“What is the right path, Father?” he asked finally. “How does one recognized it?”
“If you follow the direction of your fear, you will be on the right path. And may God help you.” (Milorad Pavic, from Lost Love in Constantinople)
COMICS
All-New Collectors’ Edition number C-56 (Facsimile Edition) by Denny O’Neil (writer), Neal Adams (writer/penciler), Dick Giordano (inker), and Terry Austin (inker). $14.99, 73 pgs, DC.
DC didn’t mess with this at all, as it looks (presumably) exactly as it looked in 1978, with the rough newsprint paper and the flat colors, and it’s pretty spectacular. I don’t have much to say about this – I assume everyone who reads this already has it – but I had never seen much of it, and it’s definitely worth the inflated cover price (you’ll notice I posted the original cover, in which this cost a whopping $2.50). The story is fine, but Adams’s art is simply amazing. He does nice work with Ali, and the fight scenes are terrific and fairly brutal, and the sci-fi stuff is really cool. This is a packed comic book, and it’s Adams at his absolute 1970s peak, and it’s just a blast to read. Pick this up if, by some weird chance, you’ve never read this before!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Birds of Prey volume 1: Megadeath by Kelly Thompson (writer), Leonardo Romero (artist), Arist Deyn (artist/colorist), Jordie Bellaire (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer), and Jessica Berbey (collection editor). $19.99, 135 pgs, DC.
I had high hopes about this comic, and perhaps they were too high, because this was a bit disappointing. Not bad, certainly, just … disappointing. I don’t know – it’s a rescue mission that Thompson goes waaaaaay out of her way to make harder than it has to be. She hand-waves away why the Birds don’t just ask Wonder Woman for help, and that’s a bummer (I mean, yes, she does reference that the Amazons are going through some things, but still …), and she doesn’t really explain the bad guy all that well or why the Amazons took Sin prisoner in the first place … this feels like a comic that exists for some reason external to its in-story raison d’être, as if DC wanted a Birds of Prey comic and didn’t particularly care why it exists. It just feels odd. Then there’s Harley Quinn, who also feels like she’s there for marketing purposes. I don’t read a lot of Harley comics because I’m not terribly interested in the character, but she never feels like she fits on a team (which Thompson, to her credit, does bring up a bit) or even in the DC Universe, as she’s so much of an agent of chaos that it just feels … wrong when she’s forced to work well with others. Writers have been trying for two decades to make her more “normal” and less like a madwoman, but it never seems to suit her. Again, I get why she’s here, as an editorial decision, but her presence seems odd based on any in-story logic. (As always, I’m fascinated by corporate comics and what goes on behind the scenes. Did Kelly get to pick the team, or did Editorial “suggest” certain characters? Writers, I assume, are cool with that, but it would be hard for me, for instance, to go along with that, because I just don’t care about Harley. If she was editorially mandated. Which she might have been. Or might not.) Thompson’s writing, as usual, is quite good, and she doesn’t allow Diana to be a “villain” for too long (just long enough for a nice big fight with Barda), and she comes up with a decent solution to the problem, and while I don’t love Harley not being crazy, she does a nice job with the other characters (even Zealot, who’s in this book for some reason … sorry, I still can’t deal with WildStorm characters living in the DCU), and Barda is fun as heck as usual, but … it’s just not as compelling as I thought it would be, given Thompson’s track record. Maybe she’s still finding her way and volume 2 will be better (I’m definitely getting volume 2, because I have faith in Kelly!).
I like Romero’s work, so for the most part, the art is well done. A few things, though – I don’t know if it’s the reproduction from Romero’s original art, or if he was doing something different with the lines at some points, or Bellaire’s occasional “off-register” coloring, but the art looks weirdly fuzzy sometimes. At times, I know it’s deliberate – Meridian is supposed to look out of phase with the world, so that works, but at other times, it just looks sloppy. I don’t know quite what’s going on. The art on this book also shows why inkers should make a comeback. Romero draws issues #1-4 and 6, and for issue #5, Deyn subjects us to the most obnoxious “it’s 1998 and I learned to draw by aping early Image artists, and not well” penciling that I’ve seen in a long time. The only thing decent about it is that some – not all, but some – of the page layouts are inventive, but man! it looks like something you’d find in a very late-era Witchblade issue. It totally interrupts the flow of the art, and I can’t help think that if artists still used inkers – none is credited here, so I assume Romero and Deyn are inking themselves or this is colored straight from pencils (the former seems a bit more likely), then maybe an inker could have kept the art a bit more consistent. Good inkers can find a way to make different pencilers at least look somewhat similar, and it would have been nice if DC had thought more about that here – either get an artist whose style looks a bit like Romero’s, delay the book so Romero could pencil it all, force the artists to use inkers so that the look would be consistent, or have an “inventory story” ready to go like they did in the olden times. I don’t love Deyn’s art at all, but I’m more annoyed that it looks absolutely nothing like Romero’s. It’s too jarring, and I don’t like to be jarred, consarnit!
Ok, rant over. Birds of Prey: pretty good, but not as good as I’d hoped. Oh well!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Cruel Universe #1 by a bunch of people. $4.99, 36 pgs, Oni Press.
The second “EC” book from Oni Press is, I think, better than the first one, as the writers – Matt Kindt, Corinna Bechko, Chris Condon, and Ben H. Winters – don’t have to stick to horror and can do some other kinds of things, although they all have a semi-horror streak running through them. In the first one, Kindt gives us gladiator games featuring several alien races, and a narrator who wonders at the horrors he’s being forced to participate in and what it’s turning him into. It’s pretty good, and the twist is better than the others (they all have twists, of course – it’s an “EC” book!). Bechko’s story of a man discovering a spaceship near a black hole is obviously obvious, to the point where I’m not entirely sure it makes sense because she wanted to get to the twist so badly. In the third story, a kajillionaire is looking for the Fountain of Youth, with predictable results. The final story, which is about on par with Kindt’s as the best in the book – is about a dude who breaks into a woman’s house one night and plans to kill her … but he can’t, for a rather clever reason. The art is all good – Kano, Caitlin Yarsky, Jonathan Case, and Artyom Topilin are the artists – and Richard Starkings and his crew letter the book so that it looks like a 1950s EC book, which is very cool. My copy of Epitaphs From the Abyss is downstairs and I don’t feel like getting it right now, but either that wasn’t lettered the same way or I missed it, because I didn’t notice it. My bad! Anyway, both of these “EC” books have been pretty good. And look at that cool-ass J.H. Williams III cover!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Epitaphs from the Abyss #2 by another bunch of people. $4.99, 25 pgs. Oni Press.
I don’t know if I’m going to keep getting the new “EC” books in single issues, but what the hell, right? It’s only money!
I mentioned above about the lettering, and this issue also has the “EC”-style lettering, so I guess issue #1 of this title does, too. I still can’t be bothered to check!
Anyway, one problem with anthologies has always been the difficulty in creating a good short story in such limited space. Everything has been done, true, so just coming up with a plot isn’t enough – writers feel like they need to screw with structure, which can be wonderful but often makes things more annoying than they need to be. In Cruel Universe, we had Matt Kindt’s story, which screwed with our expectations a bit, and it ended up working. He does something similar in the first story here (illustrated in his typical, old-school, brutal fashion by Klaus Janson), and it doesn’t work quite as well. The narrator isn’t as interesting as in the first story, and it’s unclear what, exactly, he wants (I mean, he tells us, but it almost boils down to “he’s crazy,” which always annoys me). Kindt is trying to make a point about … I think worshipping false idols, in a way? but he doesn’t really nail it. Oh well. Janson’s art is fun to see. Tyler Crook gives us a clever zombie story, which is the best one in the book, as it’s the kind of thing that works perfectly as a short story – a clever idea that doesn’t need much space to be fleshed out, so it works as a short even though it might not work as a longer story. Jason Aaron’s story, which is nicely drawn by Jorges Fornés, is a fairly standard horror story with a twist, and it’s fine but doesn’t really do anything that clever with its premise. Overall, it seems hard to make these stories zing, because every plot has been done, and if a writer tries to approach a plot from a different angle, they run the risk of not being as good as they think they are. Kindt tries and only marginally succeeds, Crook does a good job, and Aaron just drags out the old cliché-o-meter. As I’ve noted, I’d really like to support these anthologies, so we’ll see if I keep getting them. The problem is that people have a rose-colored view of the old EC books, but when you read them, the actual stories aren’t all that great. Why are they classics? Because people like Wood and Kurtzman and Craig and Davis and Williamson drew them, and those guys were amazing. If Oni (and Boom!, with their new anthology) can find a few really good artists who will come back again and again, they might have something. We shall see.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville by Joanne Starer (writer), Natacha Bustos (artist), Tamra Bonvillain (colorist), Ariana Maher (letterer), and Andrea Shea (collection editor). $16.99, 130 pgs, DC.
