Silver Surfer, Vol. 2: Worlds Apart

Silver Surfer, Vol. 2: Worlds Apart by Dan Slott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Silver Surfer and Earth girl Dawn Greenwood soar the spaceways, encountering Planet Prime, space hillbillies, and the graveyard of worlds. What will the Surfer do when Dawn finds out about his past with Galactus, with a hungry Galactus on the prowl?

The Doctor Who-flavored adventures of The Silver Surfer and Dawn Greenwood continue. The Surfer takes Dawn out for the greatest ice cream in the universe, reminisces about instances when he had to save Dawn from peril, and accidentally leads Galactus to a planet full of the survivors of worlds he lead the planet devourer to during his centuries of servitude.

It's not as dire as it sounds, though. It's actually pretty funny at times and has some charming moments. Allred and Slott did a good job conveying the emotion when Dawn found out about the Surfer's past and his role in Galactus consuming trillions of innocent lives. The ending was pretty great and left me chomping at the bit for the next volume. I'm eager to see where Slott and Allred take the Surfer and Dawn from here.

Any gripes? Not a damn one unless a craving for more Silver Surfer the way Galactus craves planets is a gripe. Dan Slott and Michael Allred continue to make the Silver Surfer a character I'm dying to read more about. Four out of five stars.

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Puppet Boy

Christian Baines
Bold Strokes Books
Reviewed by Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary

A school in turmoil over its senior play, a sly career as a teenage gigolo, an unpredictable girlfriend with damage of her own, and a dangerous housebreaker tied up downstairs. Any of these would make a great plot for budding filmmaker Eric's first movie. Unfortunately, they're his real life. When Julien, a handsome wannabe actor, transfers to Eric's class, he's a distraction, a rival, and one complication too many. Yet Eric can't stop thinking about him. Helped by Eric's girlfriend, Mary, they embark on a project that dangerously crosses the line between filmmaking and reality. As the boys become close, Eric soon wants to cross other lines entirely. Does Julien feel the same way, or is Eric being used on the gleefully twisted path to fame?

My Review

Right from the start, I was gripped by this story. 18-year-old Eric’s mom has a busy career, leaving him alone for months at a time. All this freedom enables him to straddle multiple worlds – as a student producing one of Shakespeare’s more controversial plays, a boy toy to Margaret, an older female client, and as mate to Julien and Mary. Oh, and let’s not forget about the complicated relationship Eric has with the burglar tied up in his house and that godawful MP3 he keeps playing.

So even though there’s not a single likable character in this story, Eric’s conflicts, craziness and unpredictability kept me entirely enthralled, making me laugh, hold my breath, and shake my head in disbelief. I liked that Eric’s bisexuality is understated, yet unrepentant. I also appreciated the stellar writing which easily elevates this book into the literary realm.

This is the type of book best read without knowing any specifics, so I’m not going to spoil it for you. Just know that you’ll laugh your head off, be horrified, and question your sanity…or Eric’s.

A total mindfuck and one of the more creative books I’ve read in a while.

Squadron Sinister: Warzones

Squadron Sinister: Warzones by Marc Guggenheim
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Squadron Sinister is a powerful group of individuals that are conquering all corners of the Utopolis Battleworld by force.


Surprisingly the biggest threat to their power is each other.

From time to time I have wondered how Marvel or DC could get away with characters who are clearly copied from one another. Squadron Sinister is quite likely the most blatant copying I've ever seen. They are very clearly copied off of the Justice League.

What surprised me is that I actually really liked these evil jerks. It was always very easy for me to envision the main characters in the Justice League as villains and the Squadron really embodies the League's potential darkness.

I really enjoyed the volume until the end. The story unfortunately didn't get what I would deem a proper ending and instead it somewhat abruptly had a Secret Wars ending. I realize there was a loose thread to be tied up, but it really wasn't a satisfying conclusion.

The Squadron Sinister has me interested in learning more about their past and future as The Squadron Supreme.

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THE VANISHING VELAZQUEZ BY LAURA CUMMING

The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th Century Bookseller’s Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece by Laura Cumming
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”They were like guests at a surprise party waiting for your arrival and now you have entered the room---their room, not the real one around you---or so it mysteriously seems. The whole scene twinkles with expectation. That is the first sensation on the threshold of the gallery in the Prado where Las Meninas hangs: that you have walked into their world and become suddenly as present to them as they are to you.

And what keeps them here, what keeps them alive, or so the artist implies, is not just the painting but you.”



