As with every Labor Day weekend of the past umpteen years, Austin Books and Comics hosts their annual anniversary sale (35 this year). Within the main store, all back issues are 50% off. Also, this weekend they showcased the recently relocated and freshly stocked Sidekick location, full of 50% off graphic novels and $1 comics. For the Austin comic geek, this is one of the biggest events of the year.

This year, I met up with authors Chris N. Brown and Paul O. Miles to checked out the goodies. I’m not much of a back issues collector so I managed to escape with out buying anything, choosing to save my funds for the Sidekick store. Paul picked up a ½ a dozen or so selections. Chris went absolutely apeshit, grabbing what appeared to be 50 comics but may have been as little as 30. Either way, he required a box.

Since my 800 sq foot house isn’t getting any bigger and I already own around 700 graphic novels (not to mention around 5,000 books), I tend to air on the conservative side with my purchases during this sale. While in the Sidekick store, I only picked up 4 books, though there were countless others I wanted (and may still pick up in the near future.)

The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen
Written by Otto Binder,Cary Bates, Alvin Schwartz, E. Nelson Bridwell, Jerry Siegel, and others
Art by Curt Swan, Susan S Kelly, John Forte, Creig Flessel, Marion Kaye, and others
Cover by Brian Bolland

Promo copy:

Cub reporter Jimny Olsen stars in this light-hearted volume collecting his most memorable adventures from the late 1950s and 1960s, guest-starring Superman! Jimmy undergoes startling transformations into Elastic Lad, The Wolf-Man of Metropolis, The Human Porcupine and more in these stories from SUPERMAN’S PAL JIMMY OLSEN!

I have a secret love for the Jimmy Olsen tales. They are quirky and goofy. It’s not at all surprising that many of these stories were written by Otto Binder, who wrote many of the similarly-veined Fawcett Captain Marvel tales.

The Plain Janes
Written by Cecil Castellucci
Art by Jim Rugg

Promo copy:

Noted young adult novelist Cecil Castellucci and artist Jim Rugg launch MINX with THE PLAIN JANES, a story about four girls named Jane who sit at the reject table at lunch.

When transfer student Jane is forced to move from the confines of Metro City to Suburbia, she thinks her life is over. But there in the lunch room at the reject table she finds her tribe: three other girls named Jane. Main Jane encourages them to form a secret art gang and paint the town P.L.A.I.N. — People Loving Art In Neighborhoods. But can art attacks really save the hell that is high school?

I picked up the excellent Janes as a gift got a friend’s 12 year old daughter. Hope she enjoyed it as much as me and Brandy did.

Chiaroscuro: The Private Lives of Leonardo da Vinci
Written by Pat McGreal and David Rawson
Art by Chaz Truog and Rafael Kayanan
Cover by Stephen John Phillips and Richard Bruning

Promo copy:

The passions of one of history’s greatest artists are captured in this volume collecting the dark and provacative 10-issue Vertigo maxiseries. Framed around the story of Salai, a young man whose beauty entrances the great maestro, CHIAROSCURO follows the struggles and triumphs of da Vinci’s illustrious career, from his early work in Florence and Milan to the painting of the Mona Lisa and his epochal rivalry with Michaelangelo.

I collected this series back when it came out but somehow missed two issues of the run. I can finally read the complete story.

Eerie Presents: Hunter
Written by Rich Margopoulos, Budd Lewis, Bill Dubay, and Jim Stenstrum
Art by Paul Neary, Ken Kelly, San Julian, Alex Ni

Tales of the Austin Books Labor Day Sale 2012 was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

Way back in the day, well ok actually in Fall, 2003, my first published (as an adult.. first was when I was 13) piece of prose fiction “JohnCalvin” appeared in Electric Velocipede #5.

Since those early days, the zine and editor John Klima have been nominated for countless awards (even winning a few). Although they’ve managed 24 issues, as with most genre zines, EV limps along financially. To ensure publications for the next year, Klima has began a Kickstarter campaign.

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

Some Kind of Fairy Tale
by Graham Joyce

Promo copy:

Acclaimed author Graham Joyce’s mesmerizing new novel centers around the disappearance of a young girl from a small town in the heart of England. Her sudden return twenty years later, and the mind-bending tale of where she’s been, will challenge our very perception of truth.

For twenty years after Tara Martin disappeared from her small English town, her parents and her brother, Peter, have lived in denial of the grim fact that she was gone for good. And then suddenly, on Christmas Day, the doorbell rings at her parents’ home and there, disheveled and slightly peculiar looking, Tara stands. It’s a miracle, but alarm bells are ringing for Peter. Tara’s story just does not add up. And, incredibly, she barely looks a day older than when she vanished.

