Year: 2008

Tim Powers: The Stress of Her Regard

The Stress of Her Regard, by Tim Powers
The Stress of
Her Regard

One stormy night in 1816, shortly before his wedding, physician Michael Crawford places his wedding ring on a statue, and so becomes ties to one of the nephelim, a race of inhuman vampires who predate humanity on Earth. The morning after his wedding, he wakes to find his bride Julia horrifically torn to bits in their locked room, and he’s forced to flee the life he knew to escape the hangman’s noose. With the aid of poet John Keats, he heads across the English Channel to France where he encounters Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley and Lord Byron, and becomes deeply embroiled in a fight to fight off the creature which haunts him. He’s pursued by Julia’s twin sister Josephine, who gains a nephelim lover of her own.

Taking place between 1816 and 1822, The Stress of Her Regard is a shadow history centered around the lives of the three romantic poets, all of whom died young and whose families also suffered from early deaths. Powers uses the nephelim to explain both their artistic prowess as well as the grim elements of their lives: The nephelim attach themselves like haunting spirits to humans and (perhaps as a side-effect) imbue them with certain skills and even with long life, but the nephelim are also jealous creatures who try to kill all who are loved by their human beloved.

There are many recurring elements of a Tim Powers novel: The main character is physically mutilated and forced to abandon the life they knew; there’s a leap in time between the first and second halves of the book; and the plot culminates in a mystical ritual which goes wrong somehow (yet often succeeds nonetheless). The main character is usually an everyman – albeit one with some skills of his own – who ends up as the lynchpin character amidst towering (or at least more knowledgeable) figures. All of these elements are present here, and while you could argue that this makes Powers’ books a little repetitive, his intricate plotting and clever twists and turns make each story unique. Clearly he just enjoys writing about certain dramatic situations.

A common theme of Powers’ novels is being torn between the temptations offered by the opposing forces, and one’s own well-being or loved ones. This conflict is as clear here as it’s ever been, with Crawford deeply succumbing to the nephelim’s influence in the first half, and then severely tempted to invite them back – despite the ruin it would deliver on his life and friends – in the second. He sees what the nephelim do to other people, even when – as they do for Byron – they provide a vital piece of meaning in their lives. Crawford goes through hell to get rid of his succubus, but constantly feels the temptation to invite it back, and thus can’t pass judgment on others who succumb. For the love of his friends, he drags himself through further hell in order to help them. Although Powers’ narrative is sometimes verbose enough to take the reader out of the moment, it’s still powerful stuff through the sheer aggregation of tension and emotion.

Stress wraps up with a satisfying climax and touching denouement, bringing the lives of the famous supporting characters to their historical closes. It should please any Powers fan, and is a strong fantasy/suspense tale for anyone else.

This Week’s Haul

  • Justice Society of America #20, by Geoff Johns, Alex Ross, Dale Eaglesham, Nathan Massengill, Jerry Ordway & Bob Wiacek (DC)
  • The New Teen Titans Archives vol 4 HC, by Marv Wolfman, George Pérez & Romeo Tanghal (DC)
  • Terra #1 of 4, by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti & Amada Conner (DC)
  • Top Ten Season Two #2 of 5, by Zander Cannon & Gene Ha (DC/America’s Best)
  • Gigantic #1 of 5, by Rick Remender & Eric Nguyen (Dark Horse)
The New Teen Titans Archives vol. 4 When compiling a list of the most significant books during the bronze age of comics (roughly 1970-1990), Marv Wolfman & George Pérez’s New Teen Titans would certainly make the top ten, a little bit behind Chris Claremont & John Byrne’s Uncanny X-Men. The two books (and rumor is that Titans was intended to be DC’s answer to Marvel’s X-Men) brought stronger characterization and soap opera elements to mainstream superhero comics, essentially taking what Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko had done at Marvel in the 60s to a higher level of sophistication. As such, both series are worth reading for their historical import, but also because they both hold up pretty well today.

