Mount TBR 2016 discussion
Level 8: Mt. Olympus (150+)
>
Brian! Blessed!, Barsoom, And Me!
#75 - Doctor Who: Creatures of Beauty by Nicholas BriggsFive and Nyssa land on a world that's been devastated by an ecological catastrophe set off by another planet's negligence. It's soon revealed that the race that caused the catastrophe is secretly attempting to fix it, with the aid of a rich, reclusive group of "beauties" -- people who were well-off enough to be able to correct the genetic condition that's destroying their species -- even as the authorities are closing in with the aim of destroying the beautiful people and their suspected alien allies.
The problem with the story is that it not only starts in media res, Briggs then proceeds to try and out-QT Quentin Tarantino by playing non-linear storytelling games, all of which serve mainly to confuse things completely. The actual ending of the story comes less than three-quarters in, so there's a lot of induced "Huh?" and "what just happened?" involved. I have the impression that the story told in linear fashion was probably too rubbishy for words, and this was the attempt to salvage it.
#76-Doctor Who: Project: Lazarus by Cavan ScottSix and Evelyn return to Norway in a search for Cassie, the woman they left there after Doctor Who: Project: Twilight; they hope to be able to finally cure her of the vampire virus she was infected with by the Forge and mad scientist Nimrod. As it turns out, Nimrod got to Cassie first, and has brainwashed her. Worse yet, he has plans for the Doctor....
'In the second half of the story, Seven, traveling alone (between Doctor Who: Lungbarrow and the 1996 TV movie, then) follows an anomaly in the Vortex, and finds himself back at Project Forge where, confusingly, he finds his sixth incarnation working with Nimrod...something that he has no memory of. As it turns out, there are reasons for this...horrifying ones.
Quite an interesting approach to a multi-Doctor story, and impressive for the total character devastation of Six and Evelyn halfway through. Seven, meanwhile, is in his master manipulator mode, striding straight in to the dragon's den with no fear whatsoever, and sarcasm in full bloom.
#77-Doctor Who: Flip-Flop by Jonathan MorrisGood grief...time paradoxes, time loops, all kinds of lunatic stuff as the Seventh Doctor and Mel get caught up in a cosmic Groundhog Day (with nods to It's A Wonderful Life.) The comedy element of the Slithergee is Benny Hill broad, and there are moments when I swear "Yakety Sax" should start up, but the whole story is, improbably, a hoot, with everyone involved enjoying the hell out of it. It's overall daft, in that wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey way that the later nuWho series could manage well, and it likely plays fast and loose with the confused rules of the Whoniverse, but I enjoyed it. One imagines the double loop inherent in the story just going on and on and on....
#78 - The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth KolbertI imagine it would have been easy for Kolbert to focus entirely on the doomsday scenario of the Sixth Mass Extinction (the one that's likely to encompass the human species, courtesy of the actions of humans) but she doesn't. Instead she follows a winding path through paleontology and archeology, paying out threads of history and science as she goes, looking at the prior mass extinctions and their causes, and of the roots of the current mass extinction event, noting that while the process has indeed sped up in the industrial age it began millennia ago, and was in progress as Neanderthals gave way to homo sapiens -- man's arrival on the American continent, for instance, spelled the extinction of the mammoth and the mastodon.
So. The question remains, as the book concludes...how do we get out of *this* mess?
#79 - Oh No It Isn't! by Paul CornellA full cast audio version of Oh No It Isn't!, which saw the character of Berniece Summerfield spinning off from the Virgin Books Doctor Who series. While generally entertaining in its own right, the whole thing is elevated by Nicholas Courtney as the accidentally enhanced cat, Wolsey, who spends a good part of the book believing that Berniece is Dick Whittington. The general conceit of the novel is that a reality-warping missile launched by a dead civilization somehow manages to plunge the entire cast into a reality inspired by a scholarly treatise on British pantomime. Antics, and much cross-dressing, ensue.
#80 - Doctor Who: Omega by Nev FountainThe first of a trilogy of stories bringing back iconic enemies for the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors. This one features the mad Time Lord Omega, the man who gave Gallifrey time travel and stellar manipulation capabilities (as it turns out "The Hand Of Omega" is a bit *too* literal, even if it it isn't actually Omega's hand.) As dark and gruesome as things get, there's an undeniably goofy air to the proceedings.
