No spoilers follow, ‘cuz that’s just how I roll.

I finished the unabridged audio recording of Brad Meltzer’s The Book of Lies today. As I mentioned last week, narrator Scott Brick has a tremendous talent and he brings it fully to bear here. His style is fantastic, his characterizations spot on. Through the approximately eleven-and-a-half hours of story, Brick’s efforts support an environment where the characters become tangible.

You get to know them.

Brick brought his A-game here. I have not one single complaint about his work on BoL. Only praise.

Meltzer’s story posits a connection between the murder of Superman creator Jerry Siegel’s father and Cain’s murder of Abel in the Bible. I have to say going into this, I thought the whole premise was a bit absurd. But wow. Does it work!

The audiobook had me hooked from the get-go. It kept getting better and better.

Brick’s masterful voicing drew me in… there are moments where his pacing, supported by Meltzer’s vivid writing, had me on pins. There are other moments where Brick and Meltzer had me choking back tears. Couple of times.

Yeah, I know. I’m a wuss.

But the book evokes some strong feelings about parents.

Meltzer plums the depths of Superman lore making a number of awfully compelling arguments for why we have the hero that we know today. He also spins a marvelous mystery and some danged thrilling scenes. It is a book wonderfully dense with real life history and dazzling fiction.

I have only one complaint about the audio book. I found the bumper music furnished by Sony BMG and used to close-out chapters to be a bit intrusive. Brick’s narration is rather intimate in tone. I found the music to be unwelcome to the style. Still, I cannot recommend the audio book enough.

In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I plan on buying the hardback as well. I want to enjoy the printed word, too! Joss Whedon thinks you should read the book as well.

I guess my mother was distressed at all the violence and scantily clad women she saw in the comics I read. Or maybe she was trying to broaden my horizons? I don’t know, but on occasion she’d bring home comics for me. Something with a message. They were books with a strongly Christian theme published by Spire Christian Comics.

She picked them up at the local Christian bookstore.

I was dubious at first. Not even 12 years old, I wasn’t at all interested in reading comics without superheroes or monsters or outer space aliens. But eventually a dry spell hit between new comics on the spin rack and I’d read them.

There were some really good books that mom brought home such as the adaptation of David Wilikerson’s best-selling novel The Cross and the Switch Blade and bio-stories of Tom Landry and Johnny Cash. What really got me going was Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place. Excellent story and scary villains.

Freakin’ nazis.

The books were put out by Spire Christian Comics between 1972 and 1981. Al Hartley of Archie Comics fame wrote and drew most of them.

I suspect that my mom’s hope was to educate me on matters spiritual, but what I took away from those books was that comics were more than just people in capes. They could tell stories from any point in time from any point of view.

It really opened up my mind about the medium.

I’m in Christian bookstores from time-to-time. I can’t say I have seen a comic book there in years.

As if you needed an excuse to visit Cleveland, what with it being the birthplace of Superman creator Jerry Siegel and the home of Chef Boyardee, now the Forest City has hit the freakin’ trifecta!

Starting Sept. 16 and running through Jan. 4, the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage hosts Zap! Pow! Bam! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938 – 1950. The exhibit provides an interactive Golden Age experience detailing the heroes that drove that era and the creators who birthed them.

The Maltz Museum presents this exhibition with a proud nod to the prominence of Jewish artists and the importance of Cleveland (home of the creation of Superman by a pair of Glenville High School students) in the development of comic book art.

It is amazing how many of these Golden Age creations made by those of Jewish heritage have not just withstood the test of time, but are truly American icons such as Siegel & Shuster (Superman) and Bob Kane (Batman).

The exhibit features Batmobile rides for the kiddos (freakin’ kids get all the fun) and many rare, never before displayed comic book art.

Junot Diaz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was interviewed recently by the San Jose Mercury News:

Love and Rockets was not only a revolution in comics, it was a revolution in Latino letters. It was the first time that people were writing about the kind of Latinos that I grew up with where being a Latino was a given. What we really drew or what compelled us in our lives was who we were dating, the music we were listening to, the problems we were getting into.

Do you think some day somebody will say “Final Crisis changed my life”?

Yeah. I thought not.

I tell you, the Shat can do anything! He sings, he acts, he writes … and now?

