While enjoying the most recent Back Issue (#41, July 2009 "Red, White, and Blue" issue), I stumbled upon Alex Boney’s "Quality Time: Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters." While no fault of Boney, who crafted an entertaining and interesting piece, anything that mentions Black Condor’s origin is difficult to take seriously.

Boney writes:

Ugh.

This certainly wasn’t the first time I’ve encountered this origin, but somehow I always managed to block out the memory of it. Every time I relearn it, I am slammed once again with its absolute absurdity. Even when taking in to account an era of less sophisticated comic book tastes, this one ranks among the all time moronic ideas.

Don Markstein’s Toonopedia gives a more complete overview of Black Condor’s origin, including how he learned to speak and little more of why he became a hero.

The entry also attempts to justify this ludicrous origin.

Nope. Still not buying it.

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

Brooklyn’s Finest

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Something of a genre homecoming, Antoine Fuqua’s latest film once again finds him delving into the gritty, brutal realm of cops and crooks—as he did in Training Day. Tango is an undercover officer on a narcotics detail that forces him to choose between duty and friendship. Having been to hell and back, he wants out, but the powers that be won’t let him quit. Family-man Sal is a detective tempted by greed and corruption. He can barely make ends meet, and now his wife has an illness that threatens the life of their unborn twins. Eddie is nearing retirement age and has long since lost his dedication to his job as a cop. He wakes up every morning trying to come up with a reason to go on living…and he can’t think of one. Fate brings the three men to the same Brooklyn housing project as each takes the law into his own hands. Crosscutting between multiple subplots, Brooklyn’s Finest unfolds violently and passionately as coiled, constantly roving cinematography contributes a measure of unease to the underworld action.

I reviewed Brooklyn’s Finest during its theatrical run.

Blood Law by Jeannie Holmes

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To stop a vampire killer, she’ll have to slay her own demons first.

A provocative and savvy vampire, Alexandra Sabian moves to the sleepy hamlet of Jefferson, Mississippi—population 6,000, half vampires—to escape the demons lurking in her past. As an enforcer for the Federal Bureau of Preternatural Investigations (FBPI), Alex must maintain the uneasy peace between her kind and humans, including Jefferson’s bigoted sheriff, who’d be happy to see all vampires banished from town. Then really dead vamps start turning up—beheaded, crucified, and defanged, the same gruesome manner in which Alex’s father was murdered decades ago. For Alex, the professional has become way too personal.

Things get even more complicated when the FBPI sends in some unnervingly sexy backup: Alex’s onetime mentor, lover, and fiancé, Varik Baudelaire. Still stinging from the betrayal that ended their short-lived engagement, Alex is determined not to give in to the temptation that soon threatens to short-circuit her investigation. But as the vamp body count grows and the public panic level rises, Varik may be Alex’s only hope to stop a relentless killer who’s got his own score to settle and his own bloody past to put right.

Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton

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Following in the footsteps of writers like China Miéville and Richard K. Morgan, Mark Charan Newton balances style and storytelling in this bold and brilliant debut. Nights of the Villjamur marks the beginning of a sweeping new fantasy epic.

Beneath a dying red sun sits the proud and ancient city of Villjamur, capital of a mighty empire that now sits powerless against an encroaching ice age. As throngs of refugees gather outside the city gates, a fierce debate rages within the walls about the fate of these desperate souls. Then tragedy strikes—and the Emperor’s elder daughter, Jamur Rika, is summoned to serve as queen. Joined by her younger sister, Jamur Eir, the queen comes to sympathize with the hardships of the common people, thanks in part to her dashing teacher Randur Estevu, a man who is not what he seems.

Meanwhile, the grisly murder of a councillor draws the attention of Inspector Rumex Jeryd. Jeryd is a rumel, a species of nonhuman that can live for hundreds of years and shares the city with humans, birdlike garuda, and the eerie banshees whose forlorn cries herald death. Jeryd’s investigation will lead him into a web of corruption—and to an obscene conspiracy that threatens the lives of Rika and Eir, and the future of Villjamur itself.

But in the far north, where the drawn-out winter has already begun, an even greater threat appears, against which all the empire’s military and magical power may well prove useless—a threat from another world.

