For Trade/Sale: My Catwoman Comics

This week The League is trad­ing our unwanted stuff ! I’ve got plenty of that around here, but I tried to pick some­thing that I know you guys in The League might actu­ally want–that is, unless any of you are inter­ested in Hello Kitty stuff or Insane Clown Posse CDs… Any­one? Bueller?

Didn’t think so.

So, here’s what I’m hop­ing to unload:

Are you sur­prised I have Cat­woman comics? See, back in the 90s I was obsessed with X-MEN after get­ting hooked on the car­toon, so I started col­lect­ing the comics. I still have hun­dreds of them, between X-MEN, Uncanny X-MEN, X-Factor, X-Force, X-MEN 2099, X-MEN Adven­tures, all the character-centric titles like Wolver­ine, Cable, Storm, etc. etc. etc. I even have some Avengers crossovers. Here’s a glimpse:

Feel­ing overly entrenched in the Mar­vel uni­verse, I decided at some point to branch out a lit­tle and try some­thing new. For what­ever rea­son, Cat­woman is the book I chose to do that with. I loved Bat­man, but was over­whelmed by the vol­ume of Bat­man comics out there and didn’t know where to start. I’ve also never been one to col­lect comic books just for the sake of collecting–I actu­ally do read the sto­ries and I won’t buy a book that I’m not “into” story or character-wise. When I saw Cat­woman #1 hit the stands back in 1993, I thought here was good chance to get into some­thing Batman-related from the start so I jumped on it.

Plus, the cover is embossed, so you can totally feel up Selina Kyle’s cat-bewbz. Fun, right?

I tried my best to get into Cat­woman, col­lect­ing it for about a year or so, but unfor­tu­nately it never grabbed me the way X-MEN did, so I gave up. It did, how­ever, teach me a valu­able les­son: that I shouldn’t have to “try” to get into some­thing. If you’re try­ing too hard to like some­thing, it prob­a­bly means you don’t. And if you don’t like some­thing, stop col­lect­ing it. Oth­er­wise it’s just a waste of time and money. That’s what these books rep­re­sent to me–a waste of time and money. I have no emo­tional invest­ment in them what­so­ever, and I’d be more than happy to pass them on to some­one who’ll actu­ally appre­ci­ate them.

So here’s exactly what I have up for trade:

• Cat­woman #1 — Aug 1993
• Cat­woman #2 — Sep 1993
• Cat­woman #3 — Oct 1993
• Cat­woman #4 — Nov 1993
• Cat­woman #5 — Dec 1993
• Cat­woman #6 — Jan 1994 (2x copies of this one)
• Cat­woman #7 — Feb 1994
• Cat­woman #8 — Mar 1994
• Cat­woman #9 — Apr 1994
• Cat­woman #10 — May 1994
• Cat­woman #11 — Jun 1994
• (I don’t have #12 for some rea­son…)
• Cat­woman #13 — Aug 1994
• Cat­woman #14 — Sep 1994 (2x copies of this one)
• (I don’t have #15 either)
• Cat­woman #16 — Dec 1994
• Cat­woman #0 — Oct 1994
• Cat­woman Annual #1 — 1994

All of these comics are bagged and boarded and have been rest­ing undis­turbed in my comic boxes since 1994. In other words, they’re in great condition.

And here’s what I’m inter­ested in for trade:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles any­thing, espe­cially if it’s related to the first movie
• Retro gam­ing stuff (NES carts, Atari, Sega Gen­e­sis, etc.)
• Choose Your Own Adven­ture Books (Hardcover)
• Vin­tage board games or card games
• Atari Hot Wheels (I need the 2600 GMC Motorhome and the Cen­tipede van)

Of course, money’s always good too if you’d rather just out­right buy them. I have no idea what the’re worth though, so you could prob­a­bly swin­dle me pretty good.

Let’s make a deal.

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was to post items we want to trade or sell . Here’s what we’ve got on the trad­ing post:

• William Bruce West — Hot Wheels, War­craft, Motown CDs, and signed Lenore books
• Team Hel­lions — Star Wars radio dra­mas, Empow­ered graphic nov­els, NASCAR Monopoly
• Calvin’s Cana­dian Cave of Cool — The Hunger Games Kat­niss Bar­bie
• Secret Agent Spit­ting Cobra — Bat­man collectibles
• Cool and Col­lected — Hodge­podge of cool 80s stuff includ­ing E.T, TMNT, MOTU, Thun­der­cats, Pee-Wee Colorforms
• My Vin­tage Toy­box — Vari­ety of loose fig­ures, includ­ing Beast­man, Harry Pot­ter, TMNT and The Shadow
• Stunt Zom­bie — Ran­dom toyes, includ­ing Lego Hero Fac­tory, Sav­age Dragon, G.I. Joe, Transformers
• For­tune and Glory Days — Star Wars & Indi­ana Jones toys
• AEIOU and Some­times Why — Star Wars toys
• Neato Coolville — Archer Spacemen

10,000 Points to Everyone Who Recommended I Read ‘Ready Player One’

If I could pay you in valu­able rare arti­facts like Hayata’s Beta Cap­sule or Fyndoro’s Tablet of Find­ing, I would. At the very least I would send your avatar some OASIS cred­its, even though I’m only a third level noob who’s never ven­tured far beyond the planet Ludus.

After spend­ing the past few days glued to my Kin­dle vic­ar­i­ously liv­ing out both the real world and in-game adven­tures of Parzival–which felt a lit­tle like being logged into the OASIS myself–I can finally join all you cool kids who’ve become dis­ci­ples of Ernest Cline and find myself won­der­ing why I didn’t read his book sooner. I under­stand what you mean now when you say Ready Player One was writ­ten just for geeks like me. Well, geeks like us.

Awe­some fan art/illustration by Lerms

With its hun­dreds of ref­er­ences to 80s pop cul­ture and video game his­tory, the book play­fully poked my nos­tal­gia at every turn on top of suck­ing me into its incred­i­bly enter­tain­ing story. I found the con­cept of the OASIS espe­cially relat­able as an ex-WoW player who used to spend an unhealthy amount of time ignor­ing her prob­lems in the real world while logged into a vir­tual one.

