Fantasy Book Critic

Fantasy Book Critic

EPIC FAIL Funny Videos and Epic Fail Funny Pictures

Electronic developers have currently come up with new bulbs created with a technology of LEDs. Lighting emitting diodes referred to as LEDs are widely used for decorations, digital clocks, to illuminated traffic lights and in remote controls. In addition, this technique can also be used as an LED safety vests to increase human protection.

Features

The technique is made of an electric circuit fitted with tiny bulbs. However, the bulbs are different from the normal bulbs because they do not have a flammable filament and for this reason, the bulb does not get excessively hot as compared to the rest. The flashing or constant lighting circuit is then installed in a special type of clothing. This will allow clear visibility of the person wearing the jacket especially in dimly lit areas or during the night.

Reflectors

Nowadays, there are numerous accidents that result from poor vision. However, some of them can be avoided by the individual equipping him or herself with such jackets. Motorist, night working personnel, pedestrians, police, joggers, traffic patrols and motorbike riders can wear such protective gear during their activities to avoid injuries.

Safety Features

However, the idea is not only getting any cloth and fitting it with the bulbs, the safety wear should have some special components for it to work properly. Initially, consider a cloth that is fitted with very bright and flashy colors. In addition, the lighting should be aligned alongside a reflective lining. Furthermore, the bulbs should be placed all around the jacket at reasonable intervals. This way there will be maximum visibility from any individual.

Energy

Another point that you have to consider is the energy it will consume. This is because since one is required to put it on at all times the energy used to light it up will be highly used. Therefore you should opt for one that uses low energy but is still efficient. Remember to get a battery that can hold charge for a few days and one which will give you a signal when it is about to end. Moreover, one that is of small size will is easy to move with it rather than a larger one.

Light Material

Furthermore, the safety tee shirts should be extremely light and easy to wear. This is because the gear is not meant to burden you or make you feel loaded. Instead,its main purpose is to ensure that you are partially protected from accidents that might be as a result of poor vision. One should feel comfortable while wearing the jacket since it is usually worn on top of other clothing.

Adjustable

Finally, the vest should posses an attribute that allows it to be adjusted to produce different flashes. This is because a person can use different sequences of flashes to convey varying messages to the parties concerned. Hence, the jacket should have multiple flash sequences including slow flashing, quick flashes and continuous production of light.

Fantasy Book Critic

EPIC FAIL Funny Videos and Epic Fail Funny Pictures

The purpose of obtaining a passport card is to be able to travel between land and sea borders to destinations such as Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. It is a legally issued document by United States agencies, which is not as expensive in comparison to passports. Every citizen of America has the right to obtain such a document through legal procedure.

Passport Card

This card is valid for traveling between borders and may not be used to fly to internationally based destinations. These cards have been created to provide a legal option for border travel and convenient use. It has also been designed as a means of sufficient proof of citizenship and proof of identification when required.

Research

If you are applying for the first time, you have to visit the relevant authorities. In instances where you are under sixteen years of age you should apply for the relevant document or if the item was previously issued at sixteen years old. If one has lost the item or has been a victim of theft or considerable damage then it must be replaced. There is a different forms for a online passport lost.

Outdated Passport Cards

One is required to apply for a new document if it was issued more than fifteen years ago or where you were unable to legally document your name change. During the application process one must remember that special requirements are necessary for minors between sixteen and seventeen years of age. Adults who need to apply for a new item have to complete and submit forms in person.

DS-11

If you are a citizen of the United States of America, you have the legal right to apply for these legally documented cards for border travel by completing a DS-11 form. An Acceptance Agent will approve whether one is able to complete a submission process in signing the documents. Proof such as a social security number is needed to complete the application process or it could be delayed or denied.

Procedure

The Acceptance Facility or Passport Agency are legal authorities where one may submit the necessary forms, which include proof of citizenship and designated application forms. These personal documents will be mailed to the recipient upon the issuing of the Passport Card. Evidence includes a birth certificate obtained in the state or country or a passport document.

Place Specific

If travel arrangements have been made on short notice for land or sea border destinations, one is eligible to apply for the document. Upon issuing of these legally required cards, individuals may proceed with the above mentioned travel arrangements and do not have to possess a visa. This document may be used as proof for citizenship when flying within the country or when purchasing items such as alcohol and tobacco for proof of age.

Ty Franck being hugged by Jen Taylor

I first met Ty Franck online, then in person at LosCon, and we’ve been friends ever since. He blames me for a lot of things that have happened in his life, but the truth is he warps the forces of space, time, and luck to create his own mini-universe with its own rules, as you’ll see from the interview below. My story of Ty that I think gives the most accurate impression of the kind of guy he is, is one he’s probably tired of hearing me tell. But it bears retelling.

