The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley

I received this book, whose author I had never even heard of, from LibraryThing's secret Santa book exchange. I only briefly skimmed the blurb (just enough to figure out which genre tag to put on it), because on those rare occasions where it's possible, I like to go into a book blind.

Originally published: 2021
Acquired: December 2023
Read: February 2024

The Kingdoms is about a man who suddenly wakes up without a memory, in the late nineteenth century in a world that we slowly discover is one where the French won the Napoleonic Wars and thus conquered England (though not Scotland). The book benefits from a nice sense of double wrongness: Joe has no memory, so everything is new to him, but there's a different way in which everything is new to us, as we slowly uncover how this history differs from the one we as readers know. I like to say (I think I stole this from Jo Walton) that sf is a mystery genre, where the world itself is the mystery, and The Kingdoms captures that very well. I liked Joe a lot as a protagonist, in his slow, methodical nature, and I liked how that was mirrored by the slow, methodical way in which the story unspooled. Joe is sent to man a remote lighthouse whose operators have disappeared, but also one that seems to have some kind of connection to his mysterious past; the people he meets are strange and unsettling.

The book makes some major shifts after this point, and though they worked for me in the abstract—like, if you described them to me, I certainly wouldn't object to a novel in general, or even this novel in particular, going this route—I found that in their actuality, they kind of lost me. The clear throughline of the first part of the novel ends up dissipating, with a lot of embedded narratives, and the singular character focus of the first part is lost in favor of an expanding cast, many of whom never grabbed me as much as Joe did. In the end, I got a bit lost in the plot mechanics too—and I usually do pretty well by these things! Perhaps I was not giving the book the focus it deserved, but though I enjoyed it for much of its run, by its end it didn't seem that the attributes that made it initially appeal to me were still around very much. It may work very well for someone else, but not so much for me.

Service to the Profession

When I was in grad school, I did a lot of what academics call "service" and in general found it fairly satisfying. Most prominently, I was a senator in our Graduate Student Senate, then parliamentarian, then vice president; later I did a little bit of work for the Graduate Employee Union as the "guide" for the local. I also spent five semesters at one of two assistant directors for the Freshman English Program. Beyond those things, I served on a lot of committees, and so on. (I've previously talked about these experiences here and here.)

* * *

I was reminded of the former last week because it's actually the tenth anniversary of when the UConn GEU was certified. I wasn't terribly involved in this process, but I was present throughout it. I was incoming vice president of the GSS when our health insurance was unilaterally changed by UConn HR; basically, they had ended up in an untenable financial situation, but their solution was to take it all out on us. When it was presented to the Senate, they span it so it looked like an upgrade, and it was really only once the new plan went into effect that summer that we began to realize just how awful it was. I actually had a dentist call me wanting to know why we had made such a terrible switch!

The GSS worked on solutions through its official avenues, but we were pretty limited in our power; meanwhile, outraged graduate students were kicking off the process of setting up a union. As long as I had been at UConn and involved in the GSS, people would come to meetings wondering if we were going to unionize... but it had never gone anywhere because to be honest, we had it pretty good. UConn paid above average for stipend and had great health insurance. The only people who wanted to unionize were the "true believers," those committed socialists who just love forming unions, and they had no ability to win over your average graduate assistant. The health insurance switcheroo showed everyone, though, that no matter how good you had it, the boss could always make it terrible at their discretion.

My big memory of this all was a meeting where the Dean of the Graduate School (who I did really like, and I think was pushed into an awful position by a bunch of other people's decisions) came to the GSS to tell us that the GA health plan was still losing money, and thus needed to be made even worse—and he was going to let us advise him on how to make it worse. We saw this as an attempt to gain our "approval" for whatever change was imposed; a group of people involved with the union introduced a motion rejecting the false binary and demanding UConn recognize our right to collectively bargain.

A year later, we had the fastest union card drive in higher ed history (something like that anyway) and whatever UConn saved by pushing us onto crappy health insurance was more than cancelled out by the kind of gains the GEU was able to make in collective bargaining.

So in honor of the tenth anniversary of that, the GEU invited a number of us from the early days to come and speak (mostly via Zoom) at a membership meeting. It was fun to see some people I had not thought about in a long time, and hear about some of those successes we had had. It was a reminder to me that with committed people on your side, you can really accomplish something.

* * *

I was also reminded of the latter, working in the Freshman English office. Here at UT, our Director of Academic Writing recently left the university, so the department and the Dean have ended up restructuring the position somewhat; it's been split into a Director and an Assistant Director, which are voted on by the department. (The old Director had the position as part of his contract; it never changed.) A number of people asked me if I was going to run, so I did; I thought other people might run, but in the end, I was unopposed. The Academic Writing Committee recommended me to the department, and at our last department meeting of the academic year, I was elected to the position.

I posted about it on facebook, and a friend sent me a congratulatory text, asking if it came with "with more money and security," I think envisioning it as a sort of promotion. The answer is, of course, no; I get a course release, so I'm down to a 3/3 load. Other than that, I am doing the exact same job I was doing!

But I am excited about it. The split of the old position into two works in a way that I think benefits both the assistant director and the program. The director deals with all the administrative bullshit, while I get to work on mentoring faculty and developing program pedagogy. I think (we'll see what I think in a year) that this means I get to do the fun stuff, while also it ensures this kind of important work isn't neglected by the director because of his focus on scheduling and putting out administrative fires.

* * *

At the GEU Zoom meeting, someone talked about how as a graduate student, you get thrust into leadership positions quickly because there's such churn among grad students. This is true but I hadn't really thought about it before; I was Assistant Director of Freshman English in my fourth year (second year of Ph.D.) and I was GSS vice president in my sixth (fourth of my Ph.D.). Here at UT, I am in my seventh year as faculty, but just now reaching the point where you start to get tapped to do significant leadership in service.

For me this is a real boon; it has allowed me to stretch myself and find more pleasure in a job that can sometimes feel thankless. I enjoyed doing service in grad school, and think I am finally getting to do so again here.

X-Men / Black Panther: Wild Kingdom by Peter Milligan, Reginald Hudlin, Salvador Larroca, David Yardin, Jay Leisten, et al.

from Black Panther vol. 4 #9

After its opening story arc, Black Panther vol. 4 was immediately involved in a crossover with X-Men. In this project, I've mostly stayed away from crossovers—but in the comiXology sale where I got all these Black Panther issues to begin with, they considerately put the relevant X-Men issues on sale as well. 

Wild Kingdom sees Black Panther and the X-Men responding to the same crisis in the African nation of Niganda. After Niganda's abortive attempt to invade Wakanda, a number of genetically altered animals end up on the loose, attracting the attention of Black Panther because of the danger to Wakanda and the X-Men because they show up on Cerebro (in this story called "Cerebra" for some reason). Some third-rate supervillains called Dr. Paine and the Red Ghost are trying to use enhanced primates to take over Niganda... and then, of course, the world!

from Black Panther vol. 4 #8

I like a few of the X-Men movies (i.e., X-Men, X2, First Class), but I don't think I've ever actually enjoyed an X-Men comic, and this didn't change my mind. There's not much for them in this story, just people with phonetically rendered accents bickering a bit. The only exception is Storm, as Wild Kingdom's purpose mostly seems to be to delve a bit into the T'Challa/Ororo relationship. Coming off the back of Priest's run (which is where we first learned they had a thing), I didn't find this totally convincing; I don't think Priest's Black Panther was incapable of being awkward, but I do think he would be much better at confining and controlling his awkwardness than this stammering schoolboy.

