Steven’s Comments (group member since Nov 30, 2019)

Steven’s comments from the Mount TBR 2020 group.

#20 - Star Trek: The Q Conflict by Scott & David Tipton & David Messina

Something is causing unanticipated supernovae in the alpha and beta quadrants, and a very strange event helps Picard figure out who or what may be behind it: Q. More properly, the Q Continuum, which has decided to put Metron, Trelane (and his parents), and the Organians in their place. This is not going well.

Picard promptly convinces Q to find another way...Q does. He proposes a game. Better still, he’ll bring in other teams — Kirk’s crew, Sisko’s crew from Deep Space 9, and the crew of Voyager.

As far as it goes, it’s okay. The Q are generally ridiculous, Trelane certainly is, and Metron and the Organian are above it all. The writing is okay, the art is often questionable, and the story is...there.

#19 - Scarlet Witch, Vol. 1: Witches' Road by James Robinson, Chris Visiobs, Steve Dillon, Javier Pulido et al

After the various heavily meaningless things done to Wanda Maximoff over the years, it’s nice to have a series like this where the character is treated with respect. The stories themselves aren’t the mist ground-breaking, but they have wit and emotion, presenting Wanda as someone who feels the need to atone for the worst of her past by walking the world and righting wrongs.

Adding to this, the artwork is generally quite gorgeous (when Steve Dillon is the let-down, it’s saying something.) Wanda is presented as statuesque and graceful, which is certainly a nice change.

#18 - Immortal Hulk, Volume 1: Or is he Both? by Al Ewing, Joe Bennet, & others

The Hulk returns again, despite Bruce Banner being killed (at Banner’s behest) a few months earlier. There’s something that refuses to let the Hulk die, and if Hulk can’t die, neither can Banner. So Banner wanders from place to place by day, and Hulk comes out at night. This is a mean, sadistic Hulk, too, preying on criminals and lowlives. Journalist Jackie McGee is following him, trying to get answers.

It’s an interesting take on the Hulk, with body horror coming to the fore.

#17 - Star Trek: Countdown by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Mike Johnson, Tim Jones, David Messina, et al

A prequel to the 2009 Star Trek movie, starting in the Prime timeline as the Hobus star starts an odd pre-supernova cycle that will eventually destroy Romulus. It’s a formerly in-canon story that explains why Nero has such a hatred for Spock and Vulcan.

Some of the story *does* remain in canon even with Star Trek: Picard altering the post-Nemesis timeline somewhat. The dropped parts are mostly to do with Starfleet and Picard himself. It also seems that the Hobus supernova occurs earlier in the Picard timeline than it does here.

#16 - Tyler Cross: Black Rock by Fabien Nury, Brüno

The thing that *immediately* springs to mind reading this is that Nury is homaging the Parker novels by Richard Stark (a pseudonym of Donald Westlake.) There are differences, of course — Cross's for hire, Parker isn’t, Cross works with a small crew, Parker with a larger group. Plans usually go awry, though, often due to unforeseen circumstances, which is how Cross ends up in the small a Texas oil town of Black Rock, the home of the generally terrible Pragg family, with seventeen kilos of heroin and no car.

This is a terse read, overall, and the art, which goes for a parodistic Euro take on Darwyn Cooke, is unfortunately a bit of a mismatch for the story.

#15 - Superman: Exile and Other Stories Omnibus by Jerry Ordway & various

An omnibus picking up the Superman books from the end of John Byrne’s run and covering half the distance to The Death and Return of Superman: Omnibus in its 900+ pages. The main part of it focuses on Superman’s deepening guilt over executing the three pocket universe Kryptonians who’d wiped out all life on that alternate Earth. One breakdown later and Kal-El was off to roam the cosmos, taking a teleporter and breathing gear with
him. This leads to him being given the Eradicator, a highly dangerous piece of technology (the collection ends on a cliffhanger just as the main part of that story is starting.)

Overall, it’s okay, with solid art and okay writing. Some subplots get put on a bus, though — Matrix’s story gets unceremoniously interrupted, and by the time Matrix returns she’ll have swapped genders again (when last seen he was in male form, having mimicked Clark Kent, and then Superman.)

#14 - Walter Hill's Triggerman by Walter Hill, Matt, Jef

Convicted killer “Machine Gun” Roy Nash is smuggled out of prison to be the point man in a mob hunt for the three men who were bankrolled for a major heist and welshed on the payoff, fleeing westward. The incentive for Roy: the woman he loves is with them.

The opening, set in Arizona, immediately pulls up memories of Walter Hill’s gangster-era remake of Yojimbo, Last Man Standing, but it doesn’t stop in Arizona...instead it moves on to a twilight version of L.A. where Nash gets himself into a variety of ugly scrapes, more out of his attempts to find his lost love than the two men he’s supposed to kill.

It’s a tight, yet messy, thriller, based on an unproduced screenplay by Hill. The art, by French artist Jef, is extremely detailed, though character faces can be rather ugly here and there. The Los Angeles pages also fall down a bit in another way — there’s a distinct lack of streetcars, something extremely present in 1932.

