Bot Picks: The Winner Is....?

From April 2, 2015, the Top Post Ever on this blog:

A to Z Challenge:  Bimbos!  I suppose because lots of people are searching for bimbos on the Internet.  Boy would this be a surprise.


In the Transformed series are not one but two books focusing on bimbos.  For my purposes a bimbo is a woman who looks really hot but isn't all that bright.

The first Transformed Into a Bimbo borrows heavily from my prior novel Chance of a Lifetime.  In the first story, a scientist is working on an anti-aging drug called FY-1978, which is the drug that turns Detective Steve Fischer into Stacey Chance in the novel.  Anyway, some animal rights protestors raid the lab to free the test animals and in the process the scientist gets dosed with the FY-1978.  He finds himself turning into a girl who gets increasing hot--and increasingly dumb.

The second story is basically a miniature version of Chance of a Lifetime.  A detective tries to foil a robbery at a pharmaceutical company and is shot with the drug, now going by the name Yunagin--Young Again, get it?  He turns into a young woman who then gets revenge on the criminals.

There are a couple of key differences.  First, Steve/Stacey is named Jake/Jackie Madigan; Jake is Steve's old partner in the Chances Are books.  Then of course Stacey looks like this:

You know, pretty much like a normal young woman.  Whereas Jackie looks like this:

Yowza!

Then there's how Jackie takes revenge.  Where Stacey pretty much fought them with guns and such, Jackie uses her body.  One guy is into S&M stuff so she uses that to her advantage and gets kind of creative.  You know, because this is supposed to be erotica.

Someone whined about the first book that the character should get into the sex more quickly, so I decided to give that a try with the sequel.  The first story is really short.  It's one of those classic Twilight Zone stories where a rich guy thinks he's going to cheat death by transferring his brain into his bimbo trophy wife, but gets more than he bargains for when he really starts turning into her.  If you read carefully you can see where Michael Offutt makes a cameo.

The second story was a lot longer.  It's one of those that sort of spun out of control a little.  Basically a janitor at a lab triggers a weird holodeck sort of thing and finds himself inside the holographic world as a character called "Naughty Nancy."  A scientist gets pulled in with him and together they jump through a few different scenarios as they struggle to escape.

The scenarios I based on some of my previous books, so they end up as schoolgirls, little girls, Goth girls, whores, fat girls, and geek girls.  That's part of why it ended up longer than I intended.  Fans of "Archer" will get the Dr. Krieger reference in the story.

And of course you can buy both on Amazon for the low low price of $2.99 each!

There you go.  We're done.  Now shut it down!  Until...whenever.  Happy New Year!

Bot Picks Runner-Up: Goliath is the Legal Thriller I Hoped "Better Call Saul" Would Be But Isn't

From October 24, 2016:

I remember five or six years ago I watched the (failed) pilot for a Zombieland series on Amazon Instant Video.  It was not good:  no name actors, low-budget effects, and a fairly blah story.  Since then Amazon has gotten a lot better with shows like Transparent, Mad Dogs, The Man in the High Castle, and The Tick.  Goliath is the latest addition to that list.  It's a legal thriller from David E Kelley, who knows his way around legal thrillers like LA Law, The Practice, Ally McBeal, and Boston Legal, plus other series like Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, etc.  He was a huge deal in the 90s and early 2000s, though I think he kind of fell off the radar a bit in the last ten years.  Like Kelley, most of the stars of the show were bigger stars 10-20 years ago like Billy Bob Thornton, William Hurt, and Maria Bello.  Still, it makes for a winning combination.

In the title I mentioned AMC's Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul.  I watched the first season and really wanted it to be good, but it wasn't.  Instead of actually focusing on low-rent lawyer Saul Goodman and any actual cases, they decided to do this whole lame prequel/origin story thing that was boring as shit.  The reason why 99% of prequels suck is they spend most of their time trying to build mythology and explaining useless shit (the origin of Wolverine's jacket, revealed at last!) so they don't have time to actually create a decent story.

So while they begin with something of the same premise--a low-rent lawyer who used to be part of a big firm and is now working out of a seedy motel and the bar next door--Goliath can actually tell a story instead of trying to tell us the origin of  Saul's loud wardrobe.  The story is pretty simple:  a boat blows up on the ocean and the guy on board is ruled to have committed suicide, except his sister doesn't think so.  At the behest of another ambulance chaser, she goes to Billy Bob Thornton, who basically starts out as his character from Bad Santa if he were a lawyer instead of a safe-cracker.  Really they could have called this Bad Lawyer if they'd wanted.  Anyway, he isn't willing to represent her, but then they sleep together and he takes the case against a weapons company who is represented by the big firm he helped to create but left after a murderer he defended went out and killed again.

The big firm is run by William Hurt with a Harvey Dent-type look of half his face being badly burnt.  He sits up in his office with the blinds closed while spying on everyone and listening to opera music.  It definitely makes for a creepy vibe.  As you'd expect there are a lot of high-priced assholes working for him, one of whom is Maria Bello, who also is Billy Bob Thornton's ex-wife (in the show).  Like Netflix's Jessica Jones there's a gratuitous lesbian attorney subplot involving Maria Bello and the head of the defense team for the weapons company.

From there the big law firm does pretty much everything they can to keep Billy Bob Thornton and his ragtag team from taking the case to trial and winning it.  They run over his client, frame him for a DUI (which included tazing his daughter), set up two witnesses on drug smuggling charges, and even put a dead body in his trunk.  He has some dirty tricks too like having a prostitute friend sleep with a cop to coerce some information from him.

So yeah neither side is squeaky clean, but that's the real world for you; it's never really black hats vs. white hats.  The case does eventually get to trial, where it's hampered by a judge doing everything possible to help the defense and an important witness who has a stroke.  Who wins?  You can watch to find out.

There were some things I don't think were really dealt with adequately:  who kills the mysterious "Karl Stoltz" for one thing.  How did William Hurt get burnt?  (A flashback like they do in Breaking Bad and Arrow would have been good there.)  Other than having slept with Billy Bob Thornton and the other side's lead attorney, Maria Bello doesn't really contribute a lot to the story.  And at the end there's a "hot mic" (or cell phone) moment that's a cliche I get tired of.  There are some unanswered questions, but that's for season 2, right?

If you have Amazon Prime you can watch the entire 8-episode season for free.  Unlike some of those old series on Amazon it's actually worth the time.

BTW, I was glad among all the dirty tricks, the bad guys didn't kill the stray dog Billy Bob Thornton was always feeding and even letting sleep in his room on cold nights.  I kept fearing someone was going to do a Godfather and leave the corpse in his bed or something.  Maybe they're saving that for next year.

Bot Picks 3: A New Year/A Hero's Journey

From April 1, 2012 (the first official post!)

It's day 1 of the A to Z Challenge and also Day 1 of my new author blog.  Gone are the grumpiness and bulldogs, though I know you're as sad as I am to see them go.

Anyway, in the short term at least the point of this blog is to sell my novel A Hero's Journey whenever it comes out.  I wish I had a cool book trailer or anything like that.  Instead I'll just give you a basic description of the story:

Cover by the excellent Rusty Webb

A 19-year-old genius named Emma Earl returns to her hometown of Rampart City to begin working her dream job at the Plaine Museum of Natural History.  On her first day, though, strange and terrible things begin happening, starting with the appearance of a slab of black mineral that no one--including her--can figure out what it is or where it came from.

