#The Heroin Diaries graphic novel

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — Bruce Friedman was moved by “The Diary of Anne Frank” when he read it at age 9. As a child in a kosher-keeping Jewish home on Long Island, he saw in the Holocaust memoir an essential lesson for Jewish and non-Jewish children alike.

“You learn to sympathize, empathize, share the fear and the horror and the fright and disgust with man’s inhumanity to man,” he recalled about the book. “And it’s not just the Nazis. It’s the human condition. We’re really good at hurting each other.”

And yet decades later, Friedman filed a challenge with his local school district in Florida to remove a new version of the diary from classroom shelves. The book, he wrote on a district form, “does disservice to lessons on the Holocaust.” 

He added, in all-caps, “PROTECT CHILDREN!”

Last month, the local school board sided with Friedman and voted to remove “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” from all grade levels in the district, with a spokesperson saying it was removed “based on state statute.” Also removed based on Friedman’s challenge: William Styron’s Holocaust novel “Sophie’s Choice.” 

The successes followed two of hundreds of challenges Friedman has filed against books in Clay County, near Jacksonville, where he moved from New York during the pandemic. He has files on thousands more books that others have challenged. From his home there, the Jewish father has become one of the country’s most prolific and zealous participants in the movement to purge public schools of certain books. 

The movement has largely targeted books featuring LGBTQ themes and content about racial equity, while catching books on other topics — including Jewish stories — in its dragnet. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has embedded the values of the movement into state law, making it easier for a small number of parents — or even just one — to force their districts to make books inaccessible to students.

The movement is most closely associated with a group called Moms of Liberty and inherits its worldview and tactics from decades of Christian family-values advocacy. But it turns out its flag-bearers can be Jewish dads, too.

Friedman recognizes that he stands out. “I figured we’d have a lot to talk about, Jew boy,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

He stands out in another way, too. Unlike many of his fellow book challengers, Friedman, a self-identified “bibliophile,” insists he reads every book he seeks to remove. He documents his objections as he goes in reams of challenge forms that he stores in his home office.

In objecting to a children’s biography of Harriet Tubman, for example, he says, “Telling them that the Civil War was all about slavery is a lie.” The picture book “Arthur’s Birthday,” featuring the cartoon aardvark, was bad in his view because “it is not appropriate to discuss ‘spin the bottle’ with elementary school children.” To Friedman, “Americanah,” a prizewinning novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about the immigrant experience, is “a horrible piece of garbage.” Reading from his own file on the book, he listed off its problems: “Attempted suicide, immigration fraud, promiscuity, infidelity, abortion, racism, sex, critical race theory.”

For months Friedman has battled the Clay County school board over books, even becoming a conservative folk hero when his antics at a school board meeting drew censure. This week, when Friedman attempted to read from the Mindy McGuinnis novel “Heroine,” about the opioid crisis, board members cut off his microphone, telling him there were children present. When he attempted to keep reading, two police officers escorted him from the podium.

Yet a newer board member has frequently taken his side, recently describing “every single book we’ve banned” as “filthy, filthy pornography” and adding, “People who tell you different have not read the books, period.”

Recently, the board met to revise its book policy — but a school district official said Friedman would complicate the task.

“Mr. Friedman’s erratic and inconsistent challenges make it impossible for us to predict and devise a solution,” the school district’s chief academic officer, Roger Dailey, told the board during its Sept. 26 workshop. “I don’t know that there is a way to satisfy him.”

More than 60% of all book challenges nationwide in the 2021-2022 school year came from just 11 people.  In this context, the volume of Friedman’s challenges carry weight far beyond his own district — and he’s only picked up the pace since.

“He’s been incredibly successful,” said Tasslyn Magnusson, who researches school book bans for the literary free-speech group PEN America and considers Friedman one of the biggest players in a movement she sees as attacking public education. “He’s by far the best example of how this is not about the books, but this is about destroying the system.”

Friedman’s allies, too, say he is making an outsized impact. He is “an amazing person, very patient, compassionate, and really wanted to dig into the issue of the books,” said Elana Yaron Fishbein, the founder of No Left Turn in Education, which has a list of books it deems “problematic.” Friedman is the group’s Florida chapter head; with his master list of every book challenged in every district, Fishbein said, he “really went above and beyond.”

Friedman is not the only Jew who is active in the book-challenge movement. There is Fishbein, an Israeli-born mother and a former employee of the Philadelphia Jewish federation who founded No Left Turn in Education in 2020 to combat what she says is “a leftist agenda” in public and private schools. And Brooke Weiss, a Jewish mother in Charlotte, North Carolina, is a lead organizer in Moms For Liberty. Weiss told JTA she has never challenged a book herself, but she helped put together the group’s first-ever conference earlier this year, attended by several Republican presidential candidates. 

Yet Friedman, who is involved in both groups, stands out for the sheer volume and intensity of his challenges; he is responsible for more than a third of all challenges in Florida, and for 94% of the challenges in his district, which has acceded to hundreds of his requests to pull books and has removed more books than any other in the state as a result. He insists that his efforts are on behalf of children like his own, whom he pulled from public school when they lived back in New York out of concerns about what the child was learning there. 

“I want all lessons in all schools to respect innocence,” Friedman told JTA.

Friedman said his father was a Navy veteran who worked printing art for periodicals, while his mother worked a variety of jobs including as an accountant, seamstress and Yiddish teacher. He celebrated his bar mitzvah in Jerusalem, visiting the Western Wall. His parents, who are still alive, raised him “Conservative, leaning Orthodox” — he now participates in Jewish life via his local Chabad-Lubavitch center — and they imparted other values, too.

“My house that I grew up in was filled with books, and I had unfettered access to everything,” Friedman said. “I was the kind of guy who would stay close to librarians. The library was my happy place.”

Now, looking back, he says the unfettered access wasn’t always to his benefit. He has challenged “Slaughterhouse-Five,” the classic by Kurt Vonnegut about the bombing of Dresden during World War II, which he said he wrongly appreciated as a 12-year-old. “When I read it I had no regard for my own innocence,” he said.

Friedman attended multiple colleges in the New York area and worked as a construction manager in New York. He became radicalized by what he saw in public schools a decade ago, when his wife’s son entered kindergarten on Long Island. Schools in New York and around the country had recently adopted the Common Core, a set of educational standards meant to unify and improve what is taught across districts and states.

The standards had drawn backlash from conservatives who saw them as trampling on the principle of local control of schools. (People from across the ideological spectrum also argued that — in language presaging the book-ban movement — the standards were not always “age-appropriate” for children.)

Friedman said the standards caused his now-stepson to experience “considerable harm,” declining to offer specifics. The couple pulled him from public school and enrolled him in an evangelical Christian school that had eschewed the Common Core. The school’s outlook was also new for Friedman’s wife, who was raised Catholic, and the religious approach was not his own — “I was born a Jew. I will die a Jew,” Friedman said — but the family loved the school. When he saw Fishbein talking about No Left Turn on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show following the 2020 racial justice protests, he knew he had found his new cause.

Friedman moved his family from New York to Florida during the pandemic, “in pursuit of less tyrannical, more favorable governance and in the spirit of liberty.” (He noted that while he doesn’t regret the move, he does miss his family and “the pizza.”) His arrival in Florida came just as DeSantis was making “parents’ rights” a legislative priority. The timing was perfect for him to inaugurate No Left Turn’s presence in that state.

When Friedman and his family moved to Florida, he made the decision to put his son — now in high school — back in public school, believing that his evangelical education had given him “a very good moral base” that would insulate him from danger. But he forbade his stepson from ever using the school library and threw himself into monitoring the library’s contents.

There were so many parents out there, Friedman reasoned, who didn’t have time to thoroughly monitor their children’s media consumption like he did. Even if most of those parents might be fine with their kid reading the occasional racy book passage, some might not be. 

“It’s not the kids that have a wicked dark sense of humor like I was,” he said, describing the child he pictures in his head when he files his challenges. “It’s for the sheltered little people who have parents that are so concerned with their souls that they don’t want them harmed.”

Friedman soon began reading school library books in his spare time, searching for objectionable content he could denounce, and scouring negative online reviews for more dirt on the books. He has turned the book challenge process into a science, filing flurries of official request forms — often with only one or two words of objection listed on them — which, under state law, must be considered by a formal review committee. He also has the ability to appeal any decision the committee makes, and usually does, if the decision doesn’t involve removing the book. 

Recently, he says he landed a local job — but he has kept up the book challenges. “Employment has not slowed me,” he said. “I have the time to devote because I am a very motivated and determined person, and also because I don’t eat or sleep as I ought to.”

For the book challenges Friedman doesn’t author, he volunteers to serve on the committee that will decide their fates, as a parent representative. He then attends public board meetings to hammer home his objections in person; he went viral last year when he attempted to read aloud from a memoir by author Alice Sebold at one board meeting, as part of his justification for why he wanted it removed from the district. 

As Friedman began reciting Sebold’s graphic accounting of a sexual assault, the board cut off his mic, warning him not to read “pornography” during a meeting being streamed to the public. “Hush your mouth and listen,” the school board attorney instructed him. This was hypocrisy, Friedman thought: If he can’t read a book aloud at a public board meeting because it’s pornographic, why should that same book be available in public school libraries? 

Thanks in part to Friedman’s inspiration, reading objectionable book passages aloud at school board meetings has since become a tried-and-true tactic for activists who want books removed. Recent legislation in Florida even encourages such behavior by requiring boards to remove the book if they cut off such a reading for obscenity concerns. 

The intensity of the efforts to ban books in Clay County has alarmed some educators there.

“One of the courses that I teach is on the Holocaust,” a district history teacher said during a school board meeting last year, speaking against the district’s mass book removals spurred on by Friedman. “Do I need to paint you a picture?” 

A picture is exactly what Friedman didn’t like about the illustrated version of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which was adapted by Ari Folman and David Polonsky and published in 2018 by the foundation that controls the diary’s copyright. In an image inspired by a passage in Frank’s original diary, she shares a brief memory of same-sex attraction, which was unacceptable to Friedman.

“The fact that little Anne Frank once had some lesbian thoughts that made their way into her diary, does that help a kid learn the horrors of Holocaust or inhumanity? No. So what is it helping the kid learn?” he asked. Employing a term, sometimes used as part of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, that describes adults training children to accept sexual abuse, he added, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s grooming.”

Friedman’s opposition to the book distinguishes him from Fishbein, who said she supports only “some” of Friedman’s challenges, such as one for the frequently challenged graphic novel “Gender Queer.” The Anne Frank adaptation is a different story: “We do not oppose the use of this book in schools,” she said. Friedman himself has taken to clarifying, in his challenges, that he is not acting on behalf of No Left Turn even as he continues to use an email address associated with the group.

Yet his campaign against “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” has caught on. Since Friedman first pushed his district to review the book this past winter, another Florida district removed it outright after it was challenged by a Moms For Liberty member there. Last month, a school in Texas fired a teacher who reportedly read it aloud to her eighth-grade students.

Critics of Friedman’s movement say it builds on a history of censorship that has always boded ill for the Jews. Copies of Jewish texts have been burned by antisemitic regimes throughout history, including France in the 1200s and the Roman Inquisition in the 1500s. The Nazis led a campaign not only to burn Jewish books, but also to wipe out what they deemed “degenerate art” — which often meant, if not works by Jews, then modernist pieces the regime considered to be vulgar or not generally supportive of their aims. 

“There are parallels with book burnings,” Aaron Herschel Shapiro, an instructor of Jewish American literature at Middle Tennessee State University, told JTA about the contemporary movement. “The rhetoric alone makes that clear. The books, and the ideas they contain, are framed as some sort of cultural contagion that must be purged. That’s a bit on the nose, no?”

The Association of Jewish Libraries has come out against the movement that Friedman represents. “Book bans result in the suppression of history and distortion of readers’ understanding of the world around them,” the group said in a statement last year.

