The third episode is live today, and if you’re brave enough, you can give it a listen; braver, you can hear all three. Episodes of The Page Count are available (for free of course) on iTunes here, if you hit the subscribe button, you’ll get a new episisode every month, plus a few bonus episodes, like the upcoming book/movie club (not-sucky name suggestions welcome) on The Age of Dragons, which is a B-movie fantasy interpretation of Moby Dick. You can even click the handy star rater and judge us on the spot. If you hate iTunes, there is a direct RSS feed here.

We’ve had a lot of fun making these, and we hope you enjoy them. There are still plenty of kinks to work out. It won’t take you long to discover we don’t have any sound engineers amongst us. We’re also still trying to gauge just how much beer consumption is acceptable while recording a podcast. But we do talk a whole lot about books, and it’s going a little smoother with each successive episode. We hope you’ll join us.

For more information and detailed show notes about each episode, check out http://chamberfour.com/podcast/

• Amazon is secretly supporting a number of literary organizations. But, they’re also turning up the heat on major publishers, so egregiously in fact that several of the major publishing houses are refusing to renew their Amazon contracts. This might just be the end of Amazon’s deathgrip on retail book sales… but I’m not holding my breath.

• Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department is bringing charges against Apple and five of the Big Six major publishers (all except Random House), over whether their agency-model pricing agreement violates antitrust laws. Most of the publishers are settling (which will likely mean ending agency pricing), but Apple, Macmillan, and Penguin are going to fight it out in court. Macmillan, we should remember, is still run by John Sargent, the slightly reactionary CEO who both hates and doesn’t understand libraries. I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think setting strict retail prices should be illegal—this battle might have big ramifications.

• Apple believes in that agency pricing model so completely that they are the only major U.S. ebookstore that has refused to sell Harry Potter ebooks, because J.K. Rowling wants to set her own prices for them, but isn’t using agency pricing. Does that make sense? No, not really.

• Rowling (who has announced the title and, uh, price, of her upcoming adult novel) only recently began selling her books in an official digital format. They are DRM-free (unless you want the Kindle version) and reasonably priced at $8-10. Harry Potter fans responded by buying hundreds of thousands of copies. Maybe this will finally convince publishers that DRM is an anti-selling point?

• Lastly, remember how Random House isn’t being sued by the Justice Dept.? Not only were they the only major publisher to refuse the agency model, they were also the only publisher to continue to sell ebooks to libraries with no restrictions on the number of loans those libraries can make. Then—drama! Libraries were organizing to boycott the exorbitant prices Random House was demanding. Or… maybe they’re not. Sounds like Random House is still the best major publisher, but this library ebook situation is one to keep an eye on.

OK, that’s it for this roundup. We’ll be back with lots more stuff next week, so stay tuned.

Author:

2010, Random House

Filed Under: Literary, Humor, Sci-Fi

Find it on Goodreads.

Set in a near future as absurd as it is familiar, Super Sad True Love Story depicts a narcissistic America, drunk on credit, obsessed with youth, and largely ignorant of its relationship with the rest of the world. The government is run by the monolithic Bipartisan party, and no one much cares what the military does in Venezuela so long as the never ending stream of hypnotic information keeps scrolling across their “äppäräti.” It’s funny the way Russian literature, blight, or accidental death can be funny.

I’d call it dystopian literature except that in many ways Shteyngart’s novel doesn’t go far enough in reimagining our world to qualify. “Äppäräti” are juiced up smart phones, new fashions are obscenely revealing, and everyone loves shopping. Dystopian literature shows us our world is  stranger than we imagined by drawing out similarities with a world that appears unrecognizable on its surface; Super Sad True Love Story pretty much shows us our world exactly like it is, only worse.

For all the elaborate trappings of its near future setting, Super Sad True Love Story is less affecting as satire than (like the title suggests) as a oddly simple love story. Lenny Abramov, an aging, balding book addict with dreams of immortality falls for Eunice Park, a twenty-something Korean-American beauty and a true product of her times, image obsessed, outwardly confident, inwardly self-loathing. That Shteyngart manages to cut compelling characters from these types is a testament to his talents as a writer; that Lenny and Eunice manage to find consolation in each other is a testament to the strangeness of intimacy.

Lenny and Eunice first meet at a party in Rome right before Lenny returns to the States. They spend the night together, an event which he considers a religious experience, but which she sees as a “lesser evil” than going home with another older guy at the party. Lenny invites her to live with him in New York that same night. Eunice accepts only after this other thing she has going with a guy in Rome falls apart, so why not move in with an almost stranger who worships her rather than returning to her abusive father and cowed mother in Fort Lee?

