March 2021 Books Read Standouts: The Way Of The Househusband, Vol. 1/The Scumbag, Vol. 1: Cocainefinger

 The Way Of The Househusband, Vol.1

    Aw yeah, dis one's da real deal.
    If you're anywhere in the orbit of real-time comics discussion you've doubtless heard of TWOTH this past year, or maybe you saw an advert for the confusingly-described animated Netflix adaptation, or if your nerd-credit is way better than mine maybe you watched the live-action Japanese series that I'm having a really hard time finding through legitimate internet-channels. (Seriously, if you have a line on that hit me up.) Maybe you heard about it after the fact somewhere cool like Mangasplaining, which I just recently discovered and which has been a fucking disaster for my wallet, I don't mind telling you.
   
    The Way of the Househusband has a simple premise: an average husband has a criminal past unknown to his wife, and he keeps running into people from his organized crime days. It's also a crowning example of one of my very favorite styles of storytelling: an entirely ridiculous thing taken 10,000% seriously. Or maybe a serious thing taken ridiculously? Maybe a couple layers of each? Maybe there's no difference?
    Tatsu--known in a former life as The Immortal Dragon--walks around all day in badass shades and a Yakuza-style suit under an adorable apron, and if you didn't know better you'd think criminal stereotypes acted like him instead of the other way around: testing da new guy to see if he can handle the doity woik that comes with the job (programming his Roomba), teaching actual mob guys how to survive a real cutthroat battleground (yoinking the sweater-and-glove set his wife wants from swarming housewives at a sale), and making sure his connection has da goods and that they'll be up to to da boss's standards (a blu-ray box-set of his wife's favorite magical-girl anime). That's it. That's the joke, over and over, and it works every time, because the tone is consistently warm and wholesome, the comedic timing and tension are perfect, and the art is shockingly good for a title's first volume. Also? At the end of the volume you get his kittycat having bonus adventures.
    Comedy is highly subjective and hit-or-miss, but dis is one marksman who always hits his target and completes da mission (remembers his coupons and discount-club card at the grocery 'cause it's 👏double👏points👏day).

Score: 9/10 Goddamn Terrified Door-To-Door Knife Salesmen

The Scumbag, Vol. 1: Cocainefinger

    HA, this one's gross.
    Okay, so let's say there's a potion, a serum, an infusion that would imbue one with, basically, all the best powers: flight, laser-splodo-eyebeams, invulnerability, x-ray vision, supra-strength, and all you have to do to activate them is summon genuine benevolence and goodwill for your fellow humans and a desire to protect them from all harm. Now imagine that this wonder-sauce has been stolen by and crammed into the veins of the single worst person walking the face of the Earth. Not an evil man! No, evil men have goals, evil men are convinced they are the good guys and are working for a better world, evil men, generally, have any goddamn idea what they're doing. None of these descriptors--the good or the bad--apply, in even the broadest sense, to Ernie. What applies to Ernie is an all-encompassing, nonspecific lust for hedonic sacraments: booze, vintage Mötley Crüe concert-tour t-shirts, cash, sick-ass belt buckles, every drug known to man and some heretofore known only to the most depraved ape, and all the reasonably-priced affection that any of the above can be traded for. And he's going to need a lot of all of it, on the government's dime, if he's going to play his part in their web of international espionage and intrigue.
    The Scumbag isn't a feel-good book; it's no Lumberjanes or, pardon me while I genuflect, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. But it's a hell of a fun book, and while it may be extra gross and hyperviolent and offend every sensibility you've got and also a few it invents just for that purpose, it doesn't make you feel like you're actively becoming a worse person for reading it, like The Boys. Also I don't typically enjoy spy-fiction, even super-spies, so it must've been doing something right to keep me turning the pages. Does it have a moral, or a flawed protagonist who grows and learns from his mistakes? Hell no it does not, citizen; what it has is a rocket-car, a morally ambiguous government agency forced to work with an idiot over whom they have no leverage, and a sex-bot who understands the concept of consent and will not give it, but will give a five-fingered stainless-steel salad to anyone who doesn't understand it.
    In short, I did not feel great about reading this book, but I laughed, marveled at some truly gnarly art by Rick Remender and Eric Powell (of The friggin' Goon, so you KNOW it's messed up), and I slammed pre-order on the Volume 2 trade as soon as it came up on ComiXology, so make of that what you will. 

