August
21,
2006
Ed Brubaker’s Fantastic Four: The Books of Doom
is the latest exemplar of the recent trend toward retelling origin stories. Whether it’s Straczynski’s Dr. Strange, Straczynski’s Spider-Man, Straczynski’s Fantastic Four, or the entire (non-Straczynski!) Ultimate universe, it’s origin story after origin story these days. So now we get Dr. Doom’s origin story, retold in a multi-volume hardcover.
And it doesn’t add a damn thing to the six-panel version we already knew from recaps in old comic books. He was raised by gypsies, his mom was involved in dark magics, she died, he went off to the U.S. and got involved in science where he was a rival with Reed Richards, fucked some stuff up, scarred his face hideously, went off to live with some mountain monks, and built himself a fancy suit of armor. Sure, Brubaker gives Doom a gypsy love interest, and mixes him up with the military — but it doesn’t matter. Those things don’t significantly change the story, they’re just irrelevant details hanging off the side.
Here’s my new rule for origin story retellers: You’d better change something, and that change had better lead to 1) a more interesting story than the original, and 2) a deeper understanding of the character, both as he is now, and as he was then. If you can’t do that, don’t bother. Mr. Brubaker, that means you and this completely unnecessary volume.
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August
20,
2006
Robert Kirkman is the writer of The Walking Dead, a graphic novel series about zombies. He’s also the writer of various Marvel superhero comics. So it seems pretty obvious that Robert Kirkman’s Marvel Zombies
is a story about an alternate reality where Marvel superheroes have been turned into zombies.
The high concept for this is cool, and the details of the execution are neat — the covers, for instance, are classic Marvel covers redone with zombies — but unfortunately, there’s not enough substance to the conceit to make a memorable and interesting story. Part of the problem is that the characters are basically all of the Marvel heroes, so there’s not a chance to develop any real characterization; another part is that all the characters are flesh-eating zombies, so not exactly sympathetic.
But probably the biggest problem is just the story itself. We don’t start off with the heroes beginning to be turned into zombies, which could have been a good horror story; we start off with the heroes already zombified, and already having eaten the entire population of Earth. From there, there’s not a lot left to do, other than sit around bickering until Galactus fortuitously shows up.
A lightly enjoyable, if utterly disposable, story for Marvel fans, and of absolutely no interest at all to anyone else.
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August
19,
2006
So someone was saying that there are chick books and guy books, and I was all “Nuh-unh!”, and they were all, “Yeah-huh!” And, of course, genre romance novels — which are indisputably read by a 99% female audience — came up as a datum against my theory. How can you say there’s no such thing as chick books, if there are books that only chicks read?
My argument is that marketing (in the broad sense) is a strong and powerful thing. Genre romance has been marketed exclusively to women very successfully, and has extensive trappings that make it difficult for a man to even think about reading one. But, I maintained, the actual content of genre romance novels should appeal across gender lines. If you could strip away the lurid covers and flowing fonts, and get people into the text without preconceptions, you’d get the same cross-gender enjoyment you get with other fiction.
At which point Kate Nepveu said, “Okay, so go read a genre romance, then.” And I was all, “Okay, fine, I will,” because a) saying I wouldn’t read one would obviously make my argument a lot less persuasive, but mostly because b) I thought my argument was correct.
Now, from long experience of reading gutter genres (science fiction, epic fantasy, superhero comics), my expectation of romance novels is that there’d be an awful lot of them that are utter crap, but some proportion of them that are actually quite good. But while I’ve got good filters in place for screening out the bad SF/fantasy/comics, I have no such filters in place for romance novels; one pink-covered book is the same as any other to me. Fortunately, Kate provided me with a short list of recommended books, from which I picked Julia Quinn’s Romancing Mister Bridgerton
.
The first thing I discovered, when I got the package from Amazon, is that the marketing forces that genderize the readership of romance novels are incredibly strong. There’s no way I could actually read this book in public, and no way I could have made myself walk into a physical bookstore and buy it off the shelves. It’s not just the cover (which, except for the pink lettering and the inexplicable Fabio picture on the spine, is basically unobtrusive), it’s the whole bundle of “No Boys Allowed” signals the packaging gives off.
But that’s the packaging. The stuff inside the cover is a different thing. The book is set in 19th century upper-crust London, and has two subplots: The burgeoning romance between Penelope Featherington and Colin Bridgerton (which, okay, are silly names; but fantasy readers know better than to start throwing that stone), and the race to discover the secret identity of society gossip columnist Lady Whistledown. If you imagine a Jane Austen novel without all the depth (this is not a book that concerns itself much with issues of class or economics) and not as well-written, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what you’re looking at here.
Well, except for the “sensuality”, as the euphemism goes. One chapter ends at a clear place to discreetly fade to black, as the two main characters are together in a bedroom with obvious intentions. The next chapter, though, pretty much just keeps going from there, and it’s not until the following chapter that things continue where a non-genre reader would have expected, with a disheveled morning. It’s not that it’s gratuitous — if you’re writing a novel about a romantic relationship, the physical element really is a key part of it — but it is a bit surprising. Jane Austen didn’t write nearly as much about nipples.
