K-Squared Ramblings

New Spring (Wheel of Time) Comics Finishing Soon

The long-delayed comic-book adaptation of New Spring may finally be coming to a close.

Since reading The Gathering Storm (which was very good), I’ve been saying that the previous book, Knife of Dreams, was the point where Robert Jordan finally got The Wheel of Time back on track. Thinking back, though, it was actually the expanded version of New Spring that got me excited about the series again after the dull, plodding Crossroads of Twilight.

Dabel Brothers started an 8-issue comic-book adaptation of the prequel back in 2005, published by Red Eagle Entertainment. It got off to a great start…until the studio and publisher started to feud, and the comics ceased publication entirely after #5 came out in early 2006.

Two years later (summer 2008), Dabel Brothers announced that they would start adapting the main Wheel of Time series, but at the time had no plans to complete New Spring. Finally, in April 2009, they announced that they’d be finishing the miniseries. #6 came out in May, as did the Eye of the World prologue, but #7 didn’t come out until August. It’s November now, with no sign of #8…or of Wheel of Time #2. Meanwhile, Bleeding Cool has been reporting financial problems — like not paying artists — and the Dabel Bros. website has gone offline.

It doesn’t sound promising…but there is some hope. I posted about several stalled comic miniseries at Speed Force, and Dabel Brothers’ Derek Ruiz* stopped in to comment:

NS #8 News coming soon. It’s complete and ready for printing. Once I have more to tell you on release date I’ll make my way back here. [emphasis added]

He didn’t mention Eye of the World, and I didn’t follow up. One thing at a time, after all!

As I understand it, Tor has the rights to publish the collected editions — and I suspect that’s where the main audience for this is going to be. If Dabel Brothers can ship the final issue of New Spring soon, Tor can have a hardcover in bookstores next year to tide fans over while they wait for Brandon Sanderson to finish Towers of Midnight.

*I don’t really have a way to verify it was him, but the email address does match a previous comment.

Finished The Gathering Storm (Wheel of Time) – It’s Good

This weekend I finished reading the new Wheel of Time novel, The Gathering Storm. Now that I’ve read it, I can definitely say that Brandon Sanderson was a good choice to finish the series from Robert Jordan’s notes, and that splitting the final book into three was the right approach. It may be a doorstopper, but it would be difficult to cut more than a tiny amount without diminishing the impact of what remained.

No spoilers unless you don’t want to know which characters appear in the book. In which case, stop reading now. It focuses primarily on Rand, Egwene, and their respective entourages, though most of the other major characters make appearances. If I were to guess, the next book (Towers of Midnight) will probably focus mainly on Rand and Mat, and maybe Elayne. Katie reminded me that the title is a Seanchan reference, plus there’s another mission — well, quest, really — being built up involving a tower. (Not to mention the White Tower and Black Tower, of course!)

As in Knife of Dreams (and unlike Crossroads of Twilight), things happen in this book! There’s a growing sense of urgency throughout the novel, and everyone who can is pushing hard to have everything in place for the coming apocalypse. For some characters it’s a personal journey. For others it’s political. And for some, it’s simply geographical.

As far as meshing with the rest of the series goes, the only thing that stood out for me was that points of view would switch in the middle of a chapter more often than I expected. It’s not that Robert Jordan never did it, but I remember it being rare outside of the prologues. Brandon Sanderson is more likely to take what would have been two shorter, thematically linked chapters and combine them into one. Katie also noticed one spot early on that one character from Tarabon didn’t speak with the Taraboner dialect — but only the one instance, and one in which the phrasing would have been awkward. It still reads like a Wheel of Time book.

I wish Robert Jordan had been able to finish his epic himself, but it looks like we’re getting the next best thing.

Seanchan Programmers

A tech list is discussing EAGAIN errors, and I keep misreading it as EGEANIN. #

WoT Comics, SWHS, and a Mobile Alarm Clock

• Argh! Looks like the Wheel of Time comics are stalled again! # One issue left of New Spring, one issue into Eye of the World…
• And the award for Most Disturbing Use of an Alarm Clock in a Prime Time Show goes to… FlashForward! #
• XKCD on the Star Wars Holiday Special: True. Absolutely true. #
• Wish I knew what caused the Flickr spike yesterday. 71% of visits from “Unknown source,” but hits are spread around the usual con photos. #
• Oh, yeah: I got a weird kick out of recognizing that alarm clock on FlashForward as Clocky (before the disturbing part). #

Arctic Lairs and Towers of Midnight

• Pair of spam subjects this morning: “Watch your neighbor!” and “Creepy.” No kidding. (via @lol_spam #) I’ve got Weird Al’s song, “Do I Creep You Out?” running through my head now!
• Ah, the Onion! Melting Ice Caps Expose Hundreds of Secret Arctic Lairs. # I’m trying to remember whether Dr. Impossible had an arctic base.
• The next Wheel of Time book after The Gathering Storm will be called Towers of Midnight — a much better title! # The final book will use Robert Jordan’s original title for what he hoped to fit into a single book, A Memory of Light.