The black object is just the precursor to an ancient evil that descends upon the city.  To oppose this evil, Emma is led to a suit of magic red plate armor that lets her become a hero known as the Scarlet Knight.  But even with the power of the armor, Emma might not be able to stop darkness from destroying the city.

If you want to learn more about the story, you can find all sorts of stuff on the Special Features page--look for the tab below the header graphic or click here.  We have character bios, deleted scenes, a guide to Rampart City, and the short story that started it all--Heart of a Hero.

At this point I don't know when the book is coming out, but I'd guess in summer sometime.  Until then I'll keep plugging away.  That's right, every letter in the A to Z challenge will relate to the book in some way.

Tomorrow, the origin of Emma's friend Becky Beech.

Bot Picks 4: Comic Captions 4: Not Safe for Work!

From October 3, 2012: (I sometimes wish this were still a thing.)

Comic book people must be some of the most sex-crazed people on Earth.  I mean you ever see those female heroes they draw with like the size 40-DD breasts and waists smaller than Barbie's?  And that most of their costumes look like a roll of dental floss strung over their naughty bits?  Anyway, if you don't believe me, check out this month's Comic Captions from Batman Confidential #18. 

My turn:
Batgirl: That's a big sack you've got there.

Man: You should see my other one.

Now your turn.  Caption this...if you dare!

Bot Picks 5: Two-Fer Tuesday #29: Sean Connery Storms A Crime Scene

From December 11, 2012:

It's Tuesday, which means another Two Fer Tuesday.  If you're not acquainted with the rules, I use a random number generator to pick a page and paragraph to pluck two sentences from.  Let's see what we get this week.

Page Number: 28
Paragraph Number: 7
OK, it's not really Sean Connery, just another pissed-off Scottish guy...

“What the hell is going on here?” he shouted  with an accent that reminded Donovan of Sean Connery.  At the moment his face was red and he was giving Sergeant Cielo all he could handle to keep the man from storming into the crime scene.  

If you want more than just two puny sentences, you can now get the book FREE on Amazon

Bot Picks 6: Transformed Into...A Complete Series! What I've Learned...

From December 10, 2014 (Note:  I added 12 more books in the series, plus a slew of holiday ones since then):

This might have been better for last Wednesday when everyone was doing their monthly whine.  Though really I'm not whining so much as celebrating, because the last of the Transformed gender swap books is done!

Of course last may not be accurate.  It's more like last for right now.  Basically I wrote 22 of them in almost six months and I need a little break.  22 books, 42 stories in total, and I have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of words is a lot even for me.  After a while you just need to chill out and take it easy.  Plus it's almost the holidays, so it's nice to be able to celebrate those without any self-imposed deadlines.

The last of the books, Transformed Into a Cougar Too, wasn't supposed to release until next Tuesday.  But for some reason Amazon locked it for "offensive content."  They reference some page that defines offensive content as "pretty much what you think that means."  Um, thanks guys.  Considering this is volume 20, I have no idea what would be so bad.  So I loaded it to Smashwords instead.  The penultimate one, Transformed Into a Bimbo Too, released yesterday.  I guess in theory then #20 was out before #19.  Oops.

I suppose the grand experiment worked out pretty well.  Up to last July I hadn't really written anything too "commercial" before.  The Chances Are books were probably the most commercially successful, though not to this extent.  Here are the things to take away from it:

• Find a niche market!  I didn't invent the idea of the gender swap story by a long shot.  Virginia Woolf might have with Orlando, or maybe not.  I'm not a literature scholar.  The point is you find a niche that actually has some demand.
• Be like everyone else! (Mostly)  I didn't invent the gender swap story and I didn't invent the format for how I did my stories.  I borrowed it from books I saw linked to Chance of a Lifetime on Amazon.  Reading a couple of those I just pretty much did what they did.  Check this out:

Note how similar the covers are!  Even the title format is pretty much the same.  I think her image is a little better with this one, though others of mine I think are better; it just depends on what stock photos you can find.  For my very first one I used somewhat similar story ideas from other books for the two stories in mine.  I'm not saying I plagiarized them; I just took the overall concepts and tweaked them my way.  And that's how I got a number of my story titles, by seeing what someone else was doing and doing one of my own.

• Kindle Unlimited is Awesome!  I don't use Kindle Unlimited and I wasn't sure how it work out for me, but it has been pretty awesome.  Generally I think around 40% of the money I get per month came from that.  That was 40% that I wasn't getting before.  Now maybe some of those borrows I get less for might have been sales, but maybe not.  Or they might have been sales that some asshole then "returned" a few minutes later.  The point is having another revenue stream is sweet.  If it destroys Smashwords, then too fucking bad; I don't hardly make jack off them anyway.
• Keep It Simple, Stupid!  What really annoyed me was seeing that Chance of a Lifetime was like 300 pages and FREE while these other books were in some cases like 16 pages long and going for $2.99--and with much higher sales ranks!  So when I did my own I tried to keep it much shorter than I'd usually write.  Still most ended up around 20,000-25,000 words.  I still can't write ten pages and pass it over as a "book" like some other people.  But yeah I did keep these a lot shorter than my other books.
• Give the Audience What It Wants (Or Die Trying)  When I wrote Chance of a Lifetime the girl Steve Fischer turns into is a pretty normal girl:  brown hair, average breasts, etc.  With these books that's no what you want to do.  Mostly I tried to give the audience what they would want, so I tended to exaggerate a lot.  Usually there's at least one blond, they've all got big racks (except the little girls), tiny waists, etc.  The idea is the guy always turns into a porn star.  Or well most of the time, but then titles where I didn't do that (Transformed Into a Geek Girl/MILF/Fat Girl) didn't really do as well.  When I did get a review of one the reviewer gave it 5 stars but complained the bimbo needed to get addicted to sex sooner.  So the next one (Transformed Into a Bimbo Too) that's what I set out to do, which ended up with the first story being a lot shorter and it actually took the second story in new directions.  Give people what they want, go with the lowest common denominator and you can't go wrong.  I mean it's worked out pretty well for Hugh Hefner and Seth MacFarlane so far.

I think the one area I still haven't done well in is connecting with an audience.  People might buy the books but I still hardly get any reviews.  Obviously you'd like reviews to help build some word of mouth.  Maybe it would help if Eric Filler had an online presence with an Email, Twitter, Facebook, etc. but you know how exhausting that would be?  Though that wouldn't explain why people don't review them.  If you say they don't actually read them then I don't know why they're buying them; and also as I said they aren't very long.  I haven't fulfilled my dream of becoming the Heisenberg of gender swap erotica either.  If you didn't watch Breaking Bad it means the guy whose product is so awesome that it blows everyone else's away.  Don't think it hasn't been for lack of trying.  I think I have some pretty unique concepts, not just the stereotypical "pissed off wife/lover makes husband/boyfriend into woman/little girl/etc for revenge."  The last story I wrote features "sex vampires"--make of that what you will.  But I suppose in that way I might have violated my own rules, because the cliche story probably would sell better.  I'm getting closer to staying in the lines, but still not completely.

Anyway, as I said this probably isn't the end of the series.  It's pretty easy to come up with ideas for these when you start putting your mind to it.  But I probably need some time to recharge.  Maybe I'll even get around to writing something more mainstream again.  Though after you do something that has even a slight amount of commercial success, it seems kind of pointless to go back to something that probably won't sell for shit just because it's more respectable.  Hey, I finally get Adam Sandler's career now!  I mean I can be like Tony Laplume, pumping out one thing after another that no one reads but I really do like seeing hundreds of dollars going into my account every month.  It has really come in handy on the road.

