Quick Hits!

Sometimes I read or watch things quicker than I have time – or motivation, or perhaps even focus – to set down in a full blog post. Nothing against whatever those items are. I feel a compulsion to gratuitously share my thoughts on virtually everything, but sometimes get backed up, and I don't want this to turn into a barrage of short posts. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Anyway, hence the periodic “Quick Hits.”

Screen Shot
from iPhone Kindle app

A State of Disobedience (2003) by Tom Kratman

I've been meaning to blog this novel ever since I proceeded to it directly out of his Caliphate last month, but never got around to it. I reserve the right to come back to it with a more thorough review some time in the future, because I'm thinking I'll eventually read it again. Get past the somewhat contrived opening setting up the Texas Rebellion of ca. 2010 (as best I can figure it), as well as the very transparent identity of the utterly wacko and caricaturishly evil US President “Willie Rottemayer,” and it settles into what I think is a fair depiction of how such a valiant but ultimately outnumbered and outgunned attempt at secession from the rapidly socializing, increasingly morally repugnant and anti-Christian United States would likely proceed. Although it was written a decade ago, and in no way foresaw the explosion onto the political landscape of Barack Obama, just how much cultural, political, and social developments in the succeeding decade (really, mostly in the past five years) do seem to be have been foretold sent chills down my spine as I read. As much as Caliphate did [link], this book struck me as a prophetic wake-up call in the guise of a very compelling and exciting story.  As I titled my Amazon.com review, it seems "Frighteningly Plausible."

DC Comics – October 2013, New 52 Month 24

Reviews, commentary, general reactions, and random notes on the DC Comics that were released during August that I received near the beginning of September. Caution: Spoilers ahead! [ Link to previous month ]

Here's the link to the October solicitations (for comics to be released mostly in December): (link).

I only made note of a couple of news items. One is that Smallville Season 11 is shifting to a “series of miniseries” format, dropping the “Season 11” branding and sequential numbering, supposedly to remove a perceived bar for new readers picking it up (link). This mainly irks me because it will make the weekly purchase from Comixology quite a bit more cumbersome, especially since they just a short while ago introduced an efficient “subscription” function which automatically purchases each week's installment for me and has it ready for me to download whenever I want, rather than having to manually go in and make the purchase each week. Being title-based, the subscription will no longer work. Also, it will be harder (impossible) to keep reading order straight if you're not purchasing them week-to-week. Yeah, that helps the new reader.

Secondly, and we're far enough along into October as I write this (the 12th) that sales data for September has been released, it seems that the September-released “Villains' Month” stunt paid off big time for DC. More next month, maybe – except that DC's immediate exultation really rubbed at least one retailer the wrong way (link). By all accounts, the retailers were the ones who really got screwed in the resulting debacle.

Whatever, before “Villains' Month,” there is this one more month of story-driven rather than stunt-driven comics to get through....

Gravity (2013)

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón.

This has been a busy semester so far, filled both with professional duties and with personal stuff. I'm quite a ways behind in blogging, but I'm going to try to get caught up. I may end up having to resort to a “Quick Hits” post for some, but I really want to give this movie its own separate consideration, albeit not very long or in depth.

Last weekend, on the second day of its general release, my wife and I went to the matinee showing of Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. I'm always up for a realistic near-future space movie, and based on the previews I saw over the past few weeks, I could tell that this one would be about as realistic as they come, right up there with Apollo 13, and that if anything would be worth subjecting myself to 3D (a format I can usually do without) it would be Gravity. And the billed actors were enough to get my wife to go with me.

DC Comics – September 2013, New 52 Month 23

Reviews, commentary, general reactions, and random notes on the DC Comics that were released during July that I received near the beginning of August. Caution: Spoilers ahead! [ Link to previous month ]

I am 'way, 'way, 'way behind this month, so this write-up may not be much more than a fleshing out of my notes, without much expansion along the way....

In the news over the past month or so: 1) The September solicits went up mid-August per usual [link]. 2) The Justice League 3000 fiasco [link], wherein DC fired or drove off another high profile creator, Kevin Maguire, replacing him with Howard Porter, and lost this sale to me. 3) Batman was cast for Man of Steel 2 – Ben Affleck [link]. Outcry ensued [link]. I actually can live with this. He's a capable enough actor. My main problem with him would be The Voice. He really should study Kevin Conroy's portrayal (the voice of Batman in the animated series) – not Christian Bale's. 4) The Justice League of America is emigrating to Canada [link]. 5) Rumors flew but ultimately no real clarification on whether Bryan Cranston will play Lex Luthor in Man of Steel 2 [link]. I like Breaking Bad, but I'm not sure I see him as Lex Luthor. 6) DC drove off another set of Batwoman creators – J.H.Williams III and Haden Blackman – allegedly over whether to marry Kate Kane and Maggie Sawyer [link]. It may or may not have been because of the homosexual nature of the relationship; they tapped Marc Andreyko, who is homosexual himself, as the new writer [link] (possibly keeping me on the title since I loved his Manhunter), and proclaimed their stance as that the Bat-family's personal lives have to be sucky, and heroes can't be married [link], both of which I think are stupid as mandates. They also announced their intent to pull Batwoman closer into the rest of the Bat'verse. 7) Finally, another blogger put the sad state of affairs regarding DC Editorials' bad relationship with creators and the general chaos that has plagued the company since even before the New 52 into a timeline that makes for terribly depressing reading [link]. Something is definitely rotten in Denmark.