Contrary to Birds of Prey above, I had very low expectations for this comic, and it did not disappoint! Why did I get it, you might ask, when I did not enjoy the lead-in story from the Power Girl Special, as I noted in this (super-long) post? Well, I do love Beatriz da Costa, and I had some hope that putting her and Tora in Smallville might be a nice “fish-out-of-water” story, but man, this was a slog. I don’t love Bustos’s art, but it was fine, I guess – she tells the story perfectly well and has some fun with the many characters she’s asked to draw. The art, however, isn’t the problem. I have said this before, but why don’t DC and Marvel have a Kontinuity Kop position? You know, someone who reads everything they publish and maintains a database of what is current, because some things in this book bug me because of that. I mentioned this back in February 2023, when I read Batman: The Detective: “Taylor and Kubert redesign the Gentleman Ghost into a very horrific thing, and thatās stupid, plus he has no real reason to be in the book, so why give him a dumb makeover?” Especially as I knew it wouldn’t stick. Way back in the day, I mentioned that in Secret Warriors, Hickman wrecked the Space Needle in Seattle, and I knew that the next time a Marvel comic went to Seattle, the Space Needle would be fine and dandy (as it apparently is these days). Marvel and DC always do this, and while it’s not the most annoying thing in the world, it does bug me (and a lot of other people, to be sure). I mean, the Gentleman Ghost is in this comic, and he’s the old-school GG, so Taylor and Kubert’s redesign didn’t take even a little. Plus, in kind of an ancillary rant, the Kontinuity Kop would also make sure that whatever character development a character has made does not go by the boards … whether that development is good or not. Look, I think Looker as a vampire is stupid (and I don’t even know if she’s still a vampire), but when I write my 100-issue Looker ongoing series masterpiece, you’re damned sure I’ll address it, even if to just undo it (unless, as I note, it’s already been undone). Starer is, it seems, a fan of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League, which, you know, great – I mean, who isn’t? But you can’t just write a series with Beatriz and not deal with the fact that she’s a much different character than she was in the early 1990s. In this series, she acts like a fool who doesn’t know what to do about money all the time, and while that was certainly in keeping with how Giffen and DeMatteis portrayed her, later on they made her a spicy internet model (and unless she has some reason to not do that anymore, why doesn’t she just do that in this book instead of inviting a dozen villains to Smallville?) who had quite a following, so presumably she made some money there. Later, she was a freaking spy for Checkmate, so she obviously wasn’t the immature airhead we see here. You might not like that she was a spy for Checkmate, but it still happened, and I’m a bit grumpy that people always write Beatriz as if she’s an immature airhead. I get the lure of nostalgia, I do, but come on, people – it’s not 1990 anymore!
Besides the annoying continuity problems, I could have enjoyed this if it were better, but it’s kind of a hot mess. Starer puts Bea and Tora in Smallville because they’re cleaning shit up in Baltimore and Tora calls Guy Gardner, who messes things up. So much is wrong with this introduction – Beatriz tells Tora it’s a bad idea, and she has history on her side, but Tora calls him anyway. They have the situation well in hand, but Guy messes it up, and Tora is briefly in danger, so Bea reacts by fighting Guy, which is kind of understandable, especially as Guy doesn’t seem all that concerned about Tora. They fight, Superman shows up and tells Bea and Tora that they should go to Smallville for a break. Bea notes that she’s definitely getting blamed for it even though she’s not the one who called Guy and she’s not the one who screwed everything up, and notice that Guy himself doesn’t need a “break” in Smallville – he just flies off without “explaining” anything to Superman. This is all in the Power Girl Special, and it’s a fairly lame reason to get the ladies to Kansas. Once there, they take over a salon, and Bea immediately starts thinking of ways to make money, which culminates in her bringing a bunch of D-list villains (and Ambush Bug) to town to “rehabilitate” them … and film them for a reality show. That goes as poorly as you might expect, and Bea continues to act like a childish fame-whore while things go poorly around her. Tora befriends a waitress who seems to have an unhealthy attachment to her, plus there are some cows in town who are acting oddly. Oh, and Kooey Kooey Kooey makes an appearance. Nostalgia, see? It could be a madcap romp, but Sharer’s plot is all over the place, with so many false starts and stops and people acting stupidly and Lobo showing up for no reason and wild tone shifts that don’t work – at one point, one villain actually eats the Beefeater, which does not fit in the book at all. It’s frustrating, because Sharer seems to know that this could be a better comic – as I note, in the Power Girl Special, there’s some nice misogyny from Superman, even if nobody calls him out on it, and early in the book, there’s a panel that seems to imply that Fire is both better at her job than people realize and fairly lonely, too (also: a bit self-loathing), plus the dude in the wheelchair has some incisive thoughts about his disability – but she wants it to be goofy and, eventually, kind of anticlimactic (with regard to one threat, which goes down far too easily). As always, I like when superheroes figure out ways to defeat bad guys without simply punching them, and Sharer does come up with a good solution to the problem facing Smallville, but it’s just not enough. I’m bummed out about this comic, because I think both Bea and Tora have a lot of potential, but DC keeps putting them in goofy sitcom-esque stories. They could still be in lighthearted stories that aren’t dumb, you know.
Sigh. I’ll be nicer to this book than I should be, because I like Bea so much (and I like Tora, too, just not as much as Bea), but it’s disappointing. Oh well.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Gone by Jock (writer/artist/colorist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), AndWorld Design (letterer), and Will Dennis (editor). $30, 131 pgs, Dstlry.
Jock’s sci-fi story looks great, naturally, as his style wouldn’t seem to fit a sleek science fiction story, but because he’s doing a riff on a class struggle, we get shades of Alien, Outland, District 9, Elysium and their ilk – you know, sci-fi stories that look a bit janky, which works with his angular, rigid style. He’s good at junking things up, and while the exterior shots of the spaceship on which much of the action in the book occurs are nicely futuristic, inside, Jock gives us a maze of machinery and rough edges and dark corners, which grounds the story a bit. It’s partly a “have-vs.-have-not” story, after all, and Jock wisely keeps away from the “haves” a lot, because the few times he does show them, his heavy, sharp line makes it seem a lot less desirable than it should. He’s much better at showing our hero, Abi, in her element – the slums of the city, where she is forced to jump on spaceships to scavenge for stuff to sell, which is how she gets stuck on one and ends up in space. Despite setting the book somewhere that we might not think would work with his art, Jock gives us a very neat-looking comic.
The story is fine if not terribly inspiring. Abi gets stuck on the ship, which is, it seems, a tourist ship – the passengers are taken to see the sights of the galaxy, and they’re placed in suspended animation in between stops so they don’t age too much, while the crew ages around them. Abi gets on the ship as a young-ish girl and becomes a young woman, for instance. On her fateful run, a few new people join her crew, but they turn out to be revolutionaries instead of thieves, and they try to sabotage the ship, which leads to Abi getting stuck on it. Over the years, she joins the revolutionary movement on board the ship, and eventually she has to fight for her freedom. Pretty standard stuff – we get the casual violence by the revolutionaries that our hero abhors, we get a quasi-romantic interest who we know won’t last long, we get a weird horror element, we get a person from Abi’s past haunting her. Just because it’s boilerplate doesn’t make it bad, and Jock does a decent job moving us through the plot, as predictable as it might be. Abi’s a pretty good character, so when Jock puts her in peril, we are interested in how she’s going to make it through, so that’s nice.
Like Somna, which is the other Dstlry book I’ve read, Gone is a beautiful book with a somewhat sketchy story. Both books have been by artists who don’t write that often, so that could be it, but, as I noted with Somna, a lot of writers don’t write that well, either, so why not let these artists have a go at it? I’m not sure if either of these books is worth the $30 for a hardcover, but presumably you can find them somewhere cheaper, or perhaps Dstlry will come out with softcover versions eventually!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Hello Darkness #2 by yet another bunch of creators. $5.99, 39 pgs, Boom! Studios.
This continues to be a slightly stronger horror anthology than the ones from Oni, but they’re all still pretty good. Ennis is taking his time with his nuclear war story, as this chapter is literally all the group talking to their significant others about what they should do now that there’s a as-of-this-moment-limited nuclear war going on, but at the end, it seems like things might be ratcheting up a bit. Slow Ennis usually means pretty good Ennis, and so far, this is a fairly gripping story even though not much has happened. Meanwhile, Azam Raharjo gives us a manga-flavored creepy clown story which is very creepy; Frederik Hornung’s “Stargazers” is a beautifully drawn story about a man and a woman at some kind of “Inspiration Point”-type place where things do not go as either of them expected; and Wes Craig has a story that looks amazing but I just don’t get. Cultists are sacrificing capitalists to save the earth somehow, but there’s a girl there too who seems to be important but I’m not sure why … I mean, it looks great, but I just don’t know what’s actually going on. Oh well. Overall, more good stories. That’s all we can hope for!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Love Me: A Romance Story by Francesca Perillo (writer), Stefano Cardoselli (artist), Lorenzo Scaramella (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer), and James B. Emmett (editor). $19.96, 92 pgs, Mad Cave.
Like most Cardoselli books, this comic features bonkers and beautiful art in service to a nothingburger of a story. In the future, a robot named JoJo, who drives a taxi, falls in love with a fare, with whom he makes a date. When she fails to show, he discovers she’s a lawyer who works for a crime family, and the heir to the throne is in love with her, but she rejected him, so he kidnapped her. JoJo decides to free her, and much mayhem ensues. That’s it. Perillo has fun with it, certainly, but there’s so little there it’s almost ridiculous. Gilda is very nice to JoJo, certainly, and it turns out she’s involved with the family for reasons that allow her to be shown as the victim (because she couldn’t be evil, don’t you know), but even that isn’t really enough to make us believe that JoJo would fall so hard for her. Robots have taken over menial tasks from humans (like driving taxis), and there’s a lot of anti-robot feeling in the world, but Perillo does next to nothing with that, either. It’s just JoJo killing gangsters because they won’t tell her where Gilda is and the cops pursuing him because they think he’s a cold-blooded killer. Not much there!
However, I love Cardoselli’s art, so I enjoyed reading this, as he always pulls out all the stops. His New York is a crazed, decrepit, glorious shithole, with insane businesses crammed into buildings that lean in weird angles, as if they’re about to tumble over at any moment. JoJo is a big, round robot, full of kindness, which makes his killing spree wildly incongruous. His cat, Frida, looks like Bloom County‘s Bill if Berke Breathed had really gotten into some hard drugs, and his men, as usual, are all wonderfully odd shapes and sizes, with one cop looking like he stepped out the 1970s for no other reason than Cardoselli wanted to draw him that way (Gilda, as usual with Cardoselli’s women, looks a bit odder than your usual comic women but is still gorgeous). It’s absolutely batshit, but Cardoselli makes it work. If DC ever wanted to revive the Heckler, they would be wise to get Cardoselli to do the art, because he would nail it.
