Fish and Cherries Productions

Whoa, what’s this? Three updates at once?! Yep, in order to get things balanced for my new schedule, I’m coming out with three different things on the same day. Let’s start out with two Reel Snippets, one classic and one new release.

Love Actually
Inside Out

Now let’s follow that up with my newest Ronin Reads on an obscure comic. One day, I’ll do an actual prose story…

Letter 44

The schedule will be posted this Friday. But in case you crave more content between then and now… how about our E3 podcast? Guess this isn’t a triple feature anymore! Accolades all around!

Title: Gotham City Sirens
Authors: Paul Dini (issues 1-11); Tony Bedard (issues 12-15); Peter Calloway (issues 16-26)
Artists: Guillem March; Andres Guinaldo; Jeremy Haun; Ramon F. Bachs
Type: Comic book
Genre: Superhero

Catwoman. Harley Quinn. Poison Ivy. Three of Gotham City’s deadliest ladies find themselves living together under one roof in the wake of a new Batman and other insanity. From alien plant people forming a bond with Poison Ivy to Joker wannabes trying to kill Harley to Catwoman dealing with her insane sister, the girls deal with the madness that only Gotham can bring. The real question is what will kill them first: the city or each other?

It may not seem like it from the morose description, but this series is actually a lot of fun and a lot of this comes from our three leading ladies. The three are such potent characters that all you have to do is put them in a room together and the scene just becomes electric. They can’t really be called heroes, but they’re still likable enough to keep following. That said, toward the end of the run when Peter Calloway took over, it felt like they were bickering because the script required them to, so that was disappointing.

For the first half, at least, there’s also a huge sense of fun to it, helped in no small part by the vibrant art of Guillem March. Apart from fighting wannabe superpowers in Gotham, we get to see how they spend their holiday seasons or searching for lost dogs, a plotline that has a darkly comedic payoff, which is well worth the detour. Things can get intense, for sure, but there’s still a sense of levity through it all. When Paul Dini was replaced with Tony Bedard halfway through the run, things took a darker turn with stories involving Catwoman’s sister going on a religious rampage to free her soul from “the cat demon” by killing her and Poison Ivy being seduced/taken over by a plant alien to prepare a landing zone for his people’s upcoming invasion. That’s fine, stories can go dark and the characters are still likeable enough.

When Calloway takes over, though, the art subsequently takes a nosedive and the girls’ bickering becomes more bitter and less fun. The stories get a lot less pleasant too. We have some dire stuff about people trying to extract Batman’s secret identity from Catwoman’s mind and Harley finally making off to kill the Joker, but it’s punctuated with some unnecessary stuff about someone’s murdered infant and it draws the comic into a very bittersweet ending. It’s still good in places, but it’s like following up a juicy t-bone steak with a dessert of plain water crackers. …

So why am I bringing up a five year old comic rather than a recent Saga book or something like that? Well, this comic, like many others, was canceled in DC’s massive reboot to make way for the New 52 and I wanted to highlight something we lost then. Most of the books now are overly dark and grim and severely lacking in anything fun. Before that, you could have a wannabe Joker midget that used to run with him kidnap Harley only for her to give him a verbal dressing down. But now we have bad futures that completely invalidate everything the heroes are fighting for, comedic characters and kids killed off with abandon, limbs are mauled and removed willy-nilly, and the subjects of consent and sexual orientation are handled with as much grace as a monster truck attempting to perform Swan Lake. In short, everything feels unnaturally miserable.

Even our mighty sirens don’t get off unscathed. Harley Quinn got a revamped origin that is a carbon copy of the Joker’s and a rather atrocious redesign, along with becoming the subject of an art contest where she was depicted in a “glamorous” suicide attempt. Catwoman lost all her memories of Batman’s secret and ended her first new issue having sex with him that was initially nonconsensual. Poison Ivy… okay, she didn’t get too much of a bad rap. And yet, despite their initial rocky start, there’s a bit of the old magic shining through. Poison Ivy and Harley connected and became more anti-heroes than villains. Same with Catwoman, who joined the Justice League of America for a spell before the Trinity War story. Harley even began forming her own female crime fighting team, which seems like it could be an attempt to reboot the old team. Hopefully that will be the case in the future. I’m not positive that they will keep the light tone, but I can certainly hope. Everyone deserves a chance for a new beginning, something I learned from a little series called Gotham City Sirens.

