I think I would like to be friends with Michael Chabon.

I tweeted a link to a LA Times interview with Chabon a few weeks ago which spurred me to read his new book (I’ve never read any of his earlier works) entitled Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son, which is his  second nonfiction work.   After reading it, I’m definitely going to go pick up some of his fiction, and go find his first collection of essays, Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands.

Manhood for Amateurs is a wonderful read, if for no other reason than Chabon is a master writer, with each word, from his most crass to his most lyrical, being perfectly chosen and situated in a sentence such that simply the process of reading his prose is a joy in and of itself.  The book collects essays on a variety of topics tied together with Chabon’s personal musings on the subject of manhood, whatever that actually is.  His keen wit, beautiful writing, frank honesty about both his accomplishments and mistakes, fallibilities and regrets (or lack of regrets), and love/obsession with pop culture make these essays compulsively readable.

(You don’t have to like comic books, SciFi stuff, or be a geek to appreciate Chabon’s pop culture obsessions, since they also include baseball, the radio and music, TV and movies, but if you do like comics, SciFi, or are a geek, you will find Chabon a kindred spirit).

I see myself, or who I’d like to be as a father, husband, and adult male, in much of what Chabon writes, and perhaps that may be why enjoyed the book so much.  Manhood for Amateurs is not a manifesto for a way to be a man.  Nor is it an apology for male actions.  Instead, it is what it is:  an example of one male trying to be a man (father, son, husband) and not necessarily the best possible or representable case of a man (in any of those categories), but instead a man comfortable, happy, and satisfied with himself.  It is a statement, through funny, thoughtful, idiosyncratic, pop culture infused prose, that there is no right way to be a man, just the right idea of the attempt to be the man you are – with all of your faults, obssessions, geekiness, successes, failures, lies, truths, ups, downs, hates, and loves.

While reading, I lauded his looks back on how he lived his life (in his best moments and his most asshole-ish) without regret, but instead an acceptance of that is how he became the man he is.  I understood his sense of, if not actual isolation, solitarity, as a son.  I appreciated the love he feels for his wife.  I embraced fully his example of fatherhood as it resonates so strongly with how I hope to father my hypothetical children (hopefully soon to be actual children).

I laughed out loud frequently.  I nodded knowingly.

When I was done, I felt like I knew Michael Chabon better than many of my male friends, and wished that I did know him in actual life.

I have a feeling at least a few of my male friends will be getting this book for Christmas.

Michael Chabon

For more on Michael Chabon, including an extra essay, check out his website.

I haven’t been so wonderfully surprised by the originality of a book in a long time as I was when I finished The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King.  I devoured it recently on vacation in Florida (a perfect setting, by the way, for reading a tale that involves pirates!).

The book tells the tale of Emer Morrisey, who is also Sadie Adams, and has also lived the lives of 100 dogs over the past three centuries.  Huh? You say.  Trust me, it’s brilliant, and to explain too much would give away said brilliance.

Basically, know this:
The story is told in the far past, the mid to late 1600s specifically as Cromwell commits atrocities upon the Irish and Emer Morrisey is growing up and becoming a young woman, and the late 20th Century, when Sadie Adams is a teenager.  After being cursed to live 100 lives as a dog, Emer is reborn as Sadie, with full memory of her first human life, as well as all of the dog lives she has lived in between her two human incarnations.  Interspersed between Sadie and Emer’s chapters are “Dog Facts” which are often hilarious, but also shed interesting light on Emer/Sadie and mankind in general.

Emer and Sadie, while the same person, are delightfully different, living in decidedly different periods of time, and have their own distinct views of their respective worlds.  Sadie is at once haunted, yet also driven, by her memory of her life as Emer, inlcuding the hardships of Cromwellian Ireland, love found and lost, the injustices thrust upon her, and her life as a pirate (the latter providing much hilarity as Emer wishes Sadie to disembowl, or worse, anyone who annoys her).  And while Emer experienced much adversity in the past, Sadie experiences her own in the contemporary setting, from overbearing loser parents, an even more loser drug-addicted brother, and the painful realities of current teen life, all of which come across just as difficult as starvation in Connacht after the British kill your family.

Combined with A.S. King’s amazing storytelling, history, and fantastic characters, are pirates, adventure, lost love, mystery, pathos, and humor, and ultimately, a completely satisfying conclusion.

