AiIP: Proper Author Care

The huge increase in ease of self-publishing- and decrease in cost- has led to a shift, not just in the way books are read and sold, but in the way they are discovered, marketed and promoted. Gone are the days where a select few reviews in periodicals had the power to make a book (although those entities still exist and have power), replaced by a multitude of sites such as this one, and GoodReads, where readers exert tremendous cumulative influence via their own ratings, reviews and promotion.

The Care and Feeding of an Author on Amazon, by Sherry Snider

This, for the record, is a good thing- mostly. It is, of course, open to abuse, but so were the old systems. Many people have no rating system between five stars and one, and will give a two-star review because their devise froze up while they were reading a given book. In the aggregate, though, it's a good thing to see the audience at large being able to sound off on and share books easily.

Which leads to that list to the right, which has made the rounds a couple times in the past months. Some authors love it (most notably those who aren't particularly noteworthy) while others decry it.

So, to be brutally honest with y'all and myself, I am soundly in the 'not noteworthy' camp of author (so far), but I don't agree with the sentiment that anything is owed to the person you just shelled out a few bucks to. If you buy my book (and I most certainly hope you do), here's what I ask from you:

Enjoy it.

If you want to do the rest of the things on that list, I will appreciate it. A lot. Because it will likely lead to more sales, which in turn lead to me writing more, which in turn means I hopefully will be able to write more for you to enjoy. Now, you might not enjoy my book. That's your right, as it would be your right to give it a horrid rating and review. But all I can ask, as an author, is for you to enjoy my book.

However, the people who really benefit from you rating and reviewing it (honestly) is the community at large. With the proliferation of indie works out there of varying quality, reader reviews will serve to guide others to quality work and make that stand out from the static.

It's about more than the care and feeding of an author, but about the literary community as a whole- authors and readers.

Hot Off the Presses

If you've been reading this column for a while, a while back I interviewed SC Harrison, who had a pretty rad fantasy novel out. Well, she's grown up into horror and her first horror release, Planks comes out next month. I will have a review shortly, but holy cow you guys it's so good. So stay tuned for that.

It's already way over-funded, but there is a Kickstarter for The Very Hungry Cthulupillar which I can confidentiality say is the greatest thing ever.

Rolling with Kickstarter, Walk the Fire is a promising SciFi anthology with just a few days and several bucks to go.

Moving across the pond, SciFind is launching a monthly short SF/F/H magazine, or attempting to, and there will be a story from yours truly in it if it gets funded. So not only do you get really good fiction, you get to support my alcoholism writing career.

One last bit of blatant self-promotion, but I have a few bookmarks to give away. I'll be doing a new run before too long, with different art, so if you want the really early stuff, this is pretty much the last chance to get it.

Spurs to Spandex: Why Westerns Died and Superheroes Fly

In his only DVD commentary, which accompanies his 1950 movie Winchester '73, Jimmy Stewart was asked about the enduring popularity of Westerns. In his own words, Stewart answered that he believed the Western was the essential version of the American identity, that it totally encapsulates the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, hard-work-makes-anything-possible American ethos. He believed that to this day we had maintained a frontier mentality, and in retelling the story of the United States' westward expansion we continued to tell stories that spoke meaningfully to our present-day lives. And for that reason, screen legend Jimmy Stewart felt the Western would remain enduringly popular for as long as people made movies.

Sorry, Jimmy.

"Well, this is what I think of YOU!"

For the last decade or more, there's been a new sheriff in town, and he wears spandex instead of spurs. And he can usually fly. And more often than not, he's super-well coiffed and bullets pretty much just bounce off of him. Because he's a superhero. I believe this shift in the genre balance is more meaningful than just a simple evolution of tastes. First, I think Hollywood has yet to understand (but is starting to) that "Superhero" has become an actual genre, and with that comes a tremendous degree of latitude that film executives are still unwilling to exploit, but that a market exists for. But second, and more importantly, I think this evolution in genre preference is actually a response to a much larger cultural shift that has changed the fundamental definition of what it means to be an American.

