Monster of the Day #3476

Updated on March 12, 2024 By Ken Begg 22 Comments

This is from Ghosts, but DC not only had Weird War Stories, but Strange Sports Stories. It only lasted six issues, but good on you, DC.

The 15th (!) annual Tween-Fest coming up the weekend of April 6th. See you there, we hope!

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  • The way she’s ribbing like him, I specter man going tibia little cross with her tonight, no bones about it.

  • Gamera977

    I’ve always been afraid of going skiing from watching too many Bond movies where he gets shot at by Soviet agents. Now I guess I’ll have to be afraid of snow-skellies too…

  • 🐻 bgbear_rnh

    very humerus

  • 🐻 bgbear_rnh

    Always ski with a parachute on your back. Union Jack optional.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Strange Sports Stories? Wow but I wish I could’ve seen that one back in the day. Just to see what the stories were like.

  • Ken_Begg

    It’s the same stuff, but Satan is now a gay black womyn who beats the Baseball Patriarchy.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Hah!

    And am I wrong, or are you the man who once commented on a scene in the Heinlein novel Friday where the titular character gets raped at the beginning, and it ends with her marrying her rapist (after going through several other adventures)?

  • Well, I was attacking it from political correctness, but because it was an indication of how rigid and boring Heinlein’s writing had become. The point was that the book opens with the superspy female protagonist being gangraped. She narratives that two of the guys sucked at sex, but one would have been fun under different circumstances. I instantly predicted that this guy would later turn out to be a Good Guy. 400 pages later–it was a latter day Heinlein book–I was proved correct. So it was the bad writing I was against, not (necessarily) the sexual violence.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Sorry I blew away your response when I deleted that comment of mine (about Heinlein and the rape scene in one of his later books). I was mostly stunned after reading a lady online who furiously defended it and denounced everyone bothered by it as ‘left wing feminists’ and wanted to know if that sounded odd to anyone else.

  • kgb_san_diego

    Even for people like me who like some of Heinlein’s books, Friday is a bit of a weirdo. Would you believe that it was my first Heinlein book? Boy, did I get the wrong impression… I now LOVE “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” and “Starship Troopers”. Friday is very difficult to love.

  • Ken_Begg

    Look, a lot of us, at least of the people who get together in Texas, are libertarian / conservative. We don’t like rape scenes in movies either. We’ll endure them, because you know, if you watch exploitation from the ’70s and ’80s they are hard to avoid, but I think it’s a very odd accusation to say you have to be “left wing” to dislike that sort of thing. If anything, that sounds more like a false flag piece than anything else. Although who knows what hardcore Heinlein fans get up to these days.

    That wasn’t my main complaint with the whole scene, as I explicated, but opening the book that way definitely inspired a vigorous eye-roll and a sighing, “Oh, Heinlein.”

  • Ken_Begg

    It was when I basically gave up on him. I finished the book as a sort of literary vaccine–I did the same with Stephen King’s atrocious Insomnia–and stuck to his old books thereafter.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    I think most of what he wrote post-stroke is kind of iffily regarded. Apropos of nothing, I highly recommend Alec Nevala-Lee’s “Astounding” about the Golden Age science fiction scene. Good stuff about Heinlein, Asimov, et al.

  • I’d like to tell you you were missing out by stopping reading King at Insomnia (which I liked). but outside maybe The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon? I don’t think any of the novels he’s done have been gotta reads. He’s done some great short stories (N, The Little Green God of Pain, and The Dunes), but outside of that he’s gone downhill.

    My problem with King, outside he doesn’t know when to shut up in his works, is that there are times I’d swear he repeats himself in text. I’ll read whole paragraphs and go, didn’t I just read this? No other author does that to me.

  • I think I got lucky with my visit to T-Feast in that regard.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I wasn’t criticizing you. My apologies if it came off that way. Just passing along what seemed like a very bizarre defense of that scene I’d read from a lady who is herself conservative/libertarian and who I thought was a little more sensible than that.

    Though her attitude towards Heinlein seems like out and out worship at times. As in, every word he wrote was the purest gold and only lesser minds cannot comprehend his genius. She’s good for regular tears where she denounces anyone and everyone who doesn’t worship the man.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I’ve heard other old-school fans I knew say that he got a little eccentric after the stroke.

  • kgb_san_diego

    With King, the not shutting up really is a thing.

    I would like to say a defense of the books “Mr. Mercedes”, “Finders Keepers”, and “End of Watch”. These three are really solid reads and a lot of fun.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    I really like his non fiction. Danse Macabre and On Writing are really good. Even at his worst, though, his love of the writing process comes across. It’s clear he loves putting words on the page.

  • RWA

    Was it Sarah Hoyt? She’s a fine writer in her own right but in her non-fiction essays can go a little too far.

  • Eric Hinkle

    It may have been. I can’t remember.

  • I doubt it, I’m a regular at Sarah’s blog and have seen nothing like that. And while she is a major Heinlein Fangirl (as am I for that matter) she is very well-aware of the absolute naive insanity of his sociology, which completely disregards actual human nature re: pair bonding and jealousy. Most things through TMIAHM have some degree of value, but after his stroke the writing gets increasingly dragged down by Heinlein’s fetishes. Although Friday is my personal favorite from that lesser period. Ken and I argue over that regularly.