I feel like this review does not do The Dust of 100 Dogs justice, so go read it yourself.  Also, attention librarians and such out there:  this book should see some awards for young adult literature, please!

Other links:  A.S. King’s blog.

Also, I must say, it has one of the best book covers ever.

The second in the Twilight films, New Moon, releases on November 20.  In preparation, I had a program scheduled at the library to show the first movie and have a raffle with some cool Twilight related swag, such as a tote bag filled with a special edition of the first book and a charm bracelety thing.  It was gearing up to be a cool event, and I expected a great turnout.

So, then what happens?  Movie Licensing USA calls me yesterday and tells me that Summit Entertainment (who made the films) has revoked all public performance licenses for Twilight.  Now if you aren’t familiar with Movie Licensing USA, it is a company which sells licenses to show films places, such as at libraries.  Now most films are covered under the annual subscription with a blanket license.  Twilight, however, was not, so I had already had to agree to pay an additional $100 to show it.  Plus, I’ve already purchased the prizes, booked the room space, and advertised the event.  And now I get told I can’t show it!  Why?  Because Summit Entertainment has decided to re-release Twilight in the theaters prior for two weeks prior to the opening of New Moon.  I was told by Movie Licensing USA that I could reschedule my limited license to show Twilight before the end of October, or sometime after January 1.  Before the end of October would have been impossible (in terms of booking the space and advertising, not to mention I’m on vacation next week!) and January misses the whole point in linking in with the excitement for the new movie.

I wanted to tell them to bite me with some big Edward vampire fangs.

All in all, way to screw me, and public libraries, over Summit Entertainment!  It’s all about the $ isn’t it?  I was going to provide a fun, free experience which would have brought people to the library, but you have to go and ruin it.  I’d love for people to boycott New Moon in outrage, but that would never happen.

You may know I like zombies.  I don’t know what it is about them.  They’re persistent I guess.  And, unlike many other horror-based concepts, they aren’t really running (or I guess shambling) around out there in the real world, at least not yet (as opposed to serial killers and such – hence why I will never watch a Saw film and hated Silence of the Lambs).  Also, they provide many opportunities for social commentary, which vampires, for instance, as much as I may like them, seldom seem to.

So lately I’ve read a bunch more zombie stuff.  First off is Zombie Haiku by Ryan Meacum.

Zomibe Haiku was a short bit of fun, and for what it is, quite good.  It especially excels in its graphic design, from the Polaroids of mid-attack zombies to the bits of paper with haiku scrawled on them to the flies and the blood, visually it is fantastic.   As for the actual story, it’s ok.

It tells the story of a zombie outbreak, and then the experiences of one zombie, via haiku.   However, you must suspend even more disbelief than you usually would in a zombie-related work, because frankly how many people do you think would keep writing haiku while being pursued by zombies.  It’s sort of like the movie Cloverfield, which I didn’t like at all:  drop the friggin’ camera already.  No one would keep filming at some of the points of that movie.  Also, and perhaps even harder to believe, in Zombie Haiku is that one of the zombies would be writing haiku.  These zombies do seem to have some memories of their past, however, but can’t overcome their zombification to act upon them.  So I guess they do have some higher brain functions, even if they can’t do anything about it because of their hunger and need to eat human flesh.

Some of my favorite haiku from the book:

I keep saying “brains.”
I know other words,
But I just need one.

I can see through you.
Literally through your mouth
And out to the street.

I can remember
Good food that Mom used to make.
I bet Mom tastes good.

Brains, brains, brains brains, brains.
Brains, brains, brains brains, brains, brains, brains.
Brains, brains, brains brains, brains.

I

Last night I finished reading The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan.  It is a young adult novel, and the adoring blurbs on the back are from fantastic teen-lit authors like Scott Westerfeld, Melissa Marr, and Cassandra Clare.  On listservs librarians have raved about it.  I’m not quite sure why this book has received the praise it has from so many people.  I really just didn’t find it that intriguing.  I guess my problem is that when it started, the idea held such promise (even if it did sort of seem reminiscient of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village).  Then, it fell prey to the same problems I had with Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins’ sequel to the fantastic The Hunger Games – simply too much love triangle (is that like too much cowbell?).

