The Catholic Geek: Escaping Infinity with Richard Paolinelli 04/09

The Catholic Geek: Escaping Infinity with Richard Paolinelli 04/09 by We Built That Network | Books Podcasts:


Author Richard Paolinelli joins host Declan Finn as they discuss Classic sci-fi, Star Trek, and writing Sci-fi In 2013,


 Richard retired as a sportswriter and decided to return to his fiction writing roots. He released two short stories - The Invited and Legacy of Death - as well as a full-length sci-fi novel, Maelstrom. In 2015, Richard completed nearly two years of research and interviews and published, From The Fields: A History of Prep Football in Turlock, California, chronicling 95 years of high school football in his hometown. One month later, the first book of the Jack Del Rio series, Reservations, was published by Oak Tree Press. In 2016, Richard was one of a dozen authors selected to participate in, Beyond Watson, an anthology of original Sherlock Holmes stories and was one of 20 writers involved in a second Holmes Anthology, Holmes Away From Home, released in December. Perfection's Arbiter, a biography of National League Umpire, Babe Pinelli, was released on October 8th. W & B Books acquired the Jack Del Rio series and released the second book, Betrayals, in November. The remaining two books in the Jack Del Rio series will follow in 2017 & 2018. In January of 2017, Richard returned to his science fiction roots with the release of the novel, Escaping Infinity, and hopes to release another sci-fi novel, When The Gods Fell, later this year.

Love at First Bite 2 and 3 reviewed at Book Readers Heaven

Glenda Bixler reviewed Honor At Stake quite some time ago, back when the book first came out.

While you can see the whole review at the link above, the review can be summed up in the following.

Finn easily handles the fight scenes as required to handle vampires. In fact, he's handle this entire book in such an exciting, unusual fashion that I was totally fascinated. Except for the "vampire" villains, the book reads like a great thriller. All in all, I loved the book. Finn has jazzed up the story line sufficient to please readers of romance, thrillers and the horror fans who crave that blood-drinking stranger who attacks and destroys through one bite...LOL Actually, that doesn't happen according to this author's information...so plan on learning a lot if you're into the whole vampire lexicon.

And now, she's gotten around to the others. 

For Murphy's Law of Vampires....

The book is fast-paced, full of action, a true page turner, with a laugh or two to lighten the blood-curdling events that just...don't...stop! A break in reality that won't give you nightmares...Cool! With one surprise character that leads toward the climax! Into vampires? You really need to check out this series!

And she also got around to Live and Let Bite around the same time ...

Though I recommend you watch out, there are spoilers laden throughout these.

Be prepared for escalation of the war waged by one woman and her minions, against those who battle for good! Wow, readers will begin to believe that nobody is going to come out alive in this war!

But... Well, you'll just have to read it to believe it! Sure would make an exciting, unbelievably fantastic movie to see the action described. In fact, I wonder whether the action could actually be done since it is sooo farrrr outttt! What a story! I know one thing...I'm not ready to give up on this series

And .... that's about it. Go, read her reviews, see if you'll agree. Brace for spoilers.

And if you've seen enough, just click below.

And from now until July, I should highlight that The Dragon Awards are open and ready for nominations. If you don't have any thoughts on what to nominate, I have a list of suggestions you might want to take a look at. If you already  have a good idea of what you want, just click here to go and vote for them immediately. The instructions are right there.

And here's the Love at First Bite series. 

    

Music blog: Amaranthe - Boomerang

This is an interesting video. I suspect inspired by caper films. And at least one Mission Impossible movie.

You can tell the lead, Eliza Ryd, is a trained dancer. Wow, can she move.

I should probably make a point of mentioning from now until July that The Dragon Awards are open and ready for nominations. If you don't have any thoughts on what to nominate, I have a list of suggestions you might want to take a look at. If you already  have a good idea of what you want, just click here to go and vote for them immediately. The instructions are right there.

Here, some books that are too good for the Hugos.

But not too good for a Dragon. Heh

Starting with the Love at First Bite series. 

    

Return of the 770 Trolls

To no one's surprise, over at File 770, the comments section doesn't seem to like me.

Awww, do the poor widdle babies dislike opposing opinions?

