Fear of the Dark - Walter Mosley

Paris owns a bookstore in L.A. in the '50s. It ought to be a quiet life, which is what he wants. When his cousin Ulysses stops by, Paris sends him away. Because Ulysses - or "Useless" as everyone but his mother calls him - always brings trouble with him.

But Paris can find his own trouble. Like sleeping with a girl whose previous relationship is not quite as over as she claimed. Paris takes to his heels, and when he returns to his bookstore hours later, the boyfriend's dead on the floor. As the boyfriend and lady were both white, and Paris is black, this could be a real problem were the cops to find out. Especially with Paris not knowing why the guy is dead.

The murder is connected to Useless' visit, but the whys and hows and what-fors are teased out slowly over the course of the book. There are plenty of digressions, as Paris roams the neighborhood, giving us peeks into the different lives and cultures of the city. Sometimes the enclaves different groups make for themselves, but also where they mix and coexist. Having never been a terribly community-minded person, the grand cultural map of the city, or the city as an organism, isn't hugely interesting to me except for how it impacts the story. I take more from it for the opportunities it gives Mosley to introduce new characters and sketch a quick, but interesting, background for them.

Mosley doesn't write Paris as brave, or at least, Paris doesn't think of himself as brave. Paris contrasts himself with his friend Fearless Jones (who has apparently been the protagonist of a couple other books Mosley wrote, not sure if Paris was in those, too.) From Paris' perspective, Fearless is never flustered, never afraid, can speak calmly with anyone, from a hired killer to a frightened mother to a white pastor. When they're put in a holding cell with a bunch of other guys, Paris is almost grateful to feel safe from the threats of the outside world, while Fearless is, as the names suggests unperturbed by the whole thing.

But even if Paris doesn't particularly care where Useless is, and is only dragged into the search by his aunt, he does keep digging. He keeps asking questions and trying to piece things together, whether his aunt is pressing him or not, whether Fearless is there to back him up or not. He was a likeable enough main character. Clever when he's got time to plan his approach, stubborn enough to keep digging, able to do something dangerous if it's really necessary, even though he's terrified. Although I especially liked the part where he hits his limit with his aunt and gives her a verbal dressing down. Mosley wrote that really well, the way the dam burst and it all just flooded out.

'Somebody overhearing our words would have thought that I was going down the wrong road. But that someone wouldn't have been listening between the lines. In his own estimation Tommy was a superior specimen. He only dealt with white people and was better educated than 99 percent of the Negro race. He would have felt he could dismiss me unless I intimidated him physically or intellectually.

Tommy could have kicked my ass up and down the block, so I used the only muscle I had.'

5th Passenger (2017)

An escape pod from one of a series of ships transporting some of humanity to a new world is discovered with only one survivor, one of the navigation officers. And she's comatose. Fortunately the ability to see a person's memories by slapping a pair of fancy blue goggles on someone's face exists, so we and the rescuers, can maybe learn what happened.

OK, so one thing that nags at me throughout this movie is that, even though we're allegedly seeing Lt. Miller's memories of the events, we often see Lt. Miller herself. As though we're actually seeing the memories of some 6th, invisible, passenger who was in the pod.

Now, it is pointed out or alluded to by more than one character that memory is not an ironclad thing. People remember what they want to, and memories are affected by perception. This, as you no doubt have guessed, factors into the answer to what happened. That said, it still bugs me that Lt. Miller's memories are to involve her being apart from herself.

The movie has the grounds for a good pressure cooker atmosphere, full of tension and frayed nerves. Earth seems to have been divided into "citizens" and "non-citizens." The latter aren't excluded from the ship - Lt. Miller, the livestock herder and the doctor on the pod are all in that category - but they're treated essentially as slaves or tools. Their uniforms even have a label on the sleeve that states "non-citizen". The two citizens expect them to be silent unless spoken to, and are indignant at the notion of even sharing an escape pod with "roaches", as one of the two describes them. The pod was also only supposed to hold 4 people, so they have less oxygen and food stores than expected. And Lt. Miller's pregnant with the livestock herder's kid (though he doesn't learn that until halfway through.)

