Book Review | The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman

A week after Mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett is delivered to her new school: Drearcliff Grange in Somerset. 

Although it looks like a regular boarding school, Amy learns that Drearcliff girls are special: the daughters of criminal masterminds, outlaw scientists and master magicians. Several of the pupils also have special gifts like Amy’s, and when one of the girls in her dormitory is abducted by a mysterious group in black hoods, Amy forms a secret, superpowered society called the Moth Club to rescue their friend. They soon discover that the Hooded Conspiracy runs through the School, and it's up to the Moth Club to get to the heart of it.

***

It's a credit to Kim Newman that he only rarely writes the novels you think he will. Just look at his last book: An English Ghost Story indubitably did what its title described, but it was—weirdly, wonderfully—as comical as it was creepy, and as interested in depicting the dysfunctional family it followed as it was the spectral presence that pushed them to the inevitable precipice.

Newman's newest—which purports to be the start of a series by Louise Magellan Teazle, the previous occupant of the haunted house at the heart of the aforementioned narrative—is not dissimilar in its evisceration of expectations. The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School appears to be one thing, namely a classical magical academy narrative along the lines of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. And it is! And it isn't.

"A week after Mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett was delivered to her new school. Like a parcel," (p.13) with exactly as much love and care as that imagery entails. Mother, you see, is not best pleased that her daughter has developed such particular Abilities:

In the months since she first came unstuck from the ground, Amy had been subjected to cold baths, weighted pinafores, long walks, hobbling boots and a buzzing, tickling electric belt. Leeches and exorcism were on the cards. Mother's whole idea in sending Amy to Drearcliff was to clamp down on floating. (p.22)

As it happens, however, Amy's new school—"a rambling, gloomy, ill-repaired estate on top of a cliff" (p.13)—is not at all what Mother had imagined. Instead, it's a place where unseemly tendencies are accepted. Encouraged, even, since Headmistress considers it Drearcliff's responsibility to help Amy and the other Unusuals she'll meet in the year Newman's novel narrates to find Applications for their array of Abilities.

Needless to say, not all of the students studying at Drearcliff are as welcoming as Dr. Swan...

Book Review | Tigerman by Nick Harkaway

Lester Ferris, sergeant of the British Army, is a good man in need of a rest. He's spent a lot of his life being shot at, and Afghanistan was the last stop on his road to exhaustion. He has no family, he's nearly forty and burned out and about to be retired.

The island of Mancreu is the ideal place for Lester to serve out his time. It's a former British colony in legal limbo, soon to be destroyed because of its very special version of toxic pollution—a down-at-heel, mildly larcenous backwater. Of course, that also makes Mancreu perfect for shady business, hence the Black Fleet of illicit ships lurking in the bay: listening stations, offshore hospitals, money laundering operations, drug factories and deniable torture centres. None of which should be a problem, because Lester's brief is to sit tight and turn a blind eye.

But Lester Ferris has made a friend: a brilliant, internet-addled street kid with a comicbook fixation who will need a home when the island dies—who might, Lester hopes, become an adopted son. Now, as Mancreu's small society tumbles into violence, the boy needs Lester to be more than just an observer.

In the name of paternal love, Lester Ferris will do almost anything. And he's a soldier with a knack for bad places: "almost anything" could be a very great deal—even becoming some sort of hero. But this is Mancreu, and everything here is upside down. Just exactly what sort of hero will the boy need?

***

I don't doubt that it's difficult to be different, but Nick Harkaway makes it look obscenely easy. In just two books, he's made such a mark on the landscape of imagination that his legions of readers will come to Tigerman bearing certain expectations: of an endlessly energetic narrative that streaks about like something stung, complete with a cacophony of lively characters and replete with ideas which bleed bananas.

This isn't exactly that... but it is undeniably of the award-winning author's oeuvre.

Whereas The Gone-Away World and Angelmaker were noisy novels, with ninjas and ass-kicking grannies, mad monks and clockwork killers, Tigerman, by comparison, is quiet. Being the origin story of a superhero and his sidekick, it's not silent, not entirely, but it is... stealthy, yes. Sneaky, even. All in all a much softer, sweeter and more surprising something than I had imagined.

Book Review | The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar

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For seventy years they guarded the British Empire. Oblivion and Fogg, inseparable friends, bound together by a shared fate. Until one night in Berlin, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and a secret that tore them apart.

But there must always be an account... and the past has a habit of catching up to the present.

Now, recalled to the Retirement Bureau from which no one can retire, Fogg and Oblivion must face up to a past of terrible war and unacknowledged heroism — a life of dusty corridors and secret rooms, of furtive meetings and blood-stained fields — to answer one last, impossible question: what makes a hero?

***

Lavie Tidhar has a theory about superheroes. About what they are and what they represent; about where they come from and why we hardly ever see any British ones. These are questions the author asks and answers on various occasions over the course of his indescribably demanding if accordingly rewarding new novel, though Tidhar's particular position is best encapsulated by the testimony given by a fictionalised version of Joseph Shuster — the co-creator of Superman alongside Jerry Siegel, who also appears — during the trial of Dr. Vomacht, the Nazi scientist whose cavalier prodding of probability resulted in The Violent Century's so-called Übermenschen.

