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batmanisagatewaydrug · 2 years

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reading update

friends, I have no time for bullshit. this is gonna be a long one, I have a tremendous TBR pile waiting for me, and we need to just jump right in. remember how last month I said I was going to get back into comics in a big way? I've made good on my threat.

without further ado, here's what I've been reading:

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (Sabrina Strings, 2019) - maybe one of my favorite nonfiction books I've read so far this year. shockingly comprehensive despite the sheer breadth of time it tackles; it's genuinely a bit dizzying to see antiblackness and fatphobia traced so succinctly across centuries and straight into the 21st century. prepare to spit nails learning about all the ways that the English have invented the most heinous bullshit you've ever heard to justify why they're just naturally biologically better than Black people, Asians, Natives, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Jews, and the Irish. tremendous breakdown of race-making and how deeply, truly insidious so many ideas about bodies are.

Dead Collections (Isaac Fellman, 2022) - a quirky little oddball of a novel about a trans vampire working in an archive and a recently widowed fanfic writer who have a totally typical meet cute - obviously the best way to get back out there is to hook up with the archivist handling your dead wife's screenplays and letters, right? Dead Collections follows Our Protagonist, the aforementioned vampire Sol, as he struggles with pretty much everything; if you're a fan of the Guy Having An Elaborate Internal Monologue While Having A Pretty Bad Time genre, this one may be for you. I was a little underwhelmed by Dead Collections, but it's got a sharp and interesting take on vampires + a queer sexy little romance that's worth the while.

Siren Queen (Nghi Vo, 2022) - listen: I am a Nghi Vo stan first and a person second. she can do no wrong. Siren Queen was, to my understanding, actually the first novel Vo wrote even though it's hardly the first book she's published, and while I think it shows a bit of first novel overambition, Siren Queen is still dazzling in its atmosphere and creepy factor. Vo brilliantly blends fey mythos with the early days of Hollywood - changelings roam the movie lots, actors' true names are bartered and sold, and studio heads are inhuman monsters who treat their stars like playthings. one of my favorite details was an older actor being described as having the color actually bleached out of them, turning them literally black and white, from back in the day when cameras were hungrier. spooky! and a brilliant concept, which Vo plays with in all kinds of thrilling ways as her protagonist, Chinese-American lesbian Luli, fights to make a name for herself without having to compromise any part of who she is.

Real Hero Shit (Kendra Wells, 2022) - a real fun D&D-esque comic about a ditzy and horny tiefling prince running off with a party of hardened adventurers. absolutely worth the twelve bucks I spent to scoop it up at Pride! my only complaint is that we got to see some lovingly drawn tits but absolutely zero purple cock and/or balls, which just feels wildly unfair. it's about equality, Kendra.

The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka, 1915, trans. William Aaltonen) - hey gang, at risk of sounding like a dumbass, I did not know what actually happens in The Metamorphosis. my knowledge began and ended with Gregor Samsa waking up as a bug and going "ah heck how am I gonna get to work?" and I was like cool commentary on capitalism bro, I get it. but did I? because I had no idea that Gregor then proceeds to spend the rest of his life scuttling pathetically around his room while his family feeds him garbage and ignores him. I assumed he would put on a bug tie and go to work or something and the commentary would be about the absurdism of being expected to sit at your desk doing paperwork despite being a fucking giant insect. but instead it's about, like, taking on a form that's alien and inconvenient to your family and becoming an isolated and reviled burden through absolutely no fault of your own because something about your body has become disruptive to the familial peace. and then he just fucking DIES because he gives up on life and the family's RELIEVED and get on with their business thinking about how great it is that they can move now and how lucky they are to still have a daughter with a beautiful normal body. frankly really chilling stuff, Franz.

Batman and Robin Eternal, Vol. 1 (James Tynion IV and Scott Snyder) - first off in the name of proper credit, I'm extremely aware that Tynion and Snyder are NOT the only people who worked on this by a country mile. unfortunately, there are so many issues jammed into this trade paperback that I'd be here all day if I were to list every individual writer and artist; for my sanity, I'm defaulting credit to the names listed on the front cover even though I know that's technically wrong. anyway, having said that: I remember liking Batman and Robin Eternal pretty well when I started it a few years ago, but sweet lord it has not held up for me very well at all. the story is fine, it's your standard global espionage Bat-shenanigans and every sidekick from Dick to Duke puts in at least a cameo, but god. christ. it's just... it's so New 52. according to my own math, the Batfamily timeline proposed by this book seems to suggest that Bruce has inducted a new Robin every 18 months for YEARS, and Dick somehow can't be any older than 24 at most. it's messy out here, kids. on the plus side: if you like Harper Row and you're gonna get a lot of Harper Row, and she and Cass are definitely dating.

