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Wow on 21 already!

#22 - Doctor Who: Smoke and Mirrors by Steve Lyons

Part of the Destiny Of The Doctor series. Five, Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric drop in to the 1920s to meet up with the Doctor's old friend, Harry Houdini...and a very unwelcome visitor in the shadows: the Master. Mostly just average, really, but at least Tegan in this isn't her usual awful whiny self.

#23 - Marvel Masterworks: Doctor Strange Vol. 7 by Marv Wolfman, Roger Stern, Jim Starlin, Ralph Macchio, Tom Cutton, Gene Colan, Gardner F. Fox, Howard Chaykin, Ernie Chan, and others

Mighty Marvel Mystical Madness...three hundred pages or so of it, along with the lengthy introduction from Roger Stern (who cheerfully notes a series of proofreading errors occurring in the original publications -- all of which seem to have been faithfully preserved in this volume of restored stories. Mere money can't buy that attention to detail.)

This collection compiles a run of stories mostly written or plotted by Roger Stern, many of them connected to the Dweller In Darkness saga, though the tendency towards a constantly shifting parade of writers and artists in the second Doctor Strange series does tend to make for an interesting swirl of styles and tones (the previous run, taking over the Strange Tales title, ended with #183, which is collected in Marvel Masterworks: Doctor Strange, Vol. 4 and in Doctor Strange Epic Collection: A Separate Reality (Doctor Strange.)

Despite the shifting tone, this is actually a pretty decent collection, as the stories are more and more shorn of the rather overbearing purple rose of both the Stan Lee and Roy Thomas days, although the characterization of women still leaves much to be desired (Clea's bouts of jealousy are particularly annoying.)

As a bonus, two stories by Gardner F. Fox are included because of their relevance as inspiration for the Ningal part of the continuing story. They're nothing much, brief Code-friendly blackout horror, but they brief enough to be fun.

Among the current:

Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York
Justice League of America Omnibus Vol. 1
32 Fangs
The Collectors
The Belly of the Beast
Deadpool: World's Greatest, Volume 2: End of an Error
Doctor Strange: A Separate Reality
Justice Society of America: Supertown
Modern Masters Volume 18: John Romita Jr.

#24 - Doctor Who: The King of Sontar by John Dorney

The Fourth Doctor and Leela are redirected by the Time Lords to deal with a situation involving the Sontarans (a highly militaristic species of clones that all look like ambulatory potatoes in armour.) he cloning process has, it seems, glitched, and produced the highly overpowered and impressively ambitious Commander Strang, who plans to use his own distorted genetic matrix to produce a race of Sontaran super-clones. The Time Lords want him stopped, permanently -- and they're not the only ones. The Doctor, after much running back and forth and life-threatening situations, has something else in mind -- playing into the Doctor's dilemma with the Daleks from "Genesis Of The Daleks."

This doesn't end the way you might expect, though (but the clues are in the story, so it's not an out of the blue twist in the tale.)

#25 - Justice Society of America: Supertown by Marc Guggenheim and Scott Kolins

Guggenheim was one of the writers tasked with following on the heels of Geoff Johns' monumental body of work with the Justice Society (first with David Goyer, then solo.) As such, he brought to the table an expertise in television and film scripting, and a rather cinematic approach -- which means that the stakes are huge the damage is even more huge, and motivations are left obscure (at the end of the book we don't know what the mysterious senator is up to, nor do we have an explanation for supervillain Scythe's rampage in Monument Point -- there's a reason for what he does and why he's there; we're never told it.

Oh, and there's another super super bad guy -- Dr. Chaos. Who's sort of Prometheus-light, being able to out think everybody and outfight the lesser heroes.

The whole thing...is rather dull. Sorry, Marc, love ya to bits, man, but this is far from your best. Scott Kolins' artwork is okay, but nothing...super.

#26 - Doctor Strange: The Oath by Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin

Collecting a five-part miniseries that starts in media res, and gallops along from there, by turns dramatic and as funny as I've ever seen Doctor Strange get this side of a Steve Gerber story (seriously, surprised by security robots, Strange exclaims, "By the hoary ****ing hosts!", which was rather unexpected.)