Note that the following quote comes from near the end of the novel, but know, moreover, that The Violent Century plays so fast and loose with clarity and linearity that this is as fitting a fashion as any I can imagine to start talking about a book so bleak and mysterious that any resulting discussion of it is destined to be difficult.

— I specialise in... in a form of dynamic portraiture. [...] Of the changed. Of Beyond-Men. And women. Of... for lack of a better word, Shuster says, I like to think my work focuses on heroes.

— But what's a hero? the counsellor says, again.

— It seems to me, Shuster says, it seems to me... you must understand, I think, yes, you need to first understand what it means to be a Jew.

— I think I have some experience in that, the counsellor for the defence says drily — which draws a few laughs from the audience. On the stand, Schuster coughs. His eyes, myopic behind the glasses, assume a dreamy look. Those of us who came out of that war, he says. And before that. From pogroms and persecution and to the New World. To a different kind of persecution, perhaps. But also hope. Our dreams of heroes come from that, I think. Our American heroes are the wish-fulfilment of immigrants, dazzled by the brashness and the colour of this new world, by its sheer size. We needed larger-than-life heroes, masked heroes to show us that they were the fantasy within each and every one of us. The Vomacht wave did not make them, it released them. Our shared hallucination, our faith. Our faith in heroes. This is why you see our American heroes but never their British counterpart. Our is the rise of Empire, theirs is the deline. Our seek the limelight, while theirs skulk in shadows. (pp.246-247)

In his afterword, the British and World Fantasy Award-winning author admits to modelling this and several of the surrounding sequences on the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Final Solution, for war crimes: a tack which is typical of the way Tidhar reconfigures our own horrible history into a darkly fascinating narrative as ghastly as it is fantastical.

In the beginning, in any event, a glimpse of the end: namely the framing narrative by way of which we learn of the events of The Violent Century. In The Hole in the Wall, "a London pub, hidden under the railway arches" (p.8) of the South Bank, a man known only as Oblivion confronts a fellow called Fogg, insisting that they go together to meet the Old Man, the better to clear a couple of things up. "It's just routine," (p.14) one promises the other, but Fogg knows this is not so. He has his secrets, and he will give anything to keep them.

Thus they travel together to the Farm, where Fogg is interrogated at length by the Old Man, who has no other name. He's in charge, as he has ever been, indeed, of the Bureau for Superannuated Affairs, or the Retirement Service, if you will, which long ago promised Fogg and Oblivion — among a number of others we'll meet in a moment — the opportunity "to serve. To be something. Each of you unique. Every boy's secret dream." (p.64) Be that as it may, these dreams, as we'll see, are more like nightmares for most of the changed.

Following the probability wave which made them, or rather remade them, our heroes, such as they are, were taken to the selfsame farm where the framing conversation takes place in the present day, and trained. "It is a place in which the laws of what is real seem suspended, for just a moment. It was beautiful in the daytime, the bright primary colours of blue sky and yellow sun and green grass and white stone. At night it is more of a chiaroscuro, the play of light and shade." (p.71) There, then, under the guidance of a drill instructor and a doctor — none other than Alan Turing — the changed who hail from the UK learn, little by little, to control their abilities.

And so on a lazy sunny afternoon, the Lost Boys and Girls of Never Never Land. Oblivion, Fogg, Spit, Tank, Mr Blur and Mrs Tinkle. Some we know well, some, less well. it is only the nature of things. There are others, too, though many will die in the coming war and other wars and others still are vanished, missing, location unknown: perhaps gone to their own implausible palaces of ice or bat-filled caved, hidden volcanic peaks on jungle-covered South Sea Island, forbidding chrome-and-metal skyscrapers or remote Gothic castles. Or perhaps more prosaically a cottage in Wales. The records are sealed and obscured. (p.77)

This is the calm before the storm, of course. War is coming, and from the 1940s on, it does not seem to stop. Tirelessly, Tidhar takes us through World War II, Vietnam, the Cold War and Afghanistan. But "there was only ever one war to matter, to Oblivion, to the Red Sickle, to all of them. [...] Everything else is a shadow of that war." (p.248)

A shame, then, that so much of The Violent Century is devoted to these episodic digressions. As readers, we gain little insight from said scenes, except to see our secret service set against the superheroes of other countries, from the picture-perfect poster boys who represent the United States to the long-suffering symbols of the USSR and so on. This juxtaposition certainly serves to emphasise our impression of Great Britain's Übermenschen as shady sorts, though it adds little to the either the overall narrative or the larger arcs described by our central characters.

Eventually, we do get back to what matters — the making and breaking of Fogg and Oblivion's friendship by the machinations of the Old Man — but other difficulties persist, first and foremost Tidhar's peculiar prose, moulded in the mode of Jeff VanderMeer's in Finch. The short, sharp sentences; the minimalist exposition; everything up to and including the dialogue is odd. "Words come out haltingly. Like he's forgotten speech." (p.35) It takes a lot of getting used to; progress through the book is so forth slow, leading to problems with pacing that the story's aforementioned sidesteps only exacerbate.

