Long and Short Reviews welcomes Marguerite Labbe who is visiting with us to celebrate the recent release of A Little Side of Geek.
You can’t write about comic book conventions, writers, and artists without talking about your favorites. For the record, one of Morris’s favorite artists is Neal Adams a creator of Ra’s al Ghul, who is a top villain for Morris. For all of his disavowal of geek interests, Theo has a soft spot for Spider-Man and a love for Morris’s comic Beneath the Surface which Morris describes as Dora the Explorer meets Scooby-Doo with a dash of ESP.
I didn’t get into Batman comics like Morris, though I did love the animated TV series and movies. But I have read some. One of my favorites is Gotham by Gaslight where Batman takes on Jack the Ripper. And I’ve been meaning to pick up Tom King’s Grayson and Batman runs. But I haven’t done that yet.
Since I’m writing about a comic book writer/artist, I wanted to give a shout out to some of the series that shaped me as a writer over the years.
My husband Keir introduced me to comics before we were first dating in the early years of high school. He used to go to weekend comic book conventions back when they were held in small hotel spaces and it was a room of dealers with long-boxes of comics. There may be a couple of mid-tier artists who attended, but not many. Keir and a friend and came back with the entire run of X-Men’s X-Cutioner’s Song. I read it and was hooked on X-Men throughout the rest of high school.
In college, I discovered Joseph Michael Lisner’s Dawn. I hung out at Keir’s dorm all the time and a friend down the hall had a poster of her up on his wall and it intrigued me. I cannot tell you how much I loved everything about that character. She is the goddess of birth and rebirth and her lover is Cernunnos, the god of Death. I liked Lisner’s stuff so much, that I urged Keir to take a trip with me to Pittsburgh to meet Lisner one weekend and Keir had to remind me that we couldn’t go because that was the weekend we were getting married. Eventually, I did manage to meet Lisner. I have his Dawn: Lucifer’s Halo, Dawn: Return of the Goddess, and Dawn: Three Tiers mini-series signed by him at home.
After we were married, Keir introduced me to Watchmen and I became an Alan Moore fan. The neat thing about comics is that it’s not just the about the written story. The artwork takes on its own life and in the case of The Watchman the work that the colorist John Higgins did added so much to the whole atmosphere of the tale. I think that was the first time I consciously noticed details like that beyond just enjoying the outcome. If you’ve only ever seen the movie and not read the comic I strongly urge you to do so. Because I also loved the story within the story that is missing from the movie and adds to the whole.
I was introduced to Neil Gaiman through his Sandman series which to this day still remains a personal favorite. I think it may have been a Christmas gift from my husband. In it, Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, is taken prisoner, and it leads him down a really interesting path. It was so neat how all the stories were separate and still part of a whole and I loved the dreamlike quality to the writing. That led me to his book of short stories Fragile Things that I bought for Keir just as he was deciding to launch his own comic book and I was able to get it signed for him. The note from Gaiman encouraging him to take a leap and follow his dreams really made an impact on him.
I think the last series I’ll mention because I could go on all day is Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan. It was probably the only series not introduced to me by Keir. I got it from a Twitter recommendation. It’s completely different from any other comic I’ve ever read. The superhero, Michael Hundred, questions whether his powers actually have harmed more than helped people and he decides to go into politics instead and is elected Mayor of New York.
Making this list has me wanting to go back and reread all of these as well as pick up new titles that I missed. Please tell me some of your favorite comic series and why you love them. I’m always looking for something new to read.
When opposite worlds collide, it’s anyone’s game.
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Then he meets his adorkable new neighbor, Theo Boarman, who doesn’t know Star Trek from Star Wars, but who tempts him like no other.
Theo has spent the last year recovering from the loss of his parents and trying to play both roles for his teenage brother, while working to keep the family restaurant afloat. Dating is the last thing on the menu, especially with a man who thinks the height of dining is shoving a packaged meal into the microwave.
But if Morris gives him one more shy smile or flaunts that kilt he wears so well, Theo will be forced to convince him that a hot summer fling is just the recipe to let off a little steam.
When that fling gets serious fast, Morris has to decide if he’s willing to give his heart to Theo on the chance that they’re a perfect mix.
About the Author:Marguerite Labbe has often been called both Trouble and Sunshine by those who know her. She’s not sure how she manages to make both those nicknames work together, but apparently, she does. She’s a New Hampshire woman who married an Alabama man, an Air Force brat who has somehow managed to settle herself firmly in Southern Maryland, with one overgrown son and two crazy cats.
Marguerite loves to spin tales that cross genre lines, where stubborn men build lifelong ties of loyalty, friendship, and family no matter the odds thrown against them, and where love is found in unexpected places. She has won the Rainbow Award for Historical Romance with Fae Sutherland, as well as the Rainbow Award for Paranormal and the Rainbow Romance Award for Excellence, also in Paranormal.
When she’s not working hard on writing new stories, she spends her time reading novels of all genres, enjoying role-playing and tabletop games with her friends, and helping out her husband with Apocrypha Comics Studio.
Buy the book at Dreamspinner Press, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble
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