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The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman

Listen, it's not my fault. My history with The Princess Bride is composed of  a couple decades worth of WUUUUUUUV, TWUUUU WUUUUUV! and I never realized that there was an actual novel that went with the movie. I mean, obviously Fred Savage's grandpa read him the book in the movie, but I thought that was just a prop. I mean, I've spent more hours in bookstores than any sane person and I'd have noticed the thing at some point, right?

I mean, it's inconceivable that I could possibly not know about a The Princess Bride book if it existed. There was no chance that could get stuck in the Fire Swamp of ignorance of the existence that it would take to not know that there was a novel. Seriously, you couldn't have stopped me from getting one if I had known about it. I'd have all kinds of fun storming that castle. At least until a rodent of unusual size got to my bookshelf and ate my copy. Even then, I bet I could get my boy Miracle Max to bring my copy back to life so I could read it again.

And all of that makes sense until you realize that there actually was such a book and I didn't know about it. At that point I was all just like...

"My name is Jimbo McCoy. You killed my delusion. Prepare to buy!" Forunately for me, e-books aren't all that expensive and I won't need a wheelbarrow to carry it in.

Oh wait, you wanted an actual review and not just me acting like a bigger geek than normal?

As you wish.

Or not.

Suck it up, Buttercup.

Dude, put down the six-fingered sword and the iocaine powder. I'm getting there. I promise.

Although, all trash talk aside, it does occur to me that it has been far too long since I've watched the movie with my daughters, but I digress. 

Dude, reading this review must be like climbing the Cliffs of Insanity. 

Please don't go all Dread Pirate Roberts on me. I wouldn't like it if you mostly likely killed me in the morning.

Alright, alright. I'll say something meaningful about the book.

Dude...

The Princess Bride is the most meta book in the history of ever. There is so much here that got left out of the movie because it wouldn't fit, but like "Morgenstern" must have been the worst author in the history of ever. He mentioned a bunch of crap about the history of Guilder and Florin that would totally not work in an actual novel and Goldman is really snarky about it.

I mean, I know I'm putting on airs here and I haven't really earned the right to say this, but parts of The Princess Bride read like a review from Jimbo's Awesome SF/F Reviews. Seriously. Goldman has a similar whacky and zany sense of humor. Reading endless pages about the history of women's hats would suck, but reading Goldman's complaints about those pages is pure comedy gold. 

There is a lot more about Inigo Montoya's childhood and his relationship with his father in the book than there was in the movie. This is a good thing. The whole revenge angle takes on so much more importance when we know how close he was to his father, why his father was killed, and how humiliated Montoya was by his fathers murderer. This was good stuff that would have made the movie even better if they could have found a way to work it in. 

The Narrator of the novel, supposedly Goldman himself, is a source of great entertainment as well. The story goes that his father read the book to him as a kid and left lots of it out. That's where a lot of the meta stuff comes in. Now the Narrator wants his son to read the book and can't figure out why he won't. Then the Narrator picks the book up and finds out how bad it was..

Yeah, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing you'd want to re-write honestly, but he does and it's amazing. This strikes a chord with me personally because it reminds me a lot of the struggles I've had to get my kids to read the stuff I loved as a kid. I can't even get my oldest to read the stuff I love NOW and it can be a bit of a challenge to deal with mentally. It would be so awesome if they would, but..

Yeah.

Long story (overly) long this is the type of situation that I can identify with and I'm guessing a lot of you can as well.

Of course, all of our favorite characters are there; Westley, Buttercup, Fezzik, Inigo Montoya, Vizzini, etc. Not all of the lines were translated straight from the book though, and it's one of those things where you can end up disappointed not because something isn't entertaining, but because it's not quite the way you remembered it. That much is, I guess, inevitable as the movie writer, actor/actress, director and some other person that I forgot about probably all had a hand in rewriting the dialogue for the movie. It doesn't ruin it, but it is a little different and that took some getting used to. 

One suggestion I'm going to make is to skip the introductions to both the Thirtieth and Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Editions. They don't add a whole lot to the experience and they took a lot of time to get through. I was really surprised by this because I thought I was going to get something really awesome with these, but not so much. I've been more disappointed in my life, obviously, but I kind of wish I could have that time back.

