Regicide

 Regicide is a dark fantasy series by writer Patrick Kindlon and artist Ludovic Lalliat published by Image. The ad copy often seems to compare it to "Dracula meets Berserk," and possibly that will become more relevant as the series goes on, but from the 3 issues available now, I definitely see the Berserk part, but I would otherwise liken to things like the film Viy or the novel Between Two Fires.

Mihas, a hulking peasant farmer in Wallachia, Romania, is ordered by the elders of his village to accompany the mysterious, metal-masked Doru on mission to kill the king. Their mission is complicated by the various demons that they will encounter along the way, hiding among humanity. 

Mihas reminds me a bit of Hellboy or the Goon; he's a working stiff sort of guy that relies on his own strength to get by. Lalliat's scratchy artwork is perfect for the gritty violence is brutal and the monstrous grotesqueness of the demons. 

Despite this content, the story isn't grim, though. Doru has an acerbic tongue and is constantly irritated by his bumpkinish assistant. There are also humorous story elements like their visit to Orasul Supunere ("City of Submission"), a form word-rejecting religious settlement, turned something like a modern BDSM club, complete with leather outfits for the townsfolk.

If you enjoy dark fantasy with a bit of humor and heroes battling a series of strange demons, then you will dig this.

Next Level Doom Patrol and Legion

 Last week, I checked out 2 books from DC's "Next Level" initiative (Next Level apparently being where you go once you are All In. I wonder where DC will go next with these marketing phrases?). Both were ok, but I definitely liked one better than the other.

Doom Patrol by writer Darcy Van Poelgeest and artist Niko Henrichon has Vertigo vibes, not in the sense of the specific Doom Patrol iteration that was a Vertigo founder, but more just the feel of Vertigo titles. Honestly, it feels feels even more like the Doom Patrol TV series with its grounded, sort of sadsack weirdos Doom Patrol, the character designs, and the characterization of Negative Man, though it doesn't really borrow any specific character bits or plot elements from that series (so far). The Doom Patrol is broke and have started a low-rent heroes-for-hire business to stay busy and pay bills. A job to find a missing cat immediately gets weird, because of course it would.

I thought this was ok. It was well done, but it felt like things I had seen before in a way that keeps me from being enthusiastic about it.

In Legion of Super-Heroes, Joshua Williamson and Hayden Sherman do a bit more re-imagining. The basic character origins are the same, but the 30th Century is now a time that has outlawed superheroes and Superboy is sort of an underground figure, looked up to by young outsiders who might run afoul of the Persuaders, law enforcement that gets people re-educated. The story starts with RJ Brande having been murdered, and Brainiac 1 of 5 and Tenzil Kem are investigating his murder and what it has to do with super-powered individuals. The new designs are modern but remind me a lot of latter era Moebius and a bit of 80s comic sci-fi (like Garcia-Lopez's designs in Twilight and Star Raiders). Think oversized jackets with stuff on them and knee pads. 

This is definitely the more intriguing premise of the two issues for me. It already seems better than the last Legion reboot.

Mignola's Lands Unknown

I confess that while long being a Hellboy fan, I sort of lost interest in the series with its innumerable spinoffs sometime in the 2010s. Since then, I haven't been paying a lot of attention, so if I saw Bowling with Corpses and Other Strange Tales from Lands Unknown when it came out, I mischaracterized it as yet another of those Hellboy things and didn't pay much attention.

Well, as I recently found out, I was wrong. Bowling with Corpses is, in fact, the start of a whole new shared universe: the Lands Unknown. So, far Mignola has been primary creator on two of graphic novels: the aforementioned title and Uri Tupka and the Gods with a sequel to that one, Uri Tupka and the Devils coming in November. Ben Stenbeck has contributed the two-issue series, Lands Unknown: The Skinless Man. I've read all of these available now, but I'm going to focus the rest of my discussion here on Mignola's two graphic novels, as they are the most unified in scope and tone (though that's no slight on The Skinless Man).

