‘Fairy Quest’ Comic Comes to KickStarter (and Takes My Money)

Yet another awe­some Kick­Starter project that just makes me want to start throw­ing money at the com­puter screen:

Fairy Quest: Out­laws is the first book of the Fable­wood saga, a long-term project and col­lab­o­ra­tion between renown comic indus­try vet­er­ans Hum­berto Ramos and Paul Jenk­ins , the cre­ative team behind Mar­vel Comics’  Spec­tac­u­lar Spider-Man and Peter Parker: Spider-Man , and Rev­e­la­tions.   The pair describes their work on Fairy Quest as “a labor of love.”

The book first appeared as a lim­ited edi­tion hard­bound run in 2011 and imme­di­ately sold out of its 1000-copy print run after just two con­ven­tion appear­ances.  The cre­ators have taken to Kick­Starter to self-publish and raise fund­ing for a sec­ond print run, in the form of this beau­ti­fully bound hard­cover edition:

Back­ers who pledge $30 or more will receive the book, but for $40 you’ll get a signed and num­bered copy.  The visu­als in this book are absolutely gor­geous. Ramo’s amaz­ing art­work leaps off the page with Leonardo Olea’s bril­liant col­or­ing. To see more, check out this  6-page pre­view .

What is Fairy Quest?

If you’re unfa­mil­iar with the story of Fairy Quest, here’s a snip­pet from Comic Book Resources’ recent inter­view with cre­ator Hum­berto Ramos:

“Fairy Quest: Out­laws  is the first of four books that tells the story of the Fable­wood King­dom, a place where all the fairy tale sto­ries exist for one sole pur­pose: to tell their story. Every day they have to go to “work” and replay the sto­ries every mom or dad read to their kids at bed­time. Life is quiet and sim­ple if you fol­low this sim­ple com­mand: “Do not deviate.”

But well, things are about to get shaken up a lit­tle in Fable­wood because some of the inhab­i­tants aren’t happy any­more fol­low­ing the rules. Take Lit­tle Red and Mr. Woof, who both decide they wanted to stop being ene­mies and become friends; not a big deal, right? Every­body wants to have a true friend for like, but in Fable­wood this is a prob­lem… a big one.

So sud­denly Lit­tle Red and Mr. Woof turn from the most dear­est of Fablewood’s inhab­i­tants to dan­ger­ous out­laws, and they find out the only way to keep their trea­sured friend­ship is to leave the kingdom.

That’s where their jour­ney begins.”

(via CBR )

This makes the third Kick­Starter project in as many months that I’ve pledged. Can this be con­sid­ered an addiction?

Greetings from the Sewer! TMNT Postcard Book from 1990

Going through stuff in my base­ment, I dis­cov­ered  a box full of old crap I’ve been hold­ing onto for one rea­son or another. Found a few gems in there, like this Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles post­card book­let from 1990. I don’t recall if it’s some­thing I bought myself, or was given to me as a gift, but evi­dently it cost $4.95 at the time.

Though I’m quite sure I thought these were the coolest things ever when I was 10 years old (so cool that I felt they were pre­cious enough not to rip out and use) but look­ing at them now? Not so much.

The art­work is pretty sad. The Tur­tles look like they need bariatric surgery and every­one is drawn in extremely awkward-looking poses.

It’s so awful you know I just had to scan in all 24 post­cards just to share with you. Let’s make fun of them together!

By the way, sorry to inun­date this blog with so many Turtles-related posts lately, but my TMNT fan­girlism has been kicked into high gear this week, what with the news of the upcom­ing Nick­elodeon show , live-action film , and doc­u­men­tary .

All of Raphael’s Badassery in One Video [TMNT]

The news that we’ll be get­ting a new live-action TMNT film for Christ­mas in 2013 has totally put me in Obses­sive TMNT Fan­girl mode this week now that there’s like an actual release date to look for­ward to.

Though the film will be yet another reboot of the TMNT ori­gin story (sigh), I’m still stu­pid excited about it because OMFG NINJA TURTLES!

The pos­si­bil­i­ties of what the next TMNT film could  be got me think­ing yes­ter­day about how much I’d love to see a TMNT movie star­ring just Raphael , my all time favorite turtle.

