Christian

John’s even more of a bastard than we even knew! Not only does the guy sleep around, but he refuses to use contraceptions too. He has extensive occult knowledge, but I doubt he’s versed in using intentional retrograde ejaculation or male sexual continence either. He doesn’t seem the type.

Abby was obviously worried about STDs, because she saw John as a sleazy guy. She never complained about catching a venereal disease later though. Although maybe John’s demon blood would kill any viruses. Still, Abby’s view of John wasn’t an accurate depiction of John either, it was simply how she thought about him, based on what she knew.

I don’t know, the guy walks around wearing a trench coat and is always stopping at stores to pick up Silk Cuts. I’m sure he picks up a few condoms for the coat pockets too.

I’m sure it might have just been expected by Zed, Kit, Dani, and Angie that they were going to use protection. It would read awkwardly, like a public service announcement, to make sure to write a line about it in the story.

Speaking of...Besides, I think we’re all forgetting John showing up in Zatanna’s public service announcement with the banana! Remember that?

It’s outright blasphemy to even dare compare anything HB related to Delano’s run!

I haven’t read this issue yet, but I wouldn’t put it outside the bounds of possibility that this run could have topped Ennis.

The only reason I would agree that it’s crazy talk with Ennis is due to being cut so short. If this had gone at least another twelve issues at this high of standard, I could definitely see it easily challenging Ennis.

You needed to set your sights lower, man. You should have been seeking out the chicks who were reading the David Eddings books instead.

I was reading Joyce on my own time back then. I had to put aside Ulysses for a few weeks to read her Eddings’ books.

On the other hand, I got her to read the Elric saga. So, some good came of the whole thing.

Belgariad was the original series. They weren’t trilogies though, as both series were five books. He then wrote a sequel series called the Mallorean. He did write two prequel novels set in that world also: Belgarath and Polgara.

You can usually find a lot of Eddings’ books easily at used book stores.

I am ashamed that I have so much knowledge of these books. I dated a woman while at university who loved Eddings’ series, and she gave me hers to read. We all did crazy things for sex when we were in our 20s though, right? So, I have an excuse for having read all twelve books.

They would be great fun for younger readers though. Ones who never read Tolkien yet, or who are familiar with LotR and want to read a similar fantasy series.

To be fair, I don’t know if many book editors who publish Wrath James White’s fiction in anthologies; and I don’t see his style appealing to Datlow.

The only place I’ve come across any of White’s fiction was in a horror anthology devoted exclusively to African-American horror writers.

She has published stories by Nick Mamatas. He had a story in Echoes, in fact.

I wonder why she had a problem with him. His stuff is good, and seems like it would appeal to her tastes in horror.

Yeah, Datlow prefers to publish very literary horror fiction, which is what appeals to my own tastes also.

Just for whatever reason, starting with vol. 9 of her year’s best series, the quality of a lot of the stories began to drop.

It might. It would depend on which authors she had on the list.

It seems that Datlow sticks with certain writers that she really likes, whether they put out quality stories in that year or not. She is also an editor where if you read a number of her anthologies, you figure out there are certain tropes she really likes in stories, and you’ll see certain types of stories pop up in her anthologies. Although, you could say that for most editors.

She can still put together worthy anthologies. I bought the Echoes ghost story anthology she put out last year, and it’s very high quality with a number of excellent stories.

It’s her year’s best books that have gone downhill.

Another possible reason could be that she is trying to choose stories which won’t overlap with Guran’s year’s best book.

Amazon.ca is awful!

Paula Guran’s new Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror anthology was released on Oct. 20th. For whatever reason, Amazon.ca has it listed as unavailable, even though it did indeed come out on the 20th.

The local bookstores don’t carry it either.

Since I really wanted to read the stories in the Guran book but cannot, I decided to purchase the new Datlow Best Horror of the Year (vol. 12) instead.

I was really disappointed with last year’s edition, and the table of contents for this year didn’t inspire me either, but I guess that will be what I end up reading now.

There will be probably be a few stand-out stories amidst a lot of, “Why did Datlow choose this story? She used to be so much better at this!”. At the very least, there is a Robert Shearman story I haven’t read yet included. He rarely ever goes wrong.