This week DC released the fourth volume of the Titans Archives, covering issues #21-27, which is roughly the midpoint of the Wolfman/Pérez run (Pérez left the series after #47, although he returned occasionally thereafter, but the book wasn’t the same without him). What really makes the series work is that it’s about a group of former teenage sidekicks who are growing up; rather than being 11 or 12, they’re now 19 or 20 and are coming into their own. This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: The original Robin was only going to become a man once, Kid Flash was only going to figure out how to come out of the shadow of his mentor once. Into this mix they dropped three brand-new characters from significantly different backgrounds and forged a team out of them.

This particular volume is something of a mixed bag: The first story involves the cult leader Brother Blood, who I never felt really worked as a villain due to being just too heavy-handed. The third story was notable for dealing with teenage runaways and the underworld they can often fall into. It does a pretty good job of both surveying many different characters’ fates with a central story holding it together, but again it feels a little too heavy-handed. But it was cutting-edge at the time, the sorts of issues (drugs, prostitution, minors getting involved with the mob) which had previously been verboten in comics. It’s the middle story which really shines, the longest story since the 6-issue one which launched the series: The alien Starfire’s evil sister comes to Earth and kidnaps her, and the Titans chase after her and get involved in the ongoing civil war in her home solar system. It’s satisfying as a science fiction adventure, but it also cements Robin and Starfire’s growing romantic relationship, while providing insight into her background. It’s still a fun read even today, at least as long as you ignore the political situation of the Vega system, which mostly makes little sense.

This was the point where George Pérez was making his transition from a Jack Kirby imitator to become George Pérez, with his outstanding sense of anatomy, unusually wide range of character faces, and detailed costumes and backgrounds. The changes occur almost before your eyes, and he’s now only about a year away from becoming the artist we know today, but he’s not quite there yet, and Romeo Tanghal’s inks – although they’d benefit nearly any other artist working at the time – are starting to feel not quite subtle enough to bring out the best in the pencils.

All-in-all, it’s a fine package, but the best was yet to come. Hopefully DC will keep going with these collections so we can get the whole run in hardcover.

Terra #1 Speaking of the Teen Titans, the volume above featured the first appearance of Terra, a Wolfman creation who was the pivotal character in the climactic story arc of his run with Pérez. Since then, as ComicVine’s entry on her says, she’s “probably one of the most retconned characters in the [DC Universe]”. She’s back this month, in a mini-series with yet another take on the character: This Terra is a cipher with the ability to telekinetically move the dirt and rock who protects the inhabitants below the Earth’s surface from intrusions from above – and vice-versa. In this first issue she gets in a little too deep and is rescued by Power Girl, who brings her to Doctor Mid-Nite who makes a surprising discovery about her identity. It’s a promising start, so we’ll see how it plays out.

It’s rare to see a female artist make it in mainstream superhero comics, so I’m always secretly rooting for them to hit it big, since I think it couldn’t help but be good for the industry. Unfortunately, it seems like there are only a few who make even a small impact in any decade: In the 80s there was Mary Wilshire and June Brigman, and in the 90s there was Jill Thompson.

In this decade we have Amanda Conner, who might be best known for drawing the sardonic graphic novel The Pro, and the Power Girl story in JSA Classified a few years ago. Terra may well end up being better than either of those. Conner’s strength is in facial expressions; she regularly composes pages with a series of panels from the same perspective which vary mainly in body language and expression, and they’re often the most memorable scenes in the issue. There are two such pages at the end of this issue. With the slightly cartoony edge to her style, reading this issue feels a little like reading a webcomic, yet it has a friendliness which sets it apart from the doom-and-gloom hyper-realism of many comics at DC these days.

The rest of this one ought to be fun.