TrekWeb posts some key points from an LA Times interview in which William Shatner revealed that he will be working with Bluewater Productions to develop a line of comics based on his science fiction novels.

“With all of these comics, I have final approval,” Shatner said “This is not a licensing arrangement, this will be me involved very directly throughout the process. They are going to do adaptations of my ideas and also sequels; they will be in the stores in March of 2009.”

Shatner’s Tek War books, which were co-written with Ron Goulart, are slated for development as are his Man O’ War and Quest for Tomorrow novels.

Tooling around the webernets, I found some nifty things to chew up some time…

…An early peek at artist Jake Ekiss’ Project Rooftop Vampirella Revamp submission…

…How would the US military fight a zombie army?

And…

…Rocket Raccoon!

Cigar Aficionado has long adorned its covers with celebrity images enjoying a stogie. Looking at my recent issue, I considered who from the world of comics should be on these covers.

Well, Nick Fury is the obvious choice. You can’t think of Nick without conjuring up an image of his eyepatch and cigar. And the blue-eyed idol of millions himself, the Thing, right?

Who else?

Howard The Duck, he always seems to enjoy sparking up a terd.

Pip is a corona man… er… troll, but probably not cover material.

Publishing powerhouse J. Jonah Jameson is, though.

And what about Perry White (finally a DC character)? Now there’s a man that is serious about his cigar. He smokes one in the work place at the Daily Planet. He even smokes one on his Slurpee cup!

I tell you, Cigar Aficionado, you’re really missing out on something here!

When I am not listening to all of those podcasts I keep going on about, I am generally listening to an audio book. I just started Brad Meltzer’s latest, The Book of Lies. Most of us are familiar with Meltzer from his work on Identity Crisis and Justice League of America. My wife and I are big fans of his novels.

To date, my favorite is The Book of Fate. The Wife’s is The Tenth Justice. Both of these books are political thrillers.

I am only seven chapters into the audio book, but apparently the story makes the connection between the murder of the Bible’s Abel by Cain and the murder of Mitchell Siegel, the father of Jerry Siegel. That’s right, the creator of Superman.

Beyond the fact that I was grabbed by the story from the get-go, I was thrilled to find that Scott Brick performs the narrating chores. Brother Brick is a terrific voice actor bringing a solid talent to the work. I’m a fan.

I have enjoyed Brick’s voicing on many books, most notably the recent Dune books by Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert (Frank’s boy). In fact, I was listening today and one of the characters in BoL sounded a little like Duncan Idaho from Sandworms of Dune. For the briefest of moments I thought that was the Atreides Ghola Sword Master talking to a homeless guy. And I wondered, “What’s the universal super being doing in Florida?”

I’m getting a kick out of Brick’s work here, and Meltzer’s story promises to be a good one.

I see that Meltzer’s in town next week. Gonna have to go and see him. Perhaps I will have him sign my iPod.

I was reading an article today from the Times-Picayune that details the Comic Book Project, an effort led by Dark Horse Comics to get comics into schools. The goal of the Comic Book Project is to aid educators in getting kids interested in reading:

Students — especially hard-to-reach students — find comic books less intimidating than textbooks, and they frequently can express themselves in comic book form better than they can in traditional writing classes, he said. Plus, the visual medium can be more memorable, which means more lasting learning.

Let’s face it, comics have always been in schools.

I mean, I think this is great and everything, but where the heck was the Comic Book Project when I was in fourth grade? I remember sitting there reading Fantastic Four #195 tucked safely into my spelling text book, when Mrs. Davis snatched it out from under my nose. She sent the comic and me down to Mr. Connell’s office, our gargantuanly proportioned former football player-turned-elementary school principal.

Scariest. Man. Ever.

I’ll never forget his words, “Funny books aren’t for school.”

Well, in your face, Mr. Connell! Guess we showed you, huh?

Now gimme back that book!

You know, I still don’t know how that one ends…

I listen to a whole lot of podcasts and one that appears regularly on my iPod is This Modern Death. It’s a podcast “about Modern Horror and Dark Future role-playing games.” In their latest episode, Shaun, Kristin and that other guy discuss media properties in role-playing games. They talk a great deal about some recent entries into the market, such as the Serenity and Battlestar Galactica rpgs.

The hosts regard these games as failures since the systems utilized do not capture the spirit of the setting.

