Mount TBR 2017 discussion
Level 8: Mt. Olympus (150+)
>
Over The Top And Back Again with Brian! Blessed!
#53 - Harbinger Wars: Deluxe Edition by Joshua Dysart, Duane Swierczynski, Pere Perez, Trevor Hairsine, Khari Evans, Clayton Henry, et alOh boy. This is the all-in-one compilation of the Harbinger Wars crossover from Valiant, the the four issues of the miniseries, four issues of Harbinger and four of Bloodshot. These are assembled into a sort-of linear running order, though events in each of the books get covered from different angles, so some of the story elements repeat (awkwardly, there's some continuity problems with both dialogue and imagery, and there's a tendency to zigzag back and forth in the present-day timeline.)
The basic plot: a group of Psiot children (created in the lab by Rising Spirit Corporation, who have stolen the work of Toyo Harada, whose own Harada International has its own Psiot program, Harbinger) have been broken out of the Rising Spirit compound, and half of them have managed to get as far as Las Vegas, where they've used their powers to take over a hotel, expecting to be killed by the microbombs implanted in them by PRS.
The other half of the escapees have been taken to an abandoned town in Nevada by Bloodshot, who's a nigh-unkillable cyborg. The intention is to free the Psiot children, who'll then be trained by Harada. There is, however, a wrinkle in the plan -- Bloodshot's deep programming makes killing Harada a priority. The cyborg and the kids head for Las Vegas, to get the others.
Adding a wrinkle to this plan are Harbinger's own escapees -- now calling themselves the Renegades, thanks to their flight-capable member, Faith (a thoroughly adorable plus-size girl who now deservedly had her own solo book.) They're a mostly undisciplined mob, but get drawn to the Bellagio in Las Vegas, where they meet up with the kids holding the hotel.
Complicated enough already, but we also get shenanigans with the Bleeding Monk, a Psiot who's hundreds of years old, ad the backstory on the conflict between Harada and Project Rising Spirit, as well as a visit from the four-man H.A.R.D. Corps (in a nod to the original Valiant, they're a 1990s strike team reactivated to take out the kids. It doesn't go too well.)
Generally, I've liked the Valiant books I've read, but this one is a bit of a problem child because it feels both overstuffed and repetitive. There's some excellent art and writing, and Bloodshot is a surprisingly good character, considering he's essentially the Terminator in white. I suspect I would have liked it a lot more had the editors and writers kept better track of all of the moving parts.
#54 - Rocketeer: Hollywood Horror by Roger Langridge and J. BoneOne of the occasional Rocketeer stories published since the death of creator Dave Stevens. It's a very nice hardcover book, if on the slim side. The story itself is fairly lightweight -- Cliff Secord is pulled into a scheme by the greedy Otto Rune as a result of his girlfriend Betty investigating the disappearance of her roommate, while also having to deal with the operatives of the man who created the rocket pack (this character being an expie of Doc Savage, never named.) Also getting into the act are a couple of familiar detectives with a dog named Asta. Langridge and Bone do a lot of winking at the audience here, especially with the narrator.
The artwork itself is more cartoonish than might be expected of an adventure story like this, which results in the cheesecake moments (Betty being based on Bettie Page, after all) being rather strange. Still, if you've ever wondered how an animated version of The Rocketeer would look...here you go.
#55 - The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield Volume 3 The Unbound Universe by James Goss, Guy Adams, Una McCormack and Emma ReevesBernice Summerfield has been yanked into an alternate universe, one that's in dire shape. There she encounters the Doctor...but not any Doctor she knows. This is one of the alternate Doctors -- an alternate Third -- from the Unbound series, an abject coward on the one hand, and very self-assured of his genius on the other, flying a TARDIS that's seen better days.
The universe has been devastated by a terrible war, one that's ravaged time and space, leading to a total breakdown of reality. Bernice and the Doctor get involved in the situation on several worlds, before the Doctor takes them to the Emporium At The End, where the mysterious Manager offers an escape for a selected few. As it turns out, Benny may be the solution -- but what's the Manager's actual agenda. And who *is* he really? He was a friend of the Doctor, it seems, saving the Universe together until the Doctor balked....
This is lots of fun, with a very flawed Doctor who's capable of being tragic as much as he can be over the top -- "King Of The Universe," as he calls himself from time to time.
#56 - 361 by Donald E. Westlake, read by L.J. GanserAn unusually tight, mean, bleak-hearted noir outing from Westlake, pretty much in keeping with the Parker novels he wrote as Richard Stark, albeit in the first person here. Ray Kelly goes form being demobbed from the Air Force to seeing his father murdered next to him while they're heading home. When Kelly wakes up, it's to quickly find that his brother's wife has been murdered, and unpleasant things seem to be happening, all connected to their father's days as a mob lawyer.
From there the story twists and turns, getting harsher by the twist. Kelly finds that he has a knack for not being a nice guy at all....
#57 - Voice of the Poet: American Wits: Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, Phyllis McGinley read by the poetsA bit of a motley collection of material, some of it very familiar indeed (the Ogden Nash poems, particularly, but also some of the Dorothy Parker.) The revelation for me was the poetry of Phyllis McGinley, whose works tends both towards the longer, and to the more melancholy.
A booklet is included with the text of the poems, as well as biographical commentaries about the poets.
#58 - Doctor Who: The Wishing Beast and The Vanity Box by Paul MagrsThe Sixth Doctor and Mel land on an asteroid and fall into a horrifying situation involving two old ladies (very very old ladies) and their brother are preying on the ghostly inhabitants...and they have plans for the Doctor. Escaping that situation, Six and Mel head for Earth, and a bit of relaxation....but, as always, trouble awaits them. Trouble with a certain familiar tone to it....
