Spirit Armageddon

About the Book

By DAN BARNETT - The Buzz

Posted: 11/05/2009 12:00:00 AM PST

Graphic novels are comic books for grown-ups. Full length, immersive, complex, they meld a particular (or peculiar) illustrative style with words that take on the big issues of life.

Thus it is with "Spirit Armageddon" ($20.95 in paperback from www.iuniverse.com) by Zacheas Hertz, the pen name of 20-year-old Chico writer Travis Henderson. Coupled with the manga-influenced design and black-and-white illustration of Serpentwitch, the story is the first in a planned series exploring a terrible human paradox: Is it the case that one must become violent to stop violence?

Henderson writes in a news release that he is a civilian pilot, recently enlisted in the Air Force, whose "true calling is with flight, but I find my pen has the strange ability to fly over paper" as well. "In both endeavors I lose myself to the awe and wonder of the grand scheme." The author will be signing copies of "Spirit Armageddon" at 6-8 p.m. Nov. 19 at Lyon Books in Chico as part of the bookstore's gathering of local writers, dozens of whom will be honored at the store through early December.

Zacheas imagines an earth in which falling asteroids are having a strange effect. As one character explains, "Random people from all over the world have been gaining powers. ... The power we receive has an unfortunate side effect in many people, insanity fed by their own hate, fear, greed or what is most commonly called evil."

These "medians" ("it is what the media called the first ones and the name kinda stuck") wreak violence everywhere, and the government's Armageddon Project must stop it. Some medians can be rehabilitated, relocated, but others must be killed. "No therapist can fix them, no jail can hold them, all we have left is to consider the well being of the people around them." And so young Mino, herself imbued with the asteroid's powers, despised by others from her childhood, must now consider saving the very people who hate her.

There are lighter moments in the story, but many panels depict stylized violence, and the sounds — zziing, dharr, sett, sett, sett, srakh — rattle in the reader's head as power confronts power. The final question continues to resonate: "What have we all gotten ourselves into?"

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. To submit review copies of published books, please send e-mail to danbarnett@me.com. Columns are archived on the Musable blog, http://dielbee.blogspot.com.

About the Author

I am not qualified to write this book, but this book would not have been written if I did not have the slight bit of insanity required to do anything great. What may interest you about me is that I am 20, but I started writing this series of 30 books (to which this is the first) when I was 16. I do not view myself as a writer really, I actually and a pilot. that is the courier that I have been training for. My future will lead me into further flight training, military service, and then the eventual goal of of working for an airline. I am an A student, and a hard worker. I have have been supporting myself financially for a long time, and every penny of this project has been paid for by money I earned myself. I love fun and adventure, and I believe that is what comes out of the story. also I believe that compelling moral questions born from my Christian roots add to the story's intrigue. Lastly, I find it as almost a practical joke, that I have become the writer of a graphic novel, or manga, being as I had never read one before I started doing the research for my own. essentially, the first manga I ever read was my own.