Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine So what are you READING?

Great to see you Cleome!



I remember reading a few Early 20th century art books back when I was supposed to be studying something else. On the comics front, it gave me an idea about what Grant Morrison would be mining in the next issue of Doom Patrol if nothing else.




Art that's utilitarian quite often gets a certain level of brownie points for me. The processes involved in the manufacturing are often interesting and show the huge amount of effort and cross disciplines involved in making them.

thoth, a few weeks ago I slipped into the local pizza joint for a quick single slice and a glass of iced tea. I ended up camping out there for a hour, drinking my own weight in tea. Because they had on that show where manly men hand-forge knives and then chop up huge slabs of meat with them or whatever. I was hypnotized watching the forges.

(I made sure I tipped the bartender well, at least.)

Just re-did Good Omens (as an adjunct to my discworld reread, coincidental to the miniseries) and enjoyed it quite a bit. My favorite part was at the end, where the group of tween boys didn’t gang-bang their tween female friend.

Note book on how to play guitar. It ain't goin well. only up to page 12 and it's been three months. Old fingers don't work so well.

Phew. So posted this: “I do love Good Omens, but only a couple of straight guys could write a book with the four horsemen in the midst of the AIDS crisis and think pestilence is outdated and needs to be replaced” to a Terry Pratchett group.

And apparently that’s a hystrionic attack on the writers, and a condemnation of the entire book, and indeed the entire lives of Neil Gaiman and STP?

Radicalized by Cory Doctorow: three novellas - Unauthorized Bread is set in the near future when you have to jailbreak your appliances (if you're poor) after the companies go bust - and the consequences. Model Minority tells the story of a Superman analogue who tangles with a bad cop and the Bruce Wayne character comes to the rescue. Radicalized is about white men getting even with the denial of health insurance. Red Masque is a cautionary tale of the wealthy sitting out the collapse of society in a survivalist compound.

Great ideas about a forseeable future. The stories are all about people's rights, how they fight back legally and illegally. Unauthorized Bread is quite funny; Model Minority should appeal to comic book fans as a Superman-in-the-real-world story; the final two stories are serious to dark - all very thought-provoking.

Hardcore Station by Jim Starlin - one guy with off-the-chart psychokinetic and mind-reading powers escapes from his criminal family. He's coerced into returning to Hardcore Station to solve the mystery of which of his criminal siblings - each with their own unique power - murdered his father. Very entertaining. As soon as I finished this, I ordered Volume 2, which appears to be about an entirely different set of shady characters.

Starlin's writing prose?

More novellas than novels - first one is 176 pages - but all prose.

It is a day of quiet pleasure when our local library gets in its most recent copy of a Squirrel Girl TPB. Today I could sit for an hour-and-a-half at our local library and read through The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 9: Squirrels Fall Like Dominos[i], which collects [i]The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, volumes 32-36. (2015)

At this point, Doreen’s Justice Pals now consists of:
Koi Boi (Ken Shiga)
Brain Drain (formerly Werner Schmidt)
Chipmunk Hunk (Tomas Lara-Perez)
Mary Mahajan (his girlfriend)
Nancy Whitehead (Doreen’s roommate)
& introducing
Ms. Chloe, The Overnight Librarian

(With occasional guest appearances by Kraven the Hunter (Sergei Kravinoff) and Loki (Loki Laufeyson))

Sadly, it has been announced that this run of TUSG will be ending at volume 50. However, this means I will still have about three years of occasional TPBs left.

"Breaking the Frames," by Marc Singer (no, not the actor from "Beast Master" and "V")

This book is a call to arms for the rethinking and reinvention of comics criticism, and it is long, long, LONG overdue! Singer says exactly the sort of things that I've been saying for years, in one form or another, in these forums and on other web platforms.

In a nutshell, the author makes an airtight argument against both of the extremes that have produced the ever-more festering schism between academics and populists. He doesn't offer a "Third Way," nor do I think he should have tried to -- just making such a credible, impassioned case for the evolution of comics discourse is more than enough!

Not content to simply leave it at that, Singer turns over the middle-section of the book to his scalpel-sharp challenges to popular consensus in comics criticism: Umberto Eco, Silver Age Superman vs Post-Silver Age DC, Alan Moore, Alex Ross, Kurt Busiek, Mark Waid, Marjane Satrapi, Kyle Baker, and Chris Ware are all worthy subjects for clear-eyed, objective analysis, but I have to admit I got a special type of schadenfreude from Singer's dead-on attack of Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's "Planetary." Ellis now truly stands revealed as the Emperor With No Clothes -- again, something I'd already been saying for years and years! Ahhh, vindication! I was literally jumping up and down and raising my fist triumphantly as I read those pages. Because Marc Singer is, among cultural commentators, a rock star!