Award-winning author Graham Joyce is a master of exploring new realms of understanding that exist between dreams and reality, between the known and unknown. Some Kind of Fairy Tale is a unique journey every bit as magical as its title implies, and as real and unsentimental as the world around us.

The Age of Miracles
by Karen Thompson Walker

Promo copy:

With a voice as distinctive and original as that of The Lovely Bones, and for the fans of the speculative fiction of Margaret Atwood, Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles is a luminous, haunting, and unforgettable debut novel about coming of age set against the backdrop of an utterly altered world.

“It still amazes me how little we really knew… . Maybe everything that happened to me and my family had nothing at all to do with the slowing. It’s possible, I guess. But I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”

On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life—the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.

Yoko Tsuno Vol. 7: The Curious Trio
by Roger Leloup

Promo copy:

Vic and Pol are working for a television network when, one evening, they meet a young Japanese electronics engineer under very unusual circumstances. A friendship is soon struck up, a project drafted, and the newly formed trio is on its way to investigate an underground river. But they find a lot more than they bargained for and become part of a story that began millions of light years away, changing their lives forever.

I recently interviewed Jerome Saincantin, who translated this book.

Apollo’s Outcasts
by Allen Steele
Cover by Paul Young

Promo copy:

In the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein’s juvenile classics, crafted with a modern sensibility

Jamey Barlowe has been crippled since childhood, the result of being born on the Moon. He lives his life in a wheelchair, only truly free when he is in the water. But then Jamey’s father sends him, along with five other kids, back to the Moon to escape a political coup d’etat that has occurred overnight in the United States. Moreover, one of the other five refugees is more than she appears.

Their destination is the mining colony, Apollo. Jamey will have to learn a whole new way to live, one that entails walking for the first time in his life. It won’t be easy and it won’t be safe. But Jamey is determined to make it as a member of Lunar Search and Rescue, also known as the Rangers. This job is always risky but could be even more dangerous if the new US president makes good on her threat to launch a military invasion. Soon Jamey is front and center in a political and military struggle stretching from the Earth to the Moon.

Books received 8/22/12 was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

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

Rough Justice: The DC Comics Sketches of Alex Ross
by Alex Ross

Promo copy:

Alex Ross opens his private sketchbooks to reveal his astonishing pencil and ink drawings of DC Comics characters, nearly all of them appearing in print here for the first time in paperback.

Thousands of fans from around the world have thrilled to Alex’s fully rendered photo-realistic paintings of their favorite heroes, but, as they may not realize, all of those works start as pencil on paper, and the origins of the finished images are rarely seen—until now.

From deleted scenes and altered panels for the epic Kingdom Come saga to proposals for revamping such classic properties as Batgirl, Captain Marvel, and an imagined son of Batman named Batboy, to unused alternate comic book cover ideas for the monthly Superman and Batman comics of 2008–2009, there is much to surprise and delight those who thought they already knew all of Alex’s DC Comics work.

Illuminating everything is the artist’s own commentary, written expressly for this book, explaining his thought processes and stylistic approaches for the various riffs and reimaginings of characters we thought we knew everything about but whose possibilities we didn’t fully understand.

As a record of a pivotal era in comics history, Rough Justice is a must-have for Alex’s legion of fans, as well as for anyone interested in masterly comic book imagination and illustration.

The Wanderers
by Paula Brandon
Cover by Kathleen Lynch

Promo copy:

Paula Brandon’s acclaimed fantasy trilogy comes to a triumphant conclusion in an unforgettable collision of magic, intrigue, and romance.

Time is running out. Falaste Rione is imprisoned, sentenced to death. And even though the magical balance of the Source is slipping and the fabric of reality itself has begun to tear, Jianna Belandor can think only of freeing the man she loves. But to do so, she must join a revolution she once despised—and risk reunion with a husband she has ample reason to fear.

Meanwhile, undead creatures terrorize the land, slaves of the Overmind—a relentless consciousness determined to bring everything that lives under its sway. All that stands in the way is a motley group of arcanists whose combined powers will barely suffice to restore balance to the Source. But when Jianna’s father, the Magnifico Aureste Belandor, murders one of them, the group begins to fracture under the pressures of suspicion and mutual hatred. Now humanity’s hope rests with an unexpected soul: a misanthropic hermit whose next move may turn the tide and save the world.