Title: The Invisibles (The Deluxe Edition, Book 1)
Author: Grant Morrison
Artist: Steve Yeowell, Jill Thompson, Dennis Cramer, Chris Weston, John Ridgeway, Steve Parkhouse, Duncan, Fegredo
Type: Comic Book
Genre: Anarchist, Science Fiction

Dane McGowan is a British delinquent who’s just been sent to a remedial center to try and make him an upstanding citizen. When he finds out that the institution is literally removing the emotions of the inmates to produce pure conformity, he becomes embroiled in a hidden war of magic and ideologies. On the one side are the Invisibles (as in the Invisible College), who fight for freedom in all its myriad forms, including some that others may not agree with. On the other side is the Outer Church, who use their mindless Myrmidians as soldiers to enforce their idea of conformity. Taking the name Jack Frost, Dane joins a squad of Invisibles led by one King Mob in a demented journey through time and space as he faces off against insect people, bloodthirsty god impersonators, and his own doubts.

If that description sounds a little slapdash or sparse, it’s because I honestly don’t know what to make of the plot at times. The writing is very obtuse and the jumps between scenes are so jilted that it’s hard to know whether I turned over an extra page or not. I’m even willing to admit that some of the summary is either conjecture or things I looked up online. That’s really the biggest problem with the book, that it can be really hard to follow and when you add things like time travel and tangential stories that don’t entirely connect to the main plot, then things just start to make your head hurt.

Looking back on this story, I find that it’s very reminiscent of The Matrix (though this story predates it by about five years). Both feature a protagonist with a lawless background being forced to “wake up” from the world he knew. He then discovers a secret war being fought with superhuman abilities between a group of anti-authority rebel cells and a controlling force that can insert themselves into the everyday population. What it also seems to draw inspiration from is the graphic novel Sandman, one of the most critically acclaimed comic books of all time. This comes through in the nonlinear narrative and tangential side stories focusing on minor characters and other Invisibles. However, where those two had a lot of wonder, artistic experimentation, and nuance going for them, these just get very confusing and sometimes unpleasant. One that comes to mind is a story told out of order about a soldier who turns into an abusive husband, but in the end it turns out that he was one of the mooks that King Mob killed in the beginning of the story. I’m honestly not sure what the point was of all that.

I can’t really say that the characters themselves are very compelling either. All of them act understandably, to be sure. It’s hard to blame Dane for wanting to cut and run from the group after getting partially mutilated on a mission gone wrong, but he doesn’t have to be such an asshole about it. King Mob and his crew seem intriguing, but I don’t learn quite as much about them in the book as I’d like and this book is the first twelve issues of the comic’s run. That’s an entire year that readers would have had where they learned next to nothing about their main characters. Even the side characters are confusing; I still don’t get the nature of the Invisibles’ enemy or what their motivation is. In fact, I’m pretty sure one side character turned evil, but it was really hard to tell.

In conclusion, this is a very confusing body of work. The writer Grant Morrison dips into the surreal and outlandish frequently in his pieces, but I think he went too far for this one. Maybe I’m just not seeing what he was trying to get at, but I felt that this first volume was a lot of lead up with not a lot of explanation. Should you get it? Should I continue with the series? I have absolutely no idea. It’ll definitely scratch your itch for something trippy, surreal, and on the fringe, but I think you’ll be out in the cold if you can’t get past the experimentation.

