The 1995 film Heat is one of my favorite movies of all time so I was both excited and scared to check this book out. Sequels to things you loved decadThe 1995 film Heat is one of my favorite movies of all time so I was both excited and scared to check this book out. Sequels to things you loved decades ago can go either way. For every totally awesome Top Gun: Maverick there’s an abomination like Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
So how did Heat 2 do? Much better than Afterlife, but not as well as Maverick.
Writer/director Michael Mann teamed up with veteran crime novelist Meg Gardiner to give us a story that is equal parts prequel and sequel. The story bounces between the '80s when professional thief Neil McCauley and his crew were pulling jobs while cop Vincent Hanna is desperately trying to stop another group of criminals conducting brutal home invasions that include rape and murder. The sequel thread that starts in 1995 involves one of the survivors of the original film trying to escape the cops and what happens in the subsequent years. An old loose end that ties the whole Heat story together eventually draws characters back into the same orbit, but none of them realize this at first.
As just a crime novel, this works pretty well. Mann knows how to do stories about heists, and there’s a couple of great ones in this. There’s interesting background information we learn about the characters that adds some depth to them. The dialogue hits as it did in the film so that when a character speaks, you can hear the actor who portrayed them in 1995 saying the lines. This is particularly true of Vincent Hanna where it's very easy to imagine a younger Al Pacino belting some of these out with his own brand of gusto.
The thing I thought didn’t work as well is what happens in the sequel portion when we jump forward to 2000. At this point the crime aspect isn’t about heists, it’s more about high tech black market computer gear with international organized crime.. That feels like it's borrowing elements from more recent Mann movies such as Blackhat or Miami Vice. There's interesting stuff here, but it felt like the book turned into something else then.
Also, there’s no getting around the fact that Mann is a filmmaker so a lot of his appeal is visual in nature. Yes, he can create great characters who speak snappy dialogue filled with a lot of cool lingo, and he and Gardiner set the scene well. But I felt myself longing to see the action play out on a big screen with amazing locations, a killer soundtrack, and Mann’s distinctive screen style rather than just reading it. It also leaves a lot left hanging so it’s not entirely satisfying to wait almost three decades for a follow up that still has more to come.
Still, more of this works than doesn’t, and I enjoyed it. It was a real treat to revisit this fictional world again. It’s 3.5 stars rounded up to 4....more
I can’t believe I drank 8 whiskey sours while reading this book!
It’s 1969 and former TV star Rick Dalton’s career is on a downhill slide while his neI can’t believe I drank 8 whiskey sours while reading this book!
It’s 1969 and former TV star Rick Dalton’s career is on a downhill slide while his next door neighbors, Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski, are the new cool kids of Hollywood. Meanwhile, Rick’s stuntman/driver Cliff Booth has a run in with some freaky hippies who keep talking about their leader, Charlie.
This one is a real oddity. You’ve got the writer/director of a successful movie releasing a novel based on it, but the book doesn’t exactly follow the film. In fact, the climax of the movie is casually revealed about one-third of the way through the book as something that eventually happens without going into details or mentioning it again.
I’ve often thought that Quentin Tarantino’s films are kind of Rorschach tests in that people can and will read into them what they want. While he certainly deserves criticism for several things, and I often find his personality tiresome, his movies fascinate me. Particularly this one which I thought was one of his best and had really interesting themes about a time when Hollywood was both changing and remaining the same. I also thought it had a lot of intriguing things regarding movie violence vs. violence in reality. Since I had a lot of theories about what QT was actually saying about it, I enjoyed finding more details in the book that seemed to confirm that. Especially about Cliff Booth.
If you’re into the movie, it’s worth a look, but you’re also not really missing out on anything if you just want to stick to the film version. If you don’t like QT or the film, it’s not gonna change your mind. Overall, it’s kind of like a literary version of deleted scenes. They can be interesting, but were most likely cut for a reason....more
This is a set of pretty good Star Wars stories that was completely ruined for me by the art. It’s not even all the art, it’s just one particular aspecThis is a set of pretty good Star Wars stories that was completely ruined for me by the art. It’s not even all the art, it’s just one particular aspect of it. So more’s the pity.
Apparently Salvador Larocca used photorealistic style on the major character’s faces so he did some kind of tracing off actual pictures of the actors and then these were colored in tones to make them look more like photographs, not drawings. The results at times look like a child scissored out the faces of the actors from magazine photos and then glued them into Star Wars comics.
