DC Finest Science Fiction: The Gorilla World by John Broome, Sid Gerson, Murphy Anderson, et al.

DC Finest: Science Fiction: The Gorilla World

Collection published: 2025
Contents originally published: 1953-54
Acquired: December 2025
Read: February 2026

Writers: John Broome, Gardner Fox, Sid Gerson, Mann Rubin, Edmond Hamilton, Arthur Wallace, Jack Miller, Otto Binder, Sid Miller, Jerry Coleman

Pencillers: Murphy Anderson, Gil Kane, Mort Drucker, Henry Sharp, Jim Mooney, Carmine Infantino, Alex Toth, Frank Giacoia, Jerry Granedetti, Sy Barry, Virgil Finlay, Howard Sherman, Irwin Hasen
Inkers: Murphy Anderson, Gil Kane, Sy Barry, Bernard Sachs, Jim Mooney, Frank Giacoia, Ray Burnley, Joe Giella, Virgil Finlay, Howard Sherman, Carmine Infantino

Letterers: Gaspar Saladino, Pat Gordon

Early solicitations of this DC Finest volume—which collects a bunch of science fiction tales from various DC titles from 1953 to '54—indicated it was about a "gorilla world." Someone on Reddit posted a complaint that he had bought the book for gorilla action, and that there are just two gorilla-related stories in its 600 pages. Instead, he had to read about some guy called Captain Comet!?

Well, suddenly I was interested. I became a fan of Captain Comet with his starring role in the 2007 Mystery in Space miniseries, and have enjoyed some of his other appearances in series like L.E.G.I.O.N. and R.E.B.E.L.S.; back in 2012, DC solicited an "archive edition" of Captain Comet stories, which I did preorder, but it was cancelled.

This volume contains sci-fi material (normally I try to say "sf," not "sci-fi"... but this material is definitely sci-fi, not sf) from Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space, and Action Comics. Mostly they are standalone one-off tales; if you've read any of DC's horror anthologies from around the late 1960s and early '70s (e.g., House of Mystery, House of Secrets, The Witching Hour), as I have, you'll recognize the format. There are a few recurring features: in addition to the Captain Comet stories from Strange Adventures, there are also stories about Tommy Tomorrow of the Planeteers from Action, "Interplanetary Insurance, Inc." from Mystery in Space, and the very first "Space Cabbie" story from Mystery in Space #21 (by Otto Binder and Howard Sherman), which would go on to become a recurring feature.

I have enjoyed some archival Captain Comet stories I've read (e.g., those reprinted in DC Super-Stars of Space), but these struck me as rather anodyne. Later creators would do good stuff with this setup, but here, the character is pretty bland. The most interesting ones here are definitely Strange Adventures #35, where he meets the "Guardians of the Universe" (writer John Broome clearly beginning to iterate concepts he would crystallize much more successfully in Green Lantern a few years later; art by Murphy Anderson) and #39 (by John Broome and Murphy Anderson), where he testifies against a murderous sapient gorilla (mostly because I enjoyed how this one started in medias res with a whole implied adventure beforehand).

Did no one ever retcon these guys to somehow be the same at the Green Lantern Corps's Guardians of the Universe? I am surprised.
from Strange Adventures vol. 1 #35 (script by John Broome, art by Murphy Anderson)

The Tommy Tomorrow stuff, though, was even worse. This guy has no personality and, as far as I could tell, no consistent supporting cast or worldbuilding from story to story. He's very very occasionally been brought back, but I assume only because later writers would have read these stories when they were five. Outside of indiscriminate nostalgia, I don't see what you could enjoy in these tales. 

The only person who has less of a personality than Tommy Tomorrow is one of Tommy Tomorrow's subordinates.
from Action Comics vol. 1 #195 (script by Otto Binder, art by Jim Mooney)

On the other hand, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the stories of "I.I.I.": Interplanetary Insurance, Inc. I don't know why someone at DC Comics thought kids would love stories of an interplanetary insurance fraud investigator, but it's the exact kind of mixing of the mundane and the fantastic that I enjoy. The stories don't always make a lot of sense on their own terms (maybe you should investigate the life-cycles of newly discovered aliens before selling them life insurance?) but the idea was wacky enough to be delightful. Similarly, the one "Space Cabbie" story here is good fun, and you can see why DC picked it up to be a recurring feature later on. DC has brought back Space Cabbie occasionally, but where is my return appearance for Bert Brandon of I.I.I.!?

My seven-year-old kid read the book after I was done with it; when I asked what they thought of the I.I.I. feature, they didn't even remember it. (Captain Comet was their favorite.) I can't imagine why not!?
from Mystery in Space vol. 1 #18 (script by Sid Gerson, art by Carmine Infantino & Sy Barry)

Outside of those features, this is entirely done-in-one standalone tales. Like I said, it reminded me a lot of the DC horror anthologies I've read... but those were much more consistently enjoyable than these. Is horror an easier genre to get right than sci-fi? Or have 1960s horror trappings just dated less than 1950s sci-fi trappings? The stuff here is largely pretty cheeseball. Lots of bug-eyed aliens and mad scientists who invent amazing technologies but can't think of anything better to do with them than petty theft. Every now and then there was a good one in a sort of sub-Twilgiht Zone kind of way. My favorite was probably "The Eye-Dropper World" (from Strange Adventures #42, by Otto Binder, Murphy Anderson, and Joe Giella), where a guy evolves a species of oversized paramecium to sentience in his backyard with tragic results.