"Pretty sure I'm still what it means to be American, bud."

In many ways, Westerns and Superhero Movies are identical. They are both action/adventure-oriented stories that 1) celebrate the "individual" as a type/archetype, 2) exist in a reality outside of the audience's own (past/future/alternate present) and so are essentially fantasies, and 3) are primarily concerned with the intersection of violence and power. While some movies are overtly and explicitly concerned with that question (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Spider-Man, for instance), both genres are fundamentally undergirded by the push-pull between violence and power. In the Western, it's your outlaws and scheming land-grabbers pitted against the homesteader or lawman, and both sides are pretty much outfitted with the same gear -- your six-shooter and Henry rifle, or something similar. For Superhero Movies, it is generally the massive, superhuman power of the hero pitted against either the massive, superhuman power or the mechanical product of the massive, superhuman brain of the villain. It's the same struggle, but played out with different toys against a different backdrop. Both sides possess the tools of violence, but the struggle is between whether to use those tools for good or ill.

In the 21st century, then, we prefer our stories about outliers caught up in the battle between good and evil to be clothed in more capes and fewer chaps. More explosions, fewer horses. More stardust, less, well, actual dust. A quick look at BoxOfficeMojo bears this out. The box office-tracking site lists 55 Superhero Movies released since January 1, 2000, and only 32 Westerns in the same time period. That's not a tremendous difference, but take a look at the highest-grossing Western of all time, Dances with Wolves (yep, really), and its lifetime theatrical gross of $184 million. BoxOfficeMojo lists 18 Superhero Movies that have all eclipsed Wolves, all but one of which have come out in the last decade. Dances with Wolves came out 23 years ago. Even adjusted for inflation, there are at least seven Superhero Movies released since Wolves that have left it well in the dust.

If this is the case, if Superhero Movies have established themselves as their own genre and have taken the place of the Western, what does that mean for filmmakers and fans? A lot, naturally, but until the people who greenlight movies are hip to this transformation, we're not going to see much innovation. We can look at the incredible breadth of stories Westerns provided as a possible indicator of things to come. Tables were turned, where we began to see antiheroes and were asked to invest in the story from the "bad guy's" perspective, we saw stories of smaller lives touched by much larger struggles playing out around them, allegories for cultural and religious struggles, broken people forced into the hero mold and asked to do something beyond themselves, fringe voices telling familiar stories in entirely different ways, comedies, etc.

"But wait!" you may be saying, "We've already seen all of that in Superhero Movies!" Right. Because a genre establishes a set of tropes and the storyteller's creativity rearranges those pieces into something new within familiar boundaries. It's what allows audiences to experience something new while also getting exactly what they expected. The hang-up right now is the familiar fear-based decision-making process inside of Hollywood. Until a broader way of looking at this type of movie takes hold, the response you're most likely to get to a new idea (especially if it doesn't involve a pre-existing character, like, say, Stretch Armstrong...or Aquaman) is "Well, didn't such-and-such movie already do that?" I've run into this both as a writer and working in studio development. One case in particular involved a superhero comedy script that a manager sat on because somebody "already did a superhero comedy and it tanked," only to have the script for Kick-Ass come along a few months later and step into that gap.

Is it possible that a Superhero genre isn't large or diverse enough to contain that many stories, though? No. We have 80 years of superhero comics that refute that pretty definitively. Like anything, the quality of the storytelling will usually win out, especially as the market becomes more mature. I do not believe it can become saturated in any real sense, but expectations have to be adjusted. Not every movie with a cape or a costume will make $100 million. Chronicle didn't cost much, didn't have a huge marketing push, but it gave audiences a new twist and did well, despite not coming from a pre-existing property. With successes like that, and with the emergence of independent filmmakers stepping into the waters with films like the little-seen Super, I expect Hollywood will begin experimenting a little more, inasmuch as it ever really allows experimentation.