#81 - Doctor Who: Davros by Lance ParkinSix gets to once again confront his old nemesis. Davros. No Daleks, thankfully, and there's some delving into Davros' history, which is interesting, but it's mainly Six outwitting the battered old mad scientist yet again, and even acknowledging at the end that Davros probably isn't dead.
#82 - Doctor Who: The Alchemists by Ian PotterA straight historical, set before "An Unearthly Child" (and complete with references to the TARDIS' chameleon circuit actually working) in which The Doctor and Susan land first during the Blitz in London, and then in Berlin just before Hitler's ascension as Chancellor. The brownshirts are out in the streets, Jews are fleeing, and dark deeds are afoot. The Doctor goes to visit a group of scientists, only to be kidnapped (and Susan mysteriously drugged, only to apparently be saved by a mysterious Englishman.)
It's a fairly well done bit of 1930s melodrama, but gets lower marks than it perhaps should because of the sheer abuse of Susan -- the implications are highly unpleasant, and that the worst of the abuse is at the hands of an SIS agent makes it all the worse. Nearly everyone Susan encounters during the course of the story is a fairly awful person, including most of the kids who try to help her.
#83 - Doctor Who: The Elixir of Doom by Paul MagrsSo, we have Iris Wildthyme, madcap Time Lady driving a TARDIS that looks like a London bus, Jo (Grant) Jones, former assistant to the Third Doctor, the 8th Doctor, and Hollywood in the 1930s where the cheesy movie monsters are cheesily real.
It's daft, fast, not entirely sensible, and a lot of fun. Eight is mostly in the background for this, and Magrs manages to insert some character beats for Iris that make her ever more sympathetic.
#84 - Doctor Who: The Guardian of the Solar System by Simon Guerrier#85 - Doctor Who: Find and Replace by Paul Magrs
Guerrier's story concludes a trilogy about a spectral remnant of dead companion Sara Kingdom, as she relates a previously untold First Doctor story about a gigantic clock and its horrific purpose. It's well written, but ultimately ends on a trailing note.
The Magrs story ended up out of order -- it's the first meeting of Jo (Grant) Jones, the Third Doctor's first assistant, and the madcap Time Lady Iris Wildthyme. The Third Doctor also shows up for a heartfelt sequence that gives us an entirely different view of Jo's departure from Three, and his feelings (and hers) around that subject. On the downside, the character of Huxley, the Novelizer, is annoying.
#86 - Doctor Who: Flywheel Revolution by Dale Smith/The Doctor's First XI by Ian Atkins/A Home From Home by Ian Atkins/The Caves Of Erith by Alice CavenderMore stories from the Short Trips range, the first featuring the First Doctor among discarded machines on a planet that seems to have lost all purpose, and the second featuring the Fourth Doctor and Romana on a planet that's lost all hope...which is alright, the Doctor will just set up an annual cricket match, then. Very nicely done stories, with a first person viewpoint for the first (from the POV of discarded Rover, Frankie) and third person in the second -- Atkins does a great job of catching the Fourth Doctor's speech patterns and vocal tics.
#87 - Assignment Black Viking by Edward S. AaronsSam Durrell heads for Sweden, via the Italian yacht, Vesper, to track down the source of mysterious and dangerous weather patterns in the Baltic Sea -- an assignment that grows tougher and more dangerous with every step he takes towards the north.
It's one of the better -- and more spy-fi -- books in the series, with the action growing ever more deadly and the mysteries growing ever more complicated. Mind you, it's saved from being too deadly serious by the occasional moment of lunatic storytelling -- Viking longboat, anyone?
A fun read.
Steven wrote: "#87 - Assignment Black Viking by Edward S. AaronsSam Durrell heads for Sweden, via the Italian yacht, Vesper, to track down the source of mysterious and dangerous weather patterns ..."
"occasional moment of lunatic storytelling" *snort*
Laura wrote: "*snort*"Pretty much what I did when the Viking longboat hove into view. Followed by a rather loud giggle. Repeated when the tale of the Russian nuclear sub hijacked by the Chinese and taken over by the titular Black Viking got thrown in...Aarons wasted no time at all getting past *that* one.
#88 - Doctor Who Short Trips: The Switching by Simon GuerrierDoctor Who Short Trips: Twilight's End by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright
More Doctor Who short stories. In "The Switching," the Master figures out how to remotely switch bodies with the Third Doctor, which is then played for laughs in the main (with the Master being ridiculously courteous to everyone, which makes them wonder where their usually irascible Doctor has gone.)
