Thor and the Eternals

Thor and the Eternals: The Celestials Saga (1979-1980/This collection 2020): written by Roy Thomas, Mark Gruenwald, and Ralph Macchio; illustrated by Keith Pollard, Chic Stone, John Buscema, and Gene Day; adapting portions of Richard Wagner's RING CYCLE (seriously): 

Say what you will about longtime comic-book writer Roy Thomas, but he really likes Norse mythology and Wagner's RING CYCLE. So much so that he shoehorns a really wonky take on the former and an even wonkier shoehorning of the latter into this lengthy attempt to fit Jack Kirby's Eternals into mainstream Marvel continuity.

As it wasn't enough to just figure out how the Eternals could possibly fit into Marvel's already overstuffed pantheons of Norse, Greek, and pretty much every other god on record with the exception of the Christian ones, Roy said, no, I'm also going to offer a new expanded origin for the Norse gods seen in THOR. And I'm going to adapt the RING CYCLE. And the RING CYCLE will explain mysteries of Thor's origins that no one realized were mysteries before. 

And I'll have a sizeable portion of this story narrated by the sentient, giant floating eyeball that Odin sacrificed for knowledge back when the eye was neither sentient nor floating nor giant. The eyeball will tell this story to the titular hero of this saga, Thor, who will be almost as baffled as the readers will be. 

And then Roy left Marvel before the story was over, leaving Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio to figure out how to end the whole thing, though I assume Roy may have left notes or something,

It's far and away the craziest cosmic saga of Marvel's Bronze Age, ably illustrated by John Buscema and the always under-rated Keith Pollard. Roy would go on to retell the Norse Ragnarok with DC's Justice Society of America chipping in to help the Norse gods. Then he and artist Gil Kane would adapt the RING CYCLE in the early 1990's, this time without added superheroes. Because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that Ring... of the Nibelung! Recommended.

The Lost City of Z (2016)

Why am I in this fucking film with Charlie Fucking Hunnam?

The Lost City of Z (2016): written and directed by James Gray; very loosely based on the non-fiction book by David Grann; starring Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, and Sienna Miller:

This film is a shit sandwich if you haven't read the terrific non-fiction book it's based on. If one has read the book, it's about an equal split between boredom and rage. About as dishonest, stereotyped, and miscast adaptation of a non-fiction book as I've ever seen. I mean, Jesus Christ. Charlie Fucking Hunnam. Not recommended.

Later (2021) by Stephen King

Later (2021) by Stephen King: Solid coming-of-age horror novel from King, his third from the terrific Hard Case Crime line of reprints and new material, following The Colorado Kid and Joyland. 

King's 22-year-old male narrator gets the comparisons with The Sixth Sense out of the way early, noting that he, like the kid in that movie, sees dead people. And talks to them. And they're compelled to tell the truth after they're dead, though overt references to Wonder Woman's magic lasso are not made in the novel.

It's the truth-telling that drives the major plot elements of the novel. We follow our narrator's life in detail from 6 to 13, all of it in New York, where the dead are abundant. Thankfully, dead people fade away after a few days. But when disaster threatens his single mother's literary agency, our narrator finds himself using his powers to a specific end -- and as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.

King's ability to write in the voice of a young adult remains as solid and convincing as ever. Long-time King readers will note shout-outs to many of King's previous novels that include It and 'Salem's Lot, among others. Ultimately, there are two monsters at the end of this story, and it's hard to decide whether the supernatural one or the very human one is worse. Well, OK, it's the supernatural one. But the human one is pretty close! Highly recommended.

Uncle Silas (1864) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Uncle Silas (1864/This Oxford edition 1989) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu: Irish Protestant Le Fanu was the greatest horror writer of the 19th century after Edgar Allan Poe, producing his work in the middle decades of the Victorian Era. His most famous work is "Carmilla," a terrific and weird novella about a female vampire and her teenaged victim that stands in the background of every lesbian vampire work.

Le Fanu was steadfastly prolific over his 40-year writing career as both a novelist and short-story writer. Much of that output was non-supernatural, but it's his supernatural work that endures and influences. To name one, Bram Stoker's Van Helsing was clearly inspired, right down to his name, by Le Fanu's prototypical supernatural investigator and chronicler Dr. Martin Hesselius. Stories that include "Green Tea," "The Familiar," and "Mr. Justice Harbottle" still retain the power to shock and amaze.

Uncle Silas is probably the only Le Fanu novel still read by choice by readers today. It's not supernatural, though its atmosphere certainly is, and it's weird enough to feel supernatural throughout. It's also steeped in Swedenborgianism, making the introduction and notes in this volume pretty useful for the non-Swedenborgian.

A late-Gothic/Victorian sensationalist novel, Uncle Silas concerns the sinister Uncle Silas, a gambling addict, all-around rogue, and suspected murderer now supposedly reformed in his old age. He stands in line to act as his only niece Maud's guardian until she reaches the age of 21 should her ailing father die. Silas, financially supported by that brother for decades, may have an eye on the enormous fortune Maud would inherit upon reaching maturity.

If Maud dies, he gets the money...

Narrated in the first person by Maud, 18 when the novel begins, Uncle Silas sees Maud's seemingly idyllic, pastoral, though isolated country life invaded and infected from outside and inside, the latter in the form of some tremendously bad decisions and character assessments on the part of her father. 