Despite the fact that at least one Moms For Liberty chapter has quoted Hitler in its communications, Weiss says she sees her movement as actually safeguarding Jewish stories and students. She became involved in Moms for Liberty after her daughter was asked, on a quiz about the Octavia Butler novel “Kindred,” to compare slavery and the Holocaust; the correct answer was that slavery was “just as horrible over a much longer duration,” which Weiss said was “Holocaust-minimizing.” Still, she said, “Even my mother has made the claim that this organization is antisemitic.”

Some of the most prominent Jews in the book-banning movement reject any uncomfortable historical resonances. “If we are talking about removing ‘Gender Queer’ from the school, why does that not work out well for the Jews?” Fishbein said. “What does that have to do with Jews or not Jews?”

Friedman, too, rejects the criticism, which he said in an email is coming from “misinformed people that feel it’s a precursor to the next Krystallnacht,” referring to the pogrom that is considered the start of the Holocaust.

“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you, Andrew, represent your Jewish publication, the JTA, you might feel that everything on earth is about Jewishness,” he said. “The only thing Jewish about my efforts is that they seem to connect with our people’s passion for justice.”

Friedman is continuing his challenges at a full pace, and told the board at its September meeting that he would continue doing so until it established “a rubric and a guideline” for how to better deal with content he believes is “pornographic.” This month, he filed one for Antonio Iturbe’s young-adult Holocaust novel “The Librarian of Auschwitz.” The book is based on the true story of the Jewish Auschwitz survivor Dita Kraus, who as a teenager guarded a slim volume of smuggled books in the death camp’s children’s unit so that the kids would have something to read. Kraus is still alive today. 

Friedman’s challenge to the book, which he shared with JTA, doesn’t mention Kraus’ quest to protect children’s books from Nazis. Instead, he quotes from sections describing nude, emaciated Auschwitz prisoners and Jewish corpses, passages which he believes are inappropriate for all age levels. A message to the board further articulating his objections suggests that his main issue with the book is that it mentions the Holocaust at all.

“Unsupervised forays into the horrors of the Holocaust can be traumatizing for children,” he writes. “They are almost certain to have some impact on a child. I wouldn’t necessarily expect this impact to be positive.” Elsewhere he repeats his familiar objections: “PROTECT CHILDREN,” he writes in all caps. “DAMAGED SOULS.”  

Emily Knox, a University of Illinois professor who researches book challenges, told JTA the movement’s ambitions are inherently at odds with learning about the Holocaust.

“The issue with challengers is that they want books to be pure. And so what they will say is, ‘Why would someone put this terrible thing in a book?’” she said. “But it’s impossible to have a clean book on the Holocaust. That’s not something that exists, unless you decenter the Jewish experience in the Holocaust.”

New laws on the horizon would open the door to even more book challenges. Over the summer, Florida passed a new law that allows any county resident, not just parents, to challenge any book in the district. If even a single challenge claims a book contains sexual content, that book would have to be pulled immediately until a further review can be taken. 

One book that Friedman personally says he doesn’t plan to challenge is a Holocaust work that has become a symbol of the broader book-ban movement. Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir “Maus,” which relays the experiences of his father’s survival of the Holocaust, last year was removed from a middle school lesson plan in Tennessee after the board objected to some of its illustrations, and has been on the chopping block in other districts in Missouri and Iowa. But just like with “The Diary of Anne Frank,” Friedman has positive memories of reading the book as a teen.

“I absorbed it immediately. I thought it was fantastic,” Friedman recalled. “As far as graphic novels go, and history lessons at the same time, it’s probably one of the very best.”

Still, he said, he’s fine with local efforts to remove the book from schools — even if it comes at a cost to Jews.

“That’s local control,” he said. “That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Even if their reasons are racist, even if they want that book gone because they don’t want any sympathy for Jews and they hate them, that’s local control.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Bruce Friedman has filed more than 3,000 book challenges. In fact, he has filed hundreds, but maintains a master list of all book challenges filed across the country which totals more than 3,000.

[cartograffiti]

May '24 reading diary

This month, I finished 16 books, mostly quick cookbooks and graphic novels!

I started May by listening to a very unseasonal full-cast audiobook of E.T.A. Hoffmann's original The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. When I was a child, I read a lot of different text adaptations of the Tchaikovsky ballet adapted from this story, but only realized I'd never read the original when a friend got me to read Hoffmann's squarely horror story "The Sandman" a few years ago. This was creepier than the ballet story, though clearly written for children, and I'm very glad to have gotten around to it.

K.J. Charles, author of a large number of romances I'm a fan of, put out her first mystery A-plot novel, Death in the Spires. I think it's a good introduction to her style if you're not a big romance person, and I think it was the right call for this plot to prioritize the genre elements in this way, but I also have found her B-plot mysteries more exciting. No problem, I liked it a lot, and it has a lot of juicy thoughts about justice as distinct from the law and how trust is earned or lost. Gay disabled detective.

Two sports romances: You Should Be So Lucky, a sensational 1960s baseball player/magazine journalist relationship, meditating beautifully on the fear of failure and on grief. One of the mains was in a long-term relationship with someone who has died, and I think this is the best widowed romance character I've ever read. Sebastian is also just fabulous at taking a tour of a made-up person, full of small details and slice-of-life stakes. I've read all her books and will continue to; I like her particular approach to historicals and her ability to make queer happy endings distinct and individual. M/M.

The other sports romance I read this month is The Boxing Baroness by Minerva Spencer, which I only mildly enjoyed. Unfortunately I don't even have any real criticisms, I just very simply didn't click with Spencer's style on a sentences level, particularly in sex scenes. Your mileage will vary! There is a lot of really enjoyable bits about the hot honorable love interest thirsting over how strong and cool he thinks the heroine is, and he's right. This is definitely worth trying if the basic premise of woman boxer Regency is your thing. Wait, I do have one plot criticism--this would have been stronger without the epilogue. We didn't actually need to meet [historical figure redacted]. M/F.

Graphic novels--I used to read Chelsey Furedi's Rock and Riot when it was coming out as a webcomic, and I was excited when her follow-up, Project Nought, was suspended soon after launch because of a book deal. Unfortunately I somehow missed it when the book actually came out in 2017, and only when Heartstopper sent me on a nostalgia trip last month did I realize I could read it. I wish I had read Project Nought when it was new! A lot of the sci-fi plot no longer feels futuristic even 7 years on, although the core twist is just fabulous. There isn't enough of the interpersonal depth that shines in Rock and Riot, the villain plot resolution is a bit too easy for the YA market, and overall I just wouldn't pitch this as more than pleasant.

The rest of the graphic novels, far more than pleasant, I read volumes 8, 9, 10, and 11 of Witch Hat Atelier by Shirahama Kamome. This was a good batch to read close together, as they all deal with the events of the same festival. Unfortunately I have to wait for my library to buy the next to see the resolution, but that's how manga goes! I loved a lot of what's happening at this point, with some fabulous milestones in the Coco-Agott friendship, lots of good moments from my favorite of the adults (Olruggio), and continuing to push down on the question of forbidden magic. Shirahama brings in both strong cases of things that deserve to be banned (glasses that let you see through people's clothes, not treated as remotely funny) and things that...maybe don't. I really cannot tell what ethics resolution might be end-game, which is very exciting.

Cookbooks! My lovely mother surprised me with a copy of an 80s book I'd been looking for, Vineyard Seasons by Susan Branch. I wouldn't exactly call her style pastoral, but I've seen her rediscovered a bit by cottagecore, Ghibli-esque, and related aesthetic bloggers. If that kind of romantic daily life artwork appeals to you, you might like her books as much as I do; every page is full of Branch's watercolor paintings, sometimes ornamental borders and sometimes illustrations of the sights of her home in Martha's Vineyard. I read and re-read her books just to linger over the pictures, but almost every recipe I've tried has been a winner.

I also borrowed a whole bunch of cookbooks of literary-inspired recipes. I went through two by Alison Walsh (A Literary Tea Party and A Literary Holiday Cookbook), which were disappointing; they draw from a pretty small range of books, and rely a lot on food coloring to fit the themes. Meanwhile, The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook (ed. Kate White) has a really wide range of difficulty level and approach, only some of them inspired by fiction. Each recipe was contributed by a different author, making it fun in the same way that church and community cookbooks can be, but I don't have any wish to own this, either. I have two others still to look at. (And I already own some I do recommend, Kate Young's Little Library cookbooks and Tim Federle's literary cocktail books.)

More nonfiction: DK Publishing's really insubstantial small coffee table book Banned Books, which didn't have quite enough text (I shouldn't have finished any entries unsure on what grounds they were banned/challenged, and did), but some pretty vintage covers (and not enough of those either).

Really great, with loads of pictures and thorough text: The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag by Sasha Velour. I was first aware of gender-fluid queen Sasha Velour as an illustrator and zinester, and in many ways they're the reason I was first interested in drag performers. This book doubles as a history of drag and a personal memoir of Velour's experience with it, and I enjoyed both equally. The history is well-researched and thoughtful, and the memoir is generous and self-aware. And it has some of their comics!

And I'm still reading Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles at about one per month. I finished Pawn in Frankincense in May--lush and devastating and funny and infuriating and completely absorbing. Still not a series I would recommend to everyone, and still one I'm so glad I'm reading at this exact moment, when my emotions can go through the juicer and not feel scarred afterwards.

[tigermousse]

Demonheart

 genre: fantasy, mystery, otome, drama

Demonheart is a fantasy otome visual novel about a poor girl, who just became an apprentice of village Healer - some time later the Healer announced that she is...pregnant with demon child and hopes that our heroine Bright will take care of him. Several hours after that The Healer was killed, Bright is sentenced to death for her murder. And executed. But it wasn't the end of Bright. It was just a beginning of her new life as a demonheart - a creature which possess supernatural powers and regenerative abilities. Alas, from now a lot of people wants her dead or captured. Because if you eat a heart of demonspawn, you can become one. And also she has this strange amulet given to her by her former employer - and now the demon is talking to her through it. Who can she trust? Who would be her ally?

Demonheart looks very different from usual visual novels. It has its own lore, which we learn step by step, reading it in Bright's diary. It is very original in interface, and even has alignment system. But playing through the game I honestly  not sure if the alignment system ever impacts story outcome.But on the other hand, it is mostly like in Fable 1 - when it’s easier to be good than bad.

Also you have to choose every phrase of dialogue by yourself (or chose to keep silent), and it could be fun, but in some places you just stuck between two dialog choices that seem almost identical - and thinking does they really have an impact on story? I have to confess that till the time I got to chapter 5, I was already kind of bored with so much choices.

Also the game has anagram riddles, if you are bad in that kind of puzzles, I have good news for you - you can give them up. I suck in this kind of puzzles, also english is not my native language, but I've managed, so I guess they're not very hard.

All characters in the game are assholes and will betray you sooner or later in the game, you have to deal with this and move on. Really, almost everyone you meet in this game is more or less the traitor. You can say that main love interests are kind of have their reasons for doing that, and still could become your allies. I can’t say that I’ve grown too emotionally attached to any of them.

Usually in these time of games I kind of like the charming bastards (even psychopaths), but in Demonheart, alas, they weren’t too charming.

Originality: 5/5

Story: 4/5

Characters: 3/5

Romance: 2/5

Graphics: 5/5

My rating: 4/5

SPOILER ALERT :

I pursued the largest bastard (Sir Brash) as the main love interest - he's kind of tsundere and we got love/hate relationship all alone. But his ending was not so romantic as I wished, can't say that I didn't liked it, but after all of these choices I've went through I wanted at least one cozy snuggly scene.

[myblackpontiac]

Oh, to be back in the 80s, meeting Nikki Sixx.

[isfjmel-phleg]

March 2022 Books

Delivery to the Lost City by P. G. Bell

The first one of this series was cute and clever, but I’m finding that the sequels lack those qualities.

The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown

Like Noel Streatfeild but with much less interesting characters and a much less interesting plot.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (reread)

Seasonal reread.

