In the meantime, you can look at a couple of the final versions of the section headings. First up, ‘Bondage’:

I’m pretty happy with how ‘Bondage’ turned out. The title may not be the easiest thing in the world to read, but I think it works. The illustration also resulted in my browser history being filled with rope bondage pictures. Like, moreso than usual.

‘Girl Fight’ also looks really nice in the final version. It almost makes me cringe … or makes my teeth hurt. Which means it’s working, I think.

And which of these fetching helmets will appear on the cover of DOOM?

Only time will tell. And if you’re looking for more NZW goodness before the book drops, be sure to check out her excellent new ‘Girls Don’t Like Metal‘ column.

One of John Bellairs's most-beloved books

The National Post runs a semi-regular column called ‘Old Book, New Author,’ in which a new author (in this case, I) talk about an older book that has influenced his or her work. On January 19, 2012, I wrote an installment about one of the greats of kids’ mystery novels (and frequent Edward Gorey collaborator) John Bellairs:

I’ve been dropping the name “John Bellairs” into casual conversation lately. To many, it means nothing. But to people of a certain age — men in particular — the name makes their eyes light up like I’ve just mentioned their favourite Thundercat. (Panthro, in most cases.)

Bellairs was a much-beloved author of mysteries for young readers, like an earlier, more sophisticated R.L. Stine. The House with a Clock in its Walls was the first in a string of rather chilling mysteries, which also include The Eyes of the Killer Robot and The Curse of the Blue Figurine. Like his frequent illustrator, the more widely recognized Edward Gorey, Bellairs was an American most believed was British, despite the Midwestern locales of most of his novels.

In The House with a Clock in its Walls, overweight orphan Lewis Barnavelt is sent to live with his uncle Jonathan, who just happens to be a wizard. What follows is by turns whimsical and menacing, beautiful in its blend of the fantastical and the everyday. His uncle can (and does) blot out the moon, but Lewis is more concerned with learning to play baseball and impressing the popular boys, an obsession that leads him to raise a witch from the dead. (No big deal; it’s like when you take up smoking to impress the cool kids.)

For the full column, visit the National Post website.

First are the sketches for the section named ‘Bondage,’ dealing with places of imprisonment for supervillains (Arkham Asylum, The Vault, etc). My first thought were some kryptonite handcuffs:

A more elaborate drawing involved someone being sexily pushed up against a Phantom Zone mirror prison thing from Superman II, but it was hard to illustrate clearly:

Walschots astutely noted that there should be someone using the Kryptonite handcuffs, which influenced the next iteration. (And before you mention it, I realize Kryptonite would have no effect on Tw0-Face … not that it’s necessarily Two-Face in the illustration.)

Next, the section illustration for ‘Rogues Gallery 1: Domination.’ First thought was a globe with some super-undies tossed hastily across its surface. Then I threw in a knife for good measure. And menace:

Then, I went with a Red-Skull-esque villain, so I could emphasize the riding crop:

Still, it wasn’t sexy enough, so I added assless pants in the next iteration:

I think it’s tasteful. Maybe. More illustration work to come!

‘Sounds interesting right? I thought so too. October’s a really interesting character, full of spunk and determination. She’s the kind of girl I would have been glad to be friends with when I was thirteen. The mystery is also pretty interesting. I couldn’t figure out who did it until closer to the end, and so I totally felt October’s frustration every time her hunch proved wrong.’

Obviously, Quinlan has some valid criticisms, as well, but I’m delighted she liked the book. Read the full review at wordsthatfly.wordpress.com, and check out some of her other book reviews and posts.

Additionally, 410 Media gave The Dead Kid Detective Agency what I would consider a near-rave on the first day of 2012:

‘It seems what makes a juvenile fiction novel for kids is sometimes just that the protagonist is a kid even if the book is just as appealing to adults as it is to kids … Munday handles this unbelievable plot deftly as you root for October and her friends as they move through a plot that include fights, psychopath teachers and real estate agents. I really enjoyed the exploration of the lives of the dead kids. They became real characters in the book instead of the props that they might have been in a lesser writers hands.’

Read the full review (for which I am endlessly thankful) at 410media.com.

An example of why I was interviewed.