It’s not the most promising beginning in the history of romance, except that it turns out to be exactly what they both want. Eunice tries to explain her decision to a friend:

When we were walking down this pretty street in Rome I noticed Lenny’s shirt was buttoned all wrong, and I just reached over and rebuttoned it. I just wanted to help him be less of a dork. Isn’t that a form of love too?… I think of him going down on me until he could barely breathe, the poor thing, and the way I could just close my eyes and pretend we were both other people.

Eunice wants to believe that people can change, and Lenny wants to be changed. He wants her to grant him some of her apparent ease in a world out of which he is rapidly aging; he wants her to make him “less of a dork.” His willingness to give himself to her transforms desperation into heroism, because in his heart he believes he can save her too.

On the morning Eunice arrives from Rome, Lenny gives himself a little pep talk:

Lenny, I said aloud. You are not going to screw this up. You’ve been given a chance to help the most beautiful woman in the world. You must be good, Lenny. You must not think of yourself. Only of this little creature before you. Then you will be helped in turn… if you show her that adult love can over come childhood pain, then both of you will be shown the kingdom.

The exchange between Lenny’s openness and Eunice’s guardedness drives the novel through personal and geopolitical disasters, and the possibility that two terribly matched people could find solace in each other (even a doomed solace) amidst a crumbling world is the novel’s most powerful statement. Many of the other characters you could’ve set on fire, and I might not have noticed. (In fact, some of them do go up in flames.) But Lenny and Eunice create something between themselves that I won’t soon forget.

Similar reads: Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, and The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken

Here are a few things publishers have been screwing up recently, whether through incompetence or greed.

• Publishers are hanging indie bookstores out to dry. They control the prices of every book they print, and they allow Amazon to sell books for up to 50% off the cover price. Retail bookstores buy their books, wholesale, for more than that. Remember when the Big Six banded together to renegotiate the prices of ebooks? They fought tooth and nail to get Amazon to agree to an agency model pricing structure that actually made them LESS money than Amazon’s existing $9.99-across-the-board pricing scheme. They could do the exact same thing with Amazon’s regular books, and they should because Amazon’s prices are a greater threat to indie bookstores than $9.99 ebooks were to the future of digital publishing. But publishers will not fight Amazon over this, because publishers do not care if indie bookstores go extinct.

• Instead of getting in fights with Amazon, publishers get in fights with libraries, and they don’t even understand what libraries do. Not only do libraries create future writers, they create and nurture readers. In fact, statistically, library users are publishers’ best customers. Despite all this, publishers claim borrowing ebooks from libraries makes it too easy to get around paying for books, and they fear their profits are being hurt. Random House is the only publisher left who doesn’t impose strict sanctions on the ebooks they allow libraries to lend. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster don’t allow any library copies of their ebooks.

• One publisher is actually helping Amazon get its books into brick and mortar stores. Because, again, they do not care about indie bookstores.

• They all support(ed) SOPA. Even though it’s been proven that piracy does not hurt profits.

• Their hardcover-first business model is archaic. I’ve said this before, but it doesn’t get any less true. Forcing artificial price inflation by selling hardcover editions which are obviously cheaply made is a terrible way to go about bookselling. It also increases the financial risk of overprinting, so publishers sometimes get caught with their pants down. For most of December, it was impossible to buy print copies of such bestsellers as The Hunger Games, Steve Jobs, The Art of Fielding, Thinking Fast and Slow, and many more. For much of the month after the release of the movie Hugo, on November 23, and before Christmas, Scholastic was out of stock of The Invention of Hugo Cabret. You could not buy the book in any store, and because they refused to make it an ebook, that meant you couldn’t buy it at all.

• They lie about the costs and benefits of ebooks. Publishers dragged their feet for years on the digital front, and then dragged their feet on digital pricing, often claiming that ebooks cost almost as much to produce as hardcover books. Those were all lies. Those printed books that went out of stock before Christmas? The ebooks didn’t go out of stock (except Hugo Cabret).

Publishers know they can get away with this because you don’t buy books from publishers. You buy the new Jeffrey Eugenides novel, not the new Random House book. Books are not commodities, and they are not interchangeable. People have no favorite publishers (although Random House is the least backward), and boycotts would be impossible to organize. But that works both ways: if big authors jump ship to Amazon or elsewhere, readers will follow them. If the Big Six collapse entirely, most readers will not care, provided they can still find decent books to read.

So publishers: it’s time to embrace technology, put your customers first, and entirely revamp the logistical architecture of the your industry, or Amazon’s publishing arm will do it for you (and nobody wants that).

Super fancy iBooks 2 special editions of our first two issues are now available in the iTunes App Store, specially optimized for iPad multitouch controls. These editions have all the same great writing and poetry plus the original visual art that was previously web-only. And they’re still free.

Issue #1 iPad edition

Issue #2 iPad edition

If you don’t have an iPad, never fear, you can still download the ebook editions to any other readers for free here, or see the snazzy, full-color online editions that include the visual art here.

