Bob the Galactic Bum (Yes, That's a Thing)

When I reviewed Darkstars, I called it a "forgotten" comic book. Well, I didn't know how good I had it then. I would never have known Bob the Galactic Bum even existed if an ad for it in an issue of R.E.B.E.L.S. hadn't caught my eye. It had Lobo in it, but since in the 1990s every DC Comics house ad has Lobo in it, my eye would have glazed right over it if the ad hadn't also highlighted the presence of Stealth (one of the main characters of L.E.G.I.O.N. and R.E.B.E.L.S.) and the Khunds (recurring DC outer space bad guys). So I googled, and discovered the existence of this four-issue miniseries from 1995.

Frankly, it's weird that the only place this is mentioned in R.E.B.E.L.S. is one ad, as it features three characters from the series (in addition to Stealth and Lobo, R.E.B.E.L.S. leader Vril Dox turns up) and it takes place between its issues. Plus, one of its co-writers, Alan Grant, wrote or co-wrote the first 39 issues of L.E.G.I.O.N. Surely DC would have wanted to make sure fans of the one found the other, but there wasn't even a mention in the lettercol.

Oh well, I learned about it in sufficient time to add it to my list of "uncollected DC comics set in space not about Green Lanterns," so how was it? Bob the Galactic Bum is written by Alan Grant and John Wagner, the latter being the luminary of British comics responsible for co-creating Judge Dredd, though I know him best for his work on the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. The artist is Carlos Ezquerra, Dredd's other co-creator.

This story is no Judge Dredd adventure, however. It's a light comedy about a "galactic bum" named Bob, who seems to be a stereotypical British bum, complete with ratty top hat. Bob travels the universe with his companion Buck Fifty, who can only say "What?" and the story opens with him being picked up by an interstellar cruise liner carrying a prince. Bob is offended by the prince, who he calls a "piker" (i.e., a tightwad), but when Khunds attack the cruise liner, Bob, Buck, and the piker are the only ones left alive. Bob sees the opportunity to finally make his fortune, but that means getting Prince Gazza of Chazza back to his homeworld in time for the coronation while avoiding Khunds and Lobo.

There's not a laugh on every page, but there are enough of them to make good fun. The Khunds are well done-- they're such anarchist brutes that their captain needs to reestablish his authority every single time he gives an order, and his crew is faintly embarrassed every time he compliments them-- and I enjoyed Bob's alleged duel with a guru on a higher plane. Plus the coronation traditions of Chazza (the previous monarch is executed by blind guards, which means many extra people die in the process) were amusing. Like I said, Lobo was everywhere during this era, but Alan Grant is one of the better writers of Lobo, so he wasn't too annoying. Grant, Wagner, and Ezquerra are a solid comic team, and this is four issues of fun in the world of DC space.

(Interestingly, though, the creators maintained the copyright to the story, enabling it to be reprinted in the Judge Dredd Megazine in 2008, sans any characters belonging to DC. Among other transformations, Lobo apparently became a woman named Asbo!)

Review: Fact and Feeling by Jonathan Smith

Hardcover, 277 pages
Published 1994

Borrowed from the library

Read December 2012

Fact and Feeling: Baconian Science in the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination

by Jonathan Smith

Smith's monograph traces the use of Baconian induction in Victorian literature. Smith begins by tracing out a model of what Baconian science means, summarizing it as 1) collection of facts, 2) gradual movement toward truth, and 3) rejection of hypotheses. He argues that the Victorians were finding cracks in Baconianism: for example, fact-collecting cannot really be indiscriminate (you need some kind of hypothesis to drive your data collection). But Bacon was still valorized by some, though not necessarily for the things he actually said or did.

The most interesting of the later chapters (to me, of course) were the ones on John Ruskin and Sherlock Holmes. In the Ruskin chapter, Smith is able to carefully delineate Ruskin's point of view on science. Ruskin wasn't opposed to science in general, but what he saw as foolish science: science that subordinated vision to inductive reason, prioritizing what could not be seen over what could be seen. This feels kind of reasonable on the face of it, until you remember that Ruskin rejected the idea of glaciers moving because he couldn't see them moving. Ruskin prioritized sight, and felt that scientists like Tyndall were too rapid and superficial in their observations.