Title: Aama (Volumes 1 and 2)
Author: Frederik Peeters
Artist: Edward Gauvin
Type: Graphic Novel
Genre: Science Fiction

Verloc Nim is… actually, Verloc doesn’t know who he is. He woke up on a barren planet with no memory of who he is or how he got there. However, he soon finds an apelike robot named Churchill with suspiciously human legs who gives him a journal written by none other than… Verloc Nim. The journal tells of how Verloc descended into substance abuse after his wife left him, taking his daughter away as well, before his brother picks him up and recruits him to a mission that might give his life purpose. Together with Churchill (who did not have human legs at the time), they travelled to the planet Ona(ji) to retrieve an away team and the project of one of the scientists known as Aama. They find the team holed up in a colony of their own making, but discover that the lead scientist on Aama left and took the project with her. Even more surprising is the mysterious appearance of a girl a week before the Nims’ arrival who bears a shocking resemblance to Verloc’s daughter, right down sharing to her muteness. While the Verloc of the past is working to discover what’s going on and what Aama even is, the Verloc of the present is trying to discover what happened to him, though he finds that he may not like the man he’s reading about.

This fledgling series comes to us from the hitherto unknown publisher Self Made Hero. So far, the company is making a good impression as it avoids a lot of the bad tropes that plague modern comics. The characters are diverse in race as well as personality and there’s no singular gorgeous body type for the women. Strikingly, though, attention isn’t drawn to this fact and there’s no big message about inclusion, it’s just how the world is. Or rather, worlds, as this is very much a time when travel between planets is as commonplace as changing a tire.

In fact, the handling of the sci-fi genre also stands out among other works. Everyone has their own take on sci-fi, but most of the time a lot of the conventions tend to repeat themselves, especially in robot and alien design. Not Aama. It seems to draw on the H.G. Wells school of thought in using sci-fi to depict the absurd and outlandish, yet still possible. From this absurdity comes most of the wonder of the future and the fear from the creatures the characters encounter. Monsters and robots aren’t drawn to look scary or impressive, but they still achieve that effect because of how foreign they look to our eyes and in doing so, capture the essence of the science fiction genre.

Of course, impressive visuals are nothing without good characters, but we got lucky on that front too. Both Verloc and his brother Conrad have a very interesting dynamic of being estranged for ten years and also being radically different. Verloc mires himself in humanity’s past and rejects all types of genetic modifications that are standard for other people, even having a child through natural intercourse, which is unheard of in his culture. Conrad, on the other hand, works for a corporation that seems about as ethical as Weyland-Yutani from the Aliens franchise and sees what most of us would consider wonderful and new as cynically mundane. Neither of them are perfect human beings, but there’s a sense that they’re trying to do right by their own set of values. The other characters are nice and colorful too, especially in the colony on Ona(ji), the one that stands out being the leader Professor Kaplan whose design resembles Jabba the Hutt forced into a human woman’s body.

The atmosphere of the comic is very surreal and cerebral. Several times, we’re treated to some of Verloc’s tortured dreams, which are both insightful and visually interesting. In a way, it reflects the series, seeing as both the characters and the plot are a mystery. We know where they all end (mostly), but we don’t know how they got there. Verloc’s dreams and anecdotes are interesting parallels to his future-self reading his own diary in that we’re learning about him just as he is learning about himself. One can only imagine how they would feel if they were left with no memories and were learning about their life from their own printed recollections. One must also wonder if they would be able to like themselves through those eyes.

Aama is only two volumes into its life cycle, but I’m really interested to see where it goes. I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen anything so visually imaginative in a comic. Maybe Saga, but that still has roots in some conventions. Even if the ending turns out to be a complete wash, I highly recommend this story in its infancy. Hopefully I’ll be able to write more when the next volume comes out. I’m dying to know what happens next.

Title: The Hobbit
Author: J. R. R. Tolkein
Illustrator: David Wenzel
Adapted By: Charles Dixon
Type: Comic Book
Genre: Fantasy

Big things come in small packages: this has been said all over and nowhere is it more true than with Bilbo Baggins, hobbit of the Shire. His all too quiet life is upended when the wizard Gandalf and thirteen dwarves come to his home and recruit him on a quest to retake their ancestor’s treasury from the dragon called Smaug. Along the way, they meet haughty elves, hungry trolls, hateful goblins, and a deformed creature with a golden ring that I’m sure is completely mundane and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. You all know the story, now enjoy it with artwork in this collected comic book adaptation.

