The Gateway Saga 2: Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederik Pohl (1980): Frederik Pohl's first Gateway novel won pretty much every major SF award after it came out in 1977. This second book didn't, though it's still a fine piece of work, especially for those who want psychological depth in their Space Opera.
We pick up the story 20 years after Gateway, with that novel's protagonist, Robinette Broadhead, now a comfortable millionaire on an increasingly resource-starved future Earth. He now funds space expeditions to find more of the technology of the Heechee. The Heechee were an extremely advanced alien race that left technology lying around the solar system (and the galaxy) after they disappeared half-a-million years ago.
Humanity started exploiting that technology after the first Heechee artifacts were found in artificial tunnels on Venus about 50 years before this novel. But humanity doesn't know how much of the technology works, especially the faster-than-light stardrives on the remaining Heechee spacecraft.
These spacecraft, mostly housed at the carved-out asteroid dubbed Gateway, can be programmed with unknown destinations and sent out into the galaxy. Desperate 'prospectors' pay into the Gateway Corporation for a chance to ride on these ships. Sometimes they come back with new artifacts or useful locations; sometimes they come back with nothing; sometimes they don't come back, or come back dead.
Robinette's fortune was made by the disastrous but lucrative discovery of a non-rotating black hole, a discovery that dropped everyone but Robinette into said black hole. Now, he's sent an expedition to a newly discovered Heechee vessel in our Oort cloud. It seems to be a Heechee food factory, using carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and trace elements found in the cometary halo around our solar system to make a nearly inexhaustible supply of food. It could solve Earth's food problems. But where is the factory periodically shipping its food?
Well, there's the question. The Gateway books are the much smarter father to such SF series as Stargate SG-1 and Babylon 5 in which humans seek out ancient alien technology, often using it without any idea how it works. Broadhead and the other sympathetic characters of this novel, including Wan, the most lost of all Lost Boys, and an ancient machine consciousness that was once a living, non-human (is it a Heechee?) being, are skilfully drawn.
There's less sense of the unknown in this second book, as Pohl begins to answer more questions than he asks. But the big questions, Where Did the Heechee Go and Why Did They Go There?, only begin to be answered here. The answer is a big one, but it awaits the sequel. Recommended.
The Gateway Saga 3: Heechee Rendezvous by Frederik Pohl (1984): The original Gateway Trilogy wraps up here as the mysterious Heechee finally put in an appearance 500,000 years after they seemingly vanished from the universe. The action of the third book picks up about 20 years after the second, with trilogy protagonist Robinette Broadhead beginning to show the effects of old age despite having a really terrific health plan.
Among Pohl's achievements here is a prediction of our current Cloud-based computer world, though in Pohl's world processing comes from a gigantic global pool upon which all computers can draw. That's some network! This future Earth's health care, though, hasn't been so predictively accurate, perhaps because Broadhead's health problems are such a key part of the narrative.
Many of the mysteries first posited in Gateway back in 1977 are solved here, most notably the reason for the Heechee's long disappearance. Unfortunately, the narrative bogs down again and again with Robinette Broadhead and his improbably beautiful, hyper-intelligent, and financially successful wife. She's part wish fulfillment and part comic relief, the latter because of her Boris-and-Natasha manner of speaking English. What larks, Pip!
Indeed, the trials of Broadhead and Wife seem to fascinate Pohl a lot more than the science fictional mysteries he himself created. The ending, when it comes, is rushed, somewhat perfunctory, and clearly left open-ended for yet another sequel. There would be three more Gateway novels, if you're counting.
The novel really is a must-read if one has read the first two Gateway books, despite its immense and multitudinous flaws. The tendency of the narrative to spin off into interpersonal whoopsy-cutesiness reminds me of similar problems in Robert Heinlein's later-career novels; Pohl composed the Gateway Trilogy between the ages of 57 and 64, along with a boatload of other novels.
The going never gets as bad as it does in Heinlein's worst moments (see: The Number of the Beast), but the going, she is rough at times. Pohl's decision to transform a character from the previous novel into an annoying sociopath doesn't much help things, though it does pose an interesting question as to why he did so. My guess would be that he had a conversation with a psychologist who suggested that the character's upbringing, as constructed by Pohl, would almost certainly create a near-monstrous sociopath. But it's too bad -- and the scenes with that character are almost unreadable.
