You've likely read something in the last month about Emil Ferris's stellar graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, which was just published by Fantagraphics Books. NPR's John Powers explains the story of how Ferris came to create the book:

She was a 40-year-old single mom who supported herself doing illustrations when she was bitten by a mosquito, she contracted West Nile virus, became paralyzed from the waist down, and lost the use of her drawing hand. Fighting chronic pain, she taught herself to draw again, then reinvented herself as a graphic novelist, spending six long years creating what's clearly an emotional autobiography.

It's a remarkable story, and Monsters is a remarkable debut. It tells the story of Karen Reyes, a monster-obsessed young woman in 1960s Chicago who investigates the murder of her upstairs neighbor, a Holocaust survivor named Anka. Karen imagines herself as a monster — a human eternally transitioning to a werewolf.

It will take you a while to get into the plot, though, because the art is unbelievably, distractingly good. Ferris is a world-class illustrator. Using what appears to be colored pencils on lined three-ring binder paper, Ferris replicates classic works of art and dreams up pulpy sci-fi/fantasy/horror magazine covers and renders startling portraits of characters. Those portraits are the most astounding part of the book. There is life behind these faces. These eyes are more than ink on paper: they're judging you, imploring you, seeing you.

You've never seen comics like this. The art of Monsters relies on a blend of comics techniques: some pages use the traditional panels-and-word-balloons of American comics, but many of the layouts blend words and pictures in new ways — dreamy montages with narration spooling out in margins, blocks of brief essays interpolated in full-page illustrations, double-page spreads of fever-dream faces appearing in the wood paneling of an ugly apartment.

Monsters feels to me like a once-in-a-generation debut — a vision so clear and original that it will change the course of cartooning. Ferris's book lands with the force of a Chris Ware or a Robert Crumb. Newcomers to comics will be consciously and unconsciously emulating her style and storytelling techniques for decades to come.

Wednesday March 8th: Native Seattle Reading

Coll Thrush, a professor at the University of British Columbia, has two new books out. The first, Indigenous London, looks pretty neat. But we’re most interested in the new edition of Native Seattle, his history of Seattle’s native peoples. Today, Crosscut’s Knute Berger will interview Thrush about both books. Folio: The Seattle Athenaem, 324 Marion St., 402-4612, http://folioseattle.org. $10. 7 p.m.

Thursday March 9th: Tough Girl Reading

When she was 14 years old, Portland athlete Carolyn Wood won a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics. Her new memoir Tough Girl tells that story, but it also delves into her experiences growing up as a lesbian in the unforgiving public eye. This is a personal account of a remarkable life. University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E., 634-3400, http://www2.bookstore.washington.edu/. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

Friday March 10th: Vagrants & Accidentals Reading

See our Event of the Week column for more details. Open Books, 2414 N. 45th St., 633-0811, http://openpoetrybooks.com. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

Saturday March 11th: The Immortal Irishman Reading

Tim Egan is one of our greatest literary exports. Hundreds of thousands read him in the New York Times every week, and his books are celebrated around the world. Today, he reads from his two most recent books about remarkable historical figures, The Immortal Irishman and Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher. Upper Level Center House, Seattle Center, 634-3400, http://www2.bookstore.washington.edu/. All ages. 3 p.m.

Sunday March 12th: Short Stories Live: McSweeney’s

Short Stories Live presents celebrated short stories read live by talented local performers. Today, the series plucks its three stories from postmodern literary journal McSweeney’s. Seattle actors will read McSweeney’s pieces by Spokane author Jess Walter, the world-famous Zadie Smith, and up-and-comer Nyuol Lueth Tong. Expect a lot of comedy and some dazzling sentences. Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $5. All ages. 2 p.m.

