Lots and lots of Marvel reprint books this time, and two great books on movies to boot, plus one of my current fave mystery characters returns for her fifth installment. Read on, stalwart reader … these are the books I read in January.
Hollywood: The Oral History by Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson
This giant book could be subtitled “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Hollywood.” Excerpted from more than 10,000 hours of conversations with movie professionals—actors, directors, producers, writers, and studio personnel from cinematographers to costume designers—that the American Film Institute recorded starting in 1969, film historians Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson have compiled a who’s who of Hollywood talking about their frontline experiences of making movies. It’s a wonderful, dishy, info-filled book that you can pick up at any time and just digest tidbit after tidbit. Basinger and Wasson’s compilation and arrangement of the interviews is masterful and highly enjoyable.
Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever by Matt Singer
I remember watching Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on a regular basis in the 1980s and 1990s on their various movie review TV shows. I liked both of them, but I tended to listen to Ebert more; he somehow seemed more knowledgeable about movies. This book recounts how they came together and how—despite pretty much disliking each other, or at least each other’s opinions—they became united for the common good, and maybe even, towards the end, friends. Singer’s book is a dishy recap, with sources like the wives of both Siskel and Ebert, their producers over the years, and some of the deal-makers that brought them along from a Chicago PBS station to PBS syndication to a Tribune Media syndicated show, and finally, a Disney (Buena Vista) syndicated show. Did they really change movies? I’m not sure about that, but they certainly changed how some of us saw movies and it was always great fun to watch them argue over a film that ultimately one of them liked and the other, well … not so much.
Dream Town by Lee Goldberg
My current mystery/thriller literary crush is Lee Goldberg’s LA Sheriff Department’s homicide detective Eve Ronin. She’s back for a fifth installment in her ongoing series, this time investigating a complicated case that can only be described as “ripped from today’s headlines!” It involves a celebrity reality show family and the death of its most famous member, plus a famous rap artist/record producer. Throw in an exclusive L.A. area gated housing community and some Chilean robbers who target rich folk homes such as these, plus Eve’s own TV series based on her still-budding police career and … well, that’s a whole lot. This wasn’t my favorite Eve Ronin book, but it was still an enjoyable read, even if it did juggle a lot of chainsaws, including the character’s fractured family members and her romance with a forensic consultant. As long as Goldberg keeps writing Ronin novels, I’ll keep reading ‘em.
Mighty Marvel Masterworks: Silver Surfer Vol. 1 by Stan Lee and John Buscema
Even though Jack Kirby created the Silver Surfer pretty much on his own (he figured a character as powerful as Galactus would have some kind of herald who would be his scout to find new planets to … well, basically eat), Stan Lee took a real shine (pun intended ) to him and made him his own. When it came time for the Surfer to have his own book—a giant-size, 25-center no less—Lee picked John Buscema to illustrate it, thus leaving Kirby out in the cold. Buscema did some great work on the character, especially issues #3 (Mephisto) and #4 (Thor, Loki, and Odin) and those two stories are included in this volume, which also features #1 and #2 and the Surfer story from Fantastic Four Annual #5 (drawn by Kirby), along with a story from the Marvel humor book, Not Brand Ecch. Ultimately, this version of the Silver Surfer failed as a separate title, with issue #18 (ironically drawn by Kirby) the final 1960s issue. I think Stan Lee’s penchant for Shakespearean dialogue and soliloquies kind of predestined it for cancellation; it was a bit too high-faluting. Lee and Kirby would team up for one last Surfer story with an original graphic novel in the mid-70s, inked by Joe Sinnott; while it’s nice to look at, it’s not their finest hour. That would be the Surfer’s original appearances in multiple issues of the Fantastic Four.
Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Black Panther Vol. 2 by Roy Thomas and John Buscema
This second volume of Black Panther stories is filled with reprints from series that feature T’Challa, like Avengers (#s 77-79, 87, 112, and 126), Daredevil (#69), Astonishing Tales (#s 6 and 7), Fantastic Four (#119, in which the Black Panther becomes the “Black Leopard” due to prevailing “political connotations” in America; T’Challa adds “it’s a minor point, since a panther IS a leopard,” according to writer Roy Thomas), and Marvel Team-Up #20. It’s a mixed bag of books, mostly written by Roy Thomas and drawn by John Buscema. There’s some great Buscema/Tom Palmer Avengers art, but this is also the era when Hawkeye bewilderingly became Goliath and seemed to grow exponentially dumber the larger he got, so there’s that. The Astonishing Tales two-issue story arc is in an all-but-forgotten Dr. Doom solo series. BP would soon get his own series in Jungle Action, and then an eponymous title by Jack Kirby.
