Year In Review: 2020 By The Numbers

As is ritual at this point, here’s my media round-up for 2020: what I wrote, what was published, and what I read, listened to, and watched.

WRITING

Similar to last year, not much to report on this front. 2020 was again not a good year for creating new content. I didn’t track what little fiction writing I managed to do – but I know there were far more days where I didn’t write than there were days I wrote. I’m considering it another “recharging” year, as I consumed and processed a lot of wonderful (and not-so-wonderful) books, television, movies, and “live” (via Zoo) theatre. The writing I did manage was mostly work on previous unfinished short stories, or non-fiction like book reviews and blog posts.

PROOFREADING/COPY-EDITING

I did a fair about of proofreading and copy-editing this year. In addition to my usual gig at Lightspeed Magazine from Adamant Press, I hired on as proofreader for the revived Fantasy Magazine as well. I also copy-edited Adamant Press’s anthology trilogy The Dystopia Triptych (Ignorance is Strength; Burn the Ashes; Or Else the Light). I did proofread Frank Schildiner’s spy novella The Klaus Protocol and his sword-and-sandal novella The Warrior’s Pilgrimage. I proofread the charity anthology Surviving Tomorrow and several volumes of Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s John Simon Thrillers and a few other titles I don’t feel at liberty to mention because those authors have not yet announced the books. This has become an unexpectedly fun side-line and I must be doing a good job because authors and editors keep asking me to do more! (If I proofread for you in 2020 and you’re not on this list, sorry! I didn’t keep a database tracking all the projects I worked on.)

PUBLISHING

2020 saw no new or reprinted stories published.

I wrote three paid book reviews for Strange Horizons magazine:

·         The Trans-Space Octopus Congregation by Bogi Takács

·         Eridani’s Crown by Alex Schvartsman

·         The Mid-Winter Witch by Molly Knox Ostertag

READING

I set myself a variety of reading challenges in 2020. I managed to complete a few of them.

Goodreads Challenge:

I challenged myself to read 125 books. I read 154 books from approximately 73 different publishers.

Here’s the breakdown:

• Fiction: 146 books

  • 7 anthologies

    • 3 horror

    • 4 science fiction

  • 11 single-author collections

    • 1 science fiction

    • 3 horror

    • 2 fantasy

    • 2 crime/mystery

    • 1 poetry

    • 1 romance

  • 38 graphic novels

    • 21 super-hero

    • 2 horror

    • 11 fantasy

    • 1 memoir

    • 1 crime/mystery

    • 1 sport (fencing)

    • 1 science fiction

  • 13 magazines

    • 12 issues of Lightspeed Magazine

    • 1 issue of Occult Detective Magazine

  • 40 novels

    • 8 crime

    • 4 horror

    • 9 fantasy

    • 10 science fiction

    • 2 romance

    • 4 adventure

    • 1 mainstream

    • 2 historical

  • 32 novellas

    • 4 horror

    • 14 fantasy

    • 3 romance

    • 2 mainstream

    • 4 adventure

    • 1 science fiction

    • 3 crime

    • 1 Christmas

  • 1 picture book (current events/non-fiction)

  • 4 play scripts

    • 1 memoir

    • 3 dramas

• Non-Fiction: 11 books

  • 1 biography

  • 1 current events (picture book)

  • 1 book of essays (pop-culture)

  • 1 history

  • 6 memoirs

  • 1 true crime

Other Book Stats:

# of Authors/Editors: approximately 136 (including graphic novel artists; I need to be better at listing all the creators of graphic novels somehow). The following breakdown is estimated because not every author shares their personal information online, and many people overlap categories, but roughly:

·         32 female creators

·         3 Trans/Non-Binary

·         20 LGBTQIA+

·         25 Persons of Color

Shortest Book Read: 24 pages (Whose Boat Is This? by Stephen Colbert / Late Night Writers)

Longest Book Read: 528 (Middlegame by Seanan McGuire) (The Sandman audiobook accounts for 632 pages of graphic novel, so technically that’s longer)

Total # of pages read: 30,793

Average # of pages per book: 199

# of Rereads: 6 (including annual rereads of Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol)

Monthly Breakdown:

·         January: 19

·         February: 12

·         March: 8

·         April: 11

·         May: 8

·         June: 3 (lowest read in a month)

·         July: 16

·         August: 21

·         September: 8

·         October: 9

·         November: 15

·         December: 24 (most read in a month)

Review-wise on Goodreads I gave 19 three-stars, 84 four-stars, and 51 five-star reviews.

Format Summary:

• 15 audiobooks

• 31 e-books

• 108 print

  • 26 hardcovers

  • 82 softcovers

366 Short Stories Challenge:

Each year, I challenge myself to read one short story per day. Since 2020 was a leap year, I aimed for 366 stories. I read 375 stories, beating the goal by a small margin.

Total # of pages read: approximately 6,139 pages of fiction

Average story length: 16.5 pages

Shortest story: 1 page long (“Six Waking Nightmares” by Mike Allen, and two Dresden File micro-fictions by Jim Butcher)

Longest story (novella): 190 pages (“If It Bleeds” by Stephen King).

The breakdown of where the stories appeared:

• 9 Magazines

  • Nightmare

  • Lightspeed

  • Fantasy

  • The Dark

  • Daily Science Fiction

  • Occult Detective Magazine

  • Apex Magazine

  • Skelos

  • Tor.Com

• 9 Anthologies

  • Surviving Tomorrow

  • Dagon Rising

  • Where the Veil is Thin

  • The Sinister Quartet

  • Ignorance is Strength (The Dystopia Triptych Volume 1)

  • Burn the Ashes (The Dystopia Triptych Volume 2)

  • Or Else the Light (The Dystopia Triptych Volume 3)

  • Parallel Worlds: The Heroes Within

  • Athena’s Daughters

• 10 Single-Author Collections

  • Killer, Come Back to Me by Ray Bradbury

  • Dying with Her Cheer Pants on by Seanan McGuire

  • Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier

  • Halloween Season by Lucy A. Snyder

  • Greatheart Silver and Other Pulp Heroes by Philip Jose Farmer

  • If It Bleeds by Stephen King

  • Aftermath of an Industrial Accident by Mike Allen

  • Anthems Outside of Time by Kenneth Schneyer

  • Spinning Around A Sun by Everett Maroon

  • The Grand Tour by E. Catherine Tobler

  • The Burglar in Short Order by Lawrence Block

• 4 published as “back-matter” in the following novels

  • A Killing Frost by Seanan McGuire

  • Imaginary Numbers by Seanan McGuire

  • Carson of Venus: The Edge of All Worlds by Matt Betts

  • Tarzan: The Battle for Pellucidar by Win Scott Eckert

• 22 Stand-alone (self-pubbed or publisher-pubbed in e-format)

  • 12 Seanan McGuire (Patreon)

  • 2 Mysterious Bookstore (Printed pamphlet giveaways)

  • 2 ‘Nathan Burgoine (author website)

  • 1 H.P. Lovecraft (e-pub of “Horror at Red Hook”)

  • 5 Jim Butcher (author website/newsletter)

Those 375 stories were written by 189 different authors. The following breakdown is estimated because not every author shares their personal information online, and some people overlap categories, but roughly:

·         84 female creators

·         7 Trans/Non-Binary

·         25 LGBTQIA+

·         54 Persons of Color

Monthly Breakdown:

·         January: 26

·         February: 17

·         March: 14

·         April: 24

·         May: 11

·         June: 17

·         July: 106

·         August: 27

·         September: 24

·         October: 53

·         November: 38

·         December: 18

For short stories, I gave 1 1-star rating, 5 2-star ratings, 134 3-star, 180 4-star, and 55 5-star ratings.

Graphic Novel Challenge:

Because I own so many, I challenged myself to read one graphic novel per week. I didn’t make it, reading a total of 38 from 11 different publishers:

·              DC Comics: 11

·              Marvel Comics: 11

·              BOOM! Box: 8

·              Image: 1

·              Dark Horse: 1

·              FirstSecond: 1

·              Hard Case Crime: 1

·              Scholastic Books: 1

·              Berger Books: 1

·              Disney: 1

·              Pantheon Books: 1

To Be Read Challenge: I challenged myself to read 12 specific books that had been on my bookshelves for over a year (meaning nothing published in 2019) and assigned 2 alternate titles. I read 11 of the 12 main titles (identified in italics) but neither of the alternates:

1.       Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

2.       No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe

3.       Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson

4.       A Diet of Treacle by Lawrence Block

5.       Shadowhouse Falls by Daniel Jose Older

6.       Greatheart Silver by Philip Jose Farmer

7.       Pirates of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs

8.       The Bad Seed by William March

9.       The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

10.   Choke Hold by Christa Faust

11.   Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

12.   The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Alternate #1: The Mystery of the Sea by Bram Stoker

Alternate #2: Excalibur! by Gil Kane and John Jakes

Non-Fiction Challenge: I didn’t do as well on this one. I challenged myself to read 24 non-fiction books in 2019, and I only read 11. (That was better than 2019’s 4, though.)

