“Reunion rot” is still making me feel “meh” so why not some recent reading that did the same?
THE BULLET SWALLOWER by Elizabeth Gonzalez James is a magical realist Western jumping between a hardened Mexican outlaw in the 1800s (the title refers to a bullet that should have killed him ending up going down his throat with minimal damage) and his descendant, who plays cowboys in Mexican films and is slowly learning his family’s tangled, bloody history. The magical realist part is an angel of death watching over them to find out if his decision to spare a baby during an earlier tragedy will work out well for subsequent generations. This one’s not a bad book and well-written but very much not my kind of thing (literary and Western is the wrong mix for me).
(I fully realize Jack Kirby’s Omac isn’t swallowing bullets in the scene above, but work with me).
WHERE THE GRASS IS GREEN AND THE GIRLS ARE PRETTY by Lauren Weisberg (of Devil Wears Prada fame) has an anchorwoman mired in scandal when it appears her husband bribed Princeton to get their daughter into the Ivy League; in reality Mom did it herself, but grabbed his checkbook as the most convenient. Weisberg published this right after a similar real-life scandal but even if I’d read this when the topic was fresh, I can’t say I’d care for it. The arguments how this is totally different from the legal ways to bribe colleges (endow a chair say) are pretty flimsy and even though this proved a career-wrecking scandal in real life, it’s impossible to take seriously (a comedy about how shallow this is? That I might have accepted). I threw in the towel after 100 pages.
BATMAN ’66 MEETS THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES by Lee and Mike Allred (cover by Laura Allred) has the Legion travel back in time in hopes of recruiting the greatest teenage superhero of all — Robin the Boy Wonder — into their team only to wind up with Egghead running lose in the future and Universo hypnotizing Gotham City (I suspect the scene where the two bald villains notice how similar they look is a riff on a Silver Age meeting between Rama-Tut and Doctor Doom). This had some fun moments but they didn’t mesh as well as the other off-the-wall Batman’ 66 crossovers did.
SAY NOTHING: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe is something of a bait-and-switch (like One Fine Day and The CIA Book Club). While the book’s hook is the IRA murdering informant Jean McConville in 1972 (Keefe concludes that while the IRA was riddled with informers, she was probably innocent), the bulk of the book is a history of the Troubles, the IRA and prominent figures such as activist/hit-woman Dolours Price, occasionally and randomly jumping back to the McConville family. While the IRA history is certainly interesting, the book still feels off, like why is Keefe paying attention to this murder out of so many?
Walt Simonson’s 1980s run on Thor is one of the comic book greats. His six issue Wonder Woman arc, “Game of the Gods,” isn’t in the same league, but it is entertaining. It comes right between Phil Jimenez and Greg Rucka but I didn’t get around to blogging about it until (obviously) now. Creative credit goes to Simonson for plotting, Jerry Ordway for drawing and Adam T. Hughes for the covers.
We open with a gathering of mystics in the late 1800s who discover signs that the Shattered God is returning to Earth. Then Trevor Barnes, whom she dated during the Jimenez run (he decided being a superhero love interest was more than he could handle) begins worrying when he can’t reach her.
Cut to a funeral that culminates in Diana, in the white pantsuit associated with her depowered years at the end of the Silver Age (though her clothes in that era had a lot more variety), emerging from the grave. The funeral party then turns to monsters and tries to kill her, but fails. At the end of the issue she’s alive but amnesiac, and holding a clay figurine of an infant that the monsters coveted — funny, when she smooths over a cut in the clay arm, a cut on her own arm heals. What’s with that? Simonson said in an interview the inspiration was Hammer’s classic Kiss of the Vampirewhich opens with an ominous funeral.