What’s even weirder is that I could at least understand why it’s done for people like Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams. But at one point the same thing is used for a random Imperial officer who is in a few panels so then I’ve got some strange dude’s face stuck into my Star Wars comic. Why was this necessary?
It looks sooooo awful that it immediately took me out of all the stories it was used in which was too bad because there was some interesting plots here, especially the one about R2-D2 going on a one-droid rescue mission to save C-3PO after he’s been captured. That’s the only reason I didn’t give this one star....more
Luke Skywalker is still trying to find a way to become a Jedi, and rogue archaeologist Doctor Aprhra has a crystal containing the essence of an ancienLuke Skywalker is still trying to find a way to become a Jedi, and rogue archaeologist Doctor Aprhra has a crystal containing the essence of an ancient Jedi Master. Aphra has a plan to see a mysterious queen who receives visitors only once a year and will grant a favor to unique life forms. Since Luke is crazy strong with the Force, Aphra believes he’ll catch the queen’s eye, and she will help them unlock the crystal. Despite Aprhra’s previous employment with Darth Vader and their less than friendly previous encounter Luke is so desperate to gain knowledge about the Jedi that he agrees to go along with her.
Because what could possibly go wrong with teaming up with someone who has a history of double crossing every one she deals with at a place called The Screaming Citadel?
This is another entertaining story that blends the nostalgia of the original Star Wars trilogy with the best of this new Marvel line with Doctor Aphra and her companions. There’s a lots of good action, funny banter, and a pretty creepy storyline about what the queen is actually up to. It's nothing next-level great, but it's a solid Star Wars story....more
Shady space archaeologist Doctor Aphra has finally managed to quit working for Darth Vader without ending uA long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….
Shady space archaeologist Doctor Aphra has finally managed to quit working for Darth Vader without ending up dead. Now along with her two murderous droids and the fierce Wookie bounty hunter Black Krrsantan she’s just trying to find precious artifacts to sell so she can pay off debts she owes. However, her business plan gets delayed when her archaeologist credentials are revoked thanks to a person from her past. To get back in business Aphra will have to outwit Imperial forces and track down the mythical resting place of an ancient sect related to the Jedi.
Aphra is the best new creation in these Star Wars comics, and this title focusing on her was a lot of fun. My major gripe about this line of Marvel comics has been that by setting it between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back and concentrating on the major players from the movies that it's impossible to do real drama or tell us a story of importance since we already know how it all ends. By doing this we get to follow exciting new characters in the familiar universe without knowing what comes next.
It’s also liberating to get a story about a genuine scoundrel who has no allegiance to the Rebellion or the Empire. Aphra is solely out for herself doing her own thing which provides the opportunity to introduce other characters and concepts we haven’t seen before. Plus, she’s just an entertaining character as an anti-hero surviving by her wits and stubbornness. And her droids really want to torture and murder people which I continue to find hilarious....more
If this is love then I’d hate to see the Russian idea of hate.
The Soviets have suffered several espionage losses so they decide to run an elaborate opIf this is love then I’d hate to see the Russian idea of hate.
The Soviets have suffered several espionage losses so they decide to run an elaborate operation in which they’ll kill British agent James Bond in such a way that will embarrass all of English intelligence. The two big pieces of cheese in this mousetrap are a code machine used by the Russians and a beautiful code clerk named Tatiana Romanova who doesn’t realize what kind of pawn she actually is. Will Bond take the bait? Well, he is James Bond, and did I mention that that Tatiana is a beautiful woman? Yeah, take a guess how this goes.
I’m a big fan of Bond on film and generally like those a lot more than the Fleming novels I’ve tried. With this one being the basis for one of the best Bond movies I didn’t find anything to change my mind about that. Bond is usually a bastard in both forms, but there’s something even worse and apt to make me roll my eyes in the way that he’s even more of a privileged sexist bigot on the page then any time on screen.
Plus, the structure of this novel is just weird. It’s only 191 pages, but Bond doesn’t show up until halfway through it. Instead we spend a lot of time getting all the details about how the Soviets came up with this plan. Even when Bond finally appears we get a long segment about how he’s been bored at the office and what his domestic life is like when he's not killing people or having sex. Another problem is that since we’ve been told in detail exactly what trap awaits Bond there’s not a lot of mystery for the reader even when 007 is trying to figure it out.
Although to be fair, the movie also lays out the plan, but there it’s done much more quickly so that Bond gets involved much sooner. In fact, the basic plot beats from the book are used in the film, but the film did a better job of pacing and adding action to the mix. Since I do like the movie a lot I guess that means the basic plot works as long as it moves briskly.
