2009 Reading #65: Essential Incredible Hulk Volume 1

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
61. Hmong in Minnesota by Chia Youyee Vang.
62. Myths and Legends of the Sioux by Marie L. McLaughlin.
63. Heir of Sea and Fire (Book Two of the Riddlemaster trilogy) by Patricia McKillip.
64. Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories by Craig Laurance Gidney.

65. Essential Incredible Hulk Volume 1 by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, et al. I love these Essential collections that Marvel's been doing (and DC, under the Showcase Presents banner); thick black-and-white reprints of the early runs of their classic (and sometimes not-that-classic) comics. If these had been in the library when I was a kid I would have read every single one of them; as it was, I had to settle for scattered issues of the Hulk. Most of these early issues are new to me, aside from the origin story, which has of course been recapped a thousand times. What's interesting here, aside from the weird forgotten villains like the Mole-Man's rival Tyrannus and the lame forgettable villains like Boomerang, are the changes the Hulk/Banner transformations go through as Smilin' Stan tries to figure out how this power works, exactly. The Hulk goes from gray to green (which, given the black and white, you'd miss entirely if you were coming to the character cold), from a day/night Banner/Hulk cycle to changes brought on by stress (but not anger specifically, and it works both ways--if the Hulk gets upset he changes into Banner), from somewhat dull intelligence to Banner's-brain-in-Hulk's-body (and even Banner's HEAD on Hulk's body) to something like the familiar big green dummy who can't even remember that he's the same guy as Bruce the scientist. Also, the first iterations of the "Soldiers can't hurt hulk/Hulk is the strongest one there is/Why won't humans leave Hulk alone?" Hulk is like a passive-aggressive drunk guy at a sporting event where his team is losing; he can't decide if he wants to get into a fight or go cry in a corner.

2009 Reading #66: I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
61. Hmong in Minnesota by Chia Youyee Vang.
62. Myths and Legends of the Sioux by Marie L. McLaughlin.
63. Heir of Sea and Fire (Book Two of the Riddlemaster trilogy) by Patricia McKillip.
64. Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories by Craig Laurance Gidney.
65. Essential Incredible Hulk Volume 1 by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, et al.

66. I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks by Fletcher Hanks and Paul Karasik. Post-Sycamore Hill a few of us spent the afternoon in Asheville and stopped by Malaprop's Bookstore. There, glancing at their graphic novel selection, Colonel Rowe and I were looking at a volume of reprinted nuttiness from '40s comics and came across a story by Fletcher Hanks. We showed it to Alice who, in her knowing way, said that a volume of his work had been reprinted and it was even crazier all at once. And it is. At first glance Hanks' art looks unschooled, almost naive--the proportions of his figures, particularly on Stardust the Super Wizard, are elongated or distorted. But a look at Hanks' villains makes it clear that he's working in the sphere of the grotesque, and a survey of the crimes and punishments he depicts only reinforces that. A mob of criminals launches a hyperbolic assault on New York City; a madman called the Demon sends a thousand-foot wave against it. In both cases--in most of these stories, in fact--the hero waits until after a few (or a few thousand) people have died to intercede, even when they know what's being planned beforehand. Villains are punished by being frozen alive, hurled into space, changed into rats, combined into one body (!), and perhaps craziest of all, turned into a giant head, hurled at a headless space giant, and absorbed into the giant's body. Yeah. AND THEN there's the afterword, in which Karasik, who edited this collection, tells the story (in comic form) of meeting Hanks' son, who enlightens him as to the abusive and drunken nature of his father. This is seriously weird shit, people. By which I mean that you should read it, of course.

2009 Reading #67: Wizard's Eleven

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
61. Hmong in Minnesota by Chia Youyee Vang.
62. Myths and Legends of the Sioux by Marie L. McLaughlin.
63. Heir of Sea and Fire (Book Two of the Riddlemaster trilogy) by Patricia McKillip.
64. Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories by Craig Laurance Gidney.
65. Essential Incredible Hulk Volume 1 by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, et al.
66. I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks by Fletcher Hanks and Paul Karasik.

67. Wizard's Eleven (Book Three of The True Game) by Sheri S. Tepper. Satisfying, if perhaps a bit easy, conclusion to the trilogy. It's good that Peter is still capable of making mistakes, and that Tepper brings in a character like Jinian to call him on them; it's a little more amusing, though, when it's Chance who screws things up while Peter isn't around. Some nice surprises, but some things resolved a bit unsurprisingly, like the fate of the Gamesmen of Barish. Still and all, I'm enjoying these enough that I plan to read the next trilogy somewhere down the road.

Writer's Night Out Tonight

NOTE LOCATION CHANGE:

Much as we all love Merlin's Rest, the Wednesday night music has become a deterrent to conversation, so we're going to try the Longfellow Grill this time, at 2990 West River Parkway, just at the Western end of the Marshall St. bridge. 7:30 PM; see you there!