100 by 30 Book 77 - Calvin and Hobbes

So I started reading a biography of Bill Watterson and I got nostalgic and decided to reread some of my old Calvin and Hobbes collections. Holy Cow do they hold up. I feel like the older I get, the funnier this strip becomes. I was especially appreciative of a Sunday Strip about Calvin getting "Kafka Dreams." The wonder and imagination of childhood is still there, but the added perspective of age makes these stories even richer and more profound. If you haven't read Calvin and Hobbes in a while, you really should check it out ASAP. Collections I read for this entry: Calvin and Hobbes, Yukon Ho, and Scientific Progress Goes Boink. The last one was the first Calvin and Hobbes book I ever got, and I think it took me a year to read it because I thought my mom was trying to trick me into reading a science book... sometimes I think I had more in common with Calvin than I'd like to admit.
10/10 duh.

100 by 30 Book 75 - Troy's first steampunk book

Shanghai Sparrow by Gaie Sebold

So Steampunk seems to be sticking around, and I really enjoyed Bioshock Infinite, so I figured I should try to get into the fiction and see what it's all about. I was pretty hesitant at first because the whole Steampunk thing looks like it involves a lot of made up words and there's all these gears and steam and it looks like I need to take a math course just to get the basics of this fantasy world.

Turns out, in this case at least, I had nothing to worry about. This is basically an adventure story with a little retro sci-fi dusting on it. We follow our heroine as she is plucked from the street by a mysterious stranger who sends her to a school for lady spies. It's like Hogwarts, but all the teachers are mean and/or skeevy perverts. Honestly, I picked up this book because there was a cool picture of a steampunk dragon/centipede looking thing on the cover. While we do get a steam punk dragon, the story is not nearly as epic as this setup suggests. In fact, this is actually a pretty cool story of a girl who loses everything and slowly gets it back. It's reminded me of a Charles Dickens book more than anything else. The storytelling and plotting isn't great, but I grew attached to the main character and found myself really enjoying the book despite it's flaws and lackluster conclusion. It was a nice taste of a lite-steampunk story and I look forward to reading some more. If anyone has some good suggestions, let me know.
8.5/0

100 by 30 Book 79 - Willow, Spike, and Game of Thrones

Willow - Willow goes on a solo journey to bring magic back to the world. She learns a lot about herself along the way, and has lots of sex with her snake lady spirit guide.
7/10

Spike - Spike is mopey and sad about Buffy (still) and has an adventure where he learns about stuff and blows up the Easter Island Statues, but he doesn't have sex with anybody.
6/10

Game of Thrones - This is the Graphic Novel adaptation of the first section of the first book. Lots of people have sex. Also, the Art work reminded me of the old Prince Valiant comics I used to skip past when I was a kid...which made this whole story seem pretty lame.....So maybe don't experience Game of Thrones this way.
3/10

100 by 30 Book 76 - Batman, Green Lantern, and Teen Titans

Green Lanterns vol. 3 - The End, Well that wrapped up quick. The Third Army menace is defeated and we have a new Green Lantern. He is a Muslim-American falsely accused of being a terrorist. It's really good.
9/10

Batman Detective Comics 1 - Faces of Death - Joker has his face surgically removed and nailed to his cell at Arkham Asylum, plus some other stuff happens 7/10

Teen Titans, The Culling: Rise of the Ravagers - Hunger Games for teen superheroes. It's decent.
6.5/10

100 by 30 Book 78 - Powers and Teen Titans

Teen Titans Vol. 2 - The first part is a summation of the Ravagers story arc, then we get to move forward and we get more fun teen superhero stuff. It's pretty solid
7/10

Powers Vol. 2 - Roleplay - Really good noire about a pack of cosplaying college kids who get murdered by a super villain. Also, we learn a very important lesson on why you should never grab somebody's arm while they are trying to teleport.
9/10

Powers Vol. 3 - Little Deaths - oof. after 2 very strong outings, this book was not my cup of tea. I barely have patience for the tabloids at the supermarket, and I have less patience for superhero tabloids printed practically cover to cover in the middle of my detective stories.
2/10