Oh, and there are black holes, weird black holes, artificial black holes, and various space fleets and space whales and thingamajigs. Despite all the lavish praise heaped by the novel on Broadhead's wife, the novel also posits two alien species with major downsides for females: Heechee women go into heat and, if they don't have sex while in heat, have a pronounced tendency to die; a second race not only has non-sentient females, but non-sentient females who are a food source for the (sentient) males as well as breeding stock. Well, alrighty, then! Lightly recommended.
Ed the Happy Clown: written and illustrated by Chester Brown (1982-2002; This edition 2012): The absurd, weird, violent, and disturbingly funny graphic novel Ed the Happy Clown got Canada's Chester Brown critical raves almost from its beginning as a self-published mini-comic. Brown would eventually get a publisher (Vortex Comics) and then another publisher (Drawn and Quarterly) as the strip wound down in the pages of Brown's Yummy Fur comic.
Ed the Happy Clown may not be Brown's most nuanced or artistically complex work, but it may be what he's remembered for 100 years from now, if people still read comics then. It's a horrifying, absurdist comedy, or maybe a comic, absurdist horror work. Or something. Brown was interested in the psychology of surrealism at the time, and so he tried to go with whatever his Sub-conscious and his Id spewed forth. The result is an arresting, page-turner of a nightmare.
Ed is a lovable figure who pretty much defines "acted upon, rather than acting." In a Toronto that vaguely resembles our Toronto, only with more malevolent disembodied hands, vampires, and evil pygmies, Ed finds that Ronald Reagan's head has replaced the head of his own penis. This Reagan is from a world where the people are much smaller, so, um, the head fits. And talks. And vomits.
This is neither the oddest nor the potentially most offensive thing in Ed the Happy Clown. It's also hilarious, the hilarity augmented by Brown's choice to not make the head look like Ronald Reagan (and when then-Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney shows up, he doesn't resemble his namesake either, though he is rocking a gnarly beard that makes him look like a somewhat lumpen version of Thomas Mulcair).
Brown would leave this sort of weird horror comedy behind for the most part in the early 1990's, turning instead to memoir and Canadian history in his subsequent graphic novels. I understand his decision, but lament it too. Ed the Happy Clown is just so gigantically, monstrously weird and entertaining, one wants more when it ends.
Of course, there actually was more. Brown continued the story for several more chapters after this graphic novel ends before abandoning Ed for autobiography. This definitive edition omits those last chapters and adds a new ending, as Brown decided that Ed's story had reached a natural conclusion. I've got no problem with Brown going all Wordsworth's Prelude on us, though I'd like an edition that at least puts the other chapters in an appendix. These aren't easy comics to find at decent prices.
This 2012 edition does give us a lengthy appendix written by Brown. These notes range from explaining emendations to apologizing for the somewhat racist caricatures that are the pygmies (though the pygmies are so ridiculously out-there that it's hard to view them as racial; some, including Brown, would disagree).
Some of the notes are quite hilarious in and of themselves. For example, former national NDP leader Ed Broadbent was originally supposed to be the head on Ed the Happy Clown's penis. Others show how much Brown's politics have changed over the decades. When he opines that Ronald Reagan was actually the second-best 20th-century U.S. President after Calvin Coolidge, one wishes that this were just more absurdism. But like Brown's oft-stated belief that mental illness is not an illness and only exists because the medical establishment wants it to be an illness, this is all dead-serious. In any case, highly recommended.
I Never Liked You: written and illustrated by Chester Brown (1991-93; collected 1994): Chester Brown's second attempt at long-form comic-book memoir is a much sadder, self-lacerating work than his first (that first being The Playboy). Completed and collected in the early 1990's, I Never Liked You follows Brown's relationships with girls from Grade 3 or thereabouts to the end of high school.
While there is an overarching structure to the book, it's very faint -- I Never Liked You is as much a series of vignettes as it is a graphic novel. Brown's style is relatively naturalistic for him, though there are some physical exaggerations for some characters. As in The Playboy, Chester Brown as a character has a head that looks an awful lot like an orange on a toothpick. And the girl who utters the title line has gigantic Bambi eyes.
