Thursday, November 10, 2016

GIL'S ALL FRIGHT DINER BY A. LEE MARTINEZ

Gil's All Fright DinerGil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

”Loretta outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds. Nonetheless, Sheriff Kopp held his ground with the courage of a man who had seen sheep explode spontaneously and lived to clean himself up later.”

Any apocalypse is about living to tell about it, right? The interesting thing about this small community is that spontaneously exploding sheep aren’t the strangest things that happen.

When Duke and Earl saw the glowing sign of Gil’s All Night Fright Diner appear, they had no idea they were about to stumble into a vortex of hell. They couldn’t have been more in the middle of dark nowhere if they had just driven up the ass end of a giant troll. All Duke wanted was a big greasy meal, but what he got was a full order of zombies with a side order of a horny, lascivious waitress. ”She wore a T-shirt and jean cutoffs that hugged her jiggling behind, but only barely. Cellulite rolled down her legs in flapping waves with each step. A soiled apron stretched across her immense breasts. Her hair, a frazzled bleached-blonde mess, slung to the left of her face and past her shoulders. She smiled, revealing teeth the size and color of corn kernels.”

Duke didn’t know which was more dangerous...the zombies or Loretta.

Now Gil, the owner of the diner, just disappeared. Loretta had taken it upon herself to keep the diner open, despite the infestation of zombies. She had killed well over a hundred already and figured sooner or later the graveyard down the road was going to run out of bodies. Duke was particularly adept at tearing apart zombies. It brought out the wolf in him, or should I say the werewolf in him.

What?

Oh, yeah, Duke had himself an encounter with a lycanthrope, which left him with a predisposition for back hair and the strength of ten men. Rotting corpses were just giant toothpicks. Now, his buddy Earl had a different problem. I’ll give you a couple of hints. He liked to drink blood, and a sunburn was deadly to him.

For $100 and all the beer they could drink, Loretta just hired herself some supernatural help for her supernatural problem.

The problem all originated with a bored seventeen year old named Tammy, who decided the vortex to hell swirling beneath Gil’s Diner was just too interesting to leave alone. She had a Magic 8 ball which was a little different than the one I used to have. Mine didn’t have a trapped, malevolent spirit inside who just happened to be addicted to the show Bonanza. Little Miss Tammy was of Japanese descent, exotic in this small town, and pert and curvy in all the right places. She was fully aware of the impact she had on the opposite sex and what better way to recruit male minions to your dark, magic ways than to dangle the black triangle.

To add a bit more stir fry to this sizzling skillet, there was also a pretty, very needy, spirit who proved a distraction for Earl, along with her ghostly Scottish Terrier who played hell with the musty, dusty ankles of zombies. Will all these supernormal phantasmic creatures prove to be an equal match for one pissed off, power hungry, diabolical teenager?

You’ll just have to read it to find out.

I had intended to read this for Halloween, but the best laid plans of ghouls and goblins foiled my time schedule. I also really enjoyed another book by A. Lee Martinez called The Automatic Detective.

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Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Book 1

Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Book 1Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Book 1 by Ta-Nehisi Coates
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The people of Wakanda are restless. They've been stirred up by a group called The People and some of them have become dangerous.
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T'Challa has been doubting himself and whether he can do the right thing to protect Wakanda.
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Meanwhile one of the Black Panther's Dora Milaje is sentenced to death for doing the right thing because of growing corruption in Wakanda. Her fellow Dora Milaje and lover will not allow her to be killed and steals experiment armor to free her.
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I was really excited about a new Black Panther comic especially having such a renowned author as Ta-Nehisi Coates on the project. Unfortunately very little happens in this volume. The thread that Wakanda has problems that need to be solved reoccurs, but the rest of the time is spent lamenting those problems and kindly trying to solve them. T'Challa is scared and frustrated regarding what's happening, but little of his persona is shown. The most compelling and forward moving aspect of the story is the Dora Milaje who escaped from Wakanda with experimental Midnight Angel armor. One of the lovers is sentenced to death for actually doing the right thing and the other can't accept her punishment. They embody the trope of wanted lovers on the run from their problems, but they are far from helpless because they armor they wield is powerful.

The writing in A Nation Under our Feet feels very amature. Those bubbles are packed with words mostly philosophical and political in nature. It's clear the story will eventually go somewhere, but right now it's taking the scenic route filled with speeches. It's been disappointing thus far and I think I'm going to wait to read the next issues and volumes at my library or Marvel Unlimited.

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