The Amazing Screw On Head and Other Curious Objects by Mike Mignola

The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects by Mike Mignola

The Amazing Screw On Head was originally a one shot comic book printed by Darkhorse in 2002. It won the humor category of the Eisner Awards for Best Humor Publication in 2003. In this volume which includes several other stories with similar themes, Mike Mignola describes how he created the story based on the idea of a childrens toy robot with different bodies and a scew-on head. There are several new stories added to this volume.

You could say that many of these stories satirize steampunk which is often very satirical. The stories have a dreamlike quality to them. The villains have a ridiculous theme to them; Emperor Zombie, Dr. Sharp, Gung The Magnificent, the bug eyed martians, and the monster at the top of the beanstalk.

The drawings use lots of dark shadows, browns, blacks, and reds. They look somewhat like the Hellboy comics which Mike Mignola draws, but with a much less malevolent feeling to them. The stories have a fable or fairytale quality to them. The heros are more odd and curious than heroic.

The stories made me smile. They were magical, filled with irrational objects, and worth laughing at. This book was on the Diamond Comics Distributors Bestseller List for October 2010.

Daily Thoughts 9/7/2010 (Book Reviews)

Alexander Kanoldt: Stilleben mit Büchern und Krügen, Öl auf Leinwand, 85 x 65.5 cm, 1920
Daily Thoughts 9/7/2010

The book Social Media 101 by Chris Brogan came in for me to read.  I occassionally read his website http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ .  I also placed a hold on the book Zero History by William Gibson.  I had a chance to start reading Zero History on the train home.



Today, I checked on the displays and put a few things in order.  I also worked on a list of business organizations for our county.  While I was reading through the New York Times Book Review, I found a free sample of ten chapters of  Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings at http://www.tor.com/nyt .  There were also a few books from Booklist that caught my attention;  Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying The American Dream by Arianna Huffington and Burton and Swinbourne In The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder.  Arianna Huffington is the founder of The Huffington Post.  This is a link about the reflease of the book http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/third-world-america

I did a brief tour of the library with a colleague with some visiting librarians.  We walked around and showed them the building.  Our local history room recently reopened which was a nice thing to show.  We scanned some of the older pictures of the library into one of our computers.  We might put together a photogallery of historical images.