The basic plot: Wong stumbles into the clinic run by the Night Nurse, doctor to masked and caped types in the Five Boroughs of New York, with Strange draped over his shoulders, bleeding out from a gunshot wound. From there we get the backstory, very efficiently, introduced to the villain of the piece, and acquainted with Strange's personal history. Also, it's soon revealed that Wong is dying of a brain tumor...and this is the reason Strange is now in dire condition, as he went into another dimension to retrieve an elixir that might cure Wong. The trouble is...that elixir could cure every disease known to mankind, and certain people don't want it to be available.

The entire miniseries actually reads like a storyboarded television pilot, which is really no insult to the material -- it's a lot of fun, and I wish that this version of Strange had been given more time in the spotlight (instead, he ended up with Brian Michael Bendis' New Avengers lineup.)

#27 - Doctor Strange Epic Collection: A Separate Reality (Doctor Strange by Roy Thomas, Stan Lee, Gardner F. Fox, Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Barry Windsor-Smith, P. Craig Russell, Frank Brunner and others

Marvel's Epic Collections have more or less replaced the black and white Essentials collections, packing as much material between the covers but in colour and on better paper stock. They take a similar linear approach to the collections, though there is usually an attempt to center each volume on a particular story arc.

This is the third volume in the Doctor Strange series of Epic Collections -- the books are generally released out of order, often to avoid conflicting with planned Omnibus volumes. Collected herein are the tail end of the first series, appearances in other comics that tie up the story from that series, the lengthy run in Marvel Premiere that covers the Shuma-Gorath arc, and the first few issues of the second Doctor Strange series, which incorporates the title story as well as the very bleak Silver Dagger arc.

The collection definitely gets better as it goes along, with a huge improvement once Steve Englehart arrives in the writer's chair, and Frank Brunner starts providing the artwork (which benefits from the restoration work done for the Masterworks edition of this material.)

#28 - Doctor Who: Mastermind by Jonathan Morris

Somewhere, in a secret location, there is a vault, buried deep in the Earth. The vault has thick lead walls, and one purpose: to contain the Master, in suspended animation...except for brief periods when he awakens, and can be interviewed by UNIT personnel. This is one such time, and the Master is happy to discuss what happened to him after he was pulled into the Eye Of Harmony at the end of the 8th Doctor's debut story....

A lot of fun, this one.

I guess I didn't realize Dr. Who was made into a comic book. Not sure why I didn't suspect though! Glad you're enjoying them so much.

Andrew wrote: "I guess I didn't realize Dr. Who was made into a comic book. Not sure why I didn't suspect though! Glad you're enjoying them so much."

There's been Doctor Who comics since the mid-1960s, with some rather well known names attached to them from time to time (Alan Moore and Grant Morrison among them.) I haven't read very many.

Most of what I've been working through are the Big Finish audio stories, and the occasional Doctor Who novel (I have a pile of those on hand for this year.)

Oh, my goodness...Look at you flying by the first two peaks! I bet turn on my jet-pack. :-)

Bev wrote: "Oh, my goodness...Look at you flying by the first two peaks! I bet turn on my jet-pack. :-)"

I was going to take a break from reading today, too, and I'm instead one and a half entries further along the mad climb.

There's intent behind the racing, though...I want to leave myself a bit of room to slip as the year draws onward.

Steven wrote: "Bev wrote: "Oh, my goodness...Look at you flying by the first two peaks! I bet turn on my jet-pack. :-)"

I was going to take a break from reading today, too, and I'm instead one and a half entries..."

It's a little too hectic around here at the moment for me to hike much faster than I'm doing (on #8 so far and it's dragging....). After work calms down next month or so, I'll be able to concentrate on reading a little more.

Bev wrote: "It's a little too hectic around here at the moment for me to hike much faster than I'm doing (on #8 so far and it's dragging....). After work calms down next month or so, I'll be able to concentrate on reading a little more.


That's how it's going to be here, shortly, too, as I'm getting myself properly pulled together to start recording.

#29 - Jago & Litefoot: Series 7 by Jonathan Morris, James Goss, Simon Barnard and Paul Moss, Justin Richards

Henry Gordon Jago and Professor George Litefoot are on the run, having been accused of attempting to assassinate Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. Quite galling is that not only do *they* know they didn't do any such thing, apparently quite a few others do too...none of which helps them in the slightest.

Despite their precarious position, and the dubious aid of vampire barmaid Ellie, the pair find themselves in the middle of yet more mad adventures, finding themselves in the company of Arthur Conan Doyle and 64th Century time travelers, taking a trip down the darker lanes of memory with Leela of the Sevateem (or is she?), infiltrating a gathering of Sherlock Holmes mourners, and, with retired Detective Fred Abberline, battling Jack the Ripper.