Whore
Written by Jeffrey Kaufman
Art by Marco Turini
Cover by Felix Serrano and Jeffrey Kaufman

Promo copy:

After getting downsized from the CIA, he takes any job he can to pay his debts and alimony. He isn’t a bad guy by nature, but out of necessity. He has to live a life where things don’t matter, and long as he gets paid. His motto, simply stated: “Every man has his price.”

I reviewed Whore for the mid-August Nexus Graphica.

The Broken Ones
by Stephen M. Irwin
Cover by Michael J. Windsor

Promo copy:

Award-winning author Stephen M. Irwin returns with a thrilling, supernatural crime novel built around an intriguing question: What happens when every single person is haunted by a ghost only they can see?

Without warning, a boy in the middle of a city intersection sends Detective Oscar Mariani’s car careening into a busy sidewalk. The scene is bedlam as every person becomes visited by something no one else can see. We are all haunted. Usually, the apparition is someone known: a lost relative, a lover, an enemy. But not always. For Oscar Mariani, the only secret that matters is the unknown ghost who now shares his every waking moment … and why.

The worldwide aftershock of what becomes known as “Gray Wednesday” is immediate and catastrophic, leaving governments barely functioning and economies devastated … but some things don’t change. When Detective Mariani discovers the grisly remains of an anonymous murder victim in the city sewage system, his investigation will pit him against a corrupt police department and a murky cabal conspiring for power in the new world order.

Stephen M. Irwin has created an unforgettable crime novel and an intense, textured vision of the near-future. The Broken Ones is the riveting search for hope in the darkest corners of the imagination.

Books received 8/21/12 was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

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

Dearly, Departed
by Lia Habel
Cover by David Stevenson

Promo copy:

CAN A PROPER YOUNG VICTORIAN LADY FIND TRUE LOVE IN THE ARMS OF A DASHING ZOMBIE?

The year is 2195. The place is New Victoria—a high-tech nation modeled on the mores of an antique era. Sixteen-year-old Nora Dearly is far more interested in her country’s political unrest than in silly debutante balls. But the death of her beloved parents leaves Nora at the mercy of a social-climbing aunt who plans to marry off her niece for money. To Nora, no fate could be more horrible—until she’s nearly kidnapped by an army of walking corpses. Now she’s suddenly gunning down ravenous zombies alongside mysterious black-clad commandos and confronting a fatal virus that raises the dead. Then Nora meets Bram Griswold, a young soldier who is brave, handsome, noble … and thoroughly deceased. But like the rest of his special undead unit, Bram has been enabled by luck and modern science to hold on to his mind, his manners, and his body parts. And when his bond of trust with Nora turns to tenderness, there’s no turning back. Eventually, they know, the disease will win, separating the star-crossed lovers forever. But until then, beating or not, their hearts will have what they desire.

Blades of Winter
by G. T. Almasi
Cover by Tony Mauro

Promo copy:

In one of the most exciting debuts in years, G. T. Almasi has fused the intricate cat-and-mouse games of a John le Carré novel with the brash style of comic book superheroes to create a kick-ass alternate history that reimagines the Cold War as a clash of spies with biological, chemical, and technological enhancements.

Nineteen-year-old Alix Nico, a self-described “million-dollar murder machine,” is a rising star in ExOps, a covert-action agency that aggressively shields the United States from its three great enemies: the Soviet Union, Greater Germany, and the Nationalist Republic of China. Rather than risk another all-out war, the four superpowers have poured their resources into creating superspies known as Levels.

Alix is one of the hottest young American Levels. That’s no surprise: Her dad was America’s top Level before he was captured and killed eight years ago. But when an impulsive decision explodes—literally—in her face, Alix uncovers a conspiracy that pushes her to her limits and could upset the global balance of power forever.

Coup d’Etat (The War That Came Early, Book Four)
by Harry Turtledove
Cover by Mike Bryan

Promo copy:

In 1941, a treaty between England and Germany unravels—and so does a different World War II.

In Harry Turtledove’s mesmerizing alternate history of World War II, the choices of men and fate have changed history. Now it is the winter of 1941. As the Germans, with England and France on their side, slam deep into Russia, Stalin’s terrible machine fights for its life. But the agreements of world leaders do not touch the hearts of soldiers. The war between Germany and Russia is rocked by men with the courage to aim their guns in a new direction.

England is the first to be shaken. Following the suspicious death of Winston Churchill, with his staunch anti-Nazi views, a small cabal begins to imagine the unthinkable in a nation long famous for respecting the rule of law. With civil liberties hanging by a thread, a conspiracy forms against the powers that be. What will this daring plan mean for the European war as a whole?

