Review: Three #1-5

Three was a 5-issue comic published by Image in 2013; it was written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Ryan Kelly, with colours by Jordie Bellaire. I didn't hear about the series at the time it came out (probably because that was just after I'd quit my job at Marvel) but I became intrigued when I heard this series was written by Gillen as a response to Frank Miller's 300.

Now, I liked 300 when I first read it, though I have come to see some of the problems with that work. Gillen's particular bugaboo (as explained in the first issue's editorial) was that Miller's comic celebrated the Spartans as supposedly heroic defenders of liberty - yet they owned slaves, which makes all the declarations of liberty sound rather hollow. The Spartans' slaves - the Helots - are the protagonists of Three; three Helots, natch.

The series begins with a Helot rather unwisely reminding four Spartans of a time when a Helot murdered a Spartan general; the Spartans attempt to slaughter the Helots for their defiance but three of the Helots kill all but one of the Spartans. Knowing they're now marked for death, the three Helots flee across country while Sparta gathers an army to kill them.

Unlike most historical fiction, Gillen consulted with an actual historian about this series and the back matter in Three includes a series of back-and-forth between Gillen and Professor Stephen Hodgkinson. The single most fascinating thing I learned was that the Spartans didn't write down their own history; everything we know of them was written by other people. Considering that, it's especially odd that they've become so celebrated - history only wrote about them second-hand. Gillen calls this "the Spartan Mirage" in the back matter.

There's little glory to be found in Gillen, Kelly and Bellaire's story; the Helots obtain a sort of victory; the Spartans choose pragmatism over honour. Three depicts Spartan society as fascinatingly different, but horrific and unsustainable. I'd liked what I'd read of Gillen's work before, but this... this is the most riveting story of his that I've read.

Review: Muppets Noir #1

I like the Muppets; I don't consider myself a great fan of theirs - mostly I think of them as something I loved as a child - but I'm not too proud to buy a new Muppets book when it comes out.

Roger Langridge's Muppet Show comics that he created for Boom! Studios (2009-2010) were books I bought because they'd received rave reviews; those comics turned me into a fan of Roger Langridge and I was disappointed when Boom! and the Muppets fell out, bringing it to an end while Langridge still had stories to tell.

This year, Langridge is revisiting the Muppets thanks to Dynamite Entertainment, who are publishing his series Muppets Noir. The scenario: Kermit is hit on the head with a brick while reading a private eye novel; Miss Piggy tries to revive him with a pie. In his dreams, Kermit sees himself as private detective Flip Minnow, on a case to find the missing pie heiress Meringue Crustworth (Piggy).

Because the plot is basically a farce for hanging jokes on, Langridge doesn't take the mystery of the missing Meringue at all seriously; she appears on the first page of Kermit's dream, then as the first person Minnow questions after leaving the Crustworth manor, then as a cab driver.

What I admire about Langridge's take on the Muppets is that he maintains fidelity to the original source material - that is, there are songs (even though you'll have to guess the tune and sing along in your head) and the jokes are kid-friendly, not adult material (Langridge's adult humour can be found in his non-Muppet works). Muppets Noir is not for jaded, cynical adults who want jaded, cynical Muppets; if you're going to read this as an adult, then you have to be in touch with a child-like sense of humour. If you can do that, you'll be rewarded.

Review: The Once and Future Riot

The Once and Future Riot is a recent piece of comics journalism by Joe Sacco, published last year. Sacco is best-known for his work Palestine; given his areas of interest, I think if Sacco shows up in your hometown, your hometown has got some issues.

For this book, Sacco went to Muzaffarnagar, India, where a riot erupted between Hindus and Muslims. But as Sacco finds in interviewing the people there, the precise details as to how the violence started and who suffered change depending on who's telling the story (which Sacco presents with his usual skepticism).

The moment I found most fascinating came when Sacco visited a camp of Muslim refugees who had fled after the riot and had yet to return home, despite government assurances that it was safe. One of the refugees spoke passionately about his former Hindu neighbours and the good will that had existed between them. Another refugee responded with the armor-piercing question, "Why are you here, if you have a house there?"

The book does not paint a pretty picture of India but I came away affected by many scenes such as the one I described. It's another fine piece of work by Sacco.

"You wanna reach the stars?" Fantastic Four Fanfare review

Fantastic Four Fanfare was a 4-issue mini-series released this year to celebrate the release of the film Fantastic Four: First Steps. It's an anthology series with 3 stories per issue. I do wonder why the series didn't feature 4 stories per issue - I mean, why not? What we have here is a mix of stories either featuring the Fantastic Four as a team or a spotlight tale on one (or two) members of the FF. Several of these stories were written or drawn by past creative teams on Fantastic Four. I'll briefly describe the 12 stories:

Fantastic Four: Fanfare #1 spotlights the Human Torch and features "You Realize, of Course, This Means War" by Mark Waid and Ramon Rosanas, "Life's a Gas" by Alan Davis and "Monster Island of Love" by Andrew Wheeler and Sara Pichelli. Waid wrote Fantastic Four 2002-2005; Davis has been a frequent Fantastic Four cover artist, served as penciler briefly in 1998 and wrote and drew the 2007 mini-series Fantastic Four: The End; and Pichelli was briefly the Fantastic Four penciler in 2018.

Waid's story is about Johnny's love of playing practical jokes on Ben, which Waid accelerates to the nth degree; in this story, Johnny had an entire filing cabinet labeled "Ideas for Pranking Ben." Many of the pranks are depicted in the style of a 1960s "Marvel Masterwork Pin-Up," which is a fun joke. Davis' story features the FF on a mission underground where Johnny's flame is bit more dangerous than usual; it's pretty light, but Davis is maybe the finest living FF illustrator, so it's worth a look. The final story features Johnny as a constestant on a reality TV program which turns out to be the favourite program of the Mole Man.

Fantastic Four: Fanfare #2 spotlights Mr. Fantastic and features "Dinner and a Movie" by Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver, "Future Uncertain" by John Tyler Christopher and "Hide and Seeker" by Mark Buckingham. Hickman wrote Fantastic Four 2009-2012; Buckingham drew a few Fantstic Four stories in 2003.

