Mount TBR 2022 discussion

Jumping higher by degrees…time for #49-#75.

The captcha called for tractors. Alas, I have no Ukrainian books on the piles.

#49 - The Knight of the Swords by Michael Moorcock

Moorcock’ s fantasy comes out of a long tradition of British fantasy and magic, informed by his explorations of SF. As a result, his worlds of the Eternal Champion are often dark and dangerous. Chaos wars with Law, grinding mortals between them.

Corum of the Vadagh is an aspect of the Champion, forced into the great conflict by the slaughter of his race by humans. His quest will lead him to happiness and misery both. Moorcock, writing about hugely expansive concepts, somehow managed to cram huge amounts of character and action into a fairly tiny space without losing either energy or poetry.

#50 - All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told by Douglas Wolk

Wolk read 27,000 Marvel comics, then dug into what he sees as the overarching narrative, as well as intersecting narratives over the decades. I’m guessing he had a good time, as this book is very good, both looking at what Marvel Comics is, and charting the social shifts via the characters and titles.

#51 - The Higher Frontier by Christopher L. Bennett

Bennett revisits psychic powers in Trek, with callbacks to multiple stories. It’s mostly alright, though leaden writing makes it something of a slog at times.

#52 - These Are the Voyages - TOS: Season Three by Marc Cushman

A truly exhaustive look at the production of Star Trek’s doomed third season. I’ve enjoyed reading these while rewatching the series. I’m hoping to get started on the three volumes that take things up to the first movie.

#53 - Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Fantastic Four Vol. 1: The World's Greatest Heroes by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, et al

Another updated reissue of the first ten dynamic but very clunky issues of this landmark series. Some of the stories are pure rubbish, but they did somehow catch the zeitgeist by presenting a dysfunctional family whose lives had an arc from issue to issue. Peyton Place meets comics head on. Honestly, it’s remarkable how awful these characters could be — Johnny is an idiot, Ben is a mean-tempered dry drunk, Sue is mostly a dishrag with violence issues (always knocking people aside, and once invisibly kicking some schmoe arse over teakettle) while Reed is a grouchy jackass with a knack for bad decisions.

Still, this is a good restored introduction.

#54 - Marvel Masterworks: Marvel Team-Up, Vol. 6 by Chris Claremont, John. Byrne, others

A restored collection of Marvel’s Spider-Man team-up book plus extras that include a 1977 Marvel calendar that’s inadvertently hilarious. MTU was often used as a place to wrap up storylines from canceled books (Iron Fist’s first series) or to introduce new characters, like Woodgod (whose first appearance is included as an extra) and Captain Britain (who was a staple in the UK but had never crossed the Pond.)

The stories remain workmanlike. The restoration is solid, though certainly sharper and brighter than the original release.

#55 - Spider-Man: Marvel Team-Up by Chris Claremont and John Byrne + sundry

More functional but inessential team-up tales, though the occasional references to Claremont and Byrne on the revived X-Men book are amusing.

#56 - The Conception of Terror: Tales Inspired by M.R. James, Volume 1 by various

Full cast adaptations of James stories, heavily updated. Things get a bit leaden at times, and very leaden in the final story which just seems to go on forever. Does well at providing a spooky atmosphere, but tends to overdo the scare points — giant blasts of noise isn’t frightening, they’re annoying.

An additional downside for some: these are very old fashioned tales, despite the updates.

#57 - The Enterprise War by John Jackson Miller

The story of the Enterprise‘s lost period prior to season 2 of Discovery where Pike leaves the battered flagship and takes on command of Discovery. It’s a long story, with a lot of turns, as Pike’s supposed safe harbor during the Klingon War (he’s ordered to stay far away by Starfleet Command) is anything but. A chunk of his crew is abducted, and the Enterprise is repeatedly attached, crippled, and left split in two by a saucer separation. It’s up to Pike and the absent Spock (whose mind is increasingly under pressure) to painfully figure out what the hell is actually going on.

#58 - Super Sons: The Polarshield Project by Ridley Person, Ile Gonzalez

Leaving aside the very different characterizations here (Pearson admits this upfront, and I don’t consider it an issue in that this is a very alternate universe) the draw here has to be the cute art, which lands earlier than the YA tag. The storyline is a mess, chopping all over the place, and it’s assembled with no eye to establishing parts of this alternate world, leading to a lot of confusion. The main plot driver, global warming, is also handled clumsily — the only real marker of it is the ocean rise due to polar melting. It’s a lot more complicated than that.

Oh well, at least it’s pretty.

