New project for Cozy Cabin/The Thought Corner!

Hello everybody, this is Manga4life with some pretty interesting and exciting news about The Thought Corner blog and a new project that I'm in the middle of planning out that will be pretty damn epic in my opinion. As many who know me from Twitter have learned recently, I am planning to write a book based around World of Warcraft and my favorite character that I've been playing a lot of as of late, it's something I've been planning for about a week now and the other day I announced it on my Twitter account and today I'm posting an official press release for those who don't follow me on there or know me from elsewhere on the web. Now, I to clear something up right off the bat, since I don't own any stake in World of Warcraft or have the publishing rights to any content pertaining to the game and/or it's property then I cannot officially publish or distribute any material centered around the license for profit, so instead I plan to release chapters free of charge right here on The Thought Corner blog! So even though this is not a true publication of Cozy Cabin Publishing it will still be available for the 30,000+ people who have visited this blog or the 120+ people who view this blog on a daily basis, it's my pleasure to supply the friends and readers of this site with fun and exciting reading material on a monthly basis and this project will no doubt be any different.



The plot of this story will follow the adventures of Cavendar (my character in WoW) and his growing up in Darnassus after learning that the city has been demolished by Thrall and his horde of orc's in an attempt to kill Malfurion Stormrage and Tyrande Whisperwind to take control of the Night Elf race, when Cavendar learns that much of his dear family has been slaughtered in the brawl he decides to train as a warrior in Darnassus so that he can acquire the tools possible to get revenge for what happened to his relatives. As Cavendar sets off on his quest he finds that it may not be nearly as easy as it seems and that the original goal he had set for himself has quickly become a distant memory thanks to the rising evil of the Black Dragon Flight and their obsession with destroying Azeroth as a whole. Sound exciting? Well, I guess we'll see in due time, wont we?! I've already mapped out the timeline for the story as well as chosen some key characters from WoW's deep lore to compliment the main characters that I've actually created from scratch, other key figures in the book will be real players in the game from my guild, The Grandmaster Gods. Once the first chapter is edited and complete I will post it up right here for everyone to see, this may take a week or two since I want to carefully craft this tale with razor like precision so I can't make any true promises as to when it will be ready to post, but it will be worth it my friend. Trust me.

See you in Azeroth guys, and as always: Reach for the stars and enjoy the ride!

As always I want to thank those who took the time to read my blog, it's much appreciated and you can always check me out at www.twitter.com/manga4life as well as TZ and FUNI.

Take care,
***Manga4life***

©2011 Cozy Cabin Publishing LLC

Remembering "Hitman" by Garth Ennis & John McCrea

For comic book fans, once in a while a title comes along that maybe doesn’t find the mainstream success of an X-Men or Batman but yet it finds a home near the top of your personal read list due to it’s fantastic writing or likable characters. Today I’m going to write about a series that has done just that for me, today I am going to write an article about a comic called “Hitman” by Garth Ennis and John McCrea.

“Hitman” told the story of a gun for hire named Tommy Monaghan who had meta-human superpowers and lived in Gotham City alongside some of the best known heroes and worst feared villains of DC Comics, in that city people would go to Tommy to kill a wide array of individuals (both super powered and not) and if the price was right he would gladly oblige. Doing hits on people was his job but Tommy was most certainly not a one dimensional character who spent his entire 60 issue series knocking off scum to get rich, Monaghan was a true to life average guy who had a girlfriend, best friend, and people who cared deeply about him, most of which all hung out in a downtown dive called Noonan’s. Throughout the series Tommy found himself coming face to face with multiple iconic DC characters, some of the interaction between them was actually quite hilarious, other dealings were downright serious, but it was nice to see a character like his to be accepted into the DC universe at a time when superheroes were the extreme focus of DC, not an average looking guy in a jacket flashing a gun. Some of the funniest moments within this book were the ones that took place between the characters that hung around Noonan’s Bar, one scene that comes to mind had Kyle Raynor being told by an intoxicated local bar fly that he wouldn’t amount to much as a superhero because the JLA only accepted original members, and don’t get me started on a wannabe hero that went by the name of “Dog Welder” who was absolutely knee slapping in his pathetic attempt at an outfit.

Garth Ennis' hilarious shots at superheroes made for some fantastic comedy in Hitman and his treatment of the characters in this series as it pertains to their relationships with eachother was handled perfectly, especially both early on and then later in the story when we were treated to some of with most breathtaking scenes of friends departed. One thing I do have to say is that some of the best characters in this series were without a doubt the supporting cast with my absolute favorite being a guy named Pat, a childhood friend of Tommy’s in which he had plans to move out of Gotham with once he had saved up enough cash. Pat was unfortunately tortured and left in a pool of his own blood in his own bathtub by one of Monaghan’s rivals, when Tommy discovered his best friend clinging on to dear life he found that he had no choice but to put his friend out of his misery but putting a bullet into his head himself. It was tragic and remains one of the most powerful scenes I’ve ever read in comic books to this day.



It's been a long time but I remember the first time I purchased a Hitman comic book. It happened to be issue #3 and it was on the new arrivals shelf at my local comic shop, I can't explain why but something tickled my fancy and told me I should buy it, I just had the feeling as if I should really see what this title was all about, I picked it up and thumbed through it and thought it looked cool so I added it to my overgrowing stack of books. After the decision was made, I looked around for the first 2 issues of the series but couldn‘t find them anywhere so I focused on finding the rest of my weekly purchases and moved along. I don’t know why but for some reason this particular visit to the comic book shop sticks out alongside other important comic book visits I’ve made throughout my lifetime, I probably remember it so well because I didn’t think much was going to come out of Hitman but yet I gave it a shot and I also made a couple other important pick up’s that day as well, including a 6 card set of metallic Star Wars trading cards that came in a tin holder. Anyhow, when I got home to organize my new purchases I made sure to read Hitman in my first sitting and instantly I began to fall in love with Tommy, Natt, Pat, Tiegel, Noonan and the rest of the cast, their characters were just written so awesome and I was instantly hooked thanks to the fun storytelling of Garth and the simple but fantastic art by John McCrea. McCrea's art was nothing to write home about by any means, it was simple and didn't really offer much in the way of detail or pazzaz, but it fit Hitman perfectly and I couldn't imagine anyone else illustrating the series but him. I really felt that John's art was so crucial to the book that for the few issues they had a fill-in artist take over the pencils for John that it threw everything off and those particular issues just didn't feel right to me.

Ever since I picked up that 3rd issue I made sure to pick up Hitman each and every month afterwards for as long as I could, sadly though, I stopped buying the book somewhere in the middle of it’s 60 issue run due to me losing interest in the story and other comics that were being published at the time were too much of a necessity to continue along with Hitman. Since those day's I’ve recently gone back and grabbed every issue that DC ever published of this series to ensure that I had the complete story, it's something I've always wanted to do and it's something I’m sure glad that I did, this title was too important to just let fade away into a sea of comic book obscurity and for the rest of my collecting days Hitman will continue to have a spot in this comic guru's collection.

Reach for the stars and enjoy the ride.

As always I want to thank those who took the time to read my blog, it's much appreciated and you can always check me out at www.twitter.com/manga4life as well as TZ and FUNI.

Take care,
***Manga4life***

©2011 Cozy Cabin Publishing LLC