While I believe the Watchmen movie will NOT be very good (though I’m willing to be proven wrong), I hoped if nothing else that we moved beyond this type of ignorant review when covering anything comic book related. Kevin Maher of The Times heaps lavish praise upon Snyder’s adaptation calling it "a mesmerising and brutalising experience, and will be, for some at least, more than worth the wait."

He also declares it "a movie that is reaching utterly beyond the confines of its genre." And then ends his piece with this patently incorrect statement: "But as the first attempt to make a truly post-adolescent comic book movie, Watchmen is, literally, peerless."

What confines? As writers like Alan Moore have proven time and time again, all types of stories–from action/adventure to historical to comedic and all in-between–can be told in the comics medium.

And post-adolescent comic book movies? Clearly, Mr. Maher has never seen or even heard of American Splendor or Ghost World. Two definitely "post-adolescent" comics that were made into creatively successful, mature films.

We narrowly averted a zombie apocalypse and all I got was this lousy t-shirt?

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

An amazing trio of sensational Fantagraphics titles this time!

Humbug by Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Will Elder, Al Jaffee, and Arnold Roth

Promo copy:

Harvey Kurtzman changed the face of American humor when he created the legendary MAD comic. As editor and chief writer from its inception in 1952, through its transformation into a slick magazine, and until he left MAD in 1956, he influenced an entire generation of cartoonists, comedians, and filmmakers. In 1962, he co-created the long-running Little Annie Fanny with his long-time artistic partner Will Elder for Playboy, which he continued to produce until his virtual retirement in 1988.

Between MAD and Annie Fanny, Kurtzman’s biographical summaries will note that he created and edited three other magazines, Trump, Humbug, and Help!, but, whereas his MAD and Annie Fanny are readily available in reprint form, his major satirical work in the interim period is virtually unknown. Humbug, which had poor distribution, may be the least known, but to those who treasure the rare original copies, it equals or even exceeds MAD in displaying Kurtzman’s creative genius. Humbug was unique in that it was actually published by the artists who created it: Kurtzman and his cohorts from MAD Will Elder, Jack Davis, and Al Jaffee, were joined by universally acclaimed cartoonist Arnold Roth. With no publisher above them to rein them in, this little band of creators produced some of the most trenchant and engaging satire of American culture ever to appear on American newsstands. At last, the entire run of 11 issues of Humbug is being reprinted in a deluxe format, much of it reproduced from the original art, allowing even owners of the original cheaply-printed issues to experience the full impact for the first time.

Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers

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You’ve met Fletcher Hanks. Now meet Boody Rogers! Fans of Boody Rogers’ Golden age comic-book stories span generations of cartoonists, from Robert Williams to Art Spiegelman to Johnny Ryan. Spiegelman printed Rogers’ work in RAW magazine and recently it also appeared in the anthology book Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries (Abrams). Here at last is a single book – Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers – devoted to this cult comics hero, collecting Roger’s best Sparky Watts , Babe and Dudley stories, as well as much more. This beautifully designed tome also has tons of vintage photos and unpublished art (including art from the first modern newsstand comic book that Rogers did in 1935). It all begins with a career spanning fun and fascinating interview with the late Rogers, by editor Craig Yoe (Arf).

Supermen!: The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 Edited by Greg Sadowski Foreword by Jonathan Lethem

Promo copy:

The enduring cultural phenomenon of comic book heroes was invented in the late 1930s by a talented and hungry group of artists and writers barely out of their teens, flying by the seat of their pants to create something new, exciting, and above all profitable. The iconography and mythology they created flourishes to this day in comic books, video, movies, fine art, advertising, and practically all other media. Supermen! collects the best and the brightest of this first generation, including Jack Cole, Will Eisner, Bill Everett, Lou Fine, Fletcher Hanks, Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and Basil Wolverton. If the reader is expecting to find an All-American group of altruistic do-gooders, he in for quite a jolt. As Jonathan Lethem writes in his Foreword, “A collection like Supermen! works like a reverse-neutron bomb to assumptions about the birth of the superhero image: it tears down the orderly structures of theory and history and leaves the figures standing in full view, staring back at us in all their defiant disorienting particularity, their blazing strangeness.” Beautifully designed and produced in full color, Supermen! contains twenty full-length stories, ten full-sized covers, a generous selection of vintage promotional ads, and comprehensive end notations by editor Greg Sadowski, making it indispensable to anyone interested in the origins of superheroes and the history of the comic book form.

