King shit. Glorious. https://t.co/d0sudRbaEK
— zeddy (@Zeddary) February 20, 2022
Maybe Martin just wants the popcult version of an EGOT…
#GameofThrones creator George R.R. Martin is joining forces with Marvel Comics https://t.co/ENPcPp5oOV
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 19, 2022
… Marvel is adapting Martin’s first Wild Cards book, which kicked off a long-running anthology series in 1987 with stories by Martin, Howard Waldrop and Roger Zelazny.
“As my fans may already know, the Wild Cards World holds a special place in my heart,” Martin said. “So to have the privilege of announcing that an industry titan like Marvel is going to produce the narrative from the beginning as a comic book brings me no end of joy.”
The Wild Cards series tells the story of an alternate post-World War II history where Earth is home to super-powered individuals. When a human is infected with the alien Wild Card virus, the odds are that they will be killed — referred to as “drawing the black queen.” Of those that survive, the bulk becomes “jokers” — left with some strangely mutated form. A lucky few are “aces,” those gifted with superpowers they can put to use towards heroic goals … or villainous ones…
A Little Kindness To Begin The Week
Frank Wilhoit
My latest: Symphony No. 7 . Enjoy!
Cermet
Just what we don’t need – any more fantasy fake hero’s. God, more shit. And a singing musical about GoT? Really? Sorry, this is all just more worthless crap to act as opioids to smooth the masses
Omnes Omnibus
@Cermet: At least if they are imaginary, they can’t be unpersoned by the Party .
Jerzy Russian
I don’t have a TV, and don’t have a cable package (apart from internet). I do enjoy watching superhero and science fiction movies on airplanes, though. I have seen perhaps 10 Marvel movies, and at my present rate I should be caught up in 15 years or so. If this project by Mr. Martin makes it into the airplane rotation I might just catch it at some point.
HinTN
High on his own supply.
Maybe he has bills to pay…
He DEFINITELY needs an editor.
Another Scott
Since Marvel is Disney and Disney is theme parks, cruise ships, and resorts, should we expect red weddings there soon??
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
I think that a lot of his fans would rather hear that he has finished the Game of Thrones saga, and provided a better ending than the HBO series.
kindness
I did watch the whole Game Of Thrones. That ending…..it could have been better. But since George RR Martin has been working on the final book of the series for about 10 years now and can’t seem to finish the damn thing HBO wrote that ending themselves. So….George has time to help adapt a stage version but he can’t finish his last enstalment of the series? Huh?
(for the record the GOT books are all 900 pages long. I started one and said screw it! I’ll watch the HBO version and I think I made the right call)
Baud
GoT Musical Hits
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@kindness: yeah I read the first few books and enjoyed the world building but by the last few I thought he desperately needed an editor. And some characters went off and have never been seen again ( Rickon Stark and Osha for instance I was really interested in finding out about the Isle of Faces ) it’s his series if he doesn’t want to finish it that’s his call I guess…)
Baud
@Cermet:
Fine. No free tickets to Baud! The Musical! for you.
kindness
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
I sympathise with him. It’s already been done (by some other writers).
Baud
@kindness:
I read the first book. Wasn’t that taken with it so I didn’t continue. Same with the TV series.
Brachiator
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
It is often amusing to see when authors have become so successful that they can shrug off editors.
But then again, back when novels were serialized in newspapers and magazines, you could detect padding and stretching.
cain
This is so remarkable to get so much out of a book series that isn’t even finished and likely never be finished. I suppose that those who get bent out of shape on canon will have to keep mum since the endings can be whatever the fuck it is.
As for me, I’m re-reading the Wheel of Time. The first 4 books is just great stuff. After that it’s a bit of a slog, but picks up a bit after another 5 books, lol. He could have definitely made that book way shorter than it was.
cain
@Another Scott: Prefer on a nice day, to have a white wedding.
raven
Anyone done a Fluorouracil treatment? Thoughts?
senyordave
I saw this yesterday:
Eric Trump today claims that when he was at Georgetown he had a professor who said that all white males should be castrated.
There was a comment on twitter that was perfect:
He’s confusing what the professor said with what his mother said.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1494805345562152960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1494805345562152960%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fdigbysblog.net%2F
Cermet
@Baud: Uh, wait; I think that musical I would actually like … certainly after reading his song titles.
Frosty Fred
@raven: I do fluourouracil treatment on my forehead and scalp roughly every other year. Not sure what I think about it <G>, maybe you could ask questions?