The other idea would be to go even less respectable.  Maybe find some other niche markets to explore.  I'm not sure what, but I'm sure I can find something on Amazon if I try hard enough.  That of course goes back to my first bullet point.  How low can I go?  Hurm.

Bot Picks 7: Superhero Trivia Question #2

From June 13, 2012
(BTW, the answers are Hawkman & Hawkgirl(woman))

 

It's the second Wednesday of the month and so today is the superhero trivia question.  I'm taking these from 1001 Comic Book Trivia Questions by Rich Meyer.  I'm not sure how great it is, but it was cheap and available for my Kindle.  Anyway, if you have a problem with the question or answer, it's his fault.

Without further adieu, here's the question:

"The shape-changing alien Byth was the first menace from which a pair of alien police officers defended the Earth.  What were their names?"

Answer in the comments.  First one to get it right gets a $5 gift card to Amazon in their email or Facebook.  (Again, I'm not mailing a $5 gift card.  I'm not sure Amazon would even let you do that.)

If you aren't first, never fear!  One respondent will be selected by random number generator to receive a $1 gift card.  Yes, you can give $1 gift cards.  Buy yourself a cheap eBook or MP3 or use it to get a dollar off something else.  The winner for this will be announced tomorrow.  The same person cannot win both gift cards because while that would be more convenient for me it wouldn't really be fair for everyone else.

Also I've decided on what I call the "Andrew Leon Rule" where the same person cannot win the trivia question each month.  So if you win this month you won't be eligible to win the $5 for another 3 months (until September).  But you can still win the $1 participation prize.  Andrew Leon is already disqualified this month for winning May's question.

Good luck!!!

Bot Picks 8: BIG Announcement

From October 26, 2012 (The links probably don't work for this book.  You can get my stories from it on Amazon)



I've tangentially mentioned that I've been working on a project with Neil Vogler for the last month or so now.  By this point he's probably announced we're doing something called the Flash Fiction Festival in conjunction with December House Publishing.

As the name implies it's four weeks in November with flash fiction every weekday from Me, Neil, and Sean Craven.  That's over 60 stories in all!  They cover all sorts of stuff.  I'm just going to tease the ones I did:

1. An intergalactic Gordon Ramsey takes on his newest project
2. A shocker in the Fantasy Love League
3. The city's best noir accountant gets a new client
4. The frustrations of being a female yeoman on an Enterprise-type ship
5. A soldier tries to make it back for one last dance
6. A bulldog mascot helps someone find true love
7. Time travel gets dangerous for a conman
8. A meeting of supervillains turns deadly
9. The dead have risen...to rent videotapes?
10. A vampire has had enough of the stereotypes
11. A story of boy meets girl...but the girl is a dragon!
12. On a planet of robots, one dreams of becoming a Transformer, with disastrous consequences
13. A trip to the dentist turns deadly!
14. A pair of socks hold the key to the Sox making the playoffs
15. Godzilla goes on vacation to Japan
16. A young goddess combats bullying
17. Fairy tale land's best divorce lawyer takes on a new client
18. Christmas brings together two warring sides during WWII
19. A man sick of sharing his birthday with the JFK assassination takes drastic steps
20. God decides to finally retire
21. Two young witches are brought together to fight evil
22. Timeless love and reincarnation at Starbucks

(BTW, it turns out only 20 of these will be posted in November.  I don't know which 2 are being dropped from the rotation.  Those two, plus one other I haven't written yet will be included in the eBook version as "bonus" material.)

Meanwhile, on this blog I'll have a whole prequel series of Scarlet Knight flash fiction!  Kind of like those old serials, it's a series of short connected stories that tell how the Scarlet Knight and Black Dragoon came to be.

The "Volume 0" is inspired by DC Comics, who have twice printed #0 prequel issues for like all their titles.  Since this is before Volume 1, it's Volume 0!  Wow.

BTW, I know people hate Sims so here's the prototype cover with real people:

Maybe that would have looked better if I'd cleaned it up a little, but it would have cost me like $13 to buy the images.  Nuts to that.  Say what you want, but Sims are FREE!

Anyway, if you're looking for a break from Nano writing and people blathering about Nano writing, there's going to be a ton of flash fiction to read every weekday in November!

You might wonder:  how does that affect this blog?  Excellent question!  The trivia question will air at its normal time--November 14 at 9am EST.  The rest of the normal stuff--Two-Fer Tuesday, Phony Photos, Comic Captions, Practical Superheroism, Everyday Heroes, Thursday Reviews--will go on hiatus until December.  I'm sure you'll miss them as much as I do.

BTW, if you want my "autograph" or virtual autograph really, you can now go to Kindlegraph and request one from Yours Truly.  Exciting stuff!

Bot Picks 9: A to Z Challenge 26: Zaftig Girls

From April 30, 2015:

I was kind of flummoxed for a Z word.  I mean it's not like I wrote Transformed Into a Zebra...yet.  Or Transformed Into a Zookeeper!  Transformed Into a Zombie!  That has some potential.  Transformed on a Zeppelin! The sky's the limit there...or not.

I was looking up words in the dictionary and came across zaftig, which means fat.  I just so happen to have a book called Transformed Into a Fat Girl.  This was one of my wackier ideas.  I had heard about "chubby chasers" and so thought maybe there'd be some interest in a gender swap book with fat girls.  Yeah, not so much.  Despite that, I think these are two pretty good stories!

The first story was actually the second one I wrote.  I decided since it was shorter to put it first so as not to bore the audience too much.  It's about a male fashion critic during Fashion Week who laments how there's just no hot girls to be had anymore!  A woman asks him about his perfect woman and he describes her only to look in the mirror and see he's become her!

At first he thinks it's really awesome to be a supermodel.  And why not?  He's hot, got an awesome apartment, and a sexy professional baseball player boyfriend.  But the next morning he wakes up carrying a few extra pounds.  The next day it's even worse...and so on.  Sort of like that Stephen King story/movie Thinner--only the opposite.

The second story takes more of a sci-fi tack.  In the near future if you have enough money you can transfer your brain into another body.  An old widower has scrimped and saved to get his brain put into a sexy young body.  Except something goes wrong during the surgery and he ends up waking up as a chubby young woman!  Another chubby young woman helps him to adjust to his new life, but when memories from his new body's past start surfacing, it means that mayhem is about to ensue!  Did you ever see "Idle Hands?"  It's sorta like that, only less Jessica Alba and Seth Green.

Obviously this hasn't done well enough to warrant a sequel.  Erotica buyers are so fucking shallow.

You can buy it for $2.99 on Amazon.

Well, that's the whole show.  Anyone who read all 26 entries (besides me) and still visits this blog is a saint in my book.  Now we can get back to the usual schedule of blogging about...whatever.  It was kind of easier this month since I didn't have to keep thinking of random stuff.  I work better with a theme, as this month should have demonstrated not only with blogs, but also with books.

And for all of you whining about how hard this was, I finished on March 27!  Really, write your entries in advance.  I don't give a shit if some dork says it's "cheating."  It's not cheating; it's smart.  I always write blog entries ahead of time, so why would I stop now?  Duh.  But then not everyone is unemployed and has no family or social life to bother them.  I feel your pain.

