Everyday papal excuse

I missed putting up a review today. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

For the first time this year, I did not post a review on Friday. I apologize. The reason is quite jejune; I was doing some last-minute campaigning before the upcoming papal conclave . I'm not Catholic, but it’s a cushy job, and I figure nothing ventured, nothing gained; also, I've always been a fan of Cardinals (as long as they were from St. Louis).

The neo-Mok excuse

I try not to let personal problems interfere with this site,⁶⁵ but some of you may have noticed how long it has been since I posted a review. My excuses are:

• Last week I had a cold; that, and my other responsibilities, kept me from getting anything useful done. I do not suspect Filthy Flagellum had anything to do with the matter, but I cannot be sure.
• The week before, I was performing my annual service on anti-Claus duty a little early. One week a year is a small price to pay for defeating the forces of the Frozen North. Keep those engines running, and keep pumping out those kids — we’ll beat the ice yet!
• The rest of the time — from late July to Labor Day — I spent in quiet contemplation at my Mok farm. Well, I say “farm,” but I suppose a stickler, such as the Department of Agriculture, might call it a “secret private experimental facility.” Semantics, really.

I founded the farm in 1995, when I realized that — contrary to what the narrator in the Thundarr the Barbarian intro says — the Moks weren’t going to create themselves. So I dedicated the old family farm to the project, hired some of the sharpest scientific minds in the tri-county area, and began playing God. Or Steve Gerber, if you prefer.

We’ve come a long way in less than 20 years. Morphologically, our neo-Moks are quite similar to the TV models, with lustrous coats in autumnal colors and a yodeling growl that routinely inspires passersby and visitors to suggest, “Lords of Light, would put a muzzle on that abomination?” Their incisors are the correct size (about 6 inches long), and we were fortunate to find the genetic markers for the distinctive raccoon-like eye markings early in the process. We’ve never managed to breed the correct size — ours are a mere 5 feet tall and 125 pounds — but I prefer them this way. Larger Moks would be too hard to control.

Sentience is a tricky goal; Professor Jethro says, “The neo-Mok blindly responds to stimuli without reason, lashing out at its environment like a beast. It is nothing more than a machine that coverts organic materials into excrement.” Dr. Zebediah disagrees: “That’s no different from most of your family, Jethro, but I ain’t recommending putting them in cages … except your double cousin Obadiah, maybe.” That prompted Professor Jethro to challenge Dr. Zebediah to a duel; as the challenged party, Zebediah chose the peer-reviewed scientific paper as his weapon. One of them should have satisfaction in the matter in a generation or so.

I don’t know who to agree with — except with Zebediah about putting Obadiah in a circus, or perhaps a humane zoo. Have you seen that boy? I’d call him a freak, but that’s an insult to freaks.

Anyway. Got a little distracted there. Reviews should recommence Friday. Barring another squabble between Jethro and Zebediah.

Back on track

Sorry for the lack of a review last week; I was working on galley proofs for Comic Book Collections for Libraries and didn’t get a chance to post. However, for the rest of the month, I should be doing two reviews a week.

Next week: Batman! Batman! Batman!

A Thanksgiving Excuse

No review this week, in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday. I’m thankful I don’t have to do this; I do it because I want to. And I’m thankful for everyone who reads my reviews.

It passed me by, but by my count, G-Man, v. 2: Cape Crisis became my 200th collected-edition review a couple of weeks ago. This site has been going for about four years now; 50 reviews a year isn’t a bad rate, considering the long hiatus I had in 2007. (Lasting for most of 2007, except for a couple of weeks in February and less than a month between May and June.)

A Heretical Excuse

I missed putting up a review today. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

[FFFFRRRZZZZZZZTTTTTTT*squawk*]

We interrupt this entertainment (?) for the following …

Have you ever felt lazy? Ineffective? Does it seem like the whole world is burning down around you and there’s nothing you want to do about it?

And, worse yet, do you feel bad about it? If you’re like millions of Americans, the answers to these questions is “Yes.” But you don’t have to feel bad about it any longer!

Just convert to the new religion of Buchananism. Founded by James Buchanan, fifteenth president of the United States, Buchananism preaches a message of forgiveness and sloth. You don’t have to worry about two wars, a elephantine deficit, the BP oil spill, or the gradual lardassing of an entire nation — Buchananism tells us that if it’s really a problem, then someone else with more fervor and a much clearer moral compass will come along and clean it all up. [DISCLAIMER: May result in hundreds of thousands of your countrymen’s death and as many more maimed and wounded — but it won’t be your fault!]

