Waydown #21.12.31

I had been planning to go back to school even before the pandemic. Work had been drying up and I was open to a mid-life career pivot. The original idea was for Cal State Northridge, about 20 minutes away, then we moved, and CS Fullerton was across the street but I go accepted to CSULA, which would have been a challenge (probably an hour commute from Orange County), even without juggling classes with what work came in, but then the pandemic hit and it became a benefit since all classes were online and I could take them from home. As of this writing (at the end of the fall '21 semester, before two last classes for the final term in the spring), I have yet to step foot on the physical campus (and have only driven by it twice). But I can say I love the online classes (taken from the bed in my pajamas).

Much of the reviews are readings from my first semester back in school (after a lapse of 25 years), and my Ancient Literature and British Literature classes. It ended up being quality as well as quantity, as I found some readings in both classes that changed my life. It was a great experience to be immersed in so much amazing literature, much of it legendary and pretty much all of it more prominent than whatever else I've been reading, so it gets pride of placement (if not pics of covers). Also, there wasn't quite as much in later semesters so the rest will likely take up just the next blog-zine. 

REVIEWS

The Book of Genesis. I reckon I can't imagine a better place to start. We were assigned just the first 11 chapters, though that’s where most of what it’s known for happens. The rest of it is mostly the story of Jacob and Rachel, which is actually a pretty good story (yeah, I went ahead and read it anyway -- the class hadn’t even started), but the main course of study is at the beginning. Maybe the most striking thing is how quickly it moves: God has already created the Earth by the second page, then Adam (who actually isn’t named until he’s referred to at Cain’s birthday) & Eve are shortly after that, then the eating from the Tree of Knowledge -- the meat of the book (if not all of human existence) is a page or two later. The world is populated shortly after that then it’s already into the story of Noah, when God had already gotten tired of humans. The story of the Tower of Babel has a few good points but it’s actually too short to go too deep. Of course we read this not from a religious point of view but from a purely academic perspective, though it was interesting to approach it from some religious angles, and it informed the basis of pretty much everything we read after. There's so much to get out of it and it informs so much other work and literature, and it's actually a pretty easy read, that it should be required for anyone (but especially writers (if this can get me out of reading the rest)). It was for the Ancient Texts class: You can’t get much older than that (except when you can).

The Book of Job. Basically Job arguing with God (at least in the best, most informing parts). God is going to win every time, but it’s interesting to see God’s wrath and approach from such a high and divine power as a character. Also nice to finally do something with that Bible I was given in third grade (and started to read back then but only got about a whole page into it. If I had kept at it, and read it like it was an emergency, I’d probably be getting done… right about now). Also helpful to get a universal translation (the King James version), which is what I had and what was in the assigned anthology and what I could get online so I could convert it to speech and listen to it (which was my plan for any reading I had to do, but with aged English texts you get into differing translations, and they insisted on using the new ones that weren’t yet in the public domain so they were exclusive to our book and it didn't always work, and I didn't always need it, but it helped in the longer, denser works).

Mankind. Kicking off my Renaissance-to-Modern British literature class, a morality play, which means it’s really obvious personifications of good vs. bad and not far from religion. My argument for (or against) this was that it’s a mediocre sampling but revered because it was one of the few works that survived its period (whether it deserved to or not). It’s actually not bad, if more long-winded than it needs to be by half (and the performance was even longer), but my approach was that it was dumbed-down as populist entertainment, something along an Adam Sandler movie. As studying morality plays go, there’s much more excruciating, and it was a fun work to go over (including fart jokes!). The professor also tied every other work back to this one, which didn’t often fit unless there was a clear good vs. evil bent, and not like having the foundation of the Bible, but it was a decent start (especially since there could have been worse).

The Epic of Gilgamesh. I remember I had to read this in high school, though I don’t remember anything about it other than a line from a creative-writing project I wrote for it with Griesbach. It’s also a surprise to me now that it would be taught in high school since there’s some pretty racy stuff in it (including a relationship between the two main heroes that doesn’t need much digging to get to making it homosexual). It’s also a surprise that it didn’t stick with me more since it’s the basis of pretty much every superhero comics story ever: start with a proud, able hero, he meets another hero and they fight over a misunderstanding then team up against a common threat then have their own unbreakable alliance (until one of them dies, but in the comics that’s never permanent). It’s the blueprint of every hero story going back so long that most creators might not even know that that’s what they’re ripping off. And it’s a good story, a great, epic poem. The professor made the point that the movie White Men Can’t Jump was an adaptation of it, so I watched it (for the first time) and though I argued against it, it led to me writing my own version, so I got yet another creative-writing assignment out of it (which is available upon request).

“Will And Testament” by Isabella Whitney. This almost seemed like an afterthought for hte class, thrown in between some longer works, but it was to sum up the feelings of metropolitan England in the late-1500s/early-1600s, which is relevant. I wasn’t prepared to get into it -- I’m not a poetry guy in the first place -- but I did anyway. It’s a pissed-off lady poet with a love/hate relationship with London, though it comes out more as shitting on the city. There’s some context to it, of course, but I got the gist and I could connect to the irate temperament. It would have been enough to get the thing in the first place, but I also connected it to The Book of Genesis by the word “helper” (as in how God created Eve as a helper to Adam (Genesis 2:18)). It was a minor connection, more just showing off that material could cross over to the other class, but the professor was impressed by it, enough to say it’s the kind of thing I could research, write papers on, go to conferences with, and maybe even take to graduate school (which I hadn’t ever considered as seriously as I did until I started school again). It also led to the best paper I wrote for the first half of the semester (though it was also my lowest grade, at 9/10). It’s not worth digging for, just a poem to be considered in academic circles, but there are some traces to Morrissey’s general pissiness toward giddy London.

The Iliad (Books 1, 5, 6, 11); The Odyssey (Books 1, 18, 22, 24) by Homer. (They pretty much go together. The latter is basically the sequel of the former -- yeah, they tried that shit even back then -- and they might as well flow into each other.) The books up to this point were good but this is when it kicked into high gear. These are some overly dense works -- epic poems, in great magnitude for both words -- but still some crackling adventure tales with plenty of character, intrigue, and drama. We know a lot of these stories -- the Trojan War, fighting the Cyclops, numerous trips to Hell (a common trip in most of these), most of what was in the original Clash of the Titans -- but this is the truest, most distilled version (or at least one of the good translations, we can presume). I’d be tempted to read this on my own for pleasure. There’s just so much to it (and we only read some select books -- what was in the assigned anthology -- with plenty left over to get to some other time). There’s a reason this stuff has lasted, and why people (English students or otherwise) still discover and treasure the works.

