For the first time in 6 years, I have a new release!

LAST ONE LEFT is a follow-up to my longish (37000 words) novella ODD MAN OUT. It picks up a few months after the events of that book. Paul and Amy are planning their wedding. And Roger is still on the run. But he’s coming back, and vengeance is on the table this time.

I’m proud of this book; it’s a short (a bit less than 30000 words) but action filled book that completes the story that began in ODD MAN OUT. And it’s available in both paper and ebook form. $10.95 for the paperback, $2.99 for the ebook.

I hope, if you’re reading this, that you’ll give it a try!

LAST ONE LEFT paperback

LAST ONE LEFT ebook

ODD MAN OUT paperback

ODD MAN OUT ebook

*****

Upon finishing Ben Farthing’s I FOUND A LOST HALLWAY IN A DYING MALL, I flipped it over to read the back of the book.  There, on the back cover, was this quote from horror author Jonathan Butcher:  “The eeriest liminal setting and an array of heartfelt themes bubbling beneath the surface.”

I fully agree on the heartfelt themes.  I’m sort of where Farthing’s main character is in her life right now.  Kids are grown and moved out, and while there aren’t any grandkids for us yet, I get the emotions that go with the transition. You go from being needed to maybe not really being needed so much, and maybe you begin to feel like an afterthought. You start to look for niches you can fit into in their busy lives and trying to balance between trying to naturally insert yourself into those niches and trying to force your way in. Ben addresses this in a remarkable way in this book, I feel. 

But that’s not where I was going with this blog post.  Because there is also a second quote on the back cover, from horror author Debra Castaneda, and it goes like this: “A landscape of liminal horrors.”  

Note the overlap there? “Liminal.” Honestly, I didn’t know what the word meant. So I looked it up and here’s the definition.  Liminal means “occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.” Okay, that’s a start.  Moving on, liminal horror like Farthing’s and maybe others uses these spaces in a frightening way, such as by making them empty, stretching on forever, or being places where people are not meant to linger.

Now I’m getting somewhere. I think I’m beginning to understand why it unsettles me. Empty, stretching on forever, places where people (like me) aren’t meant to be. That resonates. 

See, as a youngster, my parents decided to teach me a lesson in Marshall Field’s store in Chicago.  Our trips to the store were rare treats, and their toy section was like nothing I’d ever seen!  I guess I was wandering off all the time, and they finally decided to just let me go. They were right around the corner, but when I realized I was “lost”, I bolted.  The other way.  Fast, crying and screaming. (I was fast when I was a kid.) I was grabbed by a store employee and taken to some kind of a control center where they kept me and called the “little lost boy” alert and my parents came and got me. 

I still remember this as an adult. Not specifics, but I remember that control room. I remember the panic. I remember running and crying. I thought I was never going to get home again! It was terrifying! I would wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares about this growing up. I would sit up in bed in the middle of the night, terrified that I might have never been found — that I might have been lost forever in that huge liminal space that was Marshall Field’s flagship department store! 

Ben Farthing taps into this fear in an incredibly personal manner in all three of his books. In his I FOUND A CIRCUS TENT IN MY BACK YARD, the protagonist unwillingly enters a large colorful tent that they find in the woods behind his home with his four-year-old son, and discovers that the interior is impossibly large, going on and on with no exit in sight.  In his I FOUND PUPPETS LIVING IN MY APARTMENT WALLS, the protagonist discovers a hidden space behind the drywall of the bedroom, and when he and his cousin explore it, they find that it consistently descends into the bowels of the earth, much further down than is possible. 

Wouldn’t you know it? Right after finishing DYING MALL (which I purchased directly from the author at the Books and Brews event in Evanston, Illinois in early August), Amazon for some reason showed me an anthology of short stories called simple LIMINAL. The fifteen stories deal with some interesting candidates for liminal spaces, including a greenhouse (yeah, I get this one — I remember going into greenhouses as a kid and just being amazed by the way they just seemed to keep going and going), an office building, suburbs, a beach, a hatchery, a waiting room, a prison, a “float barn” (whatever that is), a playground, a library, a nightclub, an “Isomart,” a school, a mall and a rest stop bathroom. I’ve read the first two, and they are suitably disturbing.

