A Clockwork God Review

   The world isn’t quite what we think it is. At least according to Paul Kupperberg’s new novella, A Clockwork God. In his book, he postulates a world where all of the various gods from all of the multitude of pantheons return to earth to set up shop, and rule over whatever part of the Earth that they have chosen as theirs. And now, 20 years have passed since their return, and someone is killing them. Meanwhile the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is nowhere to be seen. Hence, positioning him as a “clockwork god”—that is to say, a god who set the world in motion, and then simply walked away from it allowing it to run on its own.

All of which is a little ironic as Kupperberg is a self-confessed atheistic Jew. He is also an American writer and editor with a long career in comics working at DC Comics, and other companies. He is currently a contributing author with Crazy 8 Press. After leaving DC he became the executive editor of Weekly World News. These days he spends his time writing novels, comic books, and newspaper strips. Some of his titles include The Same Old Story, the short story collection, In My Shorts: Hitler's Bellhop and Other Stories, JSA: Ragnarok, I Never Write for the Money but I Always Turn in the Manuscript for a Check, the Young Adult novel Emma’s Landing, and his latest novella, The Blank.

But that’s not why we’re here, for the gods have returned—and they are demanding worship. Welcome to the ReDeus Event. It is the year 2032. As previously stated, it has been 20 years since the gods of myth and legend returned to Earth. Twenty years since they carved the world into territories ruled by rival pantheons. Twenty years since every man, woman, and child on the planet was forced to swear fealty to their ancestral deities—or be branded as heretics and hunted down without mercy.

And now, a man calling himself Junker George (Junker Jörg (Knight George) was the alias used by the Protestant reformer Martin Luther while he was in hiding at Wartburg Castle in Germany between 1521 and 1522) has emerged as one of the most unlikely and perhaps most dangerous individuals in this fractured new age of faith. Claiming to be neither prophet nor priest, George is actually the possessor of a most holy Relic of Christianity, a survivor who is effortlessly moving through the fault lines between gods and mortals.

    Much to his dismay FBI Special Agent Irwin Benjamin, a weary, middle-aged atheist who has spent his life trusting evidence over faith and reason over revelation is now being drawn into George’s growing insurgency. For Benjamin, it means confronting a universe that no longer makes sense...and deciding whether his disbelief could be the most powerful weapon left to rescue all of humanity.  As George moves through the various pantheons, wantonly killing various gods Agent Benjamin discovers that for him, staying neutral is no longer an option...and that the price for defying the gods may be higher than anyone imagined.

Kupperberg’s writing is both crisp and compelling as he builds this brave new world filled with gods from multiple pantheons, Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, Indigenous Americans, and beyond. Truthfully, the sheer volume of research required of Kuperberg to piece together the various gods, their names, attributes, and associated pantheons must have been staggering, but just know that for someone that has been making up names, abilities, and superpowers for some 50+ years, none of the gods presented here are make believe. (Seriously, who knew so many pantheons existed?)

There are so many random details that make this story not only so amazingly compelling, but so insightful about today’s political and global situations. From the tiniest detail to random conversations by the primary characters, all building to an ending that completely surprised this reviewer. This story was not only grippingly entertaining, but seriously quite a bit of fun to read as well.

Available on Amazon

Teen Titans Go (the Movie)

So, a week or so back I went to see Teen Titans Go! To the Movies with fellow comic aficionado (and former DC Comics scribe) Gary Cohn. The reason for this was that while Gary was at DC he (and Dan Mishkin) co-created Amethyst Princess of Gemworld who showed up in an (all too brief) cameo in the film.

Now (admittedly) neither Gary or I would normally attend the theatrical screening of such a film (no offense to the film itself nor to the creators, cast or crew of the film, it is just that an animated film targeted towards kids (even a comicbook-based film) just isn’t our cup of tea. We are both more the live-action funnybook film kind of guys (me more than Gary, but that’s another story).

If anyone is interested, a longer, more detailed review of mine will appear at a later date over on HubPages, where I’ve been posting my film reviews as of late. (Yeah, yeah, I know I’ve been absent from those pages for a while, but, you know, life and all that, and I do plan on returning to posting over there as soon as possible.)