100 Boyfriends (Brontez Purnell) - god, WHAT a collection of stories. Purnell has put together a roller coaster of messy gay experiences - drugs, sex work, infidelity, sex addiction, cruising, etc - and tied them up in poignancy and humor. there's a man having sex with his co-worker's husband, an actor who's washed up after his days starring in a campy gay sitcom, a musician touring Europe in a whirlwind of hookups and drugs and cancelled plans. each story is whip sharp and crazy fast, hardly ever lingering more than a few pages, but they leave unforgettable impressions.

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes (Neil Gaiman, 1988) - so my mom is moving and consequently shipping me boxes full of my shit that she doesn't want to be responsible for anymore, including all the Sandman trade paperbacks that I almost bankrupted myself buying the first summer that I had a job. for me The Sandman very much falls under "things that everyone says are good and are, frustratingly, actually good" - and yes, that extends to Preludes & Nocturnes even though we all know it's the weakest part of the series! I know it's absolutely going to get better from here once Neilman starts abandoning the larger DC universe doing his own thing, and I'm looking forward to that, but for now it is kind of charming to watch him bend over backwards to get characters Martian Manhunter and the Scarecrow involved.

The Vegetarian (Han Kang, 2016, trans. Deborah Smith) - I checked this book out at the same time as The Metamorphosis because 1.) it was also short and 2.) the jacket described it as "Kafka-esque," and I can be persuaded to do almost anything by a sufficiently amount of serendipity. it's certainly also EXTREMELY UNSETTLING! the tl;dr is that a Korean woman decides to give up eating meat after having some sort of fucked up dream, only for her husband and family to lose their fucking minds. to her husband she's an embarrassment; to her brother-in-law, an object of sexual obsession; to her sister, an inconvenient obligation. I can definitely see thematic parallels to the Metamorphosis in terms of that looming question of whether your family will still love and care for you if you become someone they no longer recognize, but there's a major difference in the fact that all the narration comes from other perspectives. we have no idea what's happening in the titular vegetarian's head as she seems to grow more and more distant and passive, nor what she feels about the ways she's being (mis)treated. great book, hurt my head.

Batman: Year One (Frank Miller and David Mazzicchello, 1986) - straight up? excellent. delicious. NO notes. Gotham (the tv show) desperately wants what Year One has but is too cowardly to actually let Gordon run Flass off the road, beat him senseless, and leave him handcuffed butt naked in the woods in the middle of winter. grow up!!

Batman and Robin Eternal Volume 2 (James Tynion IV and Scott Snyder, 2016) - pretty much the same as Volume 1 but dumber and more chaotic; a story about the Batkids teaming up to take down a human trafficking ring that even Batman couldn't bust turns into just. a whole convoluted take over the world scheme that we can't call the Justice League for help with, For Some Reason. and yet. and yet. I am not immune to the scene in which Damian chews out his brothers for thinking they're failures for not being Batman clones and reminds them all that Bruce not only knows they aren't like him, but it proud of and grateful for it. or the reveal that Bruce has spent years trying to do right by Harper to give her as much control as possible over her own life. or the ending when he takes Cassandra on after getting his memory back (Bruce was an amnesiac for this entire story, I don't know why or care. comics are like that). I have feelings about daddy!Bats your honor.

Batman: King Tut's Tomb (Nunzio DeFillippis, Christina Weir, José Luis García-López, and Kevin Nowlan, 2009) - gamers, I'm not gonna lie: this is probably one of my favorite things I'm going to read this year. King Tut's Tomb collects issues #26-28 of Batman Confidential and employs possibly my favorite kind of Batman storyline: there's some weird-ass murders happening in Gotham again, and now Batman has to do something about it. in this case he teams up with the Riddler, because the insane white man doing brownface and calling himself King Tut while he kills people is also spewing riddles during his homicides, which is thematically a bit confusing and also pisses the Riddler right off. after Batman declines his first offer to help Eddie shimmies himself right out of Arkham anyway and proceeds to spend a full day cheerfully calling Bruce "partner," being rude to cops (based), and being right about pretty much everything. I really enjoy the way DeFillippis and Weir write the Riddler, employing sort of a "used car salesman" energy that really straddles the line between charming and insufferable, and Bruce makes a phenomenal straight man for him to play off. I would have read another 20 issues of this happily, but I respect a story that doesn't overstay its welcome.

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