This issue is very mixed; Buckingham's story concerns two of Dr. Doom's underlings trying to recover his robot the Seeker; it looks terrific but it's incredibly slight. The other two stories are simply underwhelming.

Fantastic Four: Fanfare #3 spotlights the Thing and features "Fight or Flight" by Dan Slott and Marcos Martin, "Another Round" by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz and "Universal Appeal" by Chip Zdarsky and Mike Allred. Dan Slott wrote Fantastic Four 2018-2022 and wrote a Thing solo series in 2006; DeFalco wrote Fantastic Four 1991-1996 and the Thing's solo adventures in Marvel Two-in-One 1981-1983; Zardsky wrote the Thing and Human Torch in Marvel 2-in-One 2018-2019 and Allred drew F.F. 2013-2014.

This issue is certainly my favourite, as it features three writers whose work I truly admire. Slott's story - with phenomenal art by Martin - focuses on Ben's experiences as a pilot over the decades. It's a very good character piece. DeFalco/Frenz's story brings back the Sandman, whom they'd done a bit of work rehabilitating into a hero back in the 80s, only for later writers to revert Sandman to a villain; this story tries to thread the needle, restoring his friendship with Ben but suggesting he'll still be a problem in the future. The final story features Johnny heading to an extraterrestrial fashion shoot, only to be upstaged by Ben.

Fantastic Four: Fanfare #4 spotlights the Invisible Woman and features "Ain't No Grave" by J. Michael Straczynski and Cafu, "One Night" by Greg Weisman, Mark Bagley and John Dell and "Clobberin' Time" by Daniel Warren Johnson and Tyrell Cannon. Straczynski wrote Fantastic Four 2005-2006 and Bagley penciled Fantastic Four 2013-2014.

Straczynski's story (which seems to be set circa 1970?) is about the Mole Man on his deathbed - which means this anthology won't read well in a trade paperback as this follows on the humourous treatment of Mole Man in issue #1. Still, it's a very good character piece on Mole Man that takes him seriously, which is not how... well, anyone else in the last 35 years has treated the character. Weisman's story is set around the time of Fantastic Four Annual #5 and features the Circus of Crime; it's appealing fluff. The last story is a kind of embarrassing story about the Sub-Mariner fighting the FF in a tournament but at least the art's appealing.

Anthologies are always a mixed bag; in this case, you might want to just cherry-pick the creators you enjoy the most. Still, taken as a whole, this is a fine collection of stories.

"But... we're so close to the miracle!" Usagi Yojimbo: Ten Thousand Plums review

Usagi Yojimbo: Ten Thousand Plums is the most recent entry in Stan Sakai's long-lived Usagi Yojimbo series. The series came back to Dark Horse Comics in 2023 but instead of an ongoing series, it's now a series of limited series.

However, Stan Sakai still writes Usagi Yojimbo the same way; although Usagi Yojimbo: Ten Thousand Plums is a five-issue mini-series, it is not a five-issue story! It's actually a three-issue story ("Ten Thousand Plums") followed by a two-issue story ("Tabo"). As before, Stan Sakai wrote, drew and lettered the series; Emi Fujii is the current colourist.

In "Ten Thousand Plums," Usagi, his cousin Yukichi and their friend Gen visited the Valley of Ten Thousand Plum Trees, where a massive grove of plum trees belonging to the shogun is kept. However, a supernatural fox who was wronged by the locals in the past plots vengeance by destroying the grove.

In "Tabo," Usagi and Yukichi travel with a number of pilgrims headed to a Buddhist shrine - but these pilgrims aren't Buddhists, they're Christians who believe the shrine is actually celebrating the Biblical Mary and that the shrine's statue can perform miracles. This brings up matters concerning Christians in feudal Japan that the Usagi Yojimbo series has visited before, as in Usagi Yojimbo: The Hidden. And since this is a world where many supernatural things exist, the characters have good reason to believe in the miracles!

The most touching part of "Tabo," however, is the afterword, where Stan describes his brother, who had recently passed away and inspired the titular Tabo of his story.

Usagi Yojimbo remains one my greatest delights in today's comic books and I'm so happy Sakai has managed to keep the series running these 40 years!

Columbo's Day

Over the last two years I slowly watched every single Columbo movie/episode, from 1968's Prescription: Murder to 2003's Columbo Likes the Nightlife. Columbo was a program I knew a little about - I knew it starred Peter Falk as a slovenly detective who seemed distracted and disorganized but was always working steadily to build a case against a criminal; I knew the "one more thing..." line; I knew the format would feature the murder at the beginning so that the audience was always aware of who the killer was (as I discovered, though, there were exceptions to the format). But I'd never actually watched a Columbo until I sat down and started with Prescription: Murder, way back at the beginning.

I suppose one of the questions I had about the series was how it functioned as a mystery program when the killer was always known at the top of the drama. As I discovered, that's the key to what makes Columbo interesting to watch - to guess at what vital mistake the killer made. Particularly during 1971-76, the period where Columbo was a regularly-scheduled program (as opposed to a now-and-then TV movie), the killer was often presented as the point-of-view character, with Columbo on the fringes (often Columbo wouldn't appear until after the first half-hour). Now, not every Columbo featured a great mistake on the killer's part; the lazy path was for Lt. Columbo to simply doubt the killer's alibi because of an unusual piece of evidence and then wear him down until he confessed; the best Columbo episodes, though, had a piece of evidence that was set up at the beginning that would come back at the climax in a satisfying way. The episode "Lovely But Lethal" had a particuarly great example of that.

Because the show often followed the killer's perspective, I did find myself strangely rooting for them to outsmart Columbo, even though I knew it was impossible (it's Columbo's show, after all). There are also many, many times I noted that if the killer had simply refused to talk to Columbo or insisted on having a lawyer present, Columbo would never have obtained the information he needed to force a confession (since Columbo usually had, at best, very flimsy circumstancial evidence). In the 70s, though, usually the killer's biggest problem would arrive in the last half-hour when they'd attempt to throw Columbo off their trail by committing another crime (even another murder) that would instead backfire big time.