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

Dandelion Fire: Book 2 of the 100 Cupboards by N. D. Wilson

Promo copy:

Henry York never dreamed his time in Kansas would open a door to adventure—much less a hundred doors. But a visit to his aunt and uncle’s farm took an amazing turn when cupboard doors, hidden behind Henry’s bedroom wall, revealed themselves to be portals to other worlds. Now, with his time at the farm drawing to a close, Henry makes a bold decision—he must go through the cupboards to find the truth about where he’s from and who his parents are. Following that trail will take him from one world to another, and ultimately into direct conflict with the evil of Endor.

Flinx Transcendent by Alan Dean Foster

Promo copy:

After thirty-five years and more than a dozen Pip & Flinx novels, Alan Dean Foster delivers the final installment in this hugely popular series

From science fiction icon Alan Dean Foster comes the highly anticipated final Pip & Flinx adventure for fans of the green-eyed redhead with awesome mental powers and his miniature flying dragon. In this dazzling novel Foster answers all the questions that his fans have been asking about their favorite hero over the years, while saving the universe in the process.

Flinx Transcendent wraps up the storylines that Alan Dean Foster has been weaving through thirteen Pip & Flinx novels. Twice as long as any previous book in the series, this represents a major milestone in science fiction publishing.

The Island by Tim Lebbon

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Kel Boon was once an agent of the land’s most secret organization, tracking and eliminating the Strangers from beyond Noreela. But then one horrifying encounter left his superior officer–and lover–dead, along with many innocents. Kel has been running ever since, hiding out as a simple wood-carver in the fishing village of Pavmouth Breaks. But when a mysterious island appears during a cataclysmic storm, sending tidal waves to smash the village, his training tells him to expect the worst. How can he war the surviving villagers that the visitors may not be the peace-loving pilgrims they claim to be? That this might be invasion he has long feared…and that he may be Noreela’s last chance?

Usually due to space limitations, some of the more interesting elements of many of my interviews end up on the cutting room floor before publication. For example, in my recent interview with Douglas Brode about the book Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone: The Official 50th Anniversary Tribute, I couldn’t include the entire story about his first meeting with Rod Serling.

Here is the complete unexpurgated tale:

“As he was getting ready to leave, I just walked up to him,‘Mr. Serling, I’m Doug Brode. I’m one of the new professors here. I would love to do an interview and article with you.’ [At the time, Brode was a regular contributor to the now-defunct Premiere-style publication Show Magazine.] Without a moment’s hesitation, he quickly pulled out a piece of paper — didn’t have a business card — wrote down his home phone number, and said, ‘Doug, I’m gonna be busy for the next month. If you can call me one month from today at this number, I’d love to set something up.’ Just like that, and he left. A month later to the day, I dialed the number, and an unmistakable voice picks up at the other end. I started to say, ‘Mr. Serling, you probably won’t remember me.’ ‘Yeah, is this Doug?’ That’s the kind of guy he was. ‘Are you free for lunch next week?’ ‘Yeah. Sure.’ ‘Can you get down to Ithaca?’ ‘Sure’ ‘Great. Meet me at the Ithaca spa.’ ‘Fine’ Ithaca spa. So I packed up a swimming suit and a towel since I was going to the spa, right? Well, the Ithaca Spa is a little a diner. It’s just a name. I walk in with a wrapped up towel and a bathing suit I didn’t need. We sat and talked. He couldn’t have been more wonderful and open about everything. Like we were best friends. He mentored me as a writer. And just a few years later, he was dead.”

While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I’m taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

Click on images for full sized versions.

