Ultimate Comics Ultimates – Volume 2

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I have previously pointed out that the current Ultimates run has been turning the dial to 11, and I think that has been true of the Ultimate series[1] in general since pretty much Magneto’s Ultimatum and on forward. Even the most laid-back of the current storylines, surrounding Spider-Man, has had a major character death in the not-too-distant past. Meanwhile, this particular episode has reached a conclusion of sorts, although not without multiple devastating nuclear strikes and a more-divergent-than-usual final outcome. And I’ll admit, however much I may have complained that the Ultimate line is working a little too hard to achieve the appearance of a full-throttle, all stories have major consequences! approach to things, it is nice to not be familiar with what’s coming next like I used to be during the first decade of that run.

As far as the current conclusion, I’m hopeful that something useful will finally be made of the main villain, whose identity I have been trying to keep quiet over the last few reviews; as things stand currently, all I have is a question mark about whether I’m expected to believe his beef with humanity (and the Ultimates in particular) is as straight-forward as it seems[2] and a smaller question mark as to what precisely occurred in his final scene of the book. Also, Tony Stark? Still cool.

[1] There is a definite downside, Marvel of ten years ago, in having one letter to distinguish between your current world-building / imprint and a team of heroes that reside within that world. I’m a little amazed I haven’t complained about this before.
[2] Because yes, I will be extremely disappointed if the most powerful Ultimate Comics villain since Galactus is only a villain because he was feeling butt-hurt and didn’t get over himself. That right there is a massive character shift with no provided explanation. (Ironically, if this were regular Marvel, I would completely believe it. That guy has always been a dick.)

Northstar Rising

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I went with a Deathlands book to ease myself into reading not-The-Wheel-of-Time, and I have to say, it was a solid choice. (The other initial possibility was Dresden Files.) See, while I had no problem returning from screen to paper, I had a huge problem reading a book that didn’t have Rand in it. Not him specifically, but I’m not kidding either; for pretty much the first half of Northstar Rising, everything about it felt subtly wrong, like I was reading a fake book that someone was trying to convince me was the real thing.

Eventually I settled in, and this one is every bit as good as the others, though I am starting to have minor problems with the series. For one thing, the titles? Chosen seemingly at random lately. I’ll admit that they went to Minnesota, which is in the north. But otherwise, they hung out with cryogenically frozen doctors (who are a touch on the stereotyped side, alas) and giant ant swarms and vikings and barrels of radioactive waste. You know, like you do when it’s the nuclear devastated wastelands of America a hundred years in the future.

Then again, I cannot really say what I’d have named it instead, there being no common theme to pull the various events of the book together. On the other hand, they broke formula a little, and that’s probably good news. Like I say, minor problems. Certainly nowhere near enough to make me put away the mind candy.

Evil Dead

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In a way, I’m disappointed by Evil Dead‘s prologue scene, since it removes the possibility of the film being a nightmare metaphor for facing and exorcising one’s demons. I mean, no, that’s not fair. It’s still a metaphor for that, but I wish I was able to believe that was true internally to the story instead of only externally, and the prologue is the line between those possibilities.

Metaphor aside, Evil Dead is a reasonably faithful adaptation of Sam Raimi’s original 1981 flick. Five friends head out to a cabin in the woods[1], find and foolishly read the Book of the Dead sitting in the basement, and then some fragment of hell breaks loose, the trees get frisky, and people start getting dismembered. I’m sure there are movies I’ve seen with more blood in them, but I’m hard-pressed to remember one. I know for a fact I’ve seen films with more gore, if only because nobody spilled their intestines. Still, though, I don’t think I’ve seen any movie that has as many things going into and especially being pulled out of someone’s body. So, that’s a claim to fame, I guess? At the least, you know what to expect now.

The acting (except for maybe the blonde chick) was above average, the effects were impressive (especially if you unfairly compare them against the intervening three decades[2] and more than an order of magnitude smaller budget of the original), and the soundtrack was pretty darn good. You could do worse for a horror outing and you could do a hell of a lot worse for a remake outing. …but seriously, who sees movies because they’re remakes?

[1] Not a Cabin in the Woods, though the influences of the original on that very fine movie are easy to spot.
[2] God help us.