"Twilight's End" finds the Seventh Doctor invading a highly secure facility for a reason that takes a while to come clear. As it turns out, Seven has been drawn back to the Forge and the end of Project Twilight.
#89 - Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet by Andrew BlumA breezy look at the creation and development of the Internet. Blum travels around from place to place, often going to curiously secret locations, investigating how this monolithic enterprise works, and how it's kept going across the world. It's a fascinating book, for me, but many, I'm sure, would find it eye-crossingly dull because of the necessary technical details that need to be there even for a book intended for the layman.
#90 - Assignment 13th Princess by Will B. AaronsOne of the final half-dozen Sam Durrell books produced after Edward S. Aarons' death, and put out under his brother's name for some obscure reason -- all six were, in fact, written by Lawrence Hall, of whom little is actually known. Hall attempts to ape Aaron's style, but the result is extremely flat and tedious as the story grinds through leaden plot point after leaden plot point. We only get out of this one thanks to the offscreen death of one of the major bad guys -- he daughter apparently causes him to fall into a natural air shaft in a cave system.
Poor Sam Durrell. He deserved a much better end than this.
The rate you swallow up books is still mind boggling. Great job!
Laura wrote: "The rate you swallow up books is still mind boggling. Great job!"Thank you!
#91 - These are the Voyages: TOS Season One by Marc Cushman and Susan OsbornQuite an impressive work of television history here, and I'm hoping that the second and third volumes are equally as fascinating.
Essentially, Cushman has set out to provide the definitive history of the development and production of Star Trek's original series, from first detail to last, and to do so he's utilised unprecedented access to personnel and records pertaining to the production of the series, along with an impressive number of ancillary items, from newspaper accounts to blog entries.
The result is a near-unprecedented warts-and-all look at the production of an entire TV series. It's compelling reading, I think, even more so if one ploughs through the book while watching the episodes in question.
#92 - Doctor Who: Master by Joseph LidsterConsidered now to be extremely non-canon, this story finds Seven stopping an assassin and telling a story about the strange events in a lonely, haunted house in the city of Perfugum, on an unknown planet. This is where we find the brilliant Doctor John Smith, an amnesiac who turns out to be a brilliant surgeon, and his two friends...and the mysterious maid/housekeeper, Jade. The night is already gloomy enough when a strange little man, apparently injured by a lightning strike, shows up....
The story attempts to provide some backstory for the Doctor and the Master, delving into their chilkdhoods, but it doesn't really work all that well, nor does the injecting of what appears to be the actual supernatural into the story (Jade turns out to be a personification of Death.)
Still, it's beautifully written, and if your stripped the Doctor Who references out of it, it would make a rather effective ghost story.
#93 - Showcase Presents: The Flash, Vol. 1 by Robert Kanigher, John Broome, Carmine Infantino, and othersThe Silver Age Flash was a hoot, really, although the way Iris West, Barry Allen's girlfriend, was written was pretty heinous (Barry's a schlub, she's a cantankerous and manipulative woman who's always shoving him away.) The stories supposedly had a science focus, but as with all of DC Comics "science" of the time, it tended to be mostly silly malarkey.
This phone book sized black and white collection is printed on something akin to newsprint, which doesn't do any damage to the artwork. The book includes the complete contents of each issue, so eventually Kid Flash shows up, to occupy most of the backup story spots, and later on The Elongated Man shows up as well.
It's lightweight, fun stuff, amusing for an occasional revisit.
#94 - Doctor Who: The Wormery by Stephen Cole and Paul MagrsSix, post "Trial Of A Timelord", is looking for a place to enjoy some r&r, and finds himself in 1930s Berlin at a club called Bianca's. As you might expect, things are not what they seem, Bianca's has some special properties (and special taxis!) and, worse, Time Lady Iris Wildthyme shows up on a mission that requires her to be even drunker than usual, a point that hardly sits well with the Doctor.
It's got all the makings of a madcap adventure with Iris, but somewhere in the development of the story things seem to have gone rather wrong -- whether it's a natural tension between the styles of Stephen Cole (whose work tends to favour hijinx with reality) and Paul Magrs (Iris' creator) or just story problems in general, the tale goes off the rails, with a lot of shoutiness and general chaos, and Iris being *extremely* annoying, rather than delightfully obnoxious.
