What I'm Reading: Roundup

Prince Valiant Volume 1: 1937-38 Absolutely beautiful over-sized hardcover of the first two years of the Sunday-only strip Prince Valiant. Drawn by Hal Foster, who brought an unprecedented skill and dedication to his work, this was an influence for decades on comics artists.

The strip still runs today, although unfortunately today's newspapers don't provide artists with the full-page canvases they had in the 1930s, when the Sunday comics were entertainment for a whole family and one of the main draws of the newspaper. According to the introduction, Hal Foster wrote over 1,000 pages of notes on the details of Prince Valiant's life, from childhood to death, and when he turned the strip over to an assistant in 1980 shortly before his death, was still working from that original plan. I wonder if the artist today, Thomas Yeates, who has done the strip since 2012, still uses those notes?

This was a Christmas gift. Provided I can find the funds and the time, I will definitely be getting Volume 2 at some point.

Squirrel Girl Marvel nowadays has a whole little corner of their universe dealing with the humorous adventures of quirky, lesser-known characters. She-Hulk, Patsy Walker (i.e. Hellcat), and Howard the Duck all have or have recently had fun series, and the creators seem inclined to let them interact. In fact, several of the characters hang out with each other in a building in Brooklyn where She-Hulk's alter ego, Jennifer Walters, has her law office and Howard the Duck has a detective agency.

Squirrel Girl is my favorite of these titles. SG is Doreen Green, a computer science student at Empire State University (where Peter Parker used to attend college). She can talk to squirrels and even has a squirrel tail she uses to help her fight bad guys (and when it's tucked up in her pants it gives her a bodacious booty). Doreen really prefers talking it out with villains and seeing if their are ways they can achieve their goals without using violence, but she's willing to take 'em on physically if that doesn't work out. It's really hilarious and appropriate for kids ages 5 to 100.

Mirror I recently started picking up this series drawn by Emma Rios, one of my favorite artists. It's set on an asteroid inhabited by humans who have been doing experiments on animals to breed warriors (or something) for a big war in space. But that's just the background, the emphasis is on the relationships between the humans and their intelligent human-animal hybrid creations, some of whom rebel against their human masters, some of whom fall in love with them, or serve them for their own reasons. Really, each character has his own unique motivations. Gorgeous, highly intricate artwork and interesting character work.

What I'm Reading: Game Time: A Baseball Companion

Game Time is a collection of essays by Roger Angell, who covers baseball for The New Yorker magazine. I believe most or all of these essays appeared in that magazine. They range from the very beginning of Angell's career in the early 1960s to 2002.

The essays are uniformly of high, even literary, quality, with an emphasis on personalities, lives, and relationships, rather than action on the field. I notice that even when he does cover action on the field, or over a season, it comes out like a story. It's a joy to read, although when reading a lot of essays back to back certain New-Yorker-ish tics come to the fore. For instance, everything is always fine: it was a fine game, so-and-so is a fine player, it was a fine play at third. And the reflex to get deeper, to figure out what it all means, on one or two occasions in the book becomes almost comical. But all in all, the writing is superb (or fine, even).

I think my favorite essay is one titled "Distance" from 1980, which is mainly about Bob Gibson, a once-fearsome pitcher who had at that point been retired for five years. Gibson was the most dominant pitcher in baseball in the late 1960s, a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals who did not hesitate to plunk batters crowding the plate. He was African-American and grew up poor in an era when blacks got little respect, so he carried himself with a certain pride than many interpreted as stand-offishness. Angell caught up with him in Omaha, his hometown, where he had opened up a popular bar-restaurant after retiring but lost none of the old prickliness.You can sense the difficulty Angell had in interviewing such a reticent man, yet he succeeds in giving the reader a detailed and moving look at an athlete past his best years, who never really had a place in life except on top of the baseball mound. He also succeeds in making us sympathize with Gibson, quite a feat for a man who previously had a well-earned image as a cold and emotionally austere man.

My least favorite essay was called "One for the Good Guys," about the New Yankees late-season surge in 1996 that brought them to the World Series against Atlanta for their first Series appearance since 1978, and what a great group of players they had, and how well-deserved it all was, and how the city and country fell for them, and barf barf barf. Fortunately, this appears to be a one-season lapse on Angell's part, and for most of the rest of the book he avoids Yankees boosterism.