2012 is off to a great start, as it began with me being interviewed by Playboy – or, more accurately, Playboy’s safe-for-work site, The Smoking Jacket. Reporter Melissa Bull asked me a few questions about illustrating Natalie Zina Walschots’s DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains and what it’s like to draw Galactus with no clothes on. Here’s a small sample:

The Smoking Jacket: Why are the dudes lounging around like this?

Me: Given that all the illustrations of male supervillains, I think it turns the whole male gaze of most comic books on its head (if that’s not too many mixed metaphors in one sentence). You go to comic conventions and there are all these pin-up drawings of female supervillains and female superheroes everywhere, and you just don’t see any male supervillain erotica. It’s wall to wall drawings of Catwoman and Harley Quinn in various states of undress, but nary a naked dude to be seen.

Comic readers are used to having their female characters overtly sexualized. Despite the spandex and bulging muscles, male characters just aren’t treated the same way by illustrators. At conventions, half the people who look at the calendars become really uncomfortable; the other half absolutely love them.

And yes, I do acknowledge that I am simultaneously drawing ‘naughty pictures’ of supervillains and writing kids’ books. It happens. I also acknowledge that most of the illustrations featured won’t appear in the finished book, but DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains will still be over-the-top incredible.

Read the full interview at The Smoking Jacket.

As with last year, I’ve broken it into three important ‘best-of’ lists: comic books, movies and songs (in no particular order). And as I noted last year, I’m purposely avoiding books without pictures, because as a book publicist, (a) the medium is dangerous territory for me, and (b) nobody cares what I think about books.

(Things I noticed: if you make a movie that blends comedy and tragedy or have a band that has a male-female duo, you have a pretty good shot of making one of those lists. I’m so obvious! Also, I didn’t read enough comic books. I need to take more comic book risks.)

Comic Books
(Read in 2011, not necessarily released in 2011)

1 ) Hark, A Vagrant! – Kate Beaton
Hands down, one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. Most of these strips will be familiar to followers of the web comic, but it’s wonderful to have it all in one compilation. Two personal notes: I want to open every talk I do about The Dead Kid Detective Agency with this Teen Boy Detective strip (but it’s sadly not age-appropriate) and Kate Beaton is incredible at drawing the facial expressions of the deranged.

2 ) The Intrepids – Kurtis J. Wiebe & Scott Kowalchuk
A bunch of teenage runaways are taken in by an old inventor and are trained to save the world from the menace that is mad science. With an art sensibility somewhere between Jack Kirby and Mike Allred and threats ranging from cyborg bears to angry baboons, this is like a no-brainer for me. I just feel the writing doesn’t always live up to the promise of the concept, a problem to which I am all-too sympathetic.

3 ) Criminal 5: The Last of the Innocent – Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
I raved about the Criminal series last year, too, but The Last of the Innocent took the excellence to the next level, mixing in nostalgic Archie-like flashbacks in a story that reads like Criminal’s version of The Kreutzer Sonata. (Yep, I just dropped some Tolstoy on you.)

4 ) Anya’s Ghost – Vera Brogsol
After my book came out, I started reading a lot of stories about kids and ghosts, and this is a very good one, with such a nice illustration style and some unexpected twists.

5 ) Walking Dead – Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard
Even though the comic series doesn’t have a Daryl Dixon, this zombie survival story is one of the most addictive comics I’ve ever read. Every book, I feel truly awful after reading it: things just seem to get worse and worse. And even when they’re okay, you just know something bad is going to happen. But still, Kirkman and Adlard’s work compels you to keep reading.

6 ) Pope Hats – Ethan Rilly
Local comics guy Ethan Rilly is, I’m convinced, going to be the next big thing. He just needs to quit his day job and do comics full time. Pope Hats is a beautiful book that blends realism with surreal elements (like early Dan Clowes) and features beautiful linework.

7 ) Axe Cop – Malachai Nicolle & Ethan Nicolle
After Hark, A Vagrant!, this was the funniest comic I’d read all year. For the uninitiated, this is a book written by a 5-year-old and drawn by his 29-year-old brother. The results, understandably, are the completely surreal adventures of a deranged policeman that read like they were written on a sugar-high (possibly because they were).

8 ) Morning Glories – Nick Spencer & Joe Eisma
I’m not usually fascinated by prep school, but this ‘Runaways meets Lost’ story has kept me intrigued. The artwork could use a bit of help here and there, though.