Most of the vignettes will pack more of a punch for those readers who've consistently felt like outsiders, especially when it comes to gender relations as a teenager. Threaded through the tales of Brown's missteps with girls is the story of his mother's encroaching madness, mental illness that will periodically lead to her hospitalization.
Brown-the-character's inability to show empathy to his mother (or be nice at all) is an integral part of the book's depiction of his social awkwardness. A scene set in a hospital room as Chester, his father, and brother visit his contorted, near-catatonic mother is the novel's best. That Brown's version of himself at that age makes the moment all about himself and his inability to simply tell his mother that he loves her ties beautifully into the book as a whole, and into the larger body of Brown's autobiographical work. Brown's work often functions as a caustic evaluation of what he perceives as his own consuming self-involvement at various points in his life. But creating a memoir is by definition to be self-involved. There's something of a closed loop involved.
That Brown would turn to a combination of history and historical biography in his next major work, Louis Riel (Collected 2003) certainly indicates a shift outwards from his contemplation of himself. However, one who reads Brown's Appendix to Louis Riel discovers that part of Brown's interest in the controversial rebel came from Riel's own audio and visual hallucinations, things which reminded Brown of his mother's madness. I Never Liked You is a solid piece of graphic storytelling, unsentimental and almost morbidly self-revelatory. Recommended.
Spawn Origins 3: Written by Grant Morrison, Todd McFarlane, Andrew Grossberg, and Tom Orzechowski; illustrated by Todd McFarlane and Greg Capullo (1994/ This collection 2009): Oh, remainders. The six-issue compilations of Todd McFarlane's reluctant hero Spawn continue here with only one issue actually written and illustrated by Todd McFarlane. I guess the Dreaded Deadline Doom was upon him. Grant Morrison writes a three-parter that is about as bland as anything Morrison has ever written. This despite the ridiculous Anti-Spawn, some angels on a space station, and a portion of Hell that's erupted onto an American armed forces firing range.
Greg Capullo is already a capable penciller, though, somewhat more realistically inclined than McFarlane but still capable of some magical lunacy. The two-parter penned by Tom Orzechowski and Andrew Grossberg is more fun, introducing as it does Houdini (yes, that one), Master of the Mystic Arts, in a team-up with Spawn to stop a nuclear detonation in the heart of Manhattan. As a piece of superhero entertainment, superior to most of the stuff from DC and Marvel at the time. Recommended.
Spawn Origins 4: written by Todd McFarlane; illustrated by Todd McFarlane and Marc Silvestri (1994-95; This collection 2010): Spawn creator/writer/artist Todd McFarlane returns to full writing and art duties for five of the six issues reprinted here. Marc Silvestri, one of McFarlane's contemporaries when they were at Marvel, draws the sixth issue in a grittier, less cartoony style than McFarlane. Spawn battles various problems caused for him by Hell, the Mob, and demonic antagonist Violator. Some of the people who knew Spawn's alter ego, assassinated Black Op Al Simmons, finally start to clue in about who Spawn is, while comic-relief cops Sam and Twitch also start to realize that Spawn is on their side. Recommended.
Caddyshack: written by Brian Doyle-Murray, Harold Ramis, and Douglas Kenney; directed by Harold Ramis; starring Chevy Chase (Ty Webb), Bill Murray (Carl Spackler), Rodney Dangerfield (Al Czervik), Ted Knight (Judge Smalls), Michael O'Keefe (Danny Noonan), and Cindy Morgan (Lacey Underall) (1980): A classic comedy of improvisation built over a stereotypical teen coming-of-age comedy. Harold Ramis and company quickly realized that the adults were far more interesting than the teens, and that the improvisation of Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and Rodney Dangerfield was the real star of the movie. Well, that and the special-effects gopher. Recommended.
