This is the second collection of the now defunct CURSE OF THE SPAWN comic series. It collects issues #5-8.

This is a total departure from the first four issues of the series, "Sacrifice of the Soul." (See my review on Amazon.) This takes place in the regular Spawn world, with Sam and Twitch as the main characters. Spawn is actually not in this story.

It is a mystery. Unfortunately, there's not too much of the mystery. There are only a couple of revelations, and they're okay. The story seems confusing at first, but in the end, it all makes sense. There are explanations.

The art is good, it's very detailed. Very dark. The angles aren't bad, but not great. During the action scenes, I found myself asking: "What is going on?" It was kind of confusing.

This is R-rated Spawn. Along the lines of the animated series that was on HBO. It's hardcore. Pretty disturbing stuff. A decent amount of gore.

All in all, it's a decent effort. Not great, not bad. If you found Book 1 to be lackluster, you'll definitely find this to be an improvement.

Instead of getting this, I would highly recommend the comic series SAM AND TWITCH, written by Brian Michael Bendis. It is not in trade paperback form yet, as the series started in August 1999, but it will be in the near future. That's much better than this. Keep an eye out for that.

I got the first two Curse of the Spawn collections in one deal and after reading the first volume I was looking up against reading this second volume. The first wasn't to my liking. After reading this second book I found it the better of the two. It reads like a good Sam & Twitch arc. Food for people who're into (paranormal) 'serial killer' stories.

Without giving it away:
Gretchen is an attractive young woman and her future looks bright. Than she is hit a a car in full speed and an ambulance comes and takes her away. Two cops ride with her in the back. The intentions of the men in the car aren't what you'd call respectable. She will never arrive in the hospital. Shortly after that day more and more wanted serial killers are being found, butchered themselves. Sam & Twitch are on the case, in which the state of victims is pretty bizar. On top of that there's a guy asking their help in another case as well. His girlfriend disappered without a trace ...

Although the 'mystery' becomes clear quickly after you start reading, it doesn't grow boring. Unlike the first collection of this series, the dialogue in here is an important factor. Characters interact fluently without any need for much 'explanatory' text-boxes. It's also nice to see a variant (female) version of a Hellspawn. People who appreciate the art on the main Spawn-title will enjoy the inside work here as well. It's detailed, stylish, atmospheric and carries plenty of gore. I'd advise this book mainly to readers who're into Sam & Twitch.

If you are a fan of the characters Sam & Twitch from 'SPAWN', than this collection is a must have. It contains issues # 5-8 from the sorely missed 'Curse of the Spawn' series, however; you don't need to have any prior knowledge of the Spawn mythos to fully enjoy this story. First appearance of Suture!

That is what the title of this book should have been called.America is the greatest country in the world and I am a proud American. However, I am not too proud of the government that orchestrated this fiasco.What a waste of American Tax payers dollars! I highly recommend that you read "Con Man or Saint?", "Turner, Turner, Turner: The King of Network Marketing" and especially "The Unstoppable American", if you can still get a copy.

I'll be brief. This is a story of government persecution, prejudice and abuse of power, spawned by the Richard Nixon Watergate era. It's a story of tragic, willful, systematic destruction of a man and his people, for the purpose of passing laws against a system of marketing, a feat that would b e the making of a lot of people's reputations.

Fanned by the flames of irresponsible yellow journalism and executed by young prosecutors who were like young surgeons fresh out of medical school and yearning to cut on someone, anybody, to test their skills, these young men and women could not wait to get into court.

Glenn Turner was a suitable victim. Meaning well, and perhaps even bringing themselves to believe that were fighting "the good fight," these government officials were not ignorant of the aclaim and prominence they would garner by bringing down a man of Glenn Turner's stature. Most of them needed little invitation to hop aboard the band wagon and join the lynching party of Glenn Turner and his people.

And they were successful. Glenn W. Turner was stripped of his wealth, reputation, his companies, and even his family. They were so successful that, even today, nearly 30 years afterward, there are many people who never met Glenn Turner, or were involved in any way, who accept without question that the man was a crook, a swindler, a cheat, as the government and the media said he was, forgetting that the government of that day was proven to be the abusers of power, corrupt and consumate liars.

And the media, then as now, does not like a hero and loves to perpetrate negativity against the wealthy and successful. The media revised Turners image to meet with what would sell, regardless of whether it was true or not.

This is the story of the way a man and his people were treated. In the opinion of those who knew him, know him now and are familiar with his companies, it was unfair, un-American, and unconscionable. It is one more black mark against the Wtergate government of Richard Nixon and further indication as to how far that corruption spread before it was brought down.

Truly what happened to Glenn Turner was a Travesty of Justice indeed.

