Al-Qaeda’s Super Secret Weapon
Turns out the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was just the opening that the terrorists were waiting for! This witty, sexy, spy tale sends up Republicans, the War on Terror™ and gay clichés from A to Z. The end of the world was never so fabulous!
Price range: $5.99 through $14.99
Turns out the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was just the opening that the terrorists were waiting for! This witty, sexy, spy tale sends up Republicans, the War on Terror™ and gay clichés from A to Z. The end of the world was never so fabulous!
ISBN: 9781938720291
Publisher: Northwest Press
Publish Date: 2013
Page Count: 72
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Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product pageDash #2 Price range: $2.99 through $3.99After the shocking events of the last issue, Dash is now on the hunt for the mysterious Zita Makara. But will a violent interrogation by his former colleague turned rival, Detective Bruno Fernez, prevent him from stopping another murder?
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Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product pageThe Legend of Bold Riley $9.99Leia Weathington’s sword-and-sorcery epic The Legend of Bold Riley is illustrated by Leia and a host of talented artists.
“Who is Bold Riley?” you might ask. She has hunted the wildest game and dallied with countless beautiful girls, but still longs to know the world beyond the city walls. Princess Rilavashana SanParite, called Bold Riley, leaves behind her station and sets out to travel through distant lands and find forgotten ruins, fearsome enemies, inscrutable gods and tragic love.
She’s as capable with a sword as she is with her wits—man, does she carve things up when the need arises—and is a strong, beautiful, confident woman who doesn’t wear a bikini into battle. And she always gets the girl!
Created by Leia Weathington, with art by Weathington, Marco Aidala, Vanessa Gillings, Kelly McClellan, Konstantin Pogorelov, Liz Conley, and Jason Thompson. Cover artwork by Brinson Thieme. 232 pages. 7″x10″. Full-color with metallic ink cover.
Retailers! Download a Bold Riley Promotional Display that highlights the foreword by fan-favorite writer Jane Espenson and helps encourage customers to check out the book.
PREVIEWS:
You can download a 67-page preview of the book in PDF or EPUB (iPad-only) format right here on the site. The preview includes excerpts from four of the stories in the book, bonus artwork and more.Additionally, there’s a ZIP file of preview images available for use in reviews and articles. Download it here. (11MB ZIP file.)
INTERVIEWS:
Feature on Panel Patter by Rob McMonigal — “Ms. Weathington, working with a variety of other artists, has created a fantasy world ripe for exploration, with our guide being Bold Riley, a young woman with royal (but restless) blood. It’s great to see the ‘Uncharted Fantasy World’ idea given a new twist by having a protagonist that’s not only female, but queer as well.”
Feature on Portland Comic Books Examiner by Christian Lipski — “Author Leia Weathington is releasing Bold Riley, her first book, at the end of June, and spoke with the Portland Comic Books Examiner about her own journey.”
Interview on Portland Comics by Doug Dorr — “I worked with 5 other artists for Bold Riley and made the mistake at first of trying to really tightly control the visuals of the comic. That was something I learned to back off from pretty fast. If you are working with artists you probably decided to get into a collaboration with them for a reason. SO TRUST YOUR ARTIST! What I’ve started doing is making model sheets characters, objects and places that must look a certain way to maintain continuity in the story, after that I send photo references, script and descriptions of mood and setting and turn the artist loose to have fun with it.”
Interview on The Hathor Legacy by Maria Velazquez — “Like many creators I started writing the kind of story I always wanted to see. Like most women I was raised with fairy tales and the complex feelings that go with them. Sure they focus primarily on female leads, but those leads tend to be passive objects. The women are what things happen TO not people who make things happen themselves.”
Interview on Sequential Tart by Lee Atchison — “We like the anti-hero right now. And with reason. Things are shit, we’re all pretty jaded. How can you not be when at the click of a button you can see the latest string of atrocities played out before your eyes. I like the anti-hero, but somewhere amid all of the horror and the skepticism, I wanted to place a story about a hero who, while not beyond reproach, is good and wants to do good and tries her hardest.”
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Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product pageDash #3 Price range: $2.99 through $3.99Zita Makara is out for blood and Dash is in her sights! Can he stop her before another life is lost? Is she really the monster she appears to be…or is someone else pulling the strings?
