December 2010 - Super Powered Fiction

Super-Powered Comics: Silverfin

By Nick Ahlhelm | December 30, 2010 - 2:58 pm | Comics

I’ll start out with the obvious: I really didn’t plan to review the first Young James Bond graphic novel here. Bond isn’t quite pulp and normally wouldn’t really fit in to the definition of super-hero. But just when I was going to give up on it as a solid, beautifully drawn story without an inch of super-powered storytelling, the unexpected happens.

See, the tale basically takes a teenage, pre-World War II Bond and puts him up against an American industrialist with a mad scheme to create super-soldiers. This has resulted in a series of murders and mutations around the Lochs of Scotland, specifically Loch Silverfin. Over the course of checking out the situation, Bond is captured by the villain. Up to this point the experiments with the full-fledged formula only resulted in abominations, but when it’s tested on young Bond, it works. Bond uses his new abilities to escape and ultimately beat the villain.

So, in every way it seems that James Bond is in fact a super-spy.
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Wrestling Wednesdays: Looking back at TNA 2010!

By Nick Ahlhelm | December 29, 2010 - 8:49 am | MHP Network

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The stars of TNA on the Bound For Glory poster

For good or ill, the major storylines all converged at Bound For Glory.

Last week I took a look back at WWE in 2010 but this week I go in to the far more complicated booking (and insane ups and downs) of TNA in 2010. I am positive I don’t even come close to really getting every ounce of what early 2010 TNA was, but all in all I think it’s a pretty good review.

Head on over to the Examiner to read the full article.

Metahuman Press closes out 2011 with two new tales!

By Nick Ahlhelm | December 29, 2010 - 8:43 am | Metahuman Press

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As we close out 2011, MHP finishes up one story while giving a prologue to another!

David Kachel’s epic Diary of a Genius concludes with chapter five. We hope to see more from David very very soon!

My own Timeline closes out the year with a tale taking several western heroes, some original, some taken from Golden Age comics, and some very real, and combining them in a prequel to the upcoming Suicide Blonde, which debuts next month!

Pulp Empire Volume 2 contributor Ken Janssens profiled!

By Nick Ahlhelm | December 28, 2010 - 6:26 pm | Pulp Empire

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Over at the excellent blog All Pulp you can find an interview with Ken Janssens. Check it out and give it a read (and maybe pick up a copy of volume two to check out his story “Killing Time”).

Super-Powered Prose: Virals by Kathy Reichs

By Nick Ahlhelm | December 28, 2010 - 7:58 am | Prose

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Super-powered fiction in prose form has come along way from Weird Heroes and Wild Cards first made the idea work in the seventies and eighties. Many writers have tried their hands at characters with super powers since, but it took even me by surprise when one of those names was Kathy Reichs.

If you do not recognize the name, you’ve probably not read too many forensic mysteries. Ms. Reichs has a successful series of books focused around the character of Temperance Brennan. Tempe sometimes goes by the nickname of Bones, or in the case of the successful television show based on the series, always goes by the name Bones. I have never really been a fan of the series in either form, but when I heard the concept for her new young adult book I knew I needed to give it a read.

Virals is the story of Brennan’s grand niece (she’s older in the books by a bit) Tory, a young girl living on a small island off the coast of Reichs’s home city of Charlotte. Tory only recently moved to the city following her mother’s death, but quickly finds herself embroiled in a mystery.

The story takes two interconnected paths as she finds a dog tag on the island where her father works for a scientific facility. It is while she investigates the tags that she discovers and rescues a captured dog in a remote lab of the facility. That rescue will alter Tory and her three friends Hi, Shelton, and Ben forever.
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