#95 - Doctor Who: Scherzo by Robert ShearmanEight, following the events of Doctor Who: Zagreus, has exiled himself to another universe. To his shock and horror, Charley Pollard has stowed away on the TARDIS, and is stranded with him. Worse yet, they're stranded in a strange, silent world that soon begins to play games with their minds and bodies, with increasingly surreal results (eventually the Doctor and Charley find their way to a solution by merging into each other; take that as whatever you want...Eight was where the extreme closeness with companions began.)
It's an odd two-hander indeed, and not entirely successful.
#96 - Battle Angel Alita - Last Order : Angel Eternal, Vol. 03 by Yukito KishiroI seem to be coming at this series at a disadvantage, as it's the follow-on to the original Battle Angel Alita, Volume 01: Rusty Angel series, which ended after nine volumes. The general feeling seems to be that this is a shadow of the original, both in the writing and in the art, and I have to admit that I find it rather lacking overall -- there's some excellent worldbuilding here, with Alita and company in space, but the story is all over the place, and Alita herself spends much of the time absent from it.
I'm going to continue onward for a while, but the series may find itself in the trade pile unfinished.
#97 - Doctor Who: The Creed of the Kromon by Philip MartinThe Eighth Doctor and Charley, still lost in the Interzone as of the end of the previous story, continue their search for the TARDIS, which brings them into a biosphere operated by the insectioid Kromon, a race of bureaucratic scavengers who base their existence on the mysterious Company. Things don't go too well for the Doctor...nor for this story, really, as it plods along. New companion C'rizz (pronounced Keh-rizz) is introduced, and at the end they all continue onward, still looking for the missing timeship.
#98 - Batman in the Seventies by Dennis O'Neill, Neil Adams, Jim Aparo and variousThe fourth of the supposedly representative Decade collections. There's a couple of classics included, but the collection is shorter than it needed to be, and seems fairly slapdash. There's no representation at all of the Englehart/Rogers work, aside from a single small cover reproduction.
#99 - Doctor Who: Dark Eyes 3 by Matt FittonEight and Liv Cenka go up against the Master and his mysterious new allies, The Eminence and its Infinite Warriors. As it turns out, the Master's usual overamped and under-thought plan involves Molly O'Sullivan, the World War One era nurse who was the companion (and source of mystery) in the first two of the Dark Eyes series.
This is a fairly standard story, featuring a lot of Eight angst and thoughtfulness, as well as a very playful Master, but it's not particularly engaging, unfortunately, and just plods from start to end despite the efforts of an excellent cast.
#100 - Deadpool: Paws by Stefan PetruchaI went with the Graphic Audio version, which proved to be a great choice. Deadpool here is a bit of a mix of various versions over the years, complete with the fourth wall breaking, as well as a selection of inner voices and hallucinations and his own unreliable narration (though the actual narrator isn't all that reliable, either.)
The main thing is that this is actually something of an heir to the Firesign Theater -- non-stop verbal calisthenics, lunatic soundscapes, constant outbreaks of surreality in dialogue and action (the plot essentially revolves around a bunch of puppies infected with monster DNA stolen from SHIELD) and even snippy exchanges with the sound engineer. We get Spider-Man horribly abused by his Aunt May, Hulk breaking down and crying, Hydra Bob, and a climactic battle that involves massive farting and hallucinations.
It's by turns hilarious, confounding, and bizarre. I hope there's a follow-up.
#101 - Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal by G. Willow WilsonAudiobook adaptation of the first arc of this comic. It's as much a character piece as a superhero story (we spend a lot of time with her friends and family), and overall it's an excellent YA piece with some moments of goofy humour -- as she's a metamorph, she quickly discovers she can transform herself into the original Ms. Marvel (in terms of body, but not powers), complete with ridiculous costume -- which she quickly discovers has major problems in practice. It's charming, light-hearted, and a neat little look at a Pakistani-American family.
#102 - Doctor Who: Dark Eyes 4 by John Dorney and Matt FittonThe Dark Eyes arc concludes as the Dalek and Master threads are pulled together, with Molly O'Sullivan, now elderly, at the center of a complex reality-shifting plot. First, though, there's a story involving a one-day time loop, and another involving monsters in Paris. It's okay, overall, but the Daleks are always boring.
