Salutations everyone! Today we’re going to talk about Black Panther in multiple media, really old wines and Nimbus.
So, grab your heart-shaped herb and your favorite cyber-enhancement, it’s time for Geekery and Wine…
The Geek Side
I have always loved Black Panther.
I know, I know. A dude of German-Russian heritage (and several others) from Nebraska…really?
Really.
It wasn’t every day that Mom went down to Gibson’s our local department store and I was able to check out the new comic book releases on the spinner. When I was growing up in my small western Nebraska hometown every comic character was precious. But none more so than Black Panther.
On its most basic level, a panther is cool.
The color black is cool.
And Black Panther was a king!
And he was black. Just like Tony Dorsett on the Dallas Cowboys or The Falcon in Marvel Comics or some of the stand-up comedians whom I loved listening to their albums on the record player at my friend Jeff’s house. But it wasn’t something I thought of as remarkable, these were just the guys I thought were awesome.
When the Marvel Super Heroes role-playing game came out in 1984, I desperately wanted to play Black Panther. My friends didn’t get it, why I loved the comic and the character so much. They thought he was basically Daredevil.
Now, at our high school in grades 10 through 12 there were only 3 African American students in the entire school and, well, none were comic book fans or nerds and I’m pretty sure they had enough on their plates just being part of a small group with almost no one else who looked like them.
So, I had this comic and this character that I loved and no one to talk about it with.
I think as I got older I started to see “the Meta” in the cross-over from comic book characters and mythological heroes (Hey….these seem to be the same thing!). And I was still enchanted with the continent of Africa. The mythology was incredibly different from the Greek and Roman myths that I learned about in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and these beautiful watercolor illustrated books my parents got me from the elementary school book fair. I loved hearing those stories.
I wanted the adventure that was promised, like Indiana Jones in the Jamaa El Fna.
In my 20’s, I tried Ethiopian food for the first time and was hooked. It was amazing!
These were all revelations to me. I hesitate to call them “discoveries” because they were always there, I just didn’t know about them. But they were moments when my world became larger. Moments where I felt that there was so much more to experience and know.
So Black Panther was the surrogate, my tour guide for all those times when I saw something that inspired me and the world graciously magnified it and sent it back to subtly blow my mind.
And then a while back, after many years of waiting, there would be a film!
I saw the Ryan Coogler film and it was magic. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. First I had to have a brush with the divine word-spinner, the uber-scribe of Black Panther. Dare I say, Black Panther’s High Priest? I would say forgive the pun, but I’m a Dad and was an English major…so…
I’ve mentioned a few times that I have a loving relationship with San Diego Comic-Con. It’s been a fantastic pilgrimage for me and my son and a wellspring of information. I even wrote about and narrated it in Journey to Nerdopolis (available on Audible). It was on my most recent trip to SDCC and I was traveling from panel-to-panel on Saturday afternoon. Doing my thing. When I had a collision with greatness.
First off…it was Saturday afternoon at Comic-Con and I had been going non-stop since Wednesday afternoon. As I’m walking down what seems to be the longest hallway ever, I glance to my left and see the sign that says “Professional’s Lounge.”
Hold the phone. I am a professional!
I have been coming to Comic-Con International on a professional badge for quite some time now. Why have I never seen this before?
What’s more, my feet were KILLING ME.
I poke my head inside and see that this a common thought amongst con-goers.
There is a collection of round tables, each seating 8 people, occupying most of the room and there is a 6-foot table next to the wall that has coffee, hot water and bottled water. It’s an oasis.
But there is nowhere to sit. I scan the room, starting to get that inkling of a feeling from high school in the lunch room when I make eye contact with an African American gentleman who has the kind of exhaustion in his eyes that I have in my legs.
He nods at me slightly and motions me over and I see that his laptop case, sling bag, etc. is occupying one seat that he is now vacating for ME!
Thank goodness.
I relay my gratitude and we exchange names.
“Colby,” I say.
“Priest,” he says.
“What do you do? Seen any good panels?” I ask.
He has quickly to hand a couple of small paper items, a bookmark, a postcard. He tells me he writes comics and has not only seen some cool panels he’s been on them!
Awesome I say, anything I might have read?
“Oh, Deathstroke right now…and Black Panther, Green Lantern, Spider-man.”
“Dude, that’s amazing.”
So, my hardcore Black Panther fans are listening right now and thinking, “Dude, you are an idiot! You claim to be a Black Panther fan and didn’t know you were sitting with the man who pretty much redefined the character in the 90’s? The man who is probably the biggest reason why the movie came into being!”
Yes. That is what I am saying.
Fandom functions on two things. Actually, most things function on these. Time and Money.
When I was reading Black Panther in my childhood, I had a lot of time. And in the late 90’s, when I got my first teaching job I had neither time nor money…so, it fell away.