Still, it is one of the classic Bond stories, and there is some charm to this including some spy vs. spy games in Turkey. It also has a top notch thug in the form of Red Grant, a psychopath from the United Kingdom who defected to Russia and became their chief executioner. If there was more of him in here I think I would have liked it more....more
It’s the early ‘50s and British intelligence is worried about unusual activity in Marseille’s underworld so they send one of their elite agents to cheIt’s the early ‘50s and British intelligence is worried about unusual activity in Marseille’s underworld so they send one of their elite agents to check it out, but 007 is murdered. His replacement? A young man named Bond. James Bond.
Anthony Horowitz already wrote one retro Bond novel based on some unused Ian Fleming material with Trigger Mortis. Here, he takes us even further back to give us the story of Bond’s first mission after earning his license to kill. Bond finds himself trying to unravel a dastardly scheme as he encounters colorful characters like a morbidly obese Corsican mob leader, a wealthy American businessman, and beautiful ex-British agent who has become a major player by running her own freelance espionage business. Along the way Bond does a little gambling while wearing a tuxedo, drinks some martinis, has a bunch of sex, and kills some people. So Bond got a pretty good idea of what his job would be like early on.
Bond fans will find a lot to like here, especially those whose favorite film version is Sean Connery because that’s the vibe Horowitz is going for. As in Trigger Mortis he cleverly skirts the problem of Bond coming across as a dated jerk by leaning into it and actually having Bond be a dated jerk in many ways. The thing that makes it tolerable is that he’s usually called out for it so it still lets Bond be the classic bastard he usually is without feeling like his behavior is being excused.
So you’ve got all the classic elements in an action filled story that provides an old school origin story. It’s a good dose of Bond to fill the time until the next movie finally gets made....more
I was in the middle of reading this volume when I the news broke that Chris Pine is not going to do the next movie so now I’m left wondering if these I was in the middle of reading this volume when I the news broke that Chris Pine is not going to do the next movie so now I’m left wondering if these comics are the only new stories I’m going to get set in this version of Star Trek. It’s like 1969 all over again! Except I guess I still have Discovery. And this new show that they announced with Patrick Stewart coming back as Picard. OK so it’s not all gloom and doom as far as the future of the Federation goes.
This is another pretty solid volume. It relies less on retelling new versions of the TOS stories, and that makes it more interesting. There’s one decent arc that plays off the fall out of the first two movies that involves Section 31. Then there’s several other shorter side adventures that would all make pretty good episodes like the Enterprise itself being given a humanoid form after an encounter with advanced alien tech. My favorite involves a crossover to an alternate universe in which the entire crew has been gender swapped so that we get to see Captain James T. Kirk meet Captain Jane T. Kirk. (And no, they don’t have sex although I’m pretty sure they were both thinking about it.)
Getting away from just retelling the TOS adventures and building off the alternate timeline helps this a lot, and the writers are coming up with some fun new ideas that feel like Trek stories. ...more
The new/old adventures of the starship Enterprise continue…
The focus in this volume is mainly on filling in the backstory of many of the supporting chThe new/old adventures of the starship Enterprise continue…
The focus in this volume is mainly on filling in the backstory of many of the supporting characters although there’s still some re-telling of classic TOS stories in the Abrams timeline along with it. Most of it’s OK, but nothing that’d breach anyone’s warp core. The one I enjoyed most was about Keenser, the little alien that is Scotty’s pal in engineering.
The odd thing here is that even though this is a thick volume with a dozen issues of the main comic that several of the stories are based on other spin-off projects that aren’t included, and there’s little explanation provided as to the background. So even though I’ve read both volumes so far I was clueless on some things about Kirk dealing with some crooked Starfleet guy who was in some Into Darkness side story they did. And I apparently missed them meeting the Gorn race for the first time. Which is just wrong. If I’m reading a rebooted Star Trek line of comics you gotta give me that Gorn intro! ...more
But which one? ‘Cause you’ve got the original Enterprise from TOS, then came the renovated one in theThese are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
But which one? ‘Cause you’ve got the original Enterprise from TOS, then came the renovated one in the first couple of movies. But that one got blowed up real good so then we had the Enterprise-A. Of course there’s Next Generations which had the Enterprise-D and E versions. Oh, and we got to see the Enterprise-B and C, too. Then there’s the Enterprise from the prequel series of the same name. So exactly which Enterprise are we talking about here? Kirk’s original Enterprise? Cool! Wait, it’s the one from the rebooted Abrams timeline though….
This is why nerds eventually lose their minds.
