Favorite Books - Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl was the best thing I read last year. It’s an almost perfect novel, with a unique setup, thrilling mystery and beautiful payoff. Nick and Amy Dunn have been married for five years. The marriage isn’t perfect and Nick is getting a little restless. One morning, Nick goes out for a walk to review his options. When he returns, Amy is gone and there are signs of a struggle. Of course the police zero in on Nick as the prime suspect, even if he swears his innocence on a stack of Bibles. As the days and weeks go by, the cops discover Nick’s girlfriend, his massive debt load and his suspicious actions, and Amy looks more and more dead. Then they find her diary ...

I hesitate to say any more about this book, I don’t want to ruin the delicious unspooling of the characters and their actions. I will say that the novel goes along about a hundred miles an hour until the middle ... then a mind-blowing plot twist throws everything into even bigger chaos. There is a huge revelation that threw me for a loop and ratcheted up the tension level another zillion notches. The only other thing I will say is I love stories written with the “unreliable narrator” device. If done well, it slowly dawns on the reader that things may not be what they seem.

I know the movie version of Gone Girl is coming out later this year, with one of my favorite directors, David Fincher, at the helm. I was cautiously looking forward to it until I read about the cast. I don’t know much about Rosamund Pike, who plays Amy. Unfortunately, it has one of the worst actors in Hollywood playing Nick; Ben Affleck. Affleck is the perfect example of what being talentless but tall and good looking will get you in show business. If a role requires an open mouth and blank stare, Affleck is your man. But I think the part of Nick requires actual acting. If any director can bring out something resembling a performance, Fincher can. There are limits to reality ... But Gone Girl, the novel? Read it.

Rating: ***** out of 5 stars

Linkapalooza

Interesting links from around the Web:

- Politics and Science Ficton: Awesome fantasy/sci-fi writer Larry Correia is a right-leaning libertarian who thinks politics don’t belong in fiction. At least not as a bludgeon to hurt writers that don’t follow the current groupthink. He speaks iron words on his blog about the subject regularly. He makes his points so well that USA Today did a column about his views--check it out here.

 

- Suicide Most Foul: A wife kills herself and the husband is charged with the crime. Is there a better example of how marriage works?

- Attack of the Octo: For natural history lovers—a short film called True Facts about the Octopus. Funny and educational!

- Mental Floss: Author John Green runs a great site called Mental Floss. In this vignette, Green presents “30 Life Hacks Debunked,” testing urban and Internet legends to see if they really work.  I’ve tried the “forks in the Oreo” one and it works like a charm. Can’t wait to try the “fast chilling bottles.” Different and watchable.

- UFO Rampage: Finally, Skeptoid looks at the Tehran 1976 UFO incident. Out of all the encounters I’ve heard of or read about, there may actually be something to this one. Doesn’t mean the object was an alien spacecraft—just that there are some things about it that are tough to explain.

Comics Capsule Reviews

4/9/14 Books
Savage Dragon #194: I admire Erik Larson for what he has achieved on this long-running superhero book. One of the few original Image books still running, the numbering on Savage Dragon is now ten times most Marvel and DC books, because of their endless and frustrating relaunches. Larsen says he’ll do the book until he dies if economically possible, and I believe him. The book has always been entertaining, with explosive action and characters aging in real time. So much so that the original Dragon, the alien with no memory who woke up in a burning field on Earth and ended up fighting super-villains, has retired. He has handed the reins of do-gooding over to his teenaged super-powered son Malcolm.

From what little I remember of my teenage years, Larson writes a convincing teen. Malcolm is trying to balance fame, girlfriends, groupies (he has no secret identity) and his dad’s old enemies who are trying to kill him. Not to mention the new villains who are trying to kill him. In issue 194, Torment, a villain who has his good and bad consciences on his head, each convincing him to do good/evil, goes a few rounds with Malcolm and causes some major property damage before running away. And then coming back, forcing Malcolm to dispatch him, possibly permanently. I’m sure next issue he will deal with his own conscience.

Savage Dragon #200 is up in six issues, and, like me, Larson loves to celebrate anniversary issues. I can’t wait to see what tale he cooks up for this one.

