BEASTS OF BURDEN: Animal Rites by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson is a TPB comics collection that reads like Lady and the Tramp taking place in Sunnydale. A group of dogs (all intelligent and talking——though not to humans) try to cope with zombie road kill, a giant demon frog, vengeful puppy ghosts and a dog who turns into a boy when the sun comes up. And behind it all, we learn, there’s something sinister … Unusual and very good.
SHAZAM ARCHIVES Volume IV has me wondering when the whimsical tone this series is best known for kicked in, since there’s no sign of it here. It does have the distinction of introducing Captain Marvel Jr. (one of comics’ first spin-off characters) but otherwise these tales of Captain Marvel are pretty unremarkable.
SUPERMAN: Kryptonite by Darwyn Cooke and Time Sale retells Superman’s first encounter with green kryptonite very well, by seizing on the idea that in his early adventures, Superman doesn’t know whether he’s really invulnerable or just hasn’t found what will hurt him yet (the scene with him panicking when buried in lava, then vomiting the lava up is really striking). And then he finds out something can … Nicely done.
LIBERTY’S EXILES: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World by Maya Jasanoff follows former Loyalists (including Britain’s Indian allies and former freed slaves) through the Revolutionary War (when many of them lost property or suffered assaults, even if they hadn’t taken up arms) and then out into the empire as they escaped the revenge of the patriot side by fleeing to Canada Sierra Leone, Britain itself, Florida (which was the focus of several schemes to reclaim North America for Britain) and India. Jasanoff shows that while loyal, the opponents of independence were often not fans of the pre-1776 status quo (many embraced some degree of self-government for the colonies) and when Britain failed to deliver on promises of land and compensation, reacted with demands the authorities found alarmingly similar to those of the American rebel side (and found even more alarming after the French Revolution showed where insubordination obviously led).Very good.
TIME TRAP is one of the few Keither Laumer books that holds up as well as I remember it. The story is a picaresque wherein a rootless drifter (one of Laumer’s favorite character types) gets caught up in a series of trapped-in-time worlds introducing him to hot futuristic women, angry cavemen, sexy frontier wives, a giant intelligent rutabaga and the supercomputer UKR (“My manifestations walk, talk, think and do everything but live.” is one of a couple of Oz jokes in the story). Very entertaining
Scarlet Traces is an interesting steampunk novel by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli in which the aftermath of War of the Worlds has Britain turning Martian technology to its own use (heat rays for furnaces, adapted tripods for cars). Gentleman adventurer Captain Autumn investigates the disappearance of a friend’s niece and discovers an unpleasant conspiracy behind all the wonders. Good, though extremely dark at the end (leading into the sequel Great Game).
Crossing Midnight: A Map of Midnight by Mike Carey, Jim Fern, Eric Nguyen and Mark Pennington has Toshi’s assignments for Lord Aratsu bring her face to face with a malevolent deathlord while Kai’s efforts to find and free his sister steer him into the seamier side of Japanese society. An excellent series——I look forward to reading Volume Three.
CONAN: Book of Thoth by Kurt Busiek, Len Wein and Kelly Jones tells how an abused street urchin, through a twist of fate (and a willingness to murder) winds up a priest in the Stygian temple of Ibis——but when he turns to Ibis’ foe Set for power, his real climb up the ladder of power begins. Thoth-Amon was never anything but a minor player in Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, but adaptations tend to play him up; canonical or not, this works very well in its own right.
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