I Reads December 2015

It's most wonderful blog of the year!  Welcome to I Reads You, a ComicBookBin web and sister publication (www.comicbookbin.com).  We write about the things we read:  mostly comic books, comics, and related books.  Sometimes, we’ll write about or link to other topics:  typically books, politics, and entertainment.

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World Trigger: Outsmart Thy Neighbor

I read World Trigger, Vol. 7

I posted a review at the ComicBookBin.  Follow me on Twitter and Tumblr or at Grumble.  Support me on Patreon.

Book Review: DEPRAVED HEART by Patricia Cornwell

DEPRAVED HEART
HARPERCOLLINS – @HarperCollins

AUTHOR: Patricia Cornwell – @1pcornw
ISBN: 978-0-06-232540-2; hardcover (October 27, 2015)
480pp, B&W, $28.99 U.S.

Depraved Heart is a 2015 crime novel from best-selling author Patricia Cornwell.  It is the 23rd novel in Cornwell's “Kay Scarpetta” series, which began with the 1990 novel, Postmortem.  Depraved Heart finds Scarpetta besieged by a spooky blast from the past when mysterious, decades-old videos appear on her phone while she is right in the middle of a suspicious death scene.

As Depraved Heart begins, medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta is in the home of Chanel Gilbert, the grown daughter of Hollywood heavy-hitter producer, Amanda Gilbert.  Chanel is dead, in what seems to be an accidental fall.  Apparently, she fell while trying to change a light bulb in her historic house, located near the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Then, it happens.  An emergency alert sounds on Scarpetta's phone.  It heralds the arrival of a video link that lands in her text messages and seems to originate from her niece, Lucy Farinelli, a computer genius.  What instantly troubles Scarpetta is that this video link opens to a surveillance film of Lucy in her room at the FBI Academy, Washington Dormitory, Room 411, but that was almost 20 years ago!

The video not only troubles Scarpetta, but also supports her suspicions that the murder scene at the Gilbert house is suspicious.  There are more videos to come, each one making her frightened for Lucy, the niece she loves and raised as if she were her own daughter.  Are these videos connected to Chanel Gilbert's murder?  Does Lucy have a connection to Chanel?  What Scarpetta is sure of is that an old enemy is back in full force, and the machinations of this brilliant monster will make Scarpetta suspicious of everyone and everything around her.

After reading Flesh and Blood last year, I eagerly awaited the next Kay Scarpetta novel.  If Patricia Cornwell had decided to take a break from Scarpetta and produce some other book for publication this year, I would have had to turn to crack for comfort.  So I was happy when HarperCollins public relations offered reviewers a galley edition of Depraved Heart.

Where as Flesh and Blood's story traveled across the Eastern seaboard and into the Bermuda Triangle, Depraved Heart is set mainly in Chanel Gilbert's house.  And it is an old house, jealously guarding secrets and fostering lies.  No matter where Scarpetta wants to go, this haunted house calls her back.

On Cornwell's part, this is an impressive feat of writing, even for someone who has been writing novels for the better part of three decades.  It is not such much that the plot and storytelling of Depraved Heart are restrained; rather, it is that Cornwell must restrain her lead character, Scarpetta.  A woman of intelligence and discipline, Scarpetta finds her life, her loved ones, her friends, her colleagues, and her work endangered in such a way that she wants to drop the facade of reason and let the animal loose.

Not that it matters either way.  Scarpetta cannot trust her memories and her emotions are suspect.  Also, for her all skills and intellect, Scarpetta does not figure things out so much as she merely stumbles about – making discoveries as if she were a janitor finding a penny in the corner.  That is what is so troubling and simultaneously thrilling, you don't when or if the death blow is coming, and neither does our forensic god, Scarpetta.

If you wonder why book series seem to become a little less interesting with each book, it is because a series will naturally play up the “same old things.”  Usually, for things to change, the original author has to die, and the estate has to be smart enough to find a new writer or new writers that can pump life back into a series.  Patricia Cornwell proves that the Kay Scarpetta series won't need Kay Scarpetta's talents anytime soon, not when the latest book can keep even depraved hearts pounding to the very last “little bit.”

A

www.patriciacornwell.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2015 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

Food Wars: Put Your Heart Into It

I read Food Wars!, Vol. 8: Shokugeki no Soma

I posted a review at the ComicBookBin.  Follow me on Twitter and Tumblr or at Grumble.  Support me on Patreon.

Review: MAN IS VOX: Barracudae (Expanded Edition)

MAN IS VOX: BARRACUDAE (Expanded Edition)
CANDLE LIGHT PRESS – @candlelightpres

WRITER: John Ira Thomas
ARTIST: Carter Allen
INKS: Jeremy Smith (“Dessert” story)
LETTERS: John Ira Thomas
COVER: Carter Allen
ISBN: 978-0-9966176-1-1; paperback (2015)
144pp, B&W and Color $14.95 U.S.

Published by Candle Light Press (CLP), Man is Vox: Barracudae is a 2003 original graphic novel (OGN) created by writer John Ira Thomas and artist Carter Allen.  The story follows a man who is essentially a killer on the search for a psycho who kills some women and abuses in terrible ways those that he does not kill.  Because of the resources and processes available to them at the time, Thomas and Allen were not able to see Barracudae published the way they intended it.