Now Angell has a number of books, most of which appear to be collections of already-published essays like this one. I would imagine they are all of similarly high quality. Game Time would be a great read for any baseball fan with literary leanings, though probably any of the others would be just as good.

Peanuts in Real Life

I must have the exact conversation presented in this May, 1956, Peanuts strip at least three times a week:

Place Names in Rock Lyrics: America

For this feature we've previously done Sweet Little Sixteen, Dancing in the Streets, Night Train, Rock'n Me, Pop Muzik, Girls, Girls, Girls, Fire Down Below, Truckin', Everywhere That I'm Not, Mess Around, Back in the USA, and Back in the USSR.

Our song today is America, by Simon & Garfunkel. It came out in 1968 on their Bookends album, but was not released as a single until 1972, to promote their Greatest Hits album that came out that year. Oddly, it only hit #97 on the Billboard chart. It's a pretty song with some pretty great lyrics. Personally, my favorite version is the lengthy prog rock workout (10 1/2 minutes) Yes gave it in 1970.

There aren't really verses and choruses, it sort of just flows. Here are the first three stanzas:

Let us be lovers,
We'll marry our fortunes together.
I've got some real estate
Here in my bag.

So we bought a pack of cigarettes,
And Mrs. Wagner's pies,
And walked off
To look for America.
"Kathy", I said,
As we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh,
Michigan seems like a dream to me now.

It took me four days
To hitch-hike from Saginaw.
"I've come to look for America."

Look, I understand they're looking for the real spirit or meaning of America, but I don't get why they hoped to find it in Saginaw, Michigan? Anyway, here's the final stanza:

Counting the cars
On the New Jersey Turnpike
The've all come
To look for America,
All come to look for America,
All come to look for America.

So the place names in this song are:
New Jersey (turnpike)
Pittsburgh
Saginaw

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And here's the master list:

Notes: The cities that has been mentioned most often is New York, with Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Philadelphia tied for second. The biggest cities we haven't heard from yet, at least in the United States, are Cleveland, Kansas City, and Seattle. Also surprising to me is that Memphis hasn't yet appeared on the list.

Atlanta x3

Baltimore x3
Baton Rouge
Boston
Buffalo
California

--(northern) California
--(coast of) California
Chattanooga

Chicago x3
Dallas
Delaware (Bay)

Detroit x3

Ft. Lauderdale
Georgia (country)
Houston
Las Vegas

London

Los Angeles x4

Miami
--Miami Beach
Moline
Moscow

Munich
New Jersey (turnpike)

New Orleans x4

New York City x6
--Queens
Nova Scotia

Paris x2

Philadelphia x4

Phoenix

Pittsburgh x2

Raleigh

Richmond
Saginaw

San Francisco
--Berkeley

St. Louis x3

Tacoma

(heart of) Texas
Tokyo
Ukraine

Vancouver

Washington, DC x2

Bleak Peanuts

When I reviewed the Complete Peanuts Vol. 1983-84, I promised a strip in there was slated for this blog's Bleak Peanuts feature. Well, it's a couple months later, but here it is:

Spike, of course, is Snoopy's brother who lives in the desert near Needles, California. In the 1980s he became a frequent guest star in the strip, displaying a sort of wry fatalism about his desert life among the cacti. Most of his strips have him forming clubs or making friends with the cacti, or writing letters to Snoopy of the humorous minutiae of his arid environment.

But this strip from October 1984 (and a few others that appeared in the couple weeks following), are a little different. That Ha! at the end is not much of a punchline, is it? How did Spike arrive in the desert, anyway? After all, he was raised at the Daisy Hill puppy farm just like Snoopy and his other siblings.

Well, clearly, he must have been adopted but his new family decided they couldn't or didn't feel like taking care of him, so they dropped him off in the desert to die or scratch out whatever existence he could. And ever since then, Spike's been waiting out his boring existence, hoping, as we see here, for some new owner to pick him and take him with her, somebody to love him and provide him the shelter and food that he cannot provide for himself.

