Todd Klein's Blog, page 11

Incoming: DC FINEST BATMAN and DR. FATE Trade Paperbacks

Images © DC Comics

These arrived together, first up is DC FINEST: BATMAN THE KILLING JOKE AND OTHER STORIES, 608 pages, including material from 1987 and 1988. Collects Batman stories from BATMAN 413-422, DETECTIVE COMICS 580-589, plus graphic novels BATMAN: SON OF THE DEMON by Mike W. Barr and Jerry Bingham, and BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. Creators on the other stories include Jim Aparo, Jim Starlin, Norm Breyfogle, Dick Giordano and others. Retail price is $39.99

Next is DR. FATE BY J.M. DeMATTEIS, 776 PAGES, includes DOCTOR FATE #1-4 (1987), DR. FATE #1-24 (1988-1991) and DR. FATE ANNUAL #1. Artists include Shawn McManus, Keith Giffen, Tom Sutton, Jim Fern, Val Semeiks, and Joe Staton. Retail price is $59.99.

Both have a May 20, 2025 release date.

The post Incoming: DC FINEST BATMAN and DR. FATE Trade Paperbacks appeared first on Todd's Blog.

My Music: DREAM GIRL

Another dream song, of a type I think we all have, involving wish fulfillment. Some can be more hurtful than others. Here’s the song: Dream Girl.

Written February 10, 1978, recorded some time that year. Dream Girl is © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

The post My Music: DREAM GIRL appeared first on Todd's Blog.

Rereading: SUMMERLAND by Michael Chabon

Cover art by William Joyce

Ethan Feld lives on small Clam Island in Puget Sound, Washington state, where he’s part of a youth baseball team, and sadly, the team member who everyone including himself feels is the worst player. He wants to quit, but his father loves baseball so much that Ethan hates to do it. Team member Jennifer T. is Ethan’s best friend, and she does what she can to encourage him, but nothing seems to help. Ethan’s father is an inventor with high hopes for his personal dirigible aircraft, but so far it just provides nice rides to the ballpark known as Summerland. While there, Ethan and Jennifer get wind of terrible doings at Hotel Beach, just beyond the ballpark, and they go to investigate. Before long, they and their friend Thor are neck deep in fighting the nefarious plans of the mighty trickster himself, Coyote, who intends to bring down the World Tree and end life as we know it. Among other things, he has kidnapped Ethan’s father to make use of his inventions.

A terrifying journey begins through magic worlds full of strange creatures and stranger customs, but all joined by a love of baseball. Can Ethan, Thor, and Jennifer T. put together a winning team to save themselves and the world too?

I see this long novel as Chabon’s attempt to create a new American fantasy, drawing on tall tales, Native American legends, the Old West, Celtic/European fairy tales, alternate worlds, and of course that very American sport baseball. It has some ups and downs for me. There are too many surprise fixes to problems, and the blend of ideas is not always a success, but by the end, I was fully invested in the characters and enjoyed the way it played out on and off the ball field.

Recommended.

The post Rereading: SUMMERLAND by Michael Chabon appeared first on Todd's Blog.

Rereading: ALICE’S ADVENTURES UNDER GROUND by Lewis Carroll

The book that became known as “Alice in Wonderland” was first a story told, or at least begun, on an idyllic summer of 1862 boat trip with Reverend Charles Dodgson (Carroll), his friend Robinson Duckworth, and young Alice Liddell and two of her sisters. Carroll was most fond of Alice, and made her the main character of the story. Alice and her siblings begged him to write it all down, and eventually he did, preparing this hand-written presentation copy with his own drawings to her at Christmas 1864. The published version, almost twice as long, with illustrations by John Tenniel, came out in 1865, and has long been considered one of the best and most unusual books written for children.

Many years after Alice was grown with children of her own, Carroll asked permission to publish a facsimile edition of his original gift book, and that first came out from Macmillan in 1886 after struggles with a dubious engraver. The manuscript was sold in 1928 to an American, and was here until resold to the British Library in 1948. This Dover edition is printed from photos of that manuscript, but only the front and back cover (as seen above) are reproduced in color.

The story pages are still interesting and pretty easy to read. Carroll’s illustrations vary in quality, but aren’t too bad, and are interesting in their own right as showing how he saw the characters. Included are the fall down the rabbit hole, difficulties getting out of it at the other end, swimming in a sea of tears, the mouse’s tail, giant Alice stuck in the White Rabbit’s house, the caterpillar on the mushroom, the Father William poem, croquet with the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, and the trial before the Queen. The writing is just as funny and charming as in the published book, though often different.

I think this is still pretty easy to find today, and worth a look. Recommended.

The post Rereading: ALICE’S ADVENTURES UNDER GROUND by Lewis Carroll appeared first on Todd's Blog.

My Music: THE CHEERING-UP SONG

This short song was written on January 14, 1978. By then I had been working in the DC Comics production department for about six months, and loved working there. I was beginning to get freelance work to do at home as well, but not nearly as much as I would have in a few years. For instance, in 1978 I lettered 482 pages, 51 covers, and designed 5 logos in addition to doing my staff job. In 1986 I lettered 5,563 pages, 396 covers, and designed 229 logos while also working 40 hours a week at DC. I think the person meant to be cheered up was myself, perhaps I was feeling sad about my father, who was in the hospital with lung cancer and who would die in March, 1978. The Cheering-Up Song.

Me in Pluckemin, NJ, January 1978.

1978 became my busiest year ever musically. Around April of that year I bought the Teac 2340 reel-to-reel tape deck and began recording many of the songs I’d already written in my living room in Highland Park, NJ, including this one. In 1978 I also wrote eleven new songs, and those are just the ones I recorded, there were a few more I didn’t get on tape. I guess I had a lot of energy then, and not much of a social life!