2015 is Candle Light Press' 20th anniversary.  In fact, there is a book celebrating that anniversary, CLP20: Twenty Years of Candle Light Press (http://candlelightpress.tumblr.com/clp20.htm), a book to which I have contributed a few notes.  For CLP, this anniversary provides an opportunity to re-release, re-present, and repackage some of its publications.

Man is Vox: Barracudae (http://candlelightpress.tumblr.com/barra.htm) gets a makeover with the release of Man is Vox: Barracudae (Expanded Edition).  It is the same graphic novel, but with color restored to the sections that were meant to be presented in color.  Additional material has been added to the main narrative, and there is a new color story produced by Thomas and Allen for this new edition of one of CLP's classic comics.  Man is Vox: Barracudae (Expanded Edition) is also published in a larger format, 7.25” x 9.5” (where as the original 2003 edition was small at 6” x 9”)

Man is Vox: Barracudae follows the trippy adventures of Tyson Gurst a.k.a. “The Fearsome Shade” a.k.a. “The Husband.”  Early in the story, a dying mobster tries to make a trade for his life (because Gurst is going to kill him).  The doomed criminal alerts Gurst to a bigger crime.  Traveling a state highway of gas stations and cheap motels, the Fearsome Shade will discover a conspiracy that ends with some of the most powerful good guys around.

Man is Vox: Barracudae is crazy.  John Ira Thomas is experimental and sometimes avant-garde, to the detriment of the narrative in a few places.  That said:  this comic book is unabashedly humorous, and, in its final act, it playfully skewers superhero comics, particularly the post-modern twisting of traditional superhero comics that started in the 1980s and continues to this day.  I like its ideas; truth and justice do come at a cost.  What do we really want from our saviors?  Do they really know what we want?

With Man is Vox: Barracudae, Carter Allen shows off his storytelling skills.  Mixing both media and drawing styles, Allen makes Thomas' script work as graphical storytelling without grounding it into boring practicality.  Allen remains an original voice in American comic books.

What I said about the original is true of Man is Vox: Barracudae (Expanded Edition).  It is both trippy and inspired.  It puts the original in OGN – original graphic novel.  Readers looking for high-quality independently published graphic novels will find one in the spiffy new Man is Vox: Barracudae (Expanded Edition).

http://candlelightpress.tumblr.com/
http://candlelightpress.tumblr.com/barra2.htm
https://www.facebook.com/Candle-Light-Press-43073733772/

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux

The text is copyright © 2015 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

Magi: Magnoshutatt Academy

I read Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic, Vol. 14

I posted a review at the ComicBookBin.  Follow me on Twitter and Tumblr or at Grumble.  Support me on Patreon.

Review: DNAgents #1

DNAGENTS No. 1
ECLIPSE COMICS

[This review first appeared on Patreon.]

WRITER: Mark Evanier
PENCILS: Will Meugniot
INKS: Al Gordon
COLORS: Janice Cohen
LETTERS: Carrie McCarthy
COVER: Will Meugniot and Al Gordon
32pp, Color, $1.50 U.S., $1.75 CAN (March 1983)

DNAgents was a comic book series created by writer Mark Evanier and artist Will Meugniot.  For most of its run, DNAgents was published by Eclipse Comics, beginning in 1983 with the first issue.  DNAgents follows a team of superheroes comprised of a five young people that were created by a corporation using genetic engineering.

DNAgents #1 (“Born Orphans”) opens in the bowels of the Matrix Corporation.  There, we meet five individuals who are not quite people and are not human.  They began as “hundreds of beakers of chemicals waiting to interact.”

When they are freed from their stasis chambers, we are introduced to a new team of superheroes, who have code names instead of birth names.  Rainbow is a young woman who is a powerful telepath and an illusionist.  Amber projects disks of electromagnetic energy that she can use as shields and weapons, or as platforms upon which she can fly.  The beefy Tank is super-strong and wears heavy body armor to regulate and augment his strength.  A conceited young man, Surge can fire blasts of lighting.  A little guy, Sham is a shapeshifter with training as a commando.

The DNAgents are immediately sent on a mission, but things are not as the youngsters are told they would be.  Can they survive in a world that they only know by the information their corporate overseers programmed into them?

It has been ages since I read DNAgents, but for some reason, the series never left my memory.  I have always remembered it fondly, so during a Mile High Comics sale, I bought a copy of DNAgents #1.  I promptly lost track of the comic book, and when I found it, I decided to read it... and to write a short review of it.

DNAgents #1 is a comic book of its time.  It's quasi-science slash fictional science is not presented in a complex or detailed manner.  Writer Mark Evanier focuses on creating the dynamics of a team and on the relationships within the team and on their relationships with other people.  Evanier (pronounced Ev-a-near) emphasizes character relationships, as he also delves into the politics within the Matrix Corporation.  Evanier's script offers plenty of action, but also has a wry sense of humor.  It would not be a stretch to say that Evanier uses Chris Claremont's storytelling on Uncanny X-Men as a template.

Artist Will Meugniot (pronounced Mineo) is good at storytelling, and his page layouts are imaginative, tending towards dynamism.  His art is not highly polished, and is somewhat awkward, in the way one might expect of an artist that has not illustrated many comic books.  There are, however, many moments when Meugniot shows that he has strong drawing skills.

Looking over DNAgents #1 before I read it, I did not think that I would read more than this first issue.  Now, that I have read it, I want to read at least a few more issues.  I also think that this series has potential.  There are a number of writers currently working in comic books that can reboot, re-imagine, or even restart DNAgents in new and interesting ways.

B+

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2015 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.