Comic Book Resources

If this is the Sentry mini I'm thinking it is, I was tickled when it came to the bits with the Sentress.

I am reading Tony Dungy's second book, Uncommon, which is more of a self-help book than I expected, but I really like him and enjoy his stories and it is very easy reading. Picked up a copy of Superman: Last Son of Krypton at a used book store last week in very good shape and will begin that next. I am also reading the Star Trek Deep Space Nine Compendium which I got on the same trip to the book store. On the comics front, I am rereading Batman: Hush, this time in the Absolute format which I checked out from my library. I am enjoying the art and trying to use this as a test case to see if the Absolute format is worth my money. After that, I will begin rereading Bone from the beginning as I also got the ninth volume finally at the used book store as well. It was a very fruitful trip to the book store last week. I also got a copy of the TPB of Herobear and the Kid as well as several issue of Mighty Avengers.

Right now it's Fritz Leiber's Three of Swords, an SF Book Club hardcover collecting the first three Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books. On deck after that are Laurie King's latest Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The Language of Bees, and you have reminded me that I still have to get to the S and T volumes of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone that I picked up a few months ago.

Comics is mostly the most recent Essential Spider-Man and probably this week's latest Essential Dr. Strange if I can find the money for it. We're on a bit on an austerity campaign around here with Julie not working so my rule is the books/comics budget is derived strictly from the comics-writing income. Oddly enough, this is really pretty do-able now that the pull list got trimmed back. I'm becoming one of those awful wait-for-the-trade-used-on-Amazon guys that are killing comics, but now that we're up to four bucks a whack that's really our only option here. I find I'm okay with not catching up to the big Marvel events till a year or so after they appear in hardcover.

I read FOR THE THRILL OF IT just a couple of weeks ago, as it happens. The courtroom stuff gets a little turgid midway through, but having sat through hundreds of trials myself as a newspaper reporter covering the courts a couple of decades ago, it *is* sometimes turgid stuff, period.

Of course, reading that one set me off on a real true-crime binge (something like 10 books in 2 weeks) that I'm only now climbing out of. With any luck, you can avoid that. Not that there's anything wrong with true-crime binges, I'm sure, but the perspective one gains on humanity in general is ... not edifying (even less so than that gained from regular perusal of comics boards & such, if you can imagine that).

In the meantime, I just got a copy of the mammoth (784 pp) OUTBREAK! THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EXTRAORDINARY SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, by Hilary Evans & Robert E. Bartholomew, & I'll probably be dipping into that for the rest of the summer. Wait -- 784 pages. Make that "... for the rest of my life." And when I leave for lunch in a couple of minutes, I'll have with me a newly acquired copy of John Merriman's THE DYNAMITE CLUB ("How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror"). Late-1800s propaganda by the deed is a subject near & dear to my historian's heart, for some reason.

Comics-wise, I finally got a copy (in the same order as OUTBREAK!) of LOST AT SEA & liked it a lot. I gather it has approximately nothing in common with O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim stuff, which I've never read. (I'm sure I'll try at least the first volume at some point, but everything I've heard about it makes me less than confident that I'll find it at all likable. Something tells me he's made lots more dough off the Pilgrim books than LOST AT SEA, which is probably unfortunate, but he sure as heck can't be blamed for going where the reward is, if indeed any sort of creative decision-making was involved.)

And I read the latest RUNAWAYS digest (vol. 8 -- Joss Whedon's time-travel arc) as well. I think this is the only series I trade-wait (actually, I digest-wait ... the trade per se has been out for a year or so, I guess) on, for whatever reasons. In any event, I know a lot of fans of the series think it made for a real falling off from Brian K. Vaughn's preceding issues, but ... I dunno. I liked it just fine. (I know a lot of fans are also saying the same about Terry Moore's issues these days, but something tells me I'll like them just fine, too, when digest-time rolls around. It's possible, of course, that I have no taste.)

Oh, forgot to mention -- I read AGE OF THE SENTRY as it was coming out & liked it a whoooooooole lot.

I'ma have to buy Age of the Sentry at some point.

But right now I'm slowly but surely working my way through Kavalier & Clay. I'm determined to actually finish it this time!

I'm glad to see this is back!

I'm reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is a nice look at the current foodscape. I saw him on C-SPAN lecturing after In Defense of Food came out and thought his work would be interesting--it very much is!

Beverly Daniel Tatum's Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? is a book from which I previously read selections for a course on Social Inequality. It's a good look at racial identity from a psychological perspective, with an emphasis on formative years.

I picked up an anthology of articles published by the US Holocaust Museum that's proving enlightening, saddening, and infuriating: well worth it.

On the comics front, I just finished Art Spiegelman's Breakdowns, featuring a lot of stuff I'd heard of but never read. After reading it, I definitely see what all the hype is about! I was initially put off by the price, but it's worth every penny. It's only 72 pages, but they're big, content-packed pages that I'm planning on reading again and again.

I also tracked down Cement Shooz and The Tick: Karma Tornado, both written and drawn by Christopher McCulloch, AKA Jackson Publick of The Venture Bros. fame. Based on the first three pages of one issue, it looks like I'm heading for an unpolished but fun early work.

Oh, and I just recently read two works related to the Leopold and Loeb trial: a biography of Clarence Darrow and (more tangentially) Ice Haven by Dan Clowes. It seems an interesting case, but I don't know if I'd want to delve too far into it.

I also vaguely remember a Matlock episode with sisters who killed their guardian just to try to commit the perfect crime (didn't work). Ah, eight-year-old me loved Matlock!

I'm reading Endymion by Dan Simmons right now, and while it's a very good sci-fi novel, it's not quite as impressive as Hyperion so far. Maybe it's just the more limited scope in terms of cast and plot, but knowing that this is basically just a prequel for Rise of Endymion keeps me optimistic that Simmons will broaden the story to deal with more of the universe like he did with the first two books in the Hyperion Cantos.

On the comics front, I'm working my way through Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby Vol. 2.

I found it hard to judge Age of Sentry on it's own merits. There's just so much Silver Age Superman pastiche going on with fairly little story beyond it, IMHO. (The natural comparison is Alan Moore's Supreme, but that had much more to say even if you ignore all of the Superman references.)

I'm re-reading Ellis' Come In Alone at the moment.

I just finished Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers (won in a contest at postmodernbarney.com, a favorite comic book blog everyone should read). It's beyond demented, extremely enjoyable, and impeccably drawn. Most Golden Age comics don't appeal to me, but I would buy Babe or Sparky Watts collections in a heartbeat.

I'm reading the definitive edition of THE BOYS vol. 1.

Not to be missed.
A must read.

I just finished a collection of Peter David's But I Digress articles, Blindness by Jose Saramago, and am halfway through the first installment of Love and Rockets Locas collection, Maggie The Mechanic, by Jaime Hernandez.