Books Read November 2022

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(R = Reread, B = Read To Wife At Bedtime)

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Fire Force, Vol. 5

Atsushi Ohkubo (Author)

It simply would not be a bullshit shonen series without a Long Lost Brother who is Mysteriously Alive and Working For The Bad Guys. And he’s got a cool sword and somehow feathers appear when he does stuff, despite not being Sephiroth even a little bit! What’s Shinra supposed to do, just kick his brother’s ass and go back to the fire station for chili? Well the first part definitely, yeah, the chili is optional but he needs to either put fiery foot to hinder or get filleted. But how do you beat a guy who can FREEZE TIME WITH FIRE SOMEHOW???

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Gideon The Ninth (R)

Tamsyn Muir (Author)

I already did a review of this back when I had a completely different format on an entirely different blogging platform! This read-through was preparatory for the then-just-released Nona The Ninth, in hopes that if I soaked myself in bone-madness and Ninth House nonsense I’d warm up that linguistic center of my brainmeats; turns out there’s absolutely no preparing for Nona, but this was still well worth re-reading because it’s goddamn delightful and, unsurprisingly, the most accessible of the Locked Tomb titles, and really yields additional treasures with subsequent readings.

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Ice Cream Man, Vol. 8: Subjects & Objects

W. Maxwell Prince (Author) Martin Morazzo (Artist) Chris O’Halloran (Artist)

I’m steering away from including screenshots with every entry, it just got to be an overwhelming amount of effort and time that damaged my desire to work on these, but ICM is one of the most consistently sinister and unpredictable series out there while still reserving the right to suckerpunch us with sincerity and defiant optimism, and I would be remiss to a criminal degree if I didn’t make an exception for it:

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Sensor

Junji Ito (Author)

Junji Ito, on the off chance that the gentle reader is unfamiliar, is recognized as one of the masters of horror manga (and also a big happy good-time goof), known perhaps most commonly for the goddamn nightmare that is The Enigma Of Amigara Fault, a short story (which can be read here in its entirety) about an earthquake revealing holes in the side of a mountain that are shaped like human bodies and cause all who see them to feel an irresistible urge to go in. Without spoiling, I will say that the urge should really be resisted if at all possible, gang.

Sensor is not about a mountain with holes in, it’s about a mountain with one hole in, and that hole contains lava. There is a phenomenon called volcanic hair (called Pele’s Hair in Hawai’ian culture) which, and I am not making this up, is basically cotton-candy made of lava turned back into stone when it cools. The volcanic hair. inthis village, however, is unusually colored and unusually…attached to the residents. Things do not get less creepy from there.

Junji is one of the jobbingest mangaka out there, which means he’s going to have a hit-and-miss average with more constituent integers than a lot of creators and I’d be lying if I said this was my favorite work of his (ya boi’s a big ol’ basic bitch sucker for Uzumaki), but if you appreciate a slow-burn mystery about a town with a terrible secret and a cult leader who may or may not be telling the truth about some pretty important things, Sensor is for you.

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Saga, Vol. 2 (R)

Vaughan (Author)  Fiona Staples (Artist)

So, do you like, pay a ghost babysitter? I mean, it feels like you should, right? But how would–where does she even bank? Washington Bootual?

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Saga, Vol. 3 (R)

Vaughan (Author)  Fiona Staples (Artist)

They say never to meet your heroes, and generally that’s good advice, but Alana and Marko are honestly kind of intergalactic dirtbag-romantics, and a hard-drinking, self-loathing author of philosophical erotica who claims that the board game, symphony, and illustrated children’s book are the only forms of high art is actually pretty much straight up their alley as fair as heroes go. Also he’s a cyclops. Also he lives in a decommissioned lighthouse, which is cool but must honestly be hell on the knees.