Years ago he was held up at gunpoint at his workplace, after hours. Gangsters broke in, cut the phone lines, and tied up both him and another woman who was working late. Ty managed to keep talking to get the gangsters off guard, and then when they left the room, his coworker untied him and he used the company’s internet (which wasn’t connected to the phone lines) to message another office, who in turn called 911.

Yes, this is a true story, but I haven’t gotten to the most unbelievable part yet. After the police arrived and sat Ty down for questioning. The dialogue went something like this:

“What can you tell us about your attackers?”

“Well, they were armed with a Glock 40.”

“So you know guns, then?”

“No, not really.”

“But you know Glocks?”

“No.”

“So how do you know it was a Glock 40?”

“Because they were holding it about here-” Ty mimes having a gun held to his forehead “-and you could read it on the side. It said, Glock 40.”

Ty would be my first choice of friend to have around during the zombie apocalypse. I call dibs.

Interview with Ty Franck, aka James S.A. Corey

Conducted and edited by Emily Mah, December 2011

Emily Mah: First off, let’s talk about your background, whatever parts of it you’d like to share. Before you were James SA Corey, what did you do for a living?

Ty Franck: A lot of stuff. But just prior to coming to New Mexico I was working as a financial software consultant with a company I helped start. Before that I ran a computer manufacturing company, and before that I worked in logistics with a musical instrument retailer. Before that, I broke rocks at a rock quarry, built sailboards and wind surfing masts, sold newspaper advertising, sold radio advertising, and briefly did high rise building renovations.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

Whichever one I currently have, usually. I hate jobs. Even the word makes me angry. I must admit, though, my current gig is pretty good. Probably the worst objectively was breaking rocks at a rock quarry. It’s the exact same job you see prisoners doing in old movies.

You’ve put literally years of work into the world of Leviathan Wakes. When did you first start building the world and what other incarnations has it had?

It started out as an idea for an RPG, but it really only took concrete form when I sat down and laid it out for a video game pitch. A friend asked me to help her develop content for an MMORPG pitch, and I took this game set in our solar system that I’d been tinkering with and finished laying it out. That really kicked off the big push to do solid world building for it. [Interviewer's note: Said friend was me.]

Do you still have time to write RPGs while you work as a novelist?

Not really. I have a semi-full time job, and I write half of a 200,000 word novel every year. I haven’t done any game design in a couple years.

Ty Franck with George RR Martin and Nathan Fillion

You’ve had an unusual path to a writing career. Can you share how it was you became the author of a novel?

I feel hesitant to answer this, because everyone will call BS on me. But here goes: I wrote a short story as a goof while working at the computer manufacturing company. A mutual friend of mine and Orson Scott Card’s showed the story to him. He sent me a very complimentary email and invited me to attend his writer’s bootcamp. Shortly thereafter, I decided to leave the company I was with, and wound up with a fair bit of money from severance, and no real plans. I drove across the country and attended the bootcamp. I didn’t do much after that but write a few more stories that I never submitted. However, when Scott Card started his online magazine, he asked if he could buy my first story for the second issue. I of course said yes. When I moved to New Mexico, this professional sale qualified me to join Critical Mass, the writers group where I first met Daniel. It was through that group that I wound up becoming friends with Daniel, and that eventually led to him asking me to run an RPG he and his wife could play in. This led to him asking me if I’d be willing to collaborate on a novel set in the universe of my game. I said yes. We wrote it, Orbit bought it, and then I was suddenly a novelist. All without ever really deciding to be one. It just sort of happened.

How has co-writng a novel compare to writing an RPG?

It’s completely different. RPGs are largely extemporaneous. You need to have the setting and major events well in mind, but the majority of things that happen in the game come from player actions, and as the game runner you react to those actions. Novels require the world building, but they also require a much more concrete plot, and none of the characters design themselves. It’s a lot harder to write a novel than to run a game.

You’ve got a day job a lot of people would envy. Care to share what it is, how you got it, and how you’ve liked it?

I work for George R.R. Martin as his personal assistant. George needed help, our mutual friend Melinda Snodgrass told him to hire me (I believe her exact words were, “he ran a 150 million a year company, he can handle your paperwork), and I’ve been working for him for about five years now.

Is it true that Orson Scott Card’s son threatened to beat you up for flirting with his girlfriend at a con in LA? And that you ate a moth once?

If he did, I’m sure it was jokingly. We’re friends, and he’s about half my size. But his girlfriend was cute. [Interviewer's note: I included this question as a joke. Said girlfriend was me, and this was actually how Ty and I first met at LosCon. He was wearing a nametag that said "Slash", so you can see why we hit it off.]

Yes, one time, I swallowed a moth. This came as a great surprise to both myself and the moth.

How has cowriting compared with your solo work?

Amazon was the only place we could snag the image. You can't actually look inside this one.

Working with Daniel is like getting the best writing workshop of all time and getting paid to go.

One adage of writing is to write what scares you. Of all the scenes you’ve written, which one scares you the most?

