Brian! Blessed!, Barsoom, And Me!

[Steven]

#119 - Doctor Who: Quinnis by Marc Platt

The First Doctor and Susan land on the planet Quinnis "in the Fourth Dimension" in a story taking place before the events of "An Uneartly Child," the first episode of the series, and spinning out of a throwaway line in an early episode.

The Doctor is quickly mistaken for a rainmaker, someone desperately needed in the parched environment of Quinnis, while Susan befriends the mysterious Needla, who's other than what she seems to be (hardly a shock in Doctor Who, of course.) While Susan finds her way into trouble, the Doctor is coerced to make it rain -- and rain it does. At which point everything goes completely catty-wampus and the real trouble begins.

A fun, if minor story.

[Steven]

#120 - Invincible, Vol. 20: Friends by Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley
#121 - Invincible, Vol. 21: Modern Family by Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley

When we last saw our hero, Mark, aka Invincible, he'd been thrown by former teammate Rex (aka Robot) into an alternate dimension where his counterpart had sided with his father and subjugated the Earth, eventually becoming the Viltrumite Emperor. At which point Mark showed up and scotched his plans by killing him...leaving Mark in deep trouble, which is where this volume starts, as Mark comes up with an insane plan on the fly (when you look at the Plot Complication map on this story, the whole thing seems nuts.)

Months pass as Mark's plan grinds onward, only to almost fall at the very last step when the alternate Annissa, a headstrong Viltrumite, decides to storm the stronghold where Emperor Mark is supposedly being held hostage by the alternate Robot (as I said, this is pretty nuts.) Our Mark escapes to his home dimension, and clone Mark, with Robot's mind inserted, "escapes" and connects with Annissa and her troops.

Mark gets back home to an unhappy reunion with his wife, Eve, who is quite pregnant by this point. Equally unhappy is his reunion with his erstwhile boss in the Global Defense Agency, Cecil, as while Mark is explaining what Rex is up (quietly taking over the planet), Rex's armor forms show up and kill Cecil quite thoroughly. And then things get even worse. Between this world's Annissa showing up and raping Mark (the surviving Viltrumites are trying to rebuild their race via breeding with humans, and Mark himself is half-Viltrumite) and Rex attacking Eve, forcing Mark to flee to save her life, it's pretty much one of Mark's worst days.

And then the Viltrumites, including his father, agree not to get in Rex's way.

In the second book, while Battle Beast goes after former Viltrumite Regent Thragg for an epic battle that carries through several chapters, Mark and Eve decide that the only way forward...is to leave Earth, rather than fighting Rex. It's a crazy situation as it is -- Rex isn't setting himself up as the ruler of Earth; he's trying to make things work as they should -- logic and order and compassionate behaviour in place of chaos and wholesale slaughter and destruction. Except that humanity rather wants the chaos.

Mark and Eve start out their new life bumpily, but think they can make a go of it...even when the story of Annissa's rape of Mark finally comes out in a scene that's as intense as the earlier bathroom scene (as Mark copes with the aftermath of a very alien dinner) was silly. I'd rolled my eyes at the rape in the earlier book, but Kirkman does manage to pay it off here.

[Steven]

#122 - Doctor Who: The Child by Nigel Fairs

Leela is the center of this story, telling a fairytale-like story to a young girl who might well be her own reincarnation. It's s story of a frozen world ruled by a Glass Angel, against whom only a Wizard can stand...but that Wizard needs first to be rescued by the Warrior.

It's a passable enough story, but not truly engaging.

[Steven]

#123 - Doctor Who: The Beginning by Marc Platt
#124 - Doctor Who: The Dying Light by Nick Wallace

Yet another look back at the pre-TV series beginnings of the Doctor, beginning in media res as the Doctor and Susan flee...someone. Their escape turns out to be an old Type 40 timeship in the repair bay, scheduled for dismantling...and, as it turns out, complete with an engineer working down in the ship's engine room. This is Quadrigger Stoyn, whose responds to being accidentally kidnapped is to be very, very stroppy indeed, even as the TARDIS and its occupants are dropped into Earth's prehistory....