Let's discuss some comics:

Caliphate (2008)

By Tom Kratman

I'll put up a warning for those who perhaps would prefer to read no further. This post will probably be accounted, as has been the book, as “Islamophobic.” So be it. As, I believe, may be inferred from my long-ago post commemorating the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 [link], I have some pretty strong views regarding how pathetically weak has been our reaction as a civilization to what became obvious that day is a ongoing war between two largely incompatible cultures. It is a conflict that we have little hope of surviving without recognizing the reality of the situation. After the initial shock of that day wore off, and our subsequent national rallying petered out into partisan bickering, our chances have diminished, and continue to do so at an alarming rate. I wish it were not so.

Nobilissima: A Novel of Imperial Rome (2012)

By Carrie Bedford

This has been my (mainly) bedtime reading for the past several weeks. A little about my reading pattern: Typically, I have several things going at once, besides some kind of professional reading and spending too much time browsing the Internet for current news, commentary, and random whim-driven “research” – some main “real” book that I lug around during the evening and end up reading in bed before turning out the light (currently I have just started what will probably take me through the next several months, Shelby Foote's monumental three-volume history of The Civil War: A Narrative); something in the nature of a graphic novel that I will dip into every couple of days (currently the second volume of Fantagraphics' wonderfully restored representation of Hal Foster's Prince Valiant Sunday comic strips, two years per volume, the second comprising 1939-1940, reproduced from the artist-author's own colored proofs); an issue or two of the box of comics I received near the beginning of the month from my mail-order comics source, therefore the comics that actually hit the stores during the previous month (e.g., currently I'm working my way through the comics that went on sale on Wednesday, 24 July; i.e., I'm always well behind comics fandom at large in my reading – and blogging), usually when I first head for bed; and, once I turn out the light, something on one of my iPhone e-reader apps. It's also handy to have during odd times of the day when I have a few unexpected moments to read. That's what Nobilissima was, read via the Kindle app. I think it appeared as one of the daily bargains offered via the BookBub mailing list, to which I subscribe. I don't remember if it was free, or a couple of bucks – the BookBub bargains are never more than that. Whatever, the short description provided in that email intrigued me enough to download it.

Comics Other Than DC – September 2013

Reviews, commentary, general reactions, and random notes on comics by publishers other than DC that were released during July (mostly) that I received near the beginning of August. Caution: Spoilers ahead! [Link to previous month] [Link to this month's DC Comics]

Buck Rogers #1 of 4 (Hermes Press)

They say that a functional definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. I may fit the bill. I have never cared for the writing of Howard Chaykin – and yet I have tried various of his comics over the years thinking that if he's as great as everyone thinks he is maybe I'll like this one. His art I actually kind of like, and in fact think it fits very well for something like we have here, the retro-flavored attempted revival of a beloved quasi-pulp character who deserves much more modern exposure. But I find myself invariably put off by the generally politically-charged revisionism that he usually imposes on such projects as he undertakes, which is invariably pretty much diametrically opposite to my own values. Add to that my belief, based on various things I've read and heard about him (seemingly confirmed in an about-the-author blurb appended to a two-page interview here, that “[h]e has a terrible reputation among fans for profanity, limited patience with nonsense, and spite”) as well as from him (see below), that I would not like him very much as a person, and I can't give you a good reason that I keep giving him repeated chances. But I do. Almost invariably with the same result as here – visceral revulsion.

Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate #1, 2009)

SFBC 3-in-1 Omnibus

By Gail Carriger, as printed in The Parasol Protectorate 3-in-1 Omnibus, vol. 1, by Science Fiction Book Club, 2011.

Okay, let's get this out of the way right off the bat: I have major theological/philosophical problems with the very idea underlying this series, specifically the rationale that supernatural creatures such as vampires, werewolves, and ghosts (as of the end of this first book, all that have been introduced – well, if you ignore the robot zombie that also appears!) result from a surfeit of “soul” in certain individuals who are balanced off by others who have a deficit of “soul,” the most extreme example being the “preternatural” heroine of these tales, Miss Alexia Tarabotti. I cannot truly conceive of a “soulless person.” It is, however, fairly easy to get past that dodgy foundational concept as a stumbling block – which I'm sure others wouldn't share anyway – by considering the quasi-scientific theory postulated to be about as accurate as others of the time-frame which provides the setting, the late 19th-century, e.g. that of a luminiferous aether that supposedly provided the medium through which light propagated [link] – which is to say, not so. I'm sure that by a century and more after Miss Tarabotti in that literary alternate universe of “The Parasol Protectorate” the anima theory of nature (my term) will have given way to something radically different as the "luminiferous aether" has fallen before quantum mechanics and general relativity. Indeed, the hubris of a scientific theory perversely co-opting a theological concept seems to me to fit well the zeitgeist of the age, especially in an imagined mash-up of steampunk and urban fantasy. The result is an indescribably clever and hilariously written send-up of Victorian England that is best described by the author herself in the introduction, “In Which Gail Discusses Building the World of the Parasol Protectorate”:

