#Nerdy bookends series

Puma is must-have piece for lovers of obscure pop-culture, artsier comics, and anyone with a streak of punk rock in their soul. It’s not hard to see why so many prominent names in comics are big fans. The book is bleak, strange, a bit dated, and at times about as subtle as a kick to the groin from a Dead Kennedys fan, but undeniably earnest and disturbingly prescient. That should be enough information to make you order a dozen copies immediately. But you know who has? Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Peter Laird, and Dave Sim, all of whom have been quoted singing the praises of Puma. The Verdict: The Puma Blues is the one of the best indie comics you’ve probably never heard of. From the minds of prolific Ninja Turtles author, Steve Murphy, and famed Sandman artist, Michael Zulli.Įlevator Pitch: Transmetropolitan meets Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, liberally dipped in the grittier side of the 1980s and paired with John Audubon-style nature art.

The Breakdown: The Puma Blues – an environmental sci-fi that rocked the indie comics scene of the 80s has been collected and completed for the first time.

#Nerdy bookends series

The series also got Liu nominated for a GLAAD Media Award 'for outstanding media images of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.' That's right, she was the writer on that famous (at least in the comic book community) wedding between Northstar and his boo, the first ever LGBT wedding in Marvel comics history! In a genre where character development and relationships can fall by the wayside in favor of kitschy hero plots and explosions, Liu is a rare gem of writerly brilliance.Graphic Novel Review: The Puma Blues: The Complete Saga In Astonishing X-Men she puts together one of the coolest X-Men teams ever, including a relatively new character Warbird, an alien warrior whose love of art was a taboo in her war-driven Shi’ar society. Her stints on X-23 and Astonishing X-Men lent amazing depth to characters long neglected or sidelined by Marvel. Marjorie Liu is one of the best comics writers out, and it’s surprising that she’s not better known. These are the books, both fiction and non-fiction, that every nerd would get a kick out of, whether for the complicated concepts that get your brain going, or just to laugh along as you recognize your own nerdy tendencies in the lead character’s nerdtastic mannerisms. But every nerd ought to branch out, or just take the occasional breather from programming your PlayStation controller to turn on all the lights in your house and read books by and about other nerds. Whether you’re a nerd for books, brains, space travel, or Boolen algebra, the one thing all nerds have in common is a love for learning, problems, and, just generally what I like to call “brain food.” That’s the thing with nerds, they’re all probably already reading heavily and relentlessly in their fields of interest. You know, those of us who’d rather read than… well, pretty much anything else, or those whose eyes light up at a mathematical problem as if it were a giant piece of cake.

It helps that many books are pretty much by and for nerds.

There are all kinds of nerds - book nerds, computer nerds, history nerds, science nerds, space nerds, sci-fi nerds, math nerds, even just plain nerd nerds - and the land of the literary has room for all of them.