This series of stories is a spin-off from the Doctor Who story "The Talons Of Weng-Chiang", and is essentially a precursor to the Paternoster Gang (indeed, there is a crossover story, Jago & Litefoot & Strax: The Haunting, where Jago and Litefoot end up dealing with Strax.) They're generally rather over the top, and only a little steampunky -- they're designed more in the vein of Shilling Shockers and Penny Dreadfuls. They're a lot of fun, though some are better than others (the fourth story here lands a bit flat.)

#30 - Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes

The story of a brief period in the existence of the staggeringly dull town of Ice Haven, Michigan, with an interlocking cast of characters and an oblique connection to the Leopold & Loeb murder case. The thread tying the character elements together is the disappearance of a strange young boy...the question being, where he went, and who took him (or, indeed, if anyone took him.) We meet the wannabe poet laureate, who's terrible, his nemesis, the town's flowery poet, more odd children, the visiting writer, Vida, whose ambitions seems terminally frustrated, pregnant Julie, and the lovesick Violet. These are all stories without much in the way of conclusion (except, perhaps, for Vida, and the missing boy), which is okay, because these ar interlocking character vignettes, in which the style of the artwork speaks to who these people are.

Quite an interesting read, and certainly not overextended.

Among the current:

Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York
Justice League of America Omnibus Vol. 1
32 Fangs
The Collectors
The Belly of the Beast
Deadpool: World's Greatest, Volume 2: End of an Error
Modern Masters Volume 18: John Romita Jr.
Jago & Litefoot: Series 9
It Rhymes with Lust

#31 - Jago & Litefoot: Series 9 by Jonathan Morris, Justin Richards, Simon Barnard & Paul Morris

Theater impresario Henry Gordon Jago and his compatriot in infernal investigations Professor George Litefoot are off on a relaxing sea cruise on a fancy steam liner. For the entire trip, everything goes swimmingly and without incident.

Riiiiiight.

Four interlocked stories create an arc involving a mysterious fog, alternate dimensions, lost islands filled with strangeness and horror, and mad science. It's Victorian era mildly steampunk Penny Dreadfuls with intermittent comedy and silly romance courtesy of the awkward Lady Danvers.

#32a - Dr. Strange: What is it That Disturbs You, Stephen? by Marc Andreyko and P. Craig Russell
#32b - Doctor Strange: What Is It That Disturbs You, Stephen? by Marc Andreyko, P. Craig Russell, Marv Wolfman, Gardner F. Fox, Michael Golden, Carmine Infantino, and others

The original version (itself actually a remake of a story in a Doctor Strange Annual) in its graphic novel edition, and the more recent compilation that draws together the title story, the original version (with a terrible script from Marv Wolfman), an issue of Marvel Premiere (from the middle of the Shuma-Gorath arc) and others.

The story itself isn't any great shakes, aside from the art (and you can see the progression in Russell's skills as an artist from the original to the GN version) but it does make good use of Russell's obsession with opera -- especially with the appearance of what seems to be a Viking ship crewed by corpses.

The remainder of the collection version ranges from the not so good to the rather charmingly ethereal. Enjoyable enough, but, in the main, inessential.

On a technical note, it's interesting to see the differences in the art rendering from the original print version to the ebook version that I have the collection in.

Among the current:

Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York
Justice League of America Omnibus Vol. 1
32 Fangs
The Collectors
The Belly of the Beast
Deadpool: World's Greatest, Volume 2: End of an Error
Modern Masters Volume 18: John Romita Jr.
It Rhymes with Lust
Doctor Who: Amorality Tale: The History Collection
Marvel Masterworks: Doctor Strange, Vol. 1
Doctor Strange Masterworks Vol. 2 (Strange Tales
Doctor Strange Masterworks Vol. 3 (Doctor Strange

#33 - Dr. Strange: Strange Tales by Peter B. Gillis, Chris Warner, and others

What a long strange trip it's been...well, is, as it ain't over 'til the fat Vishanti sings a closing spell.

This volume collects the entirety of the Doctor Strange run from the revived STRANGE TALES comic (where Strange began his life), and things get more than a little confusing, given that it follows a lengthy run in the second volume of his namesake comic. Strange has returned from a tremendous battle, exhausted, and depowered as his Sanctum Sanctorum has been battered and many of his tools and artifacts destroyed to stop a rival sorcerer -- and all the things those artifacts kept at bay are now trying to come back.

