Comics I Read Since Last October

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is basically like if you took King's "Up in the Sky" and merged it with "True Grit." Like the latter, a girl's father has been murdered and she seeks to enlist someone to aid her in her quest for vengeance. Like "Up in the Sky," a Kryptonian goes on a dangerous journey through space to aid a young girl.

Unlike other Supergirl stories it's not misogynist exploitation or disingenuous faux-feminism. Like most of King's work, it's about loss and trauma. Two damaged individuals on a quest together to attempt to square things.

You don't need to be keenly familiar with Supergirl to read this, though it would probably help to understand some of the references. Anyway, it's an amazing story and good to see King on track after the disappointing Rorschach.  

An adaptation was one of 5 movies announced by new DC movie bigshot James Gunn.  I don't think it's a really good idea.  This would be costly and it's a character who isn't terribly popular and it's a one-off story so it's not really something to build a franchise around.  An animated movie or limited TV series might have been a better idea.  When I mentioned this on Facebook, someone sassed me that I must not have heard of True Grit then.  While that has been a movie (twice) Westerns are a lot cheaper to make than what would be a big sprawling sci-fi story.  I mean Westerns you can just go to central casting and get some outfits and shoot at some national park in New Mexico; for this you'd need a whole bunch of costly CGI effects for the planets and aliens and stuff.  To do it right you'd need a couple hundred million dollars that again is for a character who's not that popular and a story not that many outside of comics readers are familiar with.  It's the kind of risky move that could pay off, but probably won't.

(Fun Fact:  Tony Laplume liked this as much as I did, which is rare.)

Batman: Curse of the White Knight by Sean Murphy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wanted to read this because I'm a huge fan of the Knightfall storyline and thus of course Azrael. But the Azrael in this is almost nothing like the real Azrael. I can forgive Murphy a little since this is an Elseworlds story and not real continuity, thus he has creative freedom to do what he wants. But still, to me, Azrael is not just some old brute quoting scripture and murdering people. Murphy seems to have a much better handle on other characters, so I'm not sure why he did Azrael so wrong.

The rest of the story is OK, but not really as good as the first one. There's a lot of old-fashioned stuff about family histories and legacies and whatever else that isn't all that interesting. A couple of major characters die and secrets are revealed and so on. In the end, like most sequels, it doesn't live up to the original.

Batman: Three Jokers by Geoff Johns
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Here's a joke for you: what happens when an event comic isn't an event? You get a decent story that at the end feels hollow because it doesn't go anywhere.

I think it was in Rebirth that Geoff Johns introduced this idea that there were actually three Jokers as a way to explain how the character has changed from 1940 to today. I don't think the regular Batman comics got into that; I know Tom King's run immediately following Rebirth never mentioned it and for that matter hardly featured the Joker at all. Which really proved one thing: the Joker is overrated as a Batman villain. I mean, King did an 85-issue arc and the Joker only really featured in a couple of issues, most of them a flashback to the "War of Jokes & Riddles." Of course the next creative team had to make the Joker prominent because fans were probably getting antsy.

Anyway, this doesn't really cover a lot of new ground. There are 3 Jokers and they're working together and turning seemingly random people into Jokers to search for America's Next Top Joker! Which, now that I think of it, a reality show format probably would have been the best way to do this. The Jokers could have been broadcasting to the whole city and Batman could have had to track them down before the final rose or crowbar or Jokerized fish or rubber chicken or whatever.

Besides Batman, there's also Batgirl (with a not-stupid costume) and Red Hood, who wants to kill the Jokers for revenge. It all plays out pretty well. There aren't really plot holes or stupid things; despite his personal and professional failings as a bigshot of DC's film/TV division, Johns remains a competent comic book writer. The art is also well done, so people and things don't look like crude sketches.

But in the end this feels so hollow because nothing important really happens. The Joker knows who Batman is and Batman knows who the Joker is and...nothing. Nothing really comes from this and it's not really breaking any new ground. So at best this rises to the level of decent entertainment for an hour or so.

Batgirl in the not-stupid costume

On the positive side it did provide some pretty good action figures from McFarlane. I have Batman, Batgirl, and one of the Jokers. Batgirl was the only one I really wanted because it's a better costume than the post-Burnside ones DC has come out with. The other two I got on sale basically 2-for-1.

Doomsday Clock: The Complete Collection by Geoff Johns
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If Alan Moore ever read this, I can only imagine how angry he'd be about this. The end especially takes a big steaming dump all over Moore and Gibbons's work with a forced happy ending. The point of that book was that the "heroes" are very broken, damaged people to the point that one "saves" the world by killing 3 million people. This was back in 1985 when most people still thought comics were for kids. What Johns does in the end is state the obvious: that such damaged, broken people couldn't be Superman. That was pretty much Moore's premise to start, that this was a world where colorful heroes weren't Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and so on.

This is an "event' that really never needed to happen. But New 52 sales and popularity were lagging, so what better way to get some attention and stoke the imaginations of fanboys than rebooting courtesy of Dr. Manhattan? That's what Johns clumsily did in Rebirth and then of course there needed to be some explanation of that, hence this. Which a lot of it really seems like padding so it could be 12 issues when half that would have probably done it. I mean all the stuff about Mime, Marionette, fake "Rorschach," Batman, the Joker, etc. didn't really do a lot.

Like Rebirth, in the end the irony is this is Johns rewriting and overwriting stuff that...Johns wrote. He was the engineer of Flashpoint and the New 52, so he's basically rewriting himself. It's the kind of unnecessary cash grab I'm glad I didn't buy for full price. (Fun Fact:  Vlad Putin and China's leader are prominently featured while others are mentioned by name.  Meanwhile America's president is never referred to by name or shown, though from some dialogue and Tweets and such it's pretty obvious it's Trump.)

The Human Target, Volume 1 by Tom King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In a way I was happy to get this as I've been wanting to read this series. On the downside it's only half the story so I'll have to wait until the next six issues are gathered up to finish reading. I definitely want to, because this is another good standalone series by Tom King that tackles another character who hasn't been really important in DC Comics for a while.

In this case it's Christopher Chance, the eponymous Human Target. His gig is to disguise himself as someone threatened with assassination. Then he'll take the bullet or whatever and flush out the assassin. It's a dangerous but lucrative occupation until Chance impersonates Lex Luthor. He thwarts an attack only to realize in the process he was poisoned and now has 12 days to live. (12 days, 12 issues, get it?) When a chemical in the poison traces back to the Justice League International, it sets Chance to find his murderer among some of the most powerful people on Earth--or anywhere else.

I realized later this has most of the elements of a Raymond Chandler mystery: much of the setting is in Los Angeles or some version thereof; there's a hardboiled, hard-drinking, trash-talking detective in Chance; a pair of "sisters," one seemingly sweet and innocent and one a femme fatale in Ice & Fire; and a powerful goon who stalks the detective to make things difficult in Guy Gardner. Really all it needs is some stolen jewelry and it'd have just about everything. But of course there's still 6 issues for that.

So definitely if you like noir mysteries and superheroes this is a good read. There are some dark turns (including a murder) but as I've said before, King manages to not be too gross or twisted; it never approaches the carnage and depravity of The Boys but it's not for kids either.

Looking forward to seeing if Chance finds his murderer before it's too late.

Dark Nights: Death Metal (2020-): Deluxe Edition by Scott Snyder
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really hated the original Metal so I wasn't interested in this. But it was on sale for so cheap that I got it for free with credits I had. It was about as unimpressive as I thought. Like Metal or the first volume of Snyder's Justice League I read, there's a lot of gobbledygook that only makes sense if you don't stop to think about it. There are fights and slugfests and continuity changes that lasted about a year before the next continuity changes. So...whatever. I'm even less interested in the stuff that comes after this that's already been overwritten. This constant cycle of rebooting might drive immediate sales but for people like me too poor for that it just renders everything in "continuity" a morbid curiosity.

Twilight by Howard Chaykin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was something a bit different from a lot of other comics I've read. From what someone told me, the original basis was a group of DC sci-fi heroes from the 50s, though updated for 1990ish. Which of course means making it a lot grittier and grimmer.

There are a lot of intriguing ideas and plot threads but with only 3 oversized issues there's not really enough time to explore everything. If this had been a 12-issue series (at least) there would have been a better opportunity to really delve into everything. I mean you basically have a 1000-year gap between the first two books and I'm not sure how long between the second and third books. Plus you've got at least a half-dozen main characters on different planets and such...it really could have used a little more space--pun mostly intended.

The framing device of old Homer Glint talking to his talking cat(!?!) is pretty fun and allows some humor into what might have otherwise been kind of grim.

The art is good for the time period with plenty of interesting aliens and ships and so on. I was worried from reading a Blogger buddy's article that some of the splash pages or two-page spreads wouldn't read well on my Kindle Fire, but it wasn't too bad and at this point it might be better to read a digitized version than a moldy old paper version.

 
The Joker War Saga by James Tynion IV
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Even though this is supposed to be the complete "saga" there's still a big chunk missing if you haven't read the comics between when Tom King's run ended and when this "event" started. The gist is that the Joker has taken over Bruce Wayne's fortune and company and the city has taken over Wayne Manor. And then the Joker has an army of clowns attacking the city while Batman and his allies try to stop them.

They try to bill this as something different, but it's really not. It's just the same old boring basic Joker garbage. Why so many people think the Joker is the ultimate villain is beyond me. He's just a stupid boring basic evil clown. Maybe the original evil clown, but at this point the shtick is worn out.

The only unique thing of the premise--that Joker has Batman's toys--isn't even used all that well. Batman doesn't seem inconvenienced at all, nor are his allies.

There are a bunch of different issues from different titles. None are really all that interesting. The one where Joker visits Bane in Arkham just seems like Tynion whining because Tom King killed Alfred before he got a chance to. "Waaah, I wanted to kill Alfred! You didn't do it right!" TS, dude.

Since there are so many different issues, the artists vary. Most are competent but a few were pretty bad like a lot of the junk Marvel puts out these days. The one focusing on "Clownhunter" was so bad I mostly skipped through it. The Harley Quinn one wasn't great either. Neither was the Batgirl one.

