It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve been able to buy a brand-new graphic novel, but with the way the pandemic is affecting comics shops all over the country, it seemed like a good time to get some via mail order. The first one I got was this new young adult comic, so let’s take a closer look at The Oracle Code by Marieke Nijkamp and Manuel Preitano.

Let’s meet Barbara Gordon, a normal teenage girl in Gotham City. She’s got a passion for computer coding and puzzles, and she loves taking on hacking challenges with her friend Benjamin. But one night, she gets a little too close to a robbery, and she gets shot and paralyzed.

A few weeks later, she’s learning how to get around in a wheelchair, and she’s been enrolled at the Arkham Center for Independence, a school and rehab facility for handicapped children. And she’s not at all happy about it. She doesn’t like the headmaster or the teachers or the therapists. She doesn’t like feeling like she’s been dumped here by her father. She doesn’t like the way her friend Benjamin won’t text her anymore.

She doesn’t like the weird noises she hears about the building either.

But she makes some new friends like Yeong and Issy, who want to help Babs adjust to the facility, and Jena, who tells her weird, creepy stories, and who has a brother at Arkham named Michael.

But the faculty say Michael doesn’t exist.

And then Jena disappears, too.

Can Barbara unravel the mysteries in Arkham? Can she learn to adjust to her new situation? Can she let go of her anger? Or is she going to end up as another mysterious disappearance?

Verdict: Thumbs up. What’s kinda amazing about this is this is a DC Comics graphic novel with minimal DC Comics content. Yeah, it’s got Babs Gordon and her dad, Commissioner Jim Gordon. It’s set in Gotham City, and in an old, creepy mansion called Arkham. But Batman doesn’t show up. Neither does Robin, Nightwing, Alfred, Batwoman, the Joker, or anyone else. And it’s really fantastic. You’ve got a detective tracking down a mystery — who says you need people in spandex, too?

And also, this definitely isn’t an all-ages book. It’s probably going to be too intense for a lot of younger readers. There’s a lot of tension and suspense and a number of downright scary moments to go along with the constant undercurrent of weirdness inside Arkham.

And Barbara’s rage at being in her wheelchair is intense, too. It’s not cartoonish anger — it’s subtle, but clear. She’s a very controlled person, but you can see her fury on almost every page. You can even see it on the cover. Look at that fist. That’s a fist that wants to punch the hell out of someone. And that tension, that quivering, teeth-gritting, white-hot, infuriated tension blazes through most of the book. It’s genuinely awe-inspiring to feel that blistering anger in the words and artwork of this comic.

Absolute kudos to Nijkamp for crafting this excellent story and the remarkable characters and to Preitano for the great art, sometimes realistic, and sometimes nightmarish and jagged and cartoony. This is a powerful and frightening and glorious book. Go pick it up.

Dang, I haven’t written anything for the blog yet? I’m irretrievably lazy.

I’ve got no reviews ready to go, no interesting comics news I’ve heard of, so I’ll drop back on current events.

Y’all as dang sick of this COVID-19 crap as I am? ‘Cause I’m dang sick of it.

My parents are in the high risk group. My siblings and I are all closer than we want to be to the high risk group. Most of my friends are in the high risk group. And even among folks who aren’t in the high risk group? It’s not like we haven’t seen plenty of young, healthy people getting sick and dying from this damned disease.

And the jackholes who rule us are champing at the bit to sacrifice us all for a few billionaires’ short-term economic gains.

And aside from that, I’ve got nothing particularly important to say — aside from wash your hands, keep up your social distancing, yell at your congressthings.

Okay, I’ll say this: Masks suck. Especially if you wear glasses. Because your breath fogs up your glasses almost immediately. It’s extremely irritating.

Here’s the only way I’ve found to make your glasses fog up less while you’re wearing a mask. Try breathing downward.

How do you breathe downwards? If you were ever in marching band in school, it’s how you play a flute. Angle your lips downwards and blow. Your glasses will still fog up a bit, but much less than they would if you were breathing normally.

So there’s my tiny bit of advice.

Everyone be careful out there. Please stay healthy.

