Archive for the ‘Reading’ Category

Good news: Strangers in Paradise, the long-running, award-winning comic by Terry Moore, is finally being collected in one massive , two-book hardcover collection.

Better news: there's also a third book to the set, containing the artwork for all the covers.

Even better news: Moore has tweaked the stories so that everything runs in unbroken order, typos have been fixed, words have been uncensored, and the artwork has been checked page by page. This is the finest edition of these stories available.

Way cool news: The Omnibus is on sale now, although it will debut at the San Diego Comic-Con. You can pre-order it from the Strangers in Paradise site and pick it up at the con (in a cool Omnibus canvas bag to haul it around) or have it shipped afterward.

Limited edition news: Only 1250 of these will be printed; after that the 1st two books (but not the covers book) will come out in paperback. Copies are available through your local comic store, but don't dawdle to preorder, they're going fast.

Extremely limited edition news: a lettered edition, only 26 copies, has been created to benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. This is the rarest Strangers in Paradise collectible imaginable and it comes with an original drawing by Terry Moore and a bottle of "Parker Lily," a fragrance based on Terry Moore's beloved epic created by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, strictly limited to 26 bottles. And right now the CBLDF is offering the rarest SiP item of all on eBay — Letter A of this limited edition set, plus a bottle each of the two prototypes of Parker Lily, the same ones sent to Terry Moore for approval. Short of auctioning off Terry Moore himself, it doesn't get better than this.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just when I think there are no cool collectibles any more…

Robert Anton Wilson, futurist and writer, died with a large amount of medical debt and his daughter, Christina, is auctioning off some of his belongings. Including this: Robert Anton Wilson's medical marijuana card

As we all know (or should) RAW was a great champion of decriminalizing marijuana. In his late sixties, when his post-polio syndrome started getting bad, he really found great relief and was a staunch supporter of WAMM. WAMM is Wo/Man's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, located in Santa Cruz. His doctor gave him the necessary paperwork and here is his official WAMM card granting him the right to use marijuana medicinally. He is of course, patient #2323. There is no signature, but his picture is emblazoned on the front with a twinkle in his eye…

RAW's work… hell, his attitude… was a huge influence on my teenage years, and I reread "Illuminatus!" every year for quite a while. The concept of fun and delight being a necessary component to any personal, religious, or philosophical belief system ran through everything he wrote and it has stuck with me all this time.

Bookz Pro, on the many ebook readers available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, just updated to be fully compatible with the 3.0 OS, and it's added some functionality. Version 2.6 now includes auto-rotation, a search bar in your library, and the ability to read from ZIP files. This is added to a decent list of ebook reading tools for a program that has set out to be the easiest native text document reader for the iPhone. Bookz Pro has a built-in dictionary, multi-language support, it opens large text files extremely quickly, and it even allows you to password-protect specific books. Bookz Pro is $4.99, the free version (without the dictionary, password protection of appearance mods) is, well, free.

All well and good. But when they updated why did they change the app's icon, which was cool and distinctive (see above left), into something that looks like an "I Can Read!" book? Clipart restrictions? Aiming at the children's iPhone market? Lost a bet? I don't recall offhand if the pro and free versions had different icons before so perhaps this is a way to make the difference more obvious, but jeez.

It's never made a lot of sense that ebooks – which require no materials, no shipping, no storage, no stocking or maintenance manpower, and no destruction of unsold inventory – often cost as much or more than their print equivalents. eBook aficionados have spent the last 10 years shaking their heads and wondering when the publishing companies would get a clue… when the aficionados weren't simply scanning in the books themselves and sharing them for free, of course.

OK, not all the publishing companies. Baen Books, as always, was ahead of the curve with a sensible and attractive pricing plan from the very beginning. But I almost have to throw them out when complaining about publishers; they keep throwing off the curve. Meanwhile the rest of the publishers priced their ebooks high and huddled together, hoping that it wouldn't catch on.

Then Amazon shook things up with the $9.95 New York Times Bestseller ebook pricing. Suddenly that seemed to be a better deal – it certainly helped drive sales of their otherwise overpriced Kindle – and we saw a chink in the pricing wall.

Now it's spreading, and I hope it continues. eReader.com, one of the oldest ebook retailers, has changed their pricing structure and they're going Amazon one better. Now all new books start at $9.95 or less the first week of their release. After that the books revert to the publisher's list price but will not exceed $12.95. Read that again: will not exceed $12.95. And you can still earn 15% Reader Rewards, rebates which can be applied to future purchases.

Read the rest of this entry »

In ABC's "Castle," Nathan Fillion plays a best-selling mystery novelist. So when they need a cute tie-in to drum up interest in the show's second season what better way than to publish one of his books?

Starting Aug. 10 ABC will publish chapters of Richard Castle's "Heat Wave" as they air reruns of the show, leading up to the season premiere in late September. The book will reportedly include elements from the shows — which makes sense, given the premise, that he's following the cops to get story ideas. The book itself will be published September 29 by Hyperion.