Friday’s Child; Master Bartlemy, or The Thankful Heart; and Messire and Other Stories by Frances E. Crompton

I really enjoyed Crompton’s The Children of Hermitage, but these earlier works of hers tend to lack the lively characterization and engaging plot of that one. (Friday’s Child in particular was a painful read; basically all that happens is the young title character, who has been sickly his whole life and longs to be an adventurer when he grows up, undergoes some unpleasant experiences and finally dies a saintly Victorian death. What even is the point and why would you do that to your protagonist.)

The Velvet Fox by Catherine Fisher

The second in a series with a lot of potential that never feels quite realized. The Victorian setting doesn’t feel authentic, and everything’s pretty surface-level. The Clockwork Crow is a memorable character, however.

Rubies in the Snow by Kate Hubbard

Fictional diary of Anastasia Nikolaevna, aimed at older middle-grade readers, I think? A bit too on-the-nose as these fictional diaries tend to be, but a decent introduction to the historical material.

Whichwood by Tahereh Mafi

It took me a while to warm up to this book’s predecessor, Furthermore, but this one drew me in from the beginning. Well-drawn heroine, beautiful prose, quite moving.

The Secret Garden: A Graphic Novel by Mariah Marsden and Hanna Luechtefeld

Discussed in full here.

The Candymakers by Wendy Mass (reread)

Reread because I missed these characters and wanted to revisit them.

Unearthing The Secret Garden: The Plants and Places That Inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett by Marta McDowell

Very interesting, plenty of gorgeous pictures, and now I want to visit Great Maytham Hall if I ever get back to England.

The Skylarks’ War and The Swallows’ Flight by Hilary McKay

Historical fiction that follows a family through WWI and WWII respectively. I was impressed with how well McKay captures the spirit of a book written in the Edwardian era, but there was some off-putting content (and some minor less-convincing things--it’s not especially likely, for instance, that a young English woman around WWI would have been named Vanessa), and the second book was less engaging (having a character abruptly turn out to have a different paternity than he’s always believed just so he’s no longer technically a blood relation and therefore can get together with the girl whom he grew up with as a cousin is...a questionable plot device).

The Forgotten Room by Stacie Morrell

If you’re going to self-publish your fanfiction, you had better be absolutely sure that it is darn good fanfiction. You might want to get an editor, do actual research about the era you’re writing in, and reread the book you’re following up (in this case, The Secret Garden) so your details and depictions are consistent. Morrell does not seem to have done any of these things. The plot seemed mostly pointless and depended on characterizations that didn’t make sense. I wasn’t expecting much, but this was especially lacking in quality.

Words on Fire by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Interesting plot and historical setting. I don’t know what it is about Nielsen’s books (I’ve read her Ascendance Trilogy) that always seems to be missing somehow? Like there’s a layer of something that would really bring them to life but it’s just...not there? And I can’t put my finger on it but that was the case with this one too.

The Secret of White Stone Gate by Julia Nobel 

Sequel to a book I read earlier. I don’t think I’ll continue the series.

The Secret Garden (book and lyrics of the musical) by Marsha Norman

Read to follow along while watching a recording of the musical.

All in Good Time by Edward Ormondroyd

Less interesting than the book to which it’s the sequel, but still amusing, especially Ormondroyd’s including a fictionalized version of himself researching the disappearance of the characters.

The Sky Is Falling by Kit Pearson

Historical fiction about British evacuees in Canada during WWII. Pearson’s book seems slight but has a lot of substance, and I will seek out the rest of the series.

The Humming Room by Ellen Potter (reread)

Potter’s prose is gorgeous and the book full of atmosphere. Regrettably too short!

Folktales for Fearless Girls by Myriam Sayalero

Read for its inclusion of “Anait” (with lovely illustrations).

The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy

I went in expecting a continuation of the slice-of-life incidents of The Good Master and was not expecting it to deal with the effects of WWI in Hungary! Quite a different tone than I was expecting but very interesting, especially in light of its being published in 1940 (Seredy seems to be indirectly addressing issues of her day).

Lucy Beware! by Pamela Sykes

Solid continuation of Mirror of Danger/Come Back, Lucy! with some good character development.

Into the Labyrinth and The Constellation of Sylvie by Roderick Townley

Not as clever as the first one (...too many disappointing sequels this month, alas).

The Story Seeker by Kristin O’Donnell Tubb

Cute continuation of The Story Collector, set in the New York Public Library in the 1920s.

Return to the Secret Garden by Holly Webb (reread)

Sequel set during WWII that basically rehashes the plot of the original in a much less interesting and thoughtful way, requiring canon characters to be out-of-character. The adult Mary is barely present and seems strangely bubbly, she’s married to Colin (why do so many adaptations and sequels go this route? does she really need to be romantically involved with either of the boys?) who SPOILER gets killed off in the war for the sake of contrived drama and sorrow, and the adult Dickon gets cast in the role of Cranky Gardener, with “he changed after being in WWI” the excuse for his very uncharacteristic behavior.

Home in the Woods by Eliza Wheeler

Someone recommended this picture book quite a while ago, and it is indeed lovely.

The Marvellous Land of Snergs by E. A. Wyke-Smith

Apparently a favorite of Tolkien’s and partially inspirational for The Hobbit? Had an intriguing beginning, with the premise of a society of ladies who rescue unwanted children and raise them on a island, but after setting this up, Wyke-Smith proceeds to abandon it in favor of a more generic fantasy-ish plot and a regrettably sexist approach to his female characters (including the “females are inherently manipulative” trope that I hate. so. much. I get that that’s a typical view of the time, but I’ve had to deal with this garbage so much that I have no patience for it).

[onyxheartbeat]

To say I'm excited for the Heroin Diaries graphic novel is an understatement.

[lgbt-ya]

Recent LGBTQ+ reads

MLM reads:

Finding Home by Hari Conner  -  A beautifully drawn graphic novel about a healer fey who can grow flowers (!) and a chef, who are travelling together across their country. Along the way, they get to know each other, and we get to learn more about their fascinating, magic world. This is a slow burn romance, and the two men don't get together in this volume, but the others are already published - I'm super excited to read the next one. The art really makes this one - their expressions give so much information, and there is a diary full of illustrations kept along the route by the character included too. Really lovely and magical! 

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley* -  A beautifully written, funny and paradoxical time-slip story set during the Napoleonic War, if it all went in France's favour. Romantic, full of ships and battles and lighthouses, this is so inventive and fun. There were a few parts which genuinely made me gasp (the freezing sea, the London Underground, the final train journey). Other times, I found myself scratching my head a bit. There were a few missing jumps in logic - I found it hard to follow all of the many battles and voyages over different time periods, and it was very frustrating that Jem didn't seem bothered about being in the past or use his knowledge of the future in any way. But I loved the characters (some of Kite's more....immoral behaviour aside) and I was truly hooked - I read this in one sitting. (Kite is a queer man, and others are questioning)

WLW reads:

Giant Days, Vol. 11 by John Allison - I love this series - I've been reading them for many years now, starting when I was a fresher like the characters, and now I am most definitely not (!). Each volume is a low-stress, big-hijinks slice of slightly surreal life, and I'm going to be dipping in and out of them as long as they're being published. (Daisy is a queer woman.)

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth* -  An intricate, lengthy ghost story, about a haunted girls school in 1902, and the group of modern actors who are filming a movie about the ghost story. Unfortunately, the crew are planning to make a haunting on-set, to build up the hype of the movie and add a second layer to the spookiness of the narrative. I loved both timelines, which were equally diverse with queer characters and intrigue. The writing was lush and relaxed, taking its time to build a realistic world on its way towards the ending. There's also some wonderful horrifying moments in there too - if you're wasp-phobic, this one might not be for you!

Genderqueer reads: 

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix* -  I really liked the worldbuilding and character dynamics in this, but it was bogged down by too much explaining and not enough showing. I couldn't really tell you what the stakes were! A bit of a shame. (The character Merlin is genderqueer)

Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries #5) by Martha Wells* -   I love Murderbot, and it was a true luxury to stretch out in a full length novel. I sometimes struggled to follow the action in the novellas, because they were so fast paced you can lose track of the tread if you don't pay attention for a single page. But I didn't have that problem at all here - it was always clear what the stakes were, and the traditional non-stop action had space for breathing room, AKA snide remarks and sitcom viewing sessions. It was so great to have ART back too! The humans are always pushed backstage compared to the fun AIs, but even so I found them really engaging and enjoyable here too. Bring on the next! (Murderbot is a modified human who doesn’t identify with a gender and uses they/them pronouns)

* gifted by publisher

My own LGBT YA novel was released for Halloween! The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker is a paranormal horror about ghosts stuck in the afterlife. 

“Congratulations, new kid. Welcome to the afterlife.”

What if death is only the beginning?

When Harriet Stoker dies after falling from a balcony in a long-abandoned building, she discovers a world of ghosts with magical powers – shape-shifting, hypnosis, even the ability to possess the living.

Felix, Kasper, Rima and Leah welcome her into their world, eager to make friends with the new arrival. Yet Harriet is more interested in unleashing her own power, even if it means destroying everyone around her. But when all of eternity is at stake, the afterlife can be a dangerous place to make an enemy.

Word count: 93,000 Ages 14+  Tropes included: breaks-the-fourth-wall, closed-environment, ghosts, historical-magic, lgbtqia, magical-house, time-travel, unreliable-narrator.

Goodreads

Amazon UK

Waterstones

“A wildly original, pleasantly diverse and wickedly engaging supernatural thriller. Fans of anti-heroes, the found family trope, queer relationships, and cool mythology will enjoy this one!” – The Nerd Daily

“Dead character Harriet discovers a world of ghosts with magical powers – shape-shifting, hypnosis, even the ability to possess the living (great for fans of TV shows Upload and the Good Place)” – BookTrust

[sarahreesbrennan]

How come between Season of The Witch and Daughter of Chaos, we skipped Sabrina's dark baptism and Tommy being resurrected/killed and went straight into the Greendale 13 threat? Loving the books so far, just curious. 🖤🖤

That’s a great question and I’m so happy you’re enjoying! I’m so sorry this reply is late, I am on unexpected deadline but I know I have a few Sabrina, Fence and In Other Lands answers owing and I am delighted the questions were asked!

There is a confusion that often arises because the category of media tie-in novels (books set in the world of a media property) has two main subcategories. They are similar and have much in common, but aren’t the same.

A) One is novelizations, which is basically a book that tells the same story as the movie/TV show/graphic novels, but through a different medium. The story covers the same space of time, and includes much of the same dialogue. It’s the same story told in a different way.

B) Two is tie-in books, which tell different stories that fit in before or after, or in the spaces between the story. Often tie-in books start with prequels, telling the tale of how the characters get to the place before the story began. It’s a different story but it’s crafted specifically to tie in with the larger story.

Both subcategories are set in the specific story world. Both offer insight into the characters, their thoughts and feelings, and secret motivations, but they are different kinds of story.

I had no idea of these distinctions before I started to write tie-in books myself, so I explain here because hey, knowledge is always useful. I’ve now read a lot of them, because I wanted to teach myself how to write them and because they’re fun, so I thought discussing examples might illustrate the difference.

The Iron Man novelization by Peter David is widely considered especially good. I’ve read it and I like it a lot: great echoes, perfect story beats. (I discuss it pretty technically because I was reading it in order to teach myself to write a novelization, as opposed to a tie-in novel. I have written a novelization, but not in the Sabrina universe and not under my name for contractual reasons!) It tells the story of the first Iron Man movie, how Tony Stark became Iron Man. A novelization means a lot of the (in this case funny and great) dialogue from the movie must be used, but then with a novelization you have to get pretty specific about why the characters said what they said, and how they felt when they said it. One thing I liked a lot in the novel was the insight offered that Tony Stark’s actions at the beginning of the story were frequently driven by sheer boredom--that he was a genius who wasn’t given enough scope for his genius, and was acting out. 

