The MCU is wildly popular entertainment. It’s made to appeal to several age groups. I embrace much of this. I also have love for some of the young adult writing of years gone by, too. There is a downbeat, thoughtful quality in the comic series, Man-Thing. While the creature was created- a mix of strange magic and a failed formula meant to help soldiers adapt, a Super Soldier Serum-in 1971, the black and white version of the slime beast only briefly appeared in the magazine, Savage Tales, premiering in its first issue. When Man-thing was revived for a regular strip, ghouls of the vampire/wolf man/ mummy/swamp monster sort popular at Universal Pictures were in vogue. Marvel took cues from the success of smaller publishers like Warren. They took advantage of the relaxed Comics Code of Approval’s standards to bring in nightmarish creations, like Shelley’s Frankenstein. These appealed to some of the young kids, but they also opened more mature story telling possibilities. This...

Short and Sweet by Integr8d Soul Buy an original I.S. song! aT least, when you click on our stuff, you really get something we worked on, instead of some predator who lets you do all the work, lies, and takes your money. Who knows what Jennifer Mills did with our money to develop a site. Not very much. Only the last payment can still be disputed. Remember that, if you set up payments, you only get 180 days to dispute. Then, good luck fighting for what's yours. It wears honest people who really like to work on things, down.

Media manipulation, morally ambiguous celebrities, and white-hot death: when Brit Peter Milligan, who first followed Alan Moore on UK's Marvel Man, and later wrote challenging comics like Shade, The Changing Man, teamed up with day-glo retro indie artists Mike and Laura Allred to create a new X-Force title, they merged marketing cynicism into a story about a group of media-approved superheroes. I reviewed this on Goodreads, after devouring nearly the entire forty issue run in two days. Funny follow-up to Shakespearean plays, but obviously, I enjoyed it. If you would like to try a book like this but don't know X-Men continuity up to that point, all the better. It contains some of the tough decisions that mark that storied franchise, but X-Statix reverses the role from the persecuted to the celebrities- who are hated and feared in their own ways. With a super-rich mogul, not adverse to blackmail and murder plots, as the team's benefactor- or as he puts it, 'own...

You and your rock trio face sinister madness. What is Allautou, and whom does the demon possess? Stop her- risk possession- or run for your life? Nearly two hours' game play, and even more when you compare twenty-four different endings. You can reach them all with a Choice click. With dark humor, paths containing differing motivations for the characters, creepy secrets and hidden powers, danger with explanations reserved for those who survive, alone...it's you, Lue Cypher, and (in some threads, playable character) Kane Z, versus the curse.... This is the First Select Your Excitement interactive game from Integr8d Soul Productions Versus the Curse of Allautou! Welcome. You are the player character, a musician who's joined a band for a party gig. Things started off pretty sweet. Then, a decidedly anti-social vibe starts as a ripple... Versus the Curse of Allautou by Lyron1 The story? You're a bass guitar player, hired to play in a ...

I can still check to see if they need any replacements out at Anderson Farms, but I didn't follow up on the Terror in the Corn maze idea. That is, I was looking about a seasonal job there, and it sounded very fun. Now I know someone who works out there, Brooke, though she's in the hospitality department, not creeping up through the corn rows. I have to at least rule out the possiblity they really can't use me. It would've been a fun way to spend these past three weeks! I looked up some fun Drunk History: Salem Witch Trials (the Giles Corey curse), Vlad the not-so-tame-Impala, and let's not forget, 'Frankenstein is not the monster's name.' Whatever that one was with Paget Brewster- we agreed, super sexy lady. Criminal Minds: that's how Angela recognized her. And ...a story our pal the Savage Beast told us in capsule form, a couple of weeks ago, in full form with 'Carl Satan'-sober people call him Carl Sagan, author of Cosmos - and a...

Before I assemble my games and dig into finishing the fourth one, Sunstrike and Company: The Infinite Pyramid , I'm sitting down with one of three new short plays by David Kempf. His terrific book They Laughed At Me is one anyone who ever daydreams of stand up comedy life should not miss. Rehab is the first murder mystery tonight- these fifteen pages will fly! My next order of business: assembling our hand-drawn portraits to prepare a flyer for our tutoring. She says, call the whole shebang, LeoTech , after my interactive program, offered presently over Zoom. LeoTech? It's like... https://youtu.be/0WotZ5jKW8k Flyer might be like this, and I'll work on the FB ad by Thursday. Here's the game roster. You can play them free for now, but donations will be appreciated, always! this was our first game on Friday the 13th; we have three released at present, with another on the way by this weekend (Sunstrike). The Angel game is not for people sensitive to religious...

