About a year and a half ago, I read Studs Terkel's Working, which was an "oral history" of occupations in the mid-1970s. I reviewed it in this post, and if you read that, you'll get a sense of how I came to know Terkel's work. Working is kind of a snapshot of a time as …
Continue reading Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression
Elseworlds books were fascinating to me when they first appeared in the early 1990s, and while I didn't get all of them (mostly because the $4.95 price tag was a bit too much at the time), I got my hands on a fair share, especially a number of the Batman ones (of which there were …
I'm not a huge mystery novel reader. Now, I have nothing against the genre and enjoy it when I do read it, it's just not my go-to. But last year, I was bumming around my local Barnes & Noble and saw the rather striking cover to Eliza Jane Brazier's novel about a woman who goes …
This is really a multi-week update because I've been "compiling" reviews in my notebook for a few weeks now. Plus, my most recent "weeks in ..." have been horror-themed and war-themed multi-review posts instead of one of my usual ones, so this is making up for that. Despite this piling up, there's not too much …
Aliens: Hive: One of the original Dark Horse series that came out after Earth War, which was the final one I bought. I probably had every intention of keeping Aliens going but didn't have the money, to be honest, because Dark Horse's comics were $2.50 in the early 1990s. Anyway, this was enjoyable but I …
Continue reading Books, Trades, and Graphic Novels in Brief, 9/1/21-10/1/21
I suppose there is something appropriate about my finishing Studs Terkel's Working on the last day of the school year when I usually spend my day getting ready to not work for an eight-week stretch. Of course, this could be total coincidence and the bigger factor in my finishing the book is that it's due …
By the time I was old enough to register who my great Aunt Frances was, she was an "old Italian woman" the way that many of my fellow "Italian-by-way-of-Brooklyn" connazionales would recognize from their own families. Short, bearing and incredible resemblance to both her sister Mimi and my grandfather John, Aunt Frances lived int he …
Continue reading Personal Archaeology 15: The Book of Questions
With John Byrne off the title after the "Days of Future Past" storyline, Chris Claremont begins what will be a long continuous run of writing the X-Men with a rotating lineup of artists with these two volumes featuring the return of Dave Cockrum as well as Paul Smith's short tenure as artist and the first …
I was excited and nervous about reading this, to be honest. I'd read through all three of the reprints of the Comico Macross series and knew what to expect, but this book reprints the first portion of the Eternity Comics sequel series, of which I've heard mixed things. My experience with The Sentinels as a …
Continue reading Robotech Archives: Robotech II: The Sentinels, Volume One
I guess the most obvious thing to say is that the Chris Claremont/John Byrne run is probably the most celebrated run on Uncanny X-Men. Not that there aren't others that are held up in high esteem by readers who are more more experienced X-fans than myself, but the run that encompasses both the Dark Phoenix …
The Uncollecting 