![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
2011 Books 41-44
May. 28th, 2011 08:56 am41) A Downhill Lie: a Hacker's return to a ruinous sport by Carl Hiaasen: I heard the author on Wait Wait a couple months back and noted to myself that the book sounded interesting, hence my picking it up when it appeared on the library's audiobook list. It was interesting and fun, but I expect that it would have meant a lot more if I actually, ya'know, played golf.
42) Tom Strong by Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse and others: my reread of Top Ten has of course triggered a reread of the America's Best Comics line, and I remain amazed by how good a book Tom Strong is. On one level it's nice, straightforward comic book super hero, but it's also thoughtful, endlessly inventive, respectful of comics history and a great example of super-exploration, something I wish we saw more of in both comics and gaming. Plus, the titular hero is such a great example of the strong, ethical scientist that Lester Dent mastered with Doc Savage. It's a good, solid heroic core, and I think people under-value the storytelling versatility of super-strength and modest damage resistance in supers gaming. This might be why I keep coming back to Jim Cambias' Doc Toltec as a game hook. as he's another great version of the iconic structure. I will warn people that there's a chunk of the book - much of the last quarter - which is fill in stories top get the book to 36 issues so that the final issue could coincide with the end of Promethia, and the failures of execution visible there show how the character type is much harder to get then you'd think.
43) Tom Strong's Terrific Tales by Alan Moore, Steve Moore and others: I immediately picked this 12 issue series up for a reread, and part of me wishes that the Tom Strong and Young Tom Story stores from here had been folded into the regular Tom Strong book to avoid the aforementioned filler spot in the main book, as they're all solidly done. The other component of TSTT is Jonni Future, which is Steve Moore and Art Adams doing to Adam Strange what Alan Moore had done to various other DC characters in his image days - reinventing them just enough to show you how cool they were. However, Jonni Future is mired in cheesecake wink nudge stuff which diminishes the idea (I don't mind seeing Art Adams draw hlaf naked women, but that really shouldn't be the focus of the stories).
44) Alan Moore's run on Awesome Comics: Alan Moore also did some work for Rob Leifeld's Awesome Comics, specifically a run on Supreme, Leifield's pathetic Superman rip-off, which produced one of the best runs of Superman ever, and Judgement Day, which performed the alchemy in turning the dross of the Awesome Comics universe into gold. I'm not sure how much Leifield realized that Moore was deconstructing and, well, shredding, every story that Lefield had produced in the script of Judgement Day, which writes off the needless dark violence of the 90's comic market with some ideas about the nature of comic book stories that he explores in much greater depth in Promethia. Plus, going from Chris Sprouse's work on Tom Strong and Supreme to Leifield's work on Judgement Day and we learn the important fact that Leifield can't draw for crap.
42) Tom Strong by Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse and others: my reread of Top Ten has of course triggered a reread of the America's Best Comics line, and I remain amazed by how good a book Tom Strong is. On one level it's nice, straightforward comic book super hero, but it's also thoughtful, endlessly inventive, respectful of comics history and a great example of super-exploration, something I wish we saw more of in both comics and gaming. Plus, the titular hero is such a great example of the strong, ethical scientist that Lester Dent mastered with Doc Savage. It's a good, solid heroic core, and I think people under-value the storytelling versatility of super-strength and modest damage resistance in supers gaming. This might be why I keep coming back to Jim Cambias' Doc Toltec as a game hook. as he's another great version of the iconic structure. I will warn people that there's a chunk of the book - much of the last quarter - which is fill in stories top get the book to 36 issues so that the final issue could coincide with the end of Promethia, and the failures of execution visible there show how the character type is much harder to get then you'd think.
43) Tom Strong's Terrific Tales by Alan Moore, Steve Moore and others: I immediately picked this 12 issue series up for a reread, and part of me wishes that the Tom Strong and Young Tom Story stores from here had been folded into the regular Tom Strong book to avoid the aforementioned filler spot in the main book, as they're all solidly done. The other component of TSTT is Jonni Future, which is Steve Moore and Art Adams doing to Adam Strange what Alan Moore had done to various other DC characters in his image days - reinventing them just enough to show you how cool they were. However, Jonni Future is mired in cheesecake wink nudge stuff which diminishes the idea (I don't mind seeing Art Adams draw hlaf naked women, but that really shouldn't be the focus of the stories).
44) Alan Moore's run on Awesome Comics: Alan Moore also did some work for Rob Leifeld's Awesome Comics, specifically a run on Supreme, Leifield's pathetic Superman rip-off, which produced one of the best runs of Superman ever, and Judgement Day, which performed the alchemy in turning the dross of the Awesome Comics universe into gold. I'm not sure how much Leifield realized that Moore was deconstructing and, well, shredding, every story that Lefield had produced in the script of Judgement Day, which writes off the needless dark violence of the 90's comic market with some ideas about the nature of comic book stories that he explores in much greater depth in Promethia. Plus, going from Chris Sprouse's work on Tom Strong and Supreme to Leifield's work on Judgement Day and we learn the important fact that Leifield can't draw for crap.