Still and all I’m glad I read The Princess Bride. It was a lot of fun exploring something I had loved for a long time in a totally different setting. This was an experience I won't forget. That sounds weird, but it's true. If you haven't read the book, and especially if you're just finding out that it actually exists, I'd recommend reading it.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Boring Intros

Kevin McDonald's A Nation Interrupted: An Alternate History Novel

So, what happens when the Confederate Army finds out that their plans have been intercepted at Antietam BEFORE the battle, changes their plan, wins the war and the Confederate States of America becomes an independent country? How does the future change? World War I? World War II? Think about it: It took the United States and the engineers that built the Transcontinental Railroad to dig the Panama Canal. What happens if the United States doesn't do the work? What then?

ESPECIALLY World War II. What happens when the United States are not united anymore? What changes when the country that needs to save Britain isn't as big a nation and doesn't have the same population, wealth and industrial base? What happens if the United States makes a more tempting target than the Soviet Union? What then?

Those are the questions answered by Kevin McDonald in A Nation Interrupted. It's well written and, in places, terrifying. I could see this happening. He's done his research and it shows. And it's weird because a solid grasp on some of the problems his Germans would face, but he doesn't let that stop him or them. He finds a way around things the same way a real world general would have to. He makes it believable. His grasp on the effectiveness of strategic bombing is spot on as well. 

This is a book with an epic cast, although they seem to all be Americans. That works though, especially in today's day and age where many people would be offended if he had included the German point of view. It does lend a certain cardboard feeling to the villains of the piece but, let's face it, they are literal Nazis. Still and all, things may have worked a mite better if we had gotten an opposing viewpoint. 

On the other hand, it's good to see an author who doesn't kowtow to the Leftist stereotype of Americas as Nazis. The Americans in the book, for the most part, are strong, patriotic and opposed to the assholes that have invaded their shores. (Oh, did I fail to mention that the Germans invade New York city? I guess I should've mentioned that little tidbit earlier. Forgive me. It's Monday.)

McDonald pulls no punches in his depiction of Hitler's Final Solution to the Jewish Question conducted on American soil. There are chunks of that part of the narrative that are quite frankly heart rending and more than just a little disgusting. That's why they work. McDonald has done some real research here. He also does his best to resolve a real-world controversy about how the Allies should have responded to the death camps. I like this. First, because it's necessary but also because his resolution matches with my own take on the issue. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that McDonald my have consumed more than one Harry Turtledove novel because A Nation Interrupted has a very similar feeling to a lot Turtledove's work without the repetitive dialogue. The shifting viewpoints, the strategic acumen and the grittiness of the characters and situations remind me a lot of Turtledove, whose work I've been reading for over twenty-five years now. I enjoy Turtledove's work and, honestly, there's not really a bigger compliment that I could pay to an Alt-Hist novel. 

Don't tell him that. He'll think I'm calling him old. Nope, the old dude in this story is moi.

Anyway...

The action in this book is intense. We find ourselves flying along with bomber crews. We find ourselves sneaking past Nazis. The tension level in A Nation Interrupted is sky high and it stays that way. This is a very quickly paced book. It builds and builds and if you you're not squirming in your seat for the majority of the end of the book you're not paying attention. There is a lot here and the possibility of catastrophic failure is never very far away. 

That's once it gets started though. A Nation Interrupted takes a minute to get started. When I first started reading this, I kind of assumed that it was the first book in a series. It's not. It's a standalone novel, but it works well that way. I do kind of feel like McDonald could have slowed down the pace a bit and given us a trilogy here though.  

There are large chunks of time skipped over with a quick overview of the progress of the war. This works because it keeps things moving and tells the reader what they need to know. It is, also, a missed opportunity in my opinion. It kind of feels like McDonald was in a big hurry to finish a story that probably could have made him a bunch more money if he had allowed it to develop further and turned it into a series.

I don't want to take this too far though. My favorite season of Babylon 5 was the fourth season. What made it so great was that J Michael Stracz...