I love this book!

In the post directly above this one, I reviewed an excellent book about comics titled, "Breaking the Frames."

I've just finished reading an earlier, and equally good, book by the same author: "Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics."

I don't agree with everything Singer says about Morrison, I particularly take issue with his dismissal of the timelier-than-ever "Marvel Boy" miniseries. Then there's some Morrison stuff he likes more than I do, such as "All Star Superman," which I find much inferior to "Flex Mentallo."

On the other hand, his glowingly insightful review of "7 Soldiers of Victory," which I still own all the trades of despite mixed feelings on previous reads, inspired me to re-read it for the first time in years.

I still think it's not perfect, but now I feel it's much, much better than I'd ever given it credit for.

And that's why I love these kinds of prose books. In an indirect way, they're like a civilized discussion of comics.

In the last week, Peace Talks and Battle Ground by Jim Butcher, and Ink and Sigil by Kevin Hearne. Sorry, not really a deep thinker here.

I picked up a footballer's autobiography on Friday because 1) I really needed to go for a walk 2) The supermarket was the only thing open and 3) they'd been pushing it all week on the radio station he now presents from. A station I occasionally tune into in place of the grimness of news channels. The first half of his footy career was fun as I remembered all the players he played with. It was interesting to hear more about them and the things that go on behind the scenes that impact sporting careers.

"Fast Fade," by Andrew Yule, originally published in 1989. This was one of the first books about filmmaking that I ever read. Yule's brisk prose propels the reader along with the seemingly unstoppable David Puttnam, from advertising in the 60s to film production in the 70s and into a triumphant first half of the 80s (Chariots of Fire, Local Hero, The Killing Fields, The Mission.) Then an ill-advised embrace of the challenge of beating Hollywood at its own game brings Puttnam's world crashing down around him. These days, everyone and their grandmother is knowledgeable about the ugly truth of Hollywood, but 30-plus years ago, it was pretty shocking to learn that Hollywood was (and, sadly, still remains) a glorified playpen for emotionally immature sleaze-balls. And although Puttnam appears to have come through in the long run with greater resilience (he ultimately became a politician,) there's no denying that this complex yet sympathetic and civic-minded go-getter was done in as much by his own forthrightness as by the sheer wrongness of Hollywood.

In the end, what really matters is that re-reading this book got me to want to watch the four films I mentioned above. In the near future, I'll be posting reviews of them in the So What Are You Watching Part 2 thread.

Great movies. I'm looking forward to your reviews.

Thank you, Stile.

Heinlein. Just about everything he wrote. I even bought a collection that contained the three short stories that he would not allow to be reprinted while he was alive. I had not read them before. I will not reread I will Fear No Evil or Job: A Comedy of Justice. I think they're awful.

File under Did Not Finish:

Grant Morrison's first work of prose fiction, "Luda."

I don't think I even got to page 100.

Grant, honey, I get it. You'll never forgive Mark Millar for stabbing you in the back.

But get over it already, sister! No need to frame it as a badly written Roman a Clef about rival drag queens with magical powers.

I mean I can kind of understand it. Like they accidentally created a monster. I won't be surprised if they have a battle in the Arctic Circle.

Ha ha ha. Dr. Frankenmorrison. Priceless.

When Men Children Clash!

I've popped Alan Moore's Illuminations on my imminent buy list. I've got a few books put aside for Festivus. So didn;t wnat another one. But it's not far away.

THEY I SHOULD'VE TYPED THEY

I didn't mean to misgender Morrison sorry just edited it.

I'd not overly worry. From Morrison's wiki page:-

"Suddenly it was taken up by the fan press and I was awarded the label 'they/them'. I never asked for it. I come from a generation where that just doesn't matter, even being labelled at all is anathema to me. I can't live in a box. I'm going to let down anyone who sticks a label on me. It will drop off quite naturally."

I've been reading a lot of short stories. I had in my possession "A Treasury of Great Science Fiction," volume 1. I've had it so long I don't know how long I've had it. Maybe 40 years. I went ahead and bought volume 2.

Most of the stories were mediocre, but the were some standouts. Among these were Rebirth by John Wyndham, Pillar of Fire by Ray Bradbury, and The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester.

The best story, though, was a story that was just 10 pages. It was The Father-Thing by Phillip K. Dick. Really good!