Anyway, Love Me is nothing special, but I still dig it. Call me kooky!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Marvel 85th Anniversary Special by people you may or may not know. $7.99, 61 pgs, Marvel.
This is a very weird “celebratory” special, not because it’s bad, but because of what Marvel chose to put in it. There’s a framing story set in the – wait for it! – 85th century (I don’t see any sly cameos by characters from Grant Morrison’s 1,000,000 thing, but they might be there), as an ugly tour guide is showing people around a “museum of heroism” that is solely focused, it seems, on Earth heroes of the 20th/21st century. Wolverine and Deadpool are there, although the tour guide (who turns out to be a bad guy, because remember, folks, that in pop culture, ugly = evil) thinks they’re not the real Logan and Wade, we know they probably are (and, in fact, they are). Anyway, the tour guide tells the patrons stories about the heroes. So that’s the set-up, and it’s fine. These are the stories: a Kamala Khan story in which she’s briefly Galactus’s herald for some very vague reason; an Excalibur story from the team’s very beginnings (they just moved into the lighthouse, in other words); a Spider-Man story (ok, fine) where the big conflict is … he gets stuck in traffic (the cow says “true”!); a manga story featuring medieval-ish analogs of the Marvel heroes; a Contest of Champions using clones of several Marvel characters, in which they basically slaughter each other. It’s just … weird. None of the stories are bad, you understand – the Ms. Marvel one is kind of weak, but it’s not terrible – but it’s just a strange assortment of stories that’s meant to highlight Marvel’s long history. I get that you might not want to drag out the big guns yet again, but it seems to me that the various decades are sitting right there, and they could have done a O.G. Human Torch story drawn in Bill Everett’s style, for instance – you know, something to show the long and wacky history of Marvel (a Stan Goldberg Millie the Model story?). The art is pretty terrific – Joshua Cassara, one of these “stormbreakers” that Marvel keeps touting yet who never seems to draw much, draws the framing story, and it’s very keen; Stephen Byrne’s work on the Kamala Khan story is fine but uninspired, a bit like the story itself; Alan Davis writes and draws the Excalibur story, and it’s as delightful as you might expect; Carlo Pagulayan does nice work on Christopher Priest’s Spider-Man story; Ken Kunita draws the absolute shit out of the “Marvel heroes-in-medieval Japan” story; and Steve Skroce gets to eviscerate a bunch of Marvel heroes in the Contest of Champions tale. Like I noted, it’s fine and dandy and occasionally funny and overall, pretty decent, it’s just very weird. Whatever. You do you, Marvel!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Rare Flavours by Ram V (writer), Filipe Andrade (artist/colorist), Inês Amaro (color assistant), João Lemos (color assistant), AndWorld Design (letterer), and Eric Harburn (editor). $16.99, 133 pgs, Boom! Studios.
A few years ago, Venkatesan and Andrade did The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, which was a superb comic, so I was looking forward to this next collaboration, and you know what? it’s pretty darned excellent, as well. It’s not quite as good as Laila Starr, but, I mean, that was really good, so I’m not disappointed at all that Rare Flavours isn’t quite as good. In this comic, we get Bakasura (who calls himself Rubin Baksh), who’s, well, a demon. He lives in India (he’s a demon from Indian mythology, so that’s not surprising), and he’s out and about experiencing food. He enlists a documentary filmmaker who’s flailing a bit and ready to quit to make a movie about food, and he’s willing to pay Mohan – Mo – a chunk of money to do so. Mo eventually agrees to this, and they go on a road trip across India, and Bakasura tells Mo about food. Of course, there are two men following the demon who want to kill him, because, well, he eats people. Oh dear.
Venkatesan writes interesting comics, as I’ve noted before. He doesn’t do things that you expect with narratives, even though they’re easy to break down – in this case, Rubin and Mo experience various dishes (Ram helpfully provides recipes), the hunters find his victims and get angry, Mo discovers that Rubin actually is a demon and has to figure out what to do about it, and we find out why the hunters are after Rubin and what Rubin has to do about it. But it’s the details that matter, as they always do, and Venkatesan is very good at fleshing out characters and having their interactions work extremely well. Rubin is charismatic from page one, and Mo is tragic without being annoying, which is hard to do. Their conversations crackle because Rubin is trying to be something different than a demon while Mo is trying to work out his own trauma, and it’s very well done. Venkatesan has always done pretty well with metaphors, and we get a lot of allusions in the narration, which takes the form of letters that Rubin sends to a person back where he spent his time before heading out into the world. Meanwhile, the hunters aren’t exactly villains, as they are, after all, hunting a person-eating demon, and Venkatesan makes them far more interesting than we might expect and makes them almost sympathetic, which is keen. And, as I noted above, he zags a bit when we think we know where we’re going, as the book doesn’t end how we think it’s going to, and it works very well. Venkatesan does a nice job showing us why Rubin does the things he does, and it’s impressive that he’s able to make Rubin far more sympathetic than we think he’ll be. Mo is more naturally sympathetic, of course, and we get a nice linkage between him, his life, and food, which is what Rubin wants. It’s a nice way to make the two characters fit together better. There’s also parts that I think could easily become mawkish, but Venkatesan manages to keep them from floundering. I don’t want to give too much away, but I don’t necessarily agree with his conclusions (it’s a me thing, I know), but he arrives at those conclusions in heart-felt ways. It’s a nice achievement.
Andrade does amazing work, which is not surprising. It begins on the first damned page, where Rubin is looking at a painting of a great hero defeating a demon which, we learn quickly, is him. The painting is superb, with Andrade (or his assistants) using short color brush strokes to make it look more like oil on canvas, while Rubin is more defined and the colors are more solid, and the contrast is wonderful. He creates a crammed, busy world full of fascinating characters, and in a comic about food, he does as well a job as anyone might be able to making smells and tastes actually come through (I mean, you certainly can’t taste and smell it, but you know what I mean!). Rubin, a man of prodigious appetites, is gigantic, and Andrade does a nice job balancing his look between jovial and menacing. Mo, meanwhile, is skinny and wretched, so watching him match up with Rubin and get snatched by the hunters is neat because Mo doesn’t have much of a physical presence. The colors are astonishing, especially when Rubin and Mo visit the chili pepper fields in issue #2. There is a hilarious scene where Andrade decides to go Full Liefeld on a few characters’ feet, which is seriously weird, but otherwise, the book is absolutely gorgeous.
Rare Flavours is a very good comic. Ram V is one of the best writers in comics right now. Go get it!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
The Savage Sword of Conan #3-4 by anyone who wants to do a Conan story! $6.99 each, 56 and 63 pgs, Titan Comics.
I missed issue #3 a few months ago – I’m not sure why! – so I grabbed it when issue #4 came out, and I’m glad I did. I did want to see the end of Patrick Zircher’s Solomon Kane story, and it’s a pretty good wrap-up, but Frank Tieri’s lead story about Conan turning into a werewolf was quite good, with a nice silly ending, and it’s drawn spectacularly by Cary Nord. In issue #4, Zub sets the stage for what I guess is going to be a big epic in the regular title, maybe? Howard wrote a story about the “Black Stone,” and it intrigued Zub, so he wanted to do something that tied several of Howard’s characters together through the Black Stone. Issue #4 gives us stories with a bunch of different characters, all interacting with the Black Stone in some capacity, and it’s pretty keen. Zub gives us a Conan story drawn by Fernando Dagnino in which our Cimmerian hero dreams of the Black Stone and the horrors that it can unleash. Zircher is back with a Solomon Kane story in which our hero fights with some other soldiers against the Turks in the 1550s or ’60s (it’s a “time of war between the armies of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand and Suleiman the Magnificent,” and Ferdinand ruled from 1556-1564 and Suleiman was sultan for that entire time), but he discovers that someone is using the Black Stone to call forth something wildly unholy. It’s probably the best story in the issue – it’s gorgeously drawn and Zircher does nice work with the tension building up to the appearance of the Stone and what happens afterward. Zub is back with a Brissa story, drawn by Dean Kotz, in which she has to fight members of her own tribe of Picts who have been corrupted by the Stone. Jeffrey Shanks and Eryk Donovan do a Conrad and Kirowan story, which takes place in 1935 and has the archaeologists fighting against a treasure hunter who has dug up the Black Stone and has, naturally, been corrupted by it. Fred Kennedy writes a Dark Agnes story, in which our hero is being forced to marry someone who has been corrupted by the Stone. Andy Belanger draws this very well, as it’s a bit cartoony but impressively detailed. Finally, Ron Marz and Mike Perkins do an El Borak tale, as the American adventurer is trying to rescue an Arabian prince and stumbles across a temple (which looks suspiciously like Petra in Jordan) in which the cult of the Black Stone once worshipped, and he has to fight off the people trying to take the prince while remaining uncorrupted himself. It’s also a pretty good story. Overall, this is a very solid issue, with really nice art and interesting stories that unite all of these Howard characters, and I’m actually kind of interested to see what Zub does with the main epic, which apparently is coming down the pike. So, I guess this issue did its job!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Slow Burn by Ollie Masters (writer), Pierluigi Minotti (artist), Alessandro Santoro (colorist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer), and Jon Moisan (editor). 110 pgs, $19.99, Boom! Studios.
Well, heck, it’s yet another comic set in a Pennsylvania town in which an underground fire has been burning for decades. This is the fourth comic (maybe fifth?) over the past three years or so that is set in a Pennsylvania town in which an underground fire has been burning for decades, and it kind of cracks me up. It’s like someone five years ago discovered Centralia and put the information out into the universe (even though Centralia has been on fire for 60 years and I drove through it back in the 1980s), and comics writers just latched onto it. I’ve written this before, of course, because I’ve gotten all of these comics (they might share a place, but the creators have been quite good), and it just cracks me up – I mean, the idea of an underground fire burning for decades underneath a town is, yes, like catnip to writers, because holy cow the story possibilities! but it still cracks me up that so many comics have sprung into existence over the past few years when, as noted, Centralia has been on fire since 19-Motherfucking-62. How many more will we get? Is the gusher dry?