Found this on Reddit where someone had put the locations mentioned on the map

The Lands Unknown is a fantasy world with a feel in some respects similar to Dunsany's imagined East or Lovecraft's Dreamlands, but less Orientalist and more Middle and Eastern Europe and West Asian than those.  It's a polytheistic world where the gods have (perhaps) left, but the Devil is still around. The stories are inspired by folktales and legends from a number of lands. In the anthology, Bowling with Corpses, one of the tales seems pretty clearly derived from a tale in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. This serves to enhance the folkloric effect that Mignola and crew seem to be going for.

Uri Tupka and the Gods is about a theologian, branded a heretic, who sets out to find the gods. Along the way, he encounters strange and deadly things, including the interference of the Devil. The best I can describe it in high concept is sort of Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath meets Viy.

I liked both of these quite a bit. It's good to see Mignola back doing art again. I'm looking forward to next installment of Uri Tupka's travels.

The Crisis Companion

 

Recently, TwoMorrows released The Crisis Companion by Kevin Miller. This is an in-depth look at Crisis on Infinite Earths, its antecedents, its concept, how it plays out issue by issue, and its legacy. Given my ongoing reread of the period of Crisis's publication on my other blog, I was very interested in getting this as soon as I could.

I haven't had a chance to read it in depth yet, but overall, I'd say it looks quite good. At 250 pages there is a lot of detail, and just from browsing it, I've already learned interesting details like how the decision to kill Supergirl was made.

I enjoyed Miller's speculation on how elements of the Crisis story may be metatextual commentary on Wolfman's feelings about writing it. This sort of literary theorizing I liked a lot. I was less pleased with his swipe at the "overly long" "Trial of the Flash" arc wherein he suggests it is the cause "in no small part" of Flash's decline in sales since its inception in 1959. I share his opinion that "Trial" is overly long, but Miller provides absolutely no evidence that sales of Flash declined more precipitously in the years between April of 1983 and June of 1985.  A cursory search online suggests that in fact its sales declined by a greater amount between 1980 and 1982 than 1983 to 1984.  Regardless, absent evidence I'm forced to conclude that either Miller was making a joke that just appears as a statement of fact or he's just being slack about providing the evidence for his claims.

This issue aside and even with a limited read, I think it's a fascinating work and worth adding to your collection if you are a DC or 80s comics history fan.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

 I caught Spider-Man: Brand New Day last weekend. It's of course the 4 in the joint Sony/Cinematic Marvel Universe Spider-Man series, following up on No Way Home's ending that had everyone forgetting Peter Parker thanks to a spell by Doctor Strange. 

Without going into explicit spoilers, I will say that despite the title reference to more modern Spider-Man comics, it made me think of Bronze Age Spidey comics as we have this happen:

And we get a subplot that may have been loosely inspired by this infamous arc:

Anyway, I enjoyed the film. I feel like it's one of the best of recent Marvel efforts, though that's perhaps damning with faint praise. In general, I think this Spider-Man series in one of the strongest of the CMU, even if it perhaps doesn't include any of the very the best films of the franchise.

My only quibble with it is in regard to the initial portrayal of Sadie Sink's mystery character--but I can't say more on that without spoiling the reveal.

Film Flashback: Dragon Inn (1967)

During a Criterion sale earlier this summer, I picked up Dragon Inn, a 1967 Taiwanese wuxia film directed by King Hu. I had seen Hu's Come Drink with Me (1966) from Shaw Brothers Studio and liked it so I decided to give this one a try. 

The titular Dragon Gate Inn is in sparse populated border area in northwest 15th-century China. There, three martial artists become involved in a plot by the power-hungry eunuch, Cao Shaoqin, and his ruthless Eastern Depot agents to assassinate the exiled family of a minister who was framed for treason and executed.

Hu's desert setting, design of the inn, and framing of the landscape recall Hollywood Westerns and perhaps Italian ones. His approach to fight choreography and fight scenes are swift and close quarters, at least until the final battle, more like Japanese chanbara films of the era than the wirework and dance like choreography of a lot of wuxia.

The toning of down of some (some!) of the eccentricities of the wuxia genre, and the Western style setup of a group of competent strangers defending an isolated location against the badguys makes this a good "gateway" wuxia to show someone new to the genre.

Things I've Watched Recently on Crunchyroll

 I've been on a fantasy anime kick, so I've been checking out some shows (beyond Frieren, which I have already been enjoying) in that genre.