I found the series at its weakest when it meddled with the format; there are some - particularly in the final years - where there isn't even a murder or where the murder isn't depicted on screen, which means the viewers weren't given all the information they were normally supplied with. Falk's always great in the role, but the 1989-2003 movies are a huge step down from what had come before. I cringed particularly while watching the final movie, Columbo Likes the Nightlife, which is painfully trying to be a hip 2003 program (with a soundtrack that sounded imitative of Run, Lola, Run) and the last thing Columbo, of all programs, should ever have tried to be was "hip." It's far more dated than most of the 70s episodes.

For my money, the best episodes of Columbo were in the 70s; my favourites are: "Blueprint for Murder"; "Dagger of the Mind"; "The Most Dangerous Match"; "Any Old Port in a Storm"; "A Friend in Deed"; "Negative Reaction"; and "How to Dial a Murder."

Throughout, there were a lot of familiar names I was happy to see; it was certainly a surprise that the first actual episode of the Columbo series was written by Steven Bochco and directed by Steven Spielberg! And I enjoyed seeing actors like Patrick McGoohan, Robert Vaughn, Dean Stockwell, Robert Culp, Roddy McDowell, Ray Milland, Leonard Nimoy, Martin Landau, Donald Pleasence, Johnny Cash, Dick Van Dyke, Ida Lupino and William Shatner to say nothing of before-they-were-famous appearances by the likes of Martin Sheen and Jamie Lee Curtis. Even in the show's twilight years I appreciated seeing the likes of Robert Foxworth, George Wendt, Richard Riehle and Billy Connolly.

I found I really enjoyed the "how catch 'em" variant to the whodunnit; I'd seen it done before in the play and film of Dial 'M' for Murder (note that John Williams played a very Columbo-like detective in the Hitchcock film version; Williams was also on a Columbo episode!) but Columbo did it so well that I went looking for other examples of the format in mystery fiction. It seems as though R. Austin Freeman's stories of Dr. Thorndyke from the 1910s might be the first stories told in that manner. I also sought out the short story "Prescription: Murder" was based on ("Dear Corpus Delicti" by William Link) and the first TV movie that was made from the resulting play Enough Rope. I definitely recommend the Dr. Thorndyke stories and, even if you've seen "Prescription: Murder" you should read the original "Dear Corpus Delicti" because it's got an amazing surprise ending that's different from the Columbo version.

I'm happy I took the time to watch the entire series, it was very rewarding.

"We are also of the cloth." Superman (2025) thoughts

The last attempt to create a cinematic universe from DC Comics properties resulted in the pretty good film Wonder Woman in 2017 and, uh, a whole lot of forgettable detritus.

At this stage, having seen DC twice attempt to roll out a slow-burn universe that attempts to ground itself in realism, I'm definitely ready for a change. James Gunn's Superman (2025) is certainly a change; I knew from his Guardians of the Galaxy films that he had a unique take on super hero properties, but is he really the kind of creative person to help build up an entire interconnected universe of films? That answer is, thankfully, 'yes.' And can he front a super hero story around an old-school stolid property like Superman, the very character who started the genre? There the answer is, 'no,' which is why the film is peppered with people like Mr. Terrific, Hawkgirl, Metamorpho and Guy Gardner.

At this point, I think - as Grant Morrison did with All-Star Superman - that the story of Superman is well-trod and well-known so there's no need to repeat his origin story - which is Gunn's take. The harder part is to get his character correct; it's hard for me to pin down how well Gunn did in that aspect since Clark Kent is barely in the film (maybe that's because films usually spend more time on Clark than Superman) but he's absolutely the Superman of the comics, especially by the standard of All-Star Superman - that he's powerful enough to handle most problems but doesn't always know the best path for applying his power. And, of course, he cares deeply for people. David Corenswet has the right mix of earnestness and toughness.

As a launching point for DC's latest attempt at a shared universe of films, I like the idea of coming in with the universe already well-inhabited and with a rich history of existing super heroes and villains, to say nothing of the tropes particular to Superman (his folks are still alive; he has his Fortress of Solitude, Krypto and Supergirl; and, in a very rare development, the Daily Planet not only has Lois Lane and Perry White but also Jimmy Olsen, Cat Grant, Steve Lombard and Ron Troupe, characters who are usually slighted by the films).

The film's version of Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) is a bit over-the-top - great for this film, but already possessing so many resources and such power that it's hard to see where he could go in any future films - it might actually be better to not revisit the character in this franchise. It's not the best interpretation of Luthor (Clancy Brown remains the standard) but again, it's recognizable as a version from the comics (All-Star Superman once more) and he has all the hubris of the best versions of Luthor; plus, he's loathsome, which creators sometimes forget is an important part in writing a villain.

I remain skeptical about the guest-starring heroes - they're fun and tell you something about how this time, the world is over-populated with heroes rather than totalling maybe a half-dozen guys. They distract from Superman, but they filled in some of the most enjoyable parts of the film. I am enough of a Mr. Terrific fanboy that I actually got excited when he donned a comics-accurate version of his leather jacket. And Nathan Fillion could probably make reading the telephone book entertaining, to say nothing of giving him one of comicdom's biggest jerks (Guy Gardner) to play around with.

I don't know if I'm interested in more stories set in this universe but I do know I like what I saw in this film and not against seeing more.

Backsliding

I've recently been looking back on the television series Sliders and, man... that show wasn't very good, was it?

Sliders was a science fiction show created by Tracy Torme. It starred Jerry O'Connell as Quinn Mallory, an inventor who built a device that enabled him to travel into parallel worlds. Unfortunately, the device lost the coordinates to his original reality and so he and his comrades (originally including Sabrina Lloyd, Cleavant Derricks and John Rhys-Davies) are perpetually 'sliding' from one reality to another, hoping each time they might find the way back home.

The series aired on Fox for 3 years (1995-1997), took a year off, then returned on the Sci-Fi Channel for 2 more years (1998-2000). When the series was first announced I was interested in it but I had no idea exactly when the show started airing or what time it was on in my area. I think it was originally on Fridays; whenever it was, I wasn't usually around when it aired. The first time I caught an episode on its original airdate was when I saw the season finale; I had no idea if the show would be back for a 2nd season but I wanted to see it. I was surprised to learn in retrospect that the 1st season had only 10 episodes. What a brief window!

