Matthew McElroy > Recent Status Updates

Oh damn.
Cyclops with twists.
Beast with locks.
And a Charles Xavier that looks something like Scatman Crothers.

Meanwhile the rookies are caught in a cave with literal Nazi mutants who are under the orders of Moira McTaggert. I always thought she was a friend to Xavier.

Back to Krakoa- some of these stories have been excellent, some of been pretty lame.
The cover is a Black Cyclops and a Black Jean Grey. Colossus, Wolverine and Beast are presumably Black as well, but given their masks and mutant forms, it is harder to tell.
I assume this will be revealed further in the book.
Bishop is now training new mutants to defend Krakoa. I have not heard of one of these characters.

Nothing like a little exposition to move the plot along. Okay- we know what Morgan Le Fay wants- instantly more intrigued.
I do not like the Forge/Furies. Are they robots? Are they sentient? Are they on earth? Why exactly are they tied to Morgan Le Fay? Why is someone who loves magic using some kind of robot for muscle? I think they used the term cybiote earlier. I have no idea if that is a real term.

The Fantastic Four stories felt intensely tired to the Marvel Universe, even when they were in outer space.
This is more like Black Panther by Ta Nehisi Coates. It is a stand alone story, and any relevance to Marvel is purely coincidental. The second book was better than the first. Morgan Le Fay isn't convincing as a villain. She seems easily defeated and I'm not sure what her motivation is.

Still at the beginning, but this is not a great start.
The Betsy Braddock/Kwannon split HAD TO HAPPEN. Someone knows this story better, but in the late 80s, Marvel wanted a Japanese fetish character. So they forged two minds into one, and had a busty ninja in a swimsuit and knee high boots fighting alongside Cyclops and Wolverine. 30 years later, they decided this was ridiculous, and split the two characters.

Easy is in it now. Sometimes a friend like Mouse is either the best or worst thing to have in a situation like this.
He reminds me of the friend in the last SA Cosby book I read. I think it was All the Sinners Bleed.
The mostly thoughtful protagonist, who is dragged into a mess he wants nothing to do with, has one friend who just say, "Yeah, I brought duct tape and gasoline."

Van Sertima is convincing that Black Africans had the ABILITY to cross the Atlantic. I guess I am Western enough to ask for an archaelogical site of Black Africans in the Americas. This idea of "Black Californians" is intriguing. He is successfully separating the Arabs from Egyptians and also separating the Egyptians, who Europeans love" from the sub-Saharan Africans that Europeans regard as inferior.

Was the Fantastic Four always THIS MUCH about family?
Or did the writing get better, so that it was less clunky and obvious?

I am not sure how the Cotati are worse than the Kree and Skrull, but okay.

Is the Order of Pama something I should be familiar with? For all the ridiculous villains, I do not hate plants being angry at humans. We have given them plenty of reasons to be furious.
Why exactly they are angry at the Kree and Skrull- I will pay closer attention.

In the first few books Val and Franklin were kind of irritating. But they are kind of growing on me. I never liked when children were the most powerful beings in the universe. It felt arbitrary. But Slott is a good enough writer to make them feel powerful, and also immature at the same time. The opportunity for a ridiculous accident is always there.

Did they just put a Mojo-Jojo Easter Egg in the Casino Cosmico?

Awwww man. The cops got involved. Who woulda thought they would be hassling a Black man on almost no evidence?

Daphne is a white girl from Louisiana? Huh, i feel like i have heard that story before.

On the book jacket, it says Walter Mosley is in the mold of Raymond Chandler. Nonsense. I read Chandler's supposed masterpiece, The Big Sleep. It stunk.
This is excellent. We don't know what Easy Rawlings does. He is finding this girl. But we do not know why Albright came to him. We do not know what is special about Daphne.
And LA in the 40s must have been a heckuva place.

Love the story of Sundiata's grandson on this quest to see what lays beyond the horizon. I am curious why Van Sertima is dismissive of Arab science, which was incredible for the time.

Did you know Africans were doing cataract surgery in the 1300s?

There is some convincing evidence here. Van Sertima does not play into traditional European arguments about divine right or naval superiority.
He admits there is a chance luck played a role in the arrival of Africans. He notes a current that extends from the coast of West Africa to the north of Brazil and the Caribbean.

The thesis is that Africans had arrived in the Western Hemisphere more than 100 years before Columbus. The first chapter focuses on Columbus and the rivalry between Portugal and Spain.
I absolutely want to believe Van Sertima. But being the product of American education, I will need to see more. Luckily, I have more than 200 pages to go.

This section was titled "A distinction between names and other words".
I do not know if i received a clarification on that. But if you are using your grade school story chart, the action is building.
Wala Kitu is not a Bond style hero- he is not suave or charismatic, or even particularly interesting. Do not get it wrong- Everett has made Kitu fascinating. But if you met Kitu, you would not talk to him very long.

1/3 of the way through the book is the first time we get a clear insight into why Kitu is the way he is. But if you have taught school for more than a year you figured it out 50 pages in.

I wonder if these mathematical concepts are real or not. They seem important to the story, but also, entirely unimportant. But anytime big words are used in a story, they feel important.

The fun part about Percival Everett's novels is that he takes the most ridiculous premise and just writes about that. Kurt Vonnegut would be proud.
John Sill, a potential villain with his own complicated backstory, has hired Wala Kitu to find nothing.
Everett's ability to harness all the meanings of 'nothing' is more creative and important than you could imagine.

Every time I read someone's recollection of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, I well up.
I'm not a jingoist. I'm not a nationalist. I was 20 when 9/11 occurred and like everyone else, I remember how that day unfolded.
I remember the conversation in the BSU (IYKYK) and how different it was from other places.
It's the event that brought King to prominence, so it makes sense this is the end of his walk.

It's a remarkably fast read. I appreciate that King didn't leave Jersey out of the picture, dedicating at least three solid chapters to his walk across the narrowest part of one of the smallest states. I say that with no irony either.
In a distance that an ultramarathoner could probably run in a day, he sees the site of one of the most important events in our history, a massive garbage dump, and New York State.

King is given opportunities that most of us wouldn't have or couldn't afford. To his credit, he doesn't waste them.
I respect his take on "Who built America?" Was it the men who wrote the papers, or the PEOPLE who built buildings, tilled fields and chopped down trees?

I love the fact that they are telling this story from a completely different perspective. Everything the 'alien' (they look entirely like earth heroes, down to the spandex and tiny waistlines) heroes are doing makes complete sense.

Cool callback to the origin of the Fantastic Four.
Ben Grimm is definitely the best of the FF.

Poor Ben Grimm. He can't have anything nice.

Ben Grimm is Jewish?!?!

I started this on Saturday. I put away that ridiculous Ross Perot book, and picked this up. It took me about five pages to be hooked. Neil starts out a few summers ago, with the goal of walking from Washington, DC to New York City, by way York, PA.
I've only been reading for about five days, but King has embraced his walk, and the goal of seeing the country in its glory and it's failure.

Levin clearly did great research. But unless he was writing just to get published, all of these financial and legal terms were wasted. He should have focused on the story and not the numbers.