Beyond using famous geek movie and video game land­marks (War Games! Pac-Man!) as a back­drop to tell one hell of an adven­ture story, Cline also warns of the dan­gers of spend­ing all our time in arti­fi­cial worlds. The dystopian sce­nar­ios he describes occur­ring just a cou­ple of decades into our future seem all too pos­si­ble, given our addic­tions to tech­nol­ogy, enter­tain­ment, and over-reliance on huge cor­po­ra­tions. Who doesn’t want to be able to just pay a monthly fee to escape into a real­is­tic world where we can be who­ever and what­ever we want? ShezCrafti would be a 99th level Ninja Tur­tle. (Who can also fly for some reason.)

Ready Player One sur­prised me by being well-written, clever and orig­i­nal despite being based on and inspired by hun­dreds of other media prop­er­ties. It’s like the author put every­thing geeks my age care about in a blender and out came a smooth, deli­cious story milk­shake. Mmm, milk­shakes… Now I’m think­ing about milkshakes.

By the end of the book I had grown to love the three main char­ac­ters, Parzi­val, Art3mis and Aech so hard, even after I found out that Aech is really–

Sigh. Fuck­ing IOI.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

10 out of 10 stars.

Could ‘House of Secrets’ be the next Harry Potter?

It’s been a while since I checked up on  House of Secrets , an upcom­ing tril­ogy of fan­tasy adven­ture books for chil­dren being penned by Chris Colum­bus (yes, the same guy who directed the first two Harry Pot­ter films) and author Ned Vizzini. I had heard about it some­time last year when it was get­ting some early “ZOMG could this be the next Harry Pot­ter??” style buzz, as seems to be the case with every new children’s fan­tasy book released in the post-Potter era. There’s already a movie deal , too, so you know a lot of hopes are being pinned here.

House of Secrets  is about the three kids in the Walker fam­ily — Cordelia, Bren­dan, and Eleanor — who have to find a new home after their father loses his job under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances. They move into a beau­ti­ful old place in San Fran­cisco that used to be owned by an extremely creepy writer named Den­ver Kristoff. (Think H.P. Love­craft mixed with Robert E. Howard.) Shortly after they move in, they real­ize that one of their neigh­bors has sin­is­ter plans for them. But before they know what’s hap­pen­ing, they are ban­ished into the world of Kristoff’s books — and they have to find their way home through pirates, sharks, and all man­ner of fan­tas­ti­cal adventures.

[Source: EW ]

Here’s the cover of the first book:

While I don’t think any­thing can ever quite fill the boy wizard’s shoes, I’m all for other peo­ple try­ing, espe­cially when one of them has had a direct hand in mak­ing the  Harry Pot­ter  fran­chise so suc­cess­ful. Colum­bus’ films ( Sorcerer’s Stone ‚  Cham­ber of Secrets ) may have been the weak­est of the eight, but they were the first, and laid the foun­da­tion for every­thing that followed.

Also, J.K. Rowl­ing had this to say:

House of Secrets,  the first book in the tril­ogy, is due out April 23, 2013.

Rejected Comics #1 — Superman is a dick.

This one goes out to Kal.

P.S. This might be the start of a new recur­ring fea­ture. We’ll see.

P.S.S. I love that I got to tag this post with the key­word “superballs.”

Chuck This Out! Ultimate Turtles Fan Book

I didn’t really make a delib­er­ate effort to go out shop­ping on Black Fri­day, but was dragged out of my cave by my older sis­ter and some­time in the after­noon we wound up at my local Tar­get. I fig­ured while I was there I might as well try to make the most of it, so nat­u­rally I grav­i­tated toward the toy aisle in search of Ninja Tur­tle stuff, but as I men­tioned on Twit­ter,  that ended up being a bust.

The TMNT toys are almost com­pletely cleaned out here. twitter.com/shezcrafti/sta…

— ShezCrafti (@shezcrafti) Novem­ber 23, 2012

On the bright side, it warms my heart to see empty pegs of TMNT toys, espe­cially next to all those other (still quite fully-stocked) shelves of action fig­ures. It means they’re sell­ing well, the kids are lov­ing them, and best of all, we’ll get more.

My trip to Tar­get was not a total waste, how­ever. I scored a copy of the Ulti­mate Tur­tles Fan Book  for $4.99, some­thing I’ve been try­ing to hunt down for months. It was the last one on the shelf. (I know, I could have just ordered one from Ama­zon, but what’s the fun in that?) The book has a ton of great-looking posters, a few activ­i­ties, and over 50 stickers.

Here are some pho­tos of the pages:

The “Chuck This Out!” poster of Michelan­gelo has to be my favorite. Not only is that a great pun, but I find the orange and pur­ple color scheme strangely appealing.

There’s more, but the rest of the pages are pieces of a larger poster that you’d have to rip out and piece together to assem­ble, which I’d rather not do.

For $1.99, I also couldn’t pass up this roll of TMNT gift wrap. Actu­ally, I’m kind of a gift wrap hoarder. I have an area in my base­ment that’s full of vin­tage wrap­ping paper, printed boxes, gift tags, etc. and I love to get cre­ative with it. I can’t wait to have an excuse to use this on someone’s gift.

A real Myst book…that plays Myst!

This def­i­nitely qual­i­fies as one of the coolest things I’ve seen this week, espe­cially since I’m a huge adven­ture game nerd.  You remem­ber the point-and-click game Myst , right? Who am I kid­ding, of course you do. Hob­by­ist Mike Ando spent six years build­ing what he calls ” A Real Myst Book “ which is a work­ing replica of the link­ing books you see in the game that trans­port you in between worlds. But wait, there’s more! The book is also a fully func­tional con­sole for play­ing all of the Myst games via touch-screen interface.