Since that will prob­a­bly never hap­pen, I had to resort to the next best thing: cre­at­ing a badass Raphael fan video.

For the music, I set­tled on Hys­te­ria  by Muse. It ended up work­ing really well for both the lyrics and the mood I was going for.  And because I like to pre­tend I live in a world where the embar­rass­ment that is  Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles III  was never made, I only used clips from the first two Tur­tles  films.

It’s a trib­ute to all the things Raph does best: brood­ing, mouthing off and kick­ing ass. Hope you like it!

J.K. Rowling to Write New Novel for Adults

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Ever since Harry Pot­ter ended, rumors have been swirling that J.K. Rowl­ing has been work­ing on a new novel for adults. Today we get con­fir­ma­tion that the rumors are true.

USA Today reports:

The author of mega-selling Harry Pot­ter series has an agree­ment with Lit­tle, Brown in the United States and Britain to pub­lish her first nov­els for grownups. The title, release date and details about the novel, long rumored, were not announced Thurs­day. Her sev­enth and final Pot­ter story came out in 2007.

Via www.usatoday.com

Of the new pub­lish­ing deal, J.K. Rowl­ing says:

“Although I’ve enjoyed writ­ing it every bit as much, my next book will be very dif­fer­ent to the Harry Pot­ter series, which has been pub­lished so bril­liantly by Blooms­bury and my other pub­lish­ers around the world,” Rowl­ing said in a state­ment released by Lit­tle, Brown. “The free­dom to explore new ter­ri­tory is a gift that Harry’s suc­cess has brought me, and with that new ter­ri­tory it seemed a log­i­cal pro­gres­sion to have a new pub­lisher. I am delighted to have a sec­ond pub­lish­ing home in Lit­tle, Brown, and a pub­lish­ing team that will be a great part­ner in this new phase of my writ­ing life.”

We don’t yet know what the the book will be about, or even what genre it belongs to, so it’s anybody’s guess if Rowl­ing will stick to her fan­tasy roots or try some­thing new.  I seem to remem­ber a quote from a few years ago where Rowl­ing said she’d love to write mys­ter­ies one day, so that’s my best guess as to what we can expect.  Her pen­chant for intrigue is a big part of what made the Pot­ter series so great.

I’m sure many fans will be dis­ap­pointed that the big announce­ment isn’t Potter-related  (I’m still hold­ing out hope for a Pot­ter pre­quel about the the  Maraud­ers ).  It’s hard for me to imag­ine what a non-Harry Pot­ter book from J.K. Rowl­ing would be like, espe­cially one that is meant for grownups, but she’s a tal­ented writer and already has enough mass appeal for it to be a suc­cess­ful ven­ture no mat­ter what she writes.

Buffy the Fetus Slayer? Latest Buffy Comic Tackles Abortion

Via  Scoop.it  -  Shezcrafti

In Buffy The Vam­pire Slayer , Sea­son 9 issue #6, the comic takes an unex­pected and con­tro­ver­sial direction:

USA Today reports that in today’s issue of Buffy The Vam­pire Slayer Sea­son 9 from Dark Horse Comics, Buffy shares her newly dis­cov­ered sta­tus as a preg­nant woman with her fam­ily and friends. She pre­sumes that the vam­pire on-again-off-again lover Spike is the father, although there’s some plot-purposeful inde­ci­sion about that. And hey, it may just turn out that there’s some mys­ti­cal energy inside her or some­thing. I’m sure there’s plenty of super­nat­ural odd­ness to come. But more con­tro­ver­sially, the comic explores her deci­sion to have an abortion.

Via www.bleedingcool.com

Joss Whe­don defends the choice:  “It’s not some­thing we would ever take lightly, because you can’t. You don’t. It’s not an easy thing for any­one.  Buffy was always about the arc of a life, and it wasn’t ever going to be one of those shows where they were per­pet­u­ally in high school and never asked why. It was about change. So there’s never a time when Buffy’s life isn’t relevant.”

I applaud Joss Whe­don for hav­ing the balls to tackle such an incred­i­bly polar­iz­ing issue, but I ques­tion his deci­sion to do it through Buffy. It changes how I feel about her char­ac­ter. For some­one who has always been about sav­ing lives, how could Buffy destroy the life inside her?

