Prepare to Die! by Paul Tobin

I finished this one quite a while back, and I’ve just got such a huge backlog of books, it’s taken me this long to get a review written.

Y’all know Paul Tobin, right? He’s written so many comics. And here’s his superhero novel!

Steve Clarke went from 14-year-old rebel to first-rate superhero during a freak chemical accident. As Reaver, he’s superstrong, super-fast, and every time he punches someone, it literally takes a year off their life. But now, Reaver is one of the last superheroes on Earth, and after an encounter with the diabolical Octagon and his team of super-powered psychos, Steve gets beat down pretty hard. As the Octagon prepares his killing blow, he tells Reaver “Prepare to die!” So Steve says, okay, I’d like to have a month to prepare to die. He doesn’t get it — the Octagon gives him just two weeks to put his affairs in order, then he’ll be back to kill him.

So Steve goes back to his old hometown to find Adele, the girl he loved when he was 14. He starts up a (probably really short-lived) relationship with her, hangs out with Adele’s sister and her lesbian lover, and remembers all his old superhero friends, including Paladin, Steve’s best friend and Earth’s greatest hero, and Kid Crater, the sidekick who Steve failed. Can Steve face his death with dignity? Should he fight to survive? Will he be able to save Adele when the villains find out about her?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a good, fun book, full of humor, great characterization, absolutely terrifying action, at least one genuinely shocking plot twist, and a killer hook that’ll draw you in for the entire rest of the novel.

I loved the characters so much, and that’s what a good superhero novel needs. Steve is dark and conflicted… and depressed. He wanted so much to be like his best friend Paladin, and when he finds out that life isn’t all roses and glory for his friend, it breaks him pretty hard. Adele is a pretty great character, too, though I think I’ve got some quibbles about her, too. The Octagon and all the villains are amazingly scary — give deadly powers to a bunch of lunatics, and you’d get something like these guys. No wonder all the superheroes are dead.

The major quibble with this book is that it’s pretty neanderthal when it comes to women. Every woman Steve encounters, he either remarks on whether or not he wants to have sex with her — or he reminisces about previously having sex with her. Well, fine, Steve is a bit of a neanderthal anyway, right? Maybe so, but there are also a few weird things with Adele’s characterization — she apparently stayed obsessed with Steve after his accident and years-long coma, long after he’d completely disappeared from her life, to the point of becoming an alcoholic because she couldn’t stop thinking about him. That’s kinda sorta crazy, because most people get over even the worst heartbreak in time, especially heartbreak from when you were 14 years old. But the great male fantasy is that the girl you loved and lost would still love you today, right?

But there’s a lot of stuff to love about this book. The action is scare-the-pants-off-you good — Reaver is in over his head in almost every battle, and you’re always left wondering if even his healing factor will be able to keep up with all the damage he’s taking.

And I believe I’ve mentioned the plot twist already? I’ll mention it again. It’s very good. It’s very, very good. It’s really a bit of a masterwork of a plot twist.

It’s not at all bad, guys. Y’all should go pick it up.

The Movement #5

The wealthy plutocrats of Coral City are upset that the Movement has been as powerful as it has been — and that it’s inspiring similar uprisings of the underclasses all over the world. Now they intend to hire superpowered mercenaries to restore their preferred social order. Meanwhile, Virtue meets with Captain Meers — he tries to talk her out of holding a televised trial for Officers Whitt and Pena on the charges of being dirty cops. But the trial goes on — Katharsis is in charge of the prosecution, Tremor for the defense, and Vengeance Moth presiding as the judge. Mouse goes after the Cornea Killer, Whitt and Pena discover that Vengeance Moth has powers of her own, and one member of the Movement decides things have gone too far.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots and lots of things going on. There are plenty of comics with only a small number of events going on, and they still feel like they’re plodding. This one had a lot of stuff happening, and nothing felt rushed, and everything felt exciting and fun. This is probably the best issue of this title so far.