Like I said, there's some fertile ground here, especially as Miller appears the only one with skills that might save them once the pod is sent off-course. But then they find another, damaged, pod, and it seems like there was an experiment on-board, and now it's on their pod, and it's almost Baby's First Alien flick. The addition of a monster doesn't entirely sabotage the social strata friction, but it looks so fake and so goofy it does a fair bit of damage. The writing doesn't help either. Lots of, lines that are clumsy attempts to provide exposition, plus some acting that thinks putting extra emphasis on every word creates extra emotion, too.

Burning Leaves and Burning Sands

Depends how good a dancer they are, and if you're in the mood to laugh at another's misfortune.

Having defeated one of the Seven Fallen Angels and repaired Tama's relationship with her father, volume 4 of No Longer Allowed in Another World finds Sensei and the others having stopped in the village of Toneriko, located in the shadow of the great tree Weltenbaum. But the village isn't doing so well, since a gang of Otherworlders set up a casino across the river, and have begun selling the leaves of the great tree as a narcotic to their fellow Otherworlders. Even one of the locals, a woman named Esche believed to possibly be a witch, has opened up a bar beside the casino and is raking in the money. She's even snared Sensei, not that he was a difficult catch.

Fortunately, an Otherworlder named Yamada, who fancies himself a protector of justice and honor, has arrived to trounce these wicked Otherworlders. And he does, even destroying their casino. Sensei's not impressed by Yamada's binary view of the world. As the villagers refuse to listen to Sensei's explanation of Esche's actions and run her out, then offer to pay Yamada to protect the village while they get down to the business of selling Weltenbaum's leaves as a drug, it would seem Sensei's correct.

Sort of. It's presented to us that all the money Esche made was essentially protection money she gave "Boss" to restrict his business to Otherworlders and leave the villagers alone. But right about the time Yamada destroys the casino, Boss was already planning to have his guys abduct some of the villagers and forcibly get them addicted to the drugs and gambling. So Esche's approach of conciliation was about to fail. Because Boss was never going to honor his word past the point it suited his purposes. That the villagers turned out to also be opportunists, simply lacking the vision to see the chance until someone else did it first, doesn't make Boss less of a scumbag or a threat.

Anyway, it turns out Esche was much more than she appeared, and the villagers are shit out of luck. Sensei, on the other hand, receives a gift to ease his distress. From there, the story ventures to yet another new region, the Samstag Desert. This is a Nir-focused story, since he's from here originally and brings the party to the orphanage where he grew up. Things are rougher than you'd expect, even for an orphanage in the middle of a freaking wasteland. Another gang of Otherworlders terrorize the region, making me believe that damn Isekai Jackpot Truck has been running people over like it's playing Grand Theft Auto, plus there's a terrible beast roaming the sands at night.

On the plus side, someone keeps leaving baskets of food on the door every night. Nir, who's struggling to match the stories he's told the other orphans of his being a great warrior, takes some solace in helping Mr. Saito collect food from an oasis for the kids. The orphanage comes under attack by the gang, and Nir demonstrates his courage, although not in battle exactly.

It's a pretty good arc, as Noda shows Nir's been defining courage too narrowly, thinking of it simply as someone who will charge into battle and crush enemies. When Sensei begins to take apart Mr. Saito's image of himself, it's Nir who leaps to the man's defense, and his own, since the things Sensei says are the same things Nir thinks of himself. We also see that even when Nir's down on himself, Annette and Tama each give his confidence a boost in their own way.

There's also the aspect that Sensei isn't necessarily correct about everything. Up to this point, his instincts have been right on, whether it was sensing the truth that there was something behind Suzuki's actions in volume 2, or that there was more to the story of Tama's estrangement from her father in volume 3, or recognizing Esche was not the collaborator the villagers believed her to be. I don't know if that's because he's from another world, and so he sees this one without preconceived notions of its inhabitants, or some innate sense for conflict or character arc that marks him as a writer. Probably the latter, since he admits that, in being so quick to label Mr. Saito a coward, he misjudged the man.

Takahiro Wakamatsu shows off his design skills more in the desert section of the book. Boss and his gang are sort of a bunch of stereotypical gangster types, with the dark coats and fedoras and thin mustaches. Not much to them. The guy leading the desert gang seems based off the Kuwabara character from YuYu Hakusho, but at least it makes him stand out visually, and his cheat skill to somehow turn animals into vehicles, is at least weird and kind of cool. Also, Wakamatsu draws a damn nice werewolf. Someone should send scans to the folks drawing that Werewolf by Night book and see if they take a hint.

