I still have images of Superman comic books stuck in my head from when I was growing up in the 1960s. They were fantastic, a mixture of superhero and science fiction, two of my greatest loves ever at that age. I loved the stories of Lex Luthor (in his traditional gray prison uniform) teaming up with Brainiac (in a pink shirt and shorty-shorts). One of the most prevalent of those images was of Superman shrunken down and trapped in a birdcage.

Ahh, those were the days. But as I grew older, Superman grew more serious and so did his problems. Sadly, so did I. I realized there were worse things for Superman – for anyone —than being trapped in a birdcage. However, I still loved those stories. They were part of my childhood and I won’t feel badly for hanging onto them.

Especially since Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely are revisiting Superman with the same love and tenderness I remember from those comic issues. Those plots were innocent and fun in a way that comics haven’t been in a long time. Now, Morrison and Quitely are doing the same thing in the pages of All-Star Superman.

The series exists outside of the traditional Superman universe. From what I’ve seen of this first graphic novel, anything goes. Clark Kent is still something of a boob. Lois Lane is sharp and still doesn’t have a clue that Clark is Superman (until he tells her). Jimmy Olsen is perky and sharp and a geek all at the same time. Luthor is violently opposed to Superman breathing the same air as him, and is brilliantly carrying out multi-layered plans to bring that to an end.

And Superman is quietly heroic throughout it all.

The graphic novel gathers the first six issues of the series. Some of the stories function as stand-alone tales but they all have continuity threads. And they’re all just good fun. This is a Superman book I’m gleefully handing off to my ten-year-old because I know he’s going to have a blast with it too.

The first story shows Morrison’s deviousness. Luthor has a plan to destroy Superman by overexposing him to the sun’s rays. During the initial set-up of the story, Morrison quickly and quietly introduces his readers to the familiar cast of characters, letting everyone know just how he’s going to spin the relationships and at what point in their lives we are. The sequence of Clark entering the newsroom on the double is a long montage that expertly showcases Quitely’s artwork. I loved it.

The first issue leaves us hanging regarding Superman’s fate after the overexposure to the sun. But the second issue is a fan’s dream come true: Lois Lane is given super-powers for a day and becomes Superwoman the way we all imagined she might back in the 1960s. Not only that, but Quitely draws her smoking hot! The two-page spread of the Fortress of Solitude is awesome.

I also loved the calm, every-day way Superman discussed Batman and Robin, and the casual way the Superman robots got introduced. They were a staple of the 1960s as well. The secret of Superman’s key to the Fortress was terrific, and the stuff of science fiction. The way Lois’s paranoia about Superman backfiring was terrific plotting. Instead of being suspicious of Clark being Superman, she starts wondering if Superman has gone insane due to his exposure.

The third issue where Lois tries to make Superman jealous of Atlas and Samson is a hoot. So is the ending where Superman finally gets tired of their constant haranguing.

Issue four concentrates on Jimmy Olsen, and it’s the Jimmy I grew up with. The one that’s still young and naïve, and always in the middle of trouble Superman has to get him out of. This one also contains some of Morrison’s trademark outside-the-box SF.

Lex Luthor takes center stage in issue five. The team-up with Clark Kent was absolutely fantastic. Can’t believe no one ever tried that before. Of course, there’s probably some credit due to the Smallville television series there. “You write like a poet but you move like a landslide,” is a quote from Luthor about Clark Kent that I’ll probably never forget. The resulting adventure as they run from the Parasite (and Clark repeatedly saves Lex) is a series of neat twists. There’s even a cameo of Beppo the Supermonkey that’s hilarious.

Issue 6 hosts a lot of surprises and nostalgia. We get to see Ma and Pa Kent, watch Superman play with Krypto the Super-Dog, and even hang out in the Smallville malt shop with Lana Lang. Seeing the Supermen of the futures was a trip down memory lane as well. You just know Morrison is having fun with the cornucopia he’s laying down. But his is one of the saddest tales Morrison weaves, and it sneaks up on you in the end.

I can’t name a graphic novel I’ve read yet that seems to span the decades and the generations Morrison’s loving tribute does in All-Star Superman. For long-time fans that haven’t read comics in a great many years, this one is a perfect return. Pick this one up and prepare to enjoy the feast.

