Book notes #3

Notes and ratings from TQF50 and TQF51 for books I didn’t review. Credits from Goodreads; apologies to anyone miscredited or missing.

Bone and Jewel Creatures (Subterranean Press), by Elizabeth Bear. A superb novella about an elderly woman who takes in a feral child and fits it with a new arm made from jewels and the remains of its own original arm, while facing the challenge of an evil necromancer. It’s a Subterranean Press book, but the ebook was available at a very reasonable price via Weightless Books. ****

BPRD, Vol. 1: Hollow Earth and Other Stories (Dark Horse Comics), by Mike Mignola and friends. Collects one-shots and other stories about Abe Sapien and the other members of the BPRD, the organisation Hellboy works for. ***

BPRD, Vol. 2: The Soul of Venice and Other Stories (Dark Horse Comics), by Mike Mignola, Scott Allie, Michael Avon Oeming, Guy Davis and friends. More great stories about Hellboy’s friends and colleagues. ****

BPRD, Vol. 3: Plague of Frogs (Dark Horse Comics), by Mike Mignola, Guy Davis and Dave Stewart. The first BPRD volume to collect a single mini-series, this spins out from events in the first Hellboy book. I’d forgotten how much I loved Guy Davis’s art on Sandman Mystery Theatre; it’s brilliant here. ****

BPRD: Hell on Earth, Vol. 1: New World (Dark Horse Comics), by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Guy Davis and Dave Stewart. Some time after the events that began in Plague of Frogs reached their conclusion, the BPRD are working for the UN and investigating the matters the UN wants investigating. Abe Sapien heads off to the woods and encounters an old friend and a demon baby and its giant-sized twin. I enjoyed this a lot. I really like Abe, more even than Hellboy. ****

BPRD: Vampire (Dark Horse Comics), by Mike Mignola and Scott Allie. A member of BPRD has had a pair of vampire souls trapped within him (I think) and he wants to find out more about the creatures. I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but it looked terrific. I’ll probably need to re-read all these Hellboy books and spin-offs in order once I have them all. ***

Bravest Warriors, Vol. 1 (KaBOOM!), by Joey Comeau, Mike Holmes, Pendleton Ward and Ryan Pequin. Based on the new science fiction cartoon from the creator of Adventure Time, and just as much fun. ****

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 6: Retreat (Dark Horse Books), by Jane Espenson, Georges Jeanty and Joss Whedon. I can’t hate any Buffy comic, but didn’t enjoy this as much as hoped. ***

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 7: Twilight (Dark Horse Books), by Brad Meltzer, Georges Jeanty and Joss Whedon. The series gets a bit wobbly. **

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 8: Last Gleaming (Dark Horse Books), by Joss Whedon, Georges Jeanty and Scott Allie. A disappointing end to a series that had begun so promisingly. ***

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 9, Vol. 1: Freefall (Dark Horse Books), by Joss Whedon, Andrew Chambliss, Georges Jeanty and Karl Moline. An improvement on Season 8, which by the end I’d gone off so much that I would never have bought this if the Kindle edition hadn’t been on sale. ***

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 9, Vol. 2: On Your Own (Dark Horse Books), by Andrew Chambliss, Scott Allie, Georges Jeanty and Cliff Richards. Feels more like a continuation of the TV series. ****

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 9, Vol. 3: Guarded (Dark Horse Books), by Andrew Chambliss, Jane Espenson, Drew Z. Greenberg, Georges Jeanty, Karl Moline and Joss Whedon. Buffy has a go at being a bodyguard, but can she put work before her true calling? Enjoyable but the emphasis on how easy the zompires (zombie vampires, created after Buffy’s world was sealed off from magic) are to kill is making them feel like a negligible threat. ***

Captain America, Vol. 1: Castaway in Dimension Z (Marvel) by Rick Remender, John Romita Jr, Klaus Janson, Tom Palmer, Scott Hanna, Dean White, Lee Loughridge and Dan Brown. A thrilling book where Captain America is taken to another dimension for a lengthy stay, a dimension of monsters ruled by Arnim Zola and his horrible experiments. The spirit of Kirby is strong in this one. ****

Book notes #1

Notes and ratings from TQF50 and TQF51 for books I didn’t review. Credits from Goodreads; apologies to anyone miscredited or missing.