My own idea is maybe a parking lot. Something like those huge lots at Disney or Universal, where they just seem to go on and on and on and on. So large that you have to take trams to reach the furthest edges…if you even can.  I think I’m going to try a short story set in a parking lot.  A hospital or a medical office might make a good setting also. 

Back to Farthing’s stories, and the stories in the anthology — is escape from this sort of liminal space even possible?  Will our friends find their way out? How will it affect them?  Those questions are terrifying to me.  Honestly, these may be the first books that have ever really made me uncomfortable, and now I understand why. (I couldn’t put my finger on it when reading the book itself.) The idea of impossible spaces is simply disturbing to me.  Because of my childhood experience? Probably. But even quite literally 6 decades later, I am still frightened by the idea.

(This article may contain spoilers for TWISTED by Jonathan Kellerman. Or maybe not. In any case, if you plan on reading the book, read on at your own risk. Or skip.)

I finished a book by Jonathan Kellerman called TWISTED last night. Kellerman is, of course, best known for his Alex Delaware series. (I’d love to see Delaware on the big or small screen!) This one, however, is NOT a Delaware novel; instead, it features Petra Connor.

Petra Connor was, if I recall correctly, first introduced in a Delaware novel, but soon merited a book of her own. (I could research it and find out what the title was, exactly, but it’s not really important to this article, and I’m kind of lazy, so I’ll leave it there. Plus my internet is down as I write this, so we’ll just move on.) Kellerman writes crime thrillers in his clipped urgent style, always from the perspective of the detectives. He’s one of my favorites.

So. Onto the book. In this story, Petra is dealing with a lot of stuff. She has a boyfriend who was a cop but is now working with some sort of anti-terrorist unit in Tel Aviv. (The book was written in 2004, so remember that the story is informed by the events of that time, not ours.) Petra catches a case where some kids were gunned down in what appears to be a random gangland shooting after a concert. As they work the case, they find that all victims are identified except for one.

Petra is also assigned to ‘babysit’ a doctoral candidate named Isaac Gomez, who is a young genius, aged 22, already accepted into medical school but is deferring in order to earn a Ph.D. degree. His thesis is something to do with crime statistics, and in his research at the department, he has stumbled across some unsolved cold cases that seem to be related by an odd fact: they all occurred on June 28th. He brings this to Petra and she writes it off initially as insignificant. But as Isaac continues to look at the details of the cases, other patterns, including the wounds themselves, emerge, and Isaac convinces Petra that they have a serial killer on their hands.

So both investigations proceed, one official with departmental sanctions, and the other unofficial, off the books, because no one would think much of it. Petra can’t tell her higher-ups because they wouldn’t allow her to spend time on it, and also because her captain dislikes her intensely.

Okay, so how is this horror? Or maybe the question should be, is it horror at all?

Up until now, what I’ve written is just an extended blurb. A summary that doesn’t give away too much. It’s the setup of the book. Now I have to get into the spoilers. So don’t read on if you don’t want to know more.

I say it is, of course. There’s a serial killer. He’s bashing his victims’ skulls in. There doesn’t appear to be a pattern, except for the date and the weapon used. No connections between any of the victims. That’s a classic serial killer horror story.

Later young Isaac, with the help of a librarian who he gets interested in the case (among other things), finds a copy of a rare old antiquarian journal, handwritten many years before by a serial killer, describing his career meticulously, prior to being caught. It contains graphic descriptions and sketches of the victims whose lives this killer, whose name is Otto Retzik, claimed.

Retzik was born on July 28th. His first killing was on his birthday. And this information will help them solve the case.