Season 2 is where I really started watching the show and there's a lot of fun ideas in that season. The show didn't take itself too seriously with wacky concepts like a world where people believe in witchcraft, or where California was part of Texas. Easily the episode I most enjoyed at the time was "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome," where the cast encountered an alternate version of Rhys-Davies' character and weren't certain which version slid with them at the episode's end. In retrospect, this 13-episode season was the highlight of the series.

I saw almost every episode of the 3rd season when they first aired. At the time, I noticed there were a lot of episodes that seemed like rip-offs of popular films. To this day I've never seen the movie Species but I assumed the episode "the Breeder" was a Species rip-off. Apparently, that was deliberate as Tracy Torme got booted off his own show this season. The showrunners also drove off Rhys-Davies and replaced him with Kari Wuhrer. In what became a tradition for the show, whenever a cast member quit Sliders the writers gave their character a humiliating, definitive, cruel death scene. This wound up being Sabrina Lloyd's last season too. Lloyd went on to better things with Sports Night while Rhys-Davies went on to, um, You Wish, but more importantly had no other commitments when Lord of the Rings started filming.

It was watching this season again that really cemeted for me how little the creators cared for their own program. Take the episode "Paradise Lost," where they slide into a small town (rather than either of their usual haunts, the cities of San Francisco or Los Angeles) where the citizens feed people to a Tremors-style monster to prolong their lives. When your show's high concept is that you can send your characters into a parallel world, how do you end up with an episode like this? There's nothing about the script that suggests Sliders; if you told me it was taken from the X-Files or Outer Limits' slush pile, I'd believe you.

The Sci-Fi Channel years saw the show become kind of a vanity project for Jerry O'Connell as he brought in his brother Charlie pretty much just because he had the clout to make them hire his brother. When the O'Connells both quit the show, the series attempted carry on without them, but kept the character of Mallory by casting a new actor (Robert Floyd) as Mallory's alternate self.

Watching that final season of Sliders, it's especially grim to see how far the budget must have fallen. Instead of filming on the Universal backlot, they were shooting on low-budget sets that looked to be made of cardboard and about 5' square. It's amazing that the show carried on so far, but I guess circa 2000 there was a lot of science fiction on cable networks and in syndication (Stargate: SG1, Andromeda, Earth: Final Conflict, First Wave) and I guess every studio and network wanted skin in the game.

I think there are some fun gems in the first 2 seasons of Sliders but boy, overall this show does not hold up.

"The outcome is always unavoidable..." Minor Threats review

Minor Threats was a 2022 mini-series written by Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum with art by Scott Hepburn, colours by Ian Herring and letters by Nate Piekos of Blambot. The creative team reunited for Minor Threats: The Fastest Way Down in 2024. Both were published by Dark Horse Comics.

Minor Threats is told from the perspective of career criminals who live in a world bursting at the seams with super heroes. The five protagonists of the first series are considered low-rung figures who enjoy little prestige among their fellow criminals. However, when a psychopath called Stickman murders the kid sidekick of the super hero Insomniac (basically a Batman expy), it results in a violent crackdown on super-criminals. The five protagonists decide to pool their resources and kill the Stickman in the hopes of stopping the crackdown.

I was skeptical about these comics, to be honest. It caught my attention because of Oswalt's name, but I also doubted whether it would be any good because when Hollywood personalities descend from their lofty heights to go slumming in the world of comics, it's usually because they want to fabricate a pitch for their next movie or TV series. The sort of comics they churn out tend to be very dull, very by-the-numbers, written down to a level where a film or TV executive can understand it.

But Minor Threats? This is a comic book! I mean, it does not look like a bunch of storyboards - there is action, speed lines, sound effects -- all those things movie people disdain.

I've seen Minor Threats compared to Astro City and I think the comparison holds. Because Oswalt's background is comedy I assumed this would be a fairly satirical comic, but it isn't. Instead, like Astro City, it visits familiar tropes from super hero comics but through a different lens - in this case, from the skewed perspective of life-long criminals.

This was a very pleasant surprise - about as violent and profanity-laden as a Robert Kirkman comic but still, a very good super hero comic with a well-realized world, well-written characters and a great plot. That's all I ask for.

"Are the readers still with us?" The Mythmakers review

Last years Abrams published the Mythmakers, a graphic novel by John Hendrix. It's the story of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien's friendship and focuses in primarily on those years they spent sharing ideas and writing their stories together - but with biographical details stretching across both men's lives (and beyond). Some passages are told through text but most of the book is a proper graphic novel. Dramatic license is employed in recounting moments from both men's lives, but Hendrix used direct quotes where possible.

What's unusual about this book is that it's introduced by a lion and a wizard, who guide the audience through the book's narrative. At first it seemed a bit patronizing to me to have these fictional characters talking through Lewis and Tolkien's lives - it left me wondering if the book was meant for younger readers. Still, the lion and the wizard are deployed to discuss ideas outside the scope of Lewis and Tolkien's lives, especially for discussions about how to define a myth and where the two men's works fit in the academic definitions of myth. There's also a deeply personal reason why Hendrix uses these two characters, which is not revealed until the end of the book.

I only learned of the Mythmakers because it was being promoted in Christian circles as a very good book - it's rare that I see Christians promoting a graphic novel, much less one that was published for the general market, not the Christian bookstore speciality market. Hendrix discusses his own faith in the book's back matter and how that influenced his depiction of Lewis and Tolkien's friendship. I won't lie, Hendrix touched my heart.

I think all fans of Lewis and Tolkien feel as Hendrix does - that the loosening of their bond is a tragedy. And that's ultimately what the Mythmakers is walking through - it's the story of how a friendship was made, how that friendship fell apart and how to draw a happy conclusion despite that. This was a fine read and I'm very happy I read it.