Barack Obama and the Supreme Court

One thing I’m surprised didn’t get more attention during the Presidential campaign – honestly, I can’t recall it being mentioned more than in passing – is the impact the next President will have on the US Supreme Court. Consider the ages of the Justices now that Barack Obama has been elected:

  • John Paul Stevens, age 88
  • Ruth Bader Ginsberg, age 75
  • Antonin Scalia, age 72
  • Anthony Kennedy, age 72
  • Stephen Breyer, age 70
  • David Souter, age 69
  • Clarence Thomas, age 60
  • Samuel Alito, age 58
  • John Roberts (Chief Justice), age 53

Unfortunately 3 of the 4 more right-wing members of the court are age 60 or under. But I wonder if John Paul Stevens has been waiting for this election to retire, while the other 5 Justices are certainly at the age that they might consider retiring in the next four years the way Sandra Day O’Connor did. And if Obama wins reelection in 2012, well, it’s conceivable that he could end up with 4 or 5 or maybe even 6 appointments.

(Okay, honestly I expect Scalia will remain on the Court until he croaks, but we can hope, can’t we?)

Given the disastrous results of the Reagan and Bush appointments to the Court, it would be wonderful if Obama had the opportunity to transform it back into something more reasonable.

Mike Resnick: Santiago

Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future, by Mike Resnick
Santiago

Santiago is my first exposure to Mike Resnick’s writing. I think it first attracted my attention when I read about its sequel, The Return of Santiago, and the notion of a major figure in the political scene whose existence wasn’t actually verified intrigued me. I think I’d expected it to be similar to Jack McDevitt’s novel A Talent For War, which is one of my favorites.

Santiago is told like a folk tale, with each chapter headed by a four-line stanza from a poem written by a far-future scribe recording the figures on the inner frontier of the human Democracy. The inner frontier is just that, full of rogues and scoundrels and bounty hunters. Sebastian Nightingale Cain is one such bounty hunter, who picks up the trail of the notorious criminal Santiago and starts to follow it, with reporter Virtue MacKenzie tagging along hoping to get the story on the mythical figure. Cain wants to head off the Angel, another bounty hunter, who’s also after Santiago. Along the way they meet many colorful figures as they unravel the mystery.

Santiago is low in science-fictional “ideas content”, with only the standard array of faster-than-light starships, laser guns, and other boilerplate science fictional trappings. The story rests entirely on the characters and on the mystery of Santiago, and neither of them really grabbed me. The characters are pretty simplistic, although Cain’s bluster – which he’s earned the right to – is often amusing. I figured out who Santiago would be about half-way through, and was disappointed that that was the extent of the mystery. It’s not so much a bad story as just not a very deep story, and the folk tale storytelling approach isn’t really my cup of tea.

I like McDevitt’s approach to this sort of mystery more (although it has its flaws, too), and the melange of characters is similar to – though not as strong as – the set in the comic book GrimJack (which was originally published around the same time as this volume). Santiago has a certain folksy charm, but it was a little too simplistic for my tastes.

Election Day

I voted this morning. My polling place is 3 blocks from my house, so I always take a nice walk down there in order to vote and enjoy the weather. That one can take a “nice walk” there in early November is a clear sign that I live in the Bay Area and not in Wisconsin any longer. Anyway, there were 5 people in line when I got there, and I ran into both one of my neighbors and one of the guys I play Magic with. I guess we have a fairly quiet district. Or maybe everyone votes after work.

My political leanings are somewhere to the left of the mainstream Democratic party, but I’m not especially enamored with any of our small parties, so I typically vote party-line Democratic. I think Obama will make a pretty good President; the bar isn’t set real high for him to be our best President since LBJ. (I’m not hugely enamored of LBJ, either, but he was a President who did some great things and some awful things, which is still a step up from everyone since, who have generally been mediocre-to-awful.)

Although I voted party-Democratic in the national and state elections, I wasn’t real enthusiastic about doing so. I’ve been disappointed in the Pelosi/Byrd Congress, who haven’t really stood up to the Bushies. I’m not real fond of the California state legislature, either, although to be fair I think California’s state government is basically screwed: Federal mandates and an extremely-difficult-to-manage budget make it practically ungovernable except during boom times. The problems are partly structural (a 2/3 majority vote of the populace is required to raise taxes, and a 2/3 vote of the legislature is required to pass a budget), and partly because I think California is just too big and too diverse to govern at the state level. I think California would be better off if it were split into two states, probably along north/south lines. But that’ll never happen.