Read the Book, Watch the Movie Challenge: I didn’t set a numbered goal for this one in 2020, but I managed two: Evening Primrose and The Bad Seed.

Complete the Series Challenge: As with the non-fiction challenge, I hit 50% on this one. Planned to read 4 complete series, totaling 16 books (backing out the two Marlowes and one Achebe I had read in 2019), and read 9 of 16, completing 2 series:

THE VELVETEEN SERIES by Seanan McGuire

1.       Velveteen Vs. The Junior Super-Patriots

2.       Velveteen Vs. The Multiverse

3.       Velveteen Vs. The Seasons

THE AFRICA TRILOGY BY Chinua Achebe – COMPLETED

1.       Things Fall Apart – read in 2018

2.       No Longer at Ease – read in December 2020

3.       Arrow of God – read in February 2020

CARSON OF VENUS by Edgar Rice Burroughs

1.       Pirates of Venus – read in January 2020

2.       Lost on Venus

3.       Carson of Venus

4.       Escape on Venus

5.       The Wizard of Venus

THE PHILIP MARLOWE SERIES (audiobook versions) - COMPLETED

1.       The Big Sleep – listened to in November 2019

2.       Farewell, My Lovely – listened to in November 2019

3.       The High Window – listened to in January 2020

4.       The Lady in the Lake – listened in January 2020

5.       The Little Sister – listened in January 2020

6.       The Long Goodbye – listened in April 2020

7.       Playback – read in November 2020

8.       Poodle Springs (started by Chandler, completed by Robert B. Parker) – read in November 2020

VIEWING

I tried tracking the movies, TV, and live events I watched this year. Here’s how that went:

Movies: Apparently, I only watched 27 movies this year, totaling 45.5 hours. The shortest was a half-hour long short film (Unspeakable, directed by Milena Govich) and the two longest were approximately 2.5 hours (Wonder Woman 84 and Billy Elliot The Musical Live). The breakdown of what I watched where is:

·              6 on BroadwayHD

·              2 on Disney+

·              12 on DVD

·              1 on HBOMax (Wonder Woman 84)

·              2 on Netflix

·              2 on Cable television

·              1 on YouTube (Unspeakable)

·              1 in the theater (1917)

Of these, 14 were first time watches, the rest movies I’ve seen before. 3 were comedies, 1 was a documentary (The House In Between), 3 were dramas, 1 was fantasy (Excalibur), 7 were horror, 8 were musicals, 3 were science fiction, and 1 was a super-hero movie (Wonder Woman 84). I suspect 2021’s numbers will match the above “what I watched where” breakdown, until COVID-19 is well and truly under control.

Live Events: I attended 2 live events this year (thanks, COVID-19!), and one of those was via Zoom.

·         1 play (Othello, live on Zoom)

·         1 sports event (ice hockey, the Atlanta Gladiators versus the Greenville Swamprabbits)

I miss live theater and live music.

Television: I watched approximately 230 hours of episodic television:

·              13 Reasons Why (36 episodes)

·              Arrow (3 episodes)

·              Batwoman (11 episodes)

·              Cursed (10 episodes)

·              DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (15 episodes)

·              Doctor Who (10 episode)

·              Leslie Jones: Time Machine (1 episode)

·              Locke & Key (10 episodes)

·              Monsterland (8 episodes)

·              Muppets Now (6 episodes)

·              Perry Mason (8 episodes)

·              Stargirl (13 episodes)

·              Star Trek: Discovery (29 episodes)

·              Star Trek: Picard (10 episodes)

·              Star Trek: Short Treks (5 episodes)

·              Star Trek: The Original Series (2 episodes)

·              Supergirl (140episodes)

·              Terriers (13 episodes)

·              The Flash (10 episodes)

·              The Mandalorian (16 episodes)

·              Watchmen (3 episodes)

Genre breakdown for television watched:

·       2 crime/noir

·       3 comedies

·       6 science fiction

·       7 superhero

·       2 fantasy

·       1 horror

·       1 drama

All were live action except for 1 animated show (Animaniacs). Only the two episodes of ST:TOS were “re-watches.”

So, there you have it: my writing, publishing, reading, and viewing by the numbers, for 2020.

Earlier this month, I posted about my reading challenges for 2021, if you’re interested.

Series Saturday: HBO's Perry Mason

This is a blog series about … well, series. I love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies, comics.

Let me start this post out with a bit of background/disclaimer/call it what you will: I’ve never read any of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason novels (I intend to fix that in 2021); I’ve never seen any of the 1930s Perry Mason movies (starring Warren William as Maxon and Claire Dodd as Della Street); and I don’t think I’ve watched an episode of the Raymond Burr series since I was in high school (although I do recall catching a couple of the late 80s/early 90s reunion movies). So, I’m probably not coming at the new Perry Mason TV series with anywhere near the expectations/baggage heavy Mason fans are. That said: this is definitely a different Perry Mason than the television show I remember.

That’s not the negative it sounds like. I liked the episodes of Perry Mason I saw as a kid/teen. But I’m also pretty open to new interpretations even of characters I love (otherwise, how could I stand so many different versions of Superman parading across my television screen?). And I happen to really enjoy film noir.

And that’s what this new series is: a noir interpretation of the previously unwritten “origin story” of Perry Mason. As noir, the eight-episode season hits all the right notes. The tone is dark, dark, dark throughout, and violent/graphic as well, from the opening scene of the first episode (a dead baby in a trolley car) to the flashback scenes of the final episode (revealing much of what the audience and Mason have suspected all along). It’s a bit unrelenting, almost suffocating. Even the daylight scenes of Los Angeles in winter/spring feel dark and a bit claustrophobic. By the time I was able to access HBOMax and watch the show, the entire season was available; I admit I found it hard to watch more than one episode at a time without coming up for light and air in between.

The set-up, for those unfamiliar, is that this is Mason’s “origin” story. Mason (Matthew Rhys) starts the season as a down-beat, down-on-his-luck private eye living on a slowly dying family farm next to a small airport, taking whatever follow-and-photograph jobs he can. Sometimes, those jobs come from lawyer E.B. Jonathan (John Lithgow) via Jonathan’s secretary Della Street (Juliet Rylance) and sometimes Mason calls on fellow P.I. Pete Strickland (Shea Whigham) for help. E.B.’s newest job for Mason involves investigating the kidnapping/death of baby Charlie Dodson, which includes investigating the child’s parents Matthew (Nate Corddry) and Emily (Gayle Rankin). E.B. has been hired by rich magnate Herman Baggerly (Robert Patrick), who goes to the same church as Matthew and Emily: The Radiant Assembly of God, led by Sister Alice McKeegan (Tatiana Maslany) and her mother Birdie (Lili Taylor). Along the way, Mason finds himself at odds with District Attorney Maynard Barnes (Stephen Root), Judge Fred Wright (Matt Frewer) and Detectives Holcomb (Eric Lange) and Ennis (Andrew Howard), and assisted by coroner Virgil Sheets (Jefferson Mays), beat cop Paul Drake (Chris Chalk), aviator Lupe Gibbs (Veronica Falcón), and a friend of Della’s named Hazel Prystock (Molly Ephraim).

The good news for viewers and mystery lovers alike: as complicated as the overlapping plots get (there are also subplots about E.B.’s financial difficulties, Mason’s estranged wife and son, Gibbs trying to purchase Mason’s family farm, Della’s boarding house friendships, Sister Alice’s health, and Drake’s struggles as a black cop), every question asked in the early episodes is answered by the end of the final episode. No cliffhangers, no missing resolutions. And the revelations about what really happened to baby Charlie and why are what I call “fair play” – that is, the clues are there littered throughout for the viewer to pick up on, even if Mason and Co. don’t see them as quickly or as clearly. I was very satisfied with the way the overlapping mysteries and crimes were pulled together, and the way the majority of the subplots were at least temporarily resolved (hey, something has to carry over to a potential season two). Most of the characters get what they deserve (both for good and bad). Fans of the Raymond Burr-led television series may not be as enamored of the way the final episode tweaks the final big courtroom scene. And I know people more familiar with the legal system are not happy about the way Mason goes from private eye to full lawyer in the space of an episode. I can live with upended expectations and a bit of suspension of disbelief.