#59 - Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories by Craig Johnson

Ten of Johnson’s Christmas stories, plus his first published short and new story “Messenger”, the latter the funniest Longmire tale thus far. The short stories often are sentimental, or take a humourous tack, little incidents in Longmire’s storied life.

#60 - The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson

This is really very much a western drama about damaged men, with occasional interruptions by a brutal mystery. Walt Longmire is a sympathetic cop, intelligent but troubled, looking forward to retiring as Sheriff of tiny Absaroka County after 24 years, meanwhile mourning his wife and drowning in grief. He’s pulled back to work, which leads him to the possibility of healing and moving on…but, of course, there’s the job, and these new complications of an old, horrific case….

It took me a while to get used to George Guidall’s narration — his Walt feels like a man in his seventies (how old *is* Walt? He’s at least late 50s here) but the laconic narration finally settled in, and by the time the ending came I was deep in Walt’s emotional state.

#61 - Death Without Company by Craig Johnson

Second of the Sheriff. Walt Longmire mysteries, this time tighter and a bit more closely focused on the mystery element. This time Walt finds himself looking into the claim that a woman in her seventies who died in the Durant nursing home was murdered — an allegation made by the former Sheriff. To Longmire’s shock, Lucian Connolly tells him: “She was my wife.” From there it’s twists and turns and weirdness amongst the Basque…yeah, me too!

Anyway, much more propulsive than the first books, and audiobook narrator George Guidall has Walt’s voice in this one.

#62 - Kindness Goes Unpunished by Craig Johnson

Henry Standing Bear is to do a presentation on a collection of Cheyenne photos at an academy in Philadelphia, so Walt Longmire decides to take a break and join him so he can meet his daughter Cady’s fiancée…and the sprawling family of his undersheriff, Victoria Moretti. He’s no sooner there than Cady is badly injured…and things start to come out of the shadows, plunging Walt and Henry into a mess that reaches from city hall to the prison system.

For all that Cady’s situation is harrowing, and the body count a little higher than usual, this is a surprisingly funny book. Johnson avoids turning Longmire into McCloud, but between Walt, Henry, and the Morettis (including Victoria, who has a *really* inappropriate moment) there’s some zingers — including Chief Inspector Victor Moretti…who moonlights as an opera singer.

#62 - Superman for All Seasons by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

One of the most affecting Superman stories ever, though rather firmly not in continuity. It covers a span of years, each part in a different season, addressing his origin and nature from a nigh-pastoral direction, and watching him through a crisis of faith triggered by the increasingly malignant Lex Luthor. Tim Sale, who recently died, did the art.

Wonderful work.

#63 - Teen Titans: The Silver Age Vol. 1 (Teen Titans by Bob Haney, Nick Cardy, etc

The goofy roots of the Teen Titans, coming together to help teenagers and mangle language worldwide. Written by Bob Haney, the stories are all typically a hair shy of insane, with increasingly ridiculous villains and a boatload of sexism. There’s also a hilarious series of panels over a number of issues where the Teen Titans exit their cave lair from behind a billboard advertising the 1966 Batman TV series.

#64 - What If? Mirror Mirror by Daniel Way, others

Oof. Some bad art and bad storytelling sink this like a stone — Wolverine becoming the Punisher in the 1920s because Al Capone killed his girlfriend (a hooker) and his kid? And Scarface is actually Sabretooth? Ouch. Thor becomes Galactus’ herald but stays worthy? Even worse, the stories are supposed to take place in the same timeline, but none of them fit with each other.

#65 - Bella Bella by Harvey Fierstein

Fierstein imagines Bella Abzug’s night of waiting for election results in 1976 as she attempts to become the Democratic nominee for the first female Senator from New York. Fierstein does well capturing Abzug’s often coarse character, and makes a number of points about what she fought for and represented. His performance, though, suffers a bit from his increasingly raspy voice, which can be hard to listen to.

#66 - The Inter-City Contract by Rod Beacham

A straightforward murder mystery on a sleeper train to Edinburgh as a dead man is discovered in the baggage area, his clothes and ID gone. It’s straightforward, with the story being set up at the start (a hit man is sent by a construction company owner to kill an inconvenient whistleblower) and the mystery going from there. Beacham plays fair, but it’s nothing adventurous, though the denouement is pretty amusing.

#67 - The James Bond Bedside Companion by Raymond Benson

Audiobook edition of the 1988 edition, which means the last film covered is The Living Daylights and the coverage of the books stops with the latter John Gardner books, just before Benson himself took over the series.

