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2011 Books 45-49
Jun. 7th, 2011 08:01 pm45) Terra Obscura vol 1 & 2 by Alan Moore, Peter Hogan and Yanick Paquette: More of the America Best Comics reread, these are two volumes of adventures based on obscure and now out of copyright heroes from the late 30s and early 40s. While not high art they are both fun and a wonderful snapshot of many of the lesser known golden age characters.
46) The Encyclopedia of Super-Heroes by Jeff Rovin: Pulled off the shelf to see if it had all of the Terra Obscura characters (answer: pretty damn near all) I got sucked into reading through this with the thought of raiding it to provide backstory heroes for a new supers universe. Some of the characters are perfectly servicable, and some are downright strange: Captain Midnight, who has the power to stop clocks (not time, just clocks, meaning that someone actually had the power Timepiece Control from Heroes Unlimited); the Echo, who uses his skills as the worlds foremost ventriloquist to fight crime (apparently the 'surprise them with a noise behind them' gimmick worked for 9 issues!) and the delightfully named Microface, whose mask contained nightvision and telescopic vision lenses, vocal amplification, a min-camera and other useful gadgets but, well, Microface?!? Rovin's work claims to be pretty exhaustive but it's easy enough to spot connections between characters that he missed or omitted. Still, the book is fun in a geeky sort of way.
47-ish) Tomorrow Stories by Alan Moore and others: Moore's first anthology book for ABC, it's got 5 components each aiming for a specific type of comic. I tried to reread the whole thing but much of the Cobweb stuff (more pseudo porn with Melinda Gibbe) and almost all of First American (Mad Magazine style social satire) left me cold. I can't really claim to have reread the whole thing.
48) Greyshirt - Indigo Sunset by Rick Veitch and others: Greyshirt was, to my mind, the strongest of the Tomorrow Stories characters - a Spirit homage with more darkness than the original but the same style of storytelling and the same two fisted style of hero whose main power is surviving getting the crap beaten out of him to eke out a victory. Plus, much like many characters in the encyclopedia, the character has a single gimmick - his chainmail suit under the dandy clothes makes him highly resistant to gunfire - backed up by a particular style. This 6 issue series gives us a 30 year look at the character, from his youth to the present, with a longer story arc weaving in and out through the various tales. Recommended.
49) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson: After having three different people recommend this in a two month period I succumbed and borrowed my parents copy. Read about a quarter of it over the weekend and then tore through the remainder last night, finishing up at a 'dear god tomorrow is going to suck' hour of 2 AM. Which means it was very engaging in the best genre page-turner sense. Of course, I could be the last person on the continental shelf who hasn't read it yet, but I'm glad it was worth the hype.
46) The Encyclopedia of Super-Heroes by Jeff Rovin: Pulled off the shelf to see if it had all of the Terra Obscura characters (answer: pretty damn near all) I got sucked into reading through this with the thought of raiding it to provide backstory heroes for a new supers universe. Some of the characters are perfectly servicable, and some are downright strange: Captain Midnight, who has the power to stop clocks (not time, just clocks, meaning that someone actually had the power Timepiece Control from Heroes Unlimited); the Echo, who uses his skills as the worlds foremost ventriloquist to fight crime (apparently the 'surprise them with a noise behind them' gimmick worked for 9 issues!) and the delightfully named Microface, whose mask contained nightvision and telescopic vision lenses, vocal amplification, a min-camera and other useful gadgets but, well, Microface?!? Rovin's work claims to be pretty exhaustive but it's easy enough to spot connections between characters that he missed or omitted. Still, the book is fun in a geeky sort of way.
47-ish) Tomorrow Stories by Alan Moore and others: Moore's first anthology book for ABC, it's got 5 components each aiming for a specific type of comic. I tried to reread the whole thing but much of the Cobweb stuff (more pseudo porn with Melinda Gibbe) and almost all of First American (Mad Magazine style social satire) left me cold. I can't really claim to have reread the whole thing.
48) Greyshirt - Indigo Sunset by Rick Veitch and others: Greyshirt was, to my mind, the strongest of the Tomorrow Stories characters - a Spirit homage with more darkness than the original but the same style of storytelling and the same two fisted style of hero whose main power is surviving getting the crap beaten out of him to eke out a victory. Plus, much like many characters in the encyclopedia, the character has a single gimmick - his chainmail suit under the dandy clothes makes him highly resistant to gunfire - backed up by a particular style. This 6 issue series gives us a 30 year look at the character, from his youth to the present, with a longer story arc weaving in and out through the various tales. Recommended.
49) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson: After having three different people recommend this in a two month period I succumbed and borrowed my parents copy. Read about a quarter of it over the weekend and then tore through the remainder last night, finishing up at a 'dear god tomorrow is going to suck' hour of 2 AM. Which means it was very engaging in the best genre page-turner sense. Of course, I could be the last person on the continental shelf who hasn't read it yet, but I'm glad it was worth the hype.
