Another Amazon review of a friend's (or rather friends') work

Check out the following link for my review of The Phantom Chronicles Vol. 2, an excellent anthology of stories about Lee Falk's classic hero, including tales by my friends and fellow Wold Newtonites Win Eckert and Matthew Baugh.

Thursday in the Big Apple

Still in New York, and still having a good time. First order of the day was going to the Museum of Modern Art, where exhibits on Pablo Picasso and Maya Deren were particular highlights (I was especially glad to finally see some of the latter's work). Then on to Midtown Comics where I picked up The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z Update #3, Samurai Executioner Vol. 2 and Path of the Assassin Vol. 1 (both by the brilliant team of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, creators of the legendary Lone Wolf and Cub), and, last but most emphatically not least, The Phantom Chronicles Vol. 2, featuring tales by, among others, my good friends and fellow creative mythographers Win Scott Eckert and Matthew Baugh. So far, so good.

Plans for this evening include ordering pizza, watching Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire and the rest of Pulp Fiction, and a shiteload of reading.

Just thought y'all ought to be updated.

Captain Midnight Chronicles

My review of the latest anthology from Moonstone Books can be found here. If this review makes you want to read the book, I suggest you

a) Vote it helpful :)

b) Buy yourself a copy, either now or when you can scrape together the cash. ;)

Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World, Vol. 2

Since I already posted a link to my review of Vol. 1, here's a link to the one for the second volume. Enjoy!

Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World, Vol. 1 - My review

As a friend of Win Scott Eckert's, who tries to support and promote his creative endeavors as much as possible, here's a link to the review I posted a while back on Amazon.com of his book Crossovers. Anyone with an interest in the titular fiction motif, the pulps, or Philip Jose Farmer's writings about the Wold Newton Family should definitely get this book.

Ass-hattery Ahoy

I love Mystery Science Theater 3000. I think it's one of the funniest shows ever made, even when I actually like the movies they show (such as Danger: Diabolik and some of the Roger Corman films). A lot of episodes aren't available on DVD, some due to copyright reasons (including pretty much all of the Gamera films they did). At the end of each episode, the credits would include the phrase, "Keep circulating the tapes". The folks at Best Brains were encouraging fans of the show to share their copies of each episode with other fans. In the years since the show started, a little thing called the Internet has become somewhat popular. One website, Youtube, has brought the circulation of episodes into the 21st Century via several MSTies posting episodes broken up into 10-12 chapter on it. However, Viacom and NBC Universal have been intermittently cracking down on these people. Some who have posted episodes have gotten their accounts suspended. More irritatingly, rather than the more logical idea of removing the episode entirely, some episodes have had only one or two chapters removed. This does a disservice to old and new fans of the show, some of the latter of whom may not have a chance to see some of these episodes otherwise. I understand the desire to protect one's intellectual property, but I have to wonder why these companies are going about it in a half-assed, rather dickish way.

Pic o' the Day

Today we have a gorgeous illustration by the great Joe Kubert featuring one of the heroes most associated with him, Hawkman. Kubert not only drew the Golden Age incarnation of the hero in Flash Comics from #62 (Feb. 1945) to the final issue, #104 (Feb. 1949), he was also the initial artist on the Silver Age re-imagining of the Winged Wonder, illustrating this version's initial appearances in The Brave and the Bold #34 (February-March 1961)-36 (June-July 1961) and 42 (June-July 1962)-44 (October-November 1962), as well as some of his appearances in the later The Atom & Hawkman.