You either have no comic books, one or two you remember, or your life might've drifted wayward, and you read them for a while. God help ya, you probably have ten-at least- you remember. Now, I won't belabor the changes in pop culture. There's a reason my talk with a co-writer of many stories wriiten for the original Savage She-Hulk series is a touchstone for a new generation to explore. Dwight Zimmerman talked Defenders with us at the Dollar Bill Birthday Global Blockbuster, which you can find in our previous post. It's a lot of fun to get this material down- but don't call it History. I mean, unless you're cool thinking of it that way. It's the Disney Plus TV series that will have many more people talking! I mean, that's why I can mention The Kingpin, and you might have more than a picture of an oval crimelord with ham-sized fists. That's OK, too, but Vincent D'Onfrio's take on the character? Iconic. He might not have stolen any...

We had a virtual birthday party for David Anthony Kraft, anyway! He had too much cheer for the happiness and friendships to end. So! Peter Benno Gillis also wrote the title which has become signature DAK, The Defender, by Marvel Comics Group. Dwight Zimmerman here became friends in art class back in North Dakota. One day, he put in a year's notice and joined Dave the Dude in the Big Apple! Jim Salicrup? Only the founding Mad Genius Associate. The Spider-Editor of my youth, and uncredited writer of Spidey Super Stories. He's busy with the Papercutz imprints today. Jo Duffy? She makes it over the roped bridge, past the gorilla, and gives DAK a sterling tribute. She pioneered writing and editing at Marvel, wrote Power Man and Iron Fist, Catwoman , and something called Star Wars . She's quick to explain, he basically WAS his Dollar Bill supporting character, dropped into the midst of the Defenders via Valkyrie's attempt to attend Empire State University...camera...

When I encountered the Prowler on the cover of The Amazing Spider-Man #93, I didn't actually have the comic, but I did read the story. The gadgets, the Ditko quality, his timeliness, yet, his modus operandi would’ve been more popular if he’d come along earlier in the Marvel Age. Truthfully, he would’ve been a brilliant antihero for DC Comics! But, I want to note, while the Flash’s Rogues Gallery was pretty much all using gadgets, and gadgets were a very common source of ‘powers’ for Silver Age costumed characters, by 1968, when they created and prepared The Prowler for his three-part (cut to two) debut in Amazing Spider-Man, he might be the last really great gadget-based character to appear, excepting Mister Miracle. You might not think either of those are very great, and the trend was not in favor of ordinary humans utilizing gadgets to have crimefighting advantages. Batman pretty much hangs up his utility belt as we knew it (especially on TV), as Denny O’Neil’s stories f...

SIMUL8: WB’s Charmed Ones SIM 4 Life So, basically, what if the cast of WB’s Charmed, premiering in 1998, were a household of friends making a living, selling paintings? When you’re playing the simplest version of Sims 4, it’s not like you have the Modifications to remake that world, though our player, Dawn, has bought one package of three ‘mods’ and a couple of other small ones. So, after that, she could’ve created the characters again as Magic Users. She’s only been at her latest game hobby basically here in April- it was Minecraft last month. She hasn’t tried Fortnight, where I imagine you could also build characters with similar powers. But it’s not quite the powers that make characters enjoyable, though when you’re a little kid, or just one at heart, imaginative appeal goes a long ways. She tried to recapture the looks of the actors, though she’s mused you don’t get to radically change heights. That’s too bad, because we’d already have our own Guillermo, a Sim of late night ...

So, Mad Scientist. After attending a couple of local karate classes at the end of 2018, I’d pictured a nebbish incel fellow- a stand-in for my own position, but someone more locked in his own little world- to characterize the Mad Scientist idea in my novel, Chrysalis of the Butterfly. Yet, when it came time this week to try out characters as Sims, he became a She. She, however, did not gain a name, other than, perhaps, Regina, in passing. Her Sim is named first name Mad, last name, Scientist. I’ve been developing Chrysalis of the Butterfly over five years, now. I thought I could put off working on it until I had reviewed and created an epilogue for I’d Go Anywhere With You, completed a short story called “Faded Einstein,” and written an epilogue, if not further chapters, on the book I’d called Great Job! You Get A Star! I’m thinking a bit of calling it The Five Star Kid. I thought, get music ready to play for people this summer and fall. Get those two previous books prep...

My original first posts were removed due to my own Copyright concerns at the time. When I began publishing here on April 4th, 2009, I had this story, and this photograph from the cosmos, and joy that I was allowing myself the decadent luxury of writing my own Fantastic Four story, while opening the door to my own Integr8d Soul fiction concepts. I felt compelled to try to re-capture something of the wonder I felt as a child, combined with soul-searching stories turned into adventures. Now, I realize those stories didn't have but a small slice of relatable every day stuff, and were more or less homages to the melodramatic comics style. When I included Escondido as my setting for "The Vanishing Wave"- an idea of mine long predating the Marvel Universe, which had only seen 'Iron Man' by 2009, but long after Jim Starlin's original Thanos battles in 1991 that led to people being snapped very temporarily out of existence- I really wanted to reclaim the feeling I...