Rating: **** out of 5 stars

Iron Fist: The Living Weapon #1: I can’t believe it!!!! A new #1 issue from Marvel!!! Such a rare and unusual occurrence. Let’s see if it is warranted. Writer/artist Kaare Andrews takes the character in a new direction. And that direction is awful.

First, Andrews repeats Iron Fist’s origin for the nth time, putting his own spin on it. He changes it just enough to be annoying and destroy what made it work originally. Then he turns Danny Rand into a depressed, amoral jerk who picks up superhero groupies for one-night stands. In this first issue, Iron Fist is attacked by some group resembling military ninjas and fights them. That is about all that happens. Talk about decompressed storytelling. The art and coloring are confusing, murky and too cartoony. And in a long line of Marvel martial arts writers, Andrews knows nothing about martial arts or hand-to-hand combat. Just once it would be nice to see Iron Fist or Shang Chi do some real Kung Fu, instead of whatever goofy shorthand the artists decide to use. Really, guys, Karate magazines are not that expensive. Buy one. In the end, Andrews gives readers no reason to care or buy issue #2.

In an editorial at the end of the book, Andrews seems to have true enthusiasm about working on Iron Fist. I appreciate that. I just wish the book was better.

Rating: * out of 5 stars

 

Shotgun Wedding #2: More vengeance-based fun by writer William Harms and artist Edward Pun. Chloe is getting closer to tracking down her erstwhile fiancé Mike and his new bride-to-be, with a planned wedding gift of bullets rather than a new toaster. Flashbacks show Mike and Chloe’s relationship before he left her at the altar. She turns out to be crazier than we thought, but very good at hiding it from Mike. Harms presents an engaging story that slowly and deliberately tells how everyone got to this point, and Pun’s art and layouts show a unique understanding of visual storytelling. The man would be a great cinematographer. I love where this book is going. Highly recommended.


Rating: **** out of 5 stars
  

Flash Gordon #1: Dynamite takes another shot at updating comic strip and movie serial hero Flash Gordon. This is how a first issue should be handled. Parker includes the familiar main characters: Flash, here a bored daredevil spending his family’s money for thrills, Dale Arden, a no-nonsense television reporter, and Dr. Zarkov, an arrogant rocket scientist. After brief introductions of each character, the action flashes to the planet Mongo, with the three in a rocketship, fleeing from Mongo’s authorities. Writer Jeff Parker makes me want to know how they got there and why—I’m sure he’ll explain as the story progresses, but my interested is piqued. Going from one misadventure to another, the three end up crashing in the jungle, surrounded by a hostile tribe of blue aliens. This book was a perfect set up for issue #2, I look forward to see what trouble our heroes get into—and get out of—next.  

Rating: **** out of 5 stars

4/16/14 Books

The Six Million Dollar Man: Season Six #2: Licensed books are tough to do, and the more obscure the property, the harder to make fans care and the stories matter. The Six Million Dollar Man was a hit when I was a kid in the ‘70s—the audience must be middle-aged fans like me who remember the series fondly. Is anyone else interested? Dynamite must think so, licensed properties aren’t free. 

While the reruns of the show don’t hold up well—the microbudget was just too small to make a sci fi show—the comic is not bad. Writer Jim Kuhoric obviously knows the show and does well portraying specific character personalities and speech patterns. The plot deals with the attack of the Maskatron, a robot version of hero Steve Austin that was featured in the 1970s toy line but never on the show (see microbudget). The espionage plot moves quickly and is more action packed than the show ever was. Steve ends up in a Russian research facility trying to steal some bionic technology, while Maskatron is hunting him down for some hot robot action. Fights, I’m assuming. A welcome addition to the television show’s mythology.

Rating *** out of 5 stars

Haunted Horror #10: This is such a fun book. Comics auteur and historian Craig Yoe has put together all kinds of collections of pre-Comics Code stories, including horror, romance and other genres. Haunted Horror is a gathering of the some of the best and most unusual non-EC horror comics. These stories are first-rate. “The Cult of 13 Ghosts” (from This Magazine is Haunted #3, 1952) tells the story of Semple Ridgedon, a Scrooge-like slumlord without the eventual redemption. When Semple finds a murder cult having unauthorized meetings on one of his properties, he tells them to skedaddle or he’ll whip them with his cane. The murdering ghost-Thuggees don’t respond as well as he had anticipated.

