And now, book reviews! (#SFWApro)

Despite the god-awful Poul Anderson essay, SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS IV has some excellent stories from Charles deLint (back when he was a relatively new name), Orson Scott Card and several lesser-known writers, the highlight being the comic “Inn of the Brass Breast” by Jeff Swycaffer (a new name to me). It also has a good essay by editor Andrew J. Offutt on choosing between living and dead writers (“Maybe the reason your book didn’t sell was the latest rerelease of Robert E. Howard or Edgar Rice Burroughs.”). Surprisingly Tanith Lee’s story (“The Sorceress”) really didn’t click with me, neither did Manley Wade Wellman’s Kardios of Atlantis tale, which as a bonus has the female lead crying rape falsely (though that’s tame compared to some of the past rape material).

The nonfiction graphic novel BILL THE BOY WONDER: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman by Marc Tyler Nobleman (illustrated by Ty Templeton) was something of a disappointment—I’d thought this was a biography of Bill Finger, but it focuses entirely on Finger’s role in creating and working on Batman, much of which I already knew. Nobleman gets into more detail in the text pages at the end, but overall this was too slight for me—more a rallying cry for Finger to get the respect he deserves (which I certainly agree with) than anything else.

AFTER THE REVOLUTION: Profiles of Early American Culture by Joseph Ellis, looks at the conviction many artists, writers and others had in the 1700s that the Revolution would trigger a seismic shift elevating American culture as much as it had transfigured government. Ellis shows that despite the paucity of America’s cultural work at the time, the vision of future greatness not only fit into the Revolutionary fervor but fed on several established theories which seemingly confirmed that Europe, like Rome, had had its day, and the torch had now past west. Ellis looks at the lives of painter Charles Peale, novelist Hugh Brackenridge, Noah Webster and playwright William Dunlap for specific examples of optimism, disillusionment and the general discomfort the revolutionary generation faced as capitalism began to take hold. Along with the limits of America’s talent at the time, Ellis sees the big obstacles to the artistic dream as including the practicalities of the marketplace (there was no practical way to distribute a published book very widely) and the suspicion of many Americans that art was as decadent as the aristocrats who patronized it. A good one.

SPIDER-GIRL: Avenging Allies: was the third volume in the series by Tom DeFalco and Patrick Olliffe (cover by Olliffe, rights with current holder) in which May Parker comes up against a mysterious killer called Kaine, attempts to join the Avengers and tries to figure out why she’s doing this super-hero gig anyway. Fun, as this series always was; as a fan of the 1970s super-hero Nova, I’ve perversely loved his characterization here—an A-lister but a stuffy one who grumbles that super-kids like Spider-Girl should stay off his lawn.

BULLETPROOF MONK by Michael Yanover, Mark Paniccia and Michael Avon Deming is a cliched graphic novel in which a Tibetan-American street kid gets caught up with street gangs, Chinese spies and the hunt for the legendary mystic of the title (guess what? The power was inside him all along!). Forgettable.