A Descent into Dullness

Only three free-range short pieces for September.  The GOON Squad Summer Special 2014 by Jonathan L. Howard is several short shorts showcasing brief interludes for the main characters of his "GOON Squad" series.  Kendare Blake's When Gods & Vampires Roamed Miami has a retired goddess being mistaken for a vampire by would-be child-of-the-night.  And finally Lavie Tidhar's Selfie is a quick little horror piece involving a cell-phone haunt...

Of Limited Loyalty is the second of Michael Stackpole's "Crown Colonies" books, an alt history of the American Revolution with magic and dragons and necromantic pre-human races.  Well building up to the American Revolution.at least...

Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings and Words of Radiance are the first two of his "Stormlight Archive" books.  Where he goes all-out for the Big Epic Fantasy, with these being the first of a ten-book series, as well as having them tie-in to a many worlds "Cosmere" setting that seems to involve the majority of his other fiction.  Sanderson delivers perfectly on the Epic Fantasy with a sprawling cast, betrayals, mysteries and of course plenty of Big Damn Hero moments for his leads...

C.M. Priest's Maplecroft takes the Lizzie Borden story drops it into a Call of Cthulu campaign.  Let us just say that she had some very defensible reasons for taking an axe to her father and stepmother...

Seanan McGuire continues her "Tobey Daye" series with the Winter Long.  Where someone thought dead returns, old alliances and friendships are shaken and beliefs about her enemies motivations are torn down...

It has been many years since I'd last read Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle and I'd forgotten how really, really good it was...

Conservation of Shadow is a collection of scifi and fantasy stories by Yoon Ha Lee.  All heavy on the metaphor and stylistic reintirpitation of South Asian history...

Arianne "Tex" Thompson's One NIght in Sixes is another alternate American history.  This time with her fantasy setting being the American Old West and a dangerous border town...

Stephen Baxter's Stone Spring has an interesting setting, a lush forested area now under the waters of the North Sea.  But his prehistoric peoples can kind of be summed up by saying life was short and often brutal and everything smelled like farts.  I just couldn't invest myself in any of his characters...

Orbus is another of Neal Asher's "Polity" books with increased focus on the alien Prador and dangerous secrets revealed on the history of the world of Spatterjay.  Plus lots of high end scifi gun fights...

Carla Speed McNeal's latest "Finder" trade is mostly a collection of the shorter pieces she did for Dark Horse Presents.  But Finder: Third World includes a few new sections, plus her usual in-depth footnoting and, BONUS, all in color...

Patrick Weekes follows up his delightful fantasy/caper book, the Palace Job, with the Prophecy Con.  The sequel also manages to both be a Epic Stakes fantasy story as well as a fast-paced caper story...

Dis Enchanted by Robert Kroese is a moderately entertaining fantasy story that wants to be a boffo fantasy comedy.  It was a cheap e-book and a fairly quick read...

Total Books: 14

Oh right, bought comics this week didn't I?

Starting with the finale to the current Lobster Johnson mini, Lobster Johnson: the Burning Hand which has a trap involving cannibal sewer zombies...

And a new Dark Horse Presents. Some Finder and Cal McDonald as well as a new Nexus and Aliens story...

And from the pages of DHP comes the first issue of Resident Alien where an alien pretending to be a retired doctor is pulled into a small town's murder mystery...

The two main stories in the current Knights of the Dinner Table are more of the UT+2 vs. Knobby Foote and Weird Pete's journey into the non-sanctioned Hackmaster game scene...

Prophet is..still Prophet. Hard to explain but one of the coolest and most interesting scifi stories out there...

And finally the Unwritten begins its next big story, starting off with an arc called "the Wound" and involving the Cult of Tommy Taylor, missing persons and an Australian cop...

So by now anyone interested has probably already heard about the alterations made to the Amazons in Wonder Woman. So we'll just ignore that and just mention that the designs for Eros and Hephasteus are very nice...

Thunderbolts steps away from the time-lost story and follows Songbird as she goes on vacation. And then things get all creepy for a bit...

Prophet finishes up its first arc with John Prophet making it onto the G.O.D. satellite and completing the mission he was awakened for...

And lastly a new Dark Horse Presents. This issue sees the return of Carla Speed McNeil and "Finder", the end of Brian Wood's "Massive" preview (and damn but how many ongoing projects does Wood have at this point), some Steve Niles' "Criminal Macabre", a short story by Andrew Vachhs illustrated by Geof Darrow and that Tarzan in the Future serial. Plus a bunch of stuff I'll forget in a bit. Oh and some violent crazyness from Evan Dorkin. Not to my taste, but worth noting for those who are fans of "Milk & Cheese" and his similar work...

A relatively large pull this week, with Marvel seeming to decide to double down for the month. Starting with a 163.1 issue for Thunderbolts. The placement of these .1 introductory issues seems pretty random. But Parker manages to put together both a recap on the series and a fairly solid issue for the ongoing story. A brief Spider-Man cameo even serves to highlight how well Parker is at capturing individual and distinctive characterization...