In “The Monster’s Ghost,” (from Dark Mysteries #2, 1951) despite a stranger’s warning, tough guy Bruce Gibson buys a house so haunted even that spikey-haired guy from Ghost Adventures couldn’t clear it out. Bruce is upset when he then finds the stranger living in his basement, summoning demons with his minions. Who wouldn’t be? A total skeptic, Bruce gives the stranger some of his blood to prove the villain can’t summon a demon. Um, sorry Bruce, turns out he can. Bruce isn’t actually killed by said demon, but he does have a magic sword stuck through his heart for the rest of his life. It’s funny, that happened to my cousin too.

In “Epitaph” (from Weird Mysteries #9, 1954), Edgar has recently lost his new bride Mariam. He can’t stop grieving because their relationship was so perfect. He wanders into the graveyard to visit her grave, which just happens to be the night that corpses rise from their graves to write their most horrible secrets on their tombstones (unknown fact: this happens all the time, just not around where you live). When he gets to Mariam’s grave, Edgar faints with shock as he finds out Mariam may not have been as perfect—or as faithful—as he thought.

There are several more stories in this issue, and they are all utterly charming. The presentation is fantastic, as they are printed on crisp, white paper and each issue has a thick page count and numerous stories. An amusing look at a bygone age of comics.

 

Rating: **** out of 5 stars

Upcoming Books

Just in time for Christmas this year--The 75th Anniversary Marvel Masterworks Slipcase Set. From the 1960s, eleven high-quality hardcovers with the first ten or so issues of:

- Captain America
- Daredevil
- Amazing Spider-Man
- The Avengers
- Fantastic Four
- Incredible Hulk
- Iron Man
- Thor
- X-Men
- Not Brand Echh (Marvel's humor title, never reprinted before)

All in a beautiful slipcase designed like the Avenger's mansion. A collector's dream, with the accompanying price tag--$500. If I win the lottery ...

Books: W is for Wasted

Sue Grafton continues to pull off an extremely difficult writing task. Grafton is the mastermind behind the “Alphabet” mystery series of detective novels (and a fellow Kentuckian, part-time at least). A is for Alibi debuted in 1982, starring that plucky P.I. Kinsey Millhone everyone loves to love. Since then, Grafton, and Kinsey, have worked their way through roughly 10,000 murders, 7000 shootings, 4000 knifings, several car accidents, one chair over the head and one large explosion. Through it all, Kinsey remains an attractive loner with no real family and a practical view of life. That is, leave people alone and they’ll leave you alone. It’s okay to be nosey and pushy as long as it’s in a good cause. And sometimes when it isn’t.

In W, Kinsey finds some new family and investigates the murder of a sleazy fellow P.I. in her California town of Santa Theresa. Raised by her single aunt after the wreck that killed her parents, Kinsey found that her mom and dad were estranged from her mother’s family. She has slowly been reuniting with them over the course of the series and it has been painful to watch—Kinsey is extremely insecure and doesn’t tend to play well with others. She doesn’t know her father’s family at all, which changes in this book when a homeless man’s body is found on the beach and turns out to be her paternal great-uncle. When she travels to a nearby town to let his family know he is dead, she meets several cousins she didn’t know she had. The sparks fly when she finds out they are a not a pleasant group, and she discovers yet another reason to avoid family reunions. As the novel progresses, the two cases overlap into one shattering mystery. Grafton does an outstanding job of balancing plot and character development, resulting in a fine story with characters that advance and grow. A tremendous read. All of the Alphabet novels are well worth your time, a truly enjoyable series.

A word about aging characters in a series. In any novel series that has been published for decades; Robert Parker’s Spencer series, Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole books, even the James Bond novels, writers usually just don’t mention the age of their characters. It’s sort of like comics, where Superman has been 34 for seventy years. They’re ageless. Grafton deals with this another way. There are only a few months at most between each of the Alphabet novels. Even though there have been 23 novels in the series since 1982, the latest book takes place around 1988. So no cell phones, no flat screen TVs, there are barely fax machines. Grafton believably keeps Kinsey in her 30s. It’s a unique way to deal with character aging and I find it a good choice for the stories she is telling.

