Armada: The Spoiler-Free Review

Armada is one of my most-anticipated books of the year.  My love for Ernie Cline’s first book, Ready Player One, has been mentioned many times on this site and in the podcast.  Ready Player One is not only in my top five books of all time (and it actually flip flops between the first and second spot depending on my mood that day) but it’s also the only book that I’ve read in less than 24 hours (not counting a few books in college that involved some skimming).  When I was able to obtain an advance copy of the book, I was thrilled.  Now that the book is available to everyone, I’m free to tell you my spoiler-free thoughts and feels on this new book.  Jump after the break to read all about it!

That’s Not Really How It Works!: Civics And The Fictional Presidency

We all know the story about the timing of the issue that featured this panel, right?

I greatly enjoy DC Comics’ Showcase Presents series of black and white reprints.  Sometimes they feature obscure characters, or just stories that would be far too expensive to hunt down the original comics in order to read, and at the price of below $15 each, the 500+ pages are generally worth it.  Besides, sometimes there’s some outright screwiness going on.  Take the original appearance of longtime foe of the Aton the Floronic Man, Jason Woodroe.  At the end of the issue, there’s a quick courtroom scene where a judge states that he is going to be handling certain procedures before Woodroe can be hauled off to a federal court for the crime of attempting to take over the world.

This tickles me for the very implications of what that panel suggests, namely that in that universe, the United States Congress proposed, debated, voted on, and passed a bill outlawing attempted world conquest.  Said law was then signed by a president.  I am sure for the juvenile readers of the original stories, this doesn’t seem too wild, but really, that’s the sort of thing that really catches my attention.

That said, let’s look at some fictional presidents.