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AWESOME-tober-fest 2011: Review of Darren Shan’s Cirque Du Freak series

Posted in books, Halloween, holiday, monsters, pop culture, reviews, vampires with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2011, Book Report, books, Halloween, holiday, monsters, pop culture, reviews, vampires on October 10, 2011 by Paxton

Here we are, Week 2 of AWESOME-tober-fest 2011. Last week was comic book week. This week is book week. We’ll start this week’s entries off with a book series I started a few years ago and I’ve talked about on the blog a few times. It’s not about Dracula specifically, but it features a nice twist on vampires and vampire lore. I’m talking about Darren Shan’s Cirque Du Freak series.

I started Shan’s series back in October 2009. I reviewed the first three books here. The first five books even made it into my year end “best of” book report in 2009. And as of April of this year, I finally finished the 12 book series. I was able to finally acquire the last two books with some help from my buddy Rondal Scott over at Strange Kids Club. So thanks for that, Rondal! Anyway, I thought since I’d talked about this series earlier, and I’ve mentioned it since, that I would wrap things up with a final review of the series.

This series has been very good. The world Shan creates is fascinating. His version of vampires is slightly different but it works. In Shan’s world, vampires are not mindless killers. They do drink human blood, but they are able to exhale a “knockout gas” from their mouth to render a human unconscious and then cut a small scratch into their shoulder or arm from which they drink. They only drink what they need then leave the human to resume his life. However, vampires have a more violent cousin called Vampaneze. They are the vicious “drink until humans are dead” monsters that one normally associates with vampires. Both of these factions are at war with each other in what is called The War of the Scars. The main character is Darren Shan, a boy who is blooded by Larten Crepsley, a former Vampire General. Darren becomes a half vampire, then is whisked away into many different adventures with his mentor, Mr Crepsley, and eventually passes the Vampire Trials, becomes a Vampire Prince and takes part in the War of the Scars as one of the chosen warriors who must defeat the rumored Vampaneze Lord.

One of the fascinating things about this book is the social setup of the vampire nation. Much of the higher order vampires live in Vampire Mountain. Vampire Mountain is ruled by the Vampire Princes, who essentially make all the important decisions for the vampire community. There are also Vampire Generals, who are higher level vampires. And when you come of age, like I mentioned earlier, you have to pass the deadly Trials before you are accepted as a full vampire. The world is just deep and endlessly interesting. Some of the most fun and interesting books took place entirely in Vampire Mountain and had nothing to do with the War of the Scars.

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Review of DC’s The New 52 – Justice League #1

Posted in Batman, comic books, reviews, Superman with tags Batman, Cavalcade Comics, comic books, DC Comics, pop culture, reviews, Superman on August 31, 2011 by Paxton

Well, for those that don’t know, I’m off to Vegas tomorrow. My wife and I are renewing our vows for our 10th anniversary and there’s no better way to do it than to do it in Vegas by Elvis. So that’s happening for me this weekend.

I wanted to jump in today with a quick comic review. The first of DC’s “New 52” came out and I got my hands on it. It was Justice League #1.

Written by Geoff Johns and drawn by the awesome Jim Lee, this comic begins DC’s journey into Rebootville. I wasn’t for sure what to expect going into this. I was a little excited, a little apprehensive. I just wanted a good start to this whole thing. Plus, I didn’t know where they would begin. Will we see the origin of the JLA, or will everything begin further back and we’ll eventually get the full-fledged JLA. Let’s see.

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Learning BASIC with the Marvel Super Heroes

Posted in 80s, books, comic books, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews with tags Book Report, books, comic books, computers, Marvel Comics, pop culture, reviews, technology on August 17, 2011 by Paxton

Yesterday I looked at the Star Wars Q&A Book about Computers. It featured a history of the computer (through 1983) and some awesome art by Ken Barr. Today, I’m looking at another awesomely vintage computer book, it’s the Marvel Super Heroes Computer Fun Book Two from 1984.

This book is LOOOOOOOOONG and it features A LOT of programs. I’ll just be looking at some of the more notable programs and artwork. You can check out my Flickr set to see more.

Here’s the cover to the activity book and the intro page telling you what to expect inside.

And here’s the Fantastic Four to tell you how to use this book (in case you weren’t already aware that you used it to, you know, program your computer).

Here’s Capt America reminding you to code your 900 lines. He gives you 9 examples (there’s another page of code I’m not showing you) of 900 lines from different BASIC environments like the Commodore 64, IBM PC and Apple II.

Here’s a program featuring Cap called Menace of the Gray Gargoyle. It’s a “fence busting” program. See the code here. Man, that Gray Gargoyle looks lame.