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Saga, Vol. 4 (R)

Vaughan (Author)  Fiona Staples (Artist)

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Saga, Vol. 5 (R)

Vaughan (Author)  Fiona Staples (Artist)

This is a great volume if you like the best character in the entire series dying! Wait, no, I guess that’s not true, Ghüs is okay. They know better than to hurt Ghüs. They’d fucking well better know. Also:

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Saga, Vol. 6 (R)

Vaughan (Author)  Fiona Staples (Artist)

Hazel goes to kindergarten! I’m sure the fact that she’s a living war crime will in no way impede her education re: shapes, the letters of the alphabet, and how to provide care for someone who just suffered massive cranial trauma. Wait, what.

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Saga, Vol. 7 (R)

Vaughan (Author)  Fiona Staples (Artist)

Remember that arc in Battlestar Galactica where they settled on New Caprica and Gaius Baltar elected himself King Shit and allowed their culture and society to stagnate into just scraping algae off of rocks to survive? Well this is kinda like that, except it’s good, and instead of letting an immigrant population waste away to nothing, Hazel and her mom and the guy who tried to kill them a whole bunch but seems to have shilled out some and her badass trans aunt that her grandma met in prison turn a vanishing native population of adorable but war-torn critters into a thriving, viable society that NOTHING BAD HAPPENS TO as long as I don’t finish the last issue in this volume.

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Fire Force, Vol. 6

Atsushi Ohkubo (Author)

Listen: there comes a time in every shark-toothed boy’s life when certain changes begin to take place; you get strange new muscles in your fingers that help you direct the flow of pyrokinetic energy through your phlogiston-pipes, you find that your old uniform doesn’t fit right anymore, and you may begin to sear blackened, smoldering footprints permanently into every surface you walk upon due to the development of your perfectly natural Adolla Burst. Or maybe Adolla Link? Maybe both? Unclear; I’ll be honest, I went to Christian school so this talk is already way more than I got, I had to learn about how to not accidentally transform into a horrific inferno-beast on the streets and from movies that gave me many of the wrong ideas.

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Fire Force, Vol. 7

Atsushi Ohkubo (Author)

Time to visit the weird uncle who avoids making eye contact and just fixes the stove and vacuum every time he comes over! It’s not weird that he has an elaborate system of tunnels under his workshop! Everybody knows those are great for the resale value, whether under a mechanic’s lab or a tacky McMansion!

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Saga, Vol. 8 (R)

Vaughan (Author)  Fiona Staples (Artist)

This volume deals with a truly heartbreaking topic: the loss of a child in-utero and being forced to carry it due to regressive bodily autonomy laws (and outlaw status), and it handles the subject with the trademark subtlety and delicacy we’ve come to expect from Vaughan and Staples:

I kid, I kid. I mean, that is literally the first page of the volume, but Saga gonna Saga, and there’s nothing it loves more than to suckerpunch us with bathos.
I can’t think of many–maybe any–other titles that could not only treat abortion with as much humanity as this one does for both the parents and siblings involved; Hazel has a pretty heartbreaking but wholesome conversation with the—time-ghost? Unclear—of her little brother, who was lost to Alana and Marko at the end of the previous volume.

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Black Hammer, Vol. 1: Secret Origins (R)

(⭐️⭐️⭐️ TOP MONTHLY RECOMMENDATION – COMIC ⭐️⭐️⭐️)

Jeff Lemire (Author)  Dean Ormston (Illustrator)

Sweet creamery BUTTER Black Hammer rules, jeepers though. And I know what you’re thinking: “ugh, do we need another superhero mythology, it is to barf”, and much as with My Hero Academia my reply is: “Look I get it, but in this case: you need this more than you need to remember where you left your keys.“
What Jeff Lemire has done here is look at what Western superhero comics has learned and achieved–and the mistakes it’s made–and started from the square one with the benefit of that experience, grounding the story in the characters (who are familiar and archetypal but unique and distinct) and their relationships so we know why we should give a shit about them before we’re asked to do so. Living all together on a farm with your teammates is weird! Being magically transformed into a superpowered child and unable to change back puts a real crimp in your dating life even if you’re already on that dating app for farmers! Uh excuse me, says the robot, at least you guys can go into town, even if it is just a diner and a vape shop, you don’t have to live in a barn, with straw all over the floor. Wait, says the raygun-gothic spaceman cut loose from time and the laws of physics, you guys get a floor?

