This Week's Fine Fellow is...

Jenette Kahn. She's had so many careers that, even limiting myself to those careers that were gloriously, unconditionally successful, I couldn't begin to list them all. So I'll confine myself to a few select areas wherein I've had direct interaction with her.

        Once upon a time Jenette ran DC Comics, as publisher and various other titles (if memory serves). She was still in that position (she'd announced her retirement by then, but wasn't quite out the door) when I first pitched Fables to DC/Vertigo. Jenette immediately made herself a champion of the series and is one of the those most directly responsible for the fact that DC accepted the series without too much fuss. So I owe Jenette.

        Following DC she set out for Hollywood to embark on another career. In partnership with Adam Richman (Hi, Adam), she formed Double Nickel Entertainment, becoming a big shot Hollywood mogul. Except that she's too nice. I haven't met too many big time Hollywood moguls, but they're supposed to be self-impressed spoiled, tantrum-throwing dictators, so I don't think Jenette is doing it right. She's much too generous, kind and interested in getting the most from the people she works with, actually treating them well in order to accomplish it.

        Almost as soon as her production company was formed, Jenette partnered up with Jim Henson Pictures in the first attempt to bring Fables to the big screen. That project didn't work out, for various reasons having nothing to do with Double Nickel or Lisa Henson, who's the boss of Jim Henson Pictures.

        If you want to see what Jenette and Double Nickel is able to bring to the big screen, go see the new (opening soon) Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino. That's a Double Nickel production. How cool is it that the first major release from the production company is already being talked about as a candidate for multiple Oscars next year? Way to go, Jenette.

        She doesn't remember (or claims not to recall) how we first met. In 1984 or perhaps '85, DC Comics held their annual Christmas party at a trendy New York spot called The Automat, designed after those ubiquitous automat restaurants that used to dot the city, back in the old black and white movie days. I wasn't working with DC back then, but I was working with Comico, doing a series called the Elementals. But DC and Comico had good relations at the time and so we were invited up from Philadelphia to join the party. It was snowing hard that evening and so those of us who took the train up from Philly were dressed for the weather. To be specific, I was wearing big, heavy ex-Army snow-stomper boots, which weren't the best shoes for the dance floor. Yes, I danced that night. It only happens when I'm supremely drunk and I was indeed truly blasted that night. At some point I was actually dancing with Jenette and, unknown to me, stomping all over her feet with my big old Army boots. I learned of this when Paul Levitz kindly and discretely escorted me off of the dance stage, sagely advising me that, "Perhaps it would be a good idea if you stayed off of the dance floor for the rest of the evening." That's right. Paul Levitz (Hi, Paul) banned me from dancing. It must have been a permanent thing, because I haven't danced since (and won't).

        One digression of note: At the same Christmas party, DC had hired two lovely young women whose job was to dance with reluctant employees and freelancers. One was dressed as Santa and the other dressed as one of Santa's elves. Later in the evening they switched to being dressed as a devil and angel. Throughout the evening, at several times, I noticed them literally dragging folks out onto the dance floor. That's right. Knowing they worked with people who were, to be kind, a bit more than socially inept, DC hired mercy dancers. One of the Comico folks from Philly, Dan Smeddy (the funniest human being who ever has and ever will exist) was scolded for hogging the (far too lovely to be real) mercy dancers all night. And he was indeed hogging them. By the end of the night he was the one literally having to drag them onto the dance floor. Later that night, after insisting I could make my way on foot to the train station (all of the other Comico people had left hours earlier) I blanked out for a bit and woke up in Chinatown, which is clear across town from the Automat or the train station, which was only a few short blocks away from the Automat. To this day I have no idea how I got there, or what I planned to do there.

        Anyway, back to Jenette. She graciously claims not to recall that I stomped all over her feet that night, until I had to be banned from the dance floor. Shortly after that DC stopped having public Christmas parties. Coincidence? I doubt it. But the very first time I came into the DC offices, following the beginning of the Fables series, Jenette was wearing a cast on one foot. Coincidence? I doubt it.

        But let's move on. Jenette Kahn is, for all of the reasons I've outlined above, and for many more reasons too numerous to list, a truly Fine Fellow.

This Week's Fine Fellow is...