Good pace so far!

#13 - Doll by Ed McBain

Backtracking slightly to #20 in the series. A fashion model is murdered in her apartment while her daughter sits in the next room, clutching a doll. Steve Carella catches the case, choosing to partner with Bert Kling, who’s becoming ever more volatile and likely to be kicked off the force. When an argument separates the two of them, Carella finds a clue and pursues it alone...which of course goes bad. A very taut procedural thriller and a solid entry in the series.

Quirkyreader wrote: "Yea on reaching Pike’s Peak. 🐸"

Going a lot slower than I wanted to, mind you. I’d hoped my surprise hospital stay would result in knocking out half a dozen books. Instead I started catching up on TV shows. Oh well.

#12 - Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here! by Ed McBain

24 hours in the life of the 87th Precinct, following the day and night shifts as they tackle various cases and deal with a variety of incidents. It’s essentially a mosaic novel, with no overarching big case, just a lot of lower-echelon stuff.

#11 - Jigsaw by Ed McBain

Detective Arthur Brown gets to be the focus of this one, though it’s unfortunately a fairly flat story. Brown is in charge of investigating a murder where the major clue is the pieces of a photograph that supposedly showing the hiding place of the loot from a robbery years before.

#10 - Shotgun by Ed McBain

A couple are found brutally murdered by shotgun in a poorly staged fake murder-suicide. Elsewhere a woman is knifed, killed with a single thrust — something that stands out as highly unusual. Detectives are assigned to what becomes a highly confusing pair of cases.

In addition an older case comes back to the 87th Precinct — one that none of the detectives even knew was a murder case. It’s an odd swerve in the middle of the story, as is Bert Kling having problems with a woman he questions, leading to a protracted fight with his girlfriend.

#9 - Eighty Million Eyes by Ed McBain

Another 87th Precinct book with A and B stories, one of which is a mystery and the other of which is procedural as Bert Kling has to deal with a man stalking a woman Kling dealt with badly in an earlier case. The A story deals with the mystery around the on-air murder of a famous TV comedian, and provides Carella and Meyer time to do a somewhat grumpy buddy cop thing. McBain, who often wrote fir television, gives the industry a shin-kicking.

#8 - He Who Hesitates by Ed McBain

87th Precinct #19. It’s another experimental tale — it’s set in the 87th squad’s territory, but the cops of the 87th barely show up in it. Instead it’s about Roger Broome, a polite young man in town to sell the handmade wood items produced in the shop he runs with his mother and brother. Roger has something he needs to tell the police...but he hesitates repeatedly. The story unfolds with nested flashbacks, and the result is an intriguing story, especially given the ending.

#7 - Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

My first descent into the Pendergast series, and, well...not so impressed. First of all, it’s a bloody Scooby Doo mystery without the dog and, yes, that means the denouement is precisely what that implies. Also, I don’t know what sort of research these guys did, but Voodoo/Voudon don’t operate quite that way, lads, and Obeah REALLY doesn’t operate the way they have it here (they nearly get it right with the backstreet Obeahman and his store full of mysterious ingredients.) Entire subplots are paid off pathetically, the secret cult is allowed to carry on, and I don’t think the nurse driving the Lincoln Town Car at high speed *ever* gets explained.

It’s really a prime example of an idiot plot — for the plot to work, the characters have to be idiots.

I hope the other books in the series are better, as I have a lot of them sitting here (vagaries of a book sale on bag day.)

#6 - X-Men: Grand Design - Second Genesis by Ed Piskor

I loved the first volume of this, and love this equally as much. Basically, alternative comics artist Ed Piskor delivers a compressed retelling of an era of the X-Men in a style that mixes underground comics and traditional mainstream comics. The result is a dense book with a wonderful style and captivating colour work. In some respects it acts as a precursor to the current (2019/2020) era of the series.

There’s a third and final volume out now, X-Men: Grand Design - X-Tinction.

#5 - Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy by Tom Veitch, Cam Kennedy

The original DE, along with the Thrawn trilogy, dragged Star Wars out of the sinkhole it was in at the end of the 1980s. As it turns out, it’s really not very good — overwritten, out of character at times, and with designs that seemed well off-model. The second story is a cluttered rush with yet another superweapon. The final story, much shorter, gets tired of reviving the Emperor and kills him off for good.

At the time it was exciting. Sadly, it didn’t wear well.

I admit that got an involuntary laugh from me...I literally have thousands of books awaiting reading. I also gave Kindle Unlimited, though that right now is saving me from excavating the McBain books from where they’re buried (I’ll need to do this soon anyway, as there’s several that aren’t available via KU, and two not even available as ebooks.)

#4 - Ax by Ed McBain

Another cold winter, another bloody murder scene in a basement as the body of an elderly janitor is discovered hacked up with an axe. The case quickly becomes perplexing...who *was* the victim, and what was he doing that caused this?

Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes have their work cut out for them as they dig into one corner after another, trying to unravel this.

I tend to like this one more than most readers do. It’s short and relentless, and it has a smattering of social commentary in with the procedural elements, plus more basic tragedy than usual.