Sappho poems (selected works). For all my years as an English major and a human being I had never heard of Sappho, yet she was legend enough to have her work included in an English class survey of ancient literature. I might have even hesitated in connecting her name to lesbian porn, but it’s actually valid. Apparently she got a name from being a lesbian poet -- or rather, a poet from the Isle of Lesbos (which had a lot of lesbians) -- but her work had more range. She had work done for hire or as a wedding gift. More than anything, she conjured a range of emotions with her work, which could be even more potent for their brevity and conciseness (and making for an easier reading assignment and one of the most lively class discussions we had, being early in the semester and having material that could be easily accessed by anyone since they could read it on the spot). If poetry is the expression of feeling, real emotion can get lost, but Sappho could tap into it. The context -- of being a Greek author who wasn’t Homer -- adds another dimension to the work as well. There’s worse stuff to put in cheap greeting cards (and does). English majors ought to be able to get laid more (though maybe girl-on-girl does better).

The Bhagavad Gita by Vyasa Krishna Dvaipayana. In an English class surveying ancient texts, it’s easy to get too familiar with the same stuff. The Bible, Gilgamesh, The Iliad -- this is stuff I read in high school, and generally, especially with The Aenad and the Metamorphoses thrown in, a bit too Greek (read: white). So it can be exhilarating to dive into old texts from other parts of the world, since there was surely something else going on in the last few thousand years, and plenty more Earth even if so little was discovered. The only familiarity, in passing at best, of The Bhagavad Gita was in getting it mixed up with “Innagoddadiveda,” a popular song from a few decades ago, so that was a reckless false positive, but if the professor finds value in it then I’m in for it. It’s a revered Indian text but contradictory, well-regarded but carrying a superstition that to have a copy in your house was bad luck. The story itself is also contradictory, as there was a story about a hesitance to fight but then a goading to go to war, so it could seek to be broad and cover both sides of the moral coin, or just be a dense amount of information and view on any morality. But we only got one chapter -- an easy reading day -- so it’s hard to put it in the larger context of even itself. That’s a shame since ancient Indian culture is as fascinating as it is deep and the fraction we got of it, and its history in the introduction (that took vastly longer to read than the actual work -- the case of most of these) teased at the worlds beyond, as rich as the Greek stuff. There's surely an entire major just on Indian literature, if not just this one work, so we only got a taste, but at least I now know that it has nothing to do with oldie stoner-metal.

The Analects (selected passages) by Confucius; Dao De Jing (selected passages) by Lao Tzu. For whatever I’ve heard attributed to Confucius has always been wise, often clever, but there had to have been more to him, as a historical figure as well as poet, than the cheap pop-culture references he usually gets. It’s doubtful that anyone affixing his wisdom to crap merchandise -- thousands of years is public domain, yo -- has ever read any of his actual works. We got into it, though as a study of the work as a block of text to be ingested densely, not slow enough to look at the individual quotes -- a place where the cheap merchandise might win out. I knew even less of the Dao De Jing, if knowing it at all would get lost in all the ancient Asian philosophy, but the two are nearly essential to study together, as counterpoints to each other (beyond how contradictory their own wisdom could be within themselves). Confucius was about seeking a personal inner peace; the Dao De Jing is service and connection to others. They’re not necessarily opposite schools of thought since there’s a lot in each for the culmination and balance between introspection and a place in the world. The wisdom is also timeless, so there’s plenty still to explore even today in any class, though it’s interesting that an English class might lay more claim than how it could more thoroughly be applied in a philosophy course (if not all of them). 

Othello by William Shakespeare. I took the Shakespeare-intensive class the first time I was in school, and have gotten enough Shakespeare anywhere else to threaten getting sick of it all, but you can’t avoid getting more when you’re taking a class on British literature. At least I got lucky enough to get a work that I had ever had zero interaction with. It’s even one of Shakespeare’s better stories, with enough to study and dig into. It’s an intense tale, made all the better for a limited cast and one of Shakespeare’s best villains. As usual there are a multitude of themes to follow -- why Shakespeare is so great to study -- bordering on maybe too many, but it leaves a lot to do with it. The professor did his best to wrench it toward relevance to today, especially when racial themes are such an important subject, but that always seemed like a minor issue writ larger to make it more interesting for younger, woke students than the larger themes in the play, like the marital drama and wider machinations by the bad guy (and even though we were on this for what seemed liked months (though it was only weeks, in two 50-minutes classes a week), we ran out of time for delving into the handkerchief and the character of Iago’s wife). Of course the best art & literature stays relevant no matter when or how recently it’s studied, and it’s supposed to withstand many different interpretations, and it has to be made interesting for a current audience, but it seemed a bit of stretching and taking it to a place it didn’t have to go, and for so long. But maybe it was interesting -- or more interesting for it -- to the other students. The world really doesn’t need too many more perspectives by an aging, middle-class, white guy (and yet you’re still here). Also a work that can make for a great stage performance, though we were gently urged away from the Laurence Fishburne version (though we got some of it, maybe not getting more, or getting more than it deserved, because Kenneth Branagh). I couldn’t help thinking of him as Idris Elba (though that’s easy casting when you need a Black guy with the most presence ever possible). And I couldn’t get the connection to the board game, but maybe it doesn’t need one (or should get one if it’s only about the black/white binary dichotomy).

The Aeneid (Books 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12) by Virgil. Both the work and the author are legends, but I wouldn’t have been able to sort out why before reading them. I wouldn’t even have been able to connect them to The Odyssey and The Iliad, though anyone would have gotten them through even a cursory glance at some context or would have gotten it when they read it. The Aeneid is basically a retelling of those Greek works but from the point of view of their enemy Trojans, as a swipe but not as an offer for forgiveness. This was introduced with Virgil being conscripted to come up with a purposely derivative work, so he’s more a hack than an icon, and since I had already enjoyed the Greek works enough to pledge my allegiance to them, this seems like the lesser bite, as magnificent as it is. Surely both works could be separated, if Virgil didn’t bring it on himself: a trip to Hell is perilous and majestic, but to keep doing it gives it a lot less majesty (and most of these epic works do it, as if it was required for any great hero). And yet this can stand on its own for its own brilliance. It’s a great work, but a shame it has to be studied in such close proximity as the other works it springs from. It would seem like comparisons to both would enhance it but really, in context, they lessen the later work, which it doesn’t deserve, but if you’re going to read one, go with the older (since we haven’t found enough about Homer to know if he was a hack, so surely his motives were pure and he can be paid posthumously with admiration and allegiance).

Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett. Usually reading assignments are at least a little bit a  chore, literature to slog through to get a lesson in studying and analysis more than getting into something you might read on your own, but sometimes there’s something you go through that can be personally significant in spite of itself (The Glass Menagerie for me, the first go in school). This book didn’t even hit me the first read-through. As a matter of fact, I was completely perplexed by it, and it made no sense until I looked up a few random things while pausing at the first half. Spoiler: It’s absurdism and minimalism. It’s a mix that with one and not the other it was be stupid or vacant, and yet it’s a balance that is graceful for its awkwardness, and deeply meaningful, granted you can let it in. Yeah, it’s supposed to be weird -- really weird -- and you’re supposed to make of it what you want. I had an interpretation in my head when starting the first class discussion about it, assuming that for all my studentness I had this one done, then there were completely different angles for it, pretty much one for each student, then one from the teacher, or maybe more so he could subtly offer up a few versions. (Somehow I even missed considering that Godot was anything other than a man they were awaiting, and it added a whole new dimension to anticipate what else it could have been). I could probably read it again and get something else out of it. We watched a performance of it on YouTube and Sweetie ended up loving it just from that. My only reference to it before this was confusing it with Waiting For Guffman, but maybe now I could see the connection between the two (possibly not as much as I see so many references to Beckett in the rest of the world and in art now). There weren’t enough writing assignments to dig into it more (though we had a big creative-writing “thought paper” that could be anything we wanted so I supposed Othello & Iago waiting for the professor, with references to everything else we’d read in the first half of the semester, including rewriting Lucky’s “think” speech in faux Old Englishe. It’s pretty much all inside jokes from class, but if you’ve at least read those two works, I could send it to you.) 

Metamorphoses by Ovid. The Odyssey and The Iliad led to The Aeneid then they led to this, which by this point seemed to wear out the idea (though was revived when all that led then into The Inferno). We only got a few of the stories (the ones about Narcissus, Apollo, and the lady-spider), and they were enjoyable, mostly retreads of myths we’d read in elementary school but hadn't been regarded as literature, but slight, and the class discussions reflected that, moving quickly through them, possibly not even getting a full class, before chewing through one great work and moving into another. There also wasn’t much grace in the work itself so it didn’t need much deeper study, leaving other works by Ovid possibly more deserving of going over (which was extra credit but I couldn’t get to it), but maybe this being a working break before moving on. Or maybe it’s all in the greater work, if the context of all that about ancient Greece and the Roman Empire didn’t melt into mush, since they’re great stories, but we had more that were more challenging. Also, for being a theme so great that it’s the title, they only had as much change as any other story (in this class or otherwise).

"An Essay On Criticism" by Alexander Pope; works by Phyllis Wheatley. Every English major probably has to come across Alexander Pope’s essay at some point (and if I have before then there’s a reason I’ve blocked it out of my memory). It’s dense, and probably genius if that just wasn’t the style of writing that got any acclaim back then, and you can get something out of just about every sentence, but it’s a trudge to crawl through. You could probably spend an entire semester on just that work, if, being a criticism on criticism, it had any purpose beyond being cleverly written. It was also sobering, coming after the wild ride that was Waiting for Godot, and the crack in the surface that I might not love everything we’d read in that class. Wheatley could have been a controversial choice to read, her being an American in a British lit class, but the professor had a reason (being the bridge to a European slave narrative) and it’s not likely anyone else noticed the chance taken on voices alien to the course’s purpose. And Wheatley’s minimal poetry might not have equaled her reason for inclusion in a class, though we did get enough out of one poem of less than a dozen lines to last a whole session. We read both authors in contrast to the other, but we didn't get far enough into the works to know why.

Inferno by Dante Alighieri. There are probably laws to make sure students study this in any English class. I recall reading it in high school, and now I’m embarrassed that I got so little out of it then. But there’s a reason it’s a classic. There’s a lot in it. It’s also fairly minimally written: By their very form, poems can be easier to get through, and the cantos (chapters) of this one are not long. We did less than a dozen, making for one of the easier reading assignments of the class, but also one of the heaviest, for the subject matter and weight of its importance on literature in the time since. The book we had had the English translation one one side and the Italian on the other, and a long introduction then footnotes so copious that it just gave them their own appendix, and plenty of ephemera, making a book that was pretty thin actually fairly thick in length and effort for reading (usually more than half of that being just getting through those footnotes). This was also when I started to become a little disenchanted with these versions of classical works, being only translations that could take liberties on the forms and intentions of the original works. The professor leaned heavily on familiarizing us with the original Italian, which was quite elegant compared to how far away the English could get from it, and we can’t learn Italian just to dig into one book but the English doesn’t seem completely true. Then I started seeing all the works in the class from this perspective of being suspicious of translations and picked up a little mistrust and exasperation that whatever we were reading wasn’t the true thing. But I had to put that aside and just pretend that the modern translations at least got the idea and lean into that. And for that it was pretty great anyway. Sinister enough that it’s almost subversive to be included in academic study. Also the first time I was given the context that there were actually two other books after this one -- where he goes through Purgatory then Heaven -- but those must be so devoid of use that they’re never considered in the study of this work. You’d think they’d have some use in relation to this one, if only for a positive ending message, but apparently the darkest journey is the more interesting/literate/seductive one.

Romantic poets. I don’t always hate poetry but when I do it’s because of the Romantic poets. I’ve already been through the paces of these, in high school and the first time in college and even more than that, it feels like, but apparently you can’t get through a British literature class without going through them once again. At least I’m old(er) enough to be tolerant of their value and my studies, and enough of a Morrissey fan to hope to get a fraction of as much from them. It was a kamikaze dive through almost 20 works by nine authors in a week or two, a whirlwind survey in a class that’s already a general survey of the material, but maybe that was as much as they deserved. Seriously, when I think of the word “pretentious,” if I don’t think of my brother, it’s about the Romantic poets. There’s far too much concern for their own feelings and navels, too insular to relate to especially by every year that gets further from their time, dragged from a context that is probably essential but also makes them even more distant. It’s all too self-important and druggy (though knowing that makes “Kubla Khan” slightly more tolerable), and usually just vain and boring. It’s already a wonder why it’s all so well-regarded, but also just baffling why it even survived. I got to be tortured through “Ode on a Grecian Urn” yet again -- even giving one entire class for it (where I didn’t get much more from it) -- but I got a better shot at “Ozymandias” for its length. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” made a little more sense and even approaching being enjoyable, much thanks to a modern translation (since it was written in modern English). Joanna Baillie -- apparently a B-lister -- got short shrift, and we might have skipped Blake (and I honestly don’t remember if I even read his). We had some Wordsworth and Percy Shelley essays and “From” Wollstonecraft’s ““A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (good lord, there was even more of it?) (though cited as an inspiration for Invisibles (now the one work from its page-long research bibliography that I’ve read)) in there, which at least weren’t poems, but they were far too dense to get much out of a few minutes in class. And Mary Shelley’s “The Mortal Immortal” was enough to almost redeem the whole unit, even if it was because it wasn’t a poem. Yet Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven” -- a selection outside of the book with the rest -- was a joy. It might have been overly done but I got the meaning and a thrill from its dark nature, enough to read it to my girls (who are creeps enough to dig such a thing). So I could be cool with Wordsworth, and Wollstonecraft gets a nod for getting a nod from Grant Morrison, and I now have an urge to maybe finally read Frankenstein, and Coleridge gets a pass, but the rest can wither and go away, especially Keats. I mean, rest in peace and all, but there’s no need to meet me at the cemetry gates.