Doctor Who: The Dying Light continues the Quadrigger Stoyn story with the Second Doctor, Jame, and Zoe. Stoyn has wound up on a complicated, apparently dying planet with something of a mind of its own and a culture that lives on a city-sized boat. Hundreds of years onward, his grudge against the Doctor remains, and he has a complicated plan to gain revenge, regain the TARDIS, and return home....

[Steven]

#125 - Essential Defenders, Vol. 1 by Roy Thomas, Steven Englehart, Len Wein, Ross Andru, Sal Buscema, et al

One of the phonebook sized reprint compilations from Marvel, printed in black and white on cheap paper. This volume serves as an introduction to the "non-team" Avengers counterpart, The Defenders. Led by Doctor Strange, the original core components were the ever0reluctant Hulk, and the ever-arrogant Namor, joined occasionally by the indecisive Silver Surfer. Also coming to the non-team, as they moved into their own book, was a new incarnation of The Valkyrie, a confused male writer's idea of what a feminist type of superhero is (it was the seventies, although guys are still trying to figure out what feminists actually are, usually incorrectly.)

This collection includes all of the stories leading up to the three-issue run in MARVEL FANFARE, and issues #1-#14 of the main book, plus the crossover issues of THE AVENGERS that make up Avengers/Defenders War. It's a very good serving of material, although many Marvel readers will likely have read the crossover in several different formats.

Ah, but I hear you ask...is it any good? Well, it's 1970s Marvel comics, most certainly not an A-list book, and it features often uncomplex art (backgrounds are noticeable by their absence in many places) that often seems rushed. The characters go on at length, in outlandishly purple speeches, and there's a lot of hitting and frowning. Occasionally the book tries for dark and strange, and occasionally it manages quite outlandish (the Xemnu story, for one) although it would take the arrival of Steve Gerber to send the book off into its surreal best.

[Steven]

#126 - Doctor Who: Luna Romana by Matt Fitton

The final story in the "Quadrigger Stoyn" trilogy finds the Fourth Doctor facing off with his accidental old enemy, along with not one, not two, but three distinct versions of Romanadvoratrelundar, his Gallifreyan companion, though the third is on Gallifrey itself, inspired to remember the story by the discovery of an old Quadrigger station -- now abandoned, as Quadriggers (a type of quantum engineer) became obsolete.

Stoyn himself is by now quite insane, and concocting ever more lunatic schemes for revenge against the Doctor, something that by this point somehow come to involve the Roman Empire. Stoyn's ultimate plan, though, is to drive the Earth back through time, to before the Big Bang, and thus somehow unmake everything. His ambition, obviously, can't be faulted. All of the rest...well....

[Steven]

#127 - Asterix & Obelix's Birthday: The Golden Book by Alberto Uderzo and René Goscinny

Created as a celebration of Asterix & Obelix's fiftieth anniversary, this particular album is less of a story than a series of vignettes and cameos, with past bits salted in, and some text pieces to break things up. The result as a whole is a bit weak, but it does have some delightful moments (the travel guide is quite amusing.) René Goscinny is, as ever, missed, in the main, though he does show up as a character in one story, and of course his contributions are included here and there in the excerpted material, as brief as that might be.

[Steven]

#128 - Showcase Presents: Justice League of America, Vol. 1 by Gardner F. Fox, et al

One of the first of the DC Showcase Presents series of black and white phonebook sized compilations, gathering together the earliest stories of the Justice League of America, the Silver Age update to the 1940s super-team Justice Society of America (and other such teams, such as the Seven Soldiers of Victory.) This book starts out with the first appearances in The Brave And The Bold, and then moves on to the team book (and an issue of Mystery In Space that's a sequel to one of the JLA stories.)

It's good old slam-bang Silver Age stuff, delivering an unusual thrill by having assorted DC heroes teaming up in a single book (although the M.O was usually to split the main team into smaller units with their own missions.) The team soon acquired a teenage helper/mascot in "Snapper" Carr, who was something of a Wesley (i.e., irritating) without Wesley Crusher's intelligence. The series also soon got down to the annual crossovers with Earth-2.