Why this surge in superhero popularity? After all, we've had superheroes in comic books since the 1930s, and superheroes like Flash Gordon in films since about the same time, but they never enjoyed the same broad-based appeal that they're seeing now. Imagine walking into Bob Evans' office at Paramount in 1972 and pitching The Avengers why don't you? I'll argue that this new swell in popularity is because the Superhero story, much more than the Western, has become the quintessential American story for today's audience. This is the genre -- for all of its fantasy -- that speaks most directly to our lives today.

"They're going to make him some shawarma he can't refuse."

It comes down to how we answer one, giant question: What really is the American Dream? As far back as Fitzgerald, we pretty much knew it wasn't simply amassing great gobs of money (although a few years after Gatsby we'd face a long American Nightmare when great gobs of money suddenly evaporated, and then we'd do it all over again 90 years later). The Declaration of Independence outlines the familiar "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," where the emphasis is on one's ability to pursue something that might make them happy without facing barriers based on race, creed, or color. We've done a pretty shaky job of that in the last 250 years, though, and these days people have pretty much figured that out. If that version of the American Dream has become so mist-enshrouded and distant that it may as well be a literal dream for all but a very few Americans, then what has taken its place? Hard work doesn't pay off like it used to. Many of the hardest working people in this country can barely keep a roof over their heads, and people who have played by the rules and "done everything right" can find themselves out of work for years and unable to repay medical or student loan debts.

Superheroes tend to have a couple of things in common: they exist in a primarily urban landscape, and they believe in magic. Just like their audiences. As a culture, we are far more likely to believe in magic today than in hard work, and not without reason. Sut Jhally, one of the foremost media scholars in the U.S., really doesn't like advertising. In Advertising and the End of the World he argues persuasively that the entire consumerist model is based on a belief in the magically transformative abilities of products. Listen up, guys, drinking poor, mass-produced beer will make beautiful women attracted to you. Buying this or that article of clothing or car will make your sad, dull life exciting and fresh! This bottle of household cleaner will unleash a muscular bald man who will scrub your floors! You get it, you've seen TV.

But reality has begun to approximate this magical aspect of our daily narrative. Peter Parker, Steve Rogers, Harry Potter, Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson, Snooki, and all of the Kardashians share one thing in common: they were unknown, regular people who had something inside of them just waiting to be discovered and exploited on a larger stage. They were destined for greatness. We watch reality TV and Superhero Movies wishing that someone would see past our own humble situations, recognize our latent talent or nobility, and lift us out of our everyday lives. I mean, tell me that there's no magic in a world where a woman can make a sex tape with a mediocre rapper and then become so much more famous than that rapper that the entire rest of her family becomes famous. Tell me that's not magic.

This one. This one is like, the most famous one ever.

I don't think there's an antidote to this type of thinking, any more than there was an antidote to the glorification of a genocidal period of national history. In time, we become more educated, we perceive more of reality, or different aspects of it, and these observations inform our view of ourselves, both individually and collectively. We then seek out stories that speak to us. Today, and for some unknown period of time stretching out ahead of us, those stories will involve gods and goddesses...er, I mean knights, er...cowboys and Indians?

Oh, right. Superheroes.

There is probably a much better, longer, and more fully researched and articulated version of this idea that I could've written if I'd had a bunch of time, but you do what you can.

Microreview [book]: Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan

Brian McClellan, Promise of Blood [Orbit, 2013]

The Meat

If ever a title gives away the contents of the book, it's this one. Brian McLellan promises blood, and blood he delivers in spades. 