A Memory of Light

For the past twenty years, which it to say, about as long as it takes to grow a human, I have been reading the Wheel of Time. For the past nine months, which is to say, about as long as it takes to gestate a human, I have been reading nothing except[1] the Wheel of Time. As of sometime shortly after I finish this review, those days have ended, I guess. It’s pretty hard to think past that, so far.

This also marks the end of the Kindle experiment. After going more than eight months of just that little screen, I picked up and read a physical book again. And let’s not kid around, A Memory of Light is a monster of a book. So, how was the adjustment? It sucked having to find light in the dark instead of the light being built in right there. And it sucked having to lug around such a huge beast of a thing instead of a thin rectangle that fits in my pocket and holds more than enough books to choke a zorse. And, call me Luddite however you will, it was a relief to be turning pages and not having the words vanish mid-screen when I turned back to the open surface after a few minutes of distraction by work or whatever. I don’t know if it’s that the ritual act is subtly different and I missed it, or what. But I am quite sure I’m not finished with legacy paperbooks yet. (Not to worry, though, the Kindle is still 100% awesome for re-reads and Dresden Files paperbacks that have lately been manufactured using non-Euclidean geometries that hurt my brain.)

And there’s the story inside the book. See, I do not think there will be spoilers here, just sensory impressions. Nonetheless, I make no promises depending upon your sensitivity. Let’s see… First, I’m glad it was three books. The first two books could have been combined into one monster, but this deserved to be separate. It was not the same story, it was not the same stage of story, and although between them they probably did not need three entire books’ worth of pages to tell the last of what Jordan left behind, they probably did need two and a half.

I just had to delete half a paragraph (and an accompanying footnote!) when I realized that it was incredibly spoilerish in its implication. You probably don’t need to know that, but if the rest of this seems a little thin, that’s why. But, here’s what left of what I can say: A Memory of Light is a very apt book title. This is such a grim story. It should be; with terms like ‘the Last Battle’ and ‘the Dark One will break the Wheel of Time and remake it in his own image’ floating around, if your world isn’t on the brink of total destruction by the last book in your series, then you’ve been writing the previous books wrong. Anyway, my point is this. There were ways I might have hated the way the story ends (The Great Lord’s victory not being among them, and I’m not just saying that in an effort to avoid the appearance of spoilers[2]), but none of them came to pass. Which is to say, I can unreservedly recommend that people who have not made up their minds should go ahead and finish. There are a couple of bad parts to the story, but it is, taken as a whole, a solidly good story that I’m glad I read and that I do not think has let me down, not after either the nine months or the twenty years.

And, okay, one or two spoilers behind the cut.

[1] I mean, yes the internet, and yes some of the articles in Playboy. But no books, no comics, no graphic novels.
[2] Though I find that secondary outcome decidedly convenient!

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Towers of Midnight revisited

Yeah, it’s fair to say that I really don’t know what I’m doing at this point. My previous review was right, and that covers almost anything non-spoilerish that I am able to say. It’s a big exciting brick of a book with very few flaws that aren’t related to my personal sadness with being so very near the end now. It sets up a big ending, it shows a world in as much turmoil as I think I’ve ever seen a world be in, and it leaves me as worried for the outcome as I have ever been in long-form fiction, which actually says quite a lot considering the decades of snickering about how no major character can ever die.

And you know what? The spoilers I would have discussed all come down to the second half of the previous sentence anyhow, so why bother with actually spelling out said spoilers at this point? So, to be clear: I haven’t read the last book yet, and so of course I might change my mind. But if it’s anything like this one, I’m going to be impressed with it. If it’s too much like this one, I might hate it, but not because of any lack of skill or care for the plot. (Man, it would be a hell of a thing if I discover after 20 years that the story Jordan has been telling is not actually the story I want to hear.)

The Gathering Storm revisited

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You know, my experience reading The Gathering Storm has not been much different this time than last. Most everything was the same, but a little bit more muffled[1]. Egwene was every bit as cool and seemed less troublesomely preachy, Mat seemed less wrong, Rand was… well, okay, that’s a difference. I don’t precisely recall how I felt about him last time, but I know that this time all I felt was pity. And that’s really all I have to say about the things that happened in the book.