This is not a pro-life rant, and abor­tion is some­thing that I don’t have strong feel­ings about one way or the other; it’s just not rel­e­vant to me. But it is some­thing that seems totally out-of-character for Buffy.  Of course we won’t know the out­come of Buffy’s del­i­cate sit­u­a­tion until the next issue, so I’ll reserve judge­ment until then.

How do you feel about it?

5 Favorite Literary Quotes, Visualized

Today was one of those cold, dreary, win­try days where you just want to stay curled up in bed with a good book.  I don’t know if it was the bleak weather, the chill­wave music I was lis­ten­ing to, or the fact that I’ve been spend­ing  way too much time on Pin­ter­est  lately, but I was sud­denly inspired to do some­thing— any­thing —creative.

It started with the Lewis Car­roll quote, and I like the way it turned out so much that I decided to make a few more.  These were cre­ated in Pho­to­shop using a com­bi­na­tion of found images, cus­tom brushes, fil­ters, recol­or­ing and retouching.

Feel free to re-post these images else­where, but please do link back to this page.

“Not all those who wan­der are lost.”

- J.R.R. Tokien

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

- Edgar Allan Poe

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

- Lewis Carroll

“Where you tend a rose, a this­tle can­not grow.”

- Frances Hodg­son Burnett

“The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.”

- Steven Wright

(Okay, so I cheated a lit­tle bit with this last one.  Steven Wright isn’t exactly a writer, but a bril­liant comic. Still, it’s a great quote!)

LABYRINTH Graphic Novel Prequel Explores Origins of David Bowie’s Goblin King

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

LABYRINTH Graphic Novel Pre­quel Explores Ori­gins of David Bowie’s Gob­lin King. Archaia will release a pre­quel graphic novel in late 2012.
Via collider.com

Why ‘Reality is Broken’ Is a Must-Read for Every Gamer

And now for some­thing com­pletely different…

If you con­sider your­self a gamer in any capac­ity, you have prob­a­bly not gone through life with­out some­one telling you, at some point, that video games are waste of time, or you have no life, and other insult­ing mis­con­cep­tions that non-gamers often spew at us.

In her new book, Real­ity is Bro­ken , vision­ary game designer Jane McGo­ni­gal hopes to change such attitudes.

Let’s be hon­est: Video games typ­i­cally get a bad rap.  Blood, sex, vio­lence, gore, moms seduc­ing 13-year-old boys on Xbox Live, the boy who shot his par­ents for tak­ing away Halo… Sen­sa­tional head­lines about video games tend to over­shadow the medium itself.

But what about all the pos­i­tive ways in which games influ­ence our lives?  Beyond basic read­ing com­pre­hen­sion and hand-eye coor­di­na­tion, video games can teach us how to set and achieve goals, adapt to new sit­u­a­tions, learn from our mis­takes, help and influ­ence oth­ers, and even how to be an effec­tive team member.

For the mil­lions of Amer­i­can gamers (over 174 mil­lion, to be more pre­cise) who already real­ize these ben­e­fits, Real­ity is Bro­ken is a refresh­ing and encour­ag­ing study of how video games improve our lives and the rea­sons why we need them.  Jane McGo­ni­gal advo­cates that video games are so omnipresent today because they are able to ful­fill basic human needs that we are oth­er­wise lack­ing in our mod­ern lives.  In short, “real­ity is bro­ken” and McGo­ni­gal believes video games are the “fix.”

“Draw­ing on pos­i­tive psy­chol­ogy, cog­ni­tive sci­ence, and soci­ol­ogy, Real­ity Is Bro­ken uncov­ers how game design­ers have hit on core truths about what makes us happy and uti­lized these dis­cov­er­iesto aston­ish­ing effect in vir­tual envi­ron­ments. Videogames con­sis­tently pro­vide the exhil­a­rat­ing rewards, stim­u­lat­ing chal­lenges, and epic vic­to­ries that are so often lack­ing in the real world. But why, McGo­ni­gal asks, should we use the power of games for escapist enter­tain­ment alone? Her research sug­gests that gamers are expert prob­lem solvers and col­lab­o­ra­tors because they reg­u­larly coop­er­ate with other play­ers to over­come daunt­ing vir­tual chal­lenges, and she helped pio­neer a fast-growing genre of games that aims to turn game­play to socially pos­i­tive ends.”