9 ) Suicide Squad (original series) # 1 – 10
The terrible, terrible decision of DC to turn Amanda Waller into a woman half her original age and one-third her original size sent me back to the original comic series about dangerous supervillains working for the government on suicide missions to earn time off their sentences. Somehow under mid-80s comics code, the book manages to be grittier and more subversive than its more modern iterations.

10 ) Infinite Kung Fu – Kagan McLeod
Torontonian and National Post staff illustrator Kagan McLeod’s years-in-the-making phone book of a comic is worth the wait, somehow capturing the energy of kung fu film in comic form.

Movies
(Watched in 2011, mostly released in 2011)

1 ) Drive – Nicolas Winding Refn (dir)
I can’t figure out whether Drive is more like, as the director and star say, ‘a John Hughes movie with head-stomping,’ or like Camus’s L’Etranger with a love story thrown in. Either way, it’s so good. Sitting in the theatre, I honestly had no idea where the story was going at any point. The soundtrack, art direction, acting: all gold. And the opening sequence (including the credits) are just perfect.

2 ) The Artist – Michel Hazanavicius (dir)
Silent film about the waning fortunes of a silent film star that’s much, much too charming to dislike. It even has an adorable dog, for Pete’s sake.

3 ) Attack the Block – Joe Cornish (dir)
I saw this in a double-bill with Cowboys and Aliens and this blew it out of the water … or dust bowl. Low level thuggish council-estate kids in London defend their apartment block from gorilla-like aliens. Like a much more violent Goonies with endearing British street slang.

4 ) Submarine – Richard Ayoade (dir)
This very funny and well-done coming-of-age story set in Wales and directed by IT Crowd and Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place star Richard Ayoade is reminiscent of Rushmore, but isn’t nearly so stylized . The film’s protagonist Oliver Tate might be even more unpleasant than Max Fischer and Yasmin Paige as Jordana Bevan is tremendous. This should be on more year-end lists. ‘My mother is worried I have mental problems. I found a book about teenage paranoid delusions during a routine search of my parents’ bedroom.’

5 ) Fright Night – Craig Gillespie (dir)
At first, I was hesitant about a remake of possibly the best horror comedy of the 1980s, but Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) does a really nice job, relocating the story to the Las Vegas suburbs and maintaining a balance of menace and humour. The movie also features a very nice acting turn by Anton Yelchin (Chekov!) and Colin Farrell being really funny. Even Christopher Mintz-Plasse isn’t completely annoying!

6 ) Hanna – Joe Wright (dir)
Like an art-house fairy tale version of The Bourne Identity, Hanna is a weird movie, but a thrilling one. Just watch Eric Bana dispatch a group of thugs in the subway and tell me it wasn’t exhilarating. Or tell me this movie doesn’t have the most killer opening and beginning. Bonuses: great soundtrack by The Chemical Brothers, Cate Blanchett dressed up like Agent Scully.

7 ) The Guard – John Michael McDonagh (dir)
I’d heard so many good things about this movie, I was a little afraid to watch it. But I wasn’t disappointed – a buddy cop movie set in small-town Ireland, featuring what is probably the role of Brendon Gleeson’s career. Like with The Commitments, you’ll probably miss half the hilarious dialogue due to the thick accent. This is like a movie by Tarantino, if he were more interested in people than movies. Also, it features my favourite type of end credits – ones that show film clips of the actors in action!

8 ) Hobo with a Shotgun – Jason Eisener (dir)
The poutine of a film – so good, but so bad for you, and 100% Canadian. The exploitation film homage about (what else) a hobo with a shotgun ends with the theme song to The Racoons and may be the only film to receive funding from the Government of Canada that shows graphic shotgun-to-crotch violence.

9 ) Beginners – Mike Mills (dir)
A nice little story about love and death that falls just on the right side of ‘too twee.’ Ewan McGregor, Melanie Durant, Christopher Plummer and Goran Visnjic (who I like seeing in any movie) are all fantastic. The subtitled dog manages to be only the second most charming pet in this list of ten movies.

10 ) Bridesmaids – Paul Feig (dir)
This movie was just plain funny. Kristen Wiig trying not to give into diarrhea? That whole air marshal sequence? Giant cookie? Wilson Phillips? What else do you want?