So it’s almost time for the strangest Easter any of us have experienced in years, probably decades. Most of the churches — the sensible ones, the ones that value their parishioners and want them to survive to summer, you know, not the megachurches and prosperity gospel scammers — aren’t going to be meeting at all, even though Easter Sunday is normally the very busiest day of the church year. Most people are making do with watching church services online, or maybe attending a drive-in service where you don’t even get out of your car.

And there aren’t a lot of large-scale Easter egg hunts either. No civic group is willing to risk getting who-knows how many kids, parents, and grandparents exposed to the virus just for the sake of a little chocolate.

But we’ll celebrate our own nerdy way instead. Who wants to see the best Easter eggs in comicsdom? (And gamedom and TVdom and well, just geekery-dom in general)

Well, I think we can all agree on the worst Easter Egg — Egg Fu! When they brought him back in the Modern Era, he was an ugly, creepy, cracked-face monster, but he was definitely even worse back in the ’70s, when he was an incredibly racist stereotype stuck on an egg. I decided to use the modern crackly one, ’cause to hell with the racist one, right?

There’s this guy — Digitamamon from the old Digimon cartoon and game in the ’90s. I know almost nothing about him, but he was apparently one of the most powerful creatures on the program. Not too bad for an adorable little egg baby, is he?

The alien eggs and yolk-monsters that appeared in Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #5 back in the ’80s were pretty good, but they were just the warm-up villains for the nigh-omnipotent Bunny from Beyond.

But then there was Togepi from the Pokemon cartoons and games in the ’90s. I didn’t know much about Pokemon at all — aside from the clearly obvious fact that the best characters were Jigglypuff, Psyduck, and Team Rocket. But I always thought Togepi was the cutest character, waffling around in his decorated eggshell in Misty’s arms, waving his little baby arms in the air, burbling happily. Surely that means Togepi is geekery’s very best egg, right?

But wait, wait, what’s this?

Okay, any egg portrayed by Vincent Price himself — and providing plenty of theatrical ham to go along with the eggs — must take the prize. Congratulations to Egghead, and Happy Easter to the rest of us!

Of all the weird things that’ve happened in the last four years, few have been more unexpected and more welcome than the return of City of Heroes.

Y’all remember City of Heroes, right? My great video game obsession, the best dang superhero MMO ever, shut down too early back in 2012. I mourned the end of that game plenty, and I figured there would never be any computer game that’d catch my attention the way CoH did. But the years passed, and all of us superhero fans had to move on.

And then, all of a sudden, about a year back, City of Heroes returned. Some guys had cobbled together their own secret game server with all the old code, all working perfectly, and they’d been playing with a few friends for years. When word got out, everyone panicked, expecting NCSoft to hit the game with a lawsuit — but NCSoft has weirdly turned cool about the whole thing. No cease-and-desist notices, at least not yet. And so lots of people, including me, showed back up to the game and started playing new superheroes in Paragon City and supervillains in the Rogue Isles.

It’s been really, really great.

I still haven’t advanced very far — I’m a dedicated alt-oholic, making up new characters every time I come up with a half-decent character concept. Some of them are re-creations of characters I played in the old CoH, some of them are brand new. But it’s been fantastic to get to play this wonderful game again.

It’s especially exciting that the people behind this new server have put a number of new powersets and missions onto the live servers so everyone can play, as well as adding a few new graphical elements. During the early fall, all the trees in Atlas Park started changing to autumn colors, and during the Christmas event, all of Atlas Park was covered in snow and ice.

They’ve even got a whole new archetype — the Sentinel, which has some of the Blaster’s offensive power and some of the Scrapper’s defenses. In other words, it’s a ranged combat specialist that doesn’t die as often as Blasters usually do. That’s a big thing!

And because I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t showing off some of my new characters — and trust me, I could very easily make this a full-time City of Heroes characters blog — here are a small number of my favorites:

Blue Viper

I’ve never managed to gain any skill with any of the Archery powersets, but I was really happy with the costume design I came up with for this character. There ain’t many things more fun than just playing around in the costume creator.

Detective Imhotep

Sometimes, you come up with a bio for a character that’s too good not to share, so here’s Detective Imhotep’s:

I’ll never forget the day that leggy dame walked into my burial chamber.