As always, entertaining stuff from the quirky Paul Magrs, who here gets to indulge his taste for twisted fairy tales *and* his fascination with Salford.
#59 - A Purple Place for Dying by John D. MacDonaldThe third Travis McGee book, as the self-styled "salvage consultant" heads to the southwest to check out a potential job...one that he doesn't think he's qualified to take, as he tells the woman, Mona. And then his potential client is shot dead by a sniper right in front of him. When he attempts to report the murder to the local Sheriff, he finds that an inexplicable cover-up has been put into motion. More than that, he discovers that the local law enforcement are on the up and up, and so is the local rich guy guy -- well, more or less; he has some antediluvian attitudes to women.
Already involved, McGee decides to go ahead and do what he can to help sort the mess out...but there are some dark, deadly secrets coming to the surface.
I mostly enjoyed this, but the element that really stuck in my craw in listening to it was the overall neanderthal attitude to women, even with McGee being a manly man in his behaviour towards the end. Those were the times, and all that. *sigh* So, in that respect, this book hasn't aged well at all.
#60 - The Deep Blue Goodbye by John D. MacDonaldThe first Travis McGee novel, in which the self-proclaimed "salvage consultant" is chivied into taking a job, despite not needing the money, by one of his various women. Once again, the misogyny is strong here, although not as bad as it gets in A Purple Place for Dying. McGee's target is a man who has a taste for younger and younger women, and for abusing those he pulls into his whirl of a life.
This first book stays firmly in South Florida (until the very end), and has McGee moving around in search of the scumbag he needs to track down and relieve of the money and jewels he stole. Along the way we get a few of McGee's fatalistic reveries.
#61 - Doctor Who: Medicinal Purposes by Robert RossSix and Evelyn Smythe land in 1827 Ediburgh, in time to encounter Burke & Hare and the infamous Dr. Knox. Sounds like the makings of a gruesome (and possibly funny) historical. What could go wrong?
Answer: everything. Rotten characterization, turgid, static story, and some improbable villainy that shoehorns in a science fictional element for no good reason.
#62 - Nightmare in Pink by John D. MacDonaldThere's a curious thematic connection between this book and The Ipcress File, which had been published two years earlier -- but it's only a thematic connection, as the stories are poles apart (as are the protagonists.) Here, McGee, in the course of his investigation into a situation involving the sister of an old war buddy that McGee feels he owes a favour, rather blindly stumbles into a trap, and is dosed with a particularly nasty form of LSD-25, with the resulting hallucinations and weird behaviour resulting in his being thrown into an asylum run by the people he's been trying to find...who happily explain the scheme, as well as explaining to McGee that he'll be lobotomized eventually, rather than killed.
Despite the big block of horror weirdness in the last third, and a bit of studied action as McGee escapes in a moment of convenience, this is actually something of a plod, with an extra dose of McGee philosophizing and musing on the subject of women.
#63 - Doctor Who: Faith Stealer by Graham DuffBack to Eight and Charley, still cromping through the Interzone in search of the TARDIS (which the Doctor almost catches up to this time, but it seems to self-destruct...a vision that the Doctor can't quite bring himself to believe.)
This stage of the ongoing journey brings Eight, Charley, and C'rizz to Multihaven, a refuge for all religions and modes of spirituality. C'rizz comes down with a mysterious illness, and increasingly strange goings-on herald the rise of one religion above all...Lucidity. All it will cost is the mind of its followers....
#64 - The Albino's Dancer by Dale SmithHonore Lachasseur is an all around oddity in 1951 London -- a former American GI from New Orleans, wounded in the Second World War, a black American in a London not yet struggling with black immigration, a very unlikely spiv, with black and grey market connections -- a man who knows where the bacon wants to be found, as he says -- even as post-war rationing is slowly easing.
Honore is also a time traveler, of sorts...a Time Channeler, whose abilities work in tandem with the petite, often frightened, Emily Blandish, and sometimes with crude time belts. Honore and Emily can find themselves anywhere in time, anywhere on Earth, with baffling missions to figure out.
This time, though, things are different, because of the albino gangster formerly known as Burgess, but now just called The Albino...a huge, scarred man who speaks through a bizarre mechanical contraption in a bunker. The first Honore knows of this is when a mysterious woman named Katherine walks up to him in a cafe and thanks him for saving her life a year earlier...when the Albino's bunker was blown up, and Honore's partner burned to death....
It's a complex story, despite its relatively short length, as Honore tries to unravel things, characters are sought out at various times in their lives, and the Albino's secrets come to light. I went with the audio version, read by Terry Molloy, who does a great job with the character voices.
#65 - B.P.R.D., Vol. 3: Plague of Frogs by Mike Mignola, et al#65a - B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs 1 by Mike Mignola, et al
The third B.P.R.D. colelction flashes back to the earliest days of Hellboy, bringing back the frog monsters and Sadu-Hem, as well as visiting the origin of Abe Sapien -- something that provides a couple of answers, and a whole collection of new questions.
This story is also the beginning of the B.P.R.D. story as an ongoing entity, rather than a series of monster tales and vignettes, and for the most part it works very well. As always, I'm surprised that a series that's ostensibly horror is less about that than it's about mystery and the fantastic -- the major threat is something essentially unknowable, the Ogdru-Jahad, existing outside of our reality and attempting to break into it.
B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs 1 is a very nicely done hardcover collection of the first three B.P.R.D. trades, with additional material at the back.
#66 - Zero Hour: Crisis in Time by Dan Jurgens, et alI read this when it first came out back in 1994. It still falls right to pieces around issue 3 (counting backwards, as issue 4 is the first issue), and by the time you hit issue 0 so much has happened off-panel in the tie-in issues that great chunks of the thing are downright confusing.
Basic pitch for this: the DC Comics Crisis On Infinite Earths essentially left all kinds of problems behind (rendered here as chronal anomalies) that needed to be cleaned up, so this event was mandated as a way of doing that -- basically, Hal Joprdan wipes out the universe from soup to nuts, with the intention of starting a whole new universe without bugs in it; in fact, hey,. he'll start a whole MULTIVERSE. Much punching and orating (and punching while orating later) he's defeated, a new Big Bang is triggered, and the universe rebuilds itself naturally...tough there's been adjustments. Such as every version of Hawkman being consolidated into one really powerful Hawkman and Guy Gardner getting a really goofy makeover.
So, despite the schlock and confusion, all's well that ends, right? Nah, the DC universe fell apart pretty much right away, the overhaul of various characters and teams didn't sit well (it was the 1990s, they got EXXXXXXXTREME), and editors and writers went right on tinkering, and before we all knew it...INFINITE CRISIS.
Jeepers.
Oh, yeah, none of this was helped by Zero Hour revisiting the whole Monarch thing. Whoever had *that* idea...was an idiot.
#67 - Untold Tales Of Spider-Man: Strange Encounter by Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern, et alSet early in the careers of Spider-Man and and Doctor Strange, this story finds them teaming up to hunt down a mystical lantern and to battle against Baron Mordo and his minions in the Dark Dimension. Lightweight, fun stuff, with art that nods to Steve Ditko but doesn't copy it.
#68 - Doctor Who: The Third Doctor Adventures, Volume 1 by Justin Richards and Andy LaneThe first entry in the Early Adventures series for the Third Doctor, with Tim Treloar stepping in to narrate and read the part of the Third Doctor -- he has an uncanny vocal resemblance to the late Jon Pertwee.
The stories are pretty much in keeping with the Third Doctor's stories, too, both of them featuring Jo as the companion. One is an Earthbound story mostly set underwater in a deep lake, while the other is a TARDIS-based adventure that takes the crew to a distant space station in the future...just in time for a wedding and a ton of political intrigue.
#69 - Revival, Vol. 2: Live Like You Mean It by Tim Seeley and Mike NortonThe second collection in a series that will seem familiar in its premise, given how many TV hows have been based on this idea recently -- in the small Wisconsin town of Wausau, the dead are returning to life. The Revivers are a motley, random, bunch, and they're all coming back...different. Much of the time they seem to be benign, but they can turn horrifically violent in a flash, or become suicidal...or, like Martha Cypress, seemingly the same glum goth-y girl as she was before she died...until she's forced into action to save the life of her nephew, and her former brother in law, which she does with cool, detached effectiveness. There's something special about Martha -- and her sister Dana, a town police officer, isn't close to figuring it out (and their father, the local Sheriff, buried under the chaos that's come with the Revivers, hasn't the first notion.)
The first story arc, Revival, Vol. 1: You're Among Friends, established the Revivers, and the town, and provided the first hints of Martha's abilities. This arc of the story expands without explaining anything, and starts to unleash the chaos.
It's a curiously interesting extension of the tonal approach of Fargo (movie and series both, though this book began before the series first appeared.) meshed with resurrection tales and something of the scientific end of The X-Files. The storytellling is elliptical, and often resolutely opaque, but I'm fascinated to see if Seeley and Norton can pull this high-wire act off for however many issues they're planning to do it.
#70 - Revival Deluxe Collection Volume 2 by Tim Seeley and Mike NortonThe third and fourth arcs of the series, plus the Revival/Chew crossover, in which John Layman's cibopathic FDA agent comes to Wausau to assist on one case and pursue another (the latter done in full Chew style, in all its outlandishness.)
While there are continuing complications and added subplots, the story has started to speed up, with hints as to what caused the Revival Day to actually happen -- and what those strange glowing creatures are (it seems they're the souls of the dead, somehow ripped from their dead bodies; when they reunite, the bodies go up like roman candles, ending the revival.)
Meanwhile, the more right-wing and anti-government types in the town are digging their way out of the quarantine zone, and the government is up to some shadowy nastiness of their own, albeit apparently as a way of finding a cure to the weirdness. And what's the story of the badly burned Native American John Doe, who was in the process of being cremated when he revived? And how is he getting out of the immersion chamber and induced coma he's in, so he can run around torching buildings and killing people?
Officer Dana Cypress, meanwhile, has a fairly straightforward situation to handle -- she's been seconded to the FBI to track down a Reviver who made it to New York, and whose behaviour there is murky at best -- just what is he up to? And what's the connection to the underground market in Reviver flesh and body parts? *That* resolves clearly enough for Dana, if no-one else, and she goes home with some useful, if perplexing, information.
Again, while this is ostensibly a horror series, I'm enjoying it -- not just the mystery, and the action, but also the characters and their interplay, and even the Wisconsin jokes (and the hilarious-to-me Easter Egg in the awful movie Octopocalypse, which is a nod to the equally terrible The Giant Spider Invasion -- both of them have their monsters bolted to Volkswagens.)
#71 - Takedown Twenty by Janet EvanovichI think at this point Evanovich is just doing these on autopilot. Stephanie gets a bond retrieval case that turns out to be utterly absurd, the people of the Burg give her hell as she tries to handle it, things go preposterously wrong, a car gets blown up or otherwise annihilated, a second case comes along, Lula is brash, Stephanie's family are predictably dysfunctional, Joe Morelli and Ranger circle around Stephanie, who can't make up her mind for either of them (split the difference here, triads are perfectly good) and preposterously dangerous things happen to Stephanie (in this case she gets thrown off a bridge and nearly buried in cement.)
In this book, the cases are neatly solved by accident by Grandma Mazur, who by this point in the series has become a truly creepy old lady rather than a quirky old lady as she used to be.
I still have a whole pile of these to wade through....
#72 - Spider Man, Dr. Strange: The Way To Dusty Death by Roy Thomas & Gerry Conway, et allI'd give it a better rating, but for it being one of those stories that would play better is the ostensible villain of the piece had actually acted intelligently, rather than storming the Sanctum, pissing off Strange, and hijacking Spider-Man's body. You can switch up to the fighty bit if Strange responds negatively to the pitch. Other than that, the story starts and ends with Spidey brooding over those he's lost due to his own actions, with a middle bit where he has to resolve (temporarily) his feelings about that
#73 - Revival: Deluxe Collection, Volume 3 by Tim Seeley and Mike NortonUnfortunately, around this point the comic seems to have gone off for a long walk in the woods, and springing a set of mysterious government-connected elements really hasn't helped. Where the first arcs had a nice energy to them, at this point all of the energy is being dissipated by misdirects and vague answers and bullshit that not only pads the story but distracts completely from the central characters of Martha and Dana.
Alas, it does not get better the closer we get to the (supposed) end.
(not in TBR list) Revival, Vol. 7: Forward by Timn Seeley and Mike Norton
Just throwing this in there as I finished out the series in single issues (it concluded with #47, and those issue encompass this volume and the unreleased volume 8.)
Back in the beginning, I remember saying that I wondered if Seeley and Norton would manage to keep the high wire act going all the way to the end. Well...they didn't. They seem to have gone for the Lost school of storytelling (throw shit out there and see what sticks), and the ever-increasing number of subplots, secondary characters, and ludicrous groups only served to bury the leads and lose supporting characters like Ramin. The less said about the sword-carrying Amish Ninja (who gets around on a pedal trike) and her Hit-Girl daughter, the better...unfortunately, those two do figure into the end of this mess.
It started out with such promise, too.
Quirkyreader wrote: "Steven, We are almost tied with our climbs. Since I'm reading non TBR things as of now you will probably pass me. "
It's possible. I had hoped to hit 75 as of this point, but was thrown off by some non-TBR things myself (my Goodreads challenge should stand a little higher -- it's at 77, and should be 79 - but some things aren't in the Goodreads database.)
I'm reading a *lot* more this year.
#74 - Capital Streetcars:: Early Mass Transit in Washington, D.C. by John DeFerrariA very nice, easy to read history of Washington D.C.'s long-gone streetcar system, from its early horse-drawn days to the end of the PCC cars. Along with the transportation history, there's also an intertwined pocket history of life in the US capitol, and the issues of race relations there. The book essentially stops in 1962, with the end of the streetcars, but the concluding chapter sums up mass transit since then -- the issues with the buses, the building of the Metro, and the so far abortive attempts to return streetcars to Washington streets.
#75 - Marvel Covers: The Modern Era Artist’s Edition by Sam Kieth, Lee Bermejo, and othersOne of IDW's Artist's Editions series, this oversized artbook is a bit of a treat, although some of the included artwork is, well, less than stellar (sorry, Rob Liefeld) and everyone else, even the best, are blown away by Lee Bermejo's entries here. Sam Kieth comes close to holding his own there, with his weird, bulky art (not to mention the hilarious front and back covers for Marvel Comics Presents #100) but then there's the flashy but ultimately empty artwork of Todd McFarlane, and the increasingly scratchy artwork of John Romita, Jr., whose later work I've never warmed up to.
Still, this is a gorgeous book, and it's something to browse through slowly....repeatedly.
#76 - S.H.I.E.L.D. by Lee & Kirby: The Complete Collection by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and variousDon't Yield, Back S.H.I.E.L.D.!
The corn is high in these fields, which is part of the fun. Inspired, if that's the word, by the success of James Bond and various knock-offs, Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. shared a book with the adventures of Doctor Strange, until both characters were sent off into their own titles.
Lee repurposed his tough-talking no-nonsense Nick Fury, regularly seen in his own World War II book, having him, twenty years on, a Colonel, and minus an eye, inducted into the super-secret techno-spy organization S.H.I.E.L.D. (its full name then was a mouthful, its full name now is a mouthful, and both mouthfuls...well, I hope you like the cut of their gibberish.)
Following this induction, the fun came thick and fast, with as many gadgets as there were words in the dialogue -- big, chunky, highly improbable things, complete with a secret underground railroad under Manhattan, barbershops acting as secret entrances, and what have you. They need it all -- there's world-shaking threats (the communist menace gets ignored pretty quickly here. Iron Man may have wiped that out) such as Hydra, Them, The Secret Empire, and those happy go lucky fellows in the yellow beekeeper suits, Advanced Idea Mechanics (they're sort of a hiring initiative for Mad Scientists.)
It's lot of cheesy fun, but this is really just the prelude. The collection doesn't include *everything* Stan and Jack did, as Kirby was still doing layouts when Steranko came aboard...but that event leads us to another collection entirely....
#77 - Tender Hearts Taste Better in Butter by Weston OchseI've had this one sitting around in Audible for quite some time, and acquiring a new portable audio player (and Bluetooth headphones) seemed good reason to get it read, if only to test out the player.
The basics: the wheelman for a professional kidnapping outfit has two children entrusted to him while negotiations are ongoing. One, a boy, is a traumatized mess, but his sister is a foul-mouthed, nasty piece of work. As time drags on, the driver gets hungry enough to stop at a diner for some food and coffee...and mayhem ensues, because the diner isn't what it seems to be.
Read by the author, who, alas, does not do a great job of reading.
#78 = Iron Fist Epic Collection: The Fury of Iron Fist by Roy Thomas, Gil Kane, Tony Isabella, Larry Hama, Chris Claremont, John ByrneFrom out of the *vaguely waves* East he came, a living weapon with one thing on his mind! Revenge! It could have been New York street hot dogs, but this is Iron Fist, like unto a thing of iron!
The mammoth collection, part of Marvel's Epic Collection line, collects most of Iron Fist's early appearances in Marvel Premiere, the Iron Fist comic, and Marvel Team-Up, though it does leave out a few things -- the two issues of Marvel Team-Up included here are the end of the Steel Serpent story as the Iron Fist title was canceled with #15. Iron Fist would go on to share a title with Luke Cage for a few years, before that too was canceled.
This is generally middling stuff, more or less typical mid-70s Marvel declamatory superhero action with a martial arts spin (and a surprising number of creator cameos), although it does stand out a little by having the most annoying narrative captions -- second person present, relentlessly. Daniel Rand, lost in the Himalayas when his father was murdered by his business partner and his mother sacrificed herself to save him, was taken in by monks from a hidden city that only appears on Earth every ten years. Over the years he's trained, and has become the Iron Fist, all so he can find and kill the man who murdered his parents. It doesn't work out quite the way he expected, of course.
Along the way he meets and fights and then sides with the usual suspects -- Captain America, the X-Men, and so on. It's not compelling enough to blow through in one sitting, unfortunately.
Dude, you read the coolest books.That's my deep comment of the day ;-)
#79 - Superman/Batman, Vol. 12: Sorcerer Kings by Cullen Bunn, ChrissCross, etc.The twelfth collection in the pre-Flashpoint Superman/Batman series. Originally, the series had a continuity of sorts, but this eventually got abandoned and the focus changed to an anthology series, in which the stories may or may not actually be in continuity. This particular volume ranges from a "Who'd win in a fight" story to one featuring the 853rd Century versions of Superman and Batman (and various iterations of the main characters through various points in time) to the title story, where the two go up against a magical threat in two different time periods. It's no great shakes, but it's fairly entertaining stuff.
#80 - The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark FrostSomewhere along the way, this changed from being a follow-up to the short-lived series, to an epistolary novel in which an FBI agent is assigned to analyze a mysterious dossier found in a carbon-steel lockbox, in part with the aim of figuring out who The Archivist, who assembled the dossier, is. Unfortunately, if you haven't figured that out by the end section, the book flat out tells you...it's a choice that makes sense, though, even when the book itself doesn't.
The content of the book veers away from the original TV series in a lot of ways -- we're treated to a slightly weird history of the region, which is followed by a look at the career of Douglas Milford -- a character who was introduced in the second season, and killed off three episodes later after marrying sexpot Lana; he was the editor of the town newspaper, and brother to the equally ancient mayor.
As Frost has it, though, Douglas Milford was much more, and no stranger to the weird and alien, and he has huge connections to the supernatural mysteries of Twin Peaks.
There's another section that covers some of the denizens of Twin Peaks during the course of the original series...with some curious errors, little mention of one Dale Cooper, and no mention of the Two Lodges. Anyone expecting a history of what happened with most of the characters after the final episode will be sorely disappointed -- we're updated on the fate of Hank Jennings (dead), Andrew Packard (dead), and Audrey Horne (injured in the bank explosion, but alive.) Instead, we're left with a little cliffhanger as something strange occurred in a secret installation in the Ghostwoods, an element that I expect will play into the revival season.
The book then returns to the UFO stuff it had touched on earlier, and that's pretty much where we leave things. It's about as inessential a tie-in as you might want, and appears, if anything, to be trying to be a stealth X-Files tie in....
#81 - Marvel Masterworks: Daredevil, Vol. 1 by Stan Lee, Bill Everett, Joe Orlando, Wally Wood, etc.Her comes Daredevil, the Man Without Fear! Secretly the blind but gifted Matt Murdock, the Lawyer Without Ethics! Compiles the first eleven issues of the first volume of Daredevil, with restored art and colouring.
While the merger of Daredevil with crime fiction was still a long way off, this series actually started out as one of the more fun books in the early Marvel years. Sure, there was syrupy romantic moping, and a certain lack of realism, but there was action, some quality artwork, and broadly written bad guys. It seems possible to take the Stilt-Man seriously, amazingly enough.
I'm surprised that, to me, these stories seem to be better than I remembered them being (I read the early comics not long after they came out, somewhere back in the Jurassic.)
I read this in the ComiXology edition, so if there was an introduction to the book in the original hardcover printing, it wasn't ported over. That's a little disappointing.
#82 - S.H.I.E.L.D. By Steranko: The Complete Collection by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jim SterankoI'm not sure why Marvel opted to include almost all of the contents of the Strange Tales issues herein, as it comes close to duplicating the entirety of the second Doctor Strange Masterworks in the process, and needlessly pads the book.
I'm actually a bit disappointed after reading through this collection, as the early entries are a combination of Jack Kirby layouts and Steranko finishes, and even when Steranko takes over completely as the artist, the Kirby influences are extremely pronounced. When Steranko is let off the chain and starts writing the stories as well...well, let's just say that the pop art flourishes were a bit startling at the time, and memory insists that they were *much* better...excerpt that the cold hard light of day renders the work just...rather gaudy and silly. The parts that actually manage to work are the parts that get played straight amidst the mad gadgetry and goofy equipment names. It also doesn't help that a major chunk of the Strange Tales entries consists of one long arc based around the old Timely and Atlas villain The Yellow Claw, a lemon yellow Fu Manchu knock-off whose chief enemy is FBI agent Jimmy Woo (used to much better effect in the much later Agents of Atlas) who's secretly in love with the Yellow Claw's daughter, Suwan.
Credit, though is definitely due to Steranko for not only trying to do something different in mainstream comics, but convincing Stan Lee to go along with it. Oi, though, it has *not* held up well.
#83 - Pacific Invasion by Jean-Luc Sala and Afif KhaledThe second of the Iron Squad stories leaps away from the beleaguered Soviet Mecha squads to take a look at what the United States is embroiled in circa 1948 -- in this alternate world, the events of the 1930s and 1940s have proceeded quite differently. The United States has stayed out of the war raging in much of the globe, until an attack from Japan puts the country on a war footing and scrambling to defend against an invasion of the West Coast. The story is bookended by scenes in a US mecha assembly plant, but the bulk of it tells the story of what happened to one National Guard unit when the Japanese, and their mechas, finally struck.
It's an interesting story, but unfortunately not as fleshed out as I wish it could have been -- the Iron Squad trilogy mainly focuses on the Soviets, and there's not enough room anywhere in the books to really build out the world as it should be.
#84 - The Devil's Pilot by Richard D. Nolane and Maza, translated by Christina Cox-De Ravel#85 - At the Gates of Hell by Richard D. Nolane and Maza, translated by Christina Cox-De Ravel
#86 - The Reich's Damned by Richard D. Nolane and Maza, translated by Christina Cox-De Ravel
The first three in the Wunderwaffen series from the French Soleil imprint, telling the ongoing alternate reality story of a world where World War II went quite differently and the Allies were beaten back at Normandy. The story mostly focuses on Hauptmann Walter Murnau, a pilot assigned to fly the new high-speed Wunderwaffe aircraft; a man of honour, he seems the Aryan ideal but ends up with Hitler (disfigured and missing an arm after an assassination attempt, and even crazier by this point) accusing him of being a "secret Jew." Murnau's life becomes more and more complicated when a mission that should have kileld him leaves him alive and healing rapidly...as do several other missions, including an attempt to kill him with a sobotaged aircraft.
Added to Murnau's mysteries are a horrifying storyline of the evolution of the death camps, the continuing battles in the war as Germany fights to hold territory (Italy has fallen to the Allies) and the British, French, and Americans try to come up with a plan of action -- although Truman, still shocked at the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is resisting the use of the atomic bomb against Berlin, even as the truth about the repurposing of Auschwitz has been revealed.
It's an intriguing alternate world story that weaves real people in among fairly standard fictional characters. It establishes the details of this world as it goes along, although there are moments where the stories could use a little more breathing room.
#87 - Wunderwaffen T04 : La Main gauche du Führer (The Left Hand Of The Fuhrer) by Richard D. Nolane and Maza, translated by Christina Cox-De Ravel#88 - Wunderwaffen T05: Disaster day by Richard D. Nolane and Maza, translated by Christina Cox-De Ravel
#89 - Wunderwaffen T06 (The Spectre Of Antarctica) by Richard D. Nolane and Maza, translated by Christina Cox-De Ravel
#90 - Wunderwaffen T07: Amerika Bomber by Richard D. Nolane and Maza, translated by Christina Cox-De Ravel
as well as Wunderwaffen T08: La Foudre de Thor and Wunderwaffen T09: Le Visiteur du soir which came out this year.
The story clomps along, with lots of action to keep things moving, although it's now turned into a story of Himmler's efforts to take over the Reich through a mixture of science and skullduggery, with even Hitler under his secret control. Meanwhile, in the Antarctic, the Nazis have found something under the ice, and are intent on digging it out. The "it", as it turns out, is likely responsible for the mysterious storm that destroyed the Allies at Normandy -- and whatever it is, it can apparently move through time.
Richard D. Nolane, the writer, is a minor science fiction writer in France, and he seems to be having a bit of fun with this series -- for no real reason, he just just casually throws out an Atlantis reference, while a parachuting secret agent is found praying to Nyarlahotep. It's not enough to turn the series goofy, but it does take the edge off of a story that has some horribly grim elements and a huge bodycount.
#91 - Opération Rebalance by Jean-Luc Sala and Afif KhaledI love the alternate world premise of this series, but overall it's too truncated to work very well, especially with the action leaping around from location to location and time period to time period (at one point this book ducks into a flashback to explain how things got this way.) Iron Squad as a whole needed much more room to explore its premise and flesh out the story and characters.
The main story here is of a covert mission to rescue kidnapped American scientists and cripple the Mekapanzer program. As is expected in this kind of story, there are other agendas at work as well, and things go sideways several times before the bleak ending.
#92 - Russians on the Moon! by Fred Duval, Jean-Pierre Pécau, Philippe Buchet...also, Who Killed the President? by Fred Duval, etc; picked up this year, so not counted in the climb.
More alternate timeline shenanigans here, from the French Jour J series (I really must learn to read French again, as a lot of this stuff is not being translated.)
In Russians On the Moon!, the timeline twitches when a large meteorite punctures the LEM on its approach to the Moon, causing its destruction. The Russians have their moon shot almost ready, and within a few months they've landed on the Moon, and taken a foothold by start the construction of a base. President Nixon promptly orders another US moon shot and construction on a permanent base to counter the Russians.
Ten years on, both bases are operational, tensions on Earth have increased, and both the Americans and the Russians are convinced something strange is going on in their respective bases...so they send up new missions to investigate. What they don't know is that the situation has gotten *really* peculiar. The trouble is, some the new arrivals are getting entirely the wrong idea, and not willing to wait for information. As Earth teeters on the brink of nuclear world war, those on the Moon have to rush to calm things down.
The story actually does end on a positive note, and as at least one other reviewer has noted, the story is pretty well structured like a movie (and, amusingly enough, we very briefly visit with one Stanley Kubrick as he watches a news report about events on the Moon.)
Who Shot The President? is a story about that terrible day in Dallas in November of 1973...yes, 1973, as Nixon is the one in the way of the assassin's bullet. In 1959, Nixon's people manage to pull off enough dirty tricks that Kennedy loses the election and falls into obscurity. Nixon manages to get re-elected, and then gets the constitution term limit amendment repealed, as he ploughs on to a fourth term, pulling the country into vicious fascism as he does so (protesters marching against the term limits thing are ruthlessly slaughtered in Chicago, and that massacre is about the be mirrored in Dallas.) By the time of the story, Nixon has ramped up his prosecution of the Viet Nam War, and is planning to first use Cobalt bombs near the Chinese border to cut off the Viet Cong's rear bases, and then to move the war into China, with the hope that the Russians will backstop his play...and that's when the powers in the shadows begin to lay their plans against him. It's a very bleak story.
#93 - Doctor Strange and the Secret Defenders by Roy Thomas, Ron Marz, Andre Coates, Tom Grindberg, and othersAlso, added this year and thus not numbered on the climb: Deadpool and the Secret Defenders (Secret Defenders by Tom Brevoort, and assorted
It starts off wobbling around mediocrity with Roy Thomas writing and Andre Coates doing art, and then nose-dives when Ton Marz comes aboard with Tom Grindberg's terrifyingly blocky and blotchy work. The collection finally grinds to a halt with a single issue entry in a long-forgotten crossover centered on the 616 Universe's version of the Starbrand from the New Universe. A sad entry in Defenders canon.
The second book (which skips over three issues of the series) is a blatant attempt to squeeze more money out of Deadpool, as the book is *still* Doctor Strange And The Secret Defenders -- with Strange more in the shadows. Deadpool's hardly in it, and he hasn't yet been given the voice and character he's best known for.
#94 - Barbarella by Jean-Claude Forest, translated by Kelly-Sue deConnick#95 - Barbarella & the Wrath of the Minute-Eater by Jean-Claude Forest, translated by Kelly-Sue deConnick
The movie was playful frippery, and was based on a playful frippery -- the Barbarella comic strip was a slightly saucy science fiction tale about an occasionally hapless Earth girl who veered between sex at the drop of a hat and helping to overcome tyrannical regimes on alien planets -- Barbarella and Flesh (not Flash) Gordon would have gotten along well, methinks. This first collection, originally wrestled into book form by Grove Press and graced with a somewhat clumsy translation by Richard Seaver, has been redone in a new edition that features a new translation by Kelly Sue DeConnick, who also translated/adapted the second collection, Barbarella & the Wrath of the Minute-Eater, has a tendency to be a bit abrupt in transitions thanks to the original format. Various of the seeds of the movie are here, though, including Pygar, Duran Durand (who was conflated with the Master Locksmith for the film), and even The Excessive Machine. The new translation is clearer and, frankly, considerably cheekier, and the artwork has a bit more room to breathe.
The second book (a third was compiled and issued by Heavy Metal many years ago, but a reprint is not on the horizon) has Barbarella now running an interstellar circus and looking for a solution to their declining attendance. Enter Narval the Aquaman, who tells her about a mysterious and obscure sector where time and space are...strange. Off they all go, and from that point on the story becomes alternate hilarious nonsense and grim nonsense (in Lio, the suicidal teen whose angst can only be alleviated by special watercolour paintings, there's both at once.) Even more so than the first volume, Barbarella's solutions to dilemmas are either to have sex with whatever's in her way, or to shoot it. Meanwhile, the world she and her crew find themselves in is the very definition of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, and it's best not to think about any of that, especially when you get to the end and find out what a mad Frenchman's idea for a TARDIS is.
Not precisely great work -- though the deConnick translation beats the Seaver translation all to hell -- but it's fun.
#96 - Elseworlds: Batman Vol. 1 by Alan Brennert, Doug Moench, Howard Chaykin, et alI've always loved the Elseworlds books from DC, even when the end result was a bit pathetic. The basic premise: DC Comics characters are dropped into alternate world settings, transformed to fit those settings (sometimes the adjustments are hilariously awkward.) Thus we can have a Batman who's a priest in a theological American state, one who's an industrial designer in 1939 America, even one who's taking the role of Victor Frankenstein -- although that story has both familiar beats and unfamiliar ones. Batman as a Green Lantern. And so on.
It's a moteley collection of storties, some good, some not so good (Robin 3000, I'm looking at you.) For my mney, the best entries here are Alan Brennert's Holy Terror, and the two by Howard Chaykin -- The Devil's workshop, which features Batman and Harry Houdini in 1907, and Dark Alliances, which has Bruce Wayne, industrial designer, being so effective as Batman that everyone things there's dozens of him. As dar as the thematic elements are, Chaykin's story is so cheerfuly loopy that there are more than a few laughs to be had (and a Catwoman costume that's just ridiculously impractical.)
Good fun, overall, and I don't doubt that I'll be revisiting at least some of the stories.
#97 - The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe by Ryan North and Erica HendersonI always did like the riotously quirky Squirrel Girl, even before a polished-up version arrived in the Avengers. North and Henderson's revamp of her as a somewhat heavy, buck-toothed (well, squirrel-toothed) computer science student whose general good nature keeps her ludicrous powerset under control until she needs to knock down Dr. Doom or Galactus is splendid stuff. Sure, half the time it makes no sense whatsoever, but that's part of the setup.
In this stand-alone graphic novel, Doreen starts out by saving not one, but several express trains after a trestle bridge is damaged. From there it's off to Tony Stark's lab, where Tony has a typically ill-thought-out request and a pile of captured machinery he's not quite sure about. Doreen winds up in the machine, and, voila! we have two Squirrel Girls. Fortunately, they both know which is the original and which is the copy, and, even better, neither one of them is the evil twin! All's well that ends, as Doreen and new twin Allene go off to eat nuts and kick butts and...