Monday March 13th: The Way of the Writer Reading

Retired UW professor Charles Johnson reads from his latest book, The Way of the Writer, which absorbs writing lessons Johnson learned from his more than five-decade-long career in literature and synthesizes them into easy-to-understand essays for aspiring writers of all ages. Part memoir, part how-to, and part spiritual guide, this book took Johnson a lifetime to write. Third Place Books Seward Park, 5041 Wilson Ave S, 474-2200, http://thirdplacebooks.com. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

Tuesday March 14th: Ask the Oracle

The Hugo House’s ongoing divination/reading series, in which authors find answers to audience questions in randomly selected passages from their books, features memoirists Melissa Febos and Elissa Washuta and poet Quenton Baker. Washuta recently announced that she’s leaving Seattle this summer for a teaching position in Ohio, so go bask in her presence while you can. Sorrento Hotel, 900 Madison St., 622-6400, hotelsorrento.com. Free. 21 and over. 7 p.m.

Kevin Craft is one of the hardest-working people in Seattle literature. As a teacher, he works on literary programs at Everett Community College and University of Washington. As an editor, he ran Poetry Northwest magazine for seven years and has compiled five anthologies. As a publisher he just built a new press, Poetry Northwest Editions, that will launch with a new collection from Sierra Nelson this year. And as a writer, he’s..well, he’s published and performed a lot of poems in a lot of places, but he actually only produced one collection to his name, and that was published over a decade ago. Craft has been so tirelessly promoting the works of others for so long that his own work has received short shrift.

Until now. The University of Washington Press’s Pacific Northwest Poetry Series has shepherded a gorgeous new collection of Craft’s poetry into being. It’s titled Vagrants & Accidentals, and it feels like a book that’s been bottled up for a decade, just waiting to be introduced to an unsuspecting world.

The poetry in Vagrants is eager and obsessed with big ideas like evolution and the act of becoming. “Old Paradox” reminds the reader to “Consider that it’s difficult/if not impossible to discover the exact/moment a tadpole becomes a frog.” Life is change. If you’re not metamorphosing, you’re probably dead.

“The Descent” is its own sort of creation myth, a blend of equal parts Bible and Darwin:

There was daylight before we grew eyes.

There were grasses therefore we grew lungs.

There were speeches therefore we grew an earful.

There were speeches we grew wary of.

That first stanza is an evolutionary take on “let there be light,” one which suggests we sprang from the void to observe and partake in the world because there was a world just waiting to be observed. The second stanza gets into the idea of writing and reading — the concept that listening developed as a response to talking, and not the other way around. And then after the creation of the word came the fear of the word, the understanding that words have power and that this power can be used for good and for evil.

And that’s where the poet comes in.

The relationship between the poet and the world may not be a chicken-and-egg situation — we know the world was here before the first poet — but Craft argues that without the eyes to see and the lips to speak and the fingers to write, the world may as well not have existed at all. On that same wavelength, a Seattle without Craft’s poetry in it would be a forgettable dot on a map. He breathes life into our world, as an editor and publisher and, most definitely, as a poet.

(Craft debuts Vagrants & Accidentals this Friday, March 10th, at Open Books in Wallingford. The reading is at 7 pm. It’s free.)

• "A branch of the Seattle Public Library is named after two African-American icons who never set foot in the Pacific Northwest," begins this report by historian Feliks Banel at MyNorthwest.com. The branch in question, of course, is the The Douglass-Truth Library.

• Ijeoma Oluo needs your help to keep her site The Establishment running:

It has been life-affirming to see so many writers bless us with some of their first professionally published pieces — women writers of color, trans writers, queer writers, disabled writers — talking about some of the most important issues of the day with actual lived experience. I have loved knowing that every piece is edited with integrity, and that every writer is paid for their labor. To be a member of the founding team of a rare platform that is fair and equitable and treats all writers with respect has given my work more purpose and satisfaction than I could have ever imagined.

• Seattle writer Anca Szilagyi announced yesterday that her debut novel, Dirty, will be published by Lanternfish Press "in late 2017 or early 2018." She describes the book as "a magical realist work about a teenage runaway whose father is disappeared during Argentina’s Dirty War."