I've known Brad Thomte for twenty years, give or take. In that time he's been an Air Force zoomie, a funnybook letterer -- among other jobs he lettered the Pantheon series I did with Lone Star Press -- sales boss for a game distributer, and various other things. He was also the worst poker player in our regular Austin game, which of course made him very welcome in those poker games. But Brad liked poker and got better at it, until he won the last ever annual Austin Maverick (winner-take-all) Poker Championship. No, we didn't cancel the tournament just because Brad won it, but because all of the old gang was scattering, moving away from Austin.

        Inspired primarily from the war stories I told (incessantly some complained) about my year of playing poker in Las Vegas, Brad decided to pack up the wife and the cats and the various other household vermin and move to Vegas to become a professional poker dealer. He did that, enrolled in a dealer's school, and did so well there that, upon graduation, the owner/teacher immediately made him one of the school's instructors. Eventually, with a few distractions along the way (Vegas can be a very distracting town) he became a poker dealer at a small, out-of-the-way casino.

        That was just the beginning. Here's the dirty little secret about Las Vegas -- okay, one of the dirty little secrets -- The town and its chief industry (gambling of course, though they prefer to call it by the less hot-button term of gaming) is populated by something decidedly less than the brightest and best that our great nation has to offer. I won't go so far as to say that the Vegas gaming industry is staffed mostly by scoundrels, drifters, losers and self-deceiving idiots, but I could float that argument, if forced to.

        Here's the typical Las Vegas Cinderella story: Melvin Dunderbum lives in Boondocks, Nebraska and hates the tedium of his life and his boring job. Mel knows that if he could just get to one of the dreams-come-true towns, he could really make something of himself. He's not quite self deceptive enough to believe he could become a movie star, if only he got himself to Hollywood, so he fixes his imagination on American dream-town numero dose: Vegas. Mel likes poker (but feel free to substitute blackjack, craps or any other standard game here) and is pretty good in his local game. He knows he could beat the system out there, not like those other losers. He gets his stake together, divorces his wife (or brings her along -- as I said, there are a million variations of this tale), packs up the twelve year old Chevrolet and heads to Vegas.

        Mel checks into one of the shabby little rent-by-the-month motel rooms in the downtown area, because he's smart and doesn't plan to waste his stake on fine accommodations. There's plenty of time to move into better digs once he's made his fortune. And then, before even settling in, Mel hits the casinos and finds his poker game.

        And he gets his ass handed to him -- time and time again.

        In a month or two Mel has blown through his stake, losing it in increments to the compassionless, bloodthirsty sharks who ceaselessly patrol the rich hunting grounds of Vegas poker tables, looking for tourists to fleece.

        At this point Mel thinks seriously about admitting defeat, packing up, tucking tail, and heading back home. In fact most Mels, or Bobs, or Wallys are just smart enough to do so. But our particular Mel isn't beaten yet. He thinks, "Okay, I was a little over my head, out of my depth, and naive when I first came out here, but now I've learned my lesson. Now I know the score. And now my poker game has gotten tight. I can win in this town, as soon as I raise another stake." See what just happened? We've just seen the first major weeding out of the real losers and dummies from the general losers and dummies. Those that have at least a wee bit of sense have gone home. The rest stay.

        So now Mel hits on a plan. "Why am I paying good money to stay in a motel room, when I have a perfectly good twelve year old Chevrolet to sleep in? That saves me enough money to put a second stake together, and now that I finally know how to play this game, I'm surely going to make it here now." So Mel checks out of his shabby motel room, starts sleeping in his car, and hits the tables again.

        And he loses his ass again.

        And now we go through our second round of weeding out, this time separating the truly incandescent dummies and losers from the merely great dummies and losers. A new round of defeated dreamers finally admit defeat and slink home at this point. But our Mel is more intrepid than that. "Okay," he says, "It was hard won knowledge, but I've finally figured out this game. All I need is one last stake to make my third and final go at the tables."

        So Mel sells his twelve year old Chevrolet to one of the many scavenger "Get instant cash for your car!" car lots that populate the most desperate areas of this town, like the uncountable packs of jackals that shadow any herd of tasty meat animals. He has one last small stake of cash and this time he really knows what he's doing.

        And you know what happens. He loses it again.

