Review: The Transformers: Dark Prelude by James Roberts, John Barber, et al.

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2013 (contents: 2012-13)
Acquired and read March 2017

The Transformers: Dark Prelude

Written by James Roberts, John Barber, Nick Roche
Art by Steve Kurth & Juan Castro, Chee, Nick Roche, David Daza, Matt Frank, Agustin Padilla
Colors by J. Aburtov, Ronda Pattison, Len O'Grady, Zac Atkinson, Thomas Deer, Joana Lafuente
Letters by Shawn Lee

Dark Prelude collects the last six issues of IDW's The Transformers Spotlight series, which apparently tie into the upcoming Dark Cybertron event. I read it here, between volume 4 of More than Meets the Eye and volume 4 of Robots in Disguise, which turned out to be a pretty good spot to read it, as some of its revelations are brought up in Robots in Disguise, Volume 4.

I previously struggled with collections of Transformers Spotlight issues, finding it difficult to invest in fragmentary stories of robots I knew nothing about. I had a much better time reading Dark Prelude, which we can probably attribute to a few things:

1. I know a lot more about Transformers, especially the IDW G1 versions, than I did even a few months ago, so I have more context for these characters.
2. James Roberts, John Barber, and Nick Roche are better writers than Simon Furman and Shane McCarthy.
3. Most of these stories plug into areas of Transformers history I actually know something about: the Orion Pax story, for example, takes place after the flashbacks in More than Meets the Eye, Volume 3, before Autocracy. Two of the stories take place during More than Meets the Eye itself, which is nice.
4. Though each of these is a standalone, done-in-one tale, there's an ongoing narrative about the Titans that you can follow. In the first story, the Decepticons learn about the existence of the Titans. The second is about a group of Decepticon Titan Hunters, following information from the first story. The third reveals that the Titan Hunters succeeded, and stolen Titan technology was used to rebuild Megatron. The fourth features Bumblebee dealing with the ramifications of that. The fifth has the same group of Titan Hunters from the second boarding the Lost Light. The sixth takes place simultaneously with the fifth, and also reveals a new perspective on an event from the first. A perfect loop! And all the stuff about the Titans of course ties into recent events in both More than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise, where a Titan appeared on Theophany and then Cybertron in turn.

It's also just a set of good stories: nothing here is bad, and the stories range from decent to highly enjoyable.

I guess somewhat predictably, two of the highlights were the ones by James Roberts set during More than Meets the Eye (specifically, during volume 2), both with his trademark combination of character work and humor-- though "The Reluctant Specialist" is perhaps more outright farcical than anything Roberts has actually done during More than Meets the Eye itself, given things like the Rodimus Star, which Rodimus gives out to reward people as brave as himself:

You might ask, "Is Rodimus descending into self-parody here?" and I would reply, "If it's this funny, who cares?"
from The Transformers Spotlight: Trailcutter (script by James Roberts, art by Matt Frank)

"The Waiting Game" has a nice comedy moment where Hoist makes fun of Roberts's own writing foibles:

Keep being quietly competent, Hoist-- it's the best thing you can do!
from The Transformers Spotlight: Hoist (script by James Roberts, art by Agustin Padilla)

But, of course, in the end, Hoist does turn out to have a "crippling psychological disorder," one that in a nice turn of events, allows him to save the day on a landing party gone wrong.

Other than those, I particularly enjoyed Nick Roche's contribution to the volume (which he writes and draws, he's a talented man), where Megatron wakes up after one of his many resurrections (it apparently takes place between two issues of the IDW ongoing only known as The Transformers) and has it out with Starscream over what a terrible job Starscream did running the Decepticons during his absence, picking up from aspects of their relationship discussed in volumes 2 and 4 of All Hail Megatron, and leading into Robots in Disguise, Volume 4, when a resurrected Megatron will once again complain about Starscream's leadership. Roche's characterization of both Starscream and Megatron here is fascinating: Starscream is filled with self-loathing over his failure, to the extent that he needs Megatron to punish him, while Megatron wants Starscream to live up to his ideals, and so bullies Starscream in a way intended to make him "better"-- but actually likes Starscream more than he lets on.