Anyway, like "Three Jokers," "Endgame," and "Death of the Family" it's another Joker-themed event that fails to add anything new or exciting to the Joker mythos. The only hit DC's had the last decade with that was the "Batman Who Laughs" and that was a Joker-ized Batman, not the real Joker.

Anyway, suffice it to say I didn't really like it and I don't really want to read the rest of Tynion's short run on the title.

(PS:  I wasn't that interested in this but I was curious if it tied to 3 Jokers--it doesn't--or Future State, which I think it sorta half-assedly starts to set up.)  

On Goodreads in a review of something, Tony Laplume talked about "5G" which has nothing to do with cell phones.  I think it was short for 5th Generation.  (You had the Golden Age of the 30s-40s, Silver Age of the 50s-60s, Bronze Age of the 70s-80s, and then I guess a 4th Generation from the 90s-on if you're wondering why it'd be considered the 5th generation.)  It was supposed to be this big concept at DC where they'd replace most of the status quo characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman with new characters.  As the rumors went around, of course the "fans" revolted and made a huge fuss and so DC backed down.  Instead, they turned it into this series called "Future State" that would introduce new characters while presumably showing the future of the DC Universe.  Predictably it was hit-or-miss when I read some of the collections they put out.

Future State: Batman - Dark Detective by Mariko Tamaki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I couldn't afford to read the Future State stories when they came out individually, so it's sorta nice they gathered them up into trades. But they did it in kind of a weird fashion. The first 4 issues of this are the titular "Dark Detective" about Bruce Wayne, who's lost everything in the future, including his life--or so everyone thinks. With what little leftover tech he has, he tries to learn more about the paramilitary group "The Magistrate" who have taken over Gotham. It's decent, but the problem is just when it's getting started, it's over.

Then there are two issues about Red Hood, who's joined the Magistrate for...reasons until they double-cross him. Then there are two Batman/Superman ones that are sort of a prequel as the Magistrate is just getting started, Superman is still Clark Kent, and Batman is still Bruce Wayne. The two Catwoman ones were the best besides the Dark Detective ones. It's sort of a Snowpiercer thing as Catwoman has to rescue people on a Magistrate train.

What's confusing then is she rescues Bruce Wayne. So...when is this taking place? That's the problem with these things; they really need to give you a timeline before each story so you know when it's fitting in to this timeline that literally spans centuries.

The last couple are Harley Quinn and Robin (Tim Drake) that are OK but again it's not really clear where everything is fitting together. The one I'm reading now, the "Next Batman," volume adds more pieces that only make it more confusing. Maybe eventually they'll rearrange the omnibuses into another omnibus that makes it make more sense.

The art varies from story to story. Some is really good and mostly realistic and some is more cartoonish.

Future State: The Next Batman by John Ridley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had already finished the "Dark Detective" volume, so then I figured I should read the second Batman-oriented volume. "The Next Batman" is Tim "Jace" Fox, the son of Lucius Fox and brother of Luke Fox, who was Batwing for about a minute--long enough for me to have an action figure of him. Only the first 28% actually covers the 4 issues of this story. And just as we're getting into the story and Jace is starting to learn the ropes of being Batman, it's over. Where did he find the Bat-stuff and why did he decide to adopt the Batman moniker? Yeah, scene missing from this and the previous book. Maybe it was in the Batman comics before this?

After that is a mishmash of other full stories and I think some backup stories that involve Nightwing (with the Next Batman), Batgirls, the Outsiders, Gotham City Sirens, Arkham Knights, Grifter, and probably more! Most of it was OK. Some was kind of gritty and some was kind of fun. The art varies with a slew of different artists.

Overall it was OK, but I think like I said with the Dark Detective volume, it'd be better if they gave you a timeline or something to know when these stories are taking place. I mean in one issue Jefferson Pierce (Black Lightning) is in jail as a human and in another he's some kind of energy being thanks to magic that happened when? It can be pretty confusing, especially if you haven't been following everything that's been going on with the Batman series.

Future State (2021-): Superman by Sean Lewis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was kind of frustrating to read. The Superman story that you'd think would be the focus, the one on the f-ing cover, is barely even dealt with! For...reasons Superman goes to Warworld and loses his powers and becomes a gladiator Mongul keeps alive to fight again and again and...I guess he escapes and conquers Mongul...somehow.

There are only two supposed Superman (Clark Kent) issues and those are about 80% about some black girl on Earth in a poor imitation of a Tom King story. So it all ends up being a teaser. There are stories involving Midnighter, Black Racer, and Mr. Miracle (Shilo Norman) that add more pieces to the puzzle, but a whole lot seems to be missing.

It actually starts with Jon Kent's Superman for one issue and then there are a bunch of other stories before we get back to that. It was pretty annoying.

I thought of giving it two stars but there is some good stuff in here. The Mr. Miracle stories are good. The "Lex Luthor: Imperious Rex" is fun. The Superwoman story is somewhat poignant. The "House of El" ones were interesting.

But overall there are all these bits and pieces and the reader is left to try to put them together into something. Like the two Bat-Family ones, it'd help if they told you when all this stuff is happening. It's hard to tell what's going on when otherwise.

Future State (2021-): Wonder Woman by Becky Cloonan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one seemed shorter than some of the other volumes. While Yara Flor, who's called Wonder Girl on the cover but Wonder Woman in the book, was the breakout star, this starts with two issues focusing on Nubia. They were pretty good but like a lot of the Future State stories it seems like it's laying the groundwork for something that's never going to happen.

The first two Yara Flor stories started out funny and then turned poignant. The Pegasus hating her reminded me of my Scarlet Knight stories where the Pegasus hates the first Emma Earl to ride it because she's not its true rider. Anyway, then there are two fun issues of Yara and Jon Kent as Wonder Woman/Superman.

Finally we have the original Wonder Woman at the end of the universe. It's kind of a downer story but it ends up with a hopeful message. Nothing ever ends--at least in comics.

The art was mostly good. The Yara Flor ones were probably the crudest while the Nubia and Diana ones were a lot better.

As I've said with the other three volumes, it can be hard to know where to place these on the timeline--except the last one.

 
Batman: Urban Legends, Vol. 1 by Chip Zdarsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked the Red Hood/Batman issues of this. Maybe not quite Tom King good but better than some other Batman writers. It kind of softens the Red Hood as he tries to stop a new drug called "Cheerdrops" that's a twist on the Scarecrow's fear gas, only instead of nightmares it puts people into a state of bliss to the point they can go comatose or fall off a building or something. When Hood finds a woman in a coma with a kid, he has to take responsibility for the kid and that in turn brings memories of his youth with Bruce Wayne. And when Batman is captured, it's up to Red Hood to save the day.

That was only about half of it, which probably would have got this 4 stars. But then there's this whole Grifter thing just thrown in there. I hadn't read WildCATS in the 90s so I didn't know who Grifter was. Some kind of cut-rate Deadpool? There's this whole long thing about him working for Lucius Fox and Leviathan and sometimes fighting Batman, Red Hood, Superman, and Nightwing. If I knew who he was or what was going on it would have been better. Inserted into this without any setup it's more confusing than fun.

 
Hardware: The Man in the Machine by Dwayne McDuffie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I understand it, in the early 90s, Dwayne McDuffie and others started Milestone Comics as a way to represent black heroes. Hardware was one of those characters. Kind of like the later Steel, Hardware is a brilliant scientist who creates an armored suit. Like Iron Man, it has different weapons and at the start can fly, though the jet pack is destroyed.

The first four issues provide the origin: Curtis Metcalf works for Edwin Alva (obvious twist on Thomas Alva Edison) who is an evil and manipulative business tycoon. When Curtis realizes Metcalf is just using him, he creates Hardware and starts taking down his boss.

The next three issues, Hardware goes after a prostitute killer and tangles with the vigilante Deathwish, who's sort of a Punisher-type character. There's a clever twist to solve the mystery.

The final issue of this volume is mostly a nightmare as Curtis/Hardware explores the cost of his war on crime. At the end of which he decides to be more about justice and less about vengeance, sort of like what has happened in Batman comics and the most recent movie.

The violence, language, and sexual content as well as the art is pretty similar to what was going on in comics for DC's other imprint Vertigo or Image Comics like Spawn. Some of the dialogue is a little corny 30 years later and the art is definitely 90s looking but it's not bad.

I'm not sure what they used to transfer this to digital but it's not a great transfer. It seemed kind of grainy and the colors a little off.

 
Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder by Judd Winick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This 2006 miniseries might have been in continuity back then, but I don't really remember. I wasn't really following comics back then anyway. This was a prequel to show Billy Batson (called Captain Marvel, not Shazam, since this was when Marvel wasn't really using the name) meeting Superman for the first time. They tangle with the same crew in museums first in Metropolis and then Fawcett City (not Philadelphia like the later Geoff Johns version used for the movie). They team up and take on some magic enemies like Sabac and Eclipso.

It's pretty lighthearted and fun with cartoony art that's probably meant to invoke the Golden Age. Then in the fourth issue it takes a pretty dark turn. It ends with sort of a whimper; those who might be hoping for a big fight between the two heroes would be really disappointed.

Personally I found the lack of angst and fighting between the heroes to be kind of refreshing. It's pretty old-school to have two heroes work together without throwing punches and trading insults first. In this case Captain Marvel really looks up to Superman and at the end Clark decides to become a mentor to Billy.

Would that the real history of these characters had been so free of acrimony and lawsuits.

 
The Trials of Shazam: The Complete Series by Judd Winick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those traditional stories or stories at least that became traditional after 1992 with the "Death of Superman" and then "Knightfall" replacing both Superman and Batman for a short time. In this case, after 2006's "Infinite Crisis," the wizard Shazam is "dead" and so Billy Batson assumes his mantle. Freddy Freeman then becomes the new Shazam.

But first he has to pass the "trials" of the six beings who make up the magic word: Solomon, Hercules, Achilles, Zeus, Apollo, and Mercury. Three are Greek gods, two are Greek demigods, and one is from the Hebrew Bible, because I guess using Athena wouldn't have fit the naming scheme.

