With a new job starting in two weeks, I’m going to spend my last days of self-employment in sunny Costa Rica. While I’m gone, I’m sorry to say there won’t be any updates to gobblin.net. I will definitely get back to the writing once I return on March 12th — hope to see you again then!
Terry Brooks goes “manga.” Labyrinth isn’t the only 80’s fantasy world to get the manga treatment. I read the first Shannara trilogy back in the 5th grade. One time we had this book fair at school where you dress as characters from your favorite book – I wanted to dress as “Alannon.” I don’t think my teacher understood that he was a wizard and not a 12 step program…
Someone was asking about an animated Return to Labyrinth, which made me nostalgic for classic animated fantasy. You remember the usual suspects — Flight of Dragons, The Last Unicorn
Now that we’ve completed the Jim Henson/Tokyopop panel at Wondercon, I”ll share the biggest news now.
In March of 2009 Tokyopop will be releasing the first (of a TBD number) of Labyrinth anthologies. These books will tell stories about favorite characters from the film such as Hoggle, Ludo, the Fierys and the Junk Lady, as well as stories related to Return to Labyrinth. Each story will feature different creators and styles.
Oh, and the title of this anthology isn’t finalized yet. I threw out “Tales of the Labyrinth,” but feel free to suggest your own titles in the comments section. Maybe we’ll do a poll in the weeks to come.
More Con Details:
Finally, this is why I don’t draw return to Labyrinth:
UPDATE:
Before I leave for vacation, I want to clarify something. Gobblin.net is a personal site and aside from reposting news, this site is an outlet for personal reflections and commentary (and self-promotion 
) and is not officially affiliated with Tokyopop or the Jim Henson Company. My involvement with the forthcoming Labyrinth anthology is that of a contributing writer. I cannot speak to the content of the anthology, nor am I or this site involved with the naming process for the anthology. Until there is further news to report, I won’t be writing further about the anthology here outside of my own contribution, nor will I (or should I) be responding to questions about the anthology’s content or title. That said, I’m psyched about the project, both as a writer and as a Labyrinth fan. For the official word on that project, please refer to the publisher:
I can’t believe it — it’s time for Wondercon already! The convention season officially kicks off for me tomorrow, and I’m really looking forward to the show. It’s a great chance to talk to people about Return to Labyrinth, but also to catch up with industry friends from other publishers and developers.
Here’s the full details on the panels I’ll be participating on:
Saturday, 4:30-5:30 TOKYOPOP and the Jim Henson Company Present Legends of The Dark Crystal and Return to Labyrinth— Last year, TOKYOPOP made waves among Jim Henson fans with their release of the debut volume of Legends of The Dark Crystal, an exciting manga prequel to Henson’s classic fantasy film. Last year also saw the release of the second volume of Return to Labyrinth, TOKYOPOP and The Jim Henson Company’s acclaimed manga sequel to Labyrinth. Join editor Tim Beedle and Return to Labyrinth writer Jake Forbes as they discuss the future of these two exciting series, provide insight on expanding Jim Henson’s fantasy universes and preview art from upcoming volumes. As a special bonus, all panel attendees will receive a free Legends of The Dark Crystal poster. Room 220
and
Sunday, 1:30-2:30 TOKYOPOP Creator Panel— Join a diverse and talented panel of artists and authors, featuring Becky Cloonan (creator, East Coast Rising, artist, American Virgin), Jake Forbes (author, Return to Labyrinth), Sho Murase (creator, ME2), Lincy Chan (artist, Rhysmyth), Morgan Luthi (creator, Snow), as they discuss the creation of their original and innovative TOKYOPOP manga titles. Room 220
I’ll also be at the Tokyopop booth immediately after both panels if you want to talk about Labyrinth, manga or other nerdy stuff. In addition to the posters that Tokyopop is giving away, I have about 50 samplers with a dozen pages of Labyrinth volume 2 and Dark Crystal 1 for anyone who hasn’t got a copy of those books yet, first come, first served.
I’m a little disappointed that my second panel overlaps with the one given by my soon-to-be employers. Yup! I’ve got a new job starting next month. More on that later…
For manga fans at the con, I highly recommend checking out the two panels given by my friend Jason Thompon. I saw him give a version of his manga history lesson at the Cartoon Art Museum, and he does an amazing job of summing up 20+ years of manga publishing in America (even if it’s got a slight Viz bias. : P).Full details on his panels HERE.