Basically, then, lots of simple fun. I've been enjoying these stories quite a bit.

[Laura]

Steven wrote: "#117 - Flirt by Laurell K. Hamilton

I 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 Hamilt..."

*LionSnort*

[Steven]

Laura wrote: "*LionSnort*

Lions EVERYWHERE.

Mem I just have a mini-Puma and a feline beanbag.

[Steven]

#129 - Samurai Executioner, Vol. 1: When the Demon Knife Weeps by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima

From the same writer and artist who created Lone Wolf and Cub, Vol. 1: The Assassin's Road, this series follows the life of Yamada Asaemon, nicknamed "Decapitator Asaemon." Asaemon is the official sword-tester to the Shogun,and a man with a fearsome reputation from the moment he takes the position -- his father has him assist in his seppuku (the previous sword-tester, the older man is dying of a terminal illness) and Asaemon's first execution is of the first woman to ever seduce him (she also robbed him.)

The series was produced parallel to the Lone Wolf And Cub series, but is actually a prequel (Asaemon faces Ogami Itto fairly early in that series, with fatal consequences) set many years before, and giving the reader a look at Edo-period Japan from a different angle. For all that, many of the themes are similar, and Asaemon, while a more distant protagonist, has time for reflection, and for compassion. Like the Lone Wolf series, too, some of the stories focus on supporting characters, and can be quite moving indeed (and quite horrifying, as with the tale of a child rapist.)

The historical elements are also accentuated -- Koike has a passion for historical veracity, and this sometimes comes out in very detailed explanations and descriptions.

[Steven]

#130 - Batman: The Doom That Came To Gotham by Mike Mignola, Richard Pace, Troy Nixey, et al

There's a degree of disappointment in this due to Mike Mignola not providing the artwork (not surprising, given that Mignola is hardly a prolific artist.) The artwork from Troy Nixey tries for Mignola in feel, but is more of the Paul Pope/Richard Corben school, with oddly bulgy figures, bit in context it mostly works, even if Tim Drake looks quite odd throughout. Co-writer Richard Pace was originally to have provided the art, and going by the examples in the extra material he would have done something much cleaner and likely less atmospheric.

The story itself is a spin on H.P. Lovecraft, though its relationship to "The Doom That Came To Sarnath" is only in the title. Mignola and Pace draw mainly on elements from At the Mountains of Madness and The Lurker at the Threshold to tell an Elseworlds story of a 1928 Bruce Wayne who has become an explorer in the years since the mnurder of his parents; at the time of the story, which is set in 1928, he's been away from Gotham for twenty years -- but is finally drawn back to face an ancient evil unleashed by Gotham aristocracy with a bizarre secret history (Ra's al-Ghul is also involved.)

The story as a whole is less of a Batman tale (even an alternate Batman tale) than a mix of Mignola's Lobster Johnson, Vol. 1: The Iron Prometheus and his B.P.R.D./Hellboy stories with the serial numbers filed off -- Ra's al-Ghul here is pretty much Rasputin with harem pants on.

Still, it's an entertaining enough tale, with a couple of interesting variations on the Batman cast.

[Steven]

#131 - Doctor Who: Phantoms of the Deep by Jonathan Morris

In the depths of the Marianas Trench is a deep sea research platform...and showing up on the cameras: a blue Police Box. It's the Fourth Doctor, accompanied by Romana I and K9 Mark II, and it's time for a base under siege story, one that involves mysterious phantoms, a World War II survivor who never ages, "goblins", hyper-intelligent squid, and an alien construct that provides a very different spin to colonial invasion.

It's an entertaining story that cracks along very well, though it does rather stretch the science a bit (however, this is Doctor Who; science is made of rubber bands.)

[Steven]

#132 - Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 4 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, et al

By this point, Claremont and Byrne had hit their stride, and were on the way to some of the more monumental stories in X-Men canon -- though not without the occasional silly sidestep, such as the Arcade Murderworld story included here. The rest of the volume charts the gradual arc towards the effects of the Hellfire Club, and Jean Grey's gradually uncontrollable transformation into Phoenix.

Once Byrne had left the book, and the Phoenix arc had ended, the book started a bit of a decline, even as the X-Men assumed a place of prominence at Marvel.

[Steven]

#133 - Doctor Who: The Darkness of Glass by Justin Richards

The Fourth Doctor and Leela get a gothic horror tale that, with its amorphous evil, actually comes off like a Sapphire & Steel story. Good fun, though, with references back to The Horror Of Fang Rock.

[Bev]

You and I are about at the same spot on Olympus. I don't think I'm going see the top after all. Do you think you'll get 17 more done by the end of 2016?

[Steven]

Bev wrote: "You and I are about at the same spot on Olympus. I don't think I'm going see the top after all. Do you think you'll get 17 more done by the end of 2016?"

I'm wondering about that...I may have enough partly-reads to help carry me through, but if I pull it off, it'll be a squeaker. I didn't manage my time well enough when I was recording ARTLAB1, I think....

[Steven]

#134 - Doctor Who: The Crooked Man by John Dorney

The Fourth Doctor and Leela arrive in a little seaside town, intending a brief holiday of sorts...and of course stumble into a weird mystery, one where corpses are turning up, killed with pages from books. As the Doctor investigates further, he discovers that there's a familiarity to the situation...one that reminds him of an early adventure. But this is the real world, not the Land of Fiction....

Another interesting adventure, although one of the major twists is telegraphed early on while another potential twist never occurs. In some ways, it's sad, too, as it's a story about the ever-increasing sea of fictional entertainment and how the deserving can end up obscure and the deserving of obscurity can end up taking over.

[Steven]

#135 - Hellboy, Vol. 3: The Chained Coffin and Others by Mike Mignola

This time around the collection mainly covers a series of Hellboy short stories, with one longer story to close out the volume. It's interesting to see Mignola trying different things, and gradually coming to settle on the style and setup for both Hellboy and the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, with explorations of a variety of myths alongside the from-whole-cloth tales. The horrors tend to be localized things at this point, with very gothic elements (and the occasional Nazi incursion) with few hints of the global apocalypse to come.

[Steven]

#136 - Hellboy, Vol. 4: The Right Hand of Doom by Mike Mignola

The overarching tale now starts to focus on Hellboy's supposed destiny -- essentially, he's the Great Beast whose job is to open the way for the Ogdru Jahad, which will end the human world. Hellboy, on the other hand, is having none of that, and is confounding all of the Dark Powers by working as a defender of humanity.

Mignola's key trick with this series has been to use all of the trappings of various kinds of horror, mixed with mythology, and deliver it with a pulp sensibility and a not inconsiderable amount of quirky humour.

[Steven]

#137 - Hellboy, Vol. 5: Conqueror Worm by Mike Mignola

This was a fun read -- this is where Mignola goes for the gold in embracing the pulp aesthetic of his work with Hellboy, without throwing out the growing mythological depth he's developed (Baba Yaga makes an appearance in the rather philosophical tag to the story.) This is also the first time that Mignola has essentially committed to a relatively long-form story in the series, and he pulls that off by essentially throwing in a whole host of stuff -- there's Nazis, Nazi super-science (behold the Kriegaffe, the Cyborg War-Ape...tenth in a series!), Nazi ghosts, mystery man Lobster Johnson, a secret Nazi space program, disembodied evil intelligences, the future of mankind (or the lack of same), and, of course, the Conqueror Worm itself.

It's completely mad, actually holds together even with all the punching and falling through things (Hellboy hasn't met a castle floor yet that he hasn't had to fall through), explains a little more of the Hellboy mythology, and even sets up the spin-off B.P.R.D. book.

Grand stuff.