I do think David Yardin and Jay Leisten did some solid work art-wise on the two Black Panther issues; hopefully they do more work on the series. But the story here is pretty goofy on the whole, and it feels weird to go from the entire history and an invasion of Wakanda being told in six issues to this mediocre threat being stretched out to four. I'll be curious to see how Hudlin's Black Panther develops when he just gets to do his own thing.

from Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four #10

I also read "Law of the Jungle," a one-part story from Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four, which retells the story of the FF's first meeting with Black Panther. In this version, Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four are taking receipt of a shipment of vibranium for science purposes—but what they don't know is that this isn't a legitimate export, but smuggled out of Wakanda. Black Panther attacks them, but the FF soon realizes what's up and travels to Wakanda to make amends and help defeat the smugglers. I haven't read much of Jeff Parker's comics work, but I always enjoy what I read; this has a good sense of fun to it, lots of little touches in terms of characterization and comedy that really elevate it. (My favorite is the Thing and the Human Torch playing good cop/bad cop.) My main complaint would be that it's very much a Fantastic Four comic, not a Black Panther one; the trip to Wakanda and battle there is over pretty quickly. But this isn't really a complaint about the story, more a complaint about the decision to reprint it in Marvel-Verse: Black Panther. (But I guess it makes sense; it's a nice one-issue version of the FF/Black Panther meeting, as opposed to the original 2½-issue one.)

Wild Kingdom originally appeared in X-Men vol. 2 #175-76 and Black Panther vol. 4 #8-9 (Nov.-Dec. 2005). The story was written by Peter Milligan (#175-76) and Reginald Hudlin (#8-9); penciled by Salvador Larroca (#175-76) and David Yardin (#8-9); inked by Danny Miki & Allen Martinez (#175-76) and Jay Leisten (#8-9); colored by Cory Petit (#175-76), Dean White (#8-9), and Matt Milla (#9); lettered by Randy Gentile (#8-9); and edited by Mike Marts (#175-75) and Axel Alonso (#8-9).

"Law of the Jungle" originally appeared in Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four #10 (May 2006). The story was written by Jeff Parker, penciled by Manuel Garcia, inked by Scott Koblish, colored by A. Crossley, lettered by Dave Sharpe, and edited by Mark Paniccia. It was reprinted in Marvel-Verse: Black Panther (2020), which was edited by Jennifer Grünwald.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

This historical intrusion fantasy is about a golem without a master created in the form of a woman and a jinni imprisoned in human form both ending up in New York City in the early twentieth century. Their lives intersect and overlap as they each struggle with the freedom and confinement of their new ways of being. For a golem, this is more freedom than she could imagine—or know what to do with. But for a jinni, this is a life of horrifying captivity... even though he can do as much, if not more, than what any human can do.

Originally published: 2013
Acquired: December 2022
Read: November 2023

I enjoyed the book but did not love it, though I can see why many others may have loved it. Where it really work is in Wecker's depiction of the immigrant communities of gaslight-era New York, and in the two central characters. There are a lot of great observations, both large and small, of the people and their world. Good character moments, good complications, interesting interactions.

But I did find that at times the backstory of the jinni was delved into more than I was actually interested in, threatening to overwhelm the present-day material that had actually hooked me on the story. The core idea of the title sometimes felt a bit lost in at all.

Reading L. Frank Baum's John Dough and the Cherub Aloud to My Kid

John Dough and the Cherub: A Whimsical Wonder-Story in which is Described the Marvelous Creation of John Dough, the Gingerbread Man; his meeting with the Incubator Baby called Chick the Cherub: their Adventures in the Isle of Phreex, the Land of Mifkets, Pirate Island and Hiland and Loland
by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by John R. Neill

My child and I used to slide the Nonestica "borderlands" novels (those books by L. Frank Baum about countries adjacent to Oz) in between Ruth Plumly Thompson "Famous Forty" installments when I had a delay in sourcing one. However, we have the whole Famous Forty now, so we haven't done that in quite some time; furthermore, we had just one left, John Dough and the Cherub, the only one I did not own when I myself was a kid.

Originally published: 1906
Acquired: July 2023
Read aloud: March–April 2024

But I realized that our next Famous Forty book, The Shaggy Man of Oz, includes a character Baum first introduced in this book; furthermore, we'd recently read The Scalawagons of Oz and will soon read The Ozmapolitan of Oz, both of which feature Mifkets, who made their debut here as well. So I decided we'd take a break from Jack Snow and read John Dough first. My kid was fascinated by John Dough the living gingerbread man back when he cameoed in The Road to Oz, but as that was over two years ago, of course they don't remember that anymore.

On the one hand, it's nice to be back with L. Frank Baum again. As much as I enjoy a lot of the later contributors to the Oz novels, there's something about Baum's particular mix of groundedness and whimsy that no one else quite gets right. Yes, fanciful things can happen in an L. Frank Baum novel, but one always feels they are happening in a real world, even if not your real world, there's something about them that feels carefully thought through and rational even at their most bizarre. Whereas at times it felt like Thompson or John R. Neill were willing to bring anything to life at the drop of a hat, Baum works hard to lay the foundation for why John Dough would come to life, and then explore how horrifying it would be to be a piece of living confectionery in a world of hungry humans. My kid is often sensitive to things or people being damaged or broken, so I expected them to not like all these threats of being eaten, but they took it with surprising equanimity most of the time.

After this, though, the book changes tack; J. L. Bell argues in the introduction that Baum probably wrote the early chapters a few years before the rest. In chapter five, John Dough is abruptly sent to a fantastic realm, the kind Baum had become famous for writing about, and encounters a child co-protagonist, Chick the Cherub, the genderless incubator baby. (On the rare occasion Baum uses pronouns for Chick, he uses "it," but I substituted the more modern singular "they.") Chick is surprisingly underexplained; I guess people in 1906 just knew what an incubator baby was, and would be willing to buy Baum's apparent assumption that a human child born to a genderless machine would itself be without gender? Chick is a fun concept the book does little with, but perhaps that's the point; my five-year-old child who sometimes insists they are both a boy and a girl was all too ready to accept a genderless child in an Oz book, and Chick's lack of gender goes almost entirely without comment. Chick is also a fun character, pushing against the often recalcitrant John Dough.

John Dough, Chick, and later Para Bruin the rubber bear travel from the Isle of Phreex to the Palace of Romance to the Isle of the Mifkets to Pirate Island to Hiland and Loland, all of them typical oddball Baum locales, with his usual vividly imagined characters... though by the time we get to the last two locations, it does kind of feel like we're running on empty, with little time spent and little fun to be had. Still, even the weaker locations are the kind that a kid can still find captivating.

