Book Review: Kaiju: Lords of the Earth

Book Review: Kaiju: Lords of the Earth edited by Essel Pratt Kaiju (“strange beast”) is primarily a subgenre of the monster movie that became codified in Japan.  They’re mostly gigantic monsters that are nigh-unstoppable by conventional armaments, and run around destroying cities or fighting other giant monsters.  The seeds of the story type were sown… Continue reading Book Review: Kaiju: Lords of the Earth

Comic Book Review: Showcase Presents Men of War

Comic Book Review: Showcase Presents Men of War edited by Paul Levitz In 1977, African-American male leads in mainstream comic books were still countable on one hand (and don’t even ask about African-American women!)  But this also had the effect of making a comic with a black person on the front attention-getting.  And I suspect… Continue reading Comic Book Review: Showcase Presents Men of War

Comic Book Review: Corpse on the Imjin! and Other Stories by Harvey Kurtzman

Comic Book Review: Corpse on the Imjin! and Other Stories by Harvey Kurtzman edited by Gary Groth In later years, Harvey Kurtzman was better known  for his humor work, among other things being the first editor of MAD.  But while he worked at EC Comics in the early Fifties, Mr. Kurtzman was also known for some… Continue reading Comic Book Review: Corpse on the Imjin! and Other Stories by Harvey Kurtzman

Comic Book Review: Our Army at War

Comic Book Review: Our Army at War edited by Joey Cavalieri Back in the day, DC Comics had a fine line of war comics.  Primarily focused around World War Two, they paid tribute to the American military and the Greatest Generation.  Which is not to say that they were mindless patriotic propaganda.  The stories often depicted… Continue reading Comic Book Review: Our Army at War

Manga Review: Vinland Saga Book Seven

Manga Review: Vinland Saga Book Seven by Makoto Yukimura Quick recap and spoilers for the previous volume:  It is the age of Vikings.  Canute, King of Denmark and (by conquest) England, needs cash to fund his occupation army.  Therefore, he has engineered an incident to force the wealthy Ketil family into outlawry and seize their… Continue reading Manga Review: Vinland Saga Book Seven

Magazine Review: High Adventure #143: Planet Stories Issue

Magazine Review: High Adventure #143: Planet Stories Issue edited by John P. Gunnison Planet Stories was a science-fiction pulp magazine published between 1939 and 1955; it specialized in interplanetary action and daring-do.  (See my review of Planet Comics, its sister magazine that started publishing about the same time.  Covers tended to the formula of busty, scantily-clad… Continue reading Magazine Review: High Adventure #143: Planet Stories Issue

Book Review: Seeds for Change

Book Review: Seeds for Change by Marly Cornell This is a biography of Surinder “Suri” and Edda (nee Jeglinsky) Sehgal, the founders of the Sehgal Foundation.  That foundation helps rural villages in India achieve clean water, improved agriculture, better education and more honest government, as well as funding conservation and ecological efforts around the world.… Continue reading Book Review: Seeds for Change

Manga Review: Vinland Saga Book Six

Manga Review: Vinland Saga Book Six by Makoto Yukimura To recap if you haven’t read the previous reviews:  It is the age of Vikings.  After the murder of Thorfinn’s father, he dedicated his life to revenge on the man who did it.  That didn’t end as he had hoped, and Thorfinn is now a slave on… Continue reading Manga Review: Vinland Saga Book Six

Magazine Review: Water~Stone Review Volume 18: All We Cannot Alter

Magazine Review: Water~Stone Review Volume 18: All We Cannot Alter edited by Mary François Rockcastle. This is the latest volume of Hamline University’s annual literary magazine, which I picked up at the Rain Taxi Book Festival.  The subtitle comes from one of the poems in this issue, “Is This What Poets Do?” by Elizabeth Oness.… Continue reading Magazine Review: Water~Stone Review Volume 18: All We Cannot Alter

Book Review: In the South Dakota Country

Book Review: In the South Dakota Country by Effie Florence Putney This is a history of South Dakota written for grade school children in the 1920s, when the frontier days were still in living memory.  (Indeed, my mother was educated in a one-room schoolhouse some years later.)  This was before Mount Rushmore and Wall Drug,… Continue reading Book Review: In the South Dakota Country