[At the end of each month, Aaron surveys the comics he read, celebrates the best, considers the rest, and takes stock of what it means to be a contemporary comic fan. Follow "The State of My Pull List" here.]
[Note: this month's Pull List is split in half---one part featuring the regular column, the other devoted entirely to the full 52-title DC relaunch. Find part two here.]
Spotlight
Mainstream comic books—not graphic novels, but monthly pamphlet comics—usually don’t end in a satisfactory way. There are obviously exceptions (the conclusion of Scott Snyder’s recent Detective Comics run is a good example) but by and large endings, whether of a story arc or an entire title, are rushed, or overly dramatic, or too easily resolved. The publishers own the characters, and are consequently disinclined towards endings that might preclude further adventures; even if Peter Parker decides to put away the web-shooters and retire from superherodom, someone else will come along to take this place.
The on-going titles published under DC’s Vertigo imprint are other notable exceptions. Executive Editor Karen Berger runs the imprint with an indie publisher’s ethic, albeit with the resources of a massive entertainment corporation behind it: take risks, give creators room to tell the stories they want to tell, and respect the readership. When Vertigo books end they do so in a gradual way that respects the integrity of the fictional universes they contain—dangling storylines are attended to, characters are bid farewell, and readers are given the closure they’ve been seeking, whether they knew it or not, since the first issue.
House of Mystery #41
House of Mystery #41 is not technically the last issue of the series—that distinction belongs to October’s issue 42, ajam-issue featuring regular creative team Matthew Sturgess and Lua Rossi plus guests Bill Willingham, Tony Akins, Steven T. Seagle, and Teddy Kristiansen. But issue 41 does bring the story Sturgess has built over the past three years to a close. And true to form for a series that was always very funny except when it was busy breaking your heart, the finale is only happy on the surface.
Having uncovered the nature of the Conception, Fig Keele reenters the titular House (and by proxy the story that she is writing), to give all the major characters the ultimate end of their stories, in the guise of scripts that she’s written. Reading these scenes I’m reminded of Grant Morrison’s “fiction suit,” a narrative device that operates like a diving rig, allowing the writer to visit the fictional world of his creation. Fig is Sturgess in fiction suit drag, adopting the guise of his character (as he seems to have done for the past five or so issues) to meet the others face to face, and possibly exorcise a little authorial guilt.
Guilt and blame have been recurring themes throughout House of Mystery so it’s no surprise to find that none of the endings (with the exception of the Goblin King’s) is entirely happy or sad—none of the characters (again, except for the Goblin King) are entirely good or bad. It’s somewhat galling to find that Lotus Blossom marries Fig’s true love Harry, but it’s worth remembering that mean-spirited and aggressive isn’t the same as evil; and I was sad to read that Anne ends up alone, until I remembered her single-mindedness in seeking to pluck the deceased Poet from a point earlier in his timeline, despite all warnings that it wouldn’t end well. Even the ending Fig writes for herself, ostensibly the happiest of the bunch, is just slightly pathetic and indulgent.
Series artist Luca Rossi contributes some of his finest art of the entire run in this issue. His gift for expressions and mood suits Sturgess’s ending structure, underlining the pathos in every scene. Take Anne’s distant gazing at the sea in the final panel of page seven, or Fig’s pained shying away from Harry in the fourth panel of page seventeen—each moving, but in subtly different ways. There are only a few artists I’ll follow from book to book, regardless of writer or character, but Luca Rossi has quickly joined those ranks.
I almost don’t want to read issue 42. No matter how Sturgess approaches that final issue, I can’t imagine it’ll be as elegant and apropos as this one. I will read it, obviously, and I bet it’ll be a fun issue considering the talent involved. But this charming, wrenching, quiet, most of all humane ending is the only ending I need. … Continue reading »
As a player, Jerry West won an Olympic gold medal and an NBA championship.He scored more points than any Laker not named Kobe Bryant ever has, and is in the Basketball Hall of Fame. As an executive, he put together the “Showtime” Lakers of the 80s, traded for Shaq and Kobe in the 90s, and turned the lowly Memphis Grizzlies into a playoff team in the 00s. He has been immortalized as a bronze statue in both Morgantown, WV (where he played in college) and Los Angeles. His silhouette became the NBA logo.
Despite this long, illustrious, and successful career, West is so emotionally crippled by loss that his autobiography, West by West, reads as if Glass Joe wrote it. … Continue reading »
It’s been a while since I did one of these holiday recommendation posts. Back in 2009 I shared the likes of Poe, Lovecraft, Shelley, Stoker, and King, as well as the classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Here’s some more spooky reading to keep you busy over the weekend.
(Where possible I’ve linked to free ebook downloads.)
My favorite Gothic novel. It’s perhaps the most atmospheric book I’ve ever read. Udolpho reads a bit like a Jane Austen novel, but with tons of eeriness. And it’s a good story to boot. Gloomy castles, dark forests, mysterious strangers, it’s all here.
Speaking of Jane Austen and eeriness, this book inserts a whole bunch of zombies into Austen’s classic novel. I really enjoyed this book, and it saw a lot of ssuccess and praise. Unfortunately, due to this things got a little out of hand at Quirk.