We had some interesting state propositions this time around:

  • I voted against the “anti-freedom” propositions, 4 (parental notification of minors seeking abortions) and 8 (outlaw gay marriage). These measures are both just plain evil, rolling back freedoms and rights for many citizens. I think anyone who supports Prop 8 should also have their right to marry revoked – it seems only fair. I suspect 8 will fail, but I’m concerned that 4 will pass.
  • Prop 1 is a bond measure for high-speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I voted against. I generally oppose bond measures as less efficient than passing new taxes, but I will occasionally vote for a county bond measure with a critical goal in mind. I also don’t think high-speed rail between the two cities will be more than a novelty. Plus, I’m very concerned with what it would do to the rail corridor on the SF peninsula, where I live, which hasn’t been worked out. I don’t know how this one will turn out, though.
  • Prop 5 reduces sentencing for certain nonviolent crimes, while Props 6 and 9 strengthen law enforcement and impose tougher penalties. I think we lock up far too many people (over 1% of the US population is presently incarcerated) with far too little attention paid to rehabilitation, so I voted for 5 and against 6 and 9. (I suspect 5 will fail, 9 will pass, and 6 could go either way.)

County measure B is a tax increase measure to bring BART to San Jose. I’m really on the fence on this one, as I think BART is a good system which is well-run, but which is also very expensive due to poor design at its inception. I like it a lot better than “heavy rail” alternatives than CalTrain, though. But it’s expensive to extend. I ended up voting yes, although I suspect the measure is going to fail.

Anyway, I’ll be watching the results tonight. Five Thirty Eight is currently projecting a 98.9% chance of an Obama victory. One of their more interesting posts recently has been What a McCain Victory Looks Like.

I’m not as excited as some Democrats about an Obama Presidency, mainly because I think the Bushies have left the country in such horrific shape that the next President is going to have some huge hurdles to overcome just to hold things together. If the Bushies hadn’t screwed things up so soundly then I think it would be a much more exciting time. As it is, I’m just hoping things can turn around soon enough that the Democrats don’t lose control of Congress in 2010.

Still, getting the Repugnicans out of the Oval Office is a great first step forward.

Jay Lake: Mainspring

Mainspring, by Jay Lake
Mainspring

Jay Lake is one of the current generation of SF writers who I heard about through word-of-mouth on the Internet,. Mainspring is his first novel, and also my first exposure to his writing.

It’s a “fantastic alternate world” story, in that it takes place on an Earth where the British Empire is ascendant and America is merely one of its provinces, but where magic is real, and the world is bisected by a giant wall around the equator. Our hero, Hethor Jacques, is a young apprentice clockmaker in New Haven, Connecticut who receives a visitation from the angel Gabriel. Gabriel tells him that the mainspring of the world is winding down, and that he has to find the fabled Key Perilous and wind it up again, a feat the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the days of Christ.

At first unsure that it’s not just a dream, Hethor is convinced by the small silver feather that Gabriel leaves behind, and a visit to his master’s son, and then to a librarian at Yale, convinces him that his vision was real. Unfortunately, it also causes him to run afoul of his father’s dishonest and greedy sons, who force their father to turn him out onto the street. This sets Hethor on a path to Boston to petition the Queen’s representative for help. This, too, goes badly, but is a blessing in disguise as he ends up conscripted to one of Her Majesty’s airships (zeppelins), where he meets Simeon Malgus, who also has some knowledge of the strange doings of the world. The ship travels to the equator to extend the empire’s reach into the wild areas near the wall around the world.

