Weasel Words

January 30, 2005

As graphic novel month concludes, we’ll wrap things up with a roundup of new (to me) graphic novel series.

It’s actually unfair to put the first four volumes of Mike Carey’s Lucifer series (Devil in the Gateway, Children and Monsters, A Dalliance with the Damned, and The Divine Comedy) into a general roundup, because they deserve to be broken out into their own entry. But getting unfairly lumped in with other things is probably the book’s lot in life, because it’s a spin-off of Gaiman’s classic Sandman.

Right there, you thought to yourself, “Oh, a spinoff. Well, let’s see what else he’s talking about in this entry.” That’s what I thought, too, until I got a strong recommendation from Pam Korda (who will no doubt get around to writing up her own review any month now). So I’m going to say this next part in bold letters to emphasize how preposterous it sounds, and yet how true it is: Lucifer is every bit as good as Sandman . In tone, subtlety, adeptness at character and plot, and world-building detail, it is fully the equal of Gaiman at his prime, and far better than Gaiman’s recent graphic novels.

The most impressive thing Carey does, though, is to manage long-term plot arcing. The secret to this is to introduce important characters and mysterious objects as small elements in the midst of an important and moving plot; and then later reveal that this chance event, this tossed-off line of dialogue, this minor character, is suddenly the key to a wholly different story. (It’s like what Tolkien did with the magic ring from The Hobbit, only without the retcon.) If you do it right — and it must be hard, because few people do — the result is a long story where each episodic arc feels like a complete story, yet inexorably drives the events of the next episode, and where a pile of supporting characters (each with their own advancing character arc) insensibly emerges. This macro-plotting is what sprawling and digressive epics can do better than any other art form, and Carey does it exceptionally well.

If you liked Sandman, go buy Lucifer. I mean it. (There are two more volumes so far — I have no idea how many there are ultimately supposed to be — and as soon as Amazon gets them into my hands, I’ll read them, too.)

Hmm, maybe that really should have had an entry to itself. Well, too late now, so let’s move along to Bill Willingham’s Fables, vol. 1: Legends in Exile . In subject matter and tone, Fables is pretty much Sandman crossed with Alias — it’s the seamy noir underside of the fairy tale world. In this first volume, Detective Wolf (last seen destroying pigs’ houses) investigates the murder of Rose Red. It could be quite silly, but... well, it works. But it only works; it doesn’t sparkle. It’s hard to say concretely why this is merely very good and not great; but read back-to-back with Lucifer, it’s clear that’s the case. Still, “very good” isn’t a criticism.

Finally, another work from the insanely prolific Brian Michael Bendis, The Pulse, vol. 1: Thin Air . Bendis is at his best when he’s doing unorthodox angles on the Marvel Universe, and that’s what he’s doing here: The Pulse is set inside the Daily Bugle, focusing on the newspaper that chronicles the world of superheroes. In a week when I hadn’t read Lucifer, I’d probably say that this was great, but for the moment, I have to downgrade it to near-great. But it is enormously fun, and it sort of ties together Bendis’ various works — Spider-Man has a part, Jessica Jones (of Alias, to which this is a quasi-sequel (but without all the adults-only trappings)) is a protagonist, and extensive references are made to Bendis’ Daredevil work. (Did I mention Bendis was prolific?) Anyway, good stuff, but you really need to have read at least Alias before this.

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January 23, 2005

I don’t feel like writing a full entry about each of these, so here’s a round-up of continuing graphic novel series.

First up, a Powers-fest, with Brian Michael Bendis’ Powers: Supergroup, Powers: Anarchy, Powers: Sellouts, and Powers Forever . These don’t vary significantly from earlier volumes, so take what I said there and apply it here. I continue to be highly, highly annoyed at the layout of the word balloons. I originally thought this was Bendis’ fault for writing such back-and-forth dialogue, but his other books have similar dialogue with no readability problems; plus, even where there’s no dialogue, it’s hard to figure out which order to read the panels in, so I think now I’m going to blame it on either the artist or the letterer. Also, I could have done without the explicit monkey-sex, but it kinda works in context.