Sentenced to Be a Hero (2026) is based on a series of light novels by Rocket Shōkai. It tells the story of Xylo Forbatz, a former knight, now member of Penal Unit 9004. He and the rest of his misfit unit were executed for various crimes then raised with (apparently, it isn't entirely clear) low level superhuman abilities. They are at the forefront of humanities war against the Demon Lords who spread fungal-like Demon Blight. Forbatz's life gets more complicated when a Goddess, Teoritta, binds with him, the Goddesses being a limited resource human's use to bind with warriors to create a formidable fighting team.

The series has an interesting concept and characters and a lot of action. There's only one season available now, but hopefully there will be a second.

Radiant (2018) is actually based on a comic by a French creator, but the anime adaptation is by a Japanese studio, and the English translation of the comic is published by Viz in North America. This one is more light-hearted than Sentenced, at least at its start, and reminds me a bit of Naruto. Monstrous, sort of kaiju-type creatures called Nemeses fall from the sky to menace the populace of this world. People can become infected by contact with a Nemesis. Those that survive gain the power to manipulate the energy-source "fantasia" and become sorcerers (as such superhero as magic-user). Noble sorcerers fight to save the world that hates and fears them. The main character, Seth, is a young Sorcerer in training.

I've only watched a couple of episodes of this one, but it's entertaining enough, if not engrossing necessarily. I find it interesting that it's basically a superhero story but in a very (for American audiences) nonstandard superhero setting, something it sort of shares with Sentenced.

Last, but certainly not least is Witch Hat Atelier (2026). This one is based on a Harvey Award winning manga, and from the anime so far, I can see why it was well-regarded. A young girl named Coco with a lifelong interest in magic accidentally casts a spell that turns her mother to crystal. Though it's against the rules, she is taken as an apprentice by a witch named Qifrey (Who has an ulterior motive. He wants information on the outlawed Brim Hats who are the source of the spell Coco cast.) and joins the other apprentices at Qifrey's atelier. 

I'm enjoying the unfolding mystery of witch society and nature of the schism between them and the Brim Hats. The animation on the series is really nice with designs reminiscent of Studio Ghibli. 

Masters of the Universe (2026)

My brother and I indulged in a bit of 80s nostalgia last weekend and took in the new Masters of the Universe movie. We both enjoyed. It's not without its as my brother put it: "It may not be the best Masters of the Universe move you could hope for, but it's probably the best one your likely to get."

The approach the move takes is kind of a fusion of the "social commentary plus affectionate poking fun at its silliness" approach of Barbie with the now default action-comedy of Guardians of the Galaxy. There also seems to be a strain of pure camp reminiscent of Flash Gordon (1980). It's not a bad approach, in theory, but the film can't decide exactly on its message (or at least can't seem to get the plot in place to support it), and its comedy, despite some funny moments, sometimes falls flat or is belabored. Yes, Fisto's name and schtick are funny to adults, but make the joke once and move on!

At times, the film seems to really need you to understand it realizes it's all silly by adding a joke or undercutting a serious bit with a gag. Playing it straight and trusting the audience to know that you were winking at them--or just allowing them to enjoy it whether you were or weren't--seems to be something the filmmakers weren't ready to do. And maybe they're right for 2026, I don't know.

Anyway, I started with the less good part. There are a lot of things I think the film does unambiguously right. The production design is good, more aesthetically pleasing than say Marvel's recent efforts. The action sequences are engaging. Pretty much all the elements of the MOTU mythos you might want to see in a first film are there. It also makes an effort to include a lot of characters, though inevitably there are still some that got left out. Sorry Stratos fans!

The cast is good overall, though some of them have more to do or more interesting to do than others. Leto really shines as Skeletor with a good mix of camp and menace without trying to specifically mimic the cackling Skeletor of the 80s cartoon. 

I would also note that despite at times making fun of the property, it never feels like those involved thought they were better than the material. The jokiness is the same sort of fond/nostalgic jokiness that comes from teens goofing on the cartoons of their youth or from internet memes using Skeletor. They are making fun with MOTU not making fun of it.