Hope to see some of you at the con. And for those who can’t make it, look for a write up early next week.
I mentioned in a recent comment that I was working on a “Jareth Chapter.” Well, on Wednesday I finished that chapter (phew!) but it still has to go through approvals (*fingers crossed*). I’m not going to comment on the specifics of that chapter because 1) until it wouldn’t be prudent until it’s been approved, and 2) this less you know about this chapter prior to reading, the better. Instead I thought I’d talk a little bit about the challenge and joy of writing for Jareth.
I keep a copy of the original Labyrinth screenplay handy as a reference when writing this series (not that It’s all that necessary – I can recite most of heart at this point, as can many of this site’s readers, I’m sure). When it came time to do the “Jareth Chapter,” I did an experiment, cutting out only the lines that Jareth says. All told he has approximately 100 lines of dialog comprised of just under 600 words. For comparison, Tom Wilkinson says about 700 words in the first 5 minutes of Michael Clayton, and he’s a supporting actor! Granted, not exactly an apples to apples comparison, but one thing is certain – Jareth doesn’t say a lot.
If that word count seems a little low, I should clarify – those are spoken words said by Jareth. If you include lyrics to the soundtrack, add another 900 words to that total. While the music and lyrics are an integral part of our understanding of the characters, they exist on a different reality form the non-musical scenes. Jareth speaking is a villain – a bully who preys on peoples weaknesses. Jareth singing represents temptation – he is a seducer, a lover and a tortured soul. Both of these aspects define Jareth, but looking at the script without the songs, it becomes quite apparent how distinct these two sides are.
The casting of David Bowie really makes this split personality work. He sells the seductive side even when (especially when?) he’s being dickish to Sarah and her friends. It’s such perfect casting. Imagine if Henson’s mentioned alternate option, Michael Jackson, had been cast in the part. He might have created memorable pop songs and led the Dr. Beverly choreographed goblins in more spirited numbers, but would he be believable as the seducer? (Well, Sarah’s supposed to be 16, so… – NO! Not going there. I like Michael).
Returning to Return to Labyrinth, the first volume showed Jareth as trickster. In volume 2, we see him vulnerable. In volume 3, you’ll see more of his dark side. I hope you’ll also see more of the seductive side. Maybe even some of that side that only comes out in dreams and songs? The image below, is taken from Chapter 1 (“Jareth’s Lies”). Remember, this is unfinished art, but it’s looking pretty great, if I may say so. (Yay, Chris!)
Next time, there will be Skub – for real! I mean, he is the star of chapter 2…
I don’t remember my first LEGO set — it was probably from the Space or Castle lines — but in the two and half decades that followed, I’ve had an intense on-again, off-again relationship with the perfect plastic bricks. Some of my fondest memories of my youth involve building modular space ships with out of LEGO bricks with my then best friend Richard, outfitting our crew with the latest in LEGO weaponry, then taking the crafts on expeditions to alien worlds (alien worlds being found in abundance in the park behind Richard’s house). In sixth grade, when most of my peers wanted nothing to do with toys, all I wanted for Christmas (besides the NES I had been denied for two years running), was the Black Seas Barracuda, scourge of the LEGO Caribbean. It was the biggest and greatest LEGO set I’d built to date. It’s glorious hull would go on to serve as the foundation for my space pirate flagship and the base of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus (visual aid for a book report, no less). The next year I got the very same LEGO set for Christmas again (Mo- SANTA had a lousy memory), but, fool that I was, I traded it in for credit towards a Game Gear. Once I entered high school, my bricks went back into the closet for most of the year as I learned to appreciate “grown up” pursuits like collecting McFarlane action figures and Magic the Gathering cards, but upon graduation, when I found myself sticking around town at the community college when most of my friends went off to their far-flung universities, I rediscovered LEGO and fell for the bricks harder than ever.
Uninspired by school and uninterested in the social activities an 18-year-old was supposed to be into, I spent most of my free time playing obscure RPGS and watching old movies. Through the former activity I became good friends with Jack, a kid a grade behind me who been a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend since first grade, who for some reason I’d never talked to before. When I visited his house, he had on display various LEGO recreations of Robotech and Star Wars vehicles. His technical mastery of building inspired me to break out my bricks, and soon Jack and I were coordinating our building efforts, building bigger and better models than ever before. Across the street from the bookstore where I worked was Tom’s Toys,the same mom-and-pop toy store that I’d been visiting all my life. (Believe it or not, this local institution was originally called “Uncle Tom’s Toys” and remained that well into the 80s…). Since I knew the staff from years of patronage, I approached them with a proposition – if Jack and I built a custom LEGO display for their window, could we get a discount when buying LEGO? They graciously accepted the offer, and some three months and 30,000 bricks later, we had our first display – a fantasy diorama featuring floating castles, a dwarven mine (with a working mine car train on constant loop) and Jack’s highly articulated dragon. It was a pretty sparse display, barely filling half the window, but it became a local landmark, attracting gawkers of all ages on a regular basis. We even got coverage in the local paper!