Perhaps it was my opening line of yesterday's blog post on the Hugos that started their ire, but they devolved into their usual venom-spewing high school cliques. Deriding Goodkind (hey, guys, you know he's still producing books in his universe? You know, the series you don't like and "isn't eligible" for anything), and calling me a special snowflake because the Hugo award choices were either crap, or stuff I've never heard of.

Let me spell something out for these douchebags, because they seem to have a slight inability for comprehensive reading.

I'll start by only quoting my own blog.

This once again boils down to a, "If anyone still cares about the Hugos anymore" story.

Yeah, that's right. No one gives a flying f*** about your crap anymore. If anyone in 770's comments section had looked at Vox Day's blog around Rabid Puppies, they would have noticed something odd: He told his followers to NOT buy tickets this year, and only really vote if they had the nominating ballot from last year. 

So, in small words: even Vox things the Hugos aren't even worth trolling anymore.

I'd ask the twits in 770s comments section to think that over, but that would require that they think in the first place.

Heck, the only reason I bothered with a Hugo post is because, well, this is probably my last chance to make fun of these losers. I mean, no one cares anymore. Larry, Brad, Vox, everybody has stopped caring.

Had the commenters noticed, even the Hugo voters are beginning to not care. But that would require the trolls be able to do math.

But, yes, I had expected yesterday's post to be the last drop of entertainment that I could get out of the Hugos.

Thankfully, 770 trolls were nice enough to give the horse just a little more juice so I can beat it to death some more. Thanks, guys. Your inability to grasp simple concepts is much appreciated.

Now, you will note that I'm talking specifically about the comments section. One of their trolls (I assume, he commented under a handle with no connecting URLs) broke their leash and decided to whine on my blog yesterday, that Honor Harrington isn't eligible!!!

Then a commenter who goes by "Migly" stepped in, and calmly corrected him.

Said troll proceeded to go on an incoherent rant for several other comments, ignoring that he'd been soundly chastised in one sentence.

So, today, I'm going after trolls.

NO PICARD
TURN BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE pic.twitter.com/6jcXGVZ07F

— Swear Trek (@swear_trek) April 3, 2017

But since I must once again use small words to be understood by small people, let's go over my own blog. People who already grasped the concepts of yesterday's blog might want to skim over this section, since they might get some mild entertainment value over it.

we were all told that This Person would have almost certainly have won the Hugo award for best editor, but she lost because she was a Puppy Pick.

If you said, "Who is Toni Weisskopf, Alex?" you'd be right.

But strangely enough, Toni isn't here. But she's not a Puppy Pick this year. We were all told that she would have won if she weren't a Puppy Pick.

Guess what: she wouldn't have even been NOMINATED if she weren't a Puppy Pick.

They lied. Shocking, isn't it?

Or, in smaller words: oh, look, every Puppy kicking little douche bag who supported downvoting one of the most popular science fiction editors in history claimed that if Toni weren't a Puppy pick, she would have easily won. Heck, Toni had more votes as a "loser" than most winners. I'm reliably informed that Toni's "loss" STILL had more votes than every win of Patty Hayden.

But I guess the comments section has long abandoned their need to cover up both their sexism and antisemitism, and decided to just go full bore into it.

...I joke, of course. We all know that Toni wasn't No Awarded because of her gender or faith, but because she's an evil Libertarian, or because she edits evil military SFF, or worse, edits Larry.

I enjoy the hypocrisy here, I really do. In an age where their battle cry is "womyn!" et al, the Hugo voters deliberately went out of their way to deny one of the premiere female editors a win award. I love it. It's beautiful that they lie so blatantly and so obviously, and they bellow that they are the champion of all women everywhere... except for the ones who disagree with them, those women are obviously sub-human and therefore don't count. Seriously, these trolls should just start handing out little yellow stars and skip all the subterfuge, it's not working.

The funny thing is, my next like after "Shocking, isn't it?" was that I can't convey enough sarcasm without going overboard. Apparently, the trolls can't read THAT part either.

After that, I went through the "best series" category, and noted that Honor Harrington, Goodkind and Ringo seemed to not even get a nod. The nimrod on my posts claimed that Honor and Goodkind were ineligible ... wrong about Honor? Nevermind, scream about Goodkind!  I guess they didn't want to mention Ringo, lest he appear in a puff of smoke and destroy them. That man can type.