So yeah, this is a comic that takes place after the events of the 2009 Star Trek reboot featuring a young Captain Kirk and his original crew, and a lot of the stories are retellings of TOS like Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Galileo Seven, and The Return of the Archons. The twist is that since we’re in an alt-timeline things play out differently than the original versions.
This is a tricky proposition. If you don’t change things enough then you’re just doing a boring pointless remake. If you change to much then you risk messing with something that fans might feel very strongly about. (Into Darkness ran into this when they tried to do another version of the Khan storyline.)
Overall, these are pretty fun that come up with interesting changes based on the way things have already been shifted because of the events of the first movie. For example, McCoy isn’t in the episode Where No Man Has Gone Before but here he’s already on the ship so his presence changes how it all goes even if much of it is still familiar. The Return of the Archons takes this even further because it seems like even the backstory of the events there are altered which would have taken place long before the timeline was changed. So that’s the writer essentially rebooting a piece of Trek history which is then used to set up a whole new plot thread going forward. Their version of The Trouble With the Tribbles also happens very differently, and there’s another story that’s entirely new and based off the events of the first movie so they aren’t just doing updates of old stuff.
The artwork is very good and really helps sell all this. They’ve got the look and feel of the new cast and Enterprise down exactly, and then they introduce other cool sci-fi action. A comic book adaptation is never going to be as satisfying as the move or TV show its based on, but this one does provide some fun supplemental action if you liked the Abrams version of the characters. (And if you don’t, I really don't want to hear about it.)...more
I’m new to the world of Twin Peaks, but as someone who holds advanced nerd degrees I’m familiar with a lot of franchises that have decades of continuiI’m new to the world of Twin Peaks, but as someone who holds advanced nerd degrees I’m familiar with a lot of franchises that have decades of continuity, intricate histories, and scores of characters who have gone through extreme story arcs. Yet, I think Twin Peaks is the only one that could release a short tie-in book that seems like it’s just filling in some story gaps until the very end when it drops a couple of revelations that made me reexamine what I assumed I knew about the story all over again.
Damn, and when I started watching the old show on Netflix last summer I thought it was about solving the mystery of who killed one girl...
OK, just to recap. The series ran for only two seasons back in the early ‘90s. A prequel movie was done after that, and then 25 years later the show returned with 18 episodes that seem not just about a surreal battle between epic forces of good and evil, but also what I thought to be a slyly brilliant meta-commentary on TV as well as the nostalgia driving the resurrection of old shows. The previous tie-in book, The Secret History of Twin Peaks, was released before its return and functioned as a set-up for it. The Final Dossier is about wrapping up some of the loose ends and acts as a kind of afterword to the series.
Following the style of Secret History the story is told in a series of FBI reports from Special Agent Tammy Preston to Deputy Director Gordon Cole that recaps and sorta explains what happened. (Or at least as much explanation as we’re likely to officially get.) It also fills in the gaps about what happened to many of the original characters as well as what occurred after the events of the last of the new episodes.
What’s interesting is that a Twin Peaks viewer sometimes knows more than Agent Preston so when she has a question we often know the answer. So it’s like even though the FBI has some pieces of the puzzle only someone who watched Twin Peaks, not any of its characters, is in a position to see the whole picture. Understanding that picture is a whole different story. Probably only David Lynch and Mark Frost could do that, and it sounds like they’ve said all they have to say on the subject.
I was slightly disappointed in this until the ending. Secret History did similar things but was also telling us a story we didn’t know at all as well as having its own central mystery to solve. This seemed only to exist as a way to tell us all the things the show didn’t have time to get into. There’s also a depressing similarity to many of the characters’ fates. What happened on the show 25 years ago seemed to have tainted almost everyone, and there’s damn few happy endings. The best that many of them managed was to maintain the status quo with their lives not getting any worse.
It also seems to go out of its way to correct a mistake in Secret History with a weird and unlikely story about how that book said that Norma’s mother had died before the show started even though there’s a whole sub-plot with her and her living mother in the original series. However, it’s odd that Frost goes to such links to correct that gaffe here when there are several other continuity errors and contradictions that aren’t addressed. (e.g. The story of how Big Ed and Nadine came to be married is nothing like how Big Ed describes it on the show.)
So it seemed like this was simply a bit of extra material to answer the questions of hard core fans, but that it hadn’t even been particularly well-researched or thought out. That’s when the last few chapters kicked me in the head with a very important bit of follow-up on the impact of one of the last big events in the return episodes, and then came a revelation that pretty much blew my mind and changed my perception about a whole facet of the entire series. (It’s possible that a more dedicated Twin Peaks fan may have twigged to this before I did, but it certainly doesn’t seem like information that the series gave us.)