The weekend box office results are in, and it looks to have under-performed which is not wholly unexpected. It's not a property younger audiences are going to have a connection to, and honestly the language and adult humor don't make it ideal to use it to introduce kids to MOTU. Like the Dungeons & Dragons movie, though, I think if you're in the group it's aimed at, you're likely to enjoy it.

Warlord's Return

 

World's Finest #51 by Mark Waid and Adrian Gutierrez came out this week, and as I mentioned previously, it features an appearance by Skartaris, Travis Morgan, and several of Warlord's supporting cast. The conceit of Waid's World's Finest series is that it is "earlier" adventurers of Batman and Superman so he can give it a bit of a retro spin will having set in the current DC Universe (whatever that actually means in terms of continuity these days). This means that we are treated to Batman's and Superman's first meeting with Travis Morgan and perhaps a bit of a setting how his backstory and Skartaris are interpreted these days.

In dialogue with Robin, Batman fills the reader in that Travis Morgan was an Air Force pilot that disappeared over the Arctic in his SR-71 "years ago" as they follow the course of a more recent SR-71 pilot to disappear named Kreitzer. We are later told Morgan's disappearance was "a year or so" before Batman and Superman went public, so the timeline is kept vague, but they are clearly retconning his disappearance being in 1969. 

Waid keeps (or rath re-introduces, since DC dropped this after Grell left) the aspect of time running differently in Skartaris than on Earth. Morgan is whitehaired as always and says he has lived "a lifetime" in Skartaris. Krietzer, who only disappeared recently from Earth's perspective has been there for "years" Skartarian time. In the original series, time was strange in Skartaris, but mostly it appeared that time ran quicker on Earth, so this inverts things.

Much of Warlord's supporting cast makes an appearance, including Machiste, Tara, Mariah, and Shakira make an appearance, prompting an amusing comment from Robin:

While the art looks nice overall (with Guerrero's coloring really stealing the show for me), I can't say I care for Guitterrez's rendition of Morgan or any of his crew. Morgan's winged helm looks like it has actually feathers stuck to it. None of the fur garments worn by Morgan, Shakira, or Tara look particularly like fur. I get the since Guiterrez is a superhero guy out of his area of competency drawing these Frazetta-descended costumes. 

Good Boy (2025)

I watched Good Boy this weekend on Prime Video. It's an indie horror film that I had heard about due to it receiving a bit of buzz (and some festival awards). The directorial debut of Ben Leonberg, it stars his dog, Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. The high concept here: a horror movie told from the dog's point of view.

In the film, Indy's owner is Todd, a young man suffering from some sort of life-threatening, progressive lung condition. After a recent hospitalization, Todd gives up his apartment in New York and heads for his grandfather's house in a rural area, a house that has been abandoned since his grandfather's relatively recent death. His sister says it's cursed and we learn that apparently more than one of their relatives has died there. 

Indy certainly experiences a sense of foreboding from the moment of their arrival, catching glimpses of a dark figure, moving shadows, and disturbing visions featuring Todd's grandfather's dog, who we learn has been missing since the grandfather's death. As Todd's condition worsens, and he pushes away both Indy and his siter, Indy has nightmares of being attacked by a figure drenched in thick, black mud.

The film is a bit of a slow burn, but it's only 74 minutes in runtime, so doesn't stretch things too much. Indy is an expressive and sympathetic protagonists, unprepared and alone facing the rising menace.

A spoiler but an important note for dog-lovers: Indy survives.

Now I want to get a bit more spoilery and discuss what I feel is an interesting aspect of the film. I don't think reading about this would diminish the enjoyment of it, but you have been warned...

When I first heard about this move, I assumed it was a horror film told from the perspective of the dog. And there's certainly an argument for that. Having seen it, though, I interpret it more as a film of a dog's horror. That is, it is a situation that would not necessarily be horrific (though likely traumatic) to a human but is horror from a dog's perspective. 

I think the apparent horrors we see depicted are mostly in Indy's mind. They are his interpretation of his knowledge of his owner's impending death. Supporting this view is the fact that the same sorts of phenomena Indy experiences in the supposedly cursed home, we already see hints of in the New York apartment. Indy senses the approach of Todd's death, and he personifies it into a tangible thing, a darkness stalking his owner.