The book also demonstrates the weaker aspects of Baum as a writer; it's very much one of his books where the characters go to a place, do a thing, go to another place, and so on. The pursuit of John Dough by "the Arab," Ali Dubh, who wants to eat him so that he can access the Elixir of Life John was baked with, provides some unity... but John himself almost never makes any interesting choices or comes up with any clever ideas. Basically, he and Chick just run away again and again and again until they end up in a place whose residents go, "Well, you're king now." The Palace of Romance incident probably displays the most initiative on the part of John and Chick, and all they do there is delay a bit and then run away! (I did like that incident, though; it's a bit darker than Baum's usual.)

My kid did not like a bit, late in the book, where John actually gets tied up and has a finger bitten off! On the other hand, they did advocate for the Princess of Mifket Island being allowed to eat a bit of John in order to restore her health, a dilemma on John's part that is curiously one-sided. Should John really be obligated to give a piece of himself to all worthy comers?

Overall, it's not one of Baum's best, but it is one of Baum's most fanciful—and kids like fancy. Even my three-year-old is starting to get in on the act, remembering characters and concepts from day to day. When we finished, I pulled out Road and we read the section where John Dough, Chick, and Para Bruin reappear there. Already a continuity fiend, my child demanded to know why we hadn't read John Dough first in its proper order! They asked if we couldn't reread all of Road now, but I demurred; we still have over a dozen Oz books to read before we start rereading any!

Next up in sequence: The Shaggy Man of Oz

Elsa Bloodstone: Bequest by Cath Lauria

 Elsa Bloodstone: Bequest
by Cath Lauria

This is a prose novel about Elsa Bloodstone, part of a line of YA tie-in books about female Marvel characters. I read it to cap off my runthrough of Marvel's Bloodstone content. It seems to take place in the regular Marvel comics universe, if somewhat genericized.

Published: 2021
Read: February 2024

I was a bit surprised, then, at how deeply this book dove into Bloodstone lore. Most post-Nextwave takes on Elsa and her father haven't really used the details of the characters established in their original stories. Sure, we're always told Ulysses Bloodstone is an immortal monster hunter with a bloodstone shard embedded in his chest, but none of the other elements of the very complicated backstory John Wagner gave him in the 1970s (see item #1 below) ever come up; the 2001 miniseries (#2 below) gave us Elsa herself, but every other aspect of her from that series has pretty much been ignored.

But Bequest has multiple callbacks to the 1970s series, revisiting some of its locations as well as a forgotten member of its supporting cast, the journalist Samantha Eden. It also very much considers the 2001 miniseries to be in continuity, bringing back Adam, the Frankenstein caretaker of Bloodstone Manor (which is back in Boston for this story) and the vampire lawyer, as well as a genie's lamp that Elsa used to travel the world in that story. (There is no mention here of the "Mordred's Causeway" Elsa used to get around in Monsters Unleashed!) But as you can see on the cover, this is clearly the post-Nextwave Elsa, a hardcore redheaded monster killer (who was trained by her father, as we saw in flashbacks in Nextwave and Marvel Zombies: Battleworld), not a naïve blond one (who didn't even know her father, as we saw in the 2001 miniseries). Lauria doesn't spend a lot of time reconciling these discrepancies, but she does have Elsa briefly think to herself that she's not sure if her memories of her father training her are real or not! I appreciated the book's inclusive approach to continuity (though I imagine there wasn't much alternative, as if you jettison the 1970s stuff and the 2001 miniseries, the character ceases to have much of a history), and I liked this vague attempt to make it all stick together. Lauria says, it all counts, don't worry about the details.

Okay, okay, that's great to know about the continuity, but what about the book!? Well, I would describe it as... aggressively okay. It seems to me that the book has two main problems. The first is that the plot is very repetitive and very simple. Elsa discovers someone is out there ransacking old haunts of Ulysses Bloodstone, trying to collect bloodstone fragments, and she teams up with her newly discovered half-sister to find out who is doing this. (This is a totally different newly discovered half-sister to the one subsequently introduced in The Death of Doctor Strange.) So Elsa and the sister go to a place, fight some monsters, go to another place, fight some more monsters, and so on. There's no sense of advancement, they never learn anything in one particular place, they never accomplish anything. They just keep doing the same thing until at the very last place they found out who did it. (It is a very underwhelming reveal.)

The other issue is that nothing really seems to be a stake personally for Elsa. The power of a prose novel over comics is that it ought to be able to let you dive into interiority more, giving more depth to a character. But I don't think Elsa has a lot of depth here, and honestly she has less depth than in stories like Marvel Zombies and Death of Doctor Strange. Sure, she has a sister... but this doesn't seem to meaningfully change her conception of herself or her father or anything, there's no development of the character arc just like there was no development of the plot arc. In a secondary issue, Elsa very much comes across as a Brit-written-by-an-American rather than an actual Brit. A few too many "blokes," especially in the early parts of the novel. I'm sure I could not do better, but why not hire a UK author to write the book if it's going to be a first-person narrative? The Elsa stories by Warren Ellis, Simon Spurrier, and Tini Howard have been among the most successful ones for this obvious reason.

Outside of all that, it is a quick, easy, action-packed read; it's hard for me to imagine any reader wouldn't blaze through it as quickly as I did. Plus it does have some good jokes. So, worth you time because it won't take a lot of your time!

* * *

And that brings me to the end of my Elsa Bloodstone project! (At seven installments across four months, that was definitely a lot faster than my JSA one.) What did I think overall? Well, I think she is a fun character who has a weird continuity—but having a weird continuity is the kind of thing that makes a character intriguing to me! I feel that's she's been robbed. I know she recently turned up in (an animated Disney Plus film that's part of) the MCU, but it's surprising to me that she's mostly had guest appearances in her time since 2001; her only starring roles have been in Legion of Monsters and Marvel Zombies. Where's her ongoing? Or, at least, a miniseries solidly focused on her? C'mon, Marvel, give her a real chance at a real run!

My next project will be a big one again... Blackhawk!

This is the last post in a series about Elsa Bloodstone. Previous installments are listed below:

1. Bloodstone & the Legion of Monsters (1975-2012)
2. Bloodstone (2001-06) 
3. Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E. (2006-07)
4. Marvel Zombies: Battleworld (2006-15)
5. Monsters Unleashed! (2017-18)
6. Marvel Action: Chillers / The Death of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone (2020-22)
   

Hugos 2024: Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha, and Nicola Scott

Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons

Collection published: 2023
Contents originally published: 2022-23
Acquired and read: April 2024

Writer: Kelly Sue DeConnick

Artists: Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha, Nicola Scott

Colorists: Arif Prianto, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Wesley Wong, Annette Kwok

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

This is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story—my first, and indeed, my first Hugo finalist this year full stop. (I usually start with a Best Novel finalist, but none made it into my first batch of arrivals.)

It's branded as a Wonder Woman comic, but Wonder Woman does not appear here. It goes back to the origins of the Amazons, exploring how the tribe of warrior women that ultimately gave birth to Wonder Woman came into existence. Skimming a timeline of DC history, I can see this ties together and dramatizes some preexisting material, but it totally stands on its own, and doesn't feel like a continuity patch or origin story. Indeed, the greatest thing you can say about it (and I speak this as someone who reads a lot of tie-in and franchise fiction) is that it transcends its origins as a tie-in comic. I would feel comfortable handing this to someone who doesn't enjoy superhero comics but does like graphic novels and wants to read a bold, dynamic take on Greek mythology, because that's what this is. It's not a rewriting of George Pérez (or whomever), it's a new myth designed to take its place among old ones.