The Cheering-Up Song is © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

The post My Music: THE CHEERING-UP SONG appeared first on Todd's Blog.

Incoming: KINGDOM COME DC COMPACT COMICS EDITION

Image © DC Comics

This is a smaller (5.5 by 8.5 inches) trade paperback edition of the 1996 miniseries I lettered with fine writing by Mark Waid and excellent painted art by Alex Ross. The reproduction is not as good as either the original comics or earlier full-size collections, but for $9.99 it’s a good deal, and it’s certainly readable at this size, though I don’t like the fact that they halftone screened the lettering. Despite that, the lettering works okay, and I suspect anyone new to the material won’t know what they’re missing. Release date is May 6, 2025.

The post Incoming: KINGDOM COME DC COMPACT COMICS EDITION appeared first on Todd's Blog.

Rereading: A SPELL IS CAST by Eleanor Cameron

This standalone novel from 1964 shows considerable growth and craft in writing for Cameron beyond her “Mushroom Planet” series, the beginning of more subtle work by her. The illustrations by Beth and Joe Krush are excellent.

Cory lives in New York City with Stephanie, though they’re not related. Cory was the infant daughter of Stephanie’s best friend when the child became orphaned, and has brought her up as her own daughter, though Stephanie is an actress doing one-woman shows and is often away on tour. This spring she’s sent the girl to visit Cory’s grandmother and Uncle Dirk in northern coastal California, in the family mansion Tarnhelm, which will all be new, though she’s been corresponding with her uncle.

When Cory arrives, she finds no one to meet her, and has to catch a ride from a neighbor, then get help from Peter, the neighbor boy, to climb up to Tarnhelm in a thunderstorm. With her welcome uncertain, Cory is happy to meet the cook and caretaker, husband and wife Fergie and Andrew, who are warm and welcoming, though when she finally sees her grandmother and uncle the next day, they’re a bit frightening. Cory gradually gets to know them, and things improve, but discovers mysteries in the old house, and places Uncle Dirk does not want her to see. Cory tries to make friends with Peter and his gang, and with a woman, Laurel, she meets on the beach, but everything keeps getting confused and uncertain, especially when she finds out Stephanie has never actually adopted her. Will Cory ever be welcome as a member of this strange family?

Recommended, has elements of gothic romance and mystery along with fine characters and well-observed settings.

The post Rereading: A SPELL IS CAST by Eleanor Cameron appeared first on Todd's Blog.

My Music: GROWN

This song was written in May 1977, and it’s about career choices. At the time I was working two jobs to pay the bills, and in my spare time doing illustrations for science fiction and fantasy fanzines.

Here I am, pensive, with one of those illustrations, this time for a book of Lovecraftian humor that never came out, you can see the surviving images HERE. The song is at this link: Grown.

There are some mistakes in the guitar picking, but in general I still like it. Ironically, two months later I was hired to work in the production department at DC Comics, beginning a whole new and more fulfilling career than I had ever imagined possible. The song shows I was preparing myself for new possibilities, I think.

Grown is © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

The post My Music: GROWN appeared first on Todd's Blog.

THE MUSIC FROM BEHIND THE MOON by James Branch Cabell

The fifth book in the “Biography of Manuel” is a short one, 54 pages, eight of which are full-page wood engravings by Leon Underwood. Though not stated in this book, one of the two main characters, the beautiful maiden Etarre, is the daughter of Manuel.

The story is of a musician and poet, Madoc, who sees Etarre in a vision, and is thereafter haunted by her mysterious music from her home behind the moon. Madoc travels from place to place, winning praise for his songs, but forever unsatisfied with them. At last he finds a way to travel on the back of a hippogriff to Etarre’s home, and attempts to free her from 725 years of servitude to the masterful giant god in that place, and his book of all human history. Is Madoc clever enough to succeed?

As entertaining as the other Cabell books in this series, even though short, and recommended.

The post THE MUSIC FROM BEHIND THE MOON by James Branch Cabell appeared first on Todd's Blog.

Rereading: THE TIN WOODMAN OF OZ by L. Frank Baum

In his twelfth Oz book, Baum delves into the past history of the Tin Woodman, and even Oz itself, briefly, a tale that has fresh elements as well as familiar ones.

The Tin Woodman and his best friend The Scarecrow are enjoying time together in the Woodman’s palace in the Winkie country when a boy asks to see them. He is Woot the Wanderer, who has been doing just that around Oz for some time before happening on the royal palace of the Woodman. He asks to hear the stories of the famous pair, and in telling his, Nick Chopper recounts his origin before he was rescued from rust by Dorothy and the Scarecrow. One thing that puzzles Woot is what happened to Nick’s betrothed, Nimmie Amee, and the Woodman admits he doesn’t know. Woot convinces him that the three of them should set out to find her. Perhaps she would still care for Nick after all this time.

Thus begins an adventure that takes them to the daunting castle of the giantess Mrs. Yoop, where they are transformed and made prisoners, joining Polychrome, the rainbow’s daughter, who has met the same fate. Mrs. Yoop’s magic is powerful, and she claims her transformations are permanent. What will happen to the adventurers then, and will they ever find Nimmie Amee?

A fun reread, and Baum floats the idea that Oz itself was transformed from an ordinary land to a magical one by a passing Fairy Queen, Lurline, the first time the magic nature of Oz had an origin. He makes other interesting statements about the nature of Oz and its magic, too. Recommended.

The post Rereading: THE TIN WOODMAN OF OZ by L. Frank Baum appeared first on Todd's Blog.