Songs
(All released in 2011)

1 ) Beyonce – Countdown
A friend turned me on to this song by saying she’d just been watching the video on repeat for days. Soon, I was in the same boat. It’s like five songs in one, and all of them are club bangers. (I’m not sure I’m allowed to say that unironically.)

2 ) Cults – Abducted
I like every song on Cults’ debut album (which I have a sneaking suspicion is sort of a concept album about actual cults … can anyone support me on this?), but the opener might be my favourite.

3 ) Lady Gaga – Marry the Night
If Lady Gaga comes out with an album, you know I’m going to include a song on this list. ‘Marry the Night’ is like Meatloaf writing a ’90s techno hit.

4 ) Kavinsky – Nightcall (from the Drive soundtrack)
All the song choices in Drive are dazzling, but I think this song, playing over the opening credits, captures the mood of the film best.

5 ) The Sounds – Best of Me
Swedish rock group The Sounds are, for my money, the best purely pop rock band around. Better Off Dead is a fantastic song on the new album, but Best of Me just hits me harder, when they sing: ‘We are still young / but we are getting older / Our hearts are still warm / but they are getting colder / and this liiiiiiife / is getting the best of me.’

6 ) Sleigh Bells – Infinity Guitars
Technically, this may have been released in 2010, but Sleigh Bells are such a nice messy guitars and drums phenomenon.

7 ) The Lonely Island – Jack Sparrow
The troubling part about The Lonely Island is that their songs, while incredibly funny, are also just good as songs. Like, I’d-listen-to-this-even-if-it-wasn’t-funny good. This song also has the great distinction of bringing back Michael Bolton to public consciousness and coining the phrase, ‘back to the good part!’

8 ) The Book of Mormon cast – All-American Prophet
Similar to The Lonely Island, the team behind The Book of Mormon are so successful because the songs work just as songs. The Book of Mormon is both a reaction against and love letter to the traditional musical. And this song, which sums up the narrative of Mormonism in the catchiest of ways, is just one of the show-stoppers.

9 ) The Raveonettes – Forget That You’re Young
The Raveonettes write great songs. And this is probably the best one on the new album Raven in the Grave. I still like In and Out of Control better – this isn’t one of their best albums. But even a so-so album by The Raveonettes is better than 99% of everything else.

10 ) Avril Lavigne – What the Hell? / Ke$ha – We R Who We R (tie)
Judge if you must, but I love Avril Lavigne’s What the Hell? And Ke$ha’s We R Who We R. I can’t explain it, but I’d take either of these songs for a million Bon Iver songs.

(Full disclosure: my favourite song I discovered in 2011 was Robyn’s ‘Call Your Girlfriend‘, but that came out a couple years ago. Too bad, because it allows once to dance while crying, always a great quality in any song.)

Comments, criticisms, arguments, screeds: all welcome! What did I miss? What did I get totally wrong?

I’ve been working on new illustrations for the book, which include frontispiece illustrations for each of the sections: Rogues Gallery 1, 2 and 3, Stronghold (about supervillain lairs or bases) and Containment (about supervillain prisons), as well as a supervillainous illustration of the author herself. I’ve put some early drawings below, but most will likely not be used in the final book. The reasons are twofold: (1) The final ones will more accurately reflect the thematic thread running through each of the rogues gallery sections, and (2) I realized, after the fact, that these illustrations are not the least bit sexy. These are sexy love poems! None of the illustrations (save maybe the author illustration) even hint at that. My bad.

This Rogues Gallery illustration is based on the popular detective-wall-of-crime-incidents seen in many a mystery tale, complete with generic supervillain mugshots. Also, an editorial sin: an apostrophe in the wrong place! I’m so … embarrassed.

This Rogues Gallery illustration didn’t work out so well – the blood from the gruesome crime scene (that chalk outline is cut in half!) was supposed to spell ‘Rogues Gallery 2,’ but it’s barely legible.

And this final Rogues Gallery illustration is an homage to that weird Anti-Monitor ship or whatever it is in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Trying to pull off a George Perez level of detail here.

My renditions of Apokolips and Latveria appear in the two Stronghold illustrations.

And Arkham Asylum is featured in the Containment illustration.