Buchananism expects nothing tangible of you — just as you should expect nothing tangible from Buchananism. There is no tithing and no early morning worship services. You will never be asked to support causes that you don’t believe in. There are no controversies and no creepy, criminal, or immoral clergy — because there is no clergy! You will never see a conspicuous monument to Buchananism and wonder if the money used to build it would have been better spent on another cause because there will be no monuments, and Buchananism doesn’t believe in causes. There are no metaphysical dilemmas with Buchananism either — that’s something no other major religion can claim! Just sit back and keep an eye on your own stuff. That’s all that Buchananism asks! (Although if you send $39.99 to the address below, we can send you a Blu-Ray of Kansas bleeding, so you can experience the sacrament of fundament testing the way Buchananism founder James Buchanan intended.)

And if that isn’t enough, we personally guarantee that Buchananism is the only major world religion with a functional religio-bot avatar here on Earth. [DISCLAIMER: RoboZoroaster does not count because it hasn’t learned — or more likely doesn’t care — about the distinction between good and evil. All it does is drive around in that tricked out Mazda and perform stupid magic tricks …] The Robot James Buchanan, when not stalking Jimmy Carter or planning to ineffectually harass Mormons, is available to counsel you on how to either do nothing or do something so horribly badly that no one will ever ask you to do it again. [WARNING: Do not ask Robot James Buchanan to attend, entertain, or look at a child’s birthday party or a bar — ]

[*squawk*SSSSSSFFFFRRRZZZZZZZTTTTTTT]

Whoa. Where did that come from? …

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, always be careful of new religions, even if you think they are everything you believe in.

A Real Excuse, This Time

I missed putting up a review today. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

OK, this isn’t one of my normal excuses. It’s the real reason I haven’t been posting any reviews here.

I’ve been finishing up the book my wife and I are writing. It’s called Comic Book Collections for Libraries. It’s not a general interest title, but it tries to make the case to librarians that libraries should start graphic novel collections and should, in fact, make a solid part of that collection books that comic-book fans actually buy and read. The manuscript was due on April 30, and I managed to turn in the 60,000 words my wife and I had written over the past ten or eleven months on time.

The book will come out in December. It will have (some) pictures. I fear it will have some omission or misstatement that will leave me open to humiliation; I hope it will sell out and have to go back for more printings. Realistically, it will probably end up somewhere in between.

So. It was a big drain on my time and my brain; last Friday, I walked around in a daze. I’m getting back to normal, although this is what I’ve been reading lately:

It’s the Hulk. In this issue, he punches a giant space mouth. And it makes me happy.

Uninspired Excuse

I missed putting up a review today. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

No review this week. I’m traveling to a far off land, where the horses sweat wine and cavalry charges were very uncoordinated, where wizards lurk in the shadows and wizened gnomes do their feckless bidding, where rivers flow with chocolate icebergs through peppermint bank …

… I can’t continue that. It’s horrible, and frankly, I’m getting sickened just by writing it. I’m actually going to my grandmother’s 90th birthday party. Happy?

A Frozen Excuse II

I missed putting up reviews on Friday and Tuesday. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

Snowpocalypse. I warned you — I warned you all. But did you listen? Oh, no. We all expected Santa to launch his offensive near the day of his greatest power, and the snowstorm in mid-December was what we got. But everyone let their guard down, and what do we have now? Two straight snowstorms that smacked the capital when St. Valentine should be bestriding the land with his army of cherubim. Did he throw in with St. Nicholas in some fallen-saints-in-rebellion alliance? Or is he merely ineffectual? (I vote for the latter; there are only so many times you can be pierced with arrows before you start to lose your taste for the fight. Believe me, I know.)

So now Santa Claus has shut down our government with his fluffy white onslaught, like a terrorist or a Republican. We can only wait for his next offensive. I’ve been preparing, conferring with others who know the danger those rosy red cheeks will blow our way. Will you be ready?

Will you?

Belated and Early Excuse

I missed putting up a review last week, and I’ll probably miss this week as well. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

The only thing worse than Filthy Flagellum or the Evil Robot James Buchanan is when Filthy and his gang team up with ERJB. It’s a catastrophe, badly managed, and there’s always the potential of an apocalypse in Kansas. (But usually an entertaining apocalypse in Kansas — not like Jericho.)

