Cursed by Thomas Wheeler
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A raw, often brutal book told in a taut prose-line and is copiously illustrated by comics legend Frank Miller.
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Jonathan Hickman's Return to Marvel's X-Men
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House of X #1 is truly a conundrum of empowerment, silence, and fear.
Read MoreBram Stoker's Dracula
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By far the best thing to come of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was the comic-book mini-series back in 1992.
Read MoreIn Memoriam: Stan Lee
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If you only know his name from The Avengers franchise, you’re missing the point entirely.
Read MoreBlack Star Renegades by Michael Moreci
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Off to a running start, Michael Moreci's debut novel Black Star Renegades opens with young provincial nobody Luke Skywalker, whose backwater planet Tatooine is in the grip of the evil Empire. Despite Luke's humble origins, wise old Jedi Knight Ben Kenobi believes he's a figure chosen by destiny to wield an enormous power against the Empire. Ben Kenobi takes Skywalker into tutelage, but the two of them fall in with a group of rogues and scoundrels and droids, and their plans are almost derailed. Luke falls in love with a tough young woman who. . .
Read MoreThe Twilight(ing) of the Superhero
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The principle of sexual selection, wrote naturalist Charles Darwin, deals with “the advantage which certain individuals have over others of the same sex and species solely in respect of reproduction.” A peacock’s tail, its marvelous length and iridescence sculpted by female choice, is the iconic example. Beetle horns, the elaborate nests of bower birds, and even the human brain, engine of art, music and speech, further illustrate the power of a positive feedback loop. The more refined a trait, the better suited to attracting mates shall a specimen be. Life, when not about brute struggle, becomes both beauty pageant and talent show.
Read MoreGordon's Alive!
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Way back in the beneficent 1950s – in 1954, to be exact – there appeared on the metal spinner-rack of Trow's Paper Goods (in a sleepy little Iowa town with neither bookstore nor library) a slim thing of wonder: a new comic book called Jungle Action #1. For the asking price of 10 cents, the reader could thrill to the exploits of Leopard Girl, Jungle Boy, and an enormous and bad-tempered Gorilla named Man-oo the Mighty. But for the real connoisseur of jungle adventure, the star of the issue was a muscular young man named Lo-Zar, Lord of the Jungle.
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