Patrick deWitt is one of my favourite novelists working today because his previous four books were all fantastic. So The Librarianist was always goingPatrick deWitt is one of my favourite novelists working today because his previous four books were all fantastic. So The Librarianist was always going to be a must-read and one of my most anticipated novels of 2023. It’s quite disappointing then to say this was utterly terrible. It went from being one of the most anticipated to one of the biggest let-downs of the year.
There isn’t really a story, just a bunch of things that happen to the main character across certain points in his life that don’t add up to anything. Bob Comet is our main character. He’s a retired librarian who decides to help out at the local old folks’ home, curating a selection of his favourite stories to read to the residents - and then he finds out one of the residents’ identities, which holds great importance to him.
Is it a spoiler if there’s no plot to be spoiled? Anyway, I won’t reveal the character’s identity but deWitt could’ve ended the story there because nothing that follows adds to what we already know of Bob’s life and the entire final third is completely irrelevant.
For example, we’re told early on that Bob’s wife ran off with his best friend when they were all young and he never remarried. Fine - but the entire middle of the novel is the story of how this happened. And guess what? Besides fleshing out the wife and best friend, to no effect, we get to read in excruciatingly dull detail what we already know. The wife and best friend run off and get married. So what’s the point? I really don’t know.
The final third is another time jump to Bob’s childhood where he meets a pair of travelling actors and he sort of helps them in their local production. Again: what’s the point? No idea. And this is by far the most boring part of the story too and the easiest cut because it has the least to do with anything. But we get it all for no reason. What a boring waste of time!
The first act is fine, the writing throughout is decent, but the narrative overall is a meandering, go-nowhere shrug of a story. Rarely entertaining and often frustratingly tedious, I definitely don’t recommend this one whether or not you’re a fan of the author, though, if you are, you’re in for a shock that this is by the same writer who gave us great novels like Ablutions and Undermajordomo Minor. Patrick deWitt’s other novels are well worth checking out if you’ve never read him before - The Librarianist is an unexpected misfire. ...more
The Blackwood family are all dead, poisoned by arsenic in the sugar bowl. All except for 18 year old Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood, the novel’s The Blackwood family are all dead, poisoned by arsenic in the sugar bowl. All except for 18 year old Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood, the novel’s narrator, her 28 year old agoraphobic sister Constance, and their wheelchair-bound/dementia-ridden Uncle Julian. Constance was blamed for the deaths but was found not guilty at her trial. However the stigma of the incident and the Blackwood’s wealth and isolation has made them a symbol of fear and hate by the villagers. And the hatred is growing…
Shirley Jackson’s final completed novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, is a very creepy read. Not because of the plot - very little actually happens in the book which is more of a character portrait - but for our first person narrator, Merricat, who is quite possibly insane.
The first scene is Merricat going into the village to get groceries. A seemingly banal task that nevertheless sets the tone: the tension and paranoia between the villagers and the Blackwoods is real. But we see how Merricat views it, as a strange game filled with violent and bloody imagery which tells you a lot about her - she is deeply disturbed.
From there we learn about her superstitions - she practices sympathetic magic – believing it protects the remaining Blackwoods somehow and the reader slowly suspects there’s more to the night the family were poisoned than we learned at first, as Jackson ever-so-delicately reveals how far gone Merricat is over the course of the novel. The calm, cold, even deadpan narration is an ingenious approach to presenting the reader with Merricat’s skewed mentality.
Because Jackson writes Merricat as this probably sociopathic character (though she does seem to genuinely love Constance), it makes certain scenes later on that much more unnerving, like when she says she sat in her hiding place listening to Jonas (her cat - or familiar?) talk, or that hallucinatory scene where she sits down to dinner and her ghostly family tell her they love her… This is a girl who would stab you to death with a butter knife without blinking!
Merricat is such a compelling character with a brilliantly captured voice. She is the reason to read this novel and you won’t forget her in a hurry! Those last words - “We are so happy.” - ooo… genuinely chilling.
Castle is a novel that could be several things all at once: an examination of agoraphobia (something Jackson also suffered from), a clever look at how myths about witches begin, a murder mystery, a surface-level horror story, a character study of a sociopath, and a fitting summary of Jackson’s career (though she didn’t know this would be her last novel).
The story features a teenage girl who practices magic and does terrible things like the girls in The Witchcraft of Salem Village (Jackson’s non-fiction book for younger readers about the Salem Witch Trials); a character called Charles (and described as “demonic”) appears much like the titular character in her short story of the same name; the barely-repressed hostility of the villagers resembles the similar community depicted in The Lottery, and there’s a troubled young woman trapped in a house much like Eleanor in The Haunting of Hill House.
Whether she intended it or not, Shirley Jackson will always be remembered as a horror writer (though in his introduction Jonathan Lethem wryly notes that Henry James wrote more horror stories yet he’s not considered a horror writer). She does seem to always be inviting the reader to make that comparison though in this novel – Merricat is basically a witch, the memories/ghosts of the past proverbially haunt a gothic manse, death, menace, and violent tension suffuse the story. Jackson is always walking this thin line between genre and everyday horror. (Speaking of Henry James, Oscar Wilde called The Turn of the Screw “a poisonous little tale” - it wasn’t, it was beyond boring! - which is a phrase more aptly suited to We Have Always Lived in the Castle.)
A special mention to the cover artist of this edition, Thomas Ott, a cartoonist whose own horror comics are definitely worth seeking out especially if you’re a fan of The Twilight Zone. The scratchboard black and white illustration is outstanding - Penguin made a good match with Ott’s unsettling visual style and Jackson’s eerie, atmospheric story.
Shirley Jackson spent much of her career writing about disturbed women and in her last novel – her masterpiece - she created her finest character in Mary Katherine Blackwood. Merricat’s story is well worth listening to but a word of advice: if she offers you sugar with your tea, politely decline…...more
Wealthy businessman Aristide Leonides has been murdered after someone swapped out his insulin for poison! Leonides’ children are quick to blame their Wealthy businessman Aristide Leonides has been murdered after someone swapped out his insulin for poison! Leonides’ children are quick to blame their elderly dad’s young bride who looks to inherit his fortune – but did the gold-digger and her secret lover dunit or is the killer someone else in the household…?
Disappointing! Crooked House is the first Agatha Christie novel I haven’t enjoyed at all. It’s a bland, dull mystery without anything much interesting happening. Did you ever play point and click PC games like Monkey Island and Broken Sword? Crooked House is like reading a non-interactive version of those games as the narrator wanders from one boring character to another all of whom conveniently open up to him about their backstories, alibis, etc. – it feels very contrived.
The cast are unmemorable nobodies, the crime itself is mundane and practically nothing of consequence happens until the reveal at the end which makes getting through this overlong 300+ page novel a tedious chore. That said, I was interested enough to keep going and see whodunit and it’s as well-written as any of Christie’s best but generally it was a case of waiting for the pointless filler to get out of the way of the investigation’s resolution.
I’d say this was a hopelessly generic country house murder mystery except Dame Aggie is largely responsible for defining the genre to begin with so I’ll just say Crooked House is one of her least entertaining/inspired efforts. ...more
Hey my dudes. ANOTHER year has passed on Goodreads like the goddamn Flash! Is it just me or did 2017 rocket past? Ay ay ay, Trumpolina must have speciHey my dudes. ANOTHER year has passed on Goodreads like the goddamn Flash! Is it just me or did 2017 rocket past? Ay ay ay, Trumpolina must have special timeslip powers or something. But, hey, World War 3 hasn’t happened yet and might not still for a few more months and we might all be living in the Matrix anyway so what the hey, y’know? Alright, enough nonsense. Here are my favourite books I read this year, all published in 2017. Les’ go!
*
Here’s the rub: every time I’ve done my top 10 picks for best comics of the year since the goshdarn series started, I’ve plumped for Giant Days – with good reason, it really is the best comic in the world! So this year I’m adopting a similar view that film critics have taken with Citizen Kane and “Best Movies of All Time” lists – Giant Days is the undisputed greatest, that’s a given, so let’s just push that to the side and give something else a chance! So this year’s Top 10 Best Comics list doesn’t include Giant Days but it’s definitely my actual pick for the top spot. Onto the others!
