A Movie and Some Books, but not much of either

Due to my travels and coping with Mum, less to review than usual
SHEBA, BABY (1975) is a so-so blaxploitation film with Pam Grier as a Chicago PI who goes home to Louisville where her father’s business is being ground under by a mob seeking to take over all the city’s black-owned companies. This is second-rate Grier (her crimefighting avenger in Coffy was much more impressive), but it’s interesting that as with Friday Foster, she gets more of a polyamorous sex life than female leads are usually allowed (and at the end she heads back to Chicago rather than stick to her hometown and date the male lead). “This is just a taste of what we’ve got planned for you sweet lady.”

THE BLOODLESS REVOLUTION: Radical Vegetarianism and the Discovery of India by Tristram Stuart chronicles the history of British vegetarianism from the English Civil War (when it was embraced by many of the radical movements spawned in the war) through the 20th century (Stuart does a very good job explaining Hitler’s embrace of vegetarianism). While many of the issues past vegetarians grappled with are familiar to me (is the issue the animal’s right to life, or whether it’s killed humanely?), many are not, as the English of the 1600s and 1700s try to figure out whether the Bible should be interpreted as endorsing or forbidding eating meat (even some pro-carnivores admitted that if the Bible didn’t sanction it, there’d be no way to justify it). The discovery of India played a role because the Brahmin caste proved it was medically possible to live without meat and survive, and because of claims their path represented Real Christianity and the west had it wrong. Despite some colorful personalities and information, this ultimately went into much more detail than I wanted to know (which is not Stuart’s fault, of course)
JOHN THE BALLADEER is a complete collection of Manly Wade Wellman’s short stories about Silver John, a folk singer traveling the Appalachians in the 1950s, where he finds himself pitted against witches, Satanists and monsters terrorizing the locals. Easily Wellman’s best work—in contrast to his earlier John Thunstone tales, John’s foes never go down easily. This includes the original cycle from the 1950s (which ends with “Nine Yards of Other Cloth”) and several stories written years later. Highly recommended.
THE BLACK OPERA by Mary Gentle has a great concept (in an alt.Europe where music has magical power, a cult plots to write an opera so powerful, it will free their god, so King Ferdinand of Sicily tries creating a counter-opera to overpower theirs), good characters and several great twists, but it still didn’t work for me: What would have worked great at 200 or 300 pages was way too drawn out at 500, and my interest waned and never really came back.
HELLBOY: The Wild Hunt by Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo has Hellboy hunted by the title menace, reunited with an old friend and taken to Morgan le Fay who reveals his mother’s lineage is just as important as his unholy father’s (“After all these centuries, the Pendragon line has a son again.”). I read this as prep for the follow up, The Storm and the Fury, which TYG gave me for an anniversary gift and I’m glad I did—this is one of the most plot-heavy entries in the series.
100 BULLETS: Strychnine Lives by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso is a so-so TPB volume in the series due to the “decompressed” storytelling—basically nothing happens in most of the book except people sitting around discussing everything that’s going to happen soon (the first three or four issues have to throw in an unrelated crime subplot just to give it something other than talk). While it’s certainly readable and there’s one major plot development, it’s mediocre as 100 Bullets goes.