Needless to say, both Gary and I thoroughly enjoyed the film (yeah, it was goofy, and hyper-kinetic, and yes, targeted for a (much) younger audience. Still, it was very entertaining, and all. Plus we not only got to see Amethyst herself, but we got to see Gary’s (and Dan’s) name(s) in the credits.

However, even more surprising, was that comicbook superstar, and Marvel’s own legendary Stan Lee also had a surprisingly unexpected Cameo in the film. Now how cool was that?

Excelsior!

Batman Vs Superman: General Mills Edition

OK, we just posted about how the new Batman/Superman film is appearing at McDonald’s with Hot Wheels superhero cars, well it is also appearing in General Mills Cereals with a quartet of pint mini comics. Here re the first two:

OK, now I have issue #3 as well!

Batman vs Superman @ McDonald’s

OK Kids, unless you’ve been living in a Spider hole for the last couple of cycles y’all already know about the big upcoming Batman/Superman slug-fest that is coming up soon enough (Thu, Mar 24). Well, in the meantime while you are still waiting for the film to drop, you can head over to McDonald’s to score some superhero-themed Hot Wheels toys.

The promotion apparently just started, so you should be able to score a full set. Here is what I grabbed up so far.

Here are the four cars I currently have are Flash, Superman, Green Lantern, and Batman

In addition to the Superhero Hot Wheels cars there are Barbies.

So, yeah, I picked up my toys this morning, and grabbed me a Shamrock Shake in the process.

Batman comes to McDonald's

So, this month (August, 2015), DC’s Batman has arrived at the clown house. (No, not the RNC, the other clown house.)

With your Happy Meal toy, you can acquire a very cool Batman action figure or mini-car (The “Boy” toy if Batman Unlimited, while the “Girl ” toy is Monster High). 

As usual the Batman toys are actually pretty cool, offering us two Batman figures, a Joker and (my personal favorite DC villain) Solomon Grundy. There are also a pair of Batmobiles, a Jokermobile, and a Joker on a trike. all very cool stuff. 

Each of the toys move in some fashion (instructions and a coupon for some other related toy from the toy store are included, as well as the ability to go online and play a Batman Unlimited game of some sort) are included in the packaging.

All-in-all, a very nice set. We are glad that DC still issues fast-food toys of their characters but we are especially disappointed that Marvel no longer seems to issue toys. this is something that we’ve noticed has occurred ever since Disney has taken over the house that Jack built, and we don't know if it has more to do with Disney attempting to shy away from the “Your food made my kid fat” claim, or that the execs at the top don't think that Happy Meal toys are appropriate their new re-imagined(adult) superheroes.

Whatever the thought process, we certainly hope that they change their minds, as we totally love these superhero toy types. Needless to say, we are still glad the DC hasn't reached that stage as of yet, and look forward to more superhero-based toys in the future.

DC toys at Wendy's

Yep it looks like DC toys are at Wendy’s.

Need to get me some!

Don't blink

JLA & General Mills: Round two!

Back in 2011 we were all excited about the teaming up of DC Comic’s Justice League of America and General Mills in that they combined forces to produce four mini comics that were inserted in cereal boxes.

Well, it seems that they have gone and done it again, producing five more comics with the JLA. We’ve already acquired one (well, two, as we got a duplicate). But we are now on the hunt to acquire the rest of this new set. Needless to say, we’ll probably hunt them up on ebay rather than keep buying cereal as we really don.t eat that much cereal any more.

Still we think that this is a very cool idea, and glad that they are choosing to keep the series going (the original four were numbered 1–4, and this new series is keeping the numbering going with 5–9).  Each issue is a stand-alone story with the last couple of pages appearing in an online mini-site

The five books in the free-with-purchase cereal series are:

• #5 - Escape from Monster Island
• #6 - Lost on Mars!
• #7 - To Catch a Thief
• #8 - Walking on Fire
• #9 - Swap Meet

The stories being told in each of the five comic books will once again be continued online on a microsite located at BiggCerealHeroes.com.

