I delighted in the theme of ‘do not grow up too fast’ and ‘be careful what you wish for.’  The final confrontation with the antagonist at the end felt rushed, but I loved some of the characters Mel meets along the way and the fantastical settings of some of the environments.

A while ago, I backed Tiny Library on Kickstarter.  It is a deck of 50 single-card RPGs from various creators, and this kit is chock full of inspiration.  Some of the cards are very much stand-alone mini-role-playing games.  Other cards are inspirations for creative minds; some are resources people could use for their games.

This past week I finally got to read ‘Olaju: The Edge of Origins’ by one of our past guests, Peter Chizoba Daniel.  It is a gorgeous graphic novel that is inspired by Nigerian folklore.  This story is unique to most other comics I have read in the past, and I would categorize it mainly in the high fantasy genre, or it could be in a new category on its own of African High Fantasy.

The late Dirk Zimmer’s artwork gave me great nostalgia. The illustrations provided an outstanding balance of horror and innocent accessibility so that my 8-year-old self was haunted by the images but not terrified by them.

I read ‘Mighty Jack and the Goblin King’ by Ben Hatke this past week.  Compared to the first book, ‘Mighty Jack’, this one had less dialogue and more action.  The second book was also much more overt in its inspiration of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and also gives a robust backstory and does some substantial world-building as well.

It was fun and educational along with being a quick and engaging read. I love how Christian set up the world and all the different species that were found by the main characters so far. I am very excited to see what each level of the pyramid brings.

This past week I finally finished reading ‘Covid Chronicles’ comic anthology from Graphic Mundi. This is a whopping 270+ page book with 65 individual stories. This book serves both as a therapy for all of us who lived (and are living) through COVID and serves as a time capsule. Although the book was published less than 2 years ago, it is also good to see how far we have come with the science and understanding of COVID.

It was a very fun and quick read, and much like all children’s books, it had a nice moral to its story.

I really enjoyed how Perreault weaved minimalistic frames with more detailed pictures. His style is also accessible enough for a reader to emulate.

This past week I read the ‘World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King’ art book. I have been doing some research on character designs and background settings. I cannot think of a better way of doing world-building research than looking at art books for games and other sci-fi and fantasy settings.

This week I received in the mail my copies of issue 1 and 2 of ‘Bric-a-Brac’ from Ryan Haack. I started reading it with my daughters this week and they really loved it. The artwork is great and fits the story and Ryan did a great job in putting together a great plot.

I’m really excited to see what happens in Issue 3 now.

I have always been a fan of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland world, and seeing a story about the Walrus and the Carpenter was pretty fun. Landridge was able to keep the spirit of Carroll alive with the tertiary characters and sprinkling in poetry as narration.

The first volume set up the world and was heavy with intrigue and court politics, whereas volume two is a magical travel adventure that dives deeper into the world. It ends with more questions than answers.

Now That most of us are stuck at home, here are some postcards that spark some nostalgia of some places we have been, hope to return to someday or perhaps visit for the first time.

We created some fun vintage-looking travel postcards of some of World of Warcraft’s more popular and memorable questing zones and locations.