The second issue went boldly where no scripter had gone before. Putting Wonder Woman in civvies is one thing, but cutting her hair? Even the depowered years never crossed that line. But you see, Diana soon finds she’s being followed; her shadows are human but possessed, and they wither and die once the possessor leaves them. Fortunately she stumbles into the salon of Becca Doherty, hair stylist and diehard WW fangirl (“You kick butt better than Superman!”). She gives Diana a crash course in who she is even if Diana doesn’t remember it. With Becca’s guidance, Diana successfully turns into Wonder Woman, but devoid of tiara or bracelets, still amnesiac (her attempt to make sense of her superhero life is hilarious). Meanwhile, the Amazons discover that Olympus is empty, the gods gone — hmm, do you suppose there’s a connection? And to strange things happening on Oa, which is situated at the center of the universe?
To prevent the pursuing possessor tracking her, Diana has Becca give her a new look, as you can see on the cover, then sets off to find answers. In the following issue, Diana, the Roman goddess, arrives on Themyscira riding Scylla, the mythological multi-headed sea serpent. Amped up by divine power, it petrifies them. During the War of the Gods crossover event the Roman and Greek pantheons merged but Diana opted to stay free rather than fuse with Artemis. Now she’s on Team Shattered God. Diana arrives on Themyscira, regains her memories and battles Scylla; still only half herself, she does well but ultimately has to flee. Meanwhile, the goddesses of Africa endow Trevor with some mysterious power and direct him to find Diana.
Over the next couple of issues we learn what’s at stake. The Shattered God was a primeval deity; when the God created the universe, it shattered said deity. Who didn’t mind much: the new universe was glorious and he was a part of it all. Except then he realized that countless other gods had sprung up, and he didn’t like it. Now his plan is to reverse creation, restore the primal atom, then start over. His will be the voice that says let there be light, his will be the mind that shapes reality — and he’ll get it right! Diana is a key part of his plan because of her unique makeup: clay and flesh, mortal and divine.
The plan works … almost. That clay image retains the essence of Diana’s god-given powers; without it, she can’t fulfill her role in the Shattered God’s plan. Off to Earth to find the figurine but of course there are surprises waiting and cards the Olympians and other gods have yet to play ….
Simonson’s Thor run is a classic. His Orion is far and away the best Fourth World material not written by Jack Kirby. “Game of the Gods” isn’t in the same league. Like I said, though, it is entertaining, particularly in the early amnesiac period — and amnesia’s enough of a cliche that ain’t easy. It’s less effective as we see more of the divine scheming on both sides of the game; as the final issue points out, some things happened that appear to make no sense (and probably don’t). Still, it’s livelier and more entertaining than the subsequent Greg Rucka run has been so far (I’m in the middle of Year Two).
I’m a fan of Gold Key’s old MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER series by Russ Manning; as Dark Horse’s third TPB of reprints is out of my price range I recently tried finding it by interlibrary loan. What I got, instead, was MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER: Flesh and Steel, collecting part of Dynamite’s 2014 revival by Fred Van Lente and Cory Smith.
Magnus starts out living in an idyllic Pacific Northwest community only to wake up and discover he’s been trapped in the Matrix, more or less. Trying to make sense of this, he enters civilization, winds up fighting robots and instead of becoming a hero becomes the target of an angry society with Leeja, his girlfriend in the original, the bounty hunter out to take him down.
The rationale behind all this is good but it’s so different from the original it qualifies as a Name Only reboot. That’s the burden of intellectual property in comics — nobody wants to let it lie fallow for long. But is there that much nostalgia for the character? Or given an earlier reboot from Valiant ran close to a hundred issues in the 1990s, maybe it’s not nostalgia but fondness for that relatively recent versions.
Whatever the reasons, it didn’t work for me. However I will give the creators a point for showing Magnus’ original fantasy world as multi-racial; too many fantasy settings like that default to a 1950s white suburban look.