Lazarus #4

Forever Carlyle and Joacquim Morray, the almost unkillable Lazaruses of their rival families, have been ambushed by Forever’s renegade siblings. A Carlyle family hit squad prepares to execute them, but a Lazarus is very good at surviving and killing. Once the hit squad has been dealt with, it’s time to track down who the family traitor is — but the Carlyles are almost as good at treachery and intrigue as Forever is at killing people…

Verdict: Thumbs up. All around excellent storytelling — and don’t neglect to read the future timeline in the back of the comic. It has a lot of interesting details about how this world turned out the way it did.

Today’s Cool Links:

• BLOG NOTICE: We’re having an unusually large amount of spam comments clogging the spam filter. So I’m gonna try to institute comment registration. Yeah, this is gonna be a bit trouble, and there may be some bumps. Hopefully, things will go fairly smoothly. If we have too much trouble, I may just go back to the old way, but I’d love to be able to frustrate a bunch of spammers…
• An 18-part crossover? Eighteen parts? DC Comics can go hang.
• Here’s a heart-breaking zombie tale for you.
• There’s politics, and then there’s coup attempts. One is how the world operates. The other requires serious, serious punishments.

Why, hello there, October! You’re the best month of the whole year, yes, you are! The weather is cooler, the leaves are changing, and most importantly… Haaaaaalloweeeeen, the best day of the year! So what’s that got to do with Friday Night Fights, especially this early in the month?

Well, simply put, I like to plan ahead. So I went looking for a good fight to save for Halloween. And I found too many of them! Way, way too many. So instead of saving a whole bunch of them for future Halloweens, I’m gonna devote all of this month’s Friday Night Fights (and probably the day after Halloween, too) to monsters and horror. Shall we begin?

Tonight’s battle comes to us from September 2009’s Captain Britain and MI13 #15 by Paul Cornell, Leonard Kirk, and Jay Leisten, in which Faiza Hussain must face the vampiric might of Count Dracula himself!

Ya wanna hear something really, really weird? Something that’ll put the creep into your bones and make you question the nature of reality itself? Neither Faiza Hussain nor Dracula — two absolutely wonderful characters who appeared in highly acclaimed comics — are currently being published in any Marvel comic books. Oooo-weeeeee-ooooo…

CBLDF Liberty Annual 2013

I always look forward to the annual benefit comic for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, partly because it’s an easy way to support a wonderful organization, partly because it’s always a pretty high-quality anthology comic. This year, we have creators including Fabio Moon, Richard Corben, Josh Williamson, Paul Tobin, Tim Seeley, Andy Kuhn, and many others. And among our stories are a prosecuting attorney willing to commit murder to censor comics; agents of Thomas Edison determined to stamp out all non-Edison movie cameras; a horror host forced to go corporate; Captain Midnight trying to figure out blogging, newspaper commenters, and untrustworthy journalists; the tale of German comedian Paul Morgan’s persecution by the Nazis; a short history of Pussy Riot; a Hack/Slash story about a supernatural censor who kills people looking at forbidden things; and a story examining the question of “What if Wertham was Right?”

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent stories — no stinkers at all, this time, and only a couple that were just so-so. Good stories, good art, and all for an excellent cause.

Mighty Avengers #2

Well, we start out somewhere deep under the ocean, where the Blue Marvel has his sanctum sanctorum, monitoring the Earth for crisis situations. Meanwhile, in New York, Luke Cage, Spectrum, the Superior Spider-Man, and um, the Amazing Spider-Hero are fighting off a bunch of Thanos’ forces, led by Proxima Midnight. She manages to take out both Spectrum and Cage, but the citizens of New York lead a chant that gets Cage back on his feet. Thanos ends up calling Proxima off, but Monica is dying and something even worse than Thanos is rising up from beneath the city.

Verdict: Thumbs up on the story. It’s quite nice, with lots of action, characterization, and humor. Artwise, it’s a lot more of a thumbs-down situation, because they’re still letting that hack Greg Land work on this book, and there’s just no good reason to let this schmuck trace that many photos of Halle Berry.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Why do they keep saying Wonder Woman is so difficult for Hollywood to get when people keep making awesome short subjects about her?
• New Hyperbole and a Half! How a dinosaur costume led Allie to evil.
• This is why superhero comics are still so much fun to read.
• These petrified birds and bats are both beautiful and creepy.
• The Simpsons Halloween Special opening, created by Guillermo del Toro, is getting me into the Halloween Spirit.

Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It by David M. Ewalt

It’s a nice time to be a fan of pen-and-paper roleplaying games.

Granted, there aren’t quite as many games out there as I’d prefer. Too many great games are basically out-of-print, sustained only by online PDF sales. I can find more RPGs at the local used bookstore than I can at any other store selling games. There are a lot of my favorite games that I haven’t bought any new material for in years — either they aren’t selling, they aren’t producing anything particularly good, or they’re selling stuff on the down-low. The comic shops I go to sell some games, but not as many as the great game stores of the past used to. They have D&D and Pathfinder and Munchkin and board games — but no GURPS, no Call of Cthulhu, no Mutants and Masterminds, none of the greats. Heck, you gotta go a far piece just to find a store specializing in roleplaying games.

But it’s still a good time to be a gamer, because RPGs are having a minor renaissance, thanks to a combination of gamer nostalgia and more people realizing it’s fun to get together and play games.

So here’s David Ewalt (billed on the cover as a Level 15 cleric) and this cool book he wrote, essentially a bit of pop-sociology, examining the history of Dungeons & Dragons, and the culture of D&D players. Most of this information is not new — many hardcore gamers have known and memorized the history of how Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created D&D, but it is very nice to have the story recorded in a nice mass-marketed book designed to appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike.

So we start in the ’70s wargaming scene, with Gygax and Arneson both adding interesting elements that moved gaming away from mass combats to a focus on individual characters — something that either freaked the grognards out or completely thrilled them. Gygax and Arneson had conflicting philosophies and styles that nevertheless merged neatly — if only temporarily — to create roleplaying’s greatest success. And for many years, times were very, very good — but good times never last forever, even if D&D might.

Scattered throughout the historical narrative are short profiles of regular gamers — some of them friends of the author, some of them just people he met while researching the book. We also visit a unique LARPing weekend event, watch the initial stages of the development of the new edition of D&D, get a short pilgrimage around the holy sites of the game’s creation, and much more.

Verdict: Thumbs up. There is so very much here that I never knew. Not just how Gygax and Arneson created the game, but how it was funded, how it was often not funded, how TSR came about, all the lawsuits that flew all around during the early years, how GenCon slowly grew.

And the whole thing never gets dry or boring or weighted down by historical facts. There’s tons of humor, winking nods to gamers’ obsessions and to the minutiae of D&D’s rules. We get to meet a ton of interesting people, watch them create their characters, play their games, and tell their stories, both in-game and in real life.

It has a few failings. Some of the darker periods of the game’s history, particularly the reign of RPG-hating Lorraine Williams at TSR, are given short shrift. And almost the entire focus of the book is on Dungeons & Dragons. Very few other RPGs are even mentioned. Magic: The Gathering is discussed a little, mostly because Wizards of the Coast ended up buying D&D.

For the most part, that’s okay — it’s a book about Dungeons & Dragons, not about every other RPG out there. But there were some points where other RPGs should’ve been mentioned — when the discussion is about how much people liked D&D version 3.5 and how many disliked version 4, it might be worth mentioning that Pathfinder was basically created as a way for gamers to keep playing 3.5, and that it ended up dethroning D&D as the most popular RPG as a result.

Still, those are mere quibbles. On the whole, it’s an outstanding book, well worth reading for anyone who grew up playing D&D and wishes they could return to the hobby. Go pick it up, read it, pass it along to your friends and family, if you think you can trust ’em to give it back. Hopefully, you’ll be able to expand your gaming group to a few more people.