#103 - Doctor Who: The Natural History of Fear by Jim MortimoreOn the surface, this is a story about a rigid dystopia in which people are regimented, questions are banned, as are names, and people can be revised at the drop of a hat. Mixed into this is the Doctor...or is he? The story is pretty much a massive mindgame, explained succinctly at the conclusion. If it has a problem, it's that th story by nature is very talky, with a lot of recursion, and a great deal of repetition of points as characters shift in and out and are forcibly changed. I'd say this is one that would benefit from a repeat listen or two.
#104 - Beyond the Sun by Matt JonesThe second in the series of Bernice Summerfield adventures, spinning out of the Doctor Who New Adventures books. In this tale, archaeologist Bernice is stuck with a routine dig with a bunch of annoying students and assistants, when her wayward ex-husband Jason shows up, gets kidnapped, and leads her on a less than merry chase that results in her being embroiled in an odd society after crashing on a mysterious planet. Very well done, with some interesting characterization.
#105 - Mai: The Psychic Girl, Book 2 by Kazuya KudoMai Kuju's story continues, starting with her somewhat idyllic life among a group of oddball students until one arm of the conspiracy to co-opt her powers moves against her, forcing her on the run. The story takes a turn, though, at that point, as it seems that the Japanese are trying to stand up against the overwhelming power of the global Wisdom Alliance conglomerate -- a conglomerate that, as part of their effort to acquire Mai and her power, has just sent 13 year old homicidal psychic Turm Garten (who's introduced blowing up an Aeroflot airliner just to get at a girl she dislikes) to Japan after inculcating jealousy of Mai in her. *That's* going to end well, I can see. You want Akira? That's how you get Akira....
#106 - The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill BrysonBryson turns his populist non-fiction skills to a memoir of his early life, growing up in the American Midwest, and while he maintains the easygoing tone he's known for, it doesn't stop him from giving a warts and all view of himself, or a perceptive analysis of how the American Dream prospered for a while in the 1950s, and then started to show signs of becoming cancerous in its growth. Overall, though, it's a gentle book, read gently by Bryson himself, with occasional hilarious moments.
#107 - Doctor Who: The Twilight Kingdom by Will ShindlerEight, Charley and C'rizz move into the next zone of the Divergent universe, and into the midst of what appears to be a revolution (and thus a base under siege story.) All is not what it seems to be, however, as one major player has a horrific secret and the zone itself conceals something terrifying and seemingly unstoppable.
It's a story with a lot of interesting, dark elements, but it does tend to drag in many spots, especially when yet another Captain Exposition pipes up.
#108 - Doctor Who: The Axis of Insanity by Simon FurmanFive, Peri, and Erimem wind up in the Axis, a labyrinthine structure outside of time and space that seems to act as a sump for all kinds of bits and pieces of orphaned time. There, the Doctor finds himself facing the Jester, a creature that has murdered the Oversee of the Axis, and seems to have the sole ambition of stealing a TARDIS and escaping into the primary universe to wreak havoc.
The story essentially requires some idiot ball carrying, much of which is done by Peri and Erimem, while the Jester is pretty much an overamped Joker knockoff. Definitely not the best of Five's stories.
#109 - The Spirit Archives, Vol. 26 by Will EisnerThe final volume of the epic DC Archives series covering the Spirit from the 1940s to the 1990s. By its nature, this is essentially an appendix to the series, covering various reprints, one-off stories, jam sessions, and even planned but not completed stories. In a lot of respects, while this is an appendix of sorts, it's still filled with rare Eisner work, much of it never collected in hardcover previously, and large parts of it do reward revisiting.
#110 - Doctor Who: Ghost in the Machine by Jonathan MorrisWhen recording becomes reality.... The TARDIS has landed, and Jo is looking for the Doctor, who seems to have left immediately after landing. When Jo also leaves the TARDIS, she discovers the Third Doctor not far away, comatose on the floor. Next to him is a tape recorder with a note: USE ME. Inside the recorder is a tape cassette labeled TARDIS LOG.
Jo's attempt to find help and solve the mystery plunges her into a dark, terrifying situation. Jo quickly finds out what's going on, but it takes a while longer for her to find her way out of the trap -- and to the Doctor. It's an excellent little tale that treats young Jo Grant very well indeed.
#111 - Doctor Who: Harvest of Time by Alastair ReynoldsAudiobook read by Geoffrey Beevers (who has played one the many variants of the Master), which is entirely appropriate given that Alastair Reynolds has chosen the Third Doctor, Jo Grant, and the Roger Delgado Master as his main characters, along with an apparent descendant of Jamie MacCrimmon.