2024 Review: Books

I don't read as much fiction as I once did, but I was very pleasantly surprised by Focus (1945) by Arthur Miller, which was apparently the only novel Miller wrote. The story concerns a man who has just started wearing glasses and his old acquaintences all think he looks 'Jewish' but rather than say that to his face, simply discriminate against him. That the problem is one that every character is aware of but no one can bring themselves to say aloud makes for a very tense situation. It's not only a study of prejudice but also of the power of unspoken, unchallenged beliefs.

Another good work of fiction was the Disenchanted (1950) by Budd Schulberg, which I sought out after enjoying Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run the previous year. This one was a fictionalized version of Schulberg's relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald and how the two men tried to write a screenplay together, only for Fitzgerald's alcoholism to scuttle the entire assignment (I watched the resulting film - Winter Carnival - and it is lousy). It's a good novel, yet the Fitzgerald character's continued debasement over hundreds of pages gets to be one-note; I realize all the scenes are inspired by events that really happened to Schulberg but on some level it might have made a superior short story.

My interest in film lead me to Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards (2024) by Tony Lee Moral, a terrific coffee table book; the author's commentary wasn't that illuminating but the samples of production art from Hitchcock's films looked terrific. And Opposable Thumbs (2023) by Matt Singer was a great look at the Roger Ebert/Gene Siskel team and how they functioned, it even inspired me to check out a few of the films that were mentioned in passing!

I suppose it's because of events transpiring among my neighbours to the south that I've become interested in understanding fascism, because in the last year I read the fictional work It Can't Happen Here (1935) by Sinclair Lewis which imagined how fascism could come to the USA; then there's the non-fiction Prequel (2023) by Rachel Maddow which explores the various fascist movements that flourished in the USA in the 1930s, as well as They Thought They Were Free (1955) by Milton Mayer, which was a study of men from a German town who had all either willingly or reluctantly conspired with the Nazis.

Others: On Writing (2000) by Stephen King inspired me in my own writing efforts; The Early Worm (1927) by Robert Benchley was another funny collection of essays; The Day the Revolution Began (2016) by N. T. Wright was a great historical look at the time of Jesus' life; The Jesus I Never Knew (1995) by Philip Yancey was a very good series of meditations on Jesus (which also referenced the above book Focus); and Muito Favorecidos (2019) by Stuart Foster, was a Portuguese version of his book Highly Favoured, a good book on the basics of faith for a primarily African audience.

2024 was also the year in which we lost science fiction author Vernor Vinge.

And that's what I enjoyed the most in 2024; I hope you yourself found some diversions - fiction or non - to enjoy in the year past and wish you good reading, watching or listening in the year ahead.

2024 Review: Television

I don't include a rundown of which television shows I watch each year, but in 2024 I watched a lot more television programming than in recent years - no doubt due to my wife's influence. By far the highlight has been slowly going through the entire series of Columbo! I knew all about Columbo but had never watched a single episode until last year; now we're 6 seasons in with several more to go and it's been a lot of fun. It's also inspired me to introduce my wife to other detective films and TV shows that I've enjoyed that have a similar bend (that is, fiction where the criminal's identity is known but the means by which the detective will catch him is unclear).

We also quite enjoyed the sitcom series How I Met Your Mother, which impressed me by its earnestness - that amidst some very good sitcom jokes there was genuine emotion and romance. Frequently I enjoyed the series as much as a drama as I did as a comedy.

We also watched a few seasons of Wallander (British version), the Kenneth Branagh series about a Swedish police detective who's good at his job yet unable to make his personal life work.

And we went back to some older shows, watching a lot of the detective series Law and Order: Criminal Intent and the sitcom Cheers which were welcome to revisit. And we finished up viewing the entirety of Alias; I summarized my feelings about the series in this post.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed X-Men '97, the sequel to the 1990s animated series. I reviewed the series twice, my first impressions here and a follow-up post here.

I suppose the only sour note of 2024 was the Star Wars series The Acolyte, which was bad, although mostly bad in the same ways I found the Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka to be bad. I wrote a brief dismissal of the series in this post.

2024 was also the year we lost actorCarl Weathers, whom I enjoyed the most on the television series Arrested Development.

Tomorrow: wrapping up 2024 with books!

2024 Review: Movies

Although my wife and I had a few free movie passes, it took us a while to find reasons to visit the cinema - 2024 just wasn't a great year for titles that were good enough to draw us out. In fact, when we did go to see Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes I was extremely irritated that two people in the row in front of me repeatedly pulled out their phones throughout the entire running time of the movie; movies are expensive, yet viewers don't seem too engaged, I guess?

That makes the best cinema experience of 2024 Furiosa, directed by George Miller. I reviewed the movie here and while I enjoyed it, it does suffer in comparison to Mad Max: Fury Road and unfortunately constantly wants the audience to compare the two films.

We also went to see Gladiator II directed by Ridley Scott, which was kind of trashy and dumb but we did have a good time with it (also, no one was checking their phones!).

From older films, I watched It's in the Bag (1945) directed by Richard Wallace, a Fred Allen movie. I've never been that interested in Allen's comedy but this was a very witty film with terrific dialogue and fun interactions between Allen and a multitude of guest stars (including Jack Benny himself!).

Another older one I checked out was No Man of Her Own (1950) directed by Mitchell Leisen, an adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's terrific crime novel I Married a Dead Man, with Barbara Stanwyck in the lead role as a woman who allows a grieving family to believe she's a dead man's fiancee.

In more recent films, I enjoyed the courtroom drama The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (2023) directed by William Friedkin. I reviewed the film (with some other movies) in this post.

My wife and I also checked out Les Miserables (2012) directed by Tom Hooper, which is the first time I've ever actually experienced the musical version of Victor Hugo's novel, having previously read the book and watched two non-musical film adaptations.

And I checked out some very good documentaries too - Helvetica (2007) directed by Gary Hustwit is easily the best documentary I've seen about design (a subject dear to my wife). The Line King (1996) directed by Susan W. Dryfoos is a documentary about artist Al Hirschfeld and was a very good biographical picture. I also enjoyed the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine documentary What We Left Behind (2019) directed by Ira Steven Behr and the biography film Jim Henson: Idea Man (2024) directed by Ron Howard.