Greg Pak, the latest writer on The Incredible Hulk and now The Incredible Hercules, evidently ushered in a new period in the life of Bruce Banner, the Hulk with the Planet Hulk storyline. I wasn’t aware of this till my son got me to buy him an issue, then the graphic novel. I’ll be reading that soon because Pak has definitely made me curious.

Evidently in the Planet Hulk storyline, the Hulk was shot into space as a means to get rid of him. He landed on a planet called Sakaar. As it turns out, Sakaar is filled with warring races and violence. Hulk is enslaved, becomes a gladiator, and eventually king. He takes a woman named Caiera as his bride. Just as Hulk’s life seems on an upward turn, the vessel that brought him to the planet explodes and kills most of the populace. Caiera dies and the Hulk goes back to Earth on a killer rampage.

However, as it turns out, the story on Sakaar doesn’t end there. The people who live on that planet are incredibly hard to kill. Caiera manages to give birth to her son even as he lies dying. As one of the Shadow people, the child can run within minutes of being born. He can also survive the lava and other natural disasters that befall the planet. Given that he was half-Hulk, I could believe that.

The story moves quickly through the boy’s life. He grows up in days and becomes a killing machine, a predator that hunts what he needs. Caiera remains to deliver a voice-over for the book, and that insight feels real and natural. Her words are easy to read and create an instant bond with the boy.

I love the violence of the planet as well. It feels like an old Edgar Rice Burroughs novel mixed with Robert E. Howard. An alien Conan the Barbarian alone against the world. I flipped through the pages as anxiously as my son had, waiting for the story to unfold in the brightly colored panels filled with explosions of action. Within minutes, the boy’s plight had won me over.

Somehow Skaar becomes a leader of a bunch of giant ant-like things. I’m sure that bond will be explained later. The full-page splash of them battling a giant serpent thing is intense. Ron Garney’s artwork fits the series to a T.

Pak doesn’t slow the pacing down as he moves the time to a month later and a killing raid against people too weak to protect themselves or get away. Those deaths obviously leave a mark on Skaar, but we don’t know what it means yet.

Then, a year later, the action unfolds again as another group of raiders attacks a community. This group is led by Axeman Bone, who’s destined to become a chief villain in the series judging from the story time he’s given. Axeman Bone kills a young man who must be related to Caiera because he has the same flesh-to-stone power she had. Pak had me at that because at first I thought that was Skaar.

We don’t see Skaar again till the end splash page. By this time he’s fully grown and in a savage berserker rage. I don’t know how intelligent Skaar is because he never speaks in this issue, but there’s plenty of action.

I was definitely intrigued with this first issue. My son and I are going to pick them up for a time and see what develops. Pak’s sense of pacing and Forney’s pencils are worth the cover price investment, and I’m really curious about where they’re going to take the Hulk’s son. Hopefully they won’t take him off-planet for a while. There seem to be plenty of adventures waiting there, and I’d love to see Conan-style adventures for a time.

With the movie out this summer, plenty of attention is being paid to the Hulk. There’s even a new, mysterious red Hulk on the loose in the new volume of the series, and Dr. Bruce Banner is trying to help figure out what that means. I’ve also heard the Hulk is supposed to have a daughter by an old character named Thundra. That story is set in the future.

Peter David was the first writer in a long time to really build an audience for the Hulk, but Greg Pak’s take on the character has obviously done the same. Now we also have Skaar, Son of Hulk to follow, and I’m down for the ride to see what we’re going to be offered.

Ky gets kicked out of the military academy for helping a fellow cadet that ultimately betrayed her trust and good nature at the beginning of the novel. One of the most endearing aspects about Ky in the beginning is how naïve she is. She does things for the right reasons and sometimes ends up totally bulldozed in spite of her good intentions. I love that quality about her because it makes her vulnerable and fallible.

After she gets released from the academy, her father – a powerful shipping magnate and head of the Vatta corporation – assigns her command of a derelict ship meant for a one-way flight. I enjoyed meeting Ky’s family, even if it did tend to bog the story down a bit. That familiarity with those family members is important for the rest of the series. They keep playing parts in Ky’s life as well as the twists and turns of the stories.