Sunday Splash Page #344

 

"Some Thing Spooked This Way Comes," in Marvel Two-in-One #99, by Bill Mantlo (writer), Bob Hall (penciler), Kevin Dzuban (inker), Bob Sharen (colorist), Rick Parker (letterer)

Similar to Marvel Team-Up, but starring the Thing instead of Spider-Man. I know some folks prefer this book, feeling the Thing fits more readily into a wider variety of situations than Spider-Man. While I might agree with the assertion about the character (at least when it comes to crazy science/outer space stuff; neither of them is at home with magic), I don't think it works to the book's advantage.

Ultimately, whether it's an alien, a mad scientist, an Asgardian, a demon or whatever, The Thing's response is going to be, "It's clobberin' time!" Of the scattered issues I've read, not many rely on the fact Ben Grimm is a smart enough guy to qualify as an astronaut, versus his ability to punch things real hard and take more punches than Rocky Balboa.

There are broad stretches where one writer dominates. Steve Gerber writes the first 10 issues, then Bill Mantlo writes most of the next 15 issues (and pops up with writer credit on several other issues later), before Marv Wolfman takes over for most of issues 25-45. Mark Gruenwald writes about 20 issues between #53 and #74, including a 6-part story at Project PEGASUS involving Quasar and Giant-Man (Bill Foster), before Tom DeFalco takes over for most (but not all) of the final 25 issues.

The artists shuffle even more frequently. Ron Wilson is probably the closest the book had to a regular, and even he's not involved for 10+ issues at a time. Sometimes it's Sal Buscema or Ernie Chan, sometimes John Byrne and Joe Sinnott, or George Perez and Gene Day. Like Marvel Team-Up, which issues you want probably depends on either who's working on the book, or who they've got the Idol o' Millions teaming up with this month.

The book concluded at 100 issues, with a callback to the issue 50 face-off between '80s Thing and '60s Thing. Ben Grimm would subsequently get another solo book, that ran for 3 years.

Saturday Splash Page #146

 

"A Happy Sendoff", in Spider-Girl: The End, by Tom DeFalco (writer), Ron Frenz (writer/penciler), Sal Buscema (finished art), Bruno Hang and Sotocolor (colorists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

"The End" was a loose group of comics Marvel did that were essentially the "final" story for a given character or group. The ones in the early 2000s were mini-series. One for the FF, one for Wolverine, 3 for the X-Men, one for the entire Marvel Universe (written by Starlin, so of course Thanos was responsible.) There were some one-shots in the mid-to-late 2000s. Marvel apparently revived it for 4 or 5 books in 2020, but I only learned that researching this post. 

To my knowledge, the best-regarded is Garth Ennis and Richard Corben's Punisher: The End, which basically says Frank Castle would never stop killing criminals, even if said criminals are the last humans left.

Spider-Girl: The End is 180 degrees from that book. Unsurprising, given the respective creative teams. Set after the strips in Amazing Spider-Man Family, Web of Spider-Man (vol. 3), and the 4-issue Spectacular Spider-Girl mini-series (which we'll see next month), we're told the story of how Spider-Girl died by a kindly old woman talking to a bunch of kids in what looks like an idyllic paradise.

The clone/symbiote hybrid, April Reilly, is still after Mayday to admit April's the original, as well as the better hero. They fight, a fire starts, May pushes her sister clear of falling debris, then is able to launch her clear of the explosion via impact webbing. As it turns out, the old lady is April, and we learn (though the kids don't), she tried to take May's place, but their little brother Benjy immediately knew she wasn't May, which tipped of MJ. April flipped, went full "lethal protector", to the point the government combined mercs with Carnage symbiotes, and civilization went down the crapper.

April gets a chance to go back and change things, and does, in the process tying off her own storyline. May returns home, unaware of the near miss, Wes, who had been circling as a possible love interest for a while, drops by and reveals he knows she's Spider-Girl, and that's where the issue ends. An actual happy ending!

Obviously, that wasn't going to last. . .

What I Bought 10/10/2024

The local comic shop didn't get any of its Marvel stuff last week - hence no Deadpool review - and this week's stuff didn't arrive until yesterday. But they did arrive, so let's make the best of it. In other news, the work truck I used Wednesday for what should have been a relatively brief excursion broke down, leaving me stranded in a podunk town near a very busy railroad crossing for 3.5 hours. Did my brain endlessly replay the opening song from In the Heat of the Night? You better believe it, especially the, 'I've got troubleeeeeees, wall to wall,' part.