I was going to ask if this guy had institutional approval, but actually, if they're not vertebrates, you can do whatever you want!
from Strange Adventures vol. 1 #42 (script by Otto Binder, art by Murphy Anderson & Joe Giella)

So, overall, this is fine in terms of actual reading experience. But it's great in terms of the archival experience: I suspect most, if not all, of these stories have never been reprinted before; the "DC Finest" volumes have given us some sure things, like "triangle era" Superman and the Jim Shooter Legion and Mike Grell's Green Arrow, but I appreciate very much their commitment to more forgotten aspects of DC's long publication history. I doubt this well sell as well as any of those, but I hope we get more volumes of Silver Age sci-fi.

Reading Ages of Oz: A Dark Descent Aloud to My Kids

The second Ages of Oz book is also the last, though it clearly wasn't intended to be the last, as it ends on a cliffhanger. It picks up right from the end of the first: having defeated the Wicked Witch of the South and liberated the Quadling Country, Glinda and her friends are attacked by the combined forces of the other three Wicked Witches. They fend off that assault, but end up separated: Glinda goes off on her own to learn more about magic from the person who trained her mother, while Locasta and the others go on their own quest to liberate Locasta's brother, who is working for the Wicked Witch of the North.

Gabriel Gale's Ages of Oz: A Dark Descent
by Lisa Fiedler
illustrated by Sebastian Giacobino

Published: 2018
Acquired: December 2025
Read aloud: December 2025–January 2026

I happen to also be watching the Star Wars movies with my kids, and I realized reading this book that it very much takes its structure from The Empire Strikes Back. Glinda has the Luke subplot: splitting off from the others, meeting a seemingly decrepit old person who turns out to be the wise mentor they were seeking, the mentor turns out to have a personal link to them, once their training is done, they must rush off to help their friends who have ended up in danger. And, like I said, the whole thing ends on a cliffhanger, and it's kinda similar to ESB as well, as it's one where someone close to hero is missing and in danger. (Though the circumstances are very different, and the hero does not learn that they are related to any of the villains.)

This isn't a complaint per se, though I feel like once I noticed the similarities they were hard to ignore. Both of the Ages of Oz books have a certain derivative vibe; in addition to the Star Wars parallels, they also comes across as Oz for the Harry Potter generation, with their emphasis on riddles and artifacts and sometimes overly complicated exposition. I found myself wishing the characters were doing things that were actually clever more often, and less figuring out weird riddles with arbitrary answers; I wish also there was more emphasis on the importance but also difficulty of bravery and teamwork here. 

The end is pretty good, though, and I did like the subplot about Locasta's wayward brother.

Even moreso than in the first book, there's a decent amount of that "joining the dots" thing prequels often do. Glinda meets the Nome King, for example, and we find out how he ended up with his Magic Belt. Fiedler does a good job of capturing the personality of Roquat as he was in Ozma of Oz, and we even get an appearance from Kaliko. (Why are the Nomes under Oz, though?) We also find out how the Golden Cap ended up in the hands of the Wicked Witch of the West, even though the Winged Monkeys originated in the Gillikin Country (as chronicled in Wonderful Wizard, though there are some inconsistencies with what the King of the Winged Monkeys told Dorothy). 

On the other hand, there are ways the join is not very obvious. Why is Mombi not the Wicked Witch of the North, but some kind of overlord, disembodied Krumbic witch? Assuming that Locasta is indeed the Good Witch of the North, it's not clear how the statement from Dorothy and the Wizard that "a good Witch had conquered Mombi in the North and Glinda the Good had conquered the evil Witch in the South" is going to be fulfilled. And if this book takes place a century before the arrival of the Wizard, why do Glinda and friends defeat the first two Wicked Witches in quick succession, and then the others not at all? If Locasta is the Good Witch of the North, why is she an old lady when Dorothy arrives in Oz, but Glinda just a young woman? These aren't criticisms per se, but it's hard for me to intuit where future installments in this series would have gone, had they happened.

I really don't buy, however, the involvement of a young Nick Chopper in these events. Why, in Wonderful Wizard, did the Tin Woodman never say, "Oh, I used to hang out with Glinda and her family?" And why is Nick's rival for Nimee Amee's affections a musician, and not a soldier?

Overall, this one had some interesting moments but I also think I found it less engaging than A Fiery Friendship. I do continue to wish there was more emphasis on the characters: Shade is still a weird blank, and Ben's commitment to the cause in Oz seems very random, and I want more of the "fiery friendship" between Glinda and Locasta the title of the first book promised us. On the other hand, my kids definitely enjoyed this, and if there were future installments, I would definitely read them. My older kid, in particular, was very disgruntled to learn there was no resolution to the cliffhanger ending forthcoming. Over seven years later, it seems unlikely there will be more... although I guess maybe the rights will have reverted to "Gabriel Gale" and he could maybe self-publish a followup or something.