I’m always anxious when attempting to depict real people. So, doing a supervillain illustration of the author, Natalie Zina Walschots, was a bit intimidating, even if it was a fantastic idea. But I’ve heard from Walschots and she really likes it (or is really good at lying to me), so colour me relieved.

I’ll post new sketches soon. And watch for DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains this spring.

Illustration of book reviewer.

The weekend of December 17, 2011, the National Post featured a bunch of review of new kids’ and YA books, all reviewed by their intended readership. The Books section featured reviews of This Dark Endeavour, Tilt and Shatter Me reviewed by twelve-, thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds. Among them, a very nice review of The Dead Kid Detective Agency by Ned Kelly (age 14), who I’m sure is no relation to Australia’s most notorious cop-killer:

The Dead Kid Detective Agency
By Evan Munday

Reviewed by Ned Kelly, age 14

The Dead Kid Detective Agency is about an outsider-Gothish girl named October Schwartz entering high school. October is the girl who wears only black clothes and eyeliner. While writing a horror novel in the cemetery next to her house, she comes across a squad of five deceased children. They come from different backgrounds and time periods, which gives the book a good dynamic. After the mysterious demise of the French teacher at her school — one of the few people she connected with — she manages to recruit the teenage ghosts to do a little detective work on the “accidental” death.

I think this book would really appeal to kids who enjoy fantasy, and a twist of the grim. The concept is pretty dark, but the book doesn’t go into too much gruesome detail. Even though October’s circumstances are not cheery, her high school experiences will be familiar to many kids.

I recommend this book to ages 12 and up. It deals with somewhat mature concepts and takes a while to get into. I wouldn’t say it’s a boy or girl book necessarily, because the plot doesn’t preach to one gender. The occasional analogy is really weird: For instance, the book describes cold weather as a Granny Smith apple left in the freezer. It’s not really my kind of book, but I still enjoyed it.

(Thanks, Ned!)

Carly Thomson's awesome Dead Kid movie poster.

That doesn’t mean that things haven’t been happening! For one, a Children’s Literature class at Langara College, in Vancouver, studied The Dead Kid Detective Agency. I Skyped into their class in late November to answer questions they had about the book and it was honestly one of the more fun things I’ve done in my life. Even better, the instructor has started sending me along responses students have had to the book (when those students have granted him permission to do so). I’ve read several essays, received three musical track to accompany the book (which I’ve yet to listen to, due to my inability to figure out the audio format in which they were saved) and a poster for a theoretical movie of the book (pictured here). Thanks to Carly Thomson for sending it along (and allowing me to post it on the site). It looks amazing!

December is also the time of year people start compiling ‘Best of 2011’ lists, and I’ve been fortunate to have The Dead Kid Detective Agency included on one such list. The Dead Kid Detective Agency was named one of  Kobo’s eBooks of 2011 (and they’re selling it for only $7.69 at the moment!) I’m looking forward to creating another ‘best of’ list of my own, closer to the New Year. (Here is 2010’s list.)

One of the more successful deep-fried spaghetti balls.

Other than that, it’s been a lot of writing and rewriting here at Casa de Munday, with the occasional excursion to buy holiday gifts or (in one exception instance) make and consume ‘deep-fried spaghetti balls.’ (It’s a long story, but one of unparalleled ambition.)

One last reminder: I’m leading a mystery writing workshop at North York Central Library this coming Saturday at 11. If you’re a teen writer looking to spend a Saturday morning writing when you should either be shopping for gifts or watching Saved by the Bell reruns, you can find out more here or here.

Visceral thrills from Thrilling Detective!

October and her friends got a write-up on the Thrilling Detective website! On it, Kevin Burton Smith gives The Dead Kid Detective Agency the a-okay:

‘By turns dark, witty and just plain cool, the author even manages — because the dead kids are from all different eras — to slip in some actual history. But for God’s sake don’t dare tell your 9-12 year old it’s educational — it’d ruin the fun. Neil Gaiman fans in particular should lap this up.’

After I emailed to thank him for the kind review, Smith asked me to ‘hug Canada for him.’ So, you’ve been warned. Also, be sure to check out the Thrilling Detective site’s homepage, which features an amazing illustration of this Raymond Chandler line: ‘I smashed the bed-spring against his cheek.’