It has been twenty plus years since I was last in the Prado, but I do still remember this painting. It wasn’t a scene that would usually be of much interest to me. At first glance, there is nothing really going on in this painting, barring a princess getting ready for a ball or a dinner party or to meet some dignitaries from another court from another country. It would be easy to pass it by, except for the scale of the painting. It is huge. Instead of scurrying on past, I suddenly found myself trapped under the gaze of the painting. These people, all long dead but very much alive, are looking at me as if I just interrupted their activities by walking in the room. These sensations I felt that day all come back to me when I read Laura Cumming’s description above.

I, without intention, have fallen into 1656. Of course, in real life we can’t stare at people like I stared at the people in this painting. I think that at any second the little girl would lift a hand to her face and giggle, or Velazquez himself would raise an eyebrow at my imprudence. They are so guileless and welcoming. Velazquez has immortalized all these people from the dwarfs to the ladies in waiting, from the artist to the king and queen reflected in the mirror, as if everyone in this painting were, at least in paint, equal.

For Velazquez everyone is unique, and by him showing us their remarkableness, they become indispensible to the rest of us.

”He finds a Venus and a Mars in the humble people around him, sees a king as compellingly ordinary and is able to make an old man selling water seem like an ancient prophet. There is an extraordinary equality to his empathetic gaze.”



If Velazquez had only painted Las Meninas, he would have been immortal, but luckily for the rest of us, he shared his gift in a number of paintings, not enough, mainly because he became so successful in the court of Philip IV that his duties to the king, beyond just painting portraits, were taken up with tasks that would have been better left to others.

The story may have begun in the 17th century, but the second act happened in the 19th century when a bookseller by the name of John Snare bought a painting at a liquidation sale. Take it from me, booksellers are always trouble, and Snare was no exception.

Now just being in the book business, we can assume that Snare was “gently mad.” There is something about art, books, and race horses that take the gently mad to the certifiably insane. This painting, luminescent beneath the grime of dust and smoke, is of the Prince of Wales, the future Charles the first, significant in the fact that he is young, but sports the beard he grew while he was petitioning Philip IV for an alliance with his daughter.

In 1649, Charles is overthrown by Oliver Cromwell and his supporters and very publically beheaded. He wore two shirts to the execution so that a morning chill would not be misinterpreted as a shiver of fear. He put his head on the block and signaled the executioner he was ready by spreading out his arms. Regardless of whether history sees him as a good king or a terrible one, his courage in his last moments was incontestable.

Could the painting be the long lost Velazquez portrait? It could be a Van Dyck, who painted Charles many times. There is something though about the eyes and the deftness of the brush that convinces Snare that it must be Velazquez. He sets out to prove it. Laura Cumming found herself consulting the same exact sources that Snare did almost a hundred and seventy years earlier.

He displays it and makes some money off people coming to see this painting by a Spanish painter rarely seen in England. Snare has a lien that doesn’t exist slapped against the painting by unscrupulous people in an attempt to steal and sell the painting before the court system can prevail. He survived that near parting with his precious; and yes, there is a bit of Gollum in Snare. He is later sued by an estate believing that the painting was stolen from a private collection. He goes bankrupt defending his right to own the painting, but even though he wins the court case, he leaves for America.

He doesn’t run away, like a normal man, with a young doxy. He runs away with a painting.

Snare leaves a wife and children. One child is born after he leaves. His paterfamilia responsibilities are superseded by his responsibility to art.

He could have sold the painting for a handsome sum and avoided bankruptcy. I can imagine he considered it, but who he is, by this time, is so defined by being the owner of this “Velazquez” that he can’t give it up. It would be like selling Secretariat or selling a building with your name on it or selling a Gutenberg Bible. You know that by selling something that precious that you will never be able to own it again.

Cumming not only expanded my knowledge of Velazquez exponentially, but also introduced me to a 19th century, mad as a hatter version of myself whom I understood completely. I knew that Velazquez was an important painter. I learned that at the Prado, when I laid my eyes on Las Meninas, the people of the Spanish court laid their eyes on me. He was such a humanist. He depicted dwarfs and poor people and famous people and royalty with the same deft brush strokes. He held no one up for ridicule, but showed each of his subject with the power of their uniqueness, evident for all to see.

He was a maestro.

”Even now one wonders how he could know where to place that speck of white that ignites a string of flashing glints across pale silk, how to convey the stiff transparency of gauze with a single dab of blue on grey, how to paint eyes that see us, but are themselves indecipherable. How could he lay paint on canvas so that it is as impalpable as breath, or create a haze that seems to emit from a painting like scent, or place a single dab of red on the side of a head so that it perfectly reads as an ear?”