2024 was also the year that directorNorman Jewison passed away.

Tomorrow: 2024 in television.

2024 Review: Comics

Although I no longer read as many comic books as I once did, 2024 saw a slight increase as I found a number of new titles to follow, along with quite a few trade paperbacks and graphic novels.

It takes something pretty impressive for me to pay attention to my one-time employers at Marvel, but Al Ewing has consistently proved worthy of my attention. I read the first year of his new series Immortal Thor with artists Martin Coccolo, Ibraim Roberson, Greg Land and Carlos Magno and it's a brilliant examination of Thor and his nature as a walking myth. As in Immortal Hulk, Ewing has an amazing knack for wielding continuity in unexpected ways, such as his reinterpretation of Thor's mother Gaea and her motivations. There's also plenty of satire as Ewing's use of Roxxon mocks not only Marvel themselves but a certain thin-skinned billionaire too.

I also read Avengers, Inc. by Al Ewing and Leonard Kirk which was, strangely, a continuation of stories Ewing had begun in previous mini-series starring Ant-Man and the Wasp. This one was basically a science fiction mystery series.

The first big new series for me is Public Domain by Chip Zdarsky, a fascinating dramatic series about the tug-of-war between a comic book creator, the publisher who own his creation, his family and all the messiness of dealing with the comic book marketplace. I reviewed the first trade paperback here.

I tried the new Image series Free Agents by Kurt Busiek, Fabian Nicieza and Stephen Mooney on the strength of the Busiek/Nicieza writing team whom I've enjoyed in the past. I read through several issues of this series and it just didn't click for me; I hope to write a blog post about it in the future so that I can puzzle out why it feels cold to me.

Superman: Lost by Priest and Carlo Pagulayan was an excellent Superman mini-series by Priest, exploring how Superman might cope with the trauma of being lost in space for years, only to return to Earth shortly after he'd departed. Priest always used complain that no one would let him write Superman so it's a small triumph that this series existed at all!

I also read Le Horla by Guillaume Sorel, a fine adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's short story. I reviewed the graphic novel here.

And finally, there are the series that I continued with in 2024, including the mini-seriesSilver Surfer: Rebirth - Legacy by Ron Marz and Ron Lim; I reviewed the series here. And Image continued the new run of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero by Larry Hama, Chris Mooneyham and Paul Pelletier, which continues Hama's sprawling storylines from IDW. Finally, Usagi Yojimbo: The Crow by Stan Sakai is the latest Usagi Yojimbo series and it was up to Sakai's usual quality of excellence.

2024 was also a year in which several of my favourite comic book creators passed away, including Peter B. Gillis, Tom Luth, Paul Neary, Don Perlin and Trina Robbins.

Tomorrow: 2024 in film.

Book Review: Death of Dignity

I recently purchased a copy of Victoria Brittain's 1998 book Death of Dignity: Angola's Civil War. The author was a reporter for the Guardian who visited Angola a few times in the 80s and 90s and I was interested to find a perspective about the country from that time period.

The book is slim, numbering only 100 pages plus a 10 page preface. The preface is what I'd hoped the rest of the book would be like - the author's personal experiences as a journalist in Angola, describing what she witnessed and what people told her. But that's not how the other 100 pages were presented; the book is primarily a history of Angola from 1975-1998. It's not really about Angolan society, or even Angolan politics; it's a book about international politics and how Angola was played like a football by various competing nations after it became independent.

The content is fine - I did pick up some interesting details here and there and particular timings of when things were announced versus when they were actually implemented that I hadn't found in other books. Otherwise, the information found in the book could be found in other titles; I was hoping the book would be something more personal and unique.

But while the content is fine, the manner in which it's relayed left me frustrated, and that's what I really want to write about. In the foreword, the author made it clear ther her book would not be "neutral" in tone but rather partisan. The author did not like the rebels and did not use any of its members' interviews in the book because "I have interviewed too many of them and seen too much of their suffering to listen to the lying justifications of those responsible."

She also promised in the foreword that "nor are there interviews with Western diplomats, the normal staple fare of Western journalists." Which is an odd hill to plant one's flag upon. She quoted Western diplomats all the time, featuring public quotes from the likes of Henry Kissinger, Chester Crocker and Margaret Antsee. She also quoted an official from the UN whom she didn't identify; either her source didn't attribute the quote or she contradicted herself? But why make the promise "I won't interview these people, but I will quote extensively from them?"

She emphasized that she did interview many Angolans and quoted them anonymously to protect them, but even there her interviewing is brief; if you added up all the interviews she conducted, it might account for 5 of the 100 pages. She quoted from the rebel's public statements very frequently, but at least she ascribed a portion of agency to them. Contrast that with her treatment of the government in quotes such as this, about the resumption of the civil war in early 1993: "The horror of how life had been reduced to a numb battle for survival in those among the MPLA leadership who never forgot it for a moment paid a heavy psychological prize as they agonised without being able to do anything." The government is written about as though they were, at best, passive.

I suppose what I really wanted was the author's personal experiences and interviews, not an opinionated guide through Angolan history. It's an angry book that is very particular to the time in which it was published (near the end of the war). But as a 1990s work of non-fiction on Angola, I found Karl Maier's book Angola: Promises and Lies - cited in Brittain's bibliography - a much better work.

"He's as short-sighted as he was when he created those damn characters." Public Domain Vol. 1: Past Mistakes review

I recently bought "Past Mistakes," the first collected edition of a new Image Comics series called Public Domain by Canadian writer-artist Chip Zdarsky. I've been a bit on the outside of comics for the last decade so while I was aware of Zdarsky being a creator on titles such as Sex Criminals and Daredevil, Public Domain is the first work of Zdarsky's I've read.

The concept behind Public Domain feels all-too-familiar. Singular Comics are the publishers of a super hero called "the Domain" who was originally created by Syd Dallas and Jerry Jasper. The Domain has become a massive franchise, the character appearing in blockbuster motion pictures. While artist Syd Dallas is invited to film premieres, he sees few other benefits from his creation's success - but as long as the fans are happy, he doesn't complain. Jasper seems to have done much better for himself, perhaps because his sister is the publisher of Singular.

