YES!!!!!

Next DC Animated Film Confirmed: Green Lantern

According to the back-cover art of the upcoming Wonder Woman disc, the next DTV animated film to come from DC Comics and Warner Home Video will be Green Lantern. No details are available as yet, including the identity of the lead character in the green tights. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the animated film will be looking to tie-in to or promote the upcoming live-action film currently in development at Warner. We'll let you know as soon as we hear more.

Wonder Woman hits shelves this March 3rd.

(Hat/tip)

This pisses me off like you wouldn't believe.

See what this guy just did

Lemme give you a hint.  See, one of the big historical complaints about letting women in the military is that they would distract the male soldiers and basically serve as company whores.  It's been used as a barrier for quite some time.

So this guy takes a survey that notes that hey, a lot of Marines have STDs (How shocking that people would have spontaneous sex when they have a job that might result in being blown up!) and a number of them had them before being recruited.  That in itself is a good an useful survey, the sort of survey that lets Public Health know where to focus and lets medical staff know what to ask about and educate on dsuring annual physicals and lets the post exchange know what to stock up on discreetly.

But hey, look how he starts the article:

Thanks to desperate recruiting methods required to staff those wars, the U.S. Marines may be turning military service into a male sexual fantasy land, where recruits are paid actual money to cohabitate with drunk, stoned, horny teenage girls.

And ends the article:

This is great news for randy young men weighing a career in the Marines -- as long as they're fastidious about wearing rubbers.

This blogger frames a potentially life-saving public health survey as the Marine Corps recruiting sexually adventurous young women to sleep with all the horny young men they recruit.  He basically outright says that USMC women are sluts and that the military is a huge co-ed orgy.   To his credit, he stops short of suggesting that the other girls are just trying to snag a pilot for marriage but he's still driving home the same shit that was said about nurses, that was said about the WACs and the WAVEs, and that's whispered about military women right now.  That they're immoral sluts who are there to sleep with the guys in the unit.

That they don't belong there and are there for the sexual gratification of the male troops.  Which--I don't care if you're pro-war or pro-peace or selective about what war and what peace--is just plain misogyny, and fuck him and everyone else who pulls that kind of shit.

That's disappointing.

So today I got into an argument on the internet. I laid out precisely what was wrong with the post that bothered me, as cleanly and neatly as possible. I was perhaps a bit sharp. The original poster certainly thought so. She answered me fiercely, and her post included a link to her personal blog. Worried I'd gone too far too soon based on the tone of her response--but unwilling to cede any ground based on the content her response--I took a step back, a deep breath and restated my position in a slightly more easy to understand way.

Then I glanced at the personal blog. Like most of us, she had a twitter widget. A multi-tweet widget, and the most recent tweet expressed happiness that someone got "really angry" (which was untrue, I'd been angry but not enough to break out any of the dark metaphors I'm so fond of in my rants) over something she wrote, and giddy expectation of the hit increase over the fight.

And suddenly all the fight was deflated from me.

Anyone who reads me knows I love an argument. I love when two people who really stand behind what they believe get into it. I love the intellectual part of the discussion, the careful sifting of your opponent's opinion for weak spots and the distillation of your own point of view into its basic essence. I love strengthening my arguments and sharpening my mind. I love trying to come up with the most clever word to leave on. I love getting angry and arguing with someone who's just as passionate as me about what she believes.

Despite what it may seem, I really don't like getting angry for anger and attention's sake and I especially don't like dealing with those who do. I love getting angry for channeling it into something productive. I love anger as a purifier, as inspiration for cutting phrases and complex metaphors.

I want to interact with people with guts and honesty or least some creativity and energy no matter what side they're on. I want to fight someone who knows the rules of the duel, who even if they aren't invested beyond playing Devil's Advocate puts a little heart into the fight. It gives me energy and between the two sides we can make something really worth reading if we're both in top shape.

But here I've encountered someone who was anticipating the attention of a fight, just as she was saying in the comments that she didn't want a Blogwar. Knowing about that disconnect... it takes the fun out of a fight. If the other guy isn't really as angry as you are, and isn't primarily concerned with getting as clear and pure a point across as possible... It's just not worth fighting over anymore.

And all that lovely rage turns to sadness in the face of insincerity, and I'm listless where I should be inspired.

It's a little like finding out a friend was only pretending to like you.

Better that I would have lost on the mental battleground, because then I would have either a new friend gained by an apology or the seed of vengeance planted in my heart and all the fire that grew from it. Instead I've got a dull feeling at the bottom of my stomach.

I miss my trolls.

Addendum: What we learn from the House

Despite all the problems I detailed last post about Derleth's continuation, I'm glad the House fragment was published because we get some substantial information on the Conrad and Kirowan characters from it.

We learn that Conrad is a fan of a crazed poet named Justin Geoffrey, to the extent that he's investigating the man's family history and trying to find out just why he was able to write such darkly beautiful poems. It further drives home the impression that Conrad was a goth as a teenager. Not with the attitude that everyone hates him or the eternally depressed outlook some goth kids seem to have, but the sort of goth kid who only reads the work of writers who committed suicide and tries to break into the funeral parlor at 3 AM so he can see what a real dead body looks like. The really creepy kind of goth kid.