• Tomorrow, to celebrate International Women's Day, Tor.com will publish new flash fiction by a host of great sci-fi authors — including Charlie Jane Anders, Maria Dahvana Headley, Nisi Shawl, Carrie Vaughn, and many more — on the theme "Nevertheless, She Persisted."

• Jillian Kay Melchior at Heatstreet writes: "To draw attention to female authors, a Cleveland bookstore celebrated Women’s History Month by turning every male-written book in the fiction room backward on its shelf." Go look at the picture of what the bookstore looked like, now imagine what your shelves would look like if you did the same. Better yet, actually try it on your own bookshelves. It only took Loganberry Books 2 hours to do this with their 10,000 titles.

• Headline of the day: "The New Yorker’s new bot will tweet 92 years worth of poetry at you."

• Print magazine sales declined 12.4 percent last year. It's not as steep a drop as the year before, but it's still bad news for print media.

• Always warms our hearts to see book reviewers start out young:

Found in the children's section: THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW. #kidsreviewbooks #thomasthetankengine 😂 pic.twitter.com/1g5HaEobaH

— Elliott Bay Book Co. (@ElliottBayBooks) March 6, 2017

Thanks to our Puppet-in-Chief, everyone's talking about Russia these days. But how much do you actually know about Russia? How much of what you know is just left over from the old Cold War frame of thinking?

This coming Saturday at 6 pm, Fantagraphics Books, University of Washington, and Short Run are bringing Russian cartoonist/journalist Victoria Lomasko to the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery in Georgetown. Lomasko will be presenting from and signing her new book of journalism, Other Russias.

Sophie Pinkham profiled Lomasko in a recent issue of the New Yorker:

Lomasko, who grew up in Serpukhov, a town in the Moscow region, has spent nearly a decade documenting the lives of ordinary people in provincial Russian cities, remote villages, and urban underbellies, the kinds of people who rarely make it into the press or the corridors of power, and who have little hope that life will get better. In her book, which is out this month from n+1 Books, we meet children so culturally and geographically isolated that they don’t even know that Moscow is a city, Kazakh migrant workers enslaved by a sadistic Moscow supermarket owner, and sex workers operating out of offices and vans in order to feed their husbands and children.

And last week, Lomasko appeared on The Takeaway in a primer episode about Russia.

This is a case of just the right writer showing up in Seattle at just the right time. Lomasko understands the situation in Russia better than any American pundit every could. Go soak up her knowledge, pick up her book, and find out what the hell's going on. The event is free, and it's part of Georgetown's monthly Art Attack artwalk, so there's plenty to do in that neck of the woods.

Each week, the Sunday Post highlights a few articles good for slow consumption over a cup of coffee (or tea, if that's your pleasure). Settle in for a while; we saved you a seat.

Three Iconic Musicians on Artistic Creation — and Its Importance Now

Wyatt Mason’s humility lifts this interview with Kendrick Lamar, Beck, and Tom Waits beyond its style-magazine setting. Maybe because Mason asks “some stupid questions,” each of the three musicians responds directly and unpretentiously, offering up their take on songwriting and the relationship between music and the world in times of crisis. E.g., this anecdote from Tom Waits’ days as a firefighter in Jacumba, California:

The captain says: ‘WAITS!!! Take that hose and start putting out some of these chickens.’ So there I am aiming at these flying, screaming, burning chickens, and I had never seen a chicken fly before, but boy can they fly. ... There had to be a hundred or so of them and the blast of water would douse the fire and they would come crashing to the ground — and then another and another. There was no time to think or prepare.”

Here it was, as Waits closed out his story, here it was again, here was where songs come from: “It was an emergency,” he wrote, “and when dealing with emergent behavior there is nothing to do but respond. I was in the moment. And it was not the fire I imagined or dreamed of. It was the fire I got.”

Quest For Solace

After the deaths of her daughter and husband, Katherine Keith re-taught herself to live on a thousand-mile dogsled race through the Alaskan wilderness.