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

Kraken by China Miéville

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With this outrageous new novel, China Miéville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read this—or any other—year. The London that comes to life in Kraken is a weird metropolis awash in secret currents of myth and magic, where criminals, police, cultists, and wizards are locked in a war to bring about—or prevent—the End of All Things.

In the Darwin Centre at London’s Natural History Museum, Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is conducting a tour whose climax is meant to be the Centre’s prize specimen of a rare Architeuthis dux—better known as the Giant Squid. But Billy’s tour takes an unexpected turn when the squid suddenly and impossibly vanishes into thin air.

As Billy soon discovers, this is the precipitating act in a struggle to the death between mysterious but powerful forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now, a city whose denizens—human and otherwise—are adept in magic and murder.

There is the Congregation of God Kraken, a sect of squid worshippers whose roots go back to the dawn of humanity—and beyond. There is the criminal mastermind known as the Tattoo, a merciless maniac inked onto the flesh of a hapless victim. There is the FSRC—the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit—a branch of London’s finest that fights sorcery

with sorcery. There is Wati, a spirit from ancient Egypt who leads a ragtag union of magical familiars. There are the Londonmancers, who read the future in the city’s entrails. There is Grisamentum, London’s greatest wizard, whose shadow lingers long after his death. And then there is Goss and Subby, an ageless old man and a cretinous boy who, together, constitute a terrifying—yet darkly charismatic—demonic duo.

All of them—and others—are in pursuit of Billy, who inadvertently holds the key to the missing squid, an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be.

Without Warning by John Birmingham

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In Kuwait, American forces are locked and loaded for the invasion of Iraq. In Paris, a covert agent is close to cracking a terrorist cell. And just north of the equator, a sailboat manned by a drug runner and a pirate is witness to the unspeakable. In one instant, all around the world, everything will change. A wave of inexplicable energy slams into the continental United States. America as we know it vanishes. From a Texas lawyer who happens to be in the right place at the right time to an engineer in Seattle who becomes his city’s only hope, from a combat journalist trapped in the Middle East to a drug runner off the Mexican coast, Without Warning tells a fast, furious story of survival, violence, and a new, soul-shattering reality.

Unholy Magic (Downside Ghosts, Book 2) by Stacia Kane

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ENEMIES DON’T NEED TO BE ALIVE TO BE DEADLY.

For Chess Putnam, finding herself near-fatally poisoned by a con psychic and then stopping a murderous ghost is just another day on the job. As an agent of the Church of Real Truth, Chess must expose those looking to profit from the world’s unpleasant little poltergeist problem—humans filing false claims of hauntings—all while staving off any undead who really are looking for a kill. But Chess has been extra busy these days, coping with a new “celebrity” assignment while trying on her own time to help some desperate prostitutes.

Someone’s taking out the hookers of Downside in the most gruesome way, and Chess is sure the rumors that it’s the work of a ghost are way off base. But proving herself right means walking in the path of a maniac, not to mention standing between the two men in her life just as they—along with their ruthless employers—are moving closer to a catastrophic showdown. Someone is dealing in murder, sex, and the supernatural, and once again Chess finds herself right in the crossfire.

Tongues of Serpents: A Novel of Temeraire by Naomi Novik

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A dazzling blend of military history, high-flying fantasy, and edge-of-your-seat adventure, Naomi Novik’s Temeraire novels, set in an alternate Napoleonic era in which intelligent dragons have been harnessed as weapons of war, are more than just perennial bestsellers—they are a worldwide phenomenon. Now, in Tongues of Serpents, Naomi Novik is back, along with the dragon Temeraire and his rider and friend, Capt. Will Laurence.

Convicted of treason despite their heroic defense against Napoleon’s invasion of England, Temeraire and Laurence—stripped of rank and standing—have been transported to the prison colony at New South Wales in distant Australia, where, it is hoped, they cannot further corrupt the British Aerial Corps with their dangerous notions of liberty for dragons. Temeraire and Laurence carry with them three dragon eggs intended to help establish a covert in the colony and destined to be handed over to such second-rate, undesirable officers as have been willing to accept so remote an assignment—including one former acquaintance, Captain Rankin, whose cruelty once cost a dragon its life.

