Shooflypie

As I mentioned last week, I'm currently reading the 3rd book in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Storm of Swords . I'm doing it not only in anticipation of the 3rd season of Game of Thrones starting two weeks from tonight (apparently this book will get me through Season 4 as well) but also because I like the books. I haven't just been reading the novel, though, a practice I started out of necessity with the 1st book in 2011 when I had to read for college course work as well and then continued that summer with the 2nd book. I'm maybe 100 pages shy of being halfway and thought I would pause to talk about when I've been reading alongside... Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell - This is yet another big short story collection in a year of big story collections. While I liked Russell's debut novel, Swamplandia! , I liked her first collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves even more and was primed for this book. Th...

There are many reasons why I was a huge fan of Starman in the 90s but today I will focus on just two. One is that James Robinson took the villainous Shade and made him into a character of great nuance and endless fascination. The other is the use of a storytelling device called "Times Past," in which Robinson would devote occasional issues to tales of the history of various Starmen or Opal City. These issues were derived from the journals of the Shade himself. Currently, Robinson has returned to the character a 12 issue series titled The Shade and #4 takes a break from the main story to bring us yet another "Times Past." It's set in 1944 and features a threat from the Nazis, the heroics of Vigilante, plus a new adventurer named Madam Fatal that you have to see to believe. It's a fun story. What makes the issue great is the art team of Darwyn Cooke and J. Bone. This is cartooning at its highest form. We get quiet moments, action set-pieces, darkness, and so...