Book News
Cape and boots included.
Lady Gaga may dress like a superhero, but soon, she’ll be acting like one.
The pop singer, 23, will star in a brand-new comic-book series focusing on the lives of pop-culture icons. The new series, called Fame, will debut May 5, Bluewater Productions has announced.
“Fame gives us the ability to tell more interesting stories about a wider variety of notable personalities,” Bluewater president Darren G. Davis said in a statement. “Conversely, it allows us to focus the scope of our other biography titles to more socially and politically important figures.”
Bluewater — publisher of the Female Force biography series that has featureed the likes of first lady Michelle Obama, Princess Diana, “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling and “Twilight” scribe Stephenie Meyer — is also launching a more “culturally relevant” celebs series.
Future issues of the Fame series will focus on Robert Pattinson, 50 Cent, David Beckham and Taylor Swift.
“Over the past year, we saw an opportunity to broaden the scope of who reads comics,” Davis said. “There were many who had never picked up a graphic novel or comic book but buy our biography titles like Female Force and Political Power. Fame is a natural extension of that trend.”
First Lines
Hidden Empire, by Orson Scott Card
This is a dangerous planet. Only a politician would try to tell you otherwise. And I’m not talking about wars — we’re America, we win our wars. There are earthquakes, storms, volcanoes. Plagues can appear out of nowhere and slaughter millions of people. Blights can wipe out our crops. A meteor the size of a bus could hit the earth and send us back to the Stone Age. An extraordinary solar flare could destroy our electronics or heat our atmosphere so much our crops all die and we starve.
And whom do we put in charge of helping us prepare to cope with such disasters? People whose only talent is for getting elected, and whose entire future consists of the run-up to the next election. It’s not their fault — anybody who doesn’t think and act that way won’t win. It’s the fundamental problem with democracy. No long-range thinking. So we’re just sitting ducks, waiting for the next disaster.
It you want to know what destroyed the Roman Empire, it was two plagues, a century apart, that killed about thirty percent of the population each time. That’s why there weren’t enough soldiers to keep the legions at full strength. That’s why the emperors had to invite the barbarian tribes to farm the abandoned land and fill the abandoned cities.
Only now we’re talking about the whole world. Whom do we invite in to settle the empty land when it’s the whole world that’s been depopulated?
10 Great films from great books
1. “Gone With the Wind”
2. “The Wizard of Oz”
3. “The Maltese Falcon”
4. “Apocalypse Now” (from “Heart of Darkness”)
5. “The Godfather”
6. “Clueless” (from “Emma”)
7. “Howard’s End”
8. “The English Patient”
9. “The Lord of the Rings”
10. “No Country for Old Men”
