Toast.x2

Meh. This was good but not great. Spoilers follow, I didn't spend much time trying to dance around anything. Think Tank - Hawkins/Ekedal (Image/TopCow) 160 pages Image Comics ISBN-10: 160706815X ISBN-13: 978-1607068150 Think Tank covers the life of Dr Loren, Genius and DARPA Engineer who is dead tired of feeling guilty that his work is used to kill people. Even work he does for non-lethal projects have lethal applications. I dont feel bad for him. Boundless cash and cutting edge projects entertain him and keep him involved at the level he is. David Loren is an infantile fratboy who annoyed the crap out of me. Good thing I like geeky technology. (Cool links cited to real world in the postscript) On a whim David breaks with military standard and heads out for a night on the town where he spills his guts to a woman in a bar. Some sex fluids are swapped and Dr. Loren is ultimately arrested and returned to base. He proceeds to spend the following chapters/issues breaking out of a milita...

Interesting article on TOR http://www.tor.com/2017/07/11/david-bowie-hogwarts Fan theory that David Bowie, (alias for David Jones) was actually from the Wizarding world; whether squibb or wizard, spent time in Hogwarts or a similar school. Lots of stretching and reaching and playing of twister to get things to line up, but a terribly fun read regardless. Not one of the theories discusses why Labyrinth 3D would poke the eyes out of children everytime Bowie turns his crotch toward the crowd.

This book is not for all readers, so let's apply a quick litmus test to see if you should continue. If you think you think you might enjoy fan fiction written by a fictional author about F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda... Well, grab a copy. This has that. 'He never drank because he was in love with his wit. And his love was loyal and unwavering.' If this description of Grandfather Carrigan pleases your soul, grab a copy. If you hate the heavy nature of prose in classics, you should consider skipping this book. It isn't that you wouldn't enjoy the story, but instead the presentation. The main character eats and breathes anachronistic viewpoints. As a result, he purposefully forms thoughts and sentences to emulate the dense text that often floods high school required reading lists.  ---- Make Dust Our Paper (Joseph M Reynolds) 122 pages Anaphora Literary Press ISBN-10: 1681143356 ISBN-13: 978-1681143354 Buying books through this link will...

A cool little secret added to The Great Divide .. in the last section of the end credits are hyper links that are carried over as bonus content from the original issues. One of these is a five page adult coloring book. I found some crayons and took a stab at it, but I do wish I had my colored pencils from home... Getting the horror scene right on Family Game Night was 'difficult' as when using ham fisted blunt tipped wax sticks. Other bonus content included, MP3s, a RPG conversion guide, and a sample of the fictional book referenced in the comic as written by the antagonist. Review Here: THE GREAT DIVIDE - VOLUME 1 (DYNAMITE COMICS)

Siberia 56 should be a damned film project. Someone make this into a movie/TV hybrid project stat!. Take your Alien/Prometheus worlds and mix with your Pitch Black/Riddick, sprinkle in a bit of Event Horizon, Dune, and little Ghost of Mars.. That is the amalgamate feel that Siberia 56 gives. It is presented as a collection of three comic volumes: The 13th Mission, Morbius, and The Pyramid. Siberia 56 - Bec / Sentenac (Insight Comics) 156 pages Insight Comics ISBN-10: 1608878619 ISBN-13: 978-1608878611 Siberia 56 is a terrible planet. It is a candidate for colonization ONLY because it has an atmosphere compatible with Human life. That is close to all it has going for it. The tropic belt ranges from 14° to -40°, with consistent lightning storms, erratic knife blade mountain ranges, and hostile life forms that live under the ice. If you get closer to the poles, the temps drop to -330° with wind sheer close to 200mph. The novel opens on the 13th mission, a group of replacement pre-colonist...

