I’ll be posting some pictures from that now and again just for fun.

Here’s the first one. This is the ‘1776′ address plate that he mentioned a couple times in Expanded Universe, I think. Yes, I was tempted to steal it.

Robert Heinlein's old address

The now-professionally published book is getting rave reviews from industry heavyweights. My own review still stands: it’s an outstanding work, regardless of the I am sure substantial improvements Barry’s work received by going through a mainstream house.

The book is schedule for publication in November. I recommend it to EVERYONE. Even illiterate people should, if apprised of this review, go to Amazon and order it. Buy lots of copies, because every child you know will want one for Christmas, or Hanukkah, or other festive multicultural giving occasion, as appropriate. You’ll want one for yourself. If you’d like, buy it through this link right now, and toss a buck to my elderly grandma, the recipient of my Amazon.com affiliate riches. (She plans to buy a boat…for the tub, to entertain the great-grand-nephews.) The pre-order deal is amazing – under $11!

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“Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword”, written and drawn by Barry Deutsch, is an independently-produced 57-page comic book that tells the story of Mirka, an 11-year old girl living in the fictional ultra-Orthodox Jewish community of Aherville. (”Hereville”, to the goyim.)

This is not a Marvel comic book filled with iron-jawed superheroes, though Mirka yearns for heroics – dreaming of dragonslaying as she tends her younger brother, knits with her stepmother, and prepares the Shabbat meal with her family. “Hereville” explores themes more adult than its protagonist might wish for in a comic book – primarily, coming of age, the role of women in traditional societies, a subtle exploration of how communities on the margins of a larger society nonetheless view themselves as the center, with their own set of outcasts and marginal figures, and the struggle faced by an independent, somewhat nonconformist young girl faced with a social role not of her choice or to her liking.

The story of Mirka begins with a friendly argument, and climaxes in a debate whose outcome could mean death to Mirka – or could, if we didn’t presume from the title that our heroine would prevail in the end. In between, Mirka saves an outcast woman (a “witch”, according to the local boys) from a beating, and is offered a reward for her service – a reward that takes the form of a quest to retrieve a sword from the local troll. But before Mirka can battle the troll, she must keep her brother from ratting out her plans to their ever-protective parents, celebrate the Shabbat, and find a way to get out of the house at night without being detected. These obstacles and travails are drawn with wit and warmth, and the reader is drawn into the oddball world of “Hereville” without a backwards glance. (A world of trolls, witches, electric lights and vacuum cleaners? Don’t ask questions – just enjoy it!)

“Hereville” is in some ways an experimental work. Deutsch attempted an ambitious method of displaying night-time scenes, using a dark palette and brown/black backgrounds to distinguish the approximately 1/3 of the book that takes place outdoors at night. This choice makes the night-time scenes quite distinct and recognizably “night”, but at the cost of washing out much of Deutsch’s distinctive linework style. The occasional frames with starlight and moonlight, or with a character’s eyes shining, make a dramatic contrast and are really very lovely.

“Really very lovely,” in fact, is a fair descriptor for most of the artwork of “Hereville”. Other reviewers have noted that the artwork improves through the course of the book’s 57 pages; I would not characterize it as an improvement, but as an evolution of the stylistic choices Deutsch made. “Hereville” began life as an online serial comic, with one or two pages appearing over the course of a week, and some stylistic modifications are to be expected. In the beginning of the book, the artist uses a lot of lined backgrounds, but by the end of the work he seems more confident in the foreground’s ability to carry the frame. Some of the individual frames and composite frames are absolutely beautiful; the four-page scene depicting Mirka’s struggle in the final conflict of the story is simply brilliant work, as are many of the individual frames preceding it. (Indeed, much of my complaint with the night-time scenes is a lament that I’m being deprived of the full enjoyment of the linework.) All of the artwork throughout the book is attractive and works well as settings for the story.

And “Hereville”, despite the beauty of the artwork, is primarily a story. Unlike some independent comic book authors who seem to feel the need to add thirteen layers of ironic detachment to their work, Deutsch is presenting a tale. It is a tale with context and subtext, and the reader will add much of their own worldview to the reading (this reviewer had assumed that the residents of Aherville were speaking a mixture of English and Yiddish, and was brought up short towards the end when the context abruptly shifted and it became clear that all of the previous dialog had actually been pure Yiddish, rendered in English simply for the benefit of the reader) – but Deutsch is content to let his characters tell their own story, without heavy-handed editorializing. Deutsch is a better artist than he is a writer – many authors with that balance of skills would provide us with gorgeous visuals illustrating vacuity. Instead we have a good story made brilliant by its artistic sensibility.