Strazi....

Strazy...

Uhh...

The guy who wrote the series didn't think it would get renewed for its fifth season, so he condensed the last two season into one season and it was freaking amazeballs. When the action gets thick, fast, and furious my eyes light up. There was a lot in A Nation Interrupted and it happened very quickly. I liked that.

And, let's face it, there are a lot of things you can say to an author that are worse than, "Well gee, Mister, I really wish I had more of your work to read, and I would've paid to do it." It's also not like McDonald hasn't published other stuff. I definitely plan to read it. I just kind of wish that it would've been more of this story instead of a completely new one. 

Truth be told though, I'm a little bit bitter. I just read a book that went with one of my favorite books of all time and not only did I spend my whole weekend reading A Nation Interrupted instead of reviewing that, this review forced itself out of my head before I could get the other one written. I blame McDonald for it. As punishment you should all buy his book and make him figure out who to spend all of that money. That'll show him!

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Fiery Crashes

A Nation Interrupted: An Alternate History Novel
Kevin McDonald
Braveship Books, 2020

A Nation Interrupted: An Alternate History Novel is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

A Nation Interrupted

Kimber Grey's The Chosen One's Assistant: Never Meet Your Heroes

Before I even get started reviewing Kimber Grey's The Chosen One's Assistant: Never Meet Your Heroes, I would like to point out that, not only was it based on Mikey Mason's  (Not Quite) The Chosen One. His music is epic and I highly recommend listening to it either on Spotify or Bandcamp. I loved the track the first time I heard it and I love it still. 

The Chosen One's Assistant is every bit as good as the song except better. There is a lot here and that makes it more fun. As opposed to five minutes of music we get over three hundred pages of story. And it's a lot more of a developed story in the book. There's just more time for it. 

And time is something that Tiberius (that's our main character) and The Chosen One (Who has no name. He's just The Chosen One.) don't have as something seems to have gone wrong and is causing the appearance of vampire stoats in an few days away and we're not sure where they're coming from but this can't be good and we need to put a stop to this...

And Tiberius, who has only been Tiberius for a short while (his gave up his old name when he signed on to be the Chosen One's Assistant. Now he is Tiberius like all of the other assistants before him and all of the ones who will come after.) and he's still learning. And listen, there's a lot to this whole Tiberius thing. He's got to handle all of the chores and all of the healing, meet with people, pray a lot...

And there's no training period. He just has to learn everything all at once. With no real help, since the Chosen One is rather self centered and apparently not overly fond of breaking in a new Tiberius every two years. There is a bit of hostility there. 

It's awesome though, because it makes sense. There is a bit of drill sergeant to The Chosen One who doesn't always have time to screw around explaining things. He's a man of action. He kills things for a living. He makes good money doing it, as does Tiberius, but there is a lot to it.

Tiberius has a lot to do outside of cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. He's the one that's in charge of anything academic. He has to research the route to travel, research the threat once they get there, etc. He also has to meet with the townspeople to coordinate the big party when they get there and to figure out where to stay and whatever else. Tiberius works harder than I do and that's saying something. I respect this character. 

I respect the Chosen One too because, although he can be a bit arrogant at times, he is a true hero and he cares. He doesn't just face down threats for the glory or the loot. He does it to protect the people he serves. He does it because he is indeed the Chosen One and it is his duty.

He's also a goofball. There is some serious humor in this book and it comes from the Chosen One more or less wimping out. This is where the book is the most like the song, which was a comedy tune about how badly life sucked for the Chosen One's Assistant (he's not referred to as Tiberius in the song.) There's nothing here that you would have to read the book to get per se, but if you've listened to the song a few times (like I told you to earlier) then it goes from hilariously funny to "Oops, I think I dislocated a rib laughing at that one. Bonus points if you listen to the song after you read the book and realize all the stuff you missed the first time and start laughing all over again. 

The Chosen One is also a man of faith. Now, it's not a real world religion. Grey created a fantasy pantheon which she has done a fairly decent job of fleshing out and assigning roles to. There aren't a whole lot of interactions directly with gods, but I like what I see so far. I wouldn't mind seeing more about both the gods and their servants, but there are more books coming, so I guess I'll have to wait. 