Apparently you become leader of the Decepticons by delivering sick burns.
from The Transformers Spotlight: Megatron (script & art by Nick Roche)

It's great stuff, deftly executed by Roche, and I can already see how it affects their strange relationship after the war in Robots in Disguise.

Overall, this is a nice set of stories, revealing new characters to me (I hope we see more of Trailcutter and Hoist in More than Meets the Eye), and adding extra shades to old characters (like Bumblebee, Megatron/Starscream, and Thundercracker). I look forward to discovering how this sets up Dark Cybertron going forward.

Next Week: Meanwhile, on Cybertron... Prowl's machinations come to a head (lol) in Robots in Disguise!

Reading Roundup Wrapup: March 2017

Pick of the month: More than Meets the Eye, Volume 4 by James Roberts, Alex Milne, et al. Apparently I am a man obsessed, as I've picked a Transformers comic for the second month in a row. (And for the third time in five months.) But really, More than Meets the Eye is one of the best ongoing comics I've ever read, and this contains its best stories. Well, so far. Good month, though. Sky Island, Reach for the Stars, and especially Among Others could have all easily won in a different month.

All books read:
1. The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Volume 4 by James Roberts
2. Chime by Franny Billingsley
3. Sky Island: Being the Further Exciting Adventures of Trot and Cap'n Bill after Their Visit to the Sea Fairies by L. Frank Baum
4. The All New Atom: Future/Past by Gail Simone
5. Doctor Who: The Emperor Dalek’s New Clothes by Justin Richards
6. The Transformers: Dark Prelude by James Roberts and John Barber with Nick Roche
7. Blue Beetle: Reach for the Stars by John Rogers with J. Torres and Keith Giffen
8. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness with Siobhan Dowd
9. The Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Volume 4 by John Barber
10. The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
11. Manhunter: Forgotten by Marc Andreyko
12. The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Volume 5 by James Roberts
13. Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
14. Among Others by Jo Walton
15. Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer by Ron Marz, Sean McKeever, Peter Johnson, Matt Cherniss, Brian Augustyn, Alan Burnett, and Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti

All books acquired:
ZERO ZERO ZERO
HOLY COW HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE
NOT EVEN A FREEBIE

Books remaining on "To be read" list: 651 (down 2)
Books remaining on "To review" list: 47 (down 5)

Please also note I have a review up at Unreality SF, of the over-coloned The Avengers: Steed and Mrs Peel: The Comic Strip Adaptations: Volume Two. Yikes!

Thoughts on LGBT Representation in Literature

This week in my Young Adult Literature course I'm teaching Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, a novel about, well, two boys kissing. Specifically, it's inspired by when two male college students broke the Guinness World Record for longest kiss. Levithan is an editor of YA fiction at Scholastic (he's edited M. T. Anderson, Suzanne Collins, and Ann M. Martin, among others), and his breakout novel was Boy Meets Boy, which I haven't read, is about a gay romance at a high school where sexual orientation is just uncommented upon. Levithan said of it, "I’m often asked if the book is a work of fantasy or a work of reality, and the answer is right down the middle – it’s about where we’re going, and where we should be."

Levithan says he wrote Boy Meets Boy because it was the kind of book he wished would cross his desk as an editor: "a book about gay teens that doesn’t conform to the old norms about gay teens in literature (i.e. it has to be about a gay uncle, or a teen who gets beaten up for being gay, or about outcasts who come out and find they’re still outcasts, albeit outcasts with their outcastedness in common)." He seemed to have his desired effect, because one reviewer described it as "the first upbeat gay novel for teens."