Anyway, this time, Filthy and ERJB have teamed up to create a chronovirus, and lucky me — I got to be the guinea pig. They infected me last week, and there’s no telling how (or when) it will end. The good news is it appears to be a 24-hour virus. Unfortunately, the bad news is that those 24 hours could be any time in history. This is the 23rd hour, and it’s take me this long to land in an era with the Internet. So, if you are a researcher in experimental immunology or radical virology, please contact me before the virus sends me to 12th century Cairo or AD 1 in North America or Moscow in 1966 (again — so cold …). Time’s short, so it’s imperative —

Out of time. Ah, sh—

An Excuse with a Brain in a Jar

I missed putting up a review Friday. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

This is getting ridiculous.

I had this friend, Sebastian, who was a brain in a jar. I know what you’re thinking, but he was a pretty good guy despite his lack of a hole to pour alcohol into. He had this bad habit of incinerating his mind-controlled minions, though, for no other reason than he could. I mean, if he zapped them with that funky brain electricity that comes out of the tubes on top of the jar because, I don’t know, they were embezzling from him or being cruel to his cat or because he thought it was just funny, I could have taken that, but no … Sebastian did it just because he wanted to. Seemed like a good idea at the time, I suppose.

And then he’d go on and on about how brains in jars are superior life forms, how they don’t have to crap and they don’t waste water and they don’t have a large carbon footprint, and man, I just got fed up with it. So I told him brains in jars were not superior in every way.

He didn’t believe me.

So I said brains in jars couldn’t taste a steak or chocolate cake or smell a rose.

And he said he could, though his minions, experience everything us mobile units did — and experience it more often, because he could take in the sensory inputs from several units at one time.

And he didn’t have to sleep.

“Aha!” I shouted. “You never know dreams!”

I can experience my units’ dreams whenever I want — even the ones they forget. I could hear the smugness in his telepathic projections, and it was driving me nuts. I wanted nothing more to wipe the smirk off his … sulci, I guess.

“You can never have children,” I said.

Children are exercises in vanity that contribute in the Earth’s destruction — part of the human plague that is laying waste to the Earth.

“You want to lay waste the Earth,” I said. “Isn’t that a little hypocritical?”

Yeah. But I want to do it in an ecologically responsible way.

So I said, “You’ll never know the love of a woman.”

Again, minions — and what’s so important about the love being from a woman? Why not a man? Or a cow? Or a —

I cut him off before he could go in a irretrievably creepy direction. “You can’t feel the joy of athletic competition, or of physically accomplishing something that you knew was impossible but you did it anyway even though it took all your strength — ”

And when he broadcasted Minions into my brain, I reached over and poured a bottle of Budweiser into his brain jar.

And then —

Well, I can’t remember anything that’s happened from between then and finding myself in the middle of Spartanburg, S.C., yesterday, wearing a pair of pink stretch pants and a t-shirt that has a picture of the Confederate flag next to an equal sign and the word “HATE.” I seem to have quite a few more bruises and broken bones than I used to. I wonder if it had anything to do with our argument?

A Frozen Excuse

I missed putting up a review for three straight weeks. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

There is a stereotype that Canadians are kind, polite people. That’s true, by and large. There’s also a stereotype that there is a sinister core to Canada, something hostile to America and freedom. And there’s some truth to that.

Not that it’s their fault; they’ve been pushed into it, by a sinister splinter of the Parti Québécois that plots not only the downfall of their neighbors and of Americans but of mankind entire. They have been subverted — some say corrupted, literally reshaped in body and soul — by eldritch ice magics. This magic comes from the most dangerous force on the continent: Santa and his elves.

Santa, whose dangerous omnipotence and time-manipulating capabilities should chill you to his core. His elves, who can make anything — including hideous manikins, mockeries of men who mock our forms by wearing haberdashery — using only snow and spells.

But they can’t stop the North Pole from melting. No, we’ve got them there, taking their frosty lairs from underneath them. But scientists — those stupid, blabbermouth scientists — have alerted them to the danger. And they’re planning to spread south.