Beowulf. By the time you get here in the survey you might realize that a lot of early literature was all about superheroes. Comics might have taken the story from Gilgamesh and on, but Beowulf is also a character so buried in archetypes that it’s easy to lose that so much came from that tale. The story itself has some surprising range, as not being just a heroic tale but exploring some of the ancillary characters (especially the lady Wealhtheow and Grendel's mother, as our professor was insistent on pointing out, that there was much female agency in this (and all other stories we read -- it was a question on the final)), and though it wanders in a few parts, it does a commendable job of fleshing out their world. Getting through it was maybe  the biggest chunk of an assignment we had (so much that I had to give it time I was supposed to be spending with family on the weekend), with its considerable depth and length coming from how much more of it survived than the earlier stuff (save for maybe the Bible, since there was considerably more at stake to preserve that through the ages). It’s a rollicking adventure, so much so that it’s almost surprising that it’s studied in a serious, academic class. I brought it up in class: If Virgil can use Homer’s character in The Aeneid, and Dante can meet Virgil and the classic poets in his Inferno, why didn’t Beowulf ever get to meet Gilgamesh? It’s a shame that it took the culture a few thousand years to realize that high-concept crossovers sell (and less than two decades to painfully drain the concept, but I digress).

Bede. Bede made a name (and legend, to be included in this class) on writing a history on England, which isn’t art but it’s important for the context of other works. The piece might have had more elegance in its original form but now it’s just a dry telling of history. It’s necessary to get the proper context for the English literature that comes next, though that depends on how much you feel it needs it (and arguments can be made either way). So on its own it doesn’t have much, but for an introduction to the rest of the works in the class, it’s at least a minor assignment for the week.

“The Wanderer”, “The Wife’s Lament”. The next few works come in less than epic, at least in relation to the other great works we’d studied, so they easily blend together in one unit. “The Wanderer” is a work of great pathos and emotion, but it’s whiny, certainly not the head-strong aggression of the epic poetry that had marked much of the class to that point. It has some great depth and there’s something to get out of it but it’s weepy and depressing. "The Wife’s Lament” takes many of the same situations and themes -- introspection, isolation, regret, recall of sacrifices -- and actually takes some action. Sure, life might suck, and your troubles might even be your own fault, but you have to keep moving, and it might even have to be at full-speed. The two works could be studies on gender, but the latter, from the feminine perspective, at least doesn’t buckle under the weight of the world and doesn’t have an excuse to not get something done (which can be relatable by even modern women). The wife at least takes action, which is a lot more involving than only looking at the state of the world -- both global and personal -- and not doing anything about it.

Marie de France. Speaking of context, de France might have earned her notoriety just from modern scholars who, most interested in representing diversity when they can, wanted representation from a female author among a history usually ruled by males. That’s fair, but the work isn’t extraordinary on its own. It’s suitable, but is it in place of something better from the period? To solve the problem of ancient diversity, I just attribute all of the anonymous works (Gilgamesh, Beowulf) to a woman. It’s possible, maybe even likely, since woman can be writers at least as great as men (and believable that a name could kept from the record just because it was a female author). 

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African by Olaudah Equiano. If you have the means to read a slave narrative, do it. It should be a prize because there aren’t a lot of them since not a lot of slaves could read or write or get published. If there’s only one then it should be this one. Even better that it’s told from the view of an African slave who went to England, not America, so the experience is different and the geography and cultures are more interesting. Slavery wasn’t an issue just in early America, though Europe got it abolished quicker and maybe it didn’t mark its soul as deeply. This book is the firsthand experience in the life of a slave like any other, except that he could put together a book that is now being taught and he immortalized himself for it. It’s an intimate account of an existence with some stimulating detail, more than the adventure story it feigns being a few times, but above all it’s a treatise on the rights of humans and a subtle, measured screed against the function of slavery. Maybe it even helped and did some good. It’s either too distant from its time to relate to or timely seeing the recent plight of African-Americans, but it’s an engrossing read that moves pretty quickly. It’s a piece of history and biography that deserves a place in any humanist library.

Geoffrey of Monmouth. Finally we’d get around to the story of King Arthur, since for students it’s literature first and adventure tale second. If we were going to experience the legends of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Odysseus, and Achilles, surely Arthur had to stand among those eventually. This was a really straight interpretation of the story, as if it was just a retelling of the story (rather than the story being the retelling), without any kind of artistry or a form of poetry like most stories were at the time, like it had been steamrolled after centuries of translations. And what we read wasn’t much of an adventure, instead part of a history mired in family drama and politics, but worked well enough for that. If we didn’t get the tales of great feats that those stories surely built their names on, we got something that probably connected to the real politics of the time, and in a college class that might have been more important (if not more interesting).

The Canterbury Tales (General Prologue, Wife Of Bath’s Tale) by Geoffery Chaucer. Yet another inevitability in a class on really old stories, but it was a lot more tolerable this time around. My experience with this had been in struggling with Ye Olde Englishe, and our book anticipated this by having a modern translation (a benefit to kowtowing to lazy students of modern day), so the original text was certainly more bearable with the life-preserver of modern English as needed. It was nearly enjoyable as a clearer story, though we only read “The General Prologue,” which doesn’t develop the characters so much as introduces them, but even that was potent. It’s a lot of stories encapsulated in miniature, and concentrates them enough to sell them in that form more than their full tales later on, as evidenced by how we read that intro and only one of the full stories of the individual characters. Of course that one had to be “The Wife Of Bath’s Tale,” the most legendary of all of them. It was noted in class that it may not have been likely the rest of the book would have the acclaim that it did, and may not even have survived in the first place, if not for the character of the wife of Bath, which doesn’t change the perspective on that story, but isolated it's so far to the exclusion of the rest that it’s a wonder how the thing is redeemed by only a fraction of its whole. The most notable feature of the wife of Bath is how ribald and independent she was as a woman, among stories of kept and quiet women of the time (if they even got a feature). She was the exception, to be sure, and stands out for it, but the personality was within the boundaries of the story and not real life, to be looked at from the distance of fiction instead of lived with. This shows more of the intolerance for free women at the time as a history lesson, but it also makes for a saucy tale for nerdy students who are bright enough to dig out some of the details to get some Medieval soft-core literary porn.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. This blew what was left of my mind after Waiting for Godot obliterated me. I’d heard of Woolf through the years but I probably assumed she was a feminist writer that wasn’t for me. Instead, she turned out a revolutionary and subversive piece of writing that still stands up today. No one is still alive today to have lived in a world with perspective of how books were written and accepted before this one, but this book changed everything after it and deserves the legendary status; any piece of literature in the last hundred years that could be considered even remotely experimental could be traced back way to this book. It’s baffling to consider how there were books that weren’t considered stream-of-consciousness -- and even this one is conservative in that regard compared to the extremes that form has gotten to -- but it’s an early push far forward in the form. It’s also dense but not in its word usage or structure, there’s just a lot to pull from it (especially given its length as a novel). We spent a few weeks on it and it still seems like we barely scratched the surface (after going far enough with WFG to find how easily we could fall into that one); you could get a great class on this work alone. It was also here that I reached a stride in writing analytic papers on readings, or this work just really lent itself to it (in content and having so much to take from). There’s really no use in being a novelist without this one.

