Thursday, May 31, 2012

The Heaven Makers

1968 Photobucket The Heaven Makers is a science fiction story written by legendary Dune scribe, Frank Herbert. Like much of his writing, it was originally serialized in a sci-fi magazine and later sold as a novel. Although written around the same time as Dune, it lacks the depth and scope of his masterpiece saga, and comes across much more like a satirical send-up of Hollywood. I was thoroughly unimpressed by the book on almost every level, and was not surprised to find other online reviewers sharing my opinion. Photobucket The story, while hardly worth going into, is about aliens hiding in our oceans and using their advanced technology to film humans while they subtly manipulate our lives to make for entertaining footage. These films are edited and used as mass media entertainment back on the home world. The story rotates both around a human who catches on to the alien presence, as well as an alien investigator sent to sniff out the abuse of power by the Earth-based crazed director and leader. Photobucket The criticism that this is one of Herbert's worst books is accurate, but there are glimpses of talent and even genius in this otherwise silly and unfleshed short novel. The premise is a dead-on prediction of modern reality TV and commentary that only a deranged alien mind would use human beings as playthings for mindless entertainment. But it is interesting to contrast the broad and cartoonish perspective on the immortality of the Chem against the prolonged life and immortality of the God Emperor of Herbert's much more famous Dune, which took an entire series to develop. Photobucket It was also a very interesting comparison to read this at the same time as previously reviewed Black Easter by James Blish. In both cases my previous view of the author was upended, but in dramatically opposite directions. Photobucket I recommend this book to sci-fi fans who still watch cartoons and won't be insulted by the lack of effort Frank Herbert puts out in what has to be considered one of his worst pieces of literature. Photobucket

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Batman: The Long Halloween

1968 Photobucket The first comic to rebuild Harvey Dent (aka Two-Face) into a household name, The Long Halloween is not full of much originality, but does an incredible job of blending so much of what makes Batman great into a film-noir style cinematic masterpiece. Photobucket Jeph Loeb is not a household name, but has been behind a lot of popular entertainment going back all the way to the original Teen Wolf and Teen Wolf Too which he co-wrote with his future Heroes collaborator Tim Kring! He has worked on superhero television shows like the Flash and Smallville as well as mega-popular Lost. But he's been collecting comic books since the seventies and writing them since the nineties. Although I think much of his work is over-rated, he consistantly writes with high standards and a love and respect for the genre that better writers often struggle with. Photobucket The Long Halloween is probably Jeph Loeb's best work, a murder mystery and character piece capped by an artistic vision which is necessary for all great works in the comics world. The quantity of full page Batman spreads does nothing to undermine the fact that Batman just looks... f*ckin' bad-ass in this series. The fantastic art work that captures Batman's awesomeness and also makes old standbys like the Joker and Catwoman seem so fresh is by Tim Sale. I've been a fan of Tim's since his earliest work on my much-beloved Myth Adventures series. Although Loeb and Sale list themselves as mutual storytellers in their frequent collaborations, my opinion is that Loeb's notable works would be far less notable without Sale's style and Eisner-winning talent. Photobucket The setting was a problem for me. I have been reading some collections of Best Of DC comics characters, such as Batman, and have been reading them according to when they were written. Cartoon and comic characters like these just never traditionally aged, like Charlie Brown and Bart Simpson. But unlike the Sunday funnies, Marvel comics came along and started taking their storylines seriously and DC followed suit. So eventually DC Comics had to address their decades of continuity by wiping out the 50 years of unaging backstory in the first historic Crisis and relaunching the origins and backstories of all the DC characters. Photobucket I haven't read a lot of those relaunches (aka 'Year One'), and I truly don't know if they were given any specific time-setting other than 'prior to now'. But I do own and covet the Frank Miller Batman Year One. The Long Halloween is generally conceded as occuring in that universe. In reviewing both volumes, I made the call that the fashion and technology reflected in the art was a gritty late-sixties look. Maybe 15 years is too long a span than mid-eighties writers had in mind... Maybe I should have waited until I got to the eighties to read all of the Year One volumes and then bounce back into modern continuity... Maybe I should have sheltered my kids from all Star Wars media so they wouldn't know who Vader was when they first saw Episode IV.. Photobucket The bottom line was that I was pumped to read Long Halloween and made the call that 1968 was a good time frame. Especially in light of knowing the huge influence it had on the recent Dark Knight movie. And although the storyline is convoluted enough that I had to re-read the plot on Wikipedia to remember the conclusion of the mystery, I was not disappointed in the least. I gave the graphic novel 5 out of 5 on Good Reads, and would whole heartedly recommend it to casual Batman fans who may not read comics normally but could dig getting into something with substance. Photobucket If you liked the latest Batman movies, or would like to read a series that is likely to stay on the top ten list of Batman comics for a very long time, then The Long Halloween is a must read. Photobucket