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Comics Review: SF&F Webcomics Roundup

Welcome to the latest instalment of my comics review column here at Skiffy & Fanty! Every month, I use this space to shine a spotlight on SF&F comics (print comics, graphic novels, and webcomics) that I believe deserve more attention from SF&F readers. This month, rather than focus on one work, I’m going to go wide. Following up on an aside in an earlier column, I want to do a quick-hits, roundup kind of post that looks at the SFFnal webcomics that I’m currently following, why they’re great, and why I hope you’ll read them too. (These reviews contain spoilers!)

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Book Review: Gift of Griffins by V.M. Escalada

Kerida Nast, bound to the Griffin Weimerk, and desperately trying to save her kingdom from invasion, returns in Gift of Griffins, sequel to Halls of Law. Gift of Griffins introduces a new major character even as the plight of Kerida and her allies and friends deepens under the boot of overseas invasion. When last we left Kerida Nast, unwilling magic user, Talent, she had gained some semblance of a fragile alliance with a new Luqs, ruler of her country, with the exiled inhabitants of the tunnels beneath the mountain range that keeps the invading forces from overrunning the rest of the land, and forged a connection to the griffin Weimerk. In Gift of Griffins, V. M. Escalada continues that story as Kerida seeks to fulfill the entirety of the Prophecy and unite her country behind Jerek to try and drive the invaders out.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

352. Lynne Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Matt Peters — Uncanny Magazine (Year Five)(An Interview)

https://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode352UncannyMagazineYear5WithMichaelLynneAndMatt/Sandf-Episode352-UncannyMagazineYear5WithMichaelLynneAndMatt.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSBelly-dancing wookies, pancakes, and multimedia cooperatives, oh my! The Thomas’ are back on Skiffy and Fanty to share their year five kickstarter with Paul and Trish! They brought with them Matt Peters, who, along with the fabulous Michi Trota, is hoping that you support Uncanny Magazine so that the world can enjoy their new venture, Uncanny TV! These three Uncanny guests share with us all the amazing things that Uncanny is doing now, what they hope to do in year 5, what wrestling has to do with recognizing a great story, and so much more! Plus, they just won a friggin’ Hugo Award (congrats, y’all). For the third time. So you know they’re legit! We hope you enjoy the episode!

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Book Review: A Study in Honor by Claire O’Dell

An Americanized retelling of the classic Sherlock Holmes story, set in a future with advanced tech, disastrous civil war, and a diverse main cast, A Study in Honor creates a unique drama that twists the original overdone story into something new.  With the leading characters transformed by sex and skin color, O’Dell puts a spin on your typical Sherlock and Watson partnership, and pulls you into a world of intrigue.   Dr. Janet Watson is fresh off the front lines of war, with a clumsy mechanical prosthesis that is too big for the delicate surgeon work she does best.  With few prospects, and only one friend in D.C., Watson must make the best of a difficult situation. She gets a job, starts therapy, finds a flat and an accompanying flatmate—Sara Holmes, who is secretive, attractive, and, most of all, maddening.  Just when everything has seemingly settled, one of Watson’s patients dies suddenly, and then her friend, another doctor on the front lines, dies as well. This sends Watson and Holmes on the path of a secret investigation, a military mission gone horribly wrong, and several more mysterious deaths.  But what awaits them on the other end of their investigation could get them both killed if they’re not careful.

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Book Review: Applied Ballardianism: Memoir from a Parallel Universe, by Simon Sellars

“In another life, I might have joined a radical church, a star cult. In this one, I attempted a PhD.” To engage thoughtfully with the work and life of science fiction*-and-literary-and-postmodernist author J.G. Ballard is, perhaps, to risk transforming oneself into a J.G. Ballard protagonist who must struggle through a J.G. Ballard world without the benefit of J.G. Ballard constructing the plot of his or her trajectory. Such is the lesson of Applied Ballardism: Memoir from a Parallel Universe, Simon Sellars’ much-anticipated exploration of how a greatly admired author can colonize a person’s imagination to an extent that borders on the dangerous.

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Guest Post: Finding the Dark by Rachel Caine

Today on Skiffy and Fanty, Rachel Caine, part of the Dead Air team, a podcast/serial story collaboration she is doing with Gwenda Bond and Carrie Ryan, tells us about finding the darknes in thrillers and what her new project has to offer. I started reading my dad’s books when I was, well, old enough to figure out where he kept them, which was way too young. Some of them were what would be euphemistically called “men’s adventure” today; James Bond-type books, only with more sex and violence. Some were horror. But I most remember the opening of one of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels … a book about a murderer backing a woman into a corner in her apartment, and relentlessly slashing back and forth at her like a sideways pendulum. It haunted me. I couldn’t get it out of my head, no matter how much fun space exploration science fiction I read, or high fantasy, or historical novels (all of which I loved).

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