At the helm of the ship, Ky is nervous and somewhat resentful. She’s in command of a tub and doesn’t really have any power over her course. While Ky is dealing with this, we’re treated to an overview of the ship, the crew, and how both work together. Moon has invested a lot in her fictional part of the galaxy and she enjoys showing off. Thankfully, the details are fascinating and will consume the thoughts of imaginative readers.

It doesn’t take Ky long to get into trouble, though, and therein lies the beginning of the adventure she ultimately undertakes. Upon her arrival at the Belinta colony, she discovers that the locals desperately need a shipment of tractors that were promised but never delivered. Sensing an opportunity for profit, Ky undertakes the contract and sets the wheels in motion for her own independence.

I found the negotiations Ky has to undergo fairly interesting because I’m an amateur historian and it’s fascinating to see that no matter where the human race has been or goes, much of what it does will center around the art of business. Moon brings that home in these books.

With a newly inked contract in hand, Ky makes for the Sabine system to buy tractors and hopefully see about getting enough of a profit to re-outfit the ship to make it spaceworthy. Instead, she ends up getting involved in a planetary insurrection and caught in a deadly crossfire.

I loved the scenes with the Mackensee mercenaries and the way they did their jobs. The praise was heaped a little heavily on Ky, but it wasn’t too sugary sweet. I was surprised when she was nearly killed at one point, then amazed again at her audacity to negotiate a new contract with the mercenaries.

Assigned to ferry out other ship captains that have lost their ships, Ky ends up having to deal with a mutiny that has deadly consequences. I liked the way Ky prepared herself and her crew for the eventuality, and the lengths to which she was prepared to go to keep her ship. She reminded me a lot of A&E’s Horatio Hornblower series. Moon’s not quite in John Ringo territory, but she’s definitely in good company with the military background.

Military/science fiction readers looking for something fun and light to read over the summer will definitely enjoy Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War series. All five books are out now, so you won’t have to wait on any of them.

D. C. Fontana, the author of several of the best original Star Trek scripts ever written, returns to kick off the stories of the fourth year of the Enterprise’s five-year mission to boldly go where no man has gone before. Only three years were revealed in the television series, and subsequent adventures were only hinted at in the moves set well after that voyage had ended.

This initial series is actually a sequel to Fontana’s “The Enterprise Incident” and the capture of the Romulan cloaking device. That was the episode where McCoy equipped Kirk with the pointed ears that make him look so much like Spook.

Although the television series didn’t deal with the captured technology from that point on, Fontana chooses to make it a focal point in this first arc of new adventures. And that’s a great place to start for Trek fans: answering old questions!

In fact, Fontana and co-writer Derek Chester do just about everything right in this first issue. The story starts with Kirk and Spock together in a shuttlecraft trying to find the Enterprise while she’s employing the new cloaking technology. That relationship was the heart and soul of the series, but I do have to wonder – again – why the captain AND his XO were off the ship at the same time. But I digress. That particular die was already set a long time ago.

The conversation between Spock and Kirk is fantastic. Spock is pontificating on the differences between humans and Vulcans – again – and Kirk enjoys needling him. The brief interchange of dialogue quickly and efficiently brings the reader up to date with what’s going on. I love the effortless ease the writers have in putting the story onto the page.

Purcell’s art explodes with color. The space scene showing the shuttle on page 4 is awesome, and it’s bound to leave some old-time fans seriously jacked about seeing that dated hardware in action.

I also enjoyed seeing the environmental suits again. The crew very rarely used them, though I do recall one of the episodes where Kirk was trapped in limbo in one (which echoes some of the plotting of this comics arc to a degree) as well as another episode where Kirk was just out of phase with everyone. Still, this story just FEELS like ST:TOS so much that I felt like a kid again. Of course, they’re out of the suits in nothing flat.

Another aspect I really am enjoying is the inclusion of other races that aren’t quite human in the crew. I’m looking forward to seeing what other treats are in store now that the budget restraints have been lifted.

And we get a mind-meld in the first issue! That totally rocked! I love how this comic is coming together and the artwork on the page. After that, the problem turns out to be anchored in science, which – hopefully – will be resolved in some creative way in the next issue or two.

