Review: Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe, Vol. 1-6 by Tom Scioli

One line review: If Jack Kirby and David Lynch teamed up to make a 1980s afternoon cartoon, it would look a lot like this.   
 
Writer/artist Tom Scioli has been a darling of the underground comics scene for years. He’s won multiple awards and huzzahs from his peers, and was personally sought-out by pop star Gerard Way when Way launched his own line of comics with DC in 2016.
 
The reason for this is that Scioli’s comics have a very unique tone to them. There is a playful austerity to them, a po-faced silliness. He blends the dynamic art of 1960s Marvel superhero comics with an almost Cormac McCarthy approach to scripting. The mix is both heady and a headtrip. And kinda goofy.
 
With the comic book series, ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’, Sciloi was given free reign to do whatever he wanted with two of Hasbro’s best-selling toy lines. He could change their backstories, rewrite their futures, and kill off as many characters as he saw fit. Nothing was off-limits. No one was worried about how it would effect toy sales. The result is one of the most imaginative and unpredictable comics I’ve ever read. At times, it feels like a ‘men on a mission’ movie. At other times it feels like Lovecraftian mythology. Then there are the times it just feels like you’re watching some scarily-smart kid smash their toys together on the floor of their bedroom.
 
Some stand-out moments include issue 0, a brief intro to many of the leads and a pretty good litmus test as to whether or not you’ve going to want to stick around, and the majorly meta issue 7, wherein the evil Doctor Mindbender makes Scarlett, “a crossbow-toting southern belle with a history in martial arts”, believe her entire existence is a lie and that she and everything else are actually — gasp! — toys.
 
I read this series 3 years ago, and imagery and ideas from it still pop into my head every week or so. That’s gotta be a good thing, right?
 
(reviewed by Josh)
 
All six volumes of this series are currently available to read — FOR FREE! — via the Hoopla app, if you’re a Falmouth Public Library, West Falmouth and Woods Hole cardholder! Click here.
 
For information on how to get a Hoopla account, click here

Hoopla Graphic Novel Review: ‘DC: The New Frontier’ by Darwyn Cooke

A blog entry from Josh, who is part of our circulation department.

Ever since Darwyn Cooke burst onto the scene in the early 1990s as a storyboard artist on ‘Batman: The Animated Series,’ he’s been been lauded for the unique blend of elegance and dynamo that he achieved in his artwork. What folks rarely seemed to mention, though, was how good of a writer he also was. It took Cooke making the seemingly backward career move from TV to comics (think: scion to serf) to finally right that wrong.

Essentially a re-telling of the Justice League’s formation, ‘DC: The New Frontier’ also covers 1950s race politics, the Red Scare and a dinosaur-populated monster island, blending it all into one epic, awe-inspiring superstory. Where most comics today tend to try to deconstruct the medium, Cooke seems more interested in re-constructing many of the ‘silver age’ elements that had been discarded over the years — space age science, pulp heroics, sweeping romance and an overall sense of wonder. Costume clad heroes both familiar and obscure pop up throughout. Some only appear briefly, in 10-20 page solo stories. Others weave in and out of the main mystery in an almost Altman-esque manner, finally converging en masse at the end of the book for a ‘We Are The World’-of-superfriends battle to save the planet. A few of the standout story lines are the Martian Manhunter’s arrival on Earth and his awkward assimilation of its culture, Hal Jordan’s transformation into the Green Lantern, and the Challengers of the Unknown’s beginning and (spoiler alert!) end.

Oh, and then there’s the art.

Ignore the word bubbles, and the book feels like a collection of long-lost pre-production art to some never-made superhero extravaganza from the glory days of the Hollywood studio system. Cooke’s biggest artistic influence is clearly Bruce Timm (the mastermind behind the aforementioned ‘Batman’ cartoon), but also evident in his work are the stylistic touches of Jack Kirby, Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino. In ‘DC: The New Frontier’, Cooke uses bits of all these classic cartoonists’ styles, blended with a bit of streamline moderne design and googie architecture, to perfectly capture the ‘anything is possible’ essence of the post-WWII United States. It’s gorgeous.

The ‘Deluxe Edition’ eBook format that DC has re-released the series in only adds to one’s appreciation of the art. Instead of the awkward-looking printing that sometimes ruins the enlargement of comic book pages, the simple grace of Cooke’s lines is actually enhanced by the digital blow up.

CLAMS cardholders can read DC: The New Frontier free on Hoopla!

Hoopla Music Review: Dizzy Gillespie ‘Jambo Caribe’ (1964)

You know how they always told you never to judge a book by its cover? Well, in this case, they’re wrong. Just look at that thing. Is it a child’s sugar-fueled scribblings, a Ralph Steadman/Hunter S. Thompson ‘Fantasia’ sequence, or Harry Belafonte’s worst experience on acid? It’s hella bizarre whatever it is, and it pretty much sums up the eclectic and eccentric music contained within.

