I haven’t posted my usual weekly updates for a bit, but I like having a count of books, comics, movies and tv at the end of the year, so I’m going to catch up with some capsule reviews.
Comics I read:
Above Snakes by Sean Lewis and Hayden Sherman: Hayden Sherman is dependably marvellous – I don’t think I’ve seen someone put that much thought into composition and rendering while also being that fast in a good while – but despite some interesting ideas, I couldn’t connect with the story.
Swamp Thing by Scott Snyder, Yanick Paquette et al: Thoroughly enjoyed this, though I wonder if Paquette’s Adam Hughes-tinged pretty art was entirely appropriate for the tone of the story.
Animal Man by Jeff Lemire, Travel Foreman et al: This, on the other hand, I didn’t enjoy much. I feel like Lemire’s writing here is superficial, rarely engaging with the interiority of the characters, particularly those around the protagonist, despite some interesting plotting. Travel Foreman’s art is great, especially when it comes to inventive body horror images, but the flat digital colouring by Kindzierski does injustice to his theatrical staging by making it look far too empty and thereby lazy in a way it actually isn’t. Some texture and grain could’ve improved things.
Avengers, New Avengers, Infinity and Secret Wars by Jonathan Hickman, Jerome Opeña, Steve Epting, Kev Walker, Mike Deodato, Stefano Caselli, Esad Ribič et al (reread): I’ll be writing about this one separately, but if you’re into big-scale superhero storytelling, it’s worth a read.
Damn Them All by Si Spurrier and Charlie Adlard: A great riff on Hellblazer, and I particularly enjoyed Si carrying forward the data-page conceit from his time in Krakoa to pack in even more story into his already-dense style. Reminded me of the other Hellblazer riff by a former Constantine writer in the Felix Castor novels by Mike Carey. Both that and this approach the concept at an angle and use it to do things they couldn’t have done in the DC book.
Eight Billion Genies by Charles Soule and Ryan Browne: A great conceit – everyone in the world simultaneously gets a genie and one wish for what to do it – and there’s a lot of pleasantly imaginative worldbuilding to go with it. Not a book of particular note, but an enjoyable story, competently executed, albeit with some unnecessary slack in the middle.
The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley (reread): Rereading this after a decade or so. The first time I read it, I thought it was a very goofy story, and dismissed it. This time, holy shit it’s a goofy book. After all, this is a book where a man breaks his own neck – BREAKS. HIS OWN. NECK – and dies to spite Batman.
It consistently gets sold as a Very Serious Batman Book and as a companion to Watchmen, something that brought realistic storytelling and logic to the DC Universe, and it’s none of those. Coming back to it after so long, I realise this isn’t a problem of creation but of advertising. Miller is writing an adventure story with cod-hardboiled dialogue which hop-skips the parody line constantly. It’s everyone else who thought he was being serious.
At its core, TDKR is a fantasy of “What if Batman was Clint Eastwood?” and it works on that level, as something made by a man who had been mugged multiple times and responded to it by binging the Dirty Harry movies on loop.
In sum, if you like this and hate The Dark Knight Strikes Again, you’re wrong, because that’s a better book at doing the same thing.
Basketful of Heads by Joe Hill and Leomacs: The story feels like a short story expanded beyond its limits, as feels to be the case with a lot of Joe Hill’s writing, but the art is glorious, and the book is worth a read just for Leomacs.
Civil War by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven (reread): I know Millar has a reputation of writing unpleasant books, but I’d say this one is a more empty book than most of his creator-owned work (which I occasionally like). Everything I remember fondly from this time seems to have happened in other books. It’s not a matter of depth or competence – this is just not a story by any reasonable measure, it’s just a bunch of “cool” moments strung together in a narrative-shaped container. This has nothing to say, and nothing contained within of human relevance. A far more cynical exercise than I remembered it being. Still better than the Captain America: Civil War movie, though.
The Seasons Have Teeth by Dan Watters and Sebastian Cabrol: I wouldn’t place this among Dan’s finest work, but it’s a worthy story, with his trademark strangeness rooted in the story of a creator’s relationship with his creation, and what that did to his relationship with the people around him (I’m being deliberately coy here so as not to spoil some of the central ideas). Dan has a great collaborator in Cabrol, who is more than able to convey the majesty and horrific alienness of the titular seasons. This book is trying to add something new to the medium of comics, and it makes for a great addition to the growing library of excellent Dan Watters comics.