Velazquez sold this painting of The Water-seller, but then when he had the chance, he bought it back and kept it for the rest of his life.

It would have made everything so much easier if Velazquez had signed all of his paintings, but then the more that I get to know the man, the more I realize that he was saying something by not signing them. He was but an instrument of his talent. His paintings belonged to the world.

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Too Like the Lightning by: Ada Palmer

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Incredibly deep and thought provoking debut by Ms. Palmer. I am not a guy who is deep into the philosophical things of life, but Ada Palmer has created an incredible story that makes you think. Thinking is way more rare in fiction nowadays that it used to be.

I will have to read this book again, its very similar in tone to the Thessaly series by Jo Walton. It sort of feels like science fiction should be more like this, strange and worms its way into your brain and changes you from the inside out.



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Queen of Thorns (Pathfinder Tales) By: Dave Gross

Queen of Thorns by Dave Gross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was the third of the Pathfinder stash I got cheap and my favorite. The characters Jeggare and Radovan are two of my favorite in recent memory. Great story, interesting mystery and ton of fun, HOWEVER, I didn't know this is not the first installment of their adventures soooooooooo if you want to test these waters, you need Prince of Wolves and Master of Devils too.

So far, I have been super pleased with my sojourn into the Pathfinder universe, they are nothing groundbreaking, but they are solid, well done, totally fun fantasy books. Give them a try.



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Another Good One From Lehane

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lehane, that guy can write!

I'm climbing on to the Dennis Lehane bandwagon really late, but I am fully on board! Even though Moonlight Mile wasn't ragingly exciting, it's so well-crafted I couldn't put down this story of a Boston-area private detective who gets into new trouble because of an old case.

This PI's career is coming to an end, but he doesn't know it yet. Russians, wunderkind and drug freaks all get the poor, aging family man deeper into the shit than he realizes he's about to fall into.

Just like me! I didn't know I was getting into a series and that it was the last book! It wasn't a problem. I could tell these were people with a past, but I was never overwhelmed by my ignorance. This is the second jump-into-the-middle-of-a-Lehane-series I've done and in both cases the author does a fine job of giving enough detail to keep the reader abreast of the haps. In other words, the books are self-contained.

I could see others giving this perhaps only 3 stars. It does drag with the chit chat here and there. I don't know, perhaps I've given this an extra star because it artificially kept my interest at times due to the setting being New England-based, which is where I grew up. Name-place dropping happens often in Moonlight Mile and that didn't bother me none!

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The Drive-In

The Drive-In by Joe R. Lansdale
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jack and his friends live for one thing: the Friday all night horror show at the Orbit Drive-In. When a comet with an eye visits, the drive-in is cut off from the rest of the world and things quickly degenerate to a no-man's land of cannibals...

Confession time: I read this way back in the Stone Age, pre-Goodreads and early in my Lansdale love affair. When I saw how cheap the trilogy was on the Kindle, I figured it was time for a reread.

The Drive-In is Bizarro fiction from back before such fiction had a name. Jack, Bob, Willard, and Randy are horror nuts who have the misfortune of being trapped at the Orbit when the shit goes down. Imagine being in eternal darkness with the only light coming from the drive-in screens and the only food coming from the concession stand. It's not hard to see how things degenerated, is it?

The Drive-In is a really fun book, full of gore, weirdness, and laughs. While it's an early Lansdale and not as slick as his later work, the beer and tailgate style is still there. Since it had been over a decade since I read it, it was pretty much a new book. Ah, the magic of getting older.

It's a pretty short tale, but like a good punk rock song, it's as long as it needs to be. When you have cannibals, motorcycle gangs, and crazy religious nuts, all trapped in the confines of a Drive-In parking lot, how long can you expect people to survive anyway? The Popcorn King was pretty damn creepy and I liked how Lansdale explained his origin, making it make logical sense, to a degree.

The Drive-In was a lot of gorey good fun packed into a pretty slim book. Four out of five stars.

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Survivor

J.F. Gonzalez
Dorchester Publishing
Reviewed by Nancy
2 out of 5 stars

Summary

It was supposed to have been a romantic weekend getaway. Lisa was looking forward to spending time alone with her husband, and telling him that they were going to have a baby.