Both issues, along with the awesome Chamber Four Fiction Anthology are still available in paperback editions from The Harvard Bookstore.

This reaction confuses me, because iBooks Author’s EULA says exactly what I expected it to say, namely that you can’t sell the books you make with iBooks Author through any distributor except Apple.

Why is this even a surprise? For one thing, iBooks Author is free. It’s obviously intended to ease creation of content for sale through iTunes, because Apple makes a ton of money on those content sales. Why would they make a free tool that would let users create content for other platforms? Why is not doing so “greedy” and “evil”?

On a more practical level, it’s frankly not that big a deal. If you’re formatting a traditional book (i.e. only words), then the process should mostly involve cutting and pasting those words from your .doc file. You will have to format your ePubs for other distributors separately, which is a drag mostly because ePub-formatting programs suck (when we publish books here at C4, we use Smashwords; it’s not perfect but it is better and easier than other formatting and publishing options we’ve tried).

So yes, Apple has not given you a free, easy, universal ePub creator. But iBooks Author isn’t geared toward creating plain old ePubs anyway, it’s specifically geared toward creating “Multi-Touch books for iPad.” In other words, this sort of thing. Because iBooks Author simplifies the formatting process, the rich-media interactive ebooks you make with it will almost certainly only work on an iPad. Even if you could export them to universal ePubs, they would look like garbage on all other devices.

Apple won’t own your copyright, your content, or the versions you make for all other platforms. You’re free to use that content however you please, even according to that reactionary ZDNet writer’s reading of the EULA. Claims that “only Apple can ever publish your work” are simply not true.

So everybody please calm down about this EULA. It’s not nearly as greedy or evil as they’d have you believe.

Spotlight

Secret Avengers #20

In his 2011 mini-series The Red Wing, one of my favorite comics of last year, Jonathan Hickman uses time travel as more than just a plot device meant to complicate the narrative and give readers a fun puzzle to solve by the final issue. That isn’t to say that the plot isn’t so tangled that it can’t be untied, but simply that Hickman describes his concept of time travel in more poetic terms (aided, it’s worth nothing, by diagrams drawn into the scene by series artist Nick Pittara) and seems less interested in the mechanics of time travel than in its effects on the story’s emotional arc. By playing with our expectations of what time travel means Hickman brings some of the danger and volatility to that sci-fi trope. Warren Ellis does the same thing in Secret Avengers #20, but from the opposite direction – rather than eschewing the paradoxes and details of time travel, Ellis luxuriates in them, creating an elaborate puzzlebox of a story that doubles as a character study of Black Widow.

The issue begins with a large panel of Captain America being shot in the chest – a shocking image, but not entirely surprising given Ellis’s very public (and likely exaggerated) dislike of superheroes – and the next few pages continue along the same lines. All of the Secret Avengers except for Black Widow are dead or dying, having received some bad intel and run a mission at the wrong moment. As he dies, War Machine gives Black Widow an emergency “escape hatch” device, which she uses to get help. As it happens, the “escape hatch” sends her back in time five years to an Italian villa, giving her enough time to figure out how to save her teammates.

Her plan is ingenious, but it’s how Ellis gradually introduces and shapes each gear in the works that makes the story such a delightful read. The device bounces her around in time as she gathers vital information about how time travel works (she can’t undo something that’s already been done, and she can’t be in the same place as her past self) then meets with an illegal superweapons manufacturer and a mad scientist, thus setting the plan in motion. These encounters are drenched in Ellis’s trademark wit, particularly Black Widow’s back and forth with eccentric scientist Count Khronus, but still convey the tedium and frustration of having to wait for time to catch up with your ideas. To busy herself Natasha befriends the Count and his assistant/husband Kongo, and visits deceased colleagues.

As the time-shifting continues these scenes get shorter and punchier, and gradually we begin to see how every seemingly disparate encounter clicks together. By the time Natasha returns to the present all that’s left to do, for both hero and reader, is to stand back and enjoy the inevitable result. And the final bits of dialogue, as the revived Avengers attribute their survival to luck and coincidence, reveals that Widow’s machinations parallel Ellis’s own storytelling goals – the most skilled practitioners of their craft can make impossible complicated acts seem like happenstance.

All along this run Ellis has been matched with high-caliber artists, and Alex Maleev is no exception. He’s equally adept at both aspects of the story, from a stunning two-page spread of the opening battle scene that suggests the scale of just how poorly the mission has gone to the slight smirk Natasha wears when consulting with Khronus and her nonchalant posture in the issue’s final panel. The subtlety of those expressions makes Ellis’s wit feel germane to the story, more than just a writer’s attempt to seem clever.