Sense and Sensibility: adapted by Emma Thompson from the novel by Jane Austen; directed by Ang Lee; starring Emma Thompson (Elinor Dashwood), Kate Winslet (Marianne Dashwood), Hugh Grant (Edward Ferrars), Alan Rickman (Colonel Brandon), Gemma Jones (Mrs. Dashwood), Harriet Walter (Fanny Dashwood), Imelda Staunton (Charlotte Palmer), Hugh Laurie (Mr. Palmer), Imogen Stubbs (Lucy Steele), Greg Wise (John Willoughby), Robert Hardy (Sir John Middleton), and Elizabeth Spriggs (Mrs. Jennings) (1995): Ang Lee and Emma Thompson's visually lush adaptation of Jane Austen is a winning combination of romance and pointed social observation. The adaptation won Thompson a well-deserved screenplay Oscar. The performances are uniformly strong. Lee's direction is painterly in composition without becoming too static in the manner of some period productions. Highly recommended.
Requiem for a Heavyweight: written by Rod Serling; directed by Ralph Nelson; starring Anthony Quinn (Louis 'Mountain' Rivera); Jackie Gleason (Maish Rennick), Mickey Rooney (Army), Julie Harris (Grace Miller), and Cassius Clay as Himself (1962): Adapted by Rod Serling from his own 1956 Playhouse 90 TV movie, the first original 90-minute drama ever shown live on American TV. Serling may have a didactic point to make about the boxing business, but he also gives his actors line after line of terrific dialogue.
As aging tomato-can boxer 'Mountain' Rivera, veteran character actor Anthony Quinn embodies wounded, almost inarticulate pride along with a sense of honour that may yet get him killed. Jackie Gleason is also terrific in his best dramatic role, as Quinn's beloved, treacherous manager. Mickey Rooney also surprises as Quinn's corner-man, and Julie Harris does delicate work as an employment agency worker trying to find Quinn a job after boxing. At less than 90 minutes, this is a terse and sorrowful work. Highly recommended.
Into the Woods: adapted by James Lapine from the musical by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim; directed by Rob Marshall; starring Anna Kendrick (Cinderella), Daniel Huttlestone (Jack), James Corden (Baker), Emily Blunt (Baker's Wife), Tracey Ullman (Jack's Mother), Meryl Streep (Witch), Johnny Depp (Wolf), Billy Magnussen (Rapunzel's Prince), Mackenzie Mauzy (Rapunzel), and Chris Pine (Cinderella's Prince) (2014): Enjoyable screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 1987 meta-musical gives us a movie-star cast that can, mostly, sing. OK, Meryl Streep occasionally moves into under-enunciated mumblemouthedness at times, especially in her climactic song.
The cast and the songs are witty and involving, and the musical's exploration of fairy-tale logic hits the light and dark notes of real fairytales while also commenting on Disneyfied bowdlerizations of those fairy tales (weirdly, this is a Disney movie, with the opening logo itself commenting on the difference between Into the Woods and more normally sunny Disney fare. So much meta!). For some reason, the scenes with the vengeful giant are murky and difficult to follow, which is not necessarily a good thing when this is your climax. A couple of gruesome deaths have been either eliminated or toned down from the stage version, and the original Narrator is nowhere to be heard, so be forewarned if you're a theatrical purist. Recommended.
The Playboy: written and illustrated by Chester Brown (1990-91; collected 1992): Canadian national treasure and cartoonist Chester Brown shifted to autobiographical comics in the early 1990's after a decade of mixing the surreal, the grotesque, the comic, and the just plain weird in the pages of his brilliant independent comic book Yummy Fur. The Playboy, originally serialized in several issues of Yummy Fur, was his first long-form attempt at memoir.
Brown takes us back to a time when teenagers read Playboys, hid Playboy around the house or in the world outside, and occasionally even bought Playboy at convenience stores rather than just stealing them from someone's father or older brother. Chester's relationship with Playboy magazine began in the mid-1970's when he was a teen-ager. He charts that relationship's ups and downs over the subsequent 15 years or so, autobiographical vignettes interspersed with a narrator's commentary.
By Brown's standards, The Playboy is fairly tame and contemplative, and lacking in didacticism. Oh, sure, there are graphic scenes of masturbation. This is an autobiographical comic, after all, and a Chester Brown comic. Money shots are mandatory. The cumulative effect is surprisingly gentle and nostalgic -- an elegy for a lost world of pillowy soft-core boobs, of a small cache of porn magazines and not the endless naked lunch of the Internet.
