November 25, 2008
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KERA Interview
Click here to listen to The Invincible Summer of the Superhero
DARK KNIGHT TRAILER – music crescendo. Heath Ledger as the Joker: “Where do we begin?”
WEEKS: We begin, of course, with The Dark Knight. You may have heard that the latest Batman movie has broken box office records. Worldwide, it has earned nearly half a billion dollars in just two weeks. But the buzz is about more than money. It's also about how good the film is, marked by the late Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker, and it's about how dark the film is.
Owen King is co-editor of a new anthology called Who Can Save Us Now? It features 22 stories by authors who came up with new takes on the superhero, giving him post-traumatic stress syndrome, love interests or the little victories of daily life in a black neighborhood. King attributes the success of The Dark Knight partly to its disturbing nature,
KING: "Batman is dark, the times seem dark to people. It's gotta be there. I don't think it's purely the adrenaline rush."
WEEKS: The first X-Men film hit cinemas eight years ago. Since then, a half-dozen comic book movies, including Spider-Man and The Incredibles, have been acclaimed as more than just adrenaline rushes. Comic books have become sophisticated and ambitious; comic book movies have finally caught up.
But the question is, why now? Why are we so engaged by Batman, a character from the Depression? As high-tech as Iron Man seems, he was created 45 years ago. In disposable pop-culture terms, that's the Stone Age.
IRON MAN TRAILER. Computer: “Sir, the upgrade is complete.” Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark: “Tell you what. Throw a little hot-rod red in there.”
WEEKS: Superheroes have always enticed us with the near-future. Shaun Treat, who teaches a class on superheroes at the University of North Texas, calls this effect "anticipatory wish-fulfillment." The superheroes' technology is so advanced, so cool, it doesn’t exist yet. So it’s not surprising that we, in effect, catch up with them. Hollywood certainly has in one way — through computer-generated imagery, which has finally permitted films to put superpowers onscreen in believable fashion,
And then there's fiction, another way to catch up. Novels like Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude, Michael Chabon's The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible — or the anthology Who Can Save Us Now? — have explored (or struggled with) various levels of irony or earnestness when considering men and women in tights and capes.
Dallas writer David Haynes directs Southern Methodist University’s creative writing program. He contributed to Who Can Save Us Now? Haynes says, superheroes have changed as we have – from the pop-art whimsy of the old Batman TV show to the brooding anti-heroes that comic pioneers Stan Lee and Jack Kirby invented. We rediscover or re-work aspects of the superheroes' characters as the cultural climate changes.
HAYNES: “Each generation steps up. We have to go back and revisit those same heroes to see what we can do with them. I was thinking about The Dark Knight the other day and I was thinking how entirely different the ‘60s television series is to this film.”
Will Clarke David Haynes at Zeus Comics
WEEKS: We revisit such characters as Batman or the X-Men not because of their soon-dated special effects or their fast-fading costumes. What brings speople back to such figures are longstanding aspects of the superhero — like the secret identity, the appealing idea that each of us is not simply a public face. We have something hidden and isolated from others. In particular, that's one thing that makes Spider-Man or Batman so compelling. They’re not just empowered by the whole becoming-someone-else routine. They’re justly troubled by it, even frightened of what they become.
After all, putting on masks and beating up people isn’t that normal, says King.
KING: “When you think about it, that doesn’t suggest an especially well-balanced mind, right?”
WEEKS: Indeed, what marks this summer’s crop of superheroes has been their engagement with big, troubling topics — issues like environmentalism in Hellboy II, arms manufacturing and the Afghan war in Iron Man or terrorism and surveillance in Dark Knight.
Violence outside the law is another one of
those longstanding traditions of the superhero, says Shaun Treat. The
comic book and the superhero are both uniquely American creations, so
it's not surprising that the superhero embodies some of America's
political tensions over the uses of violence.
TREAT “Everyday in the news we’re confronting things about Guantanamo Bay, the loss of due process, torture, and people being scared. And I think the superheroes are here to remind us that it isn’t about just having superpowers and a cool outfit. It’s about having a system of values that you adhere to – that’s what makes a good guy a good guy.”
WEEKS: For the anthology Who Can Save Us Now?, Dallas novelist Will Clarke contributed a comic story about illegitimate superbabies flying around Shreveport. Some of today’s heroes are cynical or conflicted; they’re even unpleasant drunks like Will Smith’s Hancock. It's perhaps the inevitable result of the revolution that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby started with Marvel in the '60s when they made the Fantastic Four a quarreling family.
But, Clarke says, all superheroes share another tradition, if they truly are to be considered superheroes. It's their mission of self-sacrifice.
CLARKE: “I think there’s a certain amount of hope that comes with a superhero. There’s this person that can find this inner strength and ascend. And at times when you need hope, it’s inspiring.”
TRAILER MUSIC: Black Sabbath's “Iron Man.”
July 17, 2008
July 13, 2008
Dubya arrested at the Stray Cats Bar in Shreveport!
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Click here to play video  |
Shreveport Police were called to Stray Cats Bar at 222 Travis in Downtown Shreveport just after 2 a.m. Saturday morning. After arriving at the night club police called for backup. Police say Eric Felland, 29, was arrested for resisting arrest and public intoxication. Six others were arrested for interfering with police including actor Josh Brolin, 40. Brolin is in town playing George W. Bush in the movie "W" directed by Oliver Stone. Jeffery Wright, 43, was also arrested. Wright is playing Colin Powell in the film.
