Gideon Falls Volume 4: The Pentoculus

/ Alex Good / 45 Comments

Gideon Falls Volume 4: The Pentoculus

Ah, things were really clicking in this series now. There’s a lot of jumping around, from the different dimensions accessed by the Pentoculus (that’s the multiverse machine Norton Sinclair built in his barn) to the different bodies that the Laughing Man (or as I call him, the Bug God) inhabits, but I found it all reasonably easy to follow. In part because the threads were starting to be drawn together, as the main characters (it is written that there must be five, constituting a kind of Fellowship of the Bug) all finally find themselves on the same page. Dr. Xu even gets to see herself as Old Dr. Xu in the village dimension, which is somehow at the center of everything.

In addition to the Fellowship of the Bug there are also other networks in play, including the uninspiring Ploughmen and the Bishop’s gathering of bug-fighting priests. Meanwhile, the Laughing Man is vomiting his bugs into his victims in the sort of mouth-to-mouth process that has long been popular in horror movies (see my note on this in my review of The Invasion). Once possessed, these people go on bloody rampages, all (I think) just to get attention since the Laughing Man only needs to possess Danny in order to open all the doors. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it’s just because Danny, as a character, seems like such an empty vessel thus far.

Lots of slam-bang action, and Andrea Sorrentino was really pulling out all the stops when it comes to fragmenting the page into hallucinogenic collages. This is always been his style, and with this series he gets to indulge it fully. So overall it’s a series that’s finishing strong, making me hopeful for the conclusion.

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Bookmarked! #86: The Luck of the Irish

/ Alex Good / 13 Comments

When I was a kid I used to look for four-leaf clovers. Not sure if I ever found one. If I did, I might have stuck it between the pages of a book. That’s what you did with things like that, in times long ago.

Book: A Nation and Not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution 1913–23 by Diarmaid Ferriter

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Marple: 4.50 from Paddington

/ Alex Good / 8 Comments

The year is 1957, though it’s never mentioned and I’m only saying that because of the publication date. What does this mean? Well, when the conversation turns to “foreigners” one can no longer safely assume that the French are meant, because “nowadays we have so many nationalities over here, Italians, Germans, Austrians, all the Scandinavian countries –.” Meanwhile, family members aren’t sent off to India because “that is all done with now.”

As for England’s green and pleasant land, even in St. Mary Mead there’s a nearby airfield so that the jets flying over break the panes in Miss Marple’s greenhouse. And, drafty and cold, a confessed “anachronism,” Rutherford Hall is now caught in a web of railway lines. None of the Crackenthorpe heirs has any attention of living there. They just want to sell it to developers, for whom it will be worth a fortune.

But at least the kids are alright. They’re reading something called “space fiction.” Because who knows? Someday manned space flight might be a thing.

I thought this was a really enjoyable book, but not a great mystery. You can tell why it was the first Miss Marple story to be adapted into a movie, as Murder She Said (1961) starring Margaret Rutherford. There’s a Hitchcockian hook at the beginning and then a manor house mystery that plays at times like a bedroom farce as all the Crackenthorpe men get handsy with Lucy Eyelesbarrow. Including Old Man Crackenthorpe himself, who has one foot in the grave!

And who could blame them? Good help is so hard to find, especially in 1957, and Lucy is a certified keeper. She not only cooks all her meals from scratch, she even peels the mushrooms. I’ve never heard of anyone doing that, but I guess it’s a sign of class. Or was.

But as much fun as it all is, it’s not, as I’ve said, a good mystery. As critic Robert Barnard put it, “Miss Marple apparently solves the crime by divine guidance, for there is very little in the way of clues or logical deduction.” Things are wrapped up quickly, through a ludicrous stratagem, and the great detective’s explanation left me as baffled as Barnard was as to how she managed to identify the killer. This isn’t playing fair with the reader, and I expected more from Dame Agatha.

I can’t leave off without mentioning another of Christie’s old-fashioned Britishisms. It comes when Miss Marple is talking about finances: “Women have a lot of sense, you know, when it comes to money matters. Not high finance, of course. No woman can hope to understand that, my dear father said. But everyday LSD – that sort of thing.”