The story starts with the Greek goddesses, who reach their breaking point with the ways men treat women, but find the gods unwilling to do anything about it, and so take things into their own hands. It then follows the doings of the gods, especially Hera, who refuses to overtly move against her husband's will, in parallel with the rise of the Amazon tribes, and a would-be human midwife who ends up encountering the Amazons as they travel across the world slaughtering men who hurt women, and then into a war where the gods attempt to eliminate the Amazons. It's an epic story, but the presence of Hippolyta, the midwife, keeps it grounded; I enjoyed her trajectory very much.

More importantly, though, writer Kelly Sue DeConnick has three top-notch artistic collaborators here. Phil Jimenez's work I honestly don't know that well (aside from event comics like Infinite Crisis and Dark Cybertron, which rarely showcase an artist at their best), but he had a well-regarded run as a writer and artist on Wonder Woman; here, he turns in some brilliant and beautiful two-page spreads, one of jars(!), but in particular, a few depicting Hippolyta's desperate pursuit of a lost infant. Gorgeous, heartbreaking stuff. Gene Ha I've liked since his Top Ten days, but this is probably career best work for him, his attention to character really capturing the struggle and emotions of Hippolyta as she seeks to become an Amazon. And Nicola Scott I've thought a solid artist since her debut on Birds of Prey; here, she knocks it out of the park with the war between the Amazons and the gods. For all three artists, the art is beautifully colored, and the deluxe hardcover collection really shows it off to its utmost; I don't always buy Hugo finalists outside of the category of Best Novel, but I am so glad I'm not reading this comic on my Kindle Fire.

If I had a complaint, it would be that I found the parameters of Hippolyta's key choice in the last issue kind of confusing and rushed, but I'm sure on a reread (this is a tough book to read, but not in a bad way; sometimes it's just nice to read a comic that makes you work a little harder than normal) it would hold up fine. The backmatter tease two more sets of three chapters, but even if we don't get a trilogy of trilogies for Wonder Woman Historia, this will hold up as a tremendous work about what men do to women, and what women do to get away from it.

Apocalypse Still by Leah Nicole Whitcomb

Apocalypse Still: Stories by Leah Nicole Whitcomb

Apocalypse Still is a thin collection of short stories (141 pages according to my Kindle), mostly kinds of fantasy or sf set in our present day or the near future—like it'll be our world, but there are vampire or zombies or something, or someone is part-alien or has superpowers. A lot of the times, this is clearly meant to be read in a metaphorical register, like a person denying the existence of zombie plague even when they have it and are spreading it themselves is meant to be a metaphor for COVID. This is author Leah Nicole Whitcomb's debut book; I won it for free from LibraryThing's EarlyReviewers program in exchange for an honest review.

Collection published: 2024
Contents originally published: 2023-24
Acquired: March 2024
Read: April 2024

In her influences at the end, Leah Nicole Whitcomb names one sff author (Octavia Butler) but three ones that we more associate with "literary" fiction, and this tracks with how the book itself feels: one-quarter sff, three-quarters literature. There's a bit from an essay by China Miéville that I think about a lot, possibly too much, where he discusses how metaphors and literalism work in science fiction, and the difference between how sff writers approach it and how non-sff writers approach it: 

When 'mainstream' writers dip their toes into the fantastic, they often do so with the anxiety of seriousness, keen to stress that their inventions are really 'about' other, meaningful things....
     By contrast, those firmly within the fantastic tradition know that the unreal will always be read metaphorically – what is the human mind but an engine to metaphorize and process metaphors intended and found? – but that there is also pleasure in its literalism. In Swift, for example, Gulliver's journey to Brobdingnag... clearly casts a remorseless light on Swift's own society; it also, however, features a sword fight with a giant wasp, a passage the enjoyment of which depends on the specific uncanny/estranging impact of literalizing the impossible: simply, it is a great, weird idea. Weirdness is good to think with, and is also its own end.

Elsewhere in the same essay, Miéville talks about how one of the pleasures of sff is its "technique of rationalized (rather than free-for-all) alienation from the everyday." Whitcomb's work feels to me like it approaches its "weird ideas" as metaphors and not as literal things. There's a lot of stuff here clearly meant to reflect back onto the society in which we live... but we don't get much of that other pleasure of sff, the "uncanny/estranging impact of literalizing the impossible." For me, it's experiencing both of those registers at once that makes the genre so enjoyable, but there's not much "rationalized alienation" here. Too many of the stories end with their impossible occurrence; it's the reveal or the twist or the sting. But this means that the story doesn't get to explore the impossible thing, to pursue its implications and its consequences, and it's doing that—giving the reader a world structured around an impossible idea—which allows a science fiction or fantasy story to make its unreal thing seem real. Without that, it's only metaphor.

With a couple exceptions (more on them later), I wouldn't say any of these are bad stories, but for the most part, they aren't what I want from and enjoy in my science fiction and fantasy. The title story, "Apocalypse Still," is the zombie one I mentioned earlier, and it's fine. "Superhuman" is another that ends with what makes the story interesting, instead of beginning with it. "Antenna" has a character discovering her secret, weird heritage, but again ends with her making the interesting decision about it. I did like a lot about "Race Play," which feels like a dark take on Kindred, about a black woman and white man who fall in love in 2015 but realize they are reincarnations of a slave and slave owner, but it has a totally unnecessary second part.

The two I didn't like were "Entangled," which is a sort of plotless revenge story, and "The Town of Los Valles," which is about a black family who gets kicked out of an Airbnb, but gets invited to a friendlier community, and there's no plot or conflict after that point, it's just twenty pages of them having a nice vacation! I kept waiting for a reveal that never happened.

These stories all do the one thing Miéville identifies—they are metaphors for racism and homophobia and misogyny in our world—but they don't do the other, they don't make you imagine other worlds. They're not badly written for the most part, but they feel like they come from outside the genre rather than within it.

In the Market: Being on an Academic Hiring Committee

Every year since I landed in my current position, my department has hired at least one new assistant teaching professor of academic writing; every year we take in more students, so every year we need more faculty to deliver those course. The year I was hired, the committee was entirely tenure-track faculty but over the years, the role of ATPs has grown, from a token one to being the entirety of the committee. Things seemed to work their way down the department in terms of seniority. Last year my friend Cari asked me if I was going to do it, as I was the most senior ATP who hadn't, but she would do it for a second time if I wouldn't. I dithered, and so she not only ended up on the search, but chairing it! So I was definitely on the hook this year, and I was even made search committee chair.

giving a job talk is stressful

If you want to buy me a beer, I am happy to tell you all kinds of things about the hiring process, but for here I want to restrict myself to three things that I learned.