His chapter on Holmes admirably and thoroughly lays out what it means for Holmes to think "scientifically": Holmes claims to be a naive Baconian that doesn't let theories affect his sight, that jars with the very strong personality Holmes portrays throughout the stories. Smith shows how Holmes both decries the dangers of the imagination and utterly relies upon the imagination to make the leaps of logic that the police (who Holmes derides as naive Baconians) cannot. It's a compelling discussion of why we shouldn't take Holmes (or Doyle) at his word when describing his detective method, but should instead look at what he actually does and how it interacts with the philosophy of science of the day (or, rather, the past, since naive Baconianism was mostly out by the 1890s).

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Gotham, Part XXX: Batman: Ten Nights of the Beast

Comic trade paperback, 96 pages
Published 1994 (contents: 1988)
Borrowed from the library
Read January 2016

Batman: Ten Nights of the Beast

Writer: Jim Starlin
Penciller: Jim Aparo
Inker: Mike DeCarlo
Colorist: Adrienne Roy
Letterers: John Costanza, Agustin Mas

Year Twelve, June
I'm sort of pushing the definition of Batman's "early years" at this point, but I wanted to maximize my Jason Todd stories before seeing him get killed off in A Death in the Family. He actually doesn't play a very big role in Ten Nights of the Beast, which pits Batman against the KGBeast, the trained Soviet assassin. I'd first encountered him in the uncollected miniseries Robin III: Cry of the Huntress, but this was his first appearance. Here he goes rogue and travels to Gotham City to disrupt the Star Wars missile defense program, and Batman must team up with the Gotham PD, the FBI, the CIA, and the KGB to stop him. The KGBeast has a list of ten key Star Wars personnel (conveniently, they're all residents of Gotham or will visit it during the same week) that he's working his way through, but despite acquiring his list early in the book, the KGBeast is so strong and powerful there's not a whole lot Batman can do to stop him: Batman gets pushed to his limit as the KGBeast kills person after person on the list, plus anyone who gets in his way. (Or gets his Iranian Shi'ite terrorist friend to do it for him.)

One of my favorite things in comics is people who have to wear hats to disguise the masks they're wearing as a disguise.
from Batman vol. 1 #419

The problem is that the KGBeast is so good that the story becomes implausible. There is an early effort to move one of the people on the list out of town, but other than that, Batman and company take little preventative action. The last person on the list is President Reagan,* who for some reason still comes to Gotham for a fundraising dinner! It really pushes my credulity that in a circumstance where the KGBeast has caused deaths in the triple digits in pursuit of his goal that anyone would think it appropriate to bring the President of the United States into the city where's he operating. Also, given Batman only saves the lives of about three of the people on the KGBeast's list, I don't see how the Star Wars program isn't permanently crippled. It's a very small victory, I guess.

Greatest double-take in the history of comics?
from Batman vol. 1 #420

Jim Starlin seems to really like stories where Batman is pushed to his limit-- it's something we'll see again in The Cult and A Death in the Family-- but this one doesn't really work for me; you don't feel the desperation to the extent the story needs you to. I'll expand on this in my writeups of both those collections, but I think the problem is Jim Aparo. Or rather, the Starlin/Aparo collaboration. Aparo is a great artist and supposedly a great Batman artist, but I think he's more remembered for his ten-year run on The Brave and the Bold than his late 1980s Batman stint, where I don't think he's a good tonal match for Starlin's dark and brutal scripts. But like I said, more on that next week.

* Previous appearances of Ronald Regan include Legends, Millennium, and the Deadman storyline in Action Comics Weekly. There's probably more I'm forgetting. Invasion!, maybe? DC Comics really loved this guy, I guess.

Next Week: Batman faces a Dark Knight of the Soul when he comes up against The Cult!

Review: Doctor Who: Nothing O'Clock by Neil Gaiman

Mass market paperback, 67 pages
Published 2014 (originally 2013)
Acquired December 2014
Read November 2015

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: Nothing O'Clock

by Neil Gaiman

This book is a delight, definitely in the top tier of the 12 Doctors, 12 Stories novellas. Neil Gaiman's televised Doctor Who stories have been mixed at best ("The Doctor's Wife" was pretty good; "Nightmare in Silver" probably set back the potential of the Cybermen and didn't make much sense to boot), but this is nearly perfect. The eleventh Doctor and Amy discover that someone has bought up every residence on Earth (legitimately), leaving no room for its people, who all die off, leaving the Earth free for some aliens to take over. Gaiman does a good line in creepiness (the aliens all wear animal masks, and go under names like "Mr Rabbit"), Gaiman captures the performances of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan extremely well, there are lots of great Doctorish lines (the Doctor suggests a lack of gazpacho in 1984 would be cause for alarm), and there are some nice references to things the show established after Series Five (like Mels and the War Doctor). A perfect little novella, and probably the best work Neil Gaiman has done on Doctor Who.