James’s writing takes a little warming up to, so if you haven’t read any classic literature in a while, be prepared for a pretty slow burn. But this book is well worth your patience. It’s a subtle and creepy Gothic ghost story.
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House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewsky
This one tends to fly under the radar, in part because it’s just so weird. It’s about a family that moves into a house and discovers a seemingly endless closet. Danielewsky does a bunch of experimental stuff with the print setting (font flipped around and all shapes and sizes, lots of marginalia), so this would never work as an ebook. But if you can find a copy, get it; it’s one of the best haunted house (I use that pretty loosely) stories I’ve ever read.
Probably the best mad scientists book there is (Frankensteindoesn’t count). A man shipwrecked on an island becomes the guest of a madman whose experiments on humans and animals result in freakish creatures. It is grotesque and horrifying.
Finally, if you want to take a break from reading, here’s the original and excellent Nosferatu:
(I also recommend the Bela Lugosi Dracula and Boris Karloff Frankensteinclassics. The full movies are available on YouTube for free–but I can’t embed them)
Set in the early 1800’s in Robin Hood’s territory, Thomas Frick’s The Iron Boys is a real tour de force that takes the mayhem of the Luddites who resisted the Industrial Revolution as its subject. The term “Luddite” has long been used to describe a person who resists technological change, but it’s a sure bet that not many are really aware of its historical roots as an unorganized, almost spontaneous insurrection against the dehumanizing tendencies of the emerging capitalist economy.
The Luddites flourished in the second decade of the nineteenth century in the Northern English counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Ned Ludd, the mythical figure after whom the movement was named, was reputed to live in Sherwood Forest. The Luddites were crafts workers who largely had control over their lives and livelihoods until the advent of the textile factories, which dehumanized workers in the name of profits. Indeed, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was written to an extent as a reaction to Luddism, an eloquent treatise against the machine. Byron championed the movement in the House of Lords, a lone voice against the machine. The Luddites attacked the mills and smashed the machines that were ruining their autonomous way of life. … Continue reading »
This is a short, little volume collecting, as you might have guessed, three zombie stories. Each of these stories, all by Kelly Link and originally published in different books, is good in its own way, but what really makes the collection worth notice is its consistent originality. There aren’t really any shambling corpses, no survivors banding together in a boarded-up house. One of the stories doesn’t even have actual zombies–or any sort of supernatural element–in it. … Continue reading »
[In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]
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Cain, by José Saramago. Reviewed by Robert Pinsky (New York Times).
I’ve read woefully little of the late Portuguese Nobel winner’s work. I thought The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis was a tremendous book, and I’ve begun Blindness twice and been pulled away both times. And Pinksy, obviously no slouch himself with words, manages to make me want to read this book with his very first line: “God is a petulant, small-minded tyrant in José Saramago’s final novel.” The review goes on to be excellent, and the book sounds great too. Hopefully I can find time for it someday.
1Q84, by Haruki Murakami. Reviewed by Michael Dirda (Washington Post).
Murakami is another brilliant author (and very likely going to win the Nobel someday), that I’ve read woefully little of. I love all his short stories that I’ve read, and I’ve begun 3-4 of his books and found myself really enjoying them. They’re pretty out there, and I’ve gotten distracted and put them down for whatever reasons never to return. Perhaps despite that or perhaps as penance, I’ve already gone ahead and ordered a copy of this massive book. Dirda’s review helps me stay positive that this was a good decision. This time I’m going to finish, I just know it.
Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. Reviewed by Janet Maslin (New York Times).
Pretty slim pickings around the internet this week if you’re not into reading about Steve Jobs. But if you want to read Janet Maslin slobber all over Isaacson’s authorized biography (“the biography of record”) of the recently-deceased-in-case-you-haven’t-heard tech icon, here you go. I’ll wait a week and see what Kakutani does.
It seems like trying to write a “literary” book in the sexy-supernatural genre is the authorial movement du jour. Lately, many authors are hoping to cash in on readers who like Twilight but are too ashamed to admit it. Justin Cronin’s The Passage, Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, and Lev Grossman’s The Magician King are just three recent novels that try to adultify trending YA themes. Duncan is in the same boat, but he more or less succeeds where others have fallen short.
Why? Well, basically because the writing is pretty good, and the plot avoids being overwrought. (Neither The Magicians nor its sequel (while enjoyable) were very well-written; The Passage was a structural mess.) So let’s begin with the writing. Duncan is no Henry James, but he’s read him and it shows. He finds a great balance between action and tangent and he tinges his narrator with just enough snark. Most importantly, he has bouts of eloquence without looking like he’s trying too hard. … Continue reading »
In case you hadn’t heard, it’s Supreme Court Season again, which means our nation’s top judges are now hearing cases that will affect your life. Holding top billing, we have The State of Florida (and 26 other co-signing states) v. the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which will test the constitutionality of last year’s controversial healthcare overhaul. But this is only one case of many, and, as Atlantic legal correspondent Garrett Epps points out, the majority of the cases the court will hear this session “have huge practical impact but are devoid of drama.”