As I read the book, I thought, what’s the difference between this story and something like HOLLY by Stephen King? My answer is, not much. What’s the difference between this and something like SILENCE OF THE LAMBS by Thomas Harris? Again, not much. Kellerman’s style is more clipped, more thriller than horror. But in all of these, the point of view characters are the detectives and the detective surrogates. Holly Gibney and Clarice Starling have a lot in common with Petra Connor, and maybe even more in common with Isaac Gomez, who isn’t the main character, but becomes a point of view character many times throughout the book.

How does it differ from my own books? RECIPROCAL EVIL is about a supernatural serial killer, Theodore Tremaine, who kills in order to be rewarded by his evil Masters. And the point of view character, Chris Jones, is a victim in the sense that all of Tremaine’s victims seem to surround Jones and have some connection to the young student. Chris has to investigate and figure things out as the story progresses. Maybe he’s the surrogate detective in this one?

I consider RECIPROCAL EVIL to be pure serial killer horror, with elements of a crime thriller. But is it different than TWISTED in kind, or simply in degree?

I don’t know for sure what other opinions would state, but my own is that TWISTED, by Jonathan Kellerman, is absolutely a horror novel, in the same way that SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, HOLLY, and my own RECIPROCAL EVIL are horror novels.

Thanks for reading. If you have an opinion on this, I’d love to hear it in the comments!

Just a quick post to inform anyone reading here that there are four (count ’em!) new physical copies in the Scott Dyson catalogue! (Click on the image to see the book on Amazon!)

First is 3 ON A MATCH, a collection of three novellas. It contains “The Cave”, “The Never Ending Night”, and “The Ghost Train”. (All of those are available in ebook form as well.) MATCH is priced at $13.95.

Second, THE INN has received a physical release! It’s a longish novella priced at $10.95.

Third is RECIPROCAL EVIL, a short novel, also released in paperback! It is also priced at $10.95.

And last, ODD MAN OUT, also a longish novella, is the latest to be released in paperback. Like the others, it is priced at $10.95.

Thank you for looking at them!

Books of Horror readers and authors will be in the Chicagoland area in August for the Books and Brews event, where several of the most successful indie authors will be meeting fans and signing (and selling) books at a Brewpub located in Evanston, Illinois. I thought it might be fun to pass on some haunted locations in the area. This one’s in Evanston itself.

Today: Calvary Cemetery in Evanston

Between Chicago and Evanston, there is a place where the street narrows and passes between Lake Michigan and a cemetery. This is Calvary Cemetery. Buried here is Jane Byrne, the first female mayor of Chicago, Charles Comiskey, the original owner of the Chicago White Sox and many Irish luminaries from the Chicago area.

It’s said that people who drive down Sheridan Road (the street between the cemetery and the lake) around midnight often see a ghostly figure walking across the road. He looks like a young man, late 20’s or early 30’s, covered in seaweed. Apparently he emits a slight green glow, and he disappears into the cemetery. Locals have named him “Seaweed Charlie.”

Who is he? One story says he’s a naval aviator who crashed into Lake Michigan, and his plane washed ashore near the cemetery, but his body was never recovered. Another says he is a flight instructor frrom the Glenview Naval Air Station. He lost radio contact, and there was no trace of him or his plane until his body washed up on the shore across from the cemetery.

He is never seen in the cemetery itself. He’s always on Sheridan Road. Anyone can drive past at midnight, as much as they want to, and see if you find him. He does appear often, though; there are hundreds of reports of people seeing him and he’s even caused traffic disruptions in the area. Or so they say.

I’ve been by this cemetery many times and never seen anything. I used to go to college just south of here. But I rarely was in the area at midnight. It was usually earlier or later, after a night out at the live music bars in the area, or a frat party at Northwestern.

There are some cool haunted locations in Joliet (where I’m from) and in other Chicago areas, and I can report some of the details if the post is popular.

I don’t know if I’m done with Umbrella Academy yet. I am eagerly awaiting Season 4. No clue when it comes out, but I hope I don’t have to wait another year.