10. The Unbelievable Gwenpool, Volume 2: Head of MODOK by Christopher Hastings et al. Marvel well and truly disappeared up its own bumhole this year, embracing the cancer that is far-left Social Justice Warrior identity politics and suffering declining sales due to nobody wanting to read ultra-shitty politically-correct comics! Still, their newest character turned out to also be their best comic. She might have a similar name, outfit and fourth-wall-breaking ability as Deadpool but Gwenpool is actually completely unrelated to the Merc with a Mouth. Gwen Poole is a Marvel fangirl who finds herself transported into the Marvel Universe proper and must use her knowledge of the comics to survive – as a supervillain!? Original, inventive, and great fun - Marvel, for fuck’s sake, make your New Year’s resolution be to put a stop with the bullshit virtue signalling and return to making this type of quality comic!
9. Big Mushy Happy Lump by Sarah Andersen Sarah Andersen returns with another collection of amusing strips on the modern world and, of course, her neurotic self.
8. Lady Killer 2 by Joelle Jones Joelle Jones delivers a superb sequel featuring a new adventure with her 1960s housewife who’s secretly an assassin. Great writing and art from the hugely talented Jones.
7. Dragon Ball Super, Volume 1 by Akira Toriyama and Toyotarou After a 22 year break, Dragon Ball made a welcome return to the comics world with this strong first volume of the new series, Dragon Ball Super. Goku and co. face a new galactic threat – and what better way to deal with it than through a martial arts tournament?
6. If My Dogs Were a Pair of Middle-Aged Men by Matthew Inman aka “The Oatmeal” Matthew Inman does exactly what the title says and imagines his dogs as a pair of middle-aged men! No idea where that concept came from but the result is an hilarious short book that had me laughing throughout – a must-read for fans of The Oatmeal and dog-owners!
5. The Fix, Volume 2 by Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber’s anarchic comedy of corrupt coppers, lunatic gangsters and a beagle set against the madness of modern-day LA continues to be one of Image’s outstanding titles in this excellent second volume.
4. Demon, Volume 2 by Jason Shiga Jason Shiga’s barmy and brilliant thriller/comedy Demon continues with this remarkably imaginative second volume. Jimmy’s figured out how to live forever – except the gov’mints tryna capture and study him! And they hold a trump card to lure him in: his daughter, Sweetpea! Shiga hits another homer with Demon, Volume 2 - an immensely fun and off-the-wall book.
3. Roughneck by Jeff Lemire Jeff Lemire’s had a prolific year with numerous titles to his name from the likes of Marvel and DC yet his quietly understated indie offering, Roughneck, is easily the best of the bunch, as well as his finest work in years. Set in rural Canada, the cast of traumatised, poverty-stricken characters battle addiction and the ghosts of the past in a riveting, moving family drama. If you like Lemire’s early work, particularly the Essex County Trilogy, you’ll love Roughneck.
2. The Walking Dead, Volume 28: A Certain Doom by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard The quality of the series is like a roller coaster, going from good to bad, from one to the other over and over, but when The Walking Dead’s good? There’s nothing else like it. And Volume 28: A Certain Doom is outstanding. Rick and his people face a mammoth herd of zombies in their biggest challenge to date – and not everyone is getting out alive. Main characters fall, others develop – a non-stop exciting, emotional read. The best Walking Dead book in years!
1. Batman, Volume 1: I Am Gotham/Volume 2: I Am Suicide/Volume 3: I Am Bane by Tom King, David Finch, et al. Ok, so maybe the top spot should belong only to five star books and, seeing how I rated each of Tom King’s I Am… Batman trilogy four stars, maybe they shouldn’t take first place (or actual second, given Giant Days). HOWEVER. I’m a huge Batman fan and that basically trumps any notion of logical rating! Also, reading not one, not two, but three good Batman books in a row from the same writer in the same year is pretty damned impressive – not to mention nearly impossible to do!
I was very pleasantly surprised, after being underwhelmed by his other books (Omega Men, Sheriff of Babylon, Vision), to find that King’s Batman was actually really entertaining and great fun to read, particularly in the wake of a number of disappointingly sub-par volumes from his predecessor Scott Snyder. If you love Batman, you’ll get a lot from these books and I know I’ll be coming back to re-read them again in the future – cowls off to ye, Tom King!
*
Honourable mentions in alphabetical order:
Bloodshot Reborn, Volume 4: Bloodshot Island by Jeff Lemire et al. Fante Bukowski 2 by Noah Van Sciver Haddon Hall: When David Invented Bowie by Nejib Herman By Trade by Chris W. Kim James Bond, Volume 2: Eidolon by Warren Ellis and Jason Masters James Bond: Hammerhead by Andy Diggle and Luca Casalanguida John Flood by Justin Jordan and Jorge Coelho Savage, Volume 1 by B. Clay Moore and Clayton Henry Sex Criminals, Volume 4: Fourgy! by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky Shirtless Bear-Fighter! by Jody LeHeup, Sebastian Girner and Nil Vendrell Unfollow, Volume 2: God Is Watching by Rob Williams et al. Weird Detective by Fred Van Lente and Guiu Villanova
*
Onto the non-pitcher books. My picks for these are very sparse as I don’t get through as many as I’d like and the ones I do tend to be, unfortunately, kinda shit - kinda REALLY shit (coughArtemisTheLyingGameTheLateShowcough)! Anyway: here are the diamonds published this year that stood out for me in the rough.
My favourite novel of the year: Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane
My favourite short story collection of the year: The Relive Box and Other Stories by TC Boyle
My favourite non-fiction of the year: X by Chuck Klosterman
I also really enjoyed these books though they were published at various times before this year:
Fiction The Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Of Love and Hunger by Julian Maclaren-Ross A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the First: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Non-Fiction Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger How to Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy
And my favourite book of the year out of ALL of them? Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger (But also Tom King’s Batman is a damn close second!)
*
Phew! Why do we do it, eh gang? Because we loves books and can’t get enough of them. And, no matter how many bad ones I read, the good ones never fail to remind me why I love reading so much - there’s no other experience like reading a good book, there really isn’t. And I hope you guys like reading my thoughts on my reading as much as I enjoy putting them onto Goodreads and of course reading yours. We did it for another year - let’s do it again next year, shall we?
So! Here’s to the next year of reading: the good, the bad and the mediocre, I can’t wait - BRING IT ON, 2018!
The wedding’s right around the corner but there’s more adventures to be had first! Batman, Volume 6: Bride or BurWhen a Baaaaat loves a (Cat)woman… !
The wedding’s right around the corner but there’s more adventures to be had first! Batman, Volume 6: Bride or Burglar? collects four stories of differing length. And, as usual, Tom King’s done it again, producing yet another corking Batman book!
The opening issue highlights how insane Bruce Wayne/Batman is, just in concept, when Bruce encounters a wealthy young boy, accompanied by his own butler, whose parents were also viciously murdered. But is this more than coincidence… ? It’s not the first time someone’s shone a light on the strangeness of Batman’s origins and Bruce’s choices after his parents’ deaths but it’s a fine issue nonetheless.
King continues the Superfriends story from the last book with Parts 3 and 4, this time featuring Wonder Woman. The Gentle Man is a warrior battling never-ending waves of monsters, forever, to keep our world safe. Wonder Woman and Batman do him a solid by giving him a day’s respite to visit his wife – except time doesn’t work the same way in the Gentle Man’s realm and Bruce’s faithfulness is about to be tested as he’s separated from Selina for 37 years…
I loved seeing Joelle Jones return to draw this two-parter. Her art is delectable here, particularly with the characters’ body language like Catwoman laughing at Bruce in actual knight armour and Bruce and Diana talking about their pets over dinner (of course Wonder Woman has a kangaroo!). The Gentle Man may be a contrived character, made purely for this story to work, but he was surprisingly more developed than he should’ve been, another testament to King’s skill as a writer. I don’t get how Bruce doesn’t age 37 years though. I understand why Diana wouldn’t – she’s a god – but Bruce is just a man. Hmm… shenanigans!
Everyone Loves Ivy is another callback from earlier in the series, this time to The War of Jokes and Riddles. A traumatised Ivy uses the Green to seize control of everyone’s will and it’s down to Batman and Catwoman to save the world. The concept felt derivative of Unity from Rick and Morty and the explanation behind Ivy’s actions meant little to me mostly as The War of Jokes and Riddles is the only book in King’s run that I haven’t been crazy about. Also, Catwoman – even on her best day – is NOT faster than The Flash, let alone 3! I guess Ivy controlling them must’ve slowed them down or something, right?
