Following the attacks on Vintage City by the Deathtrap Debutantes, life quiets down, and the superheroes are temporarily without work. Unfortunately, unemployed superheroes mean bored superheroes, and with Peter's birthday just around the corner, Eric asks for help in coming up with the most creative gift he can give a boy who's got everything. Tapping into everyone's fondness for computer games, Eric enlists the heroes' help in experimenting with a video game in a desperate bid to amaze Peter with something unique. What they don't expect is a game that's been sabotaged by an old nemesis. Eric and the heroes suddenly find themselves trapped in a horror game, forced to advance against the clock or be stuck in it forever. With three of their friends vanishing from the group, Eric and Ridley are forced to use their wits and their limited abilities to fight their way through monsters that are meant to keep them from finding the others. Outside, Althea as Spirit Wire, along with unexpected allies, scrambles to keep a delicate connection with her friends as she tries to save them all.

Most books about B-movies are straight-forward genre guides, biographies or encyclopaedias. Not this one. In addition to chapters on film showmen, gimmicks and cult films, Land of a Thousand Balconies documents those incidents and unusual film happenings which author Jack Stevenson has -- over the past fifteen years -- been privy to in his various capacities as show organiser, tour arranger, festival jury member and projectionist-for-hire. Land of a Thousand Balconies also focuses on movie theatres and renegade exhibition spaces, lamenting on the disappearing 'sense of place' that is such an integral part of the movie-going experience. Here the reader is invited to tour a diversity of venues -- from the notorious old grindhouses of San Francisco, the home-made store-front cinemas of Seattle and NY, through to the underground film clubs of Europe. Book jacket.