AUTUMNLANDS: Tooth and Claw by Kurt Busiek and Benjamin Dewey feels very much like a reworking of Jack Kirby’s Kamandi, but a much better take than the Magnus reboot was. As in Kamandi’s “Earth After Disaster” it’s a world of talking animals but here they also practice magic. Magic that, as we learn in the first issue, is slowly dying away. A desperate attempt to reverse that brings The Great One, the founder of civilization, from the distant past — but instead of a wise sorcerer, it’s a butt-kicking pink-skinned almost hairless creature. Learoyd, the time traveler, is equally horrified to find himself in such a freaky future. Equally upsetting, the dominant civilization, dwelling in its flying cities, has been exploiting the ground-dwellers for a long time. Now it’s time for payback … an enjoyable read.
Art by Manning, Kirby and Dewey (top to bottom), all rights to images remain with current holders.
STUFF MATTERS: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik tackles a variety of topics centering on the materials that surround us: how can a paperclip made of metal bend but not break? How can pure carbon appear as diamonds but also the graphite in pencils? Why does paper fold so well? What makes chocolate so good? Plus chapters on concrete, gels and glass.An interesting work
In the fourth Father Brown collection (I meant to read #3 first but I got it wrong), Father brown is visiting his friend Flambeau, thief-turned-detective, now happily married and retired, when one of the other guests asks THE SECRET OF FATHER BROWN — how is it possible he solves so many cases? Father Brown replies that he imagines what might drive him to commit a given murder, then reasons who would have the same motive … which doesn’t to fit the series at all, at least not to me. The stories themselves are fair but not great, other than “The Chief Mourner of Marne,” which I really like. Also Chesterton’s insights feel off, like asserting suburban residents have no interest in gossiping about their neighbors.
I’ve had ENIGMA, an eight-issue Vertigo series by Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo, on my “to read” list for a while. Discovering it available through my library’s Hoopla service, I checked it out … and didn’t finish it. Protagonist Michael Smith is shocked, utterly shocked when the Enigma and the Brain pop out of one of his beloved childhood comics — what can it possibly mean? After three issues of pretension (did you know killing a fly proves there is no god?) I gave up, flipped to the end, found I hadn’t missed anything.
Cover by Fegredo, all rights remain with current holders.
Even though I was dead broke in the early 1980s, I was still buying comics. Mostly DC, though; even though Marvel’s Epic line of creator-owned books looked interesting, it was more expensive and well, Marvel. Perhaps the most interesting was Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar — a science fiction comic written and drawn by the same guy who did such amazing things with Adam Warlock? Had I had the money … Recently I discovered THE DREADSTAR OMNIBUS Volume 1 was available via the Hoopla library service and I decided to see what I’d missed.
The opening arc, Metamorphosis Odyssey is quite a ride. Akhnaton of the ancient, wise Osirosians, realizes the relentlessly warlike Zygoteans will inevitably conquer the galaxy, subjugating every other race to slavery and then death. To prevent that he gathers a team of unlikely heroes to obtain the Infinity Horn, the one device that can avert the doom. And it does, though the solution is … drastic.
A million years later, Akhnaton and his ally Vanth Dreadstar, wielder of a powerful mystic sword, arrive in another galaxy. After Akhnaton’s death, Vanth settles down to peaceful married life …until his new homeworld is caught in the long war between the Monarchy and the Instrumentality (a religion as ruthless as the Magus’ Church of Universal Truth in Warlock). Vanth was ready to quit but they dragged him back in … and now he and his new team are out to end the war and avenge his wife’s death.
A post on Tom Brevoort’s blog said the transition from the initial story to the Dreadstar series felt like the transition of Marvel from the unconventional era of Starlin’s Warlock and Captain Marvel to the Jim Shooter era when editorial control was far more rigid. Metamorphosis Odyssey is wild; the subsequent series much less so. It has none of the visionary cosmic quality of Warlock and the adventures could as easily have happened to the Starjammers, the Omega Men or other comic-book SF teams (the Instrumentality and the Papal High Lord could likewise be Palpatine and the Empire). Which wouldn’t bother me if I liked the adventures better — though Starlin’s art remains solidly entertaining.
