The first month of summer started with the usual graphic novels and comic book collections, plus two of my favorite authors’ new books; one of them great, the other … well, not so great.
Nightshade by Michael Connelly • 5 Stars on Goodreads
What a great beginning for a new character by Michael Connelly! Nightshade introduces Detective Stilwell, “Stil” to his friends, who has been exiled to Catalina, an island off the coast of Southern California, after an altercation with a fellow Los Angeles County Sheriff detective on the mainland. Life in Catalina is easy-going, until a dead woman’s body is found floating at the bottom of the bay, and Stilwell finds himself immersed (pun intended) once again in murder and mystery, on this otherwise bucolic isle. This is another great Connelly character with the relentless and determined drive of both Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard, and I can’t wait for a second novel and—hopefully—an eventual team-up with Bosch and/or Ballard, not to mention another great TV series. I believe Connelly is already at work on a second Stilwell novel … maybe we’ll even learn his first name this time around. This is one of Connelly’s leanest novels yet; to paraphrase the author, “Every word counts, or no word counts.”
Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson • 3 Stars on Goodreads
I don’t quite know how I feel about this book. I’ve always enjoyed reading books by Peter Swanson, but this one … well, not so much. It’s the story of a married couple in their 50s, Wendy and Thom Graves, who have been harboring a dark secret for most of their lives together. But the conceit of this book is the way it’s written, revealed in it’s subtitle: “A Reverse Murder Mystery Unraveling a Marriage’s Dark Secrets, Twisted Vengeance, and a Deadly Pact in New England.” And that’s where the problem lies. I don’t want to mention the “dark secrets” as it would give too much away, but suffice it to say, structuring a book like this kind of top-loads it with all the good parts, making the rest of the book a not-so-great read. I don’t really care about Wendy’s poetry book deal, or Thom’s endless flirtations with fellow workers. I loved Swanson’s Lily Kitner books (The Kind Worth Killing, The Kind Worth Saving, and A Talent for Murder), and I’d kill (pun intended) for more stories with that enigmatic character. Kill Your Darlings is an interesting concept, but ultimately—for me, at least—it’s reverse structure is just a gimmick that gets in the way of telling a good story about one very interesting character, who deserves an encore.
Batman Vol. 5: The Dying City by Chip Zdarsky and Jorge Jimenez • 3.5 Stars on Goodreads
This is the final TPB collection of writer Chip Zdarsky’s Batman run, collecting issues 153-158, and the missing main story from Batman 150. Like his Daredevil run, Batman is one of diminishing returns. While I enjoyed each volume, including this one, each subsequent collection is not quite up to its previous one, and Volume 1: Failsafe, remains the best of the series. This one has a very questionable decision (for me, at least) to have a major character kill someone, one that I’m sure had more far-reaching implications for that character had Zdarsky continued on the book. I’m sorry to see him go, though … in some ways I enjoyed his run more than his predecessors, all who—like Zdarsky—started out great and kind of petered out at the end of their runs. The real star here though is Jorge Jimenez’s art, as it has been for the past few years. I’m happy to hear he’ll be continuing on the book when Matt Fraction takes over in September, with yet another new number 1 issue. That is, if Jim Lee ever finishes Hush 2, Part 1!
DC Finest: Batman: The Killing Joke and Other Stories by Alan Moore, Mike W. Barr, and Brian Bolland • 4 Stars on Goodreads
This latest Batman volume of the DC Finest reprint series collects stories from Batman 413 through 422, Detective Comics 580 through 599, and two late 1980s original graphic novels: Batman: Son of the Demon and Batman: The Killing Joke. Like the volume before it, this Batman book has an absolute masterpiece in it, Moore and Bolland’s The Killing Joke (the previous DC Finest Batman book had Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One; this volume follows along chronologically with that book). The other OGN is Mike W. Barr and Jerry Bingham’s Son of the Demon, an interesting story with decent art, but like Miller before him, Alan Moore is functioning on a whole different level with The Killing Joke. I am one of the few people who absolutely hates the original coloring on TKJ (by John Higgins), and I’m told it’s the version included here. It just seems overly garish to me. The other Batman and Detective stories are mainly by Jim Starlin and Alan Grant and John Wagner; the latter duo’s Detective Comics work has never been a personal fave—especially their new villain pair, Scarface and the Ventriliquist—but Norm Breyfogle’s art is nice, setting himself up as one of the premiere Bat-artists of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. This is still the Jason Todd era of Batman, but both series seem to downplay him in the stories collected here. There’s one more Batman volume coming out this year, which features the Doug Moench/Gene Colan stories, another creative pairing that isn’t a personal fave on the Caped Crusader. I may pass on that one.
Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television by Todd S. Purdum • 5 Stars on Goodreads
I didn’t really learn anything new about Desi Arnaz from Todd S. Purdum’s new biography, but I did enjoy it. I certainly agree that Arnaz doesn’t get enough credit for some of the amazing innovations he either appropriated from elsewhere (the three-camera method of filming TV shows) or outright invented (what we quaintly called in the days before streaming, the “rerun”). More than just a pretty face, competent musician, and foil to Lucille Ball, Arnaz was a savvy business man, who cut some remarkable deals with CBS and eventually bought a whole Hollywood studio (RKO). He unfortunately, had it all fall apart due to his personal demons, alcohol and women. This book tells the whole story, with the cooperation of his children, Lucie and Desi Jr., and it’s sad at times. I watched I Love Lucy religiously as a kid; it was on CBS every morning when I was still of pre-school age, in an era before annoying talk shows and garish game shows. I’ve always loved Lucy, but Desi deserves some love, too.
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