My class was discussing the importance of books like this for young adults: Two Boys Kissing uses the kiss as its crystallizing event, but as there's not much a pair of kissing people can actually do, most of the book focuses on other gay boys, in a wide variety of situations and from a wide variety of backgrounds, each of whom is affected by the kiss in some small way. I would argue its project is to "normalize" same-sex male relationships by depicting them as normal, and thus by depicting a lot of them, so that none of them is the gay relationship. They're as diverse as any relationship is.

Some of my students contended for the necessity of doing this, of showing gay teens examples of people like themselves in relationships. And of the necessity of showing non-LGBT teens same-sex relationships, so as to normalize them.

Which got me thinking. Boy Meets Boy came out in 2003, the same year I graduated high school, so I certainly didn't read it as a teen myself. But did I read any young adult novels featuring queer characters? I've been wracking my brain for two days now, and I can't think of any.

As far as I can remember, in fact, the first work of fiction I read with a non-heterosexual character in it was in fact a Star Trek novel, a spin-off novel called The Best and the Brightest about a group of cadets at Starfleet Academy. Two of them are women, and they end up in a relationship. I remember rereading bits of the novel, certain that I had missed or misunderstood something, and that one of them was a man. But no. The book came out in February 1998, so if I read it around the time it came out, I would have been in seventh or maybe eighth grade. The book presents it as completely normal: like no one even comments on the same-sex thing, though I feel like there was some uncertainty because one of them is an alien. (The Best and the Brightest was the first unambiguous depiction of a same-sex relationship in Star Trek. I found a nice 1998 article about here when researching this piece. The novels have had many more since; televised Trek has been less progressive, though maybe there's hope with Star Trek: Discovery.)

I don't remember what I thought when I figured out that no, I was right, and they were both women. Like, given that I'd never read a work of fiction with non-hetero characters, and I didn't know anyone gay (that I knew of), and that "homo" was the insult du jour in Boy Scouts, it seems like I couldn't have been au fait with homosexuality, but I don't remember anything other than that mild perplexity.

Compare that to the year 2017, where non-hetero characters appear in family television programs like Doctor Who, and Sulu turned out to be gay married in last year's Star Trek film. It's a different and still-changing world we live in.

Review: Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Trade paperback, 482 pages
Published 1989
Acquired June 2006
Previously read July 2007
Reread November 2014

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Is Hyperion a novel? These are the kind of questions I irritated my Modern Novel class with. There are two potential objections you can make, I think. The first is that it's actually a series of short stories. The second is that the story doesn't actually end: Hyperion is really only the first half of a novel that ends in The Fall of Hyperion. (These are, I guess, mutually exclusive objections.)

Yet, I would argue, Hyperion stands on its own. Fall is a vastly different book with a different focus; it picks up what was begun here, but the focus on character and genre that motivates Hyperion is gone. And Hyperion comes to a perfectly satisfying conclusion in its own way. But I'm getting ahead of myself there.

Like so many of the stories I like, Hyperion is a story about stories. Its format is self-consciously literary from the moment someone in the book actually points out that you're reading The Canterbury Tales in space (p. 25). This is brought to the forefront in chapter 3, the Poet's Tale: "Hyperion Cantos." Martin Silenus asks, "Haven’t you ever harbored the secret thought that somewhere Huck and Jim are—at this instant—poling their raft down some river just beyond our reach, so much more real are they than the shoe clerk who fitted us just a forgotten day ago?" (180-81). I suspect this is an Adam Bede reference; in that novel, the narrator complains that people identify too much with fictional characters: "It is more needful that I should have a fibre of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers—more needful that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in the clergyman of my own parish [...], than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay." You'll note that for George Eliot, having more sympathy for fictional characters than for real salesmen is a negative, whereas Silenus seems to revel in it. But then, Silenus is an ass.