First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (anthology, 2004)

My senior capstone back in undergraduate was about digital narratives; I took it with the delightful Professor Laura Mandell, who was just beginning to get into it as a research area, and I think was using the class to sort of figure out things for herself. She later ended up moving to Texas A&M and founding a digital humanities center there. She put a lot of books on the reading list, and some she never actually required us to read in the course. Eventually, I put these on my own reading list... and so two decades later, I finally got around to reading this one, First Person, an anthology of critical essays about "new media" from MIT Press.

First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game
edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan

Published: 2004
Acquired: August 2006
Read: December 2025

Anyway, reading a book about digital media from 2004 is a weird time capsule, because of course the range of digital media has changed an incredible amount in the last two decades, and I often had reactions reading this book along the lines of, "Man, I bet these people wish they knew about Facebook or ChatGPT."

Even aside from that, though, I didn't find much of interest in this book, perhaps due to my bias as a literary scholar—most of the contributors seem to be coming more out of the gaming studies space, which isn't a criticism of them, but does mean that the critical conversations they care about are not the critical conversations that I care about. There's a lot of very formalist stuff; including a diagram with arrows in it in your critical essay is a surefire way to get me to tune out. I did occasionally find stuff of interest, but that was rare. I did really enjoy "How I Was Played by Online Caroline" by Jill Walker, about an "online drama" that unfolds in real time over weeks via a blog site.

The book also suffers from being overdesigned. Each of the regular critical essays has a response essay; this essay runs along the bottom of the pages of the regular essay, which means when you finish an essay, you then need to flip backwards to read the response. But then each essay also has an online response, which you can read in full on the book's web site, but is excerpted here, and then the author of the original essay responds to the responses; again, you get an excerpt here from a longer piece on the site. I am not sure why all of this is needed. I certainly never bothered to go to the site and read a piece in full! Some of the response essays are kind of embarrassing and I can't believe they got printed; Markku Eskelinen's response to Henry Jenkins's "Game Design as Narrative Architecture" misreads Jenkins so badly that Jenkins's response to the response begins, "I feel a bit like Travis Bickle when I ask Eskelinen, 'Are you talking to me?'" (Eskelinen's own essay is also pretty bad, to be honest, claiming that narrative has nothing to do with videogames at all. I can buy a claim that literary scholars focus too much on narrative in videogames, but to claim they are not stories is patently absurd.)

The book garnered two sequels, duly titled Second Person (2007) and Third Person (2009), but I don't have any interest in tracking them down. If you do game studies or "new media" (they must call it something else these days, right? it's not really "new" anymore), I suppose this book might appeal to you, but probably also I'd imagine it's been largely superseded.

Marvel's The Transformers Year One, Part III: The Next Best Thing to Being There! (US #9-12 / UK #31-41)

The Image Til All Are One compendia are arranged in a story order that, like my own, tries to balance chronology and publication in order to make a readable experience. They don't always make the same choice that I have made, but I find their choices defensible.

One place where we differ is with the stories from the UK annuals. Some of these stories were written to fit into the continuity of the weekly title, and do so quite well, but others clearly were not written with the weekly in mind. (In fact, this was done purposefully, as the annual stories often highlighted characters who had not made it into the regular series.) The compendia take the stories that don't fit well into continuity and place them all in volume four, presumably so they don't disrupt the experience of reading the main US/UK series. I didn't want to do that, though, so my approach has been to either 1) read them somewhere near where they kinda fit even if it's not perfect, or 2) if there's no such place, around the time the annual stories would have been read. (Annuals are usually released in the fall, but are thought of as Christmas gifts.)

With this week's post, I hit two stories from the 1985 annual. One is a flashback to Cybertron in the early days of the Autobot/Decepticon war; the compendia place this (along with a 1986 story with a similar setting) before the first UK story from the regular comic as a sort of prelude. The other is set during the time the Transformers' war came to Earth, but it has some continuity issues (most notably, it features the Insecticons, who would later be introduced in a completely different way in a US story) so the compendia place it in volume four. Following my system, I read them both after the 1985 Christmas story from UK issue #41.

For the first, "And Then There Shall Come... a Leader!", this worked well; it actually is referred to directly in the very next UK story, Crisis of Command! from issues #42-44. Now that I've reread it, I would actually recommend reading the other, "Plague of the Insecticons!", much earlier, around the same time as Man of Iron and The Enemy Within!, between US issues #3 and 4. Presence of the Insecticons aside, we have Megatron still leading the Decepticons, and both sides are obviously recently arrived on Earth.

"The Wrath of Guardian!" / "The Wrath of Grimlock!" / "Dis-Integrated Circuits!" / "The Next Best Thing to Being There!" / "Brainstorm!" / "Prime Time!" / "Christmas Breaker!" / "And There Shall Come... a Leader!", from The Transformers US #9-12 (Oct. 1985–Jan. 1986) / The Transformers UK #31-41 (19 Oct.–28 Dec. 1985) and The Transformers Annual [1985]; reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium One (2025)

scripts by Simon Furman, Bob Budiansky, and James Hill; pencils by Barry Kitson, Mike Manley, Ricardo Villamonte, Herb Trimpe, William Simpson, and John Stokes; inks by Barry Kitson, M. Hands, Brad Joyce, Tom Palmer, Al Gordon, William Simpson, and John Stokes; colours by Gina Hart, Whitaker/Place, and Nel Yomtov; letters by A. Halfacree, Mike Scott, Rick Parker, Janice Chiang, Diana Albers, and Starkings

from The Transformers UK #32

This sequence of stories mostly concerns the rise of Circuit Breaker, the whereabouts of the Creation Matrix, the Autobots' deal with G. B. Blackrock, and the defeat of Shockwave. At the end of the previous arc, Ratchet and the Dinobots headed off for the Ark, where their deactivated comrades were stored. Here, the stories cover Ratchet and the Dinobots regaining access to the Ark (Shockwave reprogrammed the Autobot Guardian droid), Buster Witwicky struggling with realizing that he has the secret of Autobot power in his mind, and Josie Beller remaking herself into a supervillain, all while the Autobots struggle with the fact that Optimus is literally headless.

