WHAT ARE YOU READING?

[ohtani's jacket]

Fantastic Four #110-112 are pretty good. Reed is stuck in the Negative Zone at the beginning of issue #110, having sacrificed himself to allow Johnny and Ben to escape. He ends up escaping with a little help from his teammates, and Agatha Harkness, who finally reveals that she's a witch. Strangely, Reed and Sue barely react to the fact that their child's nanny is a witch. If there's been a major flaw in Stan's scripting thus far it's a lack of attention to detail. Ben starts acting like a dick again while Reed is fighting for his life in the Negative Zone after having put that plot point on the back burner during the past few issues. That leads to a panel where Sue slaps Ben, which is about as much backbone as Sue has shown in these Bronze Age issues. She gets to use her powers a bit during these issues, which is a welcome respite from her constant fretting. The plot contrivance of her constantly having to fly between the Baxter Building and Agatha's creepy house to spend time with Franklin is annoying. Franklin is a problem in general, but the situation is a fairly realistic depiction of what it would be like for superheroes to have children, especially celebrity types like the Fantastic Four. Stan keeps hinting that Franklin has powers of their own, though they're pretty boring powers thus far. Ben turns heel and goes on a rampage. This escalates quickly and within a few pages, J. Jonah Jameson is leading a witch hunt against the Fantastic Four, there are protesters outside the Baxter Building, and Reed has a heated confrontation with his landlord, who he calls a human parasite. The Hulk is shoehorned into the plot in the weakest way imaginable, and there's a classic Thing vs. Hulk fight in issue #112. Buscema tries his damnedest to draw a worthy Thing/Hulk fight, but it pales in comparison to Kirby's layouts. Reed and Johnny bicker over the best way to help Ben. Johnny keeps calling Reed old. Reed is a condescending prick. The fighting gets a bit old after a while. One thing Stan is great at is the single panel cliffhangers. They're fantastic. Ben is dead at the end of issue #112 and it's all Reed's fault. If that doesn't get you to pick up next month's issue, I don't know what will. Of course that implies that the Hulk killed Ben, which was never gonna happen, but the final panel was dope. 

[odessasteps]

On the House to Astonish boards, there was discussion last month about how awful a person Reed Richards is and has always been.

Edited July 24, 2023 by odessasteps

[JLSigman]

Starting up Fairy Tale where I left off last year. This is definitely rocketing to the top of my favorite King book ever, about to knock off Firestarter and The Talisman.

[odessasteps]

Picked up Absolute Multiversity on sale. Hopefully the investment will pay off in a couple ways

[ohtani's jacket]

Fantastic Four #113-115 introduces what I'm assuming is the first original Fantastic Four villain created after Kirby left, the Over-Mind. Off the top of my head, I'm only familiar with the Over-Mind from J. M. DeMatteis using him in his Defenders run, but he certainly looks the part as far as cosmic villains go. The design is similar to something Kirby might have come up with, although Jack would have given him more grotesque features. He gets introduced in fairly weak "the Over-Mind is coming!" fashion with a guest spot by The Watcher and a warning from Agatha Harkness, however it seems he may be behind the chaos that has been happening over the past few issues, both internally within the team and externally with the public turning against them. Long term plotting from Stan? We shall see.

Ben's not really dead, it's just hard to pick up a heartbeat beneath that orange rock. Reed is a giant prick towards everyone, but manages to save Ben's life. Ben smashes the machine that changed him back to his human form and declares that the Ever-Lovin' Blue-eyed Thing is back and happy to stay in that form. That was easily resolved. Johnny apologizes for the things he said to Reed, and Reed has the audacity to praise Johnny for apologizing like a man. When do you ever apologize, Reed? It's a wonder your teammates didn't up and leave a long time ago. A few panels later, Johnny has a meltdown over Crystal and almost kills himself by jumping out the window before flaming on (stupid.) Sue agonizes over what's happening to the team, and it seems like it's a deliberate plot point. It's irritating, but I do like the way every time they fight there's a kernel of truth in what they're saying. They might be a family, but they're a hugely dysfunctional one. The Fantastic Four end up being arrested and Reed bails them out.