The story begins with a coup d'etat (straight out of the French Revolution, with all its attendant savagery and gore). In a bold move, Field Marshal Tamas, a powerful powder mage, (literally) guillotines the monarchy and kills off the corrupt cabal of sorcerers who upheld the King's rule. Tamas and his small cadre of powder mages overthrow the political system, leading Tamas to declare "The Age of Kings is dead... and I have killed it." But his great victory is haunted by a counterrevolution, internecine struggle, and an important but nebulous mystery: in their dying breaths, each member of the royal cabal Tamas had assassinated whispered, "You can't break Kresimir's curse." Worried about the implications of their dying message, Tamas sends Adamat, a police investigator with a special Knack of a perfect memory, to investigate. At the same time, Tamas also sends his son Taniel (a talented powder mage accompanied by a "savage" girl, Ka-Poel) to track down an uncommonly powerful member of the royal cabal who escaped assassination. Gradually, Tamas begins to realize that his revolution has triggered a series of events that may change the world forever. 

Promise of Blood is Brian McClellan's debut novel and the first book in his Powder Mage Trilogy. It is on the whole a fast-paced, enjoyable, and well-written dark fantasy, one that finds similarities not only with Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series, but also with the recent trend of grit or grimdark in high fantasy.  The sheer brutality featured in Promise of Blood at times reminded me of Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy. Thus fans of the grittier turn in the genre will find much to appreciate in McClellan's debut.

One of the most interesting aspects of this book is its three overlapping magic systems. First, powder magic. With this, McClellan is taking a page (or a chapter) from Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series. The similarities with Mistborn's allomancy are striking. Powder mages can consume gunpowder, which gives them heightened abilities and senses and dulls pain. Powder mages can use their magic to explode gunpowder, float bullets, curve them around difficult to reach areas, and aim with superb accuracy. Second, the Else. This is a more traditional magic used by members of the royal cabal and the Predeii. It involves manipulating "the Else," the energy that surrounds us in our world. And sorcerers must put on their special rune-based gloves in order to do so. These first two overlapping magic systems create an interesting tension between the upstart powder mages and their traditional royal cabal rivals. Third, voodoo...? Ka-Poel, the "savage" who accompanies Taniel, uses a special type of magic (that McClellan leaves unexplained) that involves the use of dolls and other organic elements associated with voodoo.

McClellan is firmly entrenching himself in the "grittier," darker tradition of recent fantasy, and at times it feels as if his writing uses brutality for no other purpose than shock value. Now I am not opposed to brutality, gore, and death. I have had no difficulty getting through even the most brutal scenes of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen... after all, the brutality in those books serves an overall purpose. But at times, Promise of Blood seems to use violence for shock value. This is something we at Nerds of a Feather have complained about in the past (I won't belabor this point, but if you are interested see here). McClellan's weird fascination with severed fingers, in particular, highlights this point.

Promise of Blood also suffers from rather weak treatment of women. Adamat highlights his world's pervasive misogyny when he thinks: "Damned woman. What he'd give for an obedient wife." This is not a problem in itself. People can be misogynistic in the real world, so it is understandable that characters in a fantasy world may be as well. But McClellan does not complicate his world's misogyny through the introduction of nuanced and strong female characters. Granted, his female characters (the Predeii and Ka-Poel) wield perhaps the most powerful magics. But his female protagonists (and antagonists) all are annoyingly weak in some way, have sordid pasts, or lust for power. Nila is a weak and indecisive maid/laundress, one who keeps finding herself thrust into situations she cannot influence. Vlora, Taniel's fiancee, is talented in powder magic, but weak in resolve (she cheats on him before the story begins) and spends most of the time off camera. And Ka-Poel may be powerful as well, but she underwent unspeakable abuse in her past, abuse from which Taniel saved her.  

Finally, the story seems to wander at times, and not all the story arcs fit together. The Nila story arc, in particular, feels directionless, lacks sufficient tension, and does not fit with the book's overall tenor. I suspect that Nila will play a much broader role in the upcoming books, but her story fell flat in this first volume.

In the end, McClellan has crafted a new fantasy series that will appeal to (and will find a strong audience in) young male readers. Although it remains to be seen where he will take his Powder Mage Trilogy, I doubt that I will stay on for the ride.      

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for his interesting and overlapping magic systems; +1 for Adom.

Penalties: -1 for a pervasive misogyny; -1 for his weird fascination with severed fingers; -1 for the Nila story arc.