Check it out:

The guy is obvi­ously a huge Myst fan. Not only did he spend six years mak­ing this thing, he tracked down a copy of the same exact book that  Myst’s devel­oper Cyan  orig­i­nally scanned as a tex­ture ref­er­ence, so the phys­i­cal book is as close as to the in-game book as you can get. Ando posted a detailed write-up here  which includes tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions and some other cool infor­ma­tion and pho­tos about his project. It was clearly a labor of love.

I’d hate to see his ask­ing price for this thing.

[via CNET ]

A Few of My Favorite Illustrations from ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’

When I was in ele­men­tary school,  Scary Sto­ries to Tell in the Dark and its two sequels were my absolute favorite books to check out from the school library–that is, when they weren’t already checked out by some other stu­dent, which was quite often. These books were leg­endary in the halls of Hick­ory Ele­men­tary School, as word of mouth spread from kid to kid about the sheer ter­ror con­tained within their pages. I remem­ber when I first got wind of an excited whis­per pro­claim­ing these to be “the scari­est books you’ll ever read!” and how my eight-year-old mind spun with intrigue. I knew at that exact moment that I sim­ply  had to get my grubby lit­tle hands on these books.

Each book con­tains a col­lec­tion of ghost sto­ries, spooky poems, and musi­cal com­po­si­tions col­lected from folk­lore and retold by Alvin Schwartz–but most of them are pretty tame, even by an eight-year-old’s stan­dards. No, the REAL TERROR in these books are the macabre illus­tra­tions by Stephen Gam­mell, which range from mildly dis­turb­ing to 100% night­mare fuel. Accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, the Scary Sto­ries series was #1 on the list of the 100 Most Chal­lenged Books dur­ing the period 1990 — 1999 because of Gammell’s ter­ri­fy­ing illus­tra­tions. It all makes sense now.

Reunited and it feels so good.

I recently picked up The Scary Sto­ries Trea­sury (pic­tured above), a hard­cover vol­ume which col­lects all three Scary Sto­ries books with all of their orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions intact. I had not laid eyes upon these books since a very early age, and skim­ming through these pages again was like recap­tur­ing a dark, seedy cor­ner of my childhood–that secret, scary place I would retreat into with noth­ing but these books, a flash­light, and my too-vivid imag­i­na­tion. And of course, I never brought the dis­turb­ing imagery in these books to my par­ents’ attention.

Here are 10 of my favorite illus­tra­tions from the Scary Sto­ries books, with a bit of their accom­pa­ny­ing text. And just for fun, I’ve tried to rank them accord­ing to how much they used to scare/disturb me.

#10 — The Thing

He walked up to it and peered into its face. It had bright pen­e­trat­ing eyes sunk deep into its head.

#9 — Won­der­ful Sausage

No one knows for sure just what hap­pened to Blunt that day. Some say he was fed to his hogs. Oth­ers say he was fed to his sausage grinder. But he was never seen again, and nei­ther was his won­der­ful sausage meat.

#8 — “T-H-U-P-P-P-P-P-P-P!”

After Sarah went to bed, she saw a ghost. It was sit­ting on her dresser start­ing at her through two black holes where its eyes had been.

#7 — What Do You Come For?

No sooner had she spo­ken than down the chim­ney tum­bled two feet from which the flesh had rot­ted. The old woman’s eyes bulged with ter­ror.

#6 — The Ghost With Bloody Fingers

Soon the ghost appeared. As before, its fin­gers were bleed­ing and it was moan­ing, “Bloody fin­gers! Bloody fin­gers!”

#5 — The Dead Hand

They found young Tom Pat­ti­son by the wil­low snag, groan­ing and gib­ber­ing as if he had lost his mind. He kept point­ing with one hand at some­thing only he could see. Where his other hand should have been, there was noth­ing but a ragged stump of ooz­ing blood.

#4 — Hoo-Ha’s

Some peo­ple call those shiv­ery, shaky, screamy feel­ings the “hee­bie jee­bies” or the “scream­ing meemies.” The poet T.S. Eliot called them the “hoo-ha’s.”

#3 — Is Some­thing Wrong?

As he stood in the road pant­ing, try­ing to catch his breath, he felt some­thing tap him on the shoul­der. He turned and found him­self star­ing into two big, bloody eyes in a grin­ning skull.

#2 — The Haunted House

Her hair was torn and tan­gled, and the flesh was drop­ping off her face so he could see the bones and part of her teeth. She had no eye­balls, but there was a sort of blue light way back in her eye sock­ets. And she had no nose to her face.

#1 — “Oh, Susanna!”

“I’m hav­ing a night­mare,” Susan­nah told her­self. “When I wake up, every­thing will be alright…”

Did you have these books? Do you remem­ber being freaked out by them? And if so, wouldn’t you agree that we’re all MUCH BETTER OFF for hav­ing been exposed to such awe­some, scary things at an early age? Chal­lenged book list be damned!

Terry Brooks’ Epic Fantasy Series ‘Shannara’ Coming to TV

“Scions of Shan­nara”  art­work by Keith Parkin­son

Way back in 2008 I did a round-up of my most-anticipated fan­tasy films for the year 2009, which included Elf­s­tones of Shan­nara, the first book in Terry Brooks’ epic Shan­nara tril­ogy, which, at the time was still in devel­op­ment . Well, that movie obvi­ously never mate­ri­al­ized (while I’m on the sub­ject, that entire list I put together turned out to be one big shit­pile of dis­ap­point­ment) but accord­ing to new news today the Shan­nara series will be re-worked for TV instead.

Vari­ety reports:

Sonar Enter­tain­ment has acquired the rights to author Terry Brooks’ best­selling fan­tasy series “Shan­nara” and is part­ner­ing with Farah Films to pro­duce a tele­vi­sion series based on the books.

Farah Films prin­ci­pal Dan Farah and Sonar Enter­tain­ment CEO Stew­art Till will exec pro­duce with Brooks. Pro­duc­ers plan to recruit a showrun­ner and direc­tor before they shop the project to net­work buyers.