Best of all, Kirk is facing off against a Romulan Bird of Prey in the final few panels of the comic! The hook for next month’s comic is definitely set. The cover of the second book, with Kirk and Chekov firing phasers and floating in zero-gee, has got me salivating. I can’t wait to see how this one turns out, and I’m betting if you’re a ST:TOS fan, you won’t enjoy waiting either.

My new book is out in stores now.  I welcome reviews.

Dead Witch Walking is the first Rachel Morgan fantasy novel by bestselling new author, Kim Harrison. Harrison seemingly came out of nowhere and exploded into the market, attracting an immediate audience then growing geometrically as people started talking this first book up. Her paperbacks have been reprinted dozens of times, and she’s now being published first in hardcover. Even the first paperbacks are now getting a hardcover treatment next year.Rachel Morgan is a witch in a world that’s not quite like ours. She’s also a cop for the Inderland Security, the police force that patrols the paranormal segment of Cincinnati. Unfortunately, Rachel hates her boss and hates her job. She ultimately wants to be able to call her own shots.

One night, a series of events puts that possibility into her grasp and she takes it. Before she knows it, though, she’s blackmailed into signing on Ivy, a female vampire that’s over six feet tall and as dangerous as they come, and Jenks, a pixie who’s got a sharp tongue and a way through electronic security, as her partners. In no time at all, she’s hanging out a shingle, VAMPIRIC CHARMS PRIVATE DETECTIVE AGENCY at an old church with stories of its own to tell.

I liked the way that Harrison sets up her world, designating the “normal” world and offsetting it with the Hollows, where most of the supernatural creatures and people live. It doesn’t take long to get into the background of her richly textured novel, though the fact that the USA never got to the moon in this world still kind of jars me.

The magic and use of the supernatural characters makes sense. Harrison creates a series of rules regarding them and plays fairly with them. And her imagination is HUGE. I could almost make a checklist of future books I want Harrison to write just so I can learn more about her world.

Rachel’s character is at once warm, vulnerable, and powerful, a hard combination to pull off for a writer, but Harrison makes it seem easy. In the beginning, the action seems a little slow, but there’s actually a lot going on. Rachel figures when she quits her job and goes out on her own it’s not going to be a problem. I. S. didn’t want her there anyway, which was one of the reasons she wanted to leave the agency.

However, when Ivy goes with her, I. S. is furious. Ivy buys out her assassination contract, though. Rachel isn’t so lucky. I. S. won’t touch Ivy because they’ve made a profit off of her, but they’re plenty willing to take out their mad on Rachel.

Ivy, in addition to being a living vampire from a royal family, is a complicated character. I didn’t get to learn everything about her in this novel that I wanted to, but I’ve got a whole series to explore. She’s incredibly interesting, and there’s something about her relationship with Rachel that’s piqued my curiosity.

Jenks, the pixie, is a laugh riot. He’s got a twisted sense of humor, a tremendous fighting spirit, and doesn’t even come close to being politically correct.

Dead Witch Walking sets up a lot of the ensuing series, but the exploration of the world and of the main characters is awesome. Harrison knows how to write emotion and action, and once the story was up and running, I was hard-pressed to keep up with all the twists and turns.

This book is a must-have for urban fantasy fans. But my advice is to start here with this one, because there’s a lot of backstory that gets unveiled. And, from what I’ve heard, the characters change and grow throughout the series.

Over forty years ago, the partnership between Captain James Tiberius Kirk and Mr. Spock took place on television. That friendship, along with Dr. McCoy, has become one of the most iconic in fiction and television.

William Shatner, joined by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, penned the beginning of a multi-book new series in the Star Trek franchise. Star Trek: The Academy — Collision Course shows how 17-year-old James Kirk and 19-year-old Spock first meet, and all the trouble that sprang out of that relationship.

At the time, Kirk is trying to recover from a horrible experience he had on Tarsus IV. The view of that war and Kirk’s loss of innocence seems to mirror what’s going on in our world at the moment. But it’s a good, solid background story that explains why Kirk wants nothing to do with Starfleet and believes they’re worthless.

Spock struggles with his identity. Half-human and half-Vulcan, he finds that he fits comfortably into neither world. Not only that, but he’s uncovered a plot by someone within the Vulcan embassy that is selling priceless artifacts to a fence.