Masters gives us a fairly standard crime story set in “Trier,” Pennsylvania, but because he tells it in an interesting way, it works pretty well. Roxane drives into town with a wounded young man and an older man and something in the car that will set them up, financially, for life (I’m not going to say what it is, because it’s fun). She needs to get the wounded man, Luke, some help, but he’s in bad shape and the town, of course, is kind of dead. They do find a woman, Patti, who still lives there, and they briefly take her hostage before Roxane realizes she needs Patti’s help, as bad men are coming for them and they know where they are. That’s the bones – the bad guys show up, Roxane has to figure out how to stop them. Masters, however, does some nice things: each issue is narrated by a different character, so we get their point of view, and the story slowly clicks into place as we find out why something happened in an earlier issue that might not have made sense. The MacGuffin – what Roxane and her friends stole – is clever, and how it’s stolen is a nice mini-action movie in the middle of the book. Masters incorporates the fire pretty well, which is nice. Zach, the old man, has Alzheimer’s and wasn’t a good dude back in the day, so he’s stuck between the present and the past, with bad implications for everyone. The bad guys are intimately connected to Roxane and her crew, too, so that becomes an interesting way to play the story out. And Patti has her own demons in the past, so that works, too. Basically, it’s a fairly standard crime story, but Masters tells it in a good way, so it’s fun to read.
I don’t love Minotti’s art, even though it mostly works. He’s not tasked to do anything too spectacular, and his line has a gritty feel to it that is suited for a story set in a gritty town. However, occasionally his characters don’t quite look like they have in other places, which, when combined with Masters’s knotty storytelling, makes it a bit harder to figure out what’s going on. It’s momentary, but still disorienting, and it takes me out of the story too often. Early on, we see a man with a bandage wrapped around his face. Later, we see how he got the injury, but someone else was injured at the same time, and I’m not terribly sure if it’s another character we’ve already met or just some random dude. Patti’s mother looks exactly like Patti, so a scene with her mother is unnecessarily confusing. Minotti tries to give his characters some distinguishing marks, but he either forgets they have them or the characters are just new people who look vaguely like the old ones, and it’s odd. It’s not a complicated story, ultimately, but there’s just enough vagueness in the figures that it feels more complicated than it should, and that isn’t great. Overall, the art is decent enough, but the little things bug me.
This is a pretty crime comic that you can display on your bookshelf in the “Centralia, but not named Centralia for … legal reasons?” section. You do have one of those, right? Get to it!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Superman: Lost by Christopher Priest (writer), Carlo Pagulayan (penciler), Lee Weeks (artist), Will Conrad (artist), Dan Jurgens (penciler), José Luí (penciler), Jason Paz (inker), Joe Prado (inker), Júlio Ferreira (inker), Jonas Trindade (inker), Brett Breeding (finisher), Jeromy Cox (colorist), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer), and Brittany Holzherr (collection editor). $24.99, 220 pgs, DC.
Like most Christopher Priest books, this is a bit of a mess that wants to be more complicated than it really is, but it’s also fairly entertaining. Priest always does this “jumping back-and-forth in time” kind of storytelling, which is disorienting when you start but just becomes annoying as you go on. In this book, it works a little mainly because we know Superman is not going to be dead, so the fact that Priest brings him back from wherever he’s been “lost” rather quickly is a decent way to subvert our expectations. Superman, you see, went on a mission with the Justice League, and later that night, he’s back in his apartment, but according to him, he’s been gone for 20 years. He’s back before Bruce Wayne can even show up to tell Lois that he’s missing! Priest tells both the story of where he was missing and also his attempts to re-integrate himself back into a society that he thought was buried in the past. The book is filled with all that comic-book science gobbledygook we love about time dilation and wormholes and whatnot, and Supes spends two decades fighting the good fight out in space and trying to figure out a way back home (Priest does a nice job with showing how weird it really is that DC heroes can flit around the universe almost instantaneously, so there’s that). The planet where he spends a lot of his time makes no sense, but it’s kind of supposed to be a satire on our current American situation, so there’s some crooked Swiftian logic to it, even if Priest isn’t quite as clever or wickedly witty as Swift. There’s a Green Lantern (annoyingly named “Hope,” because of course she is), about whom Clark has some impure thoughts (he stays loyal to Lois, of course, but he can’t help thinking about doing the nasty with Hope!) and who isn’t quite what she seems (this is another nice move by Priest, but I don’t want to spoil what she’s all about). The space adventure is fine, I guess, but it’s also a bit annoying, because of the aforementioned not-so-subtle satire. More interesting are Clark’s attempts to return to his old life (luckily, as an immortal IP, he doesn’t look 20 years older so no one asks too many questions), and Lois feels like she’s losing him. Early on, this story is annoying because Lois is angry at Clark, which makes no sense – of course he’s going to go on a mission with the JLA, and of course he’s going to put himself in harm’s way, and it’s not his fault he couldn’t get back to Earth, and she didn’t even notice that he was gone 20 years because of the DCU’s weird relativity issues! But Clark feeling disconnected is interesting, and Lois trying everything she can think of is a nice depiction of a fractured marriage (even though it’s not really, because, I mean, it’s Superman and Lois Lane, fercryinowtloud), and then … Lex Luthor gets involved. Of course he fucking does. I won’t say how he does, but it’s … wow, it’s dumb. Priest does a nice job giving Lois a lot of agency (ugh) in this book, which is nice, but the whole thing with Lex is just … blech. Anyway, Priest gets out of the maze the way you think he will, which is disappointing, but oh well. See? It’s a mess. It’s not terrible, but Priest tries to do a bit too much (there’s a political scandal subplot as well!), and not all of it lands well. Plus, we get guest artists, all of whom are fine, but as usual, why did DC release this without making sure Pagulayan could draw the entire thing? (Pagulayan, to his … credit? does show up in every issue, it’s just at the end he needs some help.) Anyway, it’s an interesting story, but there’s a lot wonky with it, too.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Vengeance of the Moon Knight volume 1 by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Cappuccio (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer), Daniel Kirchhoffer (collection editor), and Lisa Montalbano (“Talent Relations Specialist”). $15.99, 90 pgs, Marvel.
Return with me to the halcyon days of … 2023? when Marvel, in its infinite wisdom, released trades of five or even (gasp!) SIX issues, and life was good. Now, we get a four (4!!!)-issue trade, as MacKay tries to convince us that Marc Spector isn’t coming back from the dead and someone else will be Moon Knight permanently. The characters in this make grim jokes about coming back from the dead, but MacKay wants us to know that it really, really, REALLY honest-and-for-true is sticking this time, consarnit! (I mean, we know it’s not, but let’s all pretend!) Why is it only 90 pages? Well, VotMK is just a caesura series until MacKay and Marvel bring Spector back, and it appears the final issue is coming out in a few weeks before everything gets rebooted (reboots: the greatest thing ever to happen to comics?), so instead of just releasing a big 9-issue trade, we have to get a 4-issue one so it can end on a cliffhanger. It’s not a very good cliffhanger (we find out who the new Moon Knight is, and the reveal is … less than stunning), but it’s a cliffhanger nevertheless! It’s a perfectly fine story – MacKay has the members of the Midnight Mission in therapy, and they each tell a part of the overall story of the “new” Moon Knight, who’s being a jerk, basically. There’s drama, there’s punching, there’s overwrougth emotions – it’s a superhero comic, you know the drill! It’s kind of difficult to really review this, as it’s so much a small part of both the “new Moon Knight” narrative AND the “Jed MacKay Moon Knight run” narrative. It’s good, and Cappuccio does his usual flowy, heavily inked thing with the art that I like but you may not. I guess we’ll see what happens in the next trade to put this more in context.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
World’s Finest volume 3 by Mark Waid (writer), Dan Mora (artist), Emanuela Lupacchino (artist), Wade von Grawbadger (artist), Norm Rapmund (artist), Tamra Bonvillain (colorist), Steve Wands (letterer), and Paul Kaminski (collection editor). $17.99, 131 pgs, DC.
After taking a few years to get out a volume 1 of this series in softcover, DC has been releasing them fastly and furiously – volume 1 came out in March, volume 2 in July, and now volume 3! Someone read my strongly worded letter, yay!
I mentioned in my review of volume 2 that I wasn’t sure if I was going to get volume 3 because volume 2 was just … fine, but I had already pre-ordered volume 3, so here we are! I’m glad I did, because volume 3 is better than volume 2, which is nice. After the first issue, a standalone story (which I’ll get to), we get the main story, which begins as a murder mystery but doesn’t stay that way for long. The victim is Simon Stagg, so we already know something is hinky, as DC probably won’t kill him off anytime soon, and after Metamorpho is investigated, Jimmy Olsen cracks the case and reveals that the murderer is … Bruce Wayne!?!?! Of course, he didn’t do it (but Waid writes a very funny grumpy Bruce when he’s complaining about Jimmy to Supes), but that’s what the evidence says! It’s all part of a big plot, of course, but I won’t spoil by whom. Waid crams in lots and lots of guest stars – to tell you who would be kind of to spoil it, so I won’t – and Bats gets to do a little detective work, which is always nice to see. Mora’s art is excellent, as usual (although he does draw Batman with a bit of stubble, which I have never liked), and he gets to draw a lot of interesting DC characters, so I’m sure he enjoys that. To get back to the first issue in the collection, though … I know there has to be action in a DC book, and that’s fine, but there can still be stories like issue #12, in which Robin and Supergirl go on a date. A disastrous date, as it turns out. They’re telling Batman and Superman about it, and we see it in flashback, and everything that can go wrong does, and there’s some action, but it’s largely goofy and non-threatening action. It’s a very fun issue, the kind of thing Waid has always excelled at, and Lupacchino’s art is terrific, of course. I’m not sure why we don’t get more “breather” issues in comics series, but whenever they show up, I enjoy them completely, and this is no exception.