Frankensteinbeck
I have no enthusiasm for Martin’s writing, but hey, the chance to get wealthy is in front of him and I have no problem with him seizing the opportunity. Good for him. May we all be so lucky.
CaseyL
I read the first, what, four or five Aces Wild books when they first came out. The concept was novel (at the time), but the series palled for a reason that has become familiar and standard for any George RR Martin work: all the characters were varying degrees of dislikeable-to-hateful, all the societies were bleak, and there was no joy to be had anywhere by anyone.
Since Marvel, even at its darkest, has a strong thread of hopefulness, it will be interesting to see which variety of dystopia prevails.
Kelly
At last ethically sourced crypto I can support:
https://theneedling.com/2022/02/15/portland-startup-to-mine-artisanal-bitcoin-using-only-slide-rules-and-graph-paper/
geg6
Good to know. Now I can ignore them both all at once. To say I’m not a fan of either Marvel or GoT/JRRM would be an understatement. And don’t get me started on Disney.
Anthony
I assume Martin is afraid to finish Game of Thrones — how could it be as good as people have hoped?
Spanky
@raven: Topical, on the crown of my head for pre-cancerous flaking. Two weeks on, two weeks off, repeated 3 times.
I’ve done 3 rounds of it this way, and everything was pretty knocked down after the 2nd. Did the 3rd just to make sure. My dermatologist was OK with that regime.
Frosty Fred
@Spanky: Not exactly my same regime, but yes, the reaction does decrease after each round.
Mike in NC
Just spoke with our friends in Tampa Bay. They plan to retire this year and are having a new house built in Asheville, NC where they grew up. I asked if they had to get permission in writing from Governor Death Sentence before departing Florida.
Mike in Oly
Well I, for one, am super excited about Wild Cards going to the comics. I’d much rather see it going into a live-action HBO series, but I will take what I can get. I loved the books and the premise. I think it was helped that GRRM was not the sole author, but it was farmed out to many authors to build the world. So many fun characters and storylines over the years and over all the novels and short story collections. Never got the appeal of GOT, but this I loved. Super excited. Cannot wait!
There go two miscreants
@Kelly: Maybe they can develop a nomogram as a shortcut!
JML
@CaseyL: Not the first time Marvel has adapted WildCards; they did a limited series under their Epic imprint with art from Jackson “Butch” Guice, Tim Truman, Larry Stroman, and several others. It was pretty good , IMHO. Told new stories in the Wild Cards universe…back in the early 90’s, I think?
Also, The Dabel Brothers published a limited series in the Wild Cards universe…boy, that’s got to be a decade old now too. (Dabel Brothers were doing some good adaptations, but clearly seemed to have some problems with financing)
Be interesting to see if they actually adapt the books or just tell stories in the Wild Cards universe?
It’s a bummer for people who jumped on A Song of Ice & Fire when it was first published that it’s probably never going to be finished. I mean, it’s a running gag in fantasy literature now. Who’s going to finish a new book first: Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, or Scott Lynch?
raven
@Frosty Fred: Thanks!!!
@Spanky:
Shalimar
@Mike in Oly: Considering they’re basically stitched together short stories, the first 6 Wild Card books were excellent. Not sure I need new versions as much as to re-read the books though.
JAFD
Met GRRM a few times, at SF conventions back in the 80’s, when we were both equally unknown. Thought he was pretty nice guy, haven’t had reason to change that – even tho he recycled my name for a GoT character who – believe it or not – meets a gruesome end.
Anyway, JAFD’s Three Laws of Economics:
It’s a free country
Everybody’s got the right to try and make an honest buck
You pays your money and you takes your choice
Have a happy Presidents Day, everyone !
Patricia Kayden
@HinTN: ? I enjoyed GoT. Not sure how much of it he actually wrote though since I’ve heard that the HBO series is different from the novels.
Patricia Kayden
@JAFD: You’re famous!!
scav
@Another Scott: Why stop there? Entire Disney Storyliving towns based on his plots.
Bill Arnold
@geg6:
Looking forward to a proper Disney rant. :-)
Dorothy A. Winsor
Dorothy A. Winsor
Or less hopefully
Heidi Mom
@Brachiator: After a writer on Slate or Salon, can’t remember which, said that Tyrion Lannister was the most interesting fictional character they’d encountered since Stringer Bell of The Wire, I had to read the books (because Stringer Bell was fascinating). Although not usually a sci-fi/fantasy reader, I liked the books so much that I read them again. Then I watched the show, and loved it from beginning to end. And it dawned on me that Benioff and Weiss had not only streamlined the plot down to the essentials, but they’d managed to write an ending for the damn thing! Maybe not a perfect one, but certainly good enough for me–everyone ended up where they belonged (= where I wanted them to be). So GRRM can do whatever he wants for the rest of his life, because I have no desire to read two more weighty tomes filled with minor characters who go nowhere.