And though colorist Nick Filardi is no slouch, I think Maleev’s pencils work even better in a bizarre two-page sequence that suddenly turns the action into a Steve Canyon-esque black and white newspaper strip. The sketchy, spare line work suits that format really well, no matter that I can’t see any good reason why it’s necessary for that sequence.

Ellis’s Secret Avengers run concludes in January, and when all is said and done it should make for a perfect trade paperback collection of tightly constructed stories. What’s ironic, then, is that these issues are ideally suited for the burgeoning digital market. As the big publishers push further into digital comics and the format gets new legs, I think we’ll see readers abandoning the trade collections that dominated publishing and sales models in the 2000s in favor of the kind of single-issue, “one and done” stories of the Silver and Bronze ages. New digital readers, who won’t be trained in the weekly or monthly buying habits of the fan who came up pre-tablet, might be less inclined to wait 30 days for the next installment of story that stretches out over six or seven issues. Instead, they might prefer issues like Secret Avengers #20, which can be read without any prior knowledge of the characters or universe, and which implies no lingering connections to subsequent stories. This wouldn’t be the first time Warren Ellis laid the groundwork for a trend the rest of the industry caught up with in three or four years.

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Solid Reads

Deadpool MAX-Mas Special #1

Deadpool MAX-Mas #1 rolls two things I love, David Lapham and Kyle Baker’s work on Deadpool and special Christmas-themed comics, into one extra-sized package. A twist on It’s A WonderfulLife, this issue has Hydra Bob lamenting that he wished he’d never been born (understandable, considering he’s been framed by the CIA as the worst terrorist in history.) Deadpool plays the “Clarence” role, but instead of going on an invisible journey through an alternate timeline, he simply fakes Bob’s death and lets his friend see what would actually happen if he’d died. The tour is split into three parts, each drawn by a different artist – Baker takes the second story, regular fill-in artist Shawn Crystal, who also drew Deadpool MAX II #3 this month, takes the third. But best of all is the first story, illustrated by Lapham himself. Since the conclusion of Young Liars we’ve had a lot of writing from David Lapham, but precious little art (a guest issue of DMZ, I think, is the only thing I recall) so it’s nice to see that clean, bold linework again. And while Lapham’s art isn’t as madcap or cartoony as Baker’s, he still manages the light yet deeply disturbing tone through precise detailing. Crystal’s art doesn’t quite hit those right notes of absurdity, but he’s no slouch, and you could ask for far less from a regular fill-in artist. Deadpool MAX II #3 takes a detour from the story of Bob and Wade’s run from the law and brings back a few characters from last year’s bachelor party issue. It’s fun, but this series always suffers when Lapham’s sense of humor gets the better of the plot. And having seen the highs this book is capable of (issue three, in particular) it’s easy to gloss over the lesser chapters.

Daredevil #7

While not exactly a “holiday special” Daredevil #7 does take place during a winter storm and includes a flashback to a Christmas party. The story finds Matt Murdoch chaperoning school trip for a dozen blind children, and having to rely on his radar senses when a bus crash strands the group in the woods during the aforementioned storm. In another writer’s hands this could easily come off as a cheesy, sentimental story about the hero being rescued by children. But Mark Waid’s script keeps the tone just dark and uncertain enough that the expected ending feels like relief rather than cliché. Daredevil’s internal narrative suggests the precariousness of both the physical situation, and the hero’s state of mind as he struggles to keep the children safe while every plan he makes fails. And artist Paolo Rivera contributes to that sense of danger in his layouts. Tight, small panels cramped with close-ups of faces and trees move suddenly into large, panoramic views of the grey and white nothingness that surrounds the troop. Coupled with the persistent snow effect from colorist Javier Rodriguez, the art gives this book a palpable, ominous chill.

I remember reading about the Elseworlds 100-Page Spectacular back when it was only an 80-Page Giant, at least a decade ago, if not longer – DC published the collection of alternate timeline stories, then immediately pulped it over concerns that an image of a baby Superman getting zapped in a microwave (and crawling away unscathed, mind you) from the Kyle Baker story, “Letitia Lerner, Superman’s Babysitter” was inappropriate. The few copies that leaked out became collector’s items, and even though the Baker story was eventually published in a different collection it still retained that “forbidden tale” appeal. Now DC have reversed their position and quietly released the original issue, with an extra story of a Jewish Batman fighting the SS in Berlin by Paul Pope that’s predictably gorgeous and thoughtful. Pope’s story is far from the only highlight in this collection, however – Baker’s “Tom and Jerry”-inspired story of baby Superman and his babysitter is chaotic fun with a great punchline in the final panel, and Tom Peyer and Ariel Olivetti’s satire of the acclaimed mini-series Kingdom Come is full of sharp inside jokes for fans (or critics) of the original. Some of the other stories don’t quite hit, particularly an MTV-style documentary about Lex Luthor’s career as a rock producer, but for pure laughs nothing beats Mark Waid and Ty Templeton’s series of mock Silver Age covers, lightly parodying the “shocking twist” nature of many Elseworlds stories. I’m sure everything would’ve read better in the context of when it was written – when was the last time DC actually released an Elseworlds story – but it’s still worth checking out to see some peerless creators enjoying a rare bit of anarchic fun with classic characters.

