Flame Tree Fiction

We see movie posters almost every day. They may pique the interest, or remind you of a film you had forgotten you wanted to see. It's this upfront, direct form of marketing that connects with audiences, often working in tandem with the trailers - either as a gateway for first time viewers or as a reminder of a trailer they liked. Combining to make sure the presence of a movie endures in one's mind up to the point of release.

Our upcoming title How To Draw Manga: Made Easy is packed with helpful tips from a range of professional artists working in the industry. Today you can preview some of the expert advice on offer, with a quick look at basic page layouts.

Rounding off our mini-series on Gothic Fantasy Origins, today we take a closer look at Science Fiction.

Influenced by the gothic fiction tradition, ghost stories have long captivated audiences and readers, with ghostly beings so often fascinating precisely because of their ability to elude definition: obscurity and intrigue are necessary for the realm of ‘ghostliness’, and set ablaze the imagination as a result. Anything ‘supernatural’ seems at once displaced from yet close to reality, and it is this small shift, similar to Freud’s ‘uncanny’, which is so unsettling. The Victorian era – the supposed ‘golden age’ of the ghost story – lent itself well to the form. Roger Clarke (author of A Natural History of Ghosts: 500 Years of Hunting for Proof) has put this down to a number of reasons – such as it being the era of flickering gaslamps with possible hallucinogenic properties, an era also of large stately homes, with secret passageways for servants to flit through unseen by the guests of the house. This is also an age when representations of reality could be popularly captured through photography, giving rise to ‘spirit photography’ that distorted the reality captured in eerie and, at the time, convincing ways. We’re adding to our range of classic gothic novels with a series on short stories, and today’s blog will take an overview of ghost stories in particular, trying to snatch a glimpse of those many elusive ghosts that have graced pages in history. 

In our first blog of a new mini series, we take a look at the first gothic horror stories. We'll cover the origins, influences, and most significant figures in the genre, casting light into one of the darkest fiction genres out there.

The internet melted this weekend. The trailer for Zack Snyder's Superman v Batman was leaked and even though the quality was grainy and a little hard to hear, comic and sci-fi fans worldwide rejoiced. 

UPDATE: 2015 SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO SUBMITTED. 2016 SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN.

One thing struck me after my intial excitement waned for the Batman v. Superman trailer that was leaked last week. It was the repetition of the suffix 'man'. Once you start saying it over and over it starts to become really noticable. BatMAN, SuperMAN, BatMAN, SuperMAN, MAN, MAN, MAN. 

What are the repurcussions of excessive power? Superhero films have lately opted for darker storylines: Man of Steel's final battle left Metroplis in ruins, with surely thousands of citizens dead. Equally Avengers Assemble's final set piece destroyed most of New York. One may wonder if the same levels of destruction will be found in the sequel. 

With the new movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron about to hit cinemas tomorrow, we thought we'd take a look at the epic might of superhero movie sequels, reboots and their general appeal to the public.