I’m not entirely sure that I like the idea of dropping something that seems so crucial in a follow-up book rather than putting it in the series itself, but nothing is easy or straight-forward when it comes to Twin Peaks. The entire show is begging to be picked apart and analyzed with layer after layer of themes and meaning examined so it doesn’t seem like that much of a cheat that one nugget was held back and tossed out later.
This would have exactly zero appeal to anyone who hasn’t the show, and it’d be pretty confusing if you haven’t read Secret History either. But for those who have it does provide a lot of interesting extras to think about.
Fair warning: Any untagged spoilers about the show in the comments will be deleted....more
I read this while enjoying a piece of cherry pie and a cup of damn good black coffee after installing my silent drape runners. And lemme tell you abouI read this while enjoying a piece of cherry pie and a cup of damn good black coffee after installing my silent drape runners. And lemme tell you about this crazy dream I had last night. I was in this room with red curtains….
OK, those are the obvious references, but I’m new to Twin Peaks fandom so cut me some slack. Honestly, I’ve always been kind of fascinated by David Lynch’s work, but I struggled mightily with it because I’m the kind of person who needs the story to make some kind of sense at the end of the day. So Lynchian style dream logic just isn’t my bag.
Or at least it didn’t used to be until all the hype about the return of Twin Peaks got my curiosity up enough to finally work my way through the two seasons of the original show after and the prequel movie Fire Walk With Me. Something clicked for me this time with the whole story about the murder of high school girl in this weird town even if that second season is a real slog at times. And I was utterly transfixed and mesmerized with the return to it over 25 years later. So that’s how I ended up reading this, and as you’d expect from show co-creator Mark Frost even a tie-in book couldn’t be simple.
This came out before the return of the show, and it’s obviously meant to fill in some gaps and lay groundwork. The concept is that what we’re reading is a file compiled by a mysterious archivist who proceeds to link the town of Twin Peaks and the stories of some of its residents to a vast conspiracy that stretches back to the days of the Lewis and Clark expedition. In fact, it’s like a Grand Unified Theory of Conspiracy Theories that includes pretty much everything from Freemasons to Roswell to the JFK assassination along with references to real people like Thomas Jefferson, Richard Nixon, and L. Ron Hubbard.
The impressive thing here is how well this is done so that it actually doesn’t seem that batshit crazy if you’ve seen the show. The structure is particularly interesting in that it’s an epistolary novel using a variety of sources ranging from newspaper accounts to top secret government documents with notes from the archivist which connect the dots. Another layer to this is that we’re actually supposed to be reading this as a report from a FBI agent (One who becomes a character in the new season.) who is vetting the file and adding her own comments and notes to what the archivist is saying as well as trying to figure out his identity.
If you were only reading this to get questions answered from the show then it might be frustrating because while there are sections that deal with the familiar characters a great deal is just about this wide ranging conspiracy about UFOs. Sort of.
The main link is that we learn that a minor character from the original run of the show actually had a whole secret life tied into this vast conspiracy which also connects it all back to the town and its citizens. By the end it all comes full circle so that it makes sense. (Or as much sense as anything in Twin Peaks ever does.) It was probably slightly confusing to anyone who hadn’t seen the last season before reading, but as a companion piece to the entire show I found it extremely compelling.
One thing that I’m scratching my head over is that it seems to have some monumental continuity errors. Especially in the story of how Big Ed lost his true love Norma and ended up marrying crazy Nadine instead. Again, I’m no expert, but this seems wildly different then the story Big Ed told on the show back in the day.
On the other hand, the tale this time is being relayed by another character, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Frost wasn’t doing something tricky here that’s a commentary on how history changes depending on who’s telling it which would be a sly wink as to how much we can trust anything that’s in this book. Or maybe he just screwed up. It’s Twin Peaks so we’ll probably never know for sure, but that’s part of what makes it all so intriguing....more
Anybody know how to hotwire an Imperial Star Destroyer?
Rebellion sympathizers on a planet are being starved out by the Empire. Luke and Leia hatch a pAnybody know how to hotwire an Imperial Star Destroyer?
Rebellion sympathizers on a planet are being starved out by the Empire. Luke and Leia hatch a plan to hijack a Star Destroyer so they can use the massive ship to run the blockade and bring relief supplies to them. Stealing the ship turns out to be the easy part as they try to run the damaged vessel with a minimal crew, and an elite squad of Stormtroopers led by Sgt. Kreel have a plan to take the ship back and capture some valuable prizes in the process. Along with that we get another tale from the journal of Ben Kenobi about how he once faced the Wookie bounty hunter Black Krrsantan and lived to tell about it.