Next up is a sort-of finale for Heroes for Hire. With Moon Knight, Silver Sable, Paladin and Stingray all being brought in to revisit the Hook drug trade. Leading to a well done appearance by Namor. After this the book moves to being a Spider-Island tie-in mini or one-shot. And then its due to return as Villains For Hire. Though I'm unsure how much Marvel really needs two bad guys as protagonist books...

And then, just one week after the last issue, another perfectly executed Daredevil from Waid and and artist Marcos Martin. This issue Matt fights a couple of lions...

Picked up two nuDC books this week. First off the new Blue Beetle. I've never been a big fan of writer Tony Bedard. Nothing negative, he was just always one of those guys writing a couple C-list books that I didn't follow. But I've got to say that, so far anyway, he's managed to recapture what made the original John Rogers run so good. And still add some personal touches as the book relaunches as a clean reboot. And artist Ig Guara is not too shabby either...

I also picked up the new Wonder Woman on the strength of Brian Azzarello writing and Cliff Chiang on art. Azzarello seems to be doing a more urban fantasy/horror take on the concept. The bit with the summoning of a pair of monster assassins is especially creepy...

On a lighter note a new Darkwing Duck finishes up the election story line. With Dark and his allies taking down the apparent master mind behind the recent super-villain attacks. Or have they?

And finally an especially strong fourth issue of Dark Horse Presents. No Concrete, but still a great Finder short and another solid episode of Chaykin's crime noir Marked Man. AND a new Beasts of Burden story, the start of a new supernatural thrillers Criminal Macabre and the Adventures of Dog Mendonca and Pizzboy. PLUS a brief but gorgeous Age of Reptiles piece. Really, this is the best issue so far of this new volume...

A very light week with only a single pull. But I did finally get the Empowered one-shot from a couple weeks back that was underordered. Full of the God Damned Maidman action...

Also a 2nd issue for the new Dark Horse Presents. Honestly I'd be almost willing to pay the eight bucks just for the eight new color pages for Carla Speed McNeil's Finder. But its also got some new Concrete, an interesting crime story written and drawn by Howard Chaykin and the odd but cute Snow Angel by David Chelsea. Plus some other stuff of varying quality...

And the one pull item is a double-sized Thunderbolts that is more fall-out from the "Fear Itself" event. Concentrating on members of both teams mostly doing search & rescue combined with containment in the smashed up Raft prison...

I'm sure its still Sunday somewhere. Hawai'i maybe...



Finder: Dream Sequence by Carla Speed McNeil

I was actually going to cover Volume 5 of Finder a couple weeks back. But I decided I needed to reread it again. Mostly because, even more than previous volumes, this a pretty imagery dense story arc. Plus I hadn't realized that it was supposed to be around THREE decades after Talisman. Thats important. This is also probably the volume that Jaeger is only tangentially involved in. Even more than Talisman where he's mostly memory and metaphor...

Dream Sequence is about virtual worlds and world building and avoiding your problems. Also conquering your darker "demon" side so that you can make-out with it. And the difficulties with artists working for corporations and for corporations based around artists. Really lots and lots of trippy, thought-provoking stuff. Like all arcs of Finder...

Honestly every time someone complains about how all comics is anymore is super-heroes and how that genre ate all the other genres I just want to hit them with some of McNeil's books. Among others. But Finder falls in any Top 10 List of Comics That Have Damn All To Do With Super-Heroes. If you think the medium of comics is stagnated by the super-hero genre than you obviously need to step away from the Big Two and read something else. And Finder is a great place to start...

Oh and to you people who DO read indy books and complain constantly how no one pays attention to the "art"? Well you'll be hard pressed to find a series thats more artistically daring and awesome than Finder as well...

( More of Jimmy's thoughtful responses )

So to give the many who couldn't care less about my attempts to create an internet feud, lets talk about comics that have moved to the web. Namely Girl Genius and Finder. Both the Foglio's and Carla Speed McNeil made the decision to move their print comics to web only versions. And then make their money selling trades. Now for McNeil I haven't heard how well thats working. But for the Foglio's everything I've read seems to indicate it was a HUGELY successful move for them...

Plus of course both are great books. Girl Genius was moving a little slow of late, but then it kicked it back up a notch with Gilgamesh's recent showing of Utter Bad-Assery. If you enjoy Steampunk style settings, then hopefully you're already a fan. If you're not, you should go now and check this comic out...

Finder was always a difficult book to describe. Its SciFi, and the setting seems to be one of those Far Future ones where Human society is barely recognizable from its current state. But its mostly about a man named Jaeger who is a former soldier, sin-eater, tracker and general ittirent charming rogue. And also about a family he got himself involved with that lives in one of the large cities. Heres an intro page. I own the first four trades for the book, all based off an odd-issue I once got for free at a con. The series hooked me THAT easily. Right now McNeil posts working pages and then when she has enough done, sells the trade. Hmmm. Going back down her newsblog I see that the first trade is now available as a Hard-Cover. Thats a good sign as to the success of her current business plan...

Oh yeah, a link to the latest page button and rss feed. Theres also already an lj-feed...