You could interpret the film as having no supernatural element at all but instead visually representing the psychological state of its canine protagonist. In fact, statements by Leonberg encourage this reading, not exclusively, but as an interpretation he wanted the film to permit.

My view, based on the events as depicted, is that Indy can in fact see ghosts, but there is no supernatural monster or curse, just death and the fear of the loss associated with it.

Battle Chasers

I think I read Battle Chasers #1 when it was released back in 1998. It didn't grab me. Primarily, it wasn't the sort of fantasy I was interested in at that (I was a bit more finicky then than I am now), and the delays I heard about that the series was plagued with never caused me to regret that decision.

But, you know, time passes. I have a greater appreciation for Madureira's influences today than I did then, and novelty and variety in my reading is more important. So, when I saw the entire series (Of the original run. The 2023 follow-up issues haven't been collected.) for pretty cheap in digital format, I picked it up.

The plot of Battle Chasers is pretty standard fantasy stuff. The young daughter of a warrior is pursued by the forces of evil, but luckily, she's able to assemble a band of reluctant heroes around her--and wield powerful magical artifacts that once belonged to her father--to save the land. 

Late 90s time capsule that it is, it's a lot. There's a lot of detail on the page; bombastic characters with bombastic designs. Coloring and lettering are really in your face, exuberant with the capabilities that digital technology offered (and to be fair, a certain excessiveness is sometimes still observed today's comics in those areas). It also feels earnest and bursting with ideas, which if not really novel, are at least pretty cool.

I wish there had been more of it to see how it developed. I hear there was eventually an computer game, which is really probably bringing the concept full circle.

The Last Abraxan

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a YouTube video about a recent Kickstarter by Mike Ortiz for a retro Bronze Age Marvel sci-fi superhero comic, something inspired by the works of the likes of David Anthony Kraft, Steve Gerber, and of course, Jim Starlin. Not only is the comic told in the particular idiom of 70s Marvel, colored in halftone dots, and features fake ads homaging common ones of the day, but the physical copy is also printed on newsprint. 

Well, I had to get a copy, and I can safely say, this was truly a labor of love by Ortiz. The detail that went into the product is impressive. You can get a hint of all of that in the "making of" features on the website. In the physical copy order, there were also extras like stickers and hardcopies of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe style file entries.

The story is definitely in the Bronze Age style, though leans a bit tongue-in-cheek. The art and design complete capture the inspirations.

The Mighty Avengers Vs. the 1970s

When I saw the announcement for the Marvel Age of Comics series, I said to some friends of mine that they seemed like the comics-related version of the 33 1⁄3 series, and apparently, I was more right than I new. They are published the same publisher (Bloomsbury), and I came across a press release that that says they were "inspired in part by Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 books."

Where the 33 1⁄3 books gave an author's idiosyncratic take on an album, the Marvel Age of Comics seem to cover a notable storyline or era in Marvel history. I decided to sample the series with The Mighty Avengers Vs. the 1970s by Paul Cornell. I suspect that, like the series that inspired them, these books will vary in how they are written and the insight provided, but on the basis of this one, I plan to check out more.

Cornell gives a compelling overview of the decade, breaking it up into the runs of the various writers (Thomas, Englehart, Shooter, and the fill-in writers), and examining how their approaches and concerns influenced the title. In centering the narrative on the writers, the artists are perhaps given short shrift, though George Perez is singled out for a good deal of praise. Cornell his talent for scene composition and character expression likely influenced writers both working with him and thereafter on the title.

Cornell's description of the series and its virtues is personal, reminding me at time of Morrison's Supergods, but is more concrete and informative rather than speculative. The complete Marvel neophyte will be confused, probably, but and the Avengers scholar might find it shallow. It appears to be gauged for the familiar, but not the expert, which is probably the right approach.

Hardwired

Recently, I decided to fill a gap in my cyberpunk awareness and check out Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired (1986). I've sampled Williams' short fiction before: his contributions to the Wild Cards shared universe, "Wall, Stone, Craft" from my years subscribing to the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy; and "Red Elvis" and "Prayers in the Wind," stories that left an impression even among other worthies in Dozois' Years Best Science Fiction collections. I figured I was long overdue to read what is perhaps his most famous novel.

