Who New

Last time, I talked about how I'd travelled  from Elgin in Moray to Port William in Galloway and back, over the weekend, about 412 miles! This time, I'm going to discuss the books and comics I read during my holiday.

 Firstly, the books. Borrowed Time by Naomi Alderman is, for my money, the best new Who novel this year. Moffat's "Twilight -with- time-travel" take has made it very fashionable to explore the idea of temporal tinkering and Alderman slyly satirises the "time-poor" society, while poking fun at the greed and stupidity of the big banks. She succeeds in making Amy more likeable, especially when falling for the alien loan sharks' pitch; her version of Rory is also quite winning. This is a deceptively simple novel which manages to be touching and amusing while actually having something to say about our struggle with the work/life balance. Highly recommended.

 Paradox Lost, on the other hand, is a "trad" BBC Who novel. It could just as easily have featured Chris and Billie or Tennant and Tate (or even the Fourth Doctor and Leela!). This is not a bad thing; occasionally, a palate cleanser is welcome. Here's the pitch: when an experimental time ship from 2789 opens a rift in Edwardian London, the Doctor, Amy and Rory team up with Arven the android and Professor Angelchrist to defeat the psychic parasites known as the Squall. These batlike creatures make their victims bleed from their eyes! The exotically-named Professor sounds like a Torchwood operative although, frustratingly, it doesn't say so and the android is depicted sympathetically. Yet again, Rory is a more heroic figure and a POV character.
I thought this was going to be a bit of a dud but although the story and its beats recall the Tenth Doctor range, it's that very familiarity that assists a pacy, undemanding read.

Meanwhile, still with Dr. Who, Animal is the third audio story from the aborted Season Twenty-Seven  of 1989/90 and the second to feature posh safecracker Raine. From that long-ago Doctor Who Monthly article, I inferred that Animal would be a reworking of the Virgin New Adventure Warlock. Infamous for its depiction of the death of an experimental specimen (as a pussycat's interior monologue!) Warlock features animal testing campaigners, a psychedelic drug that kills through social isolation (basically, the other users send the victim to Coventry) and dogs imbued with human personalities.
Actually, the animal activists are imported to the university setting of Marc Platt's story Network (which became Downtime). The Doctor is investigating the killer robots from the previous story (although that strand just seems to go away, IIRC) and encounters Triffid-like plants and an incursion by pedantic, carnivorous aliens (who appear to have been named after the "Num Lock" key). The production is badly lacking in pace but there is a darkly humourous scene in the last episode: when the Numlocks tell the human race they will come to no harm, they actually mean they will come to know harm.
The story also feature the return of Angela Bruce as Brigadier Bambera from Battlefield. I found her flatly-repeated exclamation "Outstanding!" a bit irritating and the other UNIT soldiers unconvincingly stupid and slow. There was also little for Ace to do. It's much less hard-hitting than Warlock and the whimsy seems to sit uncomfortably with the horror. I also miss Ricky Groves as Raines's dad, Harry Palmer- er, Markus Creevy.

 This is probably as good a point as any to discuss Torchwood: Miracle Day. I think it would be fair to say that the Woodies' first couple of series were wildly hit-or-miss affairs. I'd like to forget all those ludicrous ideas: the sex gas alien, the cardigan cannibals, the space meat and Owen's projectile vomiting; but I can't. Children of Earth  gained critical respectability but I wonder if it would have been garnered the comparisons with the best of Nigel Kneale's writing if it hadn't played on middle-class anxieties about "stranger danger" and school league tables. I rather think the heavyweight acting from the likes of Peter Capaldi helped rescue Torchwood's reputation for quirky campery. Nevertheless, Children ended on a note of finality. I was quite surprised to hear about this US co-production. So, is it any good?
Although the first episode was largely set-up, it did have the swagger that RTD always promised but that the show rarely delivered.(I wonder if the world-wide immortality event is connected to the Resurrection Gauntlet that Suzie Costello used- the one that Rassilon also had in The End of Time Part 2? )The second episode, however, was deadly- the flight over the Atlantic felt like it was happening in real time. There are two main problems. The first is tone. Welsh self-deprecation doesn't sit well with the techno-thriller US style, with its two modes: sentimentality and humourless gung-ho heroics. The second is character. I really have to care what happens to Gwen and Jack (and Barrowman has never convinced me that there's anything under the brittle flippancy of the Captain.) to invest in the story because the new characters are largely awful. Rex is boorish and unlikeable while Esther is mousy. Vera the surgeon seems mildly interesting but I have difficulty with Bill Pulman's scenery-chewing Hannibal Lector knock-off (never mind the improbable legal technicalities). I hope it gets better but the Woodies' inherent silliness has always been their downfall.