Piers Plowman by William Langland. This one could have been a treat or a horror as it was the professor’s specialty (teaching a graduate class of it). We actually didn’t get too deep into it (or its context which is fairly necessary), at least as much as we could have (competing with so many other works for the semester), but we went over the beginning thoroughly. This became a challenge for me as we were led into making something of some minimal content, but part of English majors mastering the art of bullshit is molding material to their own ends. For our writings when we had choices to dig into other material I’d take the other options, so I didn’t get too deep into this one, but I can respect it, especially for how it related to the common people of the time and its effect even into contemporary times. And that most of it was from a small part in microcosm, which wasn’t a lot, so this was taking an easy glide out of the semester.

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (audiobook). When I was in 6th grade my teacher was an old, crotchety German woman a year from retirement, but she instilled a love for reading into us. Drilled might be more like it. But as long as we read, we could do little wrong with her (though I tried). We usually had to read something like a book a week, which, to a non-reader like I was at that time, was torture, especially since they couldn’t just be pamphlets but real books. I mostly got around that by reading young-adult books, which I was aware of being as more light-weight than the heavier stuff I knew was out there, and that I might even have attempted, and along the way I discovered some great books, some that I still remember fondly to this day (and have always hoped to get back to read again). Dear Mr. Henshaw and The Westing Game would still be on my all-time top books list. At the time it seemed like I might be able to get around to all the young-reader books, especially the Newbery Award winners, and though that would have surely been difficult then, even if the year had been longer, it’s downright impossible now even for multiple lifetimes, since young-adult books have exploded as a market (and even some franchises with bad movies that I wouldn’t even glance through). But now The Kid is reading these books for school and I get to revisit some of them, at least in spirit. She’s not much of a reader (because phone), and she has a mom instead of an ancient teacher, but there's some good stuff on her required reading list, with a lot of classics that everyone reads in high school (or is supposed to), and a few I’ve never gotten to (though I can say I’ve read some, even recently. (Yeah, I’m an English major but I’m generally more interested in writing something to read rather than reading what someone else has produced.)) So I’m reading them with her, so that maybe we both can get something from them. And so the first book that she got in eighth grade was Island of the Blue Dolphins, which I might have scoffed at originally as some sentimental fluff for kids, only to find it won the Newbery before I was even born. Surely a classic, even if just among the kids. It’s more an adventure book, starring a strong, young heroine and actually not a lot of dolphins (at least not non-metaphorically). It’s an inspiring story, with a kid surviving alone on an island (for some reason a soft-spot for me, though it might go back to having read The Cay somewhere around sixth grade). There’s a lot for a kid to connect to, as I hoped The Kid would, if she wasn’t slogging through it just to get done with it. A person has to find a love of reading within themselves, as I did, though I was actually glad to have had a strong, hard push. My kid is probably better off overall by not having a hard teacher, but it could have helped in some respects. It’s not even so bad that she hasn’t yet had that book that will open her mind to the world of reading, as long as it’s out there on the horizon. There’s just so much more to follow.

Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. For some reason I always got this mixed up with The Red Badge of Courage. If only it was. This one is about a boy and his dogs. It’s another example of a school-book trying to impress another time and culture on the kids, but the metaphors twist a bit too much, and a theme about love and family is a bit beyond kids at that age (or my own, in 8th grade), that it becomes just a book about a kid loving his dogs a bit too much. It’s also inevitably and predictably sad -- as every story that involves love for a dog eventually is -- but it’s got a nice framing sequence, and at least I can personally relate to the context. The Kid hated this one almost as much as she did Treasure Island.

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss. Grammar porn -- you knew I’d get around to it eventually. But it’s also amazing that this actually got to be a best-seller, which is a testament not to how sure it is but how entertaining. It’s overly picky about the written English language, something that will go over the heads of most of who read it (English, American, or otherwise), but if you know a little about what it’s being such a stickler about, and can laugh about clever turns of phrase and jokes about punctuation, it’s both funny and unique, since it’s rare that a book about grammar might go mass-market (as well as going against the advice of not letting a good editor publish their own book about editing). Of course, the editor and I are kindred spirits -- none of this is advanced technique. Most of it is stuff learned in grammar school (ha ha) and for some reason the lessons are what gets lost along the way. Maybe we’ve gotten over our rage against those who are so lackadaisical, lazy, ignorant, or just plain stupid when it comes to writing properly -- again, using what we all learned in school to get to fourth grade. This isn’t even a guide to writing better -- it’s certainly not a textbook -- but a parody of a text book, and a way for the editor to get some things off her chest, and it actually caught on. She gives as much history and explanation as she does defense for her own seething rage against those who can’t -- or won’t -- write correctly, but she can at least have a laugh about it. (The best jokes come from what you hate. Maybe the same about honesty.) If you don’t ever find anything wrong with any writing you ever see then this book will do nothing for you (and you probably don't need to write). Its humor won’t overcome deficiencies. But if you actually, properly made it to fourth grade (or your region’s equivalent), it might make you laugh. And no, I don’t give a shit about your Oxford comma.

Tales of Suspense: Hawkeye & Winter Soldier (Marvel). I don’t have any particular interest in Marvel resurrecting an old brand -- as if the title of a series has any bearing on its content -- but I won’t hide my love for superhero stories, as straight-forward as they can be (even when they’re trying to cross genres then never getting too far to be anything more than an awkward attempt). I also realized that I had never read a story starring the Winter Soldier, who could be a favorite of mine if I had had more time with him (I can even attempt to not hold being the resurrected Bucky against him). I’ve probably had enough of Hawkeye and Black Widow and whatever contrivance they’re putting them through nowadays, including being dead (again), but it could be a decent mix for a modest trade to be polished off in a sitting or two. This starts off as a reasonable spy story, as well as you could do in a comic book not outfitted to excel at such a thing, filtered through a superhero story aspiring to the mismatched-couple/buddy-cop trope, then halfway through it remembers it's there to explain something so it goes off somewhere else, getting weirder than obtuse, and finally it has to get to some pay-off so it skids in, though it comes as a reminder that that consequence is the only reason for this to be a story. The art becomes better than it needs to be in flashes, but mostly it's just that Marvel style of trying to come up with something new but more to have something done and printable. And no reason it needs to take that old title (as if there was any suspense in the originals) but it’s as good as any.