In the near future of Hardwired, the Earth has lost the Rock War (a kinetic orbital strike) with the Orbital stations in the control of various corporate blocs. The territory that was formerly the United States has fractured into the rival states, scrambling to hold onto what they can in the face of environmental degradation and exploitation by the Orbital blocs. The novel has two protagonists. One is Cowboy, a cybernetically enhanced ex-pilot, now a panzer (a hovercraft or ground-effect type vehicle; storywise a futuristic truck) driver, running contraband from the relatively more prosperous West to the beleaguered East Coast. The other is Sarah, an enhanced street tough and bodyguard in Florida, trying to keep herself and her prostitute brother alive after she becomes a "loose end" following a job she took for a corporation.

Hardwired seems clearly post-Gibson, but Williams crafts a cyberpunk future all his own. No Blade Runner-inspired Sprawl here really or heavy Japanese overlay. Hardwired sets much of its action in rural areas, even more rural in his future than today, on lonely, roads, or in smaller cities like a partially drowned Tampa that becomes an evocation of the developing world under the colonial boot heel.

William's Cowboy has a much more on-the-nose name than Gibson's console cowboys. The callbacks and parallels to the Old West of reality and of celluloid myth are much stronger. Hack science fiction of the past was often derided for utilizing plots cribbed from horse operas and given a futuristic veneer, but William's work recalls the Western in a way that gives it resonance similarly to how the work of Leigh Brackett so often does. In fact, Cowboy reminds me more than a little of Brackett's outlaw protagonist in "The Citadel of Lost Ships," even down to their "the family lost their land" backstory.

Beyond the Western, the run down and discarded nature of Hardwired's America has a very 70s feel. There are echoes of car movies like Vanishing Point, but also 70s Neo-Noir. It prefigures Cowboy Bebop a bit in some of its worldbuilding and influences.

I enjoyed the novel a lot. It's fairly pulpy, I suppose, though that's never been a downside to me. It is very 80s, too, in how it is written. It's prose in interesting enough and quintessential early cyberpunk: Chandlerian simile and metaphor with a science and technology obsession. The occasional snippets of news or ad copy go for black satire at times similar to Robocop, still a year away. It's themes, though, are just as relevant, today, perhaps even more so. 

Paperback Flashback: Beyond the Farthest Star

 

In 2021, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. released Beyond the Farthest Star: Restored Edition. It features two novellas Burroughs wrote in 1940, "Adventure on Poloda" and "Tangor Returns." The first of these was published in a reportedly abridged and altered form in Blue Book in 1941. The latter didn't see print until 1964, after his death.

The two stories are quite different from Burroughs usual Sword & Planet stories. Sure, a nameless Earth man is transported by occult means to a distant planet where he makes a life and (perhaps) finds love, but there the similarities largely end. First off, there aren't really any swords, making these stories more just Planetary Romances. Secondly, there is nothing of the swashbuckling adventure of John Carter or the wandering through weird societies of Carson Napier. And wooing of a beautiful princess? Forget it.

Instead, it's a relatively grim (for Burroughs) tale of a world ground down by endless war. A battle of civilization forced to live underground and devote itself to the war-effort lest it be destroyed by a relentless, totalitarian enemy. Tangor, as our nameless hero is called on this world of Poloda, joins the air force and flies a number of raids against Kapara, the enemy of hsi adopted home of Unis.

Clearly, Burroughs has the looming second World War on his mind. Is his typical, one might say simplistic, adventure-oriented fashion, Burroughs has his hero question the war or his side. His time is consumed with surviving. Telling, though, there are no heroic victories, no destroyed Death Stars or decisive battles. In fact, the story never lingers on the results of Tangor's sorties, mainly the difficulties he has making it home in one piece.

Illustration by Mark Schultz that doesn't capture much of the book's feel

The second novella "Tangor Returns" is even more remarkable among Burroughs' work. Tangor spends most of it as a spy living undercover in Kapara. He must deal with the constant surveillance and the inability to trust anyone. He is once beaten almost to death by the secret police after a jealous acquaintance has a fake diary planted in his home. He sees one of the few men he comes to trust there "disappeared" after his own son informs on him.