There's one problem with stuff like this: what if the book by this fictional bestselling writer sucks? No one's saying who the real author is. Personally, I hope it's Nathan. Look for these to show up on Fillion's autograph lines real soon.

If you're not following @drhorrible on Twitter, you're missing some good stuff and sneaky updates like this one. Just sayin'.

Eagle-eyed Browncoats have noticed a new listing at Amazon: a third Firefly Companion book from Titan Books, due out next March. What will this one cover?

No idea. Titan hasn't released details yet, other than the official title ("Firefly: Still Flying – A Celebration of Joss Whedon’s Acclaimed TV Series") and that it will be the same format — full color, 160 pages –  as their previous Firefly and Serenity Companions.

And that means you should preorder it right away. Titan's series remains the single best companions to the 'verse that have been produced, with scripts, interviews with the cast and crew, production drawings, close ups of props, and never-before-seen-pictures, which was damn impressive considering how voraciously Browncoats hunted those out.

Although it does beg the question, what could it be about? The comics? The fans? "Can't Stop the Serenity"? The various books of essays? The licensed products from QMx? A look back? Firefly's influence on other shows? More stuff from the show that didn't fit into the previous books? Tell me it contains, say, the next three unproduced scripts in the series and I'll buy it right now.

More details as I get 'em, but be aware it's out there and coming.  And if you haven't seen Titan's Firefly: The Official Companion 1, Firefly: The Official Companion 2, or the Serenity Visual Companion, go get them immediately.

A century ago, when times were tough (as they are now) and jobs were scarce (as they are now) and people needed inexpensive entertainment to get through their days, the pulp magazines were born. They were filled with lurid tales of adventurers and detectives, ape men and wild women, science fiction and romance, true crime and fantastical yarns. Science fiction was born here, and noir detective stories. Readers were transported to deep jungles and cursed pyramids, desert islands and mad scientist lairs, and they got to forget their lives and all the uncertainties of a post-world-war world for a little while.

Now, things are getting tough again. And we could really use some cheap entertainment again…*

Enter "Steampunk Tales." This collection of 10 stories by award-winning authors takes you back to the days of Victorian inventors who never used muscle when a gear would do, and never met a piston they didn't like. Steam-powered computers, mechanical men, dirigibles and anything that can be thought up by a human mind and realized in brass, iron and leather.

As for the stories themselves – like in the original pulp magazines, some worked for me, some didn't. Some, like  "Project Moebius-5" and "Tempus Fugit," had great promise but ended abruptly and poorly. Some were experimental and had excellent passages, if not plots, like "The Anachronist's Cookbook" and "The Man and the Robot." "Benedice Te" was a rollicking good adventure, "A Grain of Sand" was a decent inventor's tale, and the world of "The Reanimation Emporium" is one I'd like to read more stories about. One or two of the rest I didn't finish, but overall it wasn't a bad evening spent.

"Steampunk Tales" will be published monthly, and will only be available for the iPhone or iPod Touch. Once the 3.0 OS comes out, you'll be able to order new issues from within the app. Just $1.99.

* OK, yes, "cheap" doesn't include the pricve of the iPhone/iPod Touch itself, but work with me, here.

That was pretty much my reaction just now. Even though I write about geek issues I don't read all the trades, and somehow I completely failed to find out ahead of time that Ultimate Spider-Man #133 was the last one in the series, to be followed by two one-shot comics this summer and then a new relaunch into Ultimate Comics Spider-Man.

Usually, avoiding spoilers works in my favor. I can be surprised, the dramatic and comedic beats hit as they're supposed to without any anticipation from me so their impact is all the harder. In this case, it was a loud "WTF?!?" followed by some frantic Googling to discover what, indeed, was the F.

Major spoilers coming. If you'd rather skip that, here's the short version: I was disappointed in every way imaginable, and I have to assume that Brian Michael Bendis had a gun held to his head.

Read the rest of this entry »

If the DVDs and  soundtrack isn't enough – and it isn't – go check out the free Dr. Horrible comics at Dark Horse Presents. First up is "Captain Hammer: Be Like Me," written by Zack Whedon, drawn by Eric Canete and colored by Dave Stewart. Excellent look at Captain Hammer's life before the events of the show, and hilarious all by itself. Read it here.

Then there's "Moist: Humidity Rising," Dr. Horrible's sidekick's awesome origin! Well, kind of awesome. Well, not really. I wasn't as impressed with this one, even though Zack penned it as well (art by Farel Dalrymple and Dan Jackson). It hits all the points – got his powers, met Billy, dreamed henchmen dreams – without any memorable lines or interesting twists or much plot at all. It's just… there. Which, come to think of it, also describes Moist, so maybe it works after all. Read it here.

And out this week, "Penny: Keep Your Head Up," by Zack Whedon and Jim Rugg, a sweet tale of her activist beginnings.