Ruckus
@raven:
I’ve had a lot of cryosurgery (liquid nitrogen) but not Fluorouracil. Sounds like it might be a touch less painful but it also may be for different types.
Librarian
@geg6: I haven’t seen GOT either. I hate it because it’s a bastardization of history. People would rather watch fake history than real history.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dorothy A. Winsor: still very interesting, and hopeful
I wonder where they’ll meet.
Citizen Alan
In my personal opinion, the “problem” with the ending of GOT was that the female semi-protagonist, who had always been depicted as low-key crazy with messianic tendencies and a strong desire to follow in the footsteps of her megalomaniac dictator forebear, ended up acting exactly how you’d expect a person with those traits to act if she weren’t a cute blonde who viewers insisted on viewing through a “girl power” lens, and then she got put down before she could go “Mad King 2.0,” and everyone got bent out of shape over it. My head canon is that immediately after the series ended, Bran and Tyrion started quietly laying the groundwork for a democracy. No more of this King bullshit.
raven
@Ruckus: Yea I’ve had that and blue light. I’ve put this off for 6 months but I started it today. I’m assuming all the internet horror stories are like all the other shit I’ve been through that are not as bad as “some” say.
Geoduck
I’m not a huge fan of the series, but I still hope some sort of conclusion gets released, even if it’s just a summary of GRRM’s post-humorous notes. Sadly, I can totally see him being a big enough troll to leave a will ordering all of said notes are destroyed.
Mike in Oly
@Shalimar: Agreed. I’m not looking for anything new out of them so much as I want a visual retelling of the original stories. We finally have the SFX tech to do them right. I’ve waited for this point in time y entire life and now I want to see all my favorite books and comics from my childhood done well in visual formats. I would also kill for a TV series based on Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels, and a version of Magic Kingdom: For Sale/Sold! And can we please do The entirety of John Varley and Alan Dean Foster’s work as movies/series as well? 20 years ago I would have tossed in Orson Scott Card, but he turned out to be a hatemonger so fuck him.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I read the GOT books as they were released. I really enjoyed the first few, but after a while, it felt like he was still branching the whole story out and not drawing it together toward an ending. Still, GRRM owes me nothing.
Heidi Mom
@Citizen Alan: Yep. “I will take what is mine with fire and blood” since Season 2, over and over and over again. Meanwhile the mantra of the male semi-protagonist is “I am the shield that guards the realms of men.” Anyone who thought those two could ever rule together wasn’t paying attention.
Brachiator
@Citizen Alan:
Okay. I can see that. For me, the idea that the Dragon Queen would just go nuts was not interesting, and not set up adequately. And in the end, Jon Snow’s history turned out to be irrelevant. The series seemed to set up a conflict between three powerful women, and then said “screw it, let’s pull something out of left field.”
Heidi Mom
@Librarian: It’s a fictional story about the struggle for power and what it does to people. Some of the characters and incidents are inspired by historical events: Robb Stark is Edward IV (or would be, if he’d been successful); Tyrion has elements of Richard III (far more capable than he’s perceived to be); the Red Wedding resembles the Campbells’ slaughter of their guests, the Macdonalds; etc. I think the presence of dragons and the undead make it clear that this is not intended to be even a fake historical narrative. It did, however, inspire me to do considerable reading of English history.
Heidi Mom
@Brachiator: Jon Snow’s history should be irrelevant, that’s the point, or part of it. Rule based on lineage is a stupid way to govern a country, because sometimes it will produce a Jon Snow and sometimes a Joffrey, and you have to take what you get. Better to reject that whole system and at least try to choose good rulers. (And don’t get me started on “Jon Snow deserved better”–what’s better than living the life you want as a free man?! It’s downright un-American to think otherwise.)
Brachiator
@Heidi Mom:
Some people in my office were fans of the show, people with wildly divergent tastes. I jumped into the series before the red wedding. I really liked many of the characters, liked watching them grow up and thought that the tv series did a great job with small character details that would be important in later episodes. Even though I was disappointed in the concluding episodes, I enjoyed the overall journey so much that I am not as unhappy with the show as are many fans.
@Librarian
I never thought that GOT was meant to be history. Some of the least useful commentary about the show viewed it as a knockoff of The War of the Roses or other aspects of English history.
