say I have a spare shelf available, yet I could use the whole bookcase at a pinch. I’m buying books I’ve (mostly) read. Purchasing outsized duplicates and handing smaller volumes to charity.
   I’m in a recycling mood. And I just want one convenient volume to read, instead of thumbing through dusty comic book issues or battered trade paperbacks. No, I don’t collect comics. I just happen to read them. Once I’ve read them, they are still around to read again. I don’t treat them as disposable and I don’t leave them sealed, unread, and yet strangely revered.
   If you collect comics and don’t read them, that is up to you. It’s not something I understand. But it is difficult to condemn you. We both have book collections measured in terms of tonnage. The big question is…will the old books that leave the house weigh more than the fresh duplicates coming in?
   I try not to think about this. Instead, I listen for the creaking of overburdened floorboards.

ON NAMING CHARACTERS.

Posted by RLL for REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE. © RLL, 2012.

Questions for authors follow familiar literary lines. Where do you get your ideas? What made you take up writing? Who inspired your work? What bleak satanic pact did you sign in your or someone else’s blood, to get your work published?

   My ideas come from my mind. Where do your ideas come from? A sub-division of that area is the matter of inventing names for characters. How did you come up with that character’s name? In a few stories, I did away with names altogether. Characters took on labels. Canada Girl. Green Piano. Whatever. (All characters from ten tales of old japan*or lies if you prefer.)

   In other cases, I’ve been forced to use actual names. Shocking. This is the preferred method, avoiding the labelling of characters MAN ONE, WOMAN FIVE, ROBOT SIX, WOLF TWELVE, NON-WOLF ANIMAL EIGHTY-THREE, and so on.

   Gilach Mac Gilach, featured in Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords, derived his name from Alistair MacLean. That’s as complex as things need be, particularly if writing fiction that ends up labelled as fantasy.

   Newsflash kiddies. All fiction is fantasy.

   My advice, which you are free to ignore, is to keep things as simple as you can. Veer from the straightforward, or easily-explained, and you may hurt your readers’ brains. Fantasy and science fiction writers like to run amok with syllables. It’s in their synthetic blood.

   Science fiction and fantasy vied with crime and adventure as I read novels and endless short stories. I wrote science fiction, fantasy, crime, and adventure as a result. Though I soon reached the conclusion that I detested the labels fantasy and science fiction.

   The terms fantasy and science fiction were used by publishing companies to foist badly-designed book covers on a semi-suspecting public. I haunted the library, ignoring the book covers and paying attention to the stuff between those covers. From that, to this.

   Only in fantasy and science fiction do writers truly run amok with syllables. The trouble with throwing in multi-syllable fantasy or science fiction names is the exponential generation of utter clutter. This is often evident in newspaper summary pieces for science fiction television shows.

   THIS EPISODE: Furqha’ha’un Biguen prevents Gharspace from crumbling at the edge of the Kloeiultizar Zone. Over in the Dvbeeinharbaux the Zakwey initiate Krakaduim against the Verlikiliki, while Warketoid Vumnish delays dealing with the Sapakoinub J’Haren – with tragic results.

   Yes, for the English language.

   You have to nail a lid on that. Then pour concrete on top. And drop a lead block on the result. With more concrete to follow. Throw in some garlic, just in case. Then erase the hard drive and take a magnet to it before hammering the construction to destruction.

   I’m always left with the feeling that I’m not quite sure who did what, to what. It’s often quicker just to watch the episode, and discover that a rogue loner hero blew up something he shouldn’t have. Threatening dire consequences which never materialise, or are easily explained away.

   Looking at the stuff I’ve published, you’ll see that I occasionally develop a theme in naming characters. Whip Walnut takes his name from chocolate. Other characters in Walnut’s story have nutty names. Being bloody obvious is no crime. It’s another way of being thematic, and appearing grown-up.

   Patti Smith provided inspiration for a character. No one sued me. I had an idea for a story featuring Kim Basinger. No one sued me. I turned James Ellroy into a criminal character. With his record, there’d be no point suing me.

   You do want to watch out, when inventing characters and passing out names. There are a lot of telephone directory characters running around in fiction. James Bond came off the front page of a book on birds. Ian Fleming was looking for a bland name for his hero. He found one. Fleming went to school with Scaramanga, and turned that annoying person into a villain.

   Do I do that? No. People who piss me off don’t make it into my fiction. I refuse to immortalise them. Many writers cheerfully fold, spindle, and mutilate their foes in fictional form. I don’t waste the energy. Well, whatever sees these people through the night…

   Characters take on more character with the addition of certain sounds. I lost track of the comic book villains created by Stan Lee. Many of those ended up with the letter K in their appellations. The hard C or K sound goes rather well with imagining villainous activity in the possessor of a crunchy name.