[RachelvlehcaR]

I'm cheering for you! You just might make it. Keep going! :)

[Steven]

RachelvlehcaR wrote: "I'm cheering for you! You just might make it. Keep going! :)"

Thirteen to go, and some of those are nearly done as it is. ONWARD! FRESH HORSES!

https://youtu.be/RgAthCrOHNU

[Steven]

#138 - B.P.R.D., Vol. 1: Hollow Earth and Other Stories by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, Ryan Sook and others

Directly stemming out of the events of Hellboy, Vol. 5: Conqueror Worm, this volume begins with Johannes Krause joining the B.P.R.D., Liz Sherman in peril, and both Abe Sapien and Roger on the verge of quitting just as Hellboy did. First, though, Abe and Roger are drawn into finding Liz, a mission that turns out to be something out of swamp-fever science fiction. Also in this volume: the first Lobster Johnson story, how Abe revived Roger the Homunculus, and an Abe Sapien story that has minimal Mike Mignola involvement. It's a fairly good start to the series.

[RachelvlehcaR]

Steven wrote: "Thirteen to go, and some of those are nearly done as it is. ONWARD! FRESH HORSES!

https://youtu.be/RgAthCrOHNU"

LOL! I love Blackadder!

[Steven]

#139 - Essential Astonishing Ant Man, Vol. 1 by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, et all

A black and white phonebook sized volume that compiles Ant-Man/Giant-Man and Wasp stories from Tales to Astonish #27 and 35-69. Ant-Man was always a third-string kind of hero, and these stories are inconsistent, sloppy, and usually quite dysfunctional when it comes to characters. The black and white presentation doesn't the stories any harm mind you, and they're quick reads, if you feel like plowing through the bottom of the Marvel barrel.

[Steven]

#140 - B.P.R.D., Vol. 2: The Soul of Venice & Other Stories by Mike Mignola, Michael Avon Oeming, Brian Augustyn, Geoff Johns, et al

A disparate collection of one-shots (and an original short to pad the volume) make up this release, and while there's some good notes sounded, there's nothing outstanding about any of it, perhaps because so many disparate voices are involved. So there's vampires in Venice, a Monsters Inc. knock-off, zombies in Moldavia, and a next-door-to-Salem story involving three women unjustly accused of witchcraft and murdered by drowning in the village pond -- that one goes right off the rails a third of the way in.

SO, a bit of a let-down, sorry to say.

[Laura]

Go! Brian, Go!!!!!

[Steven]

#141 - Doctor Who: The Exxilons by Nicholas Briggs

The Fourth Doctor and Leela land on a pleasantly warm planet...only to discover in short order that an advanced alien species is preying on the native Tarl. As expected, the usual hilarity ensues. Notable mainly for bringing back the Exxilons from "The Planet Of The Daleks," a Third Doctor story -- a bit of a "yeah, me either" moment there, as that was a rather forgettable story.

#142 - Doctor Who: Requiem for the Rocket Men by John Dorney

Now it's time for the Fourth Doctor and Leela to encounter the piratical Rocket Men, a ne'er do well lot who have popped up in the Companion Chronicles. The Master also gets involved with the proceedings, which leads to a cliffhanger at the end. As a character, Leela continues to show a great deal of growth, which is nice to see, while the Fourth Doctor continues to be cheerfully bombastic.

#143 - Doctor Who: Death Match by Matt Fitton

Four, Leela, K9 and former Rocket Man Marshall up against the Master and a gladiatorial world. It's a fairly thin story.

[Steven]

#144 - The Leftovers by Tom Perotta

This is one that I kept starting over because it so thoroughly bored me (as did the TV series.) It's written well enough, but none of the characters are engaging, the story itself is studiously mysterious and unrevealing, and, as I found out in finally plowing through to the end with great resolution, it's terribly boring. But at least it's off the pile now.

[RachelvlehcaR]

Just 6 more! You can do it! :)

[Steven]

RachelvlehcaR wrote: "Just 6 more! You can do it! :)"

It'll take a tail wind and a team of Thark Sherpas, but I can indeed.

