Behold What I Have Wrought

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It's a blog! Now, with actual blogginess! This should be fun...

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Banned Books Week 2014

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This post also appears on the Deep Stacks blog at  Round Rock High School Library . It’s not news that comic books, or at least stories and characters that were born in that medium, have become more and more visible over the past several years. Even if you’ve never darkened the door of your local comic book shop (which you should, even if — especially if — you don’t think you’d be interested), you’re doubtlessly at least somewhat familiar with the exploits of Scott Pilgrim, Groot, or Enid & Rebecca. But even with their renewed cultural currency, comics are not without their detractors. In recognition of this, the American Library Association's Banned Books Week 2014 is focusing on comic books and graphic novels which have have been challenged in our school and public libraries. The Guardian published an interview on Friday with acclaimed comic book writer and artist Jeff Smith in which he discusses his views on challenges to library collections and his feelings about his best...
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The Livin's Easy

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The solstice is still over a week away, but the good ol' summertime is rapidly ramping up around here. We've attended graduations, seen three films on the epic scale (Caspian: OK, Indy: Good, Iron Man: teh w1nz0rz!!one!), celebrated birthdays, watered our lawn for the first time ever, and visited a favorite raspas stand. This week I'm driving out to Beaumont for one of Christina's Zeta events. Actually, that understates the oddness of this journey a bit: she's in charge of organizing activities for the husbands/boyfriends/"it's complicated"-s of her sorority sisters while they have Very Important Meetings. If there weren't any guys in attendance, she wouldn't be going; and if she wasn't, I wouldn't, but since we are, I get to be in on the fun (and, in fact, did much of the research for said "fun"). Since she's going, though, and it's a well-known fact that I happily accompany her hither and yon, her chapter, composed i...
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Halloween Man vs The Invisible Man, by Drew Edwards and Sergio Calvet

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The second entry in Drew Edwards’ series of Halloween Man specials, Halloween Man versus The Invisible Man melds emotional realism with the titillating and the fantastical to create a gritty and satisfying adventure. Solar City’s fetish community has been rocked by a series of unexplained deaths when the grand dame of the scene, Claudette, comes to visit her old frenemy Lucy Chaplin, or more precisely, Lucy’s beau, Solomon Hitch. Our hero is reluctant to engage in this sort of heroism; while he’s commonly called upon to thwart the ghastly and creepy, the problem is a mystery, and he’s no detective. While comic book heroes often express token reluctance in order to build suspense, it can usually be chalked up to a gruff misanthropic streak or false humility; in this case, Solomon is genuinely out of his depth and has good reason to defer, only taking the case out of a sense of solidarity with a subculture that is marginalized and sensationalized by the media in the same way he is. The...
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