Episode 120: The Bootstrap Paradox, or: Why Is Your Kindle Sticky?

Another season of HBO’s Game of Thrones is behind us, leaving us once again with a pile of dead so high it would embarrass Jerry Garcia, were he not also dead.

This was a big season: not only was it the first that wasn’t completely backed by one of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels, but it pushed some fan-favorite characters toward their eventual endgame by (gasp!) allowing some of them to not only live, but to win. And not only to win, but to win in the layman’s sense of the word, not George R. R. Martin’s normal definition of “win,” which is “alive, but mutilated and perhaps covered in latrine leeches.”

So, as is becoming an annual tradition here, we welcomed guest John Keating: an actor, a comedian, and as close to an expert in Game of Thrones as you’re likely to find without riffling through a stack of Martin’s restraining orders.

We discuss the season, the huge arcs some characters have, the double-edged sword of certain characters’ comeuppance, and why the only ones in Westeros qualified to ride The Iron Throne are either ten years old or a quadruped.

In addition, John brings us up to date on The Concessionaires Must Die!, the independent film he co-starred in and co-wrote, which features Stan Lee in a cameo role, and has a new trailer available to psyche you up for when it appears at a film festival near you.

And, we talk about Chuck Tingle. For some reason.

Strap yourselves in, it’s one hell of an episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:48:10 — 104.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More

Thanks for listening, suckers!

No Extinction: Avatar Press SDCC 2013 Panel

And here we are: our final article covering San Diego Comic-Con 2013 (except for a bunch of video that my high-toned, dedicated video camera seems to have mangled, unless my actual computer here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office can do anything to salvage them), five days after the convention ended and more than a week after the actual panel occurred. But what the hell; given my crippling hangover and intestinal issues born from the fried chicken sandwich and fries I washed down with five black IPAs at a bar last night, it feels like I’m still at SDCC. So let’s just plow ahead, shall we?

The Avatar Press panel on Thursday morning, July 18th, with Avatar Founder and Editor-In-Chief William Christensen and World War Z and Extinction Parade writer Max Brooks, was the first panel we hit during SDCC 2013, and in some ways it set the tone for the whole convention. The room wasn’t full, but there was a healthy crowd for a comic book related panel on the most off day of the convention. Not that there are any off days at SDCC anymore, but if there is a day that qualifies, it’s this mid-week opening to the full-blown festivities. Unlike Preview Night, the whole convention center is open, and cosplayers are more plentiful, all of which draws people off the floor and makes it at least tolerable to move around; there’s nothing like a set of jugs in a spandex Power Girl suit to peel off the rubes so you can get where you’re going.

But where we were going was a panel, and we were going there later than we should. Which meant we could get a seat up front and to the side… right in front of the projector many panels use to put up new art for display. Which meant that, as a six foot tall gentleman, I spent the panel hunched over like Frankenstein’s delivery boy to stay out of the projector light, scribbling notes almost on my side as if trying to write “I am having a stroke” for the paramedics, just in case Christensen and Brooks put some new art up on the screen.

Which they did not. Every table at every panel at Comic-Con has a posted sign for presenters, reminding them that members of the crowd might be younger than 18. And every fan of Avatar comics knows that there is very little art that they could project that would be appropriate for children. There is very little Avatar art that would not make children long for the sweet release of death, or at least blindness, to tell you the truth. Avatar books are for adults, and that is on purpose.

“I just do books I want to read,” Christensen said. “It will always be intense work for adults.”