Time Masters: Vanishing Point

Amazing. 20 years after DC made a spectacular blotched job with a similarly-titled limited series, there seems to be no pressure to do it right this time at all. If anything, Time Masters appears to have become the stamp for cynically-written comics, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I dare anyone to find a redemptive quality in this book. The time travellers brought together by Rip Hunter now include superheroes Booster Gold, Superman, and Green Lantern. That’s a seismic shift in job qualification, but don’t let it fool you. The quest remains equally meaningless on an epic scale at every turn. There’s consistency.

Time Masters

Following the highly entertaining 2006-2007 series 52, some pretty strange decisions were made at DC’s Head Office. One of these was to reprint Bob Wayne and Lewis Shiner’s 8-issue Time Masters from 1990. I guess everything from its archives will eventually get at least one round of re-release, and it does make business sense to cash in on a character who has recently found mass appeal again. But that’s as much excuse as I can generate for this 2008 appearance of the best-forgotten series.

Untitled 6

This Singlish love poem was composed and read on the spot in response to a challenge issued during a closing debate at Singapore Writers Festival 2011.

Gweek’s Writing Tips

This piece was written for and first published by the Writing the City project, an initiative of the British Council of Singapore. A portion was then read on the radio channel 93.8 Live on 4 December 2011.

Gweek Tells Tales a Year Later!

The following keynote speech “What is a Story?” was read at the Telltale Symposium held at the St Joseph’s Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus on 8 September 2011. The event saw the launch of Dennis Yeo’s study companion to Telltale: Eleven Stories (2010). This speech is also available at Scribd.com.

Learning to Adapt

This review of Dave Chua and Koh Hong Teng’s Gone Case appeared in S/PORES, Volume 9 (2011).

Solomon Grundy — Singapore Version

This poem appeared as a Facebook note on 10 May 2011 in the aftermath of Singapore’s General Elections.