A Strong Cover Letter Is Important. Obviously I knew this intellectually, but going through the pile of applications made me incredibly grateful for the strong mentoring I got in graduate school. For me personally, what I was looking for was a clear specific articulation of how the candidate approached the teaching of writing. I wanted two things: a sense of an overall approach or philosophy, and a sense of a concrete applications of this, like an assignment or a classroom activity. This is a teaching-focused job, so though knowing about your scholarship/service is good, it's not the main thing we care about... but anyone can say they love teaching, and lots of people have lots of experience, so seeing your approach to it in a meaningful way is hugely important.

You Really Want the Finalists to Succeed. Obviously candidates are emotionally invested in their own success, but I didn't realize how much I would be rooting for every candidate. In previous searches, I have seen candidates bomb a talk, and intellectually, I knew that they must have done well up until that point, but this time, I felt how much I wanted these people to succeed. You had a hundred applicants, you brought in two or three or four—you brought in these people because they were the best, because they impressed you the most, and you want the rest of your department to see how good they are, what a good job you and your committee did on the search. Though in some ways it would make your life easier if one candidate came in and said something racist (now the choice is obvious!), you really do want to be in the bind of having multiple really good candidates. (If any of my candidates are reading this: none of you bombed the job talk. I mean it.)

It Feels Very Satisfying to Be on a Search. You can do a lot of "service" in higher ed that ultimately feels pointless, committees that accomplish nothing by incompetence, apathy, or design. So a search committee is a very satisfying undertaking! By the end of the process, there is someone in your department who was not going to be there without you, and that person is very good at what they do and will make a noticeable difference. Your department is demonstrably better than it was before you did what you did! How often does that happen? And if nothing else, there's a person who without you wouldn't have gotten a job.

A lot of people complain about searches, and I can definitely imagine ways in which they might be terrible (bad politics, bad colleagues, bad candidates), but none of them applied to us. I very much enjoyed the process, and though I don't know that I would do it again next year, and nor would I be in a rush to chair again, I would happily do it again in the future, knowing there's a positive addition I could make.

Marvel Action: Chillers by Jeremy Whitley, Bill Underwood, et al. / The Death of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone by Tini Howard and Ig Guara

from Marvel Action: Chillers #2
(art by Bill Underwood)

I cap off my run of Elsa Bloodstone comics with two one-off stories that are part of larger events, but read pretty much fine on their own. First, Marvel Action: Chillers #2 has a frame story about Riri Williams (I think she is the girl Iron Man?) and Doctor Strange investigating... something, I already forget. What really matters is that they come across evidence of a magical battle between Elsa Bloodstone and werewolves—one of whom is Captain America! The bulk of the story is a flashback to that battle.

In this story, Elsa is a teenage monster hunter, not the full-grown woman we've seen elsewhere, but otherwise she's recognizably the same character, perhaps a bit less over-the-top violent than she was in, say, Nextwave (see entry #3 below). (It would be hard not to be, admittedly.) She's a bit of an eager beaver, keen to team up with Captain America. Overall, it's a pretty simple story: she fights Captain America, figures out what's wrong with him, the two work together to defeat the werewolves, the end. But once you subtract the frame, there are only about fifteen pages to work with, so how complicated can it get? 

I know Jeremy Whitley's writing from IDW's My Little Pony comics, which is generally solid, and Bill Underwood is new-to-me as an artist but someone I'd like to see more of. Fun enough, and does exactly what it says on the tin, as Elsa might say. Had anyone putting together the Bloodstone & the Legion of Monsters trade (see #1 below) thought about updating its contents for its 2022 rerelease, it would have fit well in there, sans frame.

from The Death of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone #1

So too would have The Death of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone #1. Part of the problem with reading through Elsa Bloodstone comics is that many significant things have happened to the character in comics where she is not the main character. Sure, I was happy to read Nextwave, where she's part of an ensemble cast, or Monsters Unleashed! (see #5 below), where she was a secondary lead for part of the run. But if you look at her entry on the Marvel Chronology Project, you will see that she pops up all over the place: four issues of Wolverine vol. 2, then four issues of Fearless Defenders, two issues of Avengers World, three issues of A-Force, three issues of Doctor Strange: Damnation, two issues of Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider, and so on. Did I really want to pick up a bunch of storylines where Elsa was a mere side character? I decided no. But this does mean that things get imparted about her that I didn't get to read. Most significantly... she got a brother? Her mom was pregnant at the end of the original Bloodstone miniseries (see #2 below), but Cullen Bloodstone is a fully grown man, part monster, so not the same guy. Actually, digging into the MCP further, he mostly appears in Avengers Arena and Avengers Undercover, but not actually very many stories that also feature Elsa! So even if I had read all of those stories, Cullen still might have been a surprise to me.

Anyway, this story has Elsa and Cullen living together in Bloodstone Manor, which in this story seems to be outside London, not in Boston, on a night where monsters are running amok because Doctor Strange is dead, negating many of the spells he used to keep the monsters tied up. What Elsa and Cullen soon discover is that they are not the only Bloodstone children, there's also Lyra, a child Ulysses had ten thousand years ago, before he became immortal, and she's been in suspended animation since. The three siblings must learn to work together and tame their own demons, literal and metaphorical. (Cullen turns into a deadly monster when he's not careful.)

from The Death of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone #1

The result here is a very solid piece of comics from writer Tini Howard and artist Ig Guara, both creators whose past work (on Death's Head and The Omega Men respectively) I have enjoyed in the past. Howard, in particular, knows how to balance the inherent goofiness of superhero-adjacent comics with strong character work. I hope to keep reading more by her. Guara does some good action (and this story has a lot of that) and also is strong enough with faces to carry the conversations in the art. I feel reasonably certain that like most event comics, The Death of Doctor Strange was probably pointless (I am sure he got better), but also like many event comics, some of the tie-ins are interesting enough on their own. I wonder if any future writers will do anything with the set-up this story ends with, because it's a good one for Elsa and her weird family.

"Little Red Fighting Hood" originally appeared in issue #2 of Marvel Action: Chillers (Oct. 2020). The story was written by Jeremy Whitley, illustrated by Gretel Lusky and Bill Underwood, colored by Nahael Ruiz and Heather Breckel, lettered by Valeria Lopez, and edited by Elizabeth Brei. 

The Death of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone was originally published in one issue (Mar. 2022). The story was written by Tini Howard, illustrated by Ig Guara, colored by Dijjo Lima, lettered by Joe Caramagna, and edited by Tom Groneman. It was reprinted in The Death of Doctor Strange Companion (2022).

This is the penultimate post in a series about Elsa Bloodstone. The next installment covers Elsa Bloodstone: Bequest. Previous installments are listed below:

1. Bloodstone & the Legion of Monsters (1975-2012)
2. Bloodstone (2001-06) 
3. Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E. (2006-07)
4. Marvel Zombies: Battleworld (2006-15)
5. Monsters Unleashed! (2017-18)
   

The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 7

The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 7
edited by Neil Clarke

I have come to look forward to Neil Clarke's Best Science Fiction of the Year volumes, the only (I think) best-of anthology going to cover all of the sf genre and nothing but the sf genre. I like getting a sense of the best of the genre has to offer, especially from the not free-to-read magazines, which often get a lot less attention online, and the original anthologies, which rarely cross my radar. I pepper the stories from them in among my other reading; this year that meant it took me about six months to get through the thirty-one stories collected in this volume. If I had a complaint, it would simply be that the pandemic has put the series behind and it still hasn't caught up: volume 7 came out in 2023 but collects stories originally published in 2021.