Uncle Silas is a novel of mirroring, duplicates, and deception. Uncle Silas and Maud's fathers are bad and good father figures, the former with some good qualities and the latter with some bad. Maud's childhood home finds a debased and broken mirror in Silas' estate. But good lurks there, brought out by Maud's own flawed but essential decency when dealing with initially suspicious but redeemable figures that include her cousin Millie. 

But there are also dangerous characters throughout the novel. Uncle Silas sits at the top of that hierarchy, like Moriarty pulling the strands of his spider web. There's also the oafish, creepy but physically imposing cousin Dudley and a French governess who really just has to be experienced rather than described second-hand. Her dialect, along with that of some of the country characters, slides back and forth between the representational and the parodic.

It makes for a long but fun and enduring novel. Le Fanu ratchets the tension up over the past fifty pages or so. If you like protracted endings and epilogues, this novel is not for you. If you want a long novel of manners, morality, and Swedenborgian shenanigans, it probably is. Highly recommended.

Otto Graham vs. Tom Brady

One of my criticisms of the NFL is that it generally tries to pretend that the pre-Super Bowl era doesn't count, even as it celebrates a 100 year anniversary last year, 46 years of which were pre-Super Bowl era.

This handsome fellow is Otto Graham. He played ten seasons in the All-American Football Conference and then the NFL once it absorbed the AAFC, all for the Cleveland Browns. The AAFC played football on par with the NFL, as shown by the Browns winning the NFL championship in their first year in the league (1950).

Why is Otto Graham relevant to Tom Brady?

Tom Brady: 10 championship game appearances, 7 wins.

Otto Graham: 10 championship game appearances, 7 wins.

However, Otto Graham retired after ten seasons. So he was in the championship game every year of his career!

In Major League Baseball, with its love of history (maybe TOO MUCH love), Graham's accomplishments would be celebrated when someone else approached them.

In the NFL, Graham is just a footnote.

And I can't help think that it's partially because he played for Cleveland...

Also, Graham did all this while chucking around a football that looked more like a medicine ball.

The Overnight (2004) by Ramsey Campbell

The Overnight (2004) by Ramsey Campbell: Earth's greatest horror writer takes us into the first English franchise in the Texts big-box bookstore chain. There's friction between the go-get-'em American manager sent to show the English how it's done and the staff, many of whom have issues of their own with one another.

Located between Liverpool and Manchester, Texts and the surrounding strip mall have been constructed on long-unused ground in a place known as Fenny Meadows. Seemingly peaceful grassland while the mall was built, Fenny Meadows has started generating the pervasive fog and rising damp that it's infamous for. These are harbingers of what's to come.

The Overnight pleasingly combines satire with ancient horror and work-place dramedy. Campbell deftly weaves just enough exposition into the narrative to satisfy one's questions about just what is happening, all without having to drop a Basil Exposition-style figure into things. Indeed, the novel brings in what seems to be an Exposition Mouthpiece but then has him refuse to divulge more than a few snippets to one of the characters.

Instead, the most useful exposition both for the reader and for the characters comes from the fact that the Thing plaguing Fenny Meadows apparently enjoys taping over pre-recorded videocassettes. Or something does, perhaps as a warning.

Campbell divvies up The Overnight into third-person-limited chapters focused on one character. This ties into the novel's concerns with human empathy and social ties as the essence of civilization (indeed, being 'civil') -- the Thing of Fenny Meadows seeks to divide to conquer. What wakes in Fenny Meadows is the opposite of civility and fellow feeling  -- and the opposite of language itself as represented in all those doomed texts, and Texts. Winner of Best Novel of 2004 from the International Horror Guild. Highly recommended.

Solaris, but not the good one

So glowy

Solaris (2002): adapted for the screen from Stanislaw Lem's novel and Andrei Tarkovsky's previous adaptation and directed by Steven Soderbergh; starring George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies, and Viola Davis: 

Ostensibly adapted straight from Polish sf writer Stanislaw Lem's 1960's novel, this version of Solaris really seems to have been adapted from Soviet film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky's early 1970's adaptation. Its emphasis on family matters and its changed ending both reflect the film, not Lem's much more coldly rational novel. 

But at least Tarkovsky's Solaris deals with Lem's main focus -- the unknowability of the universe. This movie can't even be bothered to explain the reasons the alien planet Solaris so fascinates and disturbs humanity. We never even see the surface, instead seeing the planet only as a trippy lightshow around which the space station orbits. Of course, in neither the novel nor Tarkovsky's version does the station truly orbit -- it floats inside the atmosphere, above Solaris's mysterious world-covering ocean.

George Clooney does what he can, but the script is far from good and Clooney himself is too ironic a screen star to make the rational, skeptical main character believable. Viola Davis, Jeremy Davies, and Natascha McElhone do what they can, which ultimately isn't much. Soderbergh turns Solaris into a triumphant story about love conquering death, which is not the emphasis of Tarkovsky's ending, and is found nowhere in Lem's original. The mediocre Event Horizon is a better English-language adaptation of Solaris, and that's really saying something.

Soderbergh and company do accomplish something remarkable, though. This Solaris is half the length of Tarkovsky's meditative, glacially paced original. But it feels twice as long. Not recommended.