Love and Capes vol. 4: What to Expect (IDW, 2013)

By Thomas F. Zahler

I have declared my high regard for the work of Thom Zahler a number of times now, have the pleasure of owning several commissioned pieces of art from him, and have had the privilege of meeting him in person two years running at Houston's Comicpalooza. My love for his work goes back several years now, to my discovery of the series with which he is most identified, Love and Capes: The Heroically Super Situation Comedy, as a web comic strip. At the time it was also being published as a small-press independent comic book, and was on the verge of the first collected edition being published by IDW, who have since continued publication of the comic book as a succession of short series each of which have subsequently garnered collections. This is the latest.

Beginnings (Worlds of Honor #6, 2013)

By David Weber with Charles E. Gannon, Timothy Zahn, and Joelle Presby

One of the greatest things about David Weber's Honor Harrington franchise is his incredible generosity in allowing others to play in the wonderfully (and increasingly intricate) sandbox he has created over the past two decades. Whole books and sub-series have been written – with his oversight, to be sure – by other great science fiction authors. This is in addition to the very actively involved consulting group BuNine which recently gave us The Honorverse Companion [link]. It all adds to the rich breadth and depth of the world in which Honor Harrington's own story is being told. This sharing of the Honorverse began as early as 1998 with the appearance of More Than Honor, which contained three novellae and short stories in addition to an extensive infodump regarding the background, history, and theoretical science of “The Universe of Honor Harrington.” That collection was followed by several more released with varying frequency over the next fifteen years, with stories written by a variety of authors both known and unknown to me – Weber himself always contributes, joined by such as David Drake, Timothy Zahn, Jane Linskjold, and S. M. Stirling – culminating in this, the sixth. Sure, the stories have been of varying quality and relevance, but they are always entertaining and more often than not, even when written by other than Weber, introduce characters and background that will show up and play integral roles in his own “main” narrative. None are to be missed by fans of the Honorverse.

In this volume we get, as usual, a mixture of novellae and short stories – I'm not sure where to drawn the line – two of which are by Weber himself. And as Weber's contribution to the very first volume gave birth a decade and a half later to the Star Kingdom series of Young Adult Novels, so does at least one of the other stories herein serve as a springboard for an ancillary series to come. As will be seen, I hope, in my short little discussions below, the overall title of this volume, Beginnings, is well-chosen.

DC Comics – August 2013, New 52 Month 22

Reviews, commentary, general reactions, and random notes on the DC Comics that were released during June that I received near the beginning of July. Caution: Spoilers ahead! [ Link to previous month ]

The online previews of the DC solicitations which will appear in the August issue of Diamond's Previews catalog (and therefore solicit items mostly on-sale during the month of October) appeared while the days of July were still in single digits, earlier than I ever remember. Not sure why so early, but you may see them here (link).

News that dropped during the period I was reading this batch of comics included George Perez's announcement of what he had cryptically referred to when I was talking with him in Houston (link). It turns out he is going to Boom! Comics (link). He's the second creator in as many months that has left DC for Boom! – Paul Jenkins (last month) also was headed that direction, and although Perez's announcement is not filled with the vitriol some others' departures from DC have been, he has clearly been dissatisfied with the corporate culture that increasingly prevails at DC. That was clear both of the times I've had the pleasure of meeting him, and comes through clearly albeit graciously in the linked interview. It's DC's loss, is all I can say.

The Wolverine (2013)

Directed by James Mangold

The first thing I said when I returned home after watching this movie was, in answer to my wife's query, “It's really nice to go to a comic book movie where the heroes' objective is not 'saving the world'!” Sure, there is plenty of over-the-top action here, there, and yonder, from start to finish but especially toward the end (although the far superior and most memorable sequence is the 300-mph fight atop the bullet-train much earlier), but this is primarily a character story with both an inner and an outer conflict springing from the very nature of The Wolverine. Inner, Logan's actions at the end of the chronologically previous X-Men movie, The Last Stand, literally haunting him with the knowledge that his mutant healing factor makes him potentially immortal while all he loves will eventually die; outer, a Japanese business magnate, Yashida, whose life Logan saved almost seventy years ago at Nagasaki, not understanding that reality – though he thinks he does – striving from his death bed to steal that potential for eternal life for himself. Add a large dose of family and political conflict as well as conflicting issues of love, loyalty, and honor in the exotic locale of Japan and you end up with what I think is perhaps the best story of any of the X-Men franchise.

Cheers! ... and Thanks for reading!