I wouldn’t have bothered with DREADSTAR OMNIBUS Volume 2 except the first volume ended on a cliffhanger. Three or four issues in, I gave up on it. It felt even more conventional with the new adversaries Infra-Red and Ultra-Violet, Dreadstar getting a new costume and Vanth undergoing a transformation similar to how the cosmic entity Eon reinvented Captain Marvel during Starlin’s run on him. Still, I’m glad to have satisfied my curiosity about this series.
DC FINEST: Superman — Kryptonite Nevermore proved a fortuitous find for my Silver Age reread over at Atomic Junk Shop. While the 1971 story arc that starts with Superman #233 is on the DC app, the Action Comics stories from the same period are not. Like the DC Finest Legion of Superheroes collection, this fills a gap as the Silver Age transitions into Bronze.
The Superman story arc starts when a freak nuclear accident turns all kryptonite on Earth to iron. Suddenly Superman’s greatest weakness is gone! Not only that but Morgan Edge, the new owner of the Daily Planet, transfers Clark Kent from print to the cutting-edge world of TV reporting. Plus a mysterious flying figure, formed out of sand, begins showing up and slowly draining Superman’s powers away.
What’s going on? Well, it’s new editor Julius Schwartz and writer Denny O’Neil (Super-stalwart artist Curt Swan continues on the book) doing their best to give Kal a soft reboot (details here) away from the gimmicks of Silver Age super-editor Mort Weisinger. Over the course of 10 issues struggles to do his job while becoming weaker and weaker; even the help of Wonder Woman’s mystical mentor I Ching can’t seem to turn things around.
At the end of the story arc, the “Sand Superman” has left Earth for its home dimension carrying half of Superman’s powers with him. Kryptonite no longer allows ordinary thugs to take the Man of Might down; however he’s no longer the invincible figure he was before. While I’m not a fan of O’Neil’s writing he does put Superman through the wringer. However as soon as he left the book, Superman’s back to performing super-feats as if his power hadn’t dimmed at all. Of course, given he can fly inside the sun or shove the moon out of its orbit, it’s not like losing half his power would make him weak by most standards — I’m not sure how the heck you’d convey that (it does amuse me that Supergirl might have been stronger than he was at this point in time).
The Action run was under editor Murray Boltinoff with Curt Swan and primarily veteran DC writer Leo Dorfman. The stories don’t break the mold though the backups are interesting. After Supergirl got the leads lot in Adventure Comics, the Legion of Superheroes took over her backup in Action Comics for a while. Now most of the backups are various sort of “untold tales” about Superboy, Superman, Kandor, etc. Nothing staggering but they did add some novelty.
I’ll be discussing this era over at Atomic Junk Shop soon. Covers top to bottom by Jim Starlin (x2), Neal Adams and Curt Swan. All rights to images remain with current holders.
The Shade became an A-lister thanks to his appearances in James Robinson’s Starman series. From there he springboarded into the CW’s excellent Stargirl as a supporting character for two seasons.
It’s surprising to look back and see what a minor player he once was. One appearance in the Golden Age. Then an appearance in the classic story “Flash of Two Worlds,” which introduced the idea the Justice Society and Justice League co-existed on different Earths. There he got to fight alongside the Thinker, Jay Garrick’s arch-foe (seven appearances) and the Fiddler (four). All he could do was blot out light — a useful skill, sure, but not much.
And then the Shade returned.
This was the story that established the Shade could access dimensions of darkness, elevating him beyond a C-lister. Without this story changing his trajectory, he’d be a bar-trivia answer.
What I’m really posting about, though, is the Carmine Infantino cover. I think it’s great. Then smirking, lean figure of the Shade. Jay, trapped. Barry unable to beat his foe. When I saw it as a kid, although I didn’t have the money to spare, I was hooked. Thrilled years later when I acquired it.
The Shade’s career shows even a C-lister has potential. The cover shows — well, while I generally disregard “things were better back in the day” I think the covers were.