When I was in Middle School, I set out to read all of the Lord of the Rings books, along with The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales (either for a report or because the movies had come out). This proved to be a very daunting task, as I found Tolkein’s prose to be very dense and hard to swallow. From time to time, I’ve wondered if that was really the case or if I was just too young to appreciate the subtle nuances in the text. After reading this very faithful adaptation nowadays, I realized that even in my youth, I was completely right: Tolkein’s prose is dense, longwinded, and completely mind-numbing.

This graphic adaptation takes the text straight from the book and uses it for both dialogue and text boxes, which unfortunately works to the comic’s detriment. You see, comics are a visual medium and should make good use of their pictures. This comic has so many words you have to read to understand what’s going on that there’s practically an essay on each page. We’re told that certain things are happening and that characters are feeling certain ways, but rarely do we actually get to see it.

Which is a shame, because the artwork is really beautiful. The painted style really gives it the feel of a timeless fantasy and the wide use of colors among the characters is pleasing to the eyes. It’s too bad that because of the way the comic is structured, each panel seems like a stand-alone portrait rather than telling a sequential story. It’s also, again, hindered because this comic has, in the words of Ben “Yatzhee” Croshaw of Zero Punctuation fame, “TOO MANY FUCKING WORDS.” All that text really crowds the pictures at times and really does detract from the visual experience.

I will say this, though: the comic does make me appreciate the movies more. Oh, not because the movies are a masterpiece, but reading this comic made me realize that there was a lot of stuff that I took as extra stuff for the movies which were actually part of the original story. Beorn, Gollum chasing Bilbo and leading him out of the cavern, the eagles rescuing the party, the elves imprisoning the dwarves, the list goes on. It really does feel like the story would have been so much cheaper if it had all been squeezed into one movie (though I think two would have been plenty). I have seen the Rankin-Bass version, so I know it can be done, but I feel like a lot of the mythology got lost in translation.

This is a difficult piece to review because this is an adaptation rather than an original work, so I can’t criticize stuff like the plot or things like that. If you really want to see that happen, though, Lewis Lovhaug did it better than I could. Personally, though, I felt that a few more liberties should have been taken in order to make full use of the visual medium. It would have made the experience come to life more than feeling like the entire book transcribed over a bunch of pretty pictures. That said, the pictures are gorgeous, so if you’ve really been yearning to read The Hobbit with beautiful visuals to accompany it, feel free to check it out.

Title: Transmetropolitan: Back On The Streets
Author: Warren Ellis
Artist: Darick Robertson
Type: Comic Book
Genre: Cyberpunk

One-time journalist Spider Jerusalem only wanted one thing: peace and solitude in a secluded mountain cabin away from people, media, and constraints against making his own ebola bombs. No such luck. An old publisher calls him to call in that book he’d promised, forcing Spider to return to The City, a cacophonous cavalcade of media, consumerism, and sensory assault. Unfortunately for Spider, this is where he thrives best. Armed with a new journalism job and an assistant, he aims to take The City down a peg and give its citizens a dose of what’s been absent for a long time: cold, hard truth.

Panic initially set in when I saw the forward written by Garth Ennis, giving the comic his full approval for being a tale told by a “kindred spirit.” For those who don’t know, Garth Ennis is known for writing rather mean-spirited comics. Now, in fairness, he wrote Preacher, which is one of my favorite comics. Also in fairness, he wrote The Boys, which I consider an unreadable dredge that is unpleasant on every single level. So when Garth Ennis declares someone a kindred spirit, my instinct is to run for the hills. Thankfully, my fears were unfounded: Transmetropolitan may be more cynical than the standard comic fare, but it still manages to channel that into a very twisted sense of humor that gives the book its identity.