I found a lot to like in this sequence. There's some good comedy in the Dinobot stuff, especially with Grimlock. I like the kinda dumb Grimlock of the cartoon, but the smarter-but-still-hotheaded one of the comic is good too, especially his interplay with the other Autobots. Furman's story are small but usually have good character focus and one interesting formalistic technique per issue.

 

from The Transformers US #11

I kind of remember not having a lot of time for the Witwickys reading the US stories before, but I enjoyed them this time out, especially Buster's indecision over whether to tell his father about having the Creation Matrix, and Sparkplug's eventual realization that Buster is trying to do what's right—and there's nothing a father wants more than that. I think Budiansky's instinct that Transformers needed to be grounded in the human is a good one, even if it doesn't always work out in practice... but that's more later. 

 

The resolution to the whole Shockwave subplot is also a good one: the way Optimus finally returns and unleashes his full power is really well done. I will say, though, I though the art on many of the US stories in this run was rough. It felt like they were scrambling from artist to artist who didn't quite know how to deal with drawing giant robots on a monthly basis. Which, fair enough, does seem to be a specialized skill.

 

from The Transformers UK #41

The Christmas story is decent, but would be better if half of it wasn't recapping the arc you just read. Did they think a bunch of new readers would jump on at Christmas and need catching up? 

 

Lastly, I thought "And There Shall Come... a Leader!" was fine. Like a lot of early UK stories, the art is a bit stiff, but this story gives us Emirate Xaaron and a lot of other key facts about the early Autobot/Decepticon war on Cybertron... though notably not what a "Prime" is; Optimus Prime here is just some guy promoted to battle commander, not the leader of the Autobots by name. 

 

"Plague of the Insections!", from The Transformers Annual [1985]; reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Four (2025)

script by Furman, art by Collins/Anderson, letters by Starkings, colours by Hart

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this. Melodramatic, but solid. Clearly not high art, but good at tone and very visceral. As a one-off, it's basically everything you could want.

This is the third in a series of posts about Marvel's The Transformers. The next covers US issues #13-14 and UK issues #42-54. Previous installments are listed below:

1. US #1-3 & 33-34 / UK #1-6 & 9-17 (1984-85)
2. US #4-8 / UK #7-8 & 18-30 (1984-85) 

Star Wars: Knight Errant by John Jackson Miller, Book 2

In the waning days of the old Star Wars EU, they experimented with more cross-fertilization between Dark Horse's comics and Del Rey's novels, with series that would cross back and forth between them. One example of this was the Knight Errant series, where the story begins in the comics, then goes into a novel, and then returns to the comics. (Somewhat confusingly, the novel is just called "Knight Errant" with no subtitle, and also confusingly this mean the comic collection branded "volume two" is actually the third Knight Errant book.)

Star Wars: Knight Errant
by John Jackson Miller

Published: 2011
Acquired: January 2013
Read: December 2025

The novel picks up a bit after the end of the first trade paperback, with Kerra trapped in Sith space, still doing her best to cause problems.

Different media obviously have different strengths. Two of the benefits of a novel over a comic are worldbuilding and interiority. Though obviously comics can handle these in their own way, I think it's probably easier to work in a little touches in a novel; also given this novel is almost 400 pages but the Knight Errant trades are just 100, Miller has a much bigger canvas here. That to me was the real triumph of the novel: I can't think of any Star Wars story that's ever really shown us what it would be like to live under the Sith, what a realm under Sith thrall would actually be like. (Technically, the Empire was such a thing, but Darth Sidious kept this secret from his Empire.) Miller's novel carries us through several different kingdoms within the Sith empire, each with its own ruler with their own ethos. There's the Sith who believes no one exists but him, the Sith who believes no one deserves to exist, the Sith who directly controls their entire kingdom, and so on. I thought this stuff was fascinating and all very well done. It does what a good tie-in story should do, giving us a previously unseen angle on a familiar universe. 

We also get a mercenary who operates in Sith space; I liked this guy a lot. He's an interesting character and he shows a new angle on Sith dominance. It seems a real shame he didn't pop up more in future Knight Errant installments. 