FF #12

It’s just wall-to-wall hijinks in this issue. The kids get adjusted to the presence of Adopf Impossible, introduce him to comics, point out that his dad, with his purple and green color scheme, is definitely a villain, and then get chased all over by the shapeshifting nerd, before he finally discovers a new obsession — adorable Marvel Universe anime. Meanwhile, everyone is making plans to kill elderly Johnny Storm, Dr. Doom is getting pressured to agree to become Doom the Annihilating Conqueror, Scott Lang gets hot coffee spilled on his leg, and She-Hulk and Darla Deering go boxing.

Verdict: Thumbs up. There isn’t a whole lot of major import that happens in this issue, but it’s all great fun. Some of it is pretty funny, some of it is just cool, and all of it beautifully illustrated.

Atomic Robo Presents Real Science Adventures #11

While the Triumverate makes its plans to take over the country, the only hope is the Consortium of Science — Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse, Charles Fort, Winfield Scott Lovecraft, Wong Kei-Ying, Harry Houdini, and Annie Oakley. Unfortunately, our heroes are in the midst of being invaded by a small army of the Triumverate’s forces. Can they all keep from getting captured? Can they keep the Triumverate from destroying New York City, wrecking the economy, and taking over everything?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Tons of action and humor, with some decent suspense at the end. The art is… interesting. I like it, but it isn’t really what I was expecting from this series. At any rate, this all gets wrapped up next issue, so hold onto yer hats…

Today’s Cool Links:

• Lynda Carter herself has some ideas about how to get Wonder Woman into the movies.
• It’s not the first toy in space — they seem to send toys up into orbit all the time — but this is the first toy made in space.
• Not all the Italian pasta companies are weirdly anti-gay — some of them are a lot cooler.

Well, it’s been another rough week. We’ve been abused by bosses, abused by coworkers, abused by customers, and it’s way past time for the weekend to get started and give us a chance to forget that abuse for another couple of days. So let’s get things started with… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle is a short one — just a little gag strip from August 1982’s What If? #34 by Joe Albelo and Al Milgrom. What do you get when you move NYC’s mean streets to Asgard?

Hey, Idris Elba worked as a Norse god — so why can’t we get a good Luke Cage movie already?

Itty Bitty Hellboy #2

Art Baltazar and Franco’s tribute to Mike Mignola’s pulpiest creations continues, as Lobster Johnson arrives on the scene, with his talking blue pet Lobster Smith. They’re on the lookout for the Sasquatch, so all the Hellboy kids gleefully offer to help out. Apparently, looking for Sasquatch involves doing lots and lots of yelling, which bothers Johnson more and more as time goes by. Meanwhile, the bad guys disguise themselves as woodland creatures, Liz starts some fires, and Roger’s underwear continues to be hilarious.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The only thing I have to say about this one is that it’s adorable and funny and awesome. If you loved Tiny Titans or Superman Family Adventures or Patrick the Wolf Boy, you should definitely be reading this.

Young Avengers #10

Mother, the horrible interdimensional parasite who has bedeviled the Young Avengers, matches wits against Loki, gets fairly freaked out by the zombiepuppet version of Patriot, and plots with Leah, who, in her guise as Hulkling’s counselor, works to lead the teen shapeshifter astray.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A very interesting focus on different characters — Mother and Teddy are the two who get most of our attention, but the brief snippets of Loki’s devious mind and Leah’s ruthless deceitfulness are also quite enjoyable. And the art is beautifully done, as is the case in every issue of this series.

Wonder Woman #23.2

Apollo turns some L.A. gangsta girls into his oracles so he can see the full history of the First Born. Basically, he was Zeus and Hera’s first kid, they threw him out of Olympus, he built his own empire of pain and murder, and then the gods laid the smackdown on him.

Verdict: Thumbs down. This could’ve been told within the regular Wonder Woman comics. And it should’ve been, too.

Today’s Cool Links:

• As we’ve noted repeatedly in the last few years, the community of weirdly woman-hating geeks needs a serious collective punch in the junk.
• A really interesting long article about Stephen King, banned books, poverty, and childhood.
• Let this page load, then scroll down. It’s an amazingly beautiful piece of comic art, and it’s worth your time to read through.
• If you grew up in the ’80s, you will find this music video/best-man toast hilarious.

