![]() Hard Jack $9.95 Jack lives a normal life in a declining world only to be awakened after his death. Others of the dead convince him that he could have done better and may even save the world from the impending doom that claimed his life. Jack agrees to try and returns to the world armed with a few friends and a few tools of advanced design. He will work work within the parameters of his world to change it instead of producing a few miracles and then demanding compliance. His team amasses some wealth and turns their abilities toward finding the creator whom they know to be within the solar system. They know the creator is an artificial intelligence who has created us for a specific purpose. They plan to find it and convince it to utilize the race, as planned, before it destroys itself. They suspect the machine is benign but has no emotion and does not care if it succeeds in it's mission: it has been thwarted by race failures many times in the past. ![]() Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster $24.95 While walking down a street of a busy shopping area, my friend decided to enter a bookstore looking to purchase a certain bestseller. While I waited I perused around and accidentally found this book. I quickly grabbed it and scanned it and bought it on the spot. I'm glad my friend wanted to enter that store or else I wouldn't have found this book. "Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster" is a real find. Though spread a bit too thinly in its 150 pages (it could have easily been 100 pages instead) these reproductions of Shuster's fetish drawings are mesmerizing on so many levels. They seem to fill in a missing link about so many things: about the Superman phenomena; the whole comic book world; the crazy world of pulpy fiction; the morality of the era; the artist's intent; artists being able to dabble into their perversities, etc. Though some of the drawings might seem silly or crude today they, imo, perfectly encapsulate the intent of their existence: to elicit some fascination or erotic desire in the viewer. Surprisingly, the often perfectly drawn characters populating this tormented world are a good mix of female and male. The devil on page 98 is cool! That alone makes this collection of kinky drawings worth buying, even if the book itself is flawed. Many drawings are printed across two pages, unable to view the drawings correctly, without the annoying fold separating the art in two. Because a lot of the simple drawing fill up a single page, the book is longer than necessary and gives it a padded feel. And though the intro is interesting enough, I would have been happy with just the drawings themselves. The information about the Thrill Killers gang should have been a footnote, not several pages long. But these are minor quibbles. If you like pulp fiction art from the past this book is a must! |
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