No mat­ter what kind of gamer you are, from the week­night WoW raider to the casual DS gamer—even non-gamer—you will find your­self inspired by the views Jane presents in her book, and per­haps even in awe at all the inno­v­a­tive, ground­break­ing ways that game design­ers through­out the world are using their tal­ents for the greater good.

Book Giveaway!

Would you like to win a copy of Real­ity is Bro­ken? Cour­tesy of The Pen­guin Press and TLC Book Tours, one hard­cover copy of the book will be given away to one of my read­ers in the U.S. or Canada.  If you’d like to enter to win, sim­ply leave a com­ment below using your email address.  I will ran­domly select a win­ner on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 28 and will con­tact you fur­ther by email.

Good luck!

Meet the Morning Glories

No, I’m not talk­ing about the chick flick star­ring Rachel McAdams and Har­ri­son Ford.  Morn­ing Glo­ries is a new comic book series from Image, and it kicks much ass.  Story cre­ator Nick Spencer describes it as ” Run­aways meets LOST .” I have to admit, that got my atten­tion right away.

“Morn­ing Glory Acad­emy is one of the most pres­ti­gious prep schools in the coun­try. But behind it’s hal­lowed doors, some­thing sin­is­ter and deadly lurks. When six bril­liant but trou­bled new stu­dents arrive, they find them­selves trapped and des­per­ately seek­ing answers in a place where noth­ing is what it seems to be.”

So far, it feels a lit­tle bit like if the kids from Cruel Inten­tions attended Sun­ny­dale High, minus the mon­sters.  There’s plenty of mys­tery, the super­nat­ural, and teen angst served up LOST style.  Joe Eisma’s art­work is smooth and vivid, and really brings the stu­dents  of Morn­ing Glory Acad­mey to life.

The char­ac­ters seemed a bit arche­typal at first, but I quickly got over that when I real­ized how much fun I was hav­ing just flip­ping through the pages. Besides, how can you not love first impres­sions like these:

I can already see this comic turn­ing into a movie or TV show.  Despite it being a blend of very famil­iar ter­ri­tory, it has enough style and per­son­al­ity to stand on its own, and more impor­tantly, it’s get­ting rave reviews across the comicverse.

Remember Read-Along adventure audio books?

Being a kid in the 1980s was awe­some.  We had Trans­form­ers, Garbage Pail Kids and Simon, among a plethora of other not very edu­ca­tional toys.  (Well, I sup­pose you could argue that Simon was educational…to some degree.)  If our toys were edu­ca­tional, there was usu­ally some type of elec­tronic gim­mickry involved, I guess because we Nintendo-playing, cartoon-obsessed spawn of the MTV Gen­er­a­tion had short atten­tion spans.

But one of my favorite low-tech toys of the 80s was Read-Along audio books.  I used to spend hours lay­ing on the floor on my stom­ach with my Fisher Price tape recorder, open book sprawled in front of me as I took an audi­ble jour­ney into my favorite sto­ries.  I must have read/listened to Beren­stain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree at least fifty times.

Who didn’t love turn­ing pages to this sound?

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Some of the coolest Read-Along books were the ones based on movies like Star Wars, Grem­lins, and The Goonies.  I found this great site that archives these for­got­ten trea­sures of the past.  You can down­load MP3s of the books’ audio, or an .exe file that presents the orig­i­nal book pages with read-along audio.  They even have Read-Along ver­sions Wil­low and The Dark Crys­tal!  Head on over to Read-Along Adven­tures for a trip down mem­ory lane.

What will be our next Harry Potter?

Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows opens Novem­ber 19.  I can’t help but feel a grow­ing sense of dread that the movies are com­ing to an end.  Yes, I know it’s silly.  The books are long-since con­cluded and these days Daniel Rad­cliffe more closely resem­bles a GQ model than he does a teenaged wiz­ard.  The fans have got­ten older, the actors have got­ten older; I get all that.