Desperate times, then, call for desperate measures, and Strange finds himself turning to the Dark Side, embracing the perils of, gasp, black magic...but, wait, from the beginning he was described as a black magic practitioner, and even as a necromancer. Oh dear.... "I've just killed my first man!" he exclaims tearfully at one point...apparently he's forgotten the other men, demons, and assorted beings he's knocked off over the years. There's also a lot of "I must be an ascetic and deny myself the pleasures of love!" thing going on, which, errr, well, for the longest time he was knockin' boots with his disciple/apprentice, Clea, and not shy abut his feelings, either.

So, all of that made things a little awkward. The story itself has Strange joining an old enemy of the Ancient One to blast through to the worst of the dark forces, which turns out to be our old friend Shuma-Gorath. To do this, Strange has to do bad things, swallow a ton of darkness, and eventually merge with the randomly-appearing Arioch, Lord of Chaos (best known from Michael Moorcock's works), which blows up Strange's ego and gives him long flowing blonde locks.

Eventually it's over, Strange gets an intervention to clear him up (seriously), and we're back in business as the guardian of the light, blah blah blah. Amends are made in one case, and help is given to a tortured soul in another.

It's odd, but I remember Gillis' run on Strange being one of the really *good* ones....

#34 - Jago & Litefoot: Series 2 by Justin Richards, Mark Morris, Johnathan Morris, Andy Lane

Staggering back towards the start of all of this folderol, with the second four stories in this entertaining Penny Dreadful/steampunk series following the amateur infernal investigators. This time around it's, corks!, vampires on the loose -- well, vampires and more, as there's a visit to the Necropolis for some mad science and ghoulishness, and the surreal mystery of The Dream Theater. It's cracking good fun.

#35 - Jago & Litefoot: Series 1 by Justin Richards, Alan Barnes, Johnathan Morris and Andy Lane

And here we are back at (almost) the beginning, as the ongoing series spun out of Doctor Who: The Mahogany Murderers by Andy Lane, wherein Henry Gordon Jago and George Litefoot, fresh from their adventures with the Fourth Doctor in "The Talons Of Weng-Chiang", are plunged into infernal mystery 'gainst the apparently evil Dr. Tulp. It was good old fashioned blood and thunder Shilling Shocker stuff, and the continuing series of stories takes it even further.

In this opening quartet of ghastly tales, the often soused and rather quivery Jago (Master of Ceremonies and Manager at the Alhambra Theater!) and the stalwart Pathologist Litefoot take on more terrible than usual werewolves, the villainous Far-Off Travelers Club, a definitively fake medium with a definitively not fake supernatural connection to far-off times, and, once again, the terrible Dr. Tulp and his mahogany menaces.

Tragedy and comedy both ensue (Lane's "The Similarity Engine" has some hilarious lines), and a good time is had by all. This series is, I think, rather overlooked at times, which is a shame, as the tales do provide a great deal of entertainment.

#36 - The Belly of the Beast by Dean Wesley Smith

The first entry in the Star Trek: TNG-era Starfleet Corps of Engineers series, following the USS DaVinci and its motley crew under the command of Captain Gold. Also along for the ride is Geordi LaForge, seconded to the DaVinci after the ship and its engineers are tasked to investigate a gigantic spacecraft that attacked a colony world and then shot it out with the Enterprise, only to lose.

At first, all they find is a huge mystery -- this seems to be a cruise ship, but where are the thousands of passengers, and the crew? The quest for answers takes them deeper and deeper...and then they find the answer. It's a whole lot of Alien, a little smidgen of Event Horizon (the ship is powered by a black hole drive) and a whole lot of running.

Not much story, on the whole, and season two TNG level characters, but it's a quick and painless enough read.

You are really cracking through the books!

Oh my goodness, Steven, I'm seriously impressed! We're just 19 days in the new year and you've already knocked 36 books off your TBR. You're sure to hit Mt. Olympus' peak at this rate!

How do you find the time to read so much, I'm curious?

Hilary wrote: "You are really cracking through the books!"

I've been going so fast that I think I might take the weekend off and use the time to binge Netflix and further get my library re-ordered.

Marina wrote: "How do you find the time to read so much, I'm curious?"

It's a combination of things. I'm medically disabled, and my main work options can be managed out of the home as it is (I'm a writer and composer.) I can thus set my schedule as I wish, and of late the writing has been rather moribund, and the music side has consisted in the main of practice and rearranging my studio set-up as there's new recording in the offing.