Batman, Inc. - Leviathan Strikes! #1

My most anticipated December release was Batman, Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes! #1, the conclusion of the first volume of Grant Morrison’s Batman, Incorporated story that was beset by scheduling delays last year and put aside during the New 52 relaunch. Though the story’s momentum dissipated slightly over the four months since the last issue of Batman, Inc. was released I was still eager to return to Morrison’s dense, complicated Bat-world and read the payoff to the title’s central mystery. This extra-sized issue (that was kind of a theme this month) includes the story of Batgirl undercover in a prep school for girl assassins, drawn by Cameron Stewart, and Batman’s final confrontation with Doctor Daedalus, drawn by Chris Burnham. Both artists are in top form, but Burnham in particular shows off some effective layouts that translate a script dense with timeloops and dimension shifting into rational visuals. Throughout the finale Morrison ties together small bits of story from the previous eight issues, leading to a reveal of Leviathan’s identity that’s been effectively hidden in plain sight all along. As with the rest of Morrison’s Batman run, Leviathan Strikes! rewards subsequent readings, particularly after a refresher course of the previous issues of Batman, Inc. Unfortunately, we have to wait until May for the Morrison and Burnham’s next volume.

One fundamental rule of superhero comics is if there’s a single universe shared among two or more books, a crossover is inevitable, if for no other reason than to boost the sales of whichever book sells the least. It’s a testament to both Mark Waid’s storytelling instincts and Boom! Studios’s editorial stance, that Irredeemable and Incorruptible have gone this long (nearly three years for the former, two for the latter) without a major crossover (granted, Incorruptible began as a response to events in Irredeemable, and some characters have bled from one book into the other, but before this month’s “Redemption” arc, you never needed to read both titles to understand the basic story.) Waid uses the occasion to explore the origins of both evil Superman-analogue The Plutonian and his archenemy, the recently reformed ex-villain Max Damage. It turns out the characters share more than just mutual animosity, and Waid deftly embeds small, seemingly insignificant moments in Irredeemable that he then extrapolates into major plot points in Incorruptible. And because the issues alternate between the two characters Waid is able to maintain each book’s particular tone – dark, discomfiting irony in Irredeemable #32, and bittersweet sincerity in Incorruptible #25. Plus, in Incorruptible #25 we also get the secret origin of Charlie Hustle, which leads me to believe that either Waid knows other readers love the character as much as I do, or he’s reading this column and tailoring the story to suit my specific interests. Either way, I’m happy.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle #7

I typically reserve the space to talk about books I like, and express any negative critiques succinctly in the “One-Shots” section. But this month I must write at length about a book that’s fallen from rather lofty heights. I wish I could say otherwise, but Tales Designed to Thrizzle #7 was nowhere near as funny or inventive as the first five issues. New issues of Thrizzle have become a once-a-year event, so anticipation is always high for fans of the early issues and Kupperman’s webstrip for Fantagraphics.com, Up All Night. Issue #6 was uneven, but I hoped it was just a temporary setback and that Kupperman would be back in top form the following year. But outside of a strip about McArf the Crime Dog, who is forever on the lookout for scum, and some good gags in the “Quincy, M.D.” story, Thrizzle #7 feels, and looks, rushed. In the early issues Kupperman’s jokes defied you to figure out what was funny about, say, a character named Uncle Grandpa, or the ongoing culture war between Sex Blimps and Sex Holes. The humor was obscure but never random, and the gags didn’t build to punchlines so much as develop into bizarre worlds that then crashed into the orbits of other worlds. But now the jokes seem to stay at one level, substituting randomness for absurdity and leaning on cultural references to do the heavy lifting. Hopefully another year will find Kupperman inspired and engaged with comics as he once was.

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One-Shots

Action Comics #4 features the first big fight of the series, between Superman and what might be the new Metallo, but a lot of the action is shunted to the back-up feature, which makes for an odd but exciting reading experience.

I thought for sure the ending of last month’s All-Star Western was a kind of in medias res fade to black thing, but this month we get to see the gruesome results of Hex’s stand-off and the beginning of a new mystery that finds the bounty hunter teamed once again with Jeremiah Arkham.

In Animal Man#4 Jeff Lemire delves deeper into the background and mythology of the Red, and artist Travel Foreman tops himself with a chase sequence towards the end of the issue that somehow combines everything disturbing and horrible into one final image.