Alternating between cool, catchy, Caribbean-influenced instrumentals like ‘Hello, Trinidad’ and ‘And Then She Stopped’ and the frenetic, infectious insanity of Dizzy’s vocals on songs like ‘Poor Joe’ and ‘Don’t Try To Keep Up With The Joneses’, this is one of the most exciting and unusual jazz/world albums you’re ever going to hear.
 
Future stars Kenny Barron (piano) and James Moody (flute) accompany throughout, but ‘Jambo Caribe’ is truly the personality and sound of just one man, bebop’s most famous extended cheeks, Mr John Birks ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie. It may be his experimental, unpredictable trumpet playing that has kept this album relevant with critics and jazzopiles over the years, but it’s his playful sense of humor and obvious affection for the calypso music of the West Indies that will keep you laughing, singing, and jumping around your house every time you play it.

Falmouth Public Library, West Falmouth and Woods Hole cardholders can stream the album FREE on Hoopla here. For information on how to get a Hoopla account, click here! (reviewed by Josh)

Hoopla AudioBook Review : The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout, read by J. P. O’Shaughnessy

(reviewed by Josh)

An aging gunfighter rides into El Paso, looking to die quietly — and anonymously — from the cancer that has taken root in his prostate. Word of his condition spreads quickly, though, and soon the town is overrun by former foes looking to settle old scores, up-and-coming gumen hoping to make a name for themselves, and a few nosy fans who just want to shake his hand. Needless to say, this is neither quiet nor anonymous. It is violent. Very violent. Yet also very funny. There’s a rich, character-based vein of dark comedy that runs throughout The Shootist that makes it as fun to read as a novel by Elmore Leonard or Janet Evanovich. Blend that with the overarching theme of facing one’s own mortality, and you’ve got a story that’s perfect for these dark times.

Falmouth Public Library cardholders have free access to Hoopla, which offers an audiobook version of this book here.

Learn how to get Hoopla in this post!

Are You a ‘Gateway Reader’?

My high school’s D.A.R.E. program (a well-meaning, misguided, state-funded attempt to keep kids off drugs) used to use the term ‘gateway drug’ to describe any drug that appeared harmless (cigarettes, pot, leaning in too close to one’s magic markers), but inevitably led to other, more dangerous narcotics (crack, crystal meth, permanent markers). In recent years, I’ve begun to rework the ‘gateway’ moniker to fit the needs of my own vice of choice — books.

Gateway Books are books that are so darned good that they make you want to read any and all the other books name-dropped within.

One of the first gateway books I remember coming across was S.E. Hinton’s ‘The Outsiders’. Not only did I pick up some random Robert Frost in hopes of finding ‘Stay Silver’ and ‘Stay Bronze’ (his lesser works), I also rented the videotape of ‘Gone With The Wind’ (the book looked too long and too boring to my fourteen year old self — and still does!). A decade or so later while reading all of the Elmore Leonard novels, I had an ongoing ‘secondary syllabus’ made up of all the crime fiction paperbacks Leonard had his characters reading.

The ultimate Gateway Book for me, though, has been Mike Davis’ ‘City of Quartz’. Davis, a Los Angeles historian with a photographic memory and a gift for finding the threads that bind seemingly disparate subjects together, had me watching film noir classics like ‘Detour’ and ‘The Big Sleep’, gobbling up the South Central-centered pulp fiction of Chester Himes, the dark, satiric, science fiction of Aldous Huxley, and becoming a salivating fan boy at the altar of Joan Didion’s 1960s suicidal California travel lit. I’m not exaggerating — I literally spent an entire year exploring the books, movies and music mentioned in ‘City of Quartz’. If that ain’t the obsessive-compulsive behavior of an addict, I don’t know what is. [we have since ordered ‘City of Quartz’ for the library, and hope to have it soon!]

How about you? Do you have any ‘Gateway Books’ that sent you tumbling deeper and deeper down the reading rabbit hole? If so, please share them in the comments!
 
This blog written by Josh M.
 
Link to eBooks in Overdrive where available, here!
 
Elmore Leonard (some available in Overdrive, via CLAMS or other MA library networks!)
Robert Frost-bio, and links to some of his poems, here.
Aldous Huxley, ‘Brave New World’ ebooks here.
 