An example of a fabulous tie-in book is Tess Sharpe’s The Evolution of Claire, a book that ties in with the Jurassic World movies, a prequel of how the heroine Claire gets involved in the dubiously moral world of dinosaur park creation. So it happens before the events of the movies, but by reading it you understand Claire better, her ambitions and frustrations. Another such is Leigh Bardugo’s Wonder Woman novel, Warbringer, showing Diana’s much earlier years, and making you understand more deeply how Diana evolved her moral philosophy and her secret insecurities. 

There’s a great article in the Guardian about tie-in novels: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/jul/17/tie-in-novelisations-star-wars-jurassic-world

To add to the confusion, stories can have both novelizations and tie-in novels. 

Star Wars famously had absolute masses of tie-in novels. The Star Wars universe is so popular it even has junior and adult novelizations--two different novelizations of the same movie. Patricia C. Wrede, a rather fabulous YA/MG SFF writer, wrote the junior novelizations of the Star Wars prequels. (I’ve read them but if you want to get started on Patricia C. Wrede I would recommend her Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Nothing to do with Star Wars, I just love them.) 

Star Wars also has category B, the tie-in novels. For instance, Resistance Reborn by Rebecca Roanhorse, which is a story that takes place in between the events of the movies The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. I have also read this book. Very cool interstellar war and spies action, but also... for them that like that kind of thing, among which I would include myself... Poe ties Finn’s tie. Thank u Rebecca Roanhorse.

Similarly, there’s a novelization of Maleficent 2 (Maleficent 2: Mistress of Evil by Elizabeth Rudnick), but there’s also a tie-in novel set between Maleficents 1 and 2 (Heart of the Moors by Holly Black) telling you what happened in between the events of those movies. Significant things can happen in those spaces--deaths, courtships, mysteries solved and secrets told. A dungeon scene between Prince Philip and Maleficent is in Heart of the Moors. It’s very important.

So in a novelization, a retelling of a story through a different medium, you get the same events as in the story. But you might get extra scenes that cast a different light on the story, and you will get access to the inner thoughts and motivations of the characters.

And a tie-in book is usually set in between the seasons of a TV show/movies/issues of a graphic novel. It’s a story made to fit into a liminal space, and meant to shed light both on what happens in between the stories, but to cast light before itself and behind itself--so you might learn more about the characters’ pasts, or learn things about their feelings that will illuminate why they behave in a certain way in the future.  

For the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, I was hired to write tie-ins, so I wrote a prequel (Season of the Witch) which shows the summer before Part 1, the autumn when Sabrina turns sixteen and has to sign her soul away. It’s an adventure with a rusalka, but also shows us how Sabrina came to be 100% certain her wild witch cousin Ambrose would have her back, why she was insecure enough to do memory spells on her boyfriend (Harvey), and it’s an opportunity to know how the witch world works before our heroine does.

Then I wrote Daughter of Chaos, which happens over mortal New Year’s, right after the Christmas episode that ends Part 1, and before Part 2--because the show didn’t have mortal New Year’s. That was a new adventure that could also tell us how people felt after the events of Part 1, and why people might act the way they would in Part 2. It’s about bad luck spells and enchanted towns, but it’s also about coping with a break-up and how that can put you on a different path, about bereavement and trauma caused by magic, and about longing for affection. Plus it provides us the first hints about hell, before our heroine sees the sparks fly. 

Same deal with book 3, Path of Night, which happens between Parts 2 and 3, in the early spring while Sabrina’s boyfriend (Nick) is in hell. It’s a quest for an item of power to release your beloved from suffering, but it’s also about what happens when you ask a lot (too much?) from your friends, how you can climb out of trauma toward loving relationships (between mean-girl witches and wicked-witch cousins), and how trauma can take someone apart (nobody in hell is having a good time). Plus it provides knowledge about hell before our heroine gets it in Part 3, and glimpses pertaining to heaven.

This month my tie-in novel with C.S. Pacat’s Fence graphic novels comes out (September 29!) and it’s set after the events of volume 4, though the book Striking Distance also works (like Season of the Witch) as an entryway into a new world and an introduction to the characters (in this case a fencing team at an elite boarding school). You try to make every book a possible gateway, but a book 1 definitely should be. (Still, I read Vampire Diaries Book 4 first and caught on just fine, and I recall one reader who read Daughter of Chaos/Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Book 2 and was like, ‘I do not watch this show and did not read Book 1, but I get everything and also Nick Scratch can get it.’)

Another person reading the Sabrina books was like, ‘Sabrina talks a lot about her Dark Baptism in Season of the Witch but then it never happens, Sarah Rees Brennan!’ And this is true, because it happens on the show, and I wasn’t writing novelizations. I think writing Sabrina’s Dark Baptism and Tommy’s death would have been cool and heartbreaking, but I wasn’t meant to retell a lot of scenes from the show. I did snabble a few scenes, but only ones I could use specifically for the purposes of telling the new, in-between stories.

For both novelizations and tie-ins, you get the scripts of the media property you’re working with. Sometimes you get several versions of the scripts. Sometimes you don’t know until you watch the filmed version that scenes got cut. (There were several scenes I read about in the Sabrina scripts, which were cut later, that I used to inform the books. Plus sometimes it’s just fun to watch something and be like, I KNOW WHY e.g. SHE HAS THIS ACCENT/HIS SHIRT DISAPPEARED.) For both you get insights into the story, and especially insights into points of view, that I think you can really only get with books.

For both novelizations and tie-ins, you consult with the writers for the media property, are told things to do and things not to do, and have opportunities to do other optional research. (Things I have done in pursuit of better tie-in novels: written to Sabrina actors and asked them their character thoughts and how they played certain scenes. Forced C.S. Pacat to play with my kitten on a skype call while I took her notes about fencing and feelings.)  

For both novelizations and tie-ins, you have to write them fast, and you have highly specific contracts. Christopher Golden, who’s written many Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Daredevil novels, discusses some details here: https://iamtw.org/from-daredevil-to-buffy-christopher-golden/

So, that’s Options A and B. There’s also Mystery Option C, stories that blur the lines between the two, such as the events of a story told from the point of view of supporting characters, so you see both behind the scenes, the scenes and often before-and-after for the story proper. Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, focusing on Hamlet’s pals from uni. I don’t know what you’d call them. I just wanted to say that they exist too.

Thank you for reading! (Both this and the books.) I hope this was informative and not too dull. :)

[straydog733]

2021 Reading and Watching Resolutions

2020 is dead! It’s a new year, and with it come a new set of reading and watching resolutions. A few small tweaks, but these are mostly the same lists as last time. If you see any categories that you have recommendations for, feel free to drop me a line.

2021 Reading Resolution

A book written in North America: Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson

A book written in Central America/Caribbean: Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid  

A book written in South America: Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda by Pablo Neruda, translated by Stephen Mitchell

A book written in East Asia: I Am a Hero: Omnibus Volume 1 by Kengo Hanazawa

A book written in South Asia: A Burning by Megha Majumdar

A book written in Africa: Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

A book written in the Middle East: Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa

A book written in Australia/Pacific Islands: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

A book written in Russia: The Blizzard by Vladimir Sorokin

A book written in Europe: White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

A biography: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

A non-fiction book: Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents by Mark Sakamoto

A collection of short stories: A Short History of Indians in Canada by Thomas King

A collection of poetry: Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

A play: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

A book you’ve seen adapted: Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

A graphic novel: Die Vol 2: Split the Party by Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Stephanie Hans

A children’s book: Valley of the Moon: The Diary of María Rosalía de Milagros by Sherry Garland

A book older than 100 years: The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

A debut novel: I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells

A novel by a famous author, other than the one(s) they are best known for: Pericles by William Shakespeare

A sequel: The Sugared Game (The Will Darling Adventures #2) by KJ Charles

A book by an author you’ve never given a fair shot: Along Came A Spider by James Patterson

A book you’ve heard bad things about: The Host by Stephenie Meyer

A book released in 2021: Subtle Blood (The Will Darling Adventures #3) by KJ Charles

Wild Card: Slippery Creatures (The Will Darling Adventures #1) by KJ Charles

Wild Card: Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

Wild Card: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Comic Book by Leighton Gray and Vernon Shaw

Wild Card: Ring by Koji Suzuki

Wild Card: The Degenerates by J. Albert Mann

Bonus Reading:

A Disability History of the United States by Kim E. Nielsen

The Subsidiary by Matías Celedón 

I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive by Steve Earle 

Venomous: How Earth's Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry by Christie Wilcox

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor  

The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor

List Progress: 36/30

2021 Film Watching Resolution

A foreign film: Beware of Children (Barn) (2019)

A black and white film: M (1931)

A silent or dialogue-free film: Modern Times (1936)

An animated film: Fantastic Planet (1973)

A film based on a true story: Radium Girls (2018)

A documentary: Heroin(e) (2017)

A film based on a book: In the Tall Grass (2019)

An Oscar-winning movie: Rebecca (1940)

A trashy movie: Equilibrium (2002)

Your best friend’s recommendation: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

A children’s film: The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)

A film released in 2021: The Woman in the Window (2021)

List Progress: 12/12

Movies Outside the List:

Booksmart (2019)

All-In Madonna (2020)

Shiva Baby (2020)

Vera Drake (2004)

Ma (2019)

The Exorcist (1973)

The Omen (1976)

The Ring (2002)

Downton Abbey (2019)

The Clovehitch Killer (2018)

The Dance of the 41 (El baile de los 41) (2020)

Saint Maud (2019)

Unfriended (2014)

Psycho (1960)

Tampopo (1985)

Dear Evan Hansen (2021)

tick, tick...BOOM! (2021)

The Greatest Showman (2017)

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

I Think We’re Alone Now (2018)

Pride (2014)

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

[aion-rsa]

The Best Comics of 2020

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

It has been a year, hasn’t it?

The year started with such tenuous promise, and is ending the same way: slivers of hope among rivers of misery. But even with all the chaos, all the changes forced by the pandemic and that were coming anyway, we still got some incredible comics in 2020. 

Let us be abundantly clear: every work of art made in the last year is a small miracle. Every comic creator who put irons in the fire in a year that certainly didn’t lack fires deserves gratitude and commendation. Picking 20 comics doesn’t do justice to the herculean work and dedication that everyone who works in comics demonstrated – from the creators, to the back office folks who kept the trains running on time and let us know they were coming, to the people who actually put the books in our hands, we should be immensely grateful to all of them. 

To those creators we say: Thank you for giving us a few minutes on Wednesdays (or Tuesdays) to escape…all this. 

With that said, there really were some excellent books, and we’re very excited to talk about the best comics of 2020.

20. Loneliness of the Long Distance Cartoonist

Adrian Tomine (Writer/Artist)

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Adrian Tomine is here to share his sadness with readers and inspire it in anyone who has ever tried to make art and present it to the world. In what might be his greatest work so far, the cartoonist collects his own diary comics about being an artist and trying to release a book.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Cartoonist is painfully raw, uncomfortably authentic, and impressively hilarious. It takes guts to make yourself the butt of the joke and to do it so well, but there is such heart and humor here that it’ll speak to any reader whether or not you’ve ever had the (mis)fortune to make your own comics or not. 

19. Witch Hat Atelier 

Kamome Shirahama (Writer/Artist)

Speaking of wonderful manga, this series is one of the best books on shelves in any genre, format, or language. It’s hard to overstate how inventive and imaginative Witch Hat Atelier is but for the sake of this list we’ll try.

Kamome Shirahama paints a wonderful world where magic is real but only a select few can use it. Coco is our heroine and when she accidentally learns the secret behind using magic she’s inducted into a witch’s coven and is thrown into a vibrant world of sorcery, spells, and uneasy friendship with her fellow students. 

18. Daredevil

Chip Zdarsky (Writer); Marco Checchetto, Mike Hawthorne, Francesco Mobili, Jorge Fornes (Artists); Marcio Menyz, Mattia Iacono, Nolan Woodard (Colorists); Clayton Cowles (Letterer)

Chip Zdarsky’s Matt Murdock is terrific. His Wilson Fisk is Hall of Fame.