The book is not without its flaws. The troll, when he makes his eventual appearance as the story’s ultimate villain, is not particularly impressive or frightening, despite his very real power. Mirka is not always drawn with perfect consistency, particularly her nose, the changes to which would seem to require Aherville to employ its own full-time cosmetic surgeon. Plot-wise, the denouement could have been handled better; Mirka’s eventual victory feels somewhat contrived. Artistically, the beginning and middle of the book feel more lovingly handled than the end, which despite the power of many of its constituent panels, feels somehow rushed.

But these are minor critiques for the most part, akin to noting that a fantastic rose has a thorn on the stem or that a gorgeous dimpled infant’s hair is tousled. “Hereville” is a gem of a book, one that whets the appetite for more – and more is promised, for Deutsch has announced that the second chapter in Aherville’s saga will commence in January of 2009. Readers everywhere should delight in this news, set their bookmarks, and wait hungrily for the next pages of this ongoing work. It will be a long year – but in the meantime, we have “Hereville” to read and re-read.

For a taste of the published work, the pages of “Hereville” can be read online at Deutsch’s comic site, or purchased as a paper book. Pre-order the soon-to-be-published edition here:

http://denver.craigslist.org/wri/1502872237.html

Positives: it’s a lot of fun to build up your villages and get them nice and strong, so that you can bully the local neutrals into signing on with your empire. The graphics are quite pretty without being disruptive or distracting. The game has a quest system that introduces you to all the game features and gives you bonus gold for learning how the game works – which means you rarely encounter a player who’s just completely clueless about how the game is supposed to work. Setting up your attacks is challenging.

Negatives: the game lacks some verisimilitude; you can support a village with troops from another village, but the supporting troops can’t be “localized” – the city that built a troop is that troop’s city, forevermore. This makes organizing your empire at higher levels somewhat challenging. The map doesn’t show troops in motion, which would be cool and would really bring the game more to life.

Most of the things I find I don’t like are things where the game could be better and cooler, though, not things where the game is bad. For example, it would be great if you could have profitable, quiet trade with your peaceful neighbors. As things stand, there isn’t much incentive to be friends with people other than to avoid having to fight them; being friendly just means you leave each other alone as the game exists. I’d also like to see more high fantasy elements, like court wizards (good on defense, boost village productivity) or higher levels of palace. But these are quibbles.

The game itself is quite fun, it’s easy to play in just a few minutes a day, and it’s free to start. You can buy servants to get access to some management tools but this isn’t necessary until you’re quite into the game, and there are lots of free offers you can do to get more servants if you don’t want to shell out the $5 or so you might need in a month to play the game at the fullest level. Recommended to anyone wanting an enjoyable building/fighting game with a medieval theme.

Here’s a screenshot of the area around my main complex of villages:

and here’s a shot of my army list, of a village about to become part of the Kingdom of Bob.

Capitol police say about 1.5 million people were there; other estimates have topped 2 million. Honestly, that seems (very) high, but it’s notoriously difficult to get a good count when you’re in the middle of the crowd. I would have guessed a few hundred thousand – maybe a million on the high end. It was a very polite crowd, and from what I saw the (tiny) group of counterprotestors wasn’t abused. (OK, I did march along with them for a few moments shouting “I want free money! Free money now!”, but my wife made me come back. Spoilsport.)

99% of the crowd were people who have never been in a protest in their entire life. The crowd was older – lots and lots of vets and cornfed Midwestern types. Interestingly, the Mall was left quite clean when everyone had left – conservatives pick up their trash, I guess. The other half of the mall was reserved for a black family group having a huge “family reunion” and picnic – despite the rampant racism and black hatred, our 2 million didn’t go and beat up their hundred thousand or so. (Maybe the racists didn’t want to embarrass the black people marching with us.)

LOTS of signs, mostly handmade. Some organizations and media figures have been beating the drum for this apparently (I can’t stand Glenn Beck so we never watch his show) but everybody there we talked to had gotten themselves to DC, no astroturf that we could see beyond the scattering of pre-printed signs. I was absolutely shocked at the size of the crowd; we got onto the Metro to go into DC at Shady Grove, the northernmost red line stop, and the line for the farecards filled the entire lobby as a bunch of people who had never been to DC before tried to figure out the system. (It didn’t help that there are now two different kinds of farecards.) The whole Metro system was semi-overwhelmed by the numbers, but they did a great job keeping everybody moving and other than the crowds the transportation situation was quite smooth.

It’s hard to figure the impact of events like this. But if I was a moderate Democrat congressman on the fence, I think I would have just been pushed off. There are a lot more people out there who won’t stand for what they see as socialized medicine, than people had guessed.

Later we went to the National Gallery of Art and looked at the Spanish swords and armor display, which was pretty awesome. Armor-making by the gunpowder age had become a truly refined science, and they had some replica pieces made of stainless steel you could try on. Anyone who wants to see a photo of me clutching a mailed gauntlet to my chest or wearing a visored helmet should check here next week when I get home and get a chance to upload pictures.

I’m currently shopping for a gauntlet of my own.