More Bendis with Brian Michael Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man, vol. 5 . This is the hardcover that collects the Ultimate Six and Hollywood story arcs. The Ultimate Six stuff is awful: The art makes characters look wholly unlike themselves, which is fitting as they continually act unlike themselves. But the Hollywood half of the book is fun. It’s perhaps a bit too meta-referential to have Spider-Man encountering a Sam Raimi film crew making a Spider-Man movie (starring Tobey Maguire), but it’s amusing enough to be forgiveable.

Finally, Warren Ellis’ Ultimate Fantastic Four, vol. 2: Doom . While all the other books in this round-up have been more of the same of their serieses, this one isn’t. The first Ultimate Fantastic Four collection was co-written by Bendis and Millar, and was uninspired, but Ellis appears to actually care about the book. It’s still not a great series, but it is decidedly better; at least now the characters have distinguishable personalities. I’ll look for the third volume, and hope that it can kick up into something genuinely interesting in its own right

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January 20, 2005

The problem with multi-media super-geniuses is that you expect their super-genius in one medium to immediately extend to others, which is silly. Writing a book and writing a TV show are different jobs entirely, and just being good at one doesn’t mean you’d be good at the other. But the nice thing about super-geniuses is that they’re super-geniuses, and once they get things figured out, they can be pretty damn good. So, Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, vol. 1: Gifted .

Whedon, of course, is the writer for some of the best DVD boxed sets ever made — Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly — but his first graphic novel, Fray, was just okay. While there was nothing wrong with it, it was just generally uninspired, feeling more like a practice exercise than a real finished product. Well, if it was practice, it was in a good cause, because Whedon’s run on X-Men has started off marvelously.

It’s particularly interesting to read this after Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men, because while both are good, they’re doing totally different things. Morrison was very deliberately trying to get away from the whole superhero thing, ditching the costumes and all. Whedon, though, wants like hell to write a traditional superhero story, so he immediately brings all that back — Cyclops has a speech about how they are superheroes, by gum, and they’re going to wear the costumes from now on. If I were a reader of the monthly comic, looking for a continuing-form work with dramatic progress and thematic unity, this’d piss me off; but since I’m a graphic novel reader, and view Whedon’s and Morrison’s works as being different works that happen to be set in a shared world, I’m fine with it. Because, ultimately, what matters to me is whether a book tells a good story. Morrison did, and so far Whedon is, and if they’re different good stories, well, hey, even better.

But story direction isn’t the only place Whedon’s different than Morrison. Morrison was writing an elliptical, gritty, and dark story, so dialogue was minimalist and realist. Whedon, though, is writing something a lot closer in tone to Buffy: A funny, serious, traditional adventure story with depth and unexpected twists. So his dialogue has some real, honest-to-god, laugh out loud moments, and his characters are far more willing to show a sense of humor and good grace about someone trying to fuck them up. And, surprisingly to me, Whedon appears to be a X-Men fan, too; while he’s writing in his own style, he’s not re-inventing the characters as new people, as writers unfamiliar with a series inadvertantly do. These are very definitely the same characters who’ve been in these comics for however many decades.

Long story short, if you thought Morrison’s run was too bleak, give Whedon a shot. If you liked Morrison because of the bleakness, skip Whedon. If you liked Morrison because he was a good writer, give Whedon a shot. If you don’t give a fuck about superheroes, don’t read Whedon, and in retrospect, don’t even bother reading this review.

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January 20, 2005

Everyone (well, everyone reading this booklog) knows comic books aren’t just about costumed superheroes, that as a medium they can tell stories in any genre. That said, they do seem to be uniquely well-suited for telling stories about superheroes, so it’s cool to see that they can tell superhero stories in any genre, too. The particular genre that Ed Brubaker’s Sleeper: Out in the Cold and Sleeper: All False Moves cover is the spy thriller.