But it was fun to see the Gotham City Sirens reunite, I love how King continues to feature Bat Burger in his stories (KGBLT and Killer Croque Monsieur - I wants them!) and I’m so enjoying seeing Batman and Catwoman working together – they’re quite the formidable team! Mikel Janin’s art is spectacular – he’s seriously becoming one of the best comics artists working today – and I loved June Chung’s gorgeous colours, blending Ivy into her plants so they become one.
The book closes with Selina going shopping for her wedding dress – Catwoman-style (ie. breaking and entering)! There’s no real story but both Joelle Jones and Mikel Janin take turns drawing the comic so it looks amazing; Jones designs a helluva dress for Selina’s big day.
I liked some stories less than others and had some nitpicks but I wasn’t bored by any of them either and I LOVED the art throughout. Batman, Volume 6: Bride or Burglar? is another reliably entertaining entry in Tom King’s run. ...more
Calvin takes in his old high school friend Teddy who’s suffered a breakdown after his girlfriend Sabrina went missing and is feared dead. And so beginCalvin takes in his old high school friend Teddy who’s suffered a breakdown after his girlfriend Sabrina went missing and is feared dead. And so begins a strange odyssey through American life in 2018…
I really enjoyed Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina. It’s a clever, artful story that’s also entertaining, well-told and very much a product of our time. Through the fictional case of Sabrina’s disappearance, Drnaso highlights the bizarre conspiracy subculture that’s emerged online in recent years where large numbers of people choose to believe outlandish theories over reality (the Earth’s FLAT! etc.).
Except I wish he’d dug a little deeper in trying to understand this odd behaviour. He never mentions the repugnant Alex Jones/InfoWars but he’s represented by the ranting conspiracy theorist nut on the radio, and anyway I think Jones is more a product rather than the cause. I can speculate that it’s because people have become disenfranchised and disconnected from traditional institutions and society after so many lies so they now don’t believe anything they’re told, but there’s really nothing like that in the book which is why it feels a bit shallow and underdeveloped in that regard.
Drnaso’s more substantial in other areas like when he hints at our death-centric culture where some people feel they can only achieve significance in death over anything within their power in life. The sequence on the 9/11 memorial and the short video of the man despairing over his disappointment with life are both examples of this idea. And, though he never makes the banal point about how social media has only made some of us more isolated, I’m with him that the antidote to some of the nightmares unleashed by the internet is to spend time with real people doing real things in the real world.
The story starts slowly with a mundane conversation between Sabrina and her sister Sandra before morphing into something much more interesting and darker. Drnaso is a very subtle storyteller who doesn’t use omniscient narration or even caption boxes to let you know when the story jumps in time, though he’s very skilful and it’s never hard to follow what’s happening.
That subtlety works especially well regarding the videos that come out following Sabrina’s disappearance. Not actually showing the footage and leaving it up to the reader’s imagination made it much more creepy and effective. I found the social media profile photos more disturbing than actually seeing the videos themselves!
And, because we never know what’s going on in Teddy’s head, his stay with Calvin became increasingly tense. Teddy’s so unstable - what’s he going to do, how will he react to developments in the case? I also really liked how some violent conspiracy nut started sending Calvin letters claiming Calvin was some government stooge, a “crisis actor” - is Calvin safe? And that weird friend of his from work at the Air Force - is that the guy sending him the letters? That scene in the server room towards the end - chills! Drnaso genuinely kept me guessing and on the edge of my seat for the whole second half of the book.
Calvin himself is a bit of a dull main character and the ending fell flat but otherwise Sabrina is a solid, quality book. And I’m pleasantly surprised to find that a good book actually got nominated for the crusty old Booker Prize! I’m happy for Drawn & Quarterly and Nick Drnaso as they’ll make a shedload of money from the attention and hopefully all of the new comics readers - I’m sure this will be the first comic or “graphic novel” many people will read - will go on to read more from this excellent medium. Sabrina is a very good book with or without the award nomination which is just the cherry on top - come on Nick, I’m rooting for you buddy! ...more
Eight issues of nonsense and I still couldn’t tell you what The Batman Who Laughs was about! Far as I can tell, it’s just an excuse to trot out the deEight issues of nonsense and I still couldn’t tell you what The Batman Who Laughs was about! Far as I can tell, it’s just an excuse to trot out the derivative Judge Death-ish Batman Who Laughs villain from Dark Nights: Metal for another barney, just ‘cos. He’s brought with him the Grim Knight (aka Punisher Batman) from the Dark Multiverse and together they want to, I guess, take over Gotham or something mindlessly generic.
Scott Snyder reunites with his Black Mirror artist Jock for a much less impressive new Batman book. Also from Black Mirror is James Gordon, Jim’s psycho son, who’s brought back for no real reason besides fan service.
The awful James Tynion IV writes the Grim Knight’s origin and it’s astoopid but that’s what you get when you come up with characters that sound cool but are no more than half-baked thoughts “Durr, what if… Batman was... The Punisher?!”
I suppose this book happened because The Batman Who Laughs is a popular new character - I don’t know? I see him in more than a few books so he probably is. I don’t get it though. Like the Grim Knight, he’s a wholly superficial and uninteresting bad guy. And how does he see through that spiked metal band over his eyes anyway??
Utterly boring, instantly forgettable, badly conceived story, but then what did I expect for a sequel(ish) to the terrible Dark Nights: Metal? The Batman Who Laughs is a tedious joke of a comic. ...more
A serial killer murders women by internally decapitating them from behind earning him the name The Shrike after the bird who has a similar MO. When hiA serial killer murders women by internally decapitating them from behind earning him the name The Shrike after the bird who has a similar MO. When his latest vic turns out to be a recent one-night stand of reporter Jack McEvoy’s, making him a person of interest, Jack becomes involved in the murder investigation. Can Jack uncover who The Shrike is, find out why he’s doing what he’s doing and stop him before he kills again?
Michael Connelly’s previous Jack McEvoy novel The Scarecrow is still one of my favourite of his books but I wouldn’t say Fair Warning is as good as that one - though it’s better than The Poet, the first McEvoy book.
What really made The Scarecrow stand out was the killer whose identity was compelling and terrifying - I can still remember the character and I read that book nearly a decade ago! In comparison, The Shrike is a paper-thin villain that we never really get to know in the least. (view spoiler)[Even at the end Connelly fails to deliver anything noteworthy about the character, giving the reader a cop-out nothing in place of something. He’s an incel! As if that explains everything. (hide spoiler)] It’s very unsatisfying. (view spoiler)[It doesn’t even make sense because he beds the victims before he kills them so he’s not involuntarily celibate - he has had sex and could have regular sex and a normal relationship if he wanted. So he’s voluntarily single? He just hates women - you could argue that also describes incels but their namesake simply doesn’t apply to The Shrike. See, there’s some interesting psychological territory Connelly could have explored if he’d tried a bit more. Also, that detail at the end - a damaged spine from probable childhood abuse - is just lazy shorthand. (hide spoiler)]
Not that any of the characters are that memorable, especially the main characters Jack McEvoy and Rachel Walling, who’re basically Connelly’s stock capable professionals that appear in all of his books. About the only difference is that Jack will occasionally lose his cool and go off on one, like he does in the geneticist’s lab, which are rare exciting character moments.
But it’s also not a dull narrative either. Jack investigates at a breezy clip and the story develops well: we find out more about The Shrike’s victims, who he might be working with, other shady characters involved, Jack is always getting harassed either by the police or others, then the bodies start piling up.
Connelly writes it all in his usual competent, if sometimes long-winded, style. He’s skilful at putting across complex procedures and esoteric jargon in a way that doesn’t distract too much from the more compelling, lurid aspects of the story that most readers want to get to, as well as highlighting valid points like the lack of oversight and protection of personal data in the burgeoning field of consumer genetics.
