I’ll make this quick, dudes. If you’re reading this, you seem to enjoy what I’ve got to say. Good for me.

Well, just to let you know, I’ve got a fiction story in in a book that was just published. The book is called Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 9 and is out right now.

All you’ve got to [...]]]> by Richard

I’ll make this quick, dudes. If you’re reading this, you seem to enjoy what I’ve got to say. Good for me.

Well, just to let you know, I’ve got a fiction story in in a book that was just published. The book is called Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 9 and is out right now.

All you’ve got to do is click on the book name and that’ll take you right where you can buy the story. It’s a nice, tender story about a father reconciling with his son so they can shoot the ashes of their father/grandfather into space inside a homemade rocket. You know, the sort of thing that happens every day.

If you do pick it up, let me know. I’d love to hear what you think.

This has been your shameless self-promotion of the day.

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All right dudes, now is the time in our trip to Washington, DC, where we don the cloak, slip the dagger up the hidden sheath under our shirt sleeves and get our spy on.

That’s right. We did a day at the International Spy Museum, the home to cloak and dagger, derring and do, and the [...]]]> by Richard

All right dudes, now is the time in our trip to Washington, DC, where we don the cloak, slip the dagger up the hidden sheath under our shirt sleeves and get our spy on.

That’s right. We did a day at the International Spy Museum, the home to cloak and dagger, derring and do, and the rectal tool kit. But more on that in a minute. The Spy Museum is in downtown Washington, DC, and offers an amazing experience for young dudes and older dudes and dudettes alike. Of course, the upshot of the entire experience is to glamorize the spying profession and make them seem like valiant defenders of our natural order, but, well, you take what you can get out of it.

When you enter the actual museum, the first thing you have to do is assume your cover and your legend. Your cover means the identity you assume when you’re on a mission that could turn hostile. The legend is the background that goes with your cover ID and makes it believable. Turns out I was made for this role. I played the part of Sandra Miller, a 62-year-old clothing shop owner in Australia. Hey, I passed all the tests so I must have been a good master of disguise. Either that or I made a convincing 62-year-old woman. Not sure I want to think about that one too long.

Anyway.

The museum takes you though a history of spying, basically to tell visitors the secret history behind the history of the world. There are sections where the museum sort of slays the myth of James Bond and Mata Hari. Sections where the younger dudes (and some older ones with mental age permanently set on child) can crawl through ductwork and spy on the other visitors. Sections that cover the revolutionary war, the civil war, WW I and WWI, up through the Cold War and into the information age with a section on cyberWar.

It made for fascinating reading. There were also whole sections on some of the cool tools spies use on their missions.

Which leads me to the rectal tool kit. This was a tiny (although not as tiny as I would have liked), cylindrical tube, stuffed to the gills with lock picks, saws, pens, all sorts of stuff designed to make it easier for a spy to escape and evade capture. And it was stored. . . Well, I’m guessing you can probably figure that out just by the name alone.

This was seriously a great time. Not only did all the little dudes, their mom and I all learn a whole bunch of interesting stuff, we had a marvelous time doing it. Definitely go get your spy on.

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I’m going to keep reviewing these until at least one of you drops by the comments section to let me know that you actually bought a collection of the best comic book being published today. And, no, that’s not damning with faint praise. I love The Incredible Hercules: The Mighty Thorcules. It pushes all my [...]]]> by Richard

I’m going to keep reviewing these until at least one of you drops by the comments section to let me know that you actually bought a collection of the best comic book being published today. And, no, that’s not damning with faint praise. I love The Incredible Hercules: The Mighty Thorcules. It pushes all my buttons. It’s got humor, mythology, humor, butt kicking and smart alekry up the wazzoo. In short, it’s incredible. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) Oh, yeah. And this collection has the best sound effect ever committed to paper. Take a look.

Let me explain. For reasons too complicated to go into right now, the Incredible Hercules has to pose as his rival, the Mighty Thor (hence the title) and, this being a superhero comic, the two get into a fight. Now, Thor isn’t used to fighting bare chested. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem. But, see, Hercules isn’t above fighting dirty to win and is willing to give out a purple nurple (notice the sound effect “nurp” is, in fact, purple).

Being a serialized comic book, this could be a bit confusing, if it weren’t for the fact that The Incredible Hercules has the most inventive and fun recap pages ever speeding people up to brought. Basically, Herc has to impersonate Thor to stop an invasion of Earth by some particularly dire elves. Things do not go as planned and Thor has to impersonate Herc to stop the whole thing. Once again, things do not go as planned.

Thor, normally one of the most noble fair-fightingest of the Marvel universe takes well to playing the part of Hercules. Perhaps too well. And, of course, notice the sound effect which, if sounded out, will sound suspiciously like nut crack. Hmm. Wonder where they got the idea for that sound effect? (To get a better look at this and the next picture, make with the clicky to enlargen.) [What? That's a word, right?]

In the series, Herc has been accompanied by a young genius named Amadeus Cho, the seventh-smartest person on the planet. And someone who has even worse impulse control than the notoriously scatterbrained Hercules. In alternating issues, this collection follows Cho as he tries to find out what really happened when his parents were killed.

He’s looking for the man who planted the bomb, not so much for revenge, but to find out if his sister is really alive and, if so, where she is. When Cho finally does find the mastermind behind his personal tragedy, he’s confronted by an aged, bitter and more than slightly insane version of himself and forced into a no-win, life-or-death situation. His solution to the dilemma is uniquely his own.

Because this is a comic book, I wanted to say a little bit about the art. Reilly Brown on the epic Thorcules arc is absolutely fantastic. I mean, you get the expressions you’ve been hoping for when someone describes the action. While Rodney Buchemi doesn’t quite reach those heights on the Amadeus Cho sections, it still does a nice job of telling the story.

In all, I’ll give this book five (5) dudes out of five. It’s, sorry again, incredible. Go out and buy it now. Read it and laugh.

Otherwise. . . Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be you.

Or your underwear.

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