We learn that Conrad'll write to public officials in other towns requesting information about supernatural occurances, and that he knows how to phrase those questions so that those officials to answer him. He's a skilled researcher, and despite his really odd interests no one ever dismisses Conrad as a crank. Judging by the info he's gotten in The House he probably comes off as a journalist or a biographer when you meet him in person. His occupation might be somewhere along those lines.

We learn that its understood that Kirowan will accompany Conrad on any stupid venture he decides to undertake, at least as much because of his own interest as because of friendship with Conrad. One of the few lines Derleth cut from Howard's fragment was Conrad's statment about Kirowan: "I don't even bother to ask him to accompany me on my weird explorations any more -- I know he's as eager as I."

And we learn that Kirowan is five feet and ten inches tall. From there we can infer that O'Donnel and Vrolock are both at least a few inches shorter because Kirowan was described as tall in Haunter of the Ring. That really doesn't help with solving the mystery of who's narrating the other stories, but I'm a nerd and I can't help but notice little details that help me get the staging right in my head.

The Story That Should Not Be.

August Derleth is a writer both revered and reviled by mythos fans. While this man did the public service of founding Arkham House and keeping Lovecraftian horror alive, he also took it upon himself to take fragments that had been tossed aside by better writers and continue those stories after the writer's death as "collaborations." The back of my Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard collection includes an unfinished Conrad and Kirowan fragment entitled The House. My Nameless Cults collection includes a copy of The House in the Oaks, Derleth's completion of that fragment. This stroke of luck gives me the dubious honor of being able to compare both forms of the story and conclude that its for the best if writers leave unfinished works alone.

See, it wasn't actually Derleth's parts but Howard's that bogged the story down. This isn't a knock on Howard's skill, because the fragment is an unfinished unedited story. But what Derleth does for the first half of House in the Oaks is reprint all of Howard's fragment The House with only elaboration and no discernable pruning. By the time Howard stopped writing he had introduced Conrad, Kirowan, the mystery about the poet Justin Geoffrey, and the House. All necessary elements Derleth continued with when writing his story. Howard also introduced the artist Skuyler and the mayor of Dutchtown. Derleth kept both of these characters. They serve as exposition that could easily have been given by Conrad and disappear during the second act. And by that I don't mean disappear as characters are meant to disappear in a horror story, but they go off in their own directions and don't have any actual bearing on the plot.

Here's the thing:  Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft? These guys aren't normally found in English books as masters of the art form of the short story but they damned sure knew what the hell they were doing with it. These old pulp mag writers either became experts at polishing and pruning and editing their works or they didn't get published. Even paid by the word they didn't waste a single one getting the point across. Every sentance drove the point of the story home by adding to the plot or by adding to the atmosphere. So when the legendary Robert E. Howard makes a story start with four characters introduced not all at once (as a group in an argument, as he did in Children of the Night) but one by one in their own separate elements, either he's going to fucking use four characters or he's going chuck a couple of them to tighten up the story later in the drafting process.

Derleth came up with a good story, I think. But it was a two person story. There was no reason for all four of them to go to the house as the story unfolded, or even for the other two characters to have appeared in person. The exposition from the conversations with the artist and the mayor could easily have been worked into things said by either Conrad or Kirowan. Conrad was already noted as having corresponded with the mayor, any exposition or permission the character gave in person could have been from a letter. Even Skuyler's big important moment when he tries to break into the house but was stopped by Conrad could easily have been transferred to Kirowan. (I've read nothing of the character to suggest he was above property damage under the circumstances). There was no reason to have those characters there other than because Howard introduced them. Derleth should have either made use of them or cut the last two pages from Howard's prose and started his own part earlier.

No doubt Howard fans would have cried out in horror at the butchering of his words, but when has that ever stopped a writer?

Personally, I'd have preferred if he just wrote his own story because while House in the Oaks actually turns out to be a good tale its hardly a satisfying end for a character like Conrad. In it, James Conrad finds himself preoccupied by the House and spends a night there. He is tormented by dreams and ends up dying after attempting to burn it down. He only explains the matter in a letter to his good friend Kirowan.

Now, an occultist who ends up becoming obsessed with a gateway to the next world is a very satisfying story provided that occultist has not already encountered other worlds on two--possibly three--distinct occasions and been close to other people who have also encountered those worlds. I could see this happening to a brand new character, but not freaking Conrad. There is, I supposed, the slightest basis for an argument that he's a different character because he's called James in this story and John in another. But 1) character names change in drafts and 2) he's best friends with a sensible narrator named Kirowan, a guy who is understood to accompany him on any stupid errand than he embarks on.

Anyone who can read knows this isn't a fitting end for Kirowan, so Derleth's story wouldn't have worked with the roles reversed either.

I'd even go so far as to say it wouldn't have worked with O'Donnel, because while O'Donnel would've burnt down the house I can't see him following it up with suicide. I can see him following it up by digging up the oak trees by hand and then hunting down the Geoffrey family to make sure the weird genes didn't get passed on. (Because when that sort of character loses his sanity, he takes a whole bunch of people with him.)

This story would've worked with any new character, or any unfleshed out names from Howard's series like Taverel or Clemants. It doesn't seem right to off Conrad that way, though.

Remember the old Blog@Newsarama crew?

Well... We're back, baby!

Just thought I'd point this out.

Snell decided it was only fair to point out some of Gil Kane's placements in old Green Lantern after complaining about Ed Benes in JLA.

Take a look, and notice that Kane managed to do an awful lot of ass-shots without sacrificing the integrity of the story for it.