The Violent Century's fractured narrative does, however, have a heart, and when the author sets his sights on this, beauty both meets and beats the beast:

Through a Latin Quarter alive with revellers; Paris, City of Love, City of Lights, transforms into a magical place with one kiss, a Sleeping Beauty awakening, awash with light and love. Night transforms it into a carnival. Paris! Through open doors the smells of cooking waft out. [...] By a bakery, men queue patiently in their suits and their hats for baguette and demi-baguette; nearby they sell jambons, olives, brie and camembert; an old woman sells flowers on the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Michael and Henry buys a red rose and hands it to Klara, who laughs and tosses it in the air. (p.158-159)

The effect of the narrative's darkness and density, then, is the elevation of simple scenes like this, which are rendered with incredible resonance by dint of Tidhar's stylistic decisions. That they are purposeful doesn't make The Violent Century any easier a reading experience, but sometimes... sometimes you just have to work for your wonders.

At the last, Lavie Tidhar's latest is at once a love story, a tragedy, a spy novel, a memoir of a friendship, an exposé of the horrors of war, and a very serious study of the superhero: the origins of the concept as well as its relative relevance. The Violent Century is a difficult text, yes, but one that gives as good as it gets.

***

The Violent Century
by Lavie Tidhar

UK & US Publication: October 2013, Hodder & Stoughton

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Book Review | Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

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Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his wills.

Nobody fights the Epics... nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them.

And David wants in. He wants Steelheart — the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David's father. For years, like the Reckoners, David's been studying, and planning — and he has something they need. Not an object, but an experience.

He's seen Steelheart bleed. And he wants revenge.

***

"It's always dark in Newcago," (p.21) declares David Charleston, a decade on from the death of his fearless father at the hands of Steelheart. The darkness shrouding the city has been gathering since that fateful day, as if to help keep some deep secret... but it's always darkest before the dawn, isn't that what they say?

As well they may. But the dawn of what? Why hope, of course.

For the moment, though, there's none. Humanity has been almost completely defeated, and the night's spiteful cycle is constant reminder of our fall from prominence.

The only thing you can see up there is Calamity, which looks kind of like a bright red star or comet. Calamity began to shine one year before men started turning into Epics. Nobody knows why or how it still shines through the darkness. Of course, nobody knows why the Epics started appearing, or what their connection is to Calamity either. (p.21)

Forgive me for trotting out another expression in such quick succession, but knowledge is power, is it not? Would that it were so simple! After all, our protagonist, poor dear David, has a whole lot of knowledge — he's spent his entire adult life assembling it — but precious little power.

Alone, he's as helpless against the Epics as he was when one murdered his father in front of him — his father, who dared to dream of a hero. Alone, he might be better informed than most about the whys and wherefores of Steelheart's army, however he's no match for even the weakest of these superbeings. Alone, David's store of knowledge is unto nothing... which is why it's his heart's desire to join the Reckoners, a cell of rebels who have dedicated themselves to the death of the Epics. So when he figures out that they're in the city, he puts his life on the line to manufacture a meeting.

It isn't giving the game away to tell you that in time, the team takes him in. According to David's new boss, Prof, it seems his study of Steelheart might indeed be the key to defeating the evil overlord. Though many have tried and failed in the past, only he has seen Steelheart bleed, and this could be the piece that unlocks the ultimate puzzle.

But if the Reckoners are going to stand a chance of putting our protagonist's plan into action, they'll have to work out what Steelheart's unique weakness is. Every Epic has one.

The problem was, an Epic weakness could be just about anything. Tia [the Reckoners' in-house hacker] mentioned symbols — there were some Epics who, if they saw a specific pattern, lost their powers for a few moments. Others were weakened by thinking certain thoughts, not eating certain foods, or eating the wrong foods. The weaknesses were more varied than the powers themselves were. (p.118)

So begins Brandon Sanderson's new novel. Broadly speaking, at least. In actual fact I found Steelheart's first act rather lacking. The several action scenes it revolves around are absolutely adequate, but the plot punctuating them is predictable, the prose unpolished and the characterisation bland. Add to that — and this disappointed me most of all, given Sanderson's knack for knocking up neat new milieus — a great many of the specifics of this particular post-apocalypse appeared arbitrary. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the Epics' strengths and weaknesses; nor does the author attempt to address what caused Calamity.

Lots of people did have theories, and most would be happy to tell you about them. The Epics were the next stage in human evolution, or they were a punishment sent by this god or that, or they were really aliens. or they were the result of a government project. Or it was all fake and they were using technology to pretend they had powers. 

Most of the theories fell apart when confronted by facts. Normal people had gained powers and become Epics; they weren't aliens or anything like that. There were enough direct stories of a family member manifesting abilities. Scientists claimed to be baffled by the genetics of Epics. (pp.209-210)

So what is going on? Where did the Epics come from, and what do they want? These are just a few of the fascinating questions Sanderson asks but declines, for the larger part, to answer... which brings me back to my issues with the beginning of this book. Early on, there's a certain sense that the author is making it all up as he goes along — not a negative in itself, but taken together with everything else, I wasn't what you'd call keen to read the rest.

But here's the thing: I'm glad I gave Steelheart a chance to redeem itself. Admittedly, it mightn't have the best of beginnings, yet Sanderson finds his feet in time to make the remainder of his tale sensational. The aforementioned problems are still problems, but only with one small part of the entire narrative, because when the pace picks up, it rarely relents; the characters, including our protagonist, only really come into their own when in one another's company; whilst the story gathers such force as it goes that the reader can't help but be swept up, up and away with it.