Once I had time again, Priest had disappeared from the comics’ scene. There is an amazing article on the Vulture site entitled “The Man Who Made Black Panther Cool Then Disappeared,” I’ll leave the web address on the written blog over at Geekery and wine dot blogspot.com. http://www.vulture.com/2018/01/christopher-priest-made-black-panther-cool-then-disappeared.html
Back to the table, we were having a great conversation about living in Colorado where I lived for 22 years when a couple more chairs opened up.
Two younger gentlemen sat down and since they were close to us I introduced myself and Priest did, too.
The reaction on these guys’ faces told the tale. They looked as though they were talking to God himself.
And I was having a gradual dawning of just how completely awesome this guy is.
But this is Professionals Lounge. So, I nodded my head at them knowingly (when I actually knew nothing) and made a small hand gesture like, “Be Cool.”
They tried…but, it’s hard to meet your heroes and maintain one’s chill.
Hunh. Super-tech, cool heroes, fantastic combinations of cultures reflecting the immense diversity of the African continent. Check, check, double-check.
Somethings different…
Time to go back and buy the whole Priest run on Comixology.
Oh my goodness this was amazing! This was pulp adventure reinvented as political satire. I loved it! And I totally get why Priest is the iconic super shaman of sequential art.
This was tough though because I am ingesting the Black Panther series at a rate of about one issue every 20 minutes on my tablet and it took Christopher Priest a month to do each one of these comics. I feel like some uncultured clod who wolfs down a five-course meal in 10 minutes. But it’s so compelling, I can’t help it.
One aspect I adore in comics is when authors on an iconic title take the time to tip the hat to those that came before. You know, the ones that help make the title iconic. The differences between the Panther of the late 90’s and the Panther of the early 70’s is stark, but Priest takes the time to fold it in and make it understandable and cool.
And Sal Velouto’s Artwork was just wonderful. It lets the classic Black Panther be front and center in the most perfect way, and it even drew upon classic plot devices that were wonderfully wacky as well as friends and foes that lets them feel current.
Priest, you’re a master of your art form.
Some might ask, wither Ta-Nehisi Coates? I did read A Nation Under Our Feet, the graphic novel of his first story arc on the title. It’s good. I enjoyed it. Priest to me felt, more personal somehow. And his sense of humor gave me these wonderful breaks in dramatic tension I just didn’t get from Ta-Nehisi Coates. To be fair, though, I should probably read it again.
The film actually seems to have more to do with Priest than Coates simply by having Agent Ross in the mix, which gave the movie a Priest stamp.
The Wine Side – Really Old Wines
It’s a fact of life…many wines don’t age well. I was talking with my good friend Steven and he said, “I’d really like you to explore further into your video game past. Are you not going to do it because the wines would cost too much?”
“What a cool, question!” I thought. And I looked in the basement and found that the oldest bottle of wine I have is about 10 years old.
But the answer to the question is, of course, more complicated than that.
I start with the Wisdom of George. I went to my boss’s house for dinner when I was in my mid-twenties. She was an amazing dynamic editor who always had a cool suggestion for what to read next and possessed an editor’s red pen so sublime you almost couldn’t wait to do the next revision. Her husband, George, was retired, and in his spare time was driving and reviewing cars for an auto magazine. And George had this to say:
“I will never pay more than $10 for a bottle of wine. “
An interesting challenge.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fine to pay as much as you feel comfortable paying for a bottle of wine. I just had a lovely evening where a friend said, “I don’t drink wine very often, so when I do I don’t mind spending $25 a bottle on it.”
A great philosophy for the casual oenophile.
Buuuut, if, while drinking a wine, you can’t stop thinking about all the other things you could have bought with the money you spent on that bottle…it was too expensive.
For example, if while drinking a wine, I keep thinking, “I could have taken my wife and daughters to an evening showing of a new movie (aka 60-ish dollars)” then really I have no reason to purchase a finely aged Barolo at that price point. Especially when, in my humble, I could just as easily love a Montepulciano d’abruzo for 1/6th of that price.
It is fascinating to see wines transfer out of the $10 club over time. There was an Italian wine that I loved called Monte Antico and when I was in my 20’s this was my go-to wine, because it was about 8 bucks and tasted great with everything. And then a couple of years later it was 9 bucks and finally, now I can find it on sale for about $11.
“But isn’t that just inflation?” you ask.
Maybe. But I’ve seen other wines maintain their low price point over time and not just Yellow Tail either. I think wines “get discovered,” get popular, and then their prices go up.
The other factor that comes into play here is the “Special occasion wine.” If a person plunks down what’s for them a sizable sum, they may view it as a special occasion wine. And then it just sits there, waiting to be tasted and no occasion ever seems special enough.