I doubt he would have been into Hyperion, but I think there's a sense in which Henry James agreed more with Dan Simmons than George Eliot when he wrote "The Art of the Novel." According to James, "It is still expected, though perhaps people are ashamed to say it, that a production which is after all only a 'make believe' [...] shall be in some degree apologetic—shall renounce the pretension of attempting really to compete with life. This, of course, any sensible wide-awake story declines to do, for it quickly perceives that the tolerance granted to it on such a condition is only an attempt to stifle it, disguised in the form of generosity. [...] The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does compete with life." Now, Hyperion does make that confession that James says fiction should not, but I think it does so in order to compete with life. James wanted literature to compete with history by pretending to be history: "if it [fiction] will not give itself away, [...] it must speak with assurance, with the tone of the historian." But for Simmons, literature wins by unabashedly being literature.

This Hyperion does. It has a profound sense of history, yet at the same time, it is conscious of its fiction. Hyperion is okay with competing with reality-- and possibly even beating reality-- because Simmons, like James, knows that we need stories to make sense of the universe: "history viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians" (Hyperion 190). Without stories, we won't know we're in a cow, we'll only perceive a dark, digestive mess. But, on the other hand, perhaps the cow is lie, for Silenus says that words "are also pitfalls of deceit and misperception. Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings" (191). This is what's happened to all the characters in Hyperion: they are all locked in the prisons of the stories they have told about themselves.

But that's the reason Hyperion spans seven different genres: because each genre supplies a different truth about the world, building up our composite picture. When the Hyperion pilgrims tell each other their tales, they are set free because they are able to see all the other possible stories. They have gone from having a cow to having seven possible explanations for the dark, digestive mass that is life.

And this is why Hyperion actually is a novel. It may be made up of seven different stories, and it may continue into a second book, but it does have a conclusion and a resolution: having told their own stories, and having heard those of the others, the Hyperion pilgrims achieve a measure of self-acceptance, and walk off into the unknown, singing "We're Off to See the Wizard." Reading it, I got the shivers. A group of broken people has achieved peace at last.

Hyperion lets us step outside of our stories and histories, remove ourselves from our prisons, by showing them to us in a new context: it lets us reevaluate faith by imagining we live in a world where faith can literally be proved, or lets us imagine what it means to be a parent sacrificing a child by imagining a world where God literally contacts someone to get him to do this, or lets us contemplate how we build God by showing us computers literally trying to build God, or lets us explore the relationship between sex and violence by giving us a being that is literally sex and violence.

At the same time, these people hear the disparate stories, and step outside their own prisons. No matter what happens in Fall, they've escaped their prisons and so have we, through the art of the novel.

Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part III: Captain Atom: Armageddon

Forget Armageddon, it's DOOOOOM. The sixteen-part eighth Doctor epic Doom Coalition is finally over, and I've reviewed the final part.

Comic trade paperback, 223 pages
Published 2007 (contents: 2005-06)
Borrowed from the library
Read December 2016

Captain Atom: Armageddon

Written by Will Pfeifer

Penciled by Giuseppe Camuncoli
Inked by Sandra Hope (with Trevor Scott), (with Camuncoli)
Additional art: Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair
Color by Randy Mayor, Jonny Rench, Tony Aviña
Letters by Rob Leigh, Phil Balsman, Patrick Brosseau

Wildstorm was an independent comics publisher founded in 1993; in 1999, it was purchased by DC Comics, and in 2011's Flashpoint event, DC merged the two continuities into one. That means that from 1999 to 2011, DC was publishing stories set in two separate superhero universes, and they occasionally took advantage of that by having characters cross from one to the other. In this case, that character was Captain Atom; Armageddon reveals that though he was apparently killed in an explosion at the end of Superman Batman: Public Enemies, he actually crossed over in the Wildstorm universe. But his atomic structure is incompatible with this universe, and he's going to explode and destroy it if something can't be done to stop it.

I don't know what the Wildstorm universe was originally like, but by 2005 it was a dark place, thanks to books like The Authority, where a group of superheroes decide to use murder to remake Earth as a better place. Will Pfeifer does a good job of contrasting this with the main DC universe: while in DC, Captain Atom is a bit of an also-ran, in Wildstorm he's the most standup guy there is, surrounded by antiheroes like the Authority, the WildC.A.T.s (including freakin' Grifter), and Mister Majestic, none of whom exactly aspire to virtuous altruism. They'll do whatever it takes, but Captain Atom has lines he won't cross.