July 11, 2008
July 10, 2008
July 08, 2008
July 07, 2008
July 06, 2008
The Oxford American's Best of the South 2008 is upon us!
The Oxford American is back and it's back with a vengeance. Their Best of South issue just hit newsstands, and it features a new short story that I wrote about Shreveport and the mythological redheaded flying children who took over the town in the 80s. The cover girl photo by Saverio Truglia could actually be one of the characters from the story.
In fact, this short story is one of the favorite things that I've ever written. I particularly love the illustration that Ryan Heshka did of the main character and his abandoned babies.
But if promiscuous super heroes and flying babies aren't your thing, there's Roy Blount, Jr, Brad Land Pia Ehrhardt, and Louisiana artist Bryan LeBoeuf to delight and inspire you with their various talents.
But just look at this illustration for my story The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children and tell me you don't need a subscription to this great magazine. 
July 04, 2008
More Love From NPR for the little bastards at The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children
Holy Bookworms! Superheroes Take To The Page
by Glen Weldon
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a ... book?
NPR.org, July 3, 2008 · Quake in fear, puny humans! Spandex-clad superbeings have engineered a mass escape. From big screens and billboards, to bus ads and even bookshelves: this summer, nowhere is safe from superheroes.
Avengers, Assemble! Thematically!
Who Can Save Us Now? Brand New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories, edited by Owen King and John McNally, paperback, 320 pages
Superhero tropes turn up in every short story of this new anthology, but its 22 authors eschew the tidy duality of hero/villain to stake out moral territory where the lines between good guys and bad fade to obscurity. As a result, Who Will Save Us Now? is a surprisingly varied read, by turns funny, creepy, melancholic and joyous.
Editors Owen King and John McNally organize the collection around timeworn conventions — the origin story, the secret identity, etc. The strongest tales focus on supporting characters long denied an inner voice: the plucky girl reporter, the faithful butler, the sidekick — even the townsfolk who spend their days ducking the flying rubble of superbrawls. A standout, Will Clarke's "The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children," about a town under siege by the teenage offspring of an alien superhero, feels at once uncanny and utterly, hauntingly real.
Observer love for The Pentecostal Home For Flying Children
Will Clarke, Superhero
Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 11:46:21 AM
Last time local scrivener Will Clark published a short story in a tome edited by John McNally, he was blessed with the caterwauling of a Rhode Island mother who called for his shiny pate on a platter. She didn't take kindly to her kiddo being taught Clarke's autobiographical tale "How to Kill a Boy That Nobody Likes."
Wonder how she'll like his latest short story, title of which is "The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children." It appears in the book pictured above, which is due for publication via Simon & Schuster next week, a collection of 22 tales titled Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories , which the editors (McNally and Owen King, also contributors) describe thusly in their intro: "This is just a book, a few hours' diversion, but we believe in heroes, and we need them now, like never before." Will Clarke, of course, is mine. --Robert Wilonsky
June 24, 2008
June 23, 2008
Like A Chicken-Fried Phoenix Rising From The Ashes
My all-time favorite magazine, Oxford American, has been reincarnated once again. Born out of Marc Smirnoff's hyper-literate tenacity and its own odd, Southern karma, OA is one of the few national magazines that still publishes fiction in every issue. Over the years, this non-profit magazine has featured such notables as Roy Blount, Jr, Walker Percy, and Carson McCullars while unearthing great musical talents like My Morning Jacket, Memphis Minnie, and The Blind Boys of Alabama.
OA has won countless awards and diehard readers over the years because it delivers some of the best writing, illustration, and photography around. In this age of Britney and Paris, it is a rare magazine that delivers culturally significant work, and in order for this rarity to survive, the OA needs smart people like you. It's time to vote with your wallet. Order your subscription today. You won't be sorry.
June 17, 2008
Galisteo means "village of many names."
The hot new double-secret getaway is Galisteo, New Mexico. If you want to get off the grid, eat way too much good food, and slow down so that you can remember who you are, this is the place to go. The Galisteo Inn. 300 year-old rustic perfection with cottonwood trees older than God. It's right next door to Tom Ford's Ranch and Judge Reinhold's adobe hideout, tucked away on the winding green oasis that is the Galisteo River. This inn has been lauded by The New York Times, Vogue, Bon Apetit, Condé Nast Traveller, LA Times, Outside, and GQ. If you need to get away, you need to stay here.
May 31, 2008
May 19, 2008
What I'm Slinging
John McNally & Owen King: Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories
My story "The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children" is in this anthology.John McNally, Will Clarke and Others: When I Was A Loser
Cumberland, RI parents called this the "pornographic" retelling of my high school loserdom. Trust me, I was there, my high school days were nothing like a porno.Will Clarke: The Worthy: A Ghost's Story
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTUREWill Clarke: Lord Vishnu's Love Handles : A Spy Novel (Sort Of)
Paperback June 2006Don't Abuse the Muse: The MiddleFingerPress Mixed Tape of Fiction, Poetry & Reality
Proceeds Benefit Parkinson's Disease Research
What I'm Spinning
Archives
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