We are a long way from Barsoom or Pellucidar here. Tangor, while a man of accomplishments and ability is more an everyman than most of Burroughs' heroes, a status perhaps hinted at by his name which means "from nothing" in the language of his adopted people.

This is Burroughs more in the style of 1984 than Tarzan. It perhaps is a mode he is less suited to. Certainly, it doesn't capture the imagination in the way of his earlier works. But is interesting and short enough not to overstay its welcome.

The Avengers in the Veracity Trap

The Avengers in the Veracity Trap is the latest graphic novel in Abrams Books' MarvelArts line. It's by Chip Kidd and Michael Cho. Like the previous MarvelArts release, Ross' Fantastic Four: Full Circle, it's a visual treat: the color and design is fantastic, and Cho's art perfectly captures the Marvel Age vibe, down to sort of meta touches like every character being introduced in a Mighty Marvel Pin-Up.

Storywise, it starts with an Avengers brawl with a host of Kirby-style Marvel monsters, courtesy of Loki, but soon develops in an even more metatextual direction as Thor pursues Loki outside the realm of the comic. The Avengers soon must come to terms with the sense-shattering reality of their existence and the fictional counterparts of Kidd and Cho finding the story becoming all too real!

What could easily have been either an extended joke or a saccharine nostalgia piece, manages to do a little of both, and avoid going too far in either direction. The affection the creators feel for these characters come through, but they keep it all moving.

In the end, Kidd and Cho get to do what they do best, as do the Avengers, and the team-up put an end to Loki's schemes.

Veracity Trap is available digitally, but something that's something looks this good and that is fundamentally about the love and impact of those Silver Age stories deserves to be read in physical form.

Paperback Flashback: Thief of Llarn

Having recently revisited Gardner Fox's Sword & Planet novel Warrior of Llarn, 1966's Thief of Llarn. Poor Alan Morgan can't relax into married life with the beautiful princess Tuarra of Karthol because the thieves' guild of Llarn is stealing all the ultra-rare, precious stones called verdals. One of which happens to be in Tuarra's wedding ring.

On their way to consult with some scientists in another city-state, Morgan and his wife are waylaided by an immortal, psychic entity, who also is very much concerned about the verdal thefts. He forces Morgan to go undercover for him under threat of death rather than, you know, just teaming up. As the legendary thief, Uthian the Unmatched, Alan Morgan must steal a verdal from a remote, ancient city, then infiltrate the thieves' guild to find out who has commissioned these crimes and why. As is typical with this sort of thing, it is a leader with designs on conquest and a super-weapon.

This sequel is, I think, better than the first. Where Warrior of Llarn, while colorful, followed the predictable points in the Sword & Planet Hero's Journey, this one is freed from those restrictions. There are couple of interesting perils and new cultures and the character of super-thief Uthian the Unmatched brings a bit of Sword & Sorcery verve to things, even if he's only Alan Morgan playing a role. The Tower of Ten Thousand Deaths was neat as was the variegated force field that protected the verdal Morgan had to steal. He seemed like something that might have appeared in Fox's Adam Strange.

Paperback Flashback: Planet of Peril

Continuing with some Sword & Planet reading, I decided to check out one of ERB's earliest imitators: Otis Adelbert Kline. Kline was an editor and literary agent predominantly, but he wrote a number of adventure stories in a Burroughsian vein in the 30s and 40s. The Planet of Peril, serialized in Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1929, is his first planetary romance, and the first of a trilogy about Robert Grandon of Terra on the planet Venus.

Overall, the beats of the story are various much in the mold of A Princess of Mars. Grandon arrives on Venus (Zarovia) by telepathic transmission, gets in some danger, meets a friend, meets a girl, then has numerous perilous episodes before he and girl can be united marriage. And of course, Grandon ascends to a place of rulership. 

Kline's prose is probably as good as Burroughs' and his adventuresome perils are as imaginative as the typical Burroughs work (if maybe not quite as good as ERB's best): there jungle beasts, intelligent, giant ants, and lecherous potentates. The pace is quick and punctuated with serialized adventure fiction cliffhangers. Kline seems to have put just as much thought into his Venusian neologisms and invent biosphere.

