Big Nose Kate's Saloon, Tombstone Arizona

     I’m always wary of any posthumously published works by my favorite authors. That’s why I approached Armageddon in Retrospect, a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s essays and short stories, with caution. Being a great writer isn’t just knowing what words to leave in a story, it’s knowing which words should be left out. If Vonnegut chose not to publish these works while he was alive, he must have felt that they were not his best. Part of me prefers to honor the body of work that Vonnegut chose to show us, not what he left on the cutting room floor. Still, there’s much to be learned about the craft of writing by seeing less polished pieces from talented authors. It’s a fine line to walk, but I think Armageddon in Retrospect does it well.

     The book contains both fiction and non-fiction pieces like speeches and letters. The non-fiction in Armageddon is classic Vonnegut:  a dose of rueful humor to sweeten the moral outrage. His speeches seem like the ramblings of an old man, circular and humorous. By the time he’s ready to make his point Vonnegut has touched your humanity, opened your heart just enough to feel what he’s saying rather than just hear it.

     The best piece in the book is the letter that Vonnegut wrote to his family in 1945 after escaping a German prison camp. It is amazing.  Vonnegut takes only two pages to talk about his experience, covering all the facts up to where he is at the moment. It’s one of the most efficient pieces of communication I have ever seen. More than that, it appears to be the birth of his use of refrain.  When describing the death of some of his fellow soldiers Vonnegut says, “Many men died from shock. . . after ten days of starvation, thirst an exposure. But I didn’t.” The “but not me” refrain runs throughout his letter home, screaming his survivor’s guilt without ever addressing the topic directly.

     Most of the short stories in the collection are from early in Vonnegut’s career. He had not yet developed his trademark humor or learned to employ speculative fiction elements (like time travel) in to his work. Vonnegut’s anger in these early pieces is raw and often barely disguised by plot. These stories are not the easiest things to read. Still, they offer hope to struggling writers. If Vonnegut started out like this, it’s possible to keep working, to keep searching until you develop a style that allows you to tell even the most complicated of stories.

     Ultimately, I enjoyed Armageddon and recommend it to all Vonnegut fans. I enjoyed Armageddon – now how many people can say that?

It’s just a simple story about a mother trying to teach her boys some important life lessons. Those lessons are very different in a town like Gloaming Gap. Check it out!

I am, in fact, so enthusiastic about Picking Up the Ghost that I wrote a piece of flash fiction featuring a couple of characters of the book. Hope you enjoy the story and feel inspired to pick up a copy of Picking Up the Ghost!

Who He is not

He shuffles his identities as quickly and easily as he shuffles a deck of cards. The shapeshifter is at one with change. You can not catch the shapeshifter because the day you grab him, he is a different man than he was the day you met him. He is all about chance, luck and today.

The shapeshifter was a riverboat gambler once. He floated down the wide Mississippi, with a striped shirt, suspenders and a handlebar mustache. He wore the name Tennessee Slim and dealt cards to the wealthy pleasure seekers, watching them win and lose fortunes on the green felt of his gaming table. That was yesterday. The shapeshifter is not Tennessee Slim today.

The shapeshifter was an insurance salesman once. He worked in an office under fluorescent lights and rode the bus home to his cold bachelor’s apartment. He wore the name Robbie Freeman during the day and the name GamblinMan88 in online poker rooms at night. That was yesterday. The shapeshifter is not Robbie Freeman today.

The shapeshifter was a drifter once. He drove a car with tinted windows and New Mexico plates. He sniffed the wind off long stretches of hot asphalt for any sign of change. He wore the name Ted Lopez. He had a bag of tools, a deck of cards and a teen-aged boy to steal from. That was yesterday. The shapeshifter is not Ted Lopez today.

The shapeshifter was a teen-aged boy once. He stood by the side of the road, trying to hitch a ride and nursing his injured hand. He wore the name Cinque Williams and it did not fit him. He had a missing father, a screwdriver, a dream of an African Hougun and a burning need for answers. This is today. The shapeshifter is Cinque Williams today.

The shapeshifter pulls out his deck of cards and shuffles. It doesn’t matter what name he wears. The shapeshifter can not stand still on the side of a road. Stillness is death to him and he has cheated death for a very long time. The shapeshifter does not know it, but his luck is about to change.

Chocolate or Vanilla? This one mundane choice is what launches you into a world of time travel, mind reading and mad science in Jason Shiga’s book Meanwhile. Shiga, the winner of the 2003 Eisner “Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition” award, lives up to his reputation as one of the most innovative storytellers working today.

Meanwhile is deceptively simple. The story is told in clean, spare panels strung together in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure format. With thick, glossy pages the book looks almost like a children’s book. Each time you make a choice the panels diverge and you must follow a twisty line to the next episode of the story. The lines double and re-double, forcing you to trace them across the page with your finger before following them to a new page. This format creates a book that is not just read, it is played. The reader is an active participant in the telling of the story. At some points the act of going back to the last break in the string and choosing a new path can be a bit tedious, but the results are rewarding. There are 3,856 story possibilities in this 80 page book. If you stop at 5 or even 10 story possibilities you will end up missing much of what this book has to offer.