Spider Jerusalem, who is meant to be a surrogate to the late Hunter S. Thompson, is not a nice or heroic man. He sets his three-eyed, two-faced cat to urinate on things and people that annoy him, he constantly belittles his assistant’s boyfriend, and his mouth is filthier than a sewer during a stomach flu outbreak. But as crude as he is, the city is far worse and downright offensive to the senses. The feel is set up perfectly in the first panel Spider enters The City’s print district: holographic advertisements covering just about every inch of the side of the road advertising everything from beer to trans-species surgery in the most neon way possible. Even further in the comic, there’s a sort of bazaar where people are peddling their religions, showing that literally nothing is sacred in this metropolis. I actually really like the fact that The City has no name, meaning that it could happen to any big city if left unchecked enough. Upon reflection, it kind of reminds me of the Once-ler from the original Lorax in a weird, twisted way, in that they’re both blank entities that the readers can supplant anything into where it would resonate with them.

That said, this book isn’t exactly perfect and the reason why comes down to the format. This is a collected trade paperback of the first six issues of the comic and as such, the book is two stories back to back. The first one is actually really engaging, concerning Spider’s return to the city and dealing with a boiling situation involving police brutality against transients (people who have altered their body by splicing extraterrestrial DNA into their genome). The second half of the book deals with Spider’s new assistant, Channon Yarrow, settling into her new job and dealing with Spider’s eccentricities, while Spider himself takes on the president, television, and the aforementioned religion bazaar. This half is a bit more slapdash and less coherent, making the whole affair very anticlimactic. That said, the part where Spider prank calls various TV shows is an absolute gem and the first half more than makes up for the lackluster finisher.

It’s hard to judge this particular book because it’s setting up things for the series rather than telling a full three-act story. It’s enough to color me interested, but it hasn’t exactly wowed me yet. Some people may be tempted to direct moral outrage at the character of Spider, but I see him more as a more adult version of that type of teenager that rails against anything that’s popular or mainstream, only he’s a little more justified in the story. In the end though, I find him ultimately harmless. I think the commentary is a lot more pertinent nowadays, especially in light of the recent controversies over police brutality. If you have a demented sense of humor, this will be right up your alley. If your sensibilities are a bit tamer, I would still recommend it to test the waters. As for me, I’m intrigued to see what comes next, so I guess Volume One has accomplished its mission.

Title: Path of the Warrior; Path of the Seer; Path of the Outcast
Author: Gav Thorpe
Type: Novel Trilogy
Genre: Science Fiction

Author’s Note: Even though these are three separate books, I decided to review the whole trilogy for two reasons. The first is that all three books tell of the same event, but in a Rashomon style where each story is a different perspective on the same moments, so I thought it necessary to look at the full set to understand the whole story. The second reason is that each book preceding the final one cut off at different parts during the climax, making it necessary to read the whole trilogy to know how the story ends.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. The 41st millennium of humanity’s calendar is fraught with conflict and bloodshed spanning across the stars. Of the alien races (or xenos), perhaps none are more tragic than the Eldar, whose species was all but eradicated by a cataclysm eons past and are forced to live out their days in isolated craftworlds of their own creation, treacherous exodite worlds they inhabited, or lead far less scrupulous lifestyles like pirates or brutal raiders. But on this day, we shall speak of the craftworld Alaitoc, for something monumental happened there.

There are three friends from this craftworld whose tales weave together to tell an epic story. Like all of the Eldar, they walk specific Paths of life that they devote themselves to entirely until theyhave had their fill of it and move on to a different Path altogether. Korlandril walks the Path of the Artist and is a famous sculpter, Thirianna treads the Path of the Poet and keeps her work to herself, and Aradryan travels the Path of the Mariner as a steersman who detests feeling confined to the craftworld. An incident drives them apart in different directions and radically different Paths. Korlandril finds solace in the Path of the Warrior, where he fights for Alaitoc as a stealthy and deadly Striking Scorpion. In her eagerness to prevent tragedy, Thirianna seeks answers in the Path of the Seer where she can harness her psychic powers for the good of the craftworld. But Aradryan forsakes the Path of the Eldar completely, leaving Alaitoc on a ranger ship and walking the Path of the Outcast in a search for freedom.

