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The Strand Book Store


I can’t rightly call it one of the my favorite bookstores, but only because favorite bookstores are developed through a history of repeated visits and memories of discoveries and encounters over time.

When we visited New York, I literally took a day specifically to visit the Strand Book Store (and also neighboring Forbidden Planet, a well known comic shop).

But it is a wonderful, wonderful place. It didn’t have everything I wanted (Mary McCarthy’s The Company She Keeps, for example), but a truly amazing selection. I bought:

Alexander Pope, Essay on Man and other Poems
William Carlos Williams, Spring and All (with a lovely rubbery, leathery powder blue cover that’s wonderful the the touch)
Ron Silliman, The Alphabet (which, so long as I am reading a book a week, will probably not be read this year, since it’s a 1000+ page difficult poem/poetic series)
Karl Marx, The Capital (it’s was a used, inexpensive, hardcover edition, the sort of thing one wants in one’s permanent library)
Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist

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Flash Gordon: An Underappreciated Masterpiece


flashgordon-DVD-coverFlash Gordon is the greatest comic book movie ever made. It also contains one of the finest action sequences ever put to celluloid.

Yes, it’s high camp, but the strong actors (Max Von Sydow, Topol, Brian Blessed) chew the scenery appropriately and the merely adequate ones take the movie just seriously enough, but not too seriously (all in the proper spirit, is what I’m saying) that it doesn’t degenerate into something too ridiculous to watch.

And I will put the early action set piece where Flash defeats the elite guard of Emperor Ming using his skills as a running quarterback (with intergalactic fabrege eggs as footballs). No big stunts or wires or special effects needed. Just good ole American gridiron ingenuity.

Almost is good is when the hawkmen attack the space ship. Yeah, hawkmen, led by Brian Blessed, no less. Imagine the Battle of Agincourt from Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, except that instead of playing of the Duke of Exeter, he’s king of the hawkmen, and that instead of wearing armor, he’s wearing leather hot pants and has wings. It’s that freaking cool.

Oh, and Queen did all the music. (‘Flash!! Ooohhoohh…’)

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Action Comics: I Quit


AC_Cv16I made my occasional trip to the comic book store and bought issues #16 of Batman and Action Comics.

The New 52 Batman is still compulsively readable. In fact, I’m probably going to go back and re-read a few issues back and re #16 again to make sure I’m getting all the little details.

But Action Comics can suck it. I have no freaking idea what is going on. None at all. The chronology has completely eluded me at this point.

The earliest issues, with a new and interesting look at Superman’s early career, as a young man, fresh from the Kansas countryside, trying to figure out what kind of (super)man he wanted to be, were interesting. The art work was compelling. Now, I don’t care anymore. It lost me and I’m calling it quits.

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Comic Book Store Day


photoSo, yesterday, I went into the comic store to buy the latest comics. Most comic book titles come out monthly, but staggered, so that every week several different titles have their latest editions come out. It’s a ritual I have never participated in before, though I’ve seen it well documented on The Big Bang Theory (and also well mocked; though how that show is actually less than kind to nerds while pretending to be nerd-centric is a whole ‘nother thing altogether).

I went during lunch, and even though Beyond Comics (the comic book store just around the corner from my office) only opened a little over an hour earlier, there was a decent crowd of shoppers and browsers (including, thankfully, a couple my age and one gentleman who looked to be in his late forties).

Yesterday was Action Comics, the original Superman title. I bought #15, along with Aquaman #14. The kind lady behind the counter put my comics into a flat paper bag, as if they were pornography, and I left.

Not much happened, but it felt fun. Knowing what I was looking for and getting the Action Comic title fresh of the presses, at it were (today is the first day it was available). I felt like a true nerd, and since I am a nerd, that felt pretty good.

I will say, that I’m findng Action Comics, overall, a little hard to follow. The New 52 titles are a reboot, but some knowledge of what has happened in the last twenty years helps and just don’t know a whole lot about that. The artwork has a nice, old fashioned feel to it. Sort of a Jack Kirby, silver era feel to it, which I like.

Aquaman has too many people joking about the uselessness of Aquaman (even when he saves the eastern seaboard from an invasion of deep sea, humanoid angler fish), but the artwork is very, very good. The whole thing has a sticky, Lovecraftian feel to it (I gather that the New 52 Swamp Thing and Animal Man titles also have that organic, alien, decaying thing going, but I’m sorry, I’m not going to start reading anymore titles).