DC Drops Comics Code!

Yeah, that's about right!

Superman shaving

So, have you ever wondered how Superman shaves?



Personally, we're wondering why the mirror(s) don't melt, but then again, we’re more Marvel than DC

Boys will be boys

Now, now boys...

Who says Comics are dying?

 Not us, for sure. We recently spoke to David Campiti founder of Glass House Graphics, and  former publisher of Innovation Publishing (that gave us comics ranging from adaptions of Anne Rice’s novels Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and Queen of the Damned. Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality, On a Pale Horse; the TV series Dark Shadows, Quantum Leap, Beauty and the Beast and Lost in Space; as well as the movie series Child’s Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street and others. Some of Innovation’s original series included Angel Heat; Dangerous Secrets; Dream Angel; The Experimentals;  Al Rio’s Exposure; Galaxy Girl; Greylore;  Kevin Juaire’s Hero Alliance; Legends of the Stargrazers; and Mike Barr’s The Maze Agency). In it’s day, Innovation was the #4 comics publisher in market share, after Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse. With Glass House Graphics he represented numerous artists that worked for many of those same companies.

Well, he was telling us about a very cool company called Red Giant that is looking to, well essentially re-invent, revive, and completely resuscitate the comicbook industry. Now while this may sound like a very noble cause, we too were wondering how Dave and Red Giant plan on doing this, and well, what he told us came as something of a surprise. Red Giant is looking to develop its properties for not only the comicbook market but for other media as well; such as movies, video games, television, novels, toys, apparel and telephone wireless applications. Currently the company has a number of such properties that it is publishing on the web as web comics, but plans to reverse-engineer itself and go to print, producing a million copies of comics on a weekly bases that can be distributed free of charge in comicbook shops but elsewhere across the country.

Yes, you read that right, a million copies, weekly, free of charge.

Recently, the company was written up in not only  The Orlando Business Journal (several times), but the  The New York Times as well. Personally, while we are admittedly a tad skeptical of their plans, we totally love that they are seriously attempting to “put their money where their corporate mouth is” and give their plan the old college try.

As we have come to learn, they did an IPO last year, as a penny stock, and turned a very nice profit. Now they are working out the next steps to realizing their very noble (as far as we are concerned) business plan.

Needless to say, we wish them the very best of luck in their endeavor, because we know as well as anyone that — while comicbook characters are doing box-office business at both the movies and in the videogames industry, comicbooks themselves are experiencing something of a downturn in numbers of comics printed every month. Hopefully, Red Giant’s plan will play out and  we will get to experience yet another golden age of comics.

Supergirls

Supergirls of the world unite!

(for ice cream)

The Dark Knight

Daredevil & Calvin & Hobbes!

It's Breast Cancer Awareness month!

Green Arrow online Comic

This just in, apparently the CW network is going to have a Green Arrow TV series this fall, and you can go online to download a free comic from Comixology.

If you missed the Arrow promotional comic book – taking place between Episodes 1 and 2 of Arrow – as it was given away at Comic-Con, you still can have a chance to read it.

Here is the link for where you can get a hold of it from DC (on comixology).

If you don’t already have an account there, you can easily set one up (for free, even). We just did, and while the comic revamps the origin of  Green Arrow, it looks pretty good, and we just might check out the TV show as well.

Batman's Logo thru the years

OK,, this is actually wicked cool.

We've officially run out of stuff to collect.

Check that bought Superman rights for $130 sells for $160,000

Decades after two young cartoonists from Cleveland sold the rights to Superman for $130, their 1938 paycheck fetched $160,000 on Monday in an online auction.

From MSNBC.com

DC & the Big Bang

We just discovered The Big Bang Theory. Yeah, yeah we know that it has been on TV for a bit, but for whatever reason  we just never sat down to watch it. However, now that it is on TBS, we have become a big fan. We love all the geeky Sci-Fi, fantasy, Comicbook, collectible references. Plus we also enjoy that the main characters are all braniac scientists, most of whom can't figure out how to exist in normal society. Still we were curious as to why all of the comic book references were DC rather than Marvel. Then we saw this:

Bummer, eh?