Tag Archives: noir

Fables: Legends in Exile

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Another new graphic novel series? I can assure you, it’s all true. For, y’know, extremely relative values of new that seem in fact to reflect things published years ago. My initiation into the format only occurred within the last couple of years[1], though, so running behind kind of goes with the territory. The Fables series got on my radar via Amazon recommendations, much as with Dorothy and for that matter Ex Machina. Of my recent new series, this is certainly the one I’m the most satisfied with.

The idea of storybook characters all jumbled together in New York, while obviously cool enough to take the risk on (since I did buy it), seemed potentially fraught with peril. Apparently, they all come from different worlds (which I will choose to call dimensions) that were one after another attacked by an Adversary (who is thusfar shrouded in mystery), and by the time they realized that there was true danger afoot, they had no remaining options but to flee from their worlds to this one, which the Adversary has no apparent interest in. Being the stuff of fables, they’re immortal, so while they all came from different storybook dimensions to start with, they’ve had several hundred years on earth as Legends in Exile to properly mingle and form interrelationships. The upshot of all that background being that the interactions were rich and often funny, with distaste, attraction, working relationships, and even unlikely friendships all laid bare. The book was equal parts Storybook Melrose Place and Fable Noir.

Which raises my other extreme like for the book. The mystery was, if moderately simple, plotted quite well and made good use of the setting. Bigby Wolf[2], the sheriff of Fabletown, is confronted with murder most foul when Jack[3] reports that his girlfriend Rose Red is missing and her apartment covered in blood. Once Deputy Mayor Snow White[4], the victim’s sister, insists on including herself in the investigation and the rich and powerful Bluebeard is fingered as a potential suspect, all the trappings of a Humphrey Bogart noir are in place, and the only thing left to do is lean back and enjoy the ride. There are a lot of possibilities for the series, since the available characters cast such a wide net. I figure, if I get more volumes in the noir vein, well and good, and if not, the creators have already proven they have the chops to do good things with the premise, at least.

[1] Well, except for Sandman, which I’m prepared to call a special case.
[2] That name still gives me the giggles, even now.
[3] of “and the Beanstalk” fame
[4] whose surpassing loveliness is storied… er, whose fabled… Dammit. The point is, she’s a looker with legs that just wouldn’t quit and a smoldering fire in her eyes that told me she’d seen enough of the world to know that it wasn’t as pretty as the stories said it would be.

Fool Moon

I cannot decide if my love for the Harry Dresden books comes from their being objectively awesome, or from them being in such sharp contrast to the Anita Blake books. I mean, sex happens, but it’s dealt with tastefully, with soft-focus lensing and quick cut-aways, and far more importantly, it is not the constant focus of Harry’s regular magic-wielding, mystery-solving lifestyle. Which leaves him some time to think about wielding magic and solving mysteries. Is the prose with which he wields his magic, the world-building in which he solves his mysteries, the characterizations that come into play when he interacts with the other, er, characters really any better than most books I read? I’m going to guess that probably not, and yet I could grab the next three that I currently own and read them all in a row without getting the least bit tired of it. Um, unless the plot suddenly changes into a situation where he’s banging the vampire chick Bianca like a drum and his cop friend starts hating him and he wallows in angst by taking up with a werewolf pack? Don’t be sexy, Harry! It’s not worth it!

But also I guess there are some specifics about Fool Moon, which book is the one I just read? Werewolves, then. It turns out that there are about 5 different ways for a person to change into a wolf in Dresden’s world, and each of them with a different name. Which sounds like pretty extraneous information to have at my fingertips, except that someone with a lupine MO has been committing murders, and Harry has to figure out who and how so he can stop them from killing again! See, and I’m still not convinced why I should love these as much as I do. We’ll assume it’s not just by comparison, and go from there. I figure the two factors that the author really has working for him are multiple interesting characters (the cop chick, the mob guy, and the skull all leap to mind) and Dresden’s voice. I’m genuinely interested in everything that Harry Dresden has to say, so this first person narration thing is like the world’s best gravy on top of a mysterious chicken fried steak. The substantial food part may be really good, or it may be mediocre, but the gravy is so great that I have no way of knowing!

Blaze

For the first time in a reasonably large number of years, I’ve missed a buy-on-release-date book. I mean, I’ve chosen to wait occasionally, but this one I didn’t even know about until months later. Richard Bachman isn’t a prolific author, but of the people who write in the spare modern style brought to us by Hemingway, he’s one of the only ones that I’m willing to read at all, much less as soon as I can get my hands on the book in question.

