Spider-man: One More Day

Writers: J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada

Artist: Joe Quesada

Issues:  Amazing Spider-man #544-545, Sensational Spider-man #41, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man #24

Here it is, one of the most controversial comic arcs in the past year.  I had complained at great length about this story without having read it myself.  Shame on me.  Coverage of this story was so widespread, I knew everything that happened.  I went in with my preconceived notions of what was going to happen, and how much I was going to rant and rave about for many months to come.  I felt most sorry for my coworkers, who would invariable have to endure more of my complaining about Spider-man.

Now that I’ve read the story, and am a couple months away from the hype and all the opinions on the Internet, I’ve formulated a new opinion.  For those that don’t know, Aunt May is in mortal peril yet again, having been shot during an assassination attempt on Peter.  Peter is all kinds of depressed, and searches the Marvel Universe for some kind of cure, knowing that he would give anything to have just one more day with her.  This is emotional tripe at its finest.  Aunt May seems to be always at death’s door, so I cared little for the situation.  Peter’s reaction was what could be expected, he felt very guilty because the bullet was meant for him.  But help finally comes to Peter’s aid.

Keep reading True Believers

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Anime Club
This Thursday (April 3rd 2008)
3:30 - 5

Don’t forget to join us this Thursday for Anime Club! We will be watching Burst Angel Vol. 1. As always we have an open door policy so make it when you can!

Burst Angel follows the exploits of Jo, Sei, Amy, and Meg as they try to survive in an apocalyptic Tokyo where everyone carries guns and uses them with lethal force. There seems to be plenty of action in this one so DON”T MISS IT!

Burst Angel is rated TV14

Here is the opening theme as a test taste:

Posted under anime club, announcement

The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer

This book deserves 5 stars

I definitely loved all three of the books. It’s so passionate and shows how involved the two main characters are. As for Bella (the human), her being so `plain’ just shows the readers that even someone as beautiful as Edward can fall in love with anyone. So basically it’s just proving that it depends on your character and I think that’s a good message to send out to people. So, if you like romances, this book is defiantly for you!

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The Quad City Arts has opportunities for all aspiring teen artists. These are paid apprenticeships and cover five genres: painted mural design, poetry chapbook, applied art, percussion, and sculpture. The apprenticeships run from June 9th to July 11th. Applications are due Friday, April 18th.

For more information please contact Ryan Collins @ 309.793.1213 x107, or visit their website. If you want to stop by the gallery it is located at 1715 2nd Ave, Rock Island.

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Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender’s Game is a classic within the sci-fi genre. The book is about a young boy named Ender who is chosen to go to an elite military academy that is in outer space. There he learns to become a master tactician and advances in rank rapidly. The other half of the narrative follows the academy’s commander as he converses with other offices about how well Ender is progressing. They take such a keen interest in Ender because the Earth faces a deadly threat from an alien race, the Buggers. They are secretly molding Ender into a lethal fighting machine so he can lead the forces of Earth in a genocidal attack on the aliens’ homeworld. The problem with their machinations is that Ender doesn’t want to be a violent person. He struggles with opposing forces; goodness and survival.

I read this book quickly and was pretty riveted to it. I would recommend it to anyone who really enjoys sci-fi, war, and action/adventure yarns. Appropriate for all ages.

Posted under a librarian reads, review

Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

Guilty Pleasures is the first novel in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. I decided to read this for a variety of reasons. First I saw a teen a while back reading one of the titles. Then because the summer reading program is coming up I have been on the lookout for vampire books, and lastly Marvel Comics has made a graphic novel of this first book.

Anita Blake is an Animator, someone who can raise the dead (who then become zombies). As a plot device this profession sets her up like a private detective. Supposedly most of her time is raising the dead for such banal issues such as settling disputes over the recently deceased’s will. The majority of the book though involves her working for both the police and the vampire community to solve supernatural related crimes. In the world of Anita Blake all sorts of undead creatures are not just real but part of the daily experience of human life. Vampires are legal citizens who as a group are very similar to other ethnic and racial groups. In St. Louis, where the novels take place, there is a vampire district that is at once a tourist trap as well as a place for seedy nightclubs. In Guilty Pleasures the plot centers around the a series of killings, where the victims are all master vampires, older vampires who are very hard to kill. Anita is blackmailed by the vampire community to find the killer so they can eliminate him.

I found myself enjoying Guilty Pleasures a lot. The novel is a mix of noir/detective fiction, romance, and horror. It reads a lot like if Raymond Chandler wrote Dracula under the Harlequin imprint. There is violence and gore, which you expect. The biggest caveat is the sex/vampire fetishism that imbues the novel. While there are no sex scenes, it is mentioned a lot in the novel, and even when it’s not it’s part of the atmosphere of the book.

However, I did enjoy the book. If I have free time I may read more of the series. I would say this book would be a good read for older teens (10th grade and up) who are really into horror and vampires.

Posted under a librarian reads, review

Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks

Imagine what Harry Potter would have been like if he had discovered that instead of being born to loving, though dead, parents, he was instead the son of Voldemort.  Harry would be heir to his entire evil empire, and sent not to Hogwarts, but to a school teaching all aspects of evil.  Essentially, that is Evil Genius.  Cadel Piggott gets into some trouble because he is too smart for his own good.  His adoptive parents are encouraged by the police to take Cadel to a therapist after he breaks into several different websites.  His therapist informs him that his biological father is the nefarious Dr. Darkkon, a supervillain currently in prison.  Cadel’s evil father begins to take an active role in Cadel’s education, teaching him the ways of the Force, as it were.  After graduating high school at 13, he is enrolled in the Axis Institute, a school to train future supervillains founded by Dr. Darkkon.

While the setup is very much like Harry Potter, with a poor little orphan boy with horrible surrogate parents being swept off to a school that embraces everything about him, Evil Genius is a very different beast.  Cadel Piggott/Darkkon is a hard character.  He’s not necessarily evil, he’s just super intelligent with no proper outlet for his ideas and interests.  He’s obsessed with systems, like traffic systems and the more complex system of human social interactions.  He learns about them by experimenting with them, and causing problems so that he can learn more.  If that’s by causing a traffic jam or setting off a chain of events that all of his classmates in his high school fail their final exams, it’s all in the interest of expanding his knowledge.  Again, he’s not evil or malicious, his intent is truly to learn, but it’s hard to empathize with him.  He’s almost so smart, he’s another species.

Keep reading, True Believers

Posted under review