Next Week: We reach the end of this literary Doctor Who adventure with a twelfth Doctor adventure, in Lights Out!

Revolutionary Reading: An Examination of the Legion of Super-Heroes Threeboot, Part II: Death of a Dream

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2006 (contents: 2005-06) 
Acquired February 2016
Read May 2016

Legion of Super-Heroes: Death of a Dream

​

Writer: Mark Waid

Penciller: Barry Kitson
Interlude Written by Stuart Moore
Additional Pencils: Kevin Sharpe, Georges Jeanty, Ken Lashley
Inkers: Art Thibert, Mick Gray, Drew Geraci, Prentis Rollins, Paul Neary
Letterers: Nick J. Napolitano, Travis Lanham, Phil Balsman, Jared K. Fletcher

Created to change the United Planets, the Legion of Super-Heroes now finds itself in the position of having to save it. As a result, this volume of the Mark Waid/Barry Kitson Legion of Super-Heroes is much less about revolution the first one, drifting away somewhat from the series's unique selling point. Of course, Waid and Kitson are still masters of their craft, and there's lots to enjoy here, good twists and pay-offs and genuine character drama. Loved what happened to "Atom Girl," loved that Brainiac 5 used the slingshot of the original Robin, loved the role of Dream Girl in the proceedings. And much more.

There are points where revolution is discussed, though. Sun Boy, the only Legionnaire whose parents don't disapprove of his being a member, starts to realize that it's not really about the cause they're fighting for, but rather that he's "just an opportunity for them to relive their days as young radicals. Which sucks."

The book also explores the appropriate way to create social change, with both external and internal conflict. Brainiac 5 begins to chafe at Cosmic Boy's leadership of the Legion, believing that Cos is too accommodating of diverse perspectives. Cos would rather create a coalition of diverse interests united around common goals, while Brainiac favors a smaller group dedicated to his leadership of the Legion. Cos's beliefs are shown to have both pluses and minuses: the Legion is awe-inspiring in its size, but its open-door policy proves to be dangerous when it allows suicide bombers to enter into the Legion plaza without interference. I think Cos wins in the end, with his argument that "The Legion’s not twenty guys with corny names and costumes! It is everyone across the galaxy who has made any kind of sacrifice to take back the future! It is everyone who has ever worn this [the Legion symbol] knowing that it makes a difference!" The Legion followers end up fighting alongside the core group in battle, helping save the day. But Brainiac is right that diversity and acceptance comes with its own challenges, challenges that Cosmic Boy struggles to overcome in this book. (In fact, Cosmic Boy needs to be compelled into not leaving the Legion through subterfuge by Invisible Kid.)

Cos does make compromises. In the 31st century, all underagers are monitored on the communications network known as the Public Service; Cos has the opportunity to shut it down, but he ends up needing it communicate during the war against Terror Firma, when it turns out to be the only functioning communications system in the U.P. The revolution is forced to sacrifice some of its principles in order to survive, for better or for ill.

Finally, Terror Firma turns out to be a revolutionary movement itself, albeit a terrorist one (I guess the name is a clue). Made up of the descendants of U.P. citizens exiled to a now-forgotten prison planet, they want to change the corrupt society they were exiled from. But their methods and justifications, especially those of their leader, Praetor Lemnos, remind me of Ozymandias from Watchmen: Lemnos is the man who can shrug off the deaths of innocents to achieve utopia, due to his belief that rebuilding has to take place starting from a blank slate. The conflict between the Legion and Terror Firma thus reenacts an age-old philosophical dispute between revolutionaries: gradual reform vs. catastrophic restart. Perhaps even without thinking about it, the Legion throws their lot in with gradual reform. The implications of that choice will be explored in the series going forward.

Wars of Futures Past

I've been reading about future wars and actual wars this week, in two different books: Charles E. Gannon's Rumors of War and Infernal Machines and Cecil D. Eby's The Road to Armageddon. Both cover that period between 1871 and 1914, from when the Franco-Prussian War caused the British to start to hate Germans up to when they actually got to fight some. Eby reports that during that time, there were over 60 stories of future invasion published in Britain-- and that's just counting ones that appeared in book or pamphlet form, as the periodical press had its fair share of short stories.

