November 2024 Books …

OOPS! I realized in posting my October books, which featured Atlas Comics Library No. 3, I had never written a review for Atlas Comics Library No. 2: Venus, which I read months ago. Can you ever forgive me? Here is the review for that missing book!

Atlas Comics Library No. 2: Venus Vol. 2 by Bill Everett and Various
This second volume of the Atlas Comics Library from Fantagraphics Books features Venus, collecting issues #10 through #19 (issues #1-9 were printed in a Marvel Masterworks volume by Marvel a few years back, when they were actively reprinting Atlas stuff on their own). The comic itself is sometimes subtitled “Strange Stories of the Supernatural” on the cover, but Venus goes through a number of genres in this collection, which is primarily drawn by Bill Everett and Werner Roth. It’s original incarnation was a romance book about a goddess with a job on Earth as an editor at a magazine. It evolved into more of a science fiction mag around the time this volume begins and finally ends up as straight-up horror; along the way, it even presents the first appearances of Thor and Loki in pre-Marvel comics. Like a lot of these Atlas books, they’re pretty unreadable, but the art is great and the historical information from editor Dr. Michael Vassallo is worth the rather pricey price of admission.

The following books were read in November 2024. Kinda a slow month, but really … when the hell did December sneak up on me?

The Old Man by Thomas Perry • 4 Stars on GoodReads
I remember buying The Old Man in a Seattle bookshop back in 2019 or so—you know, before the world changed forever—and enjoying it then, so I was thrilled when it became a TV series starring Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow (TWO old men) on FX. I just finished watching the second season of that show and I was curious about how close to the book it was, because quite frankly … I remembered pretty much none of the TV action occurring in the book. So I re-read it to see, and I was right; beyond the barest bones of the story—the Jeff Bridges character, who has numerous names in the original book, but is called Dan Chase on the show—is being hunted by a Middle East man for something Chase did 30 years ago. In the book, it’s steal back money he was supposed to deliver to insurgents, but the head guy takes the money and keeps it. Dan steals it back to take to his bosses in the U.S., who want nothing to do with him, so he keeps the money and invests it over 30 years. Yes, he does kidnap—and fall for—a woman (played by Amy Brennerman), and yes, there is a guy—Julian Carson—hunting him who has a change of heart and believes him to be honest. But other than that, the TV series goes off on a separate storyline concerning Dan’s daughter (a CIA agent in the series, barely mentioned in the book, where she’s a doctor) and her dead mother, gives John Lithgow a major role as Harold Harper (a minor character in the book, one of Carson’s handlers), and a giant rare metal mine that just happens to be located where the insurgent lives. I was disappointed in the second reading of the book, but not half as much as I’m disappointed in the series, which looks like it’s headed to a third season, which I’m not sure I’ll be watching.

Dorothy Parker in Hollywood by Gail Crowther • 3.5 Stars on GoodReads
I’m fascinated by Dorothy Parker, a woman far ahead of her time, which was 1920s through mid 1960s New York City and Hollywood. This book is ostensibly about her career as a scriptwriter in Hollywood from the 1930s through the 1950s, but it’s also about her increasing liberal activisim (when she died she left all her ongoing royalties to Martin Luther King Jr or the NAACP in case of King’s passing, which happened a year or so after Dorothy herself died; the organization still receives funds from that bequest). Sadly there isn’t a lot of Hollywood meat on the bones here, since no one really knows what Dorothy contributed to the movies she worked on; many of them she—and her on-again, off-again husband Alan Campbell—don’t even bear her name in the credits. One for sure is the original A Star is Born (1937), starring Frederic March and Janet Gaynor, a movie that has such great bones that it’s been remade three times, with various musical stars of its respective eras (Judy Garland in the 1950s, Barbra Steisand in the 1970s, and Lady Gaga a few years ago). Sadly, I found the most fascinating era in this book to be Parker’s final years, which are pretty tragic. Author Crowther keeps referencing Marion Meade’s biography, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?, so maybe that’s the one we should really be reading.

Q&A by Adrian Tomine • 5 Stars on GoodReads
I loved this short volume of fan questions answered by cartoonist Adrian Tomine, which delves into everything from how he writes to what he draws with. It’s published by Drawn & Quarterly, Tomine’s traditional home for his graphic novels, and the questions are culled from online sources. Tomine is honest, funny, and forthright with his responses and there’s enough black and white and color illustrations—including a step-by-step on one of his most famous (and strangely controversial) New Yorker covers—to qualify it as an art book (or maybe an illustrated how-to book). Plus there are some great color photos, too. I urge anyone who creates—or wants to create—comics to read this book. It’s wonderful.

DC Finest: Superman: The First Superhero by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster • 5 Stars on GoodReads
This is the first in DC’s new line of reprint titles that ape the format (but thankfully, not the pricing and page count) of Marvel’s Epic Collection line. It’s called DC Finest, and each volume for the most part weighs in at about 540-625 pages for $39.95, much better than Marvel’s current $44.99 or even $49.99 for around 500 pages or less. And there’s no better title to start with than this one, Superman: The First Superhero by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, reprinting the Man of Steel’s first 25 stories (with covers) from Action Comics 1-25, Superman issues 1 through 5, and the Superman story from New York World’s Fair Comics 1 (1939). These are primitive comics at best: sketch and scratchy pen and ink renderings by Shuster (soon to be augmented and improved upon by artists like Wayne Boring and Paul Cassidy), but they have a certain amount of charm and power. Siegel’s Superman is a hero to the oppressed and does things—like kill people—he would never do in the rest of his 85+ year history. Lois Lane is in there from Action Comics 1 (George Taylor is Clark Kent’s editor at the Daily Star, which eventually becomes the Daily Planet), the Ultra-Humanite is Supes’ first super-villain, but Luthor soon makes an appearance albeit with a full head of red hair. There are no historical articles, but the packaging and design are stellar, and DC did Marvel one better by totally eliminating volume numbers; each book (and many subsequent volumes have already been announced) have a list of years (from 1938 through 2011) on the back cover with each year featured in a particular volume highlighted. I’m particularly interested in the Superman titles they’re presenting and happy to see three more coming out in the next half-year or so, including Superboy and Krypto, Superman Family with Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane reprints, and 1970s Superman edited by Julius Schwartz. Of all the comics and collections published this year, DC Finest is the one I’m most excited about, and that says a lot about this long-time and admittedly jaded comics lover.

(Click here for a longer article on DC Finest by yours truly!)