Abe Sapien, Vol. 1: The Drowning (Dark Horse Books), by Mike Mignola, Mike Alexander and Jason Shawn. Moody and spooky story of Hellboy’s aquatic chum. ***

Adventure Time, Vol. 1: Playing With Fire (KaBOOM!), by Danielle Corsetto. A black and white Adventure Time graphic novel featuring the Flame Princess. ***

Adventure Time, Vol. 2: Pixel Princesses (KaBOOM!), by Danielle Corsetto and Zack Sterling. Another black and white graphic novel, this time featuring several of the princesses as they get stuck inside their computer pal. Bought for the children (possibly by the children with their pocket money) but I enjoyed it too. ***

Afterlife with Archie, Vol. 1: Escape from Riverdale (Archie Comics), by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla. Interesting alternative take on the gang. Shows real understanding of the characters. Doesn’t have a proper ending. ***

Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects (Dark Horse Comics), by Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart. Collecting weird tales by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. The lead story is about a head who can screw himself into various bodies, and does so in order to help the President, Abraham Lincoln. ****

Amelia Cole and the Hidden War (Monkeybrain Comics), by Adam P. Knave, D.J. Kirkbride and Nick Brokenshire. Book two. Amelia works as the city’s magic sheriff while her predecessor fights in a magical war. ***

Amelia Cole and the Unknown World (Monkeybrain Comics), by Adam P. Knave, D.J. Kirkbride and Nick Brokenshire. Book one in a well-drawn and readable series about a young woman who can do magic. ***

American Elf 2009 (Top Shelf Productions), by James Kochalka. Kochalka’s daily comics from 2009. ***

American Elf 2010 (Top Shelf Productions), by James Kochalka. Kochalka’s daily comics from 2010. ***

American Elf 2011 (Top Shelf Productions), by James Kochalka. Kochalka’s daily comics from 2011. ****

American Elf 2012 (Top Shelf Productions), by James Kochalka. Conclusion of the wonderful autobiographical series. *****

Angel and Faith, Vol. 1: Live Through This (Dark Horse Books) by Christos Gage, Scott Allie, Rebekah Isaacs and Phil Noto. Vampire with a soul Angel did some stuff recently that he feels bad about, and he’s trying to put things right. Naughty vampire slayer Faith owes him one from back in the day so she’ll stick by his side, even though she thinks he’s making a mistake. The first story sees them tracking down the source of an elixir of life, and the second brings back Harmony, still the world’s most famous celebrity vampire. Enjoyable without being essential; I think Angel and Faith are both characters who benefit from a bit of offscreen time. Watch out for the spoiler for volume two in the artist’s notes at the back. ***

Asterix and the Magic Carpet (Orion), by Albert Uderzo. Asterix goes to India, in theory. It seems more like Arabia. ***

Asterix in Corsica (Orion), by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. Not the best in the series. ***

Asterix in Switzerland (Orion), by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. Very funny. Reminded me why I loved Asterix so much as a youngster. ****

Avengers Assemble (Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley. Collecting a blockbuster mini-series where the Avengers team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy to take on Thanos, who’s got his hands on a new cosmic cube and an army of Badoon. It’s not too bad, and the artwork is good, but the story struggles to fill eight issues and Gamora wears an appallingly sexist outfit that looks like Borat’s swimming costume. ***

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Vol. 6 / review by Stephen Theaker

The seven volumes in this series look very smart lined up on my bookcase, but that made me forget that I hadn’t yet read Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Vol. 6 (Dark Horse, tpb, c.400pp) (or its sequel), so I’ve put that right with great pleasure. Taken as a set, the seven omnibus volumes make a fantastic companion to the television programme, especially since their contents have been arranged in chronological order. The stories in these issues come from around the time that the Initiative was in town, so Buffy is dating Riley, Spike has a chip in his head, Willow is exploring witchcraft and romance with Tara, and Xander is with Anya. On television that felt like a sad time in the characters’ lives, even if they were all falling in love, because Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles, the original gang of four, were drifting apart, and frequently unhappy with each other. That made perfect sense in the show, but it’s nice that here in the comics everyone is still good and chummy. The writers include Christopher Golden, Tom Fassbender, Amber Benson and Jane Espenson. It’s odd that the kind of three-issue stories that seemed trivial when gathered together in flimsy graphic novels of under a hundred pages are satisfyingly substantial when run together as big, long stories in these books. It helps that this volume comes from the later, better period of the comic. The art, mostly by Cliff Richards, is good to great, the dialogue funny, the plots, well, maybe not brilliant but in the right enough ballpark that it felt authentically like Buffy.  ***