The Over-Mind walks around in his space duds and draws too much attention so he disguises himself in a ridiculous vest outfit that does nothing to disguises the fact that he's over 7 feet tall. That was a fail by Buscema. He has a short skirmish with the team and decides their powers are nothing to worry about and erases their memories of the encounter. Issue #115 is a bit of a doozy. By this stage, the reader isn't really sure who this Over-Mind dude is other than he's a threat to the entire universe, but to give him a backstory, Stan does this ridiculous trick of having Agatha Harkness help the FF communicate with the Watcher, who tells them the Over-Mind's origin story. Why he couldn't have done that a few issues ago when he popped up to warn them of his coming is beyond me. The origin itself is fairly good. It involves an aggressive race of aliens named The Eternals (!!!) who are basically a substitute for the Roman Empire, and the Over-Mind is a gladiator turned all-powerful villain. It's very Fantastic Four-esque. Interestingly, it's scripted by Archie Goodwin, and plotted by Stan Lee, which adds fuel to the fire that Stan wasn't the driving force beyond a lot of these science fiction storylines. 

Once that's done, Reed suddenly turns bad without any warning (other than the fact that he's been even more of a prick than usual the past few issues.) Looks like the Over-Mind has got him too. I guess it will be up to the other dumbasses on the team to save the day. The cover for the next issue has Dr. Doom replacing Reed on the team, which is pretty wild. I can only imagine there were a fair number of kids still buying the FF off the racks post-Kirby, the same way I keep reading the X-Men after Claremont left. I mean, what kid could resist a cover like that?

I forgot to mention that when Reed was in the Negative Zone, it appeared that Marvel used some of Kirby's old collage work for the backgrounds. Another example of how Jack's presence is still being felt. 

[ohtani's jacket]

Archie Goodwin takes over the writing duties with Fantastic Four #116 after scripting the previous issue. I believe this was a temporary gig while Stan was busy schmoozing in Hollywood. As you can imagine, the plotting is tighter with Archie on deck but the dialogue lacks pizzazz. I don't know if Buscema was working from a full script, but the art for issue #116 is the best work he's delivered since taking over from Romita. The battle between Over-Mind and the Fantastic Four is probably the best fight scene since Kirby left, and Over-Mind comes across a truly worthy FF opponent. A large part of the appeal is witnessing Doom lead the FF in Reed's place. Archie doesn't have a lot of panels to work with when roping Doom into the story, and has to rush things a bit, but it's tidy enough that a kid wouldn't question the logic behind it. Once again, Agatha Harkness steps in and intervenes. That seems to be the go-to solution when the heroes are at a loss. They ought to make her a member of the team! I could just imagine her rocking her unstable molecules outfit. She'd probably add more to the team than Sue does.

Doom vs the Over-Mind is badass. Finally, a fight scene worth of the World's Greatest Comic Magazine. It's similar to the battle Doom had with the Beyonder in Secret Wars, or that badass fight he has with Terrax during Byrne's run. Reed turning heel in the previous issue was supposedly a ruse, but he can't stop the Over-Mind from taking over his mind and tries to kill Sue. Eventually, he's able to fight off the Over-Mind's control by remembering he has a wife and child, but the question I have is why does Franklin's hair keep changing color? Is it blond or brown? You tell me, Marvel colorists. New York is raging with hatred, and people are brawling with each other in the streets. Doom falls in battle. The gizmo that was meant to stop the Over-Mind is destroyed. The end of the world is nigh. Franklin's hair keeps changing color. And then Archie pulls out the most brazen piece of dues ex machina you'll see in a Bronze Age book. It works in the sense that it's a Bronze Age comic for 12 year olds, but it's absolutely ridiculous. The saving grace is that Doom cuts an awesome promo as he staggers off. The FF are kind of bummed that that they were useless in the fight, but the Watcher pops out of nowhere and gives them a pep talk All's well that ends well.