Fisk is attempting to go legit after discovering as Mayor of New York City that there is a much larger pond he could be swimming in. But the big fish in that pond (the Stromwyns – think Marvel’s Koch Brothers) don’t much get along with someone as insignificant as Fisk. What they do to him, and what Fisk does back, is incredible. 

The art on this run has been the real deal. Jorge Fornes and Marco Checchetto have handled the bulk of the pencils this year, and their dramatically divergent styles do a great job of showing the two sides of Murdock’s world – Fornes excels at the quiet investigatory work that Daredevil does, while Checchetto blows the doors off of some monster action set pieces. No lie, Stilt Man has never looked this good. This run is shaping up to be one of the best Daredevil stories of all time, a very high bar to clear.

17. The Department of Truth

James Tynion IV (Writer), Martin Simmonds (Artist)

What happens in a world where all conspiracy theories are actually true? Or that reality actually warps to accommodate new “truths” as they come into being? Such is the premise of The Department of Truth, which delivers on all the unsettling promise of its premise. The fact that it tells its story in a way that aesthetically calls to mind Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz’s 1988 collaboration Shadowplay: The Secret Team, which told some unsavory details about how the CIA conducted some real world foreign policy only adds to the eerie feel.

With more and more people getting internet brain poisoning thanks to wilder and wilder conspiracy theories somehow becoming mainstream every day, The Department of Truth feels like one of the more timely comics of 2020. We only wish it could be a little less timely in some ways, though.

16. The Green Lantern Season Two

Grant Morrison (Writer), Liam Sharp (Artist), Steve Oliff (Colorist), Steve Wands (Letterer)

Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp have been quietly making one of the best superhero comics in decades over at DC, and although we can’t quite believe we’re saying this, it’s about Hal Jordan. The most boring Green Lantern of all has come to life in this trippy, experimental, and beautiful series which transcends space and time, showcasing the best of what Morrrison and Sharp do.

If you think that superhero comics are all the same, The Green Lantern will change your mind (and likely expand it) as Hal adventures through Sharp’s sprawling and stunning cosmos.

15. Immortal Hulk

Al Ewing (Writer); Joe Bennett, Mike Hawthorne, Butch Guice, Nick Pitarra, Javier Rodriguez (Pencilers); Ruy Jose, Belardino Brabo, Mark Morales, Tom Palmer, Marc Deering (Inkers); Paul Mounts, Matt Milla (Colorists); Cory Petit (Letterer)

Over at Marvel, Al Ewing and Joe Bennett have been equally delighting and horrifying readers with this reinvention of Bruce Banner and the hulking hero he becomes. This is about as close to a horror comic as a mainline superhero title can get as the team delve into the multiple manifestations of Hulk and the man behind them.

Just like The Green Lantern, The Immortal Hulk both reconsiders and revisits the lore that has made the character so iconic, and also features an impressive collection of Hulk-centric characters from throughout history. 

14. Shadow of the Batgirl

Sarah Kuhn (Writer), Nicole Goux (Artist)

DC Comics has been doing a great job bringing new visions of some of their best loved characters to the spotlight and Cass Cain got that treatment this year in this gorgeous graphic novel. Taking the one-time Batgirl and teaming her up with Barbara Gordon’s Oracle was a genius move, but the real magic here comes from the sweet natured take on the hero that Sarah Kuhn and Nicole Goux offer up.

Shadow of the Batgirl is a superhero comic with real heart and a look that feels far more like an indie comic than anything coming out of the big two. Just lovely!

13. Hedra

Jesse Lonergan (Writer/Artist)

Hedra is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, and probably the same goes for you. It’s a completely silent comic, but it’s a massively dense, intricate storytelling experience. It’s light and cartoony, but it’s got panels that would look at home in an old Wally Wood comic. It’s got so many panels, and yet it’s full of moments that will take your breath away.

Lonergan manages the pace and flow of the storytelling so well that you have to experience it yourself to fully appreciate it. Hedra is a beautiful, smart, fascinating comic.

12. John Constantine: Hellblazer

Si Spurrier (Writer); Aaron Campbell, Matias Bergara (Artists); Jordie Bellaire (Colorist); Adita Bidakyar (Letterer)

Si Spurrier doesn’t seem like the type who gets mad often, but his John Constantine was fucking pissed, and goddamn if it wasn’t the best Hellblazer comic in decades. This too-brief run of comics starring everyone’s favorite dirtbag street mage was as much about England being a dumpster fire as it was about Constantine being a dumpster fire, and that low-key seethe gave this book an edge that many of Constantine’s more recent exploits have been missing.

Campbell and Bergara are gifted at depicting grimy fantasy, and Bellaire continues to be one of the greatest colorists who ever lived. In a sane, just world, a second volume of John Constantine: Hellblazer is being planned as we speak. Let’s hope.

11. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin

Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird (Writers); Esau & Isaac Escorza (Artists); Luis Antonio Delgado (Colorist), Shaun Lee (Letterer)

When we saw a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic called The Last Ronin, we had no idea they meant Frank Miller Ronin. The art on this comic is astounding. 

The story is almost irrelevant, in part because it’s only just getting going (only one oversized issue has been released at the time of this writing). But it’s excellent set up – the last living Ninja Turtle assaults a city controlled by the Foot Clan to try and end their long battle once and for all. It’s set in the future, and heavily influenced by the cyberpunk ninja aesthetic so common to the genre, but filtered through a strong Miller lens that makes it a joy to discover.

10. Captain America: The End

Erik Larsen (Writer/Artist), Dono Sánchez-Almara (Colorist), Joe Caramagna (Letterer)

The superhero comic one shot is an underrated – even lost – art form these days. Annuals are often fill-in stories, and unless Marvel or DC are putting out an oversized issue to herald a line wide relaunch or a similar event, it’s rare that you get a nice thick single issue telling a self contained story of any real “importance.” Fortunately, there’s Captain America: The End.

Marvel’s The End line is exactly what it sounds like: an excuse for creators to tell not-really-in-continuity “final” stories for the biggest Marvel heroes. And while Captain America: The End ostensibly presents itself as the “final” Captain America story, it’s way more fun than that. Erik Larsen uses this opportunity to pay tribute to Cap’s greatest creative periods: specifically Jack Kirby’s two-fisted, acrobatic stint on the character in the 1960s, and his socially conscious and psychedelic late ’70s return to the book.

Wall to wall action, with Kirby-esque idea factory energy and dynamism at the forefront, Captain America: The End is one of the most purely fun superhero issues in years. But don’t mistake this for an exercise in nostalgia, as Larsen blends timely (and timeless) messages that help sum up what made Captain America great in the first place, and why we’ll never truly see the “last” Cap story.

9. Maison Ikkoku

Rumiko Takahashi (Writer/Artist)

We can’t make enough noise about how great Viz has been doing recently at making some of the harder to find manga classics available to bigger audiences. This lovely reprint of Rumiko Takahashi’s joyful slice of life comic technically came out decades ago, but most Western comics fans likely only came to it via this new printing.

Maison Ikkoku follows the misadventures of a young apartment building manager and the tenants that she has to keep in check. In turns sweet, silly, and saucy, this is truly a masterwork of manga that you must read. 

8. Billionaire Island

Mark Russell (Writer), Steve Pugh (Artist), Chris Chuckry (Colorist), Rob Steen (Letterer)

This is not Mark Russell, Steve Pugh, and Chris Chuckry’s first time on our lists, but it’s definitely the angriest they’ve been since showing up on here. If we’re really being fair, it’s entirely deserved. 

Billionaire Island is a wild fantasy story definitely based on nothing in reality about the world’s uber wealthy, who control the world, building their own island to ride out climate change while the poors all die off and suffer on the mainland. It follows a reporter with the Miami Herald, and an ex-mercenary who lost his family to Aggrocorp’s sterility experiments in Angola, as they try and bring down the aforementioned billionaires, are trapped on the island, and work to escape. 

It is every bit as hilarious as you would expect from the team who brought us The Flintstones, but there’s an edge to it that wasn’t there in Russell, Pugh and Chuckry’s earlier work. That’s probably because of the villains – The Flintstones skewered society, while Billionaire Island takes aim at the shittiest people in the world. Several of them by name.

Despite the undercurrent of anger, Billionaire Island is still packed with genuinely hilarious moments. Pugh’s sight gags remain incredible, and the comedic timing on display is outstanding. I had high expectations for Billionaire Island coming into it, and it exceeded all of them.

7. The Magic Fish

Trung Le Nguyen (Writer/Artist)

Feel like crying a lot? Because The Magic Fish got almost everyone we’ve seen read it. It’s an incredibly powerful yet quiet comic about a 13 year old coming to terms with who he is and how to talk with his parents about it. 

Tien, the aforementioned 13 year old, is a first generation Vietnamese-American with a crush on a friend and a mother who is still processing her move to the States and the family she left behind. Much of the story is about Tien trying to figure out how to broach the subject with his mother.

What stands out about The Magic Fish is how Nguyen tells the story. Much of it is is told by retellings of fairy tales – two modifications of the Cinderella story, and one of The Little Mermaid. The colors are especially effective in setting up the mood and tone of the sections of story, elegantly communicating so much about Tien’s emotional and intellectual state. And the fashion and hair are magnificent. Nguyen draws Alan Davis-good hairstyles. 

Nguyen’s The Magic Fish is accessible, deeply moving, and beautiful, a book that should be shared with friends.

6. Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen

Matt Fracion (Writer), Steve Lieber (Artist), Nathan Fairbairn (Colorist), Clayton Cowles (Letterer)

It’s probably good that the prank war issue, where Timmy Olsen stole the wheel off the Batmobile for Youtube clout, was published last December, because otherwise this entire entry would be the Den of Geek reciting bits to each other like this was comics Anchorman. And all that time we’d spend telling each other we sure have created some…content…would distract from the fact that Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen is one of the nicest, most thoughtful, best put-together comics in years. 

Beneath all of the gags – and there are a ton – Fraction, Lieber, Fairbairn, and Cowles put together a deceptively complex character study of Jimmy, Superman and Metropolis. This is a book that is as much about what Jimmy Olsen means to the people of Metropolis as it is about Dex-Starr puking blood on the remnants of Jimmy’s Gorilla City wedding, or the army of Kevins attacking him.

Lieber and Fairbairn were the perfect choices for art on this story: Lieber’s facial expressions and Fairbairn’s bright color palette sell every joke and set every mood that the story requires, and the way the creators play with time and information release is masterful. Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen is essential reading, both because of its importance to the Superman universe as a whole, and because it’s just that damn funny.

5. Once and Future (READER’S CHOICE!)

Kieron Gillen (Writer), Dan Mora (Artist), Tamra Bonvillain (Colorist), Ed Dukeshire (Letterer)

Turns out letting Dan Mora draw his way through an English lit degree is a really good idea.

Joking aside, our readers have excellent taste, naming Once and Future their top pick for comic of the year.

Kieron Gillen takes the “story about a story” formula, smashes several more stories into the first one, and then lets Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvillain go ham on the whole thing, and the resulting comic is breathlessly exciting, and gorgeous to look at. It remixes Arthurian legend and this year added a sprinkle of Beowulf and developed the magic a little more, while juxtaposing that rich fantasy world with the mundanity of things like a senior living facility.

Mora draws monsters exceptionally well, and Bonvillain gives several scenes an ominous glow that sets a hell of a tone. Once and Future is a great pick by our readers, and is comfortably one of the best books of the year.

4. Dracula, Motherf**ker!

Alex de Campi (Writer/Letterer), Erica Henderson (Artist)

You may not realize that you need a grindhouse ‘70s story about Dracula’s brides being extremely done with his shit, but trust us, you need Dracula, Motherf**ker! in your life.