Yet the experience of reading it, that I have a bit more to natter on about. Every time I opened the book[2], I plunged ahead voraciously, for hours at a time. And I’m quite apt to do the same tomorrow as I continue the early chapters of this book’s second half. But every time I didn’t have it open, I would stare at it in trepidation, thinking about how little is left. (Well, also, the book was telling me that. I know I knew how bad things are in Randland, but it seems that watching it happen all in a row is actively horrifying. How do you defeat an enemy whose very existence is so antithetical to, well, everything, that reality fails the closer he gets? And, y’know, how did he get here and why does he exist in the first place? There are a lot of open questions to be addressed in the finale, is my point. But all of this is a digression.) And this is the essential tug-of-war I’m dealing with. I want to read something else. I want to be done. I want to know what happens. I want the false comfort of believing there will always be more of this story left to tell. I want to live in this book forever, just like I want to live in…. okay, at least a few other books that I love, anyway, just like I want to live in those ones forever. It doesn’t make sense, obviously, the logical conflict at least and probably the rest of it.

I guess my point is, I’m afraid of change.

Well, what else is new?

[1] I’m not sure how to describe what I mean. Maybe everything was a little less immediate instead. Probably all I’m saying is, “I knew what was going to happen, so there weren’t as many surprises”, but it doesn’t feel like I’m getting it right when I say that.
[2] Even more than the protection and the built-in light, what I think I appreciate most about my Kindle case is that act of flipping the cover open to read it. The touchstone to how books used to be is of great comfort to me, and not only because it gives me an excuse to make otherwise dishonest claims.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

The last thing I did lately was run through the most recent entry in the Modern Warfare trilogy. (You can see from the awkward construction of the previous sentence that I have no idea if it really was a trilogy or if I should expect more to come.) They have a clever thing in the opening credits where it starts as WW3 and then the first W flips to become an M (and their acronym). Because, you see, it picks up immediately after (or, really, probably a few moments before) the end of the second game, in which World War 3 has well and truly blossomed.

The other thing about Modern Warfare 3 is that it took me several minutes to recall just now exactly how it ended, and if said ending would actually count as a completed story sequence. The answer is yes, but my inability to immediately remember what happened a mere eight days after I finished the game tells the rest of the story of this review for me. It was a perfectly adequate game, identical in play to the previous volumes, but without quite the punch and edge-of-my-seatness the others had. Maybe it’s because I’m overly jaded. It was cool and shocking the first time a viewpoint character in the game died, but after three such games, they had taught me not to get attached to anyone, and it turns out that this may be a problem in a first-person game, the inability to be attached to your own damn eyes and ears.

But still, from a purely narrative point of view, yes, I am satisfied by the complete story told in these games. Not, ultimately, as satisfied as I was with the Halo series, but pretty satisfied indeed. Will I later play the Black Ops games as well? Just maybe! It’s nice to have a game I can start and finish over the course of one or two weekends.

Knife of Dreams revisited

There are some distinct differences in my opinions of Knife of Dreams between the last time I read it and today. Well, okay, more like “…and a week or two ago.” But still, the differences have stuck with me. All of them are down to my knowledge acquired between now and then, of course. The book certainly has not changed, but I have.

One change is a matter of expectations. I made some notes about Perrin’s character development that I stand by for now, because, sad as it seems, I really remember almost nothing about what happened in the next two books. Which is to say, books I’ve already read may have satisfied my complaints, and yet I wouldn’t know it. But except for that, a lot of things happened that, yep, my opinion has subtly shifted over the intervening seven years. I’ve already made the point several times, I think, over this reread that the two year gaps between each book harmed the flow of the story a great deal, in peoples’ perceptions at least. This time, that realization has unlocked another thought in my head, as to how Jordan uses prophecy and how a decade on rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan may have come between my understanding of the plotting of these books and the author’s actual intent. My example, which of course contains spoilers, will fall in a footnote[1] below the cut.

But the other change related to my knowledge of reality. See, a few years after the book came out, its author died. I am still grateful that there are more books to read and review, but knowing that this was the last book in the series entirely written by Robert Jordan of course changed the way I felt about it, this second time. For one thing, I’ve slowed down a lot again. Part of that, I’m sure, is because I’m also drawing near the end of the story, and I don’t want to leave. I know I’ve not wanted to leave stories before, but this is the most immersed I have ever been, and a brief depressive period is bound to follow. But so be it, I’m still just as grateful as I was  three sentences ago that it didn’t end in 2005, incomplete, as it might well have done.