        And now poor Mel is homeless and broke. Does he go home now, at long last? No way. He gets a nowhere job -- perhaps as a night security guard for the same shabby motel he can no longer afford to live in -- and slowly builds up another stake. But this time he uses the money to enter one of the fairly inexpensive dealing schools in town. This time he decides to become a poker (or blackjack or craps or whatever) dealer, so that, even though he's acknowledged by this point that he's a no good degenerate gambler, he can still participate in the great game, and from time to time still play in it.

        And that, my friends, is the talent pool that the Las Vegas gaming industry draws upon to run the great machine. They aren't exactly the cream of the crop. Is this a gross generalization? Of course it is. Any generalization is by definition wrong in many particulars. But keep this in mind: During my year in Vegas, to see if I could actually make it as a professional poker player, the most common excuse I heard for a dealer not being able to make it to his assigned shift was, "I couldn't make bail last night."

        This is what I communicated to the boys and girls back in Austin, following my year in Vegas, "It's such a pool of morons out there, that anyone with even halfway competent skills and a reasonable work ethic will rise up through the ranks and run that town in a year or two."

        And Brad Thomte, to get back to the subject of this essay, was more than halfway competent and his work ethic is just fine -- much better than mine for the most part.

        Starting as a lowly extra-board dealer for one of the smallest poker rooms in the city, Brad steadily rose through the ranks, with a few distractions along the way (this can be a very distracting town), until now, as of December 1, 2008, Brad runs the most prestigious poker room in Las Vegas. Brad has just been made poker room manager (that's above the level of pit boss) of Binions, which is the universally-acknowledged long-time king of poker in Vegas, and therefore in the world. Binions is the place that started the World Poker Series and it's the one place that still gets calls in the middle of the night from folks in Norway and Singapore and Vladivostok to make an official ruling on some disputed action in their home games.

        Basically Brad runs poker in the world.

        He's done some other things, and had some other accomplishments of note, such as being one of the on-air personalities of the Ultimate Poker Challenge, one of the many TV poker shows that haunted every up-the-channel station for a time. And some of you will also recognize Brad as the model for Fables' own Bluebeard. Brad is determined to land the role of Bluebeard, if and when a Fables TV series is ever produced. But all of that pales compared to the fact that he now runs the Binions poker room.

        Basically Brad runs poker in the world.

        And that is just one of the reasons why my friend Brad is not only not another poor Mel Dunderbum, but he's also a truly a Fine Fellow.

This Week's Fine Fellow is...

New York Times Bestselling author Marjorie M Liu is this week's Fine Fellow, most likely because I'm reading one of her books just now and so she's currently on my mind.

        I met her only a short time ago, at the 2008 World's Fantasy Convention in Calgary (lovely town), where she was kind enough to give me several of her books (comped by her publisher to give out to her fans at the show) to read. She introduced herself as a Fables fan at the bar -- which is where most of the convention took place, in the sense that all of the real business of matching writers to publishers, editors and agents is done there. Okay, she reminded me then that we'd also met a bit more briefly at this year's San Diego show, when she came over to introduce herself, but I have a good excuse for not remembering her from that occasion. The San Diego show is a huge affair and I meet hundreds of people there for the first time on any given year. And I try to be on my best public behavior there, which means that breathtakingly beautiful women actually have a strike against them, as far as my remembering them is concerned. This is because, as I said, I'm trying hard to behave. The more heart-stopping you are, the more likely to be quickly scrubbed out of the old memory banks. Besides, Mark Buckingham is the big, shameless flirt at the San Diego show now. He has to be seen to be believed. And oh my, oh dear, oh lordy how he can exude innocence, harmlessness and bashful sincerity -- a talent I could never quite develop with any finesse. Even if I tried to compete, he'd leave me in his dust.

        Sothenanyway, I met Marjorie at the Calgary World's Fantasy Convention and she gave me some of her books to read. I'm in the middle of her first one right now and find myself in awe of her ability to put words together in sparse but entirely engaging and evocative sentences. Look at this line from only the second paragraph in her novel: The world trickled light. If I could craft a sentence so simple and yet so compelling, I'd really have some confidence, now that I seem to be intent on entering the prose fiction trade.

