Jonathan Woodward's Journal

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Books: Avengers, Empowered, Wolfe, Hamilton, Zelazny, Varley

Avengers: Galactic Storm by divers hands

New England Comics is having a sale on Marvel TPBs, and I was curious about Iron Man's Model 10 New Space Armor, so I snatched this up. This 19-part crossover occupied seven different Avengers-related titles back in the summer of '92. Premise: The Kree and the Shi'ar are having a war, and one of the logistically important stargates is right next to Earth's sun . . . and it's progressively destabilizing it, endangering all life in the Sol System. The Avengers send one team each to the Kree and Shi'ar empires, to negotiate a truce, or at least get them to pick another stargate. Then they discover that the Shi'ar have built a nega-bomb, capable of wiping out all life in a spiral arm . . .

For a crossover handled by seven different creative teams, this is very tightly plotted. (Unlike so many crossovers where there's a main story and a bunch of irrelevant side stories.) Plus, there are a surprising number of tough ethical questions addressed. Mildly recommended.

Empowered v5, by Adam Warren

The continuing adventures of our favorite hostage-prone heroine and her remarkably flimsy costume. Yes, I know that sounds like male fantasy wank-bait, but it actually appears to appeal to women too, not least because of Emp's imperfections. This volume is mostly about Emp and her new friend Mindf*ck, and the Superhomeys becoming aware of the villainous Willy Pete. Strong story, recommended.

The Rubber Band/The Red Box by Rex Stout

Two early novels about gargantuan detective Nero Wolfe and his legman, Archie Goodwin. They suffer a bit from their era (mid-1930s), but I remain a sucker for Wolfe mysteries.

Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton

Dead center in the New Space Opera genre, this is set in and around an interstellar human near-utopia, where new planets are opened up daily and connected by wormholes to the Commonwealth. (Ground-level wormholes, so interstellar travel is by train.) Then an astronomer notices that two stars have suddenly winked out, in the space of seconds. An expedition goes out to investigate, and discovers a lot more than they planned. First of a series of two, recommended.

What They Never Told You About Boston (Or What They Did That Were Lies) by Walt Kelley (no relation)

A slim book full of Boston trivia, by a Boston cabbie. (Like, how both "Boston" and "Shawmut" mean, roughly "boat place".) For residents, recommended.

Manna From Heaven by Roger Zelazny

A collection of stories by the late Zelazny, including all the short Amber fiction, and a number of quirky little fantasies. Recommended.

The John Varley Reader

Another collection of stories, some of them pretty powerful. Several are of especial interest to the GLBT community, as they deal with a future where changing gender is relatively easy. "Options", in particular, is about a mostly-happy marriage in which the wife starts getting a little tired of being the wife. Highly recommended.

I Say, Jolly Good Show!
So, while I find the Autobot twins fairly offensive, I just can't pass up one of their toys, the vintage ice cream truck combiner.

To compensate, from now on I'm going to pretend that the twins speak, not in faux-gangsta dialog, but with English accents.

"I say, old bean, but that trouncing was surprisingly painful to the old say-no-more."
"Terribly sorry, old chap, but trouncings are supposed to be painful, eh wot?"
"Oh quite right, very good point."

"Dash my optics, but those construction vehicles appear to be forming a giant Decepticon!"
"Well observed, dear fellow! Why, I nearly feel myself un-bot'd with terror."

"'Zounds, I appear to be getting sucked into Devastator's giant maw! Remember me to the Autobots, old bean! Britannia forever!"

In other giant robot news: full size Gundam, all lit up. Shiny.

(Link courtesy

buxom_bey,

deadwinter.)

"Thank You"s Astray
So, I made up thank you notes, for my birthday present? And some got hand-delivered, and some got mailed?

Yeah, thus far, none of the mailed ones have arrived. I know I put stamps on 'em — "Forever" stamps — so I have no idea what happened to them.

But, let this be as much of a substitute as it can be: Thank you.

Edit: Okay, phew, some of them have arrived! I no longer fail at gratitude!

LOLTransformers: Do Not Want!
I have a fondness for Transformers. And a really high tolerance for crap cinema.

But Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a bad, bad, bad movie.

If they'd cut the assorted fart, butt, and testicle jokes — and the two Autobots who are, let's face it, basically in robo-blackface — it would merely have been a bad movie. I would have been entertained, not cringing.

Strongly not recommended.

(No, no Optimus Primal icon for this post. Beast Wars Transformers was frickin' Shakespeare next to this festering oil slick.)

Speaking of Whom . . .
For my readers who are fans thereof, Empowered volume 5 came out today . . .

2012: The Year Of Special Effects
There's a new trailer out for 2012.