Last year I managed to lose a great deal of ground while I was recording, between the need to set up my new studio set-up (I hadn't recorded anything since early 2013, for reasons including the firebombing of my home), so this year I figured I'd aim to overdo things early on, so that when I started the recording work in earnest, I'd be a bit ahead -- when I get going, I'll often spend all of my waking hours working.

The other part of it is simple to explain, if a bit multiplex. I'm capable of a certain degree of multi-tasking, so I'll have audiobooks running while I'm doing other things -- for instance, right now I have Midshipman Bolitho playing on the same workstation I'm typing this on. I like having music or speech going when I'm doing other things. The audiobooks can run through the day.

The non-audiobook reading is a matter of sitting and reading consistently until I'm done. I make time for that by not watching films or television shows, which has resulted in quite a backlog there. I also don't go anywhere (in part a result of being agoraphobic), at least most of the time. I don't play games, as they bore me. At times I will also keep going past my bedtime, as I did last night, to clear out another book.

The last key to the speed is that I've been blowing through a lot of shorter works -- even the current audiobook is a mere six discs. The longer graphic novels, such as Doctor Strange Epic Collection: A Separate Reality (Doctor Strange are a matter of persistence. I'm expecting to complete at least one omnibus today, too.

Expect a severe slowdown shortly -- I've been slowing a little as it is, as I've begun watching things again, especially films with subtitles -- as I'll be going from practice and set-up to recording in the next week.

I see, Steven. It's impressive. I work from home and don't go out much or watch TV (I don't even have a TV), but I spend a lot of time with my boyfriend and do sometimes watch movies on Netflix, so I guess that takes time off of reading. I'm not much of a multi-tasker and I would never be able to listen to an audiobook while doing something else, at least not while writing. I really admire you.

Marina wrote: "I see, Steven. It's impressive. I work from home and don't go out much or watch TV (I don't even have a TV), but I spend a lot of time with my boyfriend and do sometimes watch movies on Netflix, so..."

That's the other thing -- no official girlfriend at the moment.

I did get to go out today, though, for a shopping trip to Best Buy, as an adviser, and as a purchaser, so that slowed me down somewhat. And I may be running slow today as well, as I have to clear part of my writing station and hang a shiny new monitor from the yardarm, er, dual monitor arm. And I might have to speed out briefly (and speed right back) if things go as expected today.

I'm also planning to spend this weekend catching up on some of the television and movie backlog.

#37 - Midshipman Bolitho by Alexander Kent

This is actually the first two Richard Bolitho books welded together into one, and read by Michael Jayston (best known to Doctor Who fans as The Valeyard, and otherwise a fine British actor.)

The first part, originally Richard Bolitho � Midshipman, covers the sixteen year old Bolitho's first adventure, as his assigned ship, the Gorgon, is sent out to the African coast to deal with a band of pirates. The second part, Midshipman Bolitho and the Avenger, sees him returned to England, and ashore while the Gorgon undergoes repairs and refitting. During the course of this, he's temporarily ordered to a berth on a cutter captained by his brother, Hugh, who is trying to round up a crew of smugglers, wreckers, and salvagers working the coast of Cornwall.

Jayston's reading is fine, but the books he's reading are, well, rather thin, at least in terms of the characters -- young Bolitho is just *there*, and neither he nor his best friend ever evince much in the way of character or emotion, even at the height of danger, or during great stress. There's a certain similarity to the Hornblower books, but that's more due to the setting, and to the depiction of shipboard life. Kent's writing is very much more the Boy's Own approach, though the intent might not have been to produce the Young Adult version of 18th Century Naval Adventures.

#38 - The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

From Audible, read by Juliet Stephenson. A tale of the impossible, as a young orphan encounters a mysterious fortune teller whose answer to his question about his sister is answered with the baffling, "Follow the elephant." But there are no elephants in the city of Baltese! Peter Duchene knows this...everybody knows this, including the Magician, conjuring lilies for an aristocratic audience member.

Thus comes the impossible, leading young Peter on a bizarre quest....

It's more directly aimed at the younger set, but it works for older readers as well, I think, with the main lack being that some of the characters are rather more annoying than interesting.