And yet there’s that empty feel­ing.  Say­ing good­bye to Hog­warts on the writ­ten page is one thing; but I have a feel­ing it will be much harder when it’s brought to vivid, burn­ing life on the big screen.  (It seems I’m not the only one with a sense of dread sur­round­ing the on-screen deaths of beloved char­ac­ters.)  For the bet­ter part of the past 10 years, Pot­ter fans have had a block­buster movie to look for­ward to—something really quite remark­able when you think about it.  What other fan­dom has been given the same treatment?

Hol­ly­wood has cer­tainly tried.  Since the suc­cess of Harry Pot­ter and the Sorcerer’s Stone they’ve tried (and failed) to repeat the win­ning for­mula for other young adult fan­tasy fran­chises:   A Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events , The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles , Eragon , The Golden Com­pass , The Seeker: The Dark is Ris­ing , Ink­heart and so on.  Despite being semi-decent and rel­a­tively suc­cess­ful movies in their own rights, none of them have really had the fan fer­vor that the Harry Pot­ter movies do, nor lived up to the box office expec­ta­tions.  Not sur­pris­ingly, none of the movies I just men­tioned have cur­rent plans for a sequel.

So, as far as films go, what will be our next Harry Pot­ter?  What series of books-turned-movies will we obsess over, camp in lines for, and stay up ’till 2:30 a.m. on a week­night just to catch the first show­ing?  I cer­tainly hope the answer isn’t Twilight.

The New Moon Trailer: OMG Squee!*

*Dis­claimer: I do not ever say things like ” squee ” or other words usu­ally belong­ing to the ver­nac­u­lar of 12 year old  fan­girls, but felt the dis­claimer was nec­es­sary to save me from hav­ing to explain myself to idiots who can’t tell when I’m being sarcastic.

Here’s what all the fuss is about:

If the trailer is any indi­ca­tion, I believe  New Moon is going to suck and suck hard , but it’s really not the filmmaker’s faults.  My lack of enthu­si­asm for the movie can be blamed on author Stephe­nie Meyer’s dread­ful source mate­r­ial.  For your con­ve­nience, and for my own per­sonal amuse­ment, let’s re-cap Meyer’s super-epic plot to the sequel of Twi­light , shall we?

• It’s Bella Swan’s birth­day and her vam­pire friends throw her a party at their digs.
• At the party, Bella gets a paper cut.
• Jasper, one of the newest vam­pires, can’t con­trol him­self when he sees the blood.
• Pre­dictably, he goes into a rage and lunges for Bella.
• Bella’s sexy vam­pire boyfriend Edward Cullen (pause to swoon here) saves the day…
• …But then tells Bella he must leave her for­ever in order to keep her safe, then peaces out.
• Bella can’t han­dle him leav­ing and goes all emo, bor­der­line suicidal.
• That’s okay though, because there’s yet another sexy guy, Jacob Black, just wait­ing around to take Edward’s place.
• And Jacob just hap­pens to be a werewolf.
• Jacob tries to get Bella to “drop that zero and get with the hero” but she ain’t havin’ none, and con­tin­ues to mope around and do reck­less things, like ride motor­cy­cles and go cliff diving.
• At some point Jacob the Were­wolf saves Bella from Lau­rent and Vic­to­ria, two ran­dom vam­pires turned vil­lians, recy­cled from the plot of Twi­light .
• Then out of nowhere, thanks to some weird, poorly-explained mixup cour­tesy of Edward’s sis­ter Alice, who can see the future but fucks it up som­times, Edward thinks Bella com­mit­ted suicide.
• In true Romeo and Juliet fash­ion, Edward decides he can’t live with­out Bella either, and runs off to Italy to kill him­self too.
• But Edward’s a vam­pire, and sui­cide is eas­ier said than done.  Rather than try to explain about the evil Vol­turi and the other bull­shit sec­ondary char­ac­ters that Meyer pulls out of her ass when she needs a plot, Edward’s sui­cide attempt can best be expressed as: DEATH BY SPARKLES.
• Just in the nick of time, Bella saves Edward from expos­ing him­self thus sav­ing him from the Vol­turi and there’s a big dra­matic reunite­ment scene.
• Some other unim­por­tant crap hap­pens in Italy, then Bella, Edward, and the rest of the vam­pires return home.
• Bella wants des­per­ately to become a vam­pire, and so she calls a Super­friends meet­ing where all the vam­pires take turns vot­ing on whether or not it should happen.
• And like the end­ing of  Twi­light , Meyer recy­cles the same “does Bella become a vam­pire or not?” cliffhanger in New Moon .
• The end!