The adventure goes badly for the ship, and Hethor is separated from them and carried to the top of the wall, where the gears on which the Earth travels around the sun are located. He and Malgus travel over the gears into the southern hemisphere where they become separated. But Hethor is taken in by some small aborigines who call themselves the Correct People. He forms a close bond with one of the People, Arellya, and the People accompany Hethor – whom they see as a messenger from God – on his mission as he forges ever southward in search of the Key Perilous and the Mainspring. He is opposed in this by William of Ghent, a sorcerer who served the regent in Boston, who believes that if the mainspring is allowed to wind down then it will signal a new age for mankind in freedom from the whims of heaven.

I generally prefer SF over fantasy, and this story leans more to the fantasy side than I’d expected. But my basic problem is that the story is a straightforward quest/travelogue: Hethor has a mission and he sets out to fulfill it even though he really doesn’t have much idea how to go about it, and this provides the impetus to send him across this quirky world that Lake has created and show us many things about it. Mixed in with this is Hethor’s coming-of-age tale. But despite putting these elements together in a single tale, I don’t think it manages to transcend any of them.

A travelogue is successful only to the extent that the world fascinates. The archetypal fantasy travelogue, of course, is The Lord of the Rings. There’s certainly some interesting stuff in this world, but throughout the story I kept wondering: Why is Earth on a gear? How did civilization evolve so closely with our own despite being separated from the southern hemisphere? What other effects did the bisecting of the Earth have? These questions are outside the scope of the story, but they’re the ones I was most interested in, which meant the travelogue had some big missing pieces for me.

Hethor’s narrative is okay, but doesn’t really distinguish itself in the annals of quest or coming-of-age stories. At first Hethor pursues his quest through some reasonable avenues, seeking out knowledgeable people to help and direct him, but as it progresses once he enters the southern hemisphere his attraction to the south pole doesn’t seem rational, even in the context of the story’s supernatural elements (why the south pole rather than the north?). His progress into manhood is decidedly quirky, especially once he meets Arellya and the Correct People. Lake certainly deserves props for the odd turns the story takes at this point, but overall it wasn’t a remarkable story.

Finally, I felt let down by the conclusion, as Hethor ends up leading a strange life after the conclusion of his quest, leaving everything he’d known behind. In a way it does make sense given where he ended up travelling to, but it wasn’t a very satisfying conclusion to the story.

Stories like this always make me feel like I’m missing some piece of the big picture, suspecting that there’s an allegory that I can’t see. There’s a lot of Christian imagery in Mainspring, and I have negligible understanding of Christianity other than the broad ways in which it’s influenced the culture I live in, so if Lake is trying to make points about Christianity through the story, they went entirely over my head. But if the book is what it appears to be to me, well, Lake shows considerable craftsmanship in his world-building, but the story just wasn’t very interesting to me.

This Week’s Haul

  • Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns, by Geoff Johns, Shane Davis & Sandra Hope (DC)
  • Legion of Super-Heroes #47, by Jim Shooter, Rick Leonardi & Dan Green (DC)
  • Madame Xanadu #5, by Matt Wagner, Amy Reeder Hadley & Richard Friend (DC/Vertigo)
  • Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #1 of 2, by Warren Ellis, Alan Davis, Adi Granov & Mark Farmer (Marvel)
  • The Immortal Iron Fist #19, by Duane Swierczynski, Travel Foreman & Russ Heath (Marvel)
  • Nova #18, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Wellington Alves & Scott Hanna (Marvel)
  • Thor #11, by J. Michael Straczynski, Oliver Coipel & Mark Morales (Marvel)
  • Hellboy: In The Chapel of Moloch, by Mike Mignola (Dark Horse)
  • The Boys #24, by Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson (Dynamite)
  • Project Superpowers #7 of 7, by Alex Ross, Jim Krueger & Carlos Paul (Dynamite)

Aside from this week’s spotlight reviews, I can recommend Nova as I always do – it’s a pretty satisfying Secret Invasion crossover – and Madame Xanadu, which is getting a little more interesting with each issue. I don’t think it’s selling very well, though, so I don’t know how long it will last.

Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns really has nothing to do with Final Crisis – which seems to be the case for many comics labelled as tie-ins – although it does state that it takes place between Final Crisis #1 and #2. It’s really an issue of Green Lantern, and is a prologue to the next storyline in that series. Having recently picked up the first three trade paperbacks of the current Green Lantern series, I’ve decided to start buying it regularly. Unfortunately, I’ve missed at least the last two major story arcs, which included “The Sinestro Corps War” and “Secret Origin”. The latter is yet another retelling of Hal Jordan’s origin, which seems pretty unnecessary at this point, but the Sinestro Corps stuff was pretty important. As far as I can tell, there are now both Green Lanterns and “yellow lanterns” who have been at war, and the Green Lantern Corps won, but at some cost. Apparently there are also red lanterns which we see here, and other colors of the spectrum who were implied by a two-page spread in DC Universe #0 a few months ago. While it’s a rather obvious idea, what matter is what writer Geoff Johns does with it.

The main Red Lantern is the ugly dude on the cover, who has the improbable name of Atrocitus (you’re kidding, right?), but he has a whole bunch of help, including a former Green Lantern, and they’ve all gone through some nasty ritual to become wearers of the red power rings, seeking to avenge themselves on both the Green Lantern Corps and the Sinestro Corps. Motivations are thin here, so I presume either they’ll be explained in the coming months, or were explained in a storyline I missed. So I’m taking that on faith. (This is an object lesson of why it can be hard to get into ongoing series well into their run; I’m a pretty smart guy, and I’ve been reading DC Comics for over 30 years, so I’m very familiar with the universe, but there’s a lot here that I can’t figure out. A recap would have been nice.)

The different corps each have a different insignia on their uniforms; the Red Lanterns have their lanterns turned on their sides, like a stylized “H” (for “hate”, presumably). I’m not sure what the Sinestro Corps’ insignia is supposed to symbolize.

Anyway, I enjoyed it enough that I’m sticking with my decision to read the regular series. I’m not sure what I think of Shane Davis & Sandra Hope’s artwork. The characters’ poses are pretty strong, but backgrounds are few. Something about the linework evokes the sketchy Image Comics/Rob Liefeld look, which isn’t a good thing, but overall the art is much better than that. I think it’s a step down from the series’ earlier artists (Carlos Pacheco, Ivan Reis), but I don’t know if Davis is going to be the new series penciller. Guess I’ll find out when the next issue of Green Lantern comes out.

Legion of Super-Heroes #47 The big news in Legion space this week is this widely reported interview with writer Jim Shooter about the end of his run on the Legion – the series is cancelled as of #50, but he’d intended the story to run through #54. While I’m a little suspicious of the dirt about his relationship with DC – whether it comes from Shooter or anyone else – because of Shooter’s somewhat strained reputation (deserved or not) within the industry, Shooter’s frank statements about his work on the series are interesting:

“But let’s focus on the real culprit – me. I guess what it really all comes down to is that my work wasn’t good enough to overcome all the small problems further down the line. If you’re out at first base, it doesn’t matter if you slide in at second.”

Shooter enjoyed writing scripts once again for a team he has become synonymous with over the years. “I’ve trained myself to think of [my scripts] as the end product, and I am content that I did the best I could.”

In some ways I’m sorry that he wasn’t able to execute his arc the way he’d intended, but honestly his tenure has been quite frustrating due to his approach to characterization. In past era characterizations of the Legionnaires have been his strength, but in this go-round we’ve seen some re-hashes (Lightning Lad’s shaky self-confidence as leader, Saturn Girl cheating on him with an edgier Legionnair), and a several characters who just seem embarrassing. Projectra has been at both extremes, with some interesting bits where she adjusts to life without her destroyed homeworld, but also her rather pathetic requests for Phantom Girl to read an old comic book to her. It seems like Shooter’s been trying too hard, especially to make the characters seem hipper and more futuristic, which seems at odds with Mark Waid & Barry Kitson’s strong run on the title.