Anyway, Freddy has to find each person and then do something to get their power. But an evil woman named Sabina is competing to get the powers for herself. She takes some and he gets some and then there's a final contest. (Later it occurred to me the plot setup is pretty much like the first three miniseries of the GI JOE cartoon where there was some device--the MASS Device, Weather Dominator, and Pyramid of Darkness--where the Joes and COBRA would fight over the pieces to determine who would control them.)

It's all done pretty well even if we know what the end result will be--and the end result after that. With these replacement stories the replacement hardly ever lasts more than a couple of years. I have no idea what happened to Freddy or when Billy came back or when Mary woke from her coma. I really don't know what happened to the Shazam family between this and Geoff Johns rebooting it post-New 52 with the version that became the basis for the movie.

There are two different artists sharing the work and while they have slightly different styles, both are more in that Alex Ross-type style where it looks more painted than hastily drawn as a lot of "art" these days is. So I'm giving the book a bonus point for the art.

This is certainly not essential reading, but it's not bad either.

 
Blue Beetle: Jaime Reyes Book One by Keith Giffen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I guess with a movie coming up this was on Amazon Prime to read. It's the origin of the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle, which I think the movie is about. It was also featured in I think season 2 of Young Justice.

The actual origin would begin in Identity Crisis or Infinite Crisis--one of those mid-2000s crises. The Golden Age Blue Beetle was some kind of Egyptian magic thing. Then there was Ted Kord's Blue Beetle that was more of an Iron Man-type thing with a rich scientist making cool toys. This Blue Beetle is an alien thing that bonds to young Jaime Reyes.

The tone and subject really call to mind Marvel, especially Spider-Man, both Peter Parker and Miles Morales. There are also plenty of other teen heroes who would be similar. There's a lot of the usual stuff of Jaime having to balance his superhero life and high school life. And he also has to try to find out what the scarab is and what it does.

Overall while not really deep or inventive, it's pretty fun. The art is pretty cartoony but I guess that was probably supposed to appeal more to younger readers who might be more familiar with manga and stuff like that.

(Fun Fact: This also includes Peacemaker, who is just about nothing like the John Cena version on the big and small screen.)

This isn't a comic per se but it's a book I got from Amazon Vine about a comics character, so close enough for me:

MARVEL Spider-Man: A History and Celebration of the Web-Slinger, Decade by Decade by Matthew K. Manning
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the sort of book that's not really for super-fans or True Believers as might be more appropriate. It's more of an overview of Spider-Man's history in comics, TV, film, and video games, with a heavy emphasis on the comics. There is some insider baseball for bigger fans with quotes from Stan Lee and various other writers, artists, and editors. It helps co-author Peter David worked for Marvel in the 80s, including on Spider-Man, so this isn't just "experts" who only know about Spidey from the outside.

The book is only 208 pages with plenty of illustrations, so as I said it's not really the sort of book if you want a detailed history and analysis of Spider-Man. It's fun, though, if you just want an overview of Spider-Man's history and legacy.

This also isn't a comic book but it's stories from a pulp magazine that inspired the comic books of the late 30s:

The Doctor Satan MEGAPACK®: The Complete Series from Weird Tales by The Complete Series from Weird Tales
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Before the Man of Steel and Dark Knight ushered in the Golden Age of Comics in the late 30s, there were pulp magazines. Some characters like The Shadow or The Phantom have managed to have attempts to revive them. I don't think Dr. Satan has had the same luck.

This book features 7 stories from Weird Tales magazine written by Paul Ernst from 1935-1936. The stories are all largely the same: master criminal/scientist/wizard Dr. Satan kills and/or blackmails some rich people with magic and/or something sciencey akin to magic to get money from them. He's aided by a big guy without legs who uses his arms to get around and until the last couple of stories a little monkey-ish guy. But then Ascott Keane and his assistant unravel Dr. Satan's scheme and send him packing for the next round.

In the character of Ascott Keane we see a prototype for Bruce Wayne: Keane is a rich guy who in public pretends to be a clueless playboy but in reality is a highly intelligent detective. Only instead of dressing up in a bat suit, Keane is like if Bruce Wayne had studied the mystic arts like Dr. Strange. Instead of Alfred, he has Beatrice, an attractive young redhead who's his personal assistant. Huge upgrade over an English butler if you ask me. Kind of wonder why Kane/Finger didn't go that route as it builds in a potential love interest.  Maybe it was just in the sexist 30s publishers wouldn't be cool with the idea of a woman being part of the team.

Anyway, the writing isn't great and the stories are kind of the same, but they're fun little curiosities and I got them for less than fifty cents, so whatever.

end

Ranking DC's Tales of the Dark Multiverse

In the previous entry I talked about the second volume of DC's Tales of the Dark Multiverse.  Then I got thinking:  how would I rank the 10 stories from the two volumes?  So what the hell, I'm ranking them.

1.  Death of Superman:  I liked this take on the classic 90s story.  The gist was that Lois Lane is embittered by Superman's death and uses the power of the Eradicator to try to finish Superman's work.  Inevitably she gets more and more brutal in her tactics.  Everything backfires when the real Superman returns and is killed forever.  My only problem was it ended without any real resolution.  I would have liked a whole graphic novel to fully explore it.

2.  Flashpoint:  I also liked this take on the 2011-ish event.  The gist is that Barry Allen tries to change time, fucks things up, dies, and Reverse Flash fucks things up even more.  Like the Death of Superman one, my main complaint was it was too short.  It's another where a longer story could have made it feel more complete.

3.  Blackest Night:  This was not too bad of a spinoff though one of those that was maybe a little contrived.  Sinestro tried to use the power of the White Lantern to save the universe, but failed and so most everyone in the universe are Black Lanterns (aka zombies).  With Dove, Lobo, and Mr. Miracle he tries one final Hail Mary to save the universe, but things go awry and a new universe is born based on Lobo, which is even worse than basing a whole universe on Deadpool.  Sinestro is left to try to find a way to escape the hell of his own making.  So kind of a fitting comeuppance, though it sucks it took zombifying most of the universe.

4. War of the Gods:  This one I didn't like as much but mostly because it's not an event I'm really familiar with.  It was from 1991 and I don't think all that well remembered except among comic nerds.  The gist is Wonder Woman is possessed by the witch Hectate, who kills a bunch of heroes until magic users bind her deep underground.  This had probably the closest to a happy ending of many of these stories as at least many heroes survived and even Wonder Woman survives--mostly.  If I were more familiar with the event, I might have liked it more.  (Fun Fact:  the Hectate thing is brought back in The Witching Hour featuring Wonder Woman and the Justice League Dark.)

5.  Infinite Crisis:  This is another that wasn't too bad but it's something kind of obscure.  It's really stems from the event before Infinite Crisis called Identity Crisis.  Basically Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) gets involved with a group called Checkmate and a system called OMAC/Brother Eye that was designed by Bruce Wayne to spy on the world.  Ted winds up taking over the system and while he has good intentions, things spin out of control until he's basically turned all the superheroes of the world into drones.  I was somewhat familiar with this event but still it's probably not something people would really be familiar with.

6.  Crisis on Infinite Earths:  This really comes from Last Days of the Justice Society, which came after the Crisis.  Basically the JSA are left as the main heroes on Earth and have to fight the evil Norse flame monster Surtur.  But when they fail, Green Lantern (Alan Scott) makes a deal to lead Surtur to more planets so long as he never returns to Earth.  Kind of a depressing story, but what do you expect?  Another where I don't think a lot of people would really be too familiar with it, though Surtur would probably be familiar from Thor Ragnarok.

7:  The Judas Contract:  This is another depressing story.  Tara, who betrays the Teen Titans in the Judas Contract, instead takes some kind of steroid that amps her Earth-controlling powers.  She ends up killing Superman and most other heroes and enslaving what's left of humanity as Gaia.  Another story where someone who has good intentions winds up going wrong and turning evil.  The scenario felt really contrived; if they had to do a Judas Contract one, why not just postulate what might happen if Deathstroke had actually killed all the Teen Titans?

8.  Hush:  This was OK but it's not really that great.  Loosely based on the Hush story of Batman comics, but there seemed like a lot of unnecessary shit and it didn't really tie into the original story that much or that well.  

9.  Knightfall:  The first story, I was really interested to read it--and then disappointed.  The concept should have been great:  what if Azrael had defeated Bruce Wayne and retained the Batman cowl?  And maybe if it had been written by Dennis O'Neil or one of the writers from the 90s it could have been good.  Instead, Scott Snyder had no interest in Azrael and contrives to keep Bruce Wayne alive so he can retake the mantle--only as a worse version of Batman.  I felt cheated.

10:  Metal:  Making a dumb, contrived event even more dumb and contrived!  An example of dumb, contrived storytelling:  the evil Jokerized 'Batman Who Laughs' uses the hand of Zatanna's corpse to cast spells to stop the good guys.  Some comic book nerd might disagree, but I'm pretty sure that's not how magic works; I don't think you can use a dead magician's hand like a magic wand.  Mostly I think it was just a cheap device made to add some difficulty to the fight.  So, really, shit like that is why I didn't like this or the event that spawned it in general.

There you go, that's my list.  If you read the stories, then you can make your own list.

DC's Dark Multiverse Really Hates Superman

I had already read the first volume of DC's Tales From the Dark Multiverse series.  The idea was these were all stories from the multiverse where things work out poorly.  There were stories spun out of famous events like Knightfall, Death of Superman, Blackest Night, Infinite Crisis, and the Judas Contract.

Volume II does some other famous events.

The first is Batman:  Hush.  This was a 12-issue series that at the time was sort of a soft reboot of the Batman comics.  The premise was there was someone with bandages covering his face calling himself Hush who seemed to know Batman's secret identity and was out to get him.  It turned out Hush was the Riddler, who for whatever reason was trying to be more badass.  

In the sequel Heart of Hush, Bruce Wayne's friend Tommy Elliott takes up the Hush mantle and puts a bomb in Catwoman's chest.  Batman has to do stuff to save her before she dies.  (Yeah, it's not as good.)