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is a book about survival in a post-apocalyptic world filled with neo-Puritanism, harsh conditions, little hope, few people, and lots of zombies.  That sounds awesome, right?  Well, unfortunately, Ryan wipes out all of the interesting parts about religion, the village the survivors live in, and almost everything I wanted to know more about, and instead focuses on this love triangle between Mary and two brothers, Harry and Travis (well, actually it’s a love square since Mary’s friend Cass is also involved).  What results is a novel filled mostly with Mary pining and lusting away for Travis, then feeling guilty about Harry (who she’s betrothed to), and then pining and lusting some more.  And, what’s worse, is she doesn’t really love any of them.  She really is the self-centered figure that she gets told she is several times throughout the book.  The climax of the book kicked the zombie-survival action up a notch, but then the ending was very lacking.  All in all, I was not impressed.

Finally, on to the third zombie book I’ve read recently.  And I loved.  I don’t care if you don’t like zombies, Breathers: a zombie’s lament by S.G. Browne is simply a fantastic story.

While I don’t prefer “fast” zombies (like those in the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, although it was a good enough zombie-survival-horror film), I’m not against reconceiving the idea of a zombie.  Breathers does just that.  In a world that is only different from ours because zombies have always been a part of it – just a marginalized, ignored, persecuted, part of it – Andy Warner wakes up from a major bender in a pile of defrosted frozen vegetables and melted ice cream, only to discover is parents’ heads in ziplock bags in the fridge, and the rest of their body parts cut up and shoved in the freezer.  Andy is a zombie, and has been for a few months.  The events leading up to this opening scene then unfold as Andy tells his story – from the car crash that killed his wife (and himself), to his attendance at Undead Anonymous meetings, to meeting other zombies including Rita (a sexy suicide victim) and Ray (a somewhat redneck zombie who hands out jars of preserved game that he hunts), to sessions in therapy with a plastic surgery addicted psychologist, to staging non-violent pro-zombie protests, to dealing with his angry father and passive mother (they “let” him stay in their wine cellar).  For someone who is undead, he has a lot of problems similar to those living, only he has to drink formaldehyde to keep from decomposing.

Andy is always quick to point out that we readers might not understand him or his story, his motivations and desires:  “If you’ve never woken up in a mortuary with a cannula inserted in your carotid artery while your face inflates like a balloon, then you probably wouldn’t understand.”  Andy also happens to write haiku, so I guess zombies may just like Japanese poetry, who knew?

As events unfold Andy’s unlife evolves and includes acceptance, growth, love, and ultimately a desire to live a “normal life” and regain the rights he had as a living human, leading up to the moment with his parents in the freezer, and then beyond.  Of course, there’s more to it than that, and Browne transforms many of the traditional zombie tropes into new and fresh ideas.  For instance, zombies always want to eat people, but have you ever considered why?

Breathers is hilarious, heartfelt, thought-provoking, and original.  It ranks up there with Shaun of the Dead as one of the best modern reinterpretations of the zombie mythos.  I highly recommend it.

Just as Wolverine: Prodigal Son did, the recently released manga version of the X-Men re-imagines everyone’s favorite mutants.  And just like the former, it does it sooooo well.

Whereas Wolverine: Prodigal Son was very shonen in its conception, with plenty of action, fighting, and teen boy angst, X-Men: Misfits goes in the opposite direction, turning the soap opera of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters into a nearly perfect shojo read for girls (although there’s plenty for boys to like as well).

The story revolves around Kitty Pryde and her coming to the school, her shy, somewhat naive self, and her clumsy understanding of her ability to phase through objects.  Plus, it turns out she’s the only girl.  There are other females, Storm is a teacher of environmental studies and Jean Grey is mentioned (though never appears in this volume), but as far as students go, Kitty’s the only one with the X-gene that has two X chromosomes.  This, of course, makes her much sought after by most of the student population, with all of their male teen hormones raging.  Her affections are vied for by Pyro and Angel, and there are plenty of hints that she will actually fall for the brooding Bobby Drake (Iceman) who gives her the cold shoulder (pun-intended) throughout.

Pyro and Angel, along with Forge, Havok, Longshot, and Quicksilver are actually one of the coolest adaptations of the normal X-storyline.  They this series’ version of The Hellfire Club.  In this rendition, it is apparent that they will form the basis of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (with the teacher Magneto looming over as an influence on the thoughts and ideals of the Club’s members), but the Club is still also an elite social group.  It is manifest here as that teen high school cliche of the “cool kids” club, with the hottest, most popular guys in it.  And frankly, it works oh so well.