On the other hand, I found the characterization of Kerra a bit of a squandered opportunity. Kerra is very much a character who is always on the move, and not given to introspection very much. This works to the strengths of the comics medium to an extent, but does leave me feeling like we mostly know Kerra at a bit of a remove. I do think lots of introspection wouldn't have felt right for her, but I also think the medium of a novel provided more opportunities for developing her as a character than we got. Specifically, Kerra befriends a young woman on one of the Sith worlds; she helps liberate this girl and some other Sith thralls, but then struggles to find a place of safety for them. Unfortunately, this friend character feels more like a plot point than a person. Kerra does a lot of stuff to help her, but rarely actually interacts with her or even thinks about her. I think this was a real missed opportunity; if Kerra is not inclined to reveal herself voluntarily, seeing her build a relationship with a young protegee could have done a lot to develop her.

Like a lot of Miller books, I did find that in the last quarter or so it felt like, despite the presence of fast-paced action, the book was treading water. I don't know if I could exactly put my thumb on what causes this, but I felt similarly when reading Rogue Elements and The High Country.

Despite all this, I enjoyed the novel as a whole. Overall, I found Knight Errant a mixed bag as a series (more on that when I get to the last two comics), and this was probably the best it was in execution. 

Should "They Say" What "I Say"?

In my research writing class, I draw a bit on the textbook They Say / I Say* by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, especially when it comes to teaching students how to respond to sources. My main textbook for that course is Craft of Research, but I find it doesn't say a lot about how to read sources, synthesize sources, and come up with your own argument. TS/IS, awkward title aside, has parts where it does a good job of both highlighting 1) what your sources are doing, and 2) how you might do it too. (Students, I think, often conceptualize what they're doing as distinct from their sources, not as part of it.)

I don't teach the whole book, but I do assign chapters 1-2, 4-5, and 14. The other day (as of this writing; I'm typing this up a couple weeks in advance) I was teaching chapters 4-5. These cover the "three ways" of responding to sources and how to distinguish what they say from what you say. 

As someone who was an English ed major in college and then has taught writing for eighteen years now, I have read a lot of writing textbooks in my time. Most of the time I don't like them. What I don't like is when they seem to describe something alien to me and my process. If I can't identify what they discuss with my own writing process, how can I go on to recommend that my students do it in their own process? (I still remember this book I hated as an undergraduate called Writing and Being.) So what I look out for in writing textbooks is when they describe something I already do, but in putting a name on it, help me to understand it better. I feel like no textbook I have ever read is consistently good in this regard, but you can piece together a solid writing curriculum out of various bits and pieces of Booth et al.'s Craft of Research, Rosenwasser and Stephen's Writing Analytically, Harris's Rewriting, and TS/IS.

One of the parts that really resonated for me in TS/IS is the chapters I'm talking about here, when they discuss how to 1) recognize when sources are agreeing and disagreeing with each other, and 2) how to do that yourself. Graff and Birkenstein love templates, their whole deal is both telling you the intellectual moves that academic writing typically makes and giving you specific words to accomplish it with. I didn't read TS/IS until after I wrote it... but my article on Wilkie Collins's Heart and Science uses their templates several times! (For example, their "However... / ...overlooks" template: "However, this focus on the pleasures of the interior self overlooks Mrs. Gallilee’s consistent concern with her own social standing, especially display of success.") Not because I actually used their templates, but because their templates offer very clear ways to disagree with sources that I arrived at independently.

So when I teach these chapters, I show students some examples from my own work and ask them if the writer (whoever he is) is agreeing or disagreeing with the sources. Then I reveal that 1) I wrote it all, and 2) before I ever read TS/IS, trying to make the point that this is what they should do because this is simply what writers do.

Anyway, all of this is to set up me teaching the chapters this time, this semester. I had just showed how the examples I was giving were from own work and encouraged the students to be doing this themselves.

One of my students raises his hand: "So back at the beginning of the semester, you told us all that one of the things you didn't like about AI was how it makes everything sound the same, but now you're all telling us to write the same way?" I think you could read it as confrontational or as a "gotcha" moment now that I type it out, but it didn't sound that way, it sounded like genuine curiosity about a perceived contradiction.

I often think students don't ask enough questions about why we instructors do what we do. I for one am generally happen to explain my rationales, and I try to do so in class, but I can't explain everything (I am already something of an overexplainer I feel), but then you get comments on your evals that indicate students don't understand that you had very good reasons for something, or any reasons at all. So I appreciated this question even as it knocked me for a bit of a loop. Why did I decry the sameness of LLM-generated writing even as I asked my students to use similar wording in their own writing? Could I adopt a consistent answer?

What I said is that actually I am not a huge fan of templates—there's a reason I assign just a couple chapters of TS/IS and not the whole book. I find them constrictive; I struggle with the same thing when it comes to providing examples in class. I know any writer benefits from looking at how other people have done something, but it also means that students will often mimic the thing you give them too much. What I try to teach with examples—and with templates, when I give them—is the underlying intellectual task. I actually am not a big fan of mimicking exact wording, it's more that I want them to do a certain thing, and following a template is a possible way to accomplish it... but there might be others!

That seemed to satisfy him. It was a striking moment; one always wonders how much students are actually thinking about what you say, but it seemed like he actually was!

* Officially "They Say / I Say" for some reason, but that looks stupid. If there are going to be quotation marks in the title, surely "They Say"/"I Say" would be better.

Reading Roundup Wrapup: March 2026

Pick of the month: The Maze Agency, Volume 1 by Mike W. Barr, Adam Hughes, et al. This is a collection of the first five issues of a "fair-play whodunit" comic series from the late 1980s. I enjoyed it immensely: Barr and Hughes are both accomplished comics creators, and this is both of them at the top of their game. It's a shame there's only ever been the one collection!