Rhys’ Mason is a classic noir detective: disheveled, discontent, easy to anger but also chivalrous (mostly), and doggedly determined once he decides something must be done. The character has shades and depths, and he’s not always likeable. This unlikability could have been an issue; the show is called Perry Mason, after all, and if we’re not invested in the character from the get-go that’s a problem. But Rhys gives his all to every emotion, every scene, and shows us why we should care about this damaged, often bitter, man. Mason’s arc is as strong as it is because Rhys lets us see the potential good even when Mason is at his worst in the season premiere. The character’s redemption is not a straight incline. For my money, Perry’s worst moments are mid-way through the season. Rhys plays it all expertly.

While the show is about Mason, it hews close to another aspect of noir that I love: strong, nuanced women. Rylance’s Della Street is a powerhouse of a character, equally confrontational and supportive, and I loved every moment she was on screen. She is clearly Perry’s equal, and she is the “better angel” who sits on his shoulder (and E.B. Jonathan’s shoulder as well). Equally impressive was Tatiana Maslany. I think this is the first thing I’ve seen her in (yes, yes, I know: I should watch Orphan Black) and she was mesmerizing, commanding every scene she was in regardless of whether Sister Alice was in the throes of religious ecstasy or pushing back against a controlling mother. Gayle Rankin’s Emily Dodson is the not the femme fatale one expects at the center of a noir crime story, but Rankin’s portrayal of a mother broken by the death of her child is just stunningly raw and captivating.

I know that there’s been a lot of pushback from some quarters about the casting of Chris Chalk as Paul Drake (a white character in the Raymond Burr Mason series, who I’m going to guess is also a white man in the original novels upon which both shows are based). Arguments have been made that there’s no way a black investigator, even working for a white lawyer, would have been effective in 1930s America. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in future seasons (if there are any). Regardless, Chalk is compelling, imbuing Drake with a simmering anger that he’s unable to ever totally put aside (and which erupts in one powerful scene early on, to Mason’s detriment).

The supporting cast is equally superb all around. John Lithgow is, as I think everyone knows, one of my favorite actors; his mercurial (for good reason) E.B. Jonathan appears in only four episodes but in that time you love, hate, and empathize with him in equal measure. Stephen Root’s Maynard Barnes, on the other hand, is the character you love to hate, the epitome of the slick politician who is more concerned with rising to power than he is with any kind of justice. (Robert Patrick’s officious, judgmental Herman Baggerly and Lili Taylor’s controlling, abusive Birdie McKeegan vie for second pace in the “love to hate” category.) Shea Whigham throws brilliant snark as Paul Strickland but lets us see that there’s a good guy under all that attitude. Lange and Howard do as much as they can with the “how bad are they” corrupt-cop duo act, with Howard playing the heavy very well when required. Jefferson Mays’ Virgil and Molly Ephraim’s Hazel provide some much-needed awkward humor at the right moments. Veronica Falcón’s Lupe is sexy and strong, perhaps the one true “femme fatale” in the series. Every one of these roles is a full character: we get to see at least hints of what makes them who they are.

The show is not perfect. I’ve already mentioned the stunning speed with which Mason goes from private eye to lawyer. At times, the show feels like it’s trying to do much with the lives of the supporting cast for an eight-episode season – the main storyline might have had more room to breathe had some of those supporting-cast moments been downsized a bit. And there are several pointed mentions of a mysterious Chinese gangster which felt heavy with implication and purpose, but those mentions never tie into the Charlie Dodson case nor with Sister Alice’s church. Perhaps it’s a set-up for season two. And I hope there is a season two!

Top Ten(ish): Christmas Books

Top Ten(ish) is exactly what it sounds like: I list of ten or so of my favorite things that have something in common (books by the same author or editor or publisher; music by the same band/performer, etc.). The (ish) allows me to run slightly higher or lower, because exactly 10 is often hard for me to decide. Note: they’re MY favorites, for a variety of reasons not always having to do with quality alone. I’m not saying they are The Best (in fact, I never make that determination, about anything). Your Mileage May Vary (YMMV). Please, don’t yuck my yum and tell me how I’m completely wrong about anything on this list.

Since it’s the night before Christmas, here’s my Top Ten(ish) Christmas books, in no particular order other than #1:

1.       A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: I sincerely doubt anything will ever knock this novel from the top spot. I have re-read it every year for as long as I can remember, one “Stave” (chapter) per night starting on December 21st so that Scrooge awakens a changed man on the morning of December 25th. I also usually watch at least one movie version and listen to at least one audiobook version sometime during the month of December. It’s probably the first novella I ever read (holiday or not), and you’ll notice quite a few novellas on this list. I am typically not a Dickens fan, but you’d never know that based on how much I love this book.

2.       Homemade Holidays / Faux Ho Ho by ‘Nathan Burgoine: Speaking of novellas. I was never a real big romance reader, until I started reading ‘Nathan Burgoine. Granted, I started with his more paranormal romance Triad series, but I guess that was the gateway drug. Like the Carol, ‘Nathan’s two (so far) gay romance novellas that take place at Christmas time have become annual re-reads. Homemade Holidays is about a span of years in the life of a young gay writer who was disowned by his family and how he builds new traditions, and a new family, around himself, including finding true love. Faux Ho Ho is a classic “fake relationship” story: the gay son of a rich Conservative family pretends his platonic roommate is his boyfriend to get out of traveling home for Thanksgiving, but then the couple gets invited to his sister’s wedding. Sparks fly, but the truth – and love – will out. (I’d also like to mention that ‘Nathan rewrites a classic Christmas tale through a gay lens every year on his website, and this year’s tale is a take on “Jingle Bells” that is really terrific. I can’t wait until he has enough of these to print a collection.) I wrote a review of Handmade Holidays you can find here and can’t believe I haven’t reviewed Faux Ho Ho yet.

3.       State v. Claus by P. Jo Anne Burgh: Sometimes a book just “clicks.” This year, it was State v. Claus, in which Connecticut lawyer Meg Riley finds herself defending a man who claims to be the son of Santa Claus from a home-invasion charge … and finds herself falling in love and learning to believe in the magic of Christmas again. I reviewed it in full earlier this week, but just can’t recommend it enough. Like most of the books on this list, it’s likely to become a frequent, if not annual, reread.

4.       A Wish for Wings That Work / Red Ranger Came Calling by Berke Breathed: Anyone who knows my love of the comic strip Bloom County will not be surprised to see either of these books on the list. A Wish for Wings That Work stars Bloom County’s penguin Opus, wishing he could do what other birds could do. Red Ranger Came Calling is another tale of Christmas magic that doesn’t feature any Bloom County characters but is an endearing tale about, again, the magic of belief.

5.       How The Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss: I mean … ‘nuff said, amirite?  (Okay … it’s also my favorite Seuss book, the first Christmas book I ever read to my nieces and nephews, and I cannot read it without hearing Boris Karloff in my head.)

6.       A Wish to Be A Christmas Tree by Colleen Monroe (illustrated by Michael Glenn Monroe): A tall, aged pine tree grows in the forest, left behind every year as humans come and pick other trees to cut down and take home. The animals of the forest rally to lift the tree’s spirits and show it that it is loved. A simple, yet surprisingly powerful, picture book about loneliness at the holidays and the power of friendship.

7.       If Dragon’s Mass Eve Be Cold and Clear: Ken Scholes’ novelette looks at a different but still recognizable holiday tradition on a faraway planet, through the eyes of a young woman who has lost her father and lost her hope but who goes through the motions of the holiday traditions because her father would want her to. Along the way, Scholes muses not just on tradition but family expectation, community (the good and less-good aspects) and how hope can be found in the smallest of spaces. I wrote a full review last year around this time.

8.       Miracle and Other Christmas Stories by Connie Willis: There are quite a few Christmas/Winter short story collections and anthologies on my shelf. Most of them I have to admit I’ve re-read a story or two out of every so often, but this Connie Willis collection is the only one I’ve read more than once cover-to-cover. The stories are humorous and touching, the characters relatable and familiar. I can’t even attempt to pick a favorite or two out of the eight in the hardcover edition from 1999 that I have. The book has been re-issued with extra stories under the title A Lot Like Christmas. I really should pick the expanded edition up.