This program is called Iron Man to the Rescue. It’s a game in which Iron Man has to stop a ship from shooting missiles at a school filled with children. Hope you get them all or the deaths of thousands of small schoolchildren on your head. Is it just me or does that seem like a needlessly violent scenario for a kid’s computing activity book?

There are two other Iron Man programs. The first is called Robot Retriever. It’s awesome because the title page features MODOK and ROM: Spaceknight. The other is Iron Man’s Lock Problem. I like the artwork on the title page. I didn’t realize Iron Man was popular enough in the 1980s to get three programs in this book.

The article continues below the break…

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A look at the Star Wars Q&A Book about computers (1983)

Posted in 80s, books, computers, movies, pop culture, reviews, Star Wars, technology with tags Book Report, books, computers, movies, pop culture, reviews, Star Wars, technology on August 15, 2011 by Paxton

I love vintage kids books. I love vintage pop culture books. I also love vintage books looking at early computing technology. This week, I get all three wrapped into one. I’ll be looking at three early 80s activity books featuring awesomely retro computing technology. Being a tech guy and a pop culture guy sure pays off some days. The first book I’ll be looking at is the Star Wars Question and Answer Book about Computers from 1983. Yes, I know, mixing Star Wars and computer technology? Yes, please. And the book is filled with some of the most awesome artwork mixing R2-D2 and C3PO and computer machinery. The artwork in this book is by Ken Barr. Ken Barr is a comic artist. He’s done a lot of work for Marvel, especially back in the 70s and 80s with titles like Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Doc Savage, Savage Sword of Conan and Rampaging Hulk. Most of that work being for Marvel magazines that showcase the really nice painted look of Barr’s creations. You can see a lot of that here, too. This book is mainly an information dump about computers, how they began and what they can be used for. Much of the information is surrounded by Barr’s gorgeous paintings. However there are also pages without artwork but instead use photographs of actual computer machinery.

Here’s the intro to the book explaining about computers. Next to the intro is another information page featuring a picture of an Apple II. Click the images to make them BIGGER.

Here are some pages talking about computers and video games. You can see an adorable picture of R2-D2 playing chess against a computer and both Artoo and Threepio playing an upright arcade machine. I’m seriously in love with that arcade machine painting. See it much bigger here. Continue reading →

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Billy the Kid Week 2011: Review of The Stone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy the Kid

Posted in Billy the Kid, books, pop culture, reviews with tags Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid Week, books, pop culture, reviews on July 15, 2011 by Paxton

Our final day of Billy the Kid Week. I am celebrating the 130 year anniversary of Billy the Kid’s death by reviewing a bunch of novels featuring Billy the Kid. Today’s book is The Stone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy the Kid by Bill Brooks.

This book is somewhat a sequel to yesterday’s Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid. It is a fictional story about what happened to Billy the Kid after Garrett shot him. It posits that Garrett actually shot a cow thief named Billy Barlow that night and covered it up. This book acts as Billy’s journal. It covers the events of Billy’s life up to the shooting and what happened to him after the shooting as well as if he ever got revenge on Pat Garrett.

I love the idea of this book. The idea is very similar to another book I read, The Frankenstein Papers by Fred Saberhagen. It takes an existing work and continues the story from another point of view. I love that. However, I didn’t just LOVE this book. The main problem lies in the structure. This book’s story is literally all over the place. Brooks jumps around throughout Billy’s life in a non-linear way. You’ll hear about an event that happened in one chapter but not see that event until many chapters later. Plus, half way though the book, the narrator changes to Billy’s girlfriend. We’ll be discussing Billy’s mother in one chapter, then we’ll see an entire chapter on his friend Charlie and his wife. It was really hard to get a foot hold on this book’s story with all the jumping around. And the author kept sticking in poems and quotes from Shakespeare and Lord Byron. It feels like he was trying to turn this book into literature. And it’s decidedly NOT.

I don’t know, I really wanted to love this book because the hook is great. Billy escaped his death and went on living until he was in his 90s. What happened to him? But just as I would get into the story, the narrator or the timeline would shift and I would have to readjust. It was very disconcerting.

I did like how Brooks incorporated passages and events from Garrett’s book. It was obvious Brooks read that book and built his narrative off the text and events in it. But, again, the disconcerting way the novel was written really hindered my enjoyment.

So, a recommend? For western fans and/or Billy the Kid fans, yes, but with a warning, the narrative jumps around a lot. But it’s a good enough premise to keep you reading. I never once thought about stopping the book. It’s funny, when I got this book in the mail from Paperbackswap.com, the cover seemed very familiar to me. I honestly thought I’d read it. If I did read it back when I was reading all those western books (early-mid 90s), then I don’t remember it. At all. And I probably won’t remember this again in another few years.