So, now that I’ve read a genre romance, what do I think of my original theory? I think it’s absolutely dead-on accurate. I enjoyed this book a great deal, and stayed up late reading it. In fact, I’m actually kind of irritated, because this is part of an eight-book series, and I’d like to read the rest of them, but it would feel weird to do so, for all those marketing-related reasons. If some enterprising publisher would reissue them as straight historical novels, with more gender-neutral covers, though, I’d be right there.
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August
16,
2006
So a few posts back, I was talking about how I dislike alternate histories about Nazis, but here I am having read Jo Walton’s Farthing
, in which the English have left the Continent to Hitler in exchange for peace. So, okay, it’s an alternate history with Nazis. But that’s not really what it is.
The book is set in Farthing, an English country estate, where an upper-class party is interrupted by a prominent gentleman being ostentatiously murdered. Scotland Yard sends in an investigator, and the mystery is on. But Farthing isn’t really a mystery novel, either.
Or, at least, it’s not just a mystery novel; because it is a real mystery novel, and it plays fair with the mystery. But it’s also a novel about class, race, sex, politics, justice, and family. You know, the little themes. In the hands of a lesser writer, cramming so many thematic elements into an alternate history English countryside murder mystery could have made for a lumpy batter indeed. But Walton is able to take ingredients that apparently have nothing in common and combine them into a concoction that makes you realize they belonged together the whole time.
This is a superb novel, even better than
Tooth and Claw
, and it deserves to win an award or two.
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August
13,
2006
I have two recommendations for you:
- Read Steven Brust’s Dzur
. It’s yet another typically excellent installment in his excellent Vlad Taltos series. I wasn’t sure where the series would go after Issola, but this is as a good a place as any.
- But first, re-read all the Taltos books, or at least the last couple. Brust is a subtle writer, and really expects you to be paying close attention. If you forgot about (say) the big revelation in Orca, you’d find not a single word here to refresh your memory — but also a bunch of scenes that would have a weird subtext that’d go right past you. I’m sure I missed more than one significant event in the book. I think I will schedule a re-read before the next one comes out, whenever that is.
- Bonus recommendation, as it belatedly occurs to me that it’s possible that someone here might not have already read the Taltos books: Read them! This is one of the best ongoing fantasy series in existence, and it’s not at all like any other such series. Even if you don’t like fantasy, you’ll like these. I promise.
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August
12,
2006
I’ve never been big into alternate history novels, in the sense that they’ve seemed as appealing as a giant bowl of chicken-flavored Jell-O. So it’s sort of weird that I ripped right through S. M. Stirling’s Island in the Sea of Time, Against the Tide of Years, and On the Oceans of Eternity
.
I suspect that the explanation largely focuses on the historical eras involved. Most alternate history books focus on either the Civil War or World War II, which are among the least interesting historical periods in, um, history. Stirling’s trilogy takes place back in the Bronze Age. Odysseus is rather more interesting to read about than Hitler or the General Lee.
Besides that, though, Stirling’s books are just plain tastylicious. The setup is perfectly rigged to be intriguing: The island of Nantucket is transported back to the Bronze Age by an Event of unknown origin (the cause isn’t really important to the book; it’s stage-setting), and the people who live there have to cope. A small island is the perfect size for a novel like this: Pulling back a few individuals would just lead to a crossover-fantasy novel; pulling back a larger unit of civilization (say, Britain) would make it too easy on the civilized people. A small island makes it possible, but not easy, to keep a corner of the globe more advanced than the natives.
The “not easy” is really the point of the first (and strongest) book, which is all about the aftermath of the Event, and modern people forging a sustainable way of life in a world without modern infrastructure. It’s almost entirely focused on the moderns and their immediate adaptation.
The second book takes place some years later, and deals with the growing rivalry between the Nantucketers and a more-ruthless adversary created by events in the first book. It’s more focused on the external world, and ends up feeling like a game of Civilization, as each party gains allies and territory, and researches new technologies. You can almost see the little popups declaring “Nantucket has discovered: The Rifle. What will your scientists research next?”
The third book is the final showdown between the two civilizations, and is like the interminable end of a game of Civilization, where you know what’s going to happen, but it takes four fucking hours of micro-management to get there. It’s tedious and padded, and should have been the last 100 pages of the second book.
So there’s the lame ending marring the fun a bit. Also a weak point of the books is the occasionally two-dimensional characterization. It works fine for the omni-competent, totally awesome good guys, because, hey: adventure novel. But the dippy-hippy pseudo-villains strain credulity in a particularly irritating way. Fortunately, the main villain of the books is one of the more interesting and sympathetic characters (one gets the sense that the author likes him almost more than he maybe should), so it works out okay.
Overall, the series is a fun romp with plenty of tasty scenery and story, even if it does have thin characters and a big pile of muck at the end.
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