This particular issue is a fill-in focusing on the long-dormant Brainiac 5/Dream Girl storyline from Mark Waid and Barry Kitson’s run: Dream Girl had died, but Brainy has been set on reviving her, and she visits him in her dreams. Here they consummate their relationship before it all goes wrong, mixed with a perplexing turn of events involving another member. I guess it was intended to be a 2-parter, but the second part got axed due to the cancellation. Nonetheless, Brainy’s characterization just doesn’t ring true to me, and I’m still trying to figure out what exactly Dream Girl’s status is, as she’s not alive, but then, where is she?

The issue also features the fill-in art team of Rick Leonardi and Dan Green, two artists who made their names at Marvel Comics in the mid-1980s. I’ve never been a big fan of either one, though. Green’s inks always seem to stiffen the pencils, and here over Leonardi the characters seem to resemble Frank Miller’s more recent work, with broad lips and flat noses, and occasionally some expressions that seem either flat or out-of-place. It doesn’t really work for the book.

I was pretty excited about Shooter’s run when it was first announced, but very little of it has worked for me, which has been quite disappointing. Well, only three more issues for him to fit in what he’d planned to do with the story. Maybe he’ll pull it out.

Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #1 Warren Ellis’ Astonishing X-Men run has been merely okay so far, and now there’s a two-issue series spinning out of the current story. A “ghost box” allows people to move between dimensions, and this series explores what some other dimensions’ encounters between the X-Men and the mysterious Subject X have involved. The first story herein provides insight into what Subject X is up to, while the second shows a steampunk X-Men (“The X Society”) confronting the character.

It’s obviously mainly an opportunity for Ellis to play with multiple dimensions, but it looks like it could provide some insight into what the X-Men will be dealing with in the main title. And I’m always a sucker for parallel worlds stories. So this one gets a thumbs up, and makes me a little more enthusiastic about where Ellis is going with this.

Project Superpowers #7 Project Superpowers has been Alex Ross’ latest project, but boy, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing. A bunch of old-time heroes are brought out of limbo into the present day, where they confront the one who imprisoned them (who thought he was doing the right thing), and also encounter a shadowy society who wanted them removed so they couldn’t interfere with it. The bad guys use reanimated corpses as soldiers to attack the heroes, but the whole fight – which spans three issues – really makes no sense at all. The ongoing redemption of the hero who imprisoned the others is trite, and overall the characterizations are extremely thin. The characters are many of those who appeared in Alan Moore’s Terra Obscura stories (they’re in the public domain), but Moore did so much more with them in those stories.

Moreover, this issue marks the end of chapter one, rather than being the conclusion to a complete series as I’d expected when I started buying it. I definitely am not coming back for chapter two.

I’ve enjoyed Alex Ross’ work when he’s been paired with a strong writer – Kurt Busiek or Mark Waid on Marvels and Kingdom Come – but I haven;t enjoyed any of the projects he’s done with Jim Krueger. Avengers/Invaders has been pretty good, but all of the pair’s series are paced very slowly and are so dark that they’re downright bleak. I think it’s time for me to accept that the pair write comics that just aren’t interesting to me.

J. Michael Straczynski has been working similar territory in The Twelve, and it’s much better than Project Superpowers. As maddening as I sometimes find Straczynski’s comics writing, The Twelve has been intriguing and character-driven, really the polar opposite of PS.

Vegas FTW

Debbi and I are back from a three-day trip to Las Vegas. This time around we went to meet up with her parents, who are spending the week there. We flew in Sunday and had an evening to ourselves before they arrived, and had our usual dinner at Bally’s Steakhouse, which was delicious as always. The waiters there are also terrific: Low-key yet entertaining. Ours introduced himself and said, “I’m here to bring you whatever you want.” Whatever we wanted was an appetizer of beef short rib ravioli, two steaks, sides of asparagus and onion rings, and a very rich chocolate hazelnut praline dessert. Oh, and two glasses of wine. We rarely indulge in these sorts of restaurants, but we do like this one.

