Andrew P. Mayer

Sticker Shock – Falling Machine freebies from me at Dragon*Con

Andrew — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:05:06 +0000

If you come find me at Dragon*Con I will be giving away some awesome limited edition stickers featuring characters from my upcoming novel:
The Falling Machine: The Society of Steam-Book 1

They’ll also be available at the Pyr booth: 1601 in the Imperial Ballroom at the Marriott Marquis.

Here’s a preview of what to expect:

(Click on the image to make it larger)

The character art was created by Steven Sanders, artist behind Marvel’s recent S.W.O.R.D., series, with layout and coloring by Laurenn McCubbin who drew this month’s issue of Zantanna for Vertigo. Both of them are talented and lovely people, as is obvious by how gorgeous these images are.

Andrew Mayer is at Dragon*Con 2010

Andrew — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:46:33 +0000

Did you know I’m going to be at Dragon*Con over the memorial day weekend?

It’s true! And I’ll be handing out awesome stickers for my book, The Falling Machine (The Society of Steam-Book 1).

So, if you want some free stickers (and they are fantastic!) I’ll be hanging out at the Pyr booth. I’ll also be appearing in a few other places, listed below:

FRIDAY

4 pm: Steampunk Superheroes
Location: The Westin Peachtree Ballroom
Description: A discussion of superheroes in the steampunk genre, featuring both fictional characters and costuming.

7 pm: Pyr Books, a New Voice in Publishing
Description: Join editor Lou Anders as he presents Pyr. Presenting new authors and well established ones, Pyr has something for everyone in their catalogue.
Location: Fairlie – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

FRIDAY, SUNDAY, & MONDAY: STROLL WITH THE STARS

9 am

The “Stroll with the Stars” is a chance for fans and authors to mingle and have a light walk to start the day!

That meets on the sidewalk in front of the main entrance of the Hyatt Regency on Peachtree Street

I’ll also be joining some other panels, but those aren’t confirmed yet, so I’ll be posting updates as I find out where I’m going to be.

Sculpture Punk

Andrew — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 05:28:33 +0000

I’ve probably mentioned this before (and I certainly will again), but the whole point of adding the epithet “punk” to a word to create a movement, really depends on having methods or ideas that were once so expensive that they could only be accessed by the elite becoming cheap and ubiquitous, allowing them to fall directly into the hands of the masses. That’s why you so often see the word paired with some kind of technology. And as we enter an age where mass-production and manufacturing techniques are becoming increasingly lower-cost, while increasing customization, it now takes only a small team to do what was once the work of an entire factory.

Case in point: Sculpture, where large-scale installation projects that were once few and far between are now becoming more and more commonplace.

This rocket installation on the Embarcadero in San Francisco is a great example of the kind of crazy new projects that we’ve seen spring up in the last decade or so, and I hope we see more of them.

Red—It ain’t mine no more.

Andrew — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:27:16 +0000

One problem with having projects sitting in the drawer is that over time, the good names can get taken.

Case in point is a werewolf comic I developed a few years back originally called “Red State”. I had to dump that name when Kevin Smith announced he was going to direct a movie called the same thing. Even though it’s taken him years to get it through the pipeline, it’s going to be made, which is more than I can say for mine—at least for now.

Feeling clever about it, I renamed the project “Red”, and gave every issue a unique title based around that color: “Tide”, “Light”, etc. The idea was the reader would see the name of the book, and then the individual chapter title. So, Red: Light, Red: Tide, etc. Sort of clever, right?

But now I’ve just discovered that SyFy channel (clearly the masters of clever names) have come up with their own color coded werewolf story:

For the record, mine is better.

Comic Books as Rock and Roll

Andrew — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 17:41:15 +0000

In the last few weeks I’ve read interviews with Alan Moore and Joss Whedon where they mention that mainstream comics have begun to stagnate over the last few years. The intimation is that a group of younger authors are needed to refresh the medium and give it a new take.
It’s interesting that comics, like pop music, believe that they need revolutionary, rather than evolutionary, changes. There’s an expectation that younger creators can blow the medium apart, rather than having the older, wiser masters create genre-defining masterpieces, the way that you more often see in prose books or film.
Part of that is, I think, due to the fact that (recorded) music and comics are both intimately tied to production and distribution as part of their craft. New tools appear constantly, and we expect that younger folks will have an easier time discovering shocking and powerful new ways to exploit them. Mainstream comics also rely on people being able to re-interpret the same characters and situations over and over again. What does it take to recreate Batman for a new generation? Is it simply a new way to tell the story, or does somethign as ground-breaking as The Dark Knight Returns was a quarter century ago, only happen when creators realize that the very nature of the medium has changed?