The great American mail fraud trial is a graphic example of why being rich and being right can be harmful to your wallet, particularly if you are a proponent of Multi-Level Marketing and Personal Development Systems and in the 1970's.

Multi-Level Marketing (today known as network marketing) was euphamistically referred to as pyramiding. Personal development systems were and in some cases still referred to as "feel good" hokey pokey programs designed for the gullible.

Imagine a 8th grade drop out with a severe speech impediment due to a harelip challenging people to "Dare to Be Great" and having the audicity to presume that he could lead people to financial independence and freedom!

The fact is that Glenn W. Turner did in fact turn five thousand dollars into over a quarter of a billion in under three years and through his company, Turner Enterprises, paved the way for 800 people to achieve a 7 figure income in the 1970's and in record breaking time.

He showed people how to "better their best" and taught success and leadership principles used through the centuries.

Turner amassed a net worth reportedly in excess of $350 million, owned a lear jet, a castle in Oveido, Fl, was one of the largest employers in Orlando and became "American of the Year" in 1972 beating out people like Art Linkletter.

Turner had 700 lawsuits filed against him ostensibly by over eager lawyers and spurred on by politicians looking for votes.
Glenn W. Turner was a rich, easy target. Multi-Level Marketing was an easy industry to attack and Turner was the King of MLM in 1970's USA.

Turner successfully defended 699 lawsuits, but the suits and negative media publicity achieved it's intended purpose bleeding Turner of his cash flow and his lawyer. Turner lost one lawsuit and spent some time in prison as a result. But the real question still remains, "Did Glenn W. Turner really do anything wrong?"

To the people who worked with and knew Turner personally, GWT exuded charisma and integrity. He was a real life hero, bigger than life who challenged them to "Dare to Be Great" and then showed them how they could indeed become great.

Koscot cosmetic products were state of the art. Dare to Be Great success program delivered on it's promises.

Unfortunately, to the American media, Turner was a hero that they despised and they revised his image even though it had nothing to do with fact or reality.

To the American courts, MLM was an "illegal pyramid scheme" and needed to be taken down. Be aware that these were the same courts that attempted to stop franchising a decade earlier on the basis that franchising was "an illegal pyrimid scheme" and "was robbing people of their life savings."

Today network marketing also known as muti-level marketing or MLM has attained respectability and is a huge industry. But Glenn W. Turner paid a heavy price as a pioneer and as the King of Network Marketing.

There are books such as "Con Man or Saint" and "The unstoppable American" and "Turner, Turner, Turner: The King of Network Marketing" which go into greater detail about KOSCOT Interplanetary, Dare to Be Great and The Great American Mail Fraud Trial.

Did Glenn W. Turner really do anything wrong? Did he bother people that much only because he was worth millions while they were worth thousands?

I submit that Glenn W. Turner didn't do anything wrong. And what he did do was to develop people and show them that they could have anything they wanted in life if only they were willing to step up on their toes and go for it!

The examples of things that can be built are very interesting. However, when I followed the directions for the folding chair the measurements for some of the lengths of wood and the measurements for many of the holes that were to be drilled were totally inaccurate. If the author actually built this project, then the errors are in the review before publishing. Since there are no measurements on the drawings that are shown, the text must be accurate. I will try some other projects andhope thy are more accurate.

The simple elegance of twig furniture evokes nostalgia for our rural past & conjures up an appreciation of the natural beauty of wood. Half the pleasure is learning to identify while wandering the woods collecting materials. The other half is seeing a settee on your front porch that could have been there 100 years ago. This is one good book; clear instructions, materials lists, diagrams & drawings. If you're itching to make yourself some furniture or mirror frames or bark baskets & you can't persuade someone to give you this book, go out & get it yourself. Fascinating!

This is full of great information. The projects are easy enough for a beginner. The instructions are simple to understand. I used this book for my 4-H kids. They made the lamp table and all received blue ribbons. The next year they tackled the love-seat and chairs, again, blue ribbons.

I have never read a book so badly written or less interesting. It is incredible in such an enlightened age that such rubbish is still published

The book NAME ABOVE NAMES is a wonderfully written book taking the names of Jesus from the bible and applying them to different occupations. I believe this book will help children better understand what Jesus can mean in their lives. My seven year old daughter loves it.

What a charming way to present Jesus to children! No wonder "the enemy" is worried!