Among the current:

One for the Money
Fatal Error
Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York
Justice League of America Omnibus Vol. 1
32 Fangs
The Collectors
Deadpool: World's Greatest, Volume 2: End of an Error
Modern Masters Volume 18: John Romita Jr.
It Rhymes with Lust
Doctor Who: Amorality Tale: The History Collection
Marvel Masterworks: Doctor Strange, Vol. 1
Doctor Strange Masterworks Vol. 2 (Strange Tales
Doctor Strange Masterworks Vol. 3 (Doctor Strange

#39 - Fatal Error by Keith R. A. DeCandido

The second in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series, and the first by co-creator DeCandido. It's a definite jump in writing quality from The Belly of the Beast.

This time around the DaVinci crew are called in to deal with the failing master control computer for a planet that's relied on the system for centuries. It's a task that requires the assistance of the grieving 110, a Bynar whose bonded partner was killed in the previous volume. There's more to the situation, of course, as the computer isn't malfunctioning -- it's been sabotaged.

There's not much tension in the story (and there's some Tuckerizing that kicked me out of it for a bit) but it does crack along, and the characters are solid and interesting, and there's a minimum of Treknobabble despite the presence of Geordi LaForge.

#40 - Hard Crash by Christie Golden

The third in the S.C.E. series has the USS DaVinci's crew of scientists and engineers called to the leisure world of Intar, which has just had a gigantic starship crash down into its capital city -- fortunately with enough forewarning that the people could be evacuated.

110 is still grieving, but coming to grips with his life choices -- he could return to Bynaus to be rebonded, or accept becoming an unbonded outcast. Or die...although he has to admit that he's resisting that.

And then he's included in the away team sent down to inspect and explore the crashed vessel, and all hell breaks loose.

It's a highly emotional story, as it turns out -- and packs more of a wallop than the sometimes clumsy writing would suggest. It's about managing loss and grief, and exceeding the perception of limited emotional capacity. Golden does manage to put the emotional elements across very well; the rest, not so much.

#41 - One for the Money by Janet Evanovich

I'm all over the place with this series, and only now have I managed to get back to the beginning. This is where it all starts...the somewhat luckless and hapless Stephanie Plum, who finds herself propelled into the life of a bounty hunter, which then throws her into the range of her two occasionally hapless sort-of-boyfriends, introduces her to the improbable bulk that's Lula, and starts the ongoing car gag (basically, if you hand Stephanie Plum a car of *any* kind, somebody will come along and blow it up, shoot it up, or just run into and wreck it.)

In this first story, she finds herself taking the bounty hunter job after being out of work for months, and initially does very well at it...and then she's handed the Joe Morelli ticket. Morelli is a cop accused of cold-bloodledly murdering an unarmed scumbag; he's on bail, and has vanished -- ostensibly to try to clear his name.

Stephanie's problem? She's had a fraught relationship with Morelli since their early school days together, culminating in her running over him with a car one day.

This is a pretty funny and rather profane book, and audiobook reader C.J. Tritt (who did the first of these) does great with the chaotic story and the bad language, without losijng sight of the darker and more emotional moments.

Among the current:

Two for the Dough
Interphase, Part 1
Interphase, Part 2
Deadpool Minibus
Legion of Super-Heroes, Vol. 2: The More Things Change
Daredevil: Typhoid's Kiss
Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York
Justice League of America Omnibus Vol. 1
32 Fangs
The Collectors
Deadpool: World's Greatest, Volume 2: End of an Error
Modern Masters Volume 18: John Romita Jr.
It Rhymes with Lust
Doctor Who: Amorality Tale: The History Collection
Marvel Masterworks: Doctor Strange, Vol. 1
Doctor Strange Masterworks Vol. 2 (Strange Tales
Doctor Strange Masterworks Vol. 3 (Doctor Strange

Dr. Strange is going to have to make an appearance in my reading someday. It's been a long time...

Andrew wrote: "Dr. Strange is going to have to make an appearance in my reading someday. It's been a long time..."

Very much a favourite Marvel character for me during my misspent youth. I tended to be rather more of a DC bloke, with a particular fondness for the Legion, and for, of all characters, Supergirl.

#42 - Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich

Alright, so now it's time to move forward on this series, rather than hopping around. With this one, we get more of Grandma Mazur and her antics, between her passion for guns and her thing for seeing corpses in coffins...even if it happens to be a closed casket ceremony. Evanovich was still developing both her cast of characters and her setting, but the bent humour was by this point a fixture.