I guess I already ordered volume 4, so I guess I’m glad that the book is back on decent footing after the uneven volume 2. We shall see!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Zorro: Man of the Dead by Sean Murphy (writer/artist), Simon Gough (colorist), DC Hopkins (letterer), and Clay McCormack (editor). $17.99, 95 pgs, Massive.
Zorro is in the public domain, so maybe that’s why Massive (the headquarters of which is in Hood River, Oregon, in case you were wondering) doesn’t list Johnston McCulley as his creator. That seems unnecessarily douchey.
Anyway, Sean Murphy wanted to do a Zorro story, and this is what we got, and it’s fun as all heck. Murphy sets this book in the present day, which you might think makes no sense (it’s also set in Mexico, not California, but given that Zorro is a Hispanic hero, that makes more sense). But he does something clever – Zorro is presented as a historical figure, and Diego – the Zorro there on the cover – is traumatized early in the book by the murder of his father, who was dressed as Zorro, and his caregiver is obsessed with Zorro, so in his trauma, he believes he is Zorro, which works very well for this story. His father is killed because the local drug lord, who runs the town, doesn’t want anyone to be inspired to rebellion, but as we know from countless fictional tales, killing someone’s parent guarantees that the child will seek vengeance and inspire rebellion! Years later, Diego’s sister, Rosa, is driving for the drug lord (but she’s so good at driving that she’s able to not do any other nasty stuff), and when she finds out Diego is alive (she thought him long dead), she wants to get him out of town, while Diego – thinking he’s Zorro – wants to take down the drug kingpin. It’s a solid story, and Murphy does some decent things with it – he doesn’t shy away from Diego’s trauma, and while it’s not the most in-depth portrayal of mental illness, he doesn’t ignore it, either. Rosa isn’t a coward, she just knows that El Rojo – the bad guy – is far more evil than Diego realizes, and he has far more guns than Diego knows about. Yes, Diego inexplicably stays alive even though he’s armed only with a sword and the bad guys are shooting hundreds of rounds at him, but that’s just something we have to accept! Murphy also does nice work with the ancillary characters – they aren’t completely developed, but they have enough personality to be interesting, especially the bad guy who took Rosa under his wing when she had no one else to take care of her. There’s nothing revolutionary about the story, but it works quite well.
Of course, the big draw on this book is Murphy’s art, and he does not disappoint. His work here is superb – he has such a nice fluid style, so everyone seems to be in motion realistically all the time, and he lays fights out so well, so it’s never hard to parse what’s going on even if it involves a lot of characters. His characters are juuuuuuust the slightest bit cartoonish, which makes the work less “realistic” but certainly more … I don’t know, “art-like,” I guess. You know what I mean! He has always had marvelously detailed work, and here we get a nice, fully-realized town and environs, which puts Diego and everyone else in a good setting, which makes their actions more interesting because we have a good sense of where they are. The book is packed with violence, and while I’m unsure thin blades like the ones “Zorro” wields could do some of the damage they do, it does lead to some very cool visuals, so we’ll allow it! It’s beautifully colored, too – Murphy’s scratchy hatching and Gough’s flatter hues give the book a nice, old-school feel, even on the glossy paper. It’s a beautiful comic, which is not shocking at all. I’m just glad that it’s in the service of a pretty good story. It’s not always!
If you like Murphy (and why wouldn’t you?), this is a good book to have. Even if you only like Zorro and not Murphy (for shame!), this is cool twist on the legend. That’s always fun!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
BOOKS
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Published in 1818.
I happened to find something that let me know that I bought this book 17 years ago, to give you an idea how long it sometimes takes me to get to a book. I was, at that point, past “Shelley” in my alphabetical-by-author reading of my books, and it’s taken that long to get back around to it! I find stuff like this fascinating. You may disagree.
I had just finished this when Fraser posted his thing about people believing things about pop culture that aren’t true, and Frankenstein – which Fraser says he’s “not as familiar” with as with some other things (I don’t know if that means he hasn’t read it, or if it’s just been a while) – is a prime example of this. The book is almost nothing like anything in any movie, except for the basic plot – man creates life, creation does bad things. It’s strange to read this, because you think you know what’s going to happen based on any movie you’ve seen, but it keeps confounding your expectations. It’s not the best book in the world – as far as “monster” books go, Dracula is much better, and as far as books written about the same time, Ivanhoe is better – but it’s still pretty good. Although we see the ol’ monster on the cover of my copy (with its “larger type for easier reading”!), this is very much Victor Frankenstein’s story, as he’s the narrator for most of it and therefore the focus is on him. It’s an epistolary novel, with the main narrator, Robert Walton, writing to his sister back in England from his ship, which is traveling in the far north. Walton is one of those disaffected Romantics (to be honest, if you had said Shelley based him on her dissolute husband, I would not be surprised) who wants to experience the world first-hand, and he’s up north doing some vague scientific research when he finds a man in a sled who, after recovering his health, says he was chasing after another sled that Walton and his crew saw earlier. The man is Victor Frankenstein, of course, and he’s chasing the monster, and he tells Walton his story.
The story is vaguely familiar – Frankenstein wants to create life and does so, but rejects his creation, which turns against humanity. What’s strange for people familiar with the Boris Karloff version or even the Kenneth Branagh version are the details. There’s absolutely nothing about how Victor creates life – he just does (I mean, it takes a few years, but Shelley doesn’t go into any detail). No lightning in a lab or anything like that. In most movie versions, the monster is somewhat sympathetic, and he is here, to a certain degree, but he’s also a very cold-blooded killer. It’s unclear if Victor is supposed to some kind of tortured hero to Shelley, but he’s just, basically, a douchebag. The monster tells him over and over that if he just builds an Elsa Lanchester for him, he’ll fuck off to South America and never bother anyone ever again, but Victor doesn’t because he’s, you know, a douchebag, and so the monster keeps killing. The monster tells Victor a long story about how he learned to reason (yes, the novel is like a Russian nesting doll in that way), and it’s a bit ridiculous, as he’s remarkably erudite even though he’s been alive for about two years or so and who knows what kind of brain Victor gave him? Because of the way the story is told (in flashback), it’s not quite as exciting as it might be – so much takes place “off-screen,” so to speak, which robs it of some drama. Victor is certainly given over to flowery speech (not surprising, as it’s the Romantic Era!), but when it comes to details, he’s woefully lackadaisical. What’s also fascinating is the anti-intellectualism running through the book – Victor tells Walton, basically, to stop looking for knowledge because it will lead to ruin, but maybe not all scientists are as douchey as you, Victor? The book is much more about Victor’s moral crisis and whether men should play god rather than the malignancy of the monster and what responsibility Victor has toward him – Victor seems to think his only responsibility is destroying the monster – as Shelley seems more interested in how far Victor went for knowledge rather than the result of the experiment. It’s an interesting book, and it remains impressive that Shelley was 18/19 when she wrote it. Oh, those teens were so much cooler two centuries ago!
Rating: It’s Frankenstein!
The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America by Russell Shorto. 384 pgs, 2005, Vintage Books.
Shorto tells the story of the New Amsterdam, which didn’t last very long but which, he argues, had an extremely important role in the formation of the “American Experiment” that most historians assign solely to the English. Henry Hudson “discovered” the island for the Dutch in 1609 (I mean, Verrazzano had sailed by there 80 years earlier, but he didn’t hang around), and in the 1620s, the West India Company began exploiting the land. The colony remained outside the purview of the Dutch government almost until the English took it over – the West India Company ran it like a business, without much interference from the government, which was busy fighting the Spanish for independence and was a kind of weak “confederation,” not unlike the American states in the 1780s, before the Constitution came into existence. Shorto’s argument is pretty sound, however, as the Dutch in the 17th century were fairly tolerant of other religions – for the time period, at least – and the Company was far more concerned about exploiting the natural resources of America to care too much about the personal lives of the colonists. The English colonies of the time, especially the New England ones, had no time for religious toleration, as we know from, you know, all the people they persecuted for not being Puritan, yet somehow that was supposed to have transmogrified into religious tolerance by the time of the Revolution. Shorto points out that when New Amsterdam finally became an actual colony of the Dutch government, religious toleration was written into the charter, and that charter was adopted by the English when they took it over. It’s an interesting and compelling argument, and Shorto believes it needs to be more a part of our American history. The reason it isn’t is twofold: one, history is written by the winners, and the English certainly weren’t going to give any credit to the Dutch, with whom they fought three wars in the 1600s; and two, many, many documents of the colony have never been translated into even modern Dutch, much less English, and were thought lost for centuries before they were discovered in a dusty basement in Albany and the process of translation was begun (the Dutch they used in the 1600s is difficult to translate, and not many people can). Part of Shorto’s book is about the project to actually get these documents out into the world, and that’s an interesting story in itself (the Dutch government, notorious penny-pinchers, destroyed a huge amount of documents in the 19th century because they were taking up too much space, so there’s that, too).