Doctor Strange Epic Collection Vol. 2: I, Dormammu by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Dan Adkins, Bill Everett, Marie Severin, Gene Colan and Tom Palmer
I’ve been waiting for this volume for a long time. Marvel’s Epic Collections are not published in numeric order, so volumes 1 and 3 of Doctor Strange have been out for a few years. This volume bridges the gap between all the Steve Ditko stories (Volume 1) and the start of the Steve Englehart/Frank Brunner run (Volume 3). It contains the DS stories from Strange Tales #147 through #168, and the Doctor Strange title from #169 through #178, plus Avengers #61, which concludes the story from DS #178. It’s another mixed bag, with various artists—including Bill Everett, Marie Severin, and Dan Adkins—trying to emulate Ditko with their depictions of the various dimensions ol’ Doc has his adventures in. I’m actually very fond of Adkins’s art, even though it’s filled with some very recognizable swipes (the cover to EC Comics’s M.D. #1 immediately springs to mind). Things calm down a bit when Gene Colan takes over and with Tom Palmer’s inks, Doctor Strange settles into a comfortable groove written by Roy Thomas. Palmer even pencils and inks one issue, a rarity indeed. The stories themselves are decent, getting Doc out there into those dimension-spanning adventures that Ditko made famous, but he’s a tough act to follow. I think Ditko’s Doctor Strange is pretty much the high-point of his career, at least at Marvel, admittedly over-shadowed by Spider-Man, but that might just be me.
The A-Z of Marvel Monsters by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby
While doing research for an upcoming Tales From My Spinner Rack YouTube video, I came across this 2017 book, which follows basically the same format: An A to Z approach to Marvel Monsters. However their selection is limited to monsters created and illustrated by Jack Kirby and not restricted to just the “monster books” Marvel published in the late 1950s and early 1960s (it also includes monsters from later books such as Fantastic Four, Thor, and Black Panther). Luckily, my list of Marvel Monsters only duplicates eight of theirs. The book consists of two-page spreads for each monster, including a brief write-up, a way-to-small reproduction of the original cover for the monster’s first appearance and then a full-page illo by a “modern” cartoonist like Eric Powell or Chris Samnee (to name just two of them). It also includes seven different reprints of Kirby stories from the Strange Tales/Journey Into Mystery/Tales To Astonish/Tales of Suspense era, with middling to bad reproduction/restoration. It’s a cute package, and it was only $9.99 on that website that shall not be named, and a big help to me, but I’ll stick with my original list that isn’t artist-restricted, even though I can’t find entries for N and Y.
(Not Shown) Night Fever by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
There was a time when I thought Ed Brubaker was just about the best writer in comics. I thought his Captain America/Winter Soldier story arc was brilliant, turning the tired, old, star-spangled superhero into a modern-day spy thriller. I loved Criminal, Fatale, and The Fade-Out, all series he and artist Sean Phillips did together, and I enjoyed their recent standalone graphic novels Cruel Summer, Bad Weekend, and Pulp, and I LOVE (all caps) Brubaker’s Friday series, with artist Marcos Martin. But somewhere around the time of Kill or Be Killed, I started to lose interest in the Brubaker/Phillips franchise. When they changed their publishing model from comic book series to graphic novels with the Reckless books, it all became too much for me financially; a new $25.00 graphic novel three times a year is out of my price range. I took a chance on their latest, Night Fever, because I was able to grab one at half-price ($12.50) at a nearby sale, but I found it totally underwhelming and once again, not enough bang for its buck (even at half-price). It’s about a guy who’s on a business trip to France in 1978. He can’t sleep, he’s losing interest in his job as a publishing rep. On the flight over, he reads a manuscript that has a dream in it that’s exactly like one he used to have. This causes him to have a kind of lost weekend while away, hooking up with a mysterious character called “Rainer,” and living the life he seems to think has passed him by. I kinda hated the character, to be honest, and the story just did nothing for me. There are parts where you wonder if it really happened or was it just in his sleep-deprived head or was it drugs or … what? I’m going back to my self-imposed Brubaker/Phillips exile, but I’ll still pick up Friday if and when another volume comes out, and I’ll definitely check out his Criminal show on Prime, which was just announced, when it comes around.
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