I once wrote a short scene in which a very bad man cuts off a person’s finger and then tells him he’s going to keep cutting things off until he gets what he wants. I am creeped out by Cronenberg style body horror.

Which scene would you wish you could live, personally?

I want to live on the Rocinante. I’d happily be the cook.

Which character is the most like you, and why? Or which one do you wish you could be more like?

Amos is my Id.

Do you still write short stories? Feel free to plug any upcoming releases.

I’m actually under contract to write five novellas set in The Expanse universe. The first Expanse story is called The Butcher of Anderson Station and is available as an e-book through the usual online retailers.

What are some upcoming novel releases you’d like to tell Black Gate readers about?

The second Expanse book is called Caliban’s War, and comes out in early summer of 2012.

What novel was on the Kindle screen when Jeff Bezos did his international announcement of the Kindle Fire?

Current cover art for Caliban's War, but this may change before publication.

Jeff had Leviathan Wakes open to chapter one during one of the demonstration videos for the Kindle Fire.

Did you have any idea that would happen?

We had no idea, but it was awesome.

Have you noticed any change in attention to your books or hits to your websites since?

The only real attention we got from it is people saying, “Hey! Did you see the Kindle Fire thing with your book on it?”

You’ve done work on the Wild Cards franchise. Do you have any stories about what that’s been like that you’d like to share?

Mine is idiosyncratic. I helped write a story for a friend who was busily almost dying. [Interviewer's note: Vic Milan, who is, we're happy to say, very much alive and has new books coming out. But I digress.] I feel like there’s some conflict of interest in me trying to get Wild Card’s gigs, since my boss is the editor, so I won’t submit proposals to the franchise. But I’ve promised that if they need a last minute collaborator to help someone who’s in the hospital, I’ll be the designated hitter.

Who are your favorite authors whom you feel not enough people are reading?

I don’t know how many people are reading him, but I really like Joe Hill a lot. Nice, engaging horror novels.

Anything else you’d like to share that I’ve neglected to ask about?

One time I swallowed a m- oh wait. Right.

Well, you know I’ve been thorough as an interviewer when!

-Emily

www.emilymah.com

Black Gate

There are two different stories about how it began.

In one story, there’s a writer-editor of boys’ adventure comics, who’s told by his boss — also his uncle — to create a new team of superheroes, a knock-off of the competition’s high-selling Justice League of America title. This isn’t what the writer really wants to do. But he talks it over with his wife. And he decides: I’m going to write the book the way I want to, without worrying about making perfect heroes. Maybe one of the leads will actually be a monster. Maybe another’ll be a teenager, the kind of character who in other books would just be a sidekick. They’ll bicker among themselves, and fight. They’ll be real people. And, in this story, that’s what the writer did; and it worked.

The other story has a veteran comics artist coming in to the studio of the second-rate company he’s working for. He finds the young writer-editor of the comics line crying because they’re moving the furniture out; the company’s about to close down. No problem, says the artist; you tell your uncle, the owner, to hold off folding the business. The artist, a veteran storyteller, knows how to make grab an audience. He starts cranking out the books, new title after new title. Superheroes are back in, so he starts doing superheroes like nobody ever did them, throwing everything he sees around him into his stories, everything he reads in newspapers and magazines, everything he ever found in history books and myths. Scientists. Mutants. Gods and monsters. In this story, that’s what the artist did; and it worked.

Human memory is fallible, especially when, as in this case, the two people closest to the case become estranged. What can be said for sure is this: starting in 1961, Marvel Comics, a formerly undistinguished publisher, began producing a wave of brilliant superhero comics. Most of them were written by Stan Lee, and most of the best were drawn by artist Jack Kirby — with another artist, Steve Ditko, producing two other remarkable books with Lee’s involvement. Of all the Kirby-Lee collaborations, perhaps the best was the original flagship book of the Marvel line, the first title that came in many ways to define Marvel Comics as a whole: The Fantastic Four.

The two men produced 102 issues of that title together, plus a few giant-sized annuals (and another issue half-drawn by Kirby, heavily re-conceived by Lee and completed by another artist, John Buscema). That’s an incredible record of longevity; few runs of North American comics have gone on so long. Kirby’s productivity was herculean. The typical comics artist today has difficulty doing one 22-page book a month. Kirby routinely wrote and drew seventy-five pages a month at Marvel. And yet rather than fall back into repetition his stories exploded with new ideas, new concepts, new characters and new approaches to character. Fantastic Four was perhaps his best book, the home to many of his best ideas; omnipotent cosmic gods, truly alien races, the single greatest villain ever to appear in superhero comics.