The book moves along at a lightning quick pace. Although it’s 450 pages, I whipped right through it in a single sitting, devouring this adventure for the sheer fun and pleasure it was. The idea of a young Kirk and young Spock is fascinating. The authors do a great job of showing the basis of the long friendship that is to come, as well as setting into play any of the things that Kirk and Spock agreed to disagree on.

Kirk is in love with a young Starfleet cadet who’s being brought up on charges for theft. In order to prove her innocence, Kirk undertakes to steal a Starfleet vehicle with a technological device he’s created. Of course this is over-the-top, but this is Kirk we’re talking about. Overkill should have been his middle name.

In the meantime, a Starfleet officer named Mallory has started an investigation into Kirk. Although operating under another name, I believe Mallory was in an agency that was a forerunner to Trek’s Section 31, their equivalent of spies.

The book also deals a lot with father figures. Spock argues – logically, of course – with his father Sarek, and Kirk confronts his father over his choice of lifestyles as well as his relationship with his brother Sam.

Most of the book takes place on Earth, and we don’t really get a clear idea of what the city looks like, which I found a little frustrating. And we don’t quite get the “feel” of the Academy.

However, Kirk and Spock do take to space in once of the most outrageous plot turns of the book at the end. When I saw where the plot was going, I told myself there was no way they were going to pull it off. But they did it anyway. And realistically, the plot twist doesn’t fly, but for the romantic in me, it was perfect.

Over the years, I’ve found the Shatner books sometimes uneven. Many people have complained that they’re Kirk-centric, but I’ve always forgiven that. Kirk is one of the most enduring characters of the series in all its interpretations. It only stands to reason that much of the focus would be on him.

But in this book, Kirk shares time and space with a lot of the other characters. I’m really looking forward to the next book in this series.

Kelly McCullough continues to rack up big points with his ongoing science/fantasy series starring Ravirn, a child of the Fates from Greek mythology. The first book, Webmage, was an excellent story, introducing a smart-mouthed, quick-thinking, magnet for trouble that reminded me a lot of Roger Zelazny’s signature characters.

Like Zelazny’s Corwin of Amber and Jack of Shadows, Ravirn tells his own story in a first-person narrative that explodes onto the pages and keeps moving along at a brisk pace. Since I’d read the first book, the second book, Cybermancy, didn’t offer any challenges to lock into the world. I felt like I was stepping back into a gathering of old friends. That’s how you know you have excellent characters – when your readers can drop back in and never wonder once who is who.

I call these books science/fantasy because McCullough insists on making technology and magic both driving factors of the series. Not only is Ravirn a child of the Fates who’s gifted with awesome magical abilities, he’s also a computer geek that knows his way around hacks and cracks. As steeped as I am in computer-speak, I was sometime challenged with having to keep up with the amount of information in Ravirn’s narrative, but even when I lost the thread of something (I blame my ADHD, not McCullough’s writing) it didn’t take me long to catch up.

Even cooler than that, though, Ravirn turns out to be an emerging chaos god who’s about to hang a shingle in the Greek pantheon. That story alone is worth the price of the book.

There are lots of stories in the second book of the series, though. Ravirn’s friendship with Melchior — the webgoblin he created, designed, programmed, and eventually gave independence to – is still at the forefront of the adventure. Likewise, Cerice – Ravirn’s lady love – returns with a host of new issues as well. Her webgoblin’s name is Shara, but she has a tendency to take a human form that looks an awful lot like Mae West, complete with ample charms and double entendre enough to make a sailor blush.

At the end of Webmage, Shara inadvertently got trapped in Hell. Hades, that is. Cerice is as dedicated to Shara as Ravirn is to Melchior. So you know that Ravirn has to journey to Hades, risking certain death in the Land of the Dead as he outsmarts Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades. Thankfully, Ravirn has been playing cards with the dog/s for some time, so he knows a thing or two.
The story quickly takes shape as Ravirn attempts his feats of derring-do for his lady love. Who might not even love him in the same way he loves her. I really got into all these balls McCullough kept throwing in the air. There’s always a new reason to keep turning pages. One of the strongest aspects about the books that I enjoy is the fact that McCullough plays fair with the whole Greek mythology. More to the point, if not for one of the most basic myths, this story would never even have taken place.

