Books

The BATMAN: EARTH ONE graphic novels from Geoff Johns and Gary Frank represent a fresh take on the characters -- the heroes and villains -- of the Batman mythos and give them something of a more "real world" foundation. The crimes are more gruesome, the villains more demented, but to date the only presence of any real super-normal capabilities have been exhibited by Croc -- who in this telling becomes an ally of Batman instead of an enemy. Alfred is the butler, but only as a cover of necessity, having been a former merenary in debt to Thomas Wayne and saddled with young Bruce upon the death of his parents.

'For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.' — 2 John 7 (King James Bible)

From Roman Emperor Nero, infamous for his persecution of early Christians, to notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley and '90's shock-rock media-martyr Marilyn Manson, many throughout history have been labeled, for one reason or other, by one group or other, as the Antichrist. Even American president Ronald Wilson Reagan (accused, according to urban legend, of being In League With Satan due to having his first, middle and last names each consist of six letters) was believed by some to be an avatar of The Evil One, just as The Omen films built an unholy franchise upon Damien's slight shoulders.

2021 marks the 80th birthday of Marvel's patriotic Avenger, Captain America. The brainchild of comic legends Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, he almost became known as Super-American, until Simon nixed it in favor of what has now become a household name, due in no small part to the string of successful movies produced by Marvel Comics.

Captain America: The First 80 Years is a by-the-decade retrospective of the hero's journey, detailing his origins, his evolution and adaptation to the threats of each decade, and his retroactive continuity changes that turned him into a beloved comic book hero. The crew at Titan have gone out of their way to not only tell the story of Captain America, they've nestled it in the story of the comic book industry and American 20th century history as well, so that a full and appreciable context exists.

Coloring books for grownups has been a growing trend over the last handful of years, providing a therapeutic stress relief while offering up complex, highly detailed works of art just waiting to be filled with tones of one's own choosing. The subject matter ranges from animals to celebrities to kaleidoscopic designs.

IDW's latest contribution to this genre takes things up a notch, however, with this 80-page collection on heavy gauge paper. Birds: A Smithsonian Coloring Book is not merely a coloring book, but a fact-filled guide to the species. Each project is a two-page spread, with the bird to be colored on the right while the left page is devoted to a framed set of facts, figures, and trivia about the specific breed. As such, this isn't the kind of book where you'd be inclined to tear a page out upon completion to pin up on your refrigerator.

LITTLE ROCK, AR—Cirsova Publishing is proud to announce that it has partnered with Michael Tierney and Robert Allen Lupton to restore and reprint Julian Hawthorne’s The Cosmic Courtship [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cirsova/the-cosmic-courtship-by-jul..., a never-before-collected pulp Planetary Romance by the son of famed American author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Mary Faust, a brilliant scientist, has developed a machine that can allow the conscious human soul to explore the cosmos! Her promising young assistant Miriam Mayne has accidentally transferred her consciousness Saturn, where she falls under the enchantment of an evil sorcerer! Jack Paladin, her love, sets out after her on a thrilling celestial journey to the ringed planet! Swashbuckling adventure and high romance await in Julian Hawthorne’s The Cosmic Courtship!

When Johnny Boo and Squiggle wake up in their hollow tree, they are greeted to a world that has been covered in snow overnight. It looks to Squiggle like the whole world's been covered in ice cream, so they get spoons to dig in. Competition soon arrives in the form of Ice Cream Monster, who tries to eat all the snow -- or "nothing-flavored ice cream" -- so there won't be any left.

But eating snow -- and being out in it for a long time -- leads to being really cold. And when more snow begins to fall, bringing a blizzard on our friends, Johnny's solution is to find his box of mittens so everyone has them to wear. But Squiggle and Ice Cream Monster disappear in all the snowfall and Johnny has to find them.

