Only Ben Bova I've read has been some nonfiction and one novel, I think a children's novel, called Escape, if I remember right. Currently re-reading Articles of the Federation.
Last night, I finished reading Batman '89 (2022, published by DC Comics), by Sam Hamm (writer), Joe Quiñones (artist), Leonardo Ito (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer). Reprints material originally released in single issue comic books format as Batman '89 #1-6 (October 2021-September 2022). (Was originally announced to be a DC "Digital First" release starting in July 2021 and to run for twelve digital comic book chapters in that format prior to appearing in print, but the smaller digital release chapters apparently didn't end up happening.) This hardcover collected edition has a cover by Joe Quiñones, and also original issues cover art by Joe Quiñones, Jerry Ordway and Steve Oliff, Taurin Clarke, Mitch Gerads, Lee Weeks, Babs Tarr, Adam Hughes and Julian Totino Tedesco. Also includes a nine page "Batman '89 Sketchbook" by Joe Quiñones. Buoyed by the success of recent newly released original comic book series based on the 1966-1968 Adam West "Batman" television series (under the title Batman '66) and 1975-1979 Lynda Carter television series (Wonder Woman '77), DC Comics took things to the next logical step and ventured in 2021 into telling original adventures of their two greatest motion picture renditions of their Superman and Batman characters, namely the Christopher Reeve Superman: The Movie (1978) and Michael Keaton Batman (1989) versions. Prior to this, DC's only comic books featuring the Reeve and Keaton versions of their characters were single issue movie adaptations of Superman III (1983) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)—there were no comic book or novel adaptations of Superman: The Movie (1978) or Superman II (1980) due to the deal made between Warner Bros. and original movie story writer, Mario Puzo—and single issue comic book adaptations of Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) (and also the two subsequent Batman sequels that didn't star Michael Keaton, Batman Forever (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997). (These single issue comic book adaptations all came out in the same years as their respective movies.) Batman '89, this new story by Hamm, Quiñones, et al., clearly takes place after the events of Batman Returns (as not only is Selina Kyle--the Michelle Pfeiffer version of the character--a major character in this story but they also make reference to events that occurred in Batman Returns). However, this must take place in a universe or timeline where events then led directly into this story rather than into the following two Joel Schumacher directed Batman films, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, as will become clear in my plot summary. Before that, however, I should mention that Sam Hamm, who wrote this, is the same Sam Hamm who co-wrote the screenplay for the Tim Burton directed Batman 1989 film. (Or, rather, wrote the initial draft chosen to be filmed. The script then received rewrites by Warren Skaaren and other writers.) So, unlike the Superman '78 comic book, Batman '89 does actually have a creator who has direct ties to the actual film. (Hamm also received a story credit on Batman Returns for two early script drafts he wrote but director Burton then replaced Hamm with script writer, Daniel Waters, and little of Hamm's story contributions remained in the final film.) Hamm's Batman '89 story focusses on one of the plot points he had included in his early unused Batman Returns scripts, that of Harvey Dent's (played by Billy Dee Williams in the first movie) descent into the villain, Two-Face. Here, he is still Gotham's district attorney, and he is leading a campaign to capture and prosecute the Batman as an out-of-control vigilante, and for removing Jim Gordon as Police Commissioner (despite Dent at the same time being in a romantic relationship with Jim Gordon's daughter, police sergeant Barbara Gordon). Dent is friends with Bruce Wayne, who Dent (of course) does not know is Batman. At the start of the story, Wayne (as Batman), makes a serious mistake, leading to the death of an innocent teenager (the police accidentally shooting the teen while firing at him). This leads to additional anti Batman sentiments. Another masked vigilante protecting the poorer denizens of Gotham, this one a black teenager named Drake Winston, at first is antagonistic towards the Batman. (He wears a version of the Robin costume although the only reference to anyone calling him that is two kids in the background discussing what Batman had called him. One says he heard Batman call him "Robin", like in Robin Hood. The other says, "Naw, dumbass! He said the dude was robbin' the store." "Oh... that makes sense." And, at the end, Bruce asks him what he should call Drake and Drake replies, "Well... You're a bat guy, I'm a