So here’s a quick interlude to point out two new releases.

Now, neither is 100% new. One is a paper (physical) version of my short story collection 14 DARK WINDOWS. The other is an extended edition of my long-ish short story, “The Ghost Train.” The long version will soon appear in a paperback called THREE ON A MATCH with THE CAVE and THE NEVER ENDING NIGHT.

So: Links…

14 DARK WINDOWS

THE GHOST TRAIN (with bonus short story “Garage Sale”)

The paperback is $6.99. The ebook of 14 DARK WINDOWS is still $0.99.

The ebook of THE GHOST TRAIN is $0.99.

I hope you give one or both a try in one format or another.

Thank you!

~

First we have to know just what it was that caused the apocalypse that Five found himself in after he time traveled that first time.

Spoilers to follow:

Still

Here?

You

Must

Want

To

Read

The

Spoilers.

So here we go.

Cause of the apocalypse?

It’s Vanya!

That’s right, sibling #7, the one with no powers. Turns out she does have powers. In fact, she has the most dangerous power of all of them. She can somehow draw on power sources and turn herself into a sort of bomb! We discover that Reggie discovered her power early on, tried to train her to be able to control it, but was unsuccessful. So instead of dealing with it, he first traumatized her by locking her in a cell in the basement, then later having Allison “rumor” her to forget that she has powers. She’s spent her entire life believing she’s useless and being treated like an outcast by Reggie and by her siblings.

See, Five found a clue in the apocalypse. Luther held in his hand an unusual item — someone’s glass eye. So when Five returns, he begins a search for the owner of the eye. It has a serial number on it. It must lead somewhere.

Meanwhile, Vanya has met a guy. He shows up at her place for a violin lesson. She’s expecting a little kid named Leonard Peabody, but Leonard is a grown man. She gives him a lesson, and he’s so nice, so understanding, so self-deprecating. He gives her a little carving he made, and tells her that he has a shop in town where he displays and sells his creations. He’s a bit of a mystery, but he seems really nice. He’s caught by Allison inside Vanya’s apartment, but he has a great explanation. She left her keys at his place (?) and he was dropping them off along with a bouquet of flowers!

We are also shown Klaus trying to steal things from Reggie’s study, anything he can sell to get money for drugs. He’s caught by Luther, who tells him to leave all of it, and so he does — all but one thing, a beautiful ornamental box. Klaus opens the box, tosses its contents into a dumpster, and proceeds to enjoy the spoils of his acquisition. Seems very Klaus-like, in fact. Exactly the kind of thing Klaus would do.
Later, Pogo asks the entire family about the box. It seems that he know that Klaus was the likely thief, but didn’t want to accuse him. He states that the CONTENTS of the box, not the box itself, were priceless. Everyone looks at Klaus, but he professes innocence. Pogo says something about looking past the theft of the box if the contents, which were a notebook and some papers, were returned.

Klaus makes a beeline for the dumpster and begins searching it for the notebook and papers, but to no avail. They are gone. Klaus gives up.

So here we have the first of the events leading up to the apocalypse. If Reggie doesn’t die, Klaus doesn’t return to the mansion. If Klaus doesn’t return, then he never loses the contents of the box. Reggie’s secrets remain safe. What are these secrets? We don’t know. But I believe that this whole thing is a fork in the road to possible futures in the show.

EVENT 1: REGGIE DIES, KLAUS STEALS REGGIES NOTEBOOK, SOMEONE GETS THE NOTEBOOK AND LEARNS SOME OF REGGIE’S SECRETS

The Day That Wasn’t and The Day That Was are two of my favorite episodes of Season 1. Five leaves in search of answers to what to do about this apocalypse even as a pair of assassins continue to hunt for him and attack the mansion, fighting with the remaining siblings and battling them to a virtual draw. When the Umbrellas realize that there seems to be nothing they can do about the impending destruction of the world, they move on. At some point we learn who has the missing notebook and papers and it turns out that it’s Leonard.