Turner has produced a fairly interesting book which expands on his superior 1988 article, The Ahmadiyya Mission to Blacks in the United States in the 1920s" (_The Journal of Religious Thought_, Vol 44, No 2, Pp. 50-66). Although based entirely upon secondary sources, he presents some information that will be new to students of African-American Islam. His efforts unravel however when he becomes trapped in the enigma of W. D. Fard's identity. Fard, the mysterious founder of the Nation of Islam who knighted Elijah Muhammad as his successor, fled from Detroit in 1934 creating one of those apocryphal riddles that has distracted serious scholars of religion ever since. Rather than explore the alternative development of orthodox Islam in America - a subject badly in need of publishers' attention - Turner jumps from Fard to Farrakhan, another sensationalist personality who hardly represents the sentiments of contemporary African American Muslims. The concluding chapter deals with the interesting notion of religion as a cultural commodity, but it seems like an afterthought unrelated to the text.

I found this book to be clear and well-written, with a wealth of interesting and little-known information about the history of Muslims in the United States- not only African Americans. The first white American convert to Islam, the early communities from Eastern Europe, and the colorful Ahmadiyya movement are described in detail along with biographies of African American Muslim slaves, and black Muslim movements from the 1910s onward. He shows that just as in West Africa, Islam was spread among American blacks in a form that included local ideologies (in this case, racist nationalism). And, as in Africa, orthodox Islam was eventually adopted.
With that said, this book is written from a non-Muslim perspecitive, which is occasionally too evident. One may argue that concepts that the author claims were precedented in the late 1800s- (like the "jihad of words," Islam as a force to unify the oppressed), were actually present in the religion from the beginning. In addition, Turner's "myth of a race-blind Islam," takes a great deal of consideration...Basically, although this is a great book, it is time for American Muslims to begin writing their own history.

Turner argues three interesting points in his faddish though well-researched study: First, Islam was a significant factor in the lives of American slaves. In particular, it had a disproportionate role in inspiring resistance to the institution of slavery: "writing in Arabic, fasting, wearing Muslim clothing, and reciting and reflecting on the Quran were the keys to an inner struggle of liberation against Christian tyranny." In reaction, whites sought the return of Muslims to Africa, "to rid America of Islam."

Second, this faith (what Turner calls the "old Islam") then died out. By the time of the Civil War, Islam among blacks was, "for all practical purposes, defunct."

Third, a "new Islam" took many years to revive and did so through the circuitous route of Pan-African nationalism, black Christian ministers distressed at the racism of their denomination, white American converts to Islam, Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, Nobel Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple of America, and the Indian-based Ahmadiyya Movement to America. W. D. Fard emerged from this eccentric background in 1930 and preached the religion that would eventually crystalize as the Nation of Islam. Turner then reliably covers the more familiar ground of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan, concluding that "African-American Islam has finally arrived on the center stage of American religion and politics."

Middle East Quarterly, December 1997

Lord help us if this book ever replaces the interaction between a student and teacher! If that happens, we're doomed! This book should come with a warning label:
Warning! Dangerously boring contents enclosed. Fasten a bib so as to not drool on your clothes before proceeding.

Yet another boring "brainiac" book in the saga of Kagan books; please think before you buy! It's not any better than the previous editions for the earlier sections of history. Yes yes, it has photos...oooh, ahhh. Now, let's pretend that you actually will read it. Oh! Haha! That's right! It's not possible! It's too boring. Names, dates, locations...it's very drawn out and you don't get enough of the "why's" to understand the significance of these events in history. They should take Elvis's advice and return this baby to sender!

If you are buying it for school- it is required- then of course you must purchase it. If not then I say don't buy it for reading beacuase it is a little boring. Dates after peoples names it is to much! A whole lot of info but hard to understand. Get it for school not for anything else. Oh yes it probably would help on the Ap exam but I think you should also by a study guide and workbook beacause that helps. ( if you do it right!) :) Well Goodluck! Oh my bad review of a 3 is not that it has bad info it is because it is for school and I get so bored. Hope this helps!

I can't say that I'm a history lover, but this book defintiely kept me interested. (Interested enough that I tested out of my first two semesters of European History!)

I've been working with this book in order to create a Web Development course for high school students and I have come to really dislike this book. To its credit, it covers most of the basics that people will need to get into HTML and JavaScript. However, the organization is rather poor with the sections being a collection of random material. And much is not explained in enough detail for people to really understand what is going on or what can be done. The material is not up to date either by including some tags that most people would consider deprecated. I also feel that they do not truly understand the purpose of technologies like JavaScript and how to use them. Overall, an introduction to some basic aspects of the technology, but without enough information or understanding of the technology.

I found this book to be quite disappointing.. It was awfully short, though it did introduce many important concepts. I'm not sure that I agree with the lesson plans. It gives you instructions to copy down certain codes, then gives a brief explaination later on about what you did. I came across a few errors, and since they have recently updated their resources webpage, there is no access to the pictures in which the book refers to.

This book is an excellent introduction to HTML and JavaScript. It is written at a level understandable to high school and college students, and also quite readable by adults who are novices to computers and trying to do some self-study.