Instead, it became a nightmare when her husband was arrested and Lisa was kidnapped. But the kidnappers aren't asking for ransom. They want Lisa herself. They're going to make her a star . . . in a snuff film.

My Review

Survivor is sick, twisted, and very, very disturbing. I briefly considered abandoning it in frustration after Lisa did what she had to do to get out of her situation. Then I realized I had to finish to see if Tim, Animal and the other depraved monsters got their due. I'm relieved it is finally done and the book safely out of my house.

I honestly don't know what possessed me to buy this. I like well written horror stories and don't mind some violence and gore, but Survivor wasn't particularly well written and the excessive violence and brutality made me feel dirty for reading it.

Two stars because I got sucked in and managed to finish it.

BAT MASTERSON BY ROBERT K. DEARMENT

Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend by Robert K. Dearment
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”Josephine Earp recalled Bat’s dropping in on them at their home in San Diego about 1885. He was on his way to Ensenada, Mexico, to pick up an army deserter who was reputed to be a tough hombre. Bat asked Wyatt to accompany him. ‘That made sense to Wyatt,’ wrote Josephine. ‘This careful approach, so characteristic of both these men, may account for their survival to a ripe old age despite years in a dangerous business that claimed the lives of many. Neither of them took unnecessary chances.’”


The always Dapper Bat Masterson.

Bartholomew Masterson was the name he was born with. His family called him Bart, which eventually evolved into Bat. There are several stories about how he came to be called Bat, but the most pedestrian story is the one that is true. The Penny Dreadfuls liked the idea that he got that nickname by batting desperadoes over the head with his cane. He didn’t like his given name, Bartholomew, and renamed himself William Barclay. This name ended up on his tombstone, but of course, everyone called him Bat.

The West is filled with stories of brothers standing by brothers, but I don’t think there are any more compelling stories about siblings than those about the Earps and the Mastersons. Growing up in Kansas, I enjoyed hearing lurid stories about these famous brothers. I was an avid reader of True West Magazine. The articles regarding the Earps or the Mastersons were the ones I kept to read again and again. I inhaled books about them. I filled my head with all kinds of facts and fictions about them. The truth is not easy to sort out because Tall Tales were as much a part of the West as were whiskey, doxies, and six shooters.

What Robert K. DeArment set out to do was write the definitive biography of Bat Masterson. Of course, to do so is the same as telling the history of the West. He recently wrote a second biography of Bat called Gunfighter in Gotham which I’m so glad he did because the time that Bat spends in New York is certainly worthy of special attention.

Bat was born in Quebec, but his family homesteaded in New York, Illinois, and finally in Wichita, Kansas. It is interesting to think about who Bat Masterson would have been if his father hadn’t moved to the state that gave Bat such a great opportunity to become a legend. Would he have still come West? I’m sure he would have. The West was too alluring for young men in this time period, especially infinitely curious men like the Masterson brothers. Would he have landed in Dodge City? Who can say?

Bat started out as a Buffalo hunter. He did his part, practically government sponsored, to eradicate the main source of food of the American Indian from the face of North America. He also graded the way for railroad tracks and was not paid for that work. This is the first opportunity where we see what kind of man he was before he was even really a man. A friend described him thus: ”He was a chunk of steel and anything that struck him in those days always drew fire.” To illustrate, Raymond Ritter was rumored to be arriving on the train in Dodge City with a roll of cash. He still owed Bat $300. Bat went to meet the train and drew a crowd as he went. He held a pistol on Ritter and demanded his pay. He got his money and came off the train to the cheers of the crowd. He bought a round of drinks for everyone.

Now what is most interesting about this incident is Bat Masterson was 19 years old.

Bat Masterson acquired the reputation for being a killer, but the reality was far removed from what people had been led to believe. One of his friends, who had been drinking, had some fun with a newspaper reporter from back East and spun him a story about the then 27 year old Masterson having killed 26 men. This story stuck, and over the years Masterson did little to dispel that lie, nor did he ever confirm it. It did make men careful around him.


The Original Long Branch Saloon, unfortunately long gone. Those walls could tell stories.

In actuality, he thought he’d killed three men, but on one of those he was misinformed. The one man we know for sure was killed by Bat was Sergeant Melvin K. King.

It was over a girl.

Mollie Brennan was coveted by King, but at least on the night of January 24th, 1876, she preferred the company of the rather dashing and handsome Bat Masterson. It happened in Sweetwater, Texas, after hours in the dancehall, The Lady Gay. Bat knew the owner and had acquired a key so he could spend some time alone with Miss Brennan.