It’s mind-blowing stuff, I know.  If you really want, feel free to read  my less than glow­ing review of the  New Moon book over at Ama­zon.  It’s just all so ridicu­lous, even for a fan­tasy book based on vam­pires.  Most of the book’s 563 pages is spent with Bella, as she pines away for her lost vam­pire love, and let me tell you, it was hell read­ing through page after page of this:

“I was not allowed to think of him. That was some­thing I tried to be very strict about. Of course I slipped; I was only human. But I was get­ting bet­ter, and so the pain was some­thing I could avoid for days at a time now. The trade­off was the never-ending numb­ness. Between pain and noth­ing, I’d cho­sen noth­ing.”

So by default,  New Moon the film should at least be a slight improve­ment over New Moon the book, if only because the nature of the media spares you the lit­er­ary tor­ture.  But Hol­ly­wood isn’t dumb.  It knows there’s good money to be made by cater­ing to the overzeal­ous female fan­base that made the first film such a suc­cess.   Twi­light fans want hot vam­pires, mushy romance, and plenty of Rob Pat­tin­son screen time.  Make no mis­take, New Moon will be one big fan­girl orgy from start to finish.

But why take my word for it when you can read real reviews of the trailer writ­ten by (what I hope are) teenaged girls?

“ok WOW!!! new moon is going to be AH-Mazing, i love kristen’s face when she say ” kiss me” her eye­brow is funny! and the were­wolf, i didnt even expect it to be that big, but OMg i love it!! but tay­lor GOOOOSSH!! i thought he was Hott, now he like fire! but edward was really sad!cant wait! woooo and bella looked eally pretty”

“The part when she got the paper cut and jasper tried to get her but, edward pushed her was so intensed i was like O.O”

“omg omg omg not going to faint but omg. that as freak­ing awsume. may i faint from how hot jacob is. p.s. i think the wolfy looks friendly”

“OMG! This movie looks even bet­ter than Twi­light! It’s dri­ving me crazy cause I wanna see it so bad! Idk if I can wait for Novem­ber 20 to come! Btw: Jacob, so hot!”

Well there you have it.

Oprah’s Caps Lock Key is Working

The Big O is finally on Twit­ter.  Brace your­self for an influx of soc­cer moms, pseudo-psychiatrists, and a gen­eral increase in the community’s estro­gen lev­els.  Oprah reached over 75,000 fol­low­ers in a sin­gle day, before she ever sent her first tweet.

And how fit­ting that Oprah’s first tweet was in ALL CAPS, the oft-favored style of moms, emo kids, celebu­tards, and other newbs that don’t know how to inter­net.  It’s kind of cute, really.  Like a kit­ten lost in a paper bag.  Of course, Oprah has enough money to just hire peo­ple to Twit­ter for her.

For all the warm and fuzzy life-affirming, book club­bing, puppy-hugging good­ness that’s sure to come, fol­low @Oprah .

The Twilight Effect: A Followup

A few days ago I wrote about a curi­ous phe­nom­e­non I’m call­ing The Twi­light Effect , or in other words, how a movie and book series full of medi­oc­rity and unin­ten­tional hilar­ity aimed at 15-year-old girls has man­aged to com­pletely cap­ti­vate thou­sands of oth­er­wise sen­si­ble grown women with (usu­ally) good taste.

Exhibit A

Since my boyfriend would sooner light him­self on fire than be caught dead see­ing Twi­light, I dragged three of my girlfriends–who were com­plete Twi­light virgins–out to the the­ater on a cold, snowy Fri­day night.  On my left was Joanna, who I can always count on to embrace the cheesi­ness of any dorky phase I hap­pen to be going through.  She thor­oughly enjoyed the movie, and bless her, had no prob­lem admit­ting that.

Exhibit B

And on Joanna’s other side sat my much snarkier friends Julie and Stephanie, who spent most of the movie mak­ing fun of it (“OMFG GLITTER VAMPIRES!?”). Which is pre­cisely why I find these emails hilarious:

Finally, and most alarmingly–

Exhibit C

My 70-something year old Grand­mother asked to bor­row my books.  (And she loved them.)