The order of chapters and amount of work in each chapter is quite logical. All the important HTML tags are introduced. The reader or student makes a Web page, and adds to it progressively with each chapter. One excellent feature is that after showing each set of tags and what the code looks like in a text editor, the book then shows a screen shot of what your page should look like in a browser. There are also screen shots of the menus for both Netscape and IE browsers, with explanations of how to use Page Source, for example.

The book discusses working on both PCs and Macs, and mentions the most common text editors for each.

JavaScript is introduced with a minimum of technical programming jargon. There are several interesting bits of the history of programming, which might help hold the interest of students, and serve as pleasant asides to adults.

I very much appreciate that the book also tells the user what NOT to do- the authors emphatically tell the users to be careful of color choices, that the BLINK tag will drive people nuts, and other elements of Netiquette that some books which concentrate solely on programming would not think to offer to new users.

With the first book in this series I was hoping to get another great read out of Kurtz. I was however sadly disapointed. The first book had a great premis and the plot could have really gone places. I forgave the writing hoping for an improvement in the second. My hopes were misplaced. I know more about Sir Adams crisp suits, handsomely graying temples and gold fob watch than any reader has a right to know. All of the charaters seem to come out of a Mills and Boons. Everyone of the charaters are glamourous and shallow, pale card-board cut-outs of real people, with a varnish which trys to pass itself off as deep and complex. I relise that I'm probably looking in the wrong genre for complex charaters but, I'm a devoted fantasy fan having read all of the greats and not so greats (Tolkien, Eddings, Feist, Jordan...etc.) Never in all my years of reading have I come across such trite (I average about 300 books a year..so I've read alot!!!!!!). I hoped that future books in the series would get better, a very faint hope I assure you, but I'm desperate (What else am I supposed to do while waiting for Path of Daggers I can only read the WoT a certain number of times and I feel that ten [in one year]is my limit).

It just goes to show how nice I'm feeling and how utterly drear my life is that I've finished the series thus far and gave it a great big one star......Next time I might not feel so nice.

I love occult fiction and a friend recommended the Adept series to me because he knew I liked Dion Fortune's fiction. Unlike Fortune's fiction, this novel won't gift you with verses for your rituals, but it certainly captures the feeling of the astral realms and the battle of good versus evil. Okay, so the hero is wealthy and lives a life of luxury we can only imagine, but, hey, this is a fantasy, no? And what better to fantasize than the genteel life of a British gentleman? Even if one is female (like me), one can still fantasize about such privilege. A very good read.

I find the writing to be wonderful. The historical details, imagery and incorporation of magic into a modern setting are all too rare in sci-fi, occult and fantasy literature. Although the characters are not fully developed as individuals and their interrelationships are not fully explored the excitement and potential for these stories to reflect "authentic" modern occultism more than compensates for these defficiencies. I expect very few books to hold up to the standards of great literature... ie Tolkein, Hardy, Dickens, Doestoevsky etc. and these books are certainly not timeless classics. However, these books are quite pleasant reading for an educated audience and a far cry better than the common pasteboard series.

I LIKE THE THE BOOK IT WOULD BE EVEN BETTER IF IT HAD REAL PICTURES. THE INTERVIEWS ARE THE BEST I HAVE EVER READ

THE BOOK IS A GOOD COLLECTION OF INTERVIEWS. I WISH IT HAD REAL PICTURES

I am a longtime personal friend of the author. His second book is even better than his first one. The second book Cooking up Country is a great collection of recipesmfrom the people who cook for the stars, quotes from all the top stars and wonderful photos.

FIrst of all, I bought this book for the magickal rituals contained in it. There are only about half a dozen of them, and they require quite a bit of effort on your behalf. One calls for making a model head. Another calls for creating a ring with silver and bronze. Another is making a pendant. If you're not a real hardcore magick practioner, this is going to require a bit more effort than you're used to. On a good note, these are intense rituals, and quite interesting. The problem is that this book usually goes for a steep price. Most of it is various stories or commentaries written by the editor about various old cults and stuff like that. He connects Lovecraft and Crowley to weird theories and history, which is fun to read, but not worth the price. Also, you can find the spells online, so this might be a complete waste of your time and money if you're just looking for those.

If you arre completely devoted to the lovecraft mythos of cthulu and such you will be facinated with this book as it provides many names and references for stories you migth have read for the casual reader a few good things can be found a few duds but good material

a rare gem and a good find

As a followup to the Necronomicon put out by the same group, I found the text to be not all that interesting. I feel, even for those interested in experimenting with the rituals from a Chaos standpoint would be better served by the previous work or the Simon version. However, I thoroughly enjoyed Colin Wilson's introduction and would recommend this book for that reason alone. George Hay's piece was not as good as his contributuion to the previously mentioned Necronomicon, but was not bad.