Our non-local readers (and there are at least two of you, no denying it!!) may not know this, but here in Indiana, our weather likes to bounce around a lot. Yes, mercury takes on the properties of a bouncy ball and gives the thermometer some nasty vertigo. We’ve been enjoying subzero temperatures, can expect them to go up into the 60s before the week is done, and we’ve gotten a bit caught up in the spirit.
No theme this week,\! I’m just going to bounce around from shelf to shelf and go from there. (CC Note: Not so fast! *THWACK*) ...Ooooooor I could start with a book slapped in my face with a bit of help from one of my “generous” coworkers.
Injustice Annual 1 (Taylor/ Xermanico, Redondo, & Miller): This video-game tie-in has been enjoying a long run, longer than I honestly would have expected, long enough that it celebrates getting past the twelve-issue-mark with a story about how the biggest, baddest, mainest man in the galaxy gets his butt handed to him by a nerd girl. I love comics!
You know how you go to the grocery store with one thing to buy, and you leave with something else, maybe five something elses? That’s Lobo with Earth - dude just cannot get what he came for, and yet he cannot stay away. He was just supposed to take down Superman and bring his body back to some shmuck on Apokalips, but instead he winds up in Gotham hunting down Harley Quinn, and leaving there the subject of a itty-bitty intervention.
You know how you go to the grocery store with one thing to buy, and you leave with something else, maybe five something elses? That’s Lobo with Earth - dude just cannot get what he came for, and yet he cannot stay away. He was just supposed to take down Superman and bring his body back to some shmuck on Apokalips, but instead he winds up in Gotham hunting down Harley Quinn, and leaving there the subject of a itty-bitty intervention.
Lobo’s never been the most cerebral character, so I don’t know if that makes it more or less plausible that Quinn and her psychology degree mess with his head so completely. The events within actually prove a windfall for a lot of people within: the past year hasn’t been kind to Harley, so she needed a win. Lobo lost some mojo and got an adjustment before he found himself a hobo.
I’m as surprised as anyone, but for what it is, this book is pretty entertaining. There’s action, laughs, and enlightened philosophy regarding moustaches. Don’t blow it off.
Archer and Armstrong 15 (Van Lente/ Evans): I dove into the top shelf of newbies and pulled out a title I haven’t checked in on for a while now. The writer’s still on it, artist has changed up but only briefly. I’m a bit excited- let’s do this!
Armstrong, the immortal from Sumerian times that’s seen it all and done it all, is now determined to drink it all. He’s reconnected with the brother that accidentally made Armstrong immortal (and in doing so banished himself into the timestream and destroyed the city of Ur), and they're going on a pub crawl across time and space, like if Simon Pegg and Nick Frost stole the TARDIS for a night. Archer, meanwhile, stews over finding Armstrong and his love/ hate interest in the sack. He does his wallowing at the bottom of a Happy Meal box.
Armstrong, the immortal from Sumerian times that’s seen it all and done it all, is now determined to drink it all. He’s reconnected with the brother that accidentally made Armstrong immortal (and in doing so banished himself into the timestream and destroyed the city of Ur), and they're going on a pub crawl across time and space, like if Simon Pegg and Nick Frost stole the TARDIS for a night. Archer, meanwhile, stews over finding Armstrong and his love/ hate interest in the sack. He does his wallowing at the bottom of a Happy Meal box.
The tone and style of this book haven’t changed a bit - it still revels in extremes of hilarity and seriousness. It’ll go to one extreme as an excuse to move onto the next, and it’s fun to watch, even when natural disasters claim scores of lives. Evans’ line work isn’t as crisp as Clayton Henry’s, but it communicates everything just as well. It keeps pace with the writing, which can be like sprinting a marathon sometimes.
Regular readers have nothing to worry about. This isn’t a good jumping-on point if you’re new to it, but if you want a cheap laugh and thrill, and don’t care about what happened before, this’ll be fine.
I went to the other end of the alphabet and found a new series...
Umbral 1 (Johnston. Mitten): Grimm and Supernatural make their niches out of the dark fairy tales of old. As far as new fairy tales told in ye olde style, there are few and infrequent… but one’s right now! This is a dark fantasy centered around children and why they should fear what’s under their beds.