Special effects-wise, I think this may be the movie of the year. Especially with the Kennedy bit.

Ask Doctor LJ: Sleep Study
Since I've been consistently waking up exhausted for some time now, I'm thinking I should get a sleep study done. Who out there has advice to give? My first step is talking to my regular doc about getting a referral, yah?

More Bad Comics

The Marvel Fumetti Book: Marvel's editors, as of 1983, in a fumetti. Who thought this was a good idea?
Vamps: Vampire biker babes. Five cliches, no waiting.
Vermillion: I was really pleased when DC tried to start up a line of science fiction comics. I just think it was a mistake that the first batch were all culled from Vertigo submissions. In particular, Vermillion is pretty much just a horror comic except for the spaceship in which the six-issue flashback takes place. Plus, don't set a comic in a fascinating world-city named Vermillion, and then spend your first six issues talking about the previous frickin' universe instead of Vermillion itself . . .

Pixar's Up
I am somewhat tempted to change the app I'm working on at work, so that it occasionally, for no reason, pops up a "Squirrel!" error message . . .

Old Comics
I've been going through my old comics, deciding if there's anything I want to give away. Precis: Man, I own some odd stuff.

Avengers #300, circa 1988: Captain America put together an interim team around this point, consisting of himself (going by just "The Captain" at that point, 'cause he'd been fired), Thor, Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman (who were supposed to be taking a break from superheroing) and Gilgamesh, the Forgotten One. Yeah, that's right, "The Forgotten One". The guy with the bull's-head helmet? Yeah, yoinks, that was an odd team.
Daredevil circa 1988: I'd forgotten how odd Daredevil by Ann Nocenti and John Romita, Jr. was, but it was pretty good, too.
Underworld Unleashed: Apokolips: Dark Uprising and Batman: Devil's Asylum: Yeah, whoopee, two Underwear Unwashed spinoffs in which we see how scary the villain Neron is in comics in which there's a lot of sound 'n fury, but no actual changes to the status quo.
Unknown Soldier and Doctor Thirteen (both 1997): What do these comics have in common? They both take old DC characters who hadn't gotten a lot of play (a war hero and a "ghost-breaker") and update them for the 90s by making them thoroughly unlikeable and borderline psychotic.
The raw cynicism of Avengers: Disassembled still appalls me.
Fantastic Four, circa 1992: Oh, yes, the saga of the FF versus "Occulus The Unforgiving!" DeFalco is truly not the best writer the FF ever had. Yeesh.

Books: Times Eight

The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain

I really don't know what the big deal about "The Notorious Jumping Frog" is, but there's a lot of good stuff in here, mostly satire that you wouldn't expect to travel well, but does. Recommended.

1001 Things it Means to be a Dad by Harry H. Harrison Jr.

We're not currently pregnant, but I thought I'd pick this up anyway. While often trite and/or reinforcing of traditional gender roles and/or way too religious for me, there were also a handful of "Things" that I suspect I'll find useful. Like, "You're their friend, but you're their dad first."

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

Bob Howard is a sysadmin for a government agency. This would be soul-sucking enough, but he also occasionally has to deal with things that actually suck souls, like, say, Cthulhu. Littered with pop culture references only a geek would get and fun action scenes, this is a book I should have read sooner. Highly recommended.

Operation Red Jericho by Joshua Mowll

A "young adult" pulp adventure novel about two siblings whose parents have gone missing in Western China, so they are foisted from relative to relative until they end up on their uncle's Q-ship, the Expedient. At this point they get involved in a hidden war with a Chinese tong over the superexplosive known as "zoridium".
While the main characters are, frankly, brats, this book steals its way into my heart because of its fold-out maps and diagrams of hidden fortresses and revolutionary submersibles. It's like a Tom Swift novel, if the Tom Swift novels had included blueprints and full-color illustrations. If you're as much of a sucker as I am for that sort of thing, highly recommended.

Runaways: Dead Wrong by Terry Moore and Humberto Ramos

This latest adventure of Marvel's team of teen superheroes was pretty good, but would have been much better if the dramatic ending hadn't been used, in exactly the same form, in Young Avengers: Family Matters. Dammit. Still, recommended.

The Thin Man, Little, Big, and The Stainless Steel Rat

Since my to-read pile was actually down to about 12" for a while there, I actually got a chance to read books I've read before. Crazy, huh? Thin Man is a classic 1930s detective story, even better than the (very good) movie that was made from it. But Nick and Nora sure do drink a lot. Little, Big is a fairy story set (mostly) in an urban dystopian future. It meanders a lot, the ending is weak, and there are too darn many red herrings, but the picture it paints of the Drinkwater family and their huge, multi-faced house plucks at the cockles of my heart in just the right way. The Stainless Steel Rat is an SF comedy-thriller about a criminal who goes to work for the government bringing in other criminals. I liked it better when I was younger, but it still kept me off the streets and out of trouble for a few hours.

