How do you make something lame cool?

Hawkeye is lame. The world knows it. There are whole tropes about his lameness. No one should be surprised by this. Originally conceived as Marvel’s version of Green Arrow, poor Clint didn’t really have a chance.

Enter Matt Fraction and his take on Hawkeye. In this story, Clint is an experienced hero, a man struggling to find his place in a world where whe he is a second string hero on a team of superheroes. He lives in the poor section of town, in an attempt not to be recognized.

The first story of the collection sets up Clint as a man who, like the Green Arrow before him, looks out for the little guy. In his attempt to deal with a corrupt landlord, Clint ends up rescuing a dog and buying an apartment building. The next story show us how Clint knows he’s lame, with Kate Bishop ribbing Clint about trick arrows. This merges beautifully with a fight later on in the story.

The third story focuses on Clint’s past as an operative. The final story is a Kate Bishop story from the Young Avengers book where Clint is a secondary character.

Fraction clearly knows his main character is perceived as lame and has injected his stories with a good dose of humour to deal with this. And for the most part, it works.

Clint knows he’s a second tier hero and is doing his best with it. Stories are fast paced, full of fights, action sequences, quips and solid characterization. Through most of the book, Clint is a mentor to Kate and that lends a nice bit of back and forth between the two, growing both characters.

Solid outing. Enough to bring me back for more.

I’ve put together recurring analytics report emails for two of the blogs on this site. Why two? Because I could quickly come up with the email addresses of those two.

If you want one of your own (they’re in PDF and have more information than you probably want) and you don’t get one on Monday, then drop me a line and I’ll set you up.

The Selection is a distopian YA series about a young woman named America Singer who is chosen to be one of the candidates to marry the Crown Prince of Illea.  The whole process is televsed to distract the populace from the two seperate nsurrections that are gong on. Thnk The Bachelor meets Cnderella meets the Hunger Games.

This is a collection of two short stories, The Prince and The Guard, which retell select sections from The Selection series. The book also includes the family trees of our three main characters and a Q&A wth author Kiera Cass.

The Prince

This short story shows us Prince Maxon’s thougths at the beginnng of the process.  It was nice to see his insecurity and his attracton to America’s independent nature.  We also get to see his thought process for cutting certain women the first night and their reaction.  There is, of course, more confimation at that King Clarkson is abusive and controlling and that Queen Amberly is passive.

Not bad, but I would have liked more of Maxon’s journey, whch is neat given he is as tapped by the process as the women.

The Guard

This short story looks at the revelaton of Marlee and Carter’s romance and the subsequent caning that follows, all from Aspen’s eyes.  We see his  desperation to hold on to America in the face of the Selection.  We get to see the palace staff’s reaction to America’s attempt to intervene in the caning and their growng admiration of her.

While I valued that last part, we did get to see some of that with America’s maids in the book.  What I would have liked is the story of Aspen and Lucy’s romance. How does Aspen go from being in love with the fiery, strong America to marrying the shy, damaged Lucy.  What did he see in her that he needed?

The Rest

The interview was nice, and the families trees provided context. Illera is not that old a nation, leading to its instability.  Also, I learned that America is half-Jewish, something that is never touched on in the series.  What a missed opportunity to see how relgion was or was not co-opted by the regime.

Overall, this book is for the fans of the series, not the casual reader.

2.5 out of 5 Revolutions

Howdy, RevBloggers! I’ve been doing some maintenance to the blogs today. WordPress has been updated to the most current version, as well as all the plugins which you know and love.

If you’re interested in tracking the visitors to your site, I’ve just implemented the StatCounter plugin. This requires a sign-in at the StatCounter site to activate for your individual blog. I have not actually tried this myself, so I don’t know if that will work. Let me know if you try it!

Also, there’s been some snafus with the Google Analytics tracking, which I had thought was working fine, but in fact it had completely disappeared, apparently some time ago. This is probably because the themes on a multi-site installation are prone to updating and destruction of any hard-coded javascript additions.