Aquaman #4 is a showcase for Ivan Reis, particularly the two or three splash panels set during Aquaman and Mera’s final confrontation with the trench dwellers, and the story ends on a sweet note – I’ll likely not return to Aquaman next month, and this is a good a stopping point as they come.

Coming off last month’s revelations, Scott Snyder takes us into the past in Batman #4, telling a poignant story about young Bruce Wayne’s first case that helps explain why he’s so blinded to the threat posed by the Court of Owls that he ends up walking right into a trap in the final panel.

Damian’s dalliance with the dark side of Batman’s mission grows deeper and more upsetting in Batman and Robin #4, and is made all the more convincing by the stoic, numb expression he wears, courtesy of artist Patrick Gleason (who is doing career-best work on this title.)

The first nine pages of Batwoman #4 is an object lesson in the immense potential of comics as a storytelling medium – in four elegantly structured double-page spreads (plus the first page, all by itself) J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman tell two different stories, one of passion and love, the other of naïvete and violence, that comment and enrich each other – the rest of the issue continues the sequence double-page spreads, and grapples with the aftermath of the opening scenes.

I quite enjoyed Blackhawks #4 – the first story arc resolves well, and the characters feel more defined and unique four issues in – but I can’t imagine how much better this book will be next month when CAFU takes over art duties.

The bubbly mullet that Captain Atom grows after his meeting with the military goes awry in Captain Atom #4 is sort of odd, but otherwise the art was gorgeous as ever, and the story continues to meander.

Anyone still avoiding Catwoman because of the furor about the first issue should pick up issue four, as writer Judd Winick has eased back from the sensationalism and turned in an affecting character study of Selina Kyle – however, the new villain introduced in this issue is pretty lame.

Demon Knights #4 explores the origin of the Shining Knight, with lush art for the flashback/dream sequence provided by Michael Choi, and drops two very interesting hints about the future of the series, one of which I might be overanalyzing – if I’m not, then the eventual reveal will be mind-blowing.

The Flash #4 was the first mediocre issue of the series – Francis Manapul’s art is gorgeous as usual, but the story stalls almost completely in favor of exposition that doesn’t feel entirely necessary.

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E #4 ended big and crazy, as I hoped it would, with more giant monsters and a last minute escape, plus a nice character moment to conclude the arc and present me with a nice jumping off point.

Geoff Johns uses separate imprisonment as an occasion for strong character moments in Green Lantern #4, giving Hal a chance to prove to himself that he loves Carol, and forcing Sinestro to literally confront his past and justify his actions.

John Constantine’s guest appearance in I, Vampire #4 feels like a ploy for readers, and it’s certainly a detour from a story that was just beginning to move in an interesting direction.

The team finally comes together in Justice League #4, and the first appearance of Darkseid in the new DC universe is suitably destructive and intense, but as the months roll on it seems like writer Geoff Johns is attempting to fuse the epic scale of Grant Morrison’s JLA with the humor and levity of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League title – what’s more, he’s actually pulling it off.

Severed #5 takes a step back from the visceral scares of last month’s issue, but maintains an edge-of-your-seat tension the entire time as Jack begins to understand just how strange and dangerous Mr. Fisher really is.

James Robinson dips into the mythology of the Arrerente, indigenous peoples of central Australia, in The Shade #3, and uses it to spin an elaborate puzzle that the Shade must solve with his head and heart, rather than his fists.

Writer Brian Azzarello negotiates the needs of four different plotlines in Spaceman #3, helping put Orson’s plan, or lack thereof, into context and fleshing out characters that he’s likely to come in conflict with in the next few issues.

Stormwatch #4 ties the story together neatly, and showcases each member of the team as they put the alien threat down, and the cliffhanger ending raises the hope that next month’s issue will delve into the broader purpose of Stormwatch and it’s place in the DCU.

Our own Nico Vreeland was not fond of Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Torro’s vampire novel The Strain, and I wasn’t dazzled by the first issue of its comic book adaptation – Mike Huddleston is one of my new favorite artists, but his work here feels muted compared to Butcher Baker, the Righteous Maker or even The Homeland Directive.

Marco Rudy fills in for regular artist Yanick Paquette on Swamp Thing #4, but proves to be just as adept at unique layouts and horrific imagery; particularly impressive is one full-page panel that highlights the difference in Alec and Abby’s natures.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #2 is packed with exposition, but it’s executed well by both guest artist Jerry Ordway and series artist Wes Craig, whose heavily shaded, dramatic inking sells the tragedy of the cliffhanger ending.

I had high hopes for Dynamite’s Voltron #1, but even the haze of nostalgia for my youth isn’t enough to make this issue a satisfying read – I’m all for altering the concept to suit modern storytelling needs (and god knows the cartoon’s major weakness was story) but Brandon Thomas’s script discards all the bits that made Voltron fun in the first place.