Joking aside, it's a great issue. 

[ohtani's jacket]

Fantastic Four #117-118 are a letdown. Hot-head Johnny has become love sick again. It's hard to say who the most annoying member of the Fantastic Four is. I'm generally sympathetic towards Sue since she has to put up with three idiot males, but even Sue can be prone to histrionics when Stan is scripting her. It's probably a three way tie for first, but tormented Johnny Storm is really frigging annoying. Archie's story is continuity heavy as it ties into an issue of Namor and references a couple of other stories. It turns out that Crystal and Lockjaw never made it to the Great Refuge. Instead, Lockjaw transported Crystal to a distant future where humanity has been wiped out. There she encounters the Master of Alchemy, Diablo, who had been banished there by Dr. Doom. Diablo uses one of his potions to take control of Crystal and Lockjaw so that he can exact his revenge against Doom. Little does he know that Doom is busy licking his wounds after his battle with the Over-Mind, unless that was a Doom-bot, in which case all bets are off. Diablo plans to overthrow the dictatorship of a South American country so that he can steal the country's rare chemicals and become all-powerful. He convinces the locals that Crystal is the Mayan Goddess, Ixchel, who has returned to free them from tyranny. I

t's a flimsy plot that can barely sustain an issue and a half. I'm not joking. The plot is so thin that they have to run a backup story in issue #118. Johnny discovers that Crystal is in South America thanks to, you guessed it, Agatha Harkness and her crystal ball. I do like the fact that Ben is still spooked by Agatha's house and her cat, Ebony. It also amuses me that Johnny doesn't give a frig about other people's problems such as Maximus the Mad having seized control of the Inhumans' kingdom or the South American dictator launching an air strike against the peasant uprising. No sir, all that matters to our Johnny is that he can neck with Crystal for five seconds. I guess no one ever accused Johnny Storm of being the most mature hero around. The FF have seemingly accepted Agatha at face value. If Reed and Sue discussed whether it's appropriate for a centuries old witch to be taking care of their son then it happened off panel. Issue #118 has a brief fight between Crystal and Johnny after Johnny tries to plant one on her. The cover teases a larger fight between Crystal and the FF, but to be honest, after Ben and then Reed, it's become a tired trope. The most fun part of the issue is Ben scrapping with Lockjaw. Archie has been using Ben for comic relief, but things get a little trippy in the backup story. Lockjaw and Ben take a little side trip to an alternate Earth where Ben Grimm became Mr. Fantastic and married Sue, and Reed became the Thing and turned into a recluse. It's the type of sci-fi that's right up Archie's alley, and probably would have made for a more interesting story than the Diablo mess. It does raise the question of whether Ben still has a thing for Sue. It wouldn't surprise me if that was one of the topics they argued about in the bullpen breakroom. 

It's interesting that even though Stan didn't write these stories, he gets first billing as editor. I'm sure that 90% of kids glossed over the details and simply thought this was another Stan Lee story. Archie is far more detailed than Stan, and very much a Bronze Age style writer, he just didn't have a great story idea for these fill-in issues. Even the flow of the story is pensive. The art is fairly strong, though, and it seems that Buscema is coming into his own even if his work here isn't as good as it was on The Avengers. Roy Thomas fills in next issue and then Stan is back for a final run. 

[ohtani's jacket]

