Gobblin.net

Of all the characters in Return to Labyrinth, Skub just might be my favorite. In every volume he gets a whimsical moment or two that brings a smile to my face, and I hope that trend will continue this August. In the last volume, Skub got a chance to stand in the spotlight with half a chapter dedicated to his backstory. The little fellow had a pretty tough life, that’s for sure, but somehow, through it all, he manges to end the volume with a positive outlook.

Skub has a few key scenes in volume 4, but the speech he gives on this panel is definitely my favorite Skub moment of the series. As the series has evolved and the fate of the Labyrinth looks cloudy, Skub has stepped up to become the glue that holds the goblin factions together. While Skub is probably too humble to admit it, I think he’s becoming quite the hero.

Oh, one other behind-the-scenes insight about this rough thumbnail image. See those lines around the art? The inside line represents the safe are for text that will guarantee that nothing gets cut off. The middle line represents the intended edge of the page. The art that spills out to the third box makes sure that the artwork will “bleed” off the edge of the page when it’s printed and bound. Why draw more art than will show up in the finished book? Because as sophisticated as the printing process has become, when books pages are cut and bound, there’s about a 1/8″ margin of error. You never want to let text or important images fall into that danger zone or it could ruin the reading experience.

A new batch of artwork showed up in my inbox this morning and every piece blew me away. Chris Lie, you have grown so much! (I think we both have.) This image is my favorite one of all. I’m including the full page, inked and toned, because it really is a gorgeous layout — probably the best pics of Moppet yet to appear in the series — and it’s not really a spoiler.

A little context for this image, in this volume, dreams play a very large role. We saw in the movie what happened when Sarah ate Jareth’s peach; in this volume, as suggested on the last page of volume 3, we see what Moppet dreams. This what is revealed in this scene is key to why Moppet exists and why Sarah hasn’t been quite the same. It also features a character that I think many fans of the film will be very excited to see. You’ll have to wait to find out what Moppet dreams, but for now, please enjoy this amazing page!

Director Werner Herzog isn’t just a brilliant filmmaker — he’s also one of the most amazing film subjects when he delivers his vivid blend of nihilism and naturalism in a soothing monotone. This reading/interpretation of Curious George isn’t really Herzog, but it does an amazing job of capturing his mad genius (especially the bit about the fishes in the lungs).  I hope you enjoy this as much as I did, and if you haven’t experienced Herzog’s films yet, go and watch Fitzcarraldo– it’s a gorgeous and haunting 2oth centry fable.

Bonus Link: What’s on David Bowie’s iPod these days?

When things get tough in the Labyrinth, who does Toby turn to next? Teen wizards! If anyone can stop Jareth’s plot, it’s Hogwarts grads. Okay, that’s not exactly what’s going on in this panel, but believe it or not, this is a piece of art from Return to Labyrinth volume 4. What does it have to do with the rest of the story? You’ll just have to wait, I’m afraid. Of course, you’re welcome to share your wild theories in the comments…

Update: As much as I enjoy the speculating, I figure I should probably point out that this panel has about as much to do with volume 4, as the Cheshire cat had to do with volume 3. -JF

In a very special chapter of Return to Labyrinth Volume 4, Hana learns to read! Or something like that. You’ll have to wait 7 months to find out what she’s reading.

And remember, angsty fairies aren’t the only ones who think reading is swell:

We’re now officially in 2010, the calendar year that Return to Labyrinth will come to an end! I’ve been a bit lax lately on Labyrinth themed posts for the past month, and for that I’m sorry, but now that the release is getting ever closer and more tangible I think it’s time to start getting back in the gobblin groove.

Before I start previewing all new art, I thought I’d revisit that first piece of Volume 4 art that was previewed back in August. That image was just a rough thumbnail — so rough that folks in the comments couldn’t tell what combination of Jareth/Toby/Sarah/Moppet we were seeing! In the months since, Chris has been cranking through many more thumbnails, detailed pencil pages, and now his team is already starting to ink. So here you have it again, the very first chapter splash page from Return to Labyrinth volume 4. The chapter is called “Oubliette,” which, as Hoggle pointed out, is where you put people to forget about them. Yes, there is a literal oubliette in this chapter, but the word resonates in this chapter in other ways too. More on that later. For now, enjoy this stunning piece of art!

It’s easy (and fun!) to blather on about the media we consume each year, but ultimately, books and movies are seldom the defining elements of our lives. In roughly chronological order, here are my life highlights of 2009:

• Seeing our first black president sworn in.
• Settling into a new home at the top of sunny Potrero Hill.
• Seeing Return to Labyrinth volume 3 become a New York Times listed bestseller!
• Tying the knot with an amazing lady.
• Swimming through limestone caves in Laos.
• Climbing 1,300 steps to mountaintop temples in Thailand.
• Playing matchmaker with rabbits and giving a loving home to a tragic rescue case.
• Learning how to transmogrify new ingredients into delicious meals.
• Watching one friend become a daddy and two others get engaged.
• Writing the last page of Return to Labyrinth.

