Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

Marjorie Liu, author of the soon to be released, The Iron Hunt, has been writing for Marvel Comics in starting in August, her books will be relanuching the NYX X-book series featuring mutant teens living homeless in the streets of New York City.

You can read more about the creative team’s efforts in this IGN interview.

Patricia Briggs has signed with Dabel Brothers Publishing to produce a four episode? comic mini-series featuring Mercy Thompson to be released in the fall of 2008 with a hardcover collection from Del Rey in 2009.

Via ICv2 News.

Marvel Comics is joining the digital publishing move by making available over 2500 back issues including “the first appearances of Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Incredible Hulk.” In the future, new issues won’t be available online until six months after the print publication date.

To sell people on the idea of paying for content that they can get on a week by week basis in a newspaper, Marvel is offering a 250 title sampler package for free. The archive is available only online at a subscription price of $59.88 per year or $9.99 per month.

Via USA Today.

Dear Ms. Estep:

I enjoyed the first book, Karma Girl, and found that the comic book homage is still fun in Hot Mama. However, like the first book, I find that there is problem of pacing which results from the difficult balance between the emotional arcs the characters and the comic book capers.
Fiona Fine, aka Fiera one of the Fearless Five, is mourning the loss of her teammate and fiance, Travis Teague, the Tornado. She’s decided to throw off her “widow’s weeds” and embarks on a hot and heavy affair with Johnny Belluci, the brother of one of her fashion rivals, Bella Belluci.

Karma Girl and Striker just got married and are off on their honeymoon leaving the Fearless Five down to Three: Fiera, Mr. Sage, and Hermit. Fiera’s the one with the most “firepower” (sorry couldn’t resist the bad quip) and on more than one occasion, Johnny and Fiona experience coitus interruptus as Fiona is called to some emergency in need of a superhero.

I found these episodes to be a bit odd because Fiona hardly ever felt the need to rush to the emergency and would encourage …

Jennifer Estep’s sophomore book, Hot Mama, was reviewed in Entertainment Weekly (the issue with Johnny Depp on the cover). The book was the only romance reviewed this week and received a grade of B. You can read the entirety of the review at Estep’s blog.

Dear Ms. Croft:

I really wanted to like this book. I like the publishing house. I met the authors behind the psuedonym (Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler) and they seem totally great. Unfortunately, nothing in this story actually worked for me. The book opens with a heavy sexual overtone and never relents. Riding the Storm read like an erotic romance whose paranormal aspects seemed buffer space between the sex scenes.

Remy Begnaud is a man who can affect the weather. The why behind this is not fully explored and therefore never discovered. It’s a gift or a curse, depending on whom is rendering the opinion. Haley Marie Holmes is a scientist for ACRO (Agency for Covert Rare Operatives), an secret organization made up of individuals who have special powers. She is sent to study Remy Begnaud and recruit him for ACRO before the evil Itor organization filled with its own mutants, err people with special powers who do evil instead of good.

ACRO is headed by a reclusive figure, Devlin O’Malley. He provides a …

Yes but No But Yes put together a list of the Top 15 Unintentionally Funny Comic Book Panels. The list includes references to the Joker’s Boner, Wonder Woman’s vanity, Archie beating off three other guys, and Robin exposing himself.

Part of me read the panels with some disbelief. Surely, these were photoshopped, but alas, no. Probably they were the comic illustrators idea of a “in” joke. A pretty good one too.

I can’t help but wonder what jokes Jodi Picuolt will write in for Wonder Woman or whether Jennifer Estep’s upcoming novel about superheroines, Karma Girl, will be a bang or a bust. I have my fingers crossed for “bang”.