I pulled a blank on LSD. I was sure the old pussy (that’s how you referred to old ladies back in the day, to the point where Inspector Craddock doesn’t know what else to call them) didn’t mean Lysergic Acid Diethlamide. It’s 1957 remember, not the ‘60s. But what did she mean? After some Internet sleuthing I discovered it’s an abbreviation for pounds, shillings, and pence that’s derived from the Latin currency denominations librae, solidi, and denarii. I don’t know if it’s an expression much in use anymore even in England.

Marple index

Game night

/ Alex Good / 12 Comments

So many games, so little time.

This past weekend I stopped by Gryphcon, which was being held in the basement of the University Centre, which for some reason is called Peter Clark Hall. Not the University Centre. That’s called the UC. Just the basement. This big room in the basement is Peter Clark Hall. Isn’t that weird? I always think of a Hall as being, if not a building, at least something above ground.

Anyway, Gryphcon is the annual board game and role-playing game “convention,” and it was quite well attended this year. Lots of people playing games, some of which I knew but others I’d never heard of. I took the above picture just as they were cleaning up. It’s a table that had some of the free games that drop-ins could play. That is, just pick-up games and not the registered games involving modeling kits, role-playing campaigns, or the elimination rounds for the Settlers of Catan tournament.

I’ve played Codenames. It’s a great game, already a classic. I’ve played Ticket to Ride. Great game play, but calculating who won at the end is a bit of a drag. I’ve played Skip-Bo, which is a fun and really simple card game. It’s definitely more for kids. I’ve never played Settlers of Catan though I’ve watched it played and it seems like fun. I played Pandemic once and I think it’s the kind of game you have to spend a lot of time with to enjoy. I’ve played Clue. It’s one of those old-favourite board games that I don’t think holds up that well. And that’s it for this table. (You can click on the pic to make it bigger.)

The Avengers: Four

/ Alex Good / 8 Comments

The Avengers: Four

Tight. I liked it.

Four is a retro-flavoured miniseries written by Mark Waid that has Captain America heading a new Avengers team after the OGs “decided to take some time off.” So they’re now down to four members: Cap, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver. Since the newbies are all “reformed villains” and relatively underpowered Cap has his work cut out for him whipping them into a functional unit. A point that’s underlined by the way they get their butts kicked out of the gate by the Frightful Four, with all the bad press that follows. Egged on by the media, even the public start getting into it, mocking the “Mighty Pretenders.” Things are really not off to a good start for the not-so-fab four.

Things get much worse however when they rescue a young Thai lady named Cressida from the Stranger. Cressida has the power to drain the life force from others, leaving them dried-up husks. She can either absorb that life force or transfer it to someone else, making them “better, faster, stronger.” Which sounds a bit like being a coach for the Olympics.

The Avengers basically adopt Cressida and start calling her Avenger X. But she has nefarious plans of her own, apparently being motivated by revenge. I don’t know for what. Her character isn’t filled in very much, and she even mocks the suggestion made at one point of providing an origin story. The Stranger considers her to be not a mutant, even though she says she’s had her powers since she was a kid. I think we just have to take her as a given.

She’s a formidable enemy though, both in how she schemes to set the Avengers against one another and for her (borrowed) superpowers. Indeed, she’s basically too much for this new team and at the end the OGs have to come back and lend a mighty hand. Which I thought was a bit of a cop-out. The story arc seemed to be the familiar one of the team coming together and solving their own problems. The way they’re thrown a literal lifeline here undercut all that.

Still, I loved the throwback feel to the art and the way the story held together. It’s a nice, satisfying unit, with all the different sub-adventures contributing in different ways to the main Cressida storyline. In terms of character the good guys are conflicted and the bad guys wicked in their usual bickering, arrogant way. Good and evil are complementary and evenly matched, and Waid can bring both darkness and humour to the proceedings (Wizard’s epitaph for Avenger X was a bitchy twist I wasn’t expecting!). In sum, it’s nothing wildly out of the ordinary, but it does everything a superhero comic is supposed to do, which was a treat.