Final Battles

• Movies: Standing in theater lobby listening to competing CLANKing from Star Trek & Terminator: Salvation. #
• Wheel of Time: They really couldn’t come up w/a less cliche title than The Gathering Storm? Really, A Memory of Light Part 1 would be better. #

New Spring & Unfollow

• Robert Jordan’s New Spring #6 comic delayed to next week, but after waiting 3 years, what’s 1 week? Also: Wheel of Time: Eye of the World #0 out this week! #
• WTF? I can barely keep up with ~45 people on Twitter, never mind 45,000! via @rzazueta #

Short Copy & New Spring

• Whoa, the comics New Spring #6 and Wheel of Time: Eye of the World #0 are actually on Diamond’s shipping list for next week! #
• How to Write Copy for Short Attention Spans reminds me of advice from usability guru Jakob Nielsen #

New Spring Returns, New Flu Begins

• Lots of suspected #h1n1 cases confirmed today as labs catch up. How many have been ruled out? #
• Trade-off: make vaccine for seasonal flu, or #swineflu? Which will be more dangerous? #
• Wheel of Time news: New Spring comic adaptation to be finished! 4 years later, I guess the rights are settled. #

Wheel of Time Finale: 3-Book Split

I missed this news from a couple of weeks ago: Tor has announced that A Memory of Light, the final Wheel of Time book, is going to be split into three volumes. A Memory of Light Part 1: The Gathering Storm is due on November 3, 2009. Working titles for the others are AMOL Part 2: Shifting Winds and AMOL Part 3: Tarmon Gai’don.

Author Brandon Sanderson, finishing the book from Robert Jordan’s manuscript and notes, explains how the decision was made: basically, it was turning into a 750,000-word novel. Consider that 250,000 is seriously long already, and Nanowrimo considers just 50,000 to be the lower limit. So we’re talking the equivalent of 15 Nanowrimo Novels. Not only would it need the proverbial luggage cart, but he wouldn’t be able to finish and revise it in time for a 2009 release. They figured 2011 at the earliest.

So they’re splitting it into three physical books, the first coming out in 2009 as promised to fans, and the others following — one hopes — in 2010 and 2011.

On one hand, I’m annoyed. I thought we were one book away from the finale. I thought we were only going to have one book worth of material polished by another author. And suddenly the single $25–30 purchase for one hardcover is turning into a probable total of $90 (over the course of several years, sure, but still…). Regardless of the actual reasons, it feels like a money-grab by the publisher trying to squeeze two more books out of a dead author’s fan base.

On the other hand… I’m not exactly surprised. Given the sheer amount of detail in Robert Jordan’s magnum opus, the number of open plot threads, and the scale of building up to full-on Armageddon, I think I’d rather see everything handled properly than get the Cliff Notes version of the series conclusion.

Wheel of Time Comics Return!

Update (Nov 2009): This post seems to be getting extra traffic with the new book coming out. The current status of the comics seems to be stalled again at New Spring #7 and Eye of the World #1, though there should be news on New Spring “soon.”

Dabel Brothers Publishing is going to adapt The Wheel of Time to comics, with the first issue coming out in December. Del Rey will release the collected editions. (via The Beat.) This is the same studio that did the New Spring adaptation a few years ago, an 8-issue miniseries that broke down 5 issues in due to conflicts with the series’ publisher, Red Eagle Entertainment.

(As near as I can tell, Red Eagle existed for the sole purpose of buying the movie and comic rights to Wheel of Time, and managed to run both of them into the ground. Robert Jordan himself had some rather angry words on the subject of Red Eagle, and was looking forward to their contract expiring so that he’d never have to deal with them again. “Once they are completely out of the picture,” he added, “we’ll see what happens.”)

Since I was very impressed with the issues of New Spring that actually came out, I think this is great news. I’m a little apprehensive given the number of publishers Dabel has gone through in the last few years, especially since properly adapting Wheel of Time at one issue a month will probably take more than a decade (I’m thinking 12 issues per novel).

I hope they’ll finish New Spring first. There’s only 3 issues left, and that would give them material for an actual book early on to start building buzz.

Lit Links

Author chosen to finish The Wheel of Time – When Robert Jordan died, he left behind his work on A Memory of Light, the final volume of his epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time. His wife & editor has chosen Brandon Sanderson to complete the book, due out in 2009. Jordan was part way through the manuscript, left voluminous notes, and in the months before his death had told the remaining story to his family. There’s also an interview which I’ll have to read when I have more time.

Epic Pooh – Michael Moorcock on the state of fantasy literature, originally written in the 1970s but updated for the 21st century. The title comes from comparing the style of Lord of the Rings to Winnie the Pooh. I have no problem reading and enjoying both his work and Tolkien’s, and it doesn’t bother me that Phillip Pullman dislikes Tolkien’s work as well. (Link via something I was reading a few days ago.)

