96 dB

I'm a huge Joss Whedon fan based on the Buffy and Firefly franchises, and I was a fan of the Uncanny X-Men (and spinoffs Alpha Flight and The New Mutants) back in the early-to-mid-eighties, so I suspect that I liked Whedon's take on the X-Men more than your average Whedon fan.

It should come as no surprise to any of Joss's fans that he finds a way to make the heart of the story arc be one of the not-so-powerful female characters from the X-Men universe: Kitty Pryde. Her story here is more compelling than those of the other mutants, and Whedon succeeds at giving her a bit of depth. The story covers insanely wide ground over the course of the four "volumes", and the premise is absurd (though no more than is usual for superhero comics), but it's good fun.

You can tell that Alan Moore had a blast writing The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It takes place in an alternate universe where many of our most iconic and peculiar fictional characters (Mina (Murray) Harker, Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Dr. Jeckyll, the invisible man, etc.) are real, and the aforementioned characters (along with a few others) have banded together in the late 19th century as the ultimate crime-fighting team.

It's a fantastic romp through a lot of literature I haven't read, but it's great fun — probably moreso if you've read the source material.

Rising Stars is a lot like the TV-show "Heroes". The premise — a small number of individuals endowed with super powers by a celestial event — is the same (though JMS wrote this long before "Heroes" aired). Both series start out compellingly, and both fall apart in the middle act. JMS pulls things together with a reasonably satisfying conclusion, but the overall series suffers from too many characters and selective attention to the consequences of the superpowers.

This was fun, but not lasting.

I liked this a lot better than the Buffy Season 8 comics. Fray takes place far in the future, with the first slayer being called since Buffy herself. That slayer is Melaka Fray, and her slayerhood is complicated by her family and her watcher stand-in in ways that Buffy never experienced. The story is slight but complete, and I enjoyed it more than I expected to.

From Hell is thoroughly-researched historical speculative fiction, and it's a tremendous work of art. Jack the Ripper has been studied to death in the literature, and there isn't much consensus about the identity of the murderer. Moore has taken a recent theory (one of the more plausible ones in many ways) and woven it into a complex story of conspiracy that oozes with period authenticity. The extensive end notes reveal the details of Moore's scholarship, and highlight the intensive research that Campbell put into the artwork as well.

All though it is a work of scholarship, this graphic novel is also brutally adult. There are extensive scenes of graphic violence and sex, some of which border on being gratuitous. It is also hard to follow in places, though the end notes help considerably, and many of the confusing scenes become clear in retrospect after finishing the work.

For me, this surpasses V for Vendetta and Watchmen, and therefore is likely Moore's greatest work.

I have liked Thomas Pynchon in the past, but his latest novel left me completely cold. I didn't find the drug-addled hippie cast to be particularly interesting, and the plotting was nonsensical. Usually with Pynchon you can expect some clever wordplay on every page, but here the brilliant turns of phrase are too infrequent.

More Moore.

I didn't particularly get into the story here, but I very much enjoyed the layouts, especially the way that the artists used non-standard frames. I don't think I'll bother seeking out the subsequent volumes, but this was a fun read.

It's hard for me to judge this, having seen the movie (which I loved) first. The graphic novel is harder to follow than the film, but it does afford the opportunity to savor some of the better bits. I'm impressed by how well Moore and Lloyd were able to make it work with no "sound effects" and no narration. Masterfully done.

Daemon is a techno-thriller in the vein of Michael Crichton (i.e., fast-paced with minimal character development), but it has the distinction that nearly all of its technobabble is firmly rooted in today's reality. Suarez truly knows hacking, and this novel succeeds infinitely more-so than, for example, The Blue Nowhere.

I was a little bit disappointed that Daemon turns out to be the beginning of a series rather than a standalone novel. The ending is not completely satisfying, but it works better as a standalone than many.