Kavinay
Hume advising Gen. St Clair on how to find France is a moment you'd expect in Blackadder
It's easy to miscast Derrida's work as ultimately nihilistic. Instead, Strathern does a great job illustrating how subjectivity is more a call for epistemic humility than the great relativistic Satan the Derrida's critics interpret him to be.
I don't think I've read TMNT since Return to New York. So I genuinely had no idea The Last Ronin would be so fantastic. What an amazing capstone.
The art is a bit rough and it features the single worst line of dialogue in the entire fiction, but surprisingly good for such an early piece of Battletech lore.
Higgs' own journey through the history of discordianism and magical realism is as engaging as his attempt to suss out how much of the KLF was nonsense, ahead of its time, or often both.
I don't know if any of the three threads would be too exciting as single books. But woven together by Pak, you get a really fun escalation that stands out compared to most original trilogy comics.
If you can get past the stunning naivety of a former CIA agent on European holiday concluding domestic political division is a novel factor in forever war, Ackerman provides a play-by-play of America's comprehensive failure to the Afghani people even in the last days of Kabul.
I wonder if this hits different because Man of Steel assimilated some JMS' better ideas.
Mr Bones, Mr Bones,
Calling Mr Bones
Mr Bones, Mr Bones...
Sigh.
For a series that started out well, the second book underwhelmed and this conclusion is just drawn out and disappointing.
The only reason I gave two stars was due to one wonderful interlude with Lando and Lobot.
There are some books that transcend the trappings of franchise fiction to provide a novel that is both profound and moving.
This is not it.
You come into this book excited to learn more about shows, cartoons and movies that JMS has enriched your life with. That's all there, but the real life upbringing and family of the author is the true driving narrative of this book and every bit as compelling and shocking as any fiction ever put to screen or paper.
My only complaint is that there wasn't more nerdy analytic ideas that the authors got to try out. It really does make you realize though how much of modern team success is down to composition rather than tactics. Sure, aggregate managerial decisions could boost your WAR marginally, but really it's the ability to identify talent and roles (fireman) that makes such an immense difference compared to conventional wisdom.
I wasn't immediately sold on Jennings' premise but his case for humour proliferation had me be the end. The Chinese Room argument applied to Twitter was particularly stunning. Come for the jokes, get Searle's logic applied to emergent phenomena in social media for free.
Banks has this unique ability to unflinchingly drop you into disorienting contexts and let you make sense of the alien where most authors would just bombard you with exposition.
It gets two stars for exposing how ridiculous Green Lantern is. Other than that, it's an object lesson in that some creators can deliver a definitive take on a character and then proceed to completely destroy their credibility thereafter. This is Batman on shrooms.
Okarafor's issues, even the Venom one, are great. Had this been a 6 issue run where she could really craft a deep arc, I think it would have been a wonderful book. The “filler” Covington issues feel a bit like a corny Saturday morning cartoon in comparison.
I look foreward to Okorafor's next projects.
Shockingly good and at all whatnot expected going into this book expecting an X-Men retread. The art is great and the choices made to depict what is essentially telepathic interaction is consistently compelling.
Just when you start thinking it's really about the humans... it's not. Well, urr. Damn. Fun read though and Banks continues to completely befuddle you for the first third of a culture book before all the alien concepts resolve into a clever tale.