100 by 30 Book 74 - Wonder Struck

Wonder struck by Brian Selznick

Hey Guys! I read a 600 page book in like 2 hours!!! Oh wait, this is by the guy who wrote THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET, so there were like 400 pictures. Still though, this is a great ego boost for those of you who are slow readers like me. The book is a nice adventure story of a young boy who goes searching for his long lost father after he loses his hearing during a lightning strike while visiting his dead mom's house. Wait, that doesn't sound very nice. That's kind of a bummer. Despite the premise, it is actually a much more uplifting adventure of a young boy in search of a family. This time, the photos are dedicated mostly to telling a parallel story of a young deaf girl 50 years earlier. As with his previous work, the pencil drawings are absolutely stunning and show case an extraordinary amount of emotion in every pencil stroke. It's magical and easily the best part of this book. As for the written part, while I found it engaging and easy to read, it fails to recapture the magic that was HUGO and it suffers by comparison. It's certainly not a bad book, but if you're going to pick up a book by Brian Selznick, go with HUGO.

6.5/10

100 by 30 Book 73: Sh*t My Dad Says

SH*T MY DAD SAYS by Justin Halpern is surprisingly touching. This book is based on the wildly popular twitter feed of the same name which chronicles the hilarious and often blunt statements of Justin's dad. In the book version, Justin goes into much more detail about life growing up with a father who is unafraid to say exactly what it on his mind. What comes to light is a portrait of a complicated and quite wise man doing his best to raise and love his family the only way he knows how. It's hysterical and much more enlightening than it has any right to be. At it's best moments, it reminds me of Calvin's conversations with his dad in Calvin and Hobbes, but with more f-bombs.

9/10

100 by 30 Book 72 - Justice League and Teen Titans

*note: I'm way behind on posts, so I will be keeping some of these short and sweet.

Justice League 3 & 4: Justice league continues to be a remarkable title. The characters are well-defined and their interactions are always interesting. Green Lantern and Batman have great banter. So yeah, Check it out.
8/10

Teen Titans 1: It's like Justice league meets Buffy. Well done, and good fun.
7.5/10

100 by 30 Book 71: Green Lantern Corps and New Gaurdians

Green Lantern: New Guardians Vol. 1 & 2: In yet another corner of the Green Lantern universe we find Earth Green Lantern Kyle Raynor has suddenly been given a power ring from each of the other corps (It's a long back story, but there's a bunch of different corps with different emotions powering there ring like love and rage and hope and greed) What eventually come to light is that an unknown entity is trying to get a new team together made up of lanterns from each of the corps. It starts out a little jumbled and sloppy, but what eventually comes to light is an interesting new team of 'heroes'. In the deeper plot of the book, we are given more clues of a massive change looming for the Green Lantern universe as the Guardians plot the destruction of the corps.
6/10

Green Lantern Corps: The Alpha War - The quality of all the Green Lantern books is consistently good, but this one might be my favorite. John Stewart and Guy Gardner make a great duo and the action is gritty and intense. In this volume, we get rebellion and a major power in the Green Lantern Corps is eliminated, which only signals very, very bad things to come. So far, these Green Lantern stories remind me of the Star Wars prequels with the looming darkness, but without all the really crappy storytelling.
8/10

100 by 30 Book 70: Buffy & Y The Last Man

Buffy Season 9, Vol. 4&5 - So the latest two episodes of Buffy deal very directly with what happens when you suck all the magic from the world and you forget that your baby sister is essentially made of magic. So the Scooby gang has to get together with their new friends and find a way to keep Dawn from vanishing. It's a nice story arc, but the ending threatens to let the book start to spiral off in the direction that ruined the previous season. Only time will tell if the lessons learned in season 8 stuck. For now, I'm still quite hopeful.
7.5/10

Y the Last Man Vol. 1 - I've heard a lot of good things about this series so I thought I'd give it a shot. So far I'm not impressed. Apparently, the whole point of this book is that if all the men in the world died except for one, women would just start acting like alpha males. It reads like a book written by a guy who's never met a woman in his life. What a waste of time.
0/10

100 by 30 Book 69: A Dance With Dragons

So this book can be blamed for the massive amount of shorter books I've been choosing. At almost 1200 pages, this is a lot of book to get through. So what did I get for my 1200 pages in the world of Westeros? Well, for starters, we get more walking and slow traveling than the entire written works of JRR Tolkien combined. Interspersed with all that nothingness are flashes of brutal, horrific violence and more major character deaths. The book does accomplish what George RR Martin seems to have been trying to do since the end of Storm of Swords, which is to get the narrative back under control and get our characters closer together so we can have a more focused story moving forward. By the end of the book, our major groups of characters are in about 4 locations (the wall, Winterfell, Kings Landing, and Meeren) instead of several dozen. We still have a few outliers, but at least by the end of the book, I felt like we had recovered from the disarray of the wars and the next book promises to be much more focused than either A Feast for Crows or A Dance With Dragons. The sneak preview of The Winds of Winter hints at an absolutely amazing battle sequence if that book ever gets published.