Much of the action in Wonder Woman #4 takes place at a metal concert as Wonder Woman enjoys the music and processes the recent revelations about her parentage – I’m fairly certain that’s a first in the character’s published history, and a further indication of just unique vision writer Brian Azzarrello has for this title.

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Looking Ahead to January

The conclusion of Warren Ellis’s Secret Avengers, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s Fatale, and the long-awaited return of Bulletproof Coffin!

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10. Cthulu Saves the World (Steam, XBLA)

9. Skyrim (XBOX, PS3, PC)

On a happier note (for iBooks fans), iBooks has adopted the Nook's hold-and-swipe highlighting feature, which was my favorite thing about the Nook app. Really, the only thing I liked. Definitely no reason to even try the Nook app now. Three years and counting until Barnes & Noble is bankrupt.

I'll try to keep this space updated with new features, but probably won't.]

Merry Christmas! Several thousand people at least will be unwrapping an iOS device today. Here’s a list of the major ereader apps, and their pros and cons. We’ll see you again on Tuesday, when we go back to regular programming.

iBooks: Perfect for iOS readers

Pros: Buying books through the app store. Great highlighting, syncing, dictionary, and a ton of layout options. Two-page layout on the iPad, and fewer glitches than any other app.

Cons: Doesn’t work on any non-iOS device. Not your Kindle, not your Nook, not any E-Ink ereader. If you want to use one of those devices, you’ll want to use a different app. There isn’t even a desktop version of iBooks, you can only use it on an iPhone or an iPad. There’s also no real iBooks website, and navigating through the Books section of iTunes is a proper pain, so you’ll need to come to the app with a title in mind.

The gist: iBooks is also the only app that will let you buy books through the app store and your iTunes account—that ability is turned off for all other ebook apps. But that ease-of-buying-books is not what makes iBooks the best ereader app; instead, it’s the fact that all the others have significant downsides. iBooks has all the core functions—note-taking, highlighting, search, dictionary, and layout options—and they all work. If your iPhone and/or iPad is your main ereader, look no further for your new favorite app.

OverDrive: A must-have for everybody

Pros: Library ebooks. From your couch. For free.

Cons: Layout and navigation is kludgy. There is no search, highlight, note-taking, etc.

The gist: The OverDrive app lacks a whole whole lot of polish, but it’s the only one of these with a USP: this is how you borrow library ebooks (and even audiobooks) and put them on your phone. If you’ve already got a library card, you’ve got everything you need. If not, why not?

Kindle: You are heartless, sir

Pros: Exclusive Kindle singles by great writers mean I’m probably never going to delete this app. Syncs to Kindle devices, so a must-have for that crowd. Also, the iPad app can now do Kindle Fire mags, but unless you have, for some reason, both a Kindle Fire and an iPad, that feature is pretty useless. They’ve finally started using page numbers, so that’s good. And the Kindle store has the widest selection, in my own, strictly unscientific, tests (for example, the Kindle store has the Hunger Games, and iBooks doesn’t).

Cons: Amazon makes me feel unclean. I still buy things from them, but I never enjoy it. Once you get Amazon books, you’re locked into Amazon forever. Also, they have a tendency to delete people’s accounts for no reason (“warmest regards!”). And they never give money to charity.

The gist: Basically, if you already own a Kindle, using this app during your commute is easier than lugging your Kindle around. If you don’t already own a Kindle, don’t go over to the dark side now. (On a strictly technical level, the Kindle app has a lot of polish—it’s right up there with iBooks. The major downside is the ick factor.)

Nook: The less competent major corporate bookseller

Pros: The most innovative highlighting system out there, a press-hold-swipe process that’s pretty cool. The table of contents in-book is also really well done, my favorite of any of these apps. A nifty second app called B&N Bookstore that collects reviews and info about books and puts it all in a mobile layout (but unfortunately doesn’t let you buy ebooks).

Cons: Syncing between devices often glitches out. In fact, almost everything about this app often glitches out. There’s a permanent overlay in my library that reads “no matches found.” B&N just can’t seem to get this stuff right.

The gist: Barnes & Noble had a moment there where it looked like it might be just as good, in a technical sense, as Amazon, and with none of the icky Amazon vibe. That moment is over. B&N’s software and firmware (with the exception of the Nook Simple Touch, which people seem to love) is fundamentally cruddy, plain and simple. Don’t bother with this app unless you already have a Simple Touch. In which case, remember where you left off when you switch devices, because the app won’t.

Kobo: Such promise, such disappointment

Pros: Some of the most innovative ereader functionality in the world. Reading Life is a fun summary of your activity, and Kobo Pulse is an awesome way to socialize reading. Also, Kobo lets you read your Kobo books on a wide variety of other, non-Kobo devices, so you’re never in danger of being locked in, the way you are with Amazon or Nook. The Kobo app also boasts an onboard Instapaper interface that automatically syncs with your account.