Collection published: 2023
Contents published: 2021
Acquired: September 2023
Read: October 2023–March 2024

As always, there's a lot to like here even when every story isn't exactly to my taste, and I appreciate the anthology introducing me to writers I haven't (as far as I remember, anyway) previously experienced. My favorite in this volume was the very first story, "Muallim" by Ray Nayler, which I previously wrote up here, a neat story about the uses to which a remote Asian village puts a UN educational robot that the its benefactors didn't quite intend. But that doesn't mean it was all downhill from there or anything. Other highlights included:

• "Proof by Induction" by José Pablo Iriarte. This was a 2022 Hugo finalist, so I had read it before, but it's a neat story about digital consciousness uploading and what some of the implications of that might be.
• "The Pizza Boy" by Meg Elison. A neat tale about a pizza delivery boy... in space! Where he works is a war zone, and the lengths he has to go to to gather ingredients are often illegal. Fun but serious at the same time, which is how I like my fiction.
• "I'm Waiting for You" by Kim Bo-young. Complicated story about a man taking a relativistic flight so that he can line up with one being taken by his fiancée, so they will keep their ages consistent at their wedding, only then his flight is delayed, so she has to adjust, so then he has to adjust, and it all gets quite convoluted and sad.
• "Hānai" by Gregory Norman Bossert. Aliens come to Hawaii to track down a woman who allegedly committed an enormous anthropological crime. Well observed character work and strong prose, neat exploration of a variety of cultural differences.
• "The Equations of the Dead" by An Owomoyela. A kid in a criminal organization is supposed to eliminate someone he's fallen in love with... and then ends up getting in way over his head, in a story involving mind uploads.
• "Complete Exhaustion of the Organism" by Rich Larson. I didn't totally know what was happening here but I very much enjoyed it anyway. Two people are on some kind of walk, trying to get away from some kind of weird society, but are followed by a child who comes back no matter how often they abandon it.
• "Bots of the Lost Ark" by Suzanne Palmer. Like "Proof by Induction," this was a reread, but I find Palmer's Bot 9 stories incredibly charming and well written, so I was happy to reread it. A little robot is the only hope of a massive spaceship that finds itself out of control, its human crew incapacitated, in what is possible hostile territory.

Those are just a few that stick out to on skimming back over the table of contents, but there are a number of other worthwhile stories here. There were only a couple that I did not enjoy; there were several stories included from an anthology called Make Shift: Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future, and these I found missed more than they hit, the kind of near-future futurism that dates too quickly because it's too timely; only three years later, I didn't feel like the authors had called it correctly. One of them was my least favorite story in the book, Ken Liu's "Jaunt," which was less a story and more like worldbuilding and background for a story. (It's a bit hermit crabby, actually.) But I have previously established on this blog that Ken Liu works for me much less often than he seems to work for other people.

Some of this content you can get online, of course (I have linked to them above when so), but the benefit of the volume is to get all of it in one place. Hopefully this series catches up soon!

Hugos 2024: The Finalists

The drama from the 2023 Hugo Awards will probably continue for some time, but the 2024 Hugo Award finalists have been announced—so it's time for me to get my books and start reading! Last weekend, I ordered all my books, and I have until approximately mid-July to get it all done. I'm estimating that's 7,751 pages of reading to complete in 103 days, so a pace of 75.3 pages per day is what I will need. Fairly doable, I think, but we'll see!

Before I begins, some thoughts on some different categories: (I'm not going to do every category, just ones I have opinions about based on the finalists.)

Best Novel

• The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (Harper Voyager, Harper Voyager UK)
• The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
• Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (Tordotcom, Orbit UK)
• Starter Villain by John Scalzi (Tor, Tor UK)
• Translation State by Ann Leckie (Orbit US, Orbit UK)
• Witch King by Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

I think this is the most interesting Best Novel finalist list I've seen in some years, in that it contains three novels I literally know nothing about! I've never heard of Adventures of Amina or Saint of Bright Doors, and all I know about Some Desperate Glory is that I recognize the title. The last couple years have felt kind of stale, in my opinion, so it will be nice to have some totally new-to-me authors.

Translation State is Leckie's fifth novel in the Imperial Radch milieu, but I haven't got to it yet, so it's good to have the motivation. I know of Martha Wells, of course, but I didn't even know she had a non-Murderbot novel (fantasy, I'm assuming) out last year, so that will be interesting.

Starter Villain I will be skipping under my "you are allowed to skip books that there is absolutely no chance you will enjoy" rule. Scalzi does snarky would-be supervillain? Please don't.

Best Novella

• “Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet”, He Xi / 人生不相见, 何夕, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers)
• Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)
• The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older (Tordotcom) 
• Rose/House by Arkady Martine (Subterranean) 
• “Seeds of Mercury”, Wang Jinkang / 水星播种, 王晋康, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers)
• Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher (Tor, Titan UK)

This is also a pretty interesting Best Novella list. Only two Tordotcom novellas, plus one Tor novella! (Wouldn't want to confuse those things.) I didn't know it was possible. Two of the six are Chinese translations; I guess some Chinese Worldcon members from last year exercised their nominating rights. I'm interested in seeing what new thing Arkady Martine has come up with.

Best Graphic Story or Comic

• Bea Wolf, written by Zach Weinersmith, art by Boulet (First Second)
• Saga, Vol. 11 written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
• Shubeik Lubeik, Deena Mohamed (Pantheon); as Your Wish Is My Command (Granta)
• 三体漫画：第一部 / The Three Body Problem, Part One, adapted from the novels by 刘慈欣 (Liu Cixin), written by 蔡劲 (Cai Jin),戈闻頔 (Ge Wendi), and 薄暮 (Bo Mu), art by 草祭九日东 (Caojijiuridong) (Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House) 
• The Witches of World War II written by Paul Cornell, art by Valeria Burzo (TKO Studios LLC)
• Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, art by Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha and Nicola Scott (DC Comics)

I often groan at the Best Graphic Story finalists (last year's Cyberpunk 2077 tie-in being a case in point), but this one looks interesting, with the usual Saga nomination, plus a few things I haven't heard of (Bea Wolf, Your Wish Is My Command), something from the usually dependable Paul Cornell, and a Wonder Woman comic with a top-notch creative team.

I don't see any evidence that there's an English translation of The Three Body Problem adaptation, so I may be giving it a miss.

