Wondercon, the San Francisco based convention of comics and geek culture, begins this Friday, and fantasy fans have plenty to celebrate. Forget Kick-Ass and Brightest Day — the real star of the show is The Last Unicorn! Author Peter S. Beagle will be reading a Schmendrick story from his upcoming collection, as well as answering questions. Across town (2 short BART stops away) at the gorgeous Victoria theater, the classic Rankin-Bass animated version of The Last Unicorn will be playing on April 2-4, with Beagle in attendance at each show. Q&A before the show, signings after. Finally, comics publisher IDW will be debuting their new adaptation of The Last Unicorn, with a special cover made for Wondercon.

Right before Peter Beagle takes the stage on Saturday afternoon, another of my favorite writers, Tim Powers, will be appearing at the Con. For those who haven’t read Powers, he’s a master of “secret histories” and genre-bending fantasy. His time-travel story The Anubis Gates helped inform the sensibilities of the Steampunk movement.

Unrelated to the con, fantasy film fans have a few cult-classic screenings to look forward to at the famous Castro Theater. On April 17, they’re doing a Roald Dahl double feature of Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder version) and the under-appreciated and Henson produced The Witches. (For fans of 80s horror, take that they’re also screening claymation demon-fest The Gate and John Carpenter’s cyber-satan gem Prince of Darkness on April 9.

It’s back to goblins for this week’s preview pic:

The goblins of Return to Labyrinth serve a very different role than the goblins in the film. For one thing, the movie goblins were mostly adversarial and their primary role, outside of the battle scene at the end, was to riff off of Jareth. There’s something very alien about them — they absolutely aren’t of our world. They aren’t just irreverent and incompetent — they have an air of indifference about them. Sarah’s core friends aside, it was a little scary the way the goblins she encountered really didn’t care if she lived or died. In Return to Labyrinth, as Toby was going to spend the majority of the series living amongst the goblins, I ended up humanizing them, giving them clearer roles and histories. In the Goblins of Labyrinth art book, Terry Jones weaves a rich nonsense  history for the goblins that suggests that they are more than lackeys, and hopefully I captured some of that. With the final volume, though, I really wanted the goblins to, as I mentioned in a previous post, “return to their roots.” Not every one is as kind as Skub or as high-minded as Spittledrum, and it was crucial to remind readers of that.

Next week: Sarah!

Excuse me while I take a little Labyrinth break and insert a little life update. It’s been a busy and scary couple of days here as Gatsby, the world’s plushest and most opinionated rabbit, had a serious health crisis when his digestive system stopped working. Rabbits are always eating and always pooping, but poor Gatsby’s guts got backed up and his tiny stomach went from the size of a golf ball to the size of a grapefruit. Luckily we got him to the vet right away and his doctor was able to pump the poor guy’s stomach and jumpstart his system. The doctor explained that rabbits are closest to horses in the way their digestion works, and what happened to Gatsby is the number one cause of death in horses, but thankfully, the little guy is pulling through. He’s on four medications for the short-term, and we have to squirt a nutritional paste into his mouth with a big plastic syringe until he starts eating a balanced diet on his own.

I’ve been around pets for most of my life, but this is the first time I’ve experienced a life-and-death crisis. This has been (and continues to be, poor guy) a stark reminder of how dependent our pets are on our love and vigilance. If you have a rabbit or a cat or a dog or a rodent or any sort of pet, make sure to check that they’re feeling well before you go to bed tonight, okay?

UPDATE — As far as I can tell, Gatsby is back to full health. As of today, he’s eating normally and seems to be fully recovered. Unfortunately, 3 days apart from his ladyfriend Greta has caused the two of them to have a bit of a falling out. When we first adopted her, she was a very docile and traumatized rescue animal, and she and Gatsby bonded very quickly. Now, Greta is stronger and has opinions and doesn’t much like Gatsby trying to assert his dominance. Such drama! They should get a reality show. Anyway, Gatsby’s follow up vet visit is tomorrow and we’ll know if he’s definitely in the clear.

After a string of nice inked and toned pages, this week we’re back to a rough sketch featuring Moulin and Nimbus.

