Another small comic book rant...

A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me what I read when I was nine, looking for ideas for her son.  And I said (among other things)...comic books.  I was a huge Marvel fan as a kid.  Spider-Man, Hulk, ROM, Micronauts, Shogun Warriors,Ghost Rider, some Iron Man.  Easy access to comic books was a huge part of the reason I was an avid reader then and why I’m a writer today.

But Marvel doesn’t put out stories aimed at that demographic anymore.  I follow a bunch of their writers and publicity folks, and I was stunned when one person asked about current/recent Captain America comics suitable for a ten year-old and was publicly told there weren’t any.  Which  strikes me as sad on numerous levels, because it means a lot of these creators are taking something they loved when they were young and making it into something kids can’t enjoy.

And it makes me wonder... how many of these kids (if any) will grow up loving those characters?  At least, in this format?

Bless Your Mechanical Heart

Evil Girlfriend Media just released their new anthology, Bless Your Mechanical Heart.  At it's simplest, it's a lot of bittersweet stories about robots from authors like Fiona Patton, Ken Scholes, Seanan McGuire (yeah, her! a.k.a. Mira Grant), and lots of other talented folks.


For some reason they also took a story from me, too.  It's a little thing called "The Apocrypha of Gamma-202," and it's about truth and religion and other dangerous ideas people (and robots) can have.  And they also asked me if I'd do a guest post for their blog about why I love robots.  And writing about robots.

On top of all that, they put together this little meme-ish image for the story that they've floated off around the web.  It's pretty fantastic, and it's so fitting I thought they might've had the photo taken just for this promo.

So check it out.  Bless Your Mechanical Heart.  It's robots and it's sad (which, as we all know, is happy for deep people).