Comic Review: Criminal Vol. 2 Lawless

Tracy Lawless has returned home after a couple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan; back to the world he was raised in, the crime ridden streets of the city.  Tracy probably would have preferred to stay away, but someone killed his brother, and he wants to find out why.

Despite lots of family history behind the Lawless name, Tracy has an advantage in the criminal underworld in the fact that he's been gone so damn long that no one remembers his face.  Tracy's first step in finding his brother's killer is linking up with his brother's old crew, and though that might bring him one step closer to the truth, the truth might be uglier than not knowing.

Once again, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips deliver gold standard hard-bitten crime comics.  These guys are just flat out scary good at this stuff.

Though it's predecessor, Coward was an impressive feat of crime comics, I was more impressed with Lawless due to the fact that it has been cleverly crafted to fit into the world that Brubaker and Phillips created in the series opener.

Even though both Coward and Lawless can be read completely as stand-alone stories, there are little subtle touches that stand out to the reader. Side characters who seemed like throwaways take a more prominent role, familiar faces are back in familiar roles, and names just barely mentioned become leading roles in this volume.  Brubaker and Phillips have crafted an impressive, multi-layered world that I feel like I'm just now starting to get a grasp on.

With masterful craftsmanship and impressive world-building it is easy to rate this one pretty high, but there's more goodness to be had in Lawless.  Brubaker and Phillips again deliver the goods in terms of writing and art. I really think Phillips is the best possible artist for this series, as he is just really flippin' good at bringing dark and gritty to life.

Brubaker is no slouch either. Sure, crime plots can often seem a bit recycled, but Brubaker somehow gets readers to care for his criminal, low-life, unsavory characters.  That ability to make readers care about the characters makes the plots more gripping the the tension more palpable.

As impressed as I've been with this comic makin' duo in the past, I was even more impressed here. The material that I've read from the Criminal series is definitely their best work in the comics medium thus far, and it appears to be only getting better.  Not convinced yet? Do yourself a favor and go read Criminal.

Grade: A+

Book Review: The Red Knight

It's still very early in the year, but we've already got a fantasy debut that seems poised to challenge the established ranks of the epic fantasy pantheon.  Enter Miles Cameron and his fantasy debut, the first book in the Traitor Son Cycle, The Red Knight.

The Red Knight isn't just the name of this book, it's also the name of the main character.  He's the leader of a band of mercenaries who have been hired by an abbess and her convent of nuns to protect them from the dangers of the wild.  The wild is an unruly expanse of the map where dangerous creatures, be they wyverns, irks, boglins, and other creatures of nightmare live.  It appears one of these fearful beasts has been causing problems in the lands around the nunnery, and the Red Knight and his soldiers have been hired to defeat the beast.

However, it looks like the mercenaries might be in for more than what appears to be a tidy profit, and the company of comely novices.  The creatures of the wild are out in force, with a malevolent, magical being pulling the strings. With help from the king and his knights days, possibly weeks, away, it's up to the Red Knight to devise a defense of the abbey against not only the hordes of the wild, but a magical onslaught from an unknown powerful being.

From the get-go it is pretty clear to see that Miles Cameron does a lot of things right with The Red Knight. First off, he sets his story in a very realistic medieval setting, albeit one with lots of crazy monsters hanging around.  For the first time since I read Mary Gentle's Ash I felt like a writer provided an accurate depiction of medieval arms, armor, and the mercenary life-style.  This quality came through clearest during battles or action scenes where the fighting was visceral and bloody...exactly how you might expect things to go when sharp, pointy bladed things are the weapons of choice.  On a personal note, I also liked how Cameron didn't treat horses as something the heroes can just hop on and make a charge to glory.  The war horses got appropriately tired from charging with a shit-ton of armor, and an armored dude on their backs. A small thing sure, but it was a detail I appreciated and added a nice layer of realism.

Mary Gentle's Ash wasn't the only work of fantasy this book reminded of. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself finding some parallels between The Red Knight and the works of Steven Erikson.

The Red Knight doesn't start out nearly as complex, or on such a huge scale as Erikson's stuff, but it definitely builds in complexity, and depth as the story progresses.  What begins as a tightly focused siege tale in an analog for medieval England soon expands to include Galle, a very French-like country, as well as some locales and characters with middle-eastern influences, and the Sossag people who reminded me in some ways of Native American/First Nations people.