[Steven]

#145 - The Man From U.N.C.L.E: The Cat-And-Mouse Affair by "Robert Hart Davis" (actually Dennis Lynds)

Basically the main part of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Magazine, being a rather hefty and densely packed novella in which Solo and Kuryakin are dispatched to an island somewhere in the Caribbean to deal with an attempted coup. They soon run into THRUSH, of course, and a lot of twisty-turny-plotty stuff that keeps the words coming until the space runs out. As happens so often with tie-in fiction (and with the U.N.C.L.E. novels) the whole thing is a clunky, sometimes painful read, but then again, the often highly inconsistent TV series was often a clunky, painful viewing experience.

[Steven]

And now, it's...

https://youtu.be/NQwgIZ__WrY

[Steven]

#146 - The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume III: Killdozer! by Theodore Sturgeon (edited by Paul Williams)

I actually gave this five stars on its main page, a rare accolade from me. Oddly, it's not because the quality of the stories collected is so high -- they're actually a rather variable lot, and you can see Sturgeon wrestling with what he wants to be as a writer, eventually coming to the crux of things (in part, emotion, particularly love, but also the psychological complexities of forward progress and developing technology.)

Several unpublished pieces are included, and in reading them it can be seen why they were indeed unpublished. Paul Williams provides excellent notes, as well as additional material such as the original end section of "Mewhu's Jet," which reads like an attempt to continue that story to greater (perhaps novel?) length, as well as the portions of the title story that Sturgeon altered for post-war reprint purposes.

The five star rating, then, is for the thoroughness of the North Atlantic Books Sturgeon short fiction reprint series, as well as its highly attractive design and sturdy book quality.

[Steven]

#147 - Batman in the Fifties by Bob Kane, Bill Finger, et al

I enjoyed this rather a lot more than the Batman in the Seventies book, curiously enough, perhaps because of the often outright goofy and silly stories -- this was not a very serious time for our Dark Knight Detective, I'm afraid.

[Steven]

#148 - Hellboy, Vol. 6: Strange Places by Mike Mignola

By all indications, Mignola was having difficulties telling Hellboy stories at this point, having moved back to New York City just in time for 9/11. The stories he began he kept starting over, and in the case of "The Island" he rather misfired, in my opinion, as he not only tells a confusing story about a dead defrocked priest who manages to steal Hellboy's power but also has said dead defrocked powered-up priest Basil Exposition through the history of the Hellboy universe, complete with an explanation of the Ogdru Jahad. For good measure, Mignola added an epilogue piece that explains where exactly Hellboy came from.

Good job blowing the essential mystery of your main components there.

[Bev]

Look at you fly! I had no partials (besides what I"m working on now and I don't think it's going to get done)...so I'm not going to get any further up the mountain (I have one to log yet and that's it).

Great job!

[Steven]

Thanks, Bev. The funny thing is that I still have partials, but the last two will be started-from-scratch.

[Steven]

#149 - Hellboy, Vol. 7: The Troll Witch and Others by Mike Mignola, Richard Corben, et al

Much better than volume 6, this volume collects some short stories and two-issue tales, including the cheerful retelling of the African tale, "Makoma," illustrated rather gently by Richard Corben. The stories are all set prior to Hellboy resigning from the B.P.R.D., and there is another hint about Africa hating him.

[RachelvlehcaR]

Cheering you on! One more!

[Steven]

#150 - Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi

Now in Austria, where her parents sent for safekeeping while the Iran-Iraq War raged, Marjane finds her existence a whirl of confusion and contrary influences, as her upbringing clashes with the society around her. She's undergoing growth spurts, trying to find a path to maturity, but in the end she can barely even survive as she is, with little support as she goes through her teenage years. In the end she ends up living on the streets as an act of defiance, until that almost kills her, and then she goes home to Iran.

Only to find, as soon as she's there, that she feels alien at home as well, dealing with the increasing strictures laid down by the Ayotollah and the Imams...and she finds herself unable to finally keep her head down.

The complete Persepolis story is a fascinating one, and quite moving in places, but I think I'm going to have to sit down with the omnibus volume at some point and read it end to end. There are insights to be had even for me, someone who is well removed from the subject.

[Steven]

CHISWICK! FRESH HORSES!

[RachelvlehcaR]

You did it! and with 1 more hour here (PST - Seattle time). Woohoo!