Like most spy thrillers, the books get a lot of mileage out of uncertainty, so even basic background is inclued slowly. There’s essentially no way for me to write anything about these books without spoiling something, so if you’d like to read them with a blank slate, I’ll tell you that they’re good, and then you can go off to Amazon, order them, and quit reading this.

Now, for those of you who don’t mind back-cover level spoilers, the premise is similar to that of Alias (the TV show, not the Bendis comic): Our hero is a deep cover double agent inside of a criminal organization, doing dastardly deeds just to maintain his cover. And oh yeah, the only guy who knows he’s really working for the good guys is in a coma, so there’s no way out for him.

As you’d imagine, this lends itself to all sorts of moral ambiguity, conflicted emotions, and so forth. It lends itself a little too easily, in fact — it’d be very easy for this to spin out of control into silly episodic melodrama. That it doesn’t do so, and instead works unexpected angles and unforeseen plot points, is a pleasant surprise. The story’s not complete yet, and I’m always skeptical of incomplete stories (far, far too many works start out strong and end up lame), so I’ll hold off on unconditional encomia until I see where things are going; but for now, it looks good.

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January 9, 2005

John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War is, the buzz has it, like modern-day Heinlein. And the buzz is, in this case, correct: Scalzi’s book reads a lot like a Heinlein novel. This is not a good thing.

Like a Heinlein novel, Scalzi’s novel is smugly preachy. The first chapter spends a few paragraphs snidely putting down a woman who is a) not at all relevant to the story or the characters and b) long-since dead. The snide put-downs continue (there’s a particularly grating scene where the main character smacks down a racist Jesusy hick by quoting Bible verse at him, followed by all the good characters laughing and congratulating themselves on their awesomeness; it’s like a bad Usenet thread), but are occasionally interrupted by tedious digressions into How Science Works, like this one, which explains the totally novel and unheard of concept of a “beanstalk”:

“What do you mean physics isn’t holding it up?” Jesse said. “Believe me, this is not what I want to hear right at this moment.”

Harry smiled. “Sorry. Let me rephrase. Physics is involved in holding up this beanstalk, certainly. But the physics involved aren’t of the garden variety. There’s a lot going on here that doesn’t make sense on the surface.”

“I feel a physics lecture coming on,” I said.

“I taught physics to teenagers for years,” Harry said, and dug out a small notepad and a pen. “It’ll be painless, trust me. Okay, now look.” Harry began drawing a circle at the bottom of the page. “This is the Earth. And this” —he drew a smaller circle halfway up the page— “is Colonial Station. It’s in geosynchronous orbit, which means it stays put relative to the Earth’s rotation. It’s always hanging above Nairobi. With me so far?”

We nodded.

And I nodded off. When I woke up, I discovered that the Thrilling Science Lecture went on for another three pages of raw tedium, and very nearly set the book aside right there. But I wasn’t quite able to, because I was wondering to myself: How do the space drives in this novel work? Will we find out?

Finally Ed... piped up. “I’m not following you, Alan. I thought that the skip drive just took us up past the speed of light or something like that. That’s how it works.”

“Nope,” Alan said. “Einstein’s still right—the speed of light is as fast as you can go. Besides which, you wouldn’t want to start flying around the universe at any real fraction of the speed of light, anyway. You hit even a little chunk of dirt while you’re going a couple hundred thousand klicks a second and you’re going to put a pretty good hole in your spaceship. It’s just a speedy way to get killed.”

Okay, look, I was just—

Ed blinked and then swept his hand over his head. “Whoosh,” he said. “You lost me.”

“All right, look,” Alan said. “You asked me how the skip drive works. And like I said, it’s simple: It takes an object from one universe, like the Modesto, and pops it into another universe. The problem is that we refer to it as a ‘drive.’ It’s not really a drive at all because acceleration is not a factor; the only factor is location within the multiverse.”

—kidding! I was totally fucking—

“Alan,” I said. “You’re doing another flyby.”

“Sorry,” Alan said, and looked thoughtful for a second. “How much math do you guys have?” he asked.

“I vaguely recall calculus,” I said. Ed McGuire nodded in agreement.