First written in 1973 but only recently edited and published, Blaze tells the story of brain-damaged career criminal Clayton Blaisdell’s plan to kidnap the infant heir of a New England shipping magnate. So, you know, caper story with a pretty unusual twist, which is all fine and well if I was particularly into caper stories. For the most part, the caper itself was workmanlike, entertaining without being particularly special. What really worked was the character study of our unlikely hero, Blaze. For all that he’s the criminal of the piece and in the midst of some huge mistakes, he’s an extremely sympathetic character. Sure, he had a horrible childhood and missed every good break that came his way through no fault of his own, but it’s not that I was pouring out whiny liberal sympathy for him. He’s genuinely plucky and upbeat, downright likable, while his antagonists mostly range from neutral to distasteful. I wanted to see the good things that had passed him by before start happening now, even if they would be coming from the wrong side of the books this time.

Speaking from a fan’s standpoint, it’s interesting to see a sprinkle of elements that would be spread throughout King’s[1] later works: names and places used differently in the long run, but recognizable here as half formed elements of what they would become. Still, this isn’t a persuasive factor, just interesting. The book ranks solidly in the middle of King’s oeuvre. Still, that ends up as “guaranteed to enjoy”, for me.

[1] It would appear that the jig is up, even for those who don’t mouse-over.

Storm Front

By right of expectation, this should be a graphic novel review. I’ve been pretty darn faithful about the alternating thing, and such. But then I went on vacation, in which there was a beach, and more importantly, an ocean. Also there were friends and children and laughing and a board game. And also, because I live inside myself so much and it’s worthwhile to reiterate the things that really affect me, on a bone-deep level, there was still an ocean. She had waves and a loud voice, and we had a friendly tussle in which she made sure to show me she could kill me at any moment without a thought, but that was only momentary and to demonstrate who was who; like I said, it was friendly. And just for me, flying in the face of all established knowledge on local weather patterns, she put a storm on the horizon.

If I wanted to get all cute and literary, I could use that as a segue into discussing the razor’s edge that Chicago wizard Harry Dresden lives on, between doing minor readings and finding lost objects for people and working freelance for the local police department on the stranger deaths, providing them with nudges of information here and there about things they don’t and couldn’t understand about the demonic underbelly of their world on one side of the razor, and on the other, that selfsame world of demons, black magic, monsters under far too many beds, and a council of wizards in charge of policing it all and keeping the bad guys at bay or even dead, which would probably make up for a lot of the badness if only they didn’t have reason to believe that Harry Dresden himself was one of those bad guys who they need to be poised to take care of after just a momentary magic-ethical lapse on his part. Magic is an ocean, I’d say, both wondrous and deadly by turns. Luckily, I have no interest in that kind of high-minded pandering to the gods of metaphor, and just wanted to mention what a great vacation I had, and how much I love the ocean and kind of need a permanent private beach that I could go to whenever I had the urge.

All that said, the image does have pretty good legs, especially when you consider that the incoming Storm Front is what marks Harry’s first real challenge. I mean, besides the ones in his mysterious and barely scratched past, of course. Also, ha, “pretty good legs” works really well when you consider that the book is all detective-noir, sheets of magical flame and summoned demons aside. (If I were a better, or at least more confident, writer, I’d have let that last image stand (ha!) on its own, without putting up the big neon sign pointing at it. But don’t look at me like that; you know you loved it.) So, anyway, there’s this guy, Harry Dresden, right? And he has a bleak past that won’t quite let go of him, and his job as a wizard slash consultant, and a friendly skull named Bob who helps him out sometimes, and relatively non-angsty problems with the ladies. And now he’s got himself caught up in a gang war, multiple homicides, magic drugs on the streets, police who are starting to have reason to suspect him as being complicit in some or all of these problems, and that bleak past isn’t really going anywhere, either. He’s more mature and less sex-obsessed, but it’s difficult at this early date not to find myself drawing comparisons to the Anita Blake series at its beginning. Rumor has it that they will ultimately find different directions to travel, which relieves me to no small end.

Also: I just realized I got caught up in my metaphor description of the vacation, and forgot to explain about the graphic novels. The thing is, I’m trying to take slightly better care of them than the only decent care I take of paperbacks, and bringing them all packed and luggaged and such to an ocean full of sand and water didn’t seem like a successful way to pursue that goal. Thusly, they were left at home. And now you know!