Wait, though, you may be saying. Wasn’t Lee the writer on the book? Well, yes, but. Conflicting memories again make things unsure. What can be said is this: with most of his artists, and particularly with Kirby, Lee would typically have a story conference, possibly over the phone, and based on the conference might then type up a synopsis. The artist would draw the book based on the conference and synopsis, and Lee would write dialogue and captions based on the completed art. Which meant the artist got to determine the length of scenes, got to decide how to lay out a page to emphasise certain moments — got to determine a story’s pace and structure. But more than that: it has been asserted, especially by Kirby, that the story discussions with Lee were often perfunctory, and might only have consisted of the artist telling Lee how the story would go. Notes on Kirby’s original art boards seem to outline plot points and suggest dialogue. There’s a rumour I’ve heard that Lee’s plot suggestion for one of the most famous FF stories of all consisted of telling Kirby “Have them fight God.” Kirby supposedly then took that four-word phrase and turned it into a three-issue saga (FF 48-50, the original Galactus trilogy), perhaps one of the greatest tales in the history of Marvel Comics.

It is possible that Lee’s contribution was significant. Certainly he provided the final script for the book, and created a specific tone that became characteristic of Marvel — breathless adventure along with rueful self-aware irony, bombast and humour and melodrama mixed together. He probably defined the voices of the main characters of the book, a quartet of adventurers who, mutated by cosmic rays during an illicit spaceflight, become super-powered adventurers.

You can find some interesting themes in the book, and at this point it’s impossible to be sure if they were conscious creations of Lee, or Kirby, or whether either were aware of them. One of the characteristics of the Fantastic Four is that they’re not just a team; they’re a family. Reed Richards, the super-stretchable Mister Fantastic, woos and marries Sue Storm, the Invisible Girl, during the course of the Lee/Kirby run. Sue’s brother Johnny, the Human Torch, has a complex interaction with Ben Grimm, the super-strong but monstrous-looking Thing; as the book goes on, the relationship goes from combative to avuncular, even as Ben becomes more and more of a character, an identifiable, relateable person — one often said to be based on Kirby himself. I don’t know how much of these family matters were intended by Kirby, how much by Lee, and how much they came out of the natural situation of the characters.

Similarly, from a 21st-century viewpoint it’s hard to miss the fact that the book seems concerned with masculinity, and what it means to be a man. Given that it was aimed at boys, that’s not surprising; it’s a book about how you grow up, how you become a hero. Reed, Ben, and Johnny all seem to be at different stages of life — Reed and Ben were supposed to be at college together, but to me Reed seems an older man, the patriarch of the group. Sue’s less defined than any of them; like Ben’s girlfriend, the blind sculptress Alicia, she never really develops an identifiable voice of her own. In fact, she often seems sidelined from the group. It has been argued that to some extent this comes from Lee’s scripting; that if you read the book strictly looking at Kirby’s art, ignoring the dialogue and captions, Sue becomes more of a central figure in the group.

Personally, I think the book is more Kirby’s than Lee’s. I think that the things that make the book work are things that Kirby brought. It’s impossible to be sure, at this point, given the fallibility of memory and competing stories. But when I look at the book, what draws me in is the visual storytelling, the design sense, the feel of strong-willed characters clashing, the vistas of unknown dimensions and faraway planets: all Kirby’s strengths.

Kirby’s art is perhaps literally peerless. It’s a commonplace that he was able to express power and stylised violence like nobody else; and that his storytelling was incredibly fluid. Re-reading the books I was struck as well by his ability to create three-dimensional spaces, his sense of perspective, and how he knew when to draw a detailed background and when to let the background drop away to let a panel ‘read’ faster. Above all, going through his entire FF run, you’re stunned by the sheer consistency of his dynamic compositons, the explosive energy in panel after panel, page after page, issue after issue. There’s an intuitive assurance to his art, the sure and easy knowledge that he can do whatever he wants in a panel and make it sing.

Along with that goes an incredible knack for design. Kirby’s experiments with collage as a way of depicting alternate dimensions or interstellar space are notorious, but to me more remarkable is his ability to design machinery, spacecraft, aliens — all unique, all filled with personality. And his character designs are stunning, catching in Kirby’s personal idiom the essence of who the character is. It’s not just that Kirby (and Lee) were consistently able to come up with new and dynamic opponents for the Fantastic Four, with characters and concepts setting off the main stars of the book; it’s that they all had their own dynamic looks.

(Here’s an interesting exercise: compare the number of original lasting characters from the Kirby run on FF with the number of lasting characters to come out of the book since. By ‘lasting’ let’s say, oh, characters who return in two separate stories after the one that introducses them. The first hundred issues of the series saw, among others, the FF themselves, Doctor Doom, The Mole Man, the Skrulls and later the Super-Skrull, the Puppet Master and his daughter Alicia, the Impossible Man, the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes, the Watcher, the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android, Rama-Tut, the Molecule Man, the Hate-Monger, Nick Fury as a modern-day secret agent, Diablo, Attuma, Dragon Man, the Wingless Wizard, the Inhumans, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Black Panther, Klaw, Blastaar, Annihilus, Franklin Richards … the list just goes on and on. In the post-Kirby years we get Thundra, Herbie the robot — who came from a cartoon in which Kirby had a hand — the Texas Twister, Captain Ultra, Frankie Raye, Terminus … plua a lot of characters deriving from the Kirby run. There’s Kristoff, Doctor Doom’s back-up copy; Nick Scratch and Salem’s Seven; Air-Walker, Firelord, and Terrax the Tamer, all heralds of Galactus; Nathaniel Richards; maybe some of the Fantastic Force characters; various Skrulls and Inhumans turn up; Valeria Richards is born. On the whole I wouldn’t be at all surprised if more lasting creations were intorduced in the first 100 FF issues than in the 500-plus issues since.)