So, I spent most of this afternoon figuring out how to enqueue Google Analytics javascript snippets into the header of every sub-site in the RevBlog network. If you’re googling the answer to this question, the secret is to put a micro-plugin into the folder /wp-content/mu-plugins. Here’s the code:

This doesn’t necessarily help you if you’re a regular blogger who just wants to see how many people are reading your posts. I believe I can have a larger drilldown of performance emailed to you on a regular basis, with all the funky little details which makes Google Analytics so powerful. Let me know if you want one of those, and I’ll set you up.

tachyonpub:

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Born in New Orleans on May 14, 1897, Sydney Bechet was the first great Jazz clarinetist. He famously performed with many famous musicians including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and Josephine Baker. A master of improvisation, Bechet often played lead parts that were usually reserved for trumpets.

In 2004, Tachyon produced a chapbook of Bechet’s OMAR, a tale of of passion, danger, and betrayal in the Bayou.  Infused with voodoo, love, music, and death, the chronicle is wrought out of a brutal period in American history, passed down by a family born into slavery. It is jazz legend Sidney Bechet’s story.

Sidney Bechet died in Paris on May 14, 1959 at the age of 62.

For more about Sidney Betchet, visit The Sidney Bechet Society.

For more about OMAR, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by William Reid.

I have seen a lot in the last 24 hours about the end of the Saturday Morning Cartoon Block. Many of my Gen X friends are wringing their hands at the loss of three to four hours of cartoon goodness.

And I find myself wondering what the fuss is all about.

I am the mother of a six year-old boy. I know exactly how many cartoons are available to my son. There are the 24 hour cartoon channels plus the specialty kids’ channels. There are the educational cartoons via PBS and TVO. On-demand services provide my son with even more choice and our DVD collection is full of current hits and retro goodies.

Add the Internet to that mix, and my child has more animation at his fingertips than I ever had when I sat down to watch cartoons on a Saturday morning as a child. He is living in the promised land.

So why is a certain group comparing the loss of the Saturday Morning blcok to the end of days?

Nostalgia. Plain and simple.

Gen X is its 40s now, and like the Baby Boomers before them, they yearn for the simplicity of their childhood. There is a longing for the days when they and all their friends watched the same things at the same time. They look at the multi-channel universe and bemoan what the “kids today” are missing.

But here’s the thing, they aren’t missing it. My son and his friends all watch the same shows. Oh sure, my son may be watching Word Girl at 5 while his bestest bud saw the same episode at 3, but they still gather to dicuss and roleplay. Want further proof? The Wild Kratts have three (3!) live shows in my town later in the fall. All three have been sold out for months. It’s the hottest ticket in town. Fisher Price has started making toys for Mike the Knight and the Octonaughts. My son has PJs made from Phineas and Ferb fabric.

Do you know what my friends and me would have done for G-Force PJs? Things not legal in Utah.

My fellow Gen-X nerds, stop your whining. Yes, the big four networks have stopped producing a Saturday morning cartoon block. But that’s because the kids can find better, cooler shows through other mediums. And believe me, they are watching them. The big three have failed to keep pace and have moved on to other things.

Now if you excuse me, the boy and I have some Penguins of Madigascar to watch.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.

The Best of Connie Willis
Award-Winning Stories

Promo copy:

Few authors have had careers as successful as that of Connie Willis. Inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and recently awarded the title of Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Willis is still going strong. Her smart, heartfelt fiction runs the gamut from screwball comedy to profound tragedy, combining dazzling plot twists, cutting-edge science, and unforgettable characters.

From a near future mourning the extinction of dogs to an alternate history in which invading aliens were defeated by none other than Emily Dickinson; from a madcap convention of bumbling quantum physicists in Hollywood to a London whose Underground has become a storehouse of intangible memories both foul and fair—here are the greatest stories of one of the greatest writers working in any genre today.

All ten of the stories gathered here are Hugo or Nebula award winners—some even have the distinction of winning both. With a new Introduction by the author and personal afterwords to each story—plus a special look at three of Willis’s unique public speeches—this is unquestionably the collection of the season, a book that every Connie Willis fan will treasure, and, to those unfamiliar with her work, the perfect introduction to one of the most accomplished and best-loved writers of our time.

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