“Arise, Imhotep!” she says, “Arise and serve me as my undead slave!”

So that’s what I did, ’cause sometimes a guy has to do what a guy has to do. Or at least he has to do what a dame tells him to do because she’s put runes on him and is controlling him with the Ankh of Nephren-ka.

But then one day, she got killed by the Circle of Thorns, and I knew I’d have to do what I could to find her killers. So I hung out my shingle as a private eye. You got the cash to hire me? Great, pal, I charge $25 a day, plus expenses. And bring me a few tana leaves, too. It’s been a long millennium.

Sir Loyne of Bieffe

It’s a swordsman with a cow’s head, created solely for that punny name. But his bio is pretty good, too.

And there arose in our time of most dire need… a CHAMPION! A titan who took no bull from anyone! A hero so rare — so medium rare! — that none could mooove him from the path of righteousness! Let thy hearts be comforted, innocent citizens of Paragon City! For among you walks… A COW.

(And that’s just three of ’em. You want me to post more of them? You have no idea how much I’d love to post more of them. If y’all beg me hard enough to post more video game characters, I’ll do it, and you should probably consider that a threat.)

Wanna get online and play City of Heroes again? There’s a pretty thorough guide right here on how to get on one of the larger servers/game clients, though there are several others out there. Hope to see you in-game!

I think it’s about time I reviewed an actual comic book, don’t you? Let’s take a look at Be Prepared.

This middle-grade graphic novel by Vera Brosgol was published a couple years ago, but I only discovered it after finding it in our local library a couple months back. I remembered reading and enjoying another Brosgol comic — the thoroughly creepy “Anya’s Ghost” — so I was definitely interested in this one.

Our story opens with a young Vera Brosgol, almost ten years old, and a bit of an outcast with her classmates. She’s a Russian immigrant, fairly poor, she doesn’t have the cool toys everyone else has, and she never gets to go to summer camp. But that changes when Vera learns of a camp just for Russian Orthodox kids. Her mother agrees to send Vera and her little brother Phil to the camp, and the grand adventures get underway!

But nope, turns out camp is absolutely awful in every possible way. Vera’s tentmates are a couple of older girls who treat her like crap. There are no proper toilets, just bug-filled latrines. There’s no candy allowed — but her mean-girl roommates have some and won’t share. Vera doesn’t know Russian as fluently as the other campers, which is a problem in a camp where everyone is required to speak Russian.

She even manages to bribe a few people into being her friends with gifts of her art and some candy she gets from her mother’s visit — but even that falls to pieces and makes her more unpopular than ever. And because kids can be cruel, she even helps humiliate other campers, and feels worse about it than anyone else.

She does have some triumphs. She makes a friend or two. She has a few great encounters with nature. She ends up enjoying at least some of her camping trip.

But for the most part — ugh, camping is terrible.

Verdict: Thumbs up, believe it or not! Sure, Vera spends most of the story miserable, but it’s still a wonderfully told story.

Brosgol’s artwork, cartooning skills, and storytelling are first-rate, and the way she blends comedy with drama really helps pull the narrative along. Yes, you occasionally have to go put the book down and think about flowers because OH GOD, VERA STEPPED IN IT AGAIN, SHE’S GONNA BE MISERABLE but you also come back over and over, partly because she does get great moments where she’s having fun, and partly because Brosgol manages to make it funny even when Vera is hating life.

And somewhat off-topic, but in both of the graphic novels I’ve read of Brosgol’s, the lead character is a Russian-born preteen or teenager who is lonely and kinda sad, and she makes friends, but the friends are actually awful people who cause her more suffering. So Ms. Brosgol, I really do hope your life is happier now, ’cause I love reading your books.

Anyway — “Be Prepared” by Vera Brosgol. Go pick it up. Because summer camp is legitimately terrible, but this comic is legitimately great.

Last Thursday was José Luis García-López’s birthday. I didn’t have time to write about him then, but it reminded me of something I’d really love to see happen someday soon.

Of course, longtime comics fans know García-López as a guy who’s provided art for almost every important DC Comics character over the years. But he’s most recognizable as the artist of the DC Comics Style Guide.