Firefly: The 80s Version

Andrew — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:51:24 +0000

Most of the retro mash-ups I see are just okay, but this one is close to perfect:

Avoiding The Twilight Apocalypse: Why Vampires Are Here to Stay

Andrew — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:39:46 +0000

A few years ago, right around the time that Buffy was going off the air, I thought it might be the perfect time to go out and start talking to people about creating a fresh Vampire series. I pitched some comic ideas, and was told by multiple people, in no uncertain terms , that vampires were “over”, and that it was going to be a while before anyone would want to see those bloodsuckers again. Ultimately those predictions turned out to be spectacularly wrong. And now we’re up to our necks in bloodsuckers, to the point where people are really tired of them this time.

Here’s Neil Gaiman, publicly stating what I think a lot of genre creators are feeling right now:

The saddest thing is that it runs the risk of making vampires not scary. I will be glad when the glut is over. Maybe they will be scary again. I like my creatures of the night a little nocturnal. My next big novel was going to have a vampire. Now, I’m probably not. They are everywhere, they’re like cockroaches.

But I think we’ll never get tired of Vampires. That’s because, from the tips of their pointy fangs, to the bottoms of their cold dead hearts, vampires are fantastic metaphor for all the complexities of sex. Using an undead monster to describe the more out of control and frightening parts of the sexual urge is, it turns out, a lot easier when you don’t have talk about the actual sex part.

Blood, lust, death, desire, violation, need, chastity, innocence, corruption, ruin—vampires wrap all that up in a white-skinned little package with an immortality bow on top. And like sex itself, our Vampire fetishes change to reflect our culture. For a few years they’re half-demon monsters, cloaked in darkness, now they sparkle with the burning heat of chaste desires.

I can hardly wait for them to be “over” again.

Red Dead Redemption takes interactive storytelling to the next level

Andrew — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 05:09:25 +0000

It’s been a week since I “finished” Red Dead Redemption, and I’m starting to realize that the game is one of the most important steps forward in videogame storytelling since the one-two punch of Portal and Bioshock back in 2007.

It has the usual cynical, world-weary characters, long reveals, and extreme nihilistic violence that were the hallmark of the Grand Theft Auto games. And maybe it’s just something about the historical fairy-tale world of the old west that makes good drama work better. But by the end of the game, the story has gone to a level beyond any of the previous Rockstar epics.

There’s a confidence in the way it plays with the relationship between interaction and narrative I’ve never seen in a videogame before, and it’s something I’m going to be thinking about for a while to come.

Have you played it? What do you think?

The Future of Comics are Digital

Andrew — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 08:44:54 +0000

I’ve been trying to avoid writing these large “here’s what Andrew thinks the future is going to be” pieces lately. But the truth is that they’re also what I’m actually writing for the site, so they’re what’s getting posted.

There’s been an argument going on lately about the future of comics, discussing whether the industry is going to stay in print, or move towards digital. But here’s the ultimate truth: After you’ve read a few comics on the iPad it’s pretty clear that the delicate eco-system has kept the US comic industry afloat for the last few decades has been irrevocably shattered, and print is on its way out.

The problem has been that over the last thirty years comics have gone from being cheap pieces of folded newsprint in corner store spinner racks, to expensive pieces of disposable entertainment placed into handcrafted pigeon-holes that line the walls of nerd media game preserves where the delicate pamphlets can remain pristine.

The end of result of this process has been the creation of an ever-shrinking (and aging) audience that demands a blend of nostalgia and psychedelic science-fiction that makes it almost impossible for a mass market audience to connect with until it’s been re-interpreted by a more mainstream media (usually film).

So the dwindling hardcore gets exactly what it wants, but it comes at the cost of the industry being able to grow outside of the markets it’s already in because the keepers of the preserves are terrified of losing their meager audience.