Score: 7.75/10 Balloons Full Of You-Know-What Pulled Outta You-Don't-Wanna-Know-Where

some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class

February 2021 Books Read Standouts: The Way Of Kings/Giant Days, Vol.1

The Stormlight Archive, Book One: The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson

    (Content warning for descriptions of mental illness)

    Aw frig, how does one even begin to summarize one's favorite book? A book that, no matter how many times one reads it, manages to hold new lessons, new secrets and new things one's wife absolutely will not care about when one wakes her to tell her about them? (Unrelated: One may need a place to crash tonight.) 

    Lemme ask you: When was the last time you read a thousand-page book that really needed to be a thousand pages, not just because the author could but because it's a machine, every part of which is necessary to its function and whose components simply could not fit in fewer than a thousand pages? Because the next time will be when you read this. The Way of Kings marked my entry--perhaps inevitable, in retrospect--into the world of great big goddamn fantasy doorstopper novels. What's it about, you ask? UM, ONLY EVERYTHING???? But in a much more literal sense it's mainly about three people: The only daughter of a destitute noble house eager to pay a debt that isn't her fault, a slave who was a surgeon before he saved the wrong life, and an old soldier who is uncle to the king and who may be losing his mind, because the alternative is too terrifying to consider. Can they foil a plot to topple a kingdom? Will they be able to prove their innocence and regain their freedom? How can they save the people who mean everything to them, even when those people are why they've been put in a position to lie to the person who trusts them the most? ALSO WHAT'S THIS ABOUT ANCIENT GODS MAYBE RETURNING?
    The Stormlight Archive has the most thoughtfully and thoroughly conceived worldbuilding this side of Tolkien; everything about Roshar makes sense, especially the things that don't for reasons that become glaringly obvious after you understand them, which is one of the qualities that make this an incredible read for new reasons every single time you crack it open. The cultures, the magic, the monstros, the giant-ass magic swords that actually obey the laws of physics, the ludicrous social mores that comment none too subtly on real-world double-standards, everything down to the geography and the writing systems all fractal out from a simple set of causes that make the entire world as full of breath and life as any I've ever read. But much more than that, what keeps me coming back is the people: every main character in The Stormlight Archive is mentally ill. Mind-paralyzing anxiety, wildly erratic dementia, catastrophic depression and PTSD so severe it borders on dissociative identity disorder are present and treated so realistically and subtly that it would be incredibly easy to not even realize they were happening, just like with real-life mental illness. Real talk: I live with and am medicated for anxiety that once pushed my mind's needle so far into the red that I lost nearly thirty pounds in two weeks and developed an ulcer that had me horking blood into the porcelain confessional every morning. I say this to make a point: seeing protagonists that I can relate to on that specific frequency, handled with honesty and care, is extremely rare in our media and means more to me than I can easily express, especially because even three books and three thousand pages later, they're still struggling with mental health. None of them are 'cured', all of them have had to make allowances for the limits their illnesses place on them and this is recognized and accepted by everyone who loves them, and it's implied more than once not that being mentally ill is what makes a hero, but that the empathy and force of will necessary to survive with it is part of what gives one the strength to take truly heroic actions, and the acknowledgment that disability has no bearing on ability to protect the people we love and make the world a better place is priceless.
    I've been reading this book every few years for a decade and it hasn't changed, but I have: what I appreciate about it, which characters I identify with most, what lessons I take from it, perhaps a little begrudgingly. I don't expect it to mean to you what it means to me, but if you're like me you're always in the market for a story that can teach you something about yourself, and frankly you're not gonna get a much better page-to-cost ratio this side of, fuckin, I dunno, the Bible or something, and them shits are free.