The Fantastic Four as a group are a great visual. They have a uniform — like Kirby’s earlier non-super-powered team of explorers the Challengers of the Unknown — but that’s only the starting point. There’s a man in the blue uniform, whose body is often distorted by the use of his powers; a woman in the blue uniform, often turned invisible and indicated only by dotted line; an orange monster; and a red-and-yellow flaming teen. So right away there’s a strong colour contrast among the team. And a strong contrast in shapes — each of their powers is intensely visual, even, paradoxically, the Invisible Girl’s, and so the uniform and ‘4’ icon gives just enough of a link to tie them together. (You could say, I think, that Kirby did something similar with his designs for the X-Men; again, a uniform, and again, each character wore it a little differently — one with a visor hiding his eyes, one with wings, one all-over ice, and so forth.)

I’ll go a step further, and say that the designs were distinctively Kirby. I think the patterns of the Thing’s rocks are expressionistic in a way that’s wholly Kirby — as many talented artists as have drawn the character in the years since, I’m not sure I’ve found any that felt quite right. The geometrical lines and shadows that make up his craggy shape are Kirbyesque without drawing attention to themselves, cartoony and even abstract yet still intuitively right.

I think there’s something similar, although less extremely individual, in the way Kirby drew Reed’s stretching power; he made the super-elastic acts seem not natural but credible. I think that’s a function partly of Kirby’s incredible sense of panel design, and partly a function of his sense of body language. His characters are almost always coiled, tense, writhing, as though about to bust out of their flesh with sheer energy. Reed goes a step further, and actually does what the rest promise, his physical form stretching as though by the intensity of his will and emotion. That’s Kirby’s Reed; a man who isn’t bound by the limit of his own body. Kirby’s knack for creating powerful imagery through foreshortening and distortion makes Reed’s power (like Johnny’s flames, or Sue’s force fields) a design element, part of the visual signature of the book.

Worth pointing out at this point is the contribution of Kirby’s inkers. Chic Stone, for example, gave Kirby an almost Hergé-like clarity of line, a cartooniness that emphasised the flatness of forms. At its best, its memorably bold. Like a lot of people, though, I prefer Kirby’s later inker, Joe Sinnott, who brought a range of textures and a heightened realism. Sinnott emphasised the emotions of the characters, I feel, and managed the difficult trick of keeping the vivid distortions of Kirby’s style while also making the pictures seem concrete, giving the details and sense of weight of the real world.

Still, realism is not the distinguishing mark of the book; these were wild pop sci-fi stories for kids. It’s often said that what distinguished Marvel from DC Comics was the realism of the former, but this isn’t true at all. Marvel succeeded, particularly in Fantastic Four, by being more cosmic. The emotional lives of characters who were still relatively two-dimensional were just enough to give a sense of scale to Kirby’s cosmic wonderment. The grounding in something vaguely recognisable as human foibles throws the wildness of gods from outer space into greater relief. (It’s actually tempting to see the claim that Marvel’s realism is the key to their success as an attempt to privilege Lee over Kirby.)

The characters in Fantastic Four certainly aren’t realistic in the sense of having fixed backstories and being a product of a given historical moment and culture. They are what they need to be: archetypes just broad enough to make the stories affecting. To get a sense of the limits how real they are, look at the question of the Invisible Girl’s age. In different stories, we’re told that she and Reed were kids together; that she was a minor when the Fantastic Four started as a group; and that Reed (along with Ben) fought in World War Two. These statements can’t all be true, and they really don’t need to be. Realism demands that characters have a fixed background in a certain time and place, that shapes or helps to shape who the characters are; the simpler, arguably more primal, type of story in The Fantastic Four only requires that characters have identifiable emotional tendencies and, perhaps, dialogue tics. Within that simplified approach to character, great things can be done.

Consider the single greatest villain in the history of super-hero comics, Doctor Doom. There’s nothing remotely realistic about Doom, the son of a Romany witch who takes over his own Mitteleuropean country. The equal of Reed Richards in intellect, he wears a cloak and suit of powered armour, hiding his face that was scarred after the failure of an experiment aimed at contacting his mother’s soul in Hell. A mixture of medieval and high-tech monstrosity, he’s the perfect mixture of Gothic villainy and ultramodern danger. Everything about him’s unreal, dreamlike, threatening, and, under Kirby, oddly convincing.

