Some months ago I discovered Courtney Huddleston for the first time and ogled over him on this site. Courtney must have been partaking in one of my favorite pastimes – googling your own name – and saw what I said and as a token of thanks sent me the brand-spanking new Decoy: Menagerie Hardback, soliciting now through Penny Farthing Press. I wanted to write about it, obviously, but refused to let the fact that the dude sent me a free hardback influence my words in any way, shape or form. I was going to be fair, even if I hated the book and came off as an asshole because, as I say all of the time, I’m not a reviewer. I hate reviewing. And if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it with malice. Granted, if I panned the book I probably would have felt some guilt, but I would have dealt with it as it came. I don’t have to worry about that, though, because when I looked at the back of the book and started scanning names, Phil Hester’s name jumped out and I, like most of my readers, will not only buy anything with Phil Hester’s name attached to it but firmly believe that a book cannot be bad if Phil is working on it. Phil’s excellent story also delivers the strongest art I’ve seen from Mitchell Breitweiser which happens to be on the same level as some of the strongest art I’ve seen in the past few years, period.

For those that don’t know, Decoy is the story of a shape shifting alien trapped on earth that symbiotically connected with a beat cop that got shot while on duty in an attempt to save his life. Decoy is the last good alien from a race of warmongering, sickness infected aliens – and he’s the silent partner to the young, somewhat spastic cop.

The book is beautiful; every artist delivers an amazing performance. Ben Roman's art on Scott Zirkel’s well laid out story about a murder investigation at the circus impressed the fuck out of me – I can’t wait to see what he has coming out next because his style is so fresh and exciting. I fell in love with Rove’s art as well (the kid is 24 and solid as all hell) and he worked well on M’s story about life back on Decoy’s world – a great lead-in story. Ty Templeton’s story that follows Decoy and Luck (the cop) as they protect an Avril Levigne/Courtney Love hybrid from her would be killer is a fun little tale accentuated with Ryan Woodward and crew’s vibrant art. Azad’s noir story was fun, a bit on the nose but not in a groaner way, with Sean Galloway’s art really capturing the feel of gum-shoes, roscoes, mazuma and bims. Fernando Alejandrez did a great job of translating Arvid Nelson’s neo-Russian Revolution story with this retro-propaganda style of art that made the story pop. And then there was Joshua Dysart and Courtney Huddleston’s great little story about a day in the life of Luck, with flashes to his past up to the moment he bonded with Decoy, that captures the feel of the characters and the spirit of the book while delivering a well executed, touching and fun story – a great way to end an all-around impressive anthology.

So, that’s that. It was a solid book with exceptional art and some great story-telling. If you’re new to the character the structure of the book might throw you off some. The first story takes place on Decoy’s home world and the two following stories are within Luck’s fantasy realm, of sorts, not tied to the book’s reality. There’s a bit of a warm-up there that might make it difficult for you to grasp what the book is – just enjoy the stories, though, you’ll catch on by the end.

And, if you like Azad and Hester’s work, you can see both of them in Western Tales of Terror #2, available at our website and I’ll have bunches at SPX. (I have no shame).

Yesterday I posted the picture of the mustache I sported for five minutes for the purpose of taking a picture of it. Well, Chris had some fun with said picture:


Story time.

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None of us first year players knew what to expect at football camp. We all heard stories about the hazing and the beatings and the 3AM runs but it was impossible to sort through the noise and get a feel for what football camp was really going to be like. Even on the bus-ride up there, when the varsity players would threaten us JV guys, promising us hell, it was hard to grasp what they meant by “hell”. I grew up in Red Hook. I had razor wire/Nair eggs thrown at me. I saw someone pull a gun on my friend in elementary school. What were these guys going to do that could be considered “hell”?

Nothing, really. The first night at camp they ran around our cabins, banging on walls and shouting. That was their version of hell.

My cabin made our own hell. David, the token 300 pound lineman, took a massive shit in the toilet as soon as we got off the bus that never went down; it sat there for the week, turning green. We tried plungers, poked sticks at it, dropped buckets of water in the bowl – the bitch would not go down. That was hell.

Football camp was alright. There weren’t any 3AM jogs, the jogs took place every morning at 6AM. We ran four miles along some windy, hilly road that cut through the woods. It took most of us around 40 minutes – I took fat David around two hours. He rarely made it to breakfast. Someone would also run behind David and try to motivate him to keep with it, usually this kid Cherry who we called “Cherry Rice”, not because he was good but because he wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

The only “hazing” that took place was by our coaches and it was more of a “do what I say when I say” kind of thing. They’d signal someone out in the middle of dinner and have him do fifty pushups or demand that someone sing “Blueberry Hill” while he’s right in the middle of talking to the girl that worked the lounge, the only girl in the whole camp who started off the week ugly but became super-hot by the end. Seriously, that last night at camp consisted of every single one of us desperately trying to hit that chick’s skins. You’d think she was a super-model or something.

Practice was a bitch. It was the jog every morning, followed by breakfast, followed by two to three hours of offensive practice, followed by lunch, followed by two to three hours of defensive practice, followed by dinner, followed by one to two hours of special teams practice or light offensive practice. By the time the day came to an end we were beat to fuck but always managed to scrape up enough energy to go to the lounge, play some pool and some Centipede, drink some milkshakes and comment on how the girl really wasn’t “that bad”.

One time we had a shitty offensive practice and instead of free time our coach made us go out for a fifth time and spend over an hour doing crunches. You couldn’t half-ass it, either. If you weren’t in pain you were staying longer.

But that’s what it was – it was work. Discipline. It was getting a bunch of kids that never played football ready for their first season. Didn’t work, though, we only won one game and that was against a team that didn’t win any.

But football camp was good times, either way.