Void Rivals Volume 1 by Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici: I tend to bounce off Kirkman’s work because I find there to be little of human interest in them. He is a very good plotter, but has never struck me as an actual writer. The same is the case here, it works on the plot level, but if you look beyond that, there’s no “there” there. Nothing he wants to say or convey about people, about politics, about ideas or emotions – anything, really. A bland, empty story, prettily drawn. It’s a very popular book, though, so what do I know.
Prose I read:
The Mutual Friend by Carter Bays: This is a novel written by one of the co-creators of How I Met Your Mother, and it reads like a cleverer, slightly more serious version of that show. Very enjoyable – hasn’t particularly stuck with me since I read it, but I had a good time and laughed out loud several times.
Slow Productivity by Cal Newport: Nothing new here if you listen to Newport’s podcast, as I do, but it’s good to have all of this in one place. His last book wasn’t very useful for me personally, being directed towards people who manage offices rather than people who manage themselves, but this was squarely meant for me. I’ll write more about this at some point, but if you liked Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, you’ll get something out of this.
Erasure by Percival Everett: So far superior to the movie based on it that it’s not funny. A deeply incisive and honestly felt book on race, performance, family and legacy. I meant to write a lot more about this book and the cheap, sentimental travesty the film makes of it, but it wasn’t to be. But this essay covers much of what I’d say about it.
Poor Things by Alasdair Gray: Also read this as a companion to the film, and thankfully, in this case, both versions stand tall, though surprisingly separate from one another. The story is largely identical, but Gray’s version is more literarily sophisticated while Lanthimos’s version rightly leans on performance and production design. Specifically, Gray appears in the footnotes of his book, “annotating” the manuscript with the relevant history of Glasgow, and Bella Baxter/Victoria McCandless gets a lengthy section in which she rebuts her husband’s (the book’s narrator’s) version of events, while herself being annotated by Gray again (it’s delightfully complicated). If you liked the film, I highly recommend the book.
Movies I watched:
She Dies Tomorrow: Reminded me of The Outwaters in the way it essentially ceases to be a narrative film at some point. I liked it, but it’s more interesting than it is good, I’d say.
Evil Dead 2: An old favourite that I wanted to show K. She liked it.
American Fiction: See above.
Hot Fuzz (rewatch): I rewatched this for the anniversary of its release date. Remains a near-perfect film that continues to reveal small details however many times you watch it.
Poor Things: See above, but also, just a delightful confection of a film. I think several commentators are thrusting a political statement on it and declaring it a failure on that count (too didactically feminist, not feminist in the right way, too fetishistic, too prurient), but if you instead consider it as a story, which is what it is meant to be, you’d realise that Bella Baxter is one of the finest character creations in film in some time, and the film is built around her as an individual. If the film is making a general statement, it is about men, who don’t come off looking very good, which is fine, because that’s the story being told.
Shin Godzilla (rewatch): Rewatched with K. I stand by what I said here when I first watched it, but watching it again after watching the original Godzilla, I’m a bit miffed with myself for realising so late that it was basically a remake of the original.
The Wicker Man: My first time watching this horror classic. I don’t know if I enjoyed every single moment of it, but it’s one of the stranger and more daring horror films I’ve seen, and it has cast a long shadow over horror in general, for which it is to be lauded.
Dune Part 2: I wrote about this one here.
Limbo: Bleak as hell, magnificently shot. A very thoughtful, intense movie. There is a ray of light by the end, but it emerges out of close-to-complete darkness. A far better Se7en than Se7en.
The Kid Detective: I was suspicious of this when a friend recommended it to me, but a few “trust me”s got me there, and I’m very happy they did. A former kid detective grows up to be a deadbeat loser after he fails to solve a big case. If this says “romp” to you, well, you’re wrong, though this does have its darkly funny moments. What it reminded me of most is Brubaker and Martín’s Friday, in that they share a concept but differ in the genre they’re aiming to hit. A surprisingly bleak piece of crime fiction with much to say about nostalgia and about growing up.
The Holdovers: I enjoyed this less than some people but more than others. It’s rather well-made, and the central performances are quite good. A throwback in more ways than one, this seems like an artefact out of time.