Cons: Astonishingly lacks basic functions. There’s no search function, the page-turn situation is horrible, there are no page numbers (!), the place-finder is maddening, and there’s no ability to get samples of ebooks. Basically the app is phenomenal for everything except actually reading books.

The gist: Reading Life and Pulse are such awesome innovations that I really wanted to like the Kobo app, but I just can’t. First of all, there’s no search capability, something I’ve come to rely on in ereader apps, not just as a book reviewer but as a reader (if you forget who a character is, for instance, you can search for the first time they’re mentioned).

You're 40% of the way through the scroll bar, but only 25% of the way through the book???

The page number situation is horrible, in that page numbers don’t exist. You get page numbers within chapters (4/24 in ch. 3), and a percentage of the whole book read, but you never know what page you’re on in a traditional way, i.e. a single, global page number (125). That means that if you lose your place, good luck finding it. The place-finder at the bottom is unusable. It scrolls through the entire book, but with some invisible, greater space given over to the chapter you’re in.

So that bottom blue scrolling bar (pictured above left) maps out like this:

[p 1-52] [c u r r e n t c h a p t e r] [pp. 75-346]

However, they show you no navigational markings, so attempting to skip back three pages can easily send you back three chapters instead. Infuriating.

Worst of all, the Kobo store gives you no book preview option, so you can’t read excerpts of books before you buy. Previews are perhaps my favorite feature of the ebook revolution–they’ve become an integral part of my reading experience. Even if they fixed many of these other flaws, I need previews, and I’m not going to keep a whole different app just for that.

It’s a ridiculous example of an app that entirely eschews traditional functionality and strives to be unique. Where B&N is merely incompetent, Kobo has made active decisions that make their app unusable. It’s mind-blowing, but true.

Best Nonfiction of 2011

Townie, by Andre Dubus III

Because, holy shit, I wasn’t expecting this book to be what it was. Yeah, I knew it was going to be about a street-tough kid knocking heads around an old mill town, but I didn’t expect the introspection, the redemption. Townie is a disciplined, well-crafted memoir. And at it’s core, under many gut-wrenching, heavy layers, Townie is a heart-warming tale about a father and his son.

Read my full review here.

The Convert, by Deborah Baker

This is an unconventional biography about a Jewish woman from New York who decides to convert to Islam and move to Pakistan. Weirdly, I didn’t like it as much right after I read it as I do now, months later. This book got under my skin. The book’s central figure, Maryam Jameelah, is increasingly enigmatic. Her public life and writings have become a rallying point for radical Muslims, yet Maryam herself is a complex and troubled individual who shouldn’t be put on a pedestal. This book also highlights and questions the role of a biographer. Readers will be left with plenty to ponder.

Read my full review here.

Patriot Acts, edited by Alia Malek

This book’s subtitle—Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice—more than aptly describes its contents. The narratives are puzzling. How did these acts go unnoticed? How is it that we accept them? How does a first responder, a Muslim-American EMT who died in one of the collapsing towers, get labeled a terrorist? Why must his mother suffer through those heinous allegations. Why must we detain a 16-year-old because of her religious head scarf? Now that Congress has decided it’s legal to indefinitely detain US Citizens, Patriot Acts is increasingly important. We were forced to make a choice between our freedom and our security. We chose security, and Patriot Acts shows us what we have ahead of us.

Into the Forbidden Zone, by William T. Vollman

I don’t know much about William T. Vollman, but I know that he has many dedicated (cultish?) fans. After reading this, I think I could perhaps become one of them. Forbidden Zone falls somewhere between a long magazine article and a short book. For lack of a better term, it’s a nonfiction novella published by the good folks over at Byliner. The book is Vollman’s account of his trip to Japan shortly after the Earthquake. It opens with a search for a Geiger counter, a scene which is at first humorous, but throughout the course of the book it becomes eye opening, and then extremely important.

Late add from 2010

Hellhound on His Trail, by Hampton Sides

Hellhound on His Trail is an in-depth account of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the manhunt for the assassin, James Earl Ray. In the afterword, the book’s author, Hampton Sides, balks at those who have described his book as a thriller. Given the weight and historical significance of the crime detailed in the book’s pages, I can understand his hesitancy. But this book reads like a thriller; it’s a fast paced, well constructed mystery. More importantly, it is a round portrait of King during his final days, and an only slightly less round portrait of King’s assassin (Ray’s motives remain still somewhat fuzzy, but hey, so do Hitler’s—some things will always remain a mystery.) If Sides isn’t ok with “thriller,” perhaps he’s more comfortable with what I feel is a more apt description: Masterpiece.