This book isn’t especially long, nor is it terribly complex. We get a lot of echoes of the original Dracula story updated to a dingy 1970s Los Angeles, and a lot of what you’d expect from a grindhouse horror comic, but it’s done exceptionally well by two incredibly talented storytellers. 

In retrospect, it’s hard to believe this is the first time de Campi and Henderson have ever worked together. Dracula, Motherf**ker! felt a lot like someone discovering peanut butter cups for the first time – there’s that dawning realization as you’re reading that it really works well, and then a secondary shock that nobody had ever done it before.

De Campi is a pro’s pro and a veritable cluster bomb of ideas. Henderson is a gifted sequential artist who gets to show off her mastery of color art as a storytelling device in these pages. The final package is outstanding. 

3. Far Sector

N.K. Jemisin (Writer), Jamal Campbell (Artist), Deron Bennett (Letterer)

The quality level of Far Sector is almost impossible to believe. Jamal Campbell doesn’t have an enormous comics resume, and this is N.K. Jemisin’s debut comic story. And yet the skill evident in every panel screams that this was made by a team of master craftsmen. 

Far Sector is the story of Jo Mullein, a new Green Lantern with an experimental, self-charging ring, dispatched to a floating megacity run jointly by three alien races; the Nah, a group of spacefaring fishtailed/winged bipeds; the keh-Topli, a group of carnivorous plants; and the @at, a race of sentient ethereal memelords. Jo is there at the request of the ruling council to investigate the City Enduring’s first murder in centuries. 

Her investigation is our way into Jemisin and Campbell’s vibrant imaginations.

This is a stunning book to look at – at least once an issue, Campbell draws something completely mind-bending. And Jemisin writes with the easy confidence and command of the form that people who have been writing comics for 50 years can’t match: there isn’t a wasted word on a single page of this entire series. It’s elegantly topical, stunning to look at, and a ton of fun to read. Far Sector is handily one of the greatest Green Lantern stories of all time.

X of Swords

Jonathan Hickman, Tini Howard, Leah Williams, Benjamin Percy, Vita Ayala, Zeb Wells, Ed Brisson, Gerry Duggan (Writers); Pepe Larraz, Carlos Gomez, Viktor Bogdanovic, Matteo Lolli, Carmen Carnero, Rod Reis, Phil Noto, R.B. Silva, Mahmud Asrar, Leinil Francis Yu, Stefano Casselli, Joshua Cassara (Artists); Marte Gracia, Israel Silva, Matt Wilson, Edgar Delgado, David Curiel, Nolan Woodard, Sunny Gho, Guru-eFX, Rachelle Rosenberg (Colorists); Clayton Cowles, Joe Caramagna, Cory Petit, Ariana Maher, Travis Lanham, Joe Sabino (Letterers)

X-Men fans are not commonly known for our penchant for consensus. We can and will argue over everything, from who’s a better partner for Cyclops to which story arc in the ‘90s was actually rock bottom. So when you get near unanimity that X of Swords is the best X-Men crossover since Inferno, you can pretty much take that to the bank. 

The culmination of the first phase of the X-universe’s post House of X/Powers of X plan, X of Swords tied all the mutant comics back together to take on a couple of the biggest ideas dropped in and immediately after HoXPoX. It did something that was nearly impossible: it paid off a year’s worth of stories from ten different series, with satisfying climaxes for more than a handful of storylines. 

It did this in part because several creators are making the jump to superstardom. Larraz somehow managed to do even better work than on House of X, delivering massive beat after massive beat in the final issue of the crossover. Tini Howard spent a year making Excalibur the best book in the line, and wove her plot threads through the crossover she co-shepherded (with Boss X or whatever they’re calling Hickman) to give us a foundational Otherworld and Captain Britain story. All the while, Howard also made sure that this Excalibur-centric crossover paid homage to the first Excalibur series – packing it full of magical silliness and genuine heart. Vita Ayala only got one issue in the crossover, but that issue will go down as one of Storm’s best stories of all time. And Joshua Cassara drew two issues of fights and competitions, and dropped multiple staggering spreads.

The X-Men line as a whole is the best it’s been in decades, and there’s no better proof of that than in X of Swords.

Blue in Green

Ram V (writer), Anand RK (Artist), Aditya Bidikar (Letterer)

Fiction is especially tough when the storyteller isn’t up to the subjects. If someone is writing a book about the smartest person in the world, the writer has to be smart enough to believably put brilliance in that character’s mouth. If someone is making a comic about a drug that makes everyone indescribably beautiful, then the art has to be angelic, or the book falls apart. 

But when a creative team IS up to the task, the end result can be sublime. That’s what Ram V, Anand RK and Aditya Bidikar gave us with Blue in Green. A comic about jazz that so perfectly evokes the form of its subject matter that I’m willing to bet this comic is taught in years to come. Blue in Green is incredible comics. 

Blue in Green’s story is broadly familiar: it’s the crossroads tale, where the Devil meets a gifted musician and trades the musician’s life for magnificent talent. Erik is a talented saxophonist with a rough family history who’s pissing away his talents half-heartedly teaching kids how to play. He goes home for his mother’s funeral, makes his deal, and wakes up days later, after a fugue state that included him blowing the doors off of a jazz club with his sax. Eventually, the bill comes due. 

The presentation has a uniquely loose flow to it, moving from rigid grids to collage with prose attached, with surreal, disorienting colors that match the mood of the section of story marvelously. The way the storytelling shifts from section to section, the way the form changes so that it can tell the story as much as the words or art can, is one of the most skillful feats of comics creation I’ve read in years. It’s like its own kind of visual jazz. Blue in Green is an astounding piece of comics storytelling, and I can’t wait to read what’s next from everyone involved.

The post The Best Comics of 2020 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[the--blackdahlia]

They should turn Duff’s book into a graphic novel like they did for the Heroin Diaries

[phoenix43song]

Little Women [2019] Film Review and Analysis

I have been reading the Little Women series since I was a child and I grew up on the 1994 film version that stars Winona Ryder. I have also watched the 1933, 1949, 2017 (mini series), and the 2018 modern film adaptation. I have watched and enjoyed the web series The March Family Letters on youTube, which is another modern adaptation take on the story, though unfinished. I have a graphic novel and a novel called Meg and Jo that are also modern adaptations. I love the songs from the musical, and I wish to play Jo one day (after I get my singing voice back). You can say I am a bit obsessed, though it has been quite awhile since I last read Little Women and did research on Louisa May Alcott. When I heard Greta Gerwig was going to be making another adapation I reread the whole series. The research I have done on Louisa, and the research that I have read from other fans and scholars has made reading Little Women all the more interesting. I try to be a writer, though I've only ever written novella's and short stories and short films. I love the theatre, acting, and now I am directing for the first time. I have so many story ideas for novels, series, and for feature films (maybe even TV). I've also always loved art, though without praticing much since adulthood my skills have dwindled. I identify with Jo and with Amy and I am really glad that this version of the book did these character justice...well Greta went wayland on Jo a bit.

The character of Jo in this adaptation is fully realized, three dimentional, however she is made to be have way more of a temper when she's an adult, unlike the book. Jo has this Peter Pan mentality where she wants to keep living in childhood and never grow up. She is in denial of her feelings, and she doesn't understand romantic love fully until the end. Greta decided to really incorporate Louisa herself into Jo. Louisa wrote the book loosely based on herself and her sisters growing up because she was pressured in writing a children's novel. She didn't want Jo to get married: she wanted Jo to remain a spinster like herself. Louisa was pressured to marry Jo off so she did. And then she continued to write two more novels after Little Women (technically Good Wives): Little Men and Jo's Boys. She created Friedrich Bhaer for Jo, who was the perfect choice for her...and most readers can't seem to see why Jo fell in love with him when, based on the research that I did and others did, Louisa created him off of men she had crushes on. Yes Louisa had crushes; she most likely had a few short lived romances, but we'll never know because if she wrote any of this down in her diary or in letters they have been destroyed.

Friedrich Bhaer in Greta's Little Women is not Friedrich Bhaer. He shares but a few qualities. Louis Garrel did an amazing job with what material he was given and he understands his characters and Frieidrich's relationship with Jo far better than Greta does. Based off of interviews and other comments that Greta has mentioned Greta hates Friedrich and can't stand that Jo married in the end. She doesn't understand him nor their relationship. She took away everything that Friedrich is, how Jo became friends with him, the courting he does, and one of the most romantic proposals in classic literature. Greta decided on an ambiguous ending for her movie and I absolutely hate it. The umbrella scene is rushed, hurried, and not romantic at all and it's edited in a way that this only happens in the novel that Jo writes because she is pressured, or somewhat forced, to marry off her heroine. Then there are cuts where we see Jo at her school for boys and girls, where her family presents a cake for Marmee's 60thbirthday and we see that Friedrich is there. This is cut where Jo is watching her book being made and she hugs it to herself: I really enjoyed this part of the ending, but the ending could have still followed the book more and not edited and written in a way where Jo's love for Friedrich and marriage isn't fiction. I mean Greta even had Amy and Meg drag Jo to go after him when Friedrich leaves and claim that Jo loves him. This is a change that...it destroys the characters in a huge way.

Friedrich isn't German in this film, though we do see him go into a German Beer Hall with his friends. I did love the dance scene in the Beer Hall and him dancing with Jo. He's French because Louis is French. Part of me wishes Greta would've gotten a German actor because Germany in it's people and culture was a huge part of Louisa's life and German is scattered all over the book. But I love Louis Garrel so this aspect of Friedrich didn't bother me that much. However...we don't get to know him and we don't get his backstory in this film. He doesn't play with the children, his immigration and carring for his orphaned nephews isn't mentioned, and him bringing Jo to intelletual gatherings isn't seen. Him giving Jo Shakespeare is in the film, but it's not done in person. He helps Jo with giving honest feedback on her stories and Jo doesn't take constructive critism well at all and yells at him. Friedrich likes Jo and you can tell. It's even shown that Jo likes him as well, but we sadly don't get to see their friendship: hell they don't really have much of a relationship in this movie. When Friedrich comes to visit Jo at the March house, we can see that Jo is surprised but pleased. I really do love how the family really likes him and gets to know him, and that they can see that the two love each other but that Jo is in denial. Except...Jo isn't really in denial in the book. She blushes when she realizes that Friedrich has come to court her. Jo in the book feels more mature by this point then she does in the movie.

Jo also tries to make herself love Laurie by writing him a letter because she's lonely. She never does this in the book. She does have one mention of a what if scenario but she stands by what she always thought: that she only loved Laurie like a brother. I really loved the scene where Jo rejects Laurie when he proposes because she's telling the truth and we even see in the movie that that have this special commarderie that's close but platonic, and not romantic. I do love how Greta explains and shows different kinds of love and growth in the sisters. But this seemed to degrade Jo a bit when it comes to actual full realized growth. I just don't understand where Greta was going with this and why she doesn't seem to understand Jo and Jo and Friedrich together. She put way too much of Louisa into Jo when Jo is a fictional character and not 100% Louisa. It's made to look like the umbrella propsal is fiction and that Jo did end a spinster. I am so upset right now at this that I will talk about what I did love and more of my analysis from a filmmaking aspect. (I doubled majored in theatre and in film in college and I do know that there will be changes in adaptations. However this doesn't mean that you can change characters and relationships to fit your own idea of how they should act and how they should end up. When you adapt a story you have to keep who the characters are and Greta doesn't do this with Friedrich nor with Jo in the end with her as a character and the relationship between the two).