But, no, a lot of the trolls focused on Goodkind for some reason. Perhaps because his bad guys resembled Jihadists or communists, depending on the novel. Perhaps he had one book dedicated to the intelligence industry, and like all good leftists, the trolls simply hate America.

If the trolls dislike that I don't know who Foz Meadows is .... tough.

Maybe they don't like that I hated the Ghostbusters movie from last year.

Guess what? Neither did anybody else.

Warning on the video: Rated R for language. Rated F for funny as heck.

But OF COURSE it's going to win a Hugo. Because "Oh! It's womyn! If you don't vote for it, you're a sexist!" Heh.

Then I looked at the Best Related category, and the "womyn" bullet points were an obvious theme. I can see Carrie Fisher as an in memoriam vote, but I suspect that it's not political enough.

At that point, I got bored. Why? Because it's the Hugos. Duh. It's a small, cliquish little award, given out to a small, cliquish band of closeted fantatics who'd rather give awards based on checkboxing instead of on merit. I'm told that a few nominees I never heard of are actually worth it,

To be honest, I'm bored now making fun of the 770 trolls.

It's amusing that, at the end of the day, I hopped onto this particular train because Arthur Chu called Brad Torgersen's wife and kid "human shields." At that point, I knew which side I was going to join before I knew anything else about it. Why? Because anyone who would let a comment like Chu's get through needs to be taken down a peg or two.

But these folks have no sense of humor. They're your basic, boiler plate ideologues. But they're so uniform, in such lockstep, they goose step in sync.

To my readers, I hate to break it to you, but I'm starting to agree with the rest of the crowd. It's not fun to beat these guys up anymore. In 2015, the Hugos were obviously a circle jerk. In 2016, there was still entertainment to be had.

Now it's the Black Knight sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, only in internet discussion.

[EDIT: It occurs to me that I should probably make a point of mentioning from now until July that The Dragon Awards are open and ready for nominations. If you don't have any thoughts on what to nominate, I have a list of suggestions you might want to take a look at. If you already  have a good idea of what you want, just click here to go and vote for them immediately. The instructions are right there.... moving on]

Here, some books that are too good for the Hugos.

But not the Dragons

Starting with the Love at First Bite series. 

    

FREE SHORT: Blood Stained Cliffs of Dover: A Love at First Bite story

Here's a new enticement to have you sign up for my mailing list.

Free stuff.

My, doesn't that look shiny? Isn't that interesting? Who's the classy dame?

.... Okay. If you've read the novels, you probably know the answer to the last one.

Here's the short version. Remember Bad Date? It's now for sale for $.99 over on Kindle. See, you could have had it for free.

Sign up for my newsletter, and you'll get this short story completely free. No joke. Automatically.

What's the plot? you ask, savvy reader that you are.

In World War II, the allied invasion of the continent hinges on them keeping one secret absolutely secure.

Tonight, German spy Konrad Achterberg is about to discover what that secret is.

He's also about to discover that the Nazis aren't the scariest predator in the night. Because something in the dark is colder than the dark, and it is hungry.

Sign up right here, right now, for free. You'll get access to it immediately.

And while I think about it....

Over at Silver Empire Publishing's Lyonesse streaming short story service, today is the live launch of my short story Zombie Jamboree. It stars a new character, as well as an old character.  If you've read Live and Let Bite, you know about NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Wilson (who was in Chapter 5, Blue blood), and he's got a large role in this one.

And yes, this is my take on Zombies. And here's a hint: it has nothing to do with The Walking Dead.

And here is the rest of the Love at First Bite series. 

And my other novels

    

Newsflash: Hugo Awards Swamped by Crap

This once again boils down to a, "If anyone still cares about the Hugos anymore" story.

Their pathetic list of nominations came out this year. Is anyone surprised that it's all Tor, all the time?

I'll go into detail in a minute, but let's look at one thing in particular.

Six nominees for best editor. See anything missing?

I'll give you a hint: we were all told that This Person would have almost certainly have won the Hugo award for best editor, but she lost because she was a Puppy Pick.

If you said, "Who is Toni Weisskopf, Alex?" you'd be right.