   Quick poll. Dracula. Frankenstein. Heathcliff. The letter V also features heavily in villainy. Score double points if you name a villain Viktor or Vladek. Add a few points if some form of rank provides a hard crunchy sound. Comrade Colonel Rosa Klebb.

   In my story about Whip Walnut, the hero doesn’t have those hard crunchy sounds. His adversaries have them. The Kernel. Coconut Shy. There’s no way to get around the hardness in a heroic name, if the name adds character. Albert Crabbe. So villains don’t have a monopoly on those sounds.

   What heroes tend to have a monopoly on is the name JOHN. Usually, not exclusively, coupled with a surname that starts with the letter C. You may argue that it’s a coincidence that the future messianic hero of The Terminator is John Connor. That the Holier-Than-Thou hero of medical drama er is Doctor John Carter. Okay. Argue away. I’m not convinced by coincidence.

   Jason Bourne is a character who deliberately shared initials with James Bond. That was a dig, on the part of one author. Any more contenders? Jack Bauer. Another nod in Ian Fleming’s direction. I suspect Jim Beam does not fit that pattern.

   How good does a hero have to be, based on name alone? Angel. The Saint. Characters with good built into their names. How devilish a villain can we create, going by what I’ve written so far? We’d need to throw in a rank or title.

   Crime Controller Doktor Viktor Khaos-Karnage, KMD. That last bit doesn’t stand for anything. It’s just another way of sneaking an extra K into the name. He’d need truly villainous henchmen. I imagine they’d have to be cohorts of his. Red ones, at that. The Crimson Cohorts of Crime Controller Doktor Viktor Khaos-Karnage, KMD. Available for weddings, births, funerals, and all points south.

   Ruined by choice? You could always stick to bland labels. Hero. Villain. Secondary Villain. Though introducing a Traitor, Double-Crosser, Stoolie, Snitch, or Psycho-Bitch may tip your hand a mite early in the proceedings.

   Was I really stuck when I called two characters by the same name in slim*thriller…opting to have MacLean and MacLean investigate murky doings? No. I expect a lot from my readers. You are stuck with my decisions, get on with it.

   Awkward names for fictional creations? Do I really need to explain the inappropriateness behind Fanny as a character’s monicker? In America, fanny is used to describe a person’s backside. Elsewhere, it isn’t. Leading to uproarious laughter whenever an American calls a bum-bag a fanny-pack.

   I’ll gloss over unfortunate book titles that come to mean something different when offered for sale in countries other than the author’s country of origin. Authors themselves may fall foul of this cross-cultural problem. Well, that’s just too bad.

   Shall I give advice on naming characters? Have I already given out advice? I’m not entirely sure. Here’s a solid piece of help. There’s nothing to prevent your naming a character James Bond. Just avoid giving him a hatred of women, love of the booze, and a penchant for murderous violence. That may lead to litigation.

   Make a character’s name easy to spell. Unless you employ great use of the technology. In which case, call the hero BUTTER all the way through the book. Then nail him to the page at the editing and formatting stages.

   Find and replace BUTTER, so that your man becomes Feiliks Kharkeyovich Votamoidhanolski instead. Unless he’s the villain. At that point, elevate him to the rank of Comrade Colonel. Or Kernel, if you’re feeling silly.

   Finally, be prepared to lie to people you know.

   “That Sam Smithson, the axe-killer, who happens to have your distinct laugh, taste in lumberjack shirts, and love of unsweetened coffee? Of course I didn’t base him on you, Sam. Coincidence. Look at the hero, Abraham Lincoln. Didn’t even know there’d been a President by that name. I did no research whatsoever. Made it all up. Honest. Not as honest as Honest Abe. Er…”

   Though you should be aware that you may have to lie in the other direction.

   “That Sam Smithson, the axe-killer, who happens to have your distinct laugh, taste in lumberjack shirts, and love of unsweetened coffee? Of course I based him on you, Sam. He gets all the best lines. His humour is derived from yours. Hell, that dirty joke in chapter three was lifted word-for-word from that dinner-party you hosted in the depths of winter. No, I won’t be giving you a cut. Sam. Where did you get that axe from?”

   Some people like that sort of half-arsed tribute. Naming no names. (That’s probably for the best.)

NEXT BLOG: THE WINDOWLESS WOOD-PANEL ROOM.