So far, so on the nose. It's a familiar tale in comics, mostly reminiscent of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. But where Public Domain really gets moving is when Jerry's assistant Tanya Ko discovers a document that proves Syd is the true owner of the Domain. Syd doesn't really want to start a legal fight for his propery (especially when US law favours the side with the most money to spend) but over the course of "Past Mistakes" he resolves to fight for his rights for the sake of his sons Miles and Dave. Dave is something of a screw-up who can't hold on to a job, although he's very bright and chipper (possibly due to drug use); Miles appears to be the more grounded and relatable of the two brothers, up until he proves to be a gambling addict with massive debts that need to be paid. It's Miles' debts, above all, that cinches Syd's decision to go after his rights for the Domain.

I blogged before about Stan Lee in my joint review of I am Stan and Stuf' Said, so this blog has already aired my strong feelings on the shabby treatment comic book creators have received from their publishers and the outrageous methods corporations have used to assert control over character copyrights. Public Domain isn't merely a find-and-replace telling of the Lee/Kirby saga, there are also elements of Siegel and Shuster's struggles over Superman and Bob Kane's struggle against all of his betters.

I didn't realize Public Domain was an ongoing series when I bought the trade, I thought it was a single graphic novel - so you might see more posts about Public Domain on the blog in the future, I enjoyed it quite a bit!

"We're really going to do this?" Silver Surfer: Rebirth - Legacy review

Perhaps because Jim Starlin had another falling-out with Marvel, Marvel has recently published a few mini-series written by Ron Marz (with artist Ron Lim), who of all Marvel writers has seemed to be the one most sympatico to Starlin's wishes vis-a-vis the manner in which his creations are depicted. In 2022 I blogged about Marz and Lim's Silver Surfer: Rebirth mini-series; last year they teamed up again for the Warlock: Rebirth mini-series, then followed that with Silver Surfer: Rebirth - Legacy. Ron Lim is inked by Don Ho and coloured by Romulo Fajardo Jr.

All three of these series are deliberate efforts at courting nostlagic readers - and I guess it worked, since I bought them! I don't consider myself a great Ron Marz fan, although I did enjoy his 1990s work on Silver Surfer. The real draw for me is to see new interior art by Ron Lim, who has been otherwise turning out variant covers in recent years. Lim was a personal favourite artist of mine in the 1990s and I enjoy seeing him show off his flair for splashy yet carefully composed storytelling.

Like the other two series, Silver Surfer: Rebirth - Legacy is set during the 1990s continuity; it includes the character Legacy (son of Captain Marvel) whom Marz and Lim debuted in the 1990s. Adam Warlock, Gamora and Pip make quick cameo appearances. Thanos shows up; there's also a character called Eve Warlock whom Marz and Lim created for Warlock: Rebirth and plays a pivotal role in this series. The mini-series is concerned yet again with the Infinity Gems, as Mephisto dupes Legacy into giving him the Time Gem. Honestly, to read Marz's stories, you'd think the Infinity Watch were constantly losing track of the gems back in the 90s.

There's also a brief trip to the distant future of "the Last Galactus Story," mainly to acknowledge that in that future Nova was still alive, yet Marz and Lim killed her during their 1990s Silver Surfer stories. It doesn't amount to much other than a brief opportunity to see Nova again (Marz has been pretty unrepentant about killing her way back when).

Silver Surfer: Rebirth - Legacy has a bit of flash and flair to its tale, but mostly it's for those of us with fond memories of reading Marz and Lim's work in the 1990s and enjoy seeing a bit of a remix of those stories.

"Remember me?" Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga review

Recently I was able to celebrate my birthday by watching the film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga in the cinema. I nearly missed seeing this film on the big screen as it didn't do very well at the box office and so was shuffled off to the second-run theatres very quickly. And I certainly knew that this would be a film worth seeing in the theatre.

I'm very fond of Mad Max: Fury Road - I think it was one of the best filmgoing experiences I've ever had because the film itself is such pure cinema - visual storytelling with an unyielding pace and sense of momentum. Even though I had seen all of the previous Mad Max films and thought they were okay (Road Warrior was the best, I thought), I didn't have strong opinions on them. Heck, I didn't have strong opinions on filmmaker George Miller, even though I had seen virtually all of his movies.

The success of Mad Max: Fury Road apparently gave us Miller's 2022 film Three Thousand Years of Longing, an adaptation of an obscure piece of literature that deconstructed fairy tales. That movie came and went with barely anyone other than me paying attention to it, but I suppose it was an indulgence Miller was permitted. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga seems more like the kind of movie a studio would request - something that should definitely bring back those who enjoyed Mad Max: Fury Road. But that movie came out in 2015, so whatever 'heat' surrounded Mad Max at the time has surely cooled; I'm afraid the lukewarm response to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is to be expected.

And that's a shame, because Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a pretty good film. It's not inventive in the way that Mad Max: Fury Road was. In that film, we learned how the world worked as the film unfolded. Immortan Joe, the War Boys, the Citadel, the Green Place, the Vuvalini... Furiosa doesn't only revisit the titular Furiosa, as a prequel it has to -- by necessity -- revisit the people and places we saw in Mad Max: Fury Road. Some of the places we only glimpsed (Gastown, Bullet Farm) are embellished further. But the visuals of the world are kept faithful between the two films and it suffers from that problem with prequels - everything in the film has to end up in a place consistent with where the story begins in the chronologically subsequent picture.

Furiosa has a different feel in part because it doesn't cover a short span of time (Mad Max: Fury Road covered, what, 48 hours in the characters' lives?), instead transpiring over a decade's worth of history. The way the story is broken up with 'chapter' breaks contributes to the different feeling, but it means that although there's plenty of peril and thrills, it lacks the unrelenting momentum of Mad Max: Fury Road. We do eventually get to scenes on a War Rig with the occupants fending off invaders (several of them air-based invaders, lending a welcome variety from the previous film) but the emphasis is on Furiosa's life and struggles. Ultimately it's a story of vengeance directed by Furiosa at the man who killed her mother, but it takes a very long time for her to find the opportunity to claim her vengeance.