For years, it’s been used as a guide on how to draw the most classic versions of DC’s characters, but it’s also very well loved as an example of García-López’s beautiful and stylish artwork — and it’s not available for sale anywhere for the general public!

You can find examples of some of the work in the Style Guide on Facebook and elsewhere on the web, but honestly, that’s no substitute for being able to put artwork this fantastic on your bookshelf, on your coffee table, or even on your wall.

There’s been talk about publishing the full Style Guide as a book that anyone could buy — it seems like an easy sell, doesn’t it? A collection of art from DC’s glory days by one of its greatest artists — it’d be popular with fans, creators, pop culture collectors. Some of DC’s higher-ups have at least sometimes discussed the idea favorably, but nothing has come of it yet.

Let’s check out some more of García-López’s art, ‘kay?

Come on, DC, let’s get to it. Time to get the classic DC Comics Style Guide by José Luis García-López released for the general public. It’d be a great way to honor García-López and to let us fans drool over this brilliant artwork.

How ’bout a book review? How ’bout a recent sci-fi novel that bizarrely predicted part of our current situation? Let’s take a look at A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker.

Let’s get this out of the way first. From our current vantage point in the early spring of 2020, this is a shockingly prophetic book. It’s set at some point in our near-future, when a combination of terrorist attacks and a deadly plague epidemic convinces the government to ban all mass gatherings. Sporting events are no more. All schools are taught online. Shopping malls, conventions, parades, amusement parks, festivals, movie theaters, and music concerts dry up and blow away.

It is, I will tell you, deeply weird to be reading along in a book of science fiction, published about six months ago, and find incidents that closely mirror the evening news.

So what’s our plot about? We follow two main characters. There’s Luce Cannon, rock star on the rise — at least until concerts get banned nationwide. She has a little extra fame because she played the very last major concert before large gatherings got shut down. So years afterwards, still jonesing for the thrill of playing live music for an audience, she runs secret and illegal concerts out of her soundproofed home in Baltimore. And there’s Rosemary Laws, a younger woman who has spent most of her life sheltered and protected in the rural Midwest. She’s attended online schools, has few real-world friends, lives with her technophobic parents, and works as online technical support for the Superwally retail giant.

Rosemary gets a new job working for a company called StageHoloLive — they specialize in recording holographic music concerts for live or recorded replay on Hoodies, which are basically wearable virtual reality interfaces. Put the hood up, and you can go online, watch a concert or movie, and order your groceries (with convenient drone delivery). Expecting to go into tech support, she instead finds herself in what’s now called A&R — Artists and Repertoire — essentially finding new performers in whatever secret venues they may be playing, recruiting them, and getting them signed on as StageHolo artists, ready to gain worldwide fame and make the company a lot of money.

Rosemary has no idea how to find any secret concert venues, but gets a hint from a StageHolo artist that she should check out a particular club in Baltimore. So even though she’s been told her whole life that cities and large gatherings are full of disease and probably terrorists, Rosemary gathers up all her courage and travels to the big city. Once she finds Luce’s secret music club — and once she overcomes her fears of human contact — she starts making friends, including Luce and a bunch more people in interesting and very talented bands.

But StageHoloLive has some dark secrets that cause serious repercussions when exposed. Can Rosemary continue working for them? Can Luce find a way to keep making music? And is there a way for both of them to break the hold fear has over the country?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This was a really fun book — and not just because it was so weirdly prescient. I’d actually stopped reading somewhere around the middle — not because I wasn’t enjoying it, but because I had a different book I was reading that had hooked me into focusing on it. But once the urgency about the Coronavirus outbreak started making the news, once all the sports venues started closing, all the conventions cancelled, all the schools started shutting down, and everyone was told to distance themselves socially from friends, coworkers, and even family members — well, the bizarre accidental topicality of the book’s background brought me back and kept me glued to the page. And honestly, the topicality means it deserves a lot more readers. Hint, hint, guys.