Fantastic Four #119 is a one shot story by Roy Thomas. I'm not sure how fondly it's remembered today, but it manages to pack a fair punch. It starts off weak with a squabble between Johnny and Ben, and Reed introducing a new invention of his, a robot named Auntie (AUtomatic Neuro-robot in charge of Tidying up with Increased Efficiency), but we do get a bit of continuity with Johnny still moping about Crystal and Reed revealing to Sue that he's working on a way to allow Crystal to live outside of the Great Refuge (like that's going to work.) The bulk of the story is a Johnny and Ben adventure where they travel to Rudyarda, a neighboring country of Wakanda known for its apartheid regime. Their mission is to recover a device called a Vibrotron, which augments the power of Vibranium, and discover what happened to T'Challa, who crossed the border to to retrieve the device himself, but hasn't been heard from since. There ends up being an obligatory fight scene with Klaw, but the purpose of the issue is Roy's commentary on apartheid. Ben and Johnny can't stomach the regime in Rudyarda and make several statements about it throughout the issue, including a definitive statement at the end when Ben destroys a segregated border gate. Not your typical issue of the FF. Stan often included social commentary in his scripting, but rarely based an entire issue around it. It's an incredibly wordy issue, but you get your money's worth with a Roy Thomas story. The reason that apartheid was topical was because it had escalated in South Africa with nonwhites no longer allowed to hold political office, and the country of Rhodesia had recently declared itself a Republic with a white government. Roy even manages to touch on the spate of plane hijacking that was occurring at the time when Ben and Johnny stop a hijacker from diverting their flight to Cuba. Ben does a couple of badass things in this issue -- first he contains the blast of the hijacker's grenade in his own hands, and then he crushes Klaw's soni-claw. One change that Roy made which didn't stick was T'Challa changing his name to The Black Leopard to distance himself from the Black Panther Party. 

I'm not sure how I feel about the covers during this era. The solid borders (if you can call them that) seem ugly at times. 

[JLSigman]

On 7/24/2023 at 8:10 AM, JLSigman said:

Starting up Fairy Tale where I left off last year. This is definitely rocketing to the top of my favorite King book ever, about to knock off Firestarter and The Talisman.

Million billion stars. Absolutely perfect. Well crafted, well written, sticks the landing flawlessly. Probably the best book Stephen King has ever written. Highly recommended to anyone who loves fairy tales.

[ohtani's jacket]

Fantastic Four #120-123 sees the return of Stan from what I believe they dubbed a vacation. Nice for some. Forget about all that exposition that the whippersnappers are into, Stan's FF is all-action. This is a long and convoluted Galactus story that is not merely a rehash of the original Galactus story, but a rehash of the rehash in FF #74-78. It starts with the arrival of what appears to be Galactus' latest herald, Gabriel the Air-Walker, who blows his horn to announce the end of the world. I'm not a huge fan of the character design, to be honest, and it's an absolute waste of print space when he turns out to be a robot and is cast aside. Big John does draw a pretty cool splash page at the end of #120, but that's about all the Air-Walker is good for. He's really just a precursor for the reappearance of Galactus and the Silver Surfer. Galactus wants his herald back and there's a lot of grandstanding and moralizing. The public are panicking again, as they have been throughout the post-Kirby era, and who can blame them really? They must have PTSD from the constant threats to mankind. The Surfer is prepared to sacrifice himself for the good of mankind, but Reed's not having a bar of it. He keeps telling everyone he has a plan, but no one will listen to him. Nixon orders the military  to get involved and one of the soldiers mistakenly shoots Reed. There's no blood, but we're told that Reed is at death's door. Instead of rushing him to an emergency room, the Surfer takes him to a meadow somewhere and performs surgery with his eyes. Reed's plan works and Galactus ends up trapped in the Negative Zone where we'll never hear from him again.

The coolest part of this story arc is a sequence where Sue rides on Reed's back through the city, including walking across his outstretched back like a tightrope walker, and they fly in a rocket to Galactus' ship where Reed manages to make his way into the giant cockpit and take control of the ship. This all takes place in the span of about five minutes while Galactus is fighting Johnny, but it's beautifully drawn. 