This dark multiverse tale is based more on the sequel as it's about Bruce and Tommy.  In this case, after his parents die, Bruce goes to live with Tommy.  Years later he goes insane and is put into Arkham while Tommy basically controls Wayne Enterprises.  For some reason Gotham secedes from America to become its own nation-state that's controlled by the Court of Owls and their Talons, led by Dick Grayson.  Barbara Gordon (aka Oracle) leads "the Outsiders" who include Tim Drake (Robin/Red Robin) and Orphan (late 90s-2000s Batgirl).  And Jason Todd is a rich socialite.

Anyway, one night Bruce seemingly dies and the "devil of Arkham" begins killing people.  This "devil" has a bat on his chest and head wrapped in bandages.  And of course it's Bruce Wayne, who with the Joker's help faked his death.  Instead of killing people, this "Batman the Silenced" (a stupid name because he does talk) stashes them in cages in the Batcave.  And then Alfred, who has gone crazy, inherits control of the Wayne estate.

There's a lot of useless stuff in this that didn't really need to be there.  Other than the presence of Tommy, there's really not much to tie it to the Hush stories.  Probably because it wasn't written by the original author(s).

The second story is based on Flashpoint, which was the event where Barry Allen went back in time to save his mom from Reverse Flash only to create an apocalyptic timeline where Atlantis and the Amazons were at war and Superman was a government experiment in a secret lab and Thomas Wayne became a brutal Batman after his son was murdered in the alley instead of him.

In that story, Barry didn't have his Flash powers after changing history, so he staged the accident that gave him his powers so he could fix things.  This supposes:  what if that hadn't worked and he had just died instead?

The gist is that Reverse Flash basically takes control of things--or at least tries to.  He blackmails the American president to give him control of the US and then kills Aquaman to try to scare the Amazons into making peace.  Meanwhile, Batman and Cyborg rescue Superman and start exposing him to sunlight so he can charge up to full power.  Then he takes on Reverse Flash and is winning until Batman kills him with a Kryptonite gun because he wants Reverse Flash to save Bruce.  Um...sure.  Then Wonder Woman shows up at the head of an army of Amazons and Atlanteans and they've also allied themselves with Darkseid and the New Gods.  Realizing he's fucked up, Reverse Flash escapes to go try to alter time.  

And then it just kinda ends.  Ironically DC is also doing a series called "Flashpoint Beyond" that also involves rejiggering the Flashpoint story, only that was written by original author Geoff Johns, while this was not.  It was a good story, but the end just kind of leaves us hanging, thus it's not really satisfying.

The third story is based on War of the Gods, which was...I have no idea.  I had to read the Wikipedia entry for it that says it was a 1991 story conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Wonder Woman.  The story involves all the various gods like the Greek and Roman and Norse and some other gods fighting.  This also involved Shazam and Wonder Woman.  And I guess there was some thing where if Wonder Woman died she'd be taken over by the witch Hectate, but she found some way around this, but...what if she didn't?

At first she thinks she's buried the witch deep down, but agents of the witch kill Steve Trevor and someone else and eventually the witch takes over and kills most of the superheroes until Zatanna and some of the magic users manage to trap her.  And so she's locked up somewhere until they can maybe cure her--or she escapes to terrorize everyone.

One thing that annoyed me was the witch's agents steal F-14 Tomcat fighters from an Air Force base to go bomb Paradise Island.  This is wrong for a number of reasons.  First, Tomcats are Navy planes, not Air Force planes.  Second, most of their lives, Tomcats were solely fighters, not bombers, though late in life they were adapted to that purpose.  Third, Tomcats were retired early in the 2000s, so unless this story takes place in the past (which it might; the original story came from 1991) they wouldn't be in use yet.  Especially in the 2020s it just seems so lazy that the writer and/or artist didn't take out their phones to Google what sort of plane to use.  In this case F-16s would have made the most sense as they are Air Force planes, have always been fighter-bombers, and have been in service almost 40 years.  It should have been pretty easy to find that out with a simple search.  I'm just saying.

Mostly because this is an obscure story unless you're a real comic book nerd, I couldn't care.  I didn't know who Hectate was and thus really had little interest in all of this.

DC's first major line-wide event was Crisis on Infinite Earths.  The idea was to trim the sprawling DC continuity down and leave only one Earth with one set of characters--for the next 20 years.  Though the Justice Society survived this, DC didn't really want the old geezers around, so they came up with a one-off called Last Days of the Justice Society where they end up fighting an eternal battle against the Norse god Surtur.  An eternal battle that lasted until 1992.

So the premise of the fourth story is...what if it was the Justice League who did that instead?  Only they lose against Surtur, who then comes to Earth.  The Justice Society tries to stop him, but not even original Superman can stop him.  Their Hail Mary plan to essentially create a black hole to destroy Surtur fails and it seems all is lost.

Then original Green Lantern Alan Scott makes a bargain with Surtur.  He basically becomes Surtur's Silver Surfer, a herald who leads his master to new planets to destroy.  So predictably it's a pretty depressing story.  Earth is saved, but countless other worlds are destroyed.  Though really they probably would have been anyway; it might just have taken Surtur longer to find them.

Anyway, like the one before it was fairly obscure unless you're a comic book nerd.  I guess for what it was it was OK. Not something you'd read if you want a pick-me-up but then none of these stories are.

The last story is spun out of Metal, the really stupid event that prompted the creation of this series. That ended with the Justice League making some kind of armor and defeating the god Barbatos.  But...what if that hadn't worked?  Instead the League is turned into monstrous "dragons."  Duke Thomas, aka "the Signal" is one of the few survivors left.  He recruits Nightwing, Hawkgirl and Hawkman, Flash, and a sentient monkey to kill the five "dragons" based on Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Green Lantern.  And they do.  And then Duke kills the Watcher-type guy, so I guess there won't be any more of these.  Hooray!

I thought Metal was really stupid so obviously a spinoff of that would also be pretty stupid to me.

Overall not really that great.  Some fairly obscure stuff and stuff that just wasn't great.  The Flashpoint one was probably the best.

I recall that after Marvel's What If...? series on Disney+, some people noted how many times Tony Stark was killed in the series and in the final episode was just disrespected by the Watcher, who barked, "Not you, Stark" when he took Gamora for his little team.

With these Dark Multiverse stories it seems like Superman is the one who really gets the short end of the stick most often.  In most stories he's killed or otherwise neutralized.

1. Story 1:  He does not appear in this Knightfall spinoff.
2. Story 2:  It's a spinoff of the Death of Superman so he has already "died" at the hands of Doomsday but later in the story comes back to life only to actually die.
3. Story 3:  It's a Blackest Night story where Superman as well as everyone except Dove, Sinestro, Lobo, and Mr. Miracle were made into zombies.
4. Story 4:  Superman (along with most of the other heroes) is made into an OMAC drone by Ted Kord.
5. Story 5:  Superman is poisoned with Kryptonite by Tara, who becomes the evil goddess Gaia.
6. Story 6:  He does not appear in the Hush spinoff.
7. Story 7:  After being rescued from a secret government lab, he's shot with a Kryptonite bullet by Batman.
8. Story 8:  Hectate rips his heart out Temple of Doom style.  Kali mal!
9. Story 9:  Modern Superman is trapped in a pocket universe while original Superman is about to killed by Surtur when Alan Scott cuts a deal.
10. Story 10:  Superman is turned into one of the evil "dragons," a brutish monster with a lot of teeth in its midsection.

Do you see the pattern there?  I guess it's part of that thing people have talked about where to show how badass someone is they have to take down someone who is seen to be badass.  Like how Borg or other aliens would kick Worf's ass in Star Trek TNG/DS9.  So to show how serious and terrible is, the villain has to kill Superman, the most powerful hero (supposedly) who's also the symbol of hope.

Weirdly none of these stories really involve Superman directly.  I guess because they've already done Elseworlds stories they could have used here, like Red Son where Superman was found in Ukraine in the 1930s instead of Kansas.  Or Injustice where he turns into an evil dictator after Lois and her baby are killed by the Joker.  Other than those, I'm not sure what other scenarios they could have used, so these stories focus on other characters instead, which leaves DC's original and most powerful hero as mostly a punching bag.

2017 Movies: Grumpy Bulldog v Tony Laplume

 Here we go again!  Wednesday was 2016 movie reviews of Tony Laplume and me.  Now it's 2017!

Logan (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: One of the truly great superhero movies, the kind the genre will be able to tout among the classics in decades to come, at last treating Wolverine as the icon he is but also as the man he is.

Me:

The problem is thanks to licensing and budgets and such this can't be as universe-spanning as the comic book.  But I think they lost something by Logan not having a family and not taking a vow to not kill because that really made it more important when he did finally decide to kill.  But then there wouldn't have been nearly the body count, right? (3/5)

Justice League (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: At this point a DC movie being trashed by critics and/or audiences (and an MCU being praised by both) is so old hat you just have to laugh.  I loved this one, but the later Snyder Cut is better.

Me:

Justice League:  I didn't hate this nearly as much as other people.  It wasn't a great movie either, but it did the best it could with the hand it was dealt. (3/5) (And no, the Snyder Cut was not better, just longer.)

Star Wars - Episode VII: The Last Jedi (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: The period surrounding its release was a trying time for me, but even that didn't stop me from viewing Last Jedi very differently from its (un)popular reception.  Contains at least one definitive moment in the saga.

Me:

The Last Jedi:  Do I even need to delve into this?  I've spent plenty of blog space on why this movie sucks.  Yet of course people still think it's good.  Shame on you.  I mean sure it looks nice and there's diversity, but the story itself is absolute garbage that can only resolve itself through an obvious deus ex machina.  What it did to Luke Skywalker was only slightly less traumatizing than killing Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie.  If that's your best Star Wars, you're doing it wrong. (1/5)

Wonder Woman (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Took me a few viewings, but I eventually understood what everyone loved about it.