Kind of a mixed bag here. The idea of the good guys space jacking a Star Destroyer is a cool one, and that story has a lot of great stuff although I question going to all the trouble of stealing an Imperial ship and not doing anything other than using it for anything other than a battering ram. It’s also fun to see a young Leia, Han, and Luke doing regular-degular missions for the Rebels. My favorite part of the collection was the side story about Kreel’s squad of Stormtroopers taking out a city occupied by Rebels forces because we get to see somebody in the Empire besides Darth Vader be good at their jobs for a change.
The problems once again come when because these are prequels and so we know how things ultimately turn out as well as that certain things can’t happen. The worst of this is the Kenobi story because once again he’s trying to do stuff on Tatooine without giving away that he’s a Jedi because we KNOW that he just hid out there on the down low while Luke was growing up. That’s extremely limiting. The other thing I didn’t care for was all the bickering between Han and Leia because we all know that it’s because they’re in love, but they can’t acknowledge it because it doesn’t happen until Empire Strikes Back so we’re stuck in this zone which even one character acknowledges is extremely irritating.
There’s good stuff here, but just the nature of when this story takes place kind of handcuffs the whole thing....more
The idea of giving us a story about Yoda back in the day sounds OK, but there’s two problems with the execution of it here. First, thGood this is not.
The idea of giving us a story about Yoda back in the day sounds OK, but there’s two problems with the execution of it here. First, the story seems more like one of those stinker episodes from the third season of the original Star Trek then Star Wars. Yoda goes to a planet destroyed by war with two primitive tribes still battling, and he uncovers a secret involving weird alien lifeforms. That really seems like something Jim Kirk should be doing, not Yoda.
The second problem is the inherent limit of doing prequel stories that this series keeps bumping its head against. Getting a solo Yoda adventure could be OK if it was a better story. But by using the framing device of Luke just after the events of A New Hope reading this in Obi-Wan’s journal means things have to get wonky because Luke doesn’t meet Yoda until Empire Strikes Back. So the text only describes Yoda as a ‘Jedi Master’ to explain how Luke could read a story about him but still not know his name.
And it’s just silly because why would Kenobi, who refers to Yoda as just ‘Master Yoda’ in the prequel movies, be so cryptic in this journal? It’s the things like this or having Luke fight Boba Fett but be blinded so he doesn’t recognize him later that highlight the limitations of trying to do a prequel that frequently relies on fan service rather than trying to actually do interesting things we haven’t seen before.
Which is why the second story here is much better because it involves Princess Leia being injured on a mission, and she has to be hidden by a woman who has suffered because of the war between the Empire and the Rebellion. Some good points get made about how Leia is responsible for a whole bunch of people dying, and she could be seen as a zealot who only cares about the cause, not the consequences.
The main Yoda story would be 1 star, but a solid character piece about Leia and great art work get it up to 2....more
This marks the end of the run for these Darth Vader comics, but all good things must come to an end…. Uh, I mean Darth Vader isn’t good, of course. GuThis marks the end of the run for these Darth Vader comics, but all good things must come to an end…. Uh, I mean Darth Vader isn’t good, of course. Guy’s a Sith Lord after all. But this was a generally good title so I’m sad to see it go.
This provides a satisfying end to the plot, and overall it ends up being a solid story of what kind of shenanigans Vader was up to in between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. It also provides some interesting context to his relationship to the Emperor as well as how he reacted to finding out that he had a son. It doesn’t succeed as well at making us sympathize with Vader despite some attempts to give us a glimpse into what the guy behind the mask is feeling.
It’s worth reading for the murderous droids Triple-Zero and Beetee who are the best part of the series, and this features a side adventure they have that also functions as the origin story of how two robots ended up so blood thirsty....more
Darth Vader is diverted from his secret agenda of tracking down Luke Skywalker when the Emperor sends him on a miDon’t ever ask a Sith Lord to dance.
Darth Vader is diverted from his secret agenda of tracking down Luke Skywalker when the Emperor sends him on a mission to put down a budding rebellion on a mining planet of critical importance.
This doesn’t advance the core plot that’s been driving this series, but it is a pretty cool side story in which we get to see Vader be a total bad ass as he asserts Imperial authority. One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about the story gaps these comics are filling in between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back is how the destruction of the Death Star caused a whole bunch of problems for the Empire and how Vader is used as the Emperor’s main trouble shooter.