It doesn't hurt that Sanderson is so self-aware. He draws attention to his own dreadful metaphors, going so far as to fashion a neat character beat from these; a decent deal sweetened by the earnest sense of humour he adopts to tell what turns out to be a pretty terrific tale. What Steelheart lacks in polish and initial impact it more than makes up for in terms of energy and affection. In the final summation, it's actually fantastic fun: a love letter of sorts to the superhero, though these are few and far between... and for good reason, in this instance.

What we have here, it becomes clear, is a very clever realisation of the idea that power corrupts.

Epics had a distinct, even incredible, lack of morals or conscience. That bothered some people, on a philosophical level. Theorists, scholars. They wondered at the sheer inhumanity many Epics manifested. Did the Epics kill because Calamity chose — for whatever reason — only terrible people to gain powers? Or did they kill because such amazing power twisted a person, made them irresponsible? 

There were no conclusive answers. I didn't care; I wasn't a scholar. Yes, I did research, but so did a sports fan when he followed his team. It didn't matter to me why the Epics did what they did any more than a baseball fan wondered at the physics of a bat hitting a ball. [...] Only one thing mattered — Epics gave no thought for originary human life. A brutal murder was a fitting retribution, in their minds, for the most minor of infractions. (pp.73-74)

This theme, at least, the author pays off in spades... unlike various other essential elements of Steelheart's premise.

It's hard not to see Sanderson's back-catalogue in terms of major and minor works. In the past, he's even discussed this description, explaining that novels of the latter category represent "refreshers" from the big epics which are his true love, but can be very demanding mentally. "I like to be very free and loose when I write them," he adds — and sadly, that practice is apparent in Steelheart. That said, this is much more satisfying than a paltry palate-cleanser.

I can hardly believe I'm saying this, given the failings of Steelheart's first act — not to mention its lack of clarity as regards certain crucial concepts — but I can't wait to see what Brandon Sanderson does with the rest of the Reckoners trilogy this short, sweet book about superpowers begins.

***

Steelheart
by Brandon Sanderson

UK Publication: September 2013, Gollancz
US Publication: September 2013, Tor

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Book Review | Seven Wonders by Adam Christopher

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Tony Prosdocimi lives in the bustling Metropolis of San Ventura — a city gripped in fear, a city under siege by a hooded supervillain. When Tony develops super-powers and attempts to take down The Cowl, however, he finds that the Seven Wonders - the local superhero team - aren't as grateful as he assumed they'd be...

***

Hot on the heels of his neat noir debut, Empire State author Adam Christopher returns with a winningly widescreen story about the fine line between right and wrong, and though Seven Wonders is a little lacking in terms of character and narrative, its action is excellent, and the sense of pure exuberance pervading this pulpy morality play proves persuasive.

Heroes and villains abound in Christopher's new book, and it isn't always easy to tell the usual suspects apart — not for us, nor indeed for them. Take Tony Prosdocimi, whose lifelong career in retail has left him exactly as satisfied as you'd imagine. To make matters worse, one day he wakes up with the first in a time-tested onslaught of superpowers.

You must be wondering, why worse? Who wouldn't want to be able to bend steel without breaking a sweat? Consider, then, that old adage: with great power comes - you guessed it - great responsibility, and Tony... Tony isn't exactly into that. Furthermore, he doesn't have the slightest clue how to control his inexplicable new abilities, so this strange development is as nerve-wracking as it is awesome with a capital AWESOME.

But hey, at least he's lucky in love! Doubly lucky, I dare say, to have a girlfriend happy to help him become the new man he'll need to be to master flight, X-ray sight and the like. But is Jeannie too good to be true? Why in the world would a woman like her take an interest in Tony, anyway? He was a nothing. A nobody.

Now, suddenly, he's become a something. A somebody. Then, when opportunity knocks "on an ordinary workaday morning, in an ordinary workaday bank in downtown San Ventura" (p.17) - the scene of a heist masterminded by the Shining City's resident supercriminal - Tony acid tests his powers against the Cowl. He doesn't win this war of wills... but he doesn't lose outright, either. Thus affirmed, and all ideals, Tony promptly resolves to clean up the luridly-lit streets of San Ventura, up to and including the black-clad oppressor whose reign of terror has gone on too long.

"Unusual causes of death in San Ventura were not, well, unusual. Plasma incineration, bones powdered with a superpowered punch, flesh rendered molecule by molecule: the SuperCrime department had seen it all. Including, on very rare and significant occasions, the results of a knife so sharp it fell through solid objects." (pp.97-98)

Of course, Tony isn't the only hope of the modern metropolis he calls home. Far from it, in fact. Renowned the world over, the Seven Wonders have saved the citizens of San Ventura from any number of threats, but to our man they're at best ineffectual. At worst, the assembled avengers represent an obstacle he'll have to overcome in order to take down the Cowl once and for all, because "if there was one thing guaranteed to piss the Seven Wonders off, it was a new hero on their turf." (p.42)

Meanwhile, in the aforementioned SuperCrime department of the SVPD, Detectives Sam Millar and Joe Milano are on the Cowl's trail too, but they go where the evidence leads them, and soon enough it suggests another avenue of investigation: a certain Big Deal employee, Tony Prosdocimi.