Avengers: The Collective (Marvel). Each story arc in Benids’s run changed the series nearly from the ground up, more than just switching artists (though it might not even have helped to purposely have a rotating team rather than just one regular artist), which would be enough, but also in how he would change narrative techniques and tone and themes, which is appropriate when he has a different partner, and assuming that consistency won’t matter between collections, or that anyone would care beyond a few casual issues, and that the real fans that stick around only want the issues for their unbroken runs and probably hate him already. So the next arc comes on with two new artists and a completely different thing, sprouting from a completely separate story. McNiven can’t be trusted to do more than an issue so he gets that, as something like a prelude to the next rest. He gets to operate in splash pages that probably sold well and a thin story that would have been infuriating as a single issue but just the 0 chapter in the trade. Since the whole story comes from “House of M”, the issue could have been better than the one-page recap, but it didn’t need to be connected in the first place. The plot is a contrivance from the other story, and assumes we were in for that, and a forced consequence that then somehow ties back to Magneto. The question is “why?” like it is for most of these. It’s barely an Avengers story, having them there just as components to resolve the newest blown-up, earth-shattering event. The characters hardly have their own arcs, deferring to the awkward sledgehammer of a story, though Bendis could write S.H.I.E.L.D. (enough that it could be a shame that he didn’t get a name for writing them more, except that he probably got around to them at some point like he got around to all of Marvel). Deodato’s art is the standard, being straight superheros half-hidden in heavy shadow. Alien invasions in comics stories were dead before they started and they haven’t gained any life since, for the couple they do a year that are told not shown, and like this one is supposed to mean something among them. This could have been boiled down to a single issue, an annual, or even a post-"House of M" special, and not interrupt the Avengers doing something better in the flagship title. But the whole thing will change up again with the next arc, with fingers crossed for doing something better with the next short-term artist.

Vision (Marvel), Mister Miracle (DC). For as much as I’ve been reading comics lately (which is not nearly as much as I used to but it’s better than it’s been and it’s an effort), I’m generally catching up on a few things so my range is fragmented among various publishers and series, enough that I follow stories more than creators. Following a creative team that did a story I liked would often be a reliable indicator of further, quality stuff, enough that the creators were often more important than the characters to me. But that’s a thing of the past, when I’m lucky to get through a story-line over a few months and I can’t extend to giving a lot of time to a creator’s oeuvre. But of course I take recommendations, and a friend who knows comics said the Elmer Fudd/Batman story, of all things, was brilliant. I didn’t track it down but the writer’s name stood out to me, as he’d been attached to the regular Batman series that had gotten some recognition. Not that I usually care much about what is going on with the biggest characters from the major publishers, and Batman is going to sell anyway, but the fact that someone made an impression in the regular series, especially in the wake of Scott Snyder making his own name on the series (though I’m less inclined to check out his stuff), maybe Tom King was doing something worth following in general. But I could start off slow, then I just happened to find his Vision in a collection at the library, and I’d be a fool to pass it up. It’s a deconstruction (fairly literally, within the story) of the Vision then building him again with a new supporting cast and the most interesting they’ve made him since they paired him with a human, which would have been a ridiculous combination if it didn’t make for such a classic Avengers story. The character has been around longer than most of us, and yet they’re only now getting to do something with him, outside of the Avengers. And it’s as great as anyone has heard it is. It’s not a revolutionXXX but it’s a solid story, and one with a sharp investigation of the character and consequences to change the him from this point on. I was actually a fan of the Vision/Scarlet Witch pairing (spilling over from my love of Wanda) and it always irks me when good couples are broken up in stories for the sake of doing so and cheap drama, and of course he’s been killed/destroyed more than once, even just lately, and there was no reason to follow him while he floated around aimlessly, but this brings him back and suddenly, for this story, he’s one of the most interesting heroes in the Marvel Universe. It doesn’t have a magical (literally or figuratively) remaking on the level of Sandman, but it’s a miniature epiphany that could lead to a revolution if Marvel took chances like this more often. (Not that King was an unknown quantity when Marvel took him on, but it was before he earned his name, and they didn’t give him enough to keep DC away from snapping him up.) The art is solid as well, a swerve away from the anime-lite style that has made mainstream comics look the same for a while. That’s another chance to take, to not go for an easier sell with a flashy artist (though it helps that there could hardly have been great expectations that this story could make a big splash), but to combine a fitting art style with the writing, each of them matching in nuance and quiet power. If this wasn’t the best story of that year, it’s the kind of project that would change the world at a time when comics have no further popularity or legitimacy even with the monster success of the characters in movies and anything else but comics, if this was a baseline and there were more comics like this, even just a few. But comics like this are a lot of hard work, not as much for the people making them, since they were going to do it anyway, but for the average reader to make the effort of deriving sense from the thing and not taking the easy feeding like they’ve gotten used to. Its deserving Eisner did its job, to bring some attention to a book that would have had a crime committed against it if it had been overlooked. The collection is also a nice-looking book, something that would look fine on a bookshelf (if you’re so inclined to keep and display your books). It has all the covers (with enough variants like any these days to pretty much require an extra signature in a trade just to include them all) and pages of King’s script (which, like any of them, don’t offer as much behind-the-scenes detail as anyone ever wants (and don’t provide a standard comics script for wannabe writers, since such a thing does not exist, but the search for such seems to fuel the publishing of scripts)), though they’re only the first parts of each issue so there’s not much in the way of actual completion for all elements of the stories, since there should have been just a separate script published (unless Marvel did that as well, in which case it’s cheap to include it again here and sloppy to only have part of it). There are even letters pages, in an age when such things are as infrequent as they are utterly unnecessary, and a warm and funny afterward by King himself. But best of all are the over-sized pages, which aren’t necessary even for a hardcover collection, but the bigger images make a subtle difference. The project is deserving of special consideration and such a production detail, even if Marvel putting out such a great story only serves as a reminder that they don’t do it as much as they should, and that it can pay off well when they take a chance.

