Essential Man-Thing, Vol. 1 by Steve Gerber My rating: 4 of 5 stars Steve Gerber did not always have a very optimistic viewpoint on humanity, but he wrote honestly and believed in our best values. If you want to read a thoughtful- not to mention occasionally horrific- graphic novel, this collection of serialized stories does the job. IF there's one glaring weakness, it is the strength that makes the stories unique: the protagonist is essentially mindless. This means the other random characters are necessary to give dimension to the conflicts, and they change over time. Richard Rory, hippie Everyman, is as close to a constant as the title has, and he's an interesting ordinary guy, never transformed by the usual power fantasy plot twists, but often swept up by them. This volume features his origin by Gerry Conway and Gray Morrow, and with a stop off by Jim Starlin along the way, by FEAR #10 we get to Steve Gerber, with stories about pollution, free spirits, shady developers,...

Hmm, so fans are sending videos of their flaming copies of the new Cap #1 over Twitter to Nick Spenser, writer. Anything could come of a twist; I just happened to read a review stating why the issue wasn't particularly well made. The truly offensive idea here is that Captain America- co-created by a Jewish artist who joined the Army to fight the military oppression of the Nazis- would be a deep cover member of an organization founded, fictitiously,by Nazis (Hydra). Could I ever burn a comic book? I did. When I was a child, I burned a brittle old copy of FEAR #21 my Dad found tattered in the floorboard of a '56 Chevy. My imagination and Morbius the Living Vampire did not play well, lol- I eventually took my object of morbid fascination to the trash fire in the back yard. I'd never burn another comic book, though. Irony? It was written by Steve Gerber, a writer I now really love! In other synchronicities, the issue went on sale the week I was born- as did the issue o...

Marvel Comics Group- in its phase as a slightly anarchic bastion of experimentation and creativity- published the comics reprinted here from 1976 to 1978, Leading off this volume we have the second half of Steve Gerber's run. The Steve Gerber stories are SO creative and smartly-written, with Buscema's competent layouts and nice superhero art. The ideas are so weird and original! The inks vary a bit in their outcome, but overall I like the Buscema/ Janson combo. If anything, a bit more subtlety in the art would better compliment Steve's restless wit and canny observations. These are not standard sorts of stories on the whole- the villains are strange but thought-provoking. Plots are both bizarre and driven by commentary about the modern world and individual struggles for identity in sublime pop form. Steve Gerber continued writing in comics and cartoons; after he authored Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, Man-Thing, and the team-up adventures of the Fantastic Four...

Twin flames: it's a beautiful ideal. The struggles of over a dozen couples to reach one another might offer you some insight as to the type of love you hope to find. Do the people in these stories go on to realize this ideal? The book makes the point, overall, how powerful and mystical the attraction can be. There's a lot of work that nonetheless goes into a marriage/ intimate love relationship; that, too, is addressed by many of these stories. www.amazon.com/Sacred-Fire-Twin-flames-Katrina-Bowlin-MacKenzie/dp/1489560351 The way to build that joy is so personal. I would never say expect only smooth sailing, even when there's sheer poetry in your beginnings together. Yet, you very much must hold on to the magic in those details, and continuously try to re-center yourselves in a joint attraction to those ideals. It's not a conviction to everyone's taste- some people do not find daily romance as strongly in their world of more practical concerns and quotidian inte...