Time had a brief review of The Lost Tolkien Novel.

And, I’ll be honest, it sounds promising. While I read the Silmarillion several times, it has never been a fav, and I must confess that even with all the Tolkien mania of my youth, I got bored with the collected notes that started with the Book of Lost Tales (although there are parts of Unfinished Tales, the book between the Silmarillion and the later collections of drafts and notes, that I quite enjoyed).

Still, this new discovery (and I had no idea that there was anything left for Christopher to mine) sounds like it might be an enjoyable return to Middle Earth. I would enjoy a move novel-esque visit to the First Age than the Silmarillion afforded.

I suspect that I will have to grab a copy of Children rather soon. If I do, I’ll be sure to review it here.

Almost two weeks ago I noted the passing of Batman artist Marshall Rogers–today I surfed over and saw Dave’s (of Dave’s Long Box) write-up on Rogers in the form or a review/discussion of Detective #479 (there are some scanned panels included as well). If this is a topic of interest, I would recommend reading the piece (indeed, I heartily recommend Dave’s site to any fan of comics who has a slightly off-kilter sense of humor).

I once owned that issue as well, but am fairly certain it was part of a stack of comics that I had in the late 70s that got tossed at some point (this was before I was an actual “collector”).

Via Reuters: “Ghost Rider” creator sues over copyright.

Usually, creators of characters back in the 60s and 70s had no claims on the comic characters they created. However, in reading the story, this may actually be a case wherein the creator at least has a case:

Friedrich created the character of Johnny Blaze and his alter ego Ghost Rider in 1968. Three years later, he agreed to publish the character in comic books through Stan Lee’s Magazine Management, which eventually became Marvel Entertainment.

Under the agreement, Magazine Management became holder of the copyright for the first issue, which explains the origin story of Ghost Rider. Lee’s company also held the copyrights to subsequent Ghost Rider works.

However, Magazine Management allegedly never registered the work with the Copyright Office and, pursuant to federal law, Friedrich regained the copyrights to Ghost Rider in 2024.

Of course, one wonders why Friedrich waited until now to sue.

The LAT has an interesting and somewhat amusing piece on Katie Sackhoff’s fake exit from Galactica: ‘Battlestar Galactica’ star.

I must say, between the way Moore did his podcast and the whole casting of Sackhoff in the Bionic Woman pilot, I was beginning to wonder if, in fact, they had killed the character–so kudos to the crew on that count. :

Other details also worked in favor of the surprise. One seemingly unpluggable source of leaks of character deaths is casting news — actors do want to continue working, after all. After she finished shooting her episodes, Sackhoff had a long hiatus from the Vancouver set and looked for other jobs in Los Angeles. “I was taking meetings for things and trying to tell people that they could hire me without really lying to them,” she said.

The fact the Sackhoff was auditioning for new roles spread throughout the “Battlestar Galactica” community. Then Eick cast her in his NBC pilot, a remake of “The Bionic Woman.” “I was excited to cast Katee as the guest lead in the pilot,” he said. “Because if nothing else, when it hit the press, people said, ‘Damn, she really is dead!’ “

In terms of the show itself, there are suggestions in the article that Starbuck isn’t a Cylon. Of course, given their misdirection on the death thing, can we really trust them in their press statements?

“My goal was to mislead the audience into thinking Kara Thrace was a Cylon,” Eick said. Being a Cylon, after all, would mean that there were many copies of her, and therefore Sackhoff could come back as a different version of Starbuck.

“For the fans really paying close attention — reading the message boards, consuming all the details — I think they were adequately misled,” Eick said. “They thought they knew the answer; they were wrong, and that’s ultimately what they want — to be surprised.”

We shall see. Either Starbuck is the last of the final five, or the maelstrom was a rather un-BSG-like portal of some type.