OK this is my favourite news article of the week – a Womble performer traumatised a nation (well, the six year old portion of the nation) when he accidentally removed his head during a live webfeed. Now, my first reaction was basically that it’s awesome that the Wombles are a THING again for today’s kiddies. As a mother of a six year old myself (who broke my heart with her reaction to finding out about the Santa thing last year)… seriously?

“Parents from around the UK said the ‘damage had already been done’ and that they had been forced to come up with ‘all kinds of explanations’ about why there was a human inside a Womble.”

HOW MANY KINDS OF EXPLANATION ARE THERE?

Elsewhere in the world, Aqueduct Press continue their marvellous blog series of posts about the Best Reading, Listening, Viewing, etc. in 2011. I like especially that the contributors are asked to talk about what they enjoyed, but not limit themselves to work published this calendar year. And I was honoured to be asked to talk about my own favourite things of 2011. I forgot lots of things, of course, but that’s what my own blog is for!

Also, Brit Mandelo of Tor.com blogs about her new reprint anthology, Beyond Binary, which includes a story by MEEEEE as well as a whole bunch of more famous and wonderful writers. Hooray for genderqueer SF being talked about!

Nnedi Okorafor blogs powerfully about her discomfort in discovering, in the wake of her marvellous World Fantasy win for Best Novel, that the trophy depicts the head of a very racist, unpleasant person. Ie. H.P. Lovecraft. Which has led to all kinds of conversations across Twitter and other forums about, you know, what kind of alternative trophy could better represent excellence in fantasy fiction, or the history of fantasy literature. I suspect TRADITION is going to win out on this one, or at least a combination of tradition and resistance to change, which are not entirely the same things, but personally I can think of a whole bunch of other unpleasant heads which could take his place. Like Medusa!

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Written by Neil Gaiman, pencilled by Andy Kubert, and inked by Scott Williams.

Yep, another one from the Graphic Novels Hugo Packet!

This two-issue mini-series of Batman comics was commissioned to bring the iconic Detective Comics title to a close, and to provide a moment of closure before Batman was once again reinvented for a new audience of readers. Neil Gaiman, who also writes an introduction to this graphic novel, was pretty much given free rein to write whatever he wanted, and he produced what he felt was a story that provided a ‘The End’ for Batman.

The thing that makes characters like Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman so unique is that they don’t ever end – and yet there are countless deaths and alternate futures provided through comics such as the Elseworlds series or even more standard storylines, because when you have a character who lives on forever, ageless and constantly being reinvented, it’s fun to mess with the formula. There’s hardly a character in the DC Universe who hasn’t been killed and brought back, or lost their powers, or in some way been divested of the very elements that make up their character.

Writing ‘the End’ feels like an important thing to do, despite the fact that it has little weight or sense of permanence. The truth is, nothing in a comics universe has weight or permanence. There have been so many reboots, retcons, alternate worlds, dimension-crossings that it’s hard to tap into the kind of emotional resonance that a novelist or screenwriter can summon up by killing off a beloved character.

The beauty of Gaiman’s story is that it acknowledges all these things. It is a very meta story at its heart, that shows a deep love and respect for the long, complex and utterly incomprehensible Batman backstory. The premise is that Bruce (at least, we think it’s Bruce) is witnessing his own funeral – or, rather, that of the Batman. Mourners have gathered from both sides of the law – Batman’s allies and friends, and his worse enemies. One by one, they bear witness to how the Great Detective died.

Bruce has several mysteries to solve. Where is he? How is he able to observe his own funeral? Why does everyone have a different version of his death?

At its heart this is a very simple what if kind of story, but it has some moments of real brilliance. Alfred’s story was really extraordinary, and I loved the focus on the old school Selina Kyle’s Catwoman, a character who for me has never been better than she was in the old 60′s and 70′s comics.

The artwork too, deliberately evokes several different eras of Batman, and there are many lovely touches of nostalgia to balance out a mixture of sentimentality and sharp wit in the script. On the whole this is a very readable story, which anyone could pick up but I think would mean more to those who have traversed some of the many threads of Batman’s history. It’s the first so far from the packet which I have been genuinely tempted to pick up in hard copy, if only for archival reasons.

While I’m sure this makes for a pretty slender graphic novel, being only two issues, it is fleshed out with a whole bunch of value-add content, particularly several Batman universe stories previously written by Gaiman, to which he refers in his introduction. You can see here the progression of his interest in Batman as a concept, though he has never properly “done” Batman before. The best of these is a meta-story about Batman and the Joker hanging out together behind the scenes of the comic, which should be a one page joke and yet manages to be a far more substantial and poignant piece. I also was quite interested in the Poison Ivy origin story, though the Riddler one felt far less effective and well-realised.