Bot Picks 10: Thursday Review: Batman Knightfall

From August 2, 2012:

By now you've probably already seen The Dark Knight Rises and you've maybe even read my review of it.  So now I think I can talk about the story that at least partially inspired the movie without feeling like I'm "spoiling" things for people.  Though really when I talk about the Knightfall comic book series I might mush it together with the novelization I actually read first.  There are some things in the novelization not in the comics and vice versa.

Anyway, even though until 1993 or so I'd read exactly one Batman comic in my life (it was this one where he fights some hockey player guy; somehow a tattered copy of it ended up in my closet along with part of a '60s Superman comic where he goes back in time somehow) for some reason I became obsessed with the Knightfall story.  Not obsessed enough to actually BUY any comics.  I mean back then I was like 14 and the only money I had came from mowing my grandma's yard (10 big ones!) or if I embezzled my lunch money, which was maybe another $5.

Which actually makes me wonder where the hell I'd even heard what was going on in Batman comics in the first place.  I mean this was before Al Gore had invented the World Wide Web so I couldn't even go to Wikipedia and read about it.  It was probably from going to Waldenbooks (remember when that was a thing?) or the used book store.  Though now that I think of it, I remember they ran a story on it on "Today" back when I still watched that on occasion.  That might have been what got me started.

Anyway, I think what fascinated me was the idea of the hero LOSING.  And not losing because he sacrifices himself to save a bunch of people or something like that but losing because the bad guy actually outthinks and outmuscles him.  In other words, the bad guy actually bests Batman.

So when I got around to reading the novelization (I realized later the writing is crap but the story is good), I fell in love with it even more.  The basic story goes that in this crappy Latin American island prison called Santa Prisca is this guy named Bane.  He breaks out of prison and goes up to Gotham.  He finds out from his minions (three dudes with goofy names:  Bird, Trogg, and Zombie) that Batman is all the shit in Gotham.  Bane does a little studying on the Batman and comes up with a brilliant way to destroy Batman.  [Incidentally, the full backstory of Bane is in the "Vengeance of Bane" comic that I'll review in a couple of weeks.  Because I can.]

The first thing he does is stage a raid on Arkham Asylum where most of Batman's old foes are: the Joker, Two-Face, the Riddler, and so forth.  (But not the Penguin, who was in Blackgate Prison I guess.)  Batman manages to catch a few of the crazies during the raid but the worst ones get free.

So now Batman has to go around chasing after all these bad guys at the same time.  Needless to say this gets pretty tiring.  After one of these battles, Bane watches the Batmobile and figures out which neighborhood it's going to.  Then he deduces that Bruce Wayne is the Batman.

From there he busts his way into the Batcave, where Bruce was trying in vain to get a little shut eye.  There's a somewhat anticlimactic battle between them, where Bane just whoops the hell out of Batman.  Finally, he lifts Batman up and then brings him down over his knee, breaking Batman's back.  In the novelization it says at the last second Batman is able to turn a little so his spine isn't like completely severed.

To add insult to injury, Bane takes Batman into Gotham and then chucks him into a crowd or something.  In the novelization it's kind of funny because he takes Batman to this street corner where there's only one old lady who witnesses him declaring himself the king of Gotham.

So there you go, our hero has lost.  Batman is defeated, and pretty handily too.  Of course like many comic book villains before him, Bane made the mistake of leaving Bruce Wayne alive instead of just killing him.  I mean it probably would have gone differently if he had killed Bruce before he could tap a successor.

Probably the biggest contrivance in this whole storyline is that Bruce doesn't tap Dick Grayson (Nightwing, formerly original Robin) to replace him.  Instead he picks this Jean-Paul Valley guy, who was an assassin known as Azrael.  [I'll talk more about him in 3 weeks.  Again, because I can.]


Anyway, so Jean-Paul becomes the new Batman.  He has problems like he doesn't know how to drive well, he hates Robin (score one for him!), and he struggles with Batman's whole not killing thing since Azrael was an assassin who obviously killed people.  Also when he tangles with the Scarecrow and gets a whiff of fear gas he starts to go nuts, thinking he hears this phony St. Dumas (the patron saint of the Azrael people) talking to him.

But thanks to going crazy he designs a new Batsuit that is wicked cool.  I have him standing right on my desk as I'm typing this.  The new Batsuit was designed more like the Azrael suit, which is more armor-y or kind of robotic-looking.  It has these cool dart guns and even flamethrowers.  Yes, flamethrowers!  Instead of a cape he has all these kind of partitions that form wings.  The problem at least with the new Batsuit (AzBats as some people call it) is that it's really top heavy.  To get him to stand on a stand I took from the Nite Owl II Watchmen figure I bought I have to bend his knees to give him more balance.

And here reenacting Knightfall are my Batman action figures.  You have old Bruce Wayne Batman on the ground with Bane standing over him.  To the left is the new Batsuit Jean-Paul designs.  This was the latest (and most accurate) figure.  To the right are two older versions of AzBats that I bought at some point.  The little blue one I got in about 1996 as part of a Legends of Batman two-pack along with Viking Batman (not pictured).  The red one was part of some set I bought online that included the old Batman on the ground there, regular Superman, and "Superman Red" which was part of a cheesy late 90s plot where Superman was some kind of energy being.  Anyway, the AzBats figure in that set actually had a blackish cape and head, which made no sense since that was never how it was depicted in the comics.  So I repainted it red, which sort of matches how he looks at the end of the Knightsend series.  Also, for the Bane figure I bought a Legends of the Dark Knight version from the mid-90s but the head was really stupid-looking (it had long hair and the mask didn't look right) so I chopped off his head and then online I found a replacement head from the newer figure (in the same set as the AzBats on the left) that you could only get complete if you bought all six figures in that set, which would have been a lot more expensive.  His pants should really be black and the tubes bright green but the hell with that.  So that should give you an idea how deep my obsession with this is.


Anyway, with his kickass new suit, AzBats goes out looking for Bane, even though Bruce Wayne told him not to.  There's a climactic fight, where of course the new Batman wins.  Hooray!

Except you know that Jean-Paul's reign couldn't last.  I mean they made the dude crazy and gave him a French name.  So they pretty much set him up for failure right there.

Anyway (yet again) I loved this storyline.  As I said at the beginning, I think it was a different way to look at things.  Also, though, Bane was a great villain in the comics.  He was not only really strong but he was smart too.  One of the many things that disappointed me with "Batman & Robin" was that they made Bane this idiot henchman for Poison Ivy.  I suppose a lot of the problem was being super strong it was hard in 1997 to cast someone who could look the part.  (That and Joel Schumacher is a moron.)  I mean back then if you wanted someone with lots of muscles they couldn't really act.  (See Bane's co-star Ahhh-nold Schwarzenegger for an example.  Or Lou Ferigno in "The Incredible Hulk.")  Of course nowadays with computers you can make a regular-sized guy look huge, which is how Mark Ruffalo can be the Hulk in "The Avengers."  At least in "The Dark Knight Rises" Bane gets his balls back, even if you can only understand half of what he's saying.

If you ever buy the paperback reprints of the series (I had to buy at least one used because it was out of stock or just really expensive on Amazon) it comes in two volumes.  The first volume deals with Bruce Wayne being broken and the second volume deals with Jean-Paul kicking Bane's ass.  What sucks though in volume 2 is a sizable chunk of it is actually a flashback to when Bruce's Batman fought Two-Face.  That seemed kind of dumb; why didn't they just put that in volume 1?  I think too the story in the comics might not have been quite as epic as I'd built it up to be in my own brain, but it still makes for fun reading.