I’ve always felt that super-hero stories were the daylight form of the Gothic; both of them stylised narratives mixing real-world settings and fantastic elements, all aimed at a heightened emotional intensity. Both dominated by strong-willed villains. Doom is the ultimate in that line; his first name, Victor, seems designed to recall Frankenstein. Look at his first appearance, in Fantastic Four #5, from the perspective of Sue Richards: the FF’s home, the Baxter Building, is covered in an electrified net thrown from a helicopter by the mysterious figure of Doom. Reed describes his background (a typically Gothic nested narrative structure). Doom insists on taking Sue hostage, then has the rest of the group come to his castle where he sends them back in time to gather a great treasure — which, though they don’t know it, will make him master of the world. Sue watches them go; she is left behind, trapped alone in the crumbling castle of Doctor Doom. We don’t follow her, though, but watch the other three acquire the items (Blackbeard’s treasure) and return. Doom then traps them in an airless room. Only Sue, risking Doom’s wrath, can short-circuit his machines and free the others. Seen from another perspective, then, this is a Gothic narrative; ancient castle, sinister villain, trapped heroine. But the way in which it’s told gives it a different genre colouring.

It’s an interesting point that however often Doom returns, however often he alone confronts the FF, we never feel that four against one is an unequal fight. The FF often encournter lone villains, in fact, beings of staggering power — Dragon Man, Psycho-Man, Annihilus, above all Galactus. Only their relatively uninteresting counterparts, the Frightful Four, are a recurring matching group; the FF battles the Royal Family of the Inhumans when they first appear, but after that the Inhumans become a part of their extended cast. I think this all plays into the book’s theme of family. Villains are loners. They don’t have family groups around them.

I think it’s also interesting that the book’s less manichean than Kirby’s later stories. It’s not really about the battle of good and evil. Later Kirby tales pitted New Genesis against Apokolips, the Eternals against the Deviants. That was less apparent in his Marvel work, though I suppose you can see traces of it in Thor, with the Asgardians battling the Frost Giants. Still, the point of FF is not to depict great battles. It is, in the words of another 60s phenomenon, to explore brave new worlds. The FF are explorers, not crime-fighters or warriors, and their world is unbounded even by morality; at the extreme, we find Galactus, who transcends right and wrong, heroism and villainy.

The book’s ever-expanding cast of characters, with recurring villains and supporting cast members, was accompanied by a growing roster of locations and concepts — the Baxter Building, the Negative Zone, the Blue Area of the Moon, sunken Atlantis, the Mole Man’s underground lair of Subterranea. As the book went on, the stories began to weave back and forth between these different elements and characters, at the same time as they added new ideas, or drew from other Marvel titles. The complexity grew, and stories sprawled beyond a single issue. Whole sagas opened easily into others. The title came to feel less like individual tales of a fixed group, and more like an ongoing story.

It was and is a strange, unquantifiable structure for a tale. But one that worked brilliantly. One idea, one set of characters, would contrast with another, or interact unexpectedly with some other idea. The Inhuman Triton turns out to be the only one who can save Reed Richards from the Negative Zone. Another Inhuman, Crystal, falls in love with Johnny and joins the FF. Perhaps most memorably, the angelic Silver Surfer has his cosmic power stolen by the diabolical Doctor Doom. The story grows to hold all these things.

Maybe the greatest single-issue example of what I mean, and perhaps the Platonic ideal of a Marvel comic, is FF Annual 3. It’s the wedding of Reed and Sue. Doctor Doom decides to take a hand, and builds a machine that drives all the villains of the Marvel Universe to attack the Fantastic Four at the wedding — which is being attended by every single hero in the Marvel Universe. What ensues is a wild, exuberant, nonstop fight scene, swinging ecstatically from character to character; it begins with Doctor Strange casting the Red Ghost and his apes into another dimension, and only builds from there. It’s the absolute purest example of what 60s Marvel did, what the books felt like, and what Jack Kirby could do.

Kirby understood story better than anyone; understood something that carried over into other, lesser Marvel books for years after he left. And that is this: people didn’t buy FF to get a story crafted according to the rules of Aristotle or Robert McKee or even Joseph Campbell. They buy the book to see super-heroes in action, to see wild fight scenes, to go strange places. To have their minds blown. The story is a scaffold, a delivery mechanism to get the important things across.

For all that Kirby’s famous for his depiction of action and violence, what I think makes his work stand out is its deep interaction with the feeling of awe. Obviously it depicts characters caught up in that feeling — as I say, enough realism to bring home the scale of events. What makes the appearance of Galactus stand out, perhaps more than anything, is the dazed Human Torch coming back from the interstellar god’s ship to collapse, muttering “I traveled through worlds … so big … so big … there … there aren’t words …! We’re like ants … just ants … ants!!” (I don’t know if those words were original to Lee, or suggested by Kirby.)