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Rascal. She was going to be a thief when she grew up, and she knew that because she was so good at sneaking into the palace to meet with her friend Arthir, the prince. It’s a holiday in the kingdom of Strakan - a full solar eclipse - and the pair are going to sneak into the treasure vault and borrow the Oculus, a relic of unknown power or importance, as a tiny little thrill while the grown-ups are off acting like a day with two dawns is a big deal… until the palace starts getting slaughtered by dark creatures out of nightmares. Rascal falls, wakes up, people aren’t as dead as she thought, but she’s got a new necklace, some demented stalkers, and one less friend.
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Rascal. She was going to be a thief when she grew up, and she knew that because she was so good at sneaking into the palace to meet with her friend Arthir, the prince. It’s a holiday in the kingdom of Strakan - a full solar eclipse - and the pair are going to sneak into the treasure vault and borrow the Oculus, a relic of unknown power or importance, as a tiny little thrill while the grown-ups are off acting like a day with two dawns is a big deal… until the palace starts getting slaughtered by dark creatures out of nightmares. Rascal falls, wakes up, people aren’t as dead as she thought, but she’s got a new necklace, some demented stalkers, and one less friend.
As first issues go, I love everything about this. It's got a complete world built from the ground up in classic fantasy style - a kingdom, royalty and lower class, monsters, maps, and magical artifacts. The characters have their own voices which say as much about them as the words they utter: Rascal is confident and capable, even if her grammar makes my inner-English-major cringe. There’s beauty and ugliness, peace and war, triumph and tragedy, friendship and betrayal. If the creative team can keep this up, they’ve got a winner.
I don’t get to say this very often, but just about anyone will like this on one level or another. Even children would get a thrill out of this, but I wouldn’t give it to anyone younger than 10.
And we bounce right to the middle of the alphabet where I find…
Manifest Destiny 1 (Dingess/ Roberts): NOT the X-Men storyline of the same name, this is a new series from Image comics. Kind of carrying on the fairy tale track from earlier, this series puts forth a neat little notion. Folk tales from Europe and China had loads of monsters and wicked creatures in their woods, while in the US such stories were tossed out along with the indigenous peoples - colonial tales of the forests are mostly about them being explored, paths beaten, and trees chopped. What if there were monsters in those woods, just like any other forest?
Lewis and Clark had a very simple task: to explore the natural world that was to be the US government’s next land claim. That’s what they wanted everyone to believe. Behind that, tales were told of beasts deep in the country, further than any former Europeans had yet penetrated. If expansion was to take place, such tales would need to be verified, and any threats tamed. It would be just fine if tales is all they were, and the land proved open for exploration and exploitation, but if they don’t find something to worry about soon, the cutthroats press-ganged into working for them are going to get rowdy.
Lewis and Clark had a very simple task: to explore the natural world that was to be the US government’s next land claim. That’s what they wanted everyone to believe. Behind that, tales were told of beasts deep in the country, further than any former Europeans had yet penetrated. If expansion was to take place, such tales would need to be verified, and any threats tamed. It would be just fine if tales is all they were, and the land proved open for exploration and exploitation, but if they don’t find something to worry about soon, the cutthroats press-ganged into working for them are going to get rowdy.
This doesn’t apologize for or whitewash history - early Americans wanted to find the West coast and claim everything between that and the East Coast (which they’d settled and were getting bored with). If anything was in their way, they shot it, and no one bothered to ask why. People today wouldn’t take kindly to that attitude, but I respect Dingess and Roberts for portraying it here. As heroes go, Lewis and Clark aren’t close to Steve Rogers or Clark Kent; at best, they come off more like Malcolm Reynolds, minus the sass. As to the West before we knew what Wild meant, the monuments and monstrosities are distinctly American, yet are twisted with the tension and inhumanity that make horror stories work.
Manifest Destiny as historical fiction is an oddity that hasn't had enough time to prove whether or not it could work. With time, it could grow into just about anything. If you like your horror stories to take place in worlds you recognize, this'll be a good book.
All this jumping around the shelves has given me whiplash, so I’m gonna lie down for a while until the internet stops spinning. See you next week!
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