Last year I ranked my games by how many hours I played each of them. It was sort of depressing and I don’t want to go through that again. Rather than making big lists, I’ll just cull out my gaming highlights for 2009:

• Thepure joy of playing Scribblenauts… for about an hour. This “create anything” DS puzzle/platformer was the truly rare game that elicited pure joy. Think of anything, write it and see it brought to life – amazing! After the novelty wears off, however, it becomes a pretty mediocre physics-based platformer and the moments where item behavior solves puzzles in serendipitous ways are few and far between. Still, I’ve seldom had as much fun with a game as those first moments.
• Being Batman! I watched every episode of Batman the Animated Series back in high school and college, so what a joy it was to hear Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as Joker in a new Batman game that didn’t suck. Arkham Asylum wasn’t the most groundbreaking game of the year, but I loved losing myself in that world.
• Getting to know the cast of Dragon Age. For the first 5 hours or so, the generic LOTR-derivative setting and music and stock fantasy scenarios weren’t selling me on Bioware’s latest, but once I started to assemble a small team of companions and took the time to listen to their stories and interactions, the game was a revelation. So many games in recent years allow players to make so-called “moral” choices that really only reward the player for being mustache-twirling evil or a goody-two-shoes nice. Dragon Age manages to avoid this trap by having moral choices have no bearing on the player character, but rather only affect how your companions perceive you. Eventually you learn which characters’ company you value (whether for personality, skills or looks), and you’ll be inclined to make choices based on pleasing them. At first I thought it was a little artificial, but the more I reflected on it, the more it became clear that that’s a pretty accurate reflection of life! When we’re getting to know people, we can either follow our convictions and see who’s left standing, or we can make compromises to get to know people whose convictions greatly differ from our own, and once those friendships are formed, we can navigate the occasional difference more easily. Dragon Age simulates friendship better than any game I’ve played before. Oh… and  you can have threesomes.
• A Crash Course in Facebook games. This year, I earned the majority of my income from working on Facebook games. I was the lead writer on Yakuza Lords, Champions Online (facebook version), and a forthcoming vampire game, and a contributing designer for Band of Heroes and Zynga’s Vampire Wars, Special Forces and Street Racing. As “research” I spent way too much time playing other games as I tried to familiarize myself with the space. I also spent a lot of time studying the metrics that drive the “success” of these games, at least as measured by DAU/MAU’s. I’m no longer working on those games, and I’ve since blocked all gaming apps on my account. For me, these games tap too strongly into addictive behavior patterns and don’t satisfy on any meaningful level. I don’t mean to dismiss this incredible new medium outright, but I found myself spending hours clicking buttons and leveling up and thinking about it when I was away but getting absolutely nothing out of it. There was nothing “social” about it as few of these games even have avenues for communication within the game (this is something that will change in the next year for sure). I’m still interested in working on casual/social games, but I think I need to approach that on my own terms or with likeminded creators.  We’ll see what 2010 holds.

Any gamers out there care to share their favorite gaming moment of the year?

What does it mean to be “literate” and am I doing enough to qualify? Looking back on 2009, I read 27 books, which neatly equates to a book for every 2 weeks.  I’m not a particularly speedy reader, but I know for a fact that only a couple of them took me 2 weeks to get through, which is a pretty clear sign that I had a lot of days (or weeks) where I wasn’t reading anything.  Hm. Not a good start. Of the 28 books I did read, at least half are YA or decidedly “genre,” with most of the rest skewing decidedly geek. Mabye two or three of those books require much work on the part of the reader. It isn’t that I regret reading the books I do – far from it! (with one or two exceptions) – but I certainly didn’t push myself this much in either quantity or content. It’s not as if I can hope to read but a tiny fraction of the books put out each year (not to mention, checking off the past 200 years of lit), but I can sure as hell do better at keeping up the literary conversation.

Of the books I did read, what stood out this year? Dan Simmons’ Drood was a personal favorite, as I loved Wilkie Collins as a delectably loathsome narrator of Dickens’ finals years. While neither author had a release in 2009, I discovered new YA authors Ysabeau Wilce and D.M. Cornish earlier this year, and their respective worlds of Califa and the Half-Continent quickly earned their place alongside Hogwarts, Narnia and Fantastica in my esteem. On a related note, I adored Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, a more adult take on the Wizard-coming-of-age subgenre. The trip to the magical world was a bit of a letdown, but then, wasn’t that sort of the point? The first “Girl Who,” the posthumous pop-lit mysteries from Sweeden, was a solid read, but the second was an gripping (if totally implausible) page turner. Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is one of my favorite novels of recent years, if not ever, and The Year of the Flood was a worthy companion. I still like the original better, if only because I was visiting her dystopian world anew, but I loved framing device of sermons and hymns in this one. Good stuff. I’d never read Richard Powers, but after Generosity, I’m adding the rest of his books to my queue. Amazing writer, and the themes hit close to home.

I didn’t include comics/graphic novels in my 28 book count, but I did read a few of those as well. My biggest pleasure of the year was The Unwritten, by Mike Carey. I’ve enjoyed his writing for years, but this is shaping up to be his very best work. The new Scott Pilgrim book was fun as ever, but at this point, I’m just waiting for the finale. Aside from series I worked on, I only read a half dozen manga titles this year, and of those, by far the standout series was Urasawa’s Astro-boy remix Pluto. It left me a little cold at first, but by the second volume in, I was hooked and by volume 4 I was completely caught up in the melodrama. I shouldn’t limit my list to printed comics though, as perhaps my very favorite comics of the year were the Williams-Sonoma Sapphic Erotica arc of Achewood and the emergence Kate Beaton as a cartoonist for the ages (of the ages…of history).

So that’s what 2009 was like for me as a reader. Time to make up for 2009’s shortcomings with a reading resolution! In 2010 I will try to up my book count from 28 to at least 52. Of those books, at least half should be from writers I’ve never read before.  I should read a few prize winners, and as a new member of the SFWA, all of the nominees for fantasy/sci-fi. And at least 10 of those should be nonfiction (I only read 2 this year, yeek).

Okay, ye readers. What books stood out for you this year? Anything I should add to my list or avoid? Any resolutions you want to share?

My full (and woefully short) reading list is after the jump, listed in more or less the order that I read them:

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