Awards:

The 2018 Eisners were announced, with some familiar names for us, including Monstress by Marjorie Liu, Black Bolt by Saladin Ahmed and Black Panther; World of Wakanda, by Roxana Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coats and Alitha E. Martinez.

Conventions:

San Diego Comic-Con was in full swing last weekend, and Syfy was there to cover it along with everyone else. Could I resist a cosplay roundup? I could not. Here it is. There is a pair of great Klingons and one woman with translucent wings that look like they extend out four feet on a side. And a guy with an even larger wingspan – and the Angel of Death from the second Hellboy movie! These all look safe for work or for sharing with kids.

A “cult escape room” at SDCC is the focus of this article. The star of the new series, The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly, stopped by to explain her character. She says her character was part of a cult and they chopped off her hands. Later she describes them as “actually pretty brutal.” Um, yeah, I guess so.

Here’s a nice video about the new season of Doctor Who.

“I like to think my butt is my best feature,” says Tom Ellis of Lucifer, as he discusses Season 4 which will show on Netflix.

James Wan talks about directing the upcoming Aquaman film.

WorldCon 76’s programming, which failed to give panel space to many newer writers, including first-time Hugo-nominees, created a Twitter storm. Several established convention personalities, including John Scalzi, Mary Robinette Kowal and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, withdrew from some of their panels in order to allow space for newcomers. On Facebook, WorldCon 76 Chair Kevin Roche announced that they would be revising the program completely.

Housekeeping:

I will be out of town quite a bit in August, so there will be no column on August 1, and no column on August 15 or August 22. We will keep the giveaways current during this time period.

Speaking of giveaways, they are current through July 12. You may want to check and see if you’ve won something.

Books and Writing:

A graphic novel based on George Takei’s memories of the internment camp where he spent part of his childhood during World War II will be released in the summer of next year.

Stubby the Rocket shares 15 office rituals Tor.com has developed over its ten years, as part of its 10th birthday celebration.

On Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, Theodora Goss discusses her favorite bit in her new book European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman. (Spoiler alert: it involves pastry.)

I’m linking to another post on the same blog because it’s fascinating. Kowal talks about accents, voice and identity.

Jeff VanderMeer shares writing tips with Writer’s Digest.

Book Smugglers share their thoughts on a couple of new books. The Witch Elm sounds promising.

NPR looks at Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife, a Beowulf retelling.

Movies and TV:

James Gunn, director of Guardians of the Galaxy, was fired abruptly when old tweets surfaced. The consensus among pop culture sites is that there is more at work here than just embarrassing tweets since the studio allegedly knew about the tweets already. Please note that the tweets that are quoted here are disgusting and do deal with both rape and child molesting. They were made eight years ago.

Dave Bautista, one of the Guardians of the Galaxy stars, spoke up in support of the director. The fact that the tweets were aggregated by Fox News and they “broke” the story, and that Gunn is a vitriolic critic of the current President, give this story a political cast.

A new series set in the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is in development, with an African American slayer. At first I thought it might be a period piece with Robin Wood’s mom as the slayer, but it looks like it’ll be contemporary.

Should the 13th Doctor on Doctor Who address sexism head on? Tor.com doesn’t think so.

Internet:

A “trademark troll” is trying to trademark a book cover configuration wherever there is a human figure holding any kind of a weapon, with a title and an author’s name. This person apparently has some strong opinions about trademarks and likes to file outrageous claims. Interesting if irritating.

You know what you need? Another fun time-squandering diversion, and we have one for you. It’s a title generator. (H/T to Karol.)

Non Sequitur provides the conversation with Alexa we’ve always believed would happen. (H/T to File770.)

At the Aspen Security Forum, a Microsoft executive describes how they uncovered, and stopped, a Russian-managed site directed at the campaigns of three candidates in midterm races.

The World:

It’s not often that a window becomes a powerful protest symbol, but in Romania, that is what has happened.

Paleontologists discovered the fossil remains of a new, armored dinosaur in an endangered national monument is southwest Utah.