Rise of the Robots: reading log, third quarter 2013

Once more the clock of the year arrives at quarter to midnight... well, practically ten-to now, but I’m doing the best I can here. It’s been a busy quarter covering the summer holiday period, although I know I make that excuse every time. My holidays were particularly great this year and I’ve been enjoying the Indian summer culminating in an amazing, albeit fleeting, literal trip to India for work.

So once again I find myself being thankful for all the gifts that life has brought while working hard to squander, ruin or debase them. Oh well, mustn’t grumble!

In the meantime, I distract myself with writing – the writing by others and writing of my own. In this reading report I’ll mainly be talking about Comixology, the gradual failure of my anti-gadget resolve and a bit more about – perhaps my final word on – the death of science fiction.

In defence of unmarried super heroes

And so the news that DCcomics has forbidden the marriage of Batwoman to her girlfriend, Maggie Sawyer and the predictable uproar follows. There are multiple sources of outrage to enjoy: editorial interfering in the sacred creative process, homophobia, dramatic stagnation, anti-marriage prejudice and of course the lingering hurt of a self-in-the-foot-shooting spree by DC over the last couple of years.

But I think it’s the right decision. I think splitting up Spidey and Mary Jane was the right decision and splitting up Superman and Lois was the right decision, too.

Grant Morrison explains his take on Batman

Here's a terrific video (via Bleeding Cool) where Grant Morrison talks to Kevin Smith about how he approached his recently finished run on Batman.



I read most of it, starting around about issue 666 and bailing out about halfway through Batman Inc. It's one I'll come back to this someday, I think, filling in the gaps with trades, as I did with Jonathan Hickman's run on Fantastic Four.

I'm reading his run on X-Men - New X-Men - at moment. It has its moments but it's a bit up-and-down, I think. I might write more about this in the near future...

Reading report Q1 2013: Kindle is King

For me, the first quarter of this year was dominated by February, when I fled the winter chill of London for a month of summer in my antipodean mother land. I won’t bore you with how great it all was – great weather, old friends, family on good behaviour, plenty of good wine and beer and so forth. Instead I’ll bore you with far less interesting chat about reading.

I’ve had a Kindle for a couple of years and have taken it on holiday a couple of times, but this is the trip it was made for. I always end up taking what I consider a sufficient number of books (perhaps six) and then while I’m in NZ one thing like to is search second-hand bookshops for obscure SF paperbacks from the seventies and eighties. What I particularly love is a small town book exchange (every small town in NZ has got one) with a SF section that looks like it might have come from the estate of a lonely farmer and SF fan.

I’ve done pretty well with Jack Vance, picking up nice seventies and eighties editions from Grafton and the New English Library with cool covers by Jim Burns, Mick van Houten and Peter Elson, etc. But this year I discovered something that’s killed that hobby dead: The SF Gateway. 

It’s changed my holidays for ever and I may now never visit New Zealand again.

Amazing video of Alan Moore from the 80s

From Bleeding Cool, a DC promotional video from 1984. Alan Moore talks about working on Swamp Thing and this new idea he's got called 'Watchmen' that he's currently working.

How young he looks!

I know it's been quiet here for a while. Suffice it to say I've been working away, so hang in there. I'll be back.

My Reading Year 2013 Part One: The Year I Stopped Reading Comics

No more of this!

And so another busy year hurries into the past without even having the good manners to kiss us goodbye. This one has been busier than usual for me and so has seemed to pass quicker than ever. I’ve moved house and been busy with renovations, and had my first year in a new job. These haven’t left a lot of time for some of my usual pursuits but I’ve had a lot of fun and discovered a whole new talent for painting and decorating.

In amongst it all I’ve still found room for reading and blogging from time to time. I finished off my H P Lovecraft series and wrote series on MarvelEssential Warlock and I, Robot. I wrote a few reviews and read a few reviews elsewhere on blogs and review sites here and there on the internet. It all made me wonder where the genre was heading and while I’m not sure if I read widely enough any more to be entitled to an opinion on the matter, when I started thinking about it I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that science fiction is dead.

But that’s all coming next week!

This got quite long, so I’ve decided to split it in two, one part on comics and one on prose. This is the part about comics. I’m going to talk about 80s Marvel vs DC, a new take on Ghost Rider, and how The Invisibles and Ex Machina showed me the benefits of reading comics in trade paperback and convinced me to give up pamphlets.

If any of these topics are of interest to you, read on!

Reading log - Q3

Here we are again, and me much delayed. Unfortunately I’ve had a few other things on. I was busy with my Marvel Essential Warlock series – which belongs properly in Q4 – and wrote a review of The Fractal Prince, the sequel to The Quantum Thief, which belongs also in Q4. Plus, of course, the perennial nuisance of DIY.

I have been reading, though, and in the three months to 30 September, I read:

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

A few John Service stories by Algernon Blackwood

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

Marvel Essential Super Villain Team-Up vol 1 by various.

Marvel Essential Warlock part 13

Marvel Team-Up #55, The Avengers Annual #7, Marvel Team-Up Annual #2

As with the last time around, Warlock is reduced again to conducting the final episodes of his story in the pages of comics. It begins with Marvel Team-Up #55. This is one of those books that takes a popular character and has a revolving cast of guest stars around them, in this case Spidey and in this issue Warlock. 

We still see this today at Marvel – Spidey is the sauce that goes with everything.

Marvel Essential Warlock - part 12

Warlock #12-#15

After defeating Magus, where next for Warlock? We find him (or Him) and Pip at a sleazy dive in downtown Homeworld, enjoying a bit of local colour. Pip’s clearly in his element, but Adam isn't in the mood for partying.