“Oy,” Alan said. “Fine. I’m going to use small words here. Please don’t be offended.”

“We’ll try not to,” Ed said.

“Okay. First off, the universe you’re in—the universe we’re in right htis moment—is only one of an infinite number of possible universes whose existence is allowed for within quantum physics. Every time we spot an electron in a particular position, for example, our universe is functionally defined by that electron’s position, while in the alternate universe, that electron’s position is entirely different. You following me?”

—making a joke! Nobody in the entire goddamn world wants to know how the stupid drive works. Look, it’s a skip/jump/warp/hyperspace drive; we’ve seen them a zillion times before. There is nothing — nothing! — novel or interesting about a stupid fucking space drive, and there’s certainly no need to prattle on and on about it. And if there were a need to give us the pointless infodump, there’d have to be a better way than by having your characters be stupider than—

“Not at all,” said Ed.

“You nonscientists. Well, just trust me on it, then. The point is: multiple universes. The multiverse. What the skip drive does is open a door to another one of those universes.”

“How does it do that?” I asked.

—shit.

(The scene goes on for another three pages, but quoting the whole thing probably pushes the limit of fair use excerpting, so you get a reprieve. Lucky you.)

To be fair to the book, I have to admit that there were parts of it I enjoyed; the bits that read like a rip-off of Ender’s Game (suggested alternate title: Elder’s Game) were fun. Also on the plus side, it was compellingly readable, and I whipped through it in no time flat.

But... you know how I’m always saying that the nice thing about Dave Duncan and James Alan Gardner and Terry Pratchett is that they give you highly readable books that don’t make you feel bad about reading trash? Well, Old Man’s War is the sort of highly readable book that does make you feel bad. If you’re stuck on an airplane without a better selection, it’ll serve; in any other circumstance, you can probably find something better to read.

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January 7, 2005

I tend to think, for no obvious reason, that the books an author wrote before I started reading them are their “early works” and therefore not all that good. As I’m increasingly finding out, this isn’t necessarily the case — Dave Duncan’s West of January , for instance, is pretty darn solid.

What it mostly is, though, is different from Duncan’s other stuff. Duncan these days is a straight (and increasingly conventional) fantasist; but like Shadow (another one of Duncan’s oddly-surprisingly-to-me good early works) this is one of those low-tech lost-colony SF novels. But where Shadow, with its giant intelligent eagles, seemed Pern-inspired, West of January feels more like Kirstein’s Outskirter novels. The world here has climatic issues, a handful of different primitive cultures, and higher-tech “angels”; the protagonist starts out in a nomadic herding tribe, but it’s safe to say he doesn’t stay there.

In fact, he doesn’t stay much of anywhere, as he ends up going on one of those every-spot-on-the-map tours of the world that are so endemic to fantasy. That overstuffed plotting combined with a main character who’s too omni-competent to be true (and whose personality flaws aren’t drawn completely convincingly) keep this from being a great book. But, paradoxically, they do make it a fun one.

Because, when it comes down to it, books where super-cool people explore vast and diverse worlds are pretty much the heart of the light adventure fiction genre; and if Duncan wasn’t yet an old pro at that subgenre when he wrote this book, he was quickly establishing some solid credentials. If this isn’t a book that’s going to make any awards lists, it’s nevertheless also a book that’s going to keep you reading late.

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January 4, 2005

Somewhat shockingly, it turns out that I’ve been doing this booklog thing for nearly three years now, which allows me to graphically see just how far my reading has declined — if it weren’t for graphic novels, I doubt I’d’ve read more than a dozen books this year. (I blame the Internet.) But as pathetic and lame as my reading volume was, it’s nevertheless early January and therefore time for my traditional year-end wrap-up. Let’s open the envelopes.

Trend of the Year: A year ago, I gave the illusory trend of the year award to the increasing prominence of graphic novels in my reading; this year, that illusion turned to reality, as a full 22 of the 53 books I read were graphic novels. This trend barely beats out “not reading very much”, as those numbers depressingly show. (I still blame the Internet.)