Who the heck is this guy? We find out that as a child, he was a wanna-be Umbrella Academy fanboy who has the same birthday. He grrew up imagining that he has special powers like they do. When Reggie cruelly spurned him, he decided he will get revenge someday. He grew up in an abusive household, and it turns out he killed his father. He’s read Reggie’s notes, and he knows that Vanya has incredibly strong powers, which he works to get her to first release, then control. He takes her to his grandparents’ lake house where they work at this.

Allison decides to return to her daughter in Los Angeles. And Luther, who she’s been in love with since they were kids, is going with her. He has also been in love with her. They have a lovely moment dancing to the song Dancing In The Moonlight by Toploader (a great cover of a song by King Harvest). Everyone is moving on with their lives for better or for worse. They’ve accepted that there will be an apocalypse. And they’re letting it happen, because without Five they stand no chance of stopping it.

And then Vanya finds the notebook.

This would seem to be turning point number 2. How will Vanya react to this? Will she realize that Leonard is manipulating her? Or will she focus her anger on the Umbrella Academy? No matter what, it does not seem like the apocalypse will be the same one that Five found himself in the aftermath of. The Umbrellas are dispersing. They aren’t at the Mansion for Vanya to kill.

Will we find out? No, because Five does not stay missing. In fact, he returns at the beginning of the Day That Wasn’t.

So that day never happens. This is event number 3. Five returns and says something about knowing how to stop the apocalypse. This event leads us into “The Day That Was.” The Umbrellas piece together what’s happening with Vanya. They still don’t know about her powers, but they realize that this Leonard guy is bad news.

Allison confronts Vanya and Leonard and gets her throat slashed by Vanya’s violin bow as she attempts to “rumor” her sister. They rush Allison to the Mansion, where Pogo treats her. And all seems to be forgiven with Vanya, when Luther hugs her until she passes out, and then locks her in the chamber where she was locked as a child by Reggie.

Event number 4: If Luther doesn’t do this to Vanya, do any of the rest of the apocalyptic events happen? Vanya’s powers are too strong to be contained, and she goes to the theater where she is now the concertmaster, first chair violin. The White Violin. The instrument helps her focus her powers.

The Umbrellas gather in the theater to try to save the concert’s attendees. Vanya tries to kill them, and they fight against her. Her powers are magnified by sound, and Allison ends up discharging a gun next to her ear. So instead of her explosion (she’s kind of a little nuclear bomb) hitting the theater, it is aimed at the Moon.

Vanya destroys the moon. So as the apocalypse rages, Five gathers his siblings and teleports, and time travels, out of there.

And an apocalypse occurs. It’s not the same as the one Five visited. The Umbrellas aren’t killed in it defending the Mansion. But all the same, it’s an apocalypse.

If Allison doesn’t act with the gun, does Vanya’s blast just destroy the theater, instead of hitting the moon? Maybe. This is, in my view, event number 5.

Everything the Umbrellas do leads to an apocalypse. Everything that happens in season one has to happen in the way it does for the apocalypse to occur and the Umbrellas to survive it, including Reggie’s death, which is finally revealed to be a suicide designed to get all the Umbrellas back in the Mansion and in contact with each other. Reggie’s death is event number 6, but in a way, it’s event number 1 — the precursor necessary event for everything that happens to happen. If they don’t get together, does the apocalypse happen?

I’d say it doesn’t. If any one of these events doesn’t go the way that it does go, there is no apocalypse.

Makes you wonder just who’s manipulating events here. And why.

The Umbrella Academy is not a show about multiverses like the current MCU or even something like EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (which was great; if you haven’t seen it, treat yourself!). Yet it is forced to address certain alternate futures when the siblings act in unison, and we see the consequences of their actions.

This post will be full of spoilers, so if you don’t want to know what happens in the series or are currently watching, you probably should stop here.

Going

To

Keep

Reading?

Proceed at your own risk!