Nor is this the greatest difficulty that confronts the exiled dragon and rider: Instead of leaving behind all the political entanglements and corruptions of the war, Laurence and Temeraire have instead sailed into a hornet’s nest of fresh complications. For the colony at New South Wales has been thrown into turmoil after the overthrow of the military governor, one William Bligh—better known as Captain Bligh, late of HMS Bounty. Bligh wastes no time in attempting to enlist Temeraire and Laurence to restore him to office, while the upstart masters of the colony are equally determined that the new arrivals should not upset a balance of power precariously tipped in their favor.

Eager to escape this political quagmire, Laurence and Temeraire take on a mission to find a way through the forbidding Blue Mountains and into the interior of Australia. But when one of the dragon eggs is stolen from Temeraire, the surveying expedition becomes a desperate race to recover it in time—a race that leads to a shocking discovery and a dangerous new obstacle in the global war between Britain and Napoleon.

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

Burton & Swinburne in The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder

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London, 1861.

Sir Richard Francis Burton—explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead.

Algernon Charles Swinburne—unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin!

They stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy. The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London’s East End.

Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn’t exist at all!

Tome of the Undergates (The Aeon’s Gate, Book 1) by Sam Sykes

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The debut novel from an extraordinarily talented twenty-five-year-old author. Fantasy’s next global star has arrived. Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times (Gariath the dragon man sees humans as little more than prey, Kataria the Shict despises most humans, and the humans in the band are little better). When they’re not insulting each other’s religions they’re arguing about pay and conditions. So when the ship they are travelling on is attacked by pirates things don’t go very well. They go a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demon steals the Tome of the Undergates – a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don’t want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods, and they want out.Full of razor-sharp wit, characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunging the reader into a vivid world of adventure this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.

The Queen of Sinister (Dark Age, Book 2) by Mark Chadbourn

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The plague came without warning. Nothing could stop its progress: not medicines, not prayer. The first sign of the disease is black spots at the base of the fingers; an agonising death quickly follows. But this is no ordinary disease …Caitlin Shepherd, a lowly GP, is allowed to cross the veil into the mystical Celtic Otherworld in search of a cure; her search takes her on a quest to the end of a land of dreams and nightmares to petition the gods. Caitlin is humanity’s last hope, but she carries a terrible burden: a consciousness shattered into five distinct personalities …and one of them may not be human. THE QUEEN OF SINISTER is the latest instalment in Mark Chadbourn’s riveting ‘Dark Age’ sequence: a masterful blend of Celtic myth and Arthurian legend in a modern setting.

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

The Sixth Gun #1 Written by Cullen Bunn Art by Brian Hurtt

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During the darkest days of the Civil War, wicked cutthroats came into possession of six pistols of otherworldly power. The Sixth Gun—the most dangerous of the weapons— has vanished. When the gun surfaces in the hands of an innocent girl, dark forces reawaken. Villains thought long dead set their sights on retrieving the gun and killing anyone in their path. Only Drake Sinclair, a gunslinger with a shadowy past, stands in their way.

I interviewed the creators about their previous project The Damned.

Driver For the Dead #1 Written by John Heffernan Art by Leonardo Manco

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Radical introduces a new supernatural horror set in the heart of Louisiana, from John Heffernan(screenwriter for Snakes on a Plane) and illustrator Leonardo Manco (Hellblazer).

Alabaster Graves is a driver for the dead. As a twenty-year veteran of funeral homes, mortuaries, and coroners’ offices across the Deep South, he has chauffeured hundreds of bodies to their final resting places, although the trip isn’t always so restful. Graves is a “specialty driver”, one who’s called in for the more unusual assignments that come down the pike, and if unusual equals dangerous, well, that’s just a job that pays more. Matter of fact, that’s just what Alabaster is about to get when the assignment to transport the body of renowned voodoo priest, Mose Freeman, drops in his lap. With Freeman’s sultry granddaughter riding shotgun, Alabaster must cover the distance from Shreveport to New Orleans to retrieve the remains. What he doesn’t know is that he’s being pursued by a resurrectionist named Fallow – a necromancer who gets his power from stealing body parts… and for whom the corpse of Mose Freeman would be the ultimate prize.

Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars in Brooklyn by Meredith Gran

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What is Octopus Pie?

Follow the adventures of two Brooklynites—Eve, a nerdy acerbic twentysomething and her roommate, Hanna, a long-lost friend who has blossomed into a chronically happy-go-lucky stoner. Crazed childhood rivals, art world hipsters, Eve’s meddlesome mom, and boyfriends past and present crowd their odd yet ordinary lives.

In the twilight zone between college and the adult world lies the sardonic, witty, maddening, and sometimes melancholy terrain that Meredith Gran’s addictive comic Octopus Pie maps with devastating, drop-dead-funny accuracy.

This book collects the first two years of strips, plus bonus material.

For the fine folks at Moving Pictures, I reviewed the latest Pixar movie Toy Story 3.

Check out my entire review at Moving Pictures.

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

The Last Airbender Story by Dave Roman & Alison Wilgus Art by Joon Choi

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Waging a devastating war, the Fire Nation destroyed the harmonious balance among the four nations. The Air Nation isNomads are no more, and the Water Tribes and Earth Kingdom are on the verge of collapse. In such dire times, the Avatar, master of the all four elements, is expected to return bring balance to the world. But the Avatar has been missing for a hundred years. When teenagers Katara and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe rescue a young boy frozen in an iceberg sphere, their lives—and his—are changed forever. The boy is Aang, the long-lost Avatar and long-lost last of the last aAirbenders. Now Katara and Sokka must help Aang master each of the four elements in order to fulfill his destiny as the Avatar and return balance to the world. But their mission is fraught withthey encounter obstacles and danger at every turn. After a century of conquest, the Fire Nation will not be denied its ultimate infernal triumph. Aang is all that stands in their its way—and they it will stop at nothing to stop him succeed.

The Last Airbender: Prequel: Zuko’s Story Story by Dave Roman & Alison Wilgus Art by Nina Matsumoto

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THE SON WILL RISE

Prince Zuko is banished from the Fire Nation by his own father, Fire Lord Ozai. Horribly scarred and stripped of everything he holds dear, Zuko wanders the earth for almost three years in search of his only chance at redemption: the Avatar, a mystical being who once kept the four nations in balance. All around him, people whisper that this is an impossible task—the Avatar, after all, disappeared a century ago—but Zuko defiantly continues the search. His quest is all he has left.

Avatar: The Last Airbender 1 By Various

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At the South Pole, a lone water tribe village struggles to survive. Young waterbender Katara and her warrior brother Sokka rescue a mysterious boy named Aang, who is an airbender—a race of people no one has seen in a century. Soon, everyone discovers that Aang is the long-lost Avatar. Now it’s up to Katara and Sokka to make sure that Aang faces his destiny: to save the world!

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

The Crazies

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In this terrifying glimpse into the “American Dream” gone wrong, an unexplainable phenomenon has taken over the citizens of Ogden Marsh. One by one the townsfolk are falling victim to an unknown toxin and are turning sadistically violent. People who days ago lived quiet, unremarkable lives are now depraved, blood-thirsty killers. While Sheriff Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife, Judy (Radha Mitchell), try to make sense of the escalating violence, the government uses deadly force to close off all access and won’t let anyone in or out – even those uninfected. In this film that Pat Jankiewicz of Fangoria calls “disturbing,” an ordinary night becomes a horrifying struggle for the few remaining survivors as they do their best to get out of town alive.

The Super Hero Squad Show Volume 1

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When the greatest heroes on the planet unite to face the wickedest villains in the world, you get the biggest, most family-friendly Super Hero alliance in TV history . . . the Super Hero Squad! It is no small job protecting Super Hero City from the wild, weird and even wacky villainy of the infamous baddies of VillainVille. . . but Iron Man, Wolverine, the Hulk, the Silver Surfer, Thor and the Falcon are always up for the job.

Together the Squad must keep the allies of Dr. Doom from gathering pieces of the Infinity Sword: otherwise Doom will use the Sword to rule the universe! Luckily, the City is filled with Marvel Super Hero guest-stars to help out in a pinch. These brave heroes totally deliver the action, but with plenty of humor on the side.