The events of the recent past are praying on his mind. Reciting his problems gives him a chance to provide the most concise recap we have yet seen. In fact, he decides he needs a little time to get his head back in shape so flies off into space and vacates the issue. 

What we get instead is an adventure of Pip the Troll. 

Marvel Essential Warlock - part 11

Warlock #10 and #11

Issue 10 gets straight into the action. The splashpage is a top down view showing as Black Knights flooding through a doorway towards Warlock, Pip, Gamora and Thanos.

It’s a great hook. It immediately suggests imminent violence and conflict, the few against the many. It makes you to turn the pages and find out what happens next. What does happen is an appealing few pages packed with fighting, shouting and frenzied narration. 

Marvel Essential Warlock - part 10

Warlock #9

This issue revives Warlock’s own title, so either his tenancy at Strange Tales was up or there was sufficient interest to keep the story going. It’s the big confrontation with Magus, so fans, however many they may have been, will have been waiting for this moment.

The Magus arrogantly believes his future knowledge guarantees his victory over Warlock, and so proceeds to act like a pulp movie villain.

This issue really belongs to him as he gloats over his victories – providing a handy excuse for this month’s recap – and tells the tale of how he became The Magus. 

A spectacularly great article about Marvel's 60s hey-day

Don't usually do linking here, but given the current subject matter I thought my reader (possibly readers) might be interested in this terrific article about Marvel in the 60s at i09. It's a teaser for a book that looks bloody brilliant!

Marvel Essential Warlock - part 9

Strange Tales featuring Warlock #181

Warlock wakes up from his stupor in a bizarre cosmic-Marvel weird-scape. He just has time for a quick recap page when he meets his foes.

Uh oh: clowns. Mad, evil clowns.

Marvel Essential Warlcock - part 8

Strange Tales featuring Warlock #180

This is the first issue of an American-style comic I can remember seeing. I think my brother brought it home from a trip in to London, perhaps with the scouts. I was used to typical British fare – Valiant, Lion, Whizzer & Chips and so forth – and I might even have seen UK Marvel reprints, but this just looked like something out of another universe.

Marvel Essential Warlock - part 7

Strange Tales featuring Warlock #179

We’re now into the second issue of the new Warlock, and the character’s beginning to get somewhere. The splash page features Adam Warlock posed on a slab of space debris glaring angrily at a giant spaceship hovering nearby.

“Death Ship!” it announces in shadowed block caps.

Straight in with the power chords.

This is more like it. If the original run felt a bit like a cosmic version of Jesus Christ Superstar, then this one is a like record by Yes, Rush or The Alan Parsons Project. In this issue we get to see that Warlock now has a much more of a heavy rock vibe to it than the worthy efforts that went before.

Marvel Essential Warlock - part 6

Journey Into Mystery #178

NB: Now my scanner's working I am not only adding images to new posts in this series, but I've updated the previous posts with scanned images. Wow! No expense spared!

Inevitably, Journey into Mystery #178 begins with a flashback. About a fifth of the total page count so far has been dedicated to flashbacks, so why not? It’s business as usual on that level, but there’s immediately something different about how the book looks.

The narrator never turns up again, by the way

Marvel Essential Warlock - part 5

The Incredible Hulk #177 to #179

Having lost his own series, Warlock suffers the indignity of having to share his climactic moment with the Hulk. Let’s be honest, if Hulk is even on the A list he’s near the bottom of it. He’s a difficult character, although some writers have managed to find something interesting for him to do, but it takes some effort to wring interesting dramatic goals from his ‘Hulk smash’ persona.

One solution is to drop him into utterly bizarre situations (ie, Planet Hulk), and that’s what’s happening here.

Marvel Essential Warlock - part 4

The Power of Warlock #3 - #8

So, my plan was to blog about this issue by issue, maybe every day and have a bit of fun with it. That was the plan. But as the great Ayrshire poet and chain of bottle stores in New Zealand reminds us, the best laid plans of mice and men oft gang aglay, and mine seem to go aglayer and ofter than most.

Partly this is because of my busy metropolitan life style that keeps me away from the keyboard with thrilling man-about-town antics. Partly it’s because these comics rapidly descend in quality – and let’s face it, the first few were not a towering achievement of the arts. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love cheesy 70s Marvel – that’s why I read these things – but this is terrible, even by their standards!

Marvel Essential Warlock - part 2

Marvel Premiere featuring Warlock #2

The issue starts with Warlock crashed to the (Counter) Earth like a falling star. He’s found by four kids who look a lot like kids on our familiar Marvel Earth and speak like... well, not kids anywhere, but like but 70s era Roy Thomas hipster kids.

Thanks for the lesson in civil rights, cool Dave!

Marvel Essential Warlock - part 1

I pre-ordered this weeks ago and it's finally arrived! I've been wanting to read this volume for forty years, because an issue of Jim Starlin's Warlock - Stange Tales #180, in fact - was the first actual American comic I ever saw. I'd seen things like the UK reprints, but never an actual small-size full-colour book. I'm pretty sure my brother Matt bought it - it's the sort of Heavy Metalish thing he likes.

 

I never read the rest of the series, although I've read a few other bits and pieces where Warlock plays a part - some of Starlin's other Thanos stories, mostly - so I'm, quite excited about it! 

Since we've had a bit of blog lull, I've decided to blog about this issue by issue as I read  it. Has this classic Marvel cosmic bollocks still got what it takes? Let's find out!