On my way back to Elgin, I stopped at Forbidden Planet.This month's Avengers is yet another instalment of the sprawling Fear Itself summer crossover. I already miss the Oral History of the Avengers but I like Bachalo's art. Like the previous issue, it's page upon page of devastation but the Hawkeye/Spider-Woman romance steps up a gear and Bendis finally addresses how useless Jessica Drew has been as an Avenger for, well, the last five years.Hopefully, he'll also do something about the Protector.

I also picked up the freebie sampler for the New 52. First the positives: I like the kinetic new logo for the Justice League. It's good that DC is trying to promote other genres (horror, westerns and war books). The digital platform might bring in the vital new (young ) audience.
Er, that's it. 
 It looks horrid. The artwork is murky and over-rendered. The costume designs are fussy and scream "1990s Image" to me (literally, in the case of Liefeld's Hawk and Dove). I'll certainly persevere with the Legion books and try the three JL books (although I expect the core League title will be thin on story and frequently delayed.) I'll  also try Cornell's Demon Knights and Grant Morrison's Action because I've liked some of their writing elsewhere. Otherwise, this looks like the beginning of the Garb Age.

I hope the "kiddie" Batman:The Brave and the Bold remains part of the DCNu. One of my favourite aspects of the series is its joyful exploration of some of the more obscure motifs of the Silver and Bronze Ages. "3.10 to Thanagar" has a cute homage to the late sixties Atom /Hawkman book while the Winged Wonder hinself is wearing the Joe Staton helmet with the bird insignia from All-Star in the late 70s. The villain is the shape-changer Byth from the first Silver Age Hawks story in the original B&B and a number of Katar Hol's villains cameo on the final page: IQ, Matter Master, Fadeaway Man, the Gentleman Ghost and Blackfire (Blackfire from New Teen Titans?! Shouldn't that have been Hyathis?). Rick Burchett's Big Barda also looks comically stern and powerful.

Issue 15 of Legion of Super-Heroes cover -features another solar-powered battle, very much like issue 11 and a slight costume tweaking for Sun Boy. He's one Legionnaire I've never, er, warmed to. I remember how he went all Captain Bligh with "space fatigue" and later he was hooked up with a traitor who exploited his fetish for Legion ladies. His very own nemesis is fiery Dr. Regulus, an Iron Man knock-off but here it's solar sumo Sun-Killer that gets a pasting. Meanwhile arch-villain Saturn Queen is talking about Yuga and Dharma
( is she a Buddhist or a Hindu then?) and is obviously working for big blue Green Lantern villian Krona.
I'm torn because on one hand, this story creeps along month after month at a snail's pace (all the really interesting stuff, both in terms of characters and visuals, has been happening in Adventure); but on the other, this is the Legion I've been waiting to read about for over twenty years.
Giffen's Five Year Gap LSH of the early 90s held my attention for a couple of years but despite its invention and sophistication, the relentless tragedy and sense of pessimism, coupled with the oblique storytelling, finally drove me away. There was a blip with the first Legionnaires series, which recreated some of the innocence and fun of the Sixties; but then the Zero Hour reboot kicked in and the two titles became dedicated to an inferior retelling of the Legion's history. A couple of appealing characters came out of that long period (Gates, Sensor) however. Waid's Youth Movement LSH looked as if it might be a refreshing take but both it and the Shooter revision meandered through dull sci-fi invasion stories rather than super-heroics.
The current Levitz Legion has struggled under the weight of Geoff Johns's plotlines from the interminable Green Lantern Wars and his Superman and the Legion story; which placed the LSH in a xenophobic and sadistic police state. The Legion's world is too rich and complex and goofy to be subservient to the tedious saga of Magic Wishing Rings.And now some of my favourite Legionnaires- and ones who play a major part in this issue- are to be spun off in that old chestnut "Trapped in the 21st Century". It's depressing.

Finally, to return again to the topic of Sword-and-Sorcery, the movie of Solomon Kane caught something of the bleakness and horror of REH's stories, particularly in the early, wintry scenes, which reminded me of the brutal Witchfinder General. However, it descended rapidly into risible computer-game swordfights. If Kane had followed the Puritan Spaghetti Western model of its first third with the occasional macabre flourish, it would have been far more effective. Instead, we got Ghost Rider with peasants. I was amused to see former porridge-advert star Rory McCann, who used to be in The Book Group; the camera loves him. Now that Chaykin is pencilling for Marvel again, I would prefer to see more of this Kane:

The Legal Bit: all images are presumed copyright of their respective owners, by Good Queen Bess!