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Now back in print and timed for its 50th anniversary—the landmark book Origins of Marvel Comics by Stan Lee! A deluxe, collector’s edition of the original Origins of Marvel Comics including a new cover, essays, and more. Originally published in 1974, Origins of Marvel Comics features the first appearance of characters who have dominated the pantheon of Marvel’s modern storytelling mythology—Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor, and Doctor Strange—along with a second Silver Age tale featuring these special heroes, all hand-picked and introduced by the one and only Stan Lee, and serving as an essential showcase for writers and artists such as Stan himself, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita, and Marie Severin. Whether viewed as a historical artifact that launched an industry of presenting Marvel Comics to a broad audience of fans or a collection of the best in Silver Age comics by many of the greatest creators to ever put pencil to paper, Origins of Marvel Comics highlights both the lasting greatness of these iconic characters as well as the monumental contributions of the talented creators who launched an entire storytelling universe.
The boiling pot of emotions that finally erupts in young Jesus has been cooking for years on the flames of religious fanaticism, poverty and race hatred. Transformed into the perfect victim by his grandmother, a religious fanatic, and the teachings of his parish priest, Jesus is progressively abused and brutalized. At eighteen, he marks his coming of age with the savage rape of a prostitute, the only person who loved him, and with an attack that maims the parish priest he both hated and feared. Jesus graduates from the supposedly nurturing institutions of family, church and school into the labyrinth of horrors that is the correctional system.
How the autonomous digital forces jolting our lives – as uncontrollable as the weather and plate tectonics – are transforming life, society, culture, and politics. David Auerbach’s exploration of the phenomenon he has identified as the meganet begins with a simple, startling revelation: There is no hand on the tiller of some of the largest global digital forces that influence our daily lives: from corporate sites such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit to the burgeoning metaverse encompassing cryptocurrencies and online gaming to government systems such as China’s Social Credit System and India’s Aadhaar. As we increasingly integrate our society, culture and politics within a hyper-networked fabric, Auerbach explains how the interactions of billions of people with unfathomably large online networks have produced a new sort of beast: ever-changing systems that operate beyond the control of the individuals, companies, and governments that created them. Meganets, Auerbach explains, have a life of their own, actively resisting attempts to control them as they accumulate data and produce spontaneous, unexpected social groups and uprisings that could not have even existed twenty years ago. And they constantly modify themselves in response to user behavior, resulting in collectively authored algorithms none of us intend or control. These enormous invisible organisms exerting great force on our lives are the new minds of the world, increasingly commandeering our daily lives and inner realities. Auerbach’s analysis of these gargantuan opaque digital forces yield important insights such as: The conventional wisdom that the Googles and Facebook of this world are tightly run algorithmic entities is a myth. No one is really in control. The efforts at reform - to get lies and misinformation off meganets - run into a brick wall because the companies and executives who run them are trapped by the persistent, evolving, and opaque systems they have created. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are uncontrollable and their embrace by elite financial institutions threatens the entire economy We are asking the wrong questions in assuming that if only the Facebooks of this world could be better regulated or broken up that they would be better, more ethical citizens. Why questions such as making algorithms fair and bias-free and whether AI can be a tool for good or evil are wrong and misinformed Auerbach then comes full circle, showing that while we cannot ultimately control meganets we can tame them through the counterintuitive measures he describes in detail.
“Richly and often pertinently funny [with] a sure instinct for the carefully considered irrelevance . . . a great deal of incidental hilarity [and] inspired idiocy.”—The New York Times Happy Birthday Wanda June was Kurt Vonnegut’s first play, which premiered in New York in 1970 and was then adapted into a film in 1971. It is a darkly humorous and searing examination of the excesses of capitalism, patriotism, toxic masculinity, and American culture in the post-Vietnam War era. Featuring behind-the-scenes photographs from the original stage production, this play captures Vonnegut’s brilliantly distinct perspective unlike we have ever seen it before. “A great artist.”—The Cincinnati Enquirer
It's time to DUEL! The original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga ran for 38 volumes, has been adapted into multiple anime television series, and spawned one of the most popular trading card games in the world. Duel Art collects the fantastic color artwork of series creator Kazuki Takahashi, along with rough concept sketches, tutorials, and an exclusive interview with Takahashi-sensei himself.
“Two teenagers from broken families find solace in one another’s company” in this “heart-wrenching and hopeful” YA romance novel (Kirkus Reviews). When Adam Moynihan’s oldest brother died, his life fell apart around him. Now his mom cries constantly, he and his remaining brother can’t talk without fighting, and the father he always admired moved out when they needed him most. Jolene Timber is used to being a pawn in her divorced parents’ war. But when she develops an unlikely friendship with a boy who spends every other weekend in the same apartment building that she does, suddenly the future seems less bleak. Can the boy who thinks forgiveness makes him weak and the girl who thinks love is for fools find something real together? They’ll find out . . . every other weekend.
If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...
Welcome back to another issue ov NuShIt! As the title suggests, these 248 pages contain new poetry written & performed in 2017. If it happened in 2017, I probably wrote about it or took notes for later poems. I have continued trying as many poetic styles as I could (see Keywords), & even included a Glossary as the Special Supplement this year! NuShIt '18 is already in the works, & NuShIt will keep coming each new year until I'm dead!