Whether those poor Péquistes are their mindless puppets or their motivated underlings, hoping to take their place by Santa’s throne when the conquest is complete, no one knows. All we know is that they must be fought. And who is fighting them on the tundra? While America and other NATO nations are distracted by wars on terror, it falls to the First Nations people to stand between us and subjugation by someone even fatter than Americans.

They don’t do it because they like us. Frankly, they don’t — well, they don’t like you. (They think you smell funny and have a weird accent. Sorry.) But they know someone has to make the sacrifice, and they are the ones it has fallen to. So I’ve been spending this month aiding these brave, brave people who get offended if you ask about their summer igloos. Every November, they make a push to shove back Santa and his minions before they gain their greatest strength, when Santa receives his month — or more — of worship. That is when I make my trek north, to aid their fight. But every year, the advance stalls earlier; every year, Santa’s minions gain more ground. Santa is winning; the only question is whether he will break out of containment before the ice cap melts or whether his frozen kingdom will first slip into the Arctic Sea one tepid summer. It’s a close race.

I work mainly in logistics and supply. I cannot hope to match these people’s skill and bravery. My work is just a drop in an ocean. You probably do more to aid us every day when you let your car idle while waiting for your kid to get out of school. Keep up the good work!

They don’t ask for your tribute. They don’t even ask for your thanks. But when you look to the cold December sky and don’t see a venison propelled missile of death inbound, they ask to be remembered.

And I think that’s the least we can do.

Non-fiction excuse

The reviews have been missing for the last few weeks, I realize.

I would like to come up with a fanciful explanation, but the real reason is a bit more prosaic: I am co-writing a book about how libraries can build their collections of graphic novels. This has been taking my time for the last few weeks — having a co-author is good in that it means you won’t slack off, but it also means when they expect material, you have to buckle down.

The deadlines will continue for a while. So, unfortunately, I’ve decided to cut back the reviews to one per week; the new reviews will go up on Fridays. (This week will be The Hood: Blood from Stones. The first winner of the Zuda contest, High Moon, will be the Halloween entry.) There may be other posts during the week. We’ll just see how things go.

So I’m sorry for the cutbacks in reviews. It’s hard times. Cutbacks are everywhere.

“Excuse” Is Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

I missed putting up a review today. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

There’s a race of creatures, tiny but malevolent, that live among us. They have been with humanity for centuries unmeasured, lurking in the shadows, so old they don’t have a name. They hate us for stealing the sunlight they believe should be theirs, for gouging and cutting the woods and the dells they loved, back when their hearts were capable of love. They sour the milk, they tie the cat’s tail into knots, the prick the baby so that he screams in the night. Slowly they grow bolder, so that murder can’t be far from becoming a reality …

The reason I don’t have a review up today has nothing to do with them, though. I’m just wondering if anyone has any tips on how to get a particularly nasty infestation of the things out of the garden. I’ve tried poisons, setting the neighbor’s dog on them, bars of soap, and urinating on the little buggers, but they won’t go away. Any help?

Freedom Excuse

It’s the Fourth of July; I’m celebrating my freedom. Here is a story about how I choose to do it:

You might think the Evil Robot James Buchanan would choose Independence Day as his special day to terrorize, given that his despicable brain patterns are based on a man who terrorized the country as an ineffectual president for four long years. But his brain-child has never tried to ruin the country’s birthday; the Evil Robot James Buchanan takes off all patriotic holidays as the excessive love of country sickens (and weakens) him. Also, no one has sent him a President’s Day card in a century, except for the director of Wheatland, his presidential home. And that’s just a pity card. He knows that — he’s not fooling himself, even if he does tell everyone President’s Day is just a made-up, Hallmark holiday. What really galls him is that Robot Lincoln gets tons of the cards; if only his progenitor had been able to end / stop the Civil War! Of course, if that had happened, Evil Robot James Buchanan would not be Evil Robot James Buchanan, and James Buchanan wouldn’t have been James Buchanan: he would have been competent.

I used to have a standing battle on July 4th against Red Tape, the Communist bureaucrat supervillain; it was a home-and-home thing, where he’d come over here on our Independence Day, and I’d head to Moscow or Riga or Astana or some damn place on May 1. (It’s still cold in most of country at that time of year, let me tell you; he could never figure out why I kept attacking the Crimea.) But since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the metamorphosis of Communist rulers into capitalist oligarchs, the matchup hasn’t had the same juice. We discontinued it after September 11; it just seemed tacky then. There’s some talk of him rebranding himself “Kleptocrat” or “Sticky Fingers,” a tool of the corrupt, but we both know that’s just talk. It’s sad, really. I have dozens of Yakov Smirnoff jokes I’m never going to get to use.