King’s other Eisner-winning epic shouldn’t work as well as it does with the same themes but it does and even tops it. It’s astounding that stories about families can be so comfortable in comics, but it could also be a testament to King’s ability to make the them work. It’s untapped territory for comics, but surely the argument has been made by editors that comics-weaned virgins and outcasts don’t want to read about their heroes starting families and having to deal with children. King also gets carte-blanche to do as he likes, especially when it’s only a dozen issues and his name was getting around doing Batman (a run I’m tempted to look at on his name alone, even with all the issues and continuity to plow through). Character history also doesn’t mean much anyway, since only a fool would believe that the continuity won’t be changed back by the next writer’s whim anyway (just as King changed this back from whatever happened in the travesty that was Final Crisis). King gets the Kirby-Fourth World characters to do as he likes, not the biggest names in the macrocosm but unconnected and malleable enough that he can tell his own story with them. He jettisons the past continuity just like every other writer, leaving skeletons to build on (likely more from Who's Who entries than the actual stories), and takes them to places no one would expect superheroes to go (in a conservative way), much less those purported to be gods on Earth. He even focuses on Mister Miracle himself, always the black sheep of that pantheon, instead of using him as the entry to all the other characters, then gives a tour of those worlds through the fresh eyes of a human (or humanistic) perspective. All the characters in the Fourth World are there, represented as faithfully as they’ve ever been, though in situations that should barely work in a sit-com, certainly not a comic. And casting Scott Free and Big Barda admist the everyday domestic travails of any other human being is a risk, but it succeeds, not just because it’s a ground-breaking exploration of unexplored and even hostile themes in comics, but because King keeps tight control over the path of the story and its nuances, which are essential. It starts off strong, maybe a bit too much, then uses that inciting incident as its limits (if not a trigger-warning) though it doesn't quite resolve it. That first scene also acts as the clarion call that this isn’t the standard, routine, battle-ready run-through of another disregarded corner of the DC universe (that even John Byrne could't do anything substantial with), and even if the continuity doesn't stick, the story will last as one of DC's classics.

Mitch Gerads is a willing and capable partner, following in to push the limits of the visual form as much as King pushes the narrative form, and as much as images have been maybe since Kirby led the way, though with a style not slavishly trying to swipe anything from Kirby (at least as much as anyone can get away from him). The story doesn't need a battle royale with the Hunger Dogs and every Fourth World character crammed into its splash pages (it doesn't even need splash pages), and having such a human, downbeat visual depiction is almost disconcerting. It’s a landmark story, and one that would have been the revolution if only comics stories about starting families were sexier. It probably got out to the wrong audience but those that discovered it surely caught its brilliance. Simply put, one of the best comics I’ve ever had the great fortune to experience.

X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga (Marvel). Yet another classic I hadn’t read until now. (Everyone should be so lucky to get to experience the better stuff later on when they an appreciate it the best.) Though its legend is so ubiquitous across all of comics, if you’re interested in superheroes at all and you’re grandpa-age, you’ve probably gotten it by osmosis. I don’t remember where the wild hare came from to read it, besides proving it was readily available at the library, but apparently now was the time. (Then found later I had a color trade of the story, then most of the run in the Essential volumes, which I’d had on the shelf for more immediate reading, so this was on the board more readily than most.) But I can also rate the book without nostalgia reaching back to any age in my personal history. Does it still work? Yes, it does. It’s a great story, even still. All the best character parts of the X-Men and their attendant fellows are there, with electric villains and consequences for actions, in a story that goes from the sewers of the city up to the hidden corners of the cosmos, and art that could be pages in each panel. It’s one of the pinnacles of superhero comics, and sturdy enough that it still works as well today (especially to show up the X-Men comics of the last 30 years). 

Though this was only one piece of the Claremont/Byrne partnership, when both of them were arguably at the peaks of their individual talents (though those were both very long runs, with plenty of other peaks between them), as well as a solid editor (and female, as Claremont did his best work under), and raging egos that kept their odds with each other a competition for status and control of where to take the story (a battle which Claremont won, but allowed Byrne to go on and fashion classics on his own). This is also probably the height of Marvel storytelling and collaboration, reconditioning the Marvel method to work as well as Stan did with Kirby and his other great collaborators. With that process, an artist who is also an able storyteller is invaluable, not just being able to tell the story in pictures but also anticipating what is needed from the view of a writer, and making a synthesis between the two (even if that leaves more effort to the artist). There have been multitudes of great artists, stars unto themselves, and some of them have even been passable writers, but it’s a rare breed that can enhance the work of a great writer as well, and bring out the best in both, creating a work beyond either of their talents.

The added, unexplored benefit of the Marvel method is an inadvertent limiting of the writer, forcing them into an economy of words, only having the space the artist has left for text, with no more area for rambling and no less to leave as unfilled. A writer producing a full script can control the flow of the words and how will be allowed (assuming the editor sides with them), but in the most efficient Marvel method, the artist controls that. If it wasn’t for Byrne’s mastery over dynamic images, the storytelling in this book might look antiquated, closer to Stan’s stream of consciousness word-crowds, and compressed to a degree that it all looks painfully compressed, but this is in contrast to when writers had the power over how long the story could drag out, and the artists wouldn’t mind because it was more action they could draw, and more work they could get, with more pages. But the Claremont/Byrne days were when there was some value for that 60￠ an issue. And so makes this a packed read, enough events happening that I thought it couldn’t possibly be the complete saga in one volume. It’s the X-Men’s biggest mission, with dire consequences for at least one of them, and character bits in between, including the moment that  turned Wolverine into the most popular character in comics for a while (and still, some of the time). It’s a sturdy story dense with action and character, and art that stands up in dynamism and personality, so much that it could be a lesson for any superhero storytelling that came after (and surely was). It’s a classic story that stands up for all time, or for the first time.

Essential Marvel Team-Up, vol. 1 (Marvel). Once I decided this volume of stories weren’t worth experiencing in plain black & white, they became a slog. Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-In-One always had the potential to be dynamic, switching out the co-star in every issue, but generally they just dragged a different hero into a Spider-Man or Thing story every month, rendering whatever the guest brought to it as barely an accompaniment and not an essential or needed part of the story. Worse, the stories do nothing to further develop a guest who might only have rare appearances, and heroes that already had their own series were redundant, making anyone wonder why they had to read them in the issue, if not for getting a Spider-Man story, which they could get better elsewhere. The creative teams had to be versatile, being able to churn out a single story that returns abruptly to the status quo where it started by the end, leaving little more than self-contained stories, which might have worked in the drug-store days of casually picking up an issue here and there, but did not play to the strengths of the Marvel universe and the shared world that these books usually traded on. Spidey didn’t get a full story in these and the guest-stars were generally token appearances. Even when they got to multi-part stories, it seems like it was just connecting a few similar ideas rather than getting more room for explosive ideas. This volume in particular was before they tried getting weird, like featuring Red Sonja, for whatever reason they came up with.

The creative teams were also hacks, proving their flexibility but also having styles bland enough to do a little with any character and, more importantly, to not try to get fancy on a deadline. That mentality kept the comics coming out on time, like a lot of the comics of the day, but only a few turned in classics on that schedule, and this wasn’t it. There might be some nostalgia for these comics, but looked at with a critical eye, they’re just disposable time-passers from yesteryear, and easily passed over on the way to the artists who could do more than just poop out stories on a timely basis. And especially not even in color, this is a big volume of forgettable stories that have no need to be collected together, lest the temptation comes to read more than one at a time.

