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Now that I have your undivided attention....

I'm selling tickets to the Annual Pancake Breakfast and Silent Auction Fundraiser. This event is sponsored by the Round Rock Noon Kiwanis Club (of which I'm a proud member) and benefits the Texas Baptist Children's Home in Round Rock. The breakfast is Saturday, September 29th from 7:00 a.m. to noon and will be held at TBCH. Tickets are $5.00 apiece. If you're interested, shoot me an email at docsavag@austin.rr.com and I'll sell you some tickets to support a very worthy cause.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

I was passed on the toll road the other day by a 1982 DeLorean. I'm not sure, but I think there was some kid named McFly driving it.

BRIGAND FOR HIRE

I read another Marvel trade paperback featuring the work of Howard Chaykin the other day. This time around it was DOMINIC FORTUNE: IT CAN HAPPEN HERE AND NOW. It's published under the MAX Comics imprint which means it contains explicit content (does it ever!). The stories all feature Dominic Fortune and most of the work is by Chaykin. For those of you unfamiliar with this minor Marvel character, Dominic Fortune is an adventurer, a "brigand-for-hire" as he refers to himself, a solider of "fortune" if you will who operates in the Marvel Universe in the 1930s and 1940s. He's a swashbuckling rogue of a fellow and his adventures combine heavy doses of sex, humor and violent action.

The first story in the collection is a recent four-parter written and illustrated by Chaykin in which Fortune runs afoul of an assassination attempt upon FDR. It's breezy, funny and fast-paced. The second story is a reprint of Fortune's very first appearance from the 1975 black-and-white magazine, MARVEL PREVIEW #2. Chaykin's work was raw and rough-edged at this early stage in his career but it still packed a punch. Also reprinted is the Fortune story from MARVEL PREMIERE #56 (1980), a full-color romp with pencils by Chaykin and inks by Terry Austin. This story has, in my opinion, the best artwork in the entire collection. It's a fun story to boot.

The wild card here is a six part Fortune story that was originally published as a digital comic. ASTONISHING TALES: DOMINIC FORTUNE is written by Dean Motter and illustrated by Greg Scott and it's one ugly piece of work. The artwork is incredibly dark and muddy looking and the characters are almost all "off-model" with their facial features varying from panel to panel. The story itself is a travelogue through the proto-Marvel Universe and serves to touch base with the progenitors of many later major players. Involved in this story are (in order of appearance): Howard Stark (father of Tony (Iron Man) Stark), Baron Strucker and Baron Zemo (in pre-war Berlin), Johann Shmidt (before he became the Red Skull), the parents of Victor Von Doom (Dr. Doom), T'Chaka, father of T'Challa (The Black Panther) and a name drop of both Robert Plunder (father of Lord Kevin Plunder, aka Ka-Zar) and one Rick Blaine of Casablanca, Morocco. The action moves from one locale to the other before abruptly ending back in Hollywood where the story began. It's a trip that's not worth taking.

I can't say that other creators should never be allowed to play with someone else's toys but when it comes to Dominic Fortune, if a story doesn't say Howard Chaykin in the credit box, don't bother with it. Other than the one stinker, this book is highly recommended if you like light adventure and don't mind some adult sexual content.

THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER'S PHANTOM EAGLE

I read the trade paperback collection of WAR IS HELL: THE FIRST FLIGHT OF THE PHANTOM EAGLE yesterday evening. The book was published in 2009 by Marvel Comics under their MAX imprint which contains more explicit content (and it says so right there on the front cover) than the usual Marvel Comics. The book collects all five issues of the mini-series of the same name. The series was written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Howard Chaykin. Chaykin is one of my favorite comic-book artists and it was his artwork which led me to purchase and read the book.

The story deals with one Karl Kaufmann, an idealistic young pilot in WWI. He dreams of being a lone fighter pilot, not encumbered by a squadron and battle orders. He imagines that he'll be a noble "knight of the sky" facing his enemies with honor and dignity. He has his plane painted to resemble  an eagle and he wears a non-regulation flight suit.

His dreams of solo glory are quickly dashed when he's exposed to the raw horror of aerial combat. Kaufmann also gets a look at what's going on on the ground when he and a fellow pilot are shot down in no-man's land. The war takes it's toll on these men, grinding them down, chewing them up and spitting them out. At the end, Kaufmann is a survivor and in charge of his own flight squadron. The man who wanted to fly alone is now a leader of eager, naive young pilots whom he must disabuse of any glorious fantasies about warfare.

The series is definitely for adults. There's sexual content, coarse language and several extremely graphic scenes of violence. But the story is historically accurate and well written and Chaykin's artwork is superb. I give this one a thumbs up and recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction and graphic storytelling.