bird guy... So, I'm think'... The Avenging Eagle." Bruce: "'The Avenging Eagle'..." Drake: "It's not final. I'm still deciding...") Dent, (again, of course), has an accident that freakishly disfigures the left side of his face, this time in an automobile repair garage fire (that I've already forgotten just who set on fire, just that there were a lot of bombs going off all over Gotham) that Dent runs into to try to same Winston, who Dent believes is still inside. There are also scenes prior to this showing Dent already fixated with tossing a coin (although it's a trick coin with two "heads" sides). I'm not going to try to summarize the story past this point except to say that Selina Kyle is also present in the story as both Kyle and as Catwoman, that Barbara Gordon is most of the time being pulled in various directions (her love for Harvey Dent, for her father, and her duty as a police sergeant). There are some nice moments in this story, like showing how Bruce ends up with a giant penny in the Batcave (as in the comics), and his scenes with Winston at the mansion and in the cave. The Harvey Dent stuff isn't as interesting (despite my always having been at least a bit curious as to how things would have gone with they'd stuck with Billy Dee Williams as Dent in the movies instead of re-casting the part in Batman Forever with Tommy Lee Jones). For one thing, we've seen the origin of Two-Face story told so many times by this point both in the comics and also in the various animated television series and films (Batman Forever and The Dark Knight) that it's very hard to bring much of anything new that that story. And the seeds here to Dent's dual personality both prior to the accident and also after it are just not particularly convincing. (There is an interesting moment, however, during a hallucination sequence where Dent believes it is many years later and he is governor and Barbara Gordon is the new Gotham police commissioner. She explains to him that he was right, that "Bruce Wayne flipped" and admitted to being the money man behind "a small army of mercenaries" playing as Batman. She shows him four photographs of men in the Batman costume without their masks and they are clearly meant to resemble fellow Batman film actors Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, and Ben Affleck.) So, the story comes across as pretty average due to this and also due to Hamm trying to fit too much into it (Two-Face, Catwoman, the introductions of both Barbara Gordon and Drake Winston/Robin). The art is what I would call "good overall but not great". Quiñones art here is more of a traditional movie adaptation style in the sense that it's drawn pretty much like he would draw any comic (I'd imagine) just with the faces just generally (sometimes vaguely) resembling the actors (unlike the Superman '78 art by Wilfredo Torres which looks so much like the Superman movies that he had to have been making extensive use of photo references for the facial likenesses and even for characters posing like when showing Superman in flight). I generally like both styles. Torres's Superman '78 comes across as more visually exciting to me, though, than Quiñones's does. For one thing, Hamm's plotting is much "denser" here than Robert Venditti's Superman '78's, as Quiñones' pages are crammed full of lots of little panels (many of them six or seven panels to a page). So, there's a lot more going on per page here than in Superman '78, but there are also fewer exciting moments, visually speaking. And, I hate to say it, but Quiñones' art is done no favors by how dark the artwork comes across in this story, the fault I suppose I have to put upon color artist Leonardo Ito. Now, I get that he was probably going for a tone reminiscent of the 1989 Batman film. However, his colors are *so* dark here in the many exterior night scenes and while taking place in the Batcave as to make much of Quiñones line art nearly impossible to make out. It's possible that this is some sort of production issue and not that of Ito's coloring (there are also a couple panels showing computer screens that are so small that it is impossible to read what's on the screen; I suspect this is a hold-over from when they thought this was going to be a "Digital First" release, where one would be viewing the story panel-by-panel enlarged to the size of one's phone or computer screen). There is a lot of potential here and I suppose that Batman '89 is probably a must read for die hard fans of the 1989 Tim Burton Batman movie. (Comic book direct market sales charts were still coming out at the time the first issues of Batman '89 and Superman '78 were coming out and, according to what I saw there, Batman '89 #1 was ordered by comics shops and online comics retailers by around one hundred thousand copies more than they did Superman '78 #1. Both first issues had many variant covers, so I have to presume it was just the general "Batman is cooler than Superman" mentality