Nocturnals: The Sinister Path (Big Wow Art Books). The first Nocturnals mini was a favorite of mine from the ‘90s, a fun monster-meets-gangster by a great artist getting to write his own stuff but not making a big deal of it so he could draw what he wanted and what he did best. The Bravura line came in the wake of every creator making their own imprints for their own stuff, and we can see how that went with how many are left, but there was some stuff that didn’t deserve to get lost in the shuffle. Brereton disappeared for a while after that, at least from comics, and it was doubtful we’d get to go back to that world. Then he puts out The Sinister Path and we get one more story. Luckily it’s just satisfying to be a modest meal rather than the snack to tide us over for a bigger portion, since that would be too cruel a tease to endure. It’s Brereton presumably putting out what he can, whatever he can do on the side of whatever day-job he’s got somewhere other than comics. It’s a concise though light story, enough to provide action and things happening, but suffering from the languidness the original mini took its time with. But the fact that it even exists is enough, and it has the same lush visuals, fun, and mixing of genre tropes. This might not mean as much to someone who doesn't already know that world, but to those holding out for another chapter, it works well enough. Maybe we’ll get more of these but this is enough to relieve the pressure of waiting for so long for anything else from Brereton with those characters. I’ll keep wearing the Nocturnals T-shirt I got back in the day. Maybe I can even use the time until the next one to read the original again. 

Small bites:

* Starman #81. The “Blackest Night” event ran a gimmick for a sub-set of specials being the next issue of series that had to end. Of course they hedged their bets with much-loved series (no Fate or New Guardians here), leaving it to us, apparently, to choose if these stories are worthy enough to stand beside the beloved issues before them. They made the attempt to get as much of the original creative team as possible, presumably with the condition that they could make of the issues what they wanted. This one doesn’t even feature its titular hero, Jack Knight, which just means that DC is allowing him to stay gone (as if the character could pull more sales than just another issue in the series or if keeping Robinson happy is at all important). Still, it’s a spotlight on a few of the series’ other characters, as an update, though they weren’t allowed to continue on the promise of this story beyond this. If these extra issues were the gimmick, it was already done with these singles and apparently no reason to go beyond. Though Sienkiewicz shows his value putting his hand on a few of these stories, which actually does make a difference (even if DC couldn’t care much beyond it, even just as inking work).

* Weird Western Tales #71. Might have made a better, if minor, story as an 8-pager, but instead Didio takes another assignment for himself (let's call it Shooterism) and no one could tell him what to do. Then the cadre of characters from DC's Westerns show up only as corpses, so it's hard to tell what this modern-day extension of the classic series is continuing, and if it's even making an attempt to be anything but bait to be swallowed by anyone getting every one of the tie-ins for the crossover. This would have been better as a back-up feature to something else, but the extra for this issue is an ad for a DC initiative that flopped, and took pages from the main story, so it's not even a full comic. Poor value but you can't tell the boss that.

* The Question #37. If you’re going to tack on another issue to a legendary series, and it’s not enough to reunite the best version of the original creative team, you can at least get Sienkiewicz to work magic over the whole product. Though in this case they bring in another writer to gunk up the works, being Rucka, usually solid with projects until he has to force his own version of the character in there, who would otherwise be fine if not for replacing a character who had plenty of life left in him before they unnecessarily killed him off in an enormous non-event that was overlooked by anyone. Dragging a work that could have been perfectly fine where it was into the modern day and the dregs of newer continuity is on the worst display here, as if this was the formula to finally legitimize Rucka’s pet. Instead, it proves that the most cherished version of the character is truly dead (at least within its own comic-book continuity) and will take a complete reboot of the entire universe to bring back, awkwardly at first, then eventually maybe figuring out something to do with him, even if that same creative team can't make it (but Rucka’s version finally gets dropped). Still, not a horrible single issue, but thank Sienkiewicz. And 36 was such a nice, clean number for a series to end truly on.

* Suicide Squad #67. Then a few have the misfortune of lacking the room to make the most of a series return. Like the characters in the Starman issue, this story brings the team and their world back but only have the rest the one, sole book to do something with them, and a chunk of that is just to introduce the characters again (or whichever ones are brought in as proxies) and the conflict from the “Blackest Night” happenings. In this one, we’re reminded that the Secret Six were what the original Suicide Squad evolved into before the newer team pushes out the older team, and it might as well be the #.5 issue of wherever Secret Six was. The Squad are barely a cameo to set up the story, which gets cut off before it even starts. There’s a feeling that something was intended as a larger story but it got chopped and it was harder to delete than it was to shrug and go ahead with it. Which is a shame since by all accounts Secret Six was a good series (if not to the Suicide Squad level) and this could have been a worthy story, even toeing the line of the crossover. Maybe they could have pulled in crossing over with the other extra issues, or getting Travis Morgan Warlord in there somewhere.

My Top Albums of 2020:

10. Ghosts VI: Locusts- Nine Inch Nails.

9. Ghosts V: Together- Nine Inch Nails.

My Top Fleetwood Mac Songs Of All Time (In This Order):

20. "Think About Me"

19. "Go Your Own Way"

18. "Steal Your Heart Away"

17."Say You Love Me"

16. "Hold Me"

15. "Peacemaker"

14. "Everywhere"

13. "Big Love"

12. "What's The World Coming To"

11. "Caroline"

10. "Rhiannon"

9. "What Makes You Think You're The One"

8. "The Chain"

7. "Seven Wonders"

6. "Gypsy"

5. "As Long As You Follow"

4. "Sara"

3. "Little Lies"

2. "Say You Will"

1. "Dreams"

Words/Phrases That Need To Be Fucking Destroyed Forever More:

* "Should"

* "Try"

* "Can't" 

* "Nope"

* "LCS" (for "local comics shop")

* "FLGS" (for "friendly (?) local gaming shop")

* "Who hoo" (instead of "woo hoo")

* "Oooh" (instead of "ooo")

* "Could care less" (instead of "couldn't care less")

* "Can't wait"

* "Don't have time"

RAVES

Marvel Villainous. If I haven't told you (a lot) about this game, you and I haven't talked enough in the last six months.

Going to the cinema. Most of the movies might be on streaming these days, but sometimes you just want the experience of going out to the movies, even just to get out of the house. For Covid safety we can't be crowding like we used to so there's reserved seating, which bugged me since it was the end of theater-jumping, and I'm now too old to beat that system (as well as do it in the first place). But everything else is an up-side: Knowing where you'll be sitting before the movie and not having to rush or get there too early to get a good seat (then not get one anyway). It might make the movies more expensive (and they were anyway) , but it makes the experience a little more special, like it should be. And we're giving Marvel all our money anyway.

After I finished the last blog-zine, at the end of '20 (and might not have even realized I published it on Christmas Day), the momentum carried me into this one, and it was going well for a while then work hit me in March and I didn't touch this again until early December. So I might get to roll into the next one in the same way, until (hopefully) work takes me away. But I'll get to it later, with the ultimate intention of getting another done in two months (at best, but at least one by the end of the year, which seems to be the pattern for minimal effort).