Before Greg Rucka’s run on Wonder Woman, he and Jeff Jones turned out a 2002 graphic novel, WONDER WOMAN: The Hiketeia. A young woman invokes the Hiketeia, an ancient Greek ritual, to gain Wonder Woman’s protection. Trouble is, she’s just murdered the Gotham City crooks who sex-trafficked and killed her sister; now Batman shows up and demands Diana give up the killer, never mind about this oath stuff.
Astonishingly the cover is accurate: Wonder Woman kicks Batman’s butt. The “bat god” concept has become so dominant in this century, I absolutely loved seeing him in over his head.
Beyond that? The plot could have been comfortably fitted into a single regular issue. At 90 pages this is a showcase for the art and while Jones is good, he wasn’t 90-pages-with-little-plot good.
In the afterword to BOWLING WITH CORPSES AND OTHER TALES FROM LANDS UNKNOWN writer/artist Mike Mignola said he’d begun thinking of himself as in semi-retirement, then decided nothing he could take up in retirement would be as fun as writing and drawing comics. He adapted the title story from an old Italian folktale, then developed the Lands Unknown as a place to put them. These stories of witches, ghosts, creepy inns (“Don’t share your bed with a corpse, even if the landlord offers you a discount.”) and yes, bowling with a group of flesh-eating corpses, don’t break fresh ground but they’re good and the art is typically amazing.
The follow up volume, URI TUPKA AND THE GODS: A Tale From the Lands Unknown has the eponymous heretic fleeing the inquisition only to encounter bandits, hermits with horror stories, pirates, demon frogs, finally learning the truth about why the gods have withdrawn from the mortal world. The art is again amazing but this spends too much time on the history and geography of the setting. The lurking horror also feels too close to the Oghdru Jahad of Hellboy’s mythos
TRASHED by Derf Backderf is the story of a slacker who winds up taking a job as a garbage man, discovers it’s disgustingly dirty and gross — wow, you could almost make a metaphor for the human condition out of this! This is way too talky and not interesting talk: lectures on how we’re doing sanitation and waste management wrong, how absurdly much waste we create and constant grousing about how shitty the life of a garbage man is. I’d agree with a lot of the sentiments but that doesn’t make them interesting.
Covers by Jones and Mignola; all rights to images remain with current holders.
Following the Phil Jimenez run on Wonder Woman, Walt Simonson took over for a brief arc which I somehow never got around to reviewing (soon, though). This post is about the first year under Greg Rucka, who took over writing next, and also about the first year of Absolute Wonder Woman.
Rucka first worked on Diana in a standalone story, The Hiketeia, which I haven’t read yet. Wonder Woman #196 (cover by Adam Hughes)started a run on the book that ended when Infinite Crisis rebooted everything. For the first year the primary plot driver is Veronica Cale, a Texas businesswoman who bitterly resents that Wonder Woman gets so much applause and acclaim — Cale is the real wonder woman, dammit! Employing skilled PR, Dr. Psycho and the Silver Swan, she sets out to destroy Diana.
In addition we have Eros prompt Zeus to lust for Artemis, leading to Hera hurling Themyscira into U.S. coastal waters. America is wary; the Amazons are equally wary to see US warships patrolling around them. Can the two nations avoid coming to blows?
And as the year winds to a close, Circe helps the gorgons resurrect Medusa. Cale then sends her to kill Diana …
I glanced Rucka’s run a couple of times when it was on the stand. It certainly wasn’t bad but it didn’t give me any urge to buy it. Reading it on the DC app, that hasn’t changed. The heart of the story isn’t the superhero battles, it’s the politics. The challenges on WW as an ambassador for Amazons and a speaker for women’s equality. The mundane day-to-day running of the embassy, with a minotaur as her chef. Cale’s PR maneuvers to discredit Diana. The gods are dressed in modern fashions, reflecting their connections to various modern spheres — our quest for knowledge makes Athena strong, our interest in sex boosts Aphrodite (Zeus doesn’t realize his power is fading by comparison). It feels like this is where Rucka’s heart lies (that’s my impression, not something I know for a fact) but it doesn’t work the way Astro City does with a similar approach.