Here Comes… Daredevil (Lancer Books, 1967)
Art uncredited but most likely John Romita

Continuing my tour through some of the more mainstream selections. Throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, Marvel produced several mass market (or pocket-sized) paperbacks reprinting several of their titles. The first of these collections were published by Lancer, 1966-67. The books included two Fantastic Four volumes and one each of Spider-man, Thor, Hulk, and Daredevil. The black & white pages were roughly 1/3 the size of a standard comic and had to be read sideways.

Interiors to Here Comes… Daredevil (Lancer Books, 1967)
Script by Stan Lee Art by John Romita

Conan, Volume One (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978) and Conan, Volume Two (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978)
Art by Barry Smith

Then in 1977, Pocket began their ten volume reprints of Marvel favorites: Three Spider-Man, one Captain America, two Doctor Strange, one Fantastic Four, two Hulk, and one Spider-Woman. All but the Spider-Woman were in full color. Grosset & Dunlap’s Tempo Star six volume full-color reprints of Conan the Barbarian appeared in 1978-79. Both lines chopped up the pages to make them fit on the pocket-sized pages. The color printing for the Conan volumes were particularly well done.

Conan, Volume Three (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978) and Conan, Volume Four (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978)
Art by Barry Smith

Interiors to Conan, Volume Two (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978)
Script by Roy Thomas Art by Barry Smith and Sal Buscema
from the "The Tower of the Elephant" by Robert E. Howard

In eighties Marvel began producing their own line of black & white mass market paperback titles under the banner of Marvel Illustrated Books. This series included the usual culprits of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Hulk and Captain America with the Avengers and the newly-popular X-Men thrown in. Much like the Pocket and Tempo books, these volumes chopped up the pages to accommodate the mass market size.

Stan Lee Presents The Marvel Comics Illustrated Version of Daredevil (Marvel Comics Group, November 1982 Art by Bob Larkin)
Stan Lee Presents The Marvel Comics Illustrated Version of The X-Men (Marvel Comics Group, March 1982 Art by Dave Cockrum)

Interiors to Stan Lee Presents The Marvel Comics Illustrated Version of Daredevil (Marvel Comics Group, November 1982)
Script by Stan Lee Art by Wally Wood

Much like the DC digests, these books introduced me to several influential bits of comic book history including the legendary Giant-Size X-Men #1 and the incomparable Wally Wood.

Interiors to Stan Lee Presents The Marvel Comics Illustrated Version of The X-Men (Marvel Comics Group, March 1982)
Script by Len Wein Art by Dave Cockrum

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

End of the Century by Chris Roberson

Promo copy:

UNCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE HOLY GRAIL

Three people. Three eras. One city. Endless possibilities. <i>End of the Century</i> is a novel of the distant past, the unimaginable future, and the search for the Holy Grail. Set in the city of London, the narrative is interlaced between three ages, in which a disparate group of heroes, criminals, runaways, and lunatics are drawn into the greatest quest of all time.

Twilight – Londinium, Sixth Century, CE

Galaad, a young man driven by strange dreams of a lady in white and a tower of glass, travels to the court of the high king Artor in Londinium, abandoned stronghold of the Roman Empire in Britain. With the dreams of Galaad as their only guide, Artor and his loyal captains journey west to the Summerlands, there to face a threat that could spell the end of the new-forged kingdom of Britain.

Jubilee – London, 1897
Consulting detective Sandford Blank, accompanied by his companion Roxanne Bonaventure, is called upon to solve a string of brutal murders on the eve of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The police believe that Jack the Ripper is back on the streets, but Blank believes that this is a new killer, one whose motive is not violence or mayhem, but the discovery of the Holy Grail itself. And what of the corpse-white Huntsman and his unearthly hounds, who stalks the gaslit streets of London?

Millennium – London, 1999
At the eve of the new millennium, American teenager Alice Fell is on the run, and all alone. On the streets of a strange city, friendless and without a pound to her name, Alice is not sure whether she’s losing her mind, or whether she is called by inescapable visions to some special destiny. Along with a strange man named Stillman Waters, who claims to be a retired occultist and spy, she finds herself pursued by strange creatures, and driven to steal the priceless vanishing gem that may contain the answers to the mysteries that plague her.