”When King pounded at the door, Bat, thinking that some friend who knew he was there wanted a nightcap, unlocked the door and stepped back. King sprang inside, cursing and brandishing his six-shooter. Mollie, shrieking at King, jumped in front of Bat, but the sergeant, insane with rage, jealousy, and bad liquor, opened fire. A bullet tore through Mollie’s abdomen, struck Bat, and lodged in his pelvis. The girl sank to the floor with a groan and Bat staggered backward. His legs turning to jelly under him, half-blinded with shock and pain, he managed to draw his gun and fire once. His bullet hit King squarely in the heart, killing him instantly.”



When his older brother, Edward, was shot down in the streets of Dodge City in 1878 by Jack Wagner and his trail boss Alf Walker, Bat opened fire from across the street and believed that one of his bullets killed Wagner. He even testified to the fact in the hearing, but my feeling is that it was Ed’s bullet that killed Wagner.

The other man that Bat thought he killed was James Kenedy. A posse had been formed to chase Kenedy after he killed the actress Dora Hand, who happened to be in the bed of the man he had intended to kill. Once they caught up with Kenedy, Bat shot him in the shoulder. He was later informed that Kenedy died from the wound, but Kenedy it turns out died from other causes. Mainly from being an idiot.

Masterson might have killed, but he certainly wasn’t a killer. . Considering how much time he spent wearing a badge in more than one state and in numerous cities, I would say that he was judicious in his need to terminate men from breathing.


Dubbed the Dodge City Peace Commission when they arrived to help Luke Short sort out his difficulties with the powers-that-were in Dodge at the time. These were, without a doubt, the toughest hombres ever assembled.

He loved to gamble and seemed to be pretty good at it. He loved to dress well, and the ladies seemed to like him. He was loyal to his friends. He bailed out Doc Holliday from a very serious extradition order back to Arizona by trumping up some charges to keep him in Colorado because Wyatt asked Bat to help. Bat didn’t even like the acerbic Holliday. He came running whenever his younger brother Jim was in trouble. He dropped everything to come back to Dodge City to help his friend Luke Short with some difficulties. He brought some friends by the name of Wyatt Earp, Charlie Bassett, and several other famous gunfighters, as well. Thank goodness they took a photograph while all of them were together. Needless to say, the difficulties his friends encountered were quickly settled once Bat showed up.


Still dapper as the Gotham Gunfighter.

As he got older, he exchanged his six-shooters for the power of the pen. He started a political newspaper in Dodge City called Vox Populi to write articles to destroy his political opposition. He only needed to release one scorching issue, and all of his party swept to victory at the polls. This made a lasting impression on Bat, and when he moved to New York, he became a full time newspaper reporter. He loved prize fighting and attended every major fight held in North America while he was alive. He wrote about the sport, and when he spotted something fishy, he called the fighters on the carpet.

He died at his desk at work, writing what turned out to be his last column. ”Things had broken pretty well for him in ‘this old dump of a world of ours,’ and he had departed the same way so many of his friends had died; fast, with his boots on, and with his chosen weapon in his hand.”



Certainly, there is no one more famous in the West than Wyatt Earp. He was a good self-promoter, and newspapers were always hungry for his stories. Doc Holliday, probably riding on the coattails of his friend Wyatt and helped by some wonderful depictions of his character by the actors Val Kilmer and Dennis Quaid, is probably the second most famous personage from the history of the West. Debates would range after that, but for me there is no doubt that Bat Masterson should be at the top of the rest of the list. There was a lot to admire about him. His loyalty, not only to his brothers, but to his friends as well. His honesty. His toughness and grit. His willingness to be more than just a famous gunfighter and embrace the change of a new century. There are statues in Dodge City to Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, but I’ve heard rumors that Bat Masterson will be the next statue erected to commemorate those days when there wasn’t a rougher, tougher town in the world than Dodge City.

I want to thank Robert K. DeArment for sifting facts from the Tall Tales. It was a difficult task given that Bat and Wyatt, in some cases, did very little to confirm or deny certain stories. I’m sure they both had many chuckles over the whoppers that circulated about them. The great thing is the truth about their lives is just as compelling. I’ve only touched on a few of the points about Masterson that I found most interesting. This book is filled with a multitude of tense scenes, involving gunplay, women, drinking, boxing, and politics. When you reach the end, you will realize that, even though Bat put himself in many dangerous situation, they were always based on careful calculations. He always shaved the odds in his favor, whether it was in a gunfight or at the card table.

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