The Happy Endings Foundation [archive.org] – “originally founded in 2000 by Adrienne Small after she read the first book in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket to her daughter. As well as making her feel thoroughly miserable, Mrs Small noticed her daughter seemed to take a more negative approach to life.” (Yes, it’s satire.)

And on another note:

Hixie’s Natural Log: Evolution in the species “Companies” – Microsoft’s dominance of the industry has killed off or absorbed many smaller companies. Those that have survived are those with strategies resistant to Microsoft’s tactics. The article looks at Mozilla, Google, and Apple. (via Asa Dotzler)

WOT’s up with New Spring?

Dabel Brothers Productions has been much in the news this past week, between parting ways with Marvel Comics and landing a deal to adapt Dean Koontz’ work to comics. I first encountered them in 2005 when they produced the comic book adaptation of New Spring, the prequel to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

That series was published through Red Eagle Entertainment, a company which appeared out of nowhere and seemed to have only two properties: comic book rights to New Spring and movie rights to Eye of the World. The comic started strongly, but delays led to the series ultimately getting canceled after only 5 issues of a projected 8. Red Eagle and Dabel Bros. each blamed each other.

There’s been very little information over the past year. Dabel has gone on to produce high-profile series like the Anita Blake comics, and Red Eagle has all but disappeared. (Even their website has removed everything but a logo and an email address.) I’ve just assumed it’s still been in arbitration or something.

Finally, yesterday, Robert Jordan posted some cryptic comments about his frustrations with Red Eagle:

For instance, I hear that word was floating about ComicsCon in San Diego that I am displeased with Red Eagle. Too true. Too very true. In a few more months that last contract they have with anyone on God’s green earth that so much as mentions my name will come to an end and we can see what happens after that. You see, among other things they forgot an old dictum of LBJ back when he was just a Congressman from Texas, when he famously, or infamously, said “Don’t spit in the soup. boys. We all have to eat.” Worse, Red Eagle though they could tell me they spit in the soup, or pee in it, if they wanted to and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop them. You can’t apologize your way out of that with me, not that they tried. There isn’t enough money in the world to buy your way out of it with me. Not that they tried that either. So they get no further help from me. Once they are completely out of the picture, we’ll see what happens.

So in a few months, all of Red Eagle’s WOT contracts are up. That’ll free up the movie rights, and while it may not resolve the contract dispute with DBPro over New Spring, there might not be much left of Red Eagle to block them from finishing the book. On the other hand, Dabel Bros. has plenty of other projects keeping them busy, so it might not be a high priority for them.

I am encouraged by the fact that DBPRo has gone through several site redesigns since the breakdown, and hasn’t dropped the New Spring section from their forum.

No Spring

I’ve been really enjoying the comic-book adaptation of Robert Jordan’s New Spring, the prequel to The Wheel of Time. Unfortunately, the last few issues have been very sporadic, and there’s been no way to get any kind of schedule. New issues would just pop up on the shipping list the week they arrived in stores. It didn’t help that the publisher, Red Eagle Entertainment [archive.org], is a complete unknown.

So every week, I’ve scoured Diamond’s shipping list, hoping to see “New Spring” on there. Today I figured I’d check the publisher’s site again, even though it’s been useless from the beginning. Still nothing, just a cover and March 2006 date for issue #6, which has yet to appear.

I thought of another source, though: WoT fan site Dragonmount is where I learned about Book 11. So I looked over there, and guess what? Just last week, Red Eagle issued a press release that they’re cancelling New Spring with only 5 out of 8 issues published.

On the plus side, a rep from Dabel Brothers (the studio that actually wrote and drew the comics) commented in the thread at Dragonmount, saying that “the New Spring series is being continued just not through Red Eagle. The remaining issues are all completed…”

Not surprisingly, the publisher and studio blame each other. The dispute is apparently in arbitration. But given the realities of the comics industry, the fact that the publisher appeared out of nowhere and has no other products, and the presence of artwork for issue #7 on the studio’s forums, I’m inclined to believe Dabel Brothers’ claims that Red Eagle stopped actually paying them for the work they were doing.

Ta’veren of the DCU

I was idly wondering about the way super-heroes and villains are named—not the code names, but the actual names like Clark Kent, Matt Murdock, etc. Was Hunter Zolomon destined to become Zoom? Was Roy G. Bivolo doomed to become the Rainbow Raider the moment his parents named him? And why do so many people with the initials L.L. gravitate toward Superman?

“Obviously, he’s a ta’veren!” Katie said. I laughed for a second, but then remembered an interview I’d read about Infinite Crisis. It actually fits.

Ta’veren is a term from Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time that refers to a person who forms a focal point for history (or, from another perspective, destiny). Threads of probability bend around them, and the unlikely becomes likely. Babylon 5 referred to the concept as a nexus. “You turn one way, and the whole world has a tendency to go the same way.” Read the rest of this entry »