Score: 10/10 Cauldrons Of Stew, Because Someone Has To Cook For These Airsick Lowlanders

Giant Days, Vol. 1

    God Giant Days is so friggin' good. Okay, so remember how what I loved about Lumberjanes is that it's warm and sweet and roots its monstro fights and mermaid battles of the bands and yeti roller-derbies and giant birds stealing buses fulla grandmas in a foundation of genuine human relationships and emotions that allows grounded characters to move believably in ridiculous situations? Giant Days is like that, except the weird, made-up place where the laws of nature have no sway is called 'England', and the old woman in the woods who can turn into a bear is 'going to university', and arm-wrestling a living marble statue to foil a mischievous Greek god's plans is, I dunno, Tesco.
    The premise, she is a simple one: Esther (boy-crazy Morticia Addams without the undead horse-sense), Susan (self-loathing and hypocritical but loyal Mom Friend) and Daisy (new-bornéd peep naïf who sees the good in everyone) are all roommates (and eventually housemates) going to university together in a place called Chef's-Field. Is it basically Golden Girls Babies Go To College In England? 100% yes, and that is a good thing. The stories are simple and relatable: will Esther learn to live on a student budget after a lifetime of having money-spigot parents? What exactly is going on with Susan and Graham McGraw, and what is his mustache concealing? How is Daisy going to tell her old-fashioned granny that she's met her first love, and her name is Ingrid, and also she is belligerently German? And then there's Ed. Oh, Ed. Ed, Ed, Ed.
    I don't mean to keep comparing Giant Days and Lumberjanes, but they naturally complement and contrast one another: They're both from Boom! Studios, they're both incredibly wholesome, LGBT+ friendly and are ultimately about relationships with others and with ourselves; sometimes these lessons are most effectively learned the hard way through an ill-advised relationship with a university professor, and sometimes they're delivered through a friggin' jerk of a trickster fox-god who is ruining the Parents' Day scavenger-hunt for everyone.
    A final note about Giant Days is that it has some of the sharpest, laugh-out-loud funniest, most aggressively British writing I have ever seen in any medium, and I not infrequently find myself bewildered by a reference or cultural thing that would clearly be common knowledge to a British reader but which I sometimes have to go look up, and I love when I get to do that. Not only do I get to learn new stuff but I get a tiny look at that it must be like for the rest of the world to consume American media that not only assumes a functional literacy with our media and culture but is offended by the mere notion that an international audience wouldn't be familiar with The Adventures of Briscoe County, Jr. or the Texan-approved Story of the Alamo (hint: they like to pretend it was about 'freedom' and not 'starting another goddamn war because they wanted to own slaves).

Score: 9/10 Horrifying Erotic Murals No One Told Your Girlfriend She Could Paint On Our Living Room Wall, Daisy

    

your brothers, they echo your words

January 2021 Books Read Standouts: Lumberjanes, Vol. 6 / How Long Til Black Future Month?

How Long 'til Black Future Month? - N.K. Jemisin

    Yoooooooooo it's our pal N.K. Jemisin again! She's the best, as we remember from last time, and this collection of her short stories is a very different experience but an equally awesome and perhaps more accessible one, which is of course the essential beauty and frustration of the short story experience: whether you love a particular story or hate it, it'll be over soon. My only caveat beyond that is that several stories (The Ones Who Stay and Fight, The City Born Great, Stone Hunger, and The Narcomancer) are either related to or were later fleshed out into other complete works (The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin and Jemisin's own novels The City We Became, The Fifth Season, and The Killing Moon, respectively), and that does sometimes present a roadblock to a reader. For my part I actually bounced really hard off of this collection a couple of times because I didn't realize that the first story had, if not required reading, at least strongly-suggested and helpful supplementary reading from another author whose work I wasn't familiar with, and even the ones related to her other books I'd already read were mildly confusing because I wasn't sure where in the continuity they took place, but that's a me-problem, not a this-book-problem.
    I'm not gonna go over all the stories because you deserve most of the same surprises I was overjoyed to find, but I'll choose I dunno, five at random. They're mostly fantasy/magic realism and sci-fi/alternate history, but there are at least a couple...I don't even know what you'd call the opposite, mundane fiction? Non-speculative fiction?