And you know if you just saw the movie, you might want to see how the original went, right?

If I ever publish the entire Scarlet Knight series, the sixth story (which incidentally is my favorite) is largely inspired by Knightfall.  Part of it is set in an alternate future where an aging Emma gets whupped on by a new breed of Black Dragoons.  One of them severs her spine so that she's left paralyzed.  Her daughter Louise then hears "the Call" to become the next Scarlet Knight and like Jean-Paul she struggles with the superhero gig and her predecessor's legacy.  Though unlike him she isn't crazy, so she's got that going for her.  Maybe its close relation to Knightfall is why I like it?  Hurm...

Bot Picks 11: A Spooky Halloween Post

From Halloween 2012:

I got lucky that Halloween falls on a fifth Wednesday this year, which means yet another random entry that I wrote months earlier.  (Seriously, I wrote this back in July!)

Anyway, Halloween is when we talk about what scares us, so I decided to talk about something that creeps me out and also relates to the blog theme:  comic book covers.  That's right, comic book covers can freak me right the hell out.  Embarrassing, no?

For the record I'm not talking about ALL comic book covers.  Most are pretty benign.  I mean it's not like I run screaming if I see an Archie comic or something.  There have just been some that have freaked out.

The first one I can remember that got under my skin was back in probably the mid-80s.  I'm not sure what title it was, maybe the Justice League or something.  Anyway, it involved Batman, Superman, etc. and they were in Africa where there were all these starving people (this was during that "We Are the World" period when we actually cared about people dying over there) and Lex Luthor (or someone like that) was saying something like, "Ha ha ha, not even YOU can save them." (BTW, if anyone knows what comic that was that would be cool to know. I obviously can't type a vague description into Google and hope to find anything.)

In this case it wasn't really the actual artwork that bugged me but the underlying concept behind it that some problems were too big even for superheroes.  I mean I was probably about 8 years old at the time, so I hadn't really ever thought about that.  You know like any white kid out in the suburbs I had to that point been pretty sheltered.

Now if you think this effected some great change in my life, you would be mistaken.  I mean it sure as hell didn't get me to stop eating.  Or maybe I just ate more so I wouldn't end up like those people.  Yeah, there you go.

I think overall the biggest culprit of freaky comic book covers was also my favorite hero:  Batman.  In large part because when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s there was a tendency to draw Batman on the cover looking positively demonic.  From what I read on Tony Laplume's blog, I guess this Kelley Jones guy was behind that.  Thanks for giving me nightmares, Kelley, you jerk.  Here's just one example from the Knightfall storyline:

When I actually read that comic it reminded me of something from Michael Chabon's Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, where he talks about a kid looking at a comic book and being enticed by the cover, despite that he knows the story inside will bear little resemblance to that cover.  This is because most covers are done by another artist, who isn't involved with the actual creation of the story.

In this case you look at the cover and you see a very evil-looking Batman about to kill some guy.  In the story inside it's not so dramatic.  Batman (Jean-Paul Valley at this point) does beat some guys up but it doesn't look so evil.  For one thing he has a hammer in the comic, not a board with nails in it.  I'm just saying.

A few issues later then we have this:

From that you assume Bruce Wayne is going to be killed by Batman!  Well, that doesn't really happen either.  Bruce does surprise Jean-Paul in the Batcave but there's not really a fight or anything.  But I guess the point is to make you want to see what's inside, right?

I think for the most part what made Batman look so scary in these is how first they make his costume black (when it was really blue) and they extend the bat ears so they look like horns.  You know, devil horns.  That's definitely not someone I want to meet in a dark alley, I tell you whut.

The champion of all scary Batman covers (to me) was this one:

I first saw that in a comic book store like 15 years or so ago.  Not as a cover, but as a big-ass promotional poster on the wall.  So it was kind of hard not to notice it.  There was a slogan on it too, "He's Become What He Hates Most...A Vampire."  Something like that.  I suppose that only added to the freakiness for me.  I mean do you want that thing coming in through your window to suck your blood?  Yipes!

When I started buying some Batman graphic novels, I did actually buy this one.  I think I was trying to face my fears.  Plus the idea of Batman fighting Dracula and becoming a vampire was kind of neat.  Anyway, I failed in facing my fears, at least partially.  I did read the book, but the thought of actually TOUCHING the book gave me the willies, so I decided on an ingenious solution:  I put on a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves.  It made turning the pages a little awkward at times but at least I had a barrier between me and it.  I also read it on the floor so it wouldn't be touching any part of me.  (Hmmmm, I should probably tell that to a shrink.)  That was only a year or two ago, so it's still a problem.  I don't even like to THINK about it sitting on my bookshelf, as if it'll suddenly come to life or something.

Though this doesn't happen nearly as often now.  One reason is I don't SEE many comic book covers these days.  I don't go into comic book stores and only rarely do I go to bookstores where those would be.  The other is especially with Batman they got away from that style for the most part.  On occasion though they slip a creepy one in there:

Before you think I'm too much of a wuss, I can watch like "The Human Centipede" or "Nightmare on Elm Street" at night and it doesn't bother me all.  I've buried a whole pet cemetery's worth of dead animals.  So I'm not a total wuss, just a big wuss.  But even tough guys like Indiana Jones are scared of something, right?

Happy Halloween!

Bot Picks 12: Behind The Female Protagonist: Guest Post by Melissa Foster

From May 21, 2012:

Today I'm hosting Melissa Foster, bestselling author of Megan's Way, Chasing Amanda, and Come Back to Me, as part of her blog tour.  About all Melissa's books and mine have in common is featuring a female lead character, so that's what she's going to talk about today.

Behind The Female Protagonist, by Melissa Foster

Everyone loves a strong heroine. A woman who can take down the bad guy and look sexy while she’s doing it is even better. Add a sprinkle of vulnerability and a few layers of complexity, and there you have the perfect female protagonist.  As writers, we have the privilege of making our characters anything we want them to be. This is exciting, but also a big responsibility. Below are a few ideas for creating strong female protagonists.

• START SOFT

All characters need to evolve as the story progresses. Allow your readers to bond with the softer side of your heroine, let them see her vulnerabilities, let them buy into her weaknesses so they can root for her strength later in the story.

• GAIN MOMENTUM

Give your heroine plenty of stumbling blocks. Something as challenging as a specific weakness that she needs to overcome in order to build her strength enough to conquer the enemy is a powerful writer’s tool.  Build slowly, finish hard.

• CUT LOOSE but BE WARY

Some worry that a woman shouldn’t be stronger than a male would be in the same role. While I don’t buy into that, I do believe that even while your heroine is beating the heck out of the bad guy, she needs to still be feminine. Be careful not to make her so strong that she becomes male in the reader’s eye. She needs to remain female in the descriptions of fights, chases, or emotionally draining experiences. Women have different body shapes and types then men, they get injured in ways men do not. Keep that in mind so your heroine remains female in the reader’s mind.

Female heroines are all the rave—we women want to live in a fantasy world when we read. We experience real life, we live with fear of rapists and getting into circumstances that challenge our safety. Let us live through your powerful yet sexy heroine. We can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, we can see a bad guy and kick them in their can!

What do you find is the most critical issue when developing a strong female protagonist? As a reader, what is most compelling about female protagonists?

