Monthly Archives: December 2012

Books received 12/3/12 The Apes of Wrath edition

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Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.

 

The Apes of Wrath

Edited by Richard Klaw
Foreword by Rupert Wyatt
Cover by Alex Solis

 Promo copy:

In the Rue Morgue, the jungles of Tarzan, the fables of Aesop, and outer space, the apes in these seventeen fantastic tales boldly go where humans dare not. With a foreword from the director of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, this provocative anthology delves into our cultural fascination with – and dread of – our simian cousins. These classic stories explore the lighter and darker sides of apes, mirroring our own deepest desires and anxieties. “Evil Robot Monkey” introduces a disgruntled chimp implanted with a chip that makes him cleverer than both his cohort and humans alike. In “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” a murder mystery unravels with the discovery of a hair that does not appear quite human. Merging steampunk with slapstick, “The Ape-Box Affair” has a not-so-ordinary orangutan landing on Earth in a spherical flying ship–where he is promptly mistaken for an alien. King Kong sets a terrible example with booze and Barbie dolls in “Godzilla’s 12-Step Program.” If you’ve ever wondered what makes humans different from apes, soon you’ll be asking yourself, is it less than we think?

 

I received my Advance Readers Copies over the weekend. To say I’m pleased is an understatement. Designer Elizabeth Story effectively used minimal graphics in producing this handsome book. Continue reading →

Green Lantern: 1001 Emerald Nights (2001)

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“Reign of terror? I’m not sure I understand. But you’ve got lots of time to explain it to me. Well, at least the night.”

This prestige format one-shot from DC is part of their Elseworlds series where a twist is applied to a familiar hero usually by changing their normal setting. This mash up of Green Lantern with 1001 Nights was written by Terry LaBan who is more of an underground comic writer/artist but has done some work for major companies including The Dreaming for Vertigo and a Grendel mini-series for Dark Horse. The art was by Rebecca Guay whose work I know from the Black Orchid ongoing series from the 90s and some Sandman spin-offs.

In this story, Scheherazade is a Green Lantern has come to the town of Isafakhar to end the reign of the wicked sultan Ibn Rayner. But once she insinuates her way into the Sultan’s chambers, she finds that he is not the cruel ruler that she was expecting but more of a naive, misled puppet ruler. Through three tales of the reluctant hero Al Jhor Dan and his powerful genie, she tries to educate him in how a ruler show behave personally and towards his people.

A not bad story transposing the Green Lantern mythos onto the tales of the Arabian Nights. As usual with these Elseworlds tales, a lot of the elements of the superhero remain the same just subtly tweaked to fit with the new setting. So in this case the Lanterns do not have rings to start with but summon genies from lamps to carry out their will instead. Perhaps the story was a little over-moralistic but that is the nature of the originals I can live with it. Rebecca Guay’s art is perfect for this tale as she specialises in fantasy illustration and it looks great on the page – especially the leading ladies.

Camelot 3000 (1988)

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“But no need to stand on ceremony. You may call me King Arthur!”

This book is a collection of the first comic book maxi-series, as claimed in the introduction by Don and Maggie Thompson. The series was written by Mike W. Barr who is probably best known for his writing on various Batman titles such as Batman and the Outsiders, the Year Two story in Detective Comics and the Son of the Demon graphic novel. The art was by British artist Brian Bolland who is more often associated, these days, with fabulous cover art but also worked on early Judge Dredd stories for 2000AD and DC’s The Killing Joke.

It is the year 3000 and Britain is under attack by relentless aliens from the solar system’s tenth planet. In it’s hour of need, King Arthur, it’s greatest defender, is reborn. His first act is to restore Merlin to his side followed by the reincarnations of his knights of the Round Table. They discover that Morgan le Fay is behind the alien attacks and so old conflicts are renewed.

I bought this book because it is one of the few examples of a comic series illustrated by Bolland whose work I love. Unfortunately the story did not match my expectations. For a comic that was DC’s first for mature readers, it felt very immature – let’s mix Arthurian legend with the future and an alien invasion and it’ll be cool. It seemed very thin and being stretched over twelve issues did not help. This book has not aged as well as some of it’s contemporaries from the mid eighties. It doesn’t help that a number of later comics, such as Fables, deal with the updating of mythological or fantasy characters much better.

But I came for the art and the art was good but it didn’t blow me away in the same way that his covers can do. Partly this is because it does not have the same detail as his work in black and white does – Bryan Talbot is another good example of someone whose work I prefer in black and white because so much more goes into it. I was also expecting more due to the problems that I know plagued this book as regards to deadlines however I don’t feel that it necessarily shows in the finished page. So all in all a bit of a disappointment – maybe you had to be there to appreciate it.

Escape Clause

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I fancy myself a writer. Not that I’ve written a lot of fiction, at least on paper. I’ve created characters, stories and worlds for my gaming group, and have other stories knocking around in my skull that I need to write, which I haven’t done as I have self-confidence issues when it comes to writing fiction. In that I think most of what I’ve tried to write sucks.

I have also created many characters for my MMORPG of choice, City of Heroes, which I have been playing since the beta. That’s eight years of characters and story-lines that I’ve played out with my friends that I have made there. I love this game, and could play it forever.

Sadly, the company that runs the game shut it down tonight. No one’s sure why, as the game seems to still be making a profit. There’s a huge effort being put forth by the CoH community to save the game, and I hope that it’s successful, in that either the game’s owners change their minds, or let someone else take over the servers. But it’s a long-shot.

As I’ve thought about this game coming to a close, I’ve thought about all the characters I’ve created, and what their reactions would be to this event. The end of their multiverse. And I’ve thought of transplanting a few to other MMORPGS. Or other games in general. This got me to pondering how characters in CoH would view these other game worlds.

So let me present a piece of useless fiction (useless in that I can’t publish it) from the POV of one of my characters. I hope you enjoy it.

Continue reading →