        The book is called Tiger Eye, and it's about what happens when a young woman gets caught up in a world of supernatural danger and intrigue after innocently (she thought at the time) purchasing a demon-filled Chinese riddle box at Beijing's famous Dirt Market.

        Tiger Eye is the first of her Dirk and Steele series, all of which are described (by her or the publisher -- I'm not sure) as paranormal romance thrillers. I'm pretty confident I'll be reading the other books in the series, which include, Book Two: Shadow Touch; Book Three: The Red Heart of Jade; Book Four: Dark Dreamers; Book Five: Eye of Heaven -- and so on, totaling seven books so far in this series, plus books in two or three other series she's started. She's very prolific.

        Confession time: I doubt I would ever have picked up one of Marjorie's books, had I not met her in person. The reason is they're categorized as Romances, which is where they are shelved in bookstores. Though I have no justification for avoiding it, the romance section is an area in bookstores I seldom wander into. Her novels also have traditional-looking romance book covers, which are occasionally a bit off-putting to us mighty manly men. Then again, who knows? I don't carry many biases where good storytelling is concerned. I'm willing to find it anywhere, as too many of my friends will attest, when I try to drag them to wonderful movies that they aren't eager to go to, simply because they fall under the chick-flick rubric. So, in any case, I'm glad I did meet Marjorie Liu in person, because it would have been a shame to miss out on the work of an author this talented due to whatever degree of cultural prejudices I might still possess. I trust you who read this won't make the same mistake.

        Marjorie writes, and as long as she does, I'll continue to read. I believe this more than qualifies her as a truly Fine Fellow.

        If you want to learn more about her -- and there's tons more to learn -- go to her website at: marjoriemliu.com

How does one nominate a Fine Fellow?

This was asked in the comments down below and I thought it best to answer it in its own post, since the Fine Fellow awards are vitally important. The official way to nominate someone -- even yourself -- for the Fine Fellow award is to find some way to do it. Be creative. Style, panache and bravura count for a lot.

This Week's Fine Fellow is...

Every Sunday, as often as I can remember to do it, we're going to post the Fine Fellow of the Week award. This carries on a tradition begun back in my TSR days (they were the publishers of Dungeons and Dragons way back before the company was bought out far too many times, until eventually it seems to have been passed around more often than one of Huggy Bear's -- ahem -- business associates). Those of us who worked in the downtown building, which was where all of the creative side of the D&D business was done, would elect a Fine Fellow every week. Ballot box stuffing was not only allowed, but encouraged.

     So, because I'm all about maintaining personal traditions, we're going to continue the practice here. Note that the Fine Fellow can be either male or female, and actually doesn't even need to be human (a precedent set by Time Magazine when they selected the personal computer as their Man of the Year). Our Fine Fellow can even be fictional.

     In the future, feel free to propose candidates for the weekly Fine Fellow award. You can vote for yourself, you can make any argument in support of your choice that you can imagine (and the most imaginative arguments will be given the most consideration), and if you can find a way to stuff the ballot box in our digital age, then by all means do so.

    This week our inaugural Fine Fellow can be no one else but the merely marvelous Mark Buckingham. Call him Bucky, if you like, not because he fearlessly backed up Captain America back in the big one, only to fall prey to the evil machinations of Baron Zemo (although I wouldn't put it past the always-surprising Mr. Buckingham, esquire), but because it's a nickname he seems to like.

    For those of you who're fans of my long-running Fables funnybook series, he needs no introduction. For everyone else, Bucky is a comic book artist of amazing talent, and smart as a whip. He's introduced so many good ideas to the Fables series that I couldn't begin to list them here. It wouldn't be at all unreasonable for readers to simply assume that any good idea in Fables was quite likely one of his. And Bucky is nice -- arguably the nicest man in comics (although Gene Ha and Zander Cannon could also wrangle a few well-deserved votes in that category -- but they are perhaps Fine Fellow candidates for another time).

    Mark Buckingham, my partner in crime, my friend, and one of the small handful of people I most admire in this world, is an artist without peer, who lives in Spain with his alarmingly lovely wife Irma. He is, in every important respect, a truly fine fellow.

And yes, I am fully aware that this was posted on Saturday, but this was the moment I had a spare moment to attend to this, and seriously, Bucky is such an exemplary Fine Fellow, that he deserves the extra day in office.