Meanwhile…

I just read a couple of volume Is that I thought were pretty great.

First up was Four Eyes, by Joe Kelly and Max Fiumara. I’ve liked Joe Kelly’s stuff since the late ’90s, when he wrote a criminally overlooked run of Daredevil. More recently I’ve been reading his creator-owned stuff. (I can’t recall if I talked about I Kill Giants here, but if I didn’t you should check that out if you get a chance; it’s fantastic and touching piece of magical realism.)

Four Eyes is about a young man named Enrico, who lives in a 1930s New York where dragons are real and forced to fight in brutal, illegal dog-fight style matches while gamblers bet on them in a desperate attempt to alleviate their Depression woes.

If you need more than that I’m not sure why you’re even here. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and hope to see more. There’s a lot of potential in the setting, and the art is excellent. At the moment I think this is all there is, with the future of the series uncertain. But it works pretty well on its own, so if we never get any more I won’t feel like I’ve been left with a cliffhanger.

Next was Sweet Tooth, by Jeff Lemire. A post-apocalypse setting in which a plague has wiped out much of humanity, the story follows Gus, who is among a new breed of human-animal hybrids who are immune to the plague but hunted by surviving humans. This first volume hints at a lot more going on in the world than simple survival. Isolated for years from the harsh, shattered world, Gus is a voice of hope and innocence in a dark fairy tale.

Sweet Tooth is coming out regularly, so I’m looking forward to the next trade.

(but not the wasting kind…wait, they’re both sort of the wasting kind aren’t they?)

Watched Inception over the weekend. Amazing!

Also watched the first couple episodes of “Louie.” Greatness. And thus Louis CK gets added to the pile of people to whom my wife compares me (a distinguished list that also includes Ricky Gervais and Larry David). I just have more hair.

I’m like Serpentor, if his DNA had been culled from and hilariously awkward comedians.

Reading-wise, I just finished up Michael Moorcock’s A Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy. It was a quick read, and a lot of fun. The stories get increasingly darker as you progress through the three books, which are essentially Moorcock’s deconstruction of Imperialism. I highly recommend them.

I’m chugging through China Miéville’s The Scar now, and it is as usual incredible. I picked up another fantasy book, a new book by a new writer (I think) at the same time, purely on impulse, but didn’t make it far. I will itemize the following rules for prospective fantasy writers:

• I should be able to tell the difference between the name of a person and the name of a city, artifact, or creature.
• There should not be a made-up word in every single paragraph.
• I no longer care about royalty (did I ever, I wonder?) or who/whatever else rules the kingdom.

I finished a story over the weekend, worked at it to get it to an easily sell-able flash length, then realized it is only the end of a story, and probably needs a good thousand words prior to where I start. Such is the life of a fiction writer.

Erin has a new story up over at Every Day Fiction. It went up on the 4th, and is about the failings of democracy! Check it out.

And in honor of yesterday, happy birthday you poor, deluded, doomed nation.

I’m reading Master and Commander, by Patrick O’Brian, the first of his Captain Jack Aubrey novels.

I enjoyed the movie a great deal. It’s a solid, enjoyable story about this friendship that happens to be taking place during this grand naval adventure on beautiful sailing ships. There are manly men, doing manly things in a (gentle)manly fashion!

I’m only a couple of chapters into the book, but it’s shaping up to be very similar. What the book can do that the film couldn’t, however, is go into prodigious detail about the workings of the ship. Jack likes to work out complicated navigational equations in his head, and describe the workings of the rigging, and inspect the thing and the other thing which is tied (?) to some piece of wood (?).  I dunno.

I’m actually enjoying it more than the previous sentences would suggest. All the naval lingo is essentially the same as Star Trek technobabble as far as I’m concerned, though I’m working on the assumption that it is all real. It kind of even feels like a Star Trek story, too – Aubrey’s friend Maturin is a research scientist on board a military vessel, and Trek clearly always drew inspiration from naval tradition.

I enjoy technobabble, though, so it’s all cool. Initially I thought the writing style felt a little stiff, but it’s sucked me in. I’m looking forward to some action scenes.

(I don’t know what catharpings are, but I’m sure if you modify them properly you can travel through time.)

On Jens’s recommendation, I’ve picked up Shadow & Claw, by Gene Wolfe. I’ve so far read the first half, The Shadow of the Torturer, and it is excellent. I get the impression that I’m not really smart enough to catch all the allusions and what not, but that’s fine. I’m enjoying it and eagerly look forward to seeing more of this dark, declining world. It’s difficult to summarize, but if you took my advice and read and enjoyed any of China Miéville’s books, you’ll probably like these, too.

