(Originally posted at Media Gauntlet)

Get their obsession wrong.

It’s a joke I first heard from a stand-up comedian. He was talking about driving by the lines for Star Wars: Episode I and yelling “Star Trek sucks!” just to watch the fans’ heads explode.

I laughed. Because it’s true. And just recently I demonstrated to myself once again how very true it is.

I read a lot. Everything. Okay, not everything, but close. My true literary loves (apart from comics) are Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, and Mystery. I adore mysteries. The more hard-boiled the better, although I will read the more genteel, Agatha Christie sort as well.

Glen Cook, the mastermind behind the Black Company books, has a series of very light-hearted noir mysteries set in a fantasy world, the Garrett, P.I. books. The Boy and I have a theory that he wrote these to keep from succumbing to suicidal or psycopathic urges while writing the more grim Black Company books. These books are a blast and are a blatant and loving homage to Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books. The interactions between Garrett and the Dead Man brilliantly echo Stout’s bickering between Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. I mean, it’s screamingly obvious that the books are a riff on Nero Wolfe and much of Stout’s humor is echoed in Cook’s writing.

So, why then does the blurb on the covers of most of the Garrett books compare him with Chandler? Who never wrote anything approximating the Garrett/Dead Man relationship. Who had very little, if anything, funny in his books.

Yup, there I am outside the movie theatre screaming, “Dude!  Its STAR WARS! GET IT RIGHT!”  Except actually I’m in the bookstore muttering, “Stout, you moron. Stout, not Chandler. These are NOTHING like Chandler, you idiot.”

In closing, I’d like to apologize for my absence. I had every intention of updating this while I was home recuperating from surgery, but Percocet had other ideas. Seriously, be thankful that I didn’t even try to do anything more taxing than laying on the couch and watching “Full Metal Alchemist” and “The Venture Bros.”