There's also a plot in here as well -- actually, two of them. Stephanie is after Kenny Mancuso, charged with murdering his best friend, and there's a whole lot of gubbins to do with a funeral parlor and a more than slightly shady funeral director. Along the way there's more automotive carnage, more emotional carnage with not-actually-a-boyfriend Joe Morelli, and fellow bounty hunter Ranger (who handles the *pro* jobs) is showing signs of being attracted to this, from his point of view, highly troublesome and possibly lunatic woman. Also, there's lots of swearing, a few body parts (including a foot and a penis, neither attached to their owners) and a depiction of New Jersey that might not suit the tourist board.

#43 - Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich

Three in a row. This time around Stephanie is tasked with bring in the grandfatherly Mo, a much loved storekeeper in the Burg. What nobody can understand is why Mo missed his court date and jumped bail, as it was a relatively minor charge. Worse yet, Mo is so well loved that Stephanie is essentially taking her reputation in her hands by tracking him down.

And then the bodies start to turn up, and *somebody* is taking an interest in Mo's welfare...to the point of homicide.

The plot is fairly straightforward, if twisty in how Evanovich gets to the end, but the humour is grander, the romance elements sexier, Grandma Mazur just as mad as ever (this time around she finds herself an elderly beau), and Stephanie in fine form as the craziness and pressures finally catch up with her, leading to an awesome, hilarious meltdown. Oh, and Stephanie's luck with cars continues.

If I have any quibble with this entry in the series, it's that there's a case of the creeping bloat going on -- the books are getting longer and longer.

#44 - The Fifth-Dimension Tube by Murray Leinster

Great googly-moogly, this was all around bad. It's an early effort by Leinster, in the pulp scientifiction branch of things, all rich rugged white man saves the natives and gets the ancillary girl who tags along. The basis for the plot is a scientist inventing a device that can bridge dimensions, only to have gangsters gain access to it and cause havoc in an advanced other-dimensional civilization...which proceeds to take umbrage and attack Earth.

I got this as an audiobook from Audible, and, man, as pulpily dire as the material is, the narration by Tom Weiss makes it much much worse, as he drones along without variation...no acting, no attempt at defining character through voice. At least it was well recorded....

#45 - The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith

Somehow I pulled the wrong audiobook out of the stack -- this is the second in a series of four by Smith.

Not that it matters. This is the second of the stories following the misadventures of the pompous German philologist Herr Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, a man of uncommon intellect and a singular accomplishment -- the epic academic tome Portuguese Irregular Verbs, a book so obscure that the publisher is considering selling the bulk of the copies to a firm that builds book furniture.

This time around his adventures take him from his home in Regensburg to an American university where he's mistaken for a veterinarian, resulting in his attempting to operate on an injured Dachshund, to comic and tragic effect, on an adventure involving a Coptic priest and a reliquary under threat of theft by schismatics from the Coptic Church (and this particular thread comes to an eye-wateringly weird end), and to travel aboard a ship where being pursued romantically leads him to being declared dead.

It's quite amusing, often silly, and performed brilliantly by Hugh Laurie.

#46 - The Statue of Zeus by Luca Blengino and Roberto Ali

It's the 88th Edition of the Olympic Games, but it's not all athletics in the Pancrace Arena -- political intrigue swirls around the sculptor Phydias, who is marked for assassination by one group and targeted to force him to reveal secrets hidden in the titular statue. Beyond that, there's veteran gladiator Aurelios, returning to fight in the Pankration for an unprecedented third time...the mark of someone with a death wish, according to some. Aurelios, though, is seeking the son he believes he fathered during his first time at the Games.

Excellent artwork does a lot to support a fairly slow story that could probably have used further expansion. Given that it really is a Greek tragedy, opening the story out might well have given it more impact.

#47 - Howard Lovecraft And The Kingdom Of Madness by Bruce Brown and Thomas Boatwright

I have to wonder who said "You can never do a kid's story based on Lovecraft" to Bruce Brown, because Brown apparently responded with "Hold my beer!" and we got this series of books (assembled into omnibus form with Howard Lovecraft and the Three Kingdoms) in which bits of the Chtulhu Mythos and other parts of Lovecraft's work are turned into a fast-paced PG story in which Chulthu is a smart-arsed talking sidekick to the very young Howard Lovecraft.

In this opening graphic novel, young Howard, the pugnacious Constable Smith, and "Spot" have to take Howard's possessed father, Winfield, to the Antarctic and one Herbert West, who might be the one person on Earth who can cure him. All hell promptly breaks loose -- literally.