Nerd Coefficient: 5/10 "equal parts good and bad"

Read about our scoring system here. And remember, we categorically reject grade inflation! 

Mobile: Zen Pinball HD

small ball

If it wasn't obvious from the title, we're going small this week in the gaming sector. Handheld, to be specific. Zen Pinball HD is a mobile game available for free in both the Apple and Android Play Stores. Pinball is a game that is tailor-made for mobile control schemes. It's easy because there are only two buttons, left and right. There's no getting shot to death while you try to find the 'right' button with your thumb. Tap the screen in the bottom left corner, the left flipper(s) go off. Tap the screen in the bottom right corner, the right flipper(s) go off. Simple, right?

freebie

Zen Pinball HD comes free with a pretty fun game called Sorcerer's Lair (seen above). If you manage to get a ball up to the sorcerer, he vaporizes it with, I'm assuming, sorcery. There are multi-ball portions once you've plugged enough balls into a particular hole (I know, I know, but you think of a better way to say it!). Ghosts appear at one point that you must defeat in a period of time for a bonus by rolling them over with the pinball. There are even some mini-games that I only half understand. Something about gears and a green ball? Anyway, for a free game, I haven't played a better mobile pinball app. 

this is how they getcha!

Although I'm sure it came as a great shock to you, dear readers, they also offer add-on tables for $1.99 each. I'm a Star Wars nut and I was unable to withstand the Dark Side. I was born the same week Star Wars Episode IV came out so I really didn't have a choice in the matter. I'm the definition of a Star Wars baby. Short story long, I bought the Episode V: Empire Strikes Back table and the Boba Fett table. All I've done is play these games for the last two weeks. I've turned off my 360 just to play this game, which is rare for me with mobile apps. Zen Pinball also offers Star Wars: The Clone Wars for fans of the newer movies. I probably enjoyed them more than most people, but even a die-hard fan like me knows the first three movies were better.

They also boast several tables based on Marvel characters including Thor, Wolverine, the Hulk (or the Credible In-Honk as I referred to him at the tender age of 3), X-Men, Avengers, Captain America, Ghost Rider, and then a few others I didn't recognize. My point is, you could end up blowing almost fifty dollars on tables if your habit is bad enough. I may end up grabbing Wolverine and Hulk once I've mastered Empire and Boba Fett.

episode V: the empire strikes back

The Empire Strikes Back table has tons of references to the consensus best of the Star Wars films. If you manage to put the pinball through a door in the middle of the table five times, one for each letter (V-A-D-E-R), Darth will rise up out of the table and roll off quotes from the movie. "Join me, and together we can rule the universe as father and son." If you hit the pinball at him, he quickly dispatches it with his light saber. 

If you manage to hit certain spots enough times, you're offered six different story lines that bring up memorable parts of the movie. One scene brings out asteroids and two tie fighters that fly around shooting at your pinball. Another has Yoda training Luke by doing a handstand while lifting rocks with the Force. A third brings out a storm trooper who fires at your ball with a blaster. For fans of the movie, each one brings back fond memories of George Lucas' classic film. On top of that, it's a top-notch pinball game that's as good as any real-world table that I've played. 

boba fett

The Boba Fett table could also be called Return of the Jedi, although there are a few quotes sampled from Episodes I-III. At the top of the table is the Sarlacc pit. Shooting three balls into Slave I, Boba Fett's ship, will bring on multi-ball. You start the game with one missile, but by increasing your score you can gain more. These are fired by Boba Fett at one of the "job" spots. By hitting these you take on a bounty and have to hit specific spots to complete the job. 