Another aspect that gave me fond reminiscences of Erikson is that Cameron definitely went for the grand conversion ending where all his plot threads came together in one epic, and deafening crush of action of mayhem.  I loved it. Sure, he didn't pull it all together as craftily as Erikson, (who could?) but it works pretty damn well, and I was impressed.

In addition to a wide range of people and cultures that come into play, there's also some impressive and devastating magic in this world that Miles Cameron has crafted.  The magic system, which is based on hermeticism,  is one that struck me as pretty unique to the fantasy genre, but I was never quite sure I understood just how it all worked.  Granted, this is only the opening novel in a series, and not everything can or should be explained in the first book. I'm willing to give Cameron a pass on this one as I think more exposure to the magic system would lead to a greater understanding.

I'm always a stickler for great characters, and Cameron did pretty well in that regards here too. Though this is a book of knights and ladies, there isn't a true "hero" in the King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table sense. Most everyone in The Red Knight, with a few exceptions, is more gray than clearly black or white.   I can't say that I was an instant fan of too many of these characters, but I definitely acquired a taste for more than a few of them.  By the end, there were a few whose viewpoint sections I came to look forward to.

I wouldn't be the person, or the reviewer that I am, if I didn't mention the creatures of the wild.  I love crazy beasts and monsters.  Oh, sure the creatures of the wild are fairly standard fantasy fare; irks and boglins sure sound an awful lot like orcs and goblins.  Not to mention we've got trolls, wyverns, and even a dragon. But you know what? That's fine. Why reinvent the wheel?  It's how you use them, and Cameron did a pretty damn good job of that. Yes, the irks and boglins were mostly used as sword fodder, but the larger beasts were quite awesome, gruesome and terrifying.  And intelligent. Which made for some really great monster fights.

Though there's a lot to like about The Red Knight, I found myself hung up on one key factor: That there isn't a lot about the plot that seems new.  You've got a giant siege, the "good guys" are out numbered and out-gunned, or more accurately, out-magicked, and there's a super-powerful evil tree-wizard trying to take over the world.  As I was reading, I kept wanting Cameron to steer the story away from those classic story elements, but the more I read, the more I discovered the direction towards a been-there-done-that plot was inevitable.   This led to a large degree of predictability for the story, and caused my interest to flag in the second half of the book.

The predictability and standard plot wasn't a total deal breaker for me though. Cameron still delivered enough great action and monster fights for me to be pretty well entertained from start to finish.  That being said, in a book that had a lot to like, I still found myself wanting more.

Despite drawbacks, The Red Knight is a fantasy that will likely find it's way into many hands and onto many "debut of the year" lists.  Cameron shows a lot of promise and though The Red Knight fell a little short for me, there's certainly hints that this is a series to keep an eye on.

Grade: B-

Comic Review: Criminal Vol. 1 Coward

I've been hoarding my volumes of Criminal for a while now, waiting for the right moment to uncork and savor these crime stories from the modern crime masters, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.  However, I've been enjoying their latest, Fatale so much, that my will power cracked and I decided instead to go for a Brubaker/Phillips binge and read me some Criminal.

Sometimes it's nice to have wimpy willpower.

In Coward, we follow Leo, an expert pick-pocket and a guy with a deft hand when it comes to planning a heist too.  The thing is, he has a rep for bailing on a job at the first sign of things going south.  However, sometimes a job can be worth the risk, and when Leo is approached by an old friend and a crooked cop to help orchestrate an armored car diamond heist he sets his rules aside in favor of a large pay-off.

If I had any doubt that Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are the modern masters of the crime story, I threw all reservations out the door with Coward.  These two guys are truly at their best when working in the crime genre.  Not only was Brubaker able to deliver a great story with all the twists, backstabs, and drama that are the staples of the genre, but Phillips was able to bring it all to life with his fantastic art.  The settings are seedy, the characters are unsavory, and Phillips makes it all seem so real.

The synergy that Brubaker and Phillips share is incredibly impressive and their great rapport makes it incredibly easy for the reader to completely fall into this world of crime and mayhem.  It's pretty easy to gush about how solid the Brubaker-Phillips collaboration is, these guys have worked together extensively, and it shows in Coward.

