Review: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a book I’ve wanted to read for years.  Haruki Muraki is one of my absolute favorite authors and this is probably his most important work.  However, it’s also an incredibly imposing novel.  A 600 page tome documenting the cultural malaise permeating post-war Japan and told through letters, dream logic, and one man’s quest for his missing cat.

And that’s just the A plot of the novel.  Throughout the course of the protagonist’s quest (which in itself changes thoughout the book) he is thrust into the company of a wide assortment of unusual individuals who are all in turn struggling with their own quests for self.  Lieutenant Mamiya is at the end of his life, and is reflecting on an existence that has been entirely hollow since being relased from a Russian POW camp.  Teenager, May Kasahara is trying to decide on the direction of her life after dropping out of school and accidentally killing her boyfriend.  Noboru Wataya, Japan’s latest political darling who’s adept at expressing his lack of substance.  And then there’s the various psychics, all of who have difficulty mastering their own fate.

The result is a book that requires a lot from its readers, but which is truly great from its cover (by the dream team of Chip Kidd and Chris Ware) on.  It’s also Murakami’s most technically masterful work, although I can’t help prefering some of his earlier novels such as A Wild Sheep Chase which were told with a little more abandon.  Still, very highly recommended.

Review: Immortal Iron Fist: Escape From the Eighth City

And another title bits the dust.  This time around it’s the Immortal Iron Fist.  The comic began in a blaze of glory thanks to the team of Fraction, Brubaker, and Aja, quickly becoming the best book Marvel was publishing.  But then the title was passed on to Dwayne Swierczynski and Travel Foreman, who did an able job of continuing the story, but pretty much failed to add anything to it.

Which brings me to Escape from the Eight City, a disapointingly formulaic story.  In issue 1 Iron Fist and his fellow Immortal Weapons go to Hell; in issue 2 they’re tortured for a bit, n issue 3 they break free, and in issue 4 they go home…the end.  

Fortunately Swierczynski has the opportunity to tack on a coda before the axe fell on the comic and he goes out on a high note, although one with some slightly dodgy art.  He fits an awful lot of character development into 22 pages and leaves the series at both a nice ending point, and a great place for other writer’s to pick up on the story elsewhere.  But for now the story is over, and maybe it was time.

Review: Wolverine Weapon X: Adamantium Men

If there’s one thing Marvel really didn’t need (besides another Deadpool book) it was another Wolverine book.  However, this time out it happens to be by wunderkind Jason Aaron and the great Ron Garney, so I figured it was worth a look.  And I’m glad I tried because it’s the most fun I’ve had reading a Wolverine story in ages.

There’s not really a whole lot to this story Haliburton, sorry I mean Blackguard, make themselves some Wolverine mercenaries, Logan finds out and gets revenge.  It’s a simple story, well told, that fits the character of Wolverine like a glove, and it’s got enough little flourishes (including a great little Faulkner riff) to elevate it somewhat.  For the first time, possibly ever (like the character, have never liked his own book) I’m looking forward to a future Wolverine story.

Then as a bonus this collection also includes a short story Aaron did with Adam Kubert (making his return to Marvel after some time at DC) that tries to explain why Wolverine appears in every other book the company publishes.  This one is I think the only time I’ve seen Aaron stumble to date.  The tone of the story is just a little bit off, placing Wolvie into a slightly comedic situation while trying to show that this is his way of doing penance for a few lifetimes of sins.  It’s not a bad idea, and it’s a nice little bonus story here, with some nice art to boot, but ultimately just a bit off.

So, in summary this is the book to get if you are in the market for a prototypical Wolverine story told with a great deal of skill.

Review: Incredible Hercules: The Mighty Thorcules

Will this latest volume, the Incredible Hercules has become my favorite comic currently published by Marvel.  It’s clever and may very well be the most enjoyable book on the stands at the moment.

Which brings me to the two stories in this volume, which alternate issues throughout the book.  The main story here concerns Hercules being forced to disguise himself as Thor in order to infiltrate a band of Dark Elves.  The story quickly turns to the absurd as Thor later disguises himself as Hercules and they inevitably wind up engaging in perhaps the most ridiculous fight in the history of superhero comics.  It also contains what is maybe the best comedic acting I’ve seen in a comic thanks to artist Reilly Brown.

The b-story is quite different in tone, telling the story of my new favorite character Amadeus Cho (the 7th smartest person in the world) attempting to make peace with his origins.  It’s a great counterpoint to Hercules’ story, being every bit as fun while maintaining a far more serious tone, and its especially nice to see Amadeus given a lead role.  He’s a fantastic character, and Asian-American teen brainiac who is never written like a nerd and who is regularly able to hold his own against the adults.

Writers Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente have worked wonders in this book, taking a cast off character in a Hulk spin-off and turning it into a must read each month that keeps improving.

Review: Deadpool Classic Vol.3

A while back I raved about the 2nd collection of Joe Kelly’s Deadpool run.  Well vol. 3 is now here and it’s even better.  

The issues here are the heart of the series, in which Deadpool reaches his lowest ebb and somehow manages to start his life anew afterwards…sort of.  This is Deadpool after all, a certifiable, blabber-mouthed assassin whose best friend is the old blind woman he’s imprisoning for the hell of it.  He’s always been a fun character, but only Kelly ever managed to make him sympathetic, and that’s with the aforementioned prisoner that he occasionally tortures for fun.

This is also an incredibly funny book.  Most writers try to make Deadpool funny by emphasizing how crazy he happens to be.  Kelly is the one who actually has a fantastic, absurdists sense of humor that pervades the book and not just the one character.  Villains attack with enormous teddy bears, mad scientists play chess against guinea pigs, Jerry Garcia tours Europe, and somehow Deadpool manages to buy a sheep gun (being a gun disguised as a sheep of course, what were you thinking?).