Stan didn't create too many original characters after Jack left, but the most effective one may have been the Baxter Building landlord, Walter Collins, who is a constant thorn in the group's side and keeps upsetting them by labelling them freaks. Either Stan was having trouble with his landlord or he felt the FF needed a Jameson type character to rile things up. The scenes with Agatha Harkness continue to be ridiculous. She has now taken on the role of The Watcher when it comes to warning the FF of galactic threats, and Reed uses her at the end to communicate with everyone on the planet and assure them that the threat is over. FINALLY, someone points out the fact that Reed is entrusting the care of his child to a witch, and it takes the Silver Surfer, an alien, to point it out! Reed is blasé about it. He basically says, "Oh we didn't know that she was a witch at the time, but now that we do, we can't think of anyone better to protect our son." Another pet peeve, and possibly No Prize time, Reed needed special equipment to detect Ben's heartbeat after he was sucker punched by the Hulk, but he can find Ben's pulse without any trouble. Bullsheet. 

So, I'm sensing a pattern here with Atlantis' invasion of New York, the coming of the Over-Mind, and the return of Galactus, and that pattern is that Stan didn't really have much clue when it came to story ideas, which adds fuel to the fire that Jack came up with most of the storylines and that Stan made limited contributions. He may have been coasting, but considering it was panic stations when Kirby quit, you'd assume he was putting his best foot forward, at least in the beginning. The fact that Stan went back to Galactus and the Surfer, and would do so again in the future, makes me doubt his ability to come up with fresh, original ideas. Even with the Over Mind, Archie Goodwin did all of the heavy lifting. There's one storyline left to go, and it resurrects one of the low points of the Kirby/Lee run, so we won't hold out breath for that one. 

[ohtani's jacket]

Stan's final FF story was a two-partner in issues #124-125 that saw the return of Monster from the Lost Lagoon. Not the greatest story, but better than I expected. There was a great cliffhanger at the end of issue #124 where a terrified Sue Storm thought she was about to drown. Stan ends with a message about brotherhood and accepting each other's differences, and that's a wrap.

So, what to make of it? Stan didn't pen any classic Fantastic Four adventures after Jack left, but it wasn't a total disaster, and I should really preface that by saying that Jack wasn't producing classic FF stories either. The saving grace was the artwork. Romita and Buscema weren't able to emulate Kirby, but they were no slouches themselves, and it's fair to say that the art didn't suffer, especially with Sinnott still doing the inking. The stories were average, and there was a distinct lack of character development, but they were good enough that if you were 12 years old and still using your allowance to buy FF books, that you wouldn't notice the difference. I think post-Ditko Spider-Man is MUCH better. Whether that's because Stan was better at writing Spider-Man than the FF, I'm not sure. A case can be made that Stan and Romita took Spider-Man to greater heights than Stan and Ditko did. I'm not sure I agree with it, but it's an argument I'd listen to. I don't think that you can argue that Stan and Buscema made the FF better. Ditko left much earlier than Jack did, if I'm not mistaken, and it's possible that Stan was more concerned with the comics at that time than he was in the 70s, but having read the post-Kirby Fantastic Four I can definitely see why Kirby's family said he wasn't a science fiction guy and didn't share the wealth of knowledge that Jack had. He liked to write existential Silver Surfer musings, and he was keen on promoting peace, love and brotherhood. I don't think that was a gimmick. He made a point to include anti-war and anti-prejudice messages in just about every story he scripted. The time was right for him to step down, and I don't think anyone wishes we could have gotten more Stan Lee FF stories. I don't have any plans on reading the issues that follow. I read the storyline that culminated with FF #200 a while back, and enjoyed it, but I've had my fill of the FF for the time being.

[JLSigman]

Reading Empires of Time. It's definitely vegetable reading, but now that I've gotten out of the introduction and into the parts the author has actually studied and is excited about it's picking up.

Read the second half of the ElfQuest: Stargazer's Quest. Why do I do this to myself? There's been no good ElfQuest since the late 1990s, and definitely not since the beginning of the Final Quest.

Malika: Warrior Queen volume 1 was a free borrow from Hoopla, and I liked it enough to want to read the next part of it eventually. The art's a little mushy, but the story is good.

