Erik Satie was a late 19th/early 20th century French composer whose work you almost certainly have heard without knowing who it was by (a constant for me who doesn’t know much about classical music) - if you listen to his Gymnopedies or Gnossiennes (nonsense words that he made up), you’ll probably recognise them from a thousand adverts selling anything from coffee to package holidays.
I want to talk about the book’s finale so, even though it’s not really a spoiler, I know the internet is full of people who don’t understand what that word means and thinks any detail of a story qualifies, so here’s the pointless but seemingly necessary fair warning at the top of the review:SPOILERS
Frank “Dolly” Dillon is a down-on-his-luck door-to-door salesman who happens across an even more desperate young woman who tells him a life-changing secret: her horrible aunt has a hundred grand in cash stashed away in their house! All Dolly has to do is murder the aunt and take the girl away with him - a helluva easy payday for a scumbag like him! But where did the money come from…
Some evil magical dude who thinks he owns Gotham is coming to Gotham to take ownership of Gotham with some other evil magical dudes. Guess Batman’s gonna punch some evil magical dudes? Buh huh.Not all Batman comics are slop but unfortunately quite a few are, including this one.
There isn’t really a story to Hunchback. A middle-aged woman with severe spinal curvature and a muscle disorder, who has to use a wheelchair and ventilator as a result, writes erotic fiction under a pseudonym online and posts provocative tweets like “I’d like to know what it’s like to have an abortion”. After we get to know what her day-to-day is like at the care home, something happens to her towards the end of the novella and then it’s over.
Robbers successfully knock over a bank and make it away with the loot - but the getaway doesn’t go as smoothly. Will they make it across the border down Mexico way or die trying?
Norwegian cartoonist Jason has made so many great comics I’ve enjoyed over the years that it’s an automatic must-read when I see a new book from him. Although, given the quality of his last couple of books and now this one, I’m starting to feel like his best work is behind him, unfortunately.
I know almost nothing about Natasha Brown but her debut novel Assembly feels like a cliched autobiographical first novel: she’s a black Oxbridge graduate who got a City job working in the finance sector - exactly like the nameless main character in this novel. Assembly isn’t a great debut though and reads like an author who’s still learning how to tell a story and didn’t quite know what she was shooting for.
Two Extinction Rebellion oiks squatting in a banker’s country house have a barney during a COVID rave with one lamping the other with a gold bar and then going on the run. But all is not as it seems at first and this self-righteous and neatly-packaged story of class disparity during late-stage capitalism turns out to be something more complex and disturbing…
The Absolute books are simply Elseworlds books - familiar characters with a twist set in an alternate universe but still essentially recognisable. Except for Absolute Wonder Woman. This series has so many changes to Wonder Woman that here she is basically an entirely new character - and a worse one at that.
The main Batman title has been in a creative funk ever since the end of Tom King’s run. James Tynion IV and Chip Zdarsky have both had runs on the series that were terrible and forgettable, so I’m glad DC have hired Matt Fraction, a writer who’s actually written some great comics, to attempt bringing this title back to its former glory.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky has been enjoying a strange renaissance on social media these past few years with people recommending his books, even though I’m quite certain these people aren’t reading them and nor are their largely consumer audiences. Because if they actually read his books, I sincerely doubt even half of them would be recommending them - his books are utterly terrible!
It’s a brand new imagining of Superman - get this: an alien boy sent via spaceship from his doomed home planet Krypton to Earth where he’s raised by the kind Kents and discovers he has superpowers. Superman grows up to be a paragon of truth and justice, using his superpowers for good against evil. Wait - “new”? Absolutely not.
Sheriff Nick Corey is in a bit of a pickle. He’s trying to get re-elected, only it’s clear to everyone he’s an incompetent sheriff who doesn’t do his job. His wife hates him and is probably cheating on him. Not that he cares because he’s cheating on her with other women around town. But it does bother him how the pimps at the local brothel don’t show him the respect his office deserves. What’s an honest god-fearing man to do? Simple: kill everyone.