Best Series: The arbitrary rule I set for myself last year was that I had to have read “most” of the series in the last year. I figure that 2/3 counts as “most” for these purposes, and Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle picks up the easy win. This is a seriously great trilogy, and easily the best thing I read all year.

Best Book: I was afraid that I was going to have to give Stephenson a double win, since The System of the World is clearly and obviously the single best book I read last year (and possibly since the inception of the booklog); but my arbitrary rules save the day, as this category is apparently supposed to go to the book I’d tell you to read if you could read only one book, and I’d never suggest the third book of a series in that situation. Looking over the rest of the contenders, I find myself in a situation much like last year: The runner-up is a non-fiction book, Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, and the winner is a big ol’ brick of historical fantasy, Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale .

Worst Book: Two years in a row, we have a tie in this category. Here we split the honors between a magazine article padded out to a book, Henry Petroski’s Small Things Considered , and a piece of tedium magically captured and bound between covers, Steven Gould’s Wildside . Avoid them both.

Most Disappointing Book: This is an easy category, thanks to Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Last Light of the Sun , a turgid piece of crap from a guy who’s written some of the best fantasy in existence. Let’s all hope that it represents a small stumble rather than the start of a precipitous decline.

Best Graphic Novel: Last year, I declined to give this out, as there were no worthy nominees. This year, there is one stand-out, the four volumes of Brian Michael Bendis’ Alias . I’ve lightly enjoyed most of what Bendis has written, but this is just way above his normal level.

Best Publishing Trend: Befitting 2004’s apparent status as the Year of the Graphic Novel, I’m going to go with the increasing prominence of graphic novels. It’s maybe not a new trend, but it is an ongoing one. It’s easier and easier to find comics in a useful collected form these days, which is what makes it feasible for someone like me, who’s not about to get into comic collecting or run down to the local comic book shop to get this week’s batch o’ pamphlets, to actually read this stuff. For yet another reason, I’m incredibly thankful that I don’t live 20 years ago; the Golden Age of Reading is right now, and it’s pretty damn cool.

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January 4, 2005

More time flying the lovely flies with Southwest “You hate us, but we’re cheap” Airlines means more time reading sweet delicious fluff — in this case, James Alan Gardner’s Trapped . But “fluff” is really an unfair term, here, because (like Duncan, Bujold, and Pratchett) Gardner manages to have the compulsive readability that’s a must for airline reading without sacrificing quality.

Trapped is set in the same League of Peoples universe as his other novels, but isn’t a direct sequel to any of them. (Shockingly, it doesn’t even involve Gardner’s favorite character, Admiral Festina Ramos.) The entire book takes place on Earth, now a primitive backwater isolated from galactic civilization. So primitive is Earth, in fact, that this has some of the feel of a science-fantasy novel, with nanotech “sorcery”, prophecies, swordfights and so forth. Only some of the feel, though; Gardner is too much the science fiction writer to give you magic and have you fill in the Clarke’s Law gaps yourself, so the scientific underpinnings of seemingly supernatural events are explained in detail.

If the setting never quite makes it to fantasy, though, the plot does. Our Plucky Band of Heroes is prophesied up a Quest, and after suspicious happenings, embark upon it. It sounds clichéd, but the Plucky Band being composed of middle-aged second-rate teachers makes it decidedly different from the standard coming of age story.

Having said all these nice things, I’m now going to be all weasely, because there was one major problem with the book, common to prophecy-plot novels: Things felt scripted. The characters did this, then this, then this, then this, and then you find out that’s exactly what they were fated to do the whole time, which makes it all rather pointless. Gardner seems to have the same problem, as one of his characters tries to give an explanation of why things aren’t as divinely-ordained as they seem, and why the sacrifices and choices that the characters made really were meaningful and worth it, but I didn’t quite buy it. Not a fatal flaw for me, but someone like Trent, who found Expendable to be too god-rigged, would utterly hate this book.

So, Trent: Avoid it. Everyone else: Read Gardner’s other stuff first, and if you like that, don’t avoid this. Me: Move along to the next Gardner quite happily.

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