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wolves at the Gate – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

One of my very favourite television programmes continues in comics form in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight, Vol. 3: Wolves at the Gate (Dark Horse, tpb, 136pp), collecting issues eleven to fifteen of the comic. Most of this book is written by Drew Goddard, but it opens with a single issue story by Buffy creator Joss Whedon, “A Beautiful Sunset”, in which Buffy encounters the Big Bad for this season, Twilight. He’s a dangerous fellow—he throws a steeple at her!—whose plan is to take away Buffy’s invincible armour: “her moral certainty”. (It would certainly slow her down a bit if she didn’t just assume all vampires were naughty by nature.) There’s a tease of his identity that would have been cleverly tantalising had I not learnt it already from the Amazon description of volume eight.

The four issues written by Drew Goddard give the collection its title. In “Wolves at the Gate” the slayer castle is attacked by vampires sharing the powers of Dracula, who made a brief, bathetic appearance in the TV series. Investigating takes the slayers and the gang—plus Dracula—from Scotland to Japan, where a vampire clan has plans to undo Buffy’s gift of slayerhood. It’s a story with many highlights—actually, scratch that, it’s a story entirely made up of highlights. Xander’s hilarious and oddly touching relationship with Dracula. Everyone bursting in on Buffy’s latest romantic tryst. Giant dawn fighting a giant mechadawn.

The pleasures of the Buffy season eight comic are essentially those of the original series: stories with consequences, well-planned plots, laugh-out loud dialogue, relationships that develop naturally in unexpected directions. Pencils throughout are by Georges Jeanty, with inks by Andy Owens, and they prove extremely adept at depicting each of those elements. Panels like those where Willow and Buffy discuss the latter’s latest romance display the comic skills of Kevin Maguire, while the action is always clear and powerful. They manage the tough trick of capturing the actors’ likenesses perfectly without the stiffness that afflicts many licensed comics. They draw a very pretty Buffy, and if she sometimes looks very petite, that’s because she really is; that’s what makes it so impressive when she fights the big monsters.

Angel Omnibus, by Christopher Golden, Christian Zanier and friends – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Having recently left Buffy, Sunnydale and the Hellmouth to star in his own TV series – and comic, of which all but two issues are here collected – Angel now lives in Los Angeles. Interesting characters like (dark) Wesley, Fred and the Host are far off in his future; most of these stories are set in the period before they showed up. Cordelia was working at Angel Investigations from the beginning, but Irish half-demon Doyle is the one with the visions – for a while, at least – and hard-knock detective Kate Lockley turns up more often than anyone would have hoped.

There's a certain pleasure to be had from revisiting a brief period of a favourite programme, and for comics based on a show that had still to find its feet, these are okay: pedestrian, but readable. The Christian Zanier art featured in most issues was not really to my taste, but didn't get in the way of telling the story. The stories – mostly by or co-written by Christopher Golden – feature the usual round of demons and monsters, and don't add up to much, but I was more than happy to spend a few nights reading them. Not classic comics, nor classic Angel, but not too bad.

Angel Omnibus, by Christopher Golden, Christian Zanier and friends. Dark Horse, tpb, 478pp.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight: No Future for You – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The first volume of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight (reviewed here) could have featured the gang eating jam on scones for a hundred pages and I would still have rhapsodized about it, so glad I was to be back in their company. This second book, collecting issues six to ten, can’t rely on nostalgia to see it through, but then neither did the first, which progressed the story of these characters in a way that distinguished it from the great mass of licensed comics and books.

“No Future for You” by Brian K. Vaughan and Georges Jeanty, a four-issue story, focuses on Faith, a character I’d have liked much more in the series if she hadn’t pushed Buffy into such a serious place - something Buffy herself resented. Here Giles calls on Faith to perform the kind of job he couldn’t ask Buffy to do: eliminate an untrained English slayer, a bad seed from the right side of the tracks. The first stage of Faith’s mission is to bond with the baddie and gain her trust; it goes all too well.