This is a brand new take on the X-Men, without a need for years of continuity.  While other X-Men titles outside of the main Marvel U (Earth-616) continuity, have also been good, they were not this fresh to start with.  Ultimate X-Men, for instance, was always hit or miss, but then completely failed before Ultimatum even happened (thus ending the series), when it was revealed that the “Banshee” drug was made from Wolverine (in a bastardization of the great Grant Morrison storyline in New X-Men with the drug “kick”).  Likewise, X-Men: First Class, which goes back to the roots of the original X-Men in training at Xavier’s, from what I’ve read, is a goulash of random stories and adventures that I found rather unappealing (of course I’ve only read the first trade paperback, so I might be wrong overall).   All in all, if I had any complaints about X-Men: Misfits is that some of the boys, especially Longshot, look too much like girls (which I know is a common occurence in this style of art, and for instance was the only blight on my enjoyment of the great series The Demon Ororon).  That being said, I highly recommend X-Men: Misfits to anyone who likes manga, especially shojo, and to all fans of mutants everywhere.  Like Wolverine: Prodigal Son, I hope Del Rey and Marvel commit to this series because it has lots of potential.

1994.

If you had looked at my music collection, on cassette of course, around 1993 you would probably question a lot of things about me.  Steve Winwood (in all of his heinous post-Traffic 80s glory).  Peter Cetera (in all of his even worse than Steve Winwood post-Chicago heinousness).  Bruce Hornsby & The Range (which actually isn’t so bad I suppose in a Huey Lewis kind of way).  Tom Cochrane (I, admittedly, still do love “Life is a Highway” and loathe the Rascal Flatts version from the movie Cars).  MC Hammer (I bet I could probably still rap along to both Let’s Get It Started and Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em).

And, of course, Billy Joel.  In the early ’90s, I was probably The Piano Man’s biggest Eighth Grade fan, if not biggest fan under 40.  In 1993, “River of Dreams” was my jam.  I even owned a tape of his late ’60s psychedelic rock band Attila (an album considered by many critics to be one of the worst rock albums of all time).  Since the majority of what I owned was given to me by my parents, and not stuff I had asked for (excepting MC Hammer which was probably my first attempt at discovering music on my own), I believe the Attila tape was a birthday present from my father in an attempt to bridge the gap between the Billy Joel I owned, and the classic rock I was beginning to explore on the radio (which I think made him happy).  Led Zeppelin, in particular, was speaking to my young male dorky self with its blazing guitars, thunderous drums, cocky sexuality, and weird fantasy overtones.  This would soon enough lead me to exploring and embracing music that wasn’t as wussy as what I had been listening to, yet, of course, it will still be music my father hated, which brings me to 1994.

1994 was a big year for me.  I cut my teeth musically that year.  Music, as it is for so many people, was a major part in my formation of a personal identity.  Looking back there were so many songs and albums that were significant.

Note:  The following are in no particular order and I’m sorry to those songs and albums that I’m forgetting (apparently you were not as important to me as you thought you were), and yeah, some of these may not be 1994 songs, but they FEEL like it to me as they are part of the milieu of music that influenced me around that time.  ”1994″ being somewhat of a catch-all term for ca. 1993-1995 music.  Also, to be fair there are songs and alubms which I’m leaving out from theses lists that were from this time period, but didn’t have a major impact upon me until later.  Alice in Chains, Nine Inch Nails, and U2, for instance, became major parts of my life around 1997-1998.  (Now that I think about it, another blog post about ca. 1997 could be worthwhile).  Likewise, there was a slew of great country songs from that period which have only become of interest to me in recent years, songs such as:

• “Watermelon Crawl” by Tracy Byrd
• “Indian Outlaw” and “Down on the Farm” by Tim McGraw
• “A Good Run of Bad Luck” by Clint Black
• “Chattahoochee” and other songs by Alan Jackson
• “Queen of My Double Wide Trailer” by Sammy Kershaw
• “Goodbye Says It All” by BlackHawk
• “John Deere Green” and “Pickup Man” by Joe Diffie
• “She’s Not the Cheating Kind” and other songs by Brooks & Dunn
• “Thinkin’ Problem” by David Ball
• Pretty much every Garth Brooks song
• “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” and other songs by Toby Keith
• And lots and lots and lots more country music that I keep rediscovering from that era.