The differences between The Planet of Peril and the Barsoom stories are interesting. John Carter's combat prowess is explained by his status as a sort of eternal "fighting man." Grandon, by contrast, is just a bored rich guy. On the other hand, Grandon's transport to Venus is given more of a story justification (if a pseudoscientific one) rather than just happening. Also, unlike the Barsoomians, Kline's Venusians can and do employ armor when it would benefit them to do so. Vernia has the interesting wrinkle of being more of an antagonist than Dejah Thoris, but on the other hand, Kline doesn't sell her allure with near the facility that Burroughs does his Martian princess.

Overall, if you like Burroughs' planet romance fiction, you'll probably like Kline's.

Fantastic Four: First Steps

Last night, I caught Fantastic Four: First Steps. It's been a good summer for superhero fans, with films from both Marvel and DC that easily above average for the genre. It's unfortunate, perhaps, that coming out in close proximity means the films will inevitably be compared to each other.

Like Superman, FF eschews the origin story to jump into a universe where the characters are already firmly established (4 years for the FF, 3 years for Superman) and well-loved by the public. FF pits new challenges against its protagonists, who are both heroes, celebrities, and effectively politic players through what is (I guess) an NGO. The first is a happy one: Sue's pregnancy. The second is the arrival of the Silver Surfer (though the name is never used in the movie, I don't think) who heralds the coming of Galactus.

Again, like Superman, FF gets a bit episodic with the overall narrative, as the team conceives and tries and generally fails at different means of stopping the threat. Franklin Richards is born in what may be films first zero gee birth sequence while they are feeling Galactus' relentless herald through space, after a failed attempt to negotiate with World Devourer.

FF has a more serious tone that Superman, despite having a bit less darkness to it. (While the world is imperiled there are no on-screen murders or torture, for instance). There are less jokes, though, and decidedly less of the typical Marvel quipiness.  The warmth of the team and their connection as a family does come through, though.

If I have a complaint about the film, it is with these family dynamics. The often (in the comics) fractious team members are pretty harmonious. A reasonable choice given how plot heavy it is, but none of the team get any sort of individual arc, except arguably Reed. There are gestures in that direction, but only gestures. Reed and Sue get a decent amount of character development and a bit of growth, but Ben only has the surface features of his comic portrayal, and Johnny, his hot-headed youth and womanizing attenuated to only shadows, doesn't really have anything else to replace, save perhaps a certain impatience and doggedness. He's worst served by the script.

Still, the performances are good with what they have to work with. There are tense sequences. The mid-century design sensibility manages to break the Marvel sameness to give it a distinct style. Galactus maybe should have been worked on a bit more to shore up imposing solidity, but we do get to see a giant in a goofy helmet stride through New York City, as that's something.

Paperback Flashback: Warrior of Llarn

I'm rereading a pulp novel from the 1964 I read a few years ago (well, technically I'm listening to it as a audiobook this time).

Gardner Fox isn't exactly known for his great contributions to literature, though he made substantial contributions to Golden and Silver Age DC Comics. According to Wikipedia, he's co-creator Barbara Gordon, the original Flash, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Doctor Fate, Zatanna and the original Sandman, and he's estimated to have written more than 4,000 comics stories. He also wrote a number of stories for pulp magazine in their heyday, and I feel like his work is always competent, and often above average for their output.

Warrior of Llarn is a Sword & Planet yarn in the vein of Burroughs' Mars and an original paperback, not a fix-up of his older pulp work. Earthman Alan Morgan gets transport to a distant world by means as yet mysterious. He saves a princess and gets involved with a war between two civilizations. The level of technology of the world is a bit higher than Barsoom, and Fox provides a Dune-esque (a year before Dune) explanation for why people with energy weapons might still use swords. Like Fox's earlier Adam Strange stories for DC, the planet has suffered a nuclear war in the past, which is the cause of its strange creatures and current lower level of civilization. Fox's story is old fashion, even quaint in many ways, but he's accomplished at delivering the goods. Whatever the books faults, it's not boring.

Fox wrote a sequel, Thief of Llarn, which, if memory serves, is a bit better than the first.