Season One starts with a funeral — Sir Reginald Hargreeves’s funeral, to be precise. Because of their adoptive father’s death, the five remaining siblings — Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus and Vanya — all return. They aren’t all thrilled to see each other. Diego seems especially angry with Vanya. Luther is a little miffed with Klaus, who is obviously drunk and/or high when he turns up looting the study for things he might be able to sell in order to buy drugs.

It turns out that the siblings all have powers except Vanya. It also turns out that two of the seven siblings are missing, numbers Five and Six. Five has no name beyond his number, and Six is Ben. There’s a portrait of Five hanging in the house, and there is a statue of Ben in the courtyard. As the season progresses, we learn that Vanya has written a tell-all book about the family from the perspective of the sibling who didn’t fit in, who didn’t have powers. And no one was happy about it. We also learn that Five has this cool ability to teleport. He uses it to great effect when fighting. You throw a punch at Five, you miss and he’s already behind you, punching or hitting you. He’s fast and tough and, as we learn later, very smart.

Then he returns. And while all the rest of the siblings are young-ish adults, Five is still around 13 years old.

As we learn through the episodes, Five wanted to jump through time as well as jump through space. He knows he can do it, but Reginald tells him that he’s not ready. So he goes out to practice, and he starts to practice jumping through time.

Finally, a jump lands him in —

The Apocalypse.

He’s still in whatever city they are based in. But he’s surrounded by devastation. No one is alive. He makes his way back to the mansion, and finds all of his siblings dead. They’ve all been killed. Luther, Allison, Klaus, Diego…all deceased. And Five has no way to get back to his present. So he lives his life in this desolate future, getting older, traveling with a mannequin to help him keep his sanity, and finally he meets…

The Handler.

The Handler runs the Commission. The Commission seems to me to be TUA’s version of Marvel’s TVA. They “correct” errors in the timeline. He goes to work for the Commission as one of their “correctors,” basically a temporal traveler who assassinates people. Why he can’t simply use one of their briefcases, which is how the Commission agents travel through time, to get back to his family, I don’t know. But what we do know is that when he returns, he opens a portal in the courtyard of the mansion, and Klaus throws a fire extinguisher through it (you have to see it for Klaus’s actions to make any sense at all), then Five squeezes through and he’s an old man, and then suddenly, he’s a little kid.

He miscalculated. One of his time travel equations was wrong. He comes through with all of his knowledge, all of his experience gained over the years, all of his memories intact, but he’s put it all in the body of his younger self. (“Don’t tell me. You turned Scott into a baby…you ended up pushing time through Scott instead of Scott through time…” You either know the reference or you don’t.)

Well, he’s back, and they’re together to try to stop this coming apocalypse, which happens in…a very short time. Four days? Nine days? Something like that.

But apparently the apocalypse is SUPPOSED to happen, because the Commission sends agents to kill Five. Or protect someone else. Or…

In any case, I didn’t get to the alternate timeline stuff in this post, but all this background is necessary, and I think you can start to see where they’re going with this. Are the Umbrellas going to be able to change the timeline? And how did Reggie die? And just who the everloving f*** IS Reggie?

Next post will discuss the results of their actions in Season One. More spoilers ahead so close your eyes if you don’t want to know, because this is where we get into the alternate timeline stuff. Is it a multiverse? I don’t think so. It’s just a single timeline. The commission is outside of that timeline, but tries to make sure that events line up with the “already happened for them” events of the timeline. But is THAT even the correct set of events? Who says that they are? Has the timeline been screwed around with so much that it really doesn’t matter anymore?

Or is Reggie somehow still manipulating things?

These are cool questions, and if you watch the show, or have watched it, I think you’ll really have a blast. It was part of the reason that my second viewing of the entire series was more fun than the first viewing! And why I couldn’t even get into the first show the first time I tried to watch it. Knowing this stuff is coming is half the fun for me!