Best Related Work

• All These Worlds: Reviews & Essays by Niall Harrison (Briardene Books)
• 中国科幻口述史, 第二卷, 第三卷，(Chinese Science Fiction: An Oral History, vols 2 and 3) ed. 杨枫 / Yang Feng (8-Light Minutes Culture & Chengdu Time Press)
• A City on Mars by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith (Penguin Press; Particular Books)
• The Culture: The Drawings, by Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
• 雨果X访谈 (Discover X), presented by 王雅婷 (Tina Wong)
• A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller, by Maureen Kincaid Speller, edited by Nina Allan (Luna Press Publishing)

Last year, volume one of Chinese Science Fiction: A History was a finalist, and it was not translated, so I am wondering if that will be true again this year. Discover X is a professional podcast, I think? The other finalists look solid and the exact kind of thing I like to see in this category: two collections of sf criticism, an art book by the late Iain M. Banks, and a nonfiction book about colonizing Mars. Thankfully no Twitter threads or conventions.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

• Barbie, screenplay by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, directed by Greta Gerwig (Warner Bros. Studios)
• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, screenplay by John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein and Michael Gilio, directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Paramount Pictures)
• Nimona, screenplay by Robert L. Baird and Lloyd Taylor, directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane (Annapurna Animations) 
• Poor Things, screenplay by Tony McNamara, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (Element Pictures)
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, screenplay by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham, directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson (Columbia Pictures / Marvel Entertainment / Avi Arad Productions / Lord Miller / Pascal Pictures / Sony Pictures Animation)
• 流浪地球2 / The Wandering Earth II, based on the novel by 刘慈欣 Liu Cixin, screenplay by 杨治学 Yang Zhixue, 郭帆 / Frant Gwo, 龚格尔 Gong Geer, and 叶濡畅 Ye Ruchang, script consultant 王红卫 Wang Hongwei, directed by 郭帆 / Frant Gwo (中影创意（北京）电影有限公司 / CFC Pictures Ltd, 郭帆（北京）影业有限公司 / G!Film (Beijing) Studio Co. Ltd, 北京登峰国际文化传播有限公司 / Beijing Dengfeng International Culture Communication Co, Ltd, 中国电影股份有限公司 / China Film Co. Ltd)

I was assuming Dune, Part Two would be on the list, but then I remembered that only came out this year. My wife really liked Nimona, so I'm looking forward to seeing it, and though I haven't actually done anything to watch it up until now, I am curious about Barbie. I really enjoyed the first Spider-Verse movie, so am glad to have a reason to see the second. Poor Things doesn't sound good but I guess I will give it a shot.

Despite the title, The Wandering Earth II is a prequel to the first Wandering Earth movie; they're based on a novel by Cixin Liu. Hopefully it stands alone, and hopefully it has an English release.

Thankfully, no complete seasons on the ballot!

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

• Doctor Who: “The Giggle”, written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Chanya Button (Bad Wolf with BBC Studios for The BBC and Disney Branded Television)
• Loki: “Glorious Purpose”, screenplay by Eric Martin, Michael Waldron and Katharyn Blair, directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Marvel / Disney+)
• The Last of Us: “Long, Long Time”, written by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, directed by Peter Hoar (Naughty Dog / Sony Pictures)
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: “Those Old Scientists”, written by Kathryn Lyn and Bill Wolkoff, directed by Jonathan Frakes (CBS / Paramount+)
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: “Subspace Rhapsody”, written by Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff, directed by Dermott Downs (CBS / Paramount+)
• Doctor Who: “Wild Blue Yonder”, written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Tom Kingsley (Bad Wolf with BBC Studios for The BBC and Disney Branded Television)

I nominated "Those Old Scientists" and "Wild Blue Yonder," so am happy to see both on the ballot; I am not surprised that "Those Old Scientists" and "Subspace Rhapsody" made it, as they are the exact kind of things Hugo voters love. But confession time... I am way behind on Strange New Worlds (I cheated and watched (some of) "Those Old Scientists" out of order), so I will need to watch nine SNW episodes in addition to the finalists in order to get the context!

Only one MCU thing this year across both sets of Dramatic Presentation finalists! Maybe our long national nightmare really is coming to an end.

Best Game or Interactive Work

• Alan Wake 2, developed by Remedy Entertainment, published by Epic Games 
• Baldur’s Gate 3, produced by Larian Studios
• Chants of Sennaar, developed by Rundisc, published by Focus Entertainment
• DREDGE, developed by Black Salt Games, published by Team17
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, produced by Nintendo
• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, developed by Respawn Entertainment, published by Electronic Arts

I don't care about videogames, but my wife and kid play Tears of the Kingdom, so I might actually vote for it.

Lodestar Award for Best YA Book

• Abeni’s Song by P. Djèlí Clark (Starscape)
• Liberty’s Daughter by Naomi Kritzer (Fairwood Press)
• Promises Stronger than Darkness by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor Teen)
• The Sinister Booksellers of Bath by Garth Nix (Katherine Tegen Books, Gollancz and Allen & Unwin)
• To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose (Del Rey)
• Unraveller by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children’s Books; eligible due to 2023 U.S. publication by Amulet)

Always happy to have an excuse to read more Frances Hardinge. Again, it's a stronger set of finalists than we've had in recent years, with only one being a sequel to a previous finalist. (Promises, which is the one I will skip, not having enjoyed the first book in the sequence at all.) I like Kritzer, Clark has done some good work, I've never read any Garth Nix even though he's kind of a big deal, and I've never even heard of Blackgoose. So Promises aside, I'm very into this set of books.

Overall, I think it's the strongest Hugo ballot we've seen in a few years... at least, that's how I feel before reading it!

Who Is the Black Panther? by Reginald Hudlin, John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson, et al.

While there have been some long gaps between Black Panther runs, that was not true once Christopher Preist's came to an end. Less than two years after Black Panther vol. 3 #62, Marvel debuted a new Black Panther title with Reginald Hudlin as writer. The opening story arc, Who Is the Black Panther?, carefully reintroduced the character and his setting, evidently aimed at a readership who had not previously read any Black Panther comics or only had a vague awareness of the character.

from Black Panther vol. 4 #1

Honestly, it is a bit jarring to read this coming off of Priest's run. While in Priest's run, Wakanda was a major, active force in international geopolitics, here the NSA doesn't even know that Wakanda is anything other than a "primitive" African nation. I get that a bit of a soft reset is often needed when comic titles start over, but it's made particularly jarring here by the fact that the person who delivers all of the exposition about Wakanda is Everett K. Ross, a character introduced by Priest! How can you carry over him but not the fact that Wakanda prominently annexed part of Canada and was involved in an international war with Atlantis and the United States? (Maybe a lot of time has passed? Everett K. Ross seems to be drawn about two decades older here!)

These aren't the only changes Hudlin introduces to the Black Panther mythos. This story retells how Ulysses Klaw killed T'Challa's father, the previous Black Panther, but now instead of it happening in Wakanda when Klaw stumbles in, here it happens at an international summit. (This is clearly the inspiration for T'Chaka's death in Captain America: Civil War.) It also seems that Queen Raimonda was around T'Challa's entire life; as McGregor told it, she would have been back in South Africa for some of the events Hudlin places her at here. T'Challa also suddenly has an uncle we've never seen before, who in fact acted as Black Panther when T'Challa was a child. Where was this guy during, say, all the trouble with Killmonger?

from Black Panther vol. 4 #6

The biggest change is probably the introduction of Shuri, Black Panther's sister. Since I knew the character from the movies, I've long been wondering when and how would she be introduced. Would she have been sent overseas for her own protection and brought back home? Would she be a long-lost half-sister that T'Challa suddenly learned about? Would she suddenly be added to the cast as if she had been there all along? The last one is the approach that Hudlin opts for. In some of the flashbacks this story shows us, Shuri is present at key moments in T'Challa's past, including when T'Challa ascended to the throne.