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Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product pageThe Mark of Aeacus #2 Price range: $2.99 through $4.99Jack’s adventure as the Bearer of The Mark of Aeacus continues. A mysterious stranger appears at the foot of Jack’s bed, tells him the secrets of the mark of power that he bears, then tells him he must die. Can Jack’s mysterious new powers save him… or would we all be better off if they didn’t?
The digital edition of this book adds 25 bonus pages, including Mark Brill’s original pencil artwork and a bonus pinup by Briar Hollow artist Terry Blas!
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Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product pageA Waste of Time Price range: $7.99 through $19.99The first full-length collection of irreverent and sweet comic strips from Rick Worley. Featuring a foreword by StevieD and EvilJeff from the Comic Book Queers podcast.
Foul-mouthed, sex-obsessed and misanthropic, Rick is no ordinary cute cartoon rabbit. The strips in this hysterically funny, surprisingly sweet collection range from fantasy tales about a closeted fundamentalist teddy bear, an oversexed fox, and a doomed robot love affair to autobiographical comics that share maybe a little too much information about the author. In their quest for contentment, the characters fail, fail, and sometimes fail again, but they never stop looking. There’s always the chance they’ll find that one person who was worth the search.
Or maybe not.
RAVES:
“There’s a brutal frankness and honesty coming from these foxes and teddy bears that you rarely see anywhere else. Comics are the one of the last havens to be truly offensive and beautifully unapologetic.” — from the foreword by StevieD and EvilJeff from the Comic Book Queers podcast.
“Beautifully drawn, hilarious, wistful, profane and very human. Rick Worley’s A Waste of Time knocked me out.” — Robert Kirby, creator of Curbside, Boy Trouble and THREE.
“Rick Worley’s insightful A Waste of Time comic strips are simultaneously tender and perverse—like his bunny.” — Howard Cruse, author of Stuck Rubber Baby and Wendel.
Sequential Tart –
“If you’re looking for something with good production values that is totally out of the box, this might be something worth checking out.” Read Katie Frank’s review on Sequential Tart.
Sequential Tart –
“The art is fantastic. Clean and open, drawing the focus to the characters. While the main characters are probably best described as ‘hot’, there is some variety of body types throughout the book (though, with the military aspect, most of them are also fit). Body mechanics are excellently rendered and realistic. I also really appreciate the time it takes to draw that much body hair and make it look good. ” Read Sheena McNeil’s review on Sequential Tart.
David Quantic –
“Of course, things go horribly wrong in the most hilarious ways. The terrorists soon become distracted by the everyday realities of the American Gay Lifestyle that include boyfriends, three-ways and learning how to make a mean arugula salad. Another result of the mission is the bombing of the Dallas airport (mostly for aesthetic reasons.)” Read David Quantic’s writeup David Quantic Film.
Zachary –
I should say this up front: I don’t read a lot of erotica. I come to literature for intellectual stimulation, not erotic. That said, for all its erotic content, Al-Qaeda’s Super Secret Weapon is an extremely intellegent riff on the fundamentalist values of conservative America, the fundamentalist values of certain sects of Islam, and gay culture itself.
The protagonist, Mahmoud, is a member of an Al-Qaeda cell. After hearing McCain state on television that the American’s military’s ban on homosexuality should stay in place so that soldiers are not “distracted,” Mahmoud’s cell decides to learn “the gay lifestyle” and introduce it into the American military. Over the course of the novel, Mahmoud falls for the blonde-haired American man Steve, who he enters into a relationship with. Steve calls Mahmoud his “swarthy little lamb kebab.”
The jokes are a mile a minute and span gay culture, military culture, Middle Eastern culture, and on and on.
Now, if that had been all there was to tell, I might not have proceeded to write up this review. But the real gem of this piece is its thematic core: Mahmoud’s struggle to reconcile his feelings for Steve with his identity as a terrorist. He feels trapped between two conflicting worlds and struggles to find himself.
That the novel succeeds in blending its satire with this deeper element and be simultaneously entertaining, is a great feat that few stories achieve, but Al-Qaeda’s Super Secret Weapon pulls it off with extraordinary finesse. I have one qualm with its execution. There is a page of text near the center of the novel that breaks the narrative in order to explain this thematic core directly. Big no-no. While itself humorously written, the story would have been stronger if I could have been allowed to arrive at that conclusion myself.
Overall, this is a very solid story—excellent satirical social commentary woven elegantly into thematic underpinnings—and I can highly recommend picking up a copy. Though if you are offended by religious commentary or graphic depictions of sex, you should steer clear of this one.