But it's the actual exploration of faith in the book that has me hooked. Pretty much every fantasy universe has its pantheon. Most even have clerics or paladins. Very few (The Chosen One's Assistant and R.A. Salvatore's The Cleric Quintet are all that come to mind in High Fantasy. Declan Finn's St Tommy NYPD series is an urban fantasy that shows faith as well but that's about all that I've got in the world of Science Fiction and Fantasy literature.) that actually show acts of faith. Not just praying, but believing and trusting in the god you serve to see you through whatever it is that you're going through. There is strength in faith in the real world and for the Chosen One. Tiberius is working on his. I love the Chosen One's belief and his act of sharing it with others. That's not to say that this is a preachy book. It merely shows the champion and his faith and how he shares it with others to encourage them. Major Kira would be proud. 

There are some really awesome action sequences in the book, too. Tiberius isn't really up to snuff with all of this hand to hand combat stuff, but he's got balls. Big brass ones. I don't think I'd want to go into combat armed with the level of knowledge Tiberius has. I mean, it's good to have a dagger but it's better if you know how to use it properly. The Chosen One is, of course, a badass. Except when he's not. Nice foot guy. But, for the most part, the Chosen One can deliver a beatdown like few others. 

Grey's worldbuilding is first rate as well. She's got a good grasp of what is needed to make a fantasy town work and how trails worked in the Medieval world. She throws in just enough gut wrenching awful to make the totally awesome work even better and I like that about her. This is the first of her books that I've read, but it won't be the last. 

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Cramped Toes

The Chosen One's Assistant
Kimber Grey
Greywhisper Graphics Productions, 2022

The Chosen One's Assistant is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

The Chosen One's Assistant

Message for the Devil: A King Roger V Adventure by Jason McDonald and Stormy McDonald

King Roger is back and he's up to his armpits in trouble. There's a lot going on in the city of Charleston, South Carolina is in danger. People are dying hideously. Who did it? I didn't know. You still don't. In Message for the Devil by Jason and Stormy McDonald the police think it might be Roger himself. We'd never believe that though would we?

Part of the problem is with Roger. He grew up in a mystical land on the planet Gaia, sister to Earth, where magic is plentiful and customs are closer to Medieval European than they are to modern American. This creates some problems for our hero as he does not always know the right way to handle things. At one point it becomes obvious that he doesn't even know how to count change.  In some cases, I enjoyed that face immensely, because he acts more like a Player Character in a Dungeons & Dragons game than a modern American, but it makes sense in context. 

The story itself is a mystery. Roger has been hired to find a ghost, but it's not just any ghost. Nope. That would be too easy. It has to be the ghost of a convicted murderess who was executed. Rumor has it that she said some nasty things at her own execution...

Yeah, it gets ugly quickly. This may have escaped your notice up to this point, but vengeful spirits tend not to be very nice people. Sometimes they can get downright...

Vengeful

Okay, that was terrible, but you get the point.

Hence the whole "dying hideously" that I mentioned earlier. Of course, it gets worse because Roger isn't exactly the most popular guy with the local police and they don't really understand some of his methods. I mean, do you know what a rust potion is? Do you think the police would? Think about it. I wouldn't and I'm a fantasy fan.

In a lot of ways, Message for the Devil feels like an early Dresden novel. The hero uses magic, even if Roger doesn't have the raw power that Harry does. There's a mystery. There's a supporting cast of characters that includes the police. There's even a human skull, although Roger doesn't name his skull "Bob." I've always had the feeling that Harry Dresden felt a bit out of place and Roger is certainly out of place.  Both heroes have problems with using technology, even if they manifest themselves differently. The McDonalds' world is probably about as well developed as Butcher's was after two or three books as well. (And yes, that means that the McDonalds haven't managed as much worldbuilding in two books as Butcher has managed in eight million. They'll get there. Just 7,999,998 books to go.)