Meanwhile, in America, a woman who has met Hitler face-to-face urges her countrymen to wake up to his evil. For the time being, the United States is fighting only Japan—and the war is not going as well as Washington would like. Can Roosevelt keep his grip on the country’s imagination?

Coup d’Etat captures how war makes for the strangest of bedfellows. A freethinking Frenchman fights side by side with racist Nazis. A Czech finds himself on the dusty front lines of the Spanish Civil War, gunning for Germany’s Nationalist allies. A German bomber pilot courts a half-Polish, half-Jewish beauty in Bialystock. And the Jews in Germany, though trapped under Hitler’s fist, are as yet protected by his fear of looking bad before the world—and by an outspoken Catholic bishop.

With his spectacular command of character, coincidence, and military and political strategies, Harry Turtledove continues a passionate, unmatched saga of a World War II composed of different enemies, different allies—and hurtling toward a horrific moment. For a diabolical new weapon is about to be unleashed, not by the United States, but by Japan, in a tactic that will shock the world.

Part II

Books received 8/21/2012 Del Rey edition Part I was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

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

Wards of Faerie: The Dark Legacy of Shannara
by Terry Brooks
Cover by Stephen Youll

Promo copy:

Seven years after the conclusion of the High Druid of Shannara trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Terry Brooks at last revisits one of the most popular eras in the legendary epic fantasy series that has spellbound readers for more than three decades.

When the world was young, and its name was Faerie, the power of magic ruled—and the Elfstones warded the race of Elves and their lands, keeping evil at bay. But when an Elven girl fell hopelessly in love with a Darkling boy of the Void, he carried away more than her heart.

Thousands of years later, tumultuous times are upon the world now known as the Four Lands. Users of magic are in conflict with proponents of science. Elves have distanced their society from the other races. The dwindling Druid order and its teachings are threatened with extinction. A sinister politician has used treachery and murder to rise as prime minister of the mighty Federation. Meanwhile, poring through a long-forgotten diary, the young Druid Aphenglow Elessedil has stumbled upon the secret account of an Elven girl’s heartbreak and the shocking truth about the vanished Elfstones. But never has a little knowledge been so very dangerous—as Aphenglow quickly learns when she’s set upon by assassins.

Yet there can be no turning back from the road to which fate has steered her. For whoever captures the Elfstones and their untold powers will surely hold the advantage in the devastating clash to come. But Aphenglow and her allies—Druids, Elves, and humans alike—remember the monstrous history of the Demon War, and they know that the Four Lands will never survive another reign of darkness. But whether they themselves can survive the attempt to stem that tide is another question entirely.

Fable: Edge of the World
by Christie Golden

Promo copy:

The official prequel novel to the Xbox 360 videogame, Fable:™ The Journey

It’s been almost a decade since the events of Fable 3, when the Hero vanquished the threat across the sea and claimed his throne. As king he led Albion to an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. But on the night of his wedding to his new queen, ominous word arrives: The darkness has returned.

Beyond a harrowing mountain pass, the exotic desert country Samarkand has been overrun by shadowy forces. Within the walls of its capital city, a mysterious usurper known only as the Empress has seized control. To protect his realm, the king must lead his most trusted allies into a strange land unknown to outsiders. As they forge ahead along Samarkand’s ancient Great Road, populated by undead terrors and fantastic creatures once believed to be the stuff of legend, the king is drawn ever closer to his greatest challenge yet.

But soon Albion is engulfed in a war of its own. As the darkness spreads, town by town, a treacherous force has infiltrated the queen’s circle. Now the fate of all that is good rests with a faint flicker of hope … that somewhere, somehow, heroes still do exist.

Darksiders: The Abomination Vault
by Ari Marmell

Promo copy:

Ride with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse as they seek to unearth a plot that could plunge all of Creation into chaos!

Ages before the events of Darksiders and Darksiders II, two of the feared Horsemen—Death and War—are tasked with stopping a group of renegades from locating the Abomination Vault: a hoard containing weapons of ultimate power and malice, capable of bringing an end to the uneasy truce between Heaven and Hell … but only by unleashing total destruction.

Created in close collaboration with the Darksiders II teams at Vigil and THQ, Darksiders: The Abomination Vault gives an exciting look at the history and world of the Horsemen, shining a new light on the unbreakable bond between War and Death.

Part I

Books received 8/21/2012 Del Rey edition Part II was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon