The Virtually Certain Man…At Last?

[Steven]

Hup! I’ve been doing more loaners this year than expected.

[Steven]

#61 - The Blacklist, Volume 2: The Arsonist by Nicole Phillips, Beni Lobel

Set in the first half of season 3, this finds Liz and Reddington in the run as they try to clear Liz’s name following her shooting the Attorney General. The escape of a cleaner from a deep cover CIA site leads them in the direction of the Cabal, but things aren’t exactly as they seem.

Not as good as the first story, this does still make me want to see this series.

ComiXology

[Steven]

#62 - Crossover, Vol. 1: Kids Love Chains by Donny Cates & etc

I really, really wanted to love this, given that it lands right in my wheelhouse with the alternate worlds/infinite Earths notion at the heart of it, but it trips up immediately — once the other-dimensional city pops in and destroys Denver, the denizens basically ignore the chaos they’ve created and engage it what seems like an endless brawl. Why? Cates rattles on about the uber-reality of Superman, but simultaneously suggests Superman’s a tantrumy five year old sociopath. On top of that, he throws in an anti-comics pogrom, serial killings of comics writers, a mixed religious zealot/end times militia type, a mystery involving the protagonist, a government super-agent, black site super prisons, and a secret vivisection program to build government superheroes.

It gets a bit overwhelming and a *lot* confusing, especially as Cates borrows a lot of characters from other Image creators and assorted friends because, you know, it’s a giant crossover, only, like what if it involves the *real* world? *gazes meaningfully at DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths*

I’ll keep reading, but I’ll be hoping things improve.

Hoopla.

[Steven]

#63 - Star Wars Episode IX: Duel Of The Fates by Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly, Jack Winegarden

A fan comics adaptation of the first draft of Colin Trevorrow’s script for episode 9. Flaws and all it’s still better than The Rise Of Skywalker, finally giving Finn and Rey their own agency (Poe, alas, not so much.) Best of all, it acknowledges how awful the Jedi were, and how they’d fallen from the original path, and it honors Lucas’ idea about bringing balance to the Force — yes, it’s blindingly obvious, but at least they got there. Add to that Finn and Rose being un-nerfed, and the pay-off to the stable boy at the end of Last Jedi and you have the makings of a solid film that wouldn’t pass off the entire major cast enough to make them steer well clear of Lucasfilm in future.

The art is often questionable but reading it as storyboards works.

Borrowed from the artist’s website at http://awinegarner.squarespace.com/du...

[Steven]

#64 - Willamette Valley Railways by Richard Thompson

A fairly exhaustive overview of the Willamette Valley in Oregon, covering Portland, Albany, Salem and Eugene, and the various large and small horse car and electric lines. The Willamette Valley story is a rather sad one as almost all of the passenger lines vanished between 1917 and 1930, with truncated freight lines remaining in spots…all of which were gone by 1957.

A decent amount of historical photos many of which are from tines prior to paved streets and sidewalks — lots of wooden sidewalks and disgusting looking slurries of mud and manure to be seen.

Borrowed from Scribd.

[Steven]

#65 - Justice League, Volume 4: The Sixth Dimension by Scott Snyder, Jorge Jimenez, etc
#66 - Justice League, Volume 5: The Doom War by Scott Snyder, Jorge Jimenez, etc

Scott Snyder providing the parts between one crisis (Dark Nights: Metal) and another (Dark Nights: Death Metal) in which the Omniverse gets destroyed and remade and…something. It’s what happens when a cosmically-oriented writer tries to one-up Grant Morrison on the multiversal turf. I’m not going to even try summarizing this lunacy. The epic clashes do become a tad boring eventually, but there’s quite a bit of absurd humour (much due to Jarro, a pint sized telepathic starfish that’s imprinted on Batman) so it’s not a completely lost cause.

Read via DC Universe Infinite.

[Steven]

#67 - Kind of Hindu by Mindy Kaling

Part of a series of personal stories from Kaling, who brings wit and humour to an exploration of her feelings about her Hindu heritage, and how those considerations affected what she wanted for her daughter — a tale that ends in trauma for kid and hairdresser. Entirely human and funny without ever losing the feeling for what others went through.

Kindle Unlimited/Audible Plus

[Steven]

#68 - Big Shot by Mindy Kaling

More from Kaling’s life, with an emphasis on separating the truly philanthropic from the self-aggrandizing. I suspect that the filmmaker at the core of this is actually Steven Spielberg.

She also sketches out her daily life from a professional standpoint, though does so with humour more than accuracy.

Kindle Unlimited/Audible

[Steven]

#69 - Once Upon a Time in Silver Lake by Mindy Kaling

More from Kaling’s life, this time with close friend B.J. Novak. Less funny ha-ha than oh crap! funny.

Kindle Unlimited/Audible

[Steven]

#70 - Superman & The Authority by Grant Morrison

Turns out that despite the Ultra-Humanite this is pretty much just an on-ramp for an Action Comics run. It’s also one of the first books to take up the DC Omniverse thing, as this Superman is an aging silver age hero with failing powers. He still sort of connects to Jonathan Kent, but the world here is very clearly a sidestep. Unfortunately, like Grant Morrison’s work since Final Crisis this ends inconclusively after lurching through a story that seems to have pieces missing.

Via Hoopla.

[Steven]

#71 - Cummoangetaff!: The Adventures of Big Aggie MacDonald, the Glasgow Tramcar Clippie by Allan Morrison

A fairly entertaining book about a legendary Glasgow tram conductor. It’s mostly vignettes, but does delve a bit into the demise of Glasgow’s tram lines. I suspect many of the tales of Big Aggie are apocryphal, though.

Scribd.

[Steven]

#72 - Rain Later, Good: Painting the Shipping Forecast by Peter Collyer

As a fairly recent Shipping Forecast devotee, I’ve been doing some reading on the subject…this particular book is one of the more interesting ones, despite a certain stiffness in the text. Collyer traveled around the various sea areas that are listed in the four daily radio bulletins, not just writing about them but also doing water colour paintings of features he found interesting. A very low key, rather gentle book about a British cultural icon.

Scribd.

[Steven]

#73 - Wonder Woman: Dead Earth by Daniel Warren Johnstone

A post apocalyptic Wonder Woman tale that flips the script a bit on who Diana is and the place she came from. When Diana awakens from cryosleep in the Batcave, she finds survivors of a destroyed planet battling a mutant creature. That soon leads to her being led to an encampment of human survivors where the truth about what happened slowly comes to light. It’s a brutal, heartbreaking, horrific story, with art guaranteed to turn some off.

Hoopla.

[Steven]

#74 - Atomic Robo: The Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener

I’m not even going to try and explain Atomic Robo. Out favourite atompunk/Teslapunk automaton is up to his big eyes in a battle against government conspiracies, fake news, and a pterodactyl with uplifted intelligence and a giant case of stupid. And it all comes with little science lessons!

ComiXology Unlimited.

[Steven]

#75 - Frank Thorne's Red Sonja: Art Edition Vol. 1 by Frank Thorne

It’s taken a while to work through this book — Thorne’s work (finished by various inkers) is presented as scans of the original art boards, bringing out the qualities of the line work as much as possible. Unfortunately Thorne’s work can be hard to appreciate, plus the early Marvel Red Sonja stories were rather stodgy outings.

Reading this in digital, too, might lose something — even on a big iPad, the presentation doesn’t have the heft of the printed book, which is printed a bit larger than the art boards the work was drawn on. It’s still an impressive presentation, though.

ComiXology Unlimited

[CinCO]

Steven wrote: "#75 - Frank Thorne's Red Sonja: Art Edition Vol. 1 by Frank Thorne

It’s taken a while to work through this book — Thorne’s work (finished by various inkers) is presented as scans o..."

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