Stay tuned…

My first attempt to watch Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy” ended in failure quickly. I just didn’t get it, or get into it. I was told that it was a superhero show, and what I watched of that first episode didn’t give me any real insight into the characters’ superpowers. I think it was titled “We Only See Each Other At Weddings and Funerals” or some version of that. The event that brings them together was a funeral — that of their adoptive father.

I think I turned it off before it was past the halfway point.

The second time I made it through the entire episode. Then the beginning sequence of a girl giving birth in a swimming pool in Russia set up the strangeness of the entire show. The thing was, she wasn’t pregnant when she dove into the pool. I then met Reginald Hargreeves, a wealthy and eccentric scientist and businessman, who I was told endeavored to collect “as many of the 43 (? or what it 46?) children born under similar circumstances” as he could, and that he got seven of them.

We see seven nannies pushing seven purambulators along the street, following Sir Reggie, then entering a large house in the center of a city. I took it to be New York City, but am I confident in that location? I am not.

As I watched the show, I found out that Luther, AKA #1, was on the moon when Sir Reggie died. Luther, a huge, strong man, receives the news and immediately makes plans his return to Earth. What’s he doing on the moon? No clue at this point. One by one, the seven pseudo-siblings return. #2 is Diego, and we learn that he can control the trajectory of knives. Can he do more? No clue.

#3 is Allison, and we eventually learn that her power is influencing people by saying “I heard a rumor…” and following it with her wish. What she wishes for happens. Again, how can she use this power? It does seem like a useful superpower. But we are led to assume that it is limited to the people in her general vicinity. Is this the case? No clue.

#4 is Klaus, and he seems to be comic relief at this point. Drunk, high, or both, Klaus is irreverent and willing to say stuff that the others won’t say, whether it’s for shock value or for something else, I don’t know. We also don’t have a clue what is power is.

#5 is — well, he’s not present. And this is part of where I messed up the first time. Because by the end of the episode, we DO meet Five, who goes only by his number designation. No name. He’s “Five.” And his power is…well, best I leave that for viewers to see for themselves. And I didn’t know that. Didn’t see Five on my first viewing.

#6 is also not present. His name is Ben, and he’s dead. We do meet him, however, and it’s related to Klaus. What was Ben’s power? No idea. Not yet, anyway.

#7 is Vanya. Vanya, we learn, has NO powers. She plays violin for the local symphony, and she wrote a tell-all book about the Umbrella Academy about their childhood and being raised by Reginald Hargreeves.

We also meet the household staff. Mom looks perfectly normal, until it’s revealed that she’s actually a robot! And the chief of staff, or whatever the title is, is an intelligent chimpanzee who speaks with a refined somewhat English accent, named Pogo.

Interesting cast of characters, no? And there are more coming! The Umbrella Academy ends up being a multiverse story, a time travel story, an alternate reality story. If and when I write more about the show, I will be doing spoilers. (I don’t think anything in this post is a major spoiler, yes, I spoil some of the powers and I spoil the fact that time travel plays a role in the series over its 3 seasons, but I dont give any specifics.) I want to dig into some of those aspects of the show deeper, because there are paradoxes aplenty, and layers of events affecting other events and changing things. And as Season 4 approaches, I want to work out some of these ideas for myself.

So stay tuned if you’re a fan, or if you have no intention of ever seeing the show but want to talk alternate realities as a result of time travel that aren’t related to the MCU.

Just a list of things:

• WEDNESDAY, streaming TV show on Netflix
• THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT CLUB by Grady Hendrix
• ARMY OF THE DEAD, streaming on Netflix
• THE LAST OF US, streaming on HBO Max, episode 1
• AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER, in the theater
• WAKANDA FOREVER, in the theater
• THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY, assorted episodes from Seasons 1 and 3, Netflix
• GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY, in the theater

These are just a few things that I’ve watched or read lately. I know there is a lot more, but I enjoyed each and every one of these things to varying degrees.

Can’t wait for THE FLASH movie, the new ANTMAN movie, and the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOLUME 3 movie.

Until later…