Take Cale. Her resentment for Diana is the same as the Golden Age Cheetah (cover here by H.G. Peters). Her desire to kill Diana feels way over the top; it’s easier to accept such unhinged hatred when it comes from a woman crazy enough to dress up in a cat costume.
I didn’t expect much better from Absolute Wonder Woman by Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman (who does the cover here). The Absolute Universe is one where the creators strip characters of their usual accoutrements: who is Batman without Bruce Wayne’s wealth? Who is Wonder Woman without the Amazons? Yeah, right — like “Wonder Woman without the Amazons” isn’t a go-to for a soft reboot ever since the Diana Prince Years. When I checked V1 and V2 out of the library however, it turns out they’re as good as everyone told me they were.
In the first issue we meet Circe, trapped on an island in the Greek underworld. Apollo drops an infant Diana off, informing Circe that the Amazons are gone — and the very word ‘Amazon’ is forbidden.Years later, Gateway City is under siege by demonic forces when Wonder Woman appears, riding her winged horse Pegasus, as on the cover. Which she explains to Steve Trevor at one point is the real Pegasus, killed and damned to hell by Zeus for some reason. We alternate scenes of Diana’s life in the underworld with her efforts to defend the city from increasingly nasty demonic forces. We also meet her mortal supporting cast: Steve, occultist Etta Candy and reporter Barbara Minerva (so far a “name only” character with no similarity to the original).
In the first arc she saves Gateway City (I’m not sure if that’s a callback to her operating there in John Byrne’s run or the symbolism of the name), then descends to Tartarus for a confrontation with Hades. She wins her freedom at the cost of never returning meaning she’ll never see her mother, Circe, again. Persephone, however, has arranged for Diana to eat a pomegranate seed, which compels her to return for one month of every year. This is a running theme, even if we don’t know where it’s leading: the male Olympians are vicious, the goddesses are backing Diana covertly.
In the second arc we meet the Absolute Veronica Cale, here a hot-shot national security official who sends a version of Dr. Poison against Wonder Woman. This leads to the reveal of a magical maze in which Diana might be able to find other Amazons. Entering she battles against monsters and the Golden Age foe Queen Clea. The current arc involves Cale sending Zatanna against Diana — bad news as Diana is a sorceress like her mom and Zatanna has managed to tap her magic and use it against her (I’m now reading on the app but I haven’t gotten any further yet).
For my money, this is the best WW since the New 52 reboot, possibly the best in this century. Part of the reason is, of course, that it’s a solidly entertaining story. It’s hard to go wrong when Wonder Woman shows up riding a skeletal undead Pegasus. Part of it is also that they get Diana in a way many authors don’t.
A recurring tendency since the New 52 has been to treat Diana as an Amazon warrior first and foremost; there’s a scene in one JLA story where monsters attack and her response is “Yay, something to fight and kill!” In the“Tower of Babel” arc in JLA, the trap for Diana is a mental fantasy in which she’s battling as a warrior, endlessly, something she doesn’t want to break free of.
Not here. There’s a flashback where Artemis wants to test Diana in combat. The young Amazon refuses, having seen too much senseless violence in the underworld. A disgruntled Artemis considers hunting a passing turtle for sport and suddenly Diana’s in her grill: No. You do not hurt it!
In another scene she visits Prometheus for help and convinces the eagle gnawing on his liver to stop.
When she has to send Steve home from the underworld she needs a sacrifice big enough to work such a potent marriage. She sacrifices her right arm, replacing it with a prosthetic of magic.
This is who she is. This is who Wonder Woman should be. I look forward to reviewing Year Two in about eight months.
SIX CRIMSON CRANES by Elizabeth Lim is a Y/A whose protagonist, Shiori, is princess in a fantasy analog of China. Magic is banned so it’s a shock for Shiori to realize not only does she have powers — she’s able to bring a paper bird to life as her sidekick — but so does her stepmother. And those powers may be why Shiori and her six brothers all love stepmommy so much …
Stepmother is, of course, not happy with these discoveries and takes steps: turning the brothers into cranes, exiling Shiori and putting an added curse on her, that if she speaks her brothers will die. Now the princess has to find her brothers, find a cure, break the curse on her and settle with her stepmother.