In the acknowledgements, the author tips his hat towards the groundbreaking comic book Astro City, which Seven Wonders rather resembles. For all intents and purposes, the pair share a Technicolor setting, a disparate notion of narrative, and an interest in the psychology of the superpowered — not to mention those mere mortals who become caught in their orbit. Let me stress that there's nothing sinister about said similarities: assuredly this novel owes a debt of gratitude to Kurt Busiek's greatest creation, but so do any number of subsequent series. It is, however, a useful point of comparison... one that leaves Seven Wonders wanting.

To say it's all spectacle and no substance would be to overstate the case, though there is, alas, an imbalance. Seven Wonders moves inexorably from set-piece to set-piece, each as compelling and impressive as the last, but the transitions between these scenes could be smoother. Conversations in which the dialogue borders on the obvious can take several chapters to wrap up — though they're short chapters, and over quickly, so there's that.

More meaningfully, I fear, Christopher's Kryptonite appears to be character development: in Seven Wonders, as in Empire State, this is either lackluster or abrupt. At one point a narrator remarks about how easy it would be to be evil with hyperspeed and ultrastrength on your side, then immediately a good guy goes bad, robbing a convenience store for no real reason that I could see. To a certain extent this dovetails - albeit broadly - with Seven Wonders' core concern, which asks what it means to be a hero, really. Christopher even considers the question in relation to his villain.

"The Cowl wasn't evil. Nobody was. Everybody in the whole world was the center of their own life drama. Everybody was their own superhero, everybody was a good guy. It just so happened that the Cowl's "good" was the opposite of most people's." (p.185)

But when this superhero come common criminal starts slaughtering police officers instead of stopping to wonder about what's been begun, what little credibility the cartoonish characters of Seven Wonders had earned till then is spent. Hereafter the novel's many twists and turns have precious little impact, because when good guys go bad and bad guys come good, you start to expect the unexpected.

Ultimately, Seven Wonders is a fairly entertaining amalgamation of comic book, crime fiction and pulp pastiche about power, complete with a well-sketched world and an alarming quantity of action — to boot astutely put. If you're looking for something light, Adam Christopher's second novel might just be right on the night, but ask for much more than a few evenings of frivolous fun and you're likely to find that Seven Wonders' arch-enemy is its own ambition.

...

This review was originally published, in a slightly altered form, on Tor.com.

***

Seven Wonders
by Adam Christopher

UK Publication: September 2012, Angry Robot
US Publication: August 2012, Angry Robot

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Comic Book Review | PunisherMAX Vol. I: Kingpin and Vol. II: Bullseye

The Punisher is Frank Castle, a Vietnam vet who witnessed the brutal slaying of his wife and children in Central Park... collateral damage in the mob's war on law. Haunted by his horrific history, and reeling from this latest, greatest loss, Frank Castle grieved as only a born killer could: he got himself a long leather trenchcoat, a shirt with a sweet skull on, some guns, and murdered his family's murderers.

Since then, I suppose he's mostly been keeping up appearances. Killing, kidnapping, torturing and extorting his way to the top of the food chain, such as it is in the hive of scum and villainy that is New York City... as per The Punisher, at least.

Now it's not a bad origin story, that - there are certainly many, many worse ones - but it's hardly tailor-made for a medium in which codes of conduct and content have historically restricted creativity. No surprise, then, that The Punisher has been badly mishandled in the years since its inception in the 70s. 

Which isn't to say I've steered clear of it, as perhaps I should have. Oh no. In my younger years, during my first fling with comic books, I read rather a lot of The Punisher. What can I say? In those halcyon days, bargain bins everywhere overflowed with coffee-stained copies of War Journal -- perfectly price to match my dinner money, it seemed to me. And I didn't want dinner. I wanted comics! And by god, I got comics.

Obviously not the ones I should have, because I lost my a lot of my love for the medium thereafter, and perhaps that was in part because of The Punisher. Now that I've been pulled back in, it made a certain amount of sense to see whether it had changed, or simply stayed the same. And I can hardly say how glad I am to have given this character another chance.

Not coincidentally, PunisherMAX concluded just last month, after a 22-issue run -- a fact that makes my heart abstractly glad. I like to be sure the things I begin will end eventually, and in comics that's rarely the case. To know that this story has been told on its own terms from one end to the other, to great critical acclaim to boot, thus without any obvious intrusions either... I'll admit it: starting in on the first collected volume of the series, I had - of all things - hope.

Well I've no hope now, but not because PunisherMAX disappointed me in any sense. I've no hope because this is a truly hopeless story: bleak as the inner city and black as long knives at night. But for all that... brilliant. PunisherMAX is a whiplash-fast, smartly characterised comic book, finely toned and heroically honed: Jason Aaron's scripts are tight but not terse, explicit without seeming attention-seeking, and paced perfectly.

Each of PunisherMAX's four story arcs runs for five or six issues, and chronicles, in effect, an origin. In the first, collected in Kingpin, we learn of the rise and rise of the fabled boss of mob bosses. Wilson Fisk means to make the mantle his own, and as he goes from convict to henchman to criminal mastermind, he leaves a bloody trail in his whale's wake that The Punisher cannot bring himself to believe. Fisk's rapid ascension is not without its own cost, of course, and initially Aaron is as interested in this - in the tragedy of the Kingpin - as he is in his creaky old anti-hero, which gives the narrative an excellent sense of balance.