The Twilight Effect

Last Fri­day night, I dragged three of my girl­friends out to the movies to see a lit­tle film called Twi­light . Per­haps you’ve heard of it?

If you haven’t, I will assume you’re either a shut-in or a male.  After all, it was a 75% female-dominated audi­ence that con­tributed to Twilight’s stag­ger­ing $70 mil­lion open­ing week­end , a huge coupe for direc­tor Cather­ine Hard­wicke and Sum­mit Enter­tain­ment.  To help put that fig­ure in per­spec­tive, Twilight’s suc­cess ranks in the top 4 Novem­ber box office fig­ures of all time–ahead of sum­mer block­buster Trans­form­ers, and the lat­est James Bond flick . As it turns out, Twi­light also boasts the high­est rank­ing box office debut ever for a female direc­tor.  Con­sid­er­ing the eco­nomic cri­sis we’re sup­posed to be in, these num­bers are even more impres­sive.  So impres­sive, in fact, that Sum­mit Enter­tain­ment has already announced plans to begin pre-production on Twilight’s sequel, New Moon.

But none of this news comes as a sur­prise to Twilight’s legions of diehard fans , whose fierce dis­play of buy­ing power pre­vi­ously helped pro­pel all four books of The Twi­light Saga onto the best­seller list, and keep them there, mak­ing author Stephe­nie Meyer a huge suc­cess.  Even Eclipse, Meyer’s third book of the series, dethroned Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows from the best­seller list.

But let’s back up to a few months ago, before I had so much as read a sin­gle page of this hugely pop­u­lar series, before I saw the movie (twice), and before I knew I was on Team Edward, or that there even was a Team Edward.  I remem­ber casu­ally surf­ing the inter­webs, mind­ing my busi­ness as usual, and com­ing across an occa­sional Twi­light glim­mer: a movie ad, a book review, some obsessed fangirl’s glit­ter­ing “Bella ♥‘s Edward” forum sig­na­ture.  It was easy enough to ignore–at first.  But it wasn’t long before Twi­light pro­pa­ganda seemed to creep into every facet of every web site I ever vis­ited.  (My hat’s off to whomever is behind Twilight’s aggres­sive web mar­ket­ing cam­paign, by the way.)  So I guess it was inevitable that I’d even­tu­ally click one of the ads and watch the movie trailer, right?

My reac­tion went some­thing like this:

• That looks pretty cool, I guess…
• And that vam­pire guy is pretty hot!
• Oh hey, it’s Cedric Dig­gory from Harry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire.
• I’m a Harry Pot­ter fan, maybe I’ll like this movie too?
• And Paramore is on the sound­track!? I LOVE Paramore!
• Novem­ber 21st? What a coin­ci­dence, because that’s the same week­end Half-Blood Prince was sup­posed to come out…

The next thing I knew, I was headed for the local library to check out the first book, which I soon dis­cov­ered was a com­plete impos­si­bil­ity.  Checked out; on hold; back-ordered; trans­ferred to another branch–every sin­gle one of the fifty-something copies fell into one of these cat­e­gories.  What was going on here?  Why is Twi­light so pop­u­lar?  Like many unini­ti­ated fans before me, I set out to unravel this mys­tery.  Hell, I thought, maybe if the books are that good, I should just buy them.

So I did.

And that’s how I dis­cov­ered the secret sauce, if you will, of what makes The Twi­light Saga so suc­cess­ful.  The recipe con­sists of teen angst, sex­ual ten­sion, impos­si­bly good-looking main char­ac­ters liv­ing impos­si­bly ide­al­is­tic lives, and a heavy dose of romance deliv­ered to the sap­pi­est degree pos­si­ble.  Sim­ply put, these books are pure escapism.  No real sub­stance, but no real need for it, either.  I could elab­o­rate fur­ther, but I’ve already done that  here , here , and here .  Yet despite how unre­mark­able these books really are, I spent an entire week con­sumed by them.  And I’ve already seen the movie twice.  And I’m anx­iously await­ing its sequel.

What the hell have I got­ten myself into?