Still, despite my sadness, there’s a last thing different between this book and all the others. It’s the first one I’ve only read twice (at least, in years upon years), and it was good to note that there were still a few scenes where my blood got pumping and my sense of wonder kicked up a notch and I was genuinely excited, even having a decent idea of the outcome, to see what would happen next. Because, despite some missteps, Jordan really was an incredible author, and I’m still sad that he’s gone. I hope I don’t forget that, now the story’s over and done. Because the original versions of the final entries in his series are not the only ones collected in Morpheus’ library of unwritten books.

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A Good Day to Die Hard

The other movie I’ve seen lately is the newest Die Hard. You may recall (or at the least, I do) that I really liked the last one. I am sad to say that I liked this one quite a lot less. But I have a good reason. I mean, I have easy reasons too. It’s all about the chases and the explosions and feels more soulless than most Die Hard movies have, and that would be the easy way out. But there are troubling plot and character failures that make me wonder if it’s possible to make another good sequel in this series.

So, each movie has escalated John McClane’s talent for surviving the wrong place at the wrong time. And that’s fair, as far as it goes. But… as of the last movie, he was escalated enough to do unbelievable things, because, as I said then, he didn’t really have a choice in the matter and he had the knowledge that not-quite-as-crazy things had worked before. The problem with A Good Day to Die Hard is that McClane, at this point, believes his own hype. The plot leads him to Moscow, to determine why his son stands accused of murder. So when he shows up, tall and proud and sure of his own importance, every inch the cowboy Alan Rickman once accused him of being and eager to be in the wrong place at the wrong time where before it had always been bad luck and fate, well, naturally he ruins all manner of secret spy plans that had been in place. And I’m okay with that, it’s fine drama!

Well. It’s fine drama if there are consequences to his actions. Instead, cleaning up the mess without any hint of an apology (or even a sense that he fucked things up in the first place) is the perfect father-son bonding activity. And this, in a nutshell, is my doubt about any possible continuance. You can make a movie with an overly prideful John McClane stumbling and having to get back to his feet. But John McClane the bull, smashing everything in the china shop and being greeted as the conquering hero upon his exit? That is not a metaphor I find myself perfectly comfortable with, after the past decade or so. But, political metaphor or not, the straightforward reading leaves him superhuman and undefeatable for the first time. Without some concern about the outcome, is it really worth watching?

John Dies at the End

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You guys. I am so embarrassed about this right now, and it’s going to be probably the worst review ever, but… I’m like four reviews behind, and at this point I can no longer separate out John Dies at the End the movie from the book that spawned it. At least, not in a meaningful way that I would use to form a discussion about it. In a way, that’s good; I mean, it wasn’t so awful as to make me wonder why they made the movie at all. In another way, it’s certainly bad as it did not transcend its source.

No, you know what? That’s not bad by default, I’m completely wrong about that. It’s great when an adaptation sees into the heart of the source material and creates something new, that part is true. But there’s no shame in making people remember, giving vision to words on a page, and broadening the audience. Which is the thing about this one: I hadn’t read the book in (apparently) six years, so I didn’t remember a lot, but every time some new event occurred[1], it all came right back, and yeah, I can dig that.

The plot is sufficiently strange that I’m not sure it’s worth explaining, except I have a thing that depends upon you knowing a little. See, there’s this drug on the street called Soy Sauce, which gives its users the ability to see through the barriers of time and space. And, okay, that’s pretty awesome, except that some users die horribly or are attacked by the things they can see that nobody else can. Everything else is a spoiler, except you should know that David and John are the two people standing in the way of all of this certain doom.[2]

The point of all of this is that I learned a very important lesson. See, I saw the movie at the Texas Theatre, which is known solely for being where they caught Lee Harvey Oswald, y’know, later that day. It has been somewhat remodeled, and now includes a bar. And the bar had a special related to the movie of the hour, the Soy Sauce Shot. (Which generated the first of the flashback memories I mentioned earlier.) That’s all exciting and fun, right? So we went for it (Jez and I), and… so, um, it was vodka and soy sauce[3]. Cheap vodka. It…. it tasted about like you’d expect. My lesson, if it was not entirely clear, is this: don’t drink a shot made of cheap vodka and soy sauce.

[1] Prime example: the meat monster.
[2] Trust me, it would be certain doom. Also, you may recognize John’s name from somewhere, so I will elaborate that David is the narrator.
[3] The sauce, not the reality-altering drug.