Anyway, he does a nice job bringing the time period to life. The denizens of Manhattan in the 1620s-1660s were a bunch of interesting people, and Shorto does a nice job showing what a diverse bunch they were. The colony’s records sound like fun reading, as the people loved bringing lawsuits against others, which is where we can see a very interesting portrait of the place. While the Puritans were massacring the Natives in New England and repressing every emotion, in Manhattan, there’s a record in Manhattan of a woman “dishonorably manipulating the male member” of an Irishman while two others looked on and her husband slept nearby. Hey-oh! Shorto points out that the Dutch got along perfectly well with the Indians, diving into Peter Minuit’s “purchase” of the island in great detail, which is, naturally, not anything like what we learned about it school. One of the governors of the island was a religious fanatic, and when he started a foolish war against the Natives, not only did most of the colony rebel against him, but they managed to get the government back in the Netherlands to recall him. Of course, that got them Peter Stuyvesant, which many soon regretted, but Shorto goes into a lot of detail about the way the colonists interacted with the Indians and how it was fairly beneficial to both of them. (Of course, the Dutch had no idea that they were infecting the Natives with various diseases, but they did, sadly.)
His main characters are Stuyvesant and Adriaen van der Donck, who charted the course of the colony from the time they arrived (van der Donck in 1641, Stuyvesant in 1647) almost through to the English takeover (Stuyvesant was still the governor in 1664, but van der Donck disappears from history in 1655, when he was probably killed in an Indian attack). Stuyvesant was a military man, and he ran the colony with an iron fist, which it probably needed when he first took over but became increasingly tyrannical as the years went on. Van der Donck was a lawyer who pushed hard for the cause of democracy, representing the businessmen of the colony who wanted more rights under Willem Kieft, Stuyvesant’s predecessor, and under Stuyvesant. This struggle for democratic reforms, Shorto argues, is part of the foundation of American democracy, and again, his argument is compelling. Van der Donck (after whom Yonkers is named, as the land on which the city is located was originally deeded to van der Donck, and as he was a “Jonkheer” or “young gentleman,” people called the land “Jonkheers,” because that’s the possessive form) fought his entire adult life for the rights of his fellow citizens, and while he probably couldn’t have stopped the English takeover (by 1664, the Dutch empire was declining and the English were on the rise), it’s interesting to speculate what he might have done had he lived, as he was only 37 when he died. The rivalry between Stuyvesant and van der Donck is fascinating reading, and Shorto does a nice job with it. Both men contributed greatly to what New Amsterdam became, and while Shorto is definitely more sympathetic to van der Donck, he makes it clear how important both men were to the colony and subsequent American history.
Shorto notes that the influence of the Dutch is far greater than we might think. The word “boss,” for instance, is derived from the Dutch, and Shorto makes the point that even an innocuous word like that is a crucial part of democracy, as Americans did not adopt the English word “master,” with its negative connotations, but instead the Dutch word “baas” (which, after all, means “master”) to differentiate the relationship with a “higher class person” – that person might pay their wages, but they did not control their lives. Little things like that mean a great deal to Shorto, and he again makes a good argument. The book is full of fun stuff like that, showing how deeply embedded in American culture the Dutch are, and how they have not gotten much credit for it. Just the fact that they recognized long before the English the amazing potential of Manhattan is proof of their influence on America. Shorto’s book is well researched and makes for pretty keen reading. It’s nice to get more insight into history – that’s why we study it, people!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
TELEVISION
Grantchester season 9 (PBS). For the second time, this show loses its main(-ish) character, as Tom Brittney, who’s the second vicar to solve crimes with Robson Green, left the show after the second episode (apparently he was in the running for Superman and he really digs directing, so I guess he has things going on), and the third vicar on the show, Rishi Nair, comes on board. It’s certainly implausible that Green would find three vicars in a row who dig solving mysteries with him, and the rest of the cast has some fun with both it and his attraction to vicars in general, and the show does a good job showing how addictive solving mysteries can be, as Alphy – Nair’s character – finds himself getting drawn into mysteries as his tenure begins. As usual with shows like these, the mysteries are the least interesting part. Alphy is Indian (but, as he points out more than once, he was born in Romford), so we get the racism of the early 1960s, even from generally open-minded people like Green, who believes a person who tells him someone “swarthy” is breaking into the vicarage and doesn’t stop to check who the person is (of course, Green quickly finds out and they become friends, but it’s nice touch by the show to show that in the 1960s, even someone as non-bigoted as Geordie Keating has their moments). We also get the culture shift that began post-War, as fewer people are going to church in the parish (it’s part of the reason why Brittney’s character leaves, as he feels he needs to challenge himself more), and Alphy believes he’s brought on so that if the parish fails, the Church can blame it on the “swarthy” preacher. So that’s an interesting subplot. Meanwhile, Robson Green’s daughter is almost 17 and wants to get a job and move out, so he’s dealing with that, but his wife (played wonderfully as usual by Kacey Ainsworth) is having a LOT of trouble with it, and her mental issues also make up an interesting subplot in the season. Melissa Johns, amazing as ever as Miss Scott, the police secretary and all-around secret weapon (she’s the only one who knows where everything is and what’s going on at the station, to the extent when the women in the show have a bit of a soft strike, the cops’ world falls apart), not only gets a first name and a romantic partner (yay to the first, blech to the second, as she’s far too good for him), but she also gets to do some investigating, so good for her! The cases touch more on social issues – one dead girl was a bit too “social,” for instance – and we even get a long-running mystery plot, as there’s a dude in the show who appears well-meaning but might be not quite as good as he lets on. With the loss of parishioners, we also get a bit of a debate between a lay pastor who seems to energize young people and Alphy, who’s presiding over a staid old C of E congregation. Lots going on, in other words. It’s still a decent show, and while the “crime-solving vicar” idea becomes increasingly weird every time one of them leaves the show, you just have to accept it!
House of the Dragon season 2 (HBO). This, I thought, was a better season of HotD that the first one, for a few reasons: once you know who the players are, it’s easier to go along with whatever’s happening with them, so all the shit that happens in this season had a bit more of an impact; the show expanded its cast, so that the focus wasn’t so much on the boring Targaryans; there was a bit more action, which is always nice to see. Now, it ended a bit limply – apparently, the plan is for the show to run four seasons, but they’ve done two and the Big Civil War has barely started, plus HBO cut the season from 10 episodes to 8, and everything had to be rejiggered a bit, so we end with everything coming to a head, but we’ll have to wait two years before it actually, you know, comes to a head. Why HBO did this is unknown – sure, it’s an expensive show, but it’s also very popular, so why it doesn’t make more money for them I don’t know (the money-making apparatus of pay cable has never been clear to me). Anyway, in this season, the lines are drawn more clearly, as children on both sides are killed, which makes the mothers, Rhaenyra and Alicent (Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke), one of whom is the “rightful queen” and the other of whom is the mother of the “rightful king,” pretty peeved. There doesn’t seem to be any hope of reconciliation, but the show invents two scenes between the two women that aren’t in the book, and those two scenes, in which D’Arcy and Cooke simply talk as mothers, are probably the two best scenes of the season. It doesn’t help stop the war, but they’re still amazing. Meanwhile, Rhaenyra loses a dragon, so she and her new advisor, who’s a commoner, come up with the idea of allowing anyone with Targaryan blood (even if they’re bastard descendants and not noble) to try to ride a dragon, which leads to a few other great scenes as the dragons roast quite a few people. It also gives some prominence to the commoners who do manage to get the dragon, led by Tom Bennett’s fun turn as Ulf, a braggart, coward, and all-around lout who doesn’t care a whit about being polite to the nobles (boy, I hope Ulf survives for a while, because he’s fun). The show goes a bit farther afield than it did last season, with Matt Smith spending most of the time in Harrenhal, where he has some weird religious/drug-induced experiences. We also get a very good dragon battle, which is another reason why the season is better. Despite its expense, the money really is there on the screen, which is nice. The biggest problem with the show remains its focus on the Targaryans, but it’s a bit better this season. It’s tough to really figure out why it’s not as good as Game of Thrones – I want to say the absence of Peter Dinklage plays a big part, but it’s just lacking a little je ne sais quoi that GoT had. It’s still a pretty good show, and I do hope that next season – whenever it shows up! – we’ll see a lot of dragon fighting. That’s fun!
The Veil (FX/Hulu). Elizabeth Moss stars in this fairly mediocre spy drama, which bums me out because I like Moss. She does a decent enough job here, playing a British agent who has subsumed her actual identity so as to play different people (we find out quite a bit about her “real” life, and it’s not hard to see why she would subsume it), and Yumna Marwan does good work as the woman Moss dealing with on her latest assignment, but they’re given a kind of lame plot and forced to spout far too many clichés, so the show doesn’t really work. Moss is sent to Syria to a refugee camp to extract a woman who may be a top ISIS commander or may be just a regular refugee, and her job is to figure out who Marwan really is. Moss manages to get her to Paris, where she and Marwan are caught up in a battle among various agencies who want Marwan for herself, plus there’s an actual ISIS plot afoot that maybe Marwan knows about? It’s frustrating, because the plot is kind of dumb and requires far too many moving parts to be realistic, plus there’s a big conspiracy about it that makes it much bigger (but dumber) than a regular ISIS attack. Moss is a British agent loaned out to French intelligence, but the CIA (represented by Josh Charles at his swaggering, obnoxious, ‘Murican best) is also involved, because of course it is. The inter-agency rivalry is probably true to life, but it’s also kind of dumb, and then James Purefoy shows up and things get really annoying (Purefoy is another good actor, but he’s really given nothing to work with). When Moss and Marwan are sizing each other up and dealing with their shit, the show is pretty good (not great, just pretty good). There’s not enough of it, though, which is a shame. I get that the writers needed to have something bigger going on so there would be stakes to Moss’s mission, but I do wish they had come up with something better, because it does take up a lot of time. I like spy stories, as you probably know, but this is one you can probably safely miss, unfortunately.