9.       The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas / A Full House by Madeleine L’Engle: If I were to do a Top Ten(ish) Favorite Authors list, L’Engle would be on it. I loved the Wrinkle in Time books, of course, but I loved the Austin Family series just as much. I wanted to be best friends with Vicky Austin and, if we’re being honest, tween and early-teen me absolutely had a crush on her older brother John. While the main Austin books are YA, these two are illustrated Young Reader books. The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas is narrated by seven-year-old Vicky, who is concerned the holiday will be impacted by the arrival of the newest Austin child, while A Full House is narrated by Mama Austin and centers on a homeless pregnant girl who shows up on their doorstep. Both are moving stories about the power of family, of love, and of community.

10.   The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg: I tried not to put too many picture books on this list (I have … well, a bunch), but besides The Grinch, this is the one I go back to pretty often, largely because of the beautiful artwork by Van Allsburg.

11.   The Book of Christmas (Time-Life Enchanted World series): Over the years, I’ve lost or given away most of the lavish hardcover Time-Life Library books I acquired in high school and shortly thereafter. But there are two volumes from Time-Life’s The Enchanted World series that I’ve never parted with. One is The Fall of Camelot (because hi, Arthurian-obsessed writer here) and the other is this one. The book doesn’t just concentrate on the Birth of Christ and various iterations of Santa Claus, but also includes a look at a number of other Winter holidays, carols, and traditions. In fact, a particular page and illustration in this book inspired my second Christmas novella, which will hopefully be out next year.

12.   A Stranger in the Woods by Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick: a beautiful photography book about a group of animals encountering a snowy stranger in the woods. Not so much a Christmas story as a tale about winter and the peaceful co-existence of humans and wildlife, it’s every bit as cute as it sounds.

13.   A Family for Christmas by Jay Northcote: It’s ‘Nathan Burgoine’s fault that I’m reading so much gay Christmas romance this year. I read this novella for the first time last year and am re-reading it now amidst a veritable avalanche of other gay romance. Another “fake relationship” story with endearing main characters and a happy ending. I am not well-red in the romance field (as I mentioned), but on the strength of this one, Northcote joined Burgoine as a go-to as I explore the field more, and A Family For Christmas joins Burgoine’s novellas on the frequent reread list.

14.   DC Super-Star Holiday Special, 1980, by various writers and artists: Yes, it’s a comic book, an anthology title including stories with Batman, Jonah Hex, Sgt. Rock, Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and DC’s horror comics hosts of the era. Like the Carol, it’s a book I’ve reread every year since 1980. Still the same copy, with subscription coupons cut out and all. As much as I loved super-hero Christmas stories, you’d think I’d have kept more of them over the years (particularly DC’s tabloid and digest-size Christmas with the Super-Heroes and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer editions, and Marvel’s tabloids as well). I should look into rebuilding that collection. But even if I do, nothing will ever supplant this particular comic in my heart.

Okay, friends: your turn! Hit the comments and tell me what your favorite Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Yule/Ramadan/Solstice/etc. books are – but please do so without denigrating what other people love.

Most of the books mentioned in this post.

a better picture of the DC Holiday Special cover. Smiling Batman! Remember those days?

I may have become slightly obsessed with gay holiday romances, guys.

Series Saturday: Monsterland

This is a blog series about … well, series. I love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies, comics.

Monsterland

1 season (so far), eight episodes

Annapurna Television, Two & Two Pictures

Hulu, 2020

Synopsis: (from the IMDb page) Encounters with Gothic beasts, including fallen angels and werewolves, broken people are driven to desperate acts in an attempt to repair their lives, ultimately showing there is a thin line between man and beast.

My Thoughts: Monsterland, an episodic anthology show with a horror bent, debuted on Hulu in October 2020. Based partially on Nathan Ballingrud’s fantastic short story collection North American Lake Monsters (reissued under the title Monsterland to coincide with the show), the show is more psychological horror than slasher flick or fantasy horror. Which isn’t a bad thing – but may surprise some viewers expecting more traditional horror from the series description.

Tonally, Monsterland feels like the horror equivalent of the few Black Mirror episodes I’ve seen. Episodes are claustrophobic and weather-beaten (in a good way to this viewer). Close-ups of characters, tight two-shots, and slightly-out-of-focus backgrounds in wider shots contribute to the claustrophobic “it’s just the viewer and the character” tone; for many of these episodes I really felt like I was in the room/environs with the characters. Regional climates saturate every episode: the humidity of Port Fourchon and New Orleans, the winter chill of Eugene Oregon and Newark New Jersey, the stark cold of backwoods Iron River Michigan, and the salt-air wet of Palacios Texas are as much as a character as the humans who populate the stories set there. Likewise, the man-made suburban false security of Plainfield Illinois and the tightly spaced urban modernity of New York, New York take a toll on the characters in those episodes.

Although the series is, as mentioned, nominally adapted from Nathan Ballingrud’s short stories, several episodes are original to the series. To help make them feel of a whole, episode titles are simply the city and state where the story takes place. This also contributes to the overall series concept that monsters can be found anywhere, from the rural to the urban.

And that’s really the thematic connective tissue of the series: that as much as it would be nice to think monsters are supernatural and fully evil, the truth is any one of us has the potential to be a monster to someone or something. People are selfish. People are manipulative. People make bad decisions which have greater impacts than they realize in the moment. Some of those decisions are made intentionally, some inadvertently. Some results are immediate, some take years to echo out. But ultimately, these are stories about how horrible people can be to each other and to the environment.

The “actual” monsters presented are often incidental – or at least are the inciting incident rather than the point of the episode. Meeting a shape-changing serial killer in Port Fourchon sets Toni on a path she can’t come back from; a demon in New Orleans forces Annie to see what she’s been hiding from herself for over a decade; a shadow-being exposes an already down-trodden teen in Eugene to the controlling vitriol of online conspiracy theorists; urban legends about haunted woods alter the life course of three teens in Iron River; fallen angel-like beings in Newark skirt the periphery of Brian and Amy’s personal tragedy . There are a few episodes where the supernatural element is more prevalent and central to the narrative, however: an encounter with a mermaid helps an injured Palacios fisherman reclaim his sense of self-worth, a religious epiphany emotionally and physically impregnates a New York oil executive, and a lesbian couple in Plainfield face a very real case of life-after-death.

There is a bit of lip-service paid to these episodes taking place in the same world: Kaitlyn Dever’s Toni appears in several episodes under different aliases, the oil spill at the heart of the New York episode is background to the Palacios Texas episode, and I think a couple of other background characters turn up or are mentioned more than once. It all felt a bit unnecessary. Anthology shows like this don’t really need to have recurring characters shuffling through the background except for the writers/directors to give a little wink-wink to the viewers. Had the recurring appearances of Toni led somewhere (perhaps in a potential season two?), I might have felt differently.

The performances of the leads in each episode are roundly excellent. Full credit to Kaitlyn Dever, Nicole Beharie, Kelly Marie Tran, Mike Cotton and Adepero Oduye, Trieu Tran, Taylor Schilling and Roberta Colindrez, Charlie Tahan and Ben Rappaport, Bill Camp and Michael Hsu Rosen. The supporting casts of each episode are also solid, but the intimate focus of each episode puts the burden of the story on the one or two leads, even in party scenes.

It should be noted that a few of these episodes touch heavily on topics that may be emotional triggers for people who have gone through similar struggles. I’m thinking in particular of the “Plainfield, Illinois” episode, which hinges heavily on a not-particularly nuanced portrayal of bipolar disorder and depression. It was a hard episode for me to watch, and I’m “only” depressed, not bipolar. Other episodes deal with child molestation, child abandonment, and child disappearances.

I don’t believe a second season pick-up has been announced, but I am hoping for more of Monsterland, including more direct adaptations of Ballingrud’s short stories.

Series Saturday: The Führer and the Tramp

This is a blog series about … well, series. I love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies, comics.

cover art by Dexter Wee

The Führer and the Tramp, published by Comics Experience and Source Point Press, 2020

Writers: Sean McArdle and Jon Judy

Pencils and Inks: Dexter Wee

Letters and Colors: Sean McArdle

Editor: Andy Schmidt

Synopsis: Charlie Chaplin – comic, filmmaker, and raconteur – didn’t become the world’s biggest star by courting controversy, but when he comes face-to-face with the horrors of Hitler, he feels compelled to get off the sidelines and get involved. And then Charlie is approached by FDR himself with a special assignment. His mission, if he chooses to accept it: create a propaganda film to drum up public support for joining the war in Europe.