driving this, plus the fact that the Christopher Reeve Superman movies are cultural touchstones for comic book readers roughly my age (I turn 51 in three weeks; I was six years old when Superman: The Movie came out in 1978 and eight when Superman II in 1980) while the Michael Keaton Batman serves the same for a slightly younger generation just turning forty and I have to assume there are probably more forty-year-olds still buying monthly comic books than there are fifty-plus-year-olds. (I was seventeen years old when the 1989 Batman movie came out, so part way through high school. To me, the Michael Keaton Batman was a really cool new film but I never really thought of Keaton as *the* Batman actor of my generation as I had earlier with Christopher Reeve and Superman). I gave Batman '89 three out of five stars on GoodReads. I really hope that we get to see more of these Batman '89 and Superman '78 comics as both have potential for even better stories going forwards (and both have their own built-in audiences, the fans of the films). However, based on the previous similar tie-ins DC has done (Batman '66, Wonder Woman '77, and the CW "Arrowverse" tie-in series), they all seem to have pretty short runs. I believe Batman '66 ran for the longest and most issues, including quite a few crossover mini-series with other tv characters like the Green Hornet, Steed and Mrs. Peel (the 1960s tv "Avengers"), the "Man from U.N.C.L.E.", and Lynda Carter's "Wonder Woman '77". —David Young
I'm far from a die-hard fan of the Burton/Keaton Batman, but I'm more curious about this comic than the Superman one, since I'm curious to see what Hamm had in mind for Billy Dee Williams's version of Harvey. They have the TPB on the Hoopla digital library, so I may get it. It's also refreshing to see someone actually remember that Robin was named in honor of Robin Hood, not the bird like everyone seems to assume these days.
Yes. According to Wikipedia, Ilya Salkind wrote an early script that had Brainiac as the villain, played by Richard Pryor (which quite possibly could have somehow made Superman III even worse than it was). When the script was rewritten by the Newmans (Leslie and David), Brainiac was cut. However, Brainiac also was planned to be part of the unfilmed Superman projects between the Christopher Reeve films and Superman Returns and also as part of a Superman Returns sequel: (Also from Wikipedia: ) Brainiac was planned to appear in the scrapped Superman Returns and Superman Lives film projects. Most notably, he was featured along with Lex Luthor and Doomsday in Kevin Smith's version of the script, which was later discarded by director Tim Burton, who sought to include Brainiac's intellect bonding with Lex Luthor to create "Lexiac". In 2007, director Bryan Singer reported that he wanted to use Brainiac in the Superman: The Man of Steel, the planned sequel to Superman Returns. However, the project was scrapped by Warner Bros. —David Young
I just finished The Gone World, by Tom Sweterlitsch, on the recommendation of the Space the Nation podcast, which is going to be discussing it in an upcoming episode. It had a really interesting take on time-travel that I, at least, had never seen exploited in fiction before, thought it's come up in pop-science books about how time travel could work if it were real. There were also certain aspects that reminded me of Dead Endless, but to be more specific would be a spoiler. Less of a spoiler to say it had a bit of a Stargate aspect to it, and a touch of The Expanse as well. Definitely one of those science-fiction novels where the setting could definitely support a who constellation of stories, but it's very definitely got a standalone vibe. I heard somewhere that the difference between a movie and a TV series is that a movie should be the most important or interesting thing that ever happens in the characters' lives, while a TV series has to pace itself in terms of life-defining-ness, and so it is in this case. There could be a dozen fascinating stories in this world, but this one is definitely the lynchpin, with what's left sketched in the background interesting, but ultimately would be a let-down compared to this. It's pretty grisly, though, right from the jump. I nearly abandoned it in the first chapter (also, probably not great that I started reading it over lunch), but something about it made me come back, it's definitely a page-turner, and I ended up wolfing it down over the evening.
Tessa Afshar's The Hidden Prince. Biblical fiction based on the prophecies in the Bible about Cyrus, who would rule when Israel was released from Babylonian captivity.
Just finished a book I happened upon one day at the library, Time Travel: A History by James Gleick--saw it on the shelf and the title sounded intriguing. It turned out to be a rather interesting cultural analysis of why time-travel stories (as we typically think of them) didn't exist until the late 19th century.