In creating a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style book Shiga could have given his readers a galaxy of choices. After all, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books were great for the fantasy and science fiction genres, allowing readers to hop through vast and strange new worlds. In Meanwhile Shiga does the opposite, leading his reader to three key choices in the form of machines to use: time machine, kill-box or mind-reading device. By setting these limitations Shiga creates a closed loop of a world that is anything but boring. The story, like the lines between panels, starts to double and re-double, creating a sense of déjà vu. Keep going. It only gets stranger.

Ultimately, Meanwhile isn’t just about showy page layout or leading readers through a trippy adventure. It’s an open invitation to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (No joke!) and an exploration of the power behind the tiny decisions we make every day.  It’s a special book and well worth the read.

The Engineer: Konstrukt starts fast, laying out the central conflict on page one of the book. An immense, ancient entity of the Lovecraftian variety is devouring the universe. One thing can stop it: the Konstrukt, an equally ancient device of mysterious origins. The only catch is that the Konstrukt is broken, its many cogs and wheels scattered throughout the fabric of space and time. The Engineer is one man tasked with finding these pieces and reassembling the Konstruct, enabling life as we know it to go on. With that out of the way, the rest of the book is monsters, action and weirdness.

It’s a great concept, but Brian Churilla and Jeremy Shepherd fail to deliver an interesting story. Space travel and monster bashing are fun, but standard fare in the world of comics. There is nothing new or particularly fun in the Engineer’s character. The majority of the dialog in the book consists of the Engineer talking to himself while he fights monsters. Even he seems to get bored of his own running commentary and starts to repeat lines line “That wasn’t so bad!” and “How do like that?” Another problem is that the book has transition issues. While reading, I stopped multiple times and flipped back a few pages, thinking I had skipped a page or that I had missed a key panel, but that wasn’t the case. The story just makes awkward jumps from one scene to another. There’s also a running joke about chickens that falls flat. It seems to be an attempt at Eric Powell (The Goon) style humor, but it comes off as forced and a bit distracting.

The weakness of the writing is especially noticeable against the brilliance of the art in The Engineer. Churilla’s line work is great, clearly influenced by Mike Mignola, but not a slavish copy. There is a fluid quality to his drawing. His style has a smoothness that captures all the necessary detail, but omits anything that would clutter up the scene. There are no throwaway panels here – each one looks as if it could be blown up and made in to a poster. Shepherd’s colors add depth and emotion to the line work. The ethereal blue glow of the Konstruct parts is especially arresting.

Churilla and Shephard are clearly talented individuals, but ultimately The Engineer: Konstrukt is a book that makes for better viewing than reading.

If you haven’t started reading Unwritten yet, please do so at your soonest convenience. You are missing out on a New York Times best selling, Eisner-nominated bit of brilliance.  Unwritten is a meta-fantasy in the mold of Fables, focusing on the role that stories play in our lives and culture.  The protagonist, Tommy Taylor, is the adult son of an author who penned a series of children’s books similar in scope and fame to Harry Potter. Tommy’s father disappeared under mysterious circumstances and left his son a problematic legacy.

Dead Man’s Knock pushes the envelope of self-conscious fiction, exploring the idea of a literary franchise. After years of silence, a publisher announces that Tom Taylor’s father is releasing the long awaited final volume in the Tommy Taylor series. A media and fan frenzy ensues. Questions swirl – Is the book really written by Wilson Taylor? Will it be good? Will it be what the fans expect? – but no one asks, “Will the book sell?” In omitting this question Carey and Gross emphasize the raw power of a successful series. Of course the book will sell. It doesn’t matter who wrote it or whether or not it’s good. In a world of closing book stores and declining print sales, that sort of power is rare. In fact, it’s almost magical.

Carey and Gross outdo themselves in this volume, dedicating an entire issue to Lizzie Hexam’s origins. They deliver a compelling back story for her character told in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure format. It’s well worth the time to flip back around and follow all the story possibilities included in this Eisner Award winning issue.
Seriously people, get out and read this thing!

Streets of Glory is a perfectly serviceable “End of the Old West” story. Ennis gives us a grizzled but honorable old man, a fresh young kid, a savage Indian, an ill-fated love and the requisite railroad looming over a small town on the prairie. You can see how it’s all going to play out before the story is over. That’s the problem with Westerns – we all know that the Old West has gone the way of boom towns and the Pony Express. It takes a great deal of skill to craft a fresh and exiting story in such a well worn genre, skill that just isn’t present here.

In addition to writing the book, Tone has created a website to promote the book. It’s pretty common these days to hand out a chapter or two online, but Tone prefers to make potential readers work for it, or even better, suffer for it. So if you visit his website the first chapter is free, but to unlock the next three you’ll have to solve a series of puzzles. Visit the site now and you’ll be able to say you knew about Picking Up the Ghost before it was even published. Get on it:

http://pickinguptheghost.tonemilazzo.com