Author Archives: W. Blaine Dowler

As you may be able to tell, my formal training is not as a writer. My degrees are in physics and education. In my day job, I work in supplemental education, which is why my productivity is lowest when report card season hits.

Ender’s Game new writers announced

Anonymous Coward writes, The writers of X-Men 2
screenplay (Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty) have
been hired
by Warner Brothers to write the second draft of the
script. The first draft was written by Orson Scott
Card, based on both Ender’s Game and Ender’s
Shadow.
These guys will also join Bryan Singer
for a 12 issue stint on Ultimate X-Men after
Brian K. Vaughn’s 6 issue run, which starts in May.

Weekly Comics Discussion

As usual, the shipping lists are here.
Today, I’ll be picking up Superman / Batman
, Pulse #1, Daredevil #57,
Exiles #43, Fantastic Four #510,
and (with any luck) Sojourn Vol. 4: The Theif’s
Tale
. Later today, the May order forms will be
up at this
page
. I’ll be adding Astonishing X-Men
to my pull list for sure, and I might pick up an
interesting graphic novel or two if they’re out
there.

Comic Review – “Ultimate Adventures”

The Ultimate entry into the U-Decide initiative
wrapped up in January. The trade paperback
collection of the series was cancelled by Marvel
(presumably due to low interest; the sixth issue of
the series, which was also the last issue, only sold
about 15,000 copies, about 7,000 below the
cancellation mark.) The perpetual lateness probably
hurt it more than anything. (It took 15 months to
ship 6 issues.)
Continue reading →

Big changes in Marvel’s X-Men lines: Joss Whedon new writer

The solicitations text for May’s X-Men:
Reload
event is out.
(The solicitations for all of Marvel’s other titles
is in there, too.) Among the news is a new
Astonishing X-Men series written by Joss
Whedon with John Cassaday art, and (it seems) a
relaunch of New Mutants as New X-Men:
Academy X
. Also launching are a new
Excalibur title (under Chris Claremont and
Igor Kordey) and a new District X title
about some of the less heroic mutants. Claremont is
also returning to Uncanny X-Men, with Chuck
Austen moving to X-Men (formerly New
X-Men
) along with Salvador Larocca.

All 42 point Bureau 42 reviews so far

Erf has pointed out to me that it would be convenient
to provide links to previous reviews when reviewing
something that’s part of a series. Well, that’s a
lot of work for every review, so I put in a heck of a
lot of work today, and created this
list
of every review we’ve written since adopting
the 42 point schemes. I’ll add links to the relevant
areas in my review templates, so the past reviews
will be relatively easy to track down. I hope it’ll
help readers keep track of our past reviews, as I
expect it to help me. The list of stuff I may be
potentially reviewing is still here,
and theangrymob’s list is still here.