State of the Jon: Twitch
Judging by the way my right eye started twitching last week, I'm apparently still recovering from the exhaustion and stress of moving, seasonal allergies, etc. So, if I've been falling down on the job in any way, I ask for your tolerance.

A Quick Note
A quick note, to whom it may concern: I delete any comments on my LJ that are abusive and anonymous.

First
I'd kinda forgotten how much fun first dates are . . .

. . . and how nervous-making . . .

Learn To Use Google, Guys
So, there's a new Transformers character named Nexus Maximus.

Knowing my friends, some of you just broke into giggles.

Explanation: Not safe for work.

Embarrassment of Riches
Yesterday, my lovely and obsessive wife presented me with my birthday present — which, according to the card, was made possible by donations from a few dozen of my friends.

I am humbled and embarrassed to be the recipient of this gift. I know how fond I am of my friends and family, but it is ever a surprise to find how fond they are of me. Thank you.

Everything Old is New Again
Ravage, one of the original "cassette-cons" from Transformers, is finally available in a form where you can actually store music on him.

(News courtesy

beah.)

Books: Memory, Remember, Dragon, Rogue, Vampire

Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold

Another entertaining novel in the Vorkosigan Saga, this one focusing on Miles' relationship with his homeworld and its nobles. I think his superiors are a little too quick to forgive misdeeds, but I still found it hard to put the book down. Recommended.

I Remember the Future by Michael A. Burstein

This is

buxom_bey's autographed copy, as MAB is a friend of the family. It's a very solid collection of SF stories, most of which have been nominated for a Hugo or Nebula. MAB handles religion quite well, even when it's not his own, and also handles physics well, which is a combination not always seen in SF writers. Recommended.

Hellboy: The Dragon Pool by Christopher Golden

Golden is one of the few Hellboy novelists who should be allowed to write Hellboy novels. I think it's because he foregrounds Hellboy and his relationship with the world, rather than splicing Hellboy into some random horror plot. For example, this novel deals with his second reunion with his ex-girlfriend, and has flashbacks to their breakup. The A plot is about an archaeological dig in Tibet which unearths something better left buried . . . yeah, been there, done that, but it's very well handled. Recommended.

Crimson Rogue by Liz Maverick

This is a paranormal romance, and fourth (or so) in a series, and so outside my usual reading turf, but I met Maverick at Arisia, and she was giving away free autographed copies, so . . . Regardless, it's about a modern city inhabited by humans, vampires, werewolves, demons . . . and a really unhappy cyborg with a massive bounty on his head. He falls in with an ex-demon-captive, and they fall in love while dealing with their enemies. It probably would have been better if I'd read the earlier books in the series, but I wasn't bored, and I thought the way she danced around the romance was deft. Recommended.

The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice

I'm a mild fan of Rice's earlier vampire novels, and this one was sitting around the house for some reason, so I gave it a shot. I got a dozen pages in and decided I had better things to do. Not recommended.

One Weekend, Two Basements
Our new basement is pretty typical for a 109-year-old basement, in that it has decades of ground-in dirt, and cobwebs to rival Torech Ungol. As of Friday, it also had dozens of assorted boxes, bins, and miscellany stacked haphazardly throughout, most exactly where the movers left 'em.

So, yesterday, I determined where we wanted the plastic shelves, cleared all the boxes out of that area, vacuumed the ceiling in that area to get rid of cobwebs, vacuumed the fllor to get rid of stuff that had fallen off the ceiling, mopped the floor with something biocidal, waited for it to dry, set up the shelves, partly dismantled the shelves when I realized I'd mixed incompatible parts, reassembled the shelves, and moved many of the boxes onto the shelves. Over the next few months I plan to vacuum-and-mop the rest of the basement, too (probably starting with our tenants' laundry area), but as of today it's much improved.

Today, I had to take care of the basement at our old apartment, which was full of A) unused boxes, B) piles of plastic bags and random trash, and C) a lot of stuff we wanted to give away. Since tomorrow is recycling day in Medford, this was my last opportunity to get rid of the boxes greenly. So, I spent three hours breaking down cardboard, sorting plastic from paper, and hauling it all out to the curb. A few people visited to snarf items from our giveaway piles, and then at 2pm I hauled one truckful of the stuff to Goodwill. There's still another truckful, but that basement is a lot more presentable, too.

And I'm going to try to spend the next few days in non-basement places.

Giveaway Ending at 2pm
As in the subject.