Songs from ca. 1994.

• “Seether” by Veruca Salt
• “Linger” by The Cranberries
• “She Don’t Use Jelly” by The Flaming Lips
• “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers
• “Queer,” Only Happy When It Rains,” and “Stupid Girl” by Garbage (one of several instances where the whole album didn’t seem to matter at all to me, just the singles which I heard on the radio.  Possibly due to lack of money to buy albums?)
• “Insane in the Brain” by Cypress Hill
• “Runaway Train” by Soul Asylum
• “Here Comes the Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze
• “No Rain” by Blind Melon
• “Low” by Cracker
• “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette
• “Stay” by Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories
• “Two Princes,” “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong,” and “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” by The Spin Doctors
• “Hey Jealousy,” “Until I Fall Away,” and “Follow You Down” by Gin Blossoms
• “Shine” by Collective Soul
• “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio
• “Possum Kingdom” by The Toadies
• “Come Out and Play” by The Offspring
• “Bang and Blame” and “What’s the Frequency Kenneth” by R.E.M.
• “Plowed” by Sponge
• “Creep” and “Just” by Radiohead
• “Santa Monica” by Everclear
• “In the Meantime” by Spacehog
• “I Wish” by Skee-Lo
• “Tomorrow” by Silverchair
• “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” by U2 (one of my all-time favorite music videos and probably where I first took real notice of U2, and then would later go on to be entralled by them)

Albums from ca. 1994.

These were complete albums that had an impact upon me at that time, in no particular order:

• Ill Communication by The Beastie Boys (still my favorite album they’ve produced)
• Vs. by Pearl Jam
• Ten by Pearl Jam (they’ve never again reached the brilliance or importance of those first two albums)
• Core by Stone Temple Pilots
• Purple by Stone Temple Pilots
• Under the Table and Dreaming by Dave Matthews Band
• August and Everything After by Counting Crows
• Marvin, the Album by Frente (I loved the singer’s voice. Prior to Sophie Ellis-Bexter, whatever her name was’s voice was the sexiest singing voice I’d ever heard)
• Superunknown by Soundgarden (I’ve probably owned this album 7 or more times, at least 5 on tape, and 2 on CD, yet I haven’t listened to it in a good 4 years or more now)
• Unplugged in New York by Nirvana (such a perfect moment in time)
• Wildflowers by Tom Petty
• The Presidents of the United States of America by The Presidents of the United States of America
• Weezer (the blue album) by Weezer (I think the standard for what alternative rock meant when the term was coined)
• Sixteen Stone by Bush
• Four by Blues Traveler
• (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? by Oasis
• Throwing Copper by Live
• Hoist by Phish (though I wouldn’t really get into Phish until just the past couple of years)
• Dookie by Green Day

Thinking back I must thank a couple of my 9th grade classmates:

• Grunge-y Tony (last name forgotten), who, while sitting next to me in the middle of our English class, piereced his eyebrow with a large safety pin, and regularly wore a dress to school, introduced me to Pearl Jam and Nirvana (I had, of course, as musically oblivious as I was, missed out on all the hype only to find out about them just before Kurt’s death).
• That potheaded kid who was in 10th grade and in my computer class.  He turned me on to Tom Petty’s Wildflowers (he liked it because “You Don’t Know How It Feels” mentioned smoking a joint) and Green Day (he liked them because their name supposedly came from Billie Joe Armstrong’s first experience smoking marijuana).  I remember him heavily extolling the virtues of Green Day’s Kerplunk! over Dookie.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also thank 102.7 WEQX.  Without them I never would have access to any of the music that became so important to me.  They are one of the last independent alternative radio stations out there.  And to this day, they still rock.

2009.

Flash forward 15 years.