Which got me to thinking…

The system that totally nailed the feel of its setting was the DC Heroes Role-Playing Game (you were wondering what this had to do with comics, right?). From 1985 to 1993, the now-defunct Mayfair Games published DC Heroes. It was a system that fully integrated massively powerful characters such as Superman and less powerful guys like Batman in the same game world. Truly, it allowed players to duplicate the experience of the DC Universe around the table.

The system, the Mayfair Exponential Game System (or MEGS), utilized a logarithmic scale to measure the characters’ skills, attributes and powers. It was an easy system to learn, yet it beautifully expressed the action and feel of the setting.

The game came out right after Crisis on the Infinite Earths. It captured a lot of that Man of Steel re-work in the game as well as other post-Crisis changes.

I am still using the system for my supers games.

While DC Heroes is no longer in print, it is widely available on eBay.

The Wife and I moved this summer. For the first time in my entire married life, my clothes get to live in a closet in our bedroom, and all my comics get to reside in one location, my ManCave.

Collecting since 1975 and with the exception of a few small sell-offs along the way, I still have every comic.

It is a shameful amount of comic books. Putting them all together after the move I just felt decadent. There are illiterate kids in China with nothing to read, right? It would be one thing if I ever planned on reading most of them again, but I don’t. Thus, I have resolved to liquidate a large portion of my collection.

But how do you determine what stays and what goes? Whattya’ keep?

I really enjoy the trades. I like that they are readily accessible on my bookshelf. I dig their sturdiness. So, an early decision for me was that if I could get it in the trades – it’d go. For instance, I have all of the Tomb of Dracula Essentials books. My ToD floppies – a complete collection, BTW – can go.

I’ll keep those things that I know I want to read again but will most likely never be released in trade.

I’ll keep the very first supers comic I ever read.

All my Elseworlds books are staying. The What Ifs are on their way out.

Some have sentimental value like the annual sized $1 comic Superman Family and Batman Family books my Dad would buy me at the newsstand on Sunday mornings. Those stay.

But all those danged 2099 books go.

Justice League Task Force stays.

I’m just scratching the surface. It’s a lot of books. I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts – particularly if you’ve done something similar.

Ain’t it great how I can turn the blog into my own self-help forum?

The Podge Cast is a podcast that focuses heavily on the subject of tabletop role-playing games, such as Burning Wheel, Savage Worlds, and — yes — even Dungeons & Dragons. The Podge also covers movies, TV, books and comics. Essentially, whatever the hosts are geeking over today is what they’re going to be talking about.

This week’s episode, titled “Childish Things,” covers the topic of gamer shame, that bit of embarrassment some feel for playing “pretend” in our adult years. That’s a subject folks like you and me know a little bit about. I mean, how many times have you talked around the issue of your hobby?

You and your wife are at a dinner party with your spouse’s co-workers and somebody asks what you’re reading right now. How likely are you to answer truthfully? Something like, “Guardians of the Galaxy. I loves me some Rocket Raccoon, yo!”

Or do you punch it up with some flowery words to make it sound a little less geekish than it actually is? “I am studying an illustrated narrative exploring modern heroism in a nihilist society.”

That works real well until asked for the title and you have to reveal you’re reading Howard The Duck (the Gerber stuff, not that other crap).

This week’s Podge Cast also addresses growing out of comics. Or in their case, growing out of supers comics. Interesting discussion. They are fairly well unified on their dislike of the traditional Marvel and DC universes, but love books like Walking Dead and Preacher.

I am totally going to have to hook them up with the Guardians of the Galaxy trade.

Rocket Raccoon is the frakkin’ shizzle.

Kevin noted earlier that Star Trek celebrated its 42nd anniversary yesterday. That got me to thinking: What about all those Star Trek comic books?

I didn’t start reading comics until 1975. Starting in 1967, Gold Key had been publishing Star Trek comics for eight years. Classics. I missed out on Gold Key’s original run.

I came in on the Marvel line of Trek books, which hit the stands at the same time as Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Those books were decidedly lame. Rather like the movie (tho the director’s edition DVD is pretty sweet).