At times gruesome fun, though the artwork can be off-putting due to its mix of cute and exaggerated, with the linework often verging on the sketchy.

The second book was made into an animated movie. Going by the trailer, it's pretty awful.

#48 - Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith

Back to the beginning, then, of the misadventures, misapprehensions, and misconstrued moments of Herr Professor Doktor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, the author of the noble tome Portuguese Irregular Verbs, a book that succeeds in being everything anyone would desire to know about a highly limited subject, and also serves as a step-up for a lady dentist who likes quite the stature to properly work with patients in her dentist's chair.

Poor von Igelfeld -- honoured for his highly specialized work, yet seemingly disregarded at the same time, sorely tried by academia and the modern world, inept when it comes to women, and cast into situations that are, as often as not, beyond him. Regensburg, Ireland, Venice, it's amusing, often sweetly sarcastic, and worth checking out in audio as the dulcet tones (and multiple accents) of Hugh Laurie are a happy experience.

On to the third book, then!

#49 - Dr. Strange & Dr. Doom: Triumph & Torment by Roger Stern, Gerry Conway, Bill Mantlo, Mike Mignola, Kevin Nowlan, Gene Colan

Trade paperback collection bringing together several stories as well as Roger Stern and Mike Mignola's graphic novel story of Strange and Doom working together to free the soul of Doom's mother Cynthia from the clutches of Mephisto. This is very early Mignola work, and sort of warped towards the work of Gene Colan (who was pretty much the house style for Strange for a long time) so it's rather hard to identify it as Mignola's work; it's fairly effective for the story, though.

The remainder of the collection consists of the 1971 Doctor Doom back-up story that inspired Stern's graphic novel, a Doctor Strange story from the 1980s run featuring Strange inundated by people wanting to be his new apprentice, and a couple of highly stylized Sub-Mariner tales with artwork by Mignola.

Passable stuff, even though I never have taken to Doom (and not just because of the von Doom name, which makes no sense if he's a Romani.) I did enjoy the solo Dr. Strange story quite a bit, though, and the two Sub-Mariner stories are interesting curiosities.

#50 -At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances by Alexander McCall Smith

The third entry in the Portugese Irregular Verbs series finds Herr Professor Doktor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, well-meaning and hapless as ever, setting forth for a visit to Cambridge, where the surreality of English academic life overruns him, and thereafter to South America, where his life takes an unexpectedly revolutionary turn.

Amusing silliness through and through, broader than ever, but still generally enjoyable, perhaps in part due to the audiobook being read by the inestimable Hugh Laurie.

#51 - The Anarchistic Colossus by A. E. van Vogt

Ah, van Vogt -- a writer with grand cosmic ideas and a 1928 writing style, which makes for a contradictory experience at times. Less so in this lumpen novel, though...the cosmic ideas are limited (there's still vast distances and great mental powers) and the social ideas are, well, daft - the world has fallen under the sway of sorta kinda anarcho-capitalists as a result of "extreme rightists" working together with so left they're right again bomb-throwing anarchists, and this happy crew installed supercomputers to run Kirlians, which use the much-debunked notion of Kirlian imaging to detect moods and bad mindsets, and thus nip badness in the bud by, I kid you not, stunning the naughty thinker.

Now, you might think that this is then a book about examining the pitfalls of this kind of world. Which, very slightly, it is. But, really, it's not about that at all...it's about how the world is being viewed by far distant malign alien intelligences whose notion of a good time is watching other worlds and understand their cultures and their peoples...and then sportingly wiping them out.

These are the Ig. They are far from noble. One might even say they're Ignoble, given that the Ig viewpoint here is that of a Baron. So, yes, Ig noble.

Dear God, McDonald, leave the poor bloody horse alone....

SO, we have this every man for himself (whenever the Kirlians allow it) Earth, and the Ignobles on the way, and, oh, yes, the Ig have come face to face with the Earth's private Space Navy already, and subverted it with Vast Mental Powers. These powers, incidentally, seem to have erased EVERY vestige of personality from the muscularly named main characters, such as Chip. Um...Chip *is* manly, right?

Well, never mind, anyway, because after wandering around in circles for most of the novel, the story rolls to a close with the Ig going home due to having been impressed with the Earth's anarcho-capitalist-whatever-Kirlian society and starting their *own* version.

To summarise...it was awful.