However, each of our heroes run the risk on being too immersed in their Path and losing sight of themselves and their values. This comes at a very inopportune time as the actions of one of them (or is it all of their actions?) brings enemies to Alaitoc and risks destroying their home and the thousands, if not millions, of lives that inhabit it. Each of them plays a part in this great battle that may spell the end of Alaitoc and the Eldar.

Each of the character’s stories are parallels to one another, not just in the events of the story, but in the themes as well. Each of them starts out on a path that doesn’t suit them, transfers to the titular one when they feel its pull, falls too far down the rabbit hole on the path to the point where they’re almost unrecognizable as their former selves, and have to face the consequences of their actions at the battle of Alaitoc. But each of them goes through their journey differently. Korlandril’s fall from warrior to exarch is entirely involuntary, brought on by his own hubris and lack of willpower, which is more obvious when you look at his actions from the other characters’ perspectives. Thirianna’s transformation from warlock to farseer, on the other hand, is completely voluntary; she knows that she’s going to be trapped on this path for life if she does, but she makes that sacrifice for her desire to see the future and prevent harm from coming to those she cares about. Aradryan’s descent from ranger to piracy is different and very reminiscent of someone who is falling to peer pressure. When his crewmembers blow up an innocent ship, he knows it feels wrong, but gives his conscience false promises in order to belong. Each of these even feel natural to them, as if this could have been predicted from the beginning.

The fact that the books make these characters relatable is a marvel. The characters come from a species whose ways are so alien to us that it might be hard to fathom. They are born psychic, they shift lifestyles dramatically every so often, and they have a way of compartmentalizing their very psyches to protect it from the backlash of killing another living being. Yet through the prose, the readers can understand why they do the things they do and see other species and situations are through their eyes. Everything they do has a clear logic behind it that the reader can experience firsthand. The readers also get a look at their culture through short blurbs preceding each chapter, though the content differs in each book. In Path of the Warrior, each one is an excerpt from Eldar mythology concerning their gods and genesis. Path of the Seer tells us of different runes that the warlocks and farseers use to channel their powers. The ones in Path of the Outcast all tell of different locations throughout the galaxy that are important to the Eldar or that are simply wonderful to be around. In a way, they all paint a picture of a very old and doomed culture.

This trilogy isn’t without its drawbacks, however. If you’re an American reader like myself, the use of British spelling will throw you for a loop (i.e.: “artefact” instead of “artifact,” etc.). Another point against it comes from the fact that it is not kind to people who are not into the hobby. It throws a lot of terms at the reader and doesn’t give them much exposition for context. Casual readers will probably not know what separates Striking Scorpions from Howling Banshees or of the significance and identity of She Who Thirsts. Perhaps it’s because of my previous Warhammer knowledge that it didn’t bother me, but I don’t know that a lot of newcomers will be able to pick these things up through immersion alone. Finally, there are parts of the books that do strike a bit of the “buy all our playsets and toys” mentality, especially in the Battle of Alaitoc when talking about the Phantom Titan and the other war machines. I suppose I can’t blame Games Workshop too much for this, since the books are meant to tie into the game, but I can’t help feeling a little manipulated.

Korlandril’s story feels visceral. Thirianna’s narrative is introspective. Aradryan’s tale feels emotional and intimate. Each book tells one side of a very involved story that binds them together and changes their fate forever. It’s interesting how each side not only reveals a bit about the overall saga, but of the characters as well. The writer wrote a similar trilogy dealing with the Dark Eldar and I might consider looking at that, though that will probably be a darker experience since the Dark Eldar are unapologetic slavers and rapists. I’m not sure if you’ll get as much out of this if you’re not into Warhammer 40k, but fans will get a good insight and see that there’s more to those “sissy space elves” than arrogance and pretty models.