Many comics writers, who bear no sin other than not being Jeff Lemire, have tried and failed to pull of the superhero deconstruction; Black Hammer is the genuinely great thing whose lesser cousins and imitators flood the market and obscure its significance by their well-meaning and still valid presence, like so many Chipotles concealing the taco truck whose 106 year old war criminal chef escaped execution by bamboozling his firing squad with bay leaves.

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Saga, Vol. 9 (R)

Vaughan (Author)  Fiona Staples (Artist)

“My name is Hazel. I started out as an idea, but I ended up something more.
Not much more, to be honest. It’s not like I grow up to become some great war hero or any sort of all important savior… but thanks to these two, at least I get to grow old.
Not everybody does.”

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Fire Force, Vol. 8

Atsushi Ohkubo (Author)

Look, brothers fight! It happens! One of the two wee goblins in my own human life whacked the shit out of the other just today with a Transformer (I believe it was HeatWave) for the crime of, and here I quote, “AWWIGATOR POOPY”, and I can guarantee that if they had feet that could spew flames or the ability to stop time somehow and also a bitchin’ sword, and had access to an abandoned tunnel system below a mechanic’s workshop, this is exactly what would happen.

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My Hero Academia, Vol. 2: Rage, You Damned Nerd

Kohei Horikoshi (Author)

Let’s go to Quirk-school! Let’s learn to use our powers! Let’s meet our classmates! Let’s get threatened by that asshole who followed us here from regular school! Let’s have a contest and expel the losers! Haha! Wait, what

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My Hero Academia, Vol. 3: All Might

Kohei Horikoshi (Author)

Okay listen: MAYBE, with the benefit of a hind’s sight, gathering literally every powered juvenile together at the same time WAS something of a giant “Villains Attack Here Please” sign. Anybody can figure that out after the fact! WHERE WERE YOU AND YOUR OBSERVATIONS WHEN THE KID WITH FROG POWERS AND THE KID WHO WAS A GIANT MAN-FLY GOT LINED UP NEXT TO EACH OTHER, OR WHEN THE KID WITH TAPE DISPENSERS IN HIS ARMS GOT TANGLED UP WITH THE KID WITH THICK, MANE-AND-TAIL-SLEEK HAIR OVER EVERY INCH OF HIS BODY.

(I only made ONE of those kids up!)

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Saga, Vol. 10

Vaughan (Author)  Fiona Staples (Artist)

This series is the Karen Eiffel of comics: it kills people, often suddenly, usually pointlessly, and always heartbreakingly. But it’s never the one you think it’s going to be, never anyone you think the story could possible survive without. Never someone you can imagine a version of this world without.

Oh also we meet some really cool shitty rock bands and Hazel gets hella like, Into Music, like you don’t get it, man.

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New Teeth: Stories (B)

(⭐️⭐️⭐️ TOP MONTHLY RECOMMENDATION – NON COMIC ⭐️⭐️⭐️)

Simon Rich (Author)

This was recommended to the listening public on an episode of Mangasplaining, which I am in turn recommending to you; if the winds be fair and Fortune winks upon us, one day they’ll recommend me and the cycle will be complete, and I’ll emerge as a butterfly or second-stage Pokemon or something. It was made immediately, brutally evident to me that this is my favorite kind of comedy: extremely smart and beautifully stupid at the same time, sneakily touching, and able to get its laughter-knives all the way around my shields before I realize I’ve guffawed to death, unavenged victim of the perfect crim.
Every story in this collection is related in some way to growth, whether it’s a pirate and his first mate maturing enough to co-parent a wee stowaway-girl, or a prince struggling to understand why the peasants don’t like being covered in shits and plagues, or a laserdisc player coming to accept that its time has come to an end despite its ability to play Backdraft with only three breaks for disc flips and switches, or a two-year-old hard-boiled detective growing out of his world-weariness to help his one-year-old sister of a dame despite his misgivings about her:

One of the beauties of Simon Rich is that the litmus test is pretty immediate; either you laughed so hard reading those that you startled your cat off the windowsill and they fell in your spaghetti, earning the nickname “Pink Panther”, or you didn’t. Proceed accordingly.