DC got it right when they started printing the books after Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. These books were set in my favorite era of Trek, the original cast movie era. For the first time in the movies and in the comics, one truly felt that Starfleet was a military power. Capital ship combat! U.S.S. Reliant (the Star Trek starship Hallmark ornament this year) firing on Enterprise along the broadsides? Love that! Throw in the fact that many of these books were written by my favorite comic writer, Peter David? Boo-yah! Sop that stuff up with a biscuit, my friend.

There have been other publishers working the Trek universe since then, but DC’s run remains my favorite.

Although … I really got a kick out of Marvel’s short run in 1996. Star Trek: Early Voyages told the tales of Captain Christopher Pike and a U.S.S. Enterprise predating Kirk and his crew. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy told the story of a group of young cadets. These stories were fresh, bold, and a whole load of metaphasic fun.

Both the DC books and the latter Marvel run retain a cherished space in my long boxes.

Since Wednesday, I have been sharing with you my shameful love of 90’s comics. Much of what was printed back then was gimmicky (can you say “holofoil cover?”) and is justifiably scorned. But in that giant recycling bin of comics from the decade that saw the birth of The Real World, there is gold, my friend. There is gold.

On Wednesday, we reviewed Milestone’s Icon and yesterday we looked at Defiant’s Warriors of Plasm. Today, I confess my most scandalous of passions for it is a disgraceful love I bear for the Spider-Man Clone Saga.

Truly, truly shameful.

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Over on his blog today, Marvel Comics Executive Editor Tom Brevoort revealed the new branding for Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s Fantastic Four:

Designed to have more the flavor of a mainstream magazine than a typical comic book, FANTASTIC FOUR once again looks sleek and progressive and cutting edge on the racks. In the same way as when the Ultimate books were first introduced, FF will now not be mistaken for anything else we’re publishing.

Take a look…

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I’m having a hard time with this one.

It’s not fresh news that Academy Award Winning actor William Hurt has been cast to play General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross in the upcoming Hulk movie. The announcement was made last summer. I’ve lived with this for more than five months and I’m still having trouble with it.

I mean, really, William Hurt?

The same actor that played soft-spoken John Robinson from Lost in Space?

The guy who was the soft-spoken Macon Leary in The Accidental Tourist?

Soft-spoken Duke Leto from SciFi Channel’s Frank Herbert’s Dune?

Sensing a trend here?

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As discussed yesterday, it’s widely held that the comics printed back in the 90’s were more flash than substance. Many in the hobby hold these books in contempt, but I? I bear a secret shame.

I loves me some 90’s funny books.

We’ve already reviewed my fondness of Milestone’s Icon. Today in part two of this week’s series of shameful revelations, I’d like to chat with you about a little series from Jim Shooter’s gone-before-its-time Defiant Comics, Warriors of Plasm.

Warriors of Plasm was the capital ship of Defiant’s fleet of six comic titles. It was the company’s first, and best, book. While the stories were always entertaining, it was the setting that grabbed me, still holding my imagination so many years later.

Warriors of Plasm is set on a living planet, the Org of Plasm. Like any living thing, the planet requires sustenance. The world isn’t solar powered. And it sure ain’t a vegan.

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Zeus Comics has posted additional artwork from the recently completed Wonder Woman Wardrobe War contest. All of the non-finalist entries are on display.

I have to say, some of these are just stunning. I particularly like the one up above.

I likes my Wonder Woman with a little junk in her trunk.

It’s a widely accepted truth that there was a lot of crap published back in the wild speculator fueled boom (and subsequent crash) of the 90’s. You only have to visit your comic retailer’s 25-cent boxes to see examples of those trendy-at-the-time, but desperately awful books.

Many of us in the hobby turn our nose up at those years with open disdain for the work produced. But not all of us.

I bear a secret shame, you see. I’m particularly fond of a number of books that were published then. Over the next few days, I will be sharing some of those sparkling gems with you.

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I’m getting a real kick out of Straczynski’s writing on the Thor re-launch and I have to say Coipel’s pencils are simply marvelous. JMS has brought the magic back to Odin’s boy. I’m excited about where the book is headed. Still as much as I like what they’re doing, that ain’t my Thor.

My Norse God of Thunder was hurling his mystic uru hammer back in the seventies.

My habit started back in ‘75, but I didn’t get my Thor groove on until 1978. I remember standing before the spin rack at the corner store, disgusted that I’d read everything displayed except for the Archies. And that Thor book.

I picked up Thor.

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