"Target that explosion, and fire!"

For Halloween, I tweaked the blog title and description and changed my Twitter Avatar to Captain Sulu of the U.S.S. Excelsior.

"Well, Dag-Diggety!"

Javier Grillo-Marxuach's campaign to fund a new Middleman graphic novel in 2014 just met its stretch goal of $60,000, ensuring every interior will feature both black-and-white and color, Wizard of Oz-style. If the campaign reaches $85,000 in the twelve days remaining, there will be a second new graphic novel in 2015.

At The 5-2: "The All-Consuming" by Tim McLafferty

This week, The 5-2's Halloween poem, "The All-Consuming" by New York City writer and drummer Tim McLafferty:



The 5-2 Volume Two ebook is now available from Amazon's Kindle Store, all fifty-two poems from our second year for $3.99.

BONES: "The Woman in White"

Angela, Hodgins, and the rest of the Jeffersonian team try to keep Brennan's mind off a thirty-year-old corpse so she can focus on her wedding to Booth. The lead characters had chemistry from Episode 1, but, as with any show of Bones's kind, I was wary of them getting together too soon. On the flipside, many shows drag courtships on too long, leaving the wedding for the final episode (see JAG), any chemistry having fizzled by then.

I didn't quite buy the late third season seduction of Zack Addy by the cannibal serial killer Gormogon. At the time, I thought it came out of nowhere, a ploy to bring viewers back after the 2007 writers' strike. Watching reruns, though, I see the seeds were planted. And in the larger scheme, the departure of the monotone, very Brennan-like Zack allowed Bones to find a better balance of human remains and humor that has carried it for five seasons now.

Bones premiered two seasons after another of my favorites, NCIS, but while I lost interest in NCIS three seasons ago, I've kept up with Bones throughout. Brennan, Booth, and notably the supporting characters all have personal lives that unfold along with the case of the week, letting the series have pregnancies and weddings without missing a beat.

(Spoiler alert for those who haven't seen the episode) The most moving part, by design, was Brennan's vows. In Season 2, when Brennan and Hodgins were abducted and buried alive by The Gravedigger, they each wrote a letter to someone they loved. Hodgins wrote to Angela. Brennan, she reveals at the altar, wrote to Booth. Mind blown. Single tear. Kudos to Hart Hanson, Stephen Nathan, and everyone on Bones.

At The 5-2: "Unfastening a Hook Stud" by F.J. Bergmann

This week, guest editor Terry Trowbridge's choice, a chilling prose poem:

At The 5-2: "Marilyn Monroe" by Sasha Swarup-Deuser

This week's poem is apropos of Monroe's medical records coming up for auction.

ARROW: "City of Heroes"

Arrow's second season picks up with Diggle and Felicity traveling to Lian Yu, where Oliver went after Tommy's death. Meanwhile, Queen Consolidated is left open to hostile takeover, and Starling City is plagued by copycat Hoods—earthquake survivors taking justice into their own hands.

I'm not sure why Ollie felt the need to go back to the island where he was stranded to come to terms with Tommy's death, but I like that his death made Ollie reconsider his mission and methods. The great fun of an origin story is the opportunity to show/see a character in development. The writers and Stephen Amell pull off a character who doesn't always know what he's doing, who plausibly can't foresee the ramifications of any one action he takes. Along with viewers, he finds out as he goes.

At The 5-2: Charles Rammelkamp

Rammelkamp recalls the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat:

I'm So Glad We've Had This Time Together

It's my birthday again and about four hours of it will be spent in a meeting, just as in the past, tests or midterms seemed to home in on my birthday. I have many relatives also born in October, leading to oh-so-special combination birthdays...

Sincerely, though, I've always known how fortunate I am to have lived the life I have. I hope I've made the world a better place in my own small way. Feel free to guess my age in the comments based on this Bouchercon 2013 photo by Canadian author Cathy Ace.

What can you give me this year? Well, if you like comics, snappy dialogue, and rapid-fire pop culture references, join me in contributing to the Indiegogo campaign to resurrect Javier Grillo-Marxuach's Middleman. Not only will it mean a brand new graphic novel, bringing together the classic comic and ABC Family TV continuities, but the novel will also be performed by the cast of TV series: Matt Keeslar, Natalie Morales, Brit Morgan, Jake Smollett, Mary Pat Gleason, and Alan Smyth, with special guest Amber Benson. The campaign reached its basic goal today, but if it reaches $60,000 by November 10, sections of the novel will be in color, Wizard of Oz-style.

Tom Clancy Dies

Techno-thriller pioneer Tom Clancy reportedly died in a Baltimore hospital last night at age 66. My cousin gave me my first Clancy novel, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, in 1988. I was thirteen, and he knew I was a fan of spy movies. I didn't read the book through until 1994, having decided I wanted to be a writer, and having read dozens of books in one summer, including The Hunt For Red October and Patriot Games.

I've always cared more about story than about technical detail, but I appreciate that Clancy's level of detail raised the genre's standards for authenticity. One thing I knew reading a Clancy novel: He had done his homework; practically all of it was on the page.

As detail became Clancy's trademark, his books became longer and longer, but I read Jack Ryan's arc through Debt of Honor. In that book, a kamikaze plane crash kills the President of the United States, elevating Ryan to the position. With that, it became clear to me Clancy was playing out his personal fantasy. I tried to read further in the Jack Ryan-John Clark saga, but lost the willingness to suspend disbelief.

Other critics also tired of Clancy as he tried to recapture his mojo. Most recently, there have been books published featuring his best-loved characters, but written "with"—Does this really mean "by"?—other thriller writers.