---

Melissa Foster is the award-winning author of three International bestselling novels, Megan's Way, Chasing Amanda, and Come Back to Me. She has also been published in Indie Chicks, an anthology. Melissa is on the advisory board for the Alliance of Independent Authors and is a touchstone in the indie publishing arena. When she’s not writing, Melissa teaches authors how to navigate the book marketing world, build their platforms, and leverage the power of social media, through her author-training programs on Fostering Success. Melissa is the founder of the World Literary Café, Fostering Success, and the Women’s Nest. She has been published in Calgary’s Child Magazine, the Huffington Post, and Women Business Owners magazine. Melissa is currently collaborating on the film adaption of Megan’s Way.

Melissa hosts an annual Aspiring Authors contest for children, she's written for Calgary's Child Magazine and Women Business Owners Magazine, and has painted and donated several murals to The Hospital for Sick Children in Washington, DC. Melissa lives in Maryland with her family. Melissa's interests include her family, reading, writing, painting, friends, helping women see the positive side of life, and visiting Cape Cod.

Website: http://www.MelissaFoster.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Melissa-Foster/240064542695303

Twitter: @Melissa_Foster

The Women’s Nest, women’s social network: http://www.TheWomensNest.com

World Literary Café: http://www.worldliterarycafe.com

Fostering Success: htto://www.fostering-success.com

Facebook Melissa Foster: http://www.facebook.com/MelissaFosterAuthor (Fanpage)

Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3023973.Melissa_Foster

Find her books on Amazon:

MEGAN'S WAY

CHASING AMANDA

COME BACK TO ME

Thanks to Melissa for including me on her blog tour!  

Bot Picks 13: A to Z Challenge 7: Goth Girls

From April 8, 2015 (The first Goth Girl book is permafree now!)

My fascination with Goth girls I guess began with the fifth Tales of the Scarlet Knight book, Betrayal Begets Blood.  In that Agnes the witch is transported into an alternate universe where instead of a witch, she's a fat teenager with purple hair who's into all that fake witchcraft stuff.  Then in Girl Power when the Batman character becomes a teenage girl, he's given a makeover into a sort-of Goth girl, kind of mocking that whole "creature of the night" Batman thing.

So it was only natural I guess I'd dedicate one of my Transformed books to Goth Girls.  I said in a previous post that I think it's my favorite of the series and it totally is!  The first story is called "Graveyard Girls," which comes from a song:

In this case there's a band called the Graveyard Girls and when a guy listens to their record, he turns into a Goth girl!  He hooks up with another Goth girl to try to track the lead singer of the band down.

At the end of that story they visit a Goth bar that is the setting for the second story.  In that story a guy tries to convince the owner of the bar to sell out to him, but instead she turns him into a young woman who's to become her new bartender.  Mayhem ensues!

This is one of those that I wish had done better sales-wise.  I guess for purely sentimental reasons I decided to write a sequel.  I think it features my most innovative cover to date:

See how I tried to make it look sorta like a tattoo? Awesomesauce!

The first story of this is another of my black comedies.  A nerdy Goth guy is tired of being alone and reads an article about how to fashion a golem out of mud and bring it to life.  So he designs his perfect girl in the mud--only for it to come to life with the spirit of his mortal enemy, a jock guy who bullies him at school!  See the jock died in a car wreck at like the precise moment the golem was being brought to life so it used his soul.  Makes perfect sense, right?  Obviously mayhem ensues.

The second story kind of misfired.  It's sort of a ghost story in that there's a ghost who appears at this Minnesota lake every 100 years.  Two college kids are determined to film the ghost but when the guy tries to touch the ghost he's pulled into the water and emerges as a girl!  The problem here is that it takes the whole story for him to actually become a Goth girl.  Maybe you would appreciate that slow build or probably not.  It's the kind of story that was probably better in concept than in execution.  Not that it's terrible; it just didn't work out how I planned.

But hey that first one is really good even if my descriptions kind of suck.  Go buy them for $2.99 apiece on Amazon, I command you!

Bot Picks 14: Sims I Like: White Trash Bimbo

From September 2, 2016:

I have two Transformed Into a Bimbo books, but the bimbo I created for this entry was designed for Gender Swapped By Aliens, a goofy story I wrote with my other alias.  As you might guess, there are aliens and they gender swap a guy.  Their way to "invade" is to warp reality so that the whole planet thinks the aliens have always been their masters.  Except there's one guy who does still remember and so they keep warping his reality in the hope he'll finally forget.

At one point he becomes a bimbo secretary to a real jerk of a boss.  Since the guy used to be a shrink it was kind of a role-reversal thing besides gender swapping.

I thought this hairstyle was pretty neat for the character; it makes me think of a go-go dancer or something.  She has a really good white trash look with the tube top tied at the side and the Daisy Dukes.  The prominent crucifix is kind of ironic too, isn't it?

Bot Picks 15: Sims I Like: Anime Babe

From October 14, 2016:
In the forthcoming Transformed for Halloween 3, three frat brothers are haunted by the spirit of the girl they left to die a year earlier.  Each one becomes their sexual fantasy and is then murdered, sort of Nightmare on Elm Street-style.  A nerd named Melvin's fantasy is the star of a Japanese anime series that's loosely based on Sailor Moon.

The top is a Sailor Moon top I downloaded, as are the boots and skirt.  The hair was probably from a different anime show, but whatever.  I thought the purple would be fun for the hair.  I tried to make the eyes as big and round as possible, but they aren't exactly like anime characters.  And here's just a funny pose I captured:

Bot Picks 16: On the Twelfth Day of Indie Bookmas...Christmas on the Corner by Andrew Leon

From Christmas Day 2016:

Christmas is the time to bury the hatchet and make peace and whatnot, so for the twelfth day of Indie Bookmas it's that indie book Scrooge, Andrew Leon

It's been a hard adjustment for the Howard children, moving to Louisiana. Finding out that one of them is the Guardian, one of them is a wizard, and that one of them... is angry, because he doesn't posses the same talents and gifts as his siblings. In revenge, he tells his sister that there is no Santa Claus, but in a house where anything you can imagine can become real, it turns out to have unexpected results.

Buy it for $2.99 on Amazon or FREE with Kindle Unlimited! 

By the way, here was my XMas Playlist this year on Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and DVD:

• All I Want for Christmas (1991)
• A Muppet Christmas Carol
• Ernest Saves Christmas
• The Santa Clause
• Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (MST3K version)
• The Ref
• Home Alone
• Home Alone 2
• Miracle on 34th Street (1995)
• Christmas Vacation
• Hogfather
• Bad Santa
• A Christmas Story

And I also watched XMas specials for:

• American Dad
• Futurama
• Bojack Horseman
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
• Supermansion
• Robot Chicken
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• Rick Steves' Christmas in Europe

Bot Picks 17: The Blog Year in Review

From December 26, 2016:  (Consider it a partial sneak peek of what's to come):

Here's a curious fact:  Before August 10 I only had 2 posts this year with 100 or more views.  Since then every post through November 23rd had more than 100 views, with some having more than 300.  And yet there was no increase in comments, so can I assume it was search bots finding my blog posts?