Boba constantly flies around the table using his jetpack. He does his best to avoid being hit by the pinballs. He also fires at your ball as it rolls around the table, but unlike Vader's light saber, it doesn't destroy the balls. As you can see above, one of the "spinners" on the table is Han Solo frozen in carbonite as he appeared as Jabba's finest decoration in his palace. Jabba sits in the upper-right corner of the table and also appears in a cutscene when you're given a bounty job, again drawing direct connections with Return of the Jedi. I still haven't managed to get the Sarlacc pit to pull Fett down as it is doing in the above picture, but I'm not going to stop until I get it to happen! 

the breakdown

I'm not the biggest mobile gamer in the world. I usually prefer my Xbox 360 to my GS3 for gaming, for obvious reasons. The Samsung has a nice, big screen, but it pales in comparison to my 50-inch HDTV, nevermind the difference in controller abilities. However, every once in a while a mobile title grabs a hold of me and won't let go. Zen Pinball HD, especially the Star Wars tables, have done just that. I'm a big fan of real-world pinball and I plan to have several tables in my house once I'm rich and famous. Until that day comes, Zen Pinball HD is a pretty good substitute. If you're looking for a fun mobile option other than Angry Birds and Temple Run, try out the Zen Pinball HD free table. But don't come crying to me if you end up spending a bunch of money on their other 22 pay tables. That's on you. 

the math

Objective score: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for the realistic physics that recreate the experience of playing real-world pinball tables very well. +1 for such a large number of table options, especially the multiple Star Wars tables.

Penalties: -1 for charging two bucks for each new table. It's not that I don't think they're worth it. It's just a bit high when compared to the average price of most mobile titles, especially when you consider you can spend nearly $50 to buy all the available tables. I could see some mad parents out there reprimanding their kids when they get the phone bill.

Nerd coefficient: 8/10. Well worth your time and attention. 

Man...or Astroman? (And some stuff about the nineties, Bakersfield, and sci-fi)

In lieu of the review of something or other that I had planned for today, I’m going to take this opportunity to promote Man…or Astroman?’s show at The Echo tonight. If you’re in Los Angeles, if you’re a nerd who likes good music, you should be going to the show.

But I’ve got to write more than something this. Promoting the show tonight does not qualify as a “substantive post,” which is the name of the game around here.

I grew up in the shadow of Los Angeles: Bakersfield, California. If you grew up in Southern California, or have lived here long enough to have driven to Las Vegas, you have passed through Bakersfield. Passed through and not stopped.

Though my friends and I—all transplants from Bakersfield to LA—will talk about our upbringings as culturally deprived, Bakersfield wasn’t that bad of a place. But there were three reasons for which you would go to LA. Partying. Shows. Shopping.

By shopping I mean comics and music. Though Bakersfield had a few semi-decent records stores and a comic shop that’d let you order from Previews, these places couldn’t offer what Golden Apple or Amoeba did: The possibility of discovery!

This is how I came across Man..or Astoman? A friend of mine was going to UCLA at the time. I would come as often as possible—which, sans car, was not very often. We’d drink beer in Westwood all night and shop all day. On one of these weekends, I picked up the band’s second album, Project Infinity, at Aaron’s Records. I had never even heard the band’s name at this point. Plus, it was vinyl, which was a rare buy for me. (CDs. It was the ‘90s.) But there was something about the Kirbyesque, retro-future cover that drew me in.

That album changed my life. It turned me on to surf rock, which caused me to become a half-assed guitarist. Since Man…or Astroman? was associated with two music scenes—surf/garage (the Mummies, Untamed Youth, Los Straightjackets) and the weirder, lesser know Southern indie scene of the time (Servotron, The Causey Way, Rock*A*Teens)—I soon found a world of music in that dismal era between grunge and whatever the kids listen to these days. Much of this new music caused me to become a half-assed computer musician. The band also drove my internet use in the days of AOL. The listserv devoted to the group comprised 50% of my online activity. Let's not get into the other half.

The album also turned me onto sci-fi imagery and themes. Not reading sci-fi novels or anything like that. Just the imagery.