• Weezer has released its third self-titled mono-chromatic album (and are still trying, like many bands that grew up in their wake, to recapture the blue album’s geeky alterna-pop-rock perfection).
• Chris Cornell is on his second solo career with an album (which Trent Reznor bashed on Twitter) of loops and samples produced by Timbaland after finishing up as the best singer Guns N Roses ever had with his 6 year stint in Audioslave.
• Nine Inch Nails is calling it quits and have announced their farewell tour (probably a decade too late).  Trent is in love and pissed off at his angsty fans who have turned their unnecessary rage and loathing on him via Twitter.
• Stone Temple Pilots has broken up and reformed, with Scott Weiland then releasing a second bizarre and nigh unlistenable solo album (at least some things never change, Weiland is still way whacked out).
• Nirvana has been gone the entire span of 15 years, and have we really missed them?  Dave Grohl has soldiered on with the pop-angst-rock of the Foo Fighters (probably to far greater sales than Nirvana would ever have seen).  Kurt Novoselic began to dabble in politics and almost ran as Lieutenant Governor of Washington in 2004.  If Kurt was alive today, what would he think of the music industry (he was already disillusioned in 1994) or the world today?

If you had asked me in 1994 what band that mattered to me, that was opening my mind and blowing my ears, would still be around 15 years later, and not only around, but ultimately relevant, I would not have answered Green Day.

Yet here we are in 2009.  Don’t get me wrong.  I loved Dookie.  I even crashed a car in 1998 after many, many late nights with friends followed by too many, too early mornings driving to my job as a line cook at the nastiest restaurant in Rutland, VT.  I vividly remember waking up while still yelling along to “Basket Case” as I first hit a speed limit sign, then spun out on the wet road sideways into a tree.  Even with my love of that one album, I never really got into any of the rest of their albums, including 2004’s critically praised and commercially successful American Idiot.

But over the past couple of days, I’ve listened to 21st Century Breakdown.  I’m blown away.   Green Day have released a brilliantly contemporary rock record that is easily one of the best albums of the year.  Recently, Scott Mills of BBC Radio 1 called Green Day “the biggest rock band in the world”  and at the time I scoffed, still believing it to be U2 (as a side note, No Line on the Horizon has not grown on me, if anything my opinion of it has decreased, and it hasn’t seen play on my iPod since the beginning of June).  Now, I might agree with Mills.

21st Century Breakdown is at once raw and beautiful.  From the garage punk of “Horseshoes and Handgrenades” to the Beatles-esque “Last Night on Earth” to the amazing “Restless Heart Syndrome” with its scorching guitars, the album simply stuns.  Musical influences from The Ramones to Eastern European rhythms are on display, and throughout you’re taken on trip through contemporary America and introduced to the lives of people living there.

At some point, Green Day threw off the hijinks, off-color humor, and trappings of American punk.  They’ve grown up, and with that comes excellent songwriting, fine musicianship, a socially critical point of view, and a sincere sense of trying to make a difference, somehow.  Whether its through humanitarian and charitable acts such taking part in a hurricaine relief with U2 with “The Saints Are Coming” or the Music Rising campaign, or by showing the flaws in society with their lyrics.

At some point, Green Day did the unimaginable:  they actually became the voice of their (my) generation.

Essential tracks:  ”21 Guns,” “Know Your Enemy,” “Viva La Gloria (Little Girl),” “Restless Heart Syndrome”

I haven’t given up on blogging, in fact last night I started writing, by hand, a post to put up here soon about music (shocker), specifically the new Green Day album.  That being said, I’ve found blogging to be, well, a lot more effort than it should be in comparison to the concise 140 character crack addiction that is Twitter.

So, for anyone out there who cares, follow me on Twitter for more up-to-date (and copious) opinions, reviews, and links to things that interest me.

Zombies Calling by Faith Erin Hicks

Zombies Calling by Faith Erin Hicks is the Shaun of the Dead of zombie comics.  If you like zombies, and haven’t read it, you are missing out.

At a university in Canada, a trio of students comes face to face with a zombie outbreak.  Luckily, Joss knows all about the “rules” of surviving zombie attacks from watching way too many zombie movies while she should have been studying for exams.  The dastardly source of the outbreak is fantastic (and like all good zombie stories contains its own form of social commentary) and the tidy, happy, coincidence filled, resolution fits in with all good B-movie plots. 

This is fast-paced humorous zombie mayhem with likeable characters and cutesy zombies and jokes that play with stereotypical zombie plots and commentary about popular zombie and non-zombie movies .  The latter provides one of my favorite moments in the book.  After watching a fast zombie crash headlong into a group of regular, shambling, zombies, Joss comments “HAHAHA!  Take that!  Fast zombies suck!” which leads into an aside about pandering to the short attention span of modern audiences and the debate over 28 Days Later.  Is it actually a zombie movie? Joss, like myself, says no.