The book packs in a lot of information and analysis, but Benson is often withering, especially about the films, and it can get quite tedious. Some interesting perspectives, though, especially as this is pre-World Wide Web, and pre-DVD special features (though laserdiscs were becoming a thing at this point, and the Bond films saw some degree of release.)

#68 - Strike Witches: The Sky That Connects Us by Shin Kyogoku

I just finished this, a manga that fits between seasons one and two of an anime that’s…you know, it’s confusing. The anime was based on magazine pieces, but connects to a series of light novels, a set of manga volumes, and audiobooks — it literally switches the story through all of these, so to make overall sense you have to try and assemble as much of the mosaic as you can.

Anyway, this interstitial volume follows some of the characters as their missions end and they get sent around this alternate world (World War II never happened due to an alien invasion, and magic users, all young girls, are drafted in to do battle using high-tech weapons and strap-on fighter boots, and I’m going to accept this because, well, Japan.) There’s hints of romance, much silliness, occasional battle, and, dear me, fan service that slides right down the greasy pole into outright sleaze. One chapter is mainly the characters nude at a hot spring. These warrior witches with the strap-on engines and giant guns also fly around in uniform blazers and panties. No, seriously, that’s the standard military outfit for a Strike Witch. You can imagine what the artwork’s like. More cameltoe than the entire US Army Arizona Camel Corps circa 1888.

Japan. Good lord.

#69 - Ryuko, Volume 2 by Elmo Yoshimizu

Not quite as visually messy as the first volume, but the story basically explodes all over the place — it’s about family, it’s about destiny, it’s about US Imperialism, it’s about covert nastiness, it’s about the Empress of a worldwide crime organization choosing yo be one a Buddhist nun, and and and…. Most frustrating is that Ryuko herself, the center of this and the story’s lynchpin, is woefully undeveloped…other characters are much more rounded, even as action girl Ryuko comes roaring down the middle.

I feel like Hard Case could have found a short-run crime manga that was *much* better than this.

#70 - Resume Speed by Lawrence Block

This is almost a straightforward literary piece — yet, with a few additions it could also be a bleak noir story. What’s absent in this story of a man running from place to place is any sense of a truly dark backstory —leaving the implication that he’s trying to outrun something in himself, rather than facing it, sabotaging himself whenever his life starts to mean something. It’s a tightly done, tragic novella that Block’s no-nonsense style suits to a tee.

#71 - Hell In A Handbasket by Peter David, Martin Paso, et al

The final issues of DC’s first Star Trek series conclude one story, brings prankster Sean Finnegan back, and addresses faith versus science. Middling stuff, unfortunately, but not terrible.

#72 - The First Doctor Adventures: Volume 3 by Marc Platt, Andy Lane

For all intents and purposes, stories fitting into the first season of Doctor Who, with a strong historical set in Tyre followed by a semi-experimental story that lands in the turbulent cracks of space-time (this could also have made for a Sapphire & Steel crossover.) The conceit of the second story is the appearance of a much older Susan, here to guide her cantankerous grandfather to a solution. The second story is a bit more flawed than the first, but that’s by nature of its constantly shifting canvas.

#73 - Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke

An excellent adaptation of The Hunter, with spare, shadowy illustrations from the late Darwyn Cooke. There’s a lot of elisions, of course — at least one entire subplot is gone (taking the coda with it) along with an ironic twist. The adaptation is faithful, though, and as propulsive as the novel. Parker isn’t a good man in the slightest, though you can understand his roaring rampage of revenge.

#74 - Livingstone, Vol. 1 by Tomohiro Maekawa, Jinsei Kataoka

First of a quartet about a secret organization that monitors the distribution of souls and works to prevent disruptions in the development path of those souls — as often as not an untimely death scatters shards of souls that can corrupt others, often leading to suicides. The goal is to prevent breakdowns leafing to suicides, but in certain cases the hunters will retrieve the soul and expedite the death. By the end of this volume they’ve encountered a peculiar situation where a woman, caught embezzling, kills her rapey boss…only to find out he died exactly at the time he was supposed to, and the way forward involves an untried soul graft.

It’s a surprisingly interesting manga, with roots in a stage production, and while the premise might be questionable the characters and situations are engaging and moving, even when the endings are unhappy.

#75 - The World's Greatest Comic Magazine by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby

Unfortunately the digital edition is rather poorly done, but at least the essential material is there —- admittedly cheesy, improving slowly over the year and a half collected here…even as Jack Kirby’s imagination ran rampant.

And now…next rock!