So yes, Neil Gaiman can write Batman, and does so rather cleverly. Anyone surprised? I think my favourite ‘end of Batman’ story is still the arc from the animated series Batman Beyond & Justice League Unlimited, but the cleverness of this story makes it almost completely compatible with almost every other version of Batman’s possible future. That’s what is so very clever about it.

After yesterday, I’ve been thinking about how many fantasy novels are truly standalone. Girlie Jones declared on Twitter that she doesn’t read fantasy because she’s not interested in waiting for volumes to be written. It’s a fair cop – if the concept of a journey through an elaborate magical world doesn’t grab you from the outset, it’s hard to find a half-decent gateway drug to introduce you to the genre.

Fantasy certainly lends itself to extended series, either of the to-be-continued type or the ‘many standalone novels set in the same world/based around the same character’ type. One of the pleasures of fantasy is the exploration of a world and the ongoing consequences of changes to that world – but that isn’t all that fantasy has to offer and sometimes there is a deep pleasure in a short burst of magical fiction. It’s also a great way to lure a new reader into the genre. I suspect that his many and varied standalone novels are a big part of why Neil Gaiman, for example, has such a broad fanbase.

Standalone novels are, if you are not Neil Gaiman, mostly a luxury for fantasy writers. They turn up at the very beginning of their careers, in many cases, or sidle in from time to time. The accepted wisdom is that standalones simply don’t sell as well as trilogies or series books, even when by the same author.

I wanted to assemble a list of fantasy books I love that are not only standalone, but continue to be so – they don’t share their world or characters with other books. There are no sequels, sideways or direct. @crankynick pointed out on Twitter that I had set myself a hard task because “it’s a rare writer that doesn’t go back to the well if a book takes off.” This is a cynical but let’s face it, not untrue view of how the publishing world works.

By only including pure solo standalone novels in my list, that means I am excluding many great fantasy novels which share a world or character with one or some other of their author’s works, even though they stand perfectly well on their own: such novels as The Hobbit, Valiant, The Curse of Chalion, Anansi Boys. Even Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell can be excluded on these grounds, I think, as The Ladies of Grace Adieu is very much a sequel and companion volume, while not actually a novel. Thanks to Tehani and Nicole I also learned that Threshold, Sara Douglass’ lovely novel of maths, magic and glassworking is now linked to some of her other novels and no longer counts as a standalone in that pure sense. Damn it! There goes another of my best examples.

So: THE LIST (my top 10 super-solo-unsequelled-standalone fantasy novels) presented below…

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One of the cool things I will remember about the blogosphere in 2009 was the amazing response to the TripleJ Hottest 100 of all time, as people across Australia responded to the gaping (and for many of us, quite shocking) lack of female representation in that list by celebrating women’s music. The conversation that spanned across so many blogs and Twitter accounts was layered and fascinating, and went a long way to making up for some of the more jawdropping kneejerk reactions/excuses for so many people not voting in female artists (women’s voices are higher… men are more likely to write/perform those epic songs…)

An uncomfortable theme that was raised in various circles was that women’s art is still seen as less, and that when forced to think about it, people can come up with a long list of justifications why this is so, because ‘actually I’ve been socialised to think that male=better/stronger/wiser’ is often a hard thing to admit, let alone come to terms with. One list that did have a substantial proportion of women was the “songs I am embarrassed to admit I like.”

Which brings me to Amanda Palmer, singing a song about Lady Gaga and herself and Madonna, apparently the final act of an ongoing debate with Neil Gaiman. It seems to belong to that conversation from several months ago – or maybe it’s the beginning of a new conversation. In any case, it’s a very cool song, not least because of the circumstances under which it was created. If you’re not already following Amanda’s blog (her posts are, this one notwithstanding, loooong and hard to navigate at times), she is definitely an artist to watch for the ways in which she experiments with form, social media and the changing face of technology and the internet. She’s basically the rock chick version of Cory Doctorow (ha, okay, someone has to get those two on a stage together if it hasn’t already happened), and its her willingness to throw herself, unrehearsed, into her art; her willingness to get messy, screw up & show her knickers (both metaphorically and literally) in various public forums that make her such a compelling figure.

I love the fact that Neil and Amanda have basically become the Posh and Becks of the lit/rock music world.