There's a lot of action in Message for the Devil, too. This is not the Hardy Boys by any stretch of the imagination. Roger is a big fan of bladed weapons and the police, of course, have guns. There is plenty of fighting and running and hiding to keep things lively. This is one of those areas where Roger clearly doesn't not understand the customs and laws of the United States and has a chance to get himself into some very real - and very serious - trouble. He somehow manages to get out of it, at least for the most part. Sort of. Read the book.

That's not to say that all there is to Message for the Devil is all action. This isn't a Michael Bay flick and there is no lens flare. 

Huh?

Oh, yeah. Listen, I'm not sure how you would do lens flare in a book either, but I'm fairly certain that Bay would find a way to do it. Just don't pay attention to the fact that it doesn't make sense and you'll get it.

There is some fairly serious research taking place in order to solve the mystery. Speaking as a guy who has spent his time at libraries pouring over microfilm, the research in Message for the Devil makes sense. It reads like it was written by someone who has done some real research, for the simple reason that the characters in the book are smart enough to find the right place to go to and talk to someone who knows the story and where to find the information they need. This isn't a case of some rando jumping on the internet and solving a two hundred year old mystery in five seconds using Google. There's some real work involved here. I like that. The McDonalds some how manage to keep these parts from dragging out too long as well, so props to them.

There's some personal drama here as well. King Roger abandons his chance to return to his kingdom at the end of Thief on King Street. He did so for the love of a woman that he had just met. Yes, that is a cliche but it's used so often because it works. So while all of the insanity is going on, with murders and police problems and hauntings and...

You get the idea.

...Roger has to get to know the woman that he stayed for and figure out how things work with her. And, quite frankly, IF they work with her. It's not that she's disloyal, or that he is, but we've all been there. Making things work with a new person is never easy. He's a good dude and makes his way through it, but it's not as easy as perhaps he'd like it to be. I'm okay with it though. Easy stuff doesn't make a good story. 

Message for the Devil is, as mentioned previously, a sequel. While I certainly do recommend reading the first book, you should be able to enjoy this work either way. There is enough here to move the story along independently and what callbacks there are to the previous story are brief and well enough explained so that you won't feel lost. All in all, this is a story worth reading.

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Golden Coins

Message for the Devil: A King Roger V Adventure
Jason McDonald and Stormy McDonald
Parlatheas Press, 2024

Message for the Devil: A King Roger V Adventure is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you. 

Message for the Devil

CBS's Under the Dome

Under the Dome is the rarest of the rare: A Science Fiction TV series that is entertaining, exciting and got to finish its full run despite not having the word "Star Trek" in the title.  (And listen I've been a Trek fan since forever. I'm just saying that, other than TOS, Trek has gotten a lot of episodes for most of its series where other shows don't. I'm right.) It's a really cool show, despite being a bit on the weird side. I'm a huge Sci-Fi nerd and I'm the one saying that.

I don't want to get to far into the plot of the show. I'm not big on doing spoilers in general and this show has a lot of surprises that you deserve to enjoy for yourself. Lord knows that I did. I will say that no matter how long this show goes on, no matter how weird it gets, it's never more than five minutes from getting even weirder. Seriously, strangeness abounds. 

I mean, Under the Dome is based on a Stephen King novel and I'm pretty sure all of those are weird. I say "pretty sure" because, although I've seen a ton of movies based on his books, the only thing I've ever read by Stephen King was his book On Writing. I'm not sure I learned as much about writing as I should have, but even this dude's life has been weird in spots. Imagine writing a book like Cujo, that sold like crazy and got a movie and not even being able to remember it because you were riding the white horse. Crazy.

Even as weird as it is, though, it's still a believable tale if you can accept that the town of Chester's Mill was surrounded one day by an invisible, impenetrable and indestructable dome. What follows is some of the best tropes from post-apocalyptic literature and some of the awesome characterization every Stephen King movie seems to have. Seriously, it almost feels like I've met some of these people. 

At first no one knows what caused the dome, where it came from or how it is being powered. Things are revealed over the course of the series and that's where a lot of the weirdness comes from. It's not just the causes that are weird though. Sometimes it's the method of answering the questions or, indeed, the way that people come across the right question to ask.