Me:

Wonder Woman:  The first of the modern DC live action movies where they actually got things right.  Most of it wasn't as fun and popcorn-movie entertaining as Aquaman and Shazam but it was a good origin story and for my money the No Man's Land scene is still one of the best scenes in any superhero movie.  Not to mention the significance of finally having a successful female superhero movie after decades of popular female characters being ignored. (4/5)

Murder on the Orient Express (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: The stellar cast led by director Kenneth Branagh makes this a statement on a classic.

Me:

I didn't actually write a review, at least not on this blog, but I remember it was decent though maybe not all that great unless you like old-fashioned detective movies. (3/5)

Logan Lucky (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: What were the odds that two movies released in 2017 featuring "Logan" in the title would not only exist but be well worth watching?  This one stars Daniel Craig in probably the role that led to his far more famous turn as a Southern-voiced gentleman in Knives Out.  And a great cast around him, including Adam Driver.

Me:

Logan Lucky:  A West Virginia family has been down on their luck so long it seems to be a curse.  Then the older brother (Channing Tatum) and his one-armed brother (Adam Driver) hatch a plan to rob a race track in North Carolina during a big race.  They enlist the help of an explosives expert already in jail, Daniel Craig.  Like a good heist movie there are plenty of twists and turns, but this was also pretty funny. (3/5)

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Sometimes people are just looking for disappointment, especially when they know there's something at stake, such as a potential franchise around this one.  But Charlie Hunham and company are a fine new version of the story all the same.  Also the movie that definitively made me a fan of Guy Ritchie.

Me:

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword:  As I said on Facebook, it would help if you can purge from your memory any knowledge of the actual King Arthur legend like the movie Excalibur.  I mean there's very little of that in this other than some names and vague ideas.  Instead director Guy Ritchie and his writing team try to melt together an Arthurian movie, one of Guy's London crime movies like Snatch, Robin Hood, and probably a few other things so that you end up with Arthur floating to London as a baby like Moses only to be adopted by prostitutes until he becomes their pimp.  Meanwhile King Uther's brother has made a deal with "syrens" (a weird squid lady creature) in his basement to build a tower that will somehow give him ultimate power.  The simple way to review this is to quote the old lady behind me in Transformers 2:  This movie is so stupid.  (1/5)  (Fun Fact:  N/A)

Good Time (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: The Robert Pattinson renaissance began with this performance as a bank robber who makes one terrible decision after another.

Me:

Good Time:  The vampire guy from Twilight breaks his mentally challenged brother out of therapy to rob a bank so they can go buy a farm like Of Mice & Men or something.  The teller gives them a dye pack so they end up being chased by cops and the mentally challenged brother is caught.  So vampire guy has to try to get him out, which involves an odyssey through boroughs of New York that ultimately achieves nothing.  Not really a great movie.  Kind of boring. (2/5)

Blade Runner 2049 (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Hey, I actually got into Ryan Gosling for this!  Probably a better film than its predecessor.  If Keanu Reeves can star in sequels to all his notable movies like Harrison Ford, he'll really have something.  

Me:

Blade Runner 2049:  This sequel 30 years after the original is OK but not great.  I mean it's not Last Jedi bad for a sequel but it's slow and really annoying the tiny text prologue to fill us in on all the history since the last movie.  Over 90 minutes go by before Harrison Ford shows up.  Even then mostly he's tied up and almost drowns.  Can he just retire already?  It's starting to get embarrassing. (2.5/5)

The Hitman's Bodyguard (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson.  I mean, do you really need a further explanation?

Me:

The Hitman's Bodyguard:  It's basically Midnight Run only in Europe.  Ryan Reynolds is a disgraced bodyguard whose ex works for Interpol.  After her prisoner (Samuel L Jackson) is nearly killed, she asks Reynolds to get the guy to the Netherlands to testify at the trial of a Belarus president (Gary Oldman).  For most of the movie I wondered why they needed to bother since testimony from a professor had already been thrown out because there wasn't evidence to support it.  Though I don't know when you need physical evidence to back up witness testimony.  But it turns out Jackson does have some physical evidence too.  Anyway, they have to take planes boats, trains, and automobiles to get to the Netherlands while being chased by bad guys.  The easy way to sum it up then is Reynolds is Reynolds and Jackson is Jackson and they just do their thing.  It's pretty fun even if not overly surprising or twisty. (3/5)  As a Fun Fact, if Deadpool joins the MCU then you'd have 3 starring actors from this movie all with MCU roles:  Reynolds as Deadpool, Jackson as Nick Fury, and Elodie Yung as Elektra in Daredevil.  Neat.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: This really shouldn't have worked.  But it did!

Me:

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle:  Like Power Rangers earlier in the year, this is focused mainly on a group of teenagers learning to come together as a team after they're assigned to detention in a basement and find an old video game.  When they pick characters and turn the game on, they're all sucked into the world of the game, where they have to return a jewel to a statue to save the land of Jumanji.  The kids all get characters the opposite of what they are: the nerd is the Rock, the jock is Kevin Hart, the nerdy girl is a hot chick, and the hot chick is Jack Black.  So the idea is that each character has to learn to use new skills as they come together.  The Rock actually does a decent job impersonating a nerdy teenager and Jack Black does a good job impersonating a self-centered teenage girl.  Overall it's a decent movie but fairly predictable. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  There's sort of a reverse Big at the end when one kid who's been stuck in the game since the 90s reappears in modern times as Colin Hanks.)

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: I actually think Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne as disaffected space agents is a breath of fresh air in space opera filmmaking.

Me:

Valerian:  Long before this came out I knew it would flop here in the States.  Old French property? Check.  Made by French guys?  Check.  Corny looking aliens and effects?  Check.  Unappealing lead actors?  Check.  And sometimes, just sometimes, like once in a blue moon, this Grumpy Bulldog is right and this was that time!  So yeah there's like some aliens whose planet was destroyed and their princess beams her memories to Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) who's a huge douche with an annoying partner Laureline (Carla De...whatever, the lame Enchantress from Suicide Sqaud) whom he keeps asking to marry.  Then there's a lengthy bit where they go to "the Big Market" that's in another dimension you can only see with special goggles and whatnot to rescue some weird little animal.  There's a weird bulldog-looking guy they have to steal it from, who swears revenge and yet never appears again.  Then they go to "Alpha" which is like the International Space Station only 700 years later after it was set adrift by Rutger Hauer in a pointless cameo during the credits.  And there's a jerk military guy (Clive Owen--remember him?) who you know is evil because he has his own entourage of killer robots.  He wants the little animal and stuff.  There's an especially annoying detour that goes on for like 30-45 minutes where Laureline is kidnapped by primitive aliens on the station and Valerian goes to rescue her by going to a nightclub managed by Ethan Hawke and starring Rihanna as a shape-shifting alien.  And after they save Laureline from being eaten they jump into a trash chute, reminding everyone of Star Wars, except the walls don't start closing in on them.  What was the point of that whole sequence?  It had NOTHING to do with the main plot.  It was just a lot of sexist, colonialist bullshit that probably played better in the 30s or whenever Valerian was popular in France.  But as a compliment it's still probably not as fucking stupid as Jupiter Ascending.  So there's that.  (1.5/5) BTW, in a self-indulgent bit the bulldog alien and Valerian borrow lines from writer/producer/director Luc Besson's Taken.  You know, that bit in all the previews where Liam Neeson says he'll find the guy and kill him?  Only it's reversed with the bad guy saying Neeson's words and Valerian saying the bad guy's words.

American Made (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: The fact that Tom Cruise even made a conventional drama at this point in his career should be celebrated.

Me:

American Made:  This one slipped under my radar as I never was going to watch it in the theater and just never got around to renting it on DVD.  But now it's on HBO and so I finally watched it On Demand.  Tom Cruise is an airline pilot who's recruited to work for the CIA taking pictures of communists in Central and South America.  Eventually though he starts running drugs on the side with Pablo Escobar and that whole crew that so much has been made of the last few years. When the heat gets put on his home in Louisiana the CIA moves him to Arkansas and sets him up with a private airport where they start training Contras to fight against the communists in Nicaragua.  Tom Cruise is still running drugs too and the problem becomes he has so much money that eventually people take notice.  Though it's been almost 40 years since this shit started it's a good reminder of the stupid bullshit the US government often does.  The ineffective strategy in Nicaragua was slightly more effective in Afghanistan--until of course bin Laden turned on us.  Anyway, it's an OK movie but pretty standard stuff if you've seen Goodfellas or Scarface or whatever.  His wife in the movie is pretty standard going from ignorance to turning a blind eye to actively participating in his schemes.  Not essential viewing but not poor viewing either. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Tom Cruise reunites with Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman for this but since it called for a brash, middle-aged Texan wasn't it an ideal part for Matthew McConaghuey?)

Baby Driver (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: All style makes Edgar Wright lose some of his cool.

Me:

Baby Driver:  This was directed by Edgar Wright, whom you might remember was originally making Marvel's Ant-Man movie until the whole "cinematic universe" thing started cramping his style.  What was surprising to me is this is a fairly straight-forward crime caper movie.  There's really not the humor in Wright's other projects like Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, or The World's End, all of which starred Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, neither of whom is present in this.

Basically this is pretty similar to movies like Drive starring Ryan Gosling a bit over five years ago I think.  There's a kid who goes by the handle "Baby" who after his parents died in a car accident has lived with an old deaf black guy and listens to various iPods all the time because of tinnitus.  Baby stole a car belonging to "Doc" some time earlier and wound up owing him a lot of money.  To recoup it, Baby works as Doc's wheelman, using fast & furious driving to escape the cops after robberies. 

Then he meets a girl working as a waitress in a diner and they fall in love.  But of course there's one last big job--robbing a post office to steal money order paper.  Though really couldn't you do the same at just about any pharmacy or liquor store?  Maybe they don't have as much.

Not surprisingly things all go tits-up.  The end takes a while and is kind of sad, but there's a happy ending of sorts.    It's a fun ride even if a bit too straight-forward.  (3/5)

Get Out (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: A satire so wicked its point was completely lost. 