People who haven’t tried the series really don’t know what they’re missing. McCullough has true world-building skills, a great sense of Greek mythology, and the eye of a thriller writer. The blend of technology and magic is absolutely amazing, and I’m surprised no one has thought to do it quite like this before.

The first-person narrative pulls readers in quickly and introduces them to the action and the world effortlessly. I like the humor, the puns and the jokes, a lot. It fits the characters perfectly. And now, with Ravirn’s mysterious future slightly more clear, I can’t wait to see where the third book takes him. I’m definitely going along for the trip when the book comes out.

Billed as a collaboration beyond the grave, crossing much of the same history one of the authors had written about and predicted, Variable Star is a mixture of old and new science fiction. Before he died, Robert A. Heinlein left behind eight pages of a juvenile science fiction novel he never got around to writing. He was on the cusp of going from writing young adult novels to stepping into the edgier adult market that he left a permanent imprint on as well.

If there’s one thing I have to say left a permanent impression on my growing years and was probably the reason I became a writer, I have to point to the childhood science fiction I devoured at the public library. Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton forever changed the course of my life. Edgar Rice Burroughs did as well, but his stuff spoke to me in different ways, even though it’s regarded as foundation science fiction these days as well.

Spider Robinson was also one of those young readers affected by Heinlein’s no-nonsense approach to science fiction. Obviously enamored of Heinlein and science fiction in general, Robinson has written several novels in that genre. He’s best known for his Callahan’s Cross-Time Saloon series, which is filled with puns and inside jokes as well as adventure and science fiction.

A few years ago, as Robinson explains in his afterword to the book, he was at a convention where it was announced by Robert A. Heinlein’s literary agent that the novel outline existed. One of the audience members suggested that Robinson, who was touted as a Heinlein aficionado head and shoulders above the rest, write the novel based on that outline. After a few months and some serious negotiations, that came to pass.

Unfortunately, the idea of the book is much better than the final execution. The plot revolves around Joel Johnson, a young protagonist – though he often reads as so much older that reference to his age often jarred me. Joel is dating Jinny Hamilton, and is getting pressured into getting married and having children. He protests, stating that they’ve only just completed university (they’re 1 and money is an issue.

Jinny then proceeds to reveal that she is the daughter of the solar system’s richest man. If Joel doesn’t inherit that position through marriage, then his son is scheduled to be. Freaking out, Joel flees and tries to figure out what to do with himself.

Since the Conrad family, especially Conrad of Conrad, is so powerful, he figures that in order to escape the marriage or their vengeance, he has to leave the planet. So he signs up aboard a colony ship.

At first blush, the plot seems very much like a juvenile science fiction novel. I settled in comfortably to read and thought it was a lot like the early Heinleins I’d read. Robinson did an excellent job of matching his voice to Heinlein in those years.

However, I wasn’t happy with the end result. I really liked the way Robinson played into the overall world view that Heinlein constructed in his Future History timeline in the 1950s. The line marriages, the technology, and the major events are all here.

Robinson doesn’t stay content in playing with Heinlein’s world, though. He throws in his own views of the current Iraq War and advocates freeing up certain aspects of the current drug laws. Reading about characters using drugs or advocating their use in what reads like a juvenile Heinlein novel was disturbing to me. It also spoiled the whole gee-I’ve-just-found-a-new-Heinlein-novel-I-haven’t-read feeling the book was going toward.

The book was off to a rather slow beginning, but I didn’t worry about that because I figured Robinson was just getting his feet wet, just trying out the voice and trying to get everything right.

Then the middle came along and I got bogged down in the seemingly endless adjustment problems Joel had to shipboard and colony life. Even that might have been interesting if Joel had actually gotten somewhere. Not to spoil things too much, but Joel and the colony ship never get where they’re going. We learn a few nifty facts about the world they’re headed to, but we never get to see that world.

Not only that, but the whole novel reads like a set-up to a long series that would have brought forth another Starship Troopers world. We never found out anything about the enemy that attacked – and destroyed! – our solar system. That war, somewhere, is still waiting to be waged.

The book read easily enough, but I wanted the action and excitement of those early Heinlein novels. That’s what I felt I was being offered. Although I’m glad I read it because it did remind me so much of all those pleasant years spent at an impressionable age, I wish it could have been what I’d hoped it would be.