So. This film is gorgeous. Beautiful cinematography, direction, costumes, acting, score, and editing. The only thing that I didn't like was how the characters read their letters to the camera. It took me out of the story and didn't fit in at all. The editing of present to past was well done, and I loved how it went with parallel themes. Each sister is three dimentional and real, and the different takes on money and love was really interesting. Beth's sickness and death was well done and so heartbreaking poignant. I loved how she got Jo to write again, and I loved the montage of Jo writing her novel. Mr. Dashwood was hilarious, and Meryl Streep had a blast playing Aunt March. Laura Dern made a capible Marmee but she didn't feel like Marmee to me sadly. Mr. March was barely in the film, but he's barely in the book so that was ok. The scenes between Mr. Lawerence and Beth were beautiful, and the scenes between Mr. Lawernce and Jo were good as well. I liked seeing Meg wanting riches, her feelings about being poor, but her love for John was a lot stronger and she made sacrifices. Amy was great, espeacially as an adult in Paris.

Laurie...I have a lot of thoughts on how Laurie was protrayed. I liked how his Italian ancestry was mentioned a lot and that Laurie could never sit still. I liked how he was represented as a drunk and ladies man until Amy talked sense into him. I like how we got to see how Amy and Laurie fell in love, and how Laurie realized that his love for Jo wasn't of the romantic nature either. He does love Jo and you can diffinitely see that, but at the same time they're best friends. Yes it's good to want to marry your best friend but at the same time you need more than just physical attraction ( and that's where Friedrich comes into the pitcuture). But there was something off about how he was represented. I honestly think it's because that Tim looks way too young for the adult version (even though he is an adult in real life), and that he's too skinny. Sorry I said it: Tim needs to put some meat on his bones.

This film does deserve awards and it bothers me that the film wasn't nominated for a Golden Globe (though Saoirse being nominated for Best Actress was a choice well deserved) or for an SAG awards. I hope the film is nominated a lot at the Oscar's at least. I would give this film somewhere between a 2.5 to a 3 out of 4 stars. This would've been a perfect 4/4...I know a lot of critics and fans love the ending, and that's there's only a minority of us that understand and love Friedrich, and Jo/Fritz together. At least we have other film adaptations and the musical – love the musical! - and I am really tempted to write my own version of a Little Women feature or mini series. I want to do more research on Louisa and write a biopic. I even have my own modern adapation ideas. This is a beloved book and I wish more people will read it, along with the rest of the series. To understand Jo/Fritz you have to read the last two books. This isn't really an essay or full on anaylsis, but more of me rambling, but let me know your thoughts in the comments. I would love to discuss Little Women and hear your thoughts and opinions. (Also sorry for spelling and grammar errors: I wrote this up really fast and didn’t bother to edit as I’m rather busy). 

[rockrageradio]

MEGADETH AND HEAVY METAL ANNOUNCE GRAPHIC NOVEL AND ALBUM RELEASE

EXCLUSIVE COLLABORATION TO COINCIDE

WITH RELEASE OF MEGADETH’S 35thANNIVERSARY COLLECTION, ‘WARHEADS ON FOREHEADS’

LOS ANGELES CA, March 8, 2019 –This year marks the 35th anniversary of Megadeth, to which the band is set to release their ultimate greatest hits compilation, WARHEADS ON FOREHEADS, on March 22. To further celebrate this, MEGADETH has partnered with premiere comics publisher, HEAVY METAL, to create the ultimate fan experience with a 350-page anthology of comic stories inspired by all the songs on the album. The collaboration, titled DEATH BY DESIGN, features stories written and illustrated by top talent from comics, film, television and music and will be available worldwide at retailers everywhere on June 5, 2019.

The project, carefully curated by DAVE MUSTAINE and HEAVY METAL, is a powerful book that gives both insight and understanding into the universe of MEGADETH and its harrowed mascot, VIC RATTLEHEAD.

MEGADETH, working in close collaboration with HEAVY METAL, has collected an unprecedented pool of talent for MEGADETH: DEATH BY DESIGN– making it any comic book or MEGADETH fan’s dream. Brendan Small (creator of Metalocalypse) teams with Belen Ortega (Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) for Hangar 18. Dan Fogler (Fantastic Beasts And Where To find Them) writes an apocalyptic tale insanely drawn by Andy Belanger (Southern Cross) for Rattlehead. An A-list talent pool rounds out the roster featuring Tim Seeley (Hack/Slash), Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night), Brian Wood (DMZ), Justin Jordan & John Bivens (Spread), Leah Moore & John Reppion (Judge Dredd), Joe Keatingue (Popgun), Christine Larsen (Holy Diver), Frazier Irving (Annihilator) and more than 50 other talented creators.

Says Dave Mustaine: “I have always fantasized about MEGADETH doing something this gloriously electrifying and gruesome. I hope everyone will enjoy the graphic novel as much as I enjoyed working with HEAVY METAL to put it together for you.”

Jeff Krelitz, CEO of HEAVY METAL said “Since I was old enough to buy records, MEGADETH has been one of my favorite bands, not only for the great storytelling in the music, but the world building imagery on the album covers. This opportunity to meld the two world together and tell stories inspired by their songs is a privilege that we are excited to present to the fans.”

The MEGADETH: DEATH BY DESIGN 350-page graphic novel will be presented in a 12.25”x12.25” prestige “album” format and comes in 4 different collector’s editions:

Leather bound slipcase edition with 4-clear vinyl set of WARHEADS ON FOREHEADSand DEATH BY DESIGN graphic novel signed by Dave Mustaine. Pre-order here: https://shop.heavymetal.com​

FYE Exclusive Leather bound slipcase edition with 4-clear vinyl set of WARHEADS ON FOREHEADSand DEATH BY DESIGN graphic novel signed by Dave Mustaine. Will be available at FYE retail outlets

Leather bound slipcase edition with 4-clear vinyl set of WARHEADS ON FOREHEADSand DEATH BY DESIGN graphic novel. Pre-order here: https://megadethshop.com/collections/graphic-novels

Standard hardcover edition of DEATH BY DESIGN graphic novel. Pre-order here: https://megadethshop.com/collections/graphic-novels

MEGADETH began In 1984, when Dave Mustaine was determined to start a new band that would be heavier and faster than his peers. Mustaine’s songwriting was rapidly maturing, and he set about combining the attitude and energy of punk, with the power and intricate riffing of metal, along with direct, sociopolitical lyrical content. With David Ellefson on bass and Gar Samuelson on drums, the band recorded their infamous 3-song demo which quickly circulated through the underground tape-trading circuit and became an underground hit leading to a deal with Combat Records.

MEGADETH was quickly signed by Capitol Records and released their 1986 major label debut Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?, which became the band’s first certified gold record and would go on to become MEGADETH’s first platinum selling release. Featured on Warheads On Foreheads are “The Conjuring” and the track “Good Mourning/Black Friday” which Pitchfork describes as “everything great about hardcore, plus a dose of the kind of show-off skill that makes lesser musicians' fingers bleed.” Other songs included are “In My Darkest Hour” from their platinum selling So Far, So Good, So What! (1988), “Hanger 18” and “Holy Wars…The Punishment Due” from their GRAMMY® nominated, platinum album Rust In Peace (1990), and “Symphony of Destruction” and “Sweating Bullets” from their 1992 GRAMMY® nominated, double platinum release Countdown To Extinction. Also featured are “A Tout Le Monde” and “Reckoning Day” from their 1994 platinum selling release Youthanasia, “Kingmaker” from their 2013 Top Ten release Super Collider, which hit No. 3 on both the Hard Rock Albums and Top Rock Albums charts, “She-Wolf” from the GRAMMY® nominated, Top Ten release Cryptic Writings (1997) and the title track from the band’s last album Dystopia.

Upon its release in 2016, Dystopiareasserted MEGADETH’s place at the top of the metal world, equaling the chart impact of their early nineties output, earning the band their first GRAMMY®, as well as rave reviews (The Guardian gave it five out of five stars and stated “Dystopia is an absolutely blistering return to the state-of-the-art bombast and refined technicality.”)

Warheads On Foreheads starts at that beginning with the early thrashers “Rattlehead” and “Mechanix” from the band’s 1985 debut Killing Is My Business…And Business Is Good, an album that would lay down the blueprint and establish MEGADETH as forerunners of what would later be called Thrash Metal (and recently hailed by VH1 as the Greatest Thrash Metal Debut of All Time).

MEGADETH burst onto the scene thirty five years ago, virtually inventing a genre and selling more than 38 million albums worldwide, earning numerous accolades including a 2017 GRAMMY® Award for “Best Metal Performance” for the title track “Dystopia,” 12 GRAMMY® nominations, and scoring five consecutive platinum albums. With sheer determination and a relentless recording and touring schedule, MEGADETH worked their way up from headlining clubs to headlining arenas, festival and stadiums, cementing a legacy that continues to grow and spread throughout the world.

Heavy Metal began as an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine, known for its iconic blend of dark fantasy/science fiction and horror. Now in it’s 42ndyear of publication, Heavy Metal is the fourth oldest American comics publisher, and some of the greatest European and American comic book writers and artists in history have appeared in this legendary publication’s pages, Since the magazine’s inception in 1977, the Heavy Metal banner has been seen in video games, television, and two animated feature films. In 2015, the brand established acclaimed comic book writer Grant Morrison as it's Editor-in-Chief, and launched it’s first-ever line of traditional monthly American comics. Shortly after, Heavy Metal began partnerships with top bands in the space, publishing the highly successful, Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast and the graphic novel adaption on Nikki Sixx’s autobiographical journey, The Heroin Diaries. Since then, the band has worked with Ozzy Osborne, Marylin Manson, Rob Zombie, Five Finger Death Punch, Motley Crue and many more. The brand is overseen by Publisher Kevin Eastman, COO Paul Reder and CEO Jeff Krelitz.

#soundcheckwithgentry #megadeth #metal #heavymetal #thrashmetal #hardrock #rock #rockmusic #heavymetalmagazine #turnitup #rockrageradio #rockisNOTdead #listenloud

[songbirds-sweet]

Hi again.

I collect a few things. Strange teapots, pre-1930s medical texts, scarfs.. maybe, houseplants?, concert shirts, and then a bunch of strange natural object odds and ends. I am currently looking for a 1800s copy of Paradise Lost with the lithographs too. Do you collect anything?

I am really enjoying the Mustaine book because it is filled with his strange sense of humor which I really enjoy. I loved Rockers and Rollers by Brian Johnson of AC/DC which is a memoir about his love of cars and racing. I'm in the Band by Sean Yseult of White Zombie, Moonage Daydream: The Life and Times of Ziggy Stardust, Blues all Around Me by B.B. King, Dancing with Myself - Billy Idol I really want to read White Line Fever by Lemmy, Crazy from The Heat by David Lee Roth, and Nothin' But a Food Time: The Uncensored History of the 80s Hard Rock Explosion. What have been your favorites so far, or any you are looking forward to reading?

John Carter Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs was my first series I read as a teen and I still love it. (The movie will send me into a horrible rant XD ) Tolkien of course but Children of Hurin is my favorite and so few have read it. The Sandman and Lucifer graphic novel series. Also the Savage Tales of Solomon Kane and all the related comics, books, and in this case the movie too. There are quite a few others that I really enjoy. Do you have any favorite series?

-Susi

Hi!

Oh man that's so cool! I collect books, CD's, witchcraft stuff, and word searches 😅

Ahhhh I read Nothin' But a Food Time: The Uncensored History of the 80s Hard Rock Explosion and I really enjoyed it!!! Oh man I read a lot but I'll list them by bands

The Storyteller by Dave Grohl (My favourite!!!)

RHCP: Acid For the Children by Flea and Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis

GN'R: It's So Easy (and other lies) by Duff McKagan, Slash by Slash, and My Appetite for Destruction: Sex, and Drugs, and Guns N' Roses by Steven Adler

Mötley Crüe: The Dirt, The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx (his other two books I plan to get someday!), Tommyland by Tommy Lee, and Tattoos & Tequila by Vince Neil

I also plan on getting books about Van Halen (also Sammy Hagar's and DLR's books), and a ton of other bands I could list 😂

Oh those sound like great books!!! Ah I'll always adore the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery and any of the Camp Half-Blood Chronicles by Rick Riordan but I could name more series I enjoyed!!!