The flipside of that is that the prose sometimes reads like Connelly’s talking down to a complete idiot, painstakingly explaining obvious acronyms after they appear in conversation (“44 YOA” = 44 years of age, AOD as Atlanto-Occipital Dislocation, the Shrike’s method of killing, mere paragraphs are having pasted a Wikipedia article on the cause of death!), having the main character frequently reminding you why they’re doing what they’re doing, all of which becomes tedious. Does his audience really have that short attention spans and struggle to follow a plot only slightly more complex than canned soup instructions?
The ending is also plain confusing and contrived. (view spoiler)[The Shrike got away with it - why would he risk it all just to come back and kill McEvoy? His targets were women, not some reporter he barely knew and who couldn’t touch him. It didn’t make any sense and seemed only to be there so there could be a happy ending to the story - Jack beat the bad guy again, even if the bad guy didn’t need to return from Florida to California just to get killed. Stupid! (hide spoiler)]
Fair Warning is a fairly standard crime thriller by Michael Connelly’s slick standards that’s none too onerous to read either on a technical or story level. It has its flaws and it’s largely forgettable but it’s not bad either being by turns nearly gripping and thuddingly blah and settling for inoffensively agreeable most of the time. Still, if you haven’t read it, I recommend checking out The Scarecrow over this one instead. ...more
All worlds have collided and been obliterated except for Earth-616 (the “main” Marvel universe) and Earth-1610 (the UltimateThe Multiverse is doomed.
All worlds have collided and been obliterated except for Earth-616 (the “main” Marvel universe) and Earth-1610 (the Ultimates universe) – until now. In the wake of the end of the world, a new planet appears: Battleworld. It’s ruler? Doom. Welcome to Secret Wars.
Aaaand PAUSE!
I mention quite a few spoilers in this review because they’re a large part of why this event didn’t work for me, so if you want to save yourself for Secret Wars and go into this one completely green, stop reading here. And I’ll see you later!
Alright - UN-PAUSE!
So what a load of bollocks that was! Marvel’s massive 2015 event bled over into 2016 because writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Esad Ribic don’t quite get deadlines! The event saw its Warzones/Battleworld tie-ins, as well as the relaunch of the new Marvel universe, complete months before it ended – and the story itself was terrible anyway!
But Secret Wars is (supposedly) more than just another Marvel event – it’s the culmination of a years-long storyline that Jonathan Hickman has apparently been planning since his days on Fantastic Four through his various Marvel titles but particularly with his Avengers and New Avengers books. Does that mean you have to have read all of them before diving into Secret Wars? Not really.
Valeria Richards (Reed and Sue’s daughter) summarises the main plot points of Hickman’s run succinctly in the #0 issue. The #1 issue though feels like it should’ve been the last chapter in the Time Runs Out storyline rather than the opener of this book. But once you’re past those issues and land on Battleworld from issue #2, it’s a level playing ground for everyone (and I wouldn’t recommend reading Hickman’s extremely tedious Avengers books anyway).
Secret Wars’ two biggest flaws are 1) the lack of a story and 2) the mishandled telling of what material there actually is.
The “important” moment of the series happens in the first issue, which is the premise: the Marvel universe is blowed up for the first time in its history (DC are the guys who routinely do that to their universes, not Marvel). The rest of the book is spent pretending that Battleworld is a worthwhile thing when we know its existence is temporary - take a look at the current Marvel line-up. No sign of Battleworld’s impact there!
Once we’re on Battleworld, Hickman explores the patchwork planet Doom’s put together, which turns out to be part-banal wish fulfilment and, bizarrely, part-Marvelized Game of Thrones ripoff! The realms of Battleworld are fiefdoms whose lords bow to Doom, there’s a wall to keep out the zombies/monsters guarded by the Thors (yes, plural – they’re Battleworld’s police force!) in the role of the Night’s Watch, and Sheriff Strange is a dead ringer for Petyr Baelish! It’s fun for a bit to see familiar Marvel characters in odd new roles, kinda like Marvel 1602. Then you wonder when the story will start. And it never comes.
A couple of liferafts carrying survivors from the now-exploded worlds makes it to Battleworld where they inevitably wind up fighting the various denizens. Like Itchy and Scratchy, the characters fight, and bite, and fight and bite and fight, bite bite bite, fight fight fight until the rushed end. It’s so boring!
I actually enjoyed the series up to the end of the fourth issue - unfortunately, that’s when Hickman loses control and things fall apart fast. Up to then there’d been a steady build and things made a skewed sort of sense; but then something happens, two main characters are killed, and suddenly it’s like a record skipping.
The survivors are scattered across Battleworld. Then it’s three weeks later. New characters have been introduced, others have been captured without us seeing how or why. The two Reeds - the good one from 616 and the evil one from 1610 (who douchily calls himself the “Maker”) - are suddenly working together to accomplish… something that we’re never told, nor do we see why they’re a team now. The Spider-Men (Peter Parker and Miles Morales) find the source of Doom’s power - and do nothing! Armies from across Battleworld suddenly assemble after deciding to fight against Doom for no reason. When the hell did Ben Grimm become 80 feet tall!?! What did Groot do after his BIG appearance and what was the significance? Go-nowhere plotlines and completely random, unexplained choices litter the book.
Then, quicker than you can say Deus Ex Machina, it’s all put back the way it was before – the Universe never exploded, it’s fine! What a cop out. The major exception is that the Ultimates Universe is no more (the line hasn’t been selling for some time now) with Miles Morales/Ultimate Spider-Man as the only survivor (but I’m sure his family, friends, etc. are all magically ok).
That and a couple of other minor things is it for the aftermath of Secret Wars. Doom’s deformed face is miraculously fixed and the Fantastic Four are disbanded with Reed and Sue Richards retired, though the Thing and Human Torch are still hanging around. But we knew the FF were being phased out before this event anyway as their title wasn’t selling and Disney don’t own those characters’ film rights. Basically nothing that happened on Battleworld mattered!
Hickman has all these great ideas but handles them so incompetently. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, he’s a fine ideas man who can write a helluva outline but he’s a horrible storyteller! At crucial points he resorts to Valeria Richards or Owen Reece to artlessly spout exposition which makes for an especially clunky read. The third act is all over the place and Hickman ends up falling back on the standard superhero trope of a big, consequence-free action set piece - yawn.
It wasn’t all bad. The Alex Ross covers are amazing (if completely misleading) and Esad Ribic’s art is good at times. I enjoyed the first four issues just fine and the first issue was exciting if chaotic. Ribic drew the epic scale of what was happening well and I loved what he did with Reed and Doom in that last issue. But as the series progressed the panels got sketchier and the lines more faint. If you got any of the issues on Comixology, zoom in on the single panels and look at how rushed the art looks, both pencils/inks and colours. And still the series was months late completing!
The, ahem, “story” doesn’t have a main character but both Miles Morales and Black Panther come close to being that and were brilliant though woefully underused. I liked what Hickman did with Doom too by adding in shades of grey to his character. Doom saved millions of lives in the fallout, far more than the heroes managed (double digits only), and, when it came to the crunch, Doom was the only one willing to step up to the plate and make the tough choice - the heroes wimped out. True, he became a dictator and killed more than a few characters, but I hated how Hickman gives up on this nuanced portrayal of Doom by the end, resorting to the archetypical hero v. villain fight to close out the nonsense. Victor was given short shrift when he really deserved better for what he did in the face of oblivion.
Hickman fanboys will likely gush about how amazing all of this was and enjoy deliriously pointing out all the Easter eggs sprinkled throughout (Architects of Forever cameo! etc.) but Secret Wars was an underwhelming and poorly put-together finale both to Hickman’s time at Marvel and the end of the 616 and 1610 universes (even if the 616 is basically reinstated at the end). Maybe you need to read several key tie-ins to fill in the blanks in the main story but for fuck’s sake ten issues - a couple of which were double-sized - should’ve been long enough to tell one story and Hickman couldn’t even do that well!
Secret Wars: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!...more
Batman needs Psycho Pirate to undo the mental damage he inflicted on Gotham Girl – except he’s holed up on the island prison of Santa Prisca, Bane’s dBatman needs Psycho Pirate to undo the mental damage he inflicted on Gotham Girl – except he’s holed up on the island prison of Santa Prisca, Bane’s domain! For his daring kidnap mission, Batman must assemble his own Suicide Squad, an unlikely assortment of characters including the Ventriloquist, Bronze Tiger, Jewelee and Punchee, and Catwoman. Will he succeed or will Bane once more break the Bat?