In other news, lately I’ve been a graphic novel reading machine courtesy of the fine selection offered at the public library. I’ve been catching up on everything from the funky Umbrella Academy to the heartbreaking Footnotes in Gaza. After reading a couple dozen diverse titles, the one that I keep coming back to is The Rabbi’s Cat by French cartoonist Joann Sfar.  This gorgeous graphic novel explores faith, family, colonialism and compassion in a truly intimate and often funny way. And the smart-ass titular hero is one of the most memorable characters I’ve encountered in any medium. The Rabbi’s Cat gets my highest recommendation.

On the prose front, I just finished Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman, first volume of a planned series called the Vineart War in which magic is distilled from grapes, like wine. It’s a concept that works surprisingly well, and Gilman does a great job introducing us to the intricacies of magical viticulture. The volume ends with a feisty princess, a sarcastic rogue and the promises of many cloaks, brooches and dirks to come — all the hallmarks of the kind of fantasy novel I’m not so into anymore — but as long as there’s more grapes to be stomped, I’ll give the series another volume at least.

Feel free to share your recent reads and recommendations in the comments!

This past week I started writing a new story completely unrelated to Labyrinth and I’m really excited to explore this new world more. It’s a little bit fantasy, a little bit horror and a little bit American history. I’m trying to straddle the line between a folk tale and a more contemporary ghost story. I’ve never written anything quite like this, so wish me luck!

In the meantime, here’s your weekly RTL4 preview pic. I’m not going to put this pic in any context, so you’ll have to use your imagination to figure out what exactly is going on.

The 2010 blockbuster movie season is officially underway with Tim Burton’s take on Alice breaking records and celebrating all things mad and fantastical. Alice is only tangentially related to Labyrinth, but this movie has long been on the radar of gobblin readers, so I thought I’d open up a thread to talk about it.

My mini review: I really enjoyed it! There were moments I felt a little giddy excitement about being swept away to someplace truly wonderful. I absolutely loved the Cheshire Cat, Red and White queens and the colors and fashions. I thought Alice herself was wonderfully cast and played, but in the middle part of the movie, I would have liked to see her assert herself more, as Alice the girl from the original story, was rather precocious and not one to just step in line with heroics. The one element that didn’t work for me at all was the Mad Hatter. (Sorry, Mandy!) He didn’t strike me as particular mad, just quirky, and those quirks I found more annoying than endearing.  I really liked the ending in the real world, which might have been anachronistic, but felt right. The movie is clearly not an adaptation, but even though it takes place 13 years later with a young adult Alice, it isn’t exactly a sequel either. Really, the story feels more like a Narnia or Oz book with the clear good guys and bad guys and the Hatter cast as more of a Scarecrow like “dear friend” role. It’s not necessarily the update to Alice in Wonderland I would have imagined, but it works and I was glad to go along for the adventure.

Okay, that’s my “short” take. What did you guys think? I’m also curious what you guys thought about the importance of 3D for this movie. I watched it in 3D, but in retrospect, I’d rather have saved the $3 and awkwardness of wearing double glasses to see it flat.  Let the Frabjous comments commence!

This last week, first time visitor Arianna asked if she was the only who felt sorry for Mizumi. Certainly the Queen of Cups hasn’t been the most benign figure since showing up in the Labyrinth, but her history with Jareth, as seen in a couple of flashbacks, definitely suggests that the Goblin King might have had a little bit of wrath coming to him. Arianna, you’re not alone — I have a soft spot for her as well!

I didn’t have Mizumi’s origin story completely worked out when writing volume 1.By the time volume 2 came out, I knew the story, but only hinted at it in that particular volume. When Tokyopop was slated to do a Labyrinth anthology, my planned contribution was going to be that story — of how Mizumi met Jareth and how their relationship came to an end. Well, that anthology disappeared into the aether, so when it came time to write the script for volume 4, this was my last chance to make sure the story was told. And the more that I thought about it, the more that it needed to be told in the book proper and not as an extra down the line, as that relationship says as much about what Jareth sees in Sarah as it says about the adversary in this series. Anyway, that scene went through several revisions and trims (as it wasn’t originally in the outline for this volume, which still went a few pages over my limit!). I’m glad this scene made it in, as it’s one of my very favorite in the entire series.

Okay, now that that setup is out of the way, you can understand why I’m so excited about this week’s preview pic. This is the page that leads into Mizumi’s flashback. It’s actually part of a 2 page spread, but you’ll have to wait a bit to get the rest of the image. Thank you, Chris, for the gorgeous design! I love Mizumi’s new coat.