The best part continues to be the evil droids 000 and BT-1 who delight in the chance to kill a whole lot of ‘meaty masters’ in the midst of the conflict. It’s probably a preview of how robots will soon rise up to murder us all, but for now they’re a homicidal delight to read....more
While I was in the middle of reading this one news broke that Carrie Fisher had suffered a heart attack so that added a certain bittersweet flavor to While I was in the middle of reading this one news broke that Carrie Fisher had suffered a heart attack so that added a certain bittersweet flavor to a story that focuses heavily on Princess Leia. It also provided further evidence for the case against 2016 when we finally haul it into court for its crimes against humanity.
Leia’s part involves her delivering an important Imperial prisoner to a secret Rebel prison and being caught there when a mysterious man attacks the jail. Meanwhile, Han and Luke are off on a supply run which gets complicated, there’s a single issue story about what Obi-Wan was up to on Tatooine while waiting for Luke to grow up, and the first annual has an off-shoot story about a Rebel spy on Coruscant. (If you’re reading these as single issues from the Marvel Unlimited app you should check that one out first.)
Overall, this is still a fun and solid set of Star Wars stories in which Jason Aaron and the other creators continue to fill the gap between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back and do a pretty good job of it. Since we know how things shake out they can't generate much tension regarding the main characters, but there’s a lot of interesting turns here. My favorite part was learning that Han Solo was literally a nerf herder for a brief time....more
I was hoping that this new line of comics set in the Star Wars universe would fulfill their official Marvel crossover quota simply by a set of intercoI was hoping that this new line of comics set in the Star Wars universe would fulfill their official Marvel crossover quota simply by a set of interconnected tales set between the two first movies. Aren’t we crossing the streams enough already?
But this is Marvel which means that much like the sun rising in the east tomorrow there had to be a story going through a couple of books at some point. So if you want to follow along with this one you have to read issues of the main Star Wars title as well as Darth Vader, and there’s a one-shot called Vader Down that you have to get also.
Fortunately, this one actually does take on-going story threads from both and tie some things together in a way that makes it all worth it. Darth Vader is still on his secret personal mission to track down Luke Skywalker and get all those Father’s Day presents he missed out on over the years. So he follows a lead that his minion Aphra came up with that Luke was checking out an old Jedi temple. When Vader arrives in orbit he discovers that he’s actually found a new Rebel base, and while the ole Sith Lord inflicts some major damage he eventually gets knocked out of the sky by his ingrate son.
Realizing that they have a chance to deal a huge blow to the Empire by capturing or killing Vader the Rebels send a small army after his crashed ship, but Vader starts killing a whole lot of their soldiers using only his trusty light saber and the Force even as he’s still determined to find Luke who also crash landed. Meanwhile, Han, Leia, and the rest of the gang all get sucked into the action as Aphra attempts to save Vader.
One of the best things about this book is the way that it firmly establishes exactly why the galaxy fears Darth Vader so much. Simply put, he is a bad ass. The way he just absolutely slaughters waves of Rebel forces is really well done in terms of showing how powerful, resourceful, clever, and downright murderous Vader is. The rest of the story provides a lot of pay off by having Aphra and her murderous droids finally meet up with the rest of the characters, and there’s a lot of very fun stuff there including R2-D2 and 3PO tangling with the evil robot versions of themselves.
The only problem is the same one that dogs all of these comics. By setting them between the first two movies it robs some of the inherent drama from the proceedings. We know that none of the major characters die or that Vader doesn’t capture Luke or that Luke doesn’t find out Vader is his father yet. So there’s a pretty hard cap on the drama although the writers make the most out of mining the tension of what we don’t know, like how the Emperor will finally find out who destroyed the Death Star or what happens to Aphra.
It's an entertaining Star Wars tie-in, but ultimately it just can’t have all that much of an impact to the core storyline even as it keeps flirting with it....more
You gotta admire Joe Lansdale’s gumption. If you write one short crazy-ass horror novel about an entire Texas drive-in filled with people being trappeYou gotta admire Joe Lansdale’s gumption. If you write one short crazy-ass horror novel about an entire Texas drive-in filled with people being trapped in the limbo of an endless night that devolves into a frenzy of violence and cannibalism that pales in comparison to the horrors unleashed in it by the supernatural Popcorn King, then most writers might put their pencils down and not try to follow it up. So how do you top that madness? Easy. Add in some dinosaurs!