Monday morning we gambled at the MGM Grand, where Debbi hit a royal flush on a nickel video poker machine:

Debbi's royal flush at video poker

Since it was a nickel slot it wasn’t the ginormous win it could have been, but still: It may be years before either of us hits another of those.

Deb’s parents, Jerry and Sis, arrived in the early afternoon. They’re not the big walkers that Debbi and I are – we regularly walk all over the Strip and are usually pretty pooped by the end of the day – so we cut back on our perambulations some. We did head up to Treasure Island where we had dinner at Kahunaville, an island-themed restaurant we discovered a few years back. They were a bit short on staff so we had a longer wait than we’d expected, but the food was still good. Jerry got a huge drink in a souvenir glass which we all shared, in addition to our own drinks.

Then we went to Harrah’s to see comedian Rita Rudner, who was very funny. I think I’ve seen a little of her in the past, but not a whole lot; her material focuses on gender differences. If you enjoy stand-up comedy, I recommend her.

We went to a few other hotels to see some of the sights. After brunch on Tuesday at the Bellagio cafe, we visited their conservatory, which right now has an autumn theme, like so:

The Bellagio conservatory in fall

We also went to the Flamingo where we looked in on their reserve of birds and fish, and their elaborate network of pools. Next time we go during warm weather (highs were in the 80s every day we were there) we might stay at the Flamingo and use their pools.

Debbi and Michael at the Flamingo hotel

On the gambling side of things, Debbi picked up Pai Gow Poker, since she’d been getting frustrated with not winning much at the slots or video poker machines. She thinks she’s found her game now, since she was winning or breaking even almost every time she played. I played too and finished up slightly at the game. We played a couple different (though slight) variants of the game, though they’re all basically the same. At one table a fellow sat down and made a big bet on the bonus circle and was dealt a royal flush, which won him five hundred dollars instantly! Yoiks!

For myself, I played regular poker, and had my winningest time ever in Vegas, even factoring in a poor first day there. I mostly crushed the low-limit games, which was satisfying since I ought to be able to crush those games at this point. I also played my first casino session of no-limit poker (at a 1/2 table) and won there, too, mainly on the strength of a 20-minute run of good hands. I saw a few tables where the betting was crazy before the flop, but this table was relatively sane: Some loose calls before the flop, but a fair respect for raises after the flop. I’ve been nervous about playing no-limit in the casino for a while, since I’m sure it can be very different from our fairly disciplined home games that I play in (for much lower stakes – on a really bad night you might lose all of $60, but that’s pretty rare), but this makes me think perhaps I should be playing no limit more often.

As usual, it was a trip of good food and good times. I think Deb’s parents had a good time, too. But certain furry friends were very happy to have us get back home:

Happy to be home

Congratulations to the Phillies

Congratulations to the Philadelphia Phillies and their fans (including my cow-orker Todd, and my sister and her son) on winning the World Series! After a 2-day rain delay (no, really!), they beat the Rays 4-3 in the clinching game, winning 4 games to 1.

The Phillies are a long-suffering team, having existed in the shadow of the Philadelphia Athletics until the A’s left town in the 50s. They’re the only team in existence with more than 10,000 (that’s ten thousand) losses. And they’ve won a single World Series in their 126-year existence, back in 1980. But they’ve been a pretty good team in this decade, and they finally managed to vault past the Mets and Braves and push through the playoffs for the win.

In a sign of my own prognosticative skills, I did pick the series to end in 5 games – but I predicted the Rays would run over the Phillies. Instead the Phils won both of Cole Hamels’ starts, won a close one in game 3 in a wild 9th inning, and brought out the big sticks to club the Rays in game 4.

As for the Rays, well, they’re going to be a good team for years to come, so I don’t feel too badly for them. They’re going to make things tough for my Red Sox. But it ought to make for some exciting games.