Set hun­dreds of years after the destruc­tion of our civ­i­liza­tion, series fol­lows the Shan­nara fam­ily, who are empow­ered with ancient magic and whose adven­tures con­tin­u­ously reshape the future of the world. The plan is to base the show’s first sea­son on “The Elf­s­tones of Shan­nara,” the sec­ond book in the series.

The 20th best­selling book in the 25-year-old series has just pre­miered at No. 2 on the New York Times Best­sellers list. Two more books in the series are set to be pub­lished in 2013.

[via Vari­ety ]

I’m all for more fan­tasy series being adapted for tele­vi­sion ver­sus big-budget movies. It’s not that I don’t love the Lord of the Rings films, it’s just that most fan­tasy films that  aren’t  LOTR have been huge dis­ap­point­ments (Eragon, The Seeker)  or weren’t very suc­cess­ful ( The Golden Com­pass ), not to men­tion it sucks hav­ing to wait so long in between install­ments (The Hob­bit) . Until we can clone Peter Jack­son so he can direct every epic fan­tasy film, I believe tele­vi­sion is the bet­ter option.

It’s unlikely the Shan­nara series will de-throne Game of Thrones as best fan­tasy book-to-TV series, because, frankly, the books them­selves just aren’t as juicy as what George R. R. Mar­tin writes and HBO has set the bar pretty high. How­ever, I’m glad Game of Thrones  has become some­thing of a paragon that’s inspir­ing pro­duc­ers to con­sider more shows like it. Fan­tasy series that are as ridicu­lously long as A Song of Ice and Fire or Wheel of Time   can’t be eas­ily dis­tilled into two-hour movies fit for gen­eral con­sump­tion*. With made-for-TV spe­cial effects and pro­duc­tion val­ues get­ting bet­ter all the time plus the advance­ments in second-screen tech­nol­ogy and social media gen­er­at­ing huge suc­cesses for the net­works, why not bring more fan­tasy books to tele­vi­sion instead of the big screen?

*Unless it’s Harry Pot­ter .

Did Hogwarts really exist or was it all in Harry Potter’s head?

Today I came across this weird arti­cle in my news feed, which dis­cusses a the­ory about the Harry Pot­ter books I had never heard before:

“Here’s one that might be new to you: there’s a rumor going around that the entirety of the  Harry Pot­ter  fran­chise existed com­pletely within the realm of one trou­bled boy’s imag­i­na­tion — and that his abu­sive aunt and uncle drove him to insan­ity by mak­ing him live in a cupboard.”

Fas­ci­nat­ing. I did some addi­tional pok­ing around and found this lengthy post  (extreme tl:dr warn­ing!) on a phi­los­o­phy board about “The True Mean­ing of Harry Pot­ter” which sug­gests that the Harry Pot­ter series is about men­tal ill­ness and that Hog­warts is an insane asy­lum. “I’ve heard it sug­gested to me more than once that Harry actu­ally did go mad in the cup­board, and that every­thing that hap­pened sub­se­quently was some sort of fan­tasy life he devel­oped to save him­self,” Rowl­ing said in a behind-the-scenes inter­view with Steve Kloves for the Harry Pot­ter Wiz­ards’ Col­lec­tion box set. It’s inter­est­ing that she didn’t con­firm or deny it, though.

There’s cer­tainly plenty of evi­dence to sug­gest the “Harry is insane” the­ory could be true:

• The Magic realm is invis­i­ble to Mug­gles (for the most part).
• Harry’s pre-Hogwarts life with the Durs­leys could def­i­nitely be clas­si­fied as child abuse
• The Durs­leys’ embar­rass­ment, fear and over-zealousness to rid Harry of any and all abnormalities
• And per­haps most con­vinc­ingly, this quote spo­ken to Harry by Dum­b­le­dore toward the end of the last book: “Of course it is hap­pen­ing inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

I’m sure you can con­jure up many addi­tional exam­ples that I haven’t both­ered to list. How­ever, I don’t believe any of these the­o­ries are true, or that mak­ing us believe some­thing wasn’t quite right in Harry’s head (other than that whole Volde­mort mind con­nec­tion thing) was ever J.K. Rowling’s intent.

These insan­ity the­o­ries are always fun to knock around, but they’re com­pletely sub­jec­tive and like most cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tions, you can find always find evi­dence to sup­port your wild the­o­ries if you squint your eyes and blur the details enough. Some peo­ple have a hard time sim­ply accept­ing things at face value and always try to search for a hid­den mean­ing; I guess in this case it’s because they don’t feel Harry Pot­ter is awe­some enough with­out some extra layer of head­trippy LIKE WHOA Sixth Sense “He was dead the whole time!” bullshit.

Not every­thing is a con­spir­acy the­ory, guys.

Game Over for ‘Nintendo Power’ Magazine

Sorry for the cheesy head­line. I couldn’t resist. After 24 years, Nin­tendo Power mag­a­zine is end­ing. Joys­tiq reports:

Nin­tendo has cho­sen not to renew its licens­ing agree­ment with Future Pub­lish­ing (the com­pany that cur­rently pro­duces Nin­tendo Power) and has no inten­tions to take over the pub­li­ca­tion itself, accord­ing to insider sources speak­ing to Ars Tech­nica. This infor­ma­tion is cor­rob­o­rated by Nin­tendo Power senior edi­tor Chris Hoff­man, who tweeted that he and his staff will “try to make the last issues memorable.”

Report­edly “dif­fi­cult to work with,” Nin­tendo is said to have taken no inter­est in work­ing with Future on expanded online ini­tia­tives to strengthen the Nin­tendo Power brand. Edi­tors and staff mem­bers were told that the mag­a­zine would be shut down some­time last week and have since begun tran­si­tion­ing to other Future publications.

[via Joys­tiq ]

For gamers, it’s truly the end of an era. The mag­a­zine has been a source of news, reviews, pre­views, tips and strat­egy for all things Nin­tendo since 1988. I haven’t actively main­tained a sub­scrip­tion since the early 90s, but I’m still sad to see it go.

Just for old time’s sake, here are my favorite TMNT-themed issues of Nin­tendo Power through the years:

Watch out for Sea Bear & Grizzly Shark!