Her parka finally zipped over her four other coats and two Smartwool shirts, she starts putting Velcro-strapped booties on her Alaskan huskies, a tedious task even in ideal conditions. It's like putting Velcro boots on a baby, only instead of two feet there are four and instead of one baby there are 11, and instead of being inside a warm nursery, she is outside in Alaska in February. She's barehanded, with fingers that have been wrecked by the cold for days already.

The danger of this cold is very real and goes beyond frostbitten finger tips. With more than 200 miles left in her first Yukon Quest, Katherine, 38, can't afford mistakes.

Shh! Don’t Tell Them There’s No Magic In Design Thinking

I’m not sure I agree with Jared Spool’s description of “design thinking” here. The term’s power, at IDEO and elsewhere, is less about changing perceptions of design, more about using design strategies to solve other kinds of problems — in transportation and education, for example. Still, it’s good to see someone call it out for what it is: useful jargon, but no magic bullet.

For the longest time, I didn’t get it. It seemed like we just added a new name to an old thing. Nothing was different. I thought it wouldn’t last.

But it did. Everywhere I’d go, there would be presentations where folks would talk about how they’ve introduced design thinking into their organization. (My wife and I would play this game. If we hear someone say “design thinking” in a presentation, we’d each try to be the first to say “I’M DESIGNING WITH MY THOUGHTS!”)

PPE: the Oxford degree that runs Britain

The British educational experience has a host of familiar touchpoints for readers: coming of age, empire building, and quidditch, to name just a few. Here’s a more current and less innocent lens from Andy Beckett. The PPE — a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics — has birthed generations of British political leaders. How did a single Oxford degree become so influential? And where is it leading England?

Oxford PPE remains opaque to outsiders. It is often mentioned in the media but rarely explained. Even to know what PPE stands for is to be unusually well-informed about British education and power – often, to be part of the same Oxford milieu as the PPEists. When I asked one former party leader what he got from the degree, he said with studied insouciance: “Why would you want to write about PPE?” As the establishment often says when scrutinised: nothing to see here.

Seattle Writing Prompts are intended to spark ideas for your writing, based on locations and stories of Seattle. Write something inspired by a prompt? Send it to us! We're looking to publish writing sparked by prompts.

Also, how are we doing? Are writing prompts useful to you? Could we be doing better? Reach out if you have ideas or feedback. We'd love to hear.

What would Seattle look like without John Charles Olmsted? The famous park designer, who formed the Brookline, Massachusetts landscape architectural firm Olmsted Brothers with his brother Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., was hugely productive. Over the founders' lives (the firm ran continuously from their founding, past their deaths, and almost into the 21st century: 1858-2000), they designed hundreds of parks and college campuses, all around our nation. Their father, Frederick Law Olmsted, was the co-designer of New York's Central Park, and is considered the father of architectural landscape design, so, you know, nothing big to live up to.

Locally, Olmsted designed the University of Washington campus (as the grounds for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition), not to mention Woodland, Volunteer, Cal Anderson, Seward, and Green Lake Parks, just to name a few.

He also designed Lake Washington Boulevard. Eight meandering, gorgeous miles that wind from where Montlake Boulevard and 520 meet, south through the Arboretum, and then ending up hugging the shoreline of the lake, with diversions to curve through parks, until it ends at Orcas street, at the entrance of Seward Park.

Did you know that the boulevard is considered a park? At least, it's managed by the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department. The city shuts down stretches of it a few times each Summer for family bike rides, which are awfully fun. Kurt Cobain lived briefly, and died suddenly, on the street.

Olmsted arrived in Seattle in 1903, called on by the city leaders of the day who were inspired by the City Beautiful Movement, spending most of May of that year visiting sites throughout the Seattle area, learning the land that Seattle owned, and learning of the privately owned amusement parks that Seattle came to buy.

Olmsted imagined a string of parks, connected by boulevards, making emerald ribbons throughout the Emerald City. He even complained of the rain, writing home to his wife nearly daily. Olmsted's plans for the city were submitted in July of that year. The city council adopted it in November.