It's also quite funny at times as it details Brown's attempts to hide his magazines from his parents, leading at one point to burying pornography in a nearby meadow. In another scene, he bikes across his small town to buy Playboy at a convenience store as far from his hosue as possible; of course he meets adult neighbours as he exits the store with his bagged Playboy in his hands. What to do?
Coming out as it did during the height of McKinnon-Dworkin anti-pornography rageaphobia in the early 1990's, The Playboy seems contextually brave. It's not an indictment of pornography, regardless of what one of the back-cover quotes says. It's also not major Brown. Nonetheless, The Playboy is still a nice piece of work, interior-cover cumshots and all. Recommended.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: written by Sidney Buchman, Lewis Foster, and Myles Connolly; directed by Frank Capra; starring Jean Arthur (Saunders), James Stewart (Jefferson Smith), Claude Rains (Senator Paine), Edward Arnold (Jim Taylor), Thomas Mitchell (Diz), and Harry Carey (President of the Senate) (1939): When the forces of political evil and chicanery in the far-flung year of 1939 in America order the police to turn fire hoses on peaceful protesters and the police happily comply, when the bad guys start attacking and injuring children trying to get the truth out and the authorities do nothing to stop them, one is reminded that the authorities have been knobs for a long time in America.
Frank Capra's beloved classic is a winning combination of Juvenalian political satire and gentle Horatian optimism -- Jimmy Stewart's character has a naivete that's funny to begin with before experience (and the love of Girl Friday Jean Arthur) gives him the power to defy corruption. If you thinks it ends abruptly, well, boy does it ever! A 15-minute epilogue that tied off every loose end was cut by the studio before release, and I think the movie's better for it. Capra's usual cast of supporting actors, along with the always great Claude Rains as a senator gone wrong, are terrific, as are leads Stewart and Arthur. Highly recommended.
The Big Heat: adapted from the William P. McGivern serial novel by Sydney Boeham; directed by Fritz Lang; starring Glenn Ford (Sgt. Bannion), Gloria Grahame (Debby), Jocelyn Brando (Katie Bannion), Lee Marvin (Vince), and Alexander Scourby (Lagana) (1953): Almost the Ur-Text for every movie in which a heroic cop turns in his badge and goes it alone (or with one loyal partner) against the forces of Evil. Ford is terse and violent as Sgt. Bannion, who's up against the Mob in an unnamed East Coast city. Gloria Grahame plays a mobster's mistress who ends up siding with Ford. A young Lee Marvin plays Grahame's gangster. This movie deals with many of German expatriate director Fritz (Metropolis, Fury, M) Lang's dominant tropes, most notably the corruption of the Elite and the heroic efforts of a few to combat that corruption. As was always true of Lang's direction, the movie looks terrific -- it's a dandy piece of police noir. Recommended.
The Mouse That Roared: adapted by Roger MacDougall and Stanley Mann from the novel by Leonard Wibberley; directed by Jack Arnold; starring Peter Sellers (Grand Duchess/ Prime Minister/ Tully Bascombe), Jean Seberg (Helen Kokintz), William Hartnell (Will Buckley), David Kossoff (Professor Kokintz), and Leo McKern (Benter) (1959): Peter Sellers plays three characters delightfully, with able supporting work from Leo McKern, First Doctor Who William Hartnell, and others.
The tiny European country of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick finds itself bankrupt, so its Prime Minister hatches a plan. They will declare war on the United States, quickly surrender, and then watch the aid dollars flow in from the United States to its vanquished enemy. In theory, this explains the Iraq War. There's some pointed satire here about atomic brinksmanship, but the whole thing is remarkably gentle and pleasant, with many laugh-out-loud moments. One of the early high points of the career of Peter Sellers, it wouldn't be the last time he played multiple roles in a movie. Recommended.