Batman ’66 #3

The Joker has a new enemy in Gotham City — a mysterious gangster called the Red Hood who is demanding the Clown Prince of Crime be turned over to him or he’ll unleash a deadly gas attack against the city. Batman and Robin persuade the doctors at Arkham Asylum to let them escort the Joker to the Red Hood’s meeting place, but the new villain and his minions kidnap the Joker and give the Dynamic Duo the slip. But all is not as it seems — the Red Hood is one of Arkham’s doctors, accidentally hypnotized by the Joker during therapy. And in our second story, Egghead has captured Batman and Robin and plans to drop them to their deaths from a blimp. Can they escape this deathtrap?

Verdict: Thumbs up, at least partly because we get introduced to the Batman ’66 version of Harley Quinn:

I think it would be really cool to see this sort of thing happen more often. Sixties versions of Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Bane, Two-Face, Killer Croc, Clayface, and Professor Pyg? That’d be pretty cool.

Captain Marvel #16

Oh no, it’s another crossover!

Captain Marvel somehow has her Binary energy powers again, just in time to save a lot of superheroes from the alien Builders, but she and a bunch of other heroes still get captured. And then there’s a lot of fighting and nonsense that might make sense if you’ve been following this “Infinity” crap.

Verdict: Thumbs down. I hate these stupid crossovers. They make everything idiotic.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Find out which fictional character shares your birthday. Either you’ll get something incredibly awesome… or you’ll get a character from a soap opera. Good luck!
• Introduce your baby to Cthulhu!
• Jake Lloyd voicing Darth Vader is awesome.
• Here are the weirdest and most beautiful photos ever captured by Google Street View.
• Can churches and charities fill the gap if Congress gets rid of food stamps? Sorry — not a chance.

March: Book One

When I heard about this one, I knew I’d have to get it.

It’s basically the autobiography of civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis, in graphic-novel format. The project came about because some of his staff were making jokes about staffer Andrew Aydin, who was a comics fan, but Lewis pointed out that a comic book about Martin Luther King, Jr. helped inspire him to get involved in the civil rights movement. Soon, Aydin was co-writing this book with Lewis, while Nate Powell put the art together.

Though the book starts out with what’s probably the most horrifying incident of Lewis’ life — when state troopers attacked peaceful marchers and fractured his skull on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama — we soon settle into a more straightforward biography. We visit Lewis as a child, obsessed with being a preacher and delivering passionate sermons to the family’s chickens as practice. We watch him growing up, going to college, becoming more socially aware, meeting Martin Luther King, becoming an activist…

Approximately the last half of the book focuses on the lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, following them from the organizing and planning stages through the actual sit-ins and through the trials and aftermath. It’s simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s an amazing work of art, exciting, scary, beautiful, inspiring, and informative all at once. Part memoir, part history.

Like I said, a big chunk of the book is devoted to the sit-ins, and they’re probably the most interesting parts of the story, especially for those of us who were too young to have heard about these while they were happening.

I never knew that participants had to go through training sessions to make sure they were really willing to abide by the principles of non-violence — there was a lot of roleplaying involved, with everyone calling each other names, heaping abuse on each other, blowing cigarette smoke in their faces and dousing them with water — because that’s what they knew would happen at protests, and they had to make sure that everyone could handle the pressure without snapping and punching some Nashville cop in the neck.

And the specifics of the sit-ins were pretty interesting, too — all the detail and planning that went into them, what actually happened during the sit-ins, how people reacted, they’re all extremely informative. All of this got glazed over in school, so we never learned any of this. The history makes it worth reading.

Is there rude language? Yes, there is — racial epithets are used, just as they were used in real life. Is it still kid-friendly? I think it is. Again, this is historical info, and it’s important for kids and adults to know what happened. There’s nothing explicit — there’s no gore, no sex, no over-the-top swearing — but the difficulty of life in the South for African-Americans, and what it was like to attend protests and marches — none of this is sugar-coated, and none of it should be.

It’s a great story, it’s all true, and it’s the first graphic novel written by a member of Congress! I’d consider that a must-read. Go pick it up.