Reynolds gets away from his usual hard science run of things, and instead has a great deal of fun twisting and turning time elements -- the story takes place in both the 1970s (or possibly the 1980s, as Reynolds cheekily tosses in some UNIT Dating Controversy easter eggs) and millions of years in the future. The 1970s part of the story is mostly told with Jo and UNIT personnel as the viewpoint characters, while the Doctor and the Master are thrown into the future, to be presented with a mystery related to the parasitic Sild, who are causing time ruptures.
It's a slow story at first, as the Doctor is drawn into a mystery with a North Atlantic oil platform, and then into a parallel mystery around the Master, whose presence as a prisoner in a special site is somehow being forgotten by everyone. And then the Sild turn up, rupturing time and taking over dozens of people, and temporal lunacy breaks out. It's actually quite an epic story, though a fairly compact novel for all of that (Beevers' languid narration takes about eleven hours.)
It's a top-notch Third Doctor story, and one I could well imagine being done (albeit much more cheaply!) for the TV series. Interestingly enough, Reynolds does throw in some quick nods to the current iteration of the TV series.
Is this part of the Tim Treloar Third Doctor Series? If so, how are you liking his Doctor?
Jadetyger wrote: "Is this part of the Tim Treloar Third Doctor Series? If so, how are you liking his Doctor?"No, this was a standalone novel by Alistair Reynolds, and read, in this instance, by Geoffrey Beevers (who is one of the Masters in the Big Finish productions.) Beevers essays a rather silkily evil Master, very much in the original mold, does a creditable Three, and even manages to do right by Jo. He falls down on the Brig, though, but then again nobody can do Nick Courtney's Brig anywhere close to Nick himself.
#112 - Doctor Who: Solitaire by John DorneyThe Celestial Toymaker, last seen being bested by the First Doctor, has caught up with the Eighth and Charley. He's already beaten the Doctor and somehow locked him into the form of a ventriloquist's dummy. The TARDIS is nowhere to be found.
And Charley has no memory.
It's quite a taut little story, as Charley figures out what's going on, and what this mysterious toyshop is, and what the game is about. The Toymaker is an impressive foe, but he's hard to use simply because he's so overpowered, and so devious and smart that it's hard to come up with ways to defeat him that aren't lame.
#113 - Doctor Who: The Last Post by James GossPrimarily a Liz Shaw story, with very little by the way of the Third Doctor. The story itself weaves through a number of Three's episode, and even gives hints that the main non-machine villain is the Master (but he's not.)
In short, people are dying in what seems to be ordinary ways...except that just before they die, they receive a letter informing them of the date and time of their death. Liz's mother brings this to her attention, and a strange plot begins to unravel...but UNIT isn't initially interested, and neither is the Doctor. And then Liz's Mum gets a letter....
#114 - Crisis on Multiple Earths, Vol. 3 by Mike Friedrich, Len Wein, etcThe third collection of the annual Justice League/Justice Society team-ups, complete with the three-part story that ran from #100 to #102 of the Justice League book -- offset by a rare single-part story that closes out the book.
It's fairly benign by the numbers comics work, ranging from the fairly daft (the sole Mike Friedrich story) to the tedious. All the same, it's no chore to read, and, in the right frame of mind, good old fashioned silly fun.
#115 - Hellboy, Vol. 2: Wake the Devil by Mike Mignola, etcThis is where Mignola started to get ambitious with the world of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. On th surface it's more of the usual -- Hellboy's cynicism, occult-powered Nazi survivors, the grand plan of chaotic evil to subsume the human world with the aid of the ghost of Rasputin, but the scope has been widened, and portents laid for the future (all of which have been playing out in the most recent B.P.R.D. books.)
It's good stuff, oddly (as the components wouldn't seem to add up to much), and not really horror, though it uses some of those tropes. Mignola's quirky art contributes to the feel of this story as dark fantasy adventure with modern Mystery Men as the protagonists -- it's grand pulp adventure with an epic sweep. I'm enjoying catching up.
#116 - Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 by Lynne OlsonA remarkably fascinating book about, at the top, the highly adversarial relationship between hero aviator Charles Lindbergh, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt as Germany came under the way of the Nazis and the march to World War 2 began. At the same time, the conflict between the two men is reflected in the divides in American society at the time (divides that will seem quite familiar in the present moment.)