That said, of course the test of a retcon isn't how much the new continuity is different from the old, but how good the story is being told with it is. We don't get a lot of Shuri here, but what we do get is solid and interesting, as she tries to prove herself in a world that doesn't have a lot of space for her to do so, and I look forward to seeing what Hudlin does with her during the rest of his run. As for the rest of the changes, I am agnostic on them, and I will have to see how they continue to play out.

Okay, that was a lot on the continuity... what of the actual story? Well, it's okay. The first few issues alternate between exposition about Wakanda and the Klaw going around recruiting a team of villains to invaded Wakanda, along with the help of the neighboring country of Niganda. Ultimately, the problem is that the pacing seems off, there's about four issues of recruiting and two issues of invasion, meaning it seems a bit too simple and easy to fend off, and that many aspects of the story seeded in the first four parts ultimately don't really bear fruit. Why do we need to see all this stuff about recruiting the Black Knight when he barely does anything? Why all this stuff about the Radioactive Man's girlfriend when as soon as she gets to Wakanda she dies? (And grossly the male characters' reaction to her death is "at least we got to cop a feel!") Why spend so much time on the American military sending a force of cyborg zombies to "help" when all they do is show up and then T'Challa tells them to leave?

from Black Panther vol. 4 #3

Because of the structure of the story, we don't get a huge sense of Black Panther/T'Challa as a person; like in Priest's run, we mostly see him from the outside, if at all. However, in Priest's run, we often got a sense of his intelligence and canniness this way; that's not true here, where like in McGregor's run, Black Panther is often on the back foot up until he's not. Still, I'm not strongly judging here; this arc clearly had a purpose of introducing the setting and characters to an unfamiliar audience (and tweaking them for a familiar one), and there are thirty-five more issues of this series to come! Ongoing comics can't play too much of a long game, or the pleasures are eternally deferred (e.g., Marc Andreyko's Manhunter), but if we are in for the long run, I will grant you some slack to see how it turns out.

The art for this opening arc is by the famous John Romita Jr., and I think it is actually my first experience of his work.* I can't claim to be a fan of all of his people, especially their blocky noses, but his art has a strong dynamism and power that really carries you from the action on a panel-to-panel basis, so the more action there is, the better it works. The real artistic standout, though, is Dean White on colors. White's vibrant brights and lights, in particular, and strong contrasts really capture the energy and optimism of Wakanda in a world of darkness. I don't know if "JRJR" keeps contributing to this series, and I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I hope Dean White does.

from Black Panther vol. 4 #7

After the opening arc of Black Panther vol. 4 comes a single-issue story, part of the "House of M" crossover. I never read this crossover, but I think it involves an alternate timeline where Magneto rules the world? In this story, Black Panther and Storm rule Africa together, independent of Magneto, but Magneto begins to fear their power and tries to kill T'Challa; meanwhile, T'Challa recruits allies and makes his play. Probably if one read the rest of "House of M" one would care more, but parts of it were decently put together, though it seemed to me we saw more of Magneto and Quicksilver than we did of Black Panther. I did think Trevor Hairsine had some nice detailed pencil work that suited the tone of the story well.

Who Is the Black Panther? originally appeared in issues #1-6 of Black Panther vol. 4 (Apr.-Sept. 2005). The story was written by Reginald Hudlin, penciled by John Romita Jr., inked by Klaus Janson, colored by Dean White, lettered by Chris Eliopoulos (#1-2) and Randy Gentile (#3-6), and edited by Axel Alonso.

"Soul Power in the House of M" originally appeared in issue #7 of Black Panther vol. 4 (Oct. 2005). The story was written by Reginald Hudlin, penciled by Trevor Hairsine, inked by John Dell, colored Dean White, lettered by Randy Gentile, and edited by Axel Alonso.

* Actually, it looks like I have read exactly two DC books where he contributed a small amount of art, Detective Comics vol. 1 #1027 and Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 8 #9 (both 2020), but I have no particular memory of his contributions.

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Reading Roundup Wrapup: March 2024

Pick of the month: American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953-1956 edited by Gary K. Wolfe. This Library of America anthology contained four novels: The Space Merchants, More Than Human, The Long Tomorrow, and The Incredible Shrinking Man. Only one would I say I didn't really enjoy (More Than Human), but of the other three, two were pretty good, and The Long Tomorrow was excellent. Library of America's hit rate with its sf collections has been fairly strong.

All books read:

1. Marvel-Verse: Black Panther (part 1/part 2) by Jerry Bingham et al.
2. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
3. The Magical Mimics in Oz by Jack Snow, illustrated by Frank Kramer
4. The White Dragon: Collected comic strips from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine by Martin Geraghty, Scott Gray, Russ Leach, Jacqueline Rayner, and David A Roach
5. American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953-1956: The Space Merchants / More Than Human / The Long Tomorrow / The Shrinking Man edited by Gary K. Wolfe
6. Doctor Who: Short Trips #24: The Quality Of Leadership edited by Keith R A DeCandido
7. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Long Mirage by David R. George III
8. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: I, the Constable by Paula M. Block & Terry J. Erdmann
9. The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 by Chuck Cuidera, Dick French, et al.
10. Star Trek: Prey, Book 1: Hell’s Heart by John Jackson Miller
11. Star Trek: Prey, Book 2: The Jackal’s Trick by John Jackson Miller
12. The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 7 edited by Neil Clarke 

Numerically, it's a pretty average month, but in terms of pages read I did quite well, finishing two long books that I'd been working on for a long time (two months on #2, six months on #12) and reading another book that contained four full novels (#5).

All books acquired:

1. The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 by Chuck Cuidera, Dick French, et al.
2. The White Dragon: Collected comic strips from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine by Martin Geraghty, Scott Gray, Russ Leach, Jacqueline Rayner, and David A Roach
3. Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One by Dick Dillin, Charles Cuidera, et al.
4. Blackhawk by William Rotsler
5. Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories by qntm
6. Apocalypse Still: Stories by Leah Nicole Whitcomb
7. Popular Writers of Today, Volume Nine: Aldiss Unbound: The Science Fiction of Brian W. Aldiss by Richard Mathews
8. Popular Writers of Today, Volume Thirteen: Worlds Beyond the World: The Fantastic Vision of William Morris by Richard Mathews
9. Popular Writers of Today, Volume Nineteen: The Clockwork Universe of Anthony Burgess by Richard Mathews

Currently reading:

• Apocalypse Still: Stories by Leah Nicole Whitcomb
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Gamma: Original Sin by David R. George III 

Up next in my rotations:

1. The Pelican History of England: 3. English Society in the Early Middle Ages (1066-1307) by Doris Mary Stenton 
2. The Periodic Table by Primo Levi 
3. The Dispossessed by Szilárd Borbély
4. Star Trek: Prey, Book 3: The Hall of Heroes by John Jackson Miller

Books remaining on "To be read" list: 661 (down 2)