Eventually we wanted our bricks back, and of course Tom’s Toys wanted a follow-up. Next we decided to take a more direct inspiration – Star Wars. This was a good three years before LEGO started doing licensed Star Wars kits, so every model we built was a custom creation. We decided on a half Endor, half Tatooine, with Jabba’s Palace, the Sail Barge and Sarlaac dominating one half, and the Imperial shield generator and Ewok village filling the other. The skies were filled with about a dozen spaceships dangling from fishing wire. Bringing the world to life were about 100 customzed minifig characters that Jack and I had painted and resculpted (again, this was before LEGO started making non-human minifig models). Our models were larger and more ambitious this time, and with that came a few added complications. During the drive from Jack’s house to the store, Jabba’s Sail Barge literally rolled over on top of some of the smaller vehicles, requiring a good six hours of reconstruction on-site. The results were pretty spectacular. This time we added Christmas lights into our models so that the diorama could be enjoyed at night as well. In addition to coverage in the local paper, we got an write up in Star Wars Insider magazine and an interview in the evening news (actual quote: “Go ahead and call them ‘block heads,’ they don’t mind.” Oh, but we did mind, Tony Cippola).
Our third and final display was a movie mash-up featuring everything from Ghostbusters to Godzilla to Clockwork Orange. The train was back, this time modified to be feature a Jurassic Park jeep being chased by velociraptors. Jack’s masterpiece this go-round was the hull of the sinking Titanic, complete with little lego men tumbling onto the propeller blades. It was actually to-scale with minifigs, so even though it was only about 20% of the ship, that piece alone had almost 10,000 bricks. (later, a Hollywood exec tried to buy it off Jack, but he turned them down). My star contribution was a 5-foot high model of the Empire State Building being scaled by King Kong. It wasn’t as detailed as many of the other models, but there it is quite awe-inspiring to stand next to a shoulder-high LEGO model of your own creation. As jack was by far the better customizer of LEGO minifigs to populate our world, I added a new innovation to this display – word balloons! We made taped little paper speech bubbles next to the figures heads so that they could quips from and inspired by their respective movies. All told, this display took about 100,000 bricks to build. After a 6 month run at Tom’s Toys original branch, we moved a modified version down to their new Beverly Hills branch where I worked part time while at Film School.
By that time, I was in Film School and living in student housing 200 miles away from Jack. While I did start in on a Star Wars Episode 1 diorama, it was never finished and Jack and I never built together again. No more LEGO building… until now!
Argh, the obsession calls, but I must try to resist. Last week, at Target, I saw the new Indiana Jones LEGO sets, and was oh-so close to buying them. I restrained myself, but that only served to launch me into a week of research into all the LEGO models currently on offering. I scanned every kit in the catalog comparing the price to brick ratios (LEGO fans, you know what I mean), identifying which new pieces offered exciting opportunities, and which were overly specific chunks that insulted the LEGO tradition. I scoured eBay and e-retailers looking for good deals. Eventually I broke down and decided to buy a set – not an Indiana Jones one (maybe later) but an enormous French motel/café
LEGO celebrated its 50th birthday last month, and it’s absolutely mind-boggling to think of how many LEGO bricks are out there (something like 60 bricks for every human being on earth). LEGO fandom is also growing in leaps and bounds – ten years ago, I thought my LEGO collection (around 75,000 bricks at its peak – now lost or stored) was as big as they come, but now the internet has brought together hundreds or thousands of far more impressive collections. LEGO has developed the same cool cache as 8-bit. I no longer feel like a member of the LEGO building community, but I do know that LEGO is, and always will be, a part of me.
Epilogue:
As much as I want to build my newly acquired LEGO café, it’s OFF LIMITS until I finish the script for Return to Labyrinth 3. I’m on the final stretch, with the outline for the final volume nearly done – this is no time to get distracted! Incidentally, the chapter I’m finishing up right now is also called “Obsession.”
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