Between the two halves of that I happened to notice Sharpe’s Tiger at the local HalfPrice Books and nabbed that. It’s the first of Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe books. I’ve always wanted to read them, but never actually came across the first book of the series before. Technically, it’s not the first, but it is the first chronologically, being Sharpe’s first big military adventure, and set earlier than the other books. I’m guessing it doesn’t really matter what order you read them it, but the comic book reader in me wants to read it this way. I love that period of history, with the rampant deluded colonialism and technology just advanced enough to be dangerous to user and victim alike. There is still plenty of opportunity for adventure in 18th-19th century Earth. It’s been a lot of fun so far.

I’ve been obsessed with Phonogram: The Singles Club lately, having finally obtained the couple issues I missed when they first came out. Written by Kieron Gillen with Jamie McKelvie on art.  It’s a series about music, the effect it can have on us, and how magical that is. These comics haven’t left my side for the past week.

The series is set in a London dance club and all takes place over a single night. Each issue presents the night from a different character’s point of view, and by the end of the (fantastic) last issue you get a pretty complete idea of everything that happened. Each of the tales has a bit of a supernatural twist (in the Phonogram universe, music is literally magical), but the stories are still grounded and human. It’s a beautiful, funny, heartbreaking series. At some point I need to pick up Rue Britannia, the original Phonogram series.

I don’t think it’s vital to be familiar with the music that’s referenced throughout to enjoy the stories, but I noticed my enjoyment of the series ramped up considerably once I started checking out the bands (praise be to Pandora).

What are you reading?

DC finally saw fit to release the second half of Morrison and Quitely’s All Star Superman in paperback. I raved a bit about the first volume a while back, and got to read the rest of the story this past weekend. To my great irritation, an absolute edition was announced shortly before I received mine in the mail. You’ve won this round, DiDio.

With the first volume I was most struck by just how amazing they made Superman. He was powerful and could perform phenomenal feats, and the reader feels great just watching him do these things. All of Superman’s greatest traits are showcased, from his selfless compassion to his intelligence (which is often overlooked).

Some people complain that Superman is too powerful, and they can’t identify with him as a result. That’s all bullshit. It’s not like more the modest powers possessed by the likes of Spider-Man or  Captain America are attainable by us lowly humans, either. Even non-powered heroes like Batman are far better than any real person ever will be. Powers are little more than plot devices, anyway. They aren’t important. The personality behind them is what matters, just like any other genre. Kal-el of Krypton has plenty of personality to identify with.

The second volume is focused on another theme: the world is a better place with Superman. To me, this is vital. In my years of studying stories of heroes, from the epics of Gilgamesh and Beowulf to The Odyssey and Star Wars and Seven Samurai, one of the most important questions asked of any good hero story is whether the hero and their deeds makes their world a better place. Gilgamesh returns from his quests for immortality to discover that his people haven’t just gotten along just fine without him, they’ve actually thrived in his absence. Beowulf’s heroic deeds brought nothing but trouble on his people. The motley band of surviving ronin at the end of Seven Samurai muse on what it means that the people they’ve historically oppressed are capable of turning on them or abandoning them when the warriors are no longer needed. What does it mean to be a hero? And who gets more out of the experience? Is it worth the collateral damage?

By the end of All Star Superman volume 2, I’m convinced that this is a book that has found a hero who makes the world a better place. His legacy is inspiring. His actions improve lives. He has stopped evil that wasn’t somehow his own fault. Even when he’s just a character on a page, Supes changes things.

I’ll need to reread volume 1 and then this one again to really catch everything (it’s that kind of book), but my initial impression is that this book has effectively made the case for Superman. Not that he really needed any help, but it’s nice anyway.

I’ve always had a fascination with post-apocalyptic stories. People staggering amongst the ruins of our great civilization, scrounging to live, with a few  clinging to humanity as the rest of society regresses around them. Who doesn’t like a little Mad Max every now and then? One of the things that intrigues me most about the Terminator franchise isn’t the idea that soldiers are traveling through time to try and prevent the fall of mankind, but the fact that ultimately they fail.

I didn’t get a chance to see The Road, but I’m reading the book now and it is bogglingly good, one of those “why does anyone bother to continue writing in this subgenre after this” sort of books. (Though the fact that it’s listed as “literature” instead of “science fiction” is an example of arrogant genre-dismissive bullshit that I can’t stand.) For a fun exercise in seeing people entirely missing the point, take a gander at some of the negative reviews over at Amazon. I particularly enjoy the one that thinks the lack of punctuation was perhaps an accident.

I did get to see The Book of Eli on Monday. There were a few things that could have been improved, but overall I thought it was quite good. I’m kind of surprised at the overall negative reviews it’s gotten. Many immediately complain that they’re tired of apocalyptic movies, at which point I pretty much stop reading. Isn’t that your own fault for becoming a movie reviewer? Stop whinging about your comfy, trivial job.