[Contentious C]

So I put down my re-read of The Bone Clocks at the 2/3s point because I hit Marinus' chapter in the book, and I'd forgotten more or less entirely the page-by-page events of the last sections (though not the plot), but I knew he was one of a handful of recurring characters across David Mitchell's books, and that Bone Clocks was the midpoint of a trilogy (if evidently a loose one).  So rather than barrel forward with the remainder, I thought I should diverge backwards into the path of the Marinus character by reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.  I didn't expect "Napoleonic era seafaring corruption scandal meets-stranger in a strange land falls in love meets-the plot of Raise the Red Lantern" and whatever the fuck else it's going to have for the last half of the book, but man is it weird, even by Mitchell's standards. 

Maybe it's weird because it's Mitchell writing something with a relatively point-to-point narrative.  Or maybe it's just that none of the characters really grab you except for a couple of the slaves and low-level workers, while all the (non-titular) Dutchmen and Europeans feel like slimy little extensions of each other aside from their differing names (though in retrospect there are at least 2 or 3 good reasons for that).   And considering the title, I thought it would be about someone who was actually long-lived, since that's a key sticking point of Bone Clocks and a key sticking point regarding who Marinus actually is.  I'm still waiting for it to "make sense" in the grander scheme of the story Mitchell has been trying to tell across his novels, but aside from a couple of references to "carnivores" and the sort of broadly evident racism and social asshattery that said carnivores tend to inflict on those around them, it's...well, it's not bland, because his writing is great like always, but it's also not a story I find much interest in connecting with.  I'm at the midpoint and mostly I'm just outraged at how shitty everyone is.  And I fear I'll be waiting for that broader connection much the way Craig was waiting for The Americans to get interesting (for him; I think it's fucking great).

Maybe I'm playing too many video games; I found myself reacting this way while watching the TV version of The Last of Us and that's despite knowing how it goes.  The lack of agency in my interactions with forms of media feels like it's starting to warp my interest in them in the process.  I did, however, find RIPPA's review and read just enough to get a bit of a laugh from it (but not enough for more in-depth spoilers, if there even were any).  So I guess I'm not the only one who made a few John C. Reilly faces during it.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Contentious C

[Curt McGirt]

Finally took a trip to the library

The Hard Stuff - Wayne Kramer (autobio from the MC5 guitarist. Still kickin' at 75, after a lot of shit. The subtitle is "Dope, Crime, the MC5 & My Life of Impossibilities" so it's gonna be wild)

Precious Metal: Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces (a brief little read compiled of their early Hall of Fame album entries, already returned it this morning. Not very enlightening, even about the studio stuff. Probably the best chapter was actually the Cannibal Corpse one about Tomb of the Mutilated, which isn't even their best record haha)

True Indie - Don Coscarelli (autobio from the director of the Phantasm series, The Beastmaster, Bubba Ho-Tep, etc.)

and I bought the Uni-Force Zine book that collects the '86-'89 run of Mark Sawickis from Impetigo's metal/hardcore zine. It is WILD reading classic albums reviewed in real time, like Slayer or Motorhead or Bathory records or whatever just hot off the presses and given a first listen. Tons of ads, flyers and pics and interviews with band members who were basically babies at the time. A real trip to check out for metal historians. 

[JLSigman]

Been reading "The Wicked + The Divine" collections.  Kieron Gillon never met a mythological figure he didn't love twisting a bit (or a lot, see the undead Arthur books), but these are pretty good when the artist isn't changing every other page.

[odessasteps]

He had a funny line online the other day related to that. I'll have to see if I can find it. 

[Ingobernable]

On 7/6/2023 at 11:03 AM, Ingobernable said:

I only got through one book in June because when I was done with it I picked up a few big boys and they're still underway. Also Tears of The Kingdom came into my life. All the same STUFF I FINISHED IN JUNE: 

The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye. This was a stark read but Faye's unapologetic style is incredibly engaging and she is able to talk about a whole range of disparate political issues with sensitivity. She's also really skillful in not turning this into a memoir and acknowledging her own privileges (white, middle-class, educated, supportive family) when detailing the structural oppressions faced by trans people in the UK specifically. Not a fun read but really important to recognise how confected moral panics obscure the social and structural barriers faced by trans people of all kinds, and not only trans women, who a lot of the focus is generally placed on. Strong recommendation.  

Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg. I read this in translation because I do not have Italian. I enjoyed this but not as much as I thought I would. It's a memoir/novel about growing up in Italy alongside Ginzburg's father - a noted linguist and histologist. The most interesting thing about it was the way in which the events of the Second World War and the rise of Italian facism are treated as a sort of backdrop to more mundane elements of family life; a helpful reminder that ordinary life continues and that the historical record tends to be able to create defined points at which events start or cultures change whereas in reality that's a much more gradual process that sneaks up on us. A short read, so mild recommendation.  

I have been on holiday most of this month and so neglected to post STUFF I FINISHED IN JULY. 

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Nobody needs an internet stranger to tell them that Wuthering Heights is good but Hey! Wuthering Heights is good. I tend to read more contemporary stuff so ocassionally dip back into the canon to fill in my gaps and, as a denizen now of Yorkshire this fell onto my pile and I especially enjoyed the rich descriptiveness with which Bronte (and all the Brontes) capture the landscape. ALSO people think this is a love story and HONESTLY I have to disagree on the grounds that basically all of the main characters are awful people and I did not want any of them to end up with each other. This is spooky, engrossing, and also hard work. Recommendation. 

Return of a Native: Learning From the Land by Vron Ware. This filled in a really useful gap in my political reading in that it gave me a framework for what the history of left-wing rural politics in the UK looks like. It tells that history - of the commercialisation of commons, of resistance to industrialisation by the chartists and the Luddites, and of the importation of factory farming methods from the USA - through reference to one small area in Hampshire. I found that framing really helpful, especially for conceiving of how a different kind of future might emerge from the way the land has been aggressively worked. Ware also rights fluently and attractively, which helps. Recommendation. 

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I thought that this was a novel written by a guy with a great idea but without the literary skill to carry off what he was trying. A sort of detective novel with a twist, I thought that Auster struggled to get the postmodern/ghostly elements to really land. He's trying to do something that I'd have maybe associated with DeLillo or Kafka in different types of traditions but which he just doesn't land convincingly. It's a shame because I trusted the recommendations I had received on this and, like I say, I though it had potential conceptually. Not recommended. 

[ohtani's jacket]

I read Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis & Kevin Maguire's Defenders mini-series. If you're familiar with their Justice League work, it follows a similar format. If you love their Justice League work then you'll enjoy this. If you don't like their work, or you've never read it, you'll probably hate it. The characters are written completely out of character, and Maguire chooses to draw both Namor and the Silver Surfer in extremely cartoony fashion. I liked it, as it amuses me whenever the characters insult each other. Would have liked to have seen this trio do an Avengers series. 

[JLSigman]

On 8/26/2023 at 8:25 AM, JLSigman said:

Been reading "The Wicked + The Divine" collections.  Kieron Gillon never met a mythological figure he didn't love twisting a bit (or a lot, see the undead Arthur books), but these are pretty good when the artist isn't changing every other page.

Finished the final volume of this, and I don't think he stuck the landing as well as he could have. To be honest, there were a couple of times in the final volume where I would have canceled my subscription if I'd been buying individual issues (10+ pages of nearly identical panels is not fun; nor is several pages of just black panels). To be honest, I think this would've been better as a series of short stories or something; there was an interlude where they told the story of the end of the 1923 batch of gods that worked really well in that format. Not a waste of time, but limped and stumbled a lot.

[Curt McGirt]

Finished up and just returned The Hard Stuff. Kinda tough to read considering I'm going through some similar issues, but Wayne Kramer comes off like an incredibly intelligent and hard-working dude who is still in his 70s doing a lot of work involving more than just music, but prison reform and even finally raising a child -- at his age, which is insane. The stories can be pretty bonkers because he was there for all of it. I mean he remembers when rock and roll began when he was a kid, he lived through the Detroit riots, he was part of the only band that played the DNC in '69 when the police nearly slaughtered everyone, he got put away for coke and when he came out got dropped right into the middle of dope-land NYC circa 1980 to form a band with Johnny fucking Thunders of all the worst people. I'd call it a memoir of constant struggle and endless progression. Very good (and yes, hard) stuff. 