It's never boring; it's frequently amazing. If you enjoyed Mad Max: Fury Road you'll enjoy seeing more of that film's world and explanations for the characters' backgrounds. Heck, Furiosa's line in Fury Road - "Remember me?" - uttered to Immortan Joe, now has a context and it's not what I imagined when I saw the earlier film.

I Watched Movies; I Have Opinions.

Airline travelling is the great opportunity for each of us to discover... what's been in the cinemas recently?

It seems just about every major film takes it turn as an offering presented on the tiny viewscreen located on the back of your neighbour's headrest. On my recent travels I watched four films; three were pretty good, one was rather forgettable.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023) is an adaptation of a play I hadn't heard of, which was itself adapted from a novel by Herman Wouk. I haven't read the novel either, but I knew the story from the 1954 film (The Caine Mutiny) that starred Humphrey Bogart as the commanding officer of the USS Caine, who is persecuted by his subordinates and finally driven into a breakdown during a military court martial. The 2023 version stars Kiefer Sutherland as the officer; it was directed by William Friedkin, his last before his death; sadly it was also the final film appearance of actor Lance Reddick.

As I wrote above, I wasn't aware the book had also been designed to serve as a stage play. I assumed this movie would be a full dramatization of the events leading to the mutiny; instead, it's a courtroom drama with characters discussing their versions of the events in question but with no flashbacks to them. I wonder if Friedkin took an interest in adapting the play because during the pandemic it wouldn't have been too risky to film. I should also note that the story is set in contemporary times, rather than the World War II setting of the original book, play and film.

The film has all of three sets and zero action scenes - it's carried entirely by performances and the performances are very good. This was easily the best of the films I watched; how nice that Friedkin's final picture was such a good one!

American Fiction (2023) was not quite what I was expecting; it's an adaptation of Erasure by Percival Everett and stars Jeffrey Wright as a frustrated literary professor who writes a novel he intends to use as a satire of the works he sees written about black lives and is then shocked when his satire is accepted as a worthy novel by the people whose respect he'd been unable to earn.

I thought American Fiction would be a pretty biting film, but while it is concerned with satire it's not particularly funny. There is a funny sequence where Wright imagines a scene from his book (Keith David turns up as one of the characters), but this is not Spike Lee's Bamboozled, it seldom tries to be funny. It's ultimately about Wright's character and his family and all their personal baggage, with the sensationalized novel creating a plot for the character scenes to hang from. I liked it but it's difficult to recommend.

The Beekeeper (2024) is a Jason Staham action film directed by David Ayer. Surely I've been disappointed by enough Statham movies in the past that I would avoid this, right? And given how vulgar I've found Ayer's films this surely wouldn's be for me, right? Yet I heard a bit of talk about this film on the internet indicating that it was a very satisfying revenge film because Statham's character is being pit against online scammers who cheat people out of their money. And yes, all of that does feel very cathartic to watch.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) is a horror film derived from the sequence in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula where the vessel Demeter ferries Dracula to England while he picks off the crew one by one. I thought isolating that sequence from the novel was a pretty choice for a horror film, but this film doesn't so much adapt the novel as obtain inspiration from it; they don't follow the events as recorded in the ship's log from the novel. Also, the film's rules about vampires are fairly typical Hollywood rules, such as sunlight causing them to burst into flames (which isn't in the Stoker novel). Surprisingly, the movie depicts Dracula as an inhuman creature inspired by Nosferatu even though it's a Universal movie - meaning they could draw from Universal's own history of visuals. It gets pretty ridiculous at times but I suppose I wanted a more restrained movie, faithful to the original text; this film, which features a CGI Dracula with immense bat wings who comes swooping down upon people is many things, but not restrained.

Review: Le Horla

Guy de Maupassant's 1887 short story "The Horla" was my introduction to the author; I heard a production of the radio series Mystery in the Air with Peter Lorre in the lead role of a man being haunted by an invisible presence (here) and it made an immediate impression. Certainly the adaptation featured Lorre at the top of his range, closing with him in the midst of a ranting breakdown to beat all breakdowns.

I read a lot of Maupassant's short stories (possibly all of them, I haven't found a decent bibliography that takes into account all the variant English titles his stories have had). "The Horla" wasn't Maupassant's only supernatural tale but such themes are rare in his work. "The Horla" remains his most famous work.

The concept of an invisible presence isn't necessarily ideal for adaptation in a visual medium - perhaps why radio suited it so well - but it has been done. You might recall that in 2012 I reviewed an adaptation of "the Horla" in Ernie Colon's Inner Sanctum graphic novel. But that adaptation played pretty loose with the original work.

Perhaps Maupassant's work requires a fellow Frenchman to do it justice. Guillaume Sorel adapted the short story in a full-length 2014 graphic novel. I've looked at a few French graphic novels on the blog recently and I suppose I should reiterate - I don't read French. My Portuguese helps a little; exposure to French in my bilingual homeland helps a little; but what helped me the most in Sorel's Le Horla is that dialogue isn't what drives his adaptation of this familiar story. Most of the atmosphere and terror is visual in nature.

Sorel has a few means to make the invisible menace visible. One is by demonstrating the effects of the creature's presence upon the hapless protagonist, such as in this scene where it simply breaks a flower by the stem. It's eerie and suspenseful, taking good advantage of the Horla's unseen nature.

Sorel's second means is to simply depict the Horla; it appears as an outline of a figure when it hovers over the protagonist at night. I'm not sure how I feel about those scenes - Sorel's Horla is terrifying, but giving the creature even an outline makes it somewhat comprehensible. I feel some of the terror of the story is in the creature's unreality.

Maupassant suffered from mental illlness (namely, syphilis) and it's hard to avoid seeing that in the story of the Horla - that the protagonist's increasingly unhinged rants were coming from a place that Maupassant knew all to well. Sorel's interpretation of the protagonist is a bit more restrained and keeps the ranting to a minimum. Still, Sorel's Le Horla is the most faithful adaptation I have found of Maupassant's story and I do strongly recommend it to fans of Maupassant.