I Am Groot #1

I Am Groot, Issue #1 starts off as a "Guardians of the Galaxy" comic, with the whole gang flying through space.  Star Lord is in command, but when he hits the head, baby Groot, who hasn't grown up much, takes control, flying them toward a strange object in space.  Just as they are trying to figure out what it is, Groot flies them through it into another dimension.  They get back just in time, as the anomaly is closing, but during all the chaos, Groot took an escape pod down to the planet.  The baby Groot is all by himself.

Anyway, that's the setup.  Issue #2 came out on Wednesday, but I wanted to see if I liked Issue #1 enough to keep reading it.  I am starting to read more comics, so if I get through all or almost all of the comics I bought this week, I'll buy Issue #2 next week.  I'm kinda' intrigued by someone trying to understand the language of baby Groot.  The fact that I read it at all today, with Titan, Issue #5; The Punisher, Issue #13; and Saga, Issue #44 all coming out this week is encouraging.  I'm interested.

Moby Dick or The Whale

Moby Dick or The Whale is a classic, and there's probably not much new I can say about it.  I found interesting the parallels between it and Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, for instance.  I always loved the scientific writing about Solaris, the planet, but I never knew that the interspersing of them into the story came from Melville, or apparently did.  Another thing that surprised me about Moby Dick was the ecological angle.  Although it was written a century and a half ago, Moby Dick discusses advanced issues such as extinction and overfishing.

What isn't mentioned is that whales are sentient beings worthy of protection.  Melville's characterization of Moby Dick is one of personification; he gives the whale human motives and behaviors.  Missing from the novel is the very sentience of whales in general, who are generalized as mere cattle, the catching of which is so simple that it deserves only the basest of descriptions.  Only Moby Dick himself is intelligent enough to avoid capture, making him supernatural rather than sentient.

The Garden of Words

The Garden of Words is a highly acclaimed one-shot manga book from 2013 that was made into a movie the year it came out.  The basic story is of a 15-year-old boy and a 27-year-old woman who become friends in Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden in Tokyo.  They meet one day when both are playing hookey, him from school to draw pictures of women's shoes, and her from work to drink beer and eat chocolate.  They initially speak very little, but when she parts with a poem fragment, he becomes obsessed, and they meet every morning it rains.  Later on, he finds out that she is a teacher at his school.

I love short manga like this, especially romance.  While Nisekoi has gone on for nearly 30 volumes and A Silent Voice for seven, The Garden of Words sits by itself as a simple work of 200 pages.  There's something to be said about these books, not traditional romance but more "slice of life," to use an overused term.  I absolutely loved it.

Copperhead #12

Copperhead, Issue #12 begins with Clara Bronson reacting to the revelation from Issue #11 that Zeke has become the new mayor.  She doesn't like it, but Zeke claims that he won't be the puppet of Copperhead's richest citizen, Hickory, and that he'll actually do some good.  She goes home to find more trouble there.  Clay Ford is in town, and she and he have history together.  On top of that is the revelation that the old mayor wasn't killed by a bullet but by some sort of alien worm.

I haven't read much of Copperhead's third arc - I kinda' took a break from comics around the time it started - but somehow I remember all of the characters in it.  It's always been one of my favorite "what if" comics.  What if it had a long run?  What if it got some crossover exposure?  I really think it's good, for fans of Saga and Firefly.  I'll try to catch up next week.

Old Man Logan #21 and #22

Old Man Logan, Issue #21 and Issue #22 form the first half of the "Past Lives" arc.  In Issue #20, Old Man Logan freed Asmodeus from prison only to become trapped, himself - in time.  Logan finds himself fighting the War of 1812, being tested on in Weapon X, seeing Jean Grey turn into Phoenix, and seeing other ghosts from his past.  Powerless to change the pasts he visits so far, he must keep hold of a magical medallion given to him by Asmodeus who controls Logan's body back in the present, where he's selling it to the highest bidder.

This is an interesting arc, and I by no mean want to disparage it, but it plays like a "Greatest Hits" album or a "Clip Episode" of The Simpsons.  It is being done with a new artistic team (E. Nguyen and Mossa).  I do love the old team of Sorrentino and Maiolo, but this team is just as good and definitely up to the task of revisiting pieces of Wolverine's past.  I also think that this may be one of the more memorable series I've come across in the past two years or so, perhaps worthy of an omnibus.

Paradise

Paradise is the third book in Craig Alanson's "Expeditionary Force" series, which runs four long novels and a novella.  In the near future, Earth is invaded by the hamster-like Ruhar and saved/occupied/enslaved by the reptilian Kristang.  In the series, humans are a technologically backward race, with even the Ruhar and the Kristang relatively low on the totem pole.  The protagonist, Joe Bishop, a shockingly young colonel in the UNEF, gets help from an artificial intelligence created by a long-gone race known as the Elders, and the series is off and running.

The A.I. gets the name "Skippy the Magnificent," and he is effectively the most powerful being in the universe, but his programming prevents him from talking with beings capable of interstellar travel, so he must talk only with humans.  He's by far the most interesting character I've read in science fiction in some years, perhaps ever.  He and Joe Bishop are constantly trading barbs, and the series would almost be sci-fi comedy if it weren't so tragic.

In this novel, there are humans on the planet Paradise.  They were brought there by the Kristang to supervise the local Ruhar population.  When the Ruhar retake the planet and humans cooperate with them in a desperate battle to survive, the Kristang decree the humans enemy combatants.  So, when the Ruhar trade Paradise and the humans on it for more valuable territory, Joe Bishop, Skippy, and their crew of "Pirates" must find a way to get the Ruhar to keep the planet.

I've read all three audiobooks in the past month and a half and the last two in the past week and a half, so you know this is a good series.  Alanson isn't exactly great literature, so I intersperse my reading with books that are; before reading Paradise, I read The Beautiful and Damned, and now I'm reading Moby Dick, although there is a great misconception that comedy isn't great literature or even great art.  There are also complaints of spelling errors in the original text.  Either way, I love these books.

Old Man Logan #20

Old Man Logan, Issue #20 is the second part of the two-issue "Gone Real Bad" story.  In the first issue, Logan tries to persuade his magic-wielding friends to send him into his past, where he saved one of David Banner's grandchildren.  In that timeline, he abandons the grandson, and that grandson - under the influence of someone else - grows up to be the most tyrannical ruler the Wastelands have ever seen.  Logan has to go back to that part of his past (which is actually in the future) and save the grandson before he becomes evil.

Issue #19 sees Logan about to break Asmodeus out of prison.  In Issue #20, he does, bringing Asmodeus his scepter and robe.  To complete the spell, they must go to the secret location where Asmodeus keeps his sacred and magic objects, a storage compartment in New Jersey.  Asmodeus keeps his end of the bargain - he sends Logan into his past - but he doesn't send him exactly into the past Logan wants.  Issue #21 sees Logan fighting the War of 1812.