Sexy Beast: I’m parcelling out Jonathan Glazer’s stories slowly, because like Robert Eggers, it feels like he’s making these movies just for me, and he’s making very few of them, but he’s got even more heft and thought going into his projects than Eggers, as well as a much bigger range. Sexy Beast did not disappoint. A tightly wound rubber-band of a film that snaps like a whipcrack.
Anyone But You: A film with these two leads should’ve been far raunchier and funnier, but the script just isn’t interested in doing anything of the sort. The leads look great, but phone in their performances. There are bits that I enjoyed, where it approaches the sex comedy it wants to be, but it never quite lands there. This will not become a comfort watch as I’d hoped it might (top one of those for me is still Wimbledon).
Fresh: I expected this horror film to be a lot more rote and boring than it turned out to be. It’s no modern classic, but entertainingly twisty, well-written and well-shot, and Sebastian Stan makes for a very good villain.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch): Every few years, the way people talk about this movie gets to me and I watch it again to try and see if I like it better this time around. I think after this time, I need to let go, because this is simply not a very good film.
Pain & Gain: A near-perfect dirtbag movie. Patrick Willems’s immense love for this convinced me to give it a go. I don’t know what I expected from “Michael Bay makes a heist comedy”, but it is, counterintuitively, exactly what you want a Michael Bay heist comedy to be.
Perfect Days: Could easily be called “Digital Minimalism: The Movie”. A quiet, heart-swellingly feel-good film that nonetheless doesn’t feel like it’s talking down to you. Made with a profound love for Tokyo. Also, those are some very cool toilets. Glad they invited Wenders to come look at them.
Joyland: The kind of movie you ecstatically share with everyone you know. A quietly brilliant, incredibly well-observed story of queer life in Pakistan. The small details absolutely make this movie. When streaming came to India, my hope was that we’d be making films like this, but our neighbours are clearly lapping us on this count. Wonderful central performances, particularly from Rasti Farooq as Mumtaz.
The Marvels: Not good, but better than half a dozen Marvel entertainment units, particularly Quantumania. There’s enjoyably goofy bits, but I wish they’d been strung together better. Also, if you missed the Ms. Marvel tv show because you assumed it’d be terrible, it’s better than you’d expect, so do give it a go.
DOA: This wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be – it’s got a cracking central concept (man investigating his own murder) but it’s really basic about everything else, including the idea that he only figures out what’s important in his life when he’s about to die. I was curious about this because the recent Human Target comic used the basic concept from this, but the rest of the story is very different there.
Avengers: Infinity War (rewatch): The last decent Marvel movie. Also feels like the last time they tried to make a film and not a unit of entertainment. A surprisingly tight script for its length, and it gives each character something to do that feels like it’s for them. All basic stuff, but I really miss it now that it’s not there. Beige films shot like network tv against green screen don’t hit the same.
Anatomy of a Fall: The dog is great, as is Sandra Hüller (in fact she’s incredible). There’s a lovely silent performance by the kid towards the end. But overall, I liked this far less than other people seem to. The script is too slight to be engaging, and Before Midnight did a better job of showing the messy, dysfunctional unit that an old couple can be.
I watched a lot of stray episodes of old sitcoms, which is my usual mode of tv-watching when I’m in a busy period, but did make time for a couple of proper series.
House of Ninjas: Ram V recommended this to me in a conversation about what we both see as an excessive use of irony in a lot of Western (particularly genre) storytelling, versus the sincerity/earnestness with which a lot of Japanese stories are made, so I ended up watching this with K during dinner over a few weeks. A gripping, enjoyable show, very well-shot. The only bum note is that for a story about ninjas, the fight scenes aren’t very good – a couple of serviceable ones, and one actively bad one.
X-Men ’97: Tried this after seeing a lot of praise for it on BlueSky. The first couple of episodes didn’t grip me – the dialogue is definitely aimed at younger viewers, while the story vacillates between those and older viewers. Hits a good stride with episodes 3-5, where you can see them doing classic storylines and also take some lessons from the current X-Men Krakoa era in comics. But episode 6 falls off a cliff compared to episode 5, and I don’t think I’ll be watching the rest of this.
That should do it. Next time, we’re back to doing these with the weeknotes.