Reading Series: Jumping right in or playing catch up

One of my favourite super-hero comics these days is Kurt Busiek’s Astro City. If you’ve never read it, you really owe yourself a look. The stories focus on Astro City, which, like Superman’s Metropolis or Batman’s Gotham, has more than its share of heroes and villains, but with Astro City, the stories focus on all sorts of different residents of the city, over the course of decades and seen through the eyes of heroes, villains, and regular folks on the street.

The problem for me is, the series actually started back in 1995, and although it has a relatively small run, the time between each new release is long enough I’m always forced to decide between trusting my memory of comics I read 20 years ago, or re-reading the entire series each time a new volume is released.

I'm currently two volumes behind the current trade (technically three volumes, but I only buy my collections in softcover, rather than the pricier hardcover versions which show up a few months earlier), and so I can either jump in exactly where I left off, or re-read seven other volumes first.

Luckily, the series is pretty excellent, so if I decide to re-read, my punishment is to read an awful lot of good comics and get myself extra excited for the new stuff.

Well look at that, I think I just answered my own question!

Things I've Noticed: My Loyalty to Genre TV has a limit

Yesterday I watched the sixth episode of the TV series The Event, and I think I’m done. Back when the show first appeared I wrote about how much I dug the pilot and especially the everyman quality of lead actor Jason Ritter. The thing is, after half a dozen hour-long episodes, even a cool concept and a great lead actor can’t get me to watch the next episode.

My problem with the show basically came down to pacing – for a show that promised me a world shattering event so awesome that the whole series would be named after it, I needed something more spectacular than a plane disappearing mid-flight.

As a genre fan I love the weird and the amazing, and had the plane appeared on another world or in another dimension, I really think I could have gotten behind the show. What actually happened was that the “event” in question was immediately hushed up by the government and didn’t change much of anything for the man on the street (quick side note – amazing “man on the street story” Marvels by Kurt Busiek). Basically I’ve spent the last six hours of this show watching people work to cover up a thing that was covered up in the pilot – oh but wait, they were also covering up aliens and a viral outbreak, but you know what, The X-Files kind of topped me up for shows about cover-ups, aliens and viral outbreaks – also it worked on an episodic format (where a mini-story occurred every episode, and the overall arc of the series occurred in the background), and they did it much, much better.

In the end I still really like most of the actors in the show, I just couldn’t keep waiting around for the premise to show itself. I hope this doesn’t mean I’m loosing patience with new shows but am simply becoming more discerning.

Book Review: Superfolks

One of the reasons I love reading Introductions to books is that often they will point me to other books I've never heard of before. Case in Point, Astro City: Confession, by Kurt Busiek. The introduction is done by Neil Gaiman and in it, he points out a number books which focus on super-heroes but come at them from a different direction. It was in this introduction that I first heard of Superfolks by Robert Mayer.

Basically, I would describe this book as an R-Rated version of The Incredibles. The main character, David Brinkley, is a retired Superman-type character who lost his powers ages ago but now is beginning to be able to use them again. The novel does go a lot into the sexuality of super-heroes, a topic many fans speculate on, but writers (especially before this book came out) didn't really touch on. Overall the book is really, really funny, I love the action sequences and you really get a good understanding of the main character, a man who has grown up, started his own family, and is suddenly offered the chance to re-live his boyhood dream.

The book was written in 1977, and any familiarity you have with that decade, and the state of pop culture back then will help you with the enjoyment of the book. You don't need to know everything about the era to understand the story, but you may miss certain references or in-jokes if you don't.

Robert Mayer (pictured in 1977 to the right), is actually a journalist and Superfolks was his first novel. I haven't found any of the other 7 books he's written to date, I found Superfolks in my local comic book store, but I am definitely looking, as his first book was so good. It's not for kids, but a more grown up audience will really love it.