I loved the characterization — Luce and Rosemary are the most obvious examples, but there are great character bits everywhere, from the members of Luce’s various bands to Rosemary’s parents to the corporate middle managers at SHL to the music fans willing to risk jail for the sake of new music. LGBT representation is everywhere — both Luce and Rosemary identify as queer, and they’re far from the only ones. And the fact that being gay is rarely remarked upon and never condemned is one of the few ways this future society is better than our current one.

The worldbuilding is also great. There’s a lot of stuff we’re shown without having everything specifically laid out in detail. Drones are everywhere, both for deliveries and for people wanting to see the world without leaving the house. Hoodies are rarely worn by older people but almost universal for the young — except for young people who’ve decided they can live a better life without the corporate surveillance and gatekeeping the Hoodies bring. Certain areas are completely closed to any vehicles but self-driving cars, and rural cops will stop any car with license plates from urban states out of simple racist paranoia. The characters barely remark upon these things because it’s part of the landscape of their lives, but it still manages to paint us a very clear vision of this corporate dystopia.

I was also impressed with how well the author incorporated many current issues into the story without absolutely overpowering the plot. The book addresses the question of whether concerns over public safety should trump personal freedom. It jabs a hard, angry finger at the entire concept of health care inequities. It ponders the fact that technology and social media have just as much power to oppress us as it has to liberate us.

And the story reserves its greatest venom for our system of predatory capitalism — not through diatribes and jeremiads, but just by recounting how outrageously stupid and greedy our corporate overlords can get. Is StageHoloLive over-the-top in its stupidity and evil? Maybe a little — but do you know how many restaurants make their employees come to work sick? If fiction’s villains are unrealistically vile, the real world has more than enough ridiculous evil, too.

But though it describes a short-sighted dystopia, this is still a hopeful book. Throughout the book, the power of music to bring people together, to heal and uplift, to create pure joy is celebrated. Musicians and audiences are always depicted as being willing to defy the law for the sake of live music, and more than one music fan works to turn their home or their business or even just a barn out in a back lot into a performance venue, even at the risk of losing their property to the cops. And in the end, music has the power to change lives and the system. Music — and hope — have great power.

My friends, this book is highly recommended and highly relevant, not just because it manages to predict our current situation, but because it also offers a little hope for a way out. Musicians, artists, creatives of all sorts, you will love this book more than you can believe. Go pick it up.

I’m really getting tired of this COVID-19 crap, okay? I’m tired of worrying about getting it. I’m tired of worrying that my family will get it. I’m tired of having everything shut down. I’m tired of no one being tested for the virus. I’m tired of our disease response and everything else run by the incompetent dumpgoblins in the White House.

Wash your hands, dammit! Wash your hands! Do you need a guide on how to do it?

Do you need superhero songs to help you remember?

Do you need Wonder Woman to help you remember?

Do you need Spider-Man to help you remember?

Do you need Ralph Hinkley to help you remember?

Do you need Flash Gordon to help you remember? Do you need Queen to help you remember?

Do you need the Spin Doctors to help you remember?

Do you need heavy metal to help you remember? Will you at least listen to Dethklok?

At long last, has it come to this? Do you need the stylish 1960s jazz stylings of Neal Hefti and the Dynamic Duo to help you remember?

Batman says to wash your hands! BATMAN SAYS TO WASH YOUR HANDS!

(And stay inside, if you’re able to. Don’t hoard needed supplies. Share with your neighbors if they need help. If you’re showing symptoms, call your doctor to get screened — don’t just rush to the hospital first. If your local comics shop or other local merchants have to close because of a lockdown, try to support them through mail or online ordering. And vote out the Republicans!)

People, I legit expected to start this blog back up and then spend weeks having absolutely nothing to write about but old graphic novels I dug out of storage, photos of Funko Pops, and all-caps reminders for everyone to wash their hands.

But nope, nope, turns out I get to write about an upcoming comic, and I have to tell you it sounds dumb as hell.

In this case, we’re talking about the just-announced “New Warriors” series, written by Daniel Kibblesmith and illustrated by Luciano Vecchio.

The concept doesn’t sound particularly bad. The members of the original New Warriors team, plus a few extra former teen heroes, band together to help train up a new generation of teenaged superheroes. You can find the same general formula in tons of X-Men comics, in Avengers Academy, in Teen Titans, and more.