One aspect that made Coward stand out for me was Brubaker's choice of Leo as a main character.  In pretty much every crime story I've come across, the main dude is usually a tough-guy type who won't back down from a fight, or hesitate to whip out a gun and shoot it out with some cops.  Leo, on the other hand, is the polar opposite and when the going gets tough, Leo hits the road.  The use of a non-standard character in this very standard urban crime setting was a nice touch, and one that makes this story stand out from the crowd.

As I've come to expect when Sean Phillips is involved, the art in Coward is great. Phillips can flat out draw the hell out of a crime story. As I mentioned earlier, he has a great knack for bringing the world, and the characters that fill it to life with his art.  Phillips can deliver action scenes and dramatic moments where body language and facial expressions tell the tale with equal aplomb, which is no small feat.

If you like your crime with a nice layer of grit, and are in the mood for a crime comic with fantastic writing and pitch-perfect art, than Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal is the place to go.  This is top shelf stuff from two of the very best.  I expect I'll be reading the rest of the Criminal volumes sooner than later.

Grade: A+

Book Review: The Emperor's Knife

A terrible disease is chewing away at the heart of the Cerani Empire.  Victims of the disease find their flesh become increasingly covered in geometric patterns until one of two things occur: the victim either dies in agony, or becomes a carrier who is essentially a salve to the mysterious and evil Pattern Master.

The emperor himself, Beyon has been stricken with the disease, and though he hides it from his people for now, it is only a matter of time before the patterns spread and it becomes clear that he is not only afflicted, but disobeying his own decree that anyone showing signs of the disease be killed.

The emperor's loyal agents have been dispatched to the corners of the world in search of a cure.  A last ditch deal has been struck with the people of the northern plains in hopes that Mesema, the daughter of a great chieftan, and a windreader, can help not only produce a much needed heir, but also a cure for the disease. Meanwhile, the royal assassin, Eyul has been sent to the desert wastes to seek the wisdom of a hermit.

The plans all seem like random shots in the dark, but the empire is on the brink of disaster, and the Emperor seems to be out of good ideas.  While the emperor's health flags, and the empire teeters on collapse, his chief adviser, Tuivani, plots and schemes to turn the events to his favor.  However, there's other players in this game of illness and politics and even the emperor himself has an ace up his sleeve in the form of a secret brother.

The Emperor's Knife is a book I've had my eye on for a while, and when Night Shade Books did a free Thanksgiving giveaway, I jumped on the opportunity to get my hands on this book.  I was interested in the concept of an unstoppable deadly sickness, and Williams did a good job of creating a disease that, like all terrible diseases, is unbiased in who it attacks, and completely bewildering to those who try to stop it.  Adding to my interest in the novel is the fact Williams sets it in a middle eastern-like setting which I found to be a nice switch from the typical European setting that dominates many fantasy worlds.  These concepts certainly served to draw me into Williams' world and set the stage early for an interesting read filled with political intrigue and action.

Concepts are all well and good for getting a person to start a book, but it takes more than that to fashion a great novel, and Williams takes a couple more steps in that direction with a couple interesting characters and a great magic system.

I was most taken with Eyul, the Emperor's assassin.  He's a bit of an aged dude, and I liked that rather than center a huge chunk of the narrative on a young boy poised fulfill a prophecy, Williams instead based a lot of the story on a man who's getting a little long in the tooth, and finds himself doing the dirty work of the empire.   Sarmin, the emperor's brother, was another interesting character, as his life and mental stability made him a bit of a wild card, which helped spice things up a bit. Though Eyul and Sarmin were interesting characters, I never really got invested in the other characters, and found it hard to relate to, or make myself care about what was happening to a bunch of scheming privileged politicians.

Another feather in Williams' cap is the magic system in The Emperor's Knife.  Mages in this world have elemental powers which I not only found interesting, but genius in it's simplicity.  I'm not really a fan of complex magic systems, so it was refreshing to see one that was simple, creative and cool all at the same time.

Though I did find stuff to enjoy with The Emperor's Knife, I had my gripes too.  This is a novel with lots of political twists and turns, but the events, grand actions and schemes that play out over the course of the novel don't really seem to affect anyone other than a few dozen politicians and the guards who happen to get caught in the undertow.  At times, it almost seems like the Cerani empire is an empty place, populated only by the characters in the book.  This definitely made things feel a bit more flat, and took away from what was an interesting setting.