Some of these lines include fashion, thank God.
from Captain Atom: Armageddon #4 (art by Giuseppe Camuncoli & Sandra Hope)

In some ways, Armageddon is a tour of the Wildstorm universe, I suspect designed to hook DC readers who followed Captain Atom into the crossover, hence Atom's encounters with all the heavy hitters of this reality (minus, I suppose, Gen¹³). I don't know much a new-to-Wildstorm reader really gets out of it, though; I'd already read The Authority so I followed those bits fine, but part of the book seems to assume you know more about WildC.A.T.s than I did-- who or what is the Void? And who cares about Grifter anyway?

Review: The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Volume 4 by James Roberts, Alex Milne, et al.

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2013 (contents: 2012-13)
Acquired March 2015
Read March 2017

The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Volume 4

Written by James Roberts
Pencils by Alex Milne, Brendan Cahill, Guido Guidi, and Agustin Padilla
Inks by Atilio Rojo, Alex Milne, Brian Shearer, John Wycough, Juan Castro, Guido Guidi, Marc Deering, Phyllis Novin, and Jose Aviles
Colors by Josh Burcham with Joana Lafuente and Jose Aviles
Letters by Tom B. Long

WARNING WARNING WARNING

I don't normally do this, but it seems warranted here: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE. That said, I went into this volume knowing some of what I'm going to talk about, and if anything, I think it made the book more effective.

BUT ANYWAY

I don't often cry at works of fiction. It happens on occasion, though, perhaps more as I get older. The death of the Tachikomas at the end of season one of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Penelope Wilton chaining herself to the bus at the end of episode 4 of Bob & Rose. Moira taking her suicide pill in the last chapter of On the Beach. Evelyn Smythe's contemplative last moments in Doctor Who: A Death in the Family.

But I don't think I've ever cried at a comic book.

I cried three times reading this one.

The first time came in the first issue collected here. The Lost Light crew assaults a rogue Decepticon stronghold. James Roberts tells the story in two parallel tracks, switching back and forth between the attack and its aftermath. Rewind is injured, and his conjunx endura Chromedome is freaking out about it. Now, I was spoiled a while ago on the fact that Rewind would die, so as the book came to a climax, I started tearing up. Rewind doesn't die here, but the end is still fraught with emotion, as we learn how Rewind and Chromedome first met, and then the last thing we see is the moment of Rewind's near-fatal injury. It wasn't a Decepticon who injured him; rather, Whirl purposely locked him in a room with an exploding bomb because Cyclonus was also in that room. Plus, misanthropic Cyclonus actually threw himself on the bomb to save Rewind. Oh wow so many feelings as everything that's happened throughout the issue slots into place.

You don't mean that, Cyclonus!
from The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye #12 (art by Brendan Cahill & Brian Shearer)

I didn't cry at the second issue here, but it was good fun: the Lost Light arrives at a pleasure planet, and everyone goes out drinking. Jokes are had, we get to see the crew's humanoid holomatter avatars, Ultra Magnus tries to lighten up (and fails), and Tailgate reveals his dark secret to Cyclonus. If you love when a tv show does the wacky side episode where the crew lets loose, you'll love this.

Review: On the Beach by Nevil Shute

Trade paperback, 312 pages
Published 2010 (originally 1957)
Previously read 2002/03(?) and October 2006
Acquired June 2016
Reread July 2016