And so Charlie goes from movie maker to provocateur, traveling the world and dodging danger to complete his film. With the help of undercover agent Hedy Lamarr, her handler Errol Flynn, and British patriot Alfred Hitchcock, Chaplin faces down American fascists, Nazi spies, and his own massive self-doubt to complete his masterpiece.

But just because the film is done doesn’t mean the mission is, and little tramp and great dictator go toe-to-toe, Charlie and Adolph, one-on-one, mano a mano in a rip-roaring climax that fully delivers on the promise of the premise.

My Thoughts: I ordered this series through my local comic shop partially because the concept sounded fun, but mostly on the strength of Dexter Wee’s art. I got to know Dexter’s work on the webcomic Cura Te Ipsum, in which Dexter and writer Neal Bailey “Tuckerized” me in a few scenes. I’ve always found Dex’s work to be fluid, expressive, and full of action. So I was not surprised at how well he captured Chaplin’s antic physicality, Lamarr’s intelligent sexiness, Hitchcock’s imperious posture, and Flynn’s swashbuckling stature. He also manages to lampoon Hitler and the Nazi rank-and-file without being cartoony, not always an easy line to walk when one is trying to tell a funny story that doesn’t deflate the seriousness of the threat the Third Reich posed. Wee moves effortlessly from panoramic establishing shots to multi-panel action sequences to intimate close-ups. The things he closes in on aren’t always faces – another way he drives home each character’s personality (for instance, the focus on Chaplin’s legs on the first page of the first issue, as Charlie is confronted by a Nazi soldier who mistakes him for a German Jew lacking a star and papers conveys Chaplin’s aggravation at not being recognized, anger at the way Jews are being treated, and nervousness at possibly being arrested – all accomplished without a single facial expression in evidence). And his visual representations of very real people, from Chaplin to FDR to some surprise cameos in book five that are too fun to spoil here, are spot on. I’m pretty sure most folks would recognize each historical person even without dialogue or captions.

Wee’s art brought me to the book, but Sean McArdle and Jon Judy’s story and dialogue kept me invested through all five issues. They balance the comedy, drama, and action elements perfectly throughout, never allowing the comedic or fanciful sequences to subvert the very real seriousness of the Nazi threat. Of course, the series is intended to be, first and foremost, comedy. That comedy swings between physical slapstick (Chaplin naked and spilling iodine in FDR’s lap) and Noel Coward-esque banter (especially between Flynn and Lamarr), with some more subtle humor sprinkled throughout. The dialogue, whether comedic or serious, captures the vocal ticks and mannerisms unique to each character, matching how well Wee’s art captures their physical likenesses without sliding into cliché or pastiche. All three creators really did their homework, is what I’m saying. The pace is also near perfect: I can’t imagine this story feeling as complete if it had run fewer than five issues, but I can certainly imagine how bloated it would have felt at six or more.

Being a story that purports to tell “the truth behind the true events,” there’s a lot of stuff the creators admit isn’t historically accurate (it’s unknown whether Chaplin actually ever met FDR, for instance) and bits that trade off of urban legend (this is not the first time its been suggested that Lamarr and/or Flynn were employed by the US government as spies/operatives). The fun is in imagining that this all could have happened and been highly classified all this time. McArdle, Judy and Wee roll with that sense of fun throughout … and even hint that maybe this wasn’t the only time Charlie Chaplin got suckered into a high-stakes adventure alongside Lamarr and Flynn. I can only hope there’s another miniseries in the near future from this creative team.

I believe the individual print issues of The Führer and the Tramp are sold out from the publisher, so your local comic shop may have a hard time getting them for you. But there’s always the secondary market and the ebooks, until the trade paperback collection comes out in 2021.

Series Saturday: Universal's Frankenstein movies

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

I’ve been a fan of the original Universal Studios Monsters franchise for as long as I can remember, but it’s been quite a while since I’ve done any kind of intentional rewatch of most of them. This year I thought, being in the midst of a pandemic and all, that maybe I’d have time to revisit most of the rest, via the Legacy Collection DVDs I’ve had for ages. For various reasons, I only got through the Frankenstein movies.

There are eight movies in the original Universal Frankenstein series (or seven, if you’re one of those folks who discounts Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein):

·         Frankenstein (1931)

·         The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

·         Son of Frankenstein (1939)

·         Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

·         Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

·         House of Frankenstein (1944)

·         House of Dracula (1945)

·         Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

The Universal Monsters “universe” was perhaps the earliest cinematic universe in terms of characters overlapping, but the attention to continuity wasn’t like it is today with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and such fare. The Frankenstein movies as a whole hold together better than some of the other sub-franchises in the UMU (I’m looking at you, sequels to Dracula!). Still, there are lots of discrepancies: in Frankenstein, Henry Frankenstein’s tower lab is some distance from Manor Frankenstein and the town it is a part of; in Bride, the tower is a lot closer, and in Son, the tower is right next door to what is now Castle Frankenstein, which overlooks the village. The interior sets of the Manor change quite a bit between Frankenstein and Bride, as well. Sometimes the same character is played by different actors across the franchise, and sometimes the same actors show up as multiple characters. I doubt many audience members at the time cared, as long as they got a good story, but I don’t think it would fly today.

For the most part, we do get solid stories with compelling characters. Although not very similar to the novel on which it is based, Frankenstein gives us Colin Clive’s brilliant performance as the obsessed and conflicted Henry Frankenstein and Boris Karloff’s poignant confused and lost Monster, supported by the always-eerie Dwight Frye as the hunchbacked assistant Fritz and the understated Edward Van Sloan as Doctor Waldman. The only weak point in the main cast, to me, is Mae Clarke as Elizabeth; her performance is a bit too “stagey” as compared to the rest of the cast (and perhaps is the reason the role was recast for Bride?). As unlike the source material as it may be, it’s still a tightly-told and well-acted tale directed by James Whale with great mood and tension throughout.

Karloff and Clive return as the Monster and his creator in The Bride of Frankenstein under Whale’s continued direction, with Elsa Lancaster as both Mary Shelley and the Bride. Valerie Hobson replaces Mae Clarke as Elizabeth. I love this movie almost as much as the original and Son, but man is the tone just all over the place. Whale can’t seem to decide if he’s making a pathos-filled character piece or a slapstick comedy. Una O’Connor’s Minnie (maid to Elizabeth? Housekeeper? I’m still unsure after multiple viewings exactly what her job is) takes up way more screen-time than comic relief should in a film like this, and O’Connor’s shrill over-the-top delivery makes almost every scene she’s in hard to watch. The scene where Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) produces his Homunculi also feels out of place, between the bawdy comedy between the Homunculi and the fact that Homunculi are never seen or mentioned again. Karloff is at his best as the Monster here, learning to talk and feel, and Clive matches him turn-for-turn as Henry grows desperate to just be done with creating life and return to his wife. If not for the Una O’Connor scenes and the Homunculi bit, Bride would be pretty perfect and perhaps even better than the original.

Son of Frankenstein, directed by Rowland V. Lee, was Karloff’s last turn as the Monster. Karloff does more acting here with his eyes than most actors do with their whole bodies, but he feels wasted. The Monster’s ability to talk is inexplicably gone. He’s not given much to do other than rampaging. Basil Rathbone takes over the lead spot as Henry’s son Wolf and does a great job as a man conflicted between forging his own path and following in his father’s footsteps. Bela Lugosi is brilliant, and almost unrecognizable, as the hunchback Ygor, stealing every scene he’s in.  Lionel Atwill makes his first appearance in the franchise as the one-armed Col. Krogh (in a scene that gets sent-up expertly by Mel Brooks in Young Frankenstein). There are still some awkward humorous moments, mostly involving Wolf and Elsa (Josephine Hutchinson)’s toddler son Peter (Donnie Dunagan), but they’re not as prevalent or as distracting as the Minnie scenes in Bride. Had the franchise ended as a trilogy, it might rank as one of the best horror trilogies ever.