This impression persists in PunisherMAX Vol. II: Bullseye, which brings the master assassin into the fold, under the Kingpin's wing. But Bullseye, being a bit of a lunatic - and that's putting it politely - doesn't just want to kill Frank Castle: first, he has to understand him. Before putting finger to trigger, Bullseye intends to get inside his head, the better to see what makes this vigilante tick. Meantime, The Punisher has a whole lot of catching up to do. His skepticism about the existence of a kingpin of crime has meant he's late late late to a very important date, and now that there's no doubting it, it's practically impossible to get near Fisk.

Among the most admirable aspects of this eminently accessible series is its structure. Kingpin is a tale unto itself - as is Bullseye - but one lays the foundations for the other, and the other builds atop the last chapter's narrative in readiness for the next. The only sensible place to jump on board is with the first  collected volume, but from there on out PunisherMAX doesn't stop, and to my point: you won't want it to.

All these letters later, it occurs to me that I haven't even mentioned the art of PunisherMAX. That's my bad entirely, because it's anything but. Assisting Jason Aaron through these two trades - and indeed the two concluding volumes to come - is Garth Ennis co-conspirator Steve Dillon, whose clear and present pencils took me back to the good old days. Of Preacher, I mean. More meaningfully, Dillon has a preexisting history with The Punisher, and it's evidenced in every panel he and the other iconic characters that figure into this series appear in. Dillon's layouts are plain yet perfectly poised, whilst his Frank Castle is grizzled and relentlessly grim. Exactly what you'd want, in short.

The shocking conclusion of Bullseye falls exactly halfway through the whole run of Jason Aaron's PunisherMAX, and much as I can get behind a good ending at the right time rather than a sudden conclusion well after the fact, at the moment I don't want this series to be over ever. But there's no going back now, and that's probably for the best, because without the worry that this series will have to sustain itself indefinitely, the creators can truly let loose. Thus, the first half of PunisherMAX is incredible - powerful, exhilarating and ambitious from the offing - and I can't imagine it going out with anything less than an almighty bang.

Film Review | Captain America: The First Avenger, dir. Joe Johnston

Do I love my country?

I don't know that I do. Maybe that's because I'm Scottish. Maybe that's because Scotland isn't from the inside - or the outside - a very loveable country; we highlanders are a violent and violently unhealthly people. Some of the sights hereabouts sure are pretty to look at, but wherever there are large numbers of people? If you can possibly avoid it, you probably don't want to go there. I know I don't.

In a larger sense, though, I think a country, and all the concept of country entails, is a difficult thing to feel for with such intensity... such unquestioning acceptance.

But Steve Rogers? Boy oh boy does he love his country! The Second World War is in full swing, and Steve wants nothing more than to take to the front-lines with his best buddy Bucky. But the military won't have him, no matter how often he applies - and he applies often. Alas, he's a lanky young man, physically a complete and total weakling with a long and sordid history of chronic conditions to boot.

So on the eve of his best friend's departure, when a doctor in charge of a top secret research project offers Steve another way to play some part in the ongoing war effort, the little fella - God bless him - jumps at the chance. Several vials of super-serum later, Captain America is born. All too soon, sadly, the doctor dies, and when it transpires that his super-serum can't be reproduced, Steve's only option is to help sell war bonds. In a year he has becomes an icon of purity and patriotism to the people at home, but abroad, where it actually matters a damn, he remains an object of ridicule: a man in tights, if he's any sort of man at all.

Oddly, Joe Johnston - the director who gave us Jumanji, The Rocketeer and Jurassic Park III amongst many other fondly-remembered Hollywood movies, not least Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! - Joe Johnston takes, I'm afraid, an awfully long time to tell this origin story that needn't (truth be told) have been told at all, given how intimately familiar it is... even to me, and I haven't read a Captain America comic book in my life.

Thus the first hour of Captain America: The First Avenger is an at-times excruciatingly slow build-up to a second hour that seems relentless by comparison. Indeed it is: one elaborate set-piece picks up where the last left off, and the next is always hot on its overheated heels. By the end you're basically dazed, if not confused, for this is after all an exceedingly simple film.

Simplicity is no slight in itself, of course. Often the best stories can be reduced down to one of a few boilerplate premises; it is in how a story is told that it can become exceptional, or else. But there's not a lot of nuance in Captain America: The First Avenger either. At one point, as the worm turns, Hugo Weaving as the only other person besides Steve Rogers to have survived the super-serum - so it should come as no surprise that Johann Schmidt is the bad nasty apple to Steve Rogers' delicious and nutritious orange - anyway, Hugo Weaving, somewhere around the halfway mark of the movie, actually tears off his face, to reveal the evil red skull beneath!