But strangely enough, Toni isn't here. But she's not a Puppy Pick this year. We were all told that she would have *won* if she weren't a Puppy Pick.

Guess what: she wouldn't have even been NOMINATED if she weren't a Puppy Pick.

They lied. Shocking, isn't it?

Yeah, I know it's not a surprise, but I can't convey the depth of my sarcasm without indulging in a dump truck's worth of hyperbole right now.

I mean, where do you want to start?

How about Best series?

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone (Tor Books)
The Expanse by James S.A. Corey (Orbit US / Orbit UK)
The October Daye Books by Seanan McGuire (DAW / Corsair)
The Peter Grant / Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch (Gollancz / Del Rey / DAW / Subterranean)
The Temeraire series by Naomi Novik (Del Rey / Harper Voyager UK)

Okay. Bujold is good. Novik is ... okay, I guess. I gave up after she rewrote Waterloo.

Everyone else ... should I have heard of these people? I'm almost surprised that they're just this obscure. Then again, I wouldn't have heard of Jemisin without the whole Hugo mess, so I'm not surprised.

But where's Honor Harrington?

Where's Black Tide Rising?

Where's Terry Goodkind?

Where is any of a half dozen other, good, BETTER writers? You know, the people who sell ten times the books than these folks? If these represent all of fandom, shouldn't we be expecting more best sellers on the list? After all, you become a bestseller by selling more books than other people. So ... where are the big names? There are six nominees here, but only two are people I can pick out of a lineup? Really?

But of course, this doesn't represent all of fandom, this just represents an ever shrinking niche that is WorldCon.

Best fan writer is interesting, if only because it's Mike Glyer (770), Jeffro Johnson (Castalia), Chuck Tingle (anarchist), and Foz Meadows, who I'm sure I should know of offhand, but danged if I know who it is. There's also a Natalie Luhrs and Abigail Nussbaum.

But best dramatic presentation, long form .... look at this

• Arrival -- okay. Sure. I've heard good things.
• Deadpool -- not surprised
• Hidden Figures -- Who? What? Huh?
• Rogue One -- Eh. Okay. It was entertaining.
• Stranger Things, Season One-- I've also heard good things about this.
• Ghostbusters, -- AAARRRRGGGHHH. Expect this to win. Because the Hugos

Argh, this is depressing me. Let's see if I can plow through the rest of this without getting an ulcer.

Best Related work: "Geek Feminist"? Really? Ugh. Carrie Fisher's "The Princess Diarist."  "The Women of Harry Potter." There's an Ursula Le Guin project, and a Neil Gaiman. I guess someone decided that "womyn" were the "in" thing this year. (Again, expect crap Ghostbusters to win)

Best Novel .... again, who?

Best Fanzine: Oh, Jeffro and the Castalia blog. Congrats again, man.

And, as someone just pointed out to me: all but one of the John W. Campbell Award nominees are women. What are the odds of that, considering they are "clearly an oppressed and underrepresented member of literary society?"

I guess "womyn" really were on the bullet points this year.

[EDIT.] Keep in mind, this is a list where the most votes went to Best Novel .... with a little over 2,000 votes. Jon del Arroz did a great job of showing just how bad a drop this is. A 44% drop in some cases. This has to hurt revenue.

You can see the whole list here.

But why bother? Go vote in the Dragon Awards.  Here are some suggestions.

If you want books by someone you've never heard of before, 

Here, have some of mine.

Starting with the Love at First Bite series. 

    

New reviews for Love at First Bite

Apparently, today is review day, starting with Robert Kroese's book, Aye, Robot, and continuing ... now, really.

To start with, there's Lori Bird, who wrote the original review for Honor at Stake on The Catholic Geek blog. She has her own website now, and reviewed Live and Let Bite there.

Seriously, go buy the book. It’s more than fun. I’ll give this one another 4.9 out of 5, and that minor point off the full five is just because some descriptions are a touch risque. I’d call it a heavy PG-13, but not R rating in that sense.

Speaking of the Catholic Geeks, Margot St. Aubin decided to review Murphy's Law of Vampires over on TCG site. 

As she put it.

Just when you think you are prepared for vampires— it’s not bleeping vampires but something else entirely.

Heh.

And, of course, we have the review by Jim McCoy, over at his own site.