I stum­bled upon this crazy comic book while hunt­ing down images for my  Top 10 Car­toon Sharks  list yes­ter­day. It’s two years old, but I couldn’t let Shark Week go by with­out post­ing some­thing as ridicu­lously cool as this.

Sea Bear & Griz­zly Shark: They Got Mixed Up! is pretty much exactly what it looks like. It’s a comic about a bear and a shark that, after a cos­mic rever­sal of space and time, got left behind in the nat­ural order of the world and now inhabit the oppo­site of land and sea, respec­tively,  just wait­ing to unleash bru­tal attacks on unsus­pect­ing humans.

It’s two twisted tales of evo­lu­tion in one, with Sea Bear writ­ten and drawn by Jason Howard and Griz­zly Shark writ­ten and drawn by Ryan Ott­ley . If you’ve ever won­dered what would hap­pen if sharks roamed the land and bears lurked in the depths of the sea, this book will pro­vide those answers (mild-spoiler alert: lots of rawr-tastic, gorey things).

The book is avail­able as a dig­i­tal down­load in PDF for­mat. It’s a whole lot of awe­some for just $2.

Just for the record…

I’m Team Griz­zly Shark.

‘The Wheel of Time’ is a fantasy series so epic, I need comic books to digest it.

The Wheel of Time , if you’re not famil­iar with it, is a series of epic fan­tasy books by the late Robert Jor­dan that cur­rently spans four­teen nov­els pub­lished over a period of 23 years, since 1990. The lat­est three books in the series, The Gath­er­ing Storm , Tow­ers of Mid­night , and the upcom­ing fif­teenth (count­ing the pre­quel) and final book, A Mem­ory of Light , are posthu­mous works com­pleted by author Bran­don Sander­son from Jordan’s notes.

Accord­ing to this chart over at Gamma Squad, The Wheel of Time clocks in at #5 on the list of  longest fan­tasy series ever writ­ten with 11,362 pages. For comparison’s sake, A Song of Fire and Ice (aka Game of Thrones, thanks to HBO) logs a pal­try 5,705 pages. There’s also some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of 2,600 dis­tinct characters.

I began my jour­ney into Rand­land last year with an audio book of The Eye of the World  and have since con­tin­ued the adven­tures on my Kin­dle and made it as far as The Shadow Ris­ing,  the fourth book in the series. Need­less to say, this under­tak­ing isn’t exactly what you’d call light read­ing and I still have a long way to go. Keep­ing up with the intri­cate plots, huge cast of char­ac­ters, and vast map of loca­tions is dif­fi­cult, espe­cially if you aren’t read­ing the books with reg­u­lar consistency.

That’s why I’ve decided to start sup­ple­ment­ing my read­ing with The Wheel of Time comic books :

It’s a monthly series from Dyna­mite Enter­tain­ment that begins with the first WoT book, The Eye of the World , and breaks the story down into more easily-digestible parts, and has gor­geous art­work to boot.

If you’re into dig­i­tal comics (which is my lat­est addic­tion ), Comixol­ogy is run­ning a sale right now on all Wheel of Time  comics, which are 50% off. For only 99 cents a pop for the dig­i­tal ver­sion, right now is a great time to get started or catch up.

My New Addiction: iPad Comic Books

If I haven’t been post­ing much this week­end, it’s because I’ve been feed­ing a new addic­tion: read­ing dig­i­tal comics on my new iPad ‚ which I told myself I’d be pur­chas­ing pri­mar­ily for gam­ing pur­poses. Ha!

Then I remem­bered from a news item a while back that there was a new TMNT Comics iPad app from IDW, pow­ered by Comixol­ogy, which comes with three free issues of IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles  series and includes all the orig­i­nal East­man & Laird books avail­able for purchase.

Comic books are some­thing I’ve just recently been get­ting back into, and as far as dig­i­tal comics go, I’m com­pletely new to the expe­ri­ence. This is what I’m used to:

I have phys­i­cal copies of the first three IDW TMNT books plus the Raphael micro-series, but I’ve been want­ing to catch up on the rest and thought this would be the per­fect oppor­tu­nity to test the waters to see if I’d enjoy read­ing comics this way. It started inno­cently enough…

I pro­ceeded to spend about $30 in one sit­ting and wasted the rest of my Sat­ur­day night furi­ously swip­ing my way through the story, com­pletely absorbed.

As it turns out, I really enjoyed myself and was thor­oughly impressed by the expe­ri­ence. So much so that I also down­loaded the main Comixol­ogy app ‚ signed up for an account, and started get­ting into even more trou­ble catch­ing up on The Walk­ing Dead and Morn­ing Glo­ries .

The “Guided View” tech­nol­ogy that Comixol­ogy seems to have per­fected is what really makes the read­ing expe­ri­ence so enjoy­able. I love the way it zooms in and pans around to each panel, enlarg­ing the text and art­work and fram­ing the action in an excit­ing way. It makes the story feel up close and personal.

Comixology’s “buy once, read any­where” model works like Steam in that once you’ve down­loaded a comic, it is avail­able to your account to read from the Comixol­ogy web­site or any of the iOS, Android, and Kin­dle devices Comixol­ogy sup­ports. The prices for dig­i­tal ver­sions of comic books seem to be about half of what their phys­i­cal coun­ter­parts cost.

It’s easy to get addicted when you can push that tempt­ing lit­tle “Keep Read­ing!” but­ton and instantly hold the next chap­ter of the story in your hands for a few bucks a pop.

150 Movies You Should Die Before You See

I recently received this book as a gift:

I didn’t have the heart to tell the per­son who gave it to me that I’ve already seen 86.2% of the movies in it. (Seri­ously, I did the math.)

As a self-proclaimed afi­cionado of bad movies, I would love to be able to say I could rec­om­mend this book to you, which would look great on your cof­fee table and might even trick peo­ple into think­ing you’re hip­per than you actu­ally are, but sadly I don’t feel it’s deserv­ing of the offi­cial ShezCrafti Stamp of Approval.