Judgment Day: written by Alan Moore; illustrated by Rob Liefeld, Gil Kane, and others (1997/Collected 2003): One of those Alan 'Watchmen' Moore-penned volumes from the 1990's that always seem vaguely anomalous, coming as they do from Moore's time writing for Rob Liefeld's 'wing' of Image Comics that would spin off into its own separate publishing company during Moore's time writing for a couple of the Image 'wings.' This one involves Liefeld's superhero team Youngblood, there from the beginning of Image Comics in 1992. Moore's job seems to be to give the whole thing a veneer of artsiness unknown to Liefeld's output. Well, if not artsiness than at least metafictionality.
The best parts of this series, which see a member of Youngblood put on trial for murder, involve flashbacks drawn by various artists. Most of the flashbacks are pastiches, often satiric in tone and content, of decades of comic-book titles and characters, from Old West heroes to Conan the Barbarian adaptations. And the whole plot revolves around a magical book that seems to prefigure Moore's really metafictional work in his own later title, Promethea. Moore was winning writing awards for his work on Liefeld's Superman homage Supreme at the same time, and Supreme shows up here as well.
The whole thing goes down pretty smoothly, with some nice artwork -- especially that of Grandmaster Gil Kane on a couple of sections. This volume is both a curiosity and a harbinger of Moore work to come. Exaggerated claims of Watchmen-level relevance in the publisher's foreword do seem both forced and gormless -- superheroes have been put on trial in one way or another prior to Judgment Day, from Batman in the 1940's to the Justice Society of America in the 1980's. Liefeld's art contributions are unusually awful and off-model at certain points -- his version of Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon is especially off, but the book is rife with characters with weird, up-turned nostrils and tiny, tiny feet. Recommended.
Spawn: Origins Volume 1: written and illustrated by Todd McFarlane (1992/ Collected 2009): Canadian writer-artist Todd McFarlane left Marvel Comics in 1992 along with five other creators to create creator-owned comic company Image. McFarlane, a popular Marvel artist on Spider-man and Hulk, soon launched Spawn. It rapidly became Image's best-selling title. Moreover, it became the best-selling superhero comic in North America for a few years, helping break the hold DC and Marvel had on the comic-book-buying public.
If you want to see what the fuss was about, these relatively recently released Spawn: Origins volumes are the way to go if you can find them remaindered. And boy, have I seen them remaindered for up to 80% off cover-price. They're certainly enjoyable in a pulpy way. McFarlane's greatest strength as an artist lies in full-page and double-page spreads; his weakness lies in panel-to-panel continuity, which sometimes degenerates to incomprehensibility. But the spreads are great. So too Spawn's cape and chains, which are less costume elements than they are design elements on a page.
McFarlane isn't much of a writer, but it's at least competent superhero schlock. Spawn is basically a Marvel hero whose reasons to be angsty have been turned up to 11. A former heroic CIA Black Ops soldier, Al Simmons was killed by one of his own compatriots on the job under orders from his superior. Now he's back from the dead. Well, sort of. Really, he's still dead. He's just ambulatory and has super-powers. But he's also partially amnesiac. He's been gone for five years. And he owes Hell... something. Oh, and under his costume (which is actually a living supernatural symbiote), he looks like a mummy who stayed in the oven too long. Good times! And his widow married his best friend! And both Heaven and Hell keep trying to kill him! And he lives with a bunch of homeless people in New York's Bowery! Oh, Spawn. Spawn Agonistes! Recommended.
Spawn: Origins Volume 2: written and illustrated by Todd McFarlane with writing by Alan Moore and Frank Miller (1992-93/ Collected 2009): Todd McFarlane started to bring in guest writers with the issues collected in this second volume. Two issues that chronologically should appear herein but don't also included guest writers -- Neil Gaiman on one issue that would lead to more than a decade of legal battles between Gaiman and McFarlane, and Dave Sim on a metafictional odyssey co-starring his talking aardvark Cerebus.
We do get Alan Moore and Frank Miller riffing on Spawn in issues that are much better written than McFarlane's efforts. So it goes. The whole volume entertains, McFarlane's art is very strong, and we get a storyline continued from the previous volume featuring antagonist Overtkill, one of the two or three most stupidly named super-characters of that baroque early 1990's age of super-powered characters with increasingly stupid names and increasingly cluttered costumes. Recommended.