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Fire Force, Vol. 9

Atsushi Ohkubo (Author)

Still brothers fightin’ underground with swords and flame-throwing feet! Look it’s manga, you’re supposed to be able to drop in and out if you haven’t picked up an issue of Shonen Sunday or The Phone Book With Pictures in a while.

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Edgedancer: From The Stormlight Archives

Brandon Sanderson (Author)

So there’s this girl called Lift; she’s a Dickensian street-urchin rascal quite literally powered by food, and if her magic-plant babysitter doesn’t stop her she’s going to kill Death and eat his lunch, both metaphorically and non.
Edgedancer is a Stormlight Archives novella taking place at…some point???…in the series’ timeline and, like most things in these books that aren’t related to what’s happening to Kaladin/Shallan/Dalinar, you get the distinct impression that every event and person in this story is about something else entirely that may one day make sense, but is still entertaining enough in its own right to enjoy without that context.

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She-Hulk By Rainbow Rowell, Vol. 1: Jen, Again

Rainbow Rowell (Author)

I know three things about She-Hulk:

1. She’s been around and doing the No Fourth Wall bit since 1979, so the “why does everything have to acknowledge that women exist now” chuds can go suck a pinecone for more than the usual reasons
2. Her show is dope
3. This comic about her rules, see below

The whole “Jen, Again” premise, centering around her attempt to re-establish herself as a practicing lawyer and recalibrate her life, will reward those with some familiarity with her character and history, but is also a perfect jumping-on point that manages to convey some of her past (Titania showing up to beat the shit out of her) while also expressing her desire to move forward and not fall into old, destructive patterns (literally offering to start a fight club with Titania and other powered dames so they don’t have to do crimes to have fun punching each other).
Personally I thought Jen, Again was a terrible title before I read it; like Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, it smacked of “Oh uh, well, here’s more of the same, I guess”, but I was wrong! I love being wrong for this kind of reason.

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My Hero Academia, Vol. 3: The Boy Born With Everything

Kohei Horikoshi (Author)

GUESS WHAT ALL THE VILLAINS ARE STILL ATTACKING THE WEE HEROES’ FIELD DAY

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Still Alive: Graphic Reportage From Australia’s Immigration Detention System

(⭐️⭐️⭐️ TOP MONTHLY RECOMMENDATION – NONFICTION ⭐️⭐️⭐️)

Safdar Ahmed (Author)

Let’s get one thing straight: anti-immigrant sentiment is racist, period. Any talk about preserving “culture” or “way of life” or “national identity” is fundamentally rooted in “they are different from us and that makes them bad”. (Note that this is distinct from anti-colonialist sentiment, which is when you don’t want a militarily/economically advantaged country like Spain or England or fucking France to declare your country New Franspaingland at gunpoint.)

That said, as an American I have a deeply strange and myopic perspective on many subjects that are actually relevant worldwide but have exclusive, hyperspecific contexts for me that make me functionally illiterate when it comes to how these things happen in the rest of the world, and immigration is a great example of this. Do detainees on the U.S./Mexico border get to do art therapy and tell their stories? I have no idea, because all we’re allowed to hear about them is something something THEY’LL TAKE MAH JERB until a report comes out about rampant sexual abuse by guards, involuntary sterilization of detainees, and horrifying deaths by neglect.

Anyway, Still Alive is a heartbreaking and completely grounded look at why people try to come to Australia and what awaits them when they get there, if they get there. It’s not all dark–one of the key things about humans is that we can adapt and find a way to have a life almost anywhere, given time–but it also doesn’t shy away from what happens to people who get caught in a machine designed to sweep them under the rug.

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Babyteeth, Vol. 1 (R)

Donny Cates (Author) Garry Brown (Artist) Mike Marts (Editor)

It’s a tale as old as the hills: a young girl finds herself pregnant and afraid of how herlife has just been derailed, but fortunately she’s got the support of her family, which she’ll need both emotionally and to survive relentless pursuit by the cult that believes her baby is the antichrist and wants to kill her before she can bear him. Wait–no yeah that sounds right.