The three narratives Dark Ages fantasy, gaslit mystery, and modern-day jewel heist alternate until the barriers between the different times begin to break down, and the characters confront the secrets that connect the Grail, the Glass Tower, and the vanishing gem. And lurking behind it all is the entity known only as Omega.

I reviewed this for the San Antonio Current.

The Pretender’s Crown by C. E. Murphy

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Magic, lust, and power collide in this sexy novel set amid the glittering courts of Echon, from the author of The Queen’s Bastard

C. E. Murphy is the author of several successful urban paranormal romance series for Harlequin Luna. Her first novel for Del Rey, The Queen’s Bastard, was eagerly received by her fans. Now the story continues in this second novel.

Belinda Primrose is the queen’s bastard—the illegitimate daughter of Lorraine, first queen to sit on the Aulunian throne. She is also the queen’s deadliest weapon, trained as a spy from the age of twelve.

In The Queen’s Bastard, Belinda discovered that she had powers unshared by her mother. Now, in The Pretender’s Crown, events spiral as one queen is murdered, another is suspected of having plotted to kill her, and armies marshal on both sides. Belinda learns that she is a pawn in a game much greater than she could ever have suspected—and suddenly stumbles upon a shocking secret that changes her life forever. Her powers at their greatest, she turns away from her mother for the first time ever, and must decide how to forge a life of her own.

Ice Song by Kirsten Imani Kasai

Promo copy:

For fans of Jacqueline Carey and Ursula K. LeGuin, a lush, literary debut fantasy of love, ruin, and the ties of blood

Sorykah Minuit is a scholar, an engineer, and the sole woman aboard an ice-drilling submarine in the frozen land of the Sigue.What no one knows is that she is also a rare Trader, who can switch genders without warning. When a wealthy, reclusive madman known as the Collector abducts Sorykah’s infant twins to use in his dreadful experiments, Sorykah and her male alter ego, Soryk, must cross icy wastes and a primeval forest to get them back. Complicating the dangerous journey is the fact that Sorykah and Soryk do not share memories; each transformation is as much of a jolt as if awakening from a deep and dreamless sleep.

The world through which the sundered halves of Sorykah and Soryk travel is both familiar and surreal. Environmental degradation and genetic mutation run amok; humans have become distorted into animals and animal bodies mask a wild humanity. But it is also a world of unexpected beauty and wonder, where kindness and love endure amidst the ruins.

Alluring, intense, and gorgeously rendered, Ice Song is a remarkable debut by a fiercely original new writer.

Kings and Assassins by Lane Robins

Promo copy:

Controlled by an aristocracy whose depraved whims bow to neither law nor god, the kingdom of Antyre is under siege from the only man who can save it. He is Janus Ixion, the new Earl of Last, a man whose matchless fighting abilities and leadership strike terror in Antyre’s powerful noble houses.

For Janus is the illegitimate son who has returned from the brutal slums to reclaim his birthright, and will go to any lengths to become king and reverse his country’s decline. But with a conquering foreign prince sowing chaos throughout the kingdom, Janus must battle the terrifying power of Antyre’s forgotten god, one who has gifted Janus’s vengeful wife with mysterious and dangerous skills. As Antyre nears irrevocable collapse, Janus’s manipulations and all-consuming ambition will force him and his country to choose between the rule of resurgent gods, or a victor’s throne of ashes.

In this excellent article, foobar basically states that there is no 100% secure OS (contrary to what Mac users like to pretend) and goes on to prove the vulnerabilities in the Gnome/KDE Linux desktops.

At the bottom of the piece, foobar offers sound defensive advice for any OS.

(Note for Mac users: Many elements of OS X and Linux derive from similar UNIX kernels.)

I recently discovered this interesting document from 2002.

While this guide needs an updating, the basic principles still apply.

Stacey Whitman delves into the new, most-likely illegal, and most definitely unethical Facebook Terms of Service.

This is making me rethink the whole Facebook thing. Course any management team that includes Bush-apologizer/defender Ted Ullyot should be suspect.