Although one big reveal was obvious from the first chapter, this worked for me. However the characters come off awfully contemporary — make Shiori and her brothers rich kids from Beverly Hills and it wouldn’t change much. Still, I’m up for reading more in the series eventually.
CANNIBALISM AND THE COMMON LAW: The Story of the Tragic Last Voyage of the Mignonette and the Strange Legal Proceedings to Which It Gave Rise by A.W. Brian Simpson recounts how in 1884, Captain Thomas Dudley and two crewmen were rescued from a lifeboat after the wreck of the yacht Mignonette, which they’d been crewing for a trip to Australia. Recounting their ordeal, they freely admitted they’d engaged in “the custom of the sea,” killing and eating the fourth member of the crew. They had no reason to think this would be a problem for them; as Simpson shows, it happened a lot in the 19th century and the British simply shrugged — tough situation, tough choices, “doctrine of necessity” applies. And for much of the century, the British court system had little say in what happened at sea, though by 1884 that had changed some. The only real objection to the trio’s cannibalism was that according to some versions of their story (they retold it several times) they hadn’t drawn lots to pick the victim but had just killed the weakest link.
What was also changing was that the government was increasingly uncomfortable with a legal doctrine that said killing was okay if it was necessary. Having tried a few years earlier to make a case against cannibalism and failed (it bogged down in imperial bureaucracy) they decided this time they’d succeed. To the surprise of Dudley and his men, they were charged with murder and sort-of found guilty (the judge put his thumb heavily on the scale) so the case could then be kicked up high enough to get a definitive ruling. Everyone involved did this with the intention of getting the trio pardoned — the goal was to establish a principle, not to punish them for their actions — but there was less enthusiasm at higher levels of government. The men ended up serving six months, then went free.
Unlike, say, the book Honor Killing, this is surprisingly lacking in drama. Simpson is approaching this as a legal historian covering a landmark case, not as a true-crime writer. It is not, however, lacking in interest. The book covers the rise of recreational yachting in the 19th century, multiple earlier cases of cannibalism, legal theories as to when cannibalism was justified, land-based cannibalism cases (I learned more about American cannibal Alf Packer than I ever did before), the frequency of shipwrecks (I can see why the Titanic being unsinkable made it such a big deal) and the complexities of the British legal system. Obviously not for everyone but it fits my particular tastes in nerdy reading.
DC Comics continuity has been in disarray ever since the Crisis on Infinite Earths, or more precisely, the endless reboots that followed it. Back in the 1990s, Dan Jurgens tried stabilizing it with the Zero Hour crossover event but reboots kept happening, both system wide (Infinite Crisis, Flashpoint, Convergence) and individual (John Byrne had the Doom Patrol’s history erased so he could start them over from scratch). With THE NEW HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE, Mark Waid and multiple illustrators are giving it another shot.
This gathers the various additions and retcons that have accumulated over the years and turns them into a single timeline. As many of them occurred in the last 15 years or so, and I haven’t been following comics closely (precisely because endless reboots make it hard to get attached to a character), this was interesting to see. Waid also has to account for the multiple reality resets since Infinite Crisis rebooted the post COIE world but explains that the disruptions have finally ceased and stability has been achieved. I’ll be delighted, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
This is obviously not something to read unless you’re seriously curious about this stuff; like Cannibalism and the Common Law this is a book giving you information, not drama. I was glad to have read it, though — and like I said, I hope this does set the stage for a DCU where continuity is no more tangled than it always is.
All rights to images remain with current holders. COIE cover by George Perez.
BORN TO BE POSTHUMOUS: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery reminds me of my friend Ross’s observation that epic biographies should be reserved for people who live epic lives Four hundred pages isn’t epic by 21st century standards but it’s still too big for Gorey’s life.