There is a lot going on politically in the town of Chester's Mill and I don't want to get into all of it, but it will give you whiplash. No one knows who to trust. No one knows who to turn to. Then favorites start to emerge and things get crazy. The whole town turns into one conspiracy theory come true after another and each one weirder than the last. Sworn enemies in one episode are reluctant allies the next and soon best friends before eventually selling each other out and going back to emnity a few episodes later.

The thing is that it all makes sense in context. Every crazy moment is based on something that came before and leads to a logical outcome. I love that about this series. Every time I find myself saying "HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLY HAPPEN!?!?!?!?" The answer becomes "Well, first this happened, then that thing did and after the other thing, it couldn't have gone any other way." There's a reason that King has sold more copies than anyone this side of JK Rowling and it's not because he can't carry a plot.

The special effects for the series are really good for TV too. There are some shooting stars, and several disasters and they all look beautiful. I'd kind of like to see modern movies go back to looking like Under the Dome and spending the money on writers that CBS did for this series. This is a plot and character driven story. The effects add to it, but they're not what the show is based on. Under the Dome is what The Flash and Avatar: The Way of Water could have been if they had made an effort to do more than just look cool.

I want to talk about some of my favorite characters here, but I can't because I'd spoil too much. Trying to talk about what a character is like in a story like Under the Dome without talking about what they go through is basically impossible. I guess I'll just say to watch out for people with the following names: Big Jim, Junior, Barbie, Nori, and Julia. Those are some of my favorites because reasons. And one of my favorite actresses of all time shows up in Season Three, but saying who would risk telling too much. Let's just say I was happy to see her. 

And it's really the acting that makes Under the Dome as much as anything else does. The good guys are good guys, at least until they're the bad guys. The bad guys are bad, at least until they're the bad guys. And Big Jim is the consummate politician at all times, even when he's doing no-politicky stuff. He's also a used car salesmen with all that that implies. I'll shut up now. You'll thank me later.

Wait. That didn't come out right. 

Whatever.

The whole series is only thirty-nine episodes so it's an easy binge. I got through it in basically a week although a lot of that was being stuck in the house not feeling good for pretty much an entire weekend. I'm glad I did though. Other than the fact that I almost didn't get my laundry done that weekend at least. I kind of got wrapped up in what I was watching and lost track of little details like what the day and time were. 

And that's probably the best thing about the series. It's so good, so weird, so believable and you care so much about the characters (whether it's because you want to see them succeed or because you want to see them catch a bullet being a separate issue) that you can get lost and not want to find your way back. 

My one regret about watching Under the Dome is that I'll never get to watch it for the first time again. I really loved this show. Here's hoping we get more book to TV show translations, because this is how you can truly do justice to a long book with rich content. 

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Pink Stars

Under the Dome
CBS, 2013-2015

Great Lakes Comic Con After Action Report

 Did you ever have that feeling? You know the whole thing where something happens and you think to yourself, "I should have done this much sooner?" I was thinking the same thing yesterday when I got home from Great Lakes Comic Con in Warren, Michigan yesterday because, while it wasn't my first con (or even my first GLCC) and it wasn't my daughter Riley's first comic con, it was the first time we went to one together. I had a great time. He we both are with Ecto 1. 

Great Lakes Comic Con takes place four miles north of Detroit and I'm also a huge Ghostbusters fan, so there was really no choice. I had to take a picture with the Ghostbusters car. Oh, and did I mention Ghostbusters?

These guys were a lot of fun. They even gave me a poster for the movie. It's only four weeks away.Who else is excited? 

Of course I was there as a member of The Royal Manticoran Navy: The Official Honor Harrington Fan Association. We're a good group of people and we read lots of good books. Check us out!

Seriously, David Weber is an amazingly awesome author and the Honor Harrington books are his best work. As a personal favor, just because I like you, I'll let you know that you can download the first two books here: On Basilisk Station and The Honor of the Queen.  They're awesome books and I'm guessing you agree with my taste in books, so seriously, get them. Read them. Blame me when you buy the whole freaking series. I'm a big boy. I can take it.