Rebirth has been a stream of disappointments except for Tom King’s Batman so I’m pleased to say that the second volume continues the title’s high quality, going from strength to strength.
I’m impressed with how King is taking really obscure DC characters and bringing them to the forefront of their flagship title. The continuing focus on Psycho Pirate? That dude’s never had this much attention or respect before! But also deep cuts like Silver Age characters Jewelee and Punchee (sorta like Joker and Harley decades before they were a thing) and Bronze Tiger – whaaat?? But they fit perfectly with Batman’s heist plan. I also like how Bane’s different in this one: no mask, no tights, no Venom, and he’s still super-menacing and deadly.
Like his first Batman book, King knows how to grab the reader’s attention right from the start and deliver on their expectations for what a Batman book should be with lots of big-screen action from the aerial dogfighting going into Santa Prisca to Batman taking on scores of Bane’s armed guards. The heist itself was a pleasant surprise in that King seemed to be going down a fairly standard route and then turned it around unexpectedly at the end – I love when my guesses turn out to be wrong! Each team member has a part to play and everything clicks superbly. Batman’s plans should be this complex and unpredictable – full marks to Tom King for his excellent plotting!
I have some minor critiques. Jewelee and Punchee’s inane chatterbox dialogue was quite annoying – I can see why they never remained a permanent fixture! The inner reflective, at times ponderous, nature of the narration between Batman and Catwoman felt a bit sludgy, a bit slow, particularly in contrast to the often fast-paced action. And the script is a little repetitive at times, one character echoing another in the same conversation, which feels mindless rather than suave. They’re definitely minor criticisms though and all the important things like characters and story hit the spot.
I didn’t expect King to focus so much on Batman and Catwoman’s complicated relationship either (and I was a little wary too, not being a huge fan of romance in Batman which is almost always corny as fuuuck) but it turned out to be one of the best parts of the book. I liked how King played on the dark side of Catwoman - she’s on Death Row for allegedly killing 237 people! – which seemed possible because she’s always walked the line between good and evil and might go full-villain under the right circumstances. Like the heist, King keeps the reader guessing with what really happened.
While most readers can guess the answer to whether or not Catwoman’s going to Blackgate forever, King still manages to make the story seem strangely poignant, almost convincing you that this is the final chapter in Batman and Catwoman’s story, selling the tragic lovers angle completely. Even the stuff about the sky and diamonds shining sounds silly and sentimental on paper but really works in the moment. This is one of the few times I can remember where romance in a Batman comic felt believable.
This book also has the best art I’ve seen yet from both Mikel Janin and Mitch Gerads. Janin’s art on the Bane story was very dramatic, gothic even, possibly because it reminded me a lot of Jae Lee’s spooky art, while Gerads’ twilit pages and focus on Bruce and Selina’s faces during their “last” chase across the rooftops was beautiful.
Tom King’s Batman remains THE Rebirth title to be reading and Volume 2: I Am Suicide is a great continuation of his increasingly epic storyline. It easily captured and held my attention for the entire book and I found it to be a really entertaining read – and I say that as a picky reader in general but especially when it comes to Batman! Highly recommended to any and all Batman fans. I Am Satisfied – more! ...more
A ritual killer’s doin’ his thang in the small town of Gideon Falls. A Catholic priest is dispatched to replace the previous Father who recently died A ritual killer’s doin’ his thang in the small town of Gideon Falls. A Catholic priest is dispatched to replace the previous Father who recently died in strange circumstances. A mental patient with a face mask wanders the city collecting “special” pieces of garbage. Both priest and nutbar have visions of a black barn. *Yawns* Oh, what does it all mean?
The creative team behind Old Man Logan, Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino, reunite for their first Image series, Gideon Falls. And it’s not very good!
I feel like Lemire watched two of the crappiest, most overrated, yet absurdly popular, TV shows of recent years, Mr Robot and Stranger Things, and decided to do something derivative of them. The mental patient storyline seemed similar to the main character of Mr Robot’s while the small town sheriff/supernatural goings-on was very much in the Stranger Things vein. Even without those shows’ flavourings, neither storyline is interesting. I also didn’t care about any of the characters who weren’t at all likeable or compelling.
The problem is that Lemire’s writing is too obtuse and vague to latch onto. What exactly is going on – why am I meant to care? Something about a religious war between good and evil – like Robert Kirkman’s Outcast but not as good (and even that series isn’t a hill of beans) – while The Black Barn is like The Dark Tower. I found it impossible to be invested in anything that was happening.
Lemire looks to do be doing something like what he did a few years ago in his Vertigo book Trillium with the parallel worlds/storylines – the priest is in one world/timeline, the mental patient is in another. I think that’s what the visual inversions mean – and that last panel. It’s just another unoriginal aspect bolted onto this patchwork of other pop culture elements.
Andrea Sorrentino’s art is surprisingly underwhelming given his usual quality work, though to be fair he’s not given anything very exciting to draw – lots of mundane everyday stuff for the most part. The visual spectacles are reserved for the batshit final chapter though when Sorrentino’s allowed to cut loose, drawing some remarkable, abstract stuff as the priest and some others venture into Lemire’s cut-price Upside Down.
Gideon Falls, Volume 1: The Black Barn is barnstormingly unoriginal and uninspired. Maybe Lemire’s going somewhere more engaging in the next book/s but I didn’t see enough in this first one to want to keep going and find out. ...more
Kristen Radtke takes a broad look at the subject of loneliness and also specifically how it relates to America in Seek You, in an effort to understandKristen Radtke takes a broad look at the subject of loneliness and also specifically how it relates to America in Seek You, in an effort to understand why there’s an epidemic of loneliness today, how we got here, and what can be done about it. Or are humans just naturally lonely creatures…?
It’s an interesting subject to make a comic about - in theory anyway, because in practice, or at least in Radtke’s hands, it’s not very compelling to read about.
There’s a lot of unengaging repetition here. Her dad was into ham radio when he was a kid, she was into chat rooms when she was a kid, and there are pages and pages of talking heads telling you their stories of loneliness, all of which just tell you that these people were lonely. It doesn’t really add anything except emphasise the same point over and over.
Some sections are equally dull like the invention of canned laughter and how it came to be used in sitcoms. Radtke’s point? Canned laughter can make you less lonely. How banal. Ditto the pages telling you that loneliness is bad for your health. Unless you’ve read absolutely nothing on the subject, this information isn’t going to knock your socks off (and is kind of obvious even if you didn’t know it before).
And then she makes a lot of presumptions. Like how the myth of the American cowboy and modern TV characters, all of whom promote self-sufficient “real men” who get on with things without needing anyone else, as examples of why men are so isolated in America today. Uh… maybe? Or perhaps some men simply are that way rather than because they want to be Don Draper et al.
She makes more tenuous points by then going on to say that loneliness can cause us to lose sense of what’s real and that’s why we have today’s climate of distrust and fear. It might be a contributing factor but I think the actual answer is more complex than this.
Other things she presents leave the reader confused as to what we’re meant to take away from it. Mass shooters tend to be paranoid, as a result of loneliness, she says - except for the Vegas shooter, who wasn’t. Social media is making us more alone - except for the people who feel it makes their lives more real. Not that I expected her to “solve” the issue of prevalent loneliness in society, but her suggestion of doing an equivalent of Casey Kasem’s long distance dedications would seem to hinge on social media’s involvement as I don’t know anyone who listens to radio anymore. Unless humans are generally lonely creatures and nothing can change this.
So is loneliness the reason for mass shootings or not? Does social media make us more lonely or not? Should we be using social media to alleviate loneliness or abandon it? Is there no cure for something possibly rooted within our DNA? Radtke’s presentation of these things left me unsure as to what point exactly she was trying to make (if any).
The section on Harry Harlow, a scientist studying love and isolation starting in the 1950s, was fascinating in a morbid way. The rhesus monkey experiments were both monstrous and enlightening, and Harlow himself was an intriguing, if loathsome, figure.