Additionally, though there was an unstoppable sickness at the heart of this novel, I never felt that Williams took advantage of the tension this plot element could cause. Though Williams tells the reader the sickness is plaguing many people in the empire, this is never shown, and thus weakens the story with this lack of depth.

When the dust clears, The Emperor's Knife is a debut that ultimately fell a bit flat for me.  Though I experienced some highs and lows, Williams brings some very interesting elements to the table and shows promise in his/her future novels. In the end, I wanted to like this book more than I did.  I never found myself fully invested in the characters or the world, as both lacked the vibrancy I need to get fully engaged in a novel.  Though this is the first in a trilogy, The Emperor's Knife can be read completely as a stand alone novel, as Williams wraps things up pretty neatly, yet leaves the door open just enough for stories with this world and these characters.

Grade: C

Comic Quickies: Indie Gems

Comics Class: This one was one of my many exciting pick ups from Lucky's Comics in Vancouver.  Exciting enough that I read it at the first opportunity I got: on the bus ride home, with my lady reading over my shoulder.

We both loved it.

Maybe I'm a little predisposed to like Comics Class due to the fact that I work with school aged kids. This fact certainly helped me relate to the material, but there's plenty to like about Comics Class for every reader.  First of all, it is hilarious.  There's a lot of jokes packed into this 44 page comic, enough to get both me and my partner laughing out loud on multiple occasions.

In this "kind of based on a real class" comic, Matt Forsythe, the writer/artist/protagonist takes a job teaching a comic class at a local middle school.  A job which he rides a school bus to, arm wrestles students to prove a completely non-comics related point, and doesn't have his students do any actual comics creating for the first seven weeks.

In an ironic twist of fate, the Matthew Forsythe character in the comic has absolutely no success in teaching his students anything about making comics, However, I felt like I gained insight into making them just from reading the book.

The most impressive thing about Comics Class is that it manages to do so much in such a small amount of space. It is smart, witty, insightful, and a lot of fun to read.  This was the first comic I read in 2013 and I gotta say, I got off to a perfect start.

Wimbledon Green: I've been researching and branching out into more indie comics lately, and always two names pop up as must-read creators: Seth, and Chris Ware.  I've read Seth's It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken and while I enjoyed it, I wasn't blown away.  However, the guy is extremely well respected in the comics medium, so I wasn't about to write the guy off after one pretty good, but not amazing reading experience.

This time around I went for Wimbledon Green, a comic that apparently originated as a comic he did in his sketchbook just for fun, and turned out to be a project he wanted to explore further.  The story follows the titular character, Wimbledon Green, who's an eccentric and avid collector of obscure, expensive comics. The guy is a bit of a mystery, as no one seems to know where he's from, how he got all his money to spend on comics, or even if he's who he says he is.

Regardless, Wimbledon Green has one of the most impressive rare and expensive comic collections around, a collection he's gathered thanks to some shady deals, trickery, manipulation, and possibly even outright theft.  The other comic collectors who act as Green's colleagues and rivals aren't much different in their comic collecting practices from Green.  All together they create a comic that was a lot of fun to read.

Seth's art in Wimbledon Green isn't as polished or as detailed as his other works that I've either read or thumbed through, and the lettering can be a bit hard to read at times.  That being said, I still enjoyed Seth's cartooning, and there's a fair amount of sight gags, jokes and just great cartooning in this comic to satisfy my tastes.

 Quimby the Mouse: As I mentioned earlier, aside from Seth, Chris Ware is the name that gets bandied about when folks talk about a modern master of the comics medium.  Despite his preeminence in the medium, his works have eluded me up to this point thanks to either scarcity or the price of the product.

During my most recent trip to the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery I was determined to leave with a Chris Ware book in hand so that I could finally explore his work.  After pawing through his books and inquiring with the shop person, I decided the best place to begin was (surprise, surprise) the beginning.