Me:

I can't find if I did a review of this, though I own it so obviously I watched it.  A good horror movie that doubles as a social satire. The concept is ridiculous and yet the movie itself never seems like it's ridiculous. (3/5) 

Spider-Man: Homecoming (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: I think Ned as "the guy in the chair" cheapens the results, but he's there for at least the next two movies, so what am I gonna do?  Not as riveting as the two previous incarnations.

Me:

Spider-Man:  Homecoming: Call me nostalgic or corny or whatever, but I never thought this rose to the level of the first two Raimi movies.  Sure the effects were a little better but there was never anything as good as the upside-down kiss in the rain or the final battle between Spidey and the Goblin.  Nor was there really as much attention paid to the characters as Spider-Man 2.  But at least Peter didn't show his face to half of New York like in previous movies--at least until he lets Aunt May find out his secret. (3/5)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Its best moment, Yondu's goodbye, elevates the results.

Me:

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2:  I didn't see this in theaters and when I watched it on Labor Day weekend in a motel I found myself getting bored and reading stuff on my phone instead of watching the movie.  As far as Marvel movies go, was there any reason for this to exist?  If you don't watch it, you're not missing much, especially with Gamora being rebooted in Endgame. (2.5/5)

Baywatch (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: It's definitely better than the TV series.

Me:

Baywatch:  As I said on Facebook, some movies sound bad but end up pretty good.  This is not that.  It's just a bunch of warmed-over cliches strung together into a lame movie about lifeguards trying to foil a drug smuggler.  The Rock is fine as the head lifeguard, but there's not really much to work with.  David Hasselhoff shows up for a cameo, as does Pam Anderson, though they wisely don't give her any lines. (2/5)

Thor: Ragnorak (Laplume)

rating: **

review: I'm being generous, here, as I honestly think this was a jump the shark moment.  Of course, it was otherwise popular.  And of course Love and Thunder, which I love, is considered the shark moment for everyone else.  This only figures.

Me:

Thor Ragnarök:  A lot of people love this because it's "fun" but I found it a lame bastardization of the great Planet Hulk comic and a complete 180 in Thor characterization that continued into the last two Avengers movies.  It turned the character from serious into a parody. (1/5)

#

I think we disagreed on some of the big movies--or should-be big movies--and agreed on a few.  There were of course quite a few movies I didn't watch that Laplume did.  And probably a lot I did watch and he didn't.  But don't expect him to do his own version of this. 

2016 Movies: Grumpy Bulldog v Tony Laplume: Dawn of Failure

After Laplume did a capsulizing entry on 2014 movies I compared his reviews with my reviews.  Then he wrote capsule reviews for 2015 movies and I compared those.  Now it's on to 2016!  He actually has a bunch I've never gotten around to watching, so you can go read those here.  But these are the ones that did overlap. 

Arrival (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: This is the movie that for me defines the genius of Denis Villeneuve, turning a smart story by Ted Chiang into a brilliant movie starring Amy Adams about a new kind of first contact with aliens.  

Me:

Arrival:  Like I said on Facebook, a lot of movies don't really hold my interest.  You know, after a half hour or so I get on my phone to check Facebook and Twitter and stuff.  I did once or twice early on but the rest of the time I actually watched the movie because I wanted to try to figure out what was going on.  Like Independence Day, a bunch of alien ships show up and park over parts of the Earth, though not really major cities and they seemingly have no ill intent.  Amy Adams is a linguist who signs up to visit the "heptapods" (called that for their seven feet) and try to decipher their language.  Interspersed with this are flashes to a child of hers who ends up dying as a teenager from a rare disease.  The two things are connected and it's pretty simple:  all you have to do is figure out the timing of those flashes.  The way they're presented makes it seem like they're flashbacks, but (spoiler) they aren't.  It's all sort of like Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen, which probably does most people no good whatsoever.  Anyway, Adams gives a very good low-key performance and Jeremy Renner is at least passable as a fellow scientist.  If you like sci-fi that isn't too hard or too space opera-y then this is a good choice. (4/5)  

(Fun Fact:  Also probably the best use of Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight" in a movie yet.  I wrote a whole entry about that piece that no one gave a crap about.)

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: Ambition has been a bad thing in American film in recent decades, doubly so in superhero movies, where it's only begun to surface, and mostly in DC projects.  This one is a conceptual miracle that does the impossible: finally have the two most famous superheroes of any company meet, and figure each other out.  Plus the sensational cinematic debut of Wonder Woman!

Me:  

BvS:  This attempt to create a cinematic universe was full of  holes.  There were some good parts and I didn't hate Batfleck as much as other people, but in the end the plot doesn't hold together.  I mean, what the hell was Lex Luthor's plan?  Hope Batman kills Superman or at least delays him long enough to unleash Doomsday?  And if Doomsday fails, sell out Earth to Darkseid?  Why? (2/5)

Hell or High Water (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: No one has done more for the modern Western than Taylor Sheridan (who wrote this and also, among other projects, created Yellowstone), and in any other era, this would have been recognized as an instant classic, and perhaps cemented Chris Pine's career.

Me:

Hell or High Water:  Two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) in Texas are about to lose the family ranch and so they turn to robbing banks.  The banks they rob are all from the chain that's going to foreclose on them.  Then they essentially launder the money through a casino and pay it back to the bank.  A pair of Texas Rangers led by Jeff Bridges is on their tail.  It's kind of like No Country for Old Men only without the great antagonist.  Jeff Bridges essentially reheats his Rooster Cogburn from True Grit; his lazy performance is the biggest drawback to an otherwise really good film. (4/5)

Star Trek Beyond (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: The most recent entry in the film franchise in its best moments reached operatic heights of depth but didn't quite know what to do with Kirk or Spock, unlike its immediate predecessors.  Another typically great supporting turn from Idris Elba, though.

Me:

Star Trek Beyond:  The best of the reboot movies isn't a very high bar to me.  There was fun and less of the ridiculousness from the Abrams movies.  Idris Elba is cool, though the thing where he absorbs people and becomes more human was weird.  The "Sabotage" bit was funny, though really unrealistic that people in the 23rd Century listen to late 20th Century rap.  I mean, how often do you listen to lesser 18th Century composers--not Mozart?  It's the movie where Chris Pine is most Kirk-like and most of the other characters are more like their inspirations than the Abrams movies. (3/5)

Passengers (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: One of the touchstones of modern culture, in all the wrong ways, as too few people bothered to actually watch to find out exactly how Jennifer Lawrence ends up with Chris Pratt.

Me:

I wrote a lengthy diatribe (https://ptdilloway.blogspot.com/2017/05/passengers-ode-to-male-privilege.html) but basically the gist is to answer Laplume, how Jennifer Lawrence ends up with Chris Pratt is that after he's inadvertently woke up from his cryosleep, he gets lonely and wakes her up, thereby cursing her to die in space along with him.  Isn't that romantic?  Um, no. It's selfish and creepy and sexist.  (1/5)

Midnight Special (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Jeff Nichols, had this and/or Loving (which I still haven't seen) been embraced as the landmark filmmaking it is, would be embraced as one of the modern masters of the medium.  

Me:

Midnight Special:  Like I said on Twitter, if you like Stranger Things, you should watch this movie.  It's kind of the same thing, only without the 80s setting or Stephen King references.  The frustrating thing about the movie is it doesn't really try to set things up.  You're thrown right into the middle of it as Michael Shannon is trying to get his son with freaky powers out of Texas.  They're already on the road with another guy and a manhunt is already on the way.  Eventually you can piece together that Michael Shannon and Kirsten Dunst had this kid who has powers like being able to hear radios and satellites and his eyes light up with bright white light and he can speak in tongues.  A whole weird cult called "the Ranch" formed around him, turning his ramblings into scripture.  Anyway, Michael Shannon and the kid are heading towards some point to meet up with others like the kid.  Meanwhile they have the Ranch and the government (especially Kylo Ren) on their tail.  Like 10 Cloverfield Lane, when they actually show you what's going on at the end it's a little disappointing, though not nearly as dumb.  Anyway, it's definitely an interesting movie to watch and you might want to watch it more than once to see if you missed anything the first time.  Or not.  It's your life. (3.5/5) (Fun Fact:  At one point Adam Driver talks to the kid through a microphone and it really does sound like Kylo Ren.  I'm just saying.)

Suicide Squad (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Will Smith's Deadshot, Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn, and a breakthrough performance from Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang all suggest a better film than its reputation suggests.

Me:

Suicide Squad:  I thought this movie was so dumb and lame.  I hated Jared Leto's Joker, hated Harley Quinn, and the rest of the characters were pretty forgettable.  Viola Davis did a good job of Amanda Waller, but her character does so many stupid things that it was ridiculous. (1/5)

Criminal (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Kevin Costner's career revival sort of began with this.

Me:

Criminal:  Last year in Self/Less Ryan Reynolds had Ben Kingsley take over his brain.  This year Reynolds takes over the brain of Kevin Costner, which is a huge downgrade if you ask me.  I mean that'd be like getting your brain stuffed into your dad.  Ugh.  Anyway, the idea is that there's a cyberterrorist on the loose and Ryan Reynolds had some important stuff in his brain that to try to get it out they have Tommy Lee Jones perform risky surgery to put the brain patterns of Ryan Reynolds into Kevin Costner, who is the eponymous criminal with some kind of weird brain condition that left lots of stem cells in his brain.  A lot of it then is sort of like The Bourne Identity as he unlocks memories and hidden skills while rampaging through London and punching lots of people and generally being the ugly American.  It's OK but not the greatest. (2.5/5)

(And I would disagree with Laplume and say it was Man of Steel that reminded people Kevin Costner was still alive.)

X-Men: Apocalypse (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Things don't really get good in this one until Professor X and Magneto realize they have a common enemy.  That makes this one a landmark in the film series.