Gorey was certainly a fascinating person, flamboyant in personal style and grotesquely whimsical in his art. I was surprised to realize he’d died in 2000 — his work seems very much out of another era, which is part of its charm. Despite all of which, his life story isn’t as interesting as the man himself. Dysfunctional family. Flowering in college. Endless details of the plays and the artists he liked, the books he read, the literary friends he made (I’m impressed he had the poet John Ciardi as one of his college teachers). As I often say, it’s not the author’s fault I’m not as interested in the details of the topic as they are; still, the details really don’t seem interesting.
A bigger problem is Dery’s determination to see Gorey as a gay icon. Gorey described himself as uninterested or asexual when the subject came up, though his history shows that may not have been the case. It’s a legit topic for a biographer but Dery really obsesses over it: look at his gay friends, his gay sense of style, his love of Oscar Wilde, his arch, gay sense of humor… by the time we get to any gay subtext in his art I no longer cared. A third, minor problem, is that like many nonfiction writers, Dery tries to make the subject bigger than it is — without Gorey, the graphic-novel industry would never have been open to something as gay as Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home! For various reasons, I think that’s nonsense.
G. K. Chesterton’s second Father Brown collection, THE INCREDULITY OF FATHER BROWN has a number of moments I love. There’s Father Brown explaining the difference between a real mystic and a fake (real mystics tell you everything and you’re mystified; fakes hide everything and when you see it you’re bored), his discourse on vigilantes in “The Arrow of God,” on dressing gowns as a perfect disguise in “The Dagger With Wings” and the killer’s motivation in “The Oracle of the Dog” (“If he had really known the money would come to him, I actually believe he wouldn’t have done it.”). Some of the stories, such as “The Doom of the Darnaways” don’t work half as well. Plus we have Chesterton’s religious biases, for example frowning over the 19th century American secularist Robert Ingersoll (more vicious an enemy of religion than Voltaire!). And did you know Jews were subject to fair less persecution in medieval Europe than Christians (for anyone who doesn’t know religious history, this is blatant anti-Semitic bullshit)? Overall I enjoyed it but I can see why some people avoid the series like the plague.
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: Deathlok the Demolisher by Rich Buckler (who did the striking cover here) and a variety of collaborators, including Doug Moench and Bill Mantlo, was one I read for this month’s Genre Book Club; the theme was cyberpunk and this 1974-76 series is very much proto-cyberpunk.
Luther Manning had been a capable military officer. When war hit the United States in the 1990s, he wound up stepping on a mine after which his CO, Major Ryker, rebuilt him as a cyborg (in a moment that’s now hilarious, the cyborg’s computer program runs on punch cards inserted into his prosthetic arm). “Deathlok” did a good job at first eliminating Ryker’s enemies, then Luther’s consciousness reasserted itself. Now he has two missions: take down Ryker and regain his humanity.
This has many cyberpunk elements: powerful computers, advanced tech, a decaying, violent urban setting, omnipresent surveillance. It’s most distinctive high-tech element is that even after Luther regains his mind, the computer is still in his head. The dialogue between Manning and the “‘puter” is the thing many people who glanced at the series on the stands remember.
In the Bronze Age, it was different from anything else out there, much bleaker than, say, the Atomic Knights (who were in reprint in Strange Adventures in the 1970s). There’s a lot I like, some nice touches (Luther’s in an interracial marriage) but the plotting is often wonky. Ryker’s girlfriend discover he’s a cyborg, then spends the rest of the series comatose, hooked up to a computer to enable more intuitive control of the weapons it commands or something like that. And she’s the chief woman character in the series for most of the run. And it’s really disappointing that while Ryker talks about merging with his computer and becoming “the God Machine,” the reveal is anticlimactic — apparently the entire series is about a turf war for control over New York, nothing more imaginative. A mixed bag, but one I’m glad to have read (this also includes Deathlok’s adventures in the present after his series ended, but I won’t get into that here).
Art by Gorey and Buckler, all rights to images remain with current holders.