Picked up two at Barnes in the meantime. One was a cheapo just called The Mafia written by a collaboration of four different authors. It really surprised me by being incredibly detailed about not just the American stuff but going all the way back to detail how the Sicilian peninsula engendered corruption from ancient times onward due to endentured servitude, landed gentries in the North using the peasants in a feudal manner up WAY past that had transformed into democracies in other countries. So it blends and tracks the development on both sides of the ocean, including Canada, gives up some history of US Irish and Jewish mobs as well, and in every chapter details very gruesome murders of note in individual sub-sections. They even cover the notorious Richard Kuklinski, the Iceman, to an extent that will easily turn your stomach if yours isn't as cast-iron as mine. 

I also snagged a book called There Will Be Fire about the attempted assassination by the IRA of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, so that's next up. 

[Contentious C]

Finished up Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, re-finished Bone Clocks, and also read Slade House, which is less a closing of a trilogy and more an accompaniment to Bone Clocks in some respects.  They're...I dunno.  I still think Bone Clocks is the best thing Mitchell's done besides Cloud Atlas, mostly because the characters are so much more memorable and alive and compelling than in the other things I've read.  But other than the Marinus character threading through them, and the obvious-but-loose "soul carnivores" plot point, they may as well be entirely different stabs at different things with some connective tissue crammed in there.  I guess what I'm saying is I didn't see any value in weaving together his works the way that Stephen King has done.  I think that's especially true given the way Bone Clocks ends - and how Cloud Atlas eventually develops, too - and that the world he's building isn't entirely Fantastical or fantastical; it's Earth-Prime with a justifiably dim view of humanity, and maybe they would have worked better if Autumns was *mostly* just an historical novel, or Slade House was *mostly* just a ghost story.  For me, it was hard to shake a sense of, "Well, these are victories of a sort, I suppose, but what's coming down the pipe at your ancestors is some awful stuff, so what was the point?"

Probably the most interesting thing to me about Autumns, though, was that it felt like there were little nods through several of the sections to Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy.  I don't know if those were intentional or I'm just picking up patterns that aren't there, but there are some similarities in overarching plot structure and in some very particular moments of this book.

Having said all that, I'm still curious as to whether he's going to write another book that really dives deeper - or at least as deep as Bone Clocks - into the more magic realism/sci-fi aspects of his world-building.  It won't get him listed for the Booker Prize again, and maybe that's why he avoids writing it, but I'd read it.

Edited September 25, 2023 by Contentious C

[ohtani's jacket]

I finished reading Naoki Urasawa's Monster, which is hands down one of the best written manga series you'll ever read. Superbly well-crafted, and one of the best comics of the 90s for my money. I'm contemplating watching the anime, but I might jump into another Urasawa series instead. 

[JLSigman]

Read Legion of X vol 2 and really didn't get the ending (what in the world happened to David?!?!?), and complained in my review that I didn't have access to the Sins of Sinister event which might have helped it make sense.

Yesterday, my library got the Sins of Sinister collection! So I'm reading that now. If I finish it before the Legion one goes back, I may re-read the last couple issues.

[odessasteps]

I mentioned this in the wrestling book thread, but Brian Solomons book on the Sheik is available from Hoopla, the print and audio versions. 

[JLSigman]

On 10/5/2023 at 8:24 AM, JLSigman said:

Yesterday, my library got the Sins of Sinister collection! So I'm reading that now. If I finish it before the Legion one goes back, I may re-read the last couple issues.

A well-written hellscape with a couple too many deus ex machines at the end.

And I already know that they're not in the pit any more, so I guess I'll need to track down how they got out of it.