Lake Washington Boulevard was actually a number of segmented boulevards, but were renamed as one in 1920. If you're feeling uninspired at any time, a walk through one of the parks that it bisects or skirts, or a ride along its lengths by bike or even by those strange conveyances, the automobile, might break some ideas loose in your head. I was so inspired on a recent drive, on the way to our Reading Through It Book Club at the Seward Park Third Place Books. The light on the water. The people out for strolls. The windy slow traffic.

Of course, perhaps not everything is always perfect along that beautiful stretch. Who knows what horrors lurk along along its length? Maybe we can uncover a few of them today.

Today's prompts

1. Olmsted — He was tired of the company — they seemed to never want to leave him to his thoughts. Some 3,000 miles from his home and family in Massachusetts, not even a walk along this beach was lifting his spirits, thanks to the yammering cohort. Perhaps it was the naked ambition of these Seattle people, so eager to seem sophisticated and worldly. Perhaps it was the damnable weather, always gray and drizzly. He stepped away from his group, saying he'd be back shortly, and climbed up a bluff, into the dense undergrowth. He was hoping to see a vista, a place for a clearing and a bench for a nice panorama of the water, but the foliage was thick enough to block any view from this angle. Then, even before he heard anything, a rank animal musk came across his nose. A branch cracked, as if stepped on by a heavy foot. Taking a rasping breath, he slowly turned.

2. The walker — Every night that bastard walked his dog. He'd leave his million dollar house with the view of the water and Mercer Island, and walk down to Seward Park. He'd leave the path, and break into the woods, tying the whimpering dog to a fallen tree, before walking on a bit longer. Then, at a little clearing, alone, he would unwrap the little bundle — his most dreaded secret — and prepare the ritual that brought him so much relief.

3. The child — the problem was that Daddy didn't see. Not really. He'd pick the child up, put them into the seat on the front of the bicycle, and they'd go for a ride along the water. It was so much fun, until they got to the tree. The child would try to remember to close their eyes, but they never could. They always looked up. They always saw. And Daddy never listened when they tried to warn him.

4. The teenager — He was just minding his own business. Hanging out on the beach, smoking a cigarette. Trying to not get caught smoking that cigarette. The lady looked, like, totally normal. Kind of boring. Middle aged, maybe. Wearing a business skirt and short heels. She had pearls around her neck. She just walked right past, stepping on his backpack, not even noticing. Kept walking. Went right down to the water, and she didn't even stop. Just kept going in, up to her knees, her waist, her neck, and then, swear to god, she went under. I mean, what the hell was he supposed to do?

5. The grandmother — This was back in the 60s, but she remembers that boy down at Ranier Beach like it was yesterday. He just wouldn't let up, trying to impress his friends and show off, bugging her. So she got on her little bike and rode up the shore. Four miles, if she remembered correctly. Four miles until they chickened out and turned back, getting into the white part of the shore. Four miles to the beaches where it was all white people and only white people. Everybody knew that was a bad idea, but she did it anyway. What was the worst thing that could happen? People are people, and all she wanted was to sit on the beach and read her book in peace. Surely, they'd just let her do that, right?

Today's Book News Roundup begins with three neat local opportunities:

• Are you a poet? Do you want to be Seattle's next Civic Poet? The position, as pioneered by our first Civic Poet Claudia Castro Luna, is about advocacy — about reading poetry at City Hall meetings and teaching classes about interpreting the city through poetry. She's done a stellar job and the next Civic Poet has a lot to live up to. It's a two-year program, and the winner receives $10,000 budgeted over that time. Deadlines are due on April 24th. Find everything you need to know right here.

• Are you a cartoonist who's just starting out? You should apply for Short Run's Dash Grant, which provides the winner with "$250 to complete and premiere their comic at the festival [which this year happens on November 4th in Seattle Center], mentorship by a special guest, access and instruction to local screenprint shop Fogland Studios, a free half table at the festival, and a spot in our annual gallery show. This is a terrific grant that provides up-and-coming cartoonists with a chance to make a big splash in a major Seattle comics and independent literature festival. Deadline for this is April 22.

