January 20

Review: She-Hulk, Volume 1: Single Green Female

Apparently She Hulk is way to much of a rock star for anyone to handle. Her success, invulnerability and Tony Stark-like fame has made her a very difficult to tolerate Avenger. So difficult that she is fired from her day job, kicked out of the Avengers manor and firmly encouraged to re-evaluate her play girl, partying, larger than life ways. It seems Jennifer has fully embraced being the big, green, powerful, indestructible Hulk and turned away from being a brilliant, but small, delicate, weak and vulnerable human.

Until she gets a new job working for a very prestigious law firm who wants to hire Jennifer, not She-Hulk. Dismayed, but desperate, she takes it, only to discover she’s going to work as part of a special super-human law division, blazing new trails in the law field.

There are a ton of cameos, quite a bit of Marvel-verse meta silliness (apparently Marvel comics are historical documents in this universe, so She-Hulk references her own past issues, as well as others a number of times), and, eventually, some heart to these stories.

With the growing popularity of superhero media there’s been a rise in commentary internet articles on the downsides or hidden truths of living in the Marvel-verse. This volume of She-Hulk is a dark side expose all of its own, when lawyers get involved with defending, or prosecuting, or just trying to make sense of the chaos in this world. If reading this fun, but off-the-wall (I mean, Spiderman sues J.J. Jameson for defamation in one case, then Peter Parker gets named as a co-defendant for “staging” pictures of Spiderman. That’s the level of meta we’re talking about.) volume of superhero tales doesn’t make you glad that you don’t live in the Marvel-vese, nothing will.

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January 13

Review: Guardians Team-Up #10

You are going to get exactly what you think with this one. Deadpool peddling a bike (that is apparently owned by Zelda) with an angry gun-firing Rocket Racoon in the basket sprawls over the cover and inside Rocket and Deadpool kill evil aliens and make smarmy jokes for 32 amusing pages.

There is some continunity, and a cameo too. And pseudo-cameos by a Minion and Beast. (Maybe. Or maybe I was just imagining things.) Did I mention fun and snarky already?

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September 17

Book Recommendation: Body Parts by Adrianna Dane

Full Disclosure: I read this book as a judge for the 2008 EPPIE Awards. As such this won’t be a traditional review. However, even a year later I haven’t been able to get this book out of my mind. It’s because of a recent flare up of the GLBTQ inclusion debate that I feel the need to “go public”, as it were, and recommend this book.

Body Parts by Adrianna Dane is an erotic, gender-fluid re-telling of Frankenstein. It is paranormal horror and it features explicit sex between male and female and male and male.

Body Parts is about Athan, a creature created from a marriage of science and magic. After the tragic death of his creators Athan has to live alone with his secrets, taking lovers for the energy they bring to him that keeps him alive.

Body Parts is a love story, but with the exact same strength it is a story of corruption and human failure as well as being a re-telling of Frankenstein. On the romance side it deals with attraction and raw sexuality that doesn’t have a clear target. Athan is bisexual, seeking out the best providers of energy, and furthermore he truly enjoys the act of sex no matter which gender he is with. He has the same passion for men as he does for women.

I think it’s important to note here that out of all the GLBTQ books I read for the EPPIES (which was not many, so please do not assume this is an accurate representation of the available fiction out there) Body Parts is the ONLY one that did not involve 1) A borderline or completely abusive m/m relationship or 2) a straight man falling for a gay/bisexual man (which almost always feels stodgy and forced to me as a reader). Dane’s handling of Athan’s sexuality and sex itself is masterful, never forced, and completely organic.

Likewise the horror aspects are just as well handled, making the erotic portions no more important than the themes of human jealous and self-sabotage.

As Athan develops feelings for Korrie, the scientist studying the research materials and journals of the scientists who created Athan, and Korrie becomes enamored of him as well, Korrie’s selfish, jealous coworker plots to tear everything of value from both of them with no idea what exactly that entails.

Subtle and manipulating, the story comes together beautifully at the end, making an even bigger point than the themes of sex, sexuality, sexual identity, human nature and science threaded before it. I can’t say too much without ruining a very good execution, but I strongly feel that this book has great value as part of GLBTQ fiction and horror fiction.

Dane can write the pants off quite a few horror writers I’ve read, despite that Body Parts and Dane likely aren’t even known by the horror community. Body Parts is in my top three GLBTQ works that I feel interested readers should read and is available in ebook form from Loose ID.

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