Ghost of Frankenstein moves the action from the town of Frankenstein to the town of Vasaria (where it will remain for pretty much the rest of the franchise). Lugosi returns as Ygor, Lon Chaney Jr. takes over as the Monster (not much more than a weapon of destruction, although in the early scenes there’s an attempt at emotion as the Monster once again bonds with a little girl and the crowd reacts out of fear for her safety), Sir Cedric Hardwicke plays both Ludwig Frankenstein (younger son of Henry) and Henry’s ghost, Evelyn Ankers appears as Ludwig’s daughter Elsa (not to be confused with Wolf’s wife), and Lionel Atwill plays his second character in the franchise, the not-so-nice Doctor Boehmer. It’s a solid movie, building tension as the various non-Monster leads jockey for whose brain they’re going to transplant into the Monster. There’s even a bit of a return to the Monster as he was in Bride, able to speak towards the end of the movie. But it almost feels like director Erle C. Kenton and the writers are trying too hard to be surprising and sneaky. I still love it, just not as much as the previous three.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man puts Lon Chaney Jr. back where he’s best (in hair and fangs), and puts Bela Lugosi in the Monster’s make-up. A sensible move given Ygor’s brain ends up in the Monster at the end of Ghost, except that behind-the-scenes machinations removed any scene where the Monster actually speaks, so Lugosi is as wasted as Karloff felt in Son (perhaps even more so). Elsa Frankenstein is now played by Ilona Massey (with an accent the previous Elsa didn’t have), and dialogue lets us know this is Ludwig’s daughter and not Wolf’s wife. She’s the first Frankenstein featured in the franchise who isn’t a scientist and really has nothing to do with the Monster. Lionel Atwill is back as his third character in the franchise, the Mayor of Vasaria. This is far more of a Wolf Man movie than it is a Frankenstein. Sans dialogue, the Monster is a weapon of mass destruction to be unleashed and defeated.

House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula are “everything and the kitchen sink” approaches to combining several of the Universal Monsters. To this day, I’m not sure why the Mummy and the Invisible Man weren’t invited to the parties. Both movies are pretty disjointed, especially in integrating Dracula into the rest of the action. Concentrating on just the Frankenstein elements: In House of Frankenstein, Glenn Strange takes over as The Monster; Lionel Atwill plays yet another character, Inspector Arnz; there’s a new hunchback played by J. Carrol Naish; and Boris Karloff returns to the franchise as a very different mad scientist, Doctor Neimann. Karloff is brilliant and Naish is excellent, but the Monster himself just lumbers and kills and is “killed.” In House of Dracula, Strange continues as the Monster; Lionel Atwill plays character #5 in the franchise, Police Inspector Holtz; the hunchbacked assistant is a woman (Jane Adams); and the mad scientist is now Doctor Edelmann, played by Onslow Stevens (the closest the Universal Monsters franchise ever really gets to incorporated a version of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, at least until the Abbott and Costello movies). House of Dracula is again far more of a Wolf Man (and perhaps a Jekyll/Hyde or even Dracula) movie than it is a Frankenstein movie. The Monster is mostly there for mayhem, but at least the Wolf Man gets a happy ending.

There are a lot of people who don’t consider Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as a valid part of the Frankenstein (or larger Universal Monsters) franchise. I am most emphatically not one of them. While I’m not sure where it should fit in the overall sequence (since I like to think that Larry Talbot gets to keep his Happy Ending from House of Dracula), I think it treats the monsters who appear (Bela Lugosi back as Dracula, Glenn Strange as the Monster, Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolf Man, Lenore Aubert as the requisite “mad scientist,” and a cameo by Vincent Price as The Invisible Man) with great respect. They’re played as the serious monsters they are, not for laughs. The comedy that comes from Abbott and Costello’s reactions to the Monsters fits much better than that provided by Minnie in Bride or Peter Frankenstein in Son. And Glenn Strange actually gets to speak as the Monster! The only thing that would have made this movie more perfect would have been if Lionel Atwill had still been alive to play one more random police officer or mad scientist. Unfortunately, he’d passed away in 1946. Still, it’s a fitting end-cap to the franchise.

Except…

For my own part, I also include Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein as a coda or grace note to the franchise. I included it in this rewatch, even though it’s not in the Legacy DVDs because it was released by a different studio. Brooks and Wilder’s love for the original movies is so evident in every frame of their film. They poke fun at the original movies’ inconsistencies and quirks, while still keeping the tone and using some of the original set pieces. There’s even a theory (espoused by my good friend Chuck Loridans among others) that “Froederick” Frankenstein is actually … Peter Frederick Frankenstein, Wolf’s son! (Who would have be a bit amnesiac to not remember meeting the original Monster and a one-armed policeman as a boy, but the blond hair, the expressive eyes, the sense of wonder… it fits!)

Page To Screen: Evening Primrose

Page to Screen is a series of blog posts where I read a book or story and then watch a movie based on said book or story. It will be intermittent, I’m sure, like most of my “regular” features. The first, unofficial Page to Screen entry was my review of The Bitter Tea of General Yen and the classic movie adapted from it.

Okay, so this one is technically a little backwards from the intent, because I first saw the television musical version of Evening Primrose at the Museum of Television Arts in New York City back in the late 90s. I had not seen it since then. When I discovered that the episode was on DVD and that the short story it was based on was available in print, I decided it was time to read the original story and rewatch the movie. WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS, FOR BOTH THE STORY AND THE TELEVISION EPISODE. I can’t talk about the differences between the two without spoiling stuff.

STORY REVIEW

“Evening Primrose” by John Collier is a brief twelve pages, an “accidentally found manuscript” type of story. The story purports to have been found scribbled in a pad of Highlife Bond paper bought by a customer at Bracey’s Giant Emporium. What the purchaser of the notepad (a Miss Sadie Brodribb) thinks of the tale she’s accidentally purchased, we never learn. As is the nature of people, she probably thought it was some kind of practical joke by the store employees (akin to finding a “help, I’m being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory” note in your fortune cookie). The story itself is the first person account of Mr. Charles Snell, a poet who decides the real world is no longer for him and that he’ll live in Bracey’s. He’ll hide during the day, and eat/drink/write poetry at night, deftly avoiding the store’s night watchman. He quickly discovers he’s not alone in living in the store, that this is a thing people do in stores large and small all across the city – people who for one reason or another have eschewed normal society. The community in Bracey’s has a hierarchy, at the top of which sits the regal Mrs. Vanderpant, and at the bottom of which sits a teen serving girl named Ella. Charles is warned that people who betray the community are sentenced to removal by the Dark Men, who turn the offendees into mannequins. Charles falls in love with the servant girl, who is in love with the night watchman (who remains oblivious to the community living around him). Charles decides to respect Ella’s love for another man and to help them meet and escape. Only in his emotional despair over Ella not loving him, he spills the beans to a community member he trusts. The story ends with Ella trussed up for the Dark Men and Charles determined to find the night watchman and rescue her. Charles’ final lines indicate his plan to leave his notes where a customer might find them, in case his plan to rescue Ella results in himself and the watchman also being killed. 

It’s a tightly-told story, and Collier builds the mystery of the community and threat of the Dark Men smoothly throughout the story – but the ending feels just a bit too abrupt. Charles declares his love, gets rebuffed, accidentally betrays Ella, and sets his plan to rescue her all within the final two pages of the story. I wish Collier had built the suspense of what would happen to Ella and Charles just a little bit more before the end. Regardless, I enjoyed the concept, the mood, the reveal of Charles’ character, the development of the Bracey’s community (and their relationship to communities in other stores) and eerie threat of the Dark Men.

“MOVIE” REVIEW

The television episode “Evening Primrose” first aired on November 16, 1966 as a part of the ABC Stage 67 anthology series. I would have been a whole three months old. I have no clue whether my parents watched it. Given their love of television and my father’s love of musicals, I’m going to guess they did. It starred the perfectly cast Anthony Perkins as misanthropic poet Charles Snell and Charmaine Carr as innocent, uneducated Ella Harkness, with Dorothy Stickney as more dotty-than-regal Mrs. Monday (a renamed Mrs. Vanderpant).

It’s a musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Goldman and directed by Paul Bogart. The creators and cast do a wonderful job translating the mood of the story to the screen – all the “free but still sort of trapped” sensibility, the rigidness of the Paul Stern (renamed from Bracey’s) store community, the threat of the Dark Men is there in the staging, dialogue, lyrics and instrumental music – and hey fix the pacing issue I had with the story, giving the romantic relationship more time to develop and giving space to the real threat of the Dark Men at the end. The songs start out character-centric and then become plot-propelling. Charles’ song “If You Can Find Me I’m Here” is one of the best misanthropic “you don’t like my art, screw you” songs ever written, while Ella’s “I Remember Sky” is a wistfully beautiful piece. The duet “When” moves their relationship along and incorporates their fears of being found out, while the duet “Take Me to the World” is the point at which the plot turns towards the big denouement.  