If you never drink the special occasion wine in many ways you’re saying that nothing is special about your life. And wine isn’t supposed to make you feel sad.
It is an agricultural product, too. And if it’s grown and made, someday it will spoil.
You know when a good time is? Now. Now’s pretty darned good.
Audio Goodness – Nimbus
Ah, Nimbus!!! This was another one of the books like Masters of Deception: The Gang that Ruled Cyberspace I had found and set on the shelf for later.
I had originally discovered Nimbus on the shelf of a B. Dalton Booksellers I’d worked at in Westminster, Colorado. The cover itself featured a warped head and face that somehow vaguely suggested Phil Collins…that one picture from the No Jacket Required album cover.
What drew me to the story was that it seemed to be a continuation of the dead Cyberpunk genre. And I wasn’t quite ready to let Cyberpunk go.
For those who don’t know, Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction that had its heyday during the mid to late 80’s and it’s most celebrated author was William Gibson. And his most celebrated work was Neuromancer. It brought the idea of “jacking in” to the Net into the mainstream and I loved it.
I read cyberpunk novels and short story anthologies and even game-mastered the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop roleplaying game written by Mike Pondsmith. Man fuses with Machine. Mind fuses with information. And everything is very dark and gritty because…you know…the 80’s.
The idea of effortlessly upgrading oneself to perfection was, of course, enticing…in the abstract. Practically speaking, it was a huge deal for me to get my ear pierced at 19 and that was but a single hole in one…earlobe. And decades later I still haven’t pulled the trigger on that tattoo that I’ve been talking about getting.
Also, this is perhaps the most interesting element. Nimbus was the first time I ever narrated a sex scene. I don’t consider myself to be a prude. I mean, yeah, I was raised in a small Nebraska town so not exactly the most daring of gentlemen…
Anyway…
I was narrating the book and knew a couple of days ahead of time IT was happening soon. I kinda psyched myself out at first and then I psyched myself up for it.
If I could fully commit to the moment the whole scene would be portrayed as a lovely moment of intimacy between the characters, instead of me feeling awkward about a part of the book I found steamy.
And ya know…then we could get back to the cybernetics...I narrated the scene in two takes.
What made me so keen on this book by Alexander Jablokov? I felt that Nimbus could have been the next Neuromancer. The story itself is a combination of cybernetics, jazz, and psychological tampering! Oh my god, what could be more cool?
I wanted to know more about Alex so I looked up the Odyssey Podcast: For a quick link to that podcast go to http://www.odysseyworkshop.org/podcasts2.html or wherever you get your podcasts. And got to hear him talk about plotting, characterization, and motivation. And I wholeheartedly recommend this series to anyone who is interested in the vocation of writing. Especially Science fiction and Fantasy!
In a great story, there must be trials for the main character to go through.
Some listeners may be saying, “Ugh! It seems like everyone you asked to do an audiobook has said yes. Wasn’t any part of it difficult?”
Enter a new person into the conversation. The author’s literary agent. This person has but one task. Ensure that the interests of her client are held first and foremost and that any deal entered into is fair to favorable toward her client.
Alex’s agent was frankly terrifying. She, at the time, rep-ed William Gibson of Neuromancer fame. And it seemed that every step I was taking to make our audiobook project happen was amateurish and not up to snuff in her eyes. Ultimately, I learned quite a bit from the experience…and we got the audiobook made. And it showed me the value of having a true seasoned professional in one’s corner.
Ordinarily, I would end the story there. But more recently I was at the Aritsia literary convention in Boston and I saw Alex’s name on a panel as a featured speaker. I said, “Hi” to him beforehand and he said, “We should grab a drink afterward.”
That drink turned into a 2-hour conversation about plot, characterization, the craft of writing and the direction of literature in general…it was fantastic.
And it would be a great story, even if it simply ended there. But in this case, we emailed a few times and he invited my wife and me to have dinner with him in Boston. Joining us was newly-minted science fiction novelist and his significant other, a biological sciences post-grad.
In my mind, at this point in the evening, I am seeing the clock spinning out of control. The time simply flew by. The newly-minted novelist spoke about his work debuting in the first quarter of 2019. His significant other talked about returning from her research trip to Chile and Alex and I both talked about our currently happening projects.
There was an amazing discussion about when the voice of the genre is passed on to the next generation. Its signifiers, when certain authors have said everything they are going to say and why other authors will only stop writing when they are lowered into their graves.
And where did this whole journey start? When I had reached out and said, “I really love your book, Alex, we should work together.”
It floors me.
Next time on Geekery and Wine: The Wil Wheaton conundrum, Mar de Frades Albariño and Sandstone.
Until then…
My Geeks
My Nerds
My dear, dear friends…
Adieu