You might say the same thing about Five Chiefs. Without an ounce of sensationalism or any inflammatory rhetoric, it offers an insider’s perspective on the deliberative processes of our nation’s foremost deliberating body. Stevens presents a historical survey of the Court under each of its seventeen Chief Justices, focusing on the five who sat during the years he was personally associated with the Court, from his clerkship in 1947 until his resignation in 2010.
It’s an eye-opening look at how the Court actually works, from the influence of the Chief’s management style to the long-standing traditions meant to foster cordiality between people who are paid to argue with each other. Five Chiefs won’t keep you up at night, but it will make you think about how we decide some of the most important questions facing the country today… so maybe it will keep a you up at night. … Continue reading »
[In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]
The Cat’s Table, by Michael Ondaatje, reviewed by Liesl Schillinger (New York Times)
Ondaatje’s latest is a semi-autobiographical tale about an 11-year-old boy named Michael who undertakes a three-week ocean voyage from Ceylon (where Ondaatje himself was born) to London to meet his mother. It’s tough to get an idea of this kind of novel just by reading its premise, because it seems the pleasure of it will come from the strength of the characters and its prose. I’ll be giving it a try, though, on the chance that it will be as atmospheric and eloquent as this review. [Get this book]
MetaMaus, by Art Spiegelman, reviewed by Daniel Asa Rose (BN Review)
This extensive Maus retrospective is part making-of documentary and part “graduate-level course in comics semiotics.” It’s also chock full of Spiegelman’s insight and wit. Sounds like a must-have for Maus fans. [Get this book]
The Fear Index, by Robert Harris, reviewed by Mark Lawson (Guardian)
This “financial thriller” actually sounds pretty cool. Its central invention is a stock-market robot that profits by anticipating human fear and selling stocks just before runs start. Lawson gets a little fuzzy on exactly how this goes wrong for the heroes, but a rogue fear-smelling machine has promise as a villain. [Get this book]
From the dictionarification of his mascot-word, “truthiness,” to his formation of the Colbert SuperPAC which points out a campaign finance loophole by exploiting to grant Colbert the power to accept unlimited donations from anyone and spend the money however he wants—Stephen Colbert and his right-wing nutjob parody character have had a rare and often hilarious impact on the real world. This biography seems like mostly a collection of Colbert anecdotes, but that might be enough. [Get this book]
In brief: The NYT reviews the shit out of a book about puppies. So that’s weird. But I’m sure their glut of coverage (both a featured review, and a spot on the Book Review podcast) has nothing to do with the fact that the puppy book’s author is the NYT’s current executive editor. … The Guardian rounds up thrillers. … Margaret Atwood explores her relationship with science fiction, and the for-some-reason-controversial difference between designating something science fiction and designating it literary fiction. … This Luminous Airplanes book sounds pretty cool, but this reviewer makes the website sound even cooler.
One of the pitifully few comic books available on the Nook Color
A couple of weeks ago, DC announced that it would sell 100 of its digital graphic novels exclusively through the Kindle Fire. This was breathlessly reported as “another exclusive content deal” for Amazon. In reality, it was more of a PR maneuver by DC—the titles in question are all from DC’s backlist, and the exclusivity agreement lasts only four months. If this news hadn’t had something to do with Amazon’s brand-new buzzed-about minitablet, it would’ve been a non-story.
This is crazy. Not just because the deal only lasts four months, or because it’s bad business for a company to act like a petulant child. This is crazy because Barnes & Noble doesn’t sell any digital titles on DC’s backlist. The Kindle exclusivity agreement has no effect on B&N whatsoever, in the same way that the NFL’s exclusive deal with DirecTV has no effect on them. Barnes & Noble is not in the business of broadcasting football games and they are not in the business of selling digital DC comics. In fact, they barely sell digital comics at all, from any publisher.
If the new, overhyped “exclusivity deal” was going to affect Barnes & Noble at all, they should’ve taken it as a shot across their bow instead of a declaration of war. They’ve now had almost a year to develop a woefully unrobust platform (and I’m a big fan of the Nook Color), and they’ve done next to nothing for it. You still can’t get The New Yorker on the Nook Color, and I still can’t find the cookbook from the commercial with the embedded videos.
In fact, of the things on my Nook Color wishlist from ten months ago, they have added, legitimately, three features: Goodreads, Evernote, and a note-taking app. That’s well and good, but rolling out those feature without, say, comic books points toward a misunderstanding of the Nook Color’s priorities. Those priorities should be:
1. Content
2. Ease of use
3. Extras (like Goodreads, Evernote, etc.)
The fact that B&N reacted to DC-Kindle deal with such anger suggests to me some very serious problems lurking just out of public view. Barnes & Noble should be building relationships with eager content providers like DC, not burning them down. I have to imagine this reaction is misdirected frustration because the Nook Color isn’t doing as well as they’d hoped (cf. misordered priorities, lack of content).
It should be interesting to see how it plays out, but I’ll be surprised if B&N isn’t already doomed.