1. The Trojan Girl: A found family of sentient computer programs try to save a Girl In Trouble in a virtual world that's equal parts VR Troopers, Blade Runner, and Snow Crash, with maybe a soupçon of Ralph Wrecks The Internet. But when she turns out to be More Than She Seems, they'll have to make a choice between their own safety and bringing a new kind of person into a dangerous life. Do they save the world, or save the girl? 
2. Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows: Okay so something has happened, as a result of which only a small handful of humanity is left, and they're living the same day over and over again Groundhog Day-style, except they all remember everything every time. The story focuses on a group of survivors who communicate through blog posts, chat rooms and other means of e-communication in an effort to help one another stave off madness in a world where all evidence of yesterday vanishes as soon as it's gone until, one by one, they begin to vanish from the Buddy List that says 'online'.
3. The You Train: An unnamed narrator writes either emails or some hella long texts to a friend describing the small, extremely relatable sadnesses and frustrations of her life, while noticing more and more strange subway trains arriving and passing by when the schedule explicitly lists no trains in service. (I will confess, none of the places I've ever lived were Train Places so I'm not 100% sure it's subways, and if it isn't I'm not sure what kind of difference that would make.)
4. On The Banks of the River Lex: Ooh, this is a good one. Death--the Death--tours the half-submerged ruins of New York, musing on the nature of their work in a world without humans, which they discuss with a number of other Archetypes, and not always the ones you would expect. It's not as grim--heh--as you might think, and ends with a surprising hopefulness for the future, from the most unlikely place.
5. L'Alchemista: Every chef, now and then, gets That Diner: the one who Knows Better, the one who's Been To [Insert Pretentious Foodie Destination Here], the one who bets You Couldn't Make [Insert Mispronounced Cuisine Here], and our protagonist is ready at a moment's notice to put That Diner through a fucking plate-glass window. That is, until she meets a diner with a real challenge, one she won't find in any of her cookbooks, one with an ingredient list that has a few things that are hard to get, a few things that are impossible to get, and a few things she's only read about...in myths and faerie tales. But chefs are a proud bunch, and she's not about to back down from an order, even if could end up being the last one she ever fills.

    I'll be honest, gang: All of those are really good, and they don't even include my favorite ones in the collection. When you associate an author primarily with one series or one work of theirs that you particularly love it's really easy to assign a specific flavor to them in your head, and collections like this are an excellent way to remind yourself about all the things you love about an author that maybe don't get to shine as much as their better-known work or discover, as I did, new things to love about an author you thought you knew everything about.

Score: 9/10 Ridiculous True Facts Learned About What France Wanted Haiti To Pay For

 Lumberjanes, Vol. 6: Sink or Swim

    Lumberjanes is always so good! If you're not familiar, you're in for a most wholesome and heartwarming treat; it's an ongoing series from Boom! Studios surrounding the bonds of friendship, love and perhaps romance??? between a group of campers at Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's Camp for Girls Hardcore Lady Types. Every volume centers around the girls (and later, their non-binary pal Barney) trying to earn their merit badges in a new field, encountering SUPERNATURAL SHENANIGANS in pursuit thereof, and relying on teamwork to master the new skills necessary for their badge-exams AND save the day. Are interpersonal conflicts solved through communication and compromise? YOU BET THEY ARE, BUD. Does the camp Director RIDE A SADDLÉD MOOSE named Jeremy? Oh boy does she ever. DO DINOSAURS SOMETIMES EMERGE FROM THE TIME PORTAL IN THE OLD OUTHOUSE AND WREAK HAVOC IN THE ARTS AND CRAFTS CABIN? Of course they do, you fool.

    Here in Volume 6 they have to contend with a lycanthropic sailing instructor, navigate a system of AQUATIC PORTALS, convince a bunch of selkies to quit being such friggin' jerks already, and help Mal overcome her perfectly reasonable fear of the treacherous sea. Did you know it wants us all to die? Mal knows.

    Lumberjanes is reliably one of the higher-quality ongoing series out there, and remains a warm, sweet, goofy, all-ages LGBT+ title that will always be 100% worth your time, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Score: 8 Cans Of Strange, Pureed Fish Guts That Say 'Cranberries' On The Side

been in the desert for forty-seven days, purple haze