Me:

The problem for this movie is that it's pretty dumb (I mean Jean-Grey and Magneto put the mansion back together like it's made of fucking Legos) and it's not "fun" enough to get a pass like Thor: Ragnarok.  For whatever reason they decided to wait until the third movie of the soft reboot franchise to introduce (or re-introduce) some of the most popular characters like Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Jean-Grey.  Magneto kills thousands of people, but he's still a good guy at heart, so let's let him go!  Sure, great idea. (2/5)

Captain America: Civil War (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Sort of the unoffical Avengers film between Age of Ultron and Infinity War, becomes the most blatant of the internal franchise starters with the MCU debuts of Spider-Man and Black Panther.  Loses the point of being, y'know, a Captain America film a little too easily in the process.  

Me: 

Captain America: Civil War:  What really should have been called Avengers 2 1/2 since it's only vaguely a Captain America movie.  Most of the movie is just MCU servicing by breaking up the Avengers and introducing Black Panther and Spider-Man.  But on the heels of BvS by less than 2 months it did a lot of the same things but in a far less clunky way.  The last-minute introduction of Spider-Man was especially forced, which made sense with how close it came to not happening at all.  Zemo is a decent villain, albeit an underused one. (3/5)

Now You See Me 2 (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: I still haven't seen the first one, but it was still possible to enjoy this one, which features a tongue-in-cheek turn from Daniel Radcliffe.

Me:

Now You See Me 2:  File this under "Unneeded Sequels."  It really has all the hallmarks of a bad sequel, starting with changing directors and writers and replacing the female "Horseman" (Isla Fisher) with an annoying new girl played by Lizzy Caplan.  It just doesn't have the same magic as the first movie (har har) because it's really using a lot of the same tricks.  Really lame too how they tried to redeem Morgan Freeman's magic cynic character too.  Definitely a waste of time. (1/5) (Fun Musing:  For the third movie they should have Will Arnett's Bojack Horseman join the team.  Also, I agree with people who joked they should have called this movie "Now You Don't."  I mean think how funny that would look on the shelf:  Now You See Me and then Now You Don't.  Boom)

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: No one ever goes back and rethinks their views, but after the success of Top Gun: Maverick you'd think some people would reconsider how dismissive they'd been of recent Tom Cruise projects.  This was his second Jack Reacher.  I still haven't seen the first.  I made sure to see this one, since it's probably the only real reward Cobie Smulders will get for being a prominent bit player in the MCU.

Me:

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back:  I watched the first one of these a while back and it wasn't that good.  This one was better than I thought, though still not a great movie.  An army major Jack Reacher has been talking to on the phone (Cobie Smulders) has been arrested for treason.  He springs her and they go on the run, ending up in New Orleans with a teenage girl who may or may not be Jack's daughter.  The whole thing revolves around a plot to smuggle in weapons and opium from Afghanistan.  Pretty much a straight-ahead action thriller, which is I guess what you'd expect, right?  (2.5/5)

The Accountant (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Director Gavin O'Connor has my lasting devotion thanks to Warrior (a modern classic), and he also directed Jane Got Her Gun.  This was Ben Affleck proving he wasn't just going to be Batman, but still in an action role.

Me:

The Accountant:  I'd wanted to see this for a while just for the irony, being an accountant and all.  Overall the movie is too long with too much going on that doesn't all really add up unless maybe you're like Ben Affleck in the movie.  He's an accountant who also kills people for money or expensive paintings.  He takes a job in Chicago to analyze a robotics company's books and in a single night does a whole Beautiful Mind thing on the windows to figure out some of what's going on with their books.  There's also a girl he takes on the run when other killers (led by Jon Bernthal) come after them.  There's also a lot of stuff with two IRS agents led by JK Simmons that doesn't really contribute a whole lot to the overall story.  It's the kind of movie that would be better if it were about 30 minutes shorter with some of the unnecessary backstory trimmed out. (2.5/5)  

The Magnificent Seven (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: At the time I wanted to believe that Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt could make the Western popular again.  They didn't, but it's still a pretty good movie.

Me:

The Magnificent Seven (2016):  A robber baron is taking over a small town so he can bulldoze it and mine for gold there.  When her husband is killed by the robber baron, a woman goes to a bounty hunter (Denzel Washington) who then recruits a team that includes Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, and Vincent D'Onofrio.  It feels pretty generic as they train the town how to fight and then take on the robber baron and his minions.  There are by now probably hundreds of other movies that use that same scenario:  Robin Hood (several of them I think), Dragonheart, Hercules, and so forth.  With Denzel Washington in the lead it actually made me think of Blazing Saddles, only not funny.  I never watched the original so I don't really know how it compares.  Anyway, it's an OK Western but not a Best Western. (Boom, motel slam!) (2.5/5)

Independence Day: Resurgence (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: The very belated sequel is great for world-building, but was never going to succeed in the realm of pop entertainment without Will Smith.

Me:

Independence Day: Resurgence:  It's not as embarrassing as Godfather III, but like Dumb & Dumber To it's like, "It's OK, but did we really need this after 20 years?"  No, not really.  The plot is easy to summarize:  the aliens are back 20 years later to kill us all by snuffing out our core.  Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, and Will Smith Liam Hemsworth have to take them out.  The idea of killing the queen isn't all that original, but whatever.  Stuff blows up, though fewer landmarks this time because I suppose they blew up most of them last time.  In a way this seems like the closest to a Robotech movie we're going to get as they use that premise of humans using alien technology to upgrade their arsenal, though sadly not into transforming space fighters.  It's not nearly as epic as 1996 and what feels like a long runtime and some lame green screen effects make it not essential viewing. (2.5/5) 

Deadpool (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: I get that it's great Ryan Reynolds got to make the faithful version of the character everyone wished had been in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but I don't think the concept really worked until the second one.  Obnoxious characters, for me, need a few counterbalances.

Me:

My most favorite superhero flick in years.  It's funny, violent, and crass, which is really everything fans (and not-really fans like me) were expecting and yet it still has considerable heart too.  The good thing is Fox thought so little of this they were free to do whatever they wanted without worrying about crossovers or "cinematic universes" or even setting up a sequel, as is noted in the post-credits scene.  That's pretty refreshing after Marvel and DC's recent movies with their relentless positioning for future stories.  And hey they finally got Colossus of the X-Men right! (4/5)

Doctor Strange (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Although I'm a big fan of Benedict Cumberbatch, I think basically every appearance he's made as this character has been a disappointment, the true limits of the MCU personified.  He's become both the successor of Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man and his antithesis.  Nobody involved understands the role.  The results are basically the MCU version of Inception.

Me:

Doctor Strange:  This was the first Marvel movie I didn't watch in theaters.  Because...I just didn't care.  Dr. Strange was never a character I had any interest in.  As far as overall MCU stuff I guess it does matter with the Infinity Stone thing, but otherwise isn't important. (2.5/5)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Laplume)

rating: **

review: It seems even the prequel TV show Andor has fans believing otherwise, but for me Rogue One represents a total misreading of Star Wars.  This isn't what the Rebellion actually looks like.  We saw that in, y'know, the original trilogy.  This is a collection of oddballs, and incidentally some terrorists, and I am not at all prepared to accept that the good guys in Star Wars were terrorists, or would have knowingly supported them.  That's just not how it works.  That being said, I really like how the otherwise reprehensible results gave us Ben Mendelsohn as a breakthrough actor.

Me:

Rogue One:  Most of the movie is the typical prequel:  overly complicated and connecting dots that probably never needed connected.  The deaths of...everyone seem pretty forced, like the producers just didn't want to answer ComiCon questions about why Jyn Erso wasn't in the other movies for the rest of their lives.  Had it ended that way it would probably be a couple notches down on my list.  But the epic Vader scene at the end made up for it.  For the first time in a movie we really saw Vader as the Vader we imagined when he first came through the smoke on the corvette in Episode IV.  Why haven't we had a Darth Vader movie yet?  Get on it, Disney! (3/5)

(And when are we going to get a Vader movie or TV show?  The Obi-Wan Kenobi show was close but not exactly that.)

And in response to what Laplume said:  if you support their cause then it's not terrorism, it's freedom fighting.  It all depends on a certain point of view.

I think this time there was a lot more disagreement in our reviews, which is always good.  Siskel & Ebert never would have lasted a year if they'd agreed on every single thing.  Conflict is the essence of drama and all that.

A+ Content Is Another Thing For Authors to Try in the Quest for Sales

 On Friday's post I talked about things I learned from being in a group with some other authors.  Another thing I learned was about A+ Content.  It's something I had seen on the Promote & Advertise page for books before, but I hadn't really dicked around with it.  Then I think it was Ms. Queen Bee who mentioned books with A+ Content seemed to sell a little better, so I thought I might try it.

Chances are you've probably seen A+ Content on Amazon pages without even realizing it.  For example, if you look at a computer on Amazon and there's a list of other models and a chart comparing their features, that's A+ content.  Or there might be editorial reviews or some other highlighted review from Kirkus or something like that.  Here's a good example of a professional one for John le Carre's Silverview:

And that was the reason I hadn't really bothered with it, because I didn't really have that kind of stuff.  I didn't have reviews from the New York Times, Time, and Vanity Fair and I wasn't a #1 New York Times Bestselling Author.  But you can do other things with it.  

Here's the one used for Alex Cavanaugh's Cassa series:

Looking at a couple of Ms. Queen Bee's books, she used a graphic with the title and maybe a quote from the book or something.  I figured I could do something like that--so I did.

My first attempt didn't go well.  I thought I could do a two-piece thing sort of like a book trailer.  The first graphic would have a setup, showing a resort like in my story Invitation to Paradise.  Then the second graphic would show a couple of frisky women or something.  Buuuut...it didn't really work.  The only thing you can do with just a graphic is a "logo" which turned out pretty small, and you can only use it once so I had to have another thing for the second image and put text over it and the whole thing looked stupid.