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Babyteeth, Vol. 2 (R)

Donny Cates (Author) Garry Brown (Artist) Mike Marts (Editor)

Hooboy, you think flying with a baby is bad? How about flying with a wee cambion who can only survive by drinking his mother’s blood and whose screams rattle the very harmonic superstructure of reality and open portals to Hell? THAT’S RIGHT, BUCKO: it’s about the same actually

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Babyteeth, Vol. 3: Cradle (R)

Donny Cates (Author) Garry Brown (Artist) Mike Marts (Editor)

WHOMST AMONG US hasn’t discovered at one point or another that our mother runs a counter-cult centered on protecting our maybe apocalyptic infant from a fortress-city beneath the earth? We all know this classic way! Personally I was more surprised when I found my mother’s hash pipe in her car, although I must admit it did explain a few things; the “I speak whale” bit in Finding Nemo wasn’t that funny.

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Babyteeth, Vol. 4: Grave

Donny Cates (Author) Garry Brown (Artist) Mike Marts (Editor)

Can you make a life in Hell? What do you call finding a way forward after the world ends? And perhaps most crucially but not as simply as one might think: can you trust the Devil?

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Rooster Fighter, Vol. 2

Shu Sakuratani (Author)

Listen, NOBODY is denying that Keiji is the most badass rooster this side of the Mason-Dixon, we’re merely suggesting that he could maybe use a little help organizing and strategizing in his attempts to defeat the horrifying demons manifesting from people’s darkest, suppressed desires. And if this help should happen to take the form of a kick-ass hen with a rechargeable stun-baton and a smartphone she can use to track monster sightings and communicate with humans? And if she was also raised by humans to be a proper little princess of a chicken? All the better. This book is insane and I love it.

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The Many Deaths Of Laila Starr

Ram V (Author) Filipe Andrade (Illustrator)

Gang Ram V is tearing it up over at DC with Swamp Thing, Detective Comics, and Aquaman, but I’m so glad we’re still getting weird, deeply personal one-off projects like this, in which Death gets laid off (#relatable) and sent to live a human life on Earth as part of her retirement package, only to be IMMEDIATELY killed and have to bum a new body off of a god that owes her a solid. It won’t happen again! It definitely won’t happen like six more times.
As Death keeps repeating this cycle of rebirth though, she begins to notice something, a constant: the man who made her redundant on the day he was born, because he’s the man who’s going to cure humankind of mortality, and has to decide if his achievement can outweigh the fact that–

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I Hate This Place, Vol. 1

Kyle Starks (Author) Artyom Topilin (Artist) Lee Loughridge (Artist)

You really hate to see it, but unfortunately this kind of thing happens all the time: a couple of married ladies move out to the country into a nice little farmhouse, but it turns out to be haunted/an alien hunting-ground/sentient and they are not allowed to leave, but they’re prepared to interrogate that presupposition with a vigorous application of the Shotgun Theorem.
This is another glorious insult to good taste from Kyle Starks, and so it reliably triumphs with regard to bonkers but natural dialogue, simply extraordinary violence, and horrific monstro-design, with the added benefit of a touching story about overcoming challenging new situations with your partner, especially when the challenge wants to eat and/or possess you. Hard recommend.

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Harley Quinn: The Animated Series: The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour, Vol. 1

Tee Franklin (Author) Max Sarin (Illustrator)

So, I did myself a disservice by assuming that I wouldn’t need any familiarity with the titular animated series to appreciate this; it’s still perfectly enjoyable and you can get your footing pretty quickly, but it’s very clearly bound to its show in a way that can be something of a barrier to entry.
That said, it’s also clear that if you enjoy one you’ll enjoy the other; Harley and Ivy are adorable and bonkers about each other and go through realistic new-relationship turbulence while also dealing with supervillain nonsense, the struggles of trying to be your best self for the one you love, and honestly the single most realistic depiction of Commissioner Gordon to ever appear onscreen or page:

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Hanging out and stealing all the limelight
Messing with the beat of my heart