• Do you know a writer, cartoonist, or other literary artist who deserves special recognition? Nominate them for the Courage in Culture Award, which is part of Crosscut's annual Courage Awards. The deadline for nominations is March 13th.

And in other news:

• Congratulations to the Seattle Public Library's ace Readers' Service Librarian David Wright, who just won the Margaret E. Monroe Library Adult Services Award winner for "outstanding contributions to readers’ advisory and adult services." Wright is one of the best librarians in town.

• If you're looking for something to do tomorrow, the Phinney Neighborhood Association is hosting a book exchange. Bring in your beloved cookbooks, sci fi/fantasy, mystery, and kids' books and swap them out for some new-to-you finds! If you have no books to swap, they're also selling books at $1 per paperback and $2 per hardcover. It's happening from 11 am to 2 pm at the Neighborhood Center, and it's free to enter.

• Barnes & Noble's third quarter sales declined 8 percent year-over-year. It's been a long, long time since we've seen unabashedly good news coming from Barnes & Noble.

• Patrick Melrose's exquisite Edward St. Aubyn novels are being adapted into a TV miniseries, and Benedict Cumberbatch is set to star. When I read the St. Aubyn books a few years ago, I actually pictured Cumberbatch as the protagonist. I don't know if that means Cumberbatch is a good choice or a bad choice. No air date has been announced, which means it's unclear when we'll discover if the TV show can sustain the book's bitter sense of humor and louche-but-opulent weariness for five full episodes.

Every Friday, Cienna Madrid offers solutions to life’s most vexing literary problems. Do you need a book recommendation to send your worst cousin on her birthday? Is it okay to read erotica on public transit? Cienna can help. Send your questions to advice@seattlereviewofbooks.com.

Dear Cienna,

Help me to not be a boob! I'm a dude and a writer and every time I go to describe a woman I write something about her rack. I know this drives women readers crazy, and for good reason.

But! I'm queer. Boobs to me have about as much sex appeal as cow udders. This isn't about male gaze (I don't think?), and sometimes a woman's breasts tell a story — like an old Russian lady with really big ones who is very modest and keeps that shit locked down tight. There's obviously some kind of management there that helps define who she is, right?

Or my sister talking about how big her “tits” (her words) got when she was pregnant — that's not a character trait per se, but it is something honest worth mentioning, right?

I'm a guy, but I don't want to be THAT guy. Is there a rule of thumb to help me here?

Bottle fed, Burien

Dear Bottle fed,

Being gay doesn't inoculate you against sexism, just as being a cultural latina (olé!) doesn't make me incapable of racism. As you noted, there are times when writing about breasts helps inform the reader about a character or the narrator. There are also many times when writing about boobs is lazy shorthand for a woman's sexual appeal, which in turn is lazy shorthand for her worth in the world.

So here are a few questions to consider the next time you begin fixating on a character's breasts:

1. Are these boobs central to the scene taking place right now?
2. What am I trying to convey by focusing on these boobs?
3. Is this the best way to impart that message to readers?
4. Are these boobs that I'm describing the boobs of a female character?
5. If so, why the fuck don't I ever write about male boobs? Men have chests, too, and many men even have boobs and sensitive areolas.

Here's another exercise you might try: Take a few descriptions of your characters, swap their pronouns (or remove pronouns altogether) and re-read the descriptions aloud. It will help you identify the crutches you rely on and gender biases you may have.

Kisses!

Cienna

Each week, Christine Marie Larsen creates a new portrait of an author for us. Have any favorites you’d love to see immortalized? Let us know

Today is the birthday of American illustrator, artist, author, cartoonist, and animator Dr. Seuss, born March 2, 1904.

Last week, Fernando Alfonso III wrote at the Lexington Herald Leader:

An Eastern Kentucky police chief has removed large decals with the Punisher skull and “Blue Lives Matter” from eight police cars after a backlash following the publication of a Herald-Leader story.