It’s a classic death spiral, and it means that a once thriving industry is becoming more and more dependant on licenses, name talent, and movie deals, with the irony being that the quirky comics characters and stories are generating huge amounts of money in every medium except comics.

To survive in the long-term, the market has to grow beyond the 100,000 or so people who are willing to walk into a comic shop on a weekly basis, and it’s clear that the rise of consumer computing devices like the iPad, the iPhone, and the Netbook are going to provide that opportunity.

Some people complain that digital comics don’t look as “good” as they are in print. But they’re wrong, it’s better. Not only are they cheaper (usually by 30-50%), but the next generation of readers (like Comixology) include directed panel to panel transitions that make the entire experience richer and more dramatic (if occasionally blurry). Where motion comics failed, these enhanced comics really do make me feel like I’m getting more for my money.

But even if it digital comics were worse , it doesn’t really matter. Most fans didn’t care that mp3s sound worse than CDs either. In consumer technology it’s a combination of price and convenience that trumps quality every time.

And the dirty little secret underlying all of this is there’s an invisible majority of comics readers who are already reading comics by downloading scanned content with no legal option for them to make a digital purchase.

So what does a digital future for comics look like? Everybody seems to think the big transition comes when Marvel and DC jump seriously into releasing their comics in digital format at, or close to, print publication dates. It’s already started: IDW (a major second-tier publisher) has already said they will put out every book two weeks after it comes out in the stores. Marvel is also dipping their toe into the water, saying they will release this year’s Iron Man annual simultaneously in both formats.

While getting the big publishers’ content online is important, the new audience that shows up to read comics on their gadgets may not be interested in the same material that’s been sold at the local nerd-mart.

They may want something slightly different than the endless superhero remixes that have been the staple the business for forty years. There’s already a generation out there that grew up reading manga instead of Batman, and it wouldn’t be surprising to me if we discover that their tastes are more Twilight than Avengers.

I love comics. I’ve written comics, and I’m planning to write more. But it’s clear to me that the future is already here, and that over the next half decade this new medium is going to change what comics are in ways that are going to challenge the status quo, and upset the current audience, creators, and publishers.

Why I probably won’t re-watch Lost

Andrew — Sun, 23 May 2010 19:23:28 +0000

While I’ve been a fan Lost over the last six years, one fundamental difference between Lost and other classic Television shows like X-Flies, Twin Peaks, Buffy, The Prisoner, or The Wire is that the show’s main characters really have nothing to do when they aren’t being chased by the Smoke Monster. The basic situation (trapped on an Island) creates no context for action by the characters outside of uncovering their place in the meta-story. They’re not looking for something, or doing anything, so there’s really no great stand-alone episodes.

Contrast that with Buffy, for example. She’s a Slayer, so there are satisfying individual episodes and mini-arcs throughout the series, no matter how poorly you think the final season turned out. The Angelus stuff in Season 2, for example, or the Faith/Mayor stuff in Season 3 is fantastic, and can be enjoyed on its own.

The only thing that comes close for me in Lost is the last third of Season 3 (when the show finally got back on track), and the Miles stuff from last year. But knowing that 90% of the mysterious elements don’t have much relevance to the bigger picture makes it hard for me to want to go back and watch the old stuff.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the show, but I’m bummed that so many things that kept me tuning in turned out to be red herrings: Dharma, the Black Rock, the Others, the pregnancy problems, Walt’s powers, the constant, all that time travel, and so much more, ended up being immaterial to the the show’s central conceit.

In the end it turned out to be about two guys battle over a glowing cave. That just isn’t all that interesting to me because it seems to have no direct impact on the characters I care about. And I’m not all that interested in whether SmokeLocke escapes the island because “the end of the world” is a cliché and meaningless meta-threat. For a show that is so good at being character driven, it’s kind of shocking they went decided to give them no personal stakes in the outcome. And If all the remaining Losties died in the finale, who would miss them? Who, in their world, would care? Hugo’s Mom & Dad? Penny?

In a show so filled with metaphor and symbolism, you would think they could have done more with all the literary toys they’ve created over the years. Maybe the finale will fix it, but somehow I doubt it.