Title: Saga (volumes 1-3)
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Fiona Staples
Type: Comic Book
Genre: Space opera, Fantasy, Romance

Summary: They say love is a battlefield, but in this case, the battlefield was Cupid. In the midst of an everlasting war between the winged people of Landfall and the horned folk of Wreath, two warriors from opposing sides, Alana and Marko, fall in love, run away together, and conceive a child named Hazel. And neither side is happy about this. On top of both of them being deserters, their union and offspring are considered sacrilegious by the warring people and they worry that spread of this news could damage moral of the troops. To deal with this problem, each side hires an assassin to take them out. Landfall hires Prince Robot IV, a member of mechanical aristocracy whose wife is with child herself, while Wreath contacts The Will, a stoic assassin who travels with a lie-detecting cat. The couple is always on the run, dealing with assassins, in-laws, undead nannies, and even ex-lovers to find a place where their love can be safe.

Coming from the mind that gave us Y: The Last Man and Marvel’s Runaways, Saga is a stroke of pure brilliance. The concept is fairly fresh, the dialogue is natural and snappy, and the creature and character designs are so bizarre and outlandish that they’ll never leave your head. For crying out loud, the royal family of Robot has TVs for heads. That is so surreal, it just has to be memorable. The characters are also a nice bag of complexities, each having their own baggage that makes them very distinctive. My personal favorite is Izabel, a teenage ghost with half of her body missing who becomes Hazel’s babysitter. Her design is great and there’s an irreverence about her that I just find really endearing.

While the idea of star-crossed lovers from two feuding houses isn’t exactly a new story, the science fiction and fantasy elements make it feel very new. Some spaceships happen to be living trees, which I don’t think I’ve often seen juxtaposed against laser and hard chrome. Granted, the exact limits of the magic aren’t fully explained, but I get the feeling that a clearer picture will be drawn as the series continues. The universe itself just feels so alive and diverse. It’s not just the two warring factions, there are tons of interesting aliens with their own unique cultures. Even small touches like the type of entertainment that exists in the universe acts like that subtle spice that turns good food into a culinary masterpiece.

At the end of the day, what we have is a unique epic from a man who has come out with stellar work in the past. Time will tell if this ever surpasses the quality of Y: The Last Man, which I previously thought impossible, but now I’m not so sure. Until then, all we know is that Brian K. Vaughan’s transcendent writing and Fiona Staples’ beautiful artwork have come together to form a great child of their own.

Title: Green Lantern: The Wrath of the First Lantern
Author: Geoff Johns, Peter J. Tomasi, Tony Bedard, Peter Milligan
Type: Comic Book
Genre: Superhero, Space Opera

Summary: Let me tell you about a man named Geoff Johns.

Geoff Johns is a writer at DC Comics who is currently the Chief Creative Officer at the company. But back in 2004, he was just a writer who was brought on to the Green Lantern book to fix a horrible mistake made a decade prior. See, there was a story where the Green Lantern known as Hal Jordan was turned evil and killed off as a publicity stunt that went over horribly with the critics and the audiences. Geoff Johns was given the opportunity to fix this and he struck gold.

After his Rebirth story, he knocked it out of the park again with the Green Lantern story Sinestro Corps War and again in 2009 with the company-wide crossover Blackest Night. Now, with his final story in his run of Green Lantern, Wrath of the First Lantern, Johns has shown us that lightning can strike four times.

Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps had just defeated the Third Army, an attempt by their overseers the Guardians’ at creating a completely subservient force – but their destruction led to a reawakening of Volthoom, the first of the Lanterns under the Emotional Spectrum. Fueled by his anger at the Guardians for imprisoning him for eons, he strives to tear down everything they have built and presided over, which pretty much means all of reality.

