Doctor Who: EarthWorld - A Book Review

Anji Kapoor has just had the worst week of her life, having lost her boyfriend Dave to alien invaders. 

This week is not looking any better.

Trapped on board the TARDIS, The Doctor was trying to get Anji home.  The problem is The Doctor isn't feeling quite himself and is incapable of operating his sonic screwdriver much less piloting the TARDIS.  Fitz, The Doctor's companion, is in a similarly useless state of mind. 

Perhaps this is why they wind up somewhere far away from Anji's office in modern London.  Someplace with robot dinosaurs, poorly researched exhibits inspired by "real Earth history", a trio of psychotic preteen princesses running the show and a group of teenage terrorists trying to shut the thing down.  Only one thing is certain - Anji will never complain about reporting to her office on Monday morning again!  Assuming she lives...





One wonders if they could have chosen a more accessible Eighth Doctor story for inclusion in this collection.  EarthWorld is not a bad story but it is largely dependent upon the reader being familiar with a number of earlier stories.  Writer Jacqueline Rayner gamely tries to explain things in both the introduction to this reprint volume and throughout the novel, yet it is still too much for a neophyte Whovian to cope with.

Anji is perhaps the best example of this.  Rayner makes use of a neat literary device by having Anji write e-mails to her deceased Dave in the midst of all the chaos that is occurring around her.  While this does an effective job of building sympathy for Anj and giving the reader insight into her mind, it gives the reader surprisingly little detail about Dave and the circumstances of his death, presuming the reader has already read the previous novels in the series.

The subplot involving The Doctor's other companion Fitz suffers from similar problems.  Without giving too much of the game away, Fitz undergoes an identity crisis that mirrors The Doctor's current troubles with amnesia while simultaneously conflicting with them.  Whereas The Doctor cannot remember, Fitz cannot forget.  Of the two companions, Fitz's conflict is definitely the more interesting and his plight is a more sympathetic one.  Yet Fitz's problems are even more dependent on an encyclopedic knowledge of Fitz's actions in the stories leading up to this one!

Thankfully, the final execution rises far above the rote plot.  The story moves at a brisk pace, managing to reach the conclusion before the reader is likely to notice just how thin everything is.  All in all, I'd say EarthWorld is worth reading but it might be best read as part of the whole of the Eighth Doctor Adventures than as one part of the 50th Anniversary Reprints series. 

Injustice: Gods Among Us - Year Two #1 - A Review

Every issue of Injustice: Gods Among Us seems determined to drag me into the realm of nostalgia.  The series' Annual some two months ago made me long for the days when Harley Quinn and Lobo were zany characters.  This first issue of the new Year Two series reminded me of every great comic with Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance written as a loving couple. 


It's clear from the first half of this issue that Tom Taylor has a great fondness for both Ollie and Dinah.  Thankfully for we readers, he has an equally great affinity for writing both characters.  If this series comes to a close, I hope that strings may be pulled in the New 52 universe so that Taylor might write a Green Arrow/Black Canary series worthy of the name.  Actually, scratch that - make it Black Canary/Green Arrow.  This is the 21st century, after all.

I shall say nothing about the second half of this issue.  There's something incredible I would rather not spoil.  Suffice it to say, Dinah Lance has not been so well written since the last time Gail Simone's Birds of Prey.



Bruno Redondo joins Tom Taylor in returning to this series and his artwork looks better than ever.  This is not to say that it looked bad before but I think new inker Julien Hugonnard-Bert has a better understanding of how to use shadows sparingly than other inkers who have handled Redondo's work in the past.  The artwork of this book is as bright and cheerful as its script in the early scenes and appropriately ominous in the second half.

Bottom Line: a great book is back and it should be on the reading list of every fan of fun, quality comics. 

Green Arrow: Cross Roads Reading Guide

For those who wish to read the whole of my thoughts on Green Arrow: Cross Roads in order, here is a helpful reading guide.


Green Arrow #81 - Seattle: In which Green Arrow fights Shrapnel, Nuklon and... Barbie?

Green Arrow #82 - San Francisco: In which Green Arrow is trapped in a bad Lifetime TV movie.

Green Arrow #83 - Los Angeles: Green Arrow and Huntress vs. Jenny Craig

Green Arrow #84/85 - Las Vegas: Green Arrow teams with Deathstroke.  No.  Really.

Green Arrow #86 - Dallas: The one where Green Arrow sleeps with Catwoman.

Green Arrow #87 - New Orleans: Big Easy.  Hard Read.

Green Arrow #88 - New York City: Featuring The Justice League.  But not really.

Green Arrow #89 - Gotham: Green Arrow agrees to help Anarky destroy a gun factory.

Green Arrow #90 - Run, Ollie, Run.  Run, Ollie, Run.

Off Target: Green Arrow (Vol. 2) #90

I decided to start this year off with some unfinished business.

It's been nearly a year since I last looked at Cross Roads - a mini-series that is, for my money, the worst series of books to star Green Arrow ever created.  Written by a number of authors between the time when Mike Grell ended his legendary run on the series and Chuck Dixon officially took over as writer, Cross Roads depicted an emotionally distraught Oliver Queen leaving Seattle to wander America seeking new purpose.  