Of course there was a ton of stuff to see and buy. That's a comic con standard. There were stands everywhere. Prices varied. I saw boxes of comics at fifty cents per book, classic comics at hundreds of dollars and like a billion different pieces of awesome art. That's standard at any comic con too and a lot of it was awesome. I didn't have the budget to buy all of the stuff I wanted and neither did any ten of the people you know, but if you can't go to a comic con and not just enjoy being around all the cool stuff you need to turn in your geek card and stop watching Firefly. You obviously no longer aim to misbehave. 

I've been a fan of GI Joe since his days as A Real American Hero back in the early 80s. I collected the comics and the toys as a kid and I still have a copy of the Sunbow movie from 1987. So when I walked in and saw The Finest (that's the GI Joe Cosplay society) there I had to get a pick, Those guys are awesome and they put a ton of work into their costumes. It was a real treat. Props to Central Command: The Fighting Fifth. You're a bunch of good guys.

Thank God for the Fridge. I was surrounded by snakes! And, if you spent any time at Hisstank back in the day, then you know old thatjimboguy was a loyal Joe. We kicked some serious tail in the GI Joe vs Cobra game on that site. I miss that game sometimes.

Speaking of serious cosplay, the TRMN booth was located right next to the booth of the 501st Legion. These guys set the standard for serious cosplay. Some of their members appeared in Attack of the Clones in the stormtrooper armor they had made to get into the club. I was impressed. They make some cool props, too.

Good times! I love these guys and I just noticed that I got the Han Solo in carbonite in the background. Seriously, when you're looking for good cosplay done right, look for the 501st. It's always a real treat to get a chance to meet some of these guys and it was super cool that our table was so close to ours. 

Of course, in the TRMN, we consider all cosplay/fan societies to be allies in the fight against...

Uhh...

Anyway, they're allies. And so I'm glad I got a chance to show them all a little love. Cosplayers are almost invariably kind and fun to be around. If you're ever at an event and you want to walk up to someone in cosplay, I recommend doing so. I've never had one say no to a picture and I've shaken the hands of quite a few. Of course, it's considered polite to start the conversation with, "Awesome cosplay! I love (insert character here)!" People like to be recognized for the hard work that goes into making these costumes. So let them know you appreciate what they did. You'll both feel good when you do it.

There were a butt-load of celebrities but I didn't get pics with any of them for budgetary reasons. It kinda sucks that I didn't get a chance to get an autograph from Eric Bischoff or Jason Moore and Noah Sult because I'm a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles guy, but it's all good. It's not the con's fault. It's nothing the celebrities did. It is what it is. Hopefully I'll get a promotion and have more money next year. And don't get me wrong. There were lots of other celebrities there. The celebrities I mentioned were just the one I was really excited about.

I played some D&D with my kid as well. There was a little group in the corner running introductory adventures. It wasn't my first adventure or Riley's but it was a good time. And, having only played in homebrew universes, it was nice to finally get to take a trip to Baldur's Gate. I know the place. I've read the books, but it was my first time there at a gaming table. The DM was a good guy whose name I don't remember and he did his best to get everyone involved. It was cool. 

The TMNT panel was at the same time as I was playing D&D so that was kinda rough, but we've all been there, right?

Of course, part of the fun of any con is getting pics with some of your favorite cosplayers that aren't really part of any cosplay organization, so here are a few of those.

Don't ask me why my hat is always crooked. I don't do that on purpose. 

The price was right, too. It was only twenty dollars for an all day pass. The food was about what you'd expect from a college expo center (the con was on the campus of Macomb Community College. I'm an alum, so that part was cool, too.) The prices were decent, too. I got dinner for myself and my kid for less than it probably would have cost me to go to McDonalds and we both got personal pizzas and a twenty ounce bottle of pop. So that part was cool.

All in all, it was a fun day and I can't wait to head back. I also managed to snag myself an autographed book, a comic from and indy comic maker and a Ghostbusters poster, so that part was good. I mean, it's not humanly possible to go to one of these and not buy SOMETHING. I can't wait to go back next year. Hopefully I can get Riley to come. She'll be in college by then, so we'll see how that goes but I plan to be there regardless.