On the Beach by Nevil Shute

In his book Rumors of War and Infernal Machines, Charles Gannon argues that "the discourse of nuclear literature has traditionally relied upon images because a personally meaningful quantitative assessment of the bomb’s annihilatory powers is impossible. Its size dwarfs and makes mute any discursive attempt to establish a connection between individual experience and the overwhelming total reality of a nuclear explosion." I definitely think this is true when it comes to On the Beach. It's the images that stuck with me between when I read this in high school (for class), reread it in college (for myself), and rereread it to teach it: the cloud of radioactive particles drifting south, the empty cities of North America, the seaman going out for one last fishing trip, the roads taken back over by horses. Shute's perspective on nuclear annihilation is oddly beautiful: even while nuclear war comes from the worst parts of our nature, he uses it to shine a light on our best parts. Everyone in this book does their duty up to the end, even those who didn't have any kind of duty to begin with. I started to cry when I read the last chapter, and that's the first time I've cried at a book in a long while. We no longer fear nuclear war the way we did in 1957, but the book is still a testament to how we all ought to confront death.

There must be some kind of term for un-jumping the shark, but I'm afraid to check TV Tropes.

If you read my commentary (I hesitate to call it a "review") on the third series of Primeval, you'll know I wasn't exactly enthused. But we already owned series 4 and 5 on DVD, so onward we plunged-- hey, at least they'd killed off the villain who rapidly decayed from interesting and enigmatic to maniacal and annoying.

At the end of the first episode of series 4, I turned to my wife and was like, "Actually, that was pretty good." Then at the end of the second episode, I did it again. And then again in the third! I don't know what exactly happened-- production moved to Ireland to save costs, but as far as I can tell, the head writer stayed the same, as did most of the freelance writers and directors. Yet with series 4 came a higher level of seriousness and more of a focus on character that had been lacking from the show, as well as a feeling of reality. It's hard to explain, but the show became suddenly, noticeably better. And not just better than it was in the bizarre series 3, but better than it had ever been. (I know some people out there aren't big series 4/5 fans, but I find that perspective unfathomable.)

On the other hand, the webisodes have this
whole thing about how they aren't going to
wear black uniforms in the field anymore...
and they still do.

The increase of quality was evident even before we began watching series 4 proper-- to bridge the gap between series 3 and 4 (which was eighteen months), there was a series of five "webisodes," each about five minutes long, covering a lot of the changes, as two of series 3's main cast didn't return, and two more team members were got rid of. In my commentary on series 3, I complained that Captain Becker, the Sexy Man of Action character, was so devoid of personality that the writers couldn't even land a joke about how devoid of personality he was... and then in one thirty-second scene in a single webisode he displayed more personality than in all ten episodes of series 3 put together!

The main cast is definitely one of the most prominent areas of improvement, and given that the plots on Primeval were never exactly things of genius, this is a pretty essential area. The two worst characters from series 3 don't come back-- team leader Danny Quinn and historian Sarah Page. Danny was lost in time at the end of series 3, and series 4 keeps him out of the way by reiterating that, but series 4 actually kills Sarah off with a quick line about a mission gone wrong! I didn't particularly love her character, but whoa, harsh!

Cutest moment of series 4: how worried Lester is for these
two.

Connor and Abby were stranded in time at the end of series 3, but series 4 begins with them making it back to the present day and they rejoin the team in short order. I was a little skeptical about them being in a romance at first (during the will-they-won't-they stuff of earlier seasons, I kind of felt like I liked them better as goofy friends), but series 4 and 5 do a good job with the romance, portraying them as both good friends and real lovers, but still finding room for genuine character conflict. Mind you, Connor's ascent into nerd-genius-dom is completed: an undergraduate biology major in series 1, whose main skill was having a really nice historical database, he's now a physics supergenius whose skills are sought by the head of a major tech corporation. There is a really good episode about one of Connor's undergrad buddies from series 1, who's descending into being a conspiracy theory nut in his absence-- it was one of the surprisingly good ones.

Lester annoyed me in the first series, but each series has found a way to make him a little bit better than in the previous-- 4 and 5 get the mix of humour, affection, and pompousness just right for Britain's best bureaucrat.