I did a post awhile back about Hollywood and some books that need to be turned into movies. In this case though, I'm going to suggest that maybe this series gets the Game of Thrones treatment. There's a television series here. I mean that. We may need to give Finn a bit of time to get a little further ahead before it gets started but this makes sense as a series. It's written that way and it works that way. I have zero pull in Hollywood but if I ever get some (about as likely as my getting hit by lightning twice on the same day as I hit the lottery) I'm going to make Finn an offer for this one.

So .... that happened. And it's awesome.

If you're wondering why I think that this will make a great Dragon Award nomination ... you know why. Click here and nominate it if you agree. And if you don't, I have an argument for you right here.

And if you've read them already, you'll know what I mean.

And if you haven't, what are you waiting for?

The Love at First Bite series. 

    

Review: Aye, Robot, by Robert Kroese

The sequel to the insanity that was Starship Grifters (click here for my review) brings us the continuing adventures of Rex Nihilo.

And boy, is the crazy still with us in Aye, Robot.

After interstellar con man Rex Nihilo hijacks a cargo freighter on a whim, he decides that he and his long-suffering robot sidekick Sasha have found their calling as space pirates. But when the ship's cargo turns out to be a cryogenically frozen religious fanatic who holds the secret to a vast galactic conspiracy, Rex and Sasha find themselves on the run from real pirates--as well as agents of the oppressive Malarchy, crazy space cultists and the Ursa Minor mafia. If Rex is going to get out of this jam alive, he might just have to save the galaxy... again.

Believe it or not, this is the more straightforward plot of the two novels. While Starship Grifters was covered a a surface layer of choas, with everything as a jumble until the magician showed us the con.

Now, the story is more of a straight line.

.... Except we open perhaps a week into the events of the novel, spend half of the book with 76-hours earlier (estimated). Our heroes have lost their memory, trip over a pirate ship, cargo, and a weapon to control the universe.

Why, yes, Aye, Robot is just as insane as Starship Grifters, why do you ask?

In Starship Grifters, memory and the twist at the end were constants throughout the novel. Now, we're going to play more games with each, following up on both of them far more.  I'm not going to say I was cheated out of anything, but after Starship Grifters, I was not going to trust Aye, Robot as far as I could throw it. There wasn't a massive twist at the end like I expected, but I didn't miss it. I was happy with a relatively straightforward line.

It was interesting to see that Rex might have a bit of character development in this one. Instead of the insane, random firing of neurons that ended up in a successful conclusion of the novel, Rex has reasons for doing what he does. Most of his reasons even make sense.

Rex's faithful robot companion, Sasha, is also getting more of a character. It's fascinating.

And we also have the return of the bounty hunter Pepper Melange ... yes, really ... who I always saw as Scarlet Johansson. She all but stole the last one, but was gracious enough to not seal this novel from Rex and Sasha.

Four and a half out of five star stars for Aye, Robot.

And if you want more snarky humor, check out the Love At First Bite Series

 

The Catholic Geek radio show: The world of Science Fiction and Fantasy with Jim McCoy 03/29

The Catholic Geek: The world of Science Fiction and Fantasy with Jim McCoy 03/29 by We Built That Network | Books Podcasts: Blogger Jim McCoy joins host Declan Finn to discuss how the world of SFF shouldn't be limited to just books, and open up to video games, card games, and more.



This was a fun show.  Yes, it happened last Wednesday. Sorry.

But it's up. And we're live.

Enjoy.

More Disasters to Marvel At, a Fisk

Marvel doesn't learn. In fact, they've doubled down on their stupid.

Many moons ago, I wrote up an evaluation of everything wrong with Marvel comics, where I concluded that Disney should have Joe Quesada walk the plank off the top of Marvel's office building. 

They have since doubled down on the stupid by adding POLITICS to the mess.

And now, the VP of Marvel is declaring ..... that the problem is the readers.

Yup, you read that correctly: the problem isn't that the writing sucks, the characters, premises, politics, and situations are forced, or that gender and pallet swapping heroes in the name of "diversity" is an unoriginal and stupid idea. No, the problem is YOU. YOU, dear reader, have been proclaimed by Marvel to be the problem. YOU are the racist / sexist / homophobe who just can't understand all of their brilliant concepts and ideas.