Fantastic Four #26, by Ryan North (writer), Ivan Fiorelli (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) -  Dollars to donuts Reed's trying to pull Johnny under.

Most of the cast is in New York, trick or treating. Johnny stayed home to wait for trick or treaters that ever arrived, and Reed stayed home to keep working on a magic detector. And it's detected something in the basement! Johnny convinces Reed not to wait for Sue to return (when she could just make the floor invisible to see what's down there), and they get to excavating.

And unearth a portal which spews forth ghosts of all sorts of extinct animals, which Reed theorizes are the spirits of ever animal that ever died there. Excited as he is at observing prehistoric beetles, the portal keeps spewing out ghosts, unless there's something constantly entering the portal from the other side. Fortunately, Johnny saw an article about a group of occultists planning to use a skull which constantly vomits blood to summon Mongaroth, The Charnel Destroyer of Flesh. So Reed and Johnny travel to the Paris catacombs and steal the magic, blood-vomiting skull (which also keeps saying "bleh", without halting the torrent of blood vomit.)

I had never considered how Johnny would absolutely be able to egg Reed on into bad ideas in the name of SCIENCE! Sue's aggravation with the whole thing is hilarious, as is Reed objecting to her description of their schemes as "zany." The skull's little top hat is a great touch. Ben and Alicia's dog is dressed as Jeff the Land Shark for Halloween, while Franklin's dressed as Spider-Man, which Johnny doesn't comment on, but you know he's annoyed.

Anyway, I loved this issue. It cracked me up, really great. 10 out of 10, no notes.

Interstellar Empire - John Brunner

This is really a collection of three novellas Brunner wrote, based around the notion of a steadily-disintegrating galaxy-spanning empire. The introduction describes an interest in ways to write "swords-and-spaceships" stories, and how the way to make it work is that the spaceships were in a sense inherited, or in this case, found by man in their early excursions off-world. So while humanity may have the ability to travel between stars in relatively short periods of time, they don't really understand how, and are thus unable to apply those scientific principles to other areas.

I think, though I'm not sure, that the stories - The Altar on Asconel, The Man from the Big Dark, and The Wanton of Argus - are set progressively further along in the decline of the empire. There seems to be less awareness of technology and more discussion of "sorcery", especially in Wanton of Argus. Though it's curious that in the first two stories, mutants are often exiled to the furthest reaches, if they aren't killed by a mob, but seem accepted in Wanton of Argus. The key player displays strange powers, yet no one tries to have him stoned to death, and his abilities are common knowledge. Maybe we're meant to read it as these worlds no longer can spare a ship to banish the unusual to the depths.

All three stores revolve around attempts to take control of a single world, although that world may hold the key to other worlds. There's always a manner of subterfuge, the person attempting to take control never what they present themselves as at first glance. The Man from the Big Dark is only 40 pages, so Brunner doesn't draw out the mystery as to what the person is like he does in the other two stories. The reveal is The Altar on Asconel is fairly clever, though I wonder how the main character so readily deduces everything correctly.

The reveal in The Wanton of Argus made me roll my eyes, as it involves time travel, and people from the future attempting to preserve their timeline and they've achieved utopia through mental powers that result in a level of interconnection undreamt of blah blah blah. I have yet to see the sci-fi story that could sell me on that sort of connection being a good thing.

Part of the issue was, I wanted Brunner to do more with the broader scenario, but that was outside the bounds of what he wanted to do. He makes repeated references to what the people who were either banished or voluntarily went to the edges of space are up to. How they're building and devising their own spacecraft, but their society is loosely organized at best, and any leader if vulnerable to overthrow at the first sign of weakness.

I was curious what it would look like. How do the mutants fit in, if they do? What's the overall quality of life? Do the different groups work together to prey on tradeships, or is it every group for themselves at all times? Stuff like that, but it's not what Brunner's into. Probably because he figures there's enough of that in human history already, but having access to advanced technology that's only vaguely understood and building an empire with it is something more rare.

"Now it happens also that a general who commands well in war does not rule wisely in peace. Something which does not happen, on the other hand, is that a man with no skill in strategy save in defending fishing fleets against the love-pat raids of our Klarethly pirates becomes a great Praestans."