Why?

• The author is extremely unfunny.
• Actual prod­uct descrip­tion: “Sure, everyone’s seen  The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show ‚  The Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre , and  Attack of the Killer Toma­toes . But as you’ll learn in this shock­ingly taste­less col­lec­tion of great awful movies, there’s so much  more  to the world of truly bad film.”
• It includes  Sus­piria. 
• It includes  Kung Fu Hus­tle .
• It includes Red Dawn .
• …and many other cult clas­sics that don’t deserve the lame attempt at mock­ery that Steve Miller is ped­dling here.

The thing about “bad movies” is that “bad” doesn’t always mean “not a good film.” Yes, truly bad movies do exist, but most of the ones in this col­lec­tion are hor­ror movies that are sup­posed  to be bad, cult films that actu­ally are good, and exper­i­men­tal odd­i­ties that are notable or ground­break­ing in some way. And the major­ity of them are hor­ror films.

Since all 150 films are listed right in the book’s table of contents–which is freely avail­able to pre­view at Ama­zon –I feel no guilt what­so­ever in reveal­ing them to you right here:

• Bat­tle­field Earth (2000)
• Bride of the Mon­ster (1955)
• Crea­ture with the Atom Brain (1955)
• Hideous! (1997)
• Troll 2 (1990)
• The Black Dahlia (2006)
• The Con­queror (1956)
• Heaven’s Gate (1980)
• Howard the Duck (1986)
• Hud­son Hawk (1991)
• Ishtar (1987)
• Sahara (2005)
• The Spirit (2008)
• Black Drag­ons (1942)
• Crea­ture From the Black Lagoon (1954)
• The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
• Red Dawn (1984)
• Trapped by Tele­vi­sion (1936)
• Zom­bies on Broad­way (1945)
• Ami­tyville Doll­house (1996)
• The Corpse Van­ishes (1942)
• The House on Skull Moun­tain (1974)
• Lady Franken­stein (1971)
• Can­ni­bal Holo­caust (1980)
• Ceme­tery Man (1994)
• Dead Alive (1992)
• Deep Red (1975)
• Demons (1985)
• The Machine Girl (2008)
• Re-Animator (1985)
• The Ruins (2008)
• The Street Fighter (1974)
• Sus­pe­ria (1977)
• The Trav­eler (2006)
• Urban Flesh: Rebirth Edi­tion (2007)
• April Fool’s Day (1986)
• My Bloody Valen­tine (1981)
• Santa Claus Con­quers the Mar­tians (1964)
• Satan’s Lit­tle Helper (2004)
• Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974)
• Bad Taste (1987)
• The Bloody Brood (1959)
• Can­ni­bal: The Musi­cal (1993)
• Demen­tia 13 (1963)
• Hang­men (1987)
• Kiss Daddy Good­night (1987)
• Return to Hor­ror High (1987)
• Ten Fin­gers of Death (1971)
• 1941 (1979)
• Bal­lis­tic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)
• Bat­man & Robin (1997)
• Cat­woman (2004)
• City Heat (1984)
• The Love Guru (2008)
• On Deadly Ground (1994)
• The Reap­ing (2007)
• The Black Cat (1934)
• From Beyond (1986)
• Mod­esty Blaise (1966)
• Moon­raker (1979)
• The Pun­isher (1989)
• The Raven (1935)
• Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)
• Attack of the Giant Leeches (2008)
• Attack of the Killer Toma­toes! (1978)
• Bite Me! (2004)
• Boogey­man (2005)
• Cry of the Ban­shee (1970)
• Die Hard Drac­ula (1998)
• Evil Bong (2006)
• The Fury of the Wolf­man (1972)
• The Giant Claw (1957)
• Humanoids from the Deep (1980)
• Jack Frost (1997)
• Jeep­ers Creep­ers (2001)
• Kung Fu Zom­bie (1982)
• The Manster (1959)
• Mon­sturd (2003)
• The Mummy’s Shroud (1967)
• Return of the Liv­ing Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005)
• Snow­beast (1977)
• The Sound of Hor­ror (1964)
• Tsui Hark’s Vam­pire Hunters (2002)
• Undead or Alive (2007)
• The Wasp Woman (1959)
• Were­wolf in a Girls’ Dor­mi­tory (1961)
• Zom­bies of Mora Tau (1957)
• Attack of the Mon­sters (1969)
• Black Magic Wars (1982)
• City Hunter (1993)
• Fan­tasy Mis­sion Force (1982)
• For Your Height Only (1981)
• Gam­mera the Invin­ci­ble (1966)
• Kung Fu Hus­tle (2004)
• Ninja Cham­pion (1985)
• Ninja the Pro­tec­tor (1986)
• Rein­car­na­tion (2005)
• Sis­ter Street Fighter (1974)
• The Ape Man (1943)
• Buttcrack (1998)
• Cadav­erella (2007)
• The Creeps (1997)
• Dead Dudes in the House (1991)
• The Demons of Lud­low (1983)
• Fist of Fear, Touch of Death (1980)
• Gothic (1986)
• Jesus Christ, Vam­pire Hunter (2001)
• Nud­ist Colony of the Dead (1991)
• Postal (2007)
• Satanic Yup­pies (1996)
• Skele­ton Key (2006)
• Sub­ur­ban Sasquatch (2004)
• The Witches’ Moun­tain (1972)
• Dan­ger: Dia­bo­lik (1968)
• My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)
• Sgt. Kabuki­man, N.Y.P.D. (1990)
• Ultra­christ! (2003)
• Alien Blood (1999)
• Bad Chan­nels (1992)
• Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988)
• Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)
• Xtro (1983)
• Alone in the Dark (2005)
• An Amer­i­can Carol (2008)
• The Astro-Zombies (1968)
• Back From Hell (1993)
• The Cas­tle of Fu Manchu (1969)
• The Dead Talk Back (1993)
• The Evil Brain From Outer Space (1965)
• Freddy Got Fin­gered (2001)
• Future Force (1989)
• Grave­yard of Hor­ror (1971)
• Hob­gob­lins (1988)
• The Isle of the Snake Peo­ple (1971)
• The Killer Eye (1999)
• Laser Mis­sion (1989)
• Maniac (1934)
• Mon­ster a-Go-Go (1965)
• Night Crawlers (1996)
• The Night Eve­lyn Came Out of the Grave (1971)
• Ninja Phan­tom Heroes (1987)
• Oasis of the Zom­bies (1981)
• Ring of Ter­ror (1962)
• Rock­a­billy Vam­pire (1996)
• Scream Bloody Mur­der (1973)
• Sin, You Sin­ners! (1963)
• See No Evil (2006)
• Skele­ton Man (2004)
• The St. Fran­cisville Exper­i­ment (2000)
• Track of the Moon Beast (1976)
• Tran­syl­ma­nia (2009)
• UFO: Tar­get Earth (1974)
• The Under­taker and His Pals (1966)