In previous installments, we saw Oliver Queen team up with Huntress to bring down an evil diet company, recover Incan artifacts with Catwoman in Dallas and blow up a gun factory with Anarky for no adequately explained reason.  But I've saved the best for last, kids.  And for once I make that statement without sarcasm.


Cheer up, Ollie. This issue isn't really that bad!
The issue opens with a fairly standard scene - Green Arrow saving a woman and her child from an apparent mugging/attempted rape.  The criminal is subdued and Ollie checks on the victims to make sure they're okay.  Unfortunately, it turns out the crook is down but not out and he makes a break for it. 


Astute readers will notice one thing immediately about this issue - there is no dialogue!  No caption boxes.  No thought balloons.  Not even so much as a BAM or POW to denote the action!  Well, at least there isn't any dialogue until the very end but we'll get to that.  And for those of you thinking that my reason for saying this issue is "not bad" is because we're not treated to more of Kevin Dooley's dialogue... well, that's a fair cop.  But credit being given where credit is due, the idea to do this issue without any sound cues is an effective one as you'll shortly see.

It's at this point that the narrative splits into two tracks.  One on the top of the page and the other on the bottom.  One showing Ollie catching the crook by the ankle and slowing him down as he runs off, with the other showing Ollie being one step behind in his pursuit as the crook breaks for the roof.  Most of the comic continues in this way, showing the differing action sequences as Ollie tracks the crook on the ground or chases him across the rooftops.


You film geeks are probably thinking the same thing I did - isn't this is a total rip off of Run Lola Run - the 1998 German film that won a boat-load of awards?  It would seem so, as both the movie and this comic deal with depicting how events might have played out differently because of one small change.  Yet this comic came out in 1994, several years before Run Lola Run!

Naturally one of the paths does not end well for Ollie and there is a striking image where Green Arrow stares down at his own dead body.  I'd share it with you but my image host insists it is too graphic to post.  So much for DC Comics' efforts to make this book lighten up, eh?

So what's going on that Ollie can be seeing rather direct visions of his own death?  Well, this comic - in addition to being the final part of Cross Roads - was also a tie-in to a company-wide event called Zero Hour.  I'll spare you the details, but basically Zero Hour dealt with the tiime-ine of the DC Comics Universe becoming unstable and people from various alternate realities appearing at random.

And so it is that Ollie is interrupted in his being freaked out by the arrival an old friend...



The Men's Room at the Hall of Justice is flooded and I know you have a Plunger Arrow.

Actually, we don't find out why Batman came to seek Green Arrow's help in this issue.  Naturally, it does get covered in Zero Hour but I shan't spoil that here.  Suffice it to say Oliver Queen winds up having an important part in the whole thing and it is actually pretty awesome.  And if you don't believe me, just consider this - a big crisis that is shaking the whole universe apart and it's freaking BATMAN who goes out in person to ask Green Arrow for help.

Something to think about the next time someone tells you how useless Green Arrow is. :)

Honestly, this comic isn't bad.  It's not great but it's pretty good at accomplishing what it set out to do.  The action is well paced and Eduardo Barreto did a great job illustrating it. Really, as far as tie-in comics go, it is one of the better ones I've seen. 

Reflections on New Years Day 2014

I hate New Years Day.

There's a lot of reasons for it but the chief one is that it was Her birthday and, as such, the day reminds me of Her.

Her.  The One that got away.  The One I let go.  The One I lost but never stopped loving.

The one who - prophetically - said She was the Rose Tyler to my Doctor long before anyone would know how tragic a comparison that would be.


 
This year it's hitting me harder than usual because of the burglary. 

Anytime you have something stolen, it steals more than the thing itself.  It steals your peace of mind.  It steals your illusions of safety.  And in some cases it even steals memories.

I don't care about most of what was taken.  It's just stuff and stuff can be replaced.  But to carry some of it out, they took a backpack.  And though they left behind the books I had in that backpack, there was one thing they didn't leave behind.  A little black bag with a little blue bag inside it that held all of the dice I use in my gaming.

The blue bag was velvet.  Part of a collection of random things She sent me during our first Christmas together as boyfriend and girlfriend.  She had just moved back in with Her parents to start going through chemotherapy for the bone cancer She'd been diagnosed with.  It was meant to hold wine bottles but I didn't drink wine, so I used it to hold my gamer dice.

Even after the break-up, I still kept my dice in that bag.  Even after it started sprouting holes, I used it.  And when my friends made me a new dice bag, I put Her bag inside of it.  I never let go of it because She had held it once.  In a weird way I thought of it as a token, like a sash or a scarf a lady might give her champion as a symbol of her love.

One more lost bit of the past.  One more reminder of the future that could never be.

I'm not one to wallow in the past or get maudlin.  But this break-in  - so close to Her day - couldn't help but remind me of another day.  Another burglary.  And the day when the ring I'd bought to give Her when next we met in person was taken. 

One more lost bit of the past.  One more reminder of the future that could never be.

Now, there is no Her.  There is no Us.  And I doubt She'd recognize the Me I am now.

But I still love Her.  And I always will.


Happy Birthday, Sierra Thomas.  Wherever you are.  I think you’re going to have a great year.

*****

I thank you all for letting me take this space to vent.  I promise I'll have some happier things about comics or TV shows to say the next time I write here.