All books read:

1. Getting There by Manjula Padmanabhan
2. Batgirl: Year One: The Deluxe Edition by Scott Beatty & Chuck Dixon, Marcos Martin, and Alvaro Lopez
3. Timelink: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Exploration of Doctor Who Continuity, Volume Two by Jon Preddle
4. Carpatho-Ukraine in the Twentieth Century: A Political and Legal History by Vincent Shandor
5. The Maze Agency, Volume 1 by Mike W. Barr, Adam Hughes, et al.
6. The Bands of Mourning: A Mistborn Novel by Brandon Sanderson
7. Timelink: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Exploration of Doctor Who Continuity, Volume One by Jon Preddle
8. Interfaces edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Virginia Kidd
9. The Twinkle Tales by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by Maginel Wright Enright
10. Saga of the Unfated, Book One: A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen
11. Star Trek: Vanguard: Harbinger by David Mack
12. Best of American Splendor by Harvey Pekar et al. 

I promise I had a good reason for finishing volume two of Timelink before volume one!

All books acquired:

1. The Maze Agency, Volume 1 by Mike W. Barr, Adam Hughes, et al. 
2. Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors by Brian Hayles
3. Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter
4. Fourth World by John Byrne Omnibus by John Byrne et al. 
5. Doctor Who: Decalog: Ten Stories, Steven Doctors, One Enigma edited by Mark Stammers & Stephen James Walker
6. The New Doctor Who Adventures: Falls the Shadow by Daniel O’Mahony
7. Doctor Who: Decalog 2: Lost Property: Ten Stories, Seven Doctors, No Fixed Abode edited by Mark Stammers & Stephen James Walker
8. Asimov's Science Fiction January/February 2026 edited by Sheila Williams
9. The SFWA European Hall of Fame: Sixteen Contemporary Masterpieces of Science Fiction from the Continent edited by James Morrow and Kathryn Morrow
10. Utopias of the Third Kind plus Lamentations in a Lost Tongue plus Arctic Sky and much more by Vandana Singh
11. The Tangleroot Palace by Marjorie Liu
12. One Aladdin Two Lamps by Jeanette Winterson
13. Other Shane Hintons by Shane Hinton 

A bit more than my usual of late! My family discovered a nice local used bookstore, which is where I picked up #3-7. #8-11 were courtesy ICFA (either purchased in the book room or received as gifts), and #12 was a gift from a colleague.

Currently reading:

• Death of the Planet of the Apes by Andrew E.C. Gaska
• Britain after Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400–1070 by Robin Fleming
• Star Trek: Vanguard: Summon the Thunder by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

Up next in my rotations:

1. Star Trek: Vanguard: Declassified by Dayton Ward, Kevin Dilmore, Marco Palmieri, and David Mack
2. The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois
3. The Poe Clan Vol. 1 by Moto Hagio 
4. On Progress in Physics and Subjectivity Theory: An Amateur’s Meanderings as Inspiration for Actual Physicists by N. Otre Le Vant 

Books remaining on "To be read" list: 671 (up 8)

Last month I asked, "Will my numbers [of books read] go down now that I have to read longer books?" and the answer was yes; it's my first substantive increase in my "To be read" list in some time. Still, I read a bunch of stuff from the list, so I am pretty pleased regardless.

DC Finest: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part One by Marv Wolfman, Roy Thomas, Doug Moench, George Pérez, et al.

DC Finest: Events: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part One

Collection published: 2025
Contents originally published: 1985-86
Acquired: December 2025
Read: January 2026

Writers: Marv Wolfman, Roy Thomas (with Dann Thomas), Gerry Conway, Jason Todd, Steve Englehart, Doug Moench, Alan Moore, Robert Kanigher, Mindy Newell

Pencillers: Curt Swan, George Pérez, Mike Clark, Arvell Jones, Rafael Kayanan, Todd McFarlane, Gene Colan, Joe Staton, Tom Mandrake, Stephen R. Bissette, Judith Hunt, Sam Glanzman, Michael Esposito, Don Heck

Inkers: Dave Hunt, Dick Giordano, Vince Colletta (with DeZuniga), Alfredo Alcala, Akin & Garvey, Pablo Marcos, Bob Smith, Bruce Patterson, Steve Montana, Mike Machlan, Tom Mandrake, Tatjana Wood, Mike DeCarlo, Judith Hunt, Sam Glanzman, Michael Esposito, Don Heck
Colorists: Gene D'Angelo, Anthony Tollin, Carl Gafford, Nansi Hoolahan, Adrienne Roy, Jerry Serpe

Letterers: Ben Oda, John Costanza, David Cody Weiss, Duncan Andrews, John Workman, L. Lois Buhalis, Albert De Guzman, Gaspar, Helen Vesik
Plot: Wolfman/Wein/Greenberger

DC has begun a new reprint series called "DC Finest." Despite the name—which would seem to indicate some kind of selectivity—its aim to comprehensively reprint everything DC has ever published in various lines. One of those is the "Events" line, which reprints not just the headline event stories, but integrates them with their myriad tie-ins. Crisis on Infinite Earths has of course been reprinted many times, but never with all of the "Special Crisis Cross-overs." The core series is twelve issues long, but estimates are that its DC Finest reprinting will run four 500-page volumes! I've read Crisis a couple times before, so here I won't focus on the core story, but the various included stories.