Three survivors of the first story leave the ruins of the drive-in only to find that the highway now leads through a prehistoric wilderness complete with the occasional T. Rex sighting. After some traveling and recuperating they eventually run across a woman named Grace who also lived through the terror of the never ending movie marathon but met something even worse afterwards in the guise of a deranged guy whose head has been turned into a television and calls himself Popalong Cassiday.*
* It'd been a long while since I read this, and I'd completely forgotten about Popalong Cassiday. Now I'm wondering if Brian K. Vaughan might have drawn inspiration from this for his robots with televisions for heads in Saga.
Grace is determined to return to the drive-in and stop him, and the guys agree because one of them has the hots for her and real friends don’t let a buddy go alone to confront a psychopathic guy with a TV for a head while trapped in an episode of Land of the Lost. I’m pretty sure that’s in the Guy Code somewhere, or if it’s not, it should be. Anyhow, hilarity ensues.
Like the first Drive-In this bizarre set-up sounds like it might be something meant to be comedy-horror, and there are some good laughs since Lansdale can create dialogue and descriptions to make the most awful of people, events, and circumstances funny. However, despite the goofy premises both books have a seriously dark streak of nihilism and misanthropy. The ending is a bit anti-climatic by design with Lansdale deliberately trying to stand a lot of the tropes of TV and movies on their heads. There’s a real anger and ugliness lurking just below the surface of these books, and that makes them interesting.
However, I liked this one slightly less than the first one because there the story begins with the normality of a bunch of people going to the movies and then descends into chaos. Here, the story starts off as crazy town banana pants, and then tries to take that up a notch. Once you’ve shown that people are shit who will cheerfully shed the thin veneer of civilization in the midst of a bizarro meat grinder then it’s really hard to make that any worse although Lansdale gives it a mighty effort.
It’s still a short and disturbing horror novel that will make you laugh at inappropriate times, and I’m curious to get to the third book to see how it gets wrapped up....more
With a new Hap & Leonard book out and the TV series based on their adventures coming soon it seems like Lansdale Fever is sweeping Goodreads these dayWith a new Hap & Leonard book out and the TV series based on their adventures coming soon it seems like Lansdale Fever is sweeping Goodreads these days. I blame Dan for infecting me with this particular strain of the virus.
I’d read the first two parts of The Drive-In saga way back in the ‘90s when I first discovered the Champion Mojo Storyteller, but I’d forgotten most of the story and never even gotten around to checking out the third installment. Then Dan spread his contagion all over the place, and I found myself rediscovering the gruesomeness of the Popcorn King all over again. Thanks a lot, Dan!
During the late ‘80s in Texas four young men head out to the local drive-in where they plan to spend the night watching a horror movie marathon. In the middle of their films a comet with a smile roars by, and the entire drive-in is suddenly surrounded by an inky darkness that dissolves anyone who tries to leave. With no other options the trapped patrons watch the movies over and over in an endless night as the food starts to run out. That’s when things get even weirder and more horrible.
This is a very short book, and that’s a good thing because I don’t think spinning the concept out much longer than 150 pages would actually work. (Although I’m sure Stephen King would have taken a 700 or 800 page swing at it if he would have thought of this idea first.) What really sells it is that Lansdale quickly provides the details that ground things in reality among the most mundane circumstances of people going to the movies before unleashing the batshit craziness. Then he uses the most terrible of creatures, human beings, to set the stage for the real horror show which becomes a gory supernatural B-movie spectacle.
Lansdale mainly uses two characters to represent different points of view. Our narrator Jack holds the desperately hopeful belief that there is some inherent goodness and meaning in humanity’s existence, but the counterpoint is his buddy Bob who operates under the basic assumptions that people are just bastard covered bastards with bastard filling and that believing in anything other than yourself is a waste of time. This is pretty much the same dynamic that defines the soft-hearted Hap and the pragmatic Leonard so you can almost see Jack and Bob as an early trial run at those two characters.
The part that really got to me this time was that period before things really go sideways when everyone is just stuck watching the movies over and over again while living off concession stand hotdogs and popcorn. While drive-ins were pretty much dead in my area by the time I was a teenager I’ve attended some movie marathons, and I think Lansdale really nailed that weird dreamy limbo state that sets in if you spend hour after hour staring at a screen in a theater as you shove popcorn or candy into your mouth.
Like most things Lansdale it’s got some funny stuff mixed in with some sharp edges that unsuspecting readers might cut themselves on. Overall, it’s weird and gory in ways that are different than most horror stories you’d read, but it’s also got an ugliness to it that definitely cuts into the fun factor you might expect from something this bizarre. ...more
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