Finished: see above, plus The Florence Legacy by Lauraine Snelling (contemporary - middle-aged women take a trip to Italy), Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke (time split between a woman helping Jews in WWII Germany and her daughter visiting in the '70s), On Writing (and Writers) (a collection of C.S. Lewis quotes on the title topics.) Now getting ready to read Dawn of Vengeance, then Shadow of Honour, books 2 and 3 in Ronie Kendig's "Droseran Saga" (space opera fantasy).
I am rereading Triangle: Imzadi II by Peter David. While the first is a more enjoyable read, the second book has the inclusion of the Rozhenkos (Worf’s parents seen in “Family”) to recommend it.
Reading a very battered old pulp magazine from September 1935: THE SPIDER: "King of the Red Killers" by Grant Stockbridge. Gleefully bloodthirsty stuff.
Interesting! I've been theorizing that the Fugitive Doctor came between the Second Doctor and the Third Doctor, since we never actually saw Two regenerate. I figured the Time Lords forced him into Fugitive form to work for the Division as part of his punishment, and then at the end of his time in the Division he ended up as Three stuck on Earth. It seemed to resolve the question of why the TARDIS would be stuck in police box form, why she was calling it "the TARDIS" when that's a name Susan is supposed to have made up when they ran off, and how the First Doctor could have been just about to steal the wrong TARDIS before Alt!Clara directed him to the right one when he ran off. But I'm hardly an expert on DW TOS, so maybe that theory has a hole I'm not aware of.
How much of the new series have you seen? They did reveal the Fugitive Doctor's origin. Spoiler: Fugitive Doctor's origin The Doctor had many lives before the "First" Doctor, having been discovered by the Gallifreyans as a child from another universe, already possessing regeneration, which a Gallifreyan scientist studied and duplicated. This canonizes the "Morbius Doctors" theory that the unidentified past lives we saw in the Doctor's duel with Morbius were earlier lives of the Doctor, rather than of Morbius as I always thought. At some point, the Doctor had their memory of all this erased. Of course, this has many holes in it, and it might well be retconned or ignored by future seasons. But there's no room for an extra incarnation post-Hartnell, since they were all accounted for in "The Time of the Doctor," with the War Doctor and Ten's abortive regeneration combining with the official eleven Doctors to add up to 13 lives. As for the word TARDIS, the series has been ignoring the idea that Susan coined it for decades, having all Time Lords call them that. I just figure that when the audience hears Gallifreyan speech translated into English for our benefit, we hear their word for their travel capsules as "TARDIS" because that's the English word for them.
The Mary Shelly Club by Goldy Moldvasksy. About a secret society of teenage horror fans. Quite the page-turner.
Really? I wouldn't think a book about a book club would be all that interesting. Then again, I'm sure some would say the same about my own opus-in-progress, covering the adventures of a child prodigy organist.
What? Do they try to build a monster? With the brain of "Abby Normal"? You'd be amazed at how messy the adventures of a musician can get.
I finished reading Zorro’s Exploits (Bold Venture Press, 2022, edited by Audrey Parente) last week. I read the first half from September to November 2022, then took a break before reading the second half between January and the first week of February 2023. (My individual story reviews are more detailed on the first half.) First we get two introductions (one by journalist Jan Zabiński and the other by noted Disney television historian, Bill Cotter). “The Alcalde’s Last Try” by Tekla Cichocka (illustrations by Sora Almasy). The only story in the book taking place in the 1990-1993 New World/Family Channel television series continuity (despite the front cover featuring this version of Zorro, as played by Duncan Regehr). Following soon after where the tv series left off. Alcalde Ignacio de Soto faces arrest and possibly execution for killing the Spanish king’s emissary (on the tv final episode). De Soto’s desperate last scheme to save himself is to force tavern keeper, Victoria Escalante (known to be Zorro’s love) to marry someone by the following day or lose her tavern, in hopes of drawing Zorro into a trap (hoping that capturing Zorro will outweigh everything else). Don Diego steps in to foil de Soto’s plans. “Courage by Firelight” by Aaron Rosenberg (illustrations by Steve Shipley). Poor farmers and peasants in the tavern are stirred to stand up for themselves by a stirring story of one of Zorro’s exploits by a mysterious friar. “Fray