On a side note, there is a sequence involving dragons that I quite loved because it was a slow build to a result worthy of a Darwin Award. I think it's the only time I've laughed out loud during a horrific death scene, and I refuse to feel bad about it 'cuz that character totally asked for it. What. A. Dumbass.

So now that I've officially read all of the books in the Song of Ice and Fire series so far, would I recommend them? Yes, I would, to a point. The books offer a wonderfully intricate world full of exciting and interesting characters who make you cheer for them and hate them as they go through this unforgiving and brutal world. On the other hand, the latter 2 books tend to have a lot of dull moments (think 800 or so pages of Ron, Harry, and Hermione Camping in the last Harry Potter book)

Then there is the troubling amount of sexual abuse and violence toward women, specifically very young women. While it always seems to be designed to cause distress to the reader (and quite successfully I might add. Then again, these books have never been for the faint of heart), the frequency and level of detail seems to be more than is necessary for us to understand the brutality of this world. It's something everyone should be aware of before reading these books. While I still think this series has a lot to offer readers, I do sometimes feel like I'm enjoying a nice steak diner while somebody randomly drops dog poop in my water glass.

100 by 30 Book 68 - Fables and Powers

Fables: Cubs in Toyland - Soooo, This is the creepiest story about the island of misfit toys I've ever read. The book focuses on the children of Snow White and Bigby Wolf. One of them follows a mutant toy to a mysterious island where she is made queen. Unfortunately, the island is a purgatory for all of the toys that have accidentally caused the death of a child, and there is no food of any kind. All manner of violent ickiness ensues, including no small amount of familial cannibalism. It's all very well done, but this is probably as bleak as it has ever gotten for the Fables world
8/10

Fables: Snow White - So this book sucked. I'm not opposed to major characters dying in unexpected or upsetting ways, but I am opposed to characters dying in arbitrary events that make no sense from a story stand point and effectively breaks the mythology the book has been setting up for 200 issues. Screw this whole book!
0/10

Powers #1: Who Killed Retro Girl? - Brian Michael Bendis has created an amazing noir world of Superheroes that is part Watchmen, part The Incredibles, and all awesome. The characters are layered and interesting, and the story brings up some intriguing ideas about the nature of heroes and myth. All this is done with a delightful art style that reminds me of a cross between the Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack. So far, this book is an absolute must read.

9/10

100 by 30 Book 67 - Animorphs #1: Invasion

Well that's much better! It turns out you can write a compelling series of books for kids. I remember reading this series as a kid, and I think I made it most of the way through before I was overwhelmed by the shear length of the series (said the dummy who just purchased the first book in the Wheel of Time saga). The series follows 5 teenagers as they make a fateful trip through an abandoned work site. They come across a dying alien (not named Abin Sur, but something else all alieny sounding) He tells them that the Earth is being secretly invaded by brain slugs that control your body. Before he dies, he gives them a power to fight back. They can now absorb the DNA of any animal they touch and morph into that animal for up to 2 hours. It's like every kids favorite dream come true (the superpower thing, not the evil brain slug thing) The book actually does a really great job defining our heroes and giving the story some real heart at the core. The action scenes are pretty amazing as well. Who hasn't wanted to be a 1200 lb gorilla and just punch the crap out of some bad guys? It's serialized action at it's best, and I'm almost tempted to reread the series, if it wasn't like 60 books long. If you have young kids though, I'd highly recommend slipping this book onto the pile next time you go to the library.

9/10

100 by 30 Book 66 - Goosebumps: The Girl Who Cried Monster

I was so disappointed in the last Goosebumps book I read that I thought I'd give the series another shot. I might read a couple more if the library ever has any of my old favorites in stock.