Why sci-fi? So many of these bands had B-movie back stories: Supernova and Servotron, as well as Man or Asrtoman? Why was science fiction theatrics and imagery so appealing? I can’t speak for the band—my guess is that they’re nerds. And I can’t really speak for myself either. I had never been a sci-fi fan. I grew up reading Marvel Comics, but when I started reading novels as a teen, I choose horror and crime instead of sci-fi and fantasy that many drift toward. I had never sat through an episode of Star Trek, I never read Ender’s Game. I worshipped at the altar of Star Wars as a kid, but back then few kids did not.

But despite my lack of interest in sci-fi, Man or Astroman?’s thematics appealed to me, as did Mystery Science Theater and Michael Allred’s Madman. It was retro-futurism, the camp of the sci-fi of the fifties and sixties, particularly the movies. There is something wonderfully naïve in these films, naïve because history had proven their fears of nuclear annihilation unwarranted. But there’s also an optimism, a belief that the future would be wonderful, society perfected. Jetpacks. If World War 3 didn’t interrupt progress.

In the nineties—the era of sarcasm and the death of the definition of “irony”—this naïve optimism contrasted sharply with our own too-cool disillusionment with modernity, with even post-modernity. We had come to the end of history, and found it that it sucked. The nineties had little of today’s triumphalism, the constant lauding of how awesome and connected things are today. Networks and such. This is an era that has little time for the past. The past is still mined—we’ve gone through the eighties over the last few years—without the conscious, often celebratory nostalgia that accompanied nineties retro. Is anyone actually looking longingly at the eighties? Nineties surf bands with sci-fi personas was an homage to a simpler time. Granted we looked pretty condescendingly on the past we adored—we were being sarcastic, after all—but it was that hopefulness, the youthful optimism of the early sixties that appealed to us. It was the opposite of our present, it was a world of beach parties and favorite Martians.

Plus, retro sci-fi is available. It's imagery we all recognize: flying saucers, rayguns, aliens with huge heads. No one has actually seen Robot Monster, but we all know the film's moronic monster. Vance has probably seen Robot Monster. 

I guess what I am trying to say is that I miss the nineties. Tonight, Man…or Astroman? will give me a brief moment of nostalgia of a nostalgic moment. Or they will more likely make me feel old.

I did read the reprints of Weird Science and Weird Fantasy as a kid, which I preferred over EC’s horror books. That probably explains the appeal of Project Infinity’s cover.

Thursday Morning Superhero

Another week of comics has arrived and I did my best to round-up what comics I am reading and my impressions of said comics.  This week felt a little slow, but there were still quite a few good books in the mix.  The Walking Dead is fast approaching a boiling point, Batman reached the end of a short arc, and Artful Daggers continues to impress.  Without further ado, it is time for Thursday Morning Superhero.

Pick of the Week:

Batman #20 - Scott Snyder wraps up the short Clayface arc in entertaining fashion.  With nods to Star Wars, and Batman Beyond, Batman finally takes down Clayface version 2.0.  There are some twists and turns throughout the issue, but ultimately Batman succeeds in taking down his foe and clearing the name of Bruce Wayne.  Snyder continues to dazzle with Batman and I can't wait for the next major arc.

The Rest:

Artful Daggers #3 - Available from Monkey Brain Comics on ComiXology, this creator owned title continues to impress.  Things begin to come together in issue three and you start to understand the political game various individuals are playing.  The story has me intrigued and the art is like nothing I have ever seen.  Well worth the $.99 an issue!

Walking Dead #110 - The assault on Negan and his men gets nearer as Rick and his crew make their way to the kingdom.  Not too much happens, but the scene at the end between Michonne and Ezekiel reminds me why this title is so special.

Deadpool #9 - Deadpool continues his quest to appease the demon named Vetis by killing those who sold their souls for superpowers.  In this issue he takes down one who traded his soul in order to breath underwater, but in the next issue Deadpool may be turning his sights to one of his own.