So the last few years I’ve been squaring off against a British brawler named John Bullsh*t, but frankly, he stinks. His fighting moves are crap, his quips are simply gutter level, and he’s a stain on the British national character. And he’s probably going to curl up in the bathroom and cry himself to sleep when he reads this. Boo-frickin’-hoo, John. Go buy yourself a stiff upper lip.

So I throw this open to my readers: do you know anyone who would make a good sparring partner for the Fourth of July?

I give you yet another excuse

I missed putting up a review; a review will be up Tuesday. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

Listen:

There’s unrest in the spirit world.

And when you combat unrest in the spirit world, you hope to battle or meet really cool spirits: Napoleon, Rasputin, Hannibal. World-changing guys. Or if you don’t know the names, at least you hope they’re really evil.

But no, this time the disturbance was centered on Kansas. The cause of it was William Burroughs, who was babbling some stream-of-consciousness crap about Allen Ginsburg and drugs and Interzone. Turns out, spells that try to recreate the fabric of the universe don’t work so well when you’re not picky about the order you say the words in. It does cause weird side effects, but mostly the spirits were unquiet because they were tired of listening to Burroughs.

The worst part is it’s not all that fun beating up on the ghost of a spindly Beat poet. He just keeps asking for more drugs.

(Although this time I did battle the ghost of Evil President James Buchanan. It wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped: he just stood there and did nothing, smugly watching Kansas bleed.)

Another excuse

I missed putting up a review; a special review will be up tomorrow. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

I didn’t write an excuse for not posting a review on Tuesday.

I don’t think it needs to be excused.

I was on my decennial trek to Mt. Belmont, where I went through several trials to purge my guilt and obligations. I sat in the rain for hours until a disembodied voice from the heavens told me I could leave. I toured the overpriced markets and bazaars and had to resist purchasing items. I studied. I meditated. I slept in strange beds, ate food I prepared myself, and learned to conquer my fears.

And then I returned home, and I’m already covered with guilt and obligations again. Which is a shame, but there will be a review up today. Probably.

More excuses

I missed putting up a review; a special review will be up tomorrow. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

I journeyed to Richmond, having realized the Evil Robot James Buchanan was behind a monstrous plot involving the Democratic Party, an Abba cover band, and an exciting line of fruit smoothies.

When I confronted the Evil Robot James Buchanan in his lair, he admitted he had set in motion a Byzantine plot to prolong race wars by resurrecting the ghosts of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. He said, “I’m not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I’d explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it more than a century ago.”

Filthy Flagellum and Evil Robot James Buchanan

I missed putting up a review; a review of Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle will be up tomorrow. You, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So you get a better excuse. Like this one:

The Filthy Flagellum gang, hired by the Evil Robot James Buchanan (whose thought patterns are based on the brain waves of the evil President James Buchanan), invaded my gastrointestinal tract. The gang resisted all manner of antibiotics, emetics, palliatives, placebos, and panaceas, so I was forced to send a tiny drone — of my own design, naturally — to battle the gang and its eponymous leader. Evidently, the drone was successful, as I feel much better, but I’ll have to wait for recovery of the drone to discover whether the drone was able to destroy Filthy Flagellum or merely cause him to retreat.

I … I’m not looking forward to drone recovery.

Excuse Me

I missed putting up a review on Friday. I’m sorry, and I’ve decided that you, the loyal reader, deserve a better excuse than “my personal life was crazy” or “I was crushed by the amount of work I had to do this week.” Frankly, you can get those kind of excuses anywhere, and we all know they’re lies, just excuses for being too lazy to put in the kind of quality work an unpaid “labor of love” deserves. So from now on, if I miss a Tuesday or Friday review, you’ll get a better excuse. Like this one:

The review was late this week because I was nearly devoured by hyperintelligent cheetahs. Now, you might think their speed is their greatest asset, but that’s not true; their cerebral dampening nets they use to trap their prey are murder. If they only had the opposable thumbs to actually throw the things or use their gauss rifles, I would have been in real trouble.

Columbus Day

No review today because of the sporadically observed holiday; reviews this week will be tomorrow (Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall) and Friday (Fables, v. 10: The Good Prince).