Featuring the guest voices of Adrian Pasdar (Heroes), Robert Englund (A Nightmare On Elm Street), Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica), Greg Grunberg (Heroes), James Marsters (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), Lena Headey (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) and Stan Lee!

G.I. Joe A Real American Hero: The Movie

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Re-mastered From A Brand-New High-Definition Transfer!

In the hands of G.I. Joe, the Broadcast Energy Transmitter is a device capable of fulfilling all of the energy needs of Earth. However, in the hands of Cobra and the newly revealed Cobra-La, led by the ancient and otherworldly Golobulus (Burgess Meredith), the B.E.T. could spell the end of human civilization. With Duke critically wounded on the battlefield, it is up to Lieutenant Falcon (Don Johnson) and a new class of G.I. Joe recruits, trained by none other than Sergeant Slaughter, to prevent Golobulus from infecting the entire globe with deadly mutating spores!

Bonus Features:

* Audio Commentary with G.I. Joe Writer/Story Consultant Buzz Dixon

* Public Service Announcements

* Printable Script

* Art Gallery

Not exactly a trio of DVDs you’d expect to see in the same blog post!

To celebrate the Underland Press release of The Complete Drive-In, author Joe R. Lansdale, hisownself, will be introducing two big screen presentations based on his own works: the classic Elvis vs Mummy film, Bubba Ho-Tep, and The Masters of Horror episode "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road."

This unique event takes place at The United States Art Authority (next store to Spiderhouse), Austin TX. Doors open at 6 and movies begin at 7. FREE admission with purchase of The Complete Drive-In. Otherwise, $5.

Following the films, there will be a signing with Champion Joe.

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

Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ’70s by Dan Epstein

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The Bronx Is Burning meets Chuck Klosterman in this wild pop-culture history of baseball’s most colorful and controversial decade

The Major Leagues witnessed more dramatic stories and changes in the ‘70s than in any other era. The American popular culture and counterculture collided head-on with the national pastime, rocking the once-conservative sport to its very foundations. Outspoken players embraced free agency, openly advocated drug use, and even swapped wives. Controversial owners such as Charlie Finley, Bill Veeck, and Ted Turner introduced Astroturf, prime-time World Series, garish polyester uniforms, and outlandish promotions such as Disco Demolition Night. Hank Aaron and Lou Brock set new heights in power and speed while Reggie Jackson and Carlton Fisk emerged as October heroes and All-Star characters like Mark “The Bird” Fidrych became pop icons. For the millions of fans who grew up during this time, and especially those who cared just as much about Oscar Gamble’s afro as they did about his average, this book serves up a delicious, Technicolor trip down memory lane.

This looks like a hoot. Can’t wait to dig in.

God of Clocks by Alan Campbell

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In the cataclysm of the battle of the gods, a portal to Hell has been opened, releasing legions of unnatural creatures that have pushed humanity to the edge of extinction. While warring deities clash with fallen angels, the only hope for mankind’s survival lies with the most unlikely heroes: Former assassin Rachel Hael has rejoined blood-magician Mina Greene and her little dog, Basilis, on one last desperate mission to save the world from the ravages of Hell. As Rachel travels to the final confrontation she has both sought and feared, she begins to realize that time itself is unraveling. And so she must prepare herself for a sacrifice that may claim her heart, her life, her soul—and even then it may not be enough.

Shadow’s Son by Jon Sprunk

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In the holy city of Othir, treachery and corruption lurk at the end of every street, just the place for a freelance assassin with no loyalties and few scruples.

Caim makes his living on the edge of a blade, but when a routine job goes south, he is thrust into the middle of an insidious plot. Pitted against crooked lawmen, rival killers, and sorcery from the Other Side, his only allies are Josephine, the socialite daughter of his last victim, and Kit, a guardian spirit no one else can see. But in this fight for his life, Caim only trusts his knives and his instincts, but they won’t be enough when his quest for justice leads him from Othir’s hazardous back alleys to its shining corridors of power. To unmask a conspiracy at the heart of the empire, he must claim his birthright as the Shadow’s Son . . .

Part II