It's a fascinating read because it points out how indecisive FDR could be, and how close England came to falling under the Nazi onslaught (in fact, if Hitler hadn't chosen to focus entirely on the USSR, a significant mistake on his part, FDR's dithering would have been the end of Britain,and a calamity for the world as a whole.)
It's a rather terrifying piece of non-fiction, in that it makes me realize just how much political skullduggery and political incompetence can damage efforts at unity and countering major existential threats
#117 - Flirt by Laurell K. HamiltonI suppose I should be grateful that this came up just slightly short of being a novel, because it seems to have gotten this way by dint of Hamilton overwriting and repeating so much that what should have been ten thousand words is nearer sixty thousand. The plot, basically: Anita Blake is approached by two people to raise loved ones as zombies, but turns them down, so one of the two has her kidnapped and threatened to do the job. The rest of it is Anita trying to escape and mete out punishment to the bad guys.
This is presented with a stream of sentences that come right out of bad soap opera slammed into supernatural sex/romance novels. And it goes on and on and on and onnnnnnnn....
Oh...and you get a lion, and YOU get a lion, and YOU GET A LION and EVERYBODY GETS A LION!
roar
#118 - Crisis on Multiple Earths Vol. 6 by Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas, George Perez, Romeo Tanghal, et alThe final book in this series of collections, and it wraps up with not just extended stories (one three-parter, one four-parter) but a harbinger of things to come by way of an mini event crossover between the Justice League book and the relatively new All-Star Squadron book written by Roy Thomas.
The first story has a convoluted plot launched by the Ultra-Humanite (mad genius in the body of a mutated ape, as opposed to Grodd, who's a mad genius ape with telepathy, or Monsieur Mallah, who's a beret-wearing gay French ape with a brain in a jar fetish...but I digress.) This chaotic plot spans three issues, in which U-H recruits a bunch of bad guys from Earth-1 and Earth-2, with the purpose of capturing ten assorted heroes and chucking them into limbo, at which point reality is supposed to reset and wipe out all of the superheroes on one or the other world. Said scheme goes just swell...until it does. Heroes are sprung, bad guys are punched, reality snaps back, and we're done for another year. Whoo to the hoo, yip yip.
Then it's on to the final Crisis Crossover, piling up the JLA, the JSA, and the All-Star Squadron in not one, not two, not three, but four time periods (there may, in fact be more), and not one, not two, but three parallel worlds (plus another visit to limbo, a shout-out to Earth-3, and a boot to the head and one more for Jenny and the wimp.) Plus altered timelines!
That's because it's a Per Degaton story, even though it includes the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3 (those familiar with the shenanigans in these annual crossovers know them of old; they come from a world without superheroes, where crime is the main pursuit in life or something like that.) Per Degaton, meanwhile, is a lowly lab assistant with big ambitions who steals access to a time machine in 1947 and tries to rewrite history to his specifications. His repeated efforts at this usually leave him with bad dreams, deep confusion, existential dread, and, I kid you not, having to wash test tubes yet again (this is a running gag with Per Degaton stories. America Vs. The Justice Society (Jsa by Roy Thomas has this gag repeat four or five times by the end.)
Somewhere in there, of course, Per gets his clock cleaned and his army of leather-suited thugs punched into next week, last week, and a time share in Mexico. You can understand the desire to punch Per in the head repeatedly until he just ends up Groundhog-Daying test tube cleaning day -- this time around he manages to wipe out an entire parallel Earth in a nuclear holocaust (and he isn't even there when it happens) and he causes Earth-2 to be stuck with 1940s fashions and designs for forty years.
It's purest hokum, delivered by a couple of experts in the art of writing hokum, but it's a lot of fun (well, for the most part; the implication that bad guy Brainwave, in the first story, uses his powers to repeatedly rape an actress is pretty horrible.) I'm not sure there's going to be all that much repeat value here, but I have too much to read anyway.
Mount TBR 2016
Books mentioned in this topic
Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (other topics)Hellboy, Vol. 7: The Troll Witch and Others (other topics)
Hellboy, Vol. 6: Strange Places (other topics)
Batman in the Fifties (other topics)
Batman in the Seventies (other topics)
More...
Seven and Ace head out to pick up archaeologist Benny Summerfirld, and promptly end up in the middle of a base under siege story centered around an interdimensional skull and a device that could rewrite the entire time-space continuum.
It's not a bad story, but it's not great either -- it's fairly par for the course, in fact, right down to Ace getting to blow something up.