Maybe Amazon.ca might get in the Paula Guran volumn eventually....

How often can you say that about a Howard Mackie series?

Yeah, outside of the initial few Tony Isabella issues, before Shooter said that he couldn’t use Jesus as a character, and the Stern/DeMatteis end of the series, that first Ghost Rider series was filled with one awful story after another.

Mackie’s Ketch GR did eventually go downhill in to the type of drivel that you’d expect from a Howard Mackie comic*, but for at least those first twenty-five issues (and maybe more than that), the second series was pretty fun.
 

*Well, part of it was that the book did eventually run afoul of the early-‘90s crossover idiocy.

It was very ahead of its time, I guess.

Her name was Lyta Trevor before she got married.

Nope. An explosion!

It was only supposed to be a small campfire.

The second picture is the back lawn caught fire.

It didn’t get serious though. The fire was put out.

Julie wanted to have a ceremony in honour of Fox tonight.

Things got a little out of control.

6 hours ago, dogpoet said:

Probably because Infinity Inc introduced Hector and Trevor Hall and showed the latter taking over as the false Sandman. That might have had something to do with it, mightn't it?

That probably became one of the major reasons, yeah.

I remember Jade and Obsidian, as the children of Alan Scott, being a big deal at the time for whatever reason too.

Oh, you know what, John? I didn’t even read that story-arc. I only read Bendis’ “New Mutants” issues and forgot he wrote that other story.

Yeah, that one didn’t sound like it would appeal to me so I skipped it.

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Dog-Yes, the two series were written as companion books. One taking place in the Golden Age and one in the (then) modern age of the DCU.
Both of them were spin-offs of Thomas’ All-Star Squadron; after Crisis made it do that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman could not have been involved with World War II.

Thomas hated the idea that all the hard work he put in to All-Star Squadron would be wiped from DCU continuity.

Young All-Stars seems to have been mostly forgotten, while Infinity Inc. was still considered a fairly big part of the post-Crisis DCU.

I don’t understand it because Thomas had some pretty wild concepts with Young All-Stars.
If Thomas was a better writer (I like his writing style, but it’s heavily influenced by Stan Lee) I bet that Vertigo would have made a big deal out of Young All-Stars around the time Moore was writing League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

-Also, if you decide to get on a Roy Thomas kick, I highly recommend Arak. It’s one of my favourite DC comics. It’s Thomas wanting to continue writing Conan, but having to start the character and setting from scratch.
In a lot of ways, I think it was better than Marvel’s Conan, since Thomas wasn’t simply using Howard’s fiction as his template, and Thomas used real historical details and actual world mythologies for Arak. I loved that series so much.

It’s about a Native American man finding himself lost in Charlemagne-period Europe and wanting to find his way home to North America. 

You should check out his Young All-Stars series next then. He gets really desperate to try to work out the post-Crisis issues in that series, trying to salvage the continuity of his (awesome) All-Star Squadron book.

It’s also a really fun series because Thomas does something akin to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen long before Alan Moore. There’s even a nod to Theosophy in one story-arc.

I agree with you completely about Millar’s UXM.

The Bendis run on UXM was pretty fun. It’s a series of mostly standalone issues with each one introducing a new character. There’s one really strong X-Men story during the Bendis run too.

The Vaughn run follows the Bendis issues and I liked that a lot better than Bendis, but the Bendis issue was an improvement over the far too self-aware Millar stuff.

Now I am reading The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell.

It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, although I’m not totally sure why. It does go in to the future at the end of the novel, but the majority of the novel is not science fiction.

It’s a generational saga, which starts with the time of Stanley Livingstone arriving at Victoria Falls. It follows three different generations, ending in a dystopian near-future.

Each generation has a “disease” associated with it to metaphorically show the changes and challenges facing southern Africa through the ages.

Malaria represents colonialism. AIDS represents modernity and Capitalism. Then, in the future, an Africa plagued by ever-present government controlled drones comes to represent the post-modern.

That’s a neat shirt. I would wear it.

Like I said, there are hints of some really interesting stories involving Cerebus and continuing on from where the book picked up during “High Society”, it just all gets drowned out by how obvious Sim’s agenda is, and then eventually when he starts going on for issues at length about his new monotheistic religious beliefs. Instead of really bothering to tell those interesting stories about Cerebus.