A lot of the included issues are of Roy Thomas's Earth-Two titles: here we get issues #50-52 of the WWII-set All-Star Squadron and issues #18-19 of the present-day Infinity, Inc. (There's also Justice League of America #244, which is the second half of the story begun in Infinc #19, the last-ever JLA/JSA team-up.) Both of these titles were significantly affected by the Crisis and did a lot tying into it, so their inclusion here makes sense... though I know from past experience I will definitely be bored of A-SS's Shanghaied into Hyperspace! story by the end of it. Overall, though, no complaints; these are exactly the kind of stories that ought to be included in a book like this.

No one:
Absolutely no one:
Roy Thomas: My Crisis on Infinite Earths tie-in is going to be about Mister Mind crossing between universe because he loves listening to Charlie McCarthy on the radio so much!
from All-Star Squadron #51 (plot by Roy Thomas & Dann Thomas, script by Roy Thomas, art by Mike Clark & Vince Colletta)

We also get a bunch of one-off stories from various titles: Fury of Firestorm #41, Green Lantern #194, and Wonder Woman #327. The Firestorm one is fine, it basically just shows how Firestorm is recruited by Harbinger in more detail, which isn't particularly interesting but I guess the kind of thing you'd expect a Crisis Cross-over to do. The Green Lantern story is kind of complicated, as it's clearly very enmeshed in the ongoing stories of Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner, but I'm always happy to see some Joe Staton artwork, and I'm curious to see how it continues in later volumes. (There's a funny bit of continuity massaging; as John thinks to himself that he usually doesn't wear a mask anymore but he's going to put one on before journeying to the Monitor's satellite, presumably because George Pérez drew him with a mask.) The Wonder Woman story is clearly the wrapup of an ongoing story, and therefore pretty confusing on its own.

I'm always game for some Harbinger action, great visual design.
from The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Man #41 (script by Gerry Conway, art by Rafael Kayanan and Akin & Garvey)

There are a couple inclusions I didn't get. There weren't any Crisis ties in Detective Comics #555 that I detected, nor in The Losers Special, even though that does have the Crisis Cross-over branding on the cover.

Wait, did the pre-Crisis Blue Beetle have a wife!? (It's just a joke, right?)
from Green Lantern vol. 2 #194 (script by Steve Englehart, art by Joe Staton & Bruce Patterson) 

The real highlight of the book, though, are the Batman issues: we get a continuous six-part Batman story from Batman #389-91 and Detective #556-58. The Crisis connection is technically slight, in that there's just the red skies from the Crisis... but man these stories (from the team of Doug Moench and Tom Mandrake, somehow pumping out an issue every two weeks) are great! Jason Todd is Robin, but this is before Jim Starlin turned him into an obnoxious asshole; here he's a kid trying to find his way in rough world, bereft of strong parental figures to give him guidance. Like some of the other stories I've read from this era, we're clearly at a transitional point between the Silver Age aesthetic and the Frank Miller one; unlike those other stories, I thought this really worked. It's high melodrama, but it doesn't take itself too seriously; it's dark without being grim; it's not afraid to be goofy but we get solid psychological depth for all of the principal characters. Sure, the only Crisis element is that the skies are red... but it's so beautifully used, creating a funereal atmosphere. These stories are also included in a Batman "DC Finest," Red Skies, and after reading this, I'm sorely tempted to pick up that, because I'd love to see more Moench and Mandrake on Batman.

I very much appreciated the delving into Batman's very bad taste in bad women.
from Detective Comics vol. 1 #556 (script by Doug Moench, art by Gene Colan & Bob Smith)

My only quibble with this volume is the sequencing doesn't always make sense; Detective #558 ends with Batman hearing Joker has escaped, leading into Crisis #2... but for some reason the story is placed after Crisis #2. Similarly, I think the Wonder Woman issue is also in the wrong spot. On the whole, this isn't high art, or often, even medium art, but if the point of superhero comics is their sheer interconnectedness, the creation of a massive tapestry of events that becomes a pleasure in itself, then this book captures that exceedingly well. I hope that Part Two is solicited sooner rather than later! 

Marvel's The Transformers Year One, Part II: Raiders of the Last Ark (US #4-8 / UK #7-8 & 18-30)

Here, we have the last of the UK stories that supposedly take place during the original four-issue US miniseries, letting us finally wrap up that sequence of stories and then move onto a four-issue run of US stories that is pretty continuous. We then segue into the first UK story that was actually written to fit smoothly into the US continuity. Unlike the kind of jumbled storytelling I covered in the first post in this series, this very much feels like it all goes together; everything is starting to pull in the same direction.