If you can swallow that - that, and swear an oath that you won't take anything in this film in the least seriously, up to and including a few objectionable moments - there's actually a fair bit of fun to be had with Captain America: The First Avenger. It's compromised in almost every sense, yet there's a certain purity to it. It's dated already, but right down to some horrendous special effects, it looks the part. Needless to say, none of the characters are anything resembling interesting, but an impressive cast put forth some solid performances in any event: Hugo Weaving hams it up marvelously, mostly, I expect Billie Piper fans will watch to watch the charming Hayley Atwell closely, and there is just enough humility to Chris Evans' performance that his Steve Rogers is every bit as credible as his Captain America is incredible.

So. Patriotic shenanigans, decently done if you can overlook the vast imbalance between the first half and the last, and some dodginess here and there. Fun for the whole family; that is, assuming the whole family is doing something else at the time.

I'd recommend a comic book!

Film Review | Green Lantern, dir. Martin Campbell

I don't get it.

I mean, someone's got to be pulling my leg, right? In a summer bookended by big-budget comic book movies, the first, Thor, was supposed to be awesome; so awesome that I was sad to have missed it at the cinema, so when the Blu-ray release rolled around, I gobbled it up.

And I thought it was silly nonsense. Daft but largely harmless.

Green Lantern, meanwhile... well, I only watched Green Lantern out of some misplaced sense of duty to a medium I dearly adore - the comic book, of course - so unanimously dire were the pronouncements about this particular superhero vehicle. But you know what? I actually enjoyed it.

Now I'm neither so fool nor so full of myself as to think expectations, or indeed a lack thereof, played no part in my experience of these two similar-but-different films: that Thor had come so highly recommended rather raised the bar in terms of my idea of it, I don't doubt, and perhaps the presumption that Green Lantern would be wall-to-wall terrible left me easily impressed. Nevertheless, I think there's a case to be made for Casino Royale director Martin Campbell's return to men in tights six years on from The Legend of Zorro. It's an unabashedly popcorn-friendly film, with markedly more interest in low entertainment than high art -- and what in all the quadrants is the problem with that?

Nothing, is what. And Green Lantern makes no claims to the contrary: in fact from the get-go - a clunky pre-credits VO explaining the origins of the Green Lantern Corps, as if it'd be an affront to let us figure these things out on our own - you know what this film will be. It will be ridiculous. It will be overwrought. It will pander, and indulge, and embarrass.

And, so it seems to me, you will either love every minute of it - unlikely though that may be if you're in your double digits - or despise this harmless bit of sci-fi eye candy for what it is.

I'm coming around to thinking that critics seem to see the superhero movie as something of an all or nothing proposition. Either it can be brilliant, basically because it transcends the trappings of its origins in the funny pages - a la Sam Raimi's Spider-man, or Bryan Singer's take on The X-Men - or it's some despicable thing because it doesn't.

Green Lantern certainly doesn't; to a fault, it seems subservient to the sixty-some years of comic books from which Hal Jordan, space cop, springs, not at all fully-formed. But between the masterclass and the amateur hour, film critics tend to afford the superhero movie precious little middle ground, and I would argue that - of all the genres there are in cinema - the superhero movie needs as much or more middle ground as any other. Were there such a space, Green Lantern would sit squarely in the middle of it. On an ornate throne fashioned solely from force of will. 

Yes, it's ridiculous. Yes, it's overwrought. Green Lantern is pretty much all the things it's been called - and it's been called a lot of mean-spirited things, I do declare - but it is all of these things so very inoffensively, innocently even, that the hate seems to me way out of proportion. Sure, there's some cheap-looking CG, but there are too some beautiful visual effects.

Actually, by and large, Green Lantern is spectacular to look at, up to and including the lovely Blake Lively as the Ryan Reynolds' love interest. Reynolds is for his part dopey but endearing, and his character's counterpart - Peter Sarsgaard on fine form as insidious supervillain Hector Hammond - is a good match. I did however shed an imaginary tear to see how far Tim Robbins has fallen.

In any case, Green Lantern is good looking, well cast, ably acted, and it sounds the part, too, thanks to a tense orchestral score from M. Night Shyamalan collaborator James Newton Howard, who just so happened to work with Hans Zimmer on the superhero movie soundtrack to end all superhero movie soundtracks: for The Dark Knight, needless to say.

The plot is of course a bit of a mess - better, as Fleetwood Mac might say, that comic book movies go their own way - and a more liberated script would have made a great deal of difference, but as it is, Green Lantern remains a mildly exciting, if not exactly thrilling way to spend two hours, and though it never quite comes together as some more optimistic souls than I had hoped it might, still it is leagues better than the abhorrent nonsense it's been made out as.

Coming Attractions | The Superpowers That Be

This week on The Speculative Scotsman... superheroes!

I don't know quite how it happened - I didn't plan it, except for a single addition when I saw how things had come together - but there you go: superheroes.

Bookending the week, then, just as they bookended the summer in cinemas, expect reviews of Thor and Green Lantern, two tentpole comic book movies that I tend to think the critics initially misjudged.

Between times, you can also look forward to one last Coming Back to Comic Books on the baffling Batman: RIP by the madman Grant Morrison; one last Coming Back to Comic Books for reasons I'll go into at a later date. Good reasons.

Last but not least, a beast of a piece on The Book of Transformations by friend of the blog Mark Charan Newton, who attempts, in his latest, to get to the heart of the question begged by every idiot who imagines it's acceptable to prance around in a kevlar cape the better to punch dudes in the face and elsewhere.