For the most part though, I was generally unimpressed and often bored with Kristen Radtke’s Seek You. I felt like, when she wasn’t relating bland autobiographical anecdotes or dreary pieces of history, she was either just throwing out facts on the subject without connection or else contradicting them, or drawing unconvincing conclusions. The effect is very muddled and this book made me none the wiser on the subject of loneliness - a superficial and underwhelming book. ...more
The second book by Quentin Tarantino is Cinema Speculation, a collection of nonfiction essays on 13 notable movies from between 1968 and 1981 mixed inThe second book by Quentin Tarantino is Cinema Speculation, a collection of nonfiction essays on 13 notable movies from between 1968 and 1981 mixed in with autobiography about his experience with these films. Let’s run through the checklist - how many of these have you seen?
Bullitt (1968), Dirty Harry (1971), Deliverance (1972), The Getaway (1973), The Outfit (1973), Sisters (1973), Daisy Miller (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Rolling Thunder (1977), Paradise Alley (1978), Escape From Alcatraz (1979), Hardcore (1979) and The Funhouse (1981).
For me it’s a paltry 3: Bullitt, Deliverance and Taxi Driver - to be fair the only other two I’ve even heard of are the Clint Eastwood movies Dirty Harry and Escape From Alcatraz! I’m just not a huge fan of movies from this era.
As a lifelong Tarantino fan, it was always going to be a pleasure to read about his enthusiasms and criticisms of these movies, whether or not I’ve heard of or seen them, and the additional memoir stuff is gravy. Some of the movie essays though are disappointingly dull - not quite having the same spicy behind-the-scenes stories, colourful characters, or interesting trivia as others, as are some of the nonspecific movie essays, and could’ve been excised for a snappier read.
Bullitt is compelling, unlike the movie itself, and Tarantino tries his best to finagle an explanation for why the movie is good in its badness - it’s a clever apologia but unconvincing, to me anyway. The best essays - Dirty Harry, Deliverance, The Getaway, and Taxi Driver - made me want to watch the movies, even if I’d seen them before. The Paradise Alley essay turned out to be a secret Rocky mash note that made me want to re-watch Rocky and Rocky II rather than Paradise Alley!
The lesser essays read like a list of meaningless names to little or no effect. Like The Outfit essay which devolves into Tarantino reeling off names of ‘70s actors who I didn’t know that he thought could play characters in the movie. This kind of stuff is fine if you’re someone reading this book looking to actively learn about actors from this time period, but that’s not me. I’m reading this to hear what Tarantino has to say about these movies and nothing more - if I learn something, whoopty doo, but it’s primarily entertainment to me, and reading Tarantino display his esoteric knowledge of little-known actors from this time wasn’t entertaining.
The Rolling Thunder essay was when the book started to become a bit of a chore to get through (it didn’t seem like it warranted the page count for the kind of story it was) while I remember little to nothing about his final movie choice, The Funhouse - except for when he says at the start that Tobe Hooper’s previous, and vastly more famous, movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is what he considers a perfect move. And says nothing further on that matter. So frustrating - write about that movie instead of The Funhouse!!
Tarantino’s really into Brian De Palma and I’ve never seen what other people see in this director - aside from Scarface and The Untouchables, he’s really bad (and I’ve not seen either of those movies in years). After his gushing over Sisters, I saw a couple of De Palma movies he’d mentioned: Dressed to Kill (1980) and Blow Out (1981). Don’t bother with either. Dressed to Kill has its moments but it’s really dumb and over-the-top - that’s what I thought until I saw just how dumb and over-the-top De Palma gets with Blow Out! Awful movies.
He carries on with his De Palma praise in his titular essay Cinema Speculation: What If Brian De Palma Directed Taxi Driver Instead of Martin Scorsese? which didn’t tickle me so much. I get that it would be different in certain ways but I’m just not such a cinephile that this kind of conjecture does anything for me.
The Daisy Miller essay is the shortest and features the first of the Tarantino flourishes that I expect in his movies, because it’s really about the little known actor Barry Brown, who appears in the movie, and who killed himself shortly after. Tarantino not only appreciated Brown’s acting but also his writing - Brown turned out to be a film journalist in his youth, writing a fine piece on Bela Lugosi’s drug addiction and sad final days that appeared in Castle of Frankenstein magazine issue #10 and is reprinted in full here.
This is maybe what’s most laudable about Tarantino in this book: he champions great stuff, whether it’s high profile and well-known (Taxi Driver, Brian De Palma) as much as he does the lesser-known to completely forgotten. Who else would resurrect the memory of actor Barry Brown and underline his writing ability? Or, out of all the famous film critics of the 20th century - Pauline Kael, Siskel and Ebert, Richard Corliss - who would single out Kevin Thomas of the LA Times, as he does in his appreciation essay Second-String Samurai?
That’s a quality that makes for a great critic/reviewer - they’re discerning in their tastes but not in their choices. They’ll experience a wide range of both “high/low brow” content and have no problems in critiquing the former and recommending the latter if they find them so, regardless of whether or not it’s the prevailing view of the day.
Hence his essay New Hollywood in the Seventies: The Post-Sixties Anti-Establishment Auteurs vs The Movie Brats, that highlights the evolution in cinematic tastes (for the better, to make for more vital cinema) in how older directors adapted “literature” (eg. Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon) while the younger directors picked the bestsellers of the day (eg. Spielberg’s Jaws). And it’s partly why Tarantino is critical of Paul Schrader’s Hardcore, for that movie’s disdain towards adult entertainers, who he sticks up for in his essay.
(Complete tangent: Kubrick also directed The Shining, which was a bestseller at the time as well, which kinda upends Tarantino’s thesis. I wonder why Tarantino never comments on Stanley Kubrick in this book - there’s only a passing remark on Kubrick in The Funhouse essay but no opinion offered. Maybe because he’s an outlier who was “Old Hollywood” but transcended that label to become more popular over time, during “New Hollywood” and beyond? Maybe Tarantino is aware of how well-respected Kubrick is and doesn’t want to throw shade on him - out of respect for what he did for cinema, more than anything? It’s a strange omission that, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre comment, I wish he’d addressed in greater detail.)
Tarantino combines this adoration of the less-respected side of cinematic art in his final literary flourish of the book. There are footnotes throughout but The Funhouse has a footnote that requires an entire chapter(!), and is also the chapter that closes the book. It’s called Floyd, about a drifter who babysat Tarantino when he was a kid and who took him to see great grindhouse movies in black theatres - and was also an aspiring screenwriter whose magnum opus (never produced and forever lost) was about a black cowboy hero.
Years later, Tarantino would win the Oscar for the Django Unchained screenplay, which was about a black cowboy hero, and mentions in his essay that it was Floyd’s screenplay that first inspired him to start writing screenplays and get it into his head to write one about such a character. He regrets not thanking Floyd in his Oscar acceptance speech but acknowledges him here, keeping his memory alive (he died long ago), in this book.
As entertaining as some of the movie review chapters are, I liked the autobio essays the best. Floyd is a great closer, bookending perfectly with the opening chapter, Little Q Watching Big Movies, which really takes you into the cinema experience of the late ‘60s and ‘70s - its communal conviviality and its own brand of entertainment, like when audiences hated a movie and heckled it, much to young Quentin’s amusement.
It’s a shame he doesn’t write about modern movies but I understand why he doesn’t - he’s still a working director and knows many people within the industry and doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, or burn bridges for his final movie or other projects, etc. - and why he picked movies from 50 years ago where most of the people who worked on them are dead and can’t be upset with his opinions.
Tarantino also recently started a film podcast where he reviews old movies with his friend Roger Avary (the co-writer of Pulp Fiction, among other things) called The Video Archives Podcast, so if you liked what you read here and want a weekly dose, then check that out.
Cinema Speculation is an uneven collection of film essays, some of which are fun, some that are blase, and a few that are flat out boring. But, I found it worthwhile overall and also got some film recs that I’ll make an effort to see (Dirty Harry, The Getaway). Even if I read a lot of film criticism (and I don’t), I feel like I’d still appreciate this book because Tarantino has such a unique approach to film, in all its facets, and his genuine passion for and erudition of the medium comes across strongly on every page. He’s a really good writer too, as if you didn’t already know, who can write very enjoyably for the most part, educating and entertaining at the same time. If you’re a Tarantino or general movie fan, you’ll get something out of this one - if you’re neither, then prolly not.