I refined my approach with one for The Swap Box and just used one thing with elements of the cover, a quote from the book, and the title.  Below that I basically just put the description of the book in a second time:

The only problem then was I had to wait a full week before they approved it to put it on the book.  Once I saw that worked decently, I started to do more for upcoming books.  And for the hell of it, I did some for my Chances Are books.  The first one didn't turn out great because the PowerPoint I used to set it up didn't match the size on Amazon exactly so stuff got a little cut off.  I squeezed it together better for the Second Chance one:

And the Last Chance one too.  The funny thing is, those ones got approved right away!  Like literally in seconds.  Maybe because they weren't erotica, though the Invitation to Paradise one wasn't erotica either.  So maybe after you do a couple it starts approving them quicker?  I don't know.  It's weird.  It's Amazon. [shrug]

I probably wouldn't go back and do a bunch of these for my older Eric Filler books or the Scarlet Knight books or whatever because at this point, what would it matter?  But I'd probably do this more often going forward because why not?  

It's really not hard to do.  I used just the standard PowerPoint slide and put my cover elements and text in there.  Though like I said, I had to kind of scrunch things together so it'd fit on the Amazon page.  If you use PhotoShop or whatever it would be basically the same thing.  I'm not sure exactly what size you'd need, but something that's a big rectangle.  Then just put something from the cover in and some text and then below the graphic I put a headline and basically just the description at the top of the page.  You can write some new text if you want.

The point is, it's pretty easy to do.  And my philosophy on this stuff is:  if it don't cost a lot, why not give it a shot?  Hey, that rhymes! 

The other thing to remember is the A+ box is landscape while your cover is most likely portrait.  So like with the Chances Are ones I just took the elements of the cover and put them into a landscape format.  Or for the Swap Box one I took the picture of the woman and box and the title and used a generic black box.  It can be more difficult if you have a cover image with a background that isn't easy to drop out or to extend.

In that case you might want to do like with Knocked Up Surprise where I used a completely different picture and pregnant woman.  This is the cover it published with:

And this is the A+ content:

I'm sure Ms. Queen Bee would say you have to spend a bunch of money on your A+ Content graphics, but I try to just use free ones.  Since I don't know whether this stuff really does much good, I don't want to spend a bunch of money on it.  You can if you want.

One final caveat:  if you do A+ for Amazon.com that only applies it to the main site.  You would have to recreate it and get it approved for each country site like the UK, FR, DE, AU, etc individually, which seems like a real pain in the ass.  I mean, not only do you have to load everything again, you have to log into each site individually and then you'd probably have to do a 2-step verification before you can even do anything.

I haven't really bothered doing that yet but if I did, I'd probably just do like UK, DE, AU, and CA as those are the ones I get most foreign sales to.  But as long as you have to log into each one separately and load it separately, it seems like too much effort.

When the Master Becomes the Student

I hadn't realized it, but Wednesday's post and this post both fit pretty well into the IWSG monthly theme about covers.  That was a happy accident.

I mentioned last month I was invited to a Discord group with some people who write similar things to what I do.  And there was a group project that didn't really work out great for me, though I did write some stories for myself because of it.  Their books have started coming out this last week; you can find the complete list on this blog entry I made on Wordpress.

When I joined I had this egotistical thought that maybe since I had been around for a long time, they would want to partake of my wisdom.  Instead, I was the one who did some learning about things.  So let me share some of that wisdom with Phantom Readers:

On Covers:  I really got schooled on my covers.  I wasn't particularly proud of this cover, but it seemed workable enough:

Then someone harangued me about it.  And I got what she was saying.  The bamboo-type font I thought would be fun since it's supposed to be on a tropical island.  But finding one that would really work, was difficult and this one still wasn't great, especially shrunk down to thumbnail size.

She told me to not use fun fonts and just use some basic, boring fonts.  And be consistent with them for "branding" purposes.  She suggested "Futura" font, which I guess is cliché but widely in use.  And she said to use a different model because she didn't think that one was sexy enough.  Sorry, whoever you are in that picture.  With that in mind, I came up with another draft:

The first one I used had the big title in red.  I copied the format from some other books, so while it's not really original, I guess maybe it's more professional.  This person said that the red has a tendency to look kind of fuzzy for some reason.  Kind of an optical illusion.  Now that I've mentioned it, maybe you'll see it that way.

So finally I changed it to a blue.  Hooray.

Another thing I learned:  the format you upload your book in can change how you many Kindle Pages Read your book gets if you use the Kindle Unlimited thing.  I usually just used a Word DOC but people in this group mentioned they were getting more page reads using Amazon's Kindle Create or a program like Vellum.  Unfortunately, Vellum is $249 and only for Macs, so I couldn't use that.  But I did start using Kindle Create for my books instead.  Is there a huge difference?  Probably not, but I think part of the difference is with the Kindle Create you can have more control over formatting things like drop caps and space between scene breaks and a lot of stuff like that.  That probably accounts for a lot of the difference.

Unfortunately I can't use Kindle Create files on my old Kindle Touch so I still create a MOBI on Draft2Digital.

Always Recycle:  A good thing about standalone stories versus series is you can recycle them again and again in bundles.  It seems pretty cynical to me, but it can help to earn some extra profit.  And maybe it gets people more interested in other books.  So I went through to find all the standalone books I had and then put them into categories.  Here was my first one:

There weren't a ton of sales, but there were a lot of KDP Pages read, so that helps to add some money to my coffers.  And like I said, maybe it gets some other sales and helps me get noticed in Amazon's algorithms and all that stuff.  I made a few other ones to release every now and then.

And then I suppose after a while I could take those bundles and remix them into new bundles!  Plus add any new standalone stories.  Or maybe bundle a couple of series.

Like I said, it's cynical, but it's what toy companies like Hasbro have done since the 80s:  take one figure and repaint it and release it as a "new" figure.  It's why Prowl, Bluestreak, and Smokescreen all looked the same.  As did Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp.  Then they just put the nosecone up on the head and changed the wings a little to make Ramjet, Thrust, and Dirge.  So I guess this is just taking from their playbook. 

Those were a couple of key things where I really got schooled.  I guess in general I've been too complacent or set in my ways.  It was good to talk with some other people (or sometimes just listen) and see other ways to do things.  Maybe better ways!  Or maybe not.

Some of the other stuff I learned is more specific to my niches.  I guess regular crossdressing or "feminization" is more popular than actual gender swap.  Which makes me think that even transgender people (or just transgender fans) can be kind of conservative in reading habits.  Dressing up as a girl and hiding your penis is OK, but actually becoming a girl?  No way!  That's too weird.  I would say, isn't that really just the logical endpoint of crossdressing but I suppose that varies among individuals.

Also, less surprising, is that romance is more popular than erotica.  It also takes a lot less time to get books published as Amazon gives it a lot less scrutiny.  But even if you put a book in the romance category, if your cover or description or keywords are too "spicy," Amazon might still put your book in erotica and then it can be a pain to send them emails (probably more than one since like insurance companies the first one almost always seems to just blow you off) to get it moved.  So if your book isn't "spicy" and you want it in romance, you have to be careful.

While it was a learning experience, I had to quit the group after about six weeks or so.  I mentioned in the "Collaboration Conflagration" post about how they just had to poo-poo or ignore every single thing I suggested about a group project.  After a little while it got to feeling like that with most everything else too.  Especially this one who had more success than me--six-figure sales that let her buy a farm!--would just poo-poo anything I said because Ms. Know-It-All has to be the Queen Bee.  Therefore any suggestions anyone else makes have to be shot down.  

The straw that broke the camel's back was someone had mentioned this DepositPhotos site was having a deal through another app where for $35 you could get 100 pictures--with no expiration date!  That is a really good deal, so I got that, but while using the site, I saw where you could search for free photos too, though they weren't in the biggest size.  Still, they didn't count against your 100 downloads, so I looked around for anything that might be of use later on.

And of course when I mention this, Ms. Queen Bee is like, "I wouldn't use those, TBH." Blah blah blah.  Yeah, maybe you don't get as good of a selection or whatever, but not all of us makes $100,000 a year or more on selling silly erotica books.  Some of us might be on a little more of a budget that we might want to stretch.

I wanted to say that, but I've been on the Internet long enough to know how that's going to play out, so I decided to avoid the inevitable flame war and drop out.  That wasn't the first time either.  There was the attempted group project and another time I mentioned how Goodreads doesn't put in descriptions on newer books when it adds them and she was like, "I wouldn't bother with Goodreads" blah blah blah.  Well, excuuuuuuuuse me!  Just in general she kept treating me like a newb instead of someone who had been doing this shit as long as she had.  While learning some different ways to do things is nice, there's only so much condescension and bullshit a person can take.

By that point I had probably learned most of what I was going to and Ms. Queen Bee and other bigger authors weren't participating in newsletter swaps or anything so it wasn't really doing much for cross-marketing either.  Which, I don't know why they couldn't mention some other authors in their newsletters; it's not like it costs anything.  Ms. Queen Bee and others would probably whine about "hurting their brand" or some stupid shit like that like they're Stephen King or John Grisham or something. [eye roll]

I really had no problem putting a couple of extra books by other people in my newsletter.  I think a couple of people did that for me and while I don't think it really led to tons of sales, it's the thought that counts, right?  Maybe some of these other people are worried it'd take sales away from them or something.  Which then sort of defeats the whole purpose of having a group anyway.

So it goes. 

Cover Reveal: The Years Between Us by Cheyanne Young

Welcome back to friend of the blog, Cheyanne Young, who has a new book out called The Years Between Us.  What's it about?  Good question!  Here's the description:

Book Description:

When Emma Fitzgerald said she needed a break, she didn’t mean in the time continuum. After losing her boyfriend to her mortal enemy, Emma heads to Granny’s house for the summer to do some good old fashioned sulking. When she wakes up, she (and her phone) have somehow traveled back in time to the year 2004.

 

Her uncle, who is a teenager now, warns her not to do anything that could alter the future. But then an unexpected encounter results in all evidence of her mortal enemy vanishing from her phone. Texts, photos—everything. She no longer exists.

 

Emma wonders if the Universe sent her back in time to save her own broken heart. But then her best friend’s texts disappear from her phone, too. The disruption to the time continuum had repercussions. If Emma wants to save her best friend, she’ll have to save her enemy first.

 

Website: https://cheyanneyoung.com/theyearsbetweenus/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75490762-the-years-between-us
Storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/30677350-9873-4462-ac12-4d14815dbfe9 

 

And here's the cover!

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