Under the Bridge (FX/Hulu). Riley Keough stars as a writer who returns to Victoria, BC (well, a suburb) after some years away to write a book about the “lost girls” of the area and gets more than she bargained for when one of them is killed. Lily Gladstone, fresh off her Oscar nomination for Flowers of the Killer Moon, is a local cop who, naturally, has been quite intimate with Keough in the past, something which sparks briefly between them again. This is based on a true story – Keough is playing the actual author whose book the series is based on – and it’s fairly gripping and definitely bleak. Reena Virk is a teen who comes from what appears to be a pretty decent family – her mother is a bit distant, but not, it seems, malicious – but she’s a teen, her family are part of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and she’s testing the limits of her freedom, something her mother does not react well to. She befriends some girls from the “wrong side of the tracks” – and, crucially, a girl kind of like her, from a well-off family who’s playing at being a rebel – and things do not go well from then on. The girls are cruel, of course, and they use Reena and then reject her, and she tries to get revenge, and she ends up under the titular bridge, where she’s beaten up, and then later she’s found dead in the waterway over which the bridge spans. What happened? The story is told in a lot of flashbacks, as we learn about Reena, her family, Keough’s family, and the foster kids she was hanging out with. It’s a pretty good show, although I got angry because so many people acted so very, very stupidly. It didn’t ruin the show, because a lot of the stupidity came from teenagers, who are compromised by the crazy hormones flooding their bodies and their desperate desire to belong, but it was still a bit annoying. Reena is the dumbest of them all – she does a lot of dumb things that lead to her death, sadly – but she’s not the only one. The show is somewhat an examination of a community that refuses to accept that kids can be jerks, some kids are actually pretty evil, and sometimes, circumstances do matter, and class isn’t always an indicator of how people behave. It’s 1997, so bullying is far more prevalent and racism is not called out quite as much, so there’s that, too. The actors are all pretty good: Vritika Gupta as Reena shows how desperate she is to be “normal” even though she’s Indian, from a family that practices an unusual religion, and a bit husky; Chloe Guidry is blandly attractive in a way that would dazzle small-town kids, and she’s really good at pretending to be “gangster” even though she’s terrified of actually being one; Izzy G. (ugh, really?) plays the evil rich girl a bit over-the-top but she’s still evil; Aiyana Goodfellow is heart-breaking as the “mascot” black girl who should be Reena’s ally because she’s not treated much better by the others but is also a weak teen who wants to belong; and Javon Walton plays the wounded boy very well, so when other parts of his personality are revealed, it’s not too shocking (mainly because this is a plot-driven show, so we know something is coming) but it is effective. My wife and I were laughing at some of the adults, because they just couldn’t believe the horrible things some of the teens did, and we couldn’t believe adults could be that naïve about kids. Come on, people, kids lie as easily as they breathe! Anyway, this is a bleak show with a little bit of hope at the end (although, I mean, Keough’s character died in 2022 of lung cancer when she was only 54, so it’s still bleak in the “whatever happened to” section), but it’s compelling, so there is that.
Fallout season 1 (Prime video). This is a pretty good show, although it seems the discourse around it (from what I recall) was more contentious than it really deserves, as it’s a fairly standard post-apocalyptic story with some goofiness thrown in. Ella Purnell is the nominal lead, as she plays Lucy, a young woman who lives in a “vault” – a fully-functional society deep underground, waiting until the radiation on the surface clears up – whose father – Kyle MacLachlan – is kidnapped by “raiders” who pose as the inhabitants of another vault and pillage Lucy’s vault. Lucy decides to head for the surface to rescue her father, which the inhabitants of the vault don’t think is that good an idea (but she does it anyway, of course). She discovers a fairly large group of people (you know, for a post-nuclear landscape), including Maximus (Aaron Moten), who is part of a “Brotherhood” that polices the wasteland with “knights” who wear high-tech armor. Maximus was the squire of one knight, but when he gets killed, Maximus just takes his armor and pretends to be him. The Brotherhood is after an artifact, which happens to be in the head of Michael Emerson, a scientist who escaped from the “Enclave” with whatever it is he has. Emerson dies pretty quickly, but his head becomes a prize, passing from person to person (Lucy wants it because the raiders who kidnapped her father say they’ll give him back if she brings it to them), and eventually, we find out why. Back in Lucy’s vault, her brother, Norm (Moises Arias), begins to suspect that things are not exactly what they seem, and he starts poking around. In this world, there are also undead ghouls walking around, and one of them, Walton Goggins, is having a grand time as a quasi-cowboy. Goggins provides the link to the pre-war days, as he was an actor in cowboy movies whose wife works for – you guessed it – a sinister corporation that is doing nefarious things, and Goggins – whose character is wildly patriotic – begins to realize that maybe the company does not have America’s best interests at heart. It’s a fun show, with quite a lot of bloody violence, weird creatures, lots of action, some horror, and a good dose of humor. The cast is solid (Goggins dominates the screen when he’s on it, but the rest of the cast is good, as well), the CGI is decent, and while the geography of the show makes no sense whatsoever (they move from deserts to forest and back in the blink of an eye, and it appears Lucy comes out of her vault right by Santa Monica and takes weeks to walk to … the Griffith Observatory, a distance of about 30 miles), that probably bothers only someone like me. It’s an enjoyable show, and it’s nice that the showrunners at least try to keep us guessing about how humanity reached this point. That’s kind of fun.
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Let’s look at the money I spent in August!
7 August: $163.10
14 August: $263.74 (Dang it! A Flash Gordon archive and lots of $25-30 graphic novels this week!)
21 August: $129.20
28 August: $161.22
Money spent in August: $717.26
(Aug. ’23: $720.40)
(Aug. ’22: $1000.03)
(Aug. ’21: $871.59)
YTD: $4333.35
(2023: $4391.18)
(2022: $7258.83)
(2021: $5341.27)
Still trending downward, but still too aligned with last year. Oh well.
Here’s a breakdown of publishers and formats:
About Comics: 1 (1 “classic” reprint)
Black Panel Press: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Bloomsbury Publishing: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Boom! Studios: 3 (1 single issue, 2 trade paperbacks)
Dark Horse: 2 (2 single issues)
DC: 8 (2 “classic” reprints, 2 single issues, 4 trade paperbacks)
Drawn & Quarterly: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Dstlry: 1 (1 trade paperback)
Fantagraphics: 1 (1 “classic” reprint)
Heritage Comics: 1 (1 “classic” reprint)
Image: 3 (1 graphic novel, 2 single issues)
Mad Cave: 3 (1 “classic” reprint, 1 graphic novel, 1 single issue)
Magnetic: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Marvel: 10 (9 single issues, 1 trade paperback)
Massive: 1 (1 trade paperback)
NBM: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Oni Press: 2 (2 single issues)
Papercutz: 1 (1 “classic” reprint)
Penthouse Comics: 1 (1 single issue)
Rebellion/2000AD: 2 (2 “classic” reprints)
Scout Comics: 1 (1 single issue)
Titan Comics: 2 (2 single issues)
Viz: 1 (1 manga volume)
White Hart Comics: 1 (1 graphic novel)
9 āclassicā reprints (36)
8 graphic novels (48)
1 manga volume (6)
23 single issues (67)
9 trade paperbacks (78)
So far this year, we have this:
Ablaze: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 2 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel, 1 manga volume, 1 trade paperback)
About Comics: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (2 āclassicā reprints)
Abrams: 0 + 1 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 (3 graphic novels)
Ahoy: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 trade paperback)
Antarctic: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 trade paperback)
Avery Hill Publishing: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 2 + 0 + 0 (2 graphic novels)
AWA: 0 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (4 trade paperbacks)
Battle Quest Comics: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 trade paperback)
Black Panel Press: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (1 graphic novel)
Bloomsbury Publishing: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (1 graphic novel)
Boom! Studios: 1 + 1 + 0 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 3 (1 āclassicā reprint, 2 single issues, 5 trade paperbacks)
Cartoon Books: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 (1 āclassicā reprint)
Clarion Books: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
Clover Press: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 2 + 0 + 0 (2 āclassicā reprints, 1 graphic novel)
ComicMix: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 āclassicā reprint)
Dark Horse: 3 + 3 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 2 (5 āclassicā reprints, 10 single issues, 3 trade paperbacks)
DC: 1 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 8 (3 āclassicā reprint, 13 single issues, 14 trade paperbacks)
Drawn & Quarterly: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 1 (2 graphic novels)
Dstlry: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 1 (2 trade paperbacks)
Dynamite: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 0 + 0 (2 āclassicā reprints)
Epicenter Comics: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 āclassicā reprint)
Fairsquare Comics: 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 1 + 0 (2 graphic novels, 1 trade paperback)
Fantagraphics: 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 (3 āclassicā reprints, 2 graphic novels)
First: 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
First Second Books: 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
Floating World Comics: 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
Heritage Comics: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (1 “classic” reprint)
Humanoids: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 2 + 0 (3 graphic novels)
IDW: 0 + 0 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 2 + 0 + 0 (5 trade paperbacks)
Image: 4 + 3 + 2 + 5 + 6 + 8 + 3 + 3 (2 āclassicā reprints, 6 graphic novels, 7 single issues, 19 trade paperbacks)
Invader Comics: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel, 1 single issue)
Mad Cave Studios: 2 + 1 + 0 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 3 (1 “classic” reprint, 3 graphic novels, 4 single issues, 4 trade paperbacks)
Magnetic: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (1 graphic novel)
Marvel: 3 + 3 + 2 + 4 + 1 + 3 + 3 + 10 (7 āclassicā reprints, 16 single issues, 6 trade paperbacks)
Massive Publishing: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (1 trade paperback)
MCD Books: 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
NBM: 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 1 (3 graphic novels)
Oni Press: 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 2 + 2 (3 single issues, 3 trade paperbacks)
Papercutz: 0 + 0 + 0 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 1 (3 āclassicā reprints)
Penthouse: 0 + 1 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 1 (4 single issues)
Random House: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
Rebellion/2000AD: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 2 (2 “classic” reprints)
Scout: 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (2 single issues)
SelfMadeHero Books: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
Silver Sprocket: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
SLG: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
T Pub: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
Ten Ton Press: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
Titan Comics: 0 + 4 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 2 (1 graphic novel, 4 single issues, 3 trade paperbacks)
TKO Studios: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 trade paperback)
Top Shelf: 1 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 (2 graphic novels)
Valiant: 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 single issue)
Vault: 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 0 + 0 (3 trade paperbacks)
Viz Media: 0 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 0 + 1 (5 manga volumes)
A Wave Blue World: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
White Hart Comics: 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (1 graphic novel)
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I’ve listened to some more music you guys suggested back in March (I’M SLOW!!!!!!), so here we go with my thoughts!