..... So, obviously, we are so stupid, they're obviously too smart for us, and can't be tainted by our money.

Yeah, seriously, I was out of the Marvel market after One More Day, and they only got dumber from there. Since then, they've only made things more and more idiotic since then.

And, yes, for the record, I have serious problems with the new Ms. Marvel. Not because she's Muslim. Not because they've replaced one Ms. Marvel with another (Carol Danvers got promoted to Captain Marvel, which makes a certain level of sense), but ... Well, I'll give you a hint.

Fans of the film The Incredibles will see my problem immediately.

If you thought that capes were a problem, look at this design. It's supposed to be some sort of headscarf variant, but good God, if it gets caught on anything, it's going to take her head off. Forget flying through the air, or getting caught on wreckage, she'd be decapitated riding on a roller coaster. 

Oh, and speaking of Captain Marvel, apparently, Miss Marvel decided to become a fascist in Civil War II.

And one cover of Mockingbird was literally "Ask me about my feminist politics."

Yes, really. In a comic book where I want to see Spider Man beat up Venom, or vice versa, they want to stuff politics in there. 

You know, Marvel guys, it was really bad enough that the original Civil War was a piss-poor analogy on the War on Terror -- with conflicting plotlines, story ideas, concepts of what the original Superhero Registration act even had, and sticking heroes in a prison that made real life GITMO look like day care -- but going into full on, real world politics? Are you stupid over at 666 5th Avenue?

Yes. Yes you are.

Let's look at this interview with Marvel VP of Sales David Gabriel, shall we?

What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. 

Okay, I already have to stop. Hey, dummy, you're the VP of SALES. Have you NOT NOTICED that Marvel doesn't have many (or any, depending on the month) titles in the bestseller's column? So that means that EVERYBODY is getting screwed -- Daredevil, Spider Man, Hulk, Captain America, etc.

Seriously, Gabriel, you're VP of sales. Do you even math, bro? Seriously, are the sales of Captain America UP since he said "Hail Hydra," and your people treated the readers like idiots until the next issue came out and they retracted nearly everything they said?

Oh, and "That's what we heard, whether we believe it or not?" Hey, dummy, your sales are tanking. Believe in the power of the purse. People have voted with their feet, and they are moving.

In fact, his next sentence is:

I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales. 

Shocking, huh? Math. It's a thing. Use it.

We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against.

So, Hydra-Cap? Was that working? Or maybe making a MODOK supervillain that was Trump? Really? Those were working?

That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked.

YOU DIDN'T HAVE FRESH, NEW OR EXCITING IDEAS! You brought in a black female, threw her in Iron Man armor, and declared her something new. You gave Jane Foster Thor's hammer. They brought in another Spider-man who was black, and made another Miss Marvel as Muslim, and then made Spider-Gwen and "Moon Girl." 

These idiots stuffed the Falcon into the Captain America suit, and somehow turned Sam Wilson into more Black Panther party propaganda than the actual character NAMED BLACK PANTHER. And guess what, people like Sam Wilson. He was one of the stars of the Captain America films. He was awesome. But no, Marvel's writing sucked, and suddenly people don't like him because he's "diverse"? Really? 

Marvel has not used one "fresh, new or exciting idea" in a decade! They're giving old branding to new people, and praying that the popularity will transfer over. It's basically a pallet and / or gender swap.

EVEN IO9 KNOWS THIS IS BS. And io9 screw up is Beth Elderkin, the creature from the black lagoon that suggested killing or castrating Puppies. Even she's not stupid enough to fall for this.

Gabriel’s point is bull****, because it shelves blame onto the readers and blatantly ignores a lot of other reasons Marvel Comics are doing terribly. For example, the crazy over-abundance of events and crossovers....They also can completely screw over beloved characters for the sake of drama, like turning Captain America into a fascist as Sam Wilson has taken his mantle.

And of course, they upped the price, and they don't have anyone in the talent pool anymore worth a damn.

I wonder if those could have anything to do with it? Hmmmmm.

When io9 comes close to the voice of sanity, we know it's time to start firing people at Marvel.

Here, have some books that are more superhero focused than Marvel yesterday.

And they're cheaper than come comic book.

The Love at First Bite series.