The black and white art is great, cartoonish but not overly so, but the story and characters really drive this graphic novel.  I’d love to see a cartoon series featuring these characters, or at least more books.

In addition to her website above, check out Faith Erin Hicks blog or follow her on Twitter.

Wolverine: Prodigal Son (vol. 1)

You think you know him.  The guy who’s “the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn’t very nice.”  The angry, conflicted, raging amnesiac.  The super-cool, bad boy antihero who deep down has his own morals and code of ethics.  The vertically challenged mutant with a healing factor, a chip on his shoulder, and admantium steel on his bones.  

Logan.  Weapon X.  Wolverine.

You think you know him.  Think again.

As the tagline for Johnston and Tortosa’s manga re-invention of Wolverine states, “This is not the Wolverine you know.”  Instead of being filled with over thirty years of convoluted back-story, this first volume of a new series provides a version of the character which is a breath of fresh air.  The basics of the Wolverine history are kept – Canadian, no memory of earlier life, crazy hair (which is absolutely perfect in the manga style!), retractable claws.  That, however, is about as close to the regular Marvel U’s Wolverine as Prodigal Son gets, and that makes it all the more awesome.  I just hope this doesn’t get cancelled early and we can get a chance to see just how awesome it can be (with a Del Rey Manga / Marvel version of the X-Men coming out this summer, perhaps the odds are better that it will make it for a while?).

Logan, now a teenager, was as a young child found on the doorstep of a martial arts school for misfits and troubled youth in backwoods Canada.  He quickly proved to be a natural fighter, so much so that now his ego is as strong as his muscles, both of which get a workout in this volume.  There is an undercurrent of learning self-control and self-awareness, themes that have long been part of the Wolverine mystique, which I hope continues and is capitalized upon.  They are wonderfully realized in the student/teenager aspect of Logan, who sees himself as too good to be tested against the other students, goes into beserker rage when bested in a match, rails against the smallness of his world and confinement in his Canadian dojo, and ultimately exclaims in frustration, “You think I don’t want to know who I am, what I am, every single day?  You think I don’t wonder why I’m a freak?”

Tortosa’s artwork is a brilliant interpretation of Japanese manga design through a Western lens, and perfectly matches the fast-paced, hard hitting story. And speaking of the story, Johnston’s writing combines teenage angst, action-packed martial arts action, humor, budding romance, revenge, foreboding danger, conspiracy, and, of course, plenty of opportunities for Wolverine’s claws to pop.

SNKT!

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I reviewed The Hunger Games recently in the Utica Observer-Dispatch:

“Suzanne Collins, known for her series The Underland Chronicles, stuns with her first work written for teens.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss lives in the 12th District of Panem, a harsh dystopian nation which rose from the ashes of North America. Voluntarily taking the place of her younger sister, Katniss must take part in the Hunger Games, an annual televised competition among twenty-four teen representatives of the Districts of Panem. The winner gains food, wealth and supplies for their District; the losers die.

Combining social commentary, a strong heroine, fantastic writing, and a sci-fi action movie plot, Collins has created one of the most compulsively readable novels of the year. Gripping and fast-paced, The Hunger Games will have you eagerly awaiting September 2009 when Catching Fire, the next installment in what is a planned trilogy, is published.”

I was blown away by this book.  My only regret was that I read it when I did, without the sequels in hand to continue the story. It is with some trepidation, however, that I look forward to the rest of the trilogy.  The plot could easily delve into the familiar, the “teens fight against dystopian society,” seen elsewhere in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy.  My gut feeling, though, is that Collins has some great things planned, what with the surprising twists and turns found in the first novel.

As I read, I completely envisioned the book as a movie, and lo and behold, Lionsgate has acquired the rights for distribution and Collins is working on the screenplay. Fantastic!  Now, if they really work on some cool cinematography, working the “reality TV” angle and the idea of cameras everywhere, recording everything, this will be awesome.  I see it as not only an action-packed scifi movie, but also potentially experimetal visually.  Let’s hope.  Check out the Scholastic site for the novel. I like what they are doing visually and conceptually to promote the book.

Read the book, and I know you will be looking forward to seeing Katniss and The Hunger Games on the big screen as much as I am.