Raiders of the Last Ark / "The Last Stand" / "The New Order" / "The Worse of Two Evils!" / "Warrior School!" / "Repeat Performance!" / Decepticon Dam-Busters!, from The Transformers US #4-8 (Mar.-Sept. 1985) / The Transformers UK #7-8 & 18-30 (15-28 Dec. 1984 & 18 May–12 Oct. 1985); reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium One (2025)

scripts by Simon Furman, Jim Salicrup, and Bob Budiansky; pencils by Mike Collins, Frank Springer, Alan Kupperberg, William Johnson, and John Stokes; inks by Jeff Anderson, Akin & Garvey, Alan Kupperberg, Kyle Baker, and John Stokes; letters by Starkings, Aldrich, John Workman, and Rick Parker; colour by Gina Hart, John-Paul Bove, Nel Yomtov, and Steve Whitaker

from The Transformers UK #21

Raiders of the Last Ark is the last of the UK stories that supposedly takes place during the original four-issue run; in this one, the Decepticons invade the Ark, but a malfunction in the Ark's computer, "Auntie" (mentioned but not seen in the US stories), means she turn on the Autobots, forcing Optimus and Megatron to team up to take her down. This one has some good moments, but is very jumpy, like Simon Furman thought he was going to get twice as many pages as he did. The best part is when Megatron accesses his inner black hole, a totally badass power I think was on his tech specs but never used in the US stories... though UK writers who later worked on the IDW comics remembered it, presumably because they read this story. I did think it was clever that at the end the Autobots discovered that the Decepticons scrawled "WE'LL BE BACK" into the walls of the Ark, setting up the fact that the very next story chronologically would also feature the Decepticons invading the Ark.

That story is the last issue of the US miniseries, where it seems like the Decepticons have triumphed... but then they all fall over, because Sparkplug Witwicky put a poison in the fuel he created for him. (It's impossible to imagine that all those UK stories somehow take place between issues #3 and 4 of the US series because of this.) My favorite part was the flashbacks to Sparkplug's time in Korea, a surprisingly dark direction for a kid's comic! You can tell that even from the scripting stage it was known this comic was going to become an ongoing, because even though the Autobots kind of win, the whole issue is spent setting up new threads: it ends on a cliffhanger with Shockwave arriving to defeat the Autobots, but also sets up the key to Shockwave's eventual defeat with the Dinobots.

The next four issues see Bob Budiansky debut as writer, and I very much enjoyed this stuff. My eternal bugaboo with Transformers stories is that there's just too many characters a lot of the time, so anything that strips down the cast a bit is always a good move in my book. Here, every Autobot bar Ratchet is offline, so the Autobots' gentle doctor must find a way to overcome the Decepticons and their new leader Shockwave on his own... which means a trip to the Savage Land to find the Dinobots and striking a deal with Megatron, his only ally being a human boy, Buster Witwicky. I like seeing this emphasis on clever thinking and character dilemmas as opposed to Giant Robot Battles, though I did find the way Ratchet ultimately defeats Megatron a little underwhelming—more due to art than writing, though, I expect.

from The Transformers UK #30

This leads into a final story where, as Ratchet and the Dinobots make their way back to the Ark, Ratchet tells them a story about the Decepticons trying to destroy a dam, yet another story somehow crammed into the timespan of the original US miniseries (apparently the same gap as Man of Iron, in the middle of issue #3). It is a very boring action-focused story, but I enjoyed the frame. 

This is the second in a series of posts about Marvel's The Transformers. The next covers US issues #9-12 and UK issues #31-41. Previous installments are listed below:

1. US #1-3 & 33-34 / UK #1-6 & 9-17 (1984-85)

Star Wars: Knight Errant by John Jackson Miller, Book 1

Star Wars: Knight Errant, Volume One: Aflame

Collection published: 2011
Contents originally published: 2010-11
Acquired: January 2013
Read: December 2025

Script: John Jackson Miller

Pencils: Federico Dallocchio, Ivan Rodriguez

Inks: Federico Dallocchio, Ivan Rodriguez, Belardino Brabo, Marcio Loezer
Colors: Michael Atiyeh

Letters: Michael Heisler

I was a big fan of John Jackson Miller's Knights of the Old Republic; in fact, I would say it is probably my single favorite ongoing Star Wars comic book. That took place four thousand years before the films and followed a disparate cast of characters thrown together by circumstance. (Still the best model for Star Wars story.) His later series, Knight Errant, takes place one thousand years before the films and has just a single lead, Kerra Holt. The story is set at a time where the Republic was on the retreat from the Sith; Kerra is a newly minted Jedi who crosses into Sith space on a daring raid and ends up stranded there, having to make her own way—and fight her own war.

I like the basic idea here, but the series never clicked with me like KOTOR did. At least part of that is due, I think, to Miller's artistic collaborators. This book has two primary artists, and neither is a Brian Ching or a Dustin Weaver. In particular, I think the book's open sequence really depends on the art, as it is action-packed and a key character moment, but I found the blocking of key sequences hard to work out and the character strands hard to follow.

Pivotally, I think the whole book depends on Kerra's emotional arc, that you need to see her as going too far in her desperation, and pulling back. Not that she's going to the Dark Side or anything, more than she's bitten off more than she can do, and she needs to focus on helping where she can, not overthrowing the system, which will just get her killed. But in this case I don't know if it's the writing or the art that fails to sell the vibe Miller is going for. You can tell what it's meant to be, but I don't think you really feel that there's a difference between the decisions she makes in the middle of the story and the ones she makes at the end. I think the middle of this story ought to feel like she's at her lowest point, but it doesn't really come across.