And then there’s issue 11, which pretty much built Kelly’s reputation alone, in which Deadpool goes back in time and replaces Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man #47.  That issue is not at all significant, meerly being yet another battle between Spidey and Kraven the Hunter, but it makes a perfect example of one of Stan Lee’s silver age stories.  Deadpool and company lovingly eviscerate the sorce material, while artist Pete Woods turns in a brilliant impression of John Romita’s art.  It’s a brilliant capstone to a book that holds up just as well now as it did when I first read it 13 years ago.

Review: The Tankies

The Tankies is the third book in Garth Ennis’ latest line of war comics, Battlefields.  Sadly it’s also the weakest, being a pretty paint by numbers story by the author.  Take a group of soliders from the UK, insert some male bonding, stir in a few dubious generals, and cover liberally in extreme violence.  However, being Garth Ennis the story is very well told, but he’s done this before in better books (War Stories, Punisher: Born).

The one thing that elevates this book further is that it has Carlos Ezquerra on art.  It’s been a good while since these two have collaborated, which is a real shame as their styles compliment each other perfectly.  And Ennis gives his partner plenty of material to work from, creating a beautiful book.  But its not quite enough to elevate the purely average story.

Review: Makers

Cory Doctorow’s latest, Makers is a loving tribute to mad invention and the people responsible for it.  It reminds me a lot of Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano with its world run by engineers scenario.  But unlike that dystopian view Makers is instead about the sheer joy of creation.

But this is not a purely optimistic book either.  The protagonists are far from perfect and spend just as much time ruining their lives as improving them.  But with one or two exceptions the characters aren’t terribly interesting anyway.  This just isn’t a book that’s really focused on people.  

Instead its about what people can acomplish when they are given the means to innovate.  When Doctorow gets lost in talking about people doing neat things his enthusiasm is infectious and the novel soars.  But the rest of the time the book is a bit of a misfire, feeling less like a novel than an extended essay on how large corporations are not conducive to creative thought.  Not a horrible book by any means, but probably Doctorow’s weakest novel to date.

Review: the Hunger Games

I picked up the Hunger Games after nearly everyone I knew with an interestest in YA fiction spent the better part of the last year telling me I had to read it.  I can see why it earned the adoration.

At first glance the book isn’t anything that original, treading ground seen previously in such books as Battle Royale and Tunnel In the Sky.  A group of children are carted off to a wilderness arena and are forced to fight to the death.  Why that’s become its own genre is probably something that would make for a halfway decent master’s thesis.

So, what makes the Hunger Games different?  Primarily its that Suzanne Collins isn’t actually  interested in telling an survival story.  Instead this is a dystopian story, and a damned good one.  The games in this world are used as a means of both entertaining the ruling class and ensuring their dominance over those beneath their station.

The dystopian elements were by far the most engrossing aspects of the story, but very often they also led Collins to make some slight missteps in the story.  The action elements occasionally feel somewhat unfullfilling, with quite a few major pieces of the plot occuring offstage and a few Chekhov’s Guns left unused. 

But still the book left me craving the sequel, which seems like it ought to focus more on the politics of the world Collins has created, and that interests me a great deal more than the Hunger Games detailed here.

Review: Essential Amazing Spider-Man Vol.9

This volume of the Essential Spider-Man covers the issues published between 1978 and 1980, which is not a particularly well known era for the character despite a lot of significant stuff that happens here.  The Black Cat, Madame Web, Jigsaw and Calypso all make their first appearances.  Aunt May dies for a few issues, Peter quits the Daily Bugle for a few more, John Romita Jr. becomes the regular artist and their are decent confrontations with Electro, Doc Ock, Kingpin and Mysterio.  But the story here that has sort of endured is the return of the Burglar (he who shot Uncle Ben).

Everything here’s pretty average for Spider-Man, with the possible exception that Peter’s age is starting to get a little awkward on occasion.  The character’s a TA in grad school at this point and the writers are still trying to give him the occasional problems with school/work/dating issues from when he was in high school, while occasionally attempting to actually portray him as an adult.  However, what results is Peter going to C.B.G.B’s on a date and complaining about how loud the music is there.  

But besides that, this is classic, Spidey with some very competantly told stories from comics legends Marv Wolfman and Denny O’Neil.

Review: Rex Mundi: the Valley At the End of the World

Up until now I had been a big fan of Rex Mundi, a great, well researched, alternate history/fantasy that reads like what everyone wishes the Da Vinci Code had been.  But the penultimate volume is just a huge mess of a book.

Okay where to start.  How about the fact that there are now vampires randomly introduced into the story’s third act and which have nothing to do with the main plot.  Then there’s the culmination of the war which has been building up through the 4 prior collections.  At the end of chapter 2 in this book France is on the verge of defeat, with Paris sacked and its allies abandoning the nation.  When chapter 3 starts France has magically conquered most of Europe.  

Which brings me to the use of magic in these books.  Magic has always been a part of this series, but up until now most of the characters only ever used it to light cigarettes.  Now there are suddenly mystical duels with fireballs and flying and of course those pesky vampires.  

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with this approach to the story, but I sort of felt like it along with the stylistic change brought about by new artist Juan Ferreyra changed the tone of the story far too much.  Eric J’s art from the earlier volumes was rougher and full of deep shadows.  Ferreyra’s on the other hand is a little more detailed and…well lets just go with prettier.  It’s gorgeous work, but I just don’t feel it suits the material terribly well.

So yeah, this is pretty much a textbook case of a good book turning bad.  There’s one volume to go and Arvid Nelson may be able to salvage things with it, but right now Rex Mundi is really becoming a disappointment to me.