Alfred was a billionaire - whodathunkit? And, following his demise, he left everything to Dick Grayson. Newly rich Dick decides to help his adopted ciAlfred was a billionaire - whodathunkit? And, following his demise, he left everything to Dick Grayson. Newly rich Dick decides to help his adopted city of Bludhaven, first by feeding and housing the homeless. But shenanigans are afoot in city hall as Blockbuster, the boss of Bludhaven’s underworld, is busy installing a new mayor - Melinda Zucco, the daughter of Tony Zucco, aka the man who killed Dick’s parents - and a new serial killer called Heartless is stalking the streets, murdering the homeless. And if there’s one thing Dick hates, it’s dicks! Time for Dick to get a firm handle on things and start rubbing out these problems…
(Alright, I’ll put the dick puns back in the pants - for now!)
Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo, the creative team behind Suicide Squad: Bad Blood, reunite to produce a surprisingly decent Nightwing book with Volume 1: Leaping into the Light. I haven’t read Nightwing in years - apparently he recently suffered head trauma and thought he was someone else for a spell? That sounds stoopid and I’m glad I missed it - but this isn’t a huge stumbling block and the book is easily accessible on the whole.
It’s not an amazing story. Dick doesn’t have any great nemeses like Joker or Penguin so he gets Batman’s rogues gallery castoffs like Blockbuster who’s basically DC’s Kingpin. Heartless is an unremarkable new villain too. He’s wearing half of Anarky’s mask for some reason and his MO is to remove the victim’s heart and put it in a jar - literally making them less of a heart. Hmm. Melinda Zucco seems more promising although that storyline ends up playing out in a soap opera-y way.
It was nice to see Babs Gordon and Tim Drake show up for the ride - Dick and Babs’ never-ending on/off romance is back on, sorta - and Taylor’s light, playful tone fits the series like a glove. It’s not a badly-written book, it’s just mostly very easy to put down because nothing that gripping is happening - until that final chapter, which has a great scene where Dick escapes Blockbuster and takes down an attack copter.
And, if you’ve read Taylor’s Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, you’ll know he can really bring the emotion when he wants, and he leans HARD on the feels for that closing chapter, in a way that even I was gagging from all the moving Dick moments had a lump in my throat. Other aspects though are transparently sentimental like when Dick gets a new pet puppy (kinda like Jonathan the actual wolverine in All-New Wolverine).
Bruno Redondo’s art is fantastic - it’s very slick, very appealing. Nightwing looks great, the splash pages are outstanding, and I love how Dick’s movements as he soars through Bludhaven reflect his trapeze artist beginnings, so he moves like an acrobat. I especially like how Redondo often zooms out during a scene so you know the area the characters are moving around in exactly - it shows he’s really thought about the setting.
Rick Leonardi and Neil Edwards draw the handful of pages that make up the flashback sequence, which aren’t bad but aren’t that special either, and I wasn’t that impressed with Heartless’ character design. Overall though, no real complaints about the art in this one - it’s tip-top.
I don’t think I’ve come across any truly great Nightwing books. The best ones seem to be just ok - which is where Leaping into the Light sits for me. The lack of a strong or memorable story lets it down a bit but it also has great art throughout with some sweet moments here and there. Overall, Nightwing, Volume 1: Leaping into the Light is a decent beginning/leaping on point/soft relaunch of this title and I hope it becomes even better as it goes on. ...more
Tracy Flick’s a middle-aged single mom and working as an Assistant Principal at Green Meadow High School. And then she finds out her boss, Principal JTracy Flick’s a middle-aged single mom and working as an Assistant Principal at Green Meadow High School. And then she finds out her boss, Principal Jack Weede, is suddenly retiring - at last, a shot at being in charge! Except she needs the support of the school board whose president, a Silicon Valley millionaire, is dead set on giving the school an Alumni Hall of Fame. Its first inductee? A former NFL player. And just like that, Tracy’s right back to where she was in Election: in high school, struggling for power, and a football player’s involved. But this time she’ll win - right?
We do live in the age of nostalgia so perhaps it’s not that surprising to see that Tom Perrotta has written a sequel to his late ‘90s novel, Election, even though it wasn’t a massive bestseller, or all that good. But here we are anyway, nearly 25 years later, with Election Part 2: Tracy Flick Can’t Win.
I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it either - this seems to be how I experience all of Perrotta’s novels. Election, Mrs Fletcher, and now Tracy Flick Can’t Win. They’re well-written, accessible, the characters are mildly interesting, but the stories themselves? So very forgettable. Honestly, I read Election less than 5 years ago and couldn’t recall a thing about it so I had to re-read a summary of it before picking this up.
The story of this novel really isn’t edge-of-your-seat stuff either. Tracy’s going along with this Hall of Fame idea while waiting to interview for the job, and we get to know a myriad of other characters along the way. There’s Vito Falcone, the former NFL star, now an alcoholic much-married-much-divorced high school football coach; Jack Weede, the current principal with a somewhat sordid past; Kyle Dorfman, the tech millionaire; and a pair of students: Lily Chu, who’s dating a non-binary person, and Nate Cleary, who’s smitten with a YouTuber who does ASMR.
Election was loosely about the ‘92 Clinton campaign - Tracy Flick Can’t Win doesn’t really seem to be about anything. There’s certainly a running theme: Vito, Jack, and Kyle are all cheating bastards, and, given how things play out for most of them, is the point some kind of social justice/MeToo thing against guys who used to hurt women’s feelings back in the day? I suppose it’s again a microcosm of the political world - Tracy once again having to play the game to get ahead - though the message seems to be… it’s gahbage? Eh.
The thing is that Perrotta introduces a lot of interesting elements throughout the story: CTE, depression, mortality, addiction, ageing - but he doesn’t do anything with them. He throws them in and then immediately backs away from them rather than explore them deeper. The effect is very superficial and is why this novel doesn’t feel like it has any point.
Despite not being a very long novel, it still feels heavily-padded out. The chapters are told from the characters’ perspectives and the students’ chapters, Lily and Nate, felt completely worthless. Why do we need to know about Lily’s romance with a non-binary (they/them) or Nate’s fascination with a YouTuber? Is this Perrotta’s concession to the times and is throwing them in to sound contemporary?
The ending feels really forced, even melodramatic considering the mundanity of the story up to that point. Besides being flimsy and contrived, it also very conveniently sorts out Tracy’s problem - which also takes away any agency she has as a character. We think she’s going to do something about her problem but someone else does it for her - a man, no less. Girl power… ?
All of which sounds like I hated the novel and I didn’t. Perrotta’s a fine writer, the novel is a smooth read, and you don’t need to have read Election to pick this one up. He also has a remarkable knack for character voices. Perrotta writes across genders and generations and makes each one sound convincing - that’s a helluva skill.
And it was interesting to see what happened to Tracy Flick, the girl who was gonna be the first woman president of the USA and fell short of that ambition. But it’s also not a gripping story so it’s all too easy to put down. And, while I remember the story now, I’m certain I’ll end up forgetting it wholesale in no time, like I have with the other Perrotta novels I’ve read.
Definitely not a must-read novel for anyone besides Tom Perrotta fans, Tracy Flick Can’t Win is still a decent, sometimes-entertaining read about life... or something?...more
Umbrella Academy looks like another case of Saga - a comic everyone loves that I didn’t like at all. I honestly don’t know what people see in UA that Umbrella Academy looks like another case of Saga - a comic everyone loves that I didn’t like at all. I honestly don’t know what people see in UA that makes it so beloved. It’s a mix of sci-fi and superhero comics starring a group of weird kids with powers that on paper reads a bit like a Grant Morrison comic - the Eiffel Tower goes “crazy”, one of the characters turns themselves into a living instrument - all of which I should love except Gerard Way has none of the artistry of Morrison.
The plot of the book is threadbare at best - some kids born at the same time are arbitrarily given superpowers. Why, how, it’s never explained. Flash forward several years and one of them has grafted his head onto a giant ape’s body (why?) and lives on the moon with a robot servant (why?). Again, reads like a great idea but never goes beyond its description. Anyway, the others all have similarly bizarre situations - one of them travelled forwards in time for some reason then went back and somehow became a kid forever or something (why?!) - except for one girl who’s somehow included with the other kids but doesn’t have any special powers and isn’t included in their superhero outings so I’m not sure why she’s part of the UA. And why is it called Umbrella Academy anyway?
