{"id":17193,"date":"2010-09-20T15:05:39","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T20:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?p=17193"},"modified":"2010-09-20T15:05:39","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T20:05:39","slug":"barnes-e-j-blaster-al-ackermans-tales-of-the-ling-master-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?p=17193","title":{"rendered":"Barnes, E.J. &#8211; Blaster Al Ackerman&#8217;s Tales of the Ling Master #3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ejbarnes.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Website<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/ling31.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-17194\" title=\"ling31\" src=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/ling31-187x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"187\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/ling31-187x300.jpg 187w, https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/ling31-639x1024.jpg 639w, https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/ling31.jpg 1604w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 187px) 100vw, 187px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Blaster Al Ackerman&#8217;s Tales of the Ling Master #3<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That &#8220;#3 of 3&#8221; on the cover worries me. This can&#8217;t be the end of the Blaster Al Ackerman tales, can it? There must be more of them out there, or new ones on the way?\u00c2\u00a0 Frankly, this is a series that is just begging for treatment in an anthology, with a number of different comics writers and artists doing their own take on the character if nothing else.\u00c2\u00a0 As for the comic, E.J. warned me that this one was a little more &#8220;out there&#8221; than most, which is a tall order in this series, but she wasn&#8217;t wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s often difficult to review these things without giving too much away, and these stories take that up a notch, but I&#8217;ll give it a shot.\u00c2\u00a0 Stories include a fable about a little boy who teased apples and his eventual meeting with an apple golem, another fable about a canary, a headache and a cigar on a plane, a professional &#8220;geek&#8221; (the circus kind, not the Bill Gates kind) trying to find out the truth about squid people, and one called &#8220;The Blue Catfish.&#8221; I don&#8217;t want to say a single thing about that one, but due to reviewer obligations I will say that it involves head shrinking, the concept of soul transportation and one of those stores that appear out of nowhere and vanish after you leave.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s difficult to detail the demented brilliance of these stories, but if you can&#8217;t get behind a guy wearing a stained pillowcase as a hood doling out advice at $5 a pop, often in parable form, and generally when there&#8217;s at least some veracity to the utterly bizarre questions being posed, I don&#8217;t know how to convince you.\u00c2\u00a0 If you like your comics genuinely different, there are three of these readily available that you should pick up as soon as possible. I&#8217;m hoping we can turn it into a cultural phenomena and realize my (five minute old) dream of an anthology with various takes on this character and\/or the author.\u00c2\u00a0 Make it happen America!\u00c2\u00a0 $3<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/ling32.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-17195\" title=\"ling32\" src=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/ling32-198x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/ling32-198x300.jpg 198w, https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/ling32-676x1024.jpg 676w, https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/ling32.jpg 1620w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 198px) 100vw, 198px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Website Blaster Al Ackerman&#8217;s Tales of the Ling Master #3 That &#8220;#3 of 3&#8221; on the cover worries me. This can&#8217;t be the end of the Blaster Al Ackerman tales, can it? There must be more of them out there, or new ones on the way?\u00c2\u00a0 Frankly, this is a series that is just begging [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4197,2482,597],"class_list":["post-17193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-blaster-al-ackerman","tag-e-j-barnes","tag-tales-of-the-ling-master"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17193"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17197,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17193\/revisions\/17197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}