 
 

 

 

 

Music by the Flaming Lips, ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’

The title track starts off with a lone acoustic guitar strumming in a loose, Jonathan Richman style, a warbling synthesizer chirping out a couple of random, faltering notes behind it. Faint, far away voices can be heard speaking what sounds like Japanese just as a fat, stomping drum beat comes crashing in, immediately rerouting the song’s assumed course. Like Aladdin entering the Raja’s palace only after his loud procession of musicians, jugglers and elephants, it is then that frail-voiced singer, Wayne Coyne, steps up to the mic to deliver his ballad of the city-funded, black belt, robot fighter.
 
Much like The Flaming Lips’ first hit, ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’, ‘Yoshimi’s’ charm lies in its goofy, unusual rhymes (“She’s taking lots of vitamins cause she knows that it’d be tragic if those evil robots win”), and the fact that there is really no need for such a song ever to exist and yet it seems to fill some void that was ’til now unnoticed. It’s a semi-funky, instantly catchy number, perfect for nerdy manga fans and/or parents looking to play something other than the two Frozen soundtracks when their kids are in the car.
 
Then there’s ‘One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21’. It’s a mellow, melancholy song that expresses in five heartbreaking minutes what it has taken ‘Westworld’ three-and-counting seasons to get across.

If this were as good as the album got, I’d say go ahead and YouTube the first three or four songs and call it a day. But the other, non-robot tracks are some of the most purely-written songs of love and loss since Leonard Cohen dropped ‘Hallelujah’. (What?! Record reviews are all about hyperbole disguised as personal opinion!)

Although only two or three other songs will get you as amped as ‘Yoshimi’, the others possess a quality that inspires introspection and reflection, sadness and hope. Coyne’s wounded voice, Steven Drozd’s seemingly repetitious yet persuasive drumming, and Michael Ivins’ incredibly inventive use of synths as background sound effects and impressionistic soundscapes combine to create an album full of the same sort of excitement that their older, punkier albums had with the more intricate and psychedelic experimentation of their more recent records. Equal parts pessimism, existentialism and anime-inspired science fiction, with ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’, The Flaming Lips may have created the most honest and innocent album of their discography.

If you have a Falmouth-issued library card, you can listen to ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’ on Hoopla via this link! You can learn about-and sign up for-Hoopla here
 
Music review by Josh!

Graphic Novel Review: All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

(reviewed by Josh M.)

With All-Star Superman, writer Grant Morrison takes nearly a hundred years of kooky comic book lore and condenses it into 12 episodic issues of inspired and inspiring magic.

The basic Superman elements remain the same: Alien on Earth. Dauntless do-gooder. Eternal optimist. Lois Lane. Jimmy Olsen. Lex Luther. Etc.

The basic Superman story lines remain the same: Alien invaders. Awkward office romance. Peacekeeping through punching. Lex Luther. Etc.

Yet much like a chef intensifying the flavor of a sauce by boiling it down, Morrison manages to make these tried and true ingredients feel fresher, bolder and richer than they have in years. 

My favorite issue is #5, ‘The Gospel According to Lex Luthor’, which is basically ‘Waiting for Godot’ starring Clark Kent and Lex Luthor, and staged in a supermax prison full of super-powered villains. The dialogue sparkles, the tension mounts, and instead of an onomatopoeic fistfight we get an extended ethical debate. (Albeit one with a few SMACK! CRACK! and POW!s laced throughout.)

If you’ve ever been a fan of Superman — heck, even if you’ve NEVER been a fan of Superman — this is a fun, funny and surprisingly poignant exploration of what makes the character endure.

All-Star Superman is available as an eBook on both OverDrive and Hoopla.

A Gentle Giant: In Memory of Bill Withers (July 4, 1938 – March 30, 2020)

Singer/songwriter Bill Withers passed away on March 30 from heart complications. But for 81 years prior to that, he was a genius musician, poet, songwriter and activist.

Bill Withers released his first album, ‘Just As I Am’ in 1971. Featuring such classics as ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ and ‘Grandma’s Hands’, it immediately identified Withers as an artist on par with the John Lennon, Marvin Gaye and Joni Mitchell. His next album, ‘Still Bill’, was equally amazing, giving us the classics ‘Lean On Me’ and ‘Who Is He (And What Is He to You)?’

Throughout his career, Withers would release nine studio albums, one live album, and countless collaborations with other artists (most notably ‘Just the Two of Us’ with Grover Washington Jr.). Withers was nominated for seven Grammys and won three. In 2015, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 2009, the documentary film ‘Still Bill’, was released. It is a GREAT way to learn more about this icon and appreciate the art he gave us. If you have a Falmouth-issued card, ‘Still Bill’ is available as to stream free on Qello, through our RB digital platform. You can sign up for it on our site here-call us or email if you need help with this. 

The link to ‘Still Bill’ on Qello is here, you can access it by creating a free account with your card.

(written by Josh)