'Dies iræ! Dies illa; Solvet sæclum in favilla'

   'The day of wrath, that day; will dissolve the world in ashes'

  --Opening lines to Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), thirteenth-century Latin hymn

Our idea of the apocalypse, that period of final judgment when humanity's misdeeds are held to accountability and nations crumbles beneath worldwide cataclysms, has long cast a dark thrall on the collective unconscious, and from the fifth-century B.C. writings of Persian prophet Zoroaster to the ravenous civilization-devouring zombies of George Romero's seminal Living Dead films, the dire interpretations involving the time when time itself ends fascinates us. 

When I was a middle schooler in the late 70s and early 80s, there were two books that would publish new editions which were required reading (three for me, if you count the Overstreet Price Guide to Comic Books): The GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS and THE BOOK OF LISTS. Both were filled with intriguing facts and figures that could keep me engaged for many an afternoon.

The STAR WARS BOOK OF LISTS tries to capture that same attention in a very handsomely bound hardcover with gold leaf imprinted on the cover. If you're a Star Wars fan, you'll pick this up immediately. However, you may also get disappointed quickly at what qualifies as 'trivia' in this compendium. For instance, "Caped Crusaders: Characters Who Rock Capes and Cloaks," which is immediately followed by "It's A Deal: Negotiations and Deals Made for Parts, Droids, and Information," are, kindly put, uninteresting. It screams out "I have to find 100 different lists to make from a finite set of films!"

Of my forty-five plus years of reading comic books, my list of favorite characters has never really grown beyond two. The first to make my list was Batman. I've always told myself it was because he was just a normal guy who proved you could do anything with the proper training, mindset, and a billion dollars laying around, but truthfully it was because the television show kept me glued on my little four-year-old butt every time it came on.

The second was The Flash. The iconic yet simple costume, the thinking that went into the multiple applications of what was essentially a single super ability, and the Flash Facts that instilled a curiosity for science.

Robert Greenberger once again takes on the unenviable task of distilling eight decades of adventures into a concentrated list of 100 greatest memories, a task made even more daunting when taking into consideration the fact that there have been a handful of people to wear the mantle of the scarlet speedster.

Sixteen year old Mary Shelley carries a 197-year-old burden. She's the great, great, great, great, GREAT granddaughter of the original Mary Shelley -- you know, the lady who invented the science fiction genre with her story about a doctor who revives the dead? Right, that Mary Shelley, and that book. And ever since that fateful publication, the Shelley lineage has been populated with authors, including modern Mary's grandmother (recipes) and her mother, Tawny, who writes a mega-successful mystery series about a crime-solving sleuth, also named Tawny.

Mary is the one next in line, with the expectations that she, also, will find her voice and take up the pen. But there's a problem with that.

She doesn't want to. In fact, she doesn't know what it is exactly that she wants to do, but she knows it isn't that.

Even the casual fans of Star Wars can tell you that the lightsaber is a deeply personal weapon to the one who wields it. Unlike a blaster, the lightsaber is not some mass-produced weapon made in a factory, with identically interchangeable parts. No, the lightsaber is crafted by hand by the Jedi or Sith who will take it into battle, making it an extension of themselves. "This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster. An elegant weapon for a more civilized age," as Obi-Wan put it to Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars film. And, really, that whole "random as a blaster" comment pretty much sums up why the stormtroopers could never hit anything they shot at.

Between FLIGHT, COPPER, paperback cover illustrations of the Harry Potter books, and eight volumes of the best-selling graphic novel AMULET (with a ninth in the works), writer/artist Kazu Kibuishi is a role model for not excepting or expecting anything but success. His canny understanding of storytelling, as well as of where the market swings are in comic book culture, have made him an expert in the artform, capable of speaking on subjects from the most esoteric anime to your run-of-the-mill superhero arc.

Critical Blast is joined by UNSTITCHED creator Justin Dutton to spend an hour with Kibuishi discussing these aspects of the graphic novel industry, and what traits make for stories that stand the test of time -- and remain evergreen sellers in bookstores. Check the video below for all the details.

In the hotly anticipated second installment of Bleeding Fool's exposure of the Women In Comics Facebook group, colloquially referred to as the "Whisper Network" came surprise allegations from FABLES creator Bill Willingham against Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Stephanie Cooke of embezzlement "in excess of ten thousand dollars."