I found a lot of the religious commentary interesting, myself, but it’s just such a distraction from where “Church & State” left off.

At the very least, Sim’s debates about the Torah were a vast improvement over his telling us why we should hate women.

Then comes the great “angels or whores” debate in the middle of his religious commentary and Spawn-homages (from about eight years after Spawn was last relevant)....Yeah.

Thank you for the support, guys.

He didn’t make it.

I lost both my cats within a year and a half...

Oh, you are correct.
He did change his views and got involved with an early abolitionist society though.

Checking online, he began to change his views in 1759, which is the earliest record of him donating money to an abolitionist society. It was through listening to his friend Samuel Johnson that Franklin saw the errors of his earlier views.

He had more than one pamphlet printed about the evils of slavery though. He also wrote an essay where he said that there was no difference in the intellectual ability between white and black people, and pointed out that the sole difference in races was the lack of education offered to black children and the disadvantageous facts of slavery.

By 1787, Franklin had become the president of the abolitionist society in Philadelphia, which was the earliest organized abolitionist movement in the US.

He also used his connections in the federal government to attempt to get passed a resolution for the abolishment of slavery, but it was easily voted down by the power of the slave owners in Congress.

I would say he definitely saw his errors and tried to make up for his earlier ignorance. Even if it was later in his life, it’s never too late to learn and change.

Uhh...Benjamin Franklin did not have slaves.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (among many other hypocrites did), but Franklin and Thomas Paine did not. They were both proto-abolitionists.

The conspiracy actually involves Weishaupt replacing Washington, not Franklin. Hence why “Washington” was chosen to be the first president.

I’m not sure why Ayn Randists would have a problem with Benjamin Franklin who sort of represents the ideals of libertarianism, as a very intelligent, very successful, self-made entrepreneur, who believed in separation of church and state, and small government.

Franklin was very much a classical liberal.
If modern liberals share any sympathy for Franklin it is simply due to him being a deist (they’d prefer he be an atheist, but at least it’s an Enlightenment era belief system) and his anti-slavery position.
That’s something that set Franklin apart from many other “founding fathers”, in that he found slavery abhorrent, but again, that sits with classical liberal theory (freedom of choice, ownership of the Self) as much as any other iteration of liberalism.

Besides which, the Weishaupt conspiracy is also taken from Robert Anton Wilson. It’s not as if Sim took the idea seriously in Cerebus. He was using it comically, much like RAW.

Sim does eventually start writing essays attacking the idea of separation of church and state, and pointing out how Canada’s Constitution is superior to the US Constitution because it keeps in the word “God”.
That’s a number of years in the future though, after Sim writes “Rick’s Story” and realizes that it’s a very autobiographical story.

Do you think that Trump really has the virus?

I’m with Lou. It seems fishy to me.

I can definitely see this being faked to help his re-election bid.

He’ll come out of the hospital in a few days, “This virus is hardly serious. I had it and I felt slightly sick. This is nothing to worry about. I am convinced all this negativity about the severity of the virus is fake news. I thought it before, but had no proof. Now I know. Wake up people! I said it before, people doubted me, well, guess what? The Liberals have created this virus hoax to make me lose! But now I can tell you the truth about their conspiracy, because I caught this so-called killer virus and revealed it as the common cold with a scary name. Don’t worry about this virus! Best of all, they tried a treatment option on me, and it did wonders. I feel better than I have in thirty years! So, if you are still worried about this little virus, and trust me it’s just like having a cold, there is now a known cure! There’s absolutely nothing to worry about anymore! Ignore anything else you hear. I had the virus. It’s not bad.”

I mean, the guy is in his late-70s. How can his advisors be saying he’ll only be in the hospital for a few days, as a precaution, and that he isn’t in need of any breathing assistance? Surely an old guy like him would be a bit worse off.

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Also, if he’s not that bad, tax-payers should not be paying for this hospital stay. If he was serious and in need of oxygen, maybe. Ok, still no, but whatever.
American people should not fucking be paying for a billionaire to be getting fucking health care, especially if he is having “moderate symptoms” as hospital personnel are reporting. He could have just stayed in bed at the White House.