Honestly... superheroes. Who'd have 'em?

Well, I would. And I will! So, Avengers assemble? :)

News Flashing | The Cape, Cowed

Having had so little faith in The Cape as to order only 13 episodes of this year's requisite superhero series, and then postpone the run till mid-season as if to add insult to injury, news has just hit of a final, irrevocable twist of the knife: NBC has reduced their order to a paltry 10 episodes. Presumably roughly as many the showrunners have in the can as is.

The Cape, in short, is doomed.

Long live The Cape!

There can be precious surprise, I suppose, about the dire fortunes of this silly little series. I'd be surprised to see the network even dignify The Cape with an outright cancellation. It hasn't been a ratings smash, nor anything approaching a success with the critics; in fact the only thing The Cape seems to have had going for it is the notion that it's "so bad it's good" - a nonsense made exponentially less meaningful (if it ever had any meaning at all) with every repetition.

What am I getting at, exactly? Well, at the risk of annoying anyone who's ever enjoyed a comic book, I tend to think that statement's a steaming load: The Cape isn't exactly great television, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it's far and away the most faithful superhero comic book show I've ever seen - in tone and spirit and execution. It's silly, frivolous and off-kilter in exactly the same way the vast majority of superhero comic books are silly, frivolous and off-kiler - and for that reason, I've enjoyed it a great deal.

If you're going to say it's "so bad it's good," internet, at least be truthful about what you're trashing: if The Cape is bad, it's bad only in the sense so many of the comic books I presume we all adore are bad. Let's not be dicks about a show which consciously embraces the same gleeful, madcap silliness we all do week in, week out - every Wednesday without complaint.

I for one will be watching The Cape to the bitter end, and I'll make no apologies for my fondness. Will you?

Film Review: Kick-Ass

On one hand, you have Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, respectively the writer and director of the pitch-perfect 2007 adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, reteaming for the first time since that fantastic film. On the other, there's Nicolas Cage, who hasn't been truly memorable in anything since Adaptation, and Mark Millar, the comic-book guru whose rampant egomania has come to overshadow what talent he has, as last evidenced in the Angelina Jolie vehicle Wanted. Suffice it to say, then, that going in, I didn't know what to think of Kick-Ass. I had my expectations for each of its component parts, certainly, but of the whole... nothing.

Aaron Johnson, acclaimed for his star-making role in the John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, is Dave Lizewski, an unremarkable high school student who decides to become a super-hero. He has no powers. His only training is that which he performs in front of his bedroom mirror. Dave has no earthly reason to do what he does - which is to say, order some spandex off the internet and take to the streets to right the world's wrongs - except, well, why not? A false start nearly kills him, but Dave isn't discouraged, and soon enough his antics begin to attract attention from all the wrong places. The media go crazy over Kick-Ass, several more camera-shy vigilantes come out of the woodwork to warn Dave that his amateurishness could be the end of him, and a criminal kingpin - a real villain - blames him for the mysterious disappearance of copious quantities of cocaine.

 

 

What Kick-Ass does right, it does very, very right. Things kick off brilliantly with an enthusiastic and wonderfully witty opening that ascends in energy and tenacity until the anxious high of Dave's first encounter in his superhero garb with a couple of bullies. They pull a knife; it does not go well. There's real dramatic tension in the juxtaposition of Dave's dweebish dreams and the uncompromising brutality of the world he must realise them in, and that feeling of impending tragedy, of reality biting fanboy fantasy, is among the most remarkable aspects of Kick-Ass.

Sadly, Vaughn and Goldman take their tale in another direction entirely. While Dave is recuperating from his unfortunate run-in, we meet Hit Girl and Big Daddy, a father and daughter team bound together by blood and a shared interest in vengeance against Mark Strong's ruthless mafia man. In a return to the form of his 90s action persona with added quirk, Cage clearly relishes his role, and Chloe Moretz as his pint-sized assistant is a revelation; they make, in fact, for a substantially more charismatic and entertaining pair than Kick-Ass and his eventual sidekick-come-nemesis Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, not playing McLovin' for once), and yet they are characters steeped in utter fantasy, stand-outs in the real world landscape of Kick-Ass for all the wrong reasons: gun-toting, impossibly fast and apparently invincible, they simply do not belong in the same film as Dave's bumbling vigilante.

Ultimately, the most troubling thing about Kick-Ass is not the failure of any of its individual elements - the cast equip themselves very well, the script is sound, the humour hits home more often than not and Vaughn's direction is endlessly stylish and so slick as to the belie the movie's modest budget - but the unevenness of the whole. Tonally, Kick-Ass is a mess, wavering between earnestness and frivolity; bitingly satirical one moment and cartoonishly brutal the next. It hopes to set fantasy against reality, but instead it is either realistic or fantastic - rarely does the twain meet - and in its attempts to have it both ways, it sacrifices the most vital aspects of each in the balancing act.

Kick-Ass is a mess, then, yes, lacking in any semblance of self unless that self is in fact its utter lack thereof, but what a glorious mess it is: fun from end to end, funny too, and certainly more coherent than the Mark Millar comic book it's based on, Vaughn and Goldman's second joint effort falters in terms of its tone but in every other aspect it's a raucous, riotous romp that easily transcends its source material.