Christopher Robin
and J. V. Milne
(and Pooh)

Many were published at the behest of Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe. Harmsworth was a newspaper magnate of unprecedented (and, arguably, unexceeded, proportions), owning the Times, the Sunday Times, the Daily Mail, the Observer, and many local papers. Harmsworth actually went to a school where A. A. Milne's father, J. V., was headmaster and (after Harmsworth's time) H. G. Wells was a science teacher. It was at that school that Harmsworth made his first newspaper. Later, Wells had some early publications in one of Harmsworth's papers, Answers, but Wells said of Harmsworth and his brother that they worked "with an entire disregard of good taste, good value, educational influence, social consequences or political responsibility. They were as blind as young kittens to all those aspects of life. [...] In pristine innocence, naked of any sense of responsibility, with immense native energy, they set about pouring millions of printed sheets of any sort of trash that sold, into the awakening mind of the British masses" (Experiment in Autobiography 270).

I think Wells gives Harmsworth a little too much credit here, bizarrely enough. When you read about what he got up to, it's clear he knew what kind of social consequences he might have; he just didn't care if it sold papers. In 1906, he published in the Daily Mail William Le Queux's The Invasion of 1910, a novel that purposefully fanned the flames of Teutophobia, leading to discussions in Parliament as to whether or not there were German spies everywhere in the country. (Le Queux was quite adaptive; his previous invasion novel had been about evil Frenchmen, but in the interim, France and the United Kingdom had signed a new treaty, meaning Le Queux had to pivot to a different enemy nation. He kept publishing novels about evil Germans right through the war, and then after the war, novels about resurgent German terrorists.)

That Harmsworth saw a political purpose in his journalistic enterprises comes across most clearly in my favorite anecdote from this week's research. Back in 1895, he decided he would stand as a candidate for the House of Commons in Portsmouth. To bolster his run, he purchased the Portsmouth Evening Mail and ordered its editor, a former naval correspondent, to cowrite a serial about the invasion of Portsmouth by France and Russia. Harmsworth was a candidate for the Conservatives, and the story was to place all the blame for poor defenses in Portsmouth on the Liberals. One of the paper's reporters even went around town getting names of prominent citizens so that they could be written into the story dying horrible deaths, in order to galvanize the citizens of Portsmouth to vote Harmsworth into office to save them from this dire fate.

I wish I could read this. I bet it's terrible, but it might be deliciously terrible. Apparently it sold well, but failed to get Harmsworth elected. He decided it would be easier to get into Parliament by obtaining a peerage; in the House of Lords you never have to stand for election.

It wasn't just Harmsworth; everyone was just really excited about wars at the time. Though the Boer War turned out to be a little disappointing, it did yield this amazing advertisement for British Pluck cigarettes, my other favorite discovery for the week:

Smoke cigarettes and kill Boers!

Harmsworth got his war in the end, when Britain took on evil Germans in the Great War, which turned out not to be as quick and easy as all those future-war stories had imagined.

Review: Moving Pictures by Kathryn & Stuart Immonen

Comic trade paperback, 136 pages
Published 2010

Borrowed from a friend

Read March 2015

Moving Pictures by Kathryn & Stuart Immonen

This is a beautiful comic book with deft characterization and excellent coloring with lots of neat moments, but I'll be damned if I could tell you what was actually happening 50% of the time. Lots of neat stuff, but I wish it had been a little more obvious. I don't mind working hard, but I couldn't even tell you where to begin with this one! It seems like it would be worth the effort, though.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Gotham, Part XXIX: Batman: The Killing Joke: The Deluxe Edition

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2008 (contents: 1988-96)
Borrowed from the library
Read January 2016

Batman: The Killing Joke: The Deluxe Edition

Writers: Alan Moore, Brian Bolland
Art and Colors: Brian Bolland
Letterers: Richard Starkings, Ellie DeVille

Year Twelve, March

One of the last lines, but it would have worked perfectly as the first.
from Batman: The Killing Joke (script by Alan Moore, art by Brian Bolland)

This is probably the most widely-read Batman comic that's not by Frank Miller. So of course it's by Alan Moore. Moore is an exquisite craftsman: the way this builds up tension is perfect. Of course, a large part of that's in the art, too, and Bolland and Moore make a helluva team here. It's great to look at and great to read.

But: really, this is it? Why is this one of the most read Batman stories? It's nasty, brutish, and short, and it all seems to be in service of those last two to three pages, which are brilliant, I think. I love the idea that Batman believes he or the Joker must kill the other,* but all that really happens is they share a joke. And kind of a dumb one at that. (Though I am familiar with the theory that someone is dying on that last page, I'm reading this as part of a sequence of stories, so it definitely can't happen in this context!) But I'm not convinced this story says enough to justify its existence. I dunno, maybe I'm overthinking it, but I admired this story intellectually much more than emotionally. Well crafted, but sort of empty, and cruel.