Today's story is much better written than The Haunted Mask. The characters even start to resemble real people, well, as much as can be expected in 136 pages. In this tale, Lucy loves telling monster stories and getting her little brother to believe them. But when she discovers that creepy librarian, Mr. Mortman is a real, live monster, no one will believe her. So Lucy sets out to get proof, but will Mr. Mortman discover her first? The book sets up the tension of each attempt quite well, and the twist at the end is one of the more humorous in the Goosebumps series. Despite the junk food-like quality of these books, they do seem to be designed to get kids to keep reading, which is a pretty good thing over all.

6/10

100 by 30 Book 65 - American Vampire, Incorruptable, and SHAZAM!

Today's trio of comics are wildly different, but all quite good, you should check them out.

American Vampire, Vol. 4 - Volume 4 is another solid entry in the series. We learn more of Skinner Sweets backstory (spoiler alert, he was always a little bit psycho) and we get a nice story of a greaser vampire hunter who has a serious vendetta against Skinner. The artwork is stellar as always, and I loved the drag race sequence (it's almost a requirement that you need to race two 1950s hotrods toward certain death.) Is a nice progression of the world and totally worth your time.
9/10

Incorruptible, Vol. 1 - Incorruptible is the reverse side of a series called Irredeemable that I now want to check out. The basic theme of these two books is: What if Superman woke up one day and just totally f***ing snapped? Incorruptible seems to start a few months after the world has been attacked by the Superman-type character, The Plutonian. Super Villain Max Damage has returned to the scene and has undergone a change of heart and is trying to be the hero the world so desperately needs. It's basically a much more nuanced and adult oriented version of the plot of the movie MEGAMIND. The series is off to a very promising start, but it does feel like one half of a story that needs to be read with the Irredeemable title to get the full scope of the world.
9/10

SHAZAM!, Vol. 1 - Holy crap you guys, this has to be one of the biggest surprises of any book I've read so far. The original SHAZAM! series was really, really dumb. A goody two-shoes kid named Billy Batson gets super powers when he yells the magic words. Blech! But with one simple change, the writer's have created a fascinating and nuanced world that I actually care about. The change? What if Billy Batson was a little punk kid who gets bounced around the foster system? Turns out it much more intriguing when you give great power to a flawed individual who has to learn how to be a hero. As Billy slowly begins to let people in to his life, he discovers something worth fighting for. The book does a great job of taking on a more serious tone while still having a sense of fun inherent in a story about young kids suddenly getting super powers. It's almost Spielbergian.
9.5/10

100 by 30 Book 64 - Goosebumps: The Haunted Mask

Part of the idea of this whole project was always to not only read new books, but to also revisit some old favorites from childhood. The Goosebumps series was a favorite of mine and helped me pass many an hour at youth swim meets. For those of you who didn't grow up in the 90's, Goosebumps was a series of horror books for kids. Being that they were designed for kids under the age of twelve, they almost never involved anything actually horrifying but were more along the lines of a Twilight Zone for kids. Each story had some sort of ironic twist at the end, and almost every chapter ended in a 'jump scare.' Today's book was no exception.

Carly Beth is a twelve year old scaredy cat and everyone loves making her jump and scream. So naturally the first half of the book ends with her being pranked at the end of every chapter. It becomes very tedious to have every chapter end with Carly Beth screaming and the second sentence in the next chapter is "oh, never mind, it was a joke, I wasn't about to die." Carly Beth gets so fed up that she decides to get back at everyone by buying the scariest mask she could find. She spends $30 whole dollars on a super realistic mask in the back of the store that the creepy owner doesn't want to sell her. Holloween shenanigans ensue and the moment that Carly Beth gets her revenge is actually pretty effective and well written. Unfortunately for Carly Beth, the mask is, well, haunted and melds onto her skin and becomes a part of her. This is all well and good and makes for some exciting moments, but the resolution is very, very stupid. The store owner turns out to be a mad scientist and not a wizard or anything supernatural, but he gives Carly Beth a very supernatural solution to her problem with some arbitrary rules. I have a pretty high tolerance for fantastical elements in the fiction I read (as evidenced by most of the books on this list) but I hate it when an author makes me jumps through numerous logical hoops when a simple "I'm Ethan Rayne from Buffy and I enchanted these masks for Sport" would have sufficed. Anyway, the book ends happily ever after, or it ends with the painful and horrific death of her little brother. I guess you'll have to read it to find out for sure....




BOO!

5/10