There's a really good moment in one episode that shows how the writing of series 4 is much more character-based: with one team member stranded in the past, there's a debate about whether to go through the anomaly to rescue him or to lock the anomaly to reduce the danger. Becker thinks a rescue can't be risked-- thinking about the death of Sarah on a similar mission. Abby, fresh from a year-long exile to the past, thinks every chance has to be given for a rescue. Each has their own, perfectly reasonable perspective. It's not a big thing, but it's more sophisticated than previous seasons gave us.

That said, the new characters are great. A new team function is added with Jess, who stays back at the base and co-ordinates while everyone else is out in the field. As a result, she (usually) doesn't play a big role in missions, but she was a fun character. (Weirdly, there's a subplot set up about her, Abby, and Connor all living in the same apartment which never comes up again. As this would be the third Connor-rooms-with-another-team-member subplot in four seasons, maybe this would be for the best.)

First team leader on this show I'd actually trust with my life.

The new team leader is Matt Anderson, who I am relieved to say is not a cop who doesn't play by the rules. He's a refugee from an apocalyptic future who came back in time undercover to prevent that future, but even though that plotline is pretty well done, what impresses about Matt is that he's just a really good leader, much moreso than Cutter or Danny ever were. There's one episode where the team accidentally takes a submarine into prehistory(!), and Matt doesn't really do anything flashy, he just calmly works with the other characters to organize them, keep them on task, and give them the confidence and space to do their jobs. That nice, subtle writing did a lot to warm me up to Matt. Plus, Ciarán McMenamin is just very likeable. He doesn't seem to have done a lot post-Primeval, which is a shame.

(Danny does make a one-episode return. This didn't exactly fill me with cheer, but it does tie off an old dropped plot, and the writers purposefully/deliberately foreground his ridiculousness, as he immediately begins fighting prehistoric creatures with a giant stick named "Molly"! Jenny also returns for one episode, which was a lot more welcome.)

Oh my, Julian!

The other new main cast member is Alexander Siddig of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame as Philip Burton. Honestly, he feels a little wasted-- it could have been an interesting role, but the character is written pretty flatly, and his agenda is a bit too obvious. Still, I think Siddig's salt-and-pepper look here is probably peak sexiness for him. Ruth Bradley, who played the eighth Doctor's companion Molly O'Sullivan in the Dark Eyes audio dramas also has a recurring role as Lady Emily, a Victorian adventuress, though I felt like they never quite delivered on her potential. (And there's one subplot with her that's just left forgotten.)

If you'd asked me at the end of series 3, I might've suggested on giving up on it all-- or only watching it to delight in the bad television of it all. But I persevered, and series 4 and 5 turned out to be a pretty solid team-based adventure show. If only they'd kept this set-up going! But other than a short-lived Canadian spin-off, that was it for Primeval.

(Series 5 needed more Rex, though.)

Review: A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

Trade paperback, 362 pages
Published 1984 (originally 1924)
Acquired June 2014
Read September 2014

A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

I had actually never read any E. M. Forster before teaching this novel. There's a lot going on in it: it amazes me to think that anyone could have ever wondered if it was pro-British or pro-Indian, but maybe that's my modern anti-colonialist biases at work. (Though maybe as a feminist, I should believe the accusation.) The crux of the whole book is arguably the incident in the caves, but the alleged sexual assault is just one part of that. There's a weird break in the narration at that moment-- if there is a sexual assault, it occurs between pages, and that feels like a cheat designed to up the ambiguity, given how closely Forster renders point-of-view throughout the rest of the novel.

But is it a cheat? If there was a sexual assault, it's a very modernist move to indicate it through a break in narration: the trauma of the event would render it unthinkable and therefore unnarratable. (It's kind of like, but very different to, how Hardy handles the rape of Tess in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which I taught in the same class.)

However, then the cheat becomes: if there wasn't a sexual assault, why is there a break in the narration? The answer to that, I would argue, lies earlier in the novel, where we are told, "Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence" (146). Like all moments where fiction tells you about what fiction does, you have to read this as indicative of what this work of fiction is or is not doing. According to A Passage to India, there are long passages of time where nothing happens, where the brain is lying if it indicates emotion was actually felt: "a perfectly adjusted organism would be silent" (146). So if nothing happened in the caves, of course there's a break in the narration, because if nothing is happening, the book must be silent since this book is a "perfectly adjusted organism," not an exaggerator like all those earlier works of fiction.