At heart, I feel that Kirby’s art is perhaps unmatched in comics in its ability to instill awe. He knows when to cut to a splash page or two-page spread, how to build to those moments by the rhythm of his panels. He knows how to depict moments of transfiguration — a human shape suggested with a few lines, overwhelmed by light and energy. There’s a sense in which the book could be said to be about transfiguration; the FF gaining their powers from cosmic energy, Doom as a failed attempt at similar ascendance. Things change. People change, and grow.

After Kirby left, I don’t think the book ever found anything like the same level of creative success. There’ve been fun runs, and well-crafted tales, but never that level of consistent ground-breaking excellence. There’s a possibly-apocryphal story that in the early 70s, after Kirby left, Stan Lee told his writers — for as Marvel had grown, other writers had joined the company — that the company would no longer be about change, but about the illusion of change. That wasn’t good in the long run for any of the books, I think, but it was a real problem for Fantastic Four. The Fantastic Four are supposed to be a family, and families naturally go through changes. Young people marry into other families; new children are born; older folk, sadly, pass away. If there’s one point that the Kirby FF makes about family it is this: a family is a way to experience and process change. Lacking that, the book couldn’t really be what it once was. It became just another Marvel comic: sometimes good, sometimes bad, often diverting, rarely involving.

There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose, and at least the book has a great legacy behind it. Starting on the third issue of the book, Lee, inveterate huckster that he is, slapped the tag “The world’s greatest comic magazine!” on every FF cover. For as long as I can remember I’d always dismissed the line. Re-reading the books recently, though, I felt a kind of shock go through me when I realised that for a good stretch of time in the 1960s, that phrase on that book was no more or less than the literal truth: this really was the greatest comics magazine in the world. I don’t mean to dismiss Crumb or Tezuka or Hergé, who were all also doing great work in those years, but nothing I’ve read by any of these men reach the consistency and power of Kirby’s work.

Perhaps this is the final statement to make on Lee and Kirby together: it’s a testament to Lee that he could create not just unmatched hype around a book, but an air of expectation in the book itself, the sense of something earth-shattering about to happen. It’s a testament to Kirby that he could deliver on that promise. There was no boast Lee could make that Kirby couldn’t back up. Together they created the world’s greatest comic magazine. And from that book a whole universe sprang.

Black Gate

Official Blake Crouch Website
Official J. A.  Konrath Website
Order “Stirred” HERE
Read FBC’s Review of “Serial Killers Uncut” by Jack Kilborn & Blake Crouch
Read FBC’s Review of “Run” by Blake Crouch
Read FBC’s Review of “Afraid” by Jack Kilborn
Read FBC’s Interview with Blake Crouch

ABOUT BLAKE CROUCH: Blake Crouch was born in Statesville, North Carolina and graduated in 2000 with degrees in English and Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina. He has written five previous novels and a host of short stories. Two of his stories have been previously optioned for film adaptation. Blake currently lives in Durango, Colorado with his wife.

ABOUT J. A. KONRATH: J.A. Konrath is the award-winning author of the Jack Daniels series. He is also the editor of the hitman anthology “These Guns For Hire”, and his short stories have appeared in more than sixty magazines and collections. As Jack Kilborn, the author has written the horror novels Afraid, Trapped, Endurance and Draculas. He currently lives in a suburb of Chicago with his family.

OFFICIAL PLOT SYNOPSIS: Lt. Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels has seen humanity at its most depraved and terrifying. She’s lost loved ones. Come close to death countless times. But she always manages to triumph over evil. Luther Kite is humanity at its most depraved and terrifying. He’s committed unthinkable acts. Taken human life for the sheer pleasure of it. He is a monster among monsters, and no one has ever caught him. Each is the best at what they do. Peerless. Unmatched.

Until now…

In Luther‘s experience, people are weak. Even the strong and fearless break too easily. He wants a challenge, and sets his depraved sights on Jack. But with a baby on the way, Jack is at her most vulnerable. She’s always been a fighter, but she’s never had so much to fight for. So he’s built something especially for Jack. His own, private ninth circle of hell – a nightmare world in a forgotten place, from which no one has ever escaped.

It’s J.A. Konrath‘s greatest heroine versus Blake Crouch‘s greatest villain in Stirred, the stunning conclusion to both Konrath’s Lt. Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels thriller series and Crouch’s Andrew Z. Thomas series.

Only one can survive. And it won’t be whom you think.

FORMAT/INFO: Stirred is 400 pages long divided over three Parts, an Intermezzo and an epilogue. Also included are Authors’ introduction, a character cast, storyline endnotes, bonus features, afterword and various excerpts from the authors’ books. Narration is mostly in the third-person via Luther Kite, Donaldson, Lucy, Phineas Troutt, Herb Benedict and many other characters. A first-person POV is also provided for Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels. Stirred can be read as a standalone, but it will have been useful to have read Serial Killers Uncut and or Shaken before hand to gain a deeper understanding of the story/saga so far.