The problem here is the new characters being introduced.

Trailblazer and B-Negative seem like the closest thing to halfway-decent characters and not-entirely-awful names. But Facetime is a crude caricature of an Extremely Online Memelord, just with higher-tech equipment.

And then there’s Snowflake and Safespace.

So they’re twins. Snowflake is nonbinary. They throw ice shurikens. Safespace is a jock. He creates protective shields. And those are actually, seriously the names they decided to give them.

I am absolutely no Comicsgater. Frankly, I want more non-white characters in comics. We need a heck of a lot more non-binary people, too, since there are almost none right now. But when you mix those names into the whole thing…

This isn’t representation. This is pandering. And it’s unusually clumsy pandering at that. People joke about how awkward the 1960s Teen Titans comics were, with Bob Haney trying — and failing hilariously — at creating hip teenager slang.

But this is worse, because it’s so cynical. These aren’t believable teenagers. They’re not Peter Parker or Miles Morales or Sam Alexander or Kamala Khan. These are caricatures, designed by conservatives to be derided by conservatives and bullies and trolls. These were characters created solely so Nazi fanboys on Twitter will have a new excuse to scream even more abuse and death threats at women and trans kids.

“Here’s what you want, woke teenagers,” sneers Marvel Comics, home of extreme Trump fanboy Ike Perlmutter, home of racist toerag C.B. “Akira Yoshida” Cebulski. “Here’s what you want so buy our shit, lololol, NPC loozers.”

I feel sorry for Kibblesmith and Vecchio, who have always seemed like clued-in creators. Either this is a truly epic screwup on their part, or it’s a mandate from editorial.

But either way, it’s a cruel and stupid mistake, and everyone involved should feel ashamed.

Okay, I’ve told you the blog is back, and I’ve told you what’s happened to me over the past few years. So I guess the next question is — what comes next? What does the future hold?

Well, as far as this blog goes — I’m not really sure.

I won’t be able to blog about comics as much as I used to. There are no comics shops in the town I live in now. I can pick up Archie digests at the supermarket, and the local library carries a small number of graphic novels. The closest comics shop is about an hour away — I’ve been in the store once, and it was genuinely the worst comics shop I’ve ever seen. The next closest stores are two hours away — and I deeply dislike the idea of driving for four hours there and back to pick up weekly comics.

Even if I had easy access to a comics shop, I probably wouldn’t buy many. I just don’t have the money for it nowadays. I’ll order a graphic novel occasionally, and if there are interesting comics available for free through Comixology Unlimited, I’ll read those, too.

But a few reviews of older graphic novels probably ain’t gonna cut it for gripping blog content, right?

I can do other reviews, too, of course. I already did quite a few book reviews before, so we’re all used to that. I could do movie, TV, and game reviews — but those wouldn’t happen often, ’cause I nearly never watch movies or TV or play games anymore.

I could rant about politics all the freakin’ time. But I’m not entirely sure y’all would want that, since it would mostly be me screaming about all the people I want to club with crowbars. Because I want to club so very many people with crowbars. I think about clubbing people with crowbars all the time. And while it might be fun for me, I suspect it’d get boring and creepy for the rest of y’all. I’ll try to keep the political rants to a minimum.

(At some point, I’m sure I’ll be posting about COVID-19. I got parents in the high-risk group. I’m nervous as heck.)

I can also post photos. I’ve taken a ton of pix for Instagram, and I sure don’t mind re-posting them here. Plus I could post some of my old poetry, old RPG characters, all kinds of random and quasi-cool stuff. Of course, those aren’t really typical blog fodder — and I hope to post a lot of that on my new personal website, when or if I get it up and running.

No matter what I end up writing about, however, I’ll probably be posting a lot less often than I used to. Not daily, not three times a week. I’m not even sure I want to say I’ll post every week. I have other projects I’m trying to work on these days — like I said, I want to start up a personal website, plus I’m writing a novel, and I try to post essays on other websites, too.

Above all else, I don’t want to get to the point where I absolutely despise writing for the blog, which was definitely the case by the time I quit blogging before. Hopefully, a less frequent blogging non-schedule will help stave off burnout.