...well, not so fast. Allene isn't *quite* an exact copy.....
Once again, this is an amusing outing with some outright hilarious moments. Just as much fun are the footnotes at the bottom of most of the pages (something carried over from the ongoing comic series.)
It's nice to have something as outright goofy as this. Even better, it's very much all-ages, despite half the main cast winding up in their underwear (absolutely rule-of-funny stuff, especially with Tony Stark.)
#98 - Captain America by Dan Jurgens, Vol. 1 by Dan Jurgens, Andy Kubert, Jerry Ordway and othersPost Heroes Return, and into the tail end of the 1990s, this collection is a fairly straightforward set of issues that have Cap and Nick Fury up against the Hate-Monger (a clone of Adolf Hitler who first popped up battling the Fantastic Four), and then Cap in the Savage Land to team up with the exceedingly angry Sharon Carter to bring down Count Nefaria, who has apparently killed Ka-Zar.
It's workmanlike storytelling, easy enough to read, not memorable enough to stick in the mind for long. The art veers from serviceable to excellent and then all the way to 90s shiny bombast. There doesn't seem to be anything vital in the run.
#99 - Z-Men #1: Nervous in the Service by Jeff McComsey et alWhat a weird book this was...it's essentially a sequel to Night Of The Living Dead, with the government getting involved, but the art is entirely in splash pages with dialogue running across the bottom. It's unfortunately not really very good, and apparently comes from a games company (which may explain the design.)
#100 - Hardcase by Bill PronziniThe twenty-second full length tale of Pronzini's "Nameless Detective" (who isn't really nameless, but the reader is left to figure out what his name is from the various clues in the books.)
This time around Nameless is hired by a young woman who has recently discovered, after her parents died, that she was adopted. Curious about her origins, she hires the detective to trace her pre-adoption history, a matter that seems straightforward.
It's anything but, as he soon discovers -- first, he runs afoul of small-town secretiveness, and only his doggedness finally brings out the truth, that the young woman is the result of a horrific sexual assault, a rape so savage that the fallout destroyed the boy's family, never mind the victim and her family. Pursuing the few leads he has, he tracks down the boy's family, and finds two people who are shells of humanity, and through them he finds the boy, now a successful and apparently reformed medical equipment salesman.
And then everything goes straight to hell, because this man is not the least bit contrite. His own father contends that he's unrepentant evil...and may be underestimating him. The detective soon finds himself racing the Devil, with the finish line coming up fast.
It's actually a bit of a potboiler in terms of plot, even with the monster at the center of it, and there are some extremely slow spots. I do like this character, though -- Nameless is a generally easy-going sort, good at his job, and willing to be a happy man, rather than a brooding noir type. He's not young, he's not all that fit, and he does make mistakes, but the stories are breezy and compact.
#101 - Marvel Masterworks: Doctor Strange, Vol. 3 by Roy Thomas, Gene Colan, Tom Palmer, Dan AdkinsBy the Purple Pen Of Hoggoth, or some such malarkey. More Marvel mysticism, with some excellent artwork by Gene Colan (and some less excellent art from Dan Adkins, Tom Palmer, and sundry) that's unfortunately bogged down by the florid spew of words from writer Roy Thomas.
This volume wraps up the first run of Stephen Strange's adventures, with a story that wound up being continued into other books, and finally concluded in Marvel Premiere (a run included in the subsequent Masterworks volume) on the way to launching a new Dr. Strange series.
#102 - Essential Doctor Strange, Vol. 2 by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Gene Colan, Marie Severin, Dan Adkins, Gardner F. Fox, Frank Brunner, etcBlack and white compilation of Doctor Strange outings (and appearances in other series), six hundred pages or so. Extremely variable in both writing and art, but often a fun read.
Oops, I'm a couple books late, but congrats on topping 100! You're 2/3rds there with almost half the year to go! Great job.
Jessika wrote: "Oops, I'm a couple books late, but congrats on topping 100! You're 2/3rds there with almost half the year to go! Great job."Thank you. If I'd maintained the pace I had at the beginning of the year, I'd be over the top at this point/ It is, however, gratifying to be this far, and not having to gallop madly to the end.
Mount TBR 2017
Books mentioned in this topic
These Are The Voyages: TOS Season Two (other topics)King Alfred's English: A History of the Language We Speak and Why We Should Be Glad We Do (other topics)
The Justice League of America: The Silver Age Omnibus Vol. 1 (other topics)
Krazy & Ignatz (other topics)
Z-Men: All the President's Men (other topics)
More...
It's a little dizzying, reading through this volume in a fairly short span, rather than month to month. It goes from the tail end of the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko era, with mad plotting by Ditko and swathes of nigh-incomprehensible verbiage from Lee, to Lee having to figure out the plotting himself, and then handing off the writing to Roy Thomas and Denny O'Neill at different times, only to jump back in himself, causing a stylistic whiplash.
With Ditko's departure, a bit of an artist's parade came in, starting with veteran Bill Everett (best known for his Sub-Mariner work in the 1940s), then moving on to Marie Severin's very stylized artwork, followed by the often elegant work of Dan Adkins. The quality of the artwork provides another element of cognitive whiplash, given the worst of the dialogue and captions (Lee at his most frantic) ad sometimes given even the best of them.
Still, it's here that the stories develop longer arcs, and we start to get a sense of Doctor Strange's world, its purpose, and its depth. Unfortunately, neither the character nor the setting would progress much more for a few years...but there was always the seed of something here, even if nobody seemed able to make up their minds what kind of magic Doc and his mentor actually practiced.
Whatever it was, it allowed The Ancient One to die and return almost as regularly as Spider-Man's Aunt May had heart attacks and visits from the Grim Reaper....