November 22, 2011 marked the e-book publication of “Stirred” via  Thomas & Mercer, the print division of Amazon Publishing. The paperback will be released on February 21, 2012. Cover art is provided by Jeroen ten Berge.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Stirred is a book for which both authors have been building up anticipation for their reading audience. The first collaboration between both these authors was “Serial” which was a download bonanza, and was the stepping stone in regards to the unification of their individual written worlds. Following in that direction, the authors soon expanded their collaborative efforts with Serial Uncut, Killers, Birds of Prey, etc…  All of these books along with newer material were combined into a single volume called Serial Killers Uncut, which was a huge success as well as loved by the fans. I especially liked the book and was waiting to see how it would end in Stirred as I also read Shaken the penultimate book in the Jack Daniels series. Before starting on with the review for Stirred, I’ll do a brief overview of Shaken before proceeding to the review.

  Shaken was released earlier this year and is the seventh book in the Jack Daniels series, what was especially special about this book was that it had qualities of a prequel and sequel bundled smoothly within. The story has three distinct threads featuring Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels in three different time periods of her life, the first time period is set twenty years ago, the second timeline being focused on events three years ago and lastly the third plot is set in present day. The focus of the story was on Mr. K, a killer of note and one who has refined his methods over decades. The three timelines showcase Jack struggles with him in these various time-periods.  The best part about the book is its ending and how it ties into this book, via the presence of Luther Kite who has set his sights on Jack as he sees her as his ultimate competitor via bonds of alpha predators.

 There’s also a tie-in to this book via several chapters from Serial Killers Uncut as Luther, Donaldson & Lucy return and are worse for the wear. The story begins with Jack who is now nearly eight and half months pregnant, this however hasn’t necessarily dulled her senses and she is now even more alert. Due to reasons revealed in the climax of Shaken, Jack’s friends and everyone around her is hyper alert for the presence of Luther Kite and his plans. The biggest problem is while Jack is about to deliver, she just plain refuses to accept her physiological condition thereby further endangering her own life as well as that of her baby. Luther on the other hand has been rather inspired by Dante and his most famous work and goes about his enigmatic ways to recreate the nine circles of hell in an abandoned are of the country as well targeting several other individuals to raise the stakes of his grand plan. Thus begins the final chapter in the worlds of Jack Daniels and Luther Kite, wherein only one predator can survive and for that to happen the other must be terminated as that is the only way to survive.

 This book while building upon the two previous titles does its absolute best to out thrill both the previous titles. This book is supposedly the end to not just one but two series of two different authors. Not only does it raise the stakes twice over but it also raises the question how effectively two authors can jointly write a saga and manage to make their numero uno character come out on top. As a fan of the Jack Daniels series, it was hard to imagine what fate would befall her however in the back of my mind, I knew J.A. Konrath planned to write a series about Jack’s grandson thereby ruining the surprise a bit but knowing the author’s deviousness and previous book plots, it could have very well turned out that Jack could still be dead and her baby might survive.

 This book’s strongest point is in its visceral twists and turns, Luther Kite strongly moulds the story alongside his devious plan that causes Jack and her friends but the readers as well to rack their brains as to what might be his ultimate aim.  This aspect along with the plot’s express pace is what makes this book an excellent thriller as well as one of the best serial killer titles. The authors have to be lauded for their ingenuity in coming up with all the twists for this tale and also for planning the ultimate twist in the climax of this story. I had raised a question in regards to a certain plot occurrence in Serial Killers Uncut, which was severely contradicted by events taking place in Shaken. I had raised this query in my review and also asked Blake Crouch for clarification, to which he had replied that everything will be revealed in Stirred and to my surprise it was. The contradiction plays perfectly into the massive twist planned by the authors and kudos to them for planning and executing it.  All in all this I couldn’t put down the book once I started it and as far as thrillers go, this is what every thriller aims for. As for as any negative points to this book, I couldn’t find many. Some readers might take umbrage with some of the twists as well as some of the things which occur might be near impossible for a nearly full term woman to do all of which Jack Daniels does.  But if we start questioning too much into these events, the thriller aspect might just fall apart completely.  I think that while such issues can be detrimental to the story they can’t be completely ignored. Take the book for what it is, a thriller book featuring serial killers of the most depraved kind and a cop who hunts them at the expense of her own life as well as that of her near & dear ones. It’s not a medical manual about what severely pregnant females can and cannot do.

CONCLUSION: A fitting finale to two series and with more action and intrigue packed in it to satisfy the most veteran readers. Stirred brings a strong, emotionally satisfying end to a saga of various characters with almost no room for ennui of any kind. Once again J.A. Konrath & Blake Crouch effectively show why they can be counted upon in the future to write plots mixing cerebral & visceral thrills and to thoroughly entertain their fans.

Fantasy Book Critic