Brachiator
@Heidi Mom:
One of the things I find amusing, that affects various fantasy works from Game of Thrones to Star Wars, is the insistence of some fans that the fictional universe must end up with some kind of American approved form of democracy.
So, for example, Leia could not remain a princess. She had to become a general, if not the president of the rebel alliance.
I didn’t expect Jon Snow to become the King. But it was odd to make his parentage a mystery and then throw the revelation away. But I also did not buy the idea that Arya could train to be an assassin and take away secrets from the House of Black and White without consequences.
dnfree
@raven: we have used Fluouracil or however you spell it. It has worked well on precancerous spots. (We have both had different forms of skin cancer.). Most recently for me some tough skin spots by my lips that I really didn’t want to have surgery on.
James E Powell
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I read the first four after watching the first season because I saw them for a two bucks each in a used book store.
had the same feeling. It seemed to me that GRRM didn’t have any particular ending in mind. He was continuing this ever-expanding narrative with no deadline within the story itself and no real need to write an ending.
Four books were out before A Song of Fire & Ice became a popular HBO series. After that, people wanted an ending.
And you’re right, he doesn’t owe us one or one we like.
Heidi Mom
@Brachiator: I agree that Jon’s true parentage received a lot of emphasis, especially the shot in which the newborn baby’s face becomes Jon’s. And the way the show was marketed didn’t help–“Who’ll take the throne?” etc., as if the dynastic outcome was all that mattered.
Roger Moore
@kindness:
One interpretation is that he’s so distracted with side projects he doesn’t have time for the ending of the main series. Another interpretation is that he is having a lot of trouble bringing the series to a satisfactory conclusion, so he’s working on other things where he has less of a problem with the plotting.
Johannes
@Heidi Mom: I always saw Robert Baratheon as Edward IV, with the weight gain…Cersei as Elizabeth Woodville (but nastier). But, yeah, that’s half the fun of the first book for me.
Another Scott
ObOpenThread…
Imagine that.
(via eclecticbrotha)
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Wasn’t Danaerys pregnant with her nephew Jon Snow’s child at the end of the show? I assumed that baby would be the Kwisatch Haderach or Keyser Sose or whatever of that world.
@Johannes: Who was the original Olenna Tyrell?
Johannes
Well, that’s tricky, but I’d go outside the War of the Roses and say she’s very like Eleanor of Aquitaine.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Weren’t they brother and sister?
Gabe
Authors have opinions on people who try to dictate what and at what pace they write
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5vw9RTVky4
At this point he has enough money, he can have fun and assume someone will piece something together from his notes after he is dead.
BigJimSlade
@Frank Wilhoit: Thanks!! I’ll give it a listen tomorrow!
Ten Bears
For many years it was my conviction L Ron Hubbard’s Invasion Earth decalogy were the worst set of books I had ever read. I was mistaken. Read five of them, ones and zeros: it’s about raping little girls.
Game of Thrones is where I lost faith …
evodevo
@debbie: Nope…she was the younger sister of his putative father…
Connor
@Frankensteinbeck:
George is plenty wealthy. Has been for quite a while now. This is other folks taking a chance to cash in on his name, not vice-versa. It’s also a chance for George to hand a lot of his fellow WILD CARDS creators a healthy paycheck, which I’m sure they and their families appreciate.
The Marvel deal is poetically sweet, given that his very first published anything was a fan letter to Marvel about FANTASTIC FOUR #17.
Have no idea if the Broadway project will work out or not, but no one should begrudge George the opportunity. What smart, nerdy kid from Bayonne, NJ could pass up a chance like this?
Robert Sneddon
When Wild Cards started over 40 years ago the superhero genre was still in “Truth, Justice and the American Way” mode. It was easy to differentiate the heroes from the villains, Batman was unconflicted and not dark at all really! and Watchmen had just been published. Things are different today and the Wild Cards concept doesn’t come over as edgy and wrong as it used to.
J R in WV
@raven:>
For a bump on my head. Took a V long time, but it did go away.A month on, a month off, several cycles.
Used about half the tube. Am I remembering all that right? Didn’t go look at my tube, still resting in the bathroom with all the other tubes of goo an old guy can accumulate.
J R in WV
@debbie:
There was enough incest in the video version to embarrass an Egyptian pharoh… they also did Brother/Sister marriages. Explains a lot when you think about it.
The Hapsburg ruling family did the same thing, mating close cousins over and over for generations to keep the power in the family, til it nearly killed off the whole line.
tam1MI
The backlash to the GoT ending can be summarized in four words:
IT’S
THE
MISOGYNY
STUPID.