So a bad guy wants to kill the world with music for some reason and recruits the poor girl without superpowers who does know how to play the violin really well, turning her into the human violin you see on the cover (why death by music?). Because she’s been left out, etc., she becomes evil and tries to blow up the world with a death song or something and the UA have to stop her.
Events happen without any rhyme or reason, they just happen because, while the characters are completely flat. I couldn’t tell you their names or their character traits, or why they were whisked away by some alien professor, or why anything that happened in this book happened at all. It’s just one big blur of derivative nonsense.
As most people will know, Gerard Way is the frontman for the rock band My Chemical Romance (who I do like) so its easy to see where the musical themes central to the book come from and the chapter titles read like rejected song titles for MCR: Apocalypse Suite; The Day The Eiffel Tower Went Beserk; We Only See Each Other At Weddings and Funerals; Baby, I’ll Be Your Frankenstein; Brothers and Sisters, I Am An Atomic Bomb. Each could fit in nicely on their records The Black Parade or Danger Days.
The best thing about the book by far is Gabriel Ba’s art, which is, as usual, sublime. Ba does a simply gargantuan task of bringing Way’s hyper-crazy script to life, creating the bizarre cast of the Umbrella Academy in imaginative and interesting styles while imbuing the comic with shades of surrealism, gothic horror and classic sci-fi. If you enjoyed the art in this book I highly recommend checking out his and his twin brother Fabio Moon’s books Daytripper and De:Tales.
Way is a gifted songwriter and lyricist and while he definitely possesses one hell of an imagination, Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite shows that he’s a long way from becoming a good comics writer. UA is all swagger, bombast, and barely engaging with zero substance. ...more
15 year old Sydney explores her burgeoning sexuality against a typical high school and home life background. But Syd is extraordinary in one way: she 15 year old Sydney explores her burgeoning sexuality against a typical high school and home life background. But Syd is extraordinary in one way: she gots the telekinesis!
Chuck Forsman returns to what he does best: teenage angst. And, like in Celebrated Summer and The End of the Fucking World, I Am Not Okay With This is a compelling character portrait of contemporary American adolescence. Forsman convincingly explores the inner life of a gay teen girl, slowly revealing the story behind her father’s absence and her part in it, as well as her superpower.
That said, I felt that her superpower was a misstep - the narrative didn’t need a fantastical element to it; the realism of Syd’s life was more than enough for this book. All the superpower provides are the two stupidest scenes in this book, one of which was the ending. And the ending was the only part of the book I really disliked. It was needlessly nihilistic, unimaginative, hopeless, and too easy. Besides being uninspired and abrupt, what a negative message it sends to gay kids dealing with their sexuality!
It might’ve worked if it had been metaphorical telekinesis – a symbolic representation of her outsider status/alienation/frustration - except the other stupid scene removes any ambiguity.
The art style is effectively minimalist, appropriately reflecting the bleak tone of the story. Though many of the characters are drawn cartoonishly, it somehow works and adds to the surrealism. I wonder if Syd being drawn like Popeye’s Olive Oyl was a visual pun on the name of Chuck’s imprint, Oily Comics?
Unnecessary characteristics and terrible ending aside, I Am Not Okay With This is an effortlessly compelling and enjoyable read. If you like indie comics, check out anything with Chuck Forsman’s name on the cover – dude is a brilliant creator! ...more
I never know what to expect with The Walking Dead because the quality ebbs and flows - two books in a row might stink but the next will be great, and I never know what to expect with The Walking Dead because the quality ebbs and flows - two books in a row might stink but the next will be great, and so on like that. So I’m delighted to say that Volume 28: A Certain Doom is not just one of the good ones but also one of the best additions to the series yet!
The biggest challenge Rick’s group has ever faced is upon them: a thousands-strong herd of zombies sent their way by the Whisperers. Even if they survive, some are bound to fall - but who?
From the first page to the last, Robert Kirkman keeps up the tension and suspense fantastically. Right away it’s all hands on deck as Rick and co. battle against an almost impossible number of zombies and it’s really exciting to see the various splinter groups trying different tactics to deal with them.
Negan in particular has a lot of great scenes. The conversation he has with Rick after they’re penned into a house by the herd revealed a lot about his worldview and gave his character more depth. I think I like him so much because he’s still such a wildcard. Even though he seems to be a good guy now, given that he’s done such fucked up shit in the past, I keep expecting him to turn back into the psycho villain he was when we first met him. He gives a brilliant speech at the end too but I also wouldn’t have been surprised if he had turned to Rick, sucker-punched him and walked off with a new group to raise hell once again.
But definitely the most memorable part was the death of a longtime major character. Of course I won’t spoil who it was here but I will say that Kirkman had me guessing the whole time as to who it was gonna be. You think it’s this one and then, nope, they’re safe, it’s gonna be someone else, nuh-uh, and then… The storytelling is absolutely gripping and surprising.
And full credit to Kirkman for his writing here. The plotting is perfect and so is the execution. Looking back to earlier clunkers in the series like the “WE are the walking dead” line (and he’s still dropping the occasional eye-roller here - “I’m too scared to be scared”), Kirkman’s clearly grown as a writer and realised that sometimes the most powerful thing a character can say is nothing at all. He handled the death scene masterfully, letting Charlie Adlard’s visuals say what his words can’t (and Adlard also does some of his best work in this book) making for an unexpectedly emotional but beautiful farewell for this character.
There’s more in this volume than just the herd and the death but I won’t give anything away here. Suffice it to say there’s a helluva lot going on in this one and the drama never lets up at any time. I loved it.
28 volumes in and, like its own unstoppable zombie herd, The Walking Dead still shows no sign of letting up. “There is still so much to do” says Rick. I may have a love/hate relationship with this title but so long as we continue to get books of this quality every so often I’m gonna keep reading to see what these characters do next! ...more
Ah, the reliable roller-coaster of quality that is The Walking Dead! After the spectacular rush of Volume 28 comes the expected long, tedious build-upAh, the reliable roller-coaster of quality that is The Walking Dead! After the spectacular rush of Volume 28 comes the expected long, tedious build-up to the next bit of excitement with table-setting being the order of the day in Volume 29: Lines We Cross.
Seriously: barely anything happens. Characters rebuild their homes, some grouse at others, they sob, they stick a few zombies, and that’s it for a good 75-80% of the book. Here’s the wafer-thin story we do get: Rick sends out a group led by Michonne to track down Eugene’s ham radio bud, the mysterious Stephanie, who is supposedly part of a larger community like Rick and co.’s.
Nothing happens there except they meet a new character, Princess (the girl on the cover), a chatty spear-chucking Latina, conveniently introduced after the loss of a major older character in the last volume to shore up the numbers. I guess she’s kinda different but hasn’t really had a chance to do much of anything yet.
There were a couple of unintentionally funny moments as Jesus and his beau dealt with the remnants of the Whisperers and that weirdo, Beta, pops up from the dead to yell something retarded. And Rick’s now taken to sleeping in the graveyard... ?! That’s just so absurdly emo that it tickled me.
Negan and Maggie’s showdown at the end was interesting and I look forward to seeing how Michonne and co.’s mission plays out but, crikey, Volume 29: Lines We Cross was otherwise SUCH a boring and tedious read! ...more
For some reason mystery, wonder, wisdom, and entropy are manifested as titans who want to crush planets. Guess what the Justice League have to do? ThaFor some reason mystery, wonder, wisdom, and entropy are manifested as titans who want to crush planets. Guess what the Justice League have to do? That’s right, say it with me: punch dem. Yaaaawn. Yep, it’s another impossibly bad Justice League book!
If you thought Dark Nights: Metal was Scott Snyder’s lowest ebb, think again - the dude somehow found an even lower level of quality in No Justice! Snyder heads up a team of hacks who’ve come up with one of the blandest superhero stories ever, even by bland superhero stories standards.
It amounts to emptying out a toybox of every DC character ever, arbitrarily sorting them into teams and throwing them at some disposable villains of the week. And it’s so tense that somehow the characters conveniently have the time to change into team-specific coloured uniforms before going off to hit their assigned baddie!
It’s even more boring to read than you might expect from something so unimaginative and one-note. I don’t expect anyone besides the most rabid of DC fanboys enjoying this colostomy bag of a comic. It’s an obvious pun but it’s true: No Justice is no good. ...more