Copy & paste for the win.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

3 out of 10 stars.

Fecal Kinesis: Poop as a Superpower

Think “fecal kine­sis” sounds like a lame super­power? Wrong. This hilar­i­ous new  Ros­alarian  comic explores what it would be like to wield the power of poop .

It’s about eight pages long, but I promise you it’s the most awe­some (and gross) web comic you’ll read today. Go here to read the full thing.

[Hat tip to Ohmz .]

This Kindle, iPad & Nook Cover is the Answer to ‘The Neverending Story’

For today’s post about cool but friv­o­lous prod­ucts I shouldn’t be spend­ing money on, I dis­cov­ered these hand­made cov­ers for iPad, Kin­dle and Nook designed to look like The Nev­erend­ing Story , one of my favorite ‘80s fan­tasy films. It even has a per­fect repro­duc­tion of the Auryn sym­bol, just like the dusty old book in the movie.

Each one is hand­crafted by Grim­cat Pro­duc­tions  (who also makes this kick­ass Mario ques­tion block cover) from leather and suede and bound with fil­i­gree. If I hadn’t already spent a lot of money on a light-up leather cover for my Kin­dle Touch, I would totally buy one of these, which range in price from $58.95 to $65.95 depend­ing on your device. Maybe if I ever get an iPad…

I can just imag­ine curl­ing up on a rainy day with this thing wrapped around a good fan­tasy book. Now excuse me while I go try to get that damn song out of my head.

Comic Miniseries ‘The Stuff of Legend’ Picked Up by Disney

Dead­line is report­ing that Dis­ney has just picked up The Stuff of Leg­end , a comic minis­eries pro­duced by Th3rd World Stu­dios .

Dis­ney has just made a pre-emptive pitch deal for  Stuff Of Leg­end , with Pete Can­de­land attached to direct and  Abduc­tion ‘s Shawn Chris­tensen writ­ing the script. The inten­tion is to make a live-action film set in a CGI world, like  Alice In Won­der­land .

(Source: Dead­line )

I’m not famil­iar with The Stuff of Leg­end , but it’s being described as  Toy Story meets The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia , mostly because of its World War II set­ting. Here’s the offi­cial synopsis:

The year is 1944. An allied force advances along a war-torn beach in a strange land, out­num­bered and far from home. Together, they fight the great­est evil they have ever known. Never end­ing waves of exotic ene­mies come crash­ing down on them, but they will not rest. Thou­sands of miles away, the world is on the brink of destruc­tion. But here in a child’s bed­room in Brook­lyn, our heroes, a small group of toys loyal to their human mas­ter, fight an unseen war to save him from every child’s worst nightmare.

Led by the toy sol­dier known as the Colonel and the boy’s faith­ful teddy-bear named Max, the toys enter the realm known as The Dark. There they will face off against the Boogey­man and his army– a legion of the boy’s for­got­ten, bit­ter toys. Fight­ing to sur­vive insur­mount­able odds, the toys will dis­cover this is a bat­tle not only for the soul of a child, but for their own as well…

As a fan of dark, dream-like fan­tasy sto­ries like Fairy Quest and The Broth­ers Lion­heart that revolve around chil­dren, The Stuff of Leg­end looks right up my alley.

These three magazines were my life in the early ‘90s.

How do you like that acid wash denim back­ground, by the way? I’m pretty sure I had a few pairs of jeans just like that around the time I would have been an avid reader of these three, nerd­stal­gi­cally cool mag­a­zines from my childhood:

Sega Visions Magazine

There was noth­ing, NOTHING that gave me greater read­ing plea­sure than a freshly-minted copy of Sega Visions Mag­a­zine (Sega’s short-lived answer to Nin­tendo Power).  As a huge fan of all things Sega , I would read these things from cover to cover–usually two or three times–taking time to care­fully absorb all the pre­views, reviews and bits of Sega-y good­ness scat­tered through­out each issue. I even enjoyed the ads, which were of course for upcom­ing Sega games. I loved how the mag­a­zine was divided up into dif­fer­ent sec­tions for each of Sega’s con­soles, like Gen­e­sis, Sega CD, and 32X (which obvi­ously didn’t last long).

I can recall many hours por­ing over the reviews and screen­shots for games like Shin­ing Force CD , Booger­man , Juras­sic Park , Earth­worm Jim and Dark Wiz­ard . A new issue of Sega Visions meant a trip to the my local video rental store, for which I would ago­nize over my list of poten­tial games to choose from, as I was never allowed more than two at a time. There may have only been 25 issues of Sega Visions ever pub­lished, but I will fondly remem­ber it for hav­ing intro­duced me to some of the great­est games I’ve ever played.

Fox Totally Kids Magazine

When I was grow­ing up, most of my favorite shows were on Fox, the net­work that had some­thing of an empire for cool kids’ shows in the early ‘90s. My daily after school car­toon reg­i­men con­sisted of Tiny Toons , Ani­ma­ni­acs , and Bat­man: The Ani­mated Series , and on Sat­ur­day morn­ings it was The Tick , Eek! The Cat, Taz-Mania , Bobby’s World , and X-Men . And I’ll even admit that at one point I was kind of into the The Mighty Mor­phin Power Rangers, but I was already a lit­tle too old for it at the time, so I think I only watched the first season.