Now that Grafton has only three letters of the alphabet left, I have to say if she stops with Z I’ll be majorly disappointed. After all, “AA” is for ... something, and she can just continue from there.

Rating: **** stars out of 5

Television – Fargo

 

I enjoyed the movie Fargo, but wasn’t necessarily excited about a TV show based on the property. However, FX has done a terrific job with most of its series so far, so I gave it a try. I really enjoyed it, much more than I thought I would. While Billy Bob Thornton is just plain weird, I think he is a massive talent. From Sling Blade to Monster’s Ball, he has built up a diverse body of work and is not afraid to take chances.

In Fargo the TV series, Thornton plays a nihilistic hitman, cool as an icy stream as he takes human lives. In town for a hit, he meets up with Martin Freeman’s character in the hospital, then for kicks, murders the bully who put him there. Thornton’s character exudes attitude and a keen sense of danger. When he is pulled over by a local cop (Colin Hanks), he intimidates the cop into letting him just drive off in a stolen car by attitude alone, without uttering a single specific threat. Martin Freeman (Sherlock, The Hobbit) is great as usual in the role of depressed, henpecked husband Lester Nygarrd, who snaps and pays back his wife for years of abuse.

Taking the Frances McDormand role is Allison Tolman, who does a wonderful job as Molly Solverson, a small town cop with maybe pretensions of something bigger. Her casting goes somewhat positively against the grain of most television, as she is a normal woman and not a supermodel. This would never fly on CBS!

While great drama, Fargo is a dark tale of murder and, well, more murder. It may not put viewers in a happy place, but TV this good is a joy to watch.

Rating: **** stars out of 5

Movies – Captain America: The Winter Soldier

*Slight Spoilers*

Marvel Comics, patriotism and love of America are things that do not necessarily go together. For years, Marvel has struggled with how to portray the hero that embodies the United States, Captain America. They seem not to understand why or how people love this country, and thus cannot imbue patriotism in a character who wears a flag. I was worried about how Cap would be portrayed in his new flick, The Winter Soldier. Cap was treated respectfully in his first movie (although the producers seemed to forget America fought Nazis in WWII) and very well in the Avengers. But now that Cap was in the modern day, it would be easy for Marvel to make him a conservative-hating secular humanist like the rest of their modern heroes. I’m happy to say I had nothing to worry about in The Winter Soldier. It was incredible.

I have read that Marvel executives told the movie’s producers that they wanted a political thriller. They certainly delivered. The storyline is loosely based on comic writer Ed Brubaker’s story of the same name, with Cap’s WWII sidekick Bucky returning as the titular character. The movie has some of the most dynamic and realistic action sequences I have ever seen on the big screen. Whoever the stunt coordinator was for the film should do the stunts for every movie ever made from now on, forever. At least all Marvel movies. The plot kept the action going, was understandable, and never slowed things down. And Cap’s patented comfort in using his shield as the all-around perfect weapon was fully on display. The shield becomes a beautiful ballet of balance and action; an ideal extension of his fighting flair.

Chris Evans and Anthony Mackie

Chris Evans was born to play Captain America. Anthony Mackie was wonderful as Sam Wilson, the Falcon. I’ve never cared much for Scarlett Johanssen as the Black Widow or Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, but both characters are finally given something to do, along with some back-story (finally) and are starting to grow on me. Black-hearted Robert Redford is perfect as the black-hearted villain pulling the strings from behind the scenes. The Stan Lee cameo was perfect, one of the best so far. The only criticism I would have of the movie are the costumes. Cap is not really Captain America without the 3D wings on his head, as he has had in the comics for over 70 years. Otherwise it’s just a guy in a vaguely Cap-inspired uniform. I’ve lost this battle, as Marvel has done away with them. That is a mistake, they’re an iconic feature. Falcon has too much black in his uniform, just like EVERY SUPERHERO MOVIE EVER. I know yellow spandex doesn’t translate well to the screen, but can someone wear something other than black ninja crap for a change? Hopefully the Falcon will be back in future films and have a bit of red in his wings and costume.

Those are minor nitpicks. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is pure entertainment and probably the best Marvel movie since Avengers. I loved it.

Rating: **** out of 5 stars