The bleakness here may not be quite as obvious as some of the others, but once you understand the situation, this one cuts to the bone.

What I'm Reading: Town, City & Nation: England, 1850-1914

Working on my newest novel (it's going well, thank you!) has taken its toll on my posting frequency lately, that and that my most recent book doesn't lend itself to much light discussion. Town, City & Nation: England, 1850-1914 is a real academic book. But I enjoyed it--lots of good stuff about historical city development.

I think my favorite part was the section on English seaside resorts and their development. The first were upper-class getaways like Brighton in the early 1800s, but steamboats, and later railroads, made seaside towns increasingly accessible to the middle and then lower classes as the 19th century went on. The most famous of these more middle-class seaside town was Blackpool, which remained a favored vacation destination until the 1970s. This was a subject I was simply not familiar with before reading this book.

It's quite a thorough book, covering or at least touching on pretty much any urban history or economic topic concerning English cities in its time period. I found sections on different types of work in London and class relations in the great industrial cities to be worthwhile, and a section on crime in small market towns unexpectedly fascinating. On the other hand, I was hoping for more on transportation in cities during this time period, but that's probably well-covered elsewhere.

I can't claim that Town, City & Nation would be of widespread interest, but for those with into urban history, especially how cities develop, this is well-written and well-organized, and packed full of great information.

Scary Movies: Witch

I have previously ranked horror movies here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Yesterday my wife and I got a babysitter because we both wanted to see the new movie, Witch.

WITCH: A NEW ENGLAND FOLKTALE (2015)
Hey, this is the first horror movie for this feature I've rated after seeing it in the theater! Seeing scary movies in the theater is fun because other people gasp at the same time and it enhances the scary experience. The only movie I've seen in the theater where people actually screamed out loud was The Ring, which maybe I'll discuss sometime.

The reason we wanted to see the Witch is that we had heard it went to some lengths to be an authentic period movie. Set in the mid-17th century in New England, it follows a Puritan family after they're banished from their village and make their own homestead in a remote wooded area. The actors speak in true 17th-century English, which makes them difficult to understand in some parts. Details of their farmhouse, clothing, religious observance, and lifestyle are meticulously observed. I'm no expert, but it all seemed well-done to me.

When we catch up to the family after their banishment, Catherine the mother, has recently given birth to a baby. The eldest daughter, Thomasin, perhaps 14, is charged with baby-sitting the infant one day when it is only a few weeks old. She plays a game of peek-a-boo, only the baby vanishes when she covers her eyes. Although she does not know what happened, the audience sees a red-cloaked figure hurrying through the forest with the stolen child. Later that evening, we see the red-cloaked figure as a haggard, bent-over old woman. She kills the baby and mashes it up, spreading the "baby lotion" over her body.

The family is devastated at the baby's disappearance, but I'll leave off what happens next so as not to spoil things. I have read that though this movie has gotten good critical reviews, many horror fans don't like it. I assume that's because most of the horror in this movie is psychological, rather than things jumping out of the closet scary. Personally, I found it fascinating for its faithful recreation of the time period, and rewarding in horror terms. Although there is not a lot of gore overall, there are at least a couple brief scenes that are pretty gut-churning, so I don't think I can recommend this generally. This is for those who might appreciate a more cerebral, but still pretty intense, horror movie.

Story/Plot/Characters--Acting is quite good, the story is interesting and coherent. Characters have believable motivations, although they were still two-dimensional. Still, I'm going to mark this category down a bit for lack of ambition. With just a little more background on the family this could have been a true psychological portrait, but the movie was content to settle for less. (2.5 points)
Special Effects--The special effects here were more in the costumes and sets, which carefully maintained historical accuracy. Some of the "witchy" scenes were done in near-total darkness, which I think was at least partly to obscure the lack of budget. (1 point)
Scariness--Some scary scenes. (1 point)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--Only moderately scary, but on the other hand, this movie is freaky as hell. The witch rituals, the feeling of complete isolation on this farm a day's ride from the nearest village, the crushing psychological pressure the family suffers. Complete success with atmosphere.  (2 points)
Total=6.5 points

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Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far, and let's also add to it the color ranking I use with the comic movies.
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

Day of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Gremlins (1984)=4 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points