I can't think of anymore questions to ask rn I'm so sorry, my brain is fried from working so much lately 😩

I hope you have a great day today! 💖

[ateanalenn]

This is a list of creative writing and self-publishing tools, apps and websites + a few extra that I thought would help!

ONLINE WRITING ENVIRONMENTS

750WORDS – a simple site to keep up a private diary or daily writing practice. You can earn badges and get some neat metrics after you complete your writing.

GOOGLE DOCS – I wrote a whole post about HOW WRITERS CAN USE GOOGLE DOCS!

NOISLI – noise generator and distraction-free writing (with Markdown preview).

WRITE OR DIE – no other app can make you write faster! A NaNoWriMo staple.

WORKFLOWY – a beautifully simple web/mobile app for outlining and list-making.

TWINE – a visual interface for creating “choose your own adventure”-style stories. WATCH THIS VIDEO for a great introduction.

NOTION.SO* – a beautiful web (+Mac & iOS) app for writing and/or creating worldbuilding wikis. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP and earn 150 extra content blocks.

STATIONERY

GALEN LEATHER – beautiful leather traveler’s notebooks, pen cases, notebook covers and more.

CULTPENS – I order most of my fountain pens from CultPens in the UK. My go-to pens are the Kaweco Sport, Conklin Duragraph and Pilot Penmanship.

PAPERCHASE – I love Paperchase padfolios!

ONLINE DICTIONARIES

BEHIND THE NAME – my favourite resource to research name meanings, and find character names.

WEBSTER’S 1913 – a lovely nice vintage alternative to modern dictionaries, especially useful for historical fiction.

WORDNIK – one of my favourite tools for discovering and collecting words!

MAC APPS FOR WRITERS

SCRIVENER – excellent for organising (and reorganising) longer projects. If you use Scrivener for novel writing, you might like to download my ONE PAGE NOVEL TEMPLATE.

NOTATIONAL VELOCITY – I use this for all odd notes. It’s quick, simple, beautiful, and saves all files as .txt.

FLUX – Flux automatically adjusts the colour temperature of your screen according to the time of day. I find it really helps me with eye strain!

SOCIAL MEDIA & EMAIL MARKETING

BUFFER – I love Buffer not just for their amazing app, but also because they write the best blog on social media.

ACTIVECAMPAIGN* – I have yet to find a more elegant solution for automated email campaigns.

CONVERTKIT* – another fantastic email marketing solution, especially for email courses.

MAILERLITE – a great free solution for drip-style email automation.

BOARDBOOSTER* – allows you to automate posting to your Pinterest boards. Free for the first 100 pins.

CHROME EXTENSIONS FOR WRITERS

NOISLI – simple and beautiful noise generator which allows you to create and save sound combinations.

LANES – if you’re a fan of the Pomodoro Method, this is a lovely extension that turns your new tab page into a pomodoro timer and todo checklist.

MOMENTUM – similar to Lanes, this extension turns your new tab into a beautiful dashboard.

DRAFTBACK – an amazing extension that helps you visualise the writing and editing of Google documents. READ MORE HERE.

STAYFOCUSED – block yourself from time-wasting sites. I use this to combat my Youtube addiction.

ONLINE WRITING COURSES

THE WRITEMBER WORKSHOP – my friend, Faye Kirwin’s beautiful course on making writing an easy, joyful, daily habit.

THE ONE PAGE NOVEL – my course on how to plot your novel on one A4 page.

HOW TO BE THE HEROINE OF YOUR OWN STORY – my course on how to develop your character (and yourself) on one page.

MASTERCLASS WITH JAMES PATTERSON* – bestselling author, James Patterson’s tips for writing a novel.

LEARN SCRIVENER FAST* – Scrivener is an incredibly powerful piece of software, but if you’re having trouble getting started with it, this course can help!

ONLINE WRITING COMMUNITIES

MYWRITECLUB – a site for communal writing sprints and word tracking. You can follow me HERE.

4THEWORDS – a fun, gamified writing community where you battle monsters as you write, complete quests and earn crystals.

WORDWAR.IO – word war chatrooms from the creator of Write or Die.

IOS APPS FOR WRITERS

SCRIVENER FOR IOS – this is hands-down the best and most beautiful iOS word processor.

HANX WRITER – I’ve written about how much I LOVE HANX WRITER before.

NOTABILITY – this is a great app for importing PDFs (such as WRITING WORKSHEETS) and handwriting over them.

AMBIENT NOISE

I find ambient noise to be extremely helpful when I’m trying to focus on writing. In addition to the previously-mentioned NOISLI, here are a few sites/apps you might like to try…

AMBIENT-MIXER – Ambient-Mixer allows you to create your own custom soundscapes, or to use ones created by other users. My favourite is THIS HOGWARTS LIBRARY MIX.

BRAIN.FM – in all honesty, I didn’t think this worked for me, but I’ve seen many people swear by it, so it’s worth a try.

COFFITIVITY – if you’d like to create a café atmosphere in your home, this is the web/mobile app you want.

ONLINE PUBLISHING COMMUNITIES

Wattpad – Wattpad’s strength lies in its mobile app which is very convenient for reading. It also provides great opportunities to connect with your readers and some basic metrics on how they are engaging with your stories. – Since my account was deleted without reason or warning, I can sadly no longer recommend Wattpad as a safe platform to share stories.

GOODREADS – you might not be aware that you can actually publish your own stories on Goodreads. You’ll need to login, GO TO THIS PAGE, then find the small link that says, “my writing”. I admit I haven’t tried it yet, but I love Goodreads as a book community, so I have high hopes. :)

PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS

THE PRODUCTIVITY PAGES – my paper-based goal and task-tracking solution for writers.

TODOIST – a beautifully minimal to-do list app.

RESCUETIME – automatically tracks how much time you use in each app, and gives you a productivity score based on which apps or websites you designate, “productive” and which “distracting”.

TRELLO* – a task-management app that uses boards, lists and cards. A very nice solution if you like a more visual approach. I also recommend adding the SLIM LISTS CHROME EXTENSIONto fit more on your screen.

PDF TOOLS

DOCHUB – PDF editor that you can add to your Google Drive contextual menu, or as a Chrome app.

SMALLPDF – some fantastic PDF conversion and compression tools!

PDFESCAPE – this tool makes me SO HAPPY! You can upload your PDFs and quickly and easily turn them into forms. Love it.

IMAGES

FIRMBEE – a collection of public domain mockups to use for marketing your books.

UNSPLASH – gorgeous public domain photos to use in your blog posts, book covers, or social media graphics.

GRAPHICBURGER – mockups and graphics to use in your ebooks or emails.

CREATIVEMARKET* – a great resource for images, fonts, templates and themes. Don’t miss their weekly free goods!

CANVA – an online image editor that has pre-made templates for Kindle ebook covers.

WEB SITES

WORDPRESS – my site runs on WordPress. I love it, although it can be a bit intimidating if you aren’t very tech-savvy.

ANGIEMAKES* – my WordPress theme is by AngieMakes. It has a ton of options and I really love it!

SITEGROUND* – my web host of choice. Their premium support is top notch!

MISCELLANEOUS

HOTJAR* – create heatmaps of your blog to see where viewers are looking and clicking.

WAVE – As far as I know, this is the only free accounting solution for freelancers and small businesses, and it works a treat!

Links with * are affiliate or referral links. But I promise I never recommend products unless I absolutely love them!

[potions-and-potters]

35 Classic Books That Were Banned In America

Most people read at least a few of the classics as part of English class or summer reading requirements. What a lot of people don't know is that a lot of those classics were, at some point, banned. Here is a list of those banned books and why they were banned.

1. 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,' Mark Twain, 1884

This is one of the most banned books that still holds a controversial standing. It was initially banned as it was thought to be "not suitable for trash." Later its banned status was due to racial issues and exploration of race within the novel.

2. Beloved, Toni Morrison, 1987

This Pulitzer-prize winning novel by one of the most influential African-American writers in history was banned due to its graphic violence, sexual content and inclusion of bestiality.

3. Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 1961

It was banned for language and "dirty" material, therefore deemed inappropriate for reading.

4. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley, 1965

It was seen as a "how-to-manual” for crime and thought to be too anti-white.

5. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951

It was viewed as "unacceptable" and full of "blasphemous" and "obscene" content due to the underage drinking, premarital sex, and references to prostitution.

6. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953

It was seen as going against religious belief, especially due to a scene where the Bible is banned.

7. Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936

Its thought-provoking realism of life in the south during slavery was too much for some people, and it was banned for its racial discussions.

8. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway, 1940

After censoring did not work, the book was banned for "spreading propaganda unfavorable to the state." This saw eight Turkish booksellers tried for selling it in bookstores.

9. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939

The book's use of profanity and blasphemous language got it banned.

10. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

Due to language and references to sex as well as the scandalous lives of the elite drinking and partying, it was deemed unacceptable reading material.

11. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

Seen as too full of sin and immoral thoughts and actions, the book was viewed as "pornographic and obscene."

12. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960

Another Pulitzer-prize winning book, this was banned due to its racial issues and sexual content.

13. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952

It dealt with issues of black nationalism, Marxism and identity in the twentieth century, making it seen as dangerous for its ruminations, especially those provoked in high school students.

14. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank, 1952

Due to a single chapter where she describes her anatomy using straightforward and medically accurate languages. People were horrified that children might read it and learn the terms, so it was banned.

15. The Giver, Lois Lowry, 1993

The book deals with issues such as euthanasia, all of which were considered too sensitive to be allowed.

16. Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare, 1623

Content such as cross-dressing and fake-same-sex romance had it viewed as violating the "prohibition of alternative lifestyle instruction."

17. The Color Purple, Alice Walker, 1982

Controversial since its publication, this novel's inclusion of graphic violence, rape, language, racial issues, and lesbian sex scene descriptions had it deemed too inappropriate.

18. 1984, George Orwell, 1949

It was seen as pro-communist and included sexual content.

19. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck, 1937

The racial issues and profanity was seen as too much and inappropriate.

20. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932

The depiction of drug use and casual sex got this banned.

21. Animal Farm, George Orwell, 1945

The political theories within it were seen as propaganda and dangerous. It remains a controversial novel.

22. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, 1926

It was banned in a number of America cities for being "being a monument of modern decadence."

23. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner, 1930

Due to it questioning the existence of God, it was banned for blasphemy.

24. The Awakening, Kate Chopin, 1899

The heroine's unrepentant drive for independence and emotional, sexual, and spiritual awakening lead it to be viewed as inappropriate.

25. ULYSSES, James Joyce, 1922

Seen as obscene, 500 copies were even seized and burned in New York.

26. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, 1929

The book's realistic depiction of extreme mental and physical stress that the German soldiers faced during their time in the war was seen as too much.

27. The Harry Potter Series, J.K. Rowling, 1997

The most banned book in America, it has been banned repeatedly and is still controversial. Although it is a children's book, the series is seen as promoting witchcraft, and a bad influence on children due to the fact that Harry lies and disobeys authority.

28. The Call of the Wild, Jack London, 1903

It was seen as too radical and violent.

29. Naked Lunch, William Burroughs, 1959

Due to the content of graphic sexual depictions (both gay and straight), as well as the violence and profanity, is was seen as having an "unsettling" amount of sin.

30. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852

The historically and culturally accurate depiction of the treatment of Black slaves was too sensitive and realistic and therefore deemed inappropriate.

31. Candide, Voltaire, 1759

Its satirical take on the military, religion and optimism was seen as too dangerous for Americans to read during the Second World War.

32. The Words of Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez, 2002

When censorship of the book was not enough, it was banned for going against a law outlawing Ethnic Studies classes.

33. Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, 1963

The dark and disturbing nature of the story was seen as too much for children.

34. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, 1855

New York Society for the Suppression of Vice viewed the sensuality of the book as disturbing and inappropriate.

35. Moby-Dick; or The Whale, Herman Melville,1851

People thought it went against community values.

Book lovers can rejoice that these books didn't remain banned and we were all able to read and learn from them.