Felipe’s Dilemma” by Michael Kurland (illustrations by Steve Shipley). Fray Felipe knows of a plot by some pueblo officials that he can’t reveal the details of but tells Don Diego and Don Alejandro Vega enough to set Zorro out to foil the plot. (In this story Don Alejandro knows his son is Zorro.) “A Fox in the City” by Jim Beard (illustrations by Perego). Probably my favorite of the stories in the first half of the book. Don Diego and his father (who does not know his son is Zorro in this tale) are both visiting New York City for the inauguration of the United States first President under their new Constitution, George Washington. Diego discovers a plot to kill Washington, forcing him to assume his role of Zorro far from home. “Out of the Night” by John L. French (illustrations by Michael Grassia). A beast is first mauling cattle and horses around Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Don Diego has married his love, Lolita, and sworn to her to retire as Zorro. When the beast turns to killing people (and turns out to be a different sort of evil, the supernatural kind), it puts pressure on Diego to go back on his vow. (Don Alejandro knows Diego is Zorro in this story, and also in the next one.) “The Shepherd” by Susan Kite (illustrations by Rick Celano). Another favorite of mine. A simple tale of an old shepherd who lives in the mountains outside of the pueblo with his young son who makes one of his rare visits to town for supplies on a day that Zorro also makes an appearance. The old shepherd tells Sargent Garcia in the tavern that he once took care of a beautiful black horse that looked exactly like Zorro’s horse, Tornado. The shepherd and son know nothing of Zorro, just that the wealthy don they were watching the horse for years ago came back from schooling in Spain and taken possession again of the horse. The shepherd senses he shouldn’t tell Garcia too much, but, unbeknownst to him, is overheard in the tavern by two greedy men who deduce the truth and plan to use this information to blackmail Zorro. “Life and Death” by Scott Cranford (illustrations by Phil Latter). A man that the town soldiers all fear due to his fierce reputation attacks Don Diego’s servant, Bernardo, at the tavern, putting him at death’s door. The attack enrages Diego, who immediately confronts the man as Zorro. “Fox Hunt” by Bobby Nash (illustrations by Phil Latter). Probably my third favorite of the first half of the book. A boisterous and wealthy man from Spain who is a hunter has trained to hunt the most dangerous prey in Spanish California: el Zorro! Announcing his intentions at a party thrown by Don Alejandro (who again in this story does *not* know is his son), Diego decides he must confront this man in his den, a mansion he has bought alongside a deep ravine. “Los Hombres Buenos” by Patricia Crumpler (illustrations by Aleena Valentine). Two old schoolmates of Diego’s from their years studying in Spain arrives in town just as a group of bandits are raiding the local rancheros. One is now a priest on a special mission for the Monsignor of Madrid, going ahead of a religious relic touring the area. “M For Murrieta” by Francisco Silva (illustrations also by Francisco Silva). The only story in this collection featuring the Alejandro Murrieta version of Zorro played by Antonio Banderas (and his wife, Elena, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) in the films The Mask of Zorro and The Legend of Zorro. The city’s collected taxes are stolen by a bandit said to be Alejandro’s dead brother, Joaquin. “The Road To Penance” by Ron Fortier (illustrations by Steve Shipley). The local church mission is robbed by bandits and the priest is kidnapped to be held for ransom. “Zorro and the Red Devil” by Teel James Glenn (illustrations by Francisco Silva). A group of pirates has been raiding the rancheros and settlements along the California coast. They take a group of wealthy land owners (including Don Diego and his father Don Alejandro) hostage. Diego has to get away and then take out the pirates one by one. (I really liked this story.) “The Gold Bell of Canfield Featherstone” by James Mullaney (illustrations by Francisco Silva). A bell made out of solid gold being donated by a rich plantation owner from Georgia to the local mission becomes a target for every bandit in the area, laying in wait to hijack the carriage secretly carrying it. However, not all is as it seems in regards to the reported “Gold Bell”. “A Lovely View” by Keith DeCandido (illustrations by Aleena Valentine-Lopez). Vandals hired by a wealthy don harass and pillage an orphanage set up in a mansion along the coast that the don’s wife desires. The don’s pressure prevents Capitan Monastario from stepping in. Zorro most therefore come to the sisters who