“Anywhere But Here”, a single-issue story by Joss Whedon and Cliff Richards, sees Buffy and Willow on a day trip to see the Sephrilian, a member of the demon elite who walks between walls and buckles reality. As readers might hope, they run into trouble and Buffy gets a chance to kick ass, but above all it’s a chance for the two best friends to reconnect. Much as I loved the final season of Buffy, the poor girl did get very isolated, and it’s good to see her smiling in a panel or two.

It’s a short book, but a terribly enjoyable one. I can’t pretend to have any critical distance from it, any more than I could offer an unbiased review of an hour spent with my family, but it’s hard to imagine anyone who enjoyed the television series not enjoying this too. It’s quite possibly better than a televised season eight could have been. A comic can give us Buffy and Willow flying over the mountains, or a giant-sized Dawn, and so much else that would have been difficult to achieve on a television budget.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight, Vol. 2: No Future for You, by Brian K. Vaughan, Georges Jeanty, Joss Whedon and Cliff Richards. Dark Horse, tpb, 136pp. Amazon US. Amazon UK. Reviewed from pdf.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Vol. 4 – reviewed

Enjoyable stories, but pretty forgettable on the whole – evidenced by the fact that I know I’ve read some of these issues before, but none caused any sparks of recognition. There’s too much focus on action, too little on character and dialogue. I understand why it worked out that way – how much characterisation can you manage when the show is still airing? All you can do is echo what’s already been shown on screen. But one of the great things about Buffy was that things changed, and since that can’t happen here a big chunk of the programme’s appeal is missing. Plus, this isn’t quite the Buffy of the TV series – she’s too fluffy.

There’s a funny bit towards the end where Angel gets strangled. His response – “Grip… So tight… Losing air…” (p. 358) – somewhat contradicts his discovery that upon becoming a vampire (p. 235): “I… I can’t breathe!” I’ll claim a no-prize for suggesting that the soul collector’s attack in the later story is psychological rather than physical.

Despite my griping, it was still good to spend bonus time in the company of the Scooby Gang. It was like eating a packet of bourbon biscuits – enjoyable, but nothing like eating chocolate Hobnobs.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Vol. 4, Andi Watson et al. Dark Horse, pb, 368pp. Amazon US.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home, Joss Whedon, Georges Jeanty and Others

For the seven years that it was on television Buffy the Vampire Slayer was my absolute favourite programme. Apart from loving the writing, the fighting and the biting, I think I really, truly fell in love with Buffy herself. (I think it was her incredibly sad eyes that did it.) Whenever I see Sarah Michelle Gellar in other roles now I’m filled with a huge sadness, as if I’d actually had a romantic relationship with Buffy, one that ended amicably, maybe because we moved to different cities. And now I see a doppelganger of her appearing in Scooby Doo and The Grudge. It’s a bizarre feeling!

I’d heard about the Season Eight comic being published by Dark Horse, and that it was being written by Joss Whedon, the creator of the original show. I’d held off from buying it, partly because I’ve given up on collecting individual comics, but also from a reluctance to spoil the old memories. So I waited for the trade paperback, put that on my wishlist when it came out, and waited for someone to buy it for me. I was easing myself back into it.

I should have pre-ordered it myself! This is a fabulous book, continuing the story from season seven and moving it forward. Things can happen! Things can change! Tie-ins are nearly always much more exciting when the programme is off the air or when they aren’t forced to maintain a strict continuity – see the Doctor Who New Adventures or the Star Trek New Frontier books, for example, and compare them to the stultifying dullness of most Star Trek comics (at least those with which Peter David is not involved) – but with the original creator on board this takes that principle to a new level. Everything really counts. It seems stupid that that makes a difference – after all, like Alan Moore wrote in Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?, they are all imaginary stories – but it does.

And the stories are great. It’s quite easy to imagine these stories as they might have looked on television, but here they are portrayed with the budget of a movie – while still being paced perfectly for a comic book. It’s wonderful to see Buffy, Xander and Willow interacting again, in a way that was often quite rarely seen in later seasons of the programme, and it’s fascinating to see the reactions of those in power to the multitude of female heroes now in their midst. It’s also nice to see some payoff on Xander losing his eye, which seemed a bit random onscreen.

Huge credit must also go to the artist, Georges Jeanty, who achieves the remarkable and rare feat of capturing the likenesses of the cast members while sacrificing nothing in expression, movement or character.

Highly recommended!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home, Joss Whedon, Georges Jeanty and Others, Dark Horse, tpb, 136pp.