The Beths – “Expert in a Dying Field” (2022). Terrible-D suggested this, and I really enjoyed it. It’s a “simple” pop song, but the music is nice and fuzzy, and it has a nice, melancholy, minor key feel to it. It’s a “loss-of-love” song, but the lyrics are good and devastating, so it hits nice and hard. “And I can burn the evidence but I can’t burn the pain,” sings Elizabeth Stokes, the vocalist and rhythm guitarist. She has a pleasant voice, tinged with a fun Kiwi accent, and the band behind her is solid. There’s an art to writing a good pop song, and this song is a good example of one done right. I don’t have much more to say about it, just that’s a good tune.
Shinyribs – “Poor People’s Store” (2010). Bill Reed has been a weirdo for a long time, so of course he would suggest this weird song, which showed up on the latest season of Fargo. It’s a fun song – just a list of things that you can find at the “poor people’s store,” which sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, if you ask me. I’m not sure if you can get both Christina Aguilera AND black mascara, or if you can get the kind of black mascara that Christina Aguilera wears (I’m going to go with the latter, because I doubt if Christina Aguilera would allow herself to be sold at the poor people’s store). The lyrics take a weird dark turn at the end, when you can get clothes that smell like you just got out of jail, but overall, this is a groovy tune, with Mr. Shinyribs plucking on his ukelele and having a blast.
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We had some technical problems here at the blog last week, so I got behind on my reviews, and therefore got behind on anything else I usually blather about here, so I apologize for not listening to more of the music you guys suggested. The technical problems seem to have been sorted, so that’s nice. I will post a few photos of my daughter at the Diamondbacks game a few weeks ago, as her choir (not just hers, as I know a dude whose daughter was there last week) gets to sing the national anthem once a year. She never went because we just assumed it would be a logistical nightmare, and it was, but it’s her final year of high school, so we wanted her to experience it once. It was fun, but we didn’t stay for the game because she and the rest of the womenfolk in my family have no interest in baseball. Still, she seemed to enjoy it. I couldn’t get a good photo of her from the front because they are not happy at all if you walk onto the grass of the outfield. We got there a bit late and had to walk in front of the entire choir to get her into place, and we were right on the edge of the grass, and they kept telling us to stay off of it. So I could only take pictures from the back. Oh well. This is only the third time I’ve been on the field of a major sports stadium, and I always forget how frickin’ huge it is. It’s very impressive!
She also turned 22 on the 30th, which was nice. It’s still a bit surprising to me that she’s, you know, alive, but we celebrate every day of it, not just her birthday!
So that’s that for this month. As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you’re having a good Labor Day if you’re in the States and a good random day in September if you’re, you know, anywhere else. I always love Labor Day, simply because there are so many people in this country who hate unions and think we don’t need them, even though they get the benefits from union agitation over the decades. Ah, history. Who needs it, right? Have a great day, everyone!
I echo your sentiment about the Oni EC line, and hope that they can get some top tier artists involved. Nic Klein has been killing it on the latest Hulk series, and I think he would be a great fit.
I see you grabbed the J.H. William’s cover to Cruel Universe. I stuck with Smallwood’s cover because it gave me Wally Wood vibes.
Also, glad you liked the music suggestion. I missed a chance to catch the Beth’s live at First Ave back in February, but perhaps I’ll get another chance in the next few years.
Again a slow month for me in regard to comics. Sigh…
But a better month with visiting concerts. Yeah!!
8/4 Gene Simmons Band
I skipped the End of the road tour from Kiss because the singing of Paul Stanley was terrible the last few years.
Gene is still a good singer (for someone being 74) and he had a nice selection of songs that night. We had a fun evening and even some dutch words. Fun night.
8/20 An Endless Sporadic + Kyros
The 3rd free concert in Boerderij this year. We had a rainy trip to Zoetermeer but the first show made us forget that right away. These Americans gave us a wonderfull performance. It’s all instrumental but what a variation! Right after the show I bought all 3 cd’s and even a shirt. If they ever come somewhere near you, check them out. The deserve it.
Kyros on the other hand… We left after 4 songs, but not before speaking with the drummer and 1 of the guitar players of An Endless Sporadic.
8/23 Blonde Redhead
Luckely not in Amsterdam but in Breda. This meant people who watch the band instead of the phones. The lightning was not great for taking pictures (blue, purple and red don’t work well for my phone). At the the end of each year I make an album to remember what we saw that year. The show on the other hand was fine.
8/24 Edward Reekers’ the Liberty Project
The second time this year and the 3rd in total that we saw this show. It’s a rock opera, musical and concept album in one. The band was in great form and after the show I had a nice talk with Edwards daughter about the birth of the album.
I just finished my first month at the new job. I work as a government official. When someone like you wants help from local authority because you need help for your daughter the local authority can give you an amount of money and when the paperworks comes I put it in the system. It’s something different for what I did before but it’s nice to help people.
Apart from that nothing special happening at the moment.
I’m glad you are enjoying the new job, sir!
I took some time off, and spent a whole lot of time reading comics on the porch – including Rare Flavors this afternoon (I have Vol 3 of Worldās Finest open at the moment).
Read a lot of good stuff, including the last Friday trade, the first issue of The Power Fantasy, and Brubakerās āDeadenders,ā but the headliner isā¦I finally read Hitman!
So good.
So, so, so motherloving good.
Even with my higher tolerance for Ennisās gonzo sensibilitiesā¦this might be the best thing heās done.
(Althoughā¦that final fight with Cassidy in Preacher is damn tough to match).
I’ve only been telling everyone how good Hitman is for, like 20 years, you know! š
I have the standard-trim Superman vs Muhammad Ali hardcover from a while back, which IIRC was recolored. So I skipped this reprint, but maybe I shouldn’t have.
I also thought Birds of Prey was a little light on story, but I actually really dug the way Thompson used Harley as part of the team. Also really liked that Barda/Cassandra Cain pairing. Romero’s art is the real draw here, and they’re definitely going for an old-timey aesthetic. At first I thought maybe there were some coloring misprints in the trade (which tends to happen these days), but no, it’s a deliberate invoking of a newsprint look. But that visual style kinda goes away with Deyn’s fill-in issue. It looks fine to me, just not of a piece with the rest of the book. And it looks like Romero isn’t coming back anytime soon.
I haven’t read any of these anthology books you wrote about, so take this with a grain of salt, but: modern anthologies don’t really do it for me. I’m not sure if it’s because creators don’t have the “tools” or storytelling or expectations have shifted too much, but I find myself having way more time for a random old Charlton issue than this. Is it because of those older creators, their talents, or the denser or historical or ephemeral nature of the work? Am I just getting old? Then again, the artists you mention for these EC books are all great, so I should probably check them out.
I’m only partway through Fire & Ice as of this writing, but I’m really digging it. The characters feel much more like themselves than they did in King and Smallwood’s Human Target, for example. And I like the pliant, expressive, cartoony art. Plus I’m trying not to worry about continuity anymore. This book references stuff happening in Superman, but it may as well be in its own universe, which is fine.
I really hope Dstlry comes out with some paperback editions at some point.
I bought (but have not read) both Laila Starr and Rare Flavours, but I did read the first two volumes of Ram V’s Detective Comics. Moody and poetic with some good moments, but overall a little slow and meandery so far.
I also picked up Superman: Lost but haven’t gotten to it yet. It’s only when flipping through this that I realized Priest must request Willie Schubert to letter all his books. Happy to see Willie still working.
World’s Finest vol 2 was a lot more fun for me than v1, but I haven’t read v3 yet.
I also read the Police Comics #1 facsimile, which was a lot of wacky Golden Age fun. It introduced me to 711, my new favorite obscure character– a guy who switched places with his lookalike friend to go to prison as him for a few weeks (prisoner #711), except the friend dies so he’s stuck in jail, except he breaks out at night to fight crime based on what he hears in prison, except he breaks back in during the day to serve this dead guy’s sentence. Silly *and* kind of brilliant. Apparently they unceremoniously killed the character off after like 15 issues. I would like to bring this guy back.
On PBS I watched their rebroadcast of Magpie Murders, in preparation for Moonflower Murders coming soon. I dug it– playfully clever metatextual whodunnits are my scones and jam. I also like the hokey but charming The Ark on Syfy, now in season 2– a show about a space ark where everything breaks and the characters have to be really clever, plus now we’ve got other enemy factions and it’s getting a little more Trekky.
Shinyribs is cool. I caught them at random on an Austin City Limits and dig the whole vibe. Hoping they tour up this way one day.
As you might recall, I don’t like Schubert’s lettering. That jaggedness doesn’t do it for me.
I wonder if the Supes-v-Ali hardcover was recolored by Adams. Adams got way too enamored with digital coloring, and it didn’t look great. This looks more “authentic” (although I’m sure they touched it up), which is nice.
We really enjoyed Magpie Murders – I didn’t know there was a “sequel,” but I’ll definitely check it out!
I totally agree about Luthor in Superman: Lost. I really liked the first few issues. After all, it is a good premise. But the whole deal with the Green Lantern was not great. Then Luther comes in and blech. That was bad.
So are the new EC comics using a font to imitate the original EC lettering? That’s kind of neat.