run the orphanage’s aid. “A Wolf in the Land” by Don Everett Smith Jr. (illustrations by Michael Grassia). A very good story about Zorro vs. a werewolf that has killed the local doctor and a soldier and threatens to continue killing others in the area. The first encounter between Zorro and the werewolf does not go well. “The Kindness of Strangers” by Patrick Thomas (illustrations by Rob Davis). Zorro must reach a witness who can clear an innocent man from being executed by the Alcalde. The Alcalde’s soldiers stand between Zorro and the witness. “Z” by Bret Bouriseau (illustrations also by Bret Bouriseau). Zorro encounters a beautiful seniorita in a carriage being chased by another carriage and about to be driven over a cliff. But, this encounter takes a supernatural turn. An enjoyable range of stories. In general, I am enjoying the longer stories a bit better than the shorter ones (and, generally speaking, the stories in the second half of the book are a bit better than in the first half). Some might find it jarring that these stories seem to take place based all on different versions of Zorro, many seemingly based on the original Johnston McCulley pulp stories, others seemingly from the 1957-1959 Disney television series (the Guy Williams version), the aforementioned story featuring the Duncan Regehr and Antonio Banderas versions, etc. I didn’t really have a problem with this (other than the back and forth about if his father, Don Alejandro, knows his secret or not; ironically, the opening story based on the New World tv series Zorro, which ended with the clear indication that Diego was just about to reveal his secret to his father right as the end credits rolled, does not address whether Alejandro knows or not, focusing entirely on Diego and Victoria instead). My only real complaint is that this book really needed another proofreading prior to publication. I’ve found the frequent misspellings (and usages of incorrect words) distracting. In one case it happens twice, in two back-to-back sentences (something like “So I would seem ” when it should have said, “So it would seem”, followed by in incorrect use of “too” in the next sentence instead of “to”). In another story Zorro is actually written as “Zero” twice in the middle of a passage. Easy things to catch if one has enough live “eyes” going over the text prior to printing (and not an over reliance on spell-checking software). But this is a small press outfit, so perhaps Parente didn’t have any editorial assistants to help go over it. Still, I enjoyed this book and plan to read the other Zorro novels and story collections published by Bold Ventures Press. Short story collections are almost always an uneven experience, and Zorro’s Exploits is no exception. Therefore I ended up giving it three out of five stars on GoodReads (but definitely recommend it to Zorro fans). — David Young
I did a watch-through of most of the screen versions of Zorro not long ago (after reading the original novel), but the Regehr series is the main one I haven't managed to find, aside from a '90s animated series I never heard of and various overseas productions. (And Zorro: The Gay Blade, which I remember not caring for when I saw it in my youth.) That seems to be cutting things very close chronologically, given that the Pueblo of Los Angeles was only founded by 44 settlers in 1781, eight years before Washington's inauguration. In 1789 it would still have been quite a tiny settlement compared to how it's usually portrayed in Zorro stories. Aha, that would be in the continuity of the 1957 Guy Williams series, which featured Sgt. Garcia and gave Tornado his name and the origin story described there. (Ditto for KRAD's story featuring Monastario.) Not unusual for anthologies like this. Well, drawing on existing adaptations' continuities is unusual, but they tend to have stories that aren't in continuity with each other and use different interpretations of the concept/characters at the authors' discretion. I wonder what other continuities they draw on. There are a lot of options, including the Douglas Fairbanks silent movies, the 1936 The Bold Caballero (the first color Zorro movie), the Tyrone Power classic, the various Republic serial versions, and the Filmation animated series.
There is a complete series DVD set of the Family Channel/Newline Duncan Regehr “Zorro” series that I managed to buy several years back, after it had already gotten kind of hard to find. Looking… Yeah, I bought it off Amazon in February 2014 for $51.94. Looking at what it’s going for now. YIKES!!! $239.98 (used)/$258.89 (new). I sure am glad I bought it when I did! I also was smart and bought the two Disney Treasures “Zorro” tv series sets when they first came out. Those are also crazy high prices now. — David Young