Quimby the Mouse collects Ware's early works, mostly strips and one to two page comics. Some of which he made while still an undergrad in college.  The comic is printed in a very large format, and has a running gag that the material between the covers is from a discontinued library book.  Using the oversized format to its fullest capabilities, Ware fills up each and every page with either comics or text, and often his panels are postage stamp size or smaller.  This led to two things: I often found myself squinting to either read the microscopic text or view the art, and I found that on many occasions, it would take me 20-30 minutes just to work my way through a single page.  I didn't mind that the pages called for deep immersion, but I wasn't expecting so much squinting given the massive size of this comic.

In the end, all the squinting and eye strain paid off as I was rewarded with a great glimpse at what Ware is able to bring to the table in terms of comics.  His style of cartooning is completely unique, and pops off the page as very eye-catching.  I was also impressed with his ability to create a feeling of motion with his panel art.  In many of the Quimby strips I was able to quickly move my eye from one panel to the next and create the sensation that the art was actually moving, like a flip book or early animation.  All told, it was a cool experience, and I'm excited to explore more of his work in the future.

I Lost My Blurb-ginity!

The other day I got a really awesome email from my fellow blogger-buddy Bryce from Only The Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Bryce was kind enough to give me the heads up that my review of Scourge of the Betrayer got blurbed in the trade paperback edition of said book.   

Bryce also sent me a photo of the blurb, which was exciting, but I really wanted see it for myself. I've been searching around a few of the local book shops here in Seattle, but I didn't come across a paperback copy of the book until today.

Exciting! It was all I could do to not show it off to the random people in the fantasy and sci-fi section.

Thanks go out to Bryce for the heads up, and thanks to Jeff Salyards for blurbing my review!

Kicking it Old School: The Dispossessed

I've been traipsing around in the annals of old school SF again, this time around I decided to explore the fertile ground that is the works published list of Ursula K. Le Guin.  I picked out The Dispossessed based on the back blurb, and a staff recommendation from my favorite local bookstore.

A few generations ago, the moon Anarres, with its bleak desert-like landscape, was settled by an anarchic utopian civilization.  Urras, the mother planet, is a planet much like our own. It has a capitalist system with extreme wealth and severe poverty, as well as it's fair share of warring nations, and savage inequalities.  On the surface, the two planets seem like night and day, and that discrepancy has led to hatred and misunderstanding between the two planets for years.

Shevek, a brilliant physicist from Anarres is underappreciated and underutilized on his own planet. So he decides to undertake a most unheard of mission, and travels to Urras in hopes of pursuing his physics career, learning about this unknown world, to share his knowledge, and reunite the two planets.

The Dispossessed has a unique narrative style that I enjoyed quite a lot.  The chapters alternate between focusing on Shevek's time on Urras, and his time on Anarres.  The cool part is that the Urras chapters deal with the events of Shevek's time on the foreign planet, and the Anarres chapters deal with the events of Shevek's life that lead up to his departure from Anarres.  I enjoyed this quality of the book as it made me feel like I was having to put together a mental jigsaw puzzle so that I could understand the book.

There was a bit of a drawback however, as it makes the reader wait a long time for an explanation as to why Shevek decided to leave his home planet behind.  This long development worked as a double-edged sword as it kept me on the hook... to an extent, because for a large portion of the book I didn't understand Shevek's motives, and that led to some frustration on my part.

For me, the most impressive part of this novel is that Le Guin had to create and make real not one world but two, and she did it incredibly well. There were plenty of parallels between Urras and our own, which was a deliberate part of the plot, but Le Guin also made Urras different enough so that it was fun to explore alongside Shevek.  It was interesting to see how further exploration of each planet brought about more highlights and inadequacies of each. The exploration of these two disparate societies reminded me a bit of books like Brave New World, but The Dispossessed explores both the Utopian and Dystopian side by side which I found much more interesting.

In the past, I have had a hard time getting fully into SF books where the focus is on a political exploration/message.  I've often felt like the politics often overtake the narrative and don't leave any space for an interesting story.  For two thirds of The Dispossessed, I felt the same way. However, once the back story kicked in and gave meaning to the current events of the novel, I found myself enjoying it a lot more, and felt rewarded for sticking with it.  It might take a while the whole picture to become clear, but I was glad I hung in there.

I didn't enjoy The Dispossessed as much as my previous Le Guin read, The Lathe of Heaven, but I still enjoyed what this book has to offer.  Despite being published before I was born, it still is a book that can have relevance today.  That should say a lot.  It's not too bad of a read either.

Grade: 7.5 Fanny Packs