Here are the posts the bots liked most in reverse order:

• Sims I Like: Anime Babe (334 views)
• Luke Cage Packs a Powerful Punch (334 views)
• Goliath is the Legal Thriller I Hoped "Better Call Saul" Would Be But Isn't  (338 views)
• Things I Thought I Shouldn't Think (356 views)
• Sims I Like: Ms T (362 views)
• You Don't Get the Swag if You Ain't Got the SPAG (363 views)
• The World of Amazon Can Be a Shady Place (369 views)
• 6 1/2 Years of Blogging: What's the Point? (371 views)
• More Comic Book Reviews You Won't Read & Don't Care About (378 views)
• Stuff I Watched: September Edition (380 views)

The weird thing is they're all clustered together from September 26th through October 14th with the "Goliath" entry as an outlier on October 24th.

Make of that what you will.  Happy 2017, y'all!  (Will it be worse than 2016?  Probably.)

Bot Picks 18: A New Year, A Brand New Attitude! (Or Not) 💩💩💩💩

From January 2, 2017 (How long did I stick with this?)

The dumpster fire that was 2016 is over.  Time to light fire to a whole new dumpster!  Most likely with Drumpf at the wheel that dumpster will end up being destroyed in a nuclear holocaust.  So, let's eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we could (and probably will) die!

I mean I could spend the next 4 years (or however long until WWIII with China disintegrates us all) picking on Drumpf and the evil Republican regime that's determined to kill many of the people who voted for them, but what's the point?  No one cares.  Especially not right now.  It's still the honeymoon phase.  Eventually the dupes will realize that he's not going to deliver on his crazy promises.

So instead of railing on about that, let's have some fun.  I always liked the Comic Book Challenge I ran back in 2012, but sadly even though I was offering money to the winners, people only grudgingly participated.  Still, I'm not going to be deterred.  I'm going to start a whole new trivia challenge on an even more obscure subject:  my books!

Because this blog is supposed to help sell books, remember?  So here's your new blogging schedule:

Monday:  I'll ask the weekly question relating to one of my books.  Since you probably haven't read that book--though of course you could always go and buy those books to study up--the questions will be multiple choice or true and false, something to give you a fighting chance.

Wednesday:  I'll reveal the answer.  Provided more than one person actually answers the questions, I'll total up the scores.  Let's say the first person gets 5 points, the second gets 3, and the third gets 1 point.

At the end of the year whoever has the most points will win...something.  Probably a gift card for $20 or so.  And there'll probably be something for second and third place--if applicable.

Friday:  I'm going to keep doing weekly reviews:  for me, not so much for you.

The contest starts next week, so you have time to buy some books and bone up.  Not that you will.

Bot Picks 19: On the Tenth Day of Indie Bookmas...War Angel by Rusty Carl

From December 23, 2016:

On the Tenth Day of Indie Bookmas...it's my favorite cover illustrator, Rusty Carl (formerly Rusty Webb)

Engel Johnson discovers that his Grandmother has been hiding a secret since the final days of World War II. His visit to her death bed reveals that she she witnessed some of the most horrifying moments of the 20th century first hand.

And that she's been keeping a secret for more than 65 years.

This novelette set both in the present day and in waning days of the second World War shows how great forces disrupted the life of one family for generations.

Get it for 99 cents or FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

Bot Picks 20: On the Eleventh Day of Indie Bookmas...Miss Simon's Moxie by Tony Laplume

From December 24, 2016:

On the Eleventh Day of Indie Bookmas...it's my frenemy, Tony Laplume!

Agnes Butterfield has developed amnesia and ended up lost in the mean streets of suburban Washington, D.C. This is bad, because she’s President of the United States. What follows is a madcap adventure involving bumbling kidnappers, homeless writers, a professional wrestler, and several other hapless individuals, in a story told by the indomitable Miss Simon to her most important audience ever: Tim Laflamme.

Get it for $4.99 on Kindle or $7.00 in paperback!

Bot Picks 21: Grumpy Bulldog vs. the National Football League

From November 18, 2016:

It's been a heavy week so let's end on a light note!  Also I haven't watched new stuff so I'm not doing a "Stuff I Watched" this week.  Mostly I've been watching stuff already watched but got on DVD recently including both Ghost Rider movies for $6 at a KMart Going Out of Business Sale.  Did I get ripped off?  I don't know, I consider them in that middling part of the superhero movie pack along with Green Lantern, Daredevil, and most of the X-Men movies.

Anyway...the NFL (or National Football League as idiot announcers like to remind us 40 times a game) has seen ratings decline.  Is it because of the election?  Because of players protesting the national anthem?  Me, I think in part it's because the game has gotten to be so shitty to watch.  People complain that baseball is slow but every football game is 3-4 hours between commercials, injuries, and plays being reviewed and the stuff between all that often isn't great.  So here are some suggestions to fix things:

1. This comes from the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column that used to be on ESPN:  eliminate DirecTV's monopoly on Sunday Ticket.  That's the satellite package where you can see most every NFL game instead of the ones on your local airwaves.  That would allow cable subscribers to get the package and watch more games.
2. Along with that, give more people access to the "Redzone Channel" where you can see scoring plays.  That's a big thing for fantasy football so the more people who have that the better
3. Thursday football should be reserved for Thanksgiving only.  The Thursday Night Football games are usually a dumpster fire with bad matchups and crappy "Color Rush" uniforms.  (BTW, attention Packers, white is not a "color" really.)
4. Just have 1 London game if you must.  Having one football game on at 9:30am is neat but when you do it 3 or 4 weeks in a row it starts to get lame. And why has it always been London?  Why not some of the other former NFL Europe cities?  Though Amsterdam might have too many players failing drug tests. Zing!
5. End tippy-tappy penalties.  Stop killing scoring drives with "holding" penalties that cost 10 yards and 90% of the time stop a drive dead.  Either dial it down to 5 yards or say fuck it and let them hold all they want.  As well, end "block in the back" penalties on kickoffs that take away great returns.
6. Simplify Catches.  Use the college rule that only one foot has to be down and enough of this "process of the catch" bullshit where a receiver has to catch the ball, fall down, get up, and do a fucking tap dance without juggling the ball.  No one likes sitting around debating what is or isn't a catch for five minutes.
7. Speed up reviews!  This crap of waiting 5 minutes to review the spot of the ball is so ridiculous.  Lower the number of challengeable plays and get those replays in there faster so we don't have to wait forever.
8. Go full college OT.  A few years ago the National Football League changed overtime from sudden death to a half-baked system where if the first team who gets the ball gets a touchdown they win, but otherwise the other team gets the ball.  Just use the more exciting college system where each team gets the ball on the 20 and try to outscore each other.
9. For NBC only:  stop with the stupid player introductions.  We got bored of this on Monday Night Football years ago and there was no need to transfer it to Sunday Night except maybe Al Michaels is too lazy to read names.  Sorry, players, but we've heard every variation of your jokey introductions:  using high schools, junior highs, elementary schools, or made-up schools like "The school of hard knocks" and we're sick of hearing THE Ohio State and THE U.  It's especially sad for 30-something players to brag about where they went to college.  You got a stupid college ring to show while you're at it?
10. Let some fun in, but not too much.  I was as sick of Terrell Owens and Randy Moss, etc.'s inane touchdown celebrations in the 2000s as everyone else, but as usual the NFL took things too far by fining players for wearing different-colored socks or refusing to let Antonio Bryant wear shoes with Muhammad Ali on them.  Hidden Sharpies and mooning crowds are bad but no one cares what socks the players wear.
11. Speaking of, stop letting Commissioner Roger Goodell be judge, jury, and executioner.  The punishment system of the NFL is a joke.  A kicker gets suspended 1 game for beating his wife but smoking a joint gets you a 4-game ban?  2014 was a dumpster fire of a season for NFL punishment as Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson were suspended for abusing a girlfriend and child respectively only AFTER the word of the crimes got out to the press.  Goodell should have lost all power then, but for some reason he's still calling the shots and the system is as inconsistent as ever.
12. This is cruel but:  get injured players off the goddamned field!  I know it sounds mean and it risks legal action to do but look the NFL is in part like NASCAR:  people come to watch the wrecks as much as the race.  Let's not pretend like we really give a shit when some poor guy goes down on the field.  Sure we all gasp and applaud when he's carried away, but then guess what?  We applaud the next bone-crushing hit.  Football is a gladiator sport only the bodies are weapons.  Let's stop pretending we're worried about their collected health and just keep the game going.  Are you not entertained!?  And especially if the dude just has a fucking cramp or something wimpy, push him to the sideline and keep going!
13. Stop "freezing" kickers.  One of the lamest things coaches started doing in the 2000s is calling a timeout right before a kicker would kick a field goal at the end of the game or half.  Much of the time they would wait until just before the ball was snapped so the kicker would get a practice kick.  To me it's as lame as the dude who goes on The Price is Right, sees the highest bid is $900 and bids $901 just to be a dick.  Make it so you have to call the time out by the time players are set instead of when the ball is hiked so we have less fake kicks.  And it would eliminate those ironic moments when a coach "freezes" a kicker who misses the first time and nails the second attempt.