Graphicalex

Cla$$war

/ Alex Good / 12 Comments

Cla$$war

In which a bunch of cynical, burnt-out, and horny superheroes, created by an ex-Nazi scientist with a thing for human experimentation, dress up in stars-and-stripes costumes and fight America’s wars. But when one of the members of the team (he’s just called “American”) develops a conscience the world’s mightiest heroes are soon fighting among themselves.

With a synopsis like that I was expecting something very much along the lines of The Boys, and that’s what Cla$$war is. But Cla$$war actually came first, running from 2002 to 2004 while The Boys was 2006-2012. And Marvel’s Civil War storyline, which also shares some similarities to what we get here, kicked off in 2006 as well. Actually, at the time Cla$$war was thought to have been influenced by DC’s The Authority, but Rob Williams says he didn’t know The Authority before he started writing and that his inspiration was more drawn from the Noam Chomsky he’d been reading.

The title, complete with dollar signs, is a bit misleading. In fact, I’m not sure why it was chosen. Nothing in the comic addresses class war in the sense of economic exploitation and the effects of entrenched social inequality. Instead, its target is American imperialism. The Enola Gay team (that’s what they’re called) are more supersoldiers than superheroes, fighting alongside the troops in foreign countries while the political rot deepens at home.

I wasn’t thrilled by the story here, not because of any political leanings (I like Chomsky too) but because the political message wasn’t new. The references here are up to date, with the president that American begins by attacking (he publicly brands the word “LIAR” on his forehead) being a stand-in for George W. Bush, and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq being referenced as earlier forays by Enola Gay. But it also felt a lot like the 1970s, with the Vietnam War and the political conspiracy thrillers of the time. And the invasion of Glenada is clearly a reference to the 1983 invasion of Grenada.

That said, I came away thinking this is a comic that should be better known. Perhaps being published by Com.x, a smaller British comic publisher, meant it didn’t get as much exposure. I thought the art by Trevor Hairsine and Travel Foreman was first-rate, and while the story was pedestrian I liked the way the different characters sparked off one another. American is a bit of a stick, but the other members of Enola Gay, while jerks, have distinct and complicated personalities. And the new superfreak the Nazi doctor whips up in his lab had real potential. I wanted to read more about all of these guys, but for whatever reason the series didn’t continue. It was initially planned to run for 12 issues but they only did six. As things stand the story breaks off, with only the character of Heavyweight now removed from the picture. Twenty years later I doubt we’ll see the series continued, at least in the way Williams might have intended. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a sequel.

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Holmes: The Ripper Legacy

/ Alex Good / 6 Comments

I didn’t much care for this. David Stuart Davies is a decent writer and a renowned Holmesian, but something just felt off.

As one of the Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series it’s a pastiche, but the narrow meaning of the word “pastiche” is that it’s an imitation of the style of previous works, and that might be a place to start. While part of the book is presented in the canonical manner of being the written recollections of Dr. Watson, the excerpts from his journal are interlaced with chapters from a third-person omniscient point of view describing actions and events occurring elsewhere. Holmes’s thoughts are even described, which I found jarring.

Also, if not quite jarring but disconcerting, was the character of Holmes. He’s quite unpleasant here, especially in the early going. Not just brusque but rude and insulting, even to the husband and wife who have lost their 8-year-old child. He’s also not very impressive as a detective. He knows that the lost child had been adopted because . . . his picture doesn’t look like either of his parents. Later, he will be embarrassed when he pays a pair of prostitutes to tell him where he can find someone when he’s standing right below a tavern sign with the person’s name on it. So much for his powers of observation. Another big clue will be provided by pictures of the same country house hanging on the walls of a man’s office and home. Even Watson should have noticed that. But then a pattern is held to where Holmes is always one step ahead and Watson a couple of steps behind (which leads to his being captured by the bad guys not once but twice).