There are a couple of significant changes to the story, as often happens in page-to-screen adaptations. Ella is now an adult (to remove the ickiness of a poet in his late twenties falling in love with a sixteen-year-old, I assume) and her mistreatment at the hands of the older community members is made more explicit (including that they have never taught her to read, write, or do math, and force her to live in the store basement). Instead of unrequited love, Ella falls as much in love with Charles as he does with her. And in what I think is a very sensible change that heightens the drama of the last act, the couple is found out not through Charles intentionally revealing his feelings to his ‘trusted friend’ Roscoe, but because Charles accidentally turns on the store’s speaker system while they are singing “Take Me To The World” and unknowingly lets the entire store community know what they are planning (the night watchman hears too, thus revealing that there are people living in the store even if he can’t manage to find them, which puts him in danger without having to work in the awkward love triangle).

The final act is a wonderful game of cat-and-mouse through the store as Mrs. Monday and Roscoe try to delay Charles and Ella long enough for the Dark Men to catch them. The fate of the characters implied by the structure of Collier’s story is made explicit in the final scenes of the episode. I always thought it was a delightfully dark ending, and I’m glad Goldman and Sondheim didn’t decide to change it for television.

Interesting trivia: while the television episode originally aired in color, the only print remaining is in black and white. And I actually think that adds to the mood and thus effectiveness of the production. I’m kind of glad the color print isn’t available (the DVD has some test footage of Anthony Perkins in Stern Brothers and it just feels too bright for the story being told).

FINAL COMPARISON

While I liked Collier’s story well enough and I want to read more of his short stories, I think I prefer the musical in this instance.

The Collier story can be found in his collection Fancies and Goodnights. The Sondheim-Goldman musical is available on DVD and Prime Video.

SERIES SATURDAY: Stargirl TV series

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

I think that Stargirl has become my favorite of the current live-action super-hero television offerings. (This being said, as I’ve also noted on social media, in light of not having seen any of Doom Patrol, Titans, Swamp Thing or Umbrella Academy, and having fallen way behind on Black Lightning, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Gotham.) So I’m here to talk about why in more depth than my Facebook post.  IN CASE IT NEEDS TO BE SAID – FROM THIS POINT ON, EXPECT SPOILERS! BOW OUT NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THE ENTIRE SEASON AND CARE ABOUT BEING SURPRISED!

I only became familiar with the Courtney Whitmore Stargirl character after her solo comics series had ended and she’d become a full member of the Justice Society of America. In fact, I still haven’t read her solo series, although I’ve picked up the trade paperback collections and mean to get around to them real soon. So my impressions of the show are based on what I know of the character from her appearances in various JSA runs, and on the show itself.

I’m a firm believer in not expecting live-action versions of comic books to hew too closely to the material on which they’re based. It’s less disappointing when they make wholesale changes if you just go in expecting there to be egregious differences. But Stargirl … Stargirl seems intent on capturing the feel, if not the word-for-word storyline, of the comics. I don’t know how closely anything in season one maps onto the original Stargirl comics (other than Courtney’s step-dad being former sidekick Stripesy and building a giant robot) but they certainly seem to be embracing the legacy aspect of JSA comics going back to the 70s (when Robin, Power Girl, and a time-tossed Star-Spangled Kid joined the team). Okay, so this is not the Beth Chapel, Rick Tyler, Henry King Junior or Yolanda Montez I met back in the late 80s (most obviously, the show’s versions aren’t adults) … but they capture the spirit of each of those characters really well: Henry fighting his father’s evil influence, Rick trying to live up to his father’s legacy but still be his own man, Yolanda trying to decide if she even wants to do this superhero thing at all. Beth is the only one I feel doesn’t have much of the original comics version in her portrayal, but this version of the character is endearing and works as the brainier side of a very brawn-heavy team. I also wasn’t sure how I’d feel about the pilot episode’s biggest departure from the comics: killing off most of the JSA. I have to say I think they gave it all the poignancy it deserved, given that show is not about those characters, but rather the legacy they leave behind.

The show is also embracing the giddiness of super-hero fight scenes that many of the current CW shows eschew for more “realistic” (grittier, darker-filmed) fight choreography. It’s not unusual, in a Stargirl fight scene, to see a character get kicked in the chest and fly across the room. It’s also not unusual to actually be able to see who is hitting who and how hard, and what happens to them after they get hit. With the exception of the opening battle of the pilot, in which the Injustice Society kills most of the JSA, even the night-time and subterranean scenes are well-lit enough to see whose doing what. (Arrow’s fight choreography was mostly spectacular – but how often could you actually see the details of what was going on?) I loved pretty much every fight scene from the pilot on, but the fights in the finale had me cheering for just how well-done they were.

The costumes are also really faithful to the comics, and look almost nothing like what you’d find on any of the other Berlanti-led super-hero shows to date. Gone are the realistic heavy leather outfits of Arrow, Flash, etc.; in are cloaks and cowls and form-fitting spandex and outfits that shouldn’t work in real life but do anyway because COMIC BOOKS. It gives the show a more traditional comic-book look, which I think is part of what frees them to be a little over-the-top in the fight choreography. The only outfits I didn’t really like were those in the snapshot of Pat’s former team, the Seven Soldiers of Victory. They looked a little too much like Halloween costumes. Especially Shining Knight’s, which looked like something you’d pick up at a Ren Faire (but maybe I’m being picky on that because he’s one of my favorite super-heroes?).

The details in the costumes are matched by little set details throughout the season. I particularly loved the movies playing at the theater in Blue Valley: the Unknown Soldier, The Haunted Tank, GI Robot (get the feeling that the people of Blue Valley love their war movies?), and Prez. And I’m sure I missed some other easter eggs, because I can’t imagine Geoff Johns and James Robinson not throwing in more and more obscure stuff as production went along.

The acting on the show is top-notch. Brec Bassinger pulls off the neat trick of letting Courtney be pretty unlikeable at the start (she may be justified in being upset about the move to Blue Valley, but we don’t have to like the way she treats Pat or Mike) and even partway through the season (her grandstanding in the training session with “her” JSA) and still getting us to feel for her. Her best episode was the one in which she finds out her father isn’t who she thought he was and all of her insecurities and heartbreak tumble out. The actors playing the rest of the JSA are excellent as well; while some of what they’re given to play is standard “high school angst,” they don’t overplay it like a lot of high school-set shows do. Of the adult characters, I think Neil Jackson steals the show as Jordan Mahkent/Icicle – his character certainly shows the most depth and nuance (especially as compared to the very one-note “sadistic lunkhead” portrayals of Sportsmaster and Tigress), with Christopher James Baker’s Henry King/Brainwave a close second. And I have to give props to Nelson Lee, who spends the whole season acting under a hood through which we’re barely able to see even his eyes and yet sells every scene perfectly. Amy Smart is terrific as Courtney’s mother, and although I’m not a huge Luke Wilson fan I think he gets Pat Dugan’s mix of sincerity and insecurity just right.

I think the tightness of the season – 13 episodes – helped the actors as well. There was no room for one-off episodes exploring side-quests or a “day in the life at Blue Valley High.” Every scene needed to further the narrative or enhance character, and for the most part they did. Even the scenes of Mike Dugan’s school science fair were necessary – we had to care about the kid if we were going to worry about his safety in the finale. The only scenes I felt didn’t contribute to the overall arc were the scenes in the two-part finale focused on Isaac Bowin (The Fiddler’s son); if they’re not a set-up for the character having a bigger role in season two, then they really were extraneous.

The final episode was one of the most satisfying season finales I’ve seen in a long time, super-hero show or otherwise. The writing staff wrapped up all the major plots for the season while still giving us plenty of hooks into season two. And most of the finale was action, action, action. Which made the quieter Christmas scenes at the end more powerful.

But let’s talk about season two before we go.

With DC Universe and the decision to move most of the original live-action and animated content to HBO Max, there’s a lot of trepidation therefore that Stargirl moving to the CW instead will cause it to fall victim to the things that people dislike about the Arrowverse shows: increased romantic soap—opera elements and too many “filler” episodes, and a move to filming in Vancouver instead of Georgia. I’m hoping that Greg Berlanti will stick to the formula that made season one of Stargirl successful: 13 episodes (15, at most) and a focus on one major problem for the heroes to overcome (and that filming will remain in Georgia as Black Lightning has).

