ONCE AND FUTURE: The Wasteland wraps up the Kieron Gillen/Dan Mora series about the return of King Arthur plunging Britain into mythic chaos (first three volumes reviewed here). In V4, Monarchies in the UK, we ended up with multiple Arthurs — Celtic, medieval, Victorian fantasy — feuding for control. Duncan’s enmeshed himself in the Beowulf myth which means death by dragon; Rose has committed herself to play Gawain in Gawain and the Green Knight which means she will soon have to let the Green Knight cut off her head.
At the start of the Wasteland, Duncan, Rose and Bridget recruit Robin Hood as a mythic figure with no tolerance for kings. Bridget has a plan which could restore England to normal at the end of the year; however the Arthurs and their Merlins won’t go gently into that good night and even without them, the plan isn’t easy … A good finish to a great series.
J.D. Vance first came to prominence almost a decade ago with Hillbilly Elegy, his book on the failures of Appalachia’s people. Elizabeth Catte’s WHAT YOU ARE GETTING WRONG ABOUT APPALACHIA pushes back against Vance, the many people who came before him and the pundits who declared Appalachia was “Trump country.” As Catte details, Appalachia isn’t one monolithic region, nor does it have its own distinct culture: it’s not all Scots/Irish, not all-white, not all right-wing (there’s long history of intense labor and environmental activism, not to mention Black Lives Matter groups) and not all mired in poverty, apathy and drugs. Nor are the problems in Appalachia unique to the region, as Catte found out when she moved to Texas and found the pollution in her new home equally horrible. Well worth reading.
I’m a big fan of British horror writer Ramsey Campbell but THE SEARCHING DEAD: The First Book of the Three Births of Daoloth didn’t work for me at all. The Lovecraftian elements are embedded in the (I assume autobiographical) story of a schoolboy’s life; while Campbell can write mundane life well, the balance between the normal world and the supernatural stuff was too skewed toward the normal. I may try it again but this time I DNFed.
THE ART OF RAMONA FRADON is a great showcase for the comics artist one of the few woman drawing comics back in the 1950s and on into the 1970s, with credits including Aquaman, Metamorpho and Super-Friends. The book includes her art, mixed in with a long interview with Howard Chaykin about her life, her work on the Brenda Starr comic strip and her horror at going to Marvel in the 1970s and discovering the Marvel method (which would have had her writing the plot for the issue for no extra pay) and that Marvel was a little too freewheeling (“At DC people sat behind desks, not on them.”). A good impulse purchase, though obviously not for every taste.
#SFWApro. Once and Future cover by Mora, all rights to images remain with current holders.