Those are just some ideas, some good and some maybe less good.  The idea is speed things up and eliminate some of the bullshit that makes watching a football game such a chore.

Bot Picks 22: Comics I Read, Mostly Featuring Transformers and Dr. Strange Because They Were On Sale

From January 6, 2017:

Happy Epiphany!  At least that's what it is in some religions in parts of the world.  The whole "12 Days of Christmas" thing is supposed to be between Christmas and Epiphany.  Still don't know who wants all those birds and servants and musicians.

Anyway, I've mostly watched Christmas stuff recently so I thought I'd instead review some comics that I bought over the holiday season.

Transformers:  Dark Cybertron:  IDW's Transformers series tries to mesh together pretty much all the non-Michael Bay incarnations of Transformers, including Beast Wars characters.  It can be kind of confusing.  And especially because a lot has happened in the series up to this point.  Starscream is heading a unified government on Cybertron, until Shockwave (who is kind of like a Star Trek Vulcan, all logic and no emotions) launches an elaborate scheme to take over the planet and the universe.  There are a lot of moving parts with things happening on Cybertron, in deep space, and in the "dead universe" which is some kind of netherworld dimension.  I enjoyed it even though I didn't really understand all that happened up to that point. (3/5)

Transformers:  Combiner Wars:  The series eventually continued with the relaunch of combiner teams.  They were Hasbro's answer to Voltron where five mini robots formed one super robot.  The evil Menasor is let loose on a Cybertronian colony and then the heroic Superion is sent to fight him.  But then there are more combiners introduced (reintroduced) like Devastator, Defensor, Bruticus, and Optimus Maximus, which was something that would have been neat in the old series since it features Optimus Prime and four other Autobots.  Like the other it was fun even if I didn't get all the background. (3/5)

Dr. Strange Masterworks Volume 1:  This is the original Dr. Strange series featured in Strange Tales back in the early 60s, written by Stan "the Man" Lee.  Like Spider-Man it started as a backup feature with the Human Torch carrying the main title for a while and then Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD.  Those parts are not included so you just get the 8 page stories of Dr. Strange.  Somehow they became popular despite that they were pretty corny.  The writing was pretty lame.  Everyone uses exclamation points!  All the time!  It gets annoying!  Most of the stories are Dr. Strange fighting his nemesis Baron Mordo, Nightmare, or Dorammadu.  It didn't really pick up until the last six issues or so where there's a continuous story of Mordo and Dorammadu teaming up and Strange going on the run.  Still, it's really hard to imagine how this launched a title popular enough to get a big movie made. (2/5)

Dr. Strange:  The Oath:  This 2012 version written by Brian K Vaughn has an almost noirish feel as Dr. Strange is shot by a burglar armed with Hitler's suicide gun, a weapon so evil it could penetrate Strange's magical defenses.  Saved by the "Night Nurse" (you might have seen her on Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones on Netflix) Strange, his servant Wong, and the nurse go on the trail of the killer.  It soon leads them to a pharmaceutical company and a cure for any disease known to man.  It was fun without seeming generically so.  Strange has kind of a stuffy know-it-all quality that conflicts perfectly with the more down-to-earth Night Nurse with Wong as the intermediary between them.  The story of evil Big Pharma also is pretty relevant to our times. (4/5)

Dr. Strange:  The Way of the Weird:  I think this was the latest relaunch of the title, but with Marvel who can tell anymore?  Dr. Strange faces a threat outside our dimension as some outside force called the Inquisition is tracking down and killing magic users.  This is making magic harder to use and eventually the war is going to end up on Strange's doorstep.  This story is largely a copy of "Spider-Verse" where an evil family was hunting and killing all the Spider-Men (and Women) from other dimensions.  The writing wasn't bad but it just felt generic with the bland, wise-cracking hero.  Pick up pretty much any other Marvel title from 2015 and it'll feel exactly the same.  I suppose being bought by Disney has led to this homogeneous feel. (2.5/5)

Dr. Strange & Dr. Doom:  Triumph & Torment:  This graphic novel from the 80s or something pairs up Dr. Strange and Dr. Doom.  A wizard has a challenge to see who will be the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth.  Dr. Doom shows up because he has some magic ability.  Of course Dr. Strange wins but Doom asks him a boon that he can't refuse.  That boon is to go to Hell and rescue the soul of Doom's mother.  So they go to Hell and fight Mephisto who is the Marvel Universe's Lucifer or whatever.  The hell part wasn't as epic as it could have been but the end was good.  To pad the book's length they add a couple of random Dr. Strange, Dr. Doom, and Sub-Mariner comics that tangentially apply to this, the Sub-Mariner ones mostly because they're drawn by the same artist, Mike Mignolo, who gained recognition for his Hellboy series.  That was kind of lame but oh well. (3/5)

Justice League 3001, Vol 1:  Sometime during the New 52 DC started Justice League 3000, which was kind of like Futurama--with superheroes!  Cloned versions of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc are created to save the universe from "the five" that's like the evil Empire or whatever.  The clones are imperfect, though, without all the memories of the originals and in Superman's case he can't fly or use heat vision.  Anyway, 3001 obviously picks up a couple of months later.  The head of the League has been possessed by an evil Lois Lane who sends them on dangerous missions hoping they'll die.  Meanwhile a gender-swapped Guy Gardner Green Lantern joins the team, in case you thought I was the only one to do that sort of thing.  It's pretty fun but confusing.  For one I didn't read the first year of issues and for another there are a lot of loose threads.  I want to read the second (and I think final) volume to see how much gets resolved.  This volume has a killer ending (pun intended) where Superman literally loses his head.  I'd worry about spoilers if I thought anyone who reads this would ever bother to read it. (3/5)

Amazing Spider-Man, Worldwide, Vol 2:  Peter Parker's globe-trotting adventures continue.  In this volume he battles Mr. Negative in China and then Scorpio in Paris/England.   It's a good continuation of Slott's Spider-Man that has been going for over a decade.  (3/5)