Any­way, Totally Kids Mag­a­zine was required read­ing for Fox Kids Club fans, and as far as I can tell, was nearly impos­si­ble to avoid. I don’t ever remem­ber hav­ing sub­scribed to it, yet it appeared in our mail­box month after month like clockwork.

 The arti­cles, if they can even qual­ify as arti­cles, were a bit on the shal­low side, but I didn’t care. What I loved most about this mag­a­zine were the big, bold pic­tures of all my favorite car­toon char­ac­ters span­ning its bright, col­or­ful pages–just look at that fan­tas­tic Tick cover up above, for exam­ple. Some issues even had pull-out posters, like this awe­some X-MEN one . Totally Kids Mag­a­zine was one of my favorite go-to sources of ref­er­ence mate­r­ial for use in my shitty mid­dle school draw­ings . And you gotta love that help­ful pro­gram­ming guide right on the front cover.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles Magazine

Around 1988 or so was when my huge obses­sion with Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles began. I will never for­get my first intro­duc­tion to the Tur­tles, which came in the form of an episode of the orig­i­nal TMNT car­toon that I ran­domly saw at my babysitter’s house one morn­ing. (I still remem­ber which exact episode it was, too:  “Enter the Fly” .) I couldn’t have known then that my hap­pen­stance view­ing of that par­tic­u­lar episode would be the begin­ning of a life­time of Ninja Tur­tles fandom.

Thank­fully, for the obsessed kids like me, there was Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles Mag­a­zine . I can still recall one arti­cle in par­tic­u­lar, “Catch­ing Up with Keno” (or some­thing to that effect) that was pub­lished around the time Secret of the Ooze was in the­aters. It was an inter­view with Ernie Reyes Jr. (Donatello’s stunt dou­ble in the first movie & the char­ac­ter of Keno in the sec­ond) about his life, hob­bies, and how he got started in mar­tial arts. Fas­ci­nat­ing stuff, I know!

Matt from X-Entertainment once wrote an exhaus­tive ret­ro­spec­tive of TMNT Mag­a­zine that serves as a much bet­ter and more thor­ough trib­ute than I could ever dream of writ­ing, so I’ll direct you TMNT fans there for a fun trip back in time through Tur­tles history.

So tell me: what old mag­a­zines did you used to love as a kid?

‘Fairy Quest’ Comic Comes to KickStarter (and Takes My Money)

Yet another awe­some Kick­Starter project that just makes me want to start throw­ing money at the com­puter screen:

Fairy Quest: Out­laws is the first book of the Fable­wood saga, a long-term project and col­lab­o­ra­tion between renown comic indus­try vet­er­ans Hum­berto Ramos and Paul Jenk­ins , the cre­ative team behind Mar­vel Comics’  Spec­tac­u­lar Spider-Man and Peter Parker: Spider-Man , and Rev­e­la­tions.   The pair describes their work on Fairy Quest as “a labor of love.”

The book first appeared as a lim­ited edi­tion hard­bound run in 2011 and imme­di­ately sold out of its 1000-copy print run after just two con­ven­tion appear­ances.  The cre­ators have taken to Kick­Starter to self-publish and raise fund­ing for a sec­ond print run, in the form of this beau­ti­fully bound hard­cover edition:

Back­ers who pledge $30 or more will receive the book, but for $40 you’ll get a signed and num­bered copy.  The visu­als in this book are absolutely gor­geous. Ramo’s amaz­ing art­work leaps off the page with Leonardo Olea’s bril­liant col­or­ing. To see more, check out this  6-page pre­view .

What is Fairy Quest?

If you’re unfa­mil­iar with the story of Fairy Quest, here’s a snip­pet from Comic Book Resources’ recent inter­view with cre­ator Hum­berto Ramos:

“Fairy Quest: Out­laws  is the first of four books that tells the story of the Fable­wood King­dom, a place where all the fairy tale sto­ries exist for one sole pur­pose: to tell their story. Every day they have to go to “work” and replay the sto­ries every mom or dad read to their kids at bed­time. Life is quiet and sim­ple if you fol­low this sim­ple com­mand: “Do not deviate.”

But well, things are about to get shaken up a lit­tle in Fable­wood because some of the inhab­i­tants aren’t happy any­more fol­low­ing the rules. Take Lit­tle Red and Mr. Woof, who both decide they wanted to stop being ene­mies and become friends; not a big deal, right? Every­body wants to have a true friend for like, but in Fable­wood this is a prob­lem… a big one.

So sud­denly Lit­tle Red and Mr. Woof turn from the most dear­est of Fablewood’s inhab­i­tants to dan­ger­ous out­laws, and they find out the only way to keep their trea­sured friend­ship is to leave the kingdom.

That’s where their jour­ney begins.”

(via CBR )

This makes the third Kick­Starter project in as many months that I’ve pledged. Can this be con­sid­ered an addiction?

Greetings from the Sewer! TMNT Postcard Book from 1990

Going through stuff in my base­ment, I dis­cov­ered  a box full of old crap I’ve been hold­ing onto for one rea­son or another. Found a few gems in there, like this Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles post­card book­let from 1990. I don’t recall if it’s some­thing I bought myself, or was given to me as a gift, but evi­dently it cost $4.95 at the time.

Though I’m quite sure I thought these were the coolest things ever when I was 10 years old (so cool that I felt they were pre­cious enough not to rip out and use) but look­ing at them now? Not so much.

The art­work is pretty sad. The Tur­tles look like they need bariatric surgery and every­one is drawn in extremely awkward-looking poses.

It’s so awful you know I just had to scan in all 24 post­cards just to share with you. Let’s make fun of them together!

By the way, sorry to inun­date this blog with so many Turtles-related posts lately, but my TMNT fan­girlism has been kicked into high gear this week, what with the news of the upcom­ing Nick­elodeon show , live-action film , and doc­u­men­tary .