The title of the series plays on two previous Marvel comic-book series. WAR IS HELL ran for fifteen issues beginning in 1973 while The Phantom Eagle made his debut in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #16 in September, 1968. Written and illustrated by Herb Trimpe (who had a long run drawing THE INCREDIBLE HULK), the one-shot story told the exploits of the Phantom Eagle, a solo pilot who flew a customized plane and wore a distinctive flight suit. It was exactly the kind of romanticized, pulp hero material that Ennis and Chaykin deconstruct so brilliantly in their series.

I remember buying that first appearance of the Phantom Eagle (I've still got it!) and enjoying it immensely. I was a big fan of war comics from any era and I liked Trimpe's art (still do). But the Eagle only flew that one and only time back in '68. We had to wait forty-one years for another appearance but the wait was worth it.

YOU ARE LOOKING LIVE AT...

I was really looking forward to watching the college football game last night between number two ranked Alabama (the defending national champions) and number eight Michigan. Unfortunately, the game became a blow-out fairly quickly as 'Bama totally dominated the out-manned Wolverines. I expected Alabama to win but I was pulling for the Wolverines to pull the upset or at least make it a competitive, fun game to watch. That didn't happen.

I turned the game off after the third quarter and watched an episode of THE DEAD FILES that I had recorded. I wonder how many other people did the same thing I did. Not watch DEAD FILES, but turn the game off. I'm sure die-hard Alabama fans stayed with it until the end but I bet a lot of folks gave up and that's not what ABC/ESPN wanted. If you're an advertiser who bought time in the fourth quarter, chances are your ad wasn't seen by as many eyeballs as were watching earlier in the evening.

And can anyone explain to me why a game that's listed as a 7:00 p.m. start time didn't actually get under way until 7:14 p.m.? I can understand a little bit of pre-game chatter but almost fifteen minutes of blather and commercials before kick-off? I hope that's a one-time thing and doesn't happen on every Saturday night game this season.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the absence of the Longhorn Network on Time Warner Cable. A lot of missed last night's game against Wyoming and we'll miss next weeks' game against New Mexico. The LHN has been in existence for well over a year and we still can't get it in Austin on the largest cable provider in the city. What's up with that? If you've got Grande or AT&T U-verse, I hope you enjoyed the game.

REACHER SAID NOTHING

I finished reading WITHOUT FAIL by Lee Child yesterday evening. I read the entire book aloud to my beloved wife Judy and we both loved it. It's the third Jack Reacher novel I've read to her and she likes them as much as I do.

Reacher is an ex-military policeman who is homeless by choice. He wanders the country living life one day at a time. He's never expressly looking for trouble but trouble always finds him and at the end of the books, trouble has lost.

In this one Reacher is recruited to plan a theoretical assassination attempt upon the Vice-President elect of the United States. His theories become fact when an actual plot is revealed to be in motion and it's a race against time to uncover the conspirators and prevent them from carrying out their deadly task.

WITHOUT FAIL has the usual Child narrative trademarks: swift, brutal, realistic action set-pieces combined with brilliant deductive reasoning. Reacher is part Sherlock Holmes, part Dirty Harry and is the best action/adventure hero in contemporary thriller fiction.

He's also a man of few words. Child uses the sentence "Reacher said nothing" many times throughout the book. Those three words indicate that Reacher's intellect is at work, furiously turning over facts and theories in his mind to arrive at a plausible, logical solution to whatever challenge he's facing.

Reacher is also a big guy. Child expressly states that he stands six foot, five inches tall. He's an intimidating physical presence and he's not shy about breaking opponent's bones when he has to.

The Reacher series now stands at seventeen titles (a new novel comes out this fall). I've read nine of the books thus far: KILLING FLOOR, DIE TRYING, TRIPWIRE, WITHOUT FAIL, ONE SHOT, THE HARD WAY, BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE, NOTHING TO LOSE and GONE TOMORROW. I will definitely read them all in the months and years to come.

If you haven't read a Reacher novel yet, do yourself a favor and pick one up. I suggest starting with KILLING FLOOR, the first book in the series. The novels are self-contained and stand-alone and do not have to be read in order but they're better if you do.

Oh and please remember to cross against the light to avoid the JACK REACHER movie coming out later this year. The film stars Tom Cruise as Reacher. Tom Cruise is a lot of things but one thing he isn't is 6 foot 5 inches tall and no CGI special effects can make him so. If Clint Eastwood was thirty years younger, he would be perfect as Reacher. That's the way I see the character in my mind when I'm reading the books.

The Jack Reacher series by Lee Child gets my highest recommendation. I love these books!

FOOTBALL QUESTION

It's the start of college football season and once again I'm wondering what in the name of the wide world of sports are Texas Governor Rick Perry and movie director/actor Mel Brooks doing on ESPN's Game Day broadcast? Don't those guys have enough to do without talking about college football every Saturday?