I was digging in my phone a today and found a video I forgot recording a few weeks back. The book I was was reading was okay (The Girl Before, Delaney), but I actually have a couple nice memories because of it. Sitting in the backyard, 100° F weather, nice cool breeze blowing through the maple tree. Kids playing, drinking coffee with my wonderful wife. The light dancing across the pages. Serious calm. ;) Toastx2 review of The Girl Before

There is something sinister here… An individual monkey, banging a drum, using his thumb. This clever rhyming book by Al Perkins and Eric Gurney is catchy and fun to read. The single monkey then proceeding to a full hand, then two hands and more monkeys with more drums. Published under the Dr Seuss imprint, it has a nice feel and sound. The artwork is unique, but familiar. Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb (Perkins/Gurney) 24 pages Random House Books for Young Readers ISBN-10: 0679890483 ISBN-13: 978-0679890485 Kiddo perspective: My daughter and son love this book. Maybe it is the easy storyline, maybe it is the ability to pound out the sounds on the book as we read it. Maybe they just like reading with me. According to my son, 'none of those' is why he likes it. He likes it because he is always hungry and in page reads 'Hands pick the apples and hands pick the plums' to which my daughter replies 'dum ditty dum dum' in the style of the story and the repeats ad infinitum...

'You have to see the big picture to build a sand castle... But you have to appreciate the small picture to understand the sand.' Genius is a graphic novel masterwork when the proper lenses are worn. I read it years ago and again last week. Both times, my heart hurt afterward, but the first time, my head space was not the same. It was a 'good not great' offering which I enjoyed but had no need to discuss. My life was less complicated and I was closer to my Big idea years. Genius (Steven Seagle, Teddy Kristiansen) 128 pages First Second ISBN-10: 1596432632 ISBN-13: 978-1596432635 Now I have children and global fears that live in the spaces of my heart where I once held invincibility and cast iron resolve. I understand the narrative of Genius so much better than I really want to. I never wrote a review before because I was only seeing the sand castle, not the components that allow the castle to exist.. Hats off to Steven Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen for this amazing graphi...

Just want to call out some amazing Independent work worth paying attention to. Go spend a couple bucks buying an ebook from this guy. Put some ramen in his belly and get some good art in the process. Our Blood Stained Roof Ryan Andrews is an incredible illustrator and comic artist. His website, has a couple great examples of his work. In particularly, pay attention to “Our Blood Stained Roof” which is s story of three young boys who watch a flock of geese mysteriously dive bomb to their roof and die. Their consciences get the best of them and they refuse to allow their father to move the corpses to the local dump. Instead, they opt to give them a funeral, even at the cost of facing their fathers dismay. The illustrations are actually pretty gory/vibrant at times, and may not be fitting for the young, or even for some of the older people I know. They are bloody, as the name implies. Our Bloodstained Roof is a little fairly chilling to read. Not that it is scary, just that it brings out ...

Okay okay. This book was pretty awesome. You might get stuck at the basic premise of ^^Mankind creates Artificial Intelligence and something bad happens.^^ Get past the trope and you get to the good stuff. It is worth it. Run Program (Scott Meyer) 366 pages 47North ISBN-10: 1477848738 ISBN-13: 978-1477848739 Trope: Humans make A.I. Humans try to put a lease on AI by thinking 'Hey! I should give it the mentality of a child and help it learn naturally! That should make it malleable and more prone to kindness and rule following! Derp de derrrr....' Child A.I., just like a real child, DOESN'T WANT TO LISTEN TO ADULTS I grew up on awesome movies like D.A.R.Y.L., Cloak and Dagger, and War Games; I couldn't resist a book like this. Luckily, the key to any story with artificial intelligence is how it unfolds. Run Program's unfold took it to some places brand new and unexpected. Here is the boil down with minimal to zero spoilers- A.I., (aka Albert) is a child. He has never...

Death is touching another human being. Skin to Skin contact to be precise. Any touch. A kiss, a hug, a casual touch to the back of the neck.. All of these will kill. The Great Divide: Separation is Survival is Separation - Vol 1 (Ben Fisher, Adam Markiewicz) 144 pages Dynamite Entertainment ISBN-10: 1524103349 ISBN-13: 978-1524103347 In Ben Fisher's The Great Divide, 'Seperation is Survival', and the Human desire for Community actively works to kill. Paul and Maria are an odd couple, stuck trying to determine if community is worth it, or if the company of a Rider means more that that of the living. After the barest of touches.. When hemmoraging from the eyes and ears, a life ends painfully but quick in torrents of blood. Within minutes, when death is complete, it is unclear what other trauma occurs during death. The bloody deceased, however, are not gone. They become Riders. Riders are personality, memories, skills, all rolled up and forcefully stuffed into the brain of the...