It seems pretty clear to me in reading The Killing Joke that Barbara was raped, but a lot of people (including Alan Moore, allegedly) insist that she was not. Again, this is something that I think changes if you view the story as in- or out-of-continuity. If it's out, then yes she was because there are some insinuations that don't make any sense if you don't think that's what they're adding up to. But if it's in, then pretty clearly not, because none of the subsequent 23 years of Barbara Gordon stories ever indicated something like that had happened. That said, the mental trauma this must have caused isn't really dwelt on at all by later stories, which mostly just focus on the physical act of crippling caused by Joker's bullet.
from Batman: The Killing Joke (script by Alan Moore, art by Brian Bolland)

I did like "An Innocent Guy," an eight-page story written, drawn, and colored by Brian Bolland that is also collected here. It felt like "Harvey Pekar Does Batman," actually. Is that weird?

from Batman: Black and White #4 (script and art by Brian Bolland)
Yeah, I know it's in color.

* I must say, this sticks out as odd in the context of my readthrough, in which the Joker has a been a major villain in exactly two stories (The Man Who Laughs, Batman: Batgirl) and a minor one in a few others (The Long Halloween, Strange Apparitions, The Cat and the Bat). If the previous 28 stories were all I knew about Batman, I'd be hard-pressed to identify the Joker as his greatest nemesis! He's been curiously absent from these tales. I feel like Two-Face probably pops up the most consistently. Or maybe, strangely enough, Hugo Strange. I should make a chart and find out.

Next Week: In Soviet Russia, Star Wars watches you! Batman tangles with the KGB in Ten Nights of the Beast!

Review: Doctor Who: The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage by Derek Landy

Mass market paperback, 85 pages
Published 2014 (originally 2013)
Acquired December 2014
Read October 2015

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor: The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage
by Derek Landy

     'So this whole entire world we're standing on right now is...what? A story? Not a planet at all but a story? How can we stand on a story? How can a story have gravity, or light, or air for us to breathe?'
     The Doctor shrugged. 'Every good story has atmosphere.'

I'd never heard of Derek Landy before reading this book, but his take on the tenth Doctor and Martha turns out to be delightful. He captures Tennant's kookiness well, Martha is very well-characterized, the banter between them is natural and easy (there are a lot of good laughs), and the central concept of the story, where the TARDIS lands on a planet based on some books Martha read as a kid about child sleuths, isn't exactly original (even within Doctor Who) but is well-executed and entertaining. Another hit for this solid series of releases.

Next Week: The eleventh Doctor and Amy investigate a real estate scam in Nothing O'Clock!

Reading Roundup Wrapup: June 2016

Pick of the month: Experiment in Autobiography by H. G. Wells. This book consumed my life for the first couple weeks of the month. How could I have ever picked something else? The definitive account of his life, from teaching student to draper's assistant to dabbler in scientific romances to writer of literary fiction to proponent of the World State. Endlessly fascinating. I'll be holding back my review of it until September, though, for Wells's 150th birthday.

All books read:
1. Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866) by H. G. Wells
2. Team 7, Volume 1: Fight Fire with Fire by Justin Jordan with Tony Bedard
3. Birds of Prey, Volume 3: A Clash of Daggers by Duane Swierczynski with Gail Simone
4. The Transformers: Autocracy by Chris Metzen and Flint Dille
5. The Transformers Spotlight by Simon Furman
6. H. G. Wells in Love: Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography edited by G. P. Wells
7. H. G. Wells & Rebecca West by Gordon N. Ray
8. Reading for Our Time: Adam Bede and Middlemarch Revisited by J. Hillis Miller
9. The New Doctor Who Adventures: Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel

All books acquired:
1. Dashing Diamond Dick and Other Classic Dime Novels edited by J. Randolph Cox
2. On the Beach by Nevil Shute
3. Y: The Last Man: One Small Step by Brian K. Vaughan
4. Lilith's Brood by Octavia E. Butler
5. The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two edited by George Mann
6. Romeo and/or Juliet: a chooseable-path adventure by Ryan North and William Shakespeare and You
7. Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 1: Dawn by Yoshiki Tanaka
8. The History of Mr Polly by H. G. Wells
9. The Beth Book by Sarah Grand

Books on "To be read" list: 629 (down 2)
Books on "To review" list: 83 (down 13)