The Catlettsburg Police department, which employs eight full-time and two part-time officers for a population of about 2,500, featured the images on the hoods of its 2013 and 2017 Ford Interceptor sedans and sport-utility vehicles, assistant police chief Gerry Hatzel said. The stylized skull was from “The Punisher” comic book series.

The Punisher, of course, is a mass murderer. Created in the 1970s as a pastiche of the gritty Death Wish and Dirty Harry films, the character murders criminals without any semblance of a fair trial. He considers himself to be a soldier, but he works alone, without any commanding officers to keep him in line. He answers to no one. He is, in short, not a role model for police officers.

When comics writer Mark Waid argued that the Punisher is a villain, a number of Twitter users fansplained to him that the Punisher is an “anti-hero”. “[H] e IS one of the good guys. He's an anti-hero. As a comic book writer, you should know the difference,” one person told Waid. Another lectured the comics veteran, “Learn your terms before using them.”

For thirty years, superhero comics have continually blurred the definition of “anti-hero” to the point where it now basically means “protagonist.” A mass-murderer is not an anti-hero; a mass-murderer is a villain. An anti-hero is a character who reluctantly upholds noble causes or otherwise behaves in a courageous manner that is against type. (As another Twitter user explained during the Punisher discussion, Luke Skywalker is the hero of Star Wars, while Han Solo is an anti-hero and Boba Fett is the villain. This is a pretty good rule of thumb.)

This confusion is a trend that can be traced back to the days when the Punisher, who started as a villain in Spider-Man comics, first starred in his own mini-series. It’s a confusion as old as kids misreading Rorschach as the hero of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen, when in fact he’s intended as a horrific parody of cartoonist Steve Ditko’s Objectivist leanings. It’s what happens when 13-year-old boys read Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns as a cool Batman story instead of a parable about the creeping fascism of the Reagan era.

Of course, this isn’t a problem that’s exclusive to comics. Blockbuster movies have had a hard time identifying heroes for the last 40 years or so. But comics have been singularly obsessed with heroism for almost a century now, and so the problem seems more egregious within comics somehow.

And I’m not saying that every fictional story needs to center on a hero who unfailingly commits good works. But the fact that fandom that can’t recognize the difference between an anti-hero and a villain is troubling. And the fact that police — people who swear to protect and serve the American public — celebrate the logo of a murderer should be worrying to everyone.

For years, Amazon has offered commissions to book bloggers who link to books on Amazon. In other words, if you were reading a review on a blog and you clicked the link on the blog to buy that book on Amazon, you'd be sending a small amount of money the bloggers' way. It's called the affiliate program. Some book blogs have grown to depend on affiliate revenue over the years, and Amazon relied on affiliates to serve, effectively, as handsellers for the company.

As of today, that deal has changed. Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader notes that Amazon is cutting the amount they pay to affiliates by a significant amount:

Amazon is saying that they don't want to pay as much they used to; they no longer value the more active affiliates. That is their right; Amazon is in business to make money, and I can understand why they made this decision...I have been crunching my numbers, and I expect to lose about a fifth of my Amazon affiliate income. That's going to hurt, and I won't be the only one to feel the pinch.

This is what happens when you're the only game in town: when you decide to change the rules, there's nothing anyone else can do.

What does this mean for you? Well, it's likely there'll be even fewer book blogs for you to read in the months and years to come. A few of those bloggers are in the comments on the Digital Reader post. One notes, "Lots of people wanted to believe Amazon was altruistic and a force for good in the publishing world. Well it ain’t, and we’re seeing it more and more."

If your business relies on Amazon — whether you're a self-publisher or an affiliate or a used bookseller — you should remember that: pretty much everybody who partners with Amazon gets the shaft eventually.

For the sake of transparency, when you click on a book that the Seattle Review of Books reviews, that link will almost always take you to IndieBound, the online retailing site for the American Booksellers Association. IndieBound does provide an affiliate-like service, meaning if you were to buy a book through a link on our site, we'd get a (very small) amount in return. It's not part of our operating budget at all. If you want to support us, you should buy a sponsorship with us.