What is easy to overlook if you focus on the sexual assault, I think, is that there's another act of violence in the cave: Mrs. Moore's crisis of faith. Mrs. Moore struggles with what she thought were fundamentals of existence when she finally travels to a place where they are not true. India is older than anything in world (135), upsetting her beliefs in Britain and in Christianity, and the darkness of the cave shows how a whisper can be echoed to seem all-consuming (166). She thinks the cave is evil, but it turns out to just be that the cave amplifies what is brought into it; I never thought I'd make this comparison, but it's basically the cave from The Empire Strikes Back. In the end, she cannot write down what happened (165)-- it really was too traumatic for her. Later we are told that there is no sorrow like Mrs. Moore's sorrow, the experience of an utterly unprofound vision. When East meets West, Mrs. Moore accesses the modern condition and realizes how meaningless life is. Poor woman.

Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part II: Manhunter: Trial by Fire

Comic trade paperback, 222 pages
Published 2007 (contents: 2005)
Borrowed from the library
Read December 2016

Manhunter: Trial by Fire

Writer: Marc Andreyko

Pencillers: Javier Pina, Jesus Saiz, Brad Walker, Diego Olmos
Inkers: Fernando Blanco, Jimmy Palmiotti, Bob Petrecca
Colorist: Steve Buccellato
Letterers: Jared K. Fletcher, Rob Leigh, Pat Brosseau, Nick J. Napolitano, Travis Lanham

This book is good but not great. Which is fine; lots of comic books out there aren't even good. But Manhunter seems like it should be great. All the pieces are there, and there are lots of things to like here. I like showing what happens when a supervillain gets arrested and goes on trial (Kate calls Hawkman and Superman as witnesses in the trial of Shadow Thief for the murder of Firestorm). I like that Superman takes the time to sign a photo for Kate's son. I like that Andreyko delves into the history of DC's various Manhunters, showing her as the latest in a lineage (DC's sense of history and tradition was the highlight of the post-Crisis/pre-Flashpoint universe). I like that Kate isn't always nice, struggles with smoking, and has an ex-henchman she goes to for technical support.

When I told my wife (who is reading Manhunter along with me) that I liked it when Superman testified, she said, "Of course you did." I guess I am predictable.
from Manhunter vol. 3 #7 (art by Jesus Saiz & Fernando Blanco)

But the book never clicks as much as I want it to. The trial of Shadow Thief is interrupted by various supervillains trying to kill him so he can't testify against them, a mistrial is declared... and that's it, the storyline is over while they wait for a new trial to come along. The Manhunter stuff just gets confusing because there's so many Manhunters, and I've even read the issue of Secret Origins that organized all their histories into one coherent narrative. And bringing it all in for a five-issue story doesn't quite work because it pulls this series away from its core purpose a little too much: how does Kate carry out the kind of justice the legal system won't let her?

I mean, yeah, of course.
from Manhunter vol. 3 #13 (art by Brad Walker & Jimmy Palmiotti)

That said, the stories are decent. I like the sense of Kate as someone who struggles in combat, who is improvising and doing her best, and sometimes failing. She gets beat up, she suffers, but she plunges back into it all. She has tenacity and luck on her side-- she survives a fight with Cheshire, which might seem improable, but is mostly because she cares more than Cheshire. Cheshire is a hired gun and has a reason to just give up, while Kate has a dozen reasons to just keep going regardless.

The fakeout about who was killing Manhunters might have worked better if I could keep track of who they all were.
from Manhunter vol. 3 #13 (art by Brad Walker & Jimmy Palmiotti)

Anyway, I like it, and I'll obviously keep reading. But I'm still hoping that Manhunter delivers on its potential.

Next Week: Captain Atom crosses universes and experiences Armageddon!