But Volthoom doesn’t strike down his foes with swords, lasers, or armies, rather with their own inner demons, forcing them to relive painful memories and even twist them to have different outcomes that feel just as real, all the while draining their emotions to slowly become godlike. It’s up to Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Carol Ferris, Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner, Simon Baz, and even their former foes Sinestro and Atrocitus to fight back and stop a mad god.

What people have to understand before going on is that this is actually a collection of four different comic lines tied together in the same story: Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: New Guardians, and Red Lanterns. As such, it alternates between the titles after each issue. Unlike Rise of the Third Army, which was a far less pleasant story, this one actually makes the story seem much more grand and connects to make the narrative feel fleshed out. This is especially amazing when you consider that not a lot happens in this story, but that gives them time to give all the characters the focus they need and make their struggle truly meaningful.

Sadly, the weak link comes in the form of the Red Lanterns title. The events concerning Volthoom have to share time with a subplot involving Rankorr – the first human Red Lantern – discovering his purpose and I will freely admit, I don’t care about this character. His plight does not match the epic tone of the series or hopeful feeling at the end and feels like an unnecessary afterthought, like the writer was only half committed to the events of this title-shaking crossover. All in all, it’s a malignant tumor on what was nearly a perfect book.

Framing a good chunk of the story as a cross between a clip show and a collection of what if scenarios was a brilliant way to bring the continuity of the past ten years to the forefront to lead up to one final, gratifying hurrah. I will admit that I wish that the final epilogue of what happened to all the characters was the last thing we read in the book rather than the Red Lanterns issue, but given the way the book was structured, I understand that was impossible. While the epilogue is a feel-good masterpiece, a big part of me worries that DC will do something that contradicts it, killing or mentally scaring one of the characters to make a big story seem gritty and adult.

But what DC does in the future is not important. This is about Geoff Johns – the greatest of all the Green Lantern writers. The inspiration he left behind continues to burn bright. He was the spark that started the everlasting fire.

Title: Skin Game
Author: Jim Butcher
Type: Novel
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Summary: Harry Dresden was Chicago’s only professional wizard detective. But then he made a deal with Mab, Queen of the Winter Fae, and became her knight, murdered his lover to save their daughter Maggie, died, came back, orchestrated the death of Mab’s possessed daughter, lost his former apprentice Molly to the Winter Court as her replacement, and imposed an exile on himself to a magical, dangerous island in the middle of Lake Michigan. And that was before this book.

Mab calls upon Harry’s services to help square away one of her debts to Nicodemus Archleone of the Knights of the Blackened Denarius (holders of one of Judas’ thirty pieces of silver that each contain a fallen angel), one of Harry’s deadliest foes. Worse still, the job is to help Nichodemus break into Hades’ personal vault and steal the Holy Grail, thus potentially incurring the wrath of the Greek Underworld. The rules of the Fae bind Harry to helping Nicodemus see his plan through, but Mab reminds him in private that the gloves are off once the deed is done. In short, she wants Harry to burn Nicodemus and burn him hard.

With the help of his cop not-quite-lover Karrin Murphy, a retired Knight of the Cross and family man Michael Carpenter, his friend-coming-into-his-own-in-a-supernatural-world Waldo Butters, some unlikely allies from the past, and even some supernatural allies, Harry makes good on his promise and gives Nicodemus a burn that he will never forget. But Harry must also come to terms with not only becoming a part of his Maggie’s life, but actually give birth to another daughter that was the product of a fallen angel’s shadow inside his head. Even for Harry Dresden, this set of days is far from typical.

The Dresden Files has been my favorite series for a long time for its voice and witty dialogue, the world it builds, and the memorable characters, but even this blew my standards away. This is the first one in a while that has been pure unadulterated fun; the past few books have had rather bittersweet endings that felt rather soul-crushing, but not Skin Game. This one actually offers hope for the future of these characters and introduces some really fun ones as well. There’s plenty of action, no shortage of drama and intrigue, and plenty to make this a must-read for fans of the series. And if you haven’t started the series yet, well, what the hell are you doing with your life?