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. #

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.

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.

The Wheel Turns

I finally talked myself into reading New Spring, the prequel novel to Robert Jordan’s interminable long-running Wheel of Time series. It’s actually a very interesting character study of young Moiraine, and much more engrossing than the last two books in the series have been—perhaps because I don’t expect it to advance the plot.

Anyway, I’ve spent the last week thinking, “I really ought to see if there’s any news on Book 11.” I finally remembered it when I was in front of a computer, and discovered that Knife of Dreams has just been finished, the cover announced last week, and the book is scheduled to be released on October 11.

I came into the series when Book 8, Path of Daggers was the latest, and Winter’s Heart was released during the year it took me to read the series up to that point. I really liked books 1 (once it got going), 4, and 5, and book 2 still managed to keep me up for hours trying to finish when I really should’ve just gone to bed. The problem is that after book 5, he stopped writing novels, and started writing a novel. A really long one that spans multiple books. (Seriously, how long can he drag out the Faile kidnapping story?)