Another point that I thought out of place was some of the action. Here’s a taste:

Inside the chamber, Henshaw had taken advantage of the distraction caused by Gaunt’s exit and had scrabbled across the floor to retrieve the gun. With a cry of satisfaction he grabbed it and, clambering to his feet, aimed it at Holmes. Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger. The detective feinted to the left, the bullet just clipping the shoulder of his overcoat. Henshaw roared his dismay and was about to shoot again, but Holmes fired first. Henshaw was hit in the chest and the force of the blow flung his body backwards. With an animal-like bellow he crashed against the far wall of the room, and then slowly slithered down to the floor, leaving a thin trail of blood in his wake.

Watson describes this scene as being “like some violent mummer’s play,” but what it sounds like to me is hard-boiled detective fiction of the American school. And this isn’t the first man Holmes kills in the book.

A pastiche is fan service, and certain popular elements tend to show up in a lot of them. Characters like Mycroft Holmes and Professor Moriarty weren’t seen very often in the canon, nor do the Baker Street Irregulars appear more than a couple of times, but they’re here again, as they are in most Holmes pastiches. But the problem with recurring characters like these is that they become stock figures. Here is Moriarty finally coming face-to-face with Holmes:

“Call me sentimental, Sherlock Holmes, but I have a whim to take a final drink with you. We have gazed at each other for some time across the great divide that separates us and yet we share some strange kind of bond. We are both masters of our profession, you and I; meticulous, brilliant and resourceful. It is these qualities that almost make us brothers.”

You can see what I mean by calling this stuff fan service. But while fans may eat it up I thought it just seemed tired.

The plot itself, finally, mines the Stephen Knight thesis that the Ripper slayings were meant to cover-up the affairs of Prince Albert Victor, then second-in-line to the throne. I don’t think this is very likely, but it has been a popular source for subsequent fictions, like the film Murder by Decree and Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell. I thought it unnecessary here though, and couldn’t figure out why the government considered it to be such a big deal that the prince had a love child. Wasn’t that common to most royals? And how would anyone prove it anyway? The eye test?

So to me it felt like going through the motions, giving Holmes fans a bit of everything except maybe a cameo from Irene Adler (another minor figure from the canon who has enjoyed a long deuterocanonical afterlife). But the mystery wasn’t that interesting and there was an air of glumness and nastiness about it too. Not my thing, but if you wanted to be generous you could see it as an attempt to grow the brand.

Holmes index

Shaft: Imitation of Life

/ Alex Good / 23 Comments

Shaft: Imitation of Life

No, this comic doesn’t t have anything to do with the 1959 Douglas Sirk melodrama of the same name. Instead, it takes its title from a long interior monologue our hero Shaft has over the question of whether art imitates life (mimesis) or life imitates art (Oscar Wilde). Doesn’t that seem a little heady for Shaft? Well, in my review of the 1971 film Shaft I did remark upon the well-stocked bookshelves in his apartment. He’s not just a complicated man but a  guy who reads!

That monologue has a point here because Shaft is looking for a missing person and his investigation takes him (as per usual) into the seedy underbelly of a rotten Big Apple, specifically a mob-run porn operation. But at the same time some indie filmmakers, financed by the same mob outfit, are making a movie about Shaft’s adventures (called The Black Dick, if you can dig it) for which Shaft has been hired as a consultant. So before long it feels like the line is being blurred between what’s real and what’s movie moonshine.

It’s a simple story, of the kind that was popular at the time (that time being the 1970s). Think of movies like Hardcore. The bit of a twist they give it is that the missing person is a young gay man rescued by another gay man who teams up with Shaft. But to be honest, I didn’t find this part that interesting. It does benefit though from keeping things simple, and Dietrich Smith’s clean artwork is an incongruous but oddly effective fit with the sleazy proceedings. With his skin-tight turtlenecks showing off an overdeveloped chest that casts a pronounced shadow in any light, Shaft himself seems more than a bit like a plastic action figure, but that works too. They could have gone with a generic look, which is what I was expecting, but I like how they went with a more cartoonish change-up. Yeah, I could dig it.

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