Anyway, I am interested in the place of religion in these settings. Would people turn their backs on the old religions, since they appear to have failed? Would they cling to them, desperate for salvation? Would they invent new ones to try and explain the horrible events that took place?

The third option is a sticky wicket to me. We tend to think of religion as something that humans naturally develop per a basic need to explain the unknown, but I have to wonder if new religions would arise at all. In these scenarios, humans are barely surviving, primarily off the remnants of the dead, and a landscape so inhospitable makes long-term survival for the species unlikely. When would these people have the luxury of inventing new gods?

Friend and fellow Writer’s Inker Sandra has a new story out over at Rose and Thorn. Check it out! She needs to write more.

Also her name looks like a court case! There’s got to be some sort of metaphor there ripe for fictionalizing.

Reading

I’ve nabbed a gargantuan tome of short stories by T.C. Boyle, on Gay’s recommendation.

(Speaking of Gay, she’s got a pair of new stories up that you should check out, here and here.)

I do occasionally venture into that world of non-genre, contemporary fiction. A quick perusal of my bookshelves will find Rick Bass’s The Watch, Mark Richard’s The Ice at the Bottom of the World, and Eudora Welty’s A Curtain of Green. As I recall, each had at least a couple of stories I found excellent, though it’s been some time since I read any of them.

There’s also Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist, which I loved. It’s sort of an absurdest espionage story involving elevator inspectors that delivers some sharp social commentary. Great stuff. I really need to look into getting some of his other books.

A month or so ago TwoMorrows had a sale on their Modern Masters books, and I nabbed a couple (actually, looks like they have a sale going now, too, though not quite as good as the one I got). Volume 9 featuring Mike Wieringo, and Volume 10 featuring Kevin Maguire.

Mike was artist on an excellent run of Fantastic Four (along with writer Mark Waid) and an great visual storyteller. These Modern Masters books present a lot of the raw pages he drew, and even without the dialogue I have no trouble at all following the story. His art is full of fun, contagious energy. I identify a lot with Mike, the kinds of stories he likes, the moods he enjoys evoking, his unwarranted insecurities concerning his art. His sudden death a couple years ago pretty well crushed me. One of these days I’ll get a copy of his creator-owned Tellos. I don’t know why I keep putting it off. Maybe because I’ll feel awful, knowing that he won’t be able to produce more?

Maguire was artist for the (in)famous Justice League International era of DCs premier superhero team back in the late ’80s, early ’90s. For those unfamiliar with the period, this was shortly after DCs big Crisis reboot of the Universe. Their big heroes (namely Superman and Wonder Woman) were all sort of tied up being modernized, so the company put together a new Justice League of lesser-known characters. There are few heroes I love more than the 2nd stringers, they guys who should never win but manage to anyway, and Maguire’s expressive art really made you love them. He’s one of those artists who doesn’t work as often as I’d like, and it’s a treat every time he pops up. His recent Batgirl arc of Batman Confidential was a hoot.

I finally read V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. I particularly liked the film version and the book didn’t change my opinion. They both work in their own ways. The film solved a few problems the book had and updates it for modern audiences, but it delivers a different philosophy, so I see how people might be a little irritated by it. People like to say the movie is an attack on the Bush administration, but I think that says more about Bush than the film. Plus I don’t get people saying Evey was a prostitute; she tries to be, for like one panel on page 2. What would people say about my entire summer of 2001?

Watching

I recently obtained a Playstation 3 and holy crap does Blu-Ray look good. We nabbed Superman and Goodfellas for cheap and they look amazing.

(FYI, if you ever want to see my cry like a baby, you’ll put on Superman and queue the scene where Superman saves Lois from the helicopter crash. Goddammit it gets me every time.)

(Evidently, Smallpox Blanket-Giving Day was taken already? I dunno.)

Hope everyone is (or will be) having a good Thanksgiving weekend. Ours should be fun – the wife and I will be hosting her family this year, and visiting my family (including a cousin who’s on leave from Afghanistan) on Saturday, then probably hanging out with some friends on Sunday. These friends have recently produced offspring which I’m told is “cute” and “life altering and/or affirming.” I shall put the new heir to the test! If she doesn’t bring me my food fast enough or change the television channel properly it won’t speak well of the reproductive process. And I don’t want to hear some “she’s only a few months old” nonsense!

Anyway, since you are just laying around in a turkey coma, you should go read this story by KC. It is excellent!

And also this one, by JR Hume, because it’s probably the best piece of flash I’ve read in a while.

I also found this article to be interesting. I have my own thoughts on sexism in genre fiction (which I think is often unfairly singled out for being sexist despite it simply being a reflection of our society as a whole). I may gather them up over this long weekend and post about it next week.