Microreview [book]: Gods and Monsters: Unclean Spirits, by Chuck Wendig

The Meat

Is there a God? Or perhaps there are many? Is death The End? If, on the other hand, a Supreme Being(s) exists, what implications does that have for our human existence? We've all wondered about it. Is there an arbiter of my earthly conduct, who, like Anubis, will weigh my soul and determine if I am feather-light and bound for the celestial realms or heavy with transgression and in for some good old fashioned torment? How would our behavior change (if at all!) if we could know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that such a being is up there somewhere—and is watching? Well, Chuck Wendig has an answer, albeit a playful but gritty urban fantastical one: kill as many of those supernatural scumbags as possible!

Almost from page one, we can sense that there's something unusual about the world Wendig presents, and very quickly, we figure out just what that nagging something is: in this (dystopian!) universe, the gods and monsters are all too real, and all too horrible. In fact, the line between god and monster ends up being pretty thin/bordering on nonexistent, and everywhere the capriciousness of the gods as described, say, in Ovid's Metamorphosis, each with his (or, significantly, her) all too human failings like jealousy, petty rivalries, and totally gratuitous cruelty, is on display. Easy enough, then, to get behind the little vendetta Cason Cole (who is about as estranged from his wife and kid as it is possible to be, really) and his mysterious ally Frank (who has more scar tissue than face) launch against these supernatural jerks, because after all, students of Greek mytho-history, for example, universally long to administer a flying elbow on someone like Aphrodite for instigating the Trojan War. No trouble at all to get into the mindset that giving gods a thorough beat-down is probably a good idea.

But gods must be incredibly tough to kill, right? Well...apparently not, since each has a fatal weakness to a specific substance which human mythology, rather handily, has recorded in some way, shape or form. Plus it's suggested that strong gods can apparently smite wimpy gods without much effort, and refrain from doing so solely out of class solidarity. It's all a little pat, but I'm prepared to forgive Wendig this Superman-esque Kryptonite copout.

Any of this sounding familiar? A story about a tough as nails man with some grade-A family problems who encounters gods and whatnot and soon realizes he can a) hold his own against them, and even better b) play them off against each other, but c) might himself not be quite as ordinary as he seems? Yeah, that's ringing an American Gods-shaped bell loud and clear, and unfortunately Wendig hasn't really moved out of Neil Gaiman's giant shadow here.

American Gods and Monsters, by Nuck Wendigan--no, wait a minute...

 On the other hand, there are far worse places to be, stylistically and even creatively speaking, than in the shadow of Gaiman's greatness, so while he loses points for reproducing a story similar enough to that of American Gods that the P-word popped into my head, Wendig has produced quite an entertaining novel here. It may lack Gaiman's effortless pithiness and thought-provoking philosophical overtones, perhaps (Gaiman is British, after all, and everyone knows those guys have the Midas touch when writing), but it's still a page-turner that grabs you at the beginning and keeps a vice-like grip on your attention till the end (even though by the end, the similarities between Shadow, from American Gods, and Wendig's protagonist Cason are getting pretty extreme).

 Wendig—rather boldly, I would say—also indirectly includes the Christian God and angels (including the fallen ones) in his story, suggesting they're simply part of the vast pantheon of human belief, though there's no fistfight between Cason and God, sad to say. Unlike Gaiman, Wendig never comes right out and explains the mechanism, as it were, behind the gods' existence—whether they exist and draw power solely from human faith, or if their existence is independent of human action—which is kind of a problem, since the world he's created consequently lacks the clarity of Gaiman's vision, in which gods' power and very existence are dependent on human worship and belief. In Wendig's view, why are some gods stronger than others? This is one mystery that is never explained.

Regardless, if the standard of a novel's success is how entertained the reader feels while reading and what kind of mental aftertaste the story leaves, Wendig has done his job well indeed!

The Math

Baseline score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for the awesome line "the ants weigh more than the elephants", + 1 for creating a vivid, gritty world where a tough guy battles it out with the gods

Penalties: -2 for coming perilously close to copying American Gods in the process, and -1 for not being as good as said masterwork (which you should read!)

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10    A mostly enjoyable experience

[This is quite a high score by our rigorous standards!]