The claim dates back to 2015 and references the period when Cooke was Willingham's assistant. Willingham reconfirmed that this is still an open case, hampered by the fact that Cooke had since moved back to Canada.

One of my favorite books of my childhood was Caroline Rush's TALES OF MR. PENGACHOOSA, in which a young girl housebound with scarlet fever suddenly finds that in the stillness of her room the chirping of her hamster, Hammy, sounds like tiny little words. Eventually she begins to understand him, and he regales her of tales of his grandfather, Mr. Pengachoosa, whose magical encounters always tied to something in the house. It was such an impacting story that, as an adult, I had to seek out a copy on eBay for my personal collection.

Critical Blast Publishing will be releasing their newest anthology, THE DEVIL YOU KNOW on July 1, 2020.

The speculative fiction collection -- featuring the works of Jared Baker, Erica Ciko Campbell, Sarah Cannavo, Michael W. Clark, Christopher Cook, Andra Dill, Cara Fox, R.A. Goli, Gerald A. Jennings, Kevin Kangas, Daryl Marcus, Damascus Mincemeyer, Steve Oden, Evan Purcell, Troy Riser, Joseph Rubas, Hannah Trusty, Wondra Vanian, Henry Vogel, and KD Webster -- recounts tales of meetings with the literary Devil, in the vein of "The Devil and Daniel Webster," "Faust," and other such similar conventions. With stories set in the past, present, and future, and ranging from comedy to horror, THE DEVIL YOU KNOW is designed to appeal to as wide a readership as possible.

We are officially one week away from the release of Stephen J. Mitchell’s debut novel BULLETPROOF: ORIGINS; the YA Adventure novel about a bullied high school freshman who discovers he’s indestructible. We present to you an exclusive preview of Chapter 1 in its entirety. The stunning comic-book style cover art was provided by up-and-coming artist Matt Flint. It was designed to look like the cover of a graphic novel as most superhero stories are told in the pages of comics, but this isn't an ordinary superhero story. It's a "sub-par" hero story!

At first blush, Robin Gerber's BARBIE FOREVER: HER INSPIRATATION, HISTORY, AND LEGACY might appear to be another beautifully designed coffee table book, packaged to appeal to fans of the Mattel maven whose fashions and careers have delighted and motivated children for decades -- six of them, to be precise! My expectation was the cursory introduction, maybe four or five pages of text delivering a succinct history of the doll and her creator, and then a veritable book full of photographs of Barbie through the years.

You've seen the banners. You've seen the tweets and the Facebook postings. BULLETPROOF is coming...

But what is BULLETPROOF? And when is it coming?

Time for the Critical Blast staff to sit down and have a little geek out about the Disney/Sony custody battle over Spider-Man, the upcoming CW crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths, the continued tomkinging (yes, we've verbed it) of Batman this week -- oh, and lots and lots of discussion about BULLETPROOF, including the hotly anticipated release date!

Click and enjoy. (And if you like this type of content, by all means click that Subscribe button. It costs nothing, and it means the world to us!)

The average  person today, when asked about Greek history, will probably recall the days of Plato and Socrates -- as though the country leapt straight from the days of philosophical and mathematical breakthroughs and went straight into the 21st century.

So when I read that SONS OF CHAOS was about the Greek war for independence, I was at a loss. When did Greece belong to someone else? When did this war occur?

Surprisingly, the war was relatively recent, as historical epochs go: the 1800s, in fact. When, you know, there actually was an America, so the fact that I did not know about this is a bit embarrassing. However, when it was explained that this was one of the wars of the Ottoman Empire, that, at least, was something I had heard of, so I felt a little better.

The Internet has made famous the Darwin Awards -- people who died in such fashion as to have done a benefit to humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool. But people have been making their final exit in unusual ways long before we were able to share such stories in a viral fashion.

James Proud has collected these historical horrors (and sometimes hilarities) in this comfortable-sized hardcover, HISTORY'S WEIRDEST DEATHS, featuring over 120-pages of anecdotes, peppered with the occasional page of factoids and tidbits -- ending, appropriately enough, with famous last words.