The concern I have is that the season finale set up a ton of possible main storylines for season two. We got set-ups for The Shade (one of my favorite DC characters ever), Eclipso, the search for the Seven Soldiers, the return of Sylvester Pemberton, the whereabouts/survival of the remaining ISA members who aren’t clearly dead, and perhaps even some who were … and left somewhat unspoken was what will happen when the ISA’s kids find out their parents are dead or incarcerated (we didn’t see Artemis Crock or Cameron Mahkent in any meaningful capacity in the season finale, but we did see Isaac Bowin take a tuba to a bully’s head) and who is responsible for those deaths/incarcerations. That’s a lot to juggle in a short 13-15 episode season. I’m afraid that the writers are going to try to go bigger in season two, which will not necessarily be better, and I’m hoping that this prolonged pandemic-induced hiatus will give Johns and company time to decide what story they want to tell in season two and what can wait until a probably season three or longer.

But even with that concern firmly in place, I’m excited and hopeful for a second season of Stargirl. It’s nice to see a brightly-lit, hopeful, less-angst-driven superhero show on television right now.

SERIES SATURDAY: Young Heroes In Love

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

To say that Young Heroes in Love was one of DC Comics’ more eclectic offerings of the late 1990s would not be an understatement. It ran 18 issues, from 1996 to 1998, and I remember enjoy its quirky take on a group of early-20s heroes just trying to make their mark in the greater super-hero world while also navigating their own hormones. I liked it enough that it’s one of those short-lived near-forgotten series that has had a permanent home in my comics collection, surviving multiple downsizings and moves.

And yet, I can’t recall having reread it since it was first published. So I was overdue but a little nervous to actually do it. Any time I consider revisiting something I haven’t read or watched in a decade or more, there’s always that question: will it hold up to my memory?

Happy to say that Young Heroes in Love pretty much does. It’s not perfect, but it’s still good – and when it’s really good, it’s really really good.

Writer Dan Raspler and artist Dev Madan co-created the team and concept, and you can tell from the first issue that they’re just having total fun with the idea of, as Wikipedia puts it, a super-hero garage band. These folks know they want to be super-heroes, and that the best way to make a name for themselves is to work together – but they’re really not very good at that last part yet. Given time, maybe they would be – but Raspler never got to explore that far since the series only ran 17 issues (plus a weird DC 1 Million crossover issue).  When the team encounters more famous heroes, like Superman (during his “electric powers” phase) in issue #3, they fall all over themselves fan-boy and –girling while also trying to impress. They even offer the Man of Steel (Electric? Whatever) membership! Most of the run is one endearing attempt after another to “make it big.” They go up against several giant monsters as well as a serial kidnapper and a villain team with a “rat” theme (Raspler’s hysterical take on the long history of villain teams built around a common theme, most famously represented by Marvel Comics’ Serpent Society). They have their biggest case fighting Batman’s enemy The Scarecrow, but they don’t make a big splash in the news. They do make a big impression on fans in Japan and end up the subject of a manga magazine – mirroring the success lots of young bands have overseas long before they become popular here at home.

Dev Madan’s art in the early issues sets a matching serio-comic tone, slightly cartoonish but not over-exaggerated. It took a little getting accustomed to (in my memory, the art was a bit more realistic). The characters all have distinct looks that stay consistent throughout the issues Madan illustrates (although the same can’t be said for the issues drawn by other artists), and he’s really good at giving the characters a variety of body types. Frostbite’s angular build contrasts Off-Ramp’s scruffy dad-bod (a term that I don’t think had been invented yet in 1996, but which totally fits the character). Bonfire is petite, Monstergirl is more full-figured. The diversity in body types of most of the team becomes extra apparent whenever Hard Drive (the telepathic/telekinetic leader) shares panels with Thunderhead (the team tank): both are broad-shouldered, muscular blonds (although Hard Drive’s blond hair is close-cut and Thunderhead’s is a typical shaggy rocker-do). I have to think making the Brain and the Brawn look so much alike was a conscious decision on Raspler and Madan’s part.

Okay, technically, Hard Drive isn’t the brains of the outfit – the diminutive Junior is the smartest guy in the room (at least until the team meets a particular pre-teen genius), but he’s often overlooked by his own team because he doesn’t have any other power other than being small – which does enable him to solve a case all by himself at one point, proving his worth to the cops if not to his own team. And Junior isn’t the only tiny member of the team: Zip Girl joins a few issues in, and she’s not only small, she can change sizes (to lead a normal life out of costume) and she can fly. Junior doesn’t mind, because he’s in unrequited love with her.

Which brings us around to the title of the book. They’re not just The Young Heroes – they’re Young Heroes in LOVE. The soap opera aspect of the book is nearly pitch-perfect, from budding crushes and unrequited love to one-night stands (and a subplot where Hard Drive tries to brainwash Bonfire into being in love with Thunderhead because it’s better for the team dynamic than her total sexual attraction to her power-opposite, Frostbite, and in which its very clear Hard Drive is in the wrong. Yes, he gets his come-uppance eventually). It being the late 90s, it’s not surprising that the majority of the relationships (the good and the toxic) are heterosexual. But not quite all of them. I’d forgotten just how (as comics writer Steve Orlando recently put it) “ahead of its time” this book was in, near the very end, giving us a relationship between a comfortably bisexual character (Frostbite) and a newly-out-of-the closet character (Off-Ramp). And it’s clear this was not a “the book’s being cancelled and no-one is likely to use these characters again, so what the hell” last minute decision. In early issues, we see Frostbite’s glances and flirting with Off-Ramp. Off-Ramp himself spends the early issues not showing attraction to anyone else on the team, mooning over a string of unsuccessful relationships with women. But the character blurbs at the start of the issues often included phrases like “who knows what Off-Ramp loves” – clear hints that sooner or later, Off-Ramp would have a romantic connection with someone. (And no – Off-Ramp’s coming out is not instigated by any kind of mind-control on Hard Drive’s part.)

If there’s one thing that might be deemed problematic about the book, it would be that the main cast is very, very, very white. Monstergirl, aka Rita Lopez, is an alien shapeshifter who hatched from an egg and imprinted on the Latino parents who raised her as their own (shades of Superman’s origin!). She’s the only Person of Color in the main cast (Yes, Frostbite is also not white: but he’s a blue-skinned ancient snow elf from northern Canada, so I’m not sure he counts). And there are only a couple of non-white supporting characters (including Junior’s childhood best friend who is now a cop). This is not something I consciously noticed in 1996-98, and I’m not sure it made a conscious impression on most readers at the time. There was no mention of it on the letters page at least. Which is surprising, given this was only a couple of years after the debut of Milestone Comics, an independent imprint published/distributed by DC. I’d like to think that if Raspler and Madan were pitching the book today, the cast would have been a bit more diverse.

I’d also like to think that if there had been more time, some of the fascinating background world-building would have been explored. Monstergirl’s alien uncle shows up eventually to reveal her true nature, but we never really get to learn anything about Frostbite’s people (for instance, are they connected at all to Justice League member Icemaiden’s community?), nor about the intriguing society of Travelers that Off-Ramp is apparently a member of. In fact, for most of the run everyone on the team seems to forget that Frostbite isn’t just another Young American Hero. Just like they seem to forget Monstergirl’s erratic behavior or Bonfire’s deep knowledge of the super-hero world except when mentioning it is needed to drive a plot point.

Soap opera romance, deep ruminations on the nature of celebrity and teamwork, tweaks on classic comic book conventions, young characters who are earnest and endearing but not perfect and whose bad decisions come back to haunt them, interesting world-building that never gets fully developed, and character traits that somehow get completely forgotten from issue to issue: holy shit – Young Heroes in Love was a CW Arrowverse show before there was an Arrowverse!

I doubt that Young Heroes in Love is on DC’s priority list for collection in trade paperback or hardcover (although, considering the recent collections of First Issue Special and Wanted, I could be wrong about that). But the individual issues seem to be available for only a few bucks each through places like Midtown Comics.

NEW FEATURE GRAPHICS!

For a while now, I’ve been considering commissioning new graphic headers for some of the regular/semi-regular features on the blog. Features like the book reviews, interviews and even “Series Saturday” tend to lead off with a photograph or book cover and so don’t really need a unifying header. But Reading Round-Up, Sunday Shorts and the new Top Ten(ish) don’t usually have a header of any kind, and boy were they feeling left out.

Enter Scott Witt: long-time friend/brother, former housemate, great cartoonist and all-around nice guy. Scott created three headers featuring his character Mopey the Platypus. Mopey is a coffee-drinking, moody, sarcastic writer waiting for his big break. Yes, he’s based on me.

Mopey has appeared in most iterations of Scott’s The World of Witt — in comic strip form, as part of several card games and board games. It’s an honor to be Tuckerized into Scott’s world. A world you can check out on his Patreon, and his Instagram.

And now: Mopey the Platypus in: New Graphics!