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I’ve had some requests for new book reviews. Well, prods actually. Closer to demands, really. And in Beau’s case, a cranky phone call.

So, as summer passes its midway point here’s some reading suggestions for you vacating bibliophiles.

THE HORNS OF THE BUFFALO

and

THE ROAD TO KANDAHAR

by John Wilcox

 

I was really looking forward to digging into this series as the late Victorian period and its colonial military actions are a favorite of mine. After devouring the first two volumes, I can report that Wilcox knows his stuff and delivers the derring-do.

Unlikely hero, Simon Fonthill manages to find his way to the heart of the action again and again in these stories with stalwart Sgt Jenkins (named “352” because of the number of Jenkinses in the Welsch 24^th Rifles) always at his side.

Simon’s a young man from a family steeped in the British army going back to Wellington. He’s a dreamer and imagines life as a grand adventure beyond his father’s estate in Wales. The real world lurks beyond the peaceful glens and lazy streams to teach the lad a hard lesson on far battlefields where the spear and saber mean death and despair not romance.

In The Horns of the Buffalo (a reference to the Zulus’ main battle strategy), Simon is late to join his regiment in Natal in 1879. He is assigned as a scout and, with 352, is on the spot as the Zulu impi rise in rebellion to protect their land. Fonthill is there at the disaster of Isandlwana when the best of the British and native troops were massacred in an event that made Custer’s Last Stand seem like a footnote. Our hero also finds himself shoulder to shoulder with the defenders at Rorke’s Drift and the description of that action is thrilling and suspenseful even for someone familiar with its outcome.

There are also asides to Alice Griffith, a childhood friend of Simon’s who challenges the ideas of the day to become a crusading journalist. These chapters add depth to the world of the books and Alice is a plucky gal who comes to Simon’s aid when he is accused of cowardice. The book closes with a court martial trial ala Breaker Morant that puts our hero in a tight spot.

The Road to Kandahar finds Fonthill and loyal 352 embroiled in The Great Game between Britain and Russia in Afghanistan. Simon is once again acting as a scout and this time it’s in the (still) dangerous mountains beyond the Khyber Pass. We’re treated to the fall of Kabul and the bloody vengeance taken by the soldiers of the Queen. It’s rousing stuff and filled with historic detail much as the first book. All Rudyard Kipling bluff and mayhem seasoned with characters with depth and substance. My only minor quibble is a tiny bit of 21^st Century PC attitude that would have been alien in the frontiers of empire in the late 1800s. But that might be a sop to an editor or publisher and Wilcox manages to counter much of it slyly in the course of the story. I hope the inclusion of this aspect vanishes as the series goes on. Even as it is, it doesn’t intrude on the action or dampen the thrills. Fast paced stuff with terrific action and suspense pieces and a cast of characters that grow on you even as they grow themselves.

 

 

DIRTY MONEY

by Richard Stark

 

A brand new Parker novel. This one is the conclusion of what Donald Westlake (AKA Stark) insists is not a trilogy. He’s the author and I’m not going to argue with the guy. And each of the books (this one along with Nobody Runs Forever and Ask the Parrot) can be read on their own. But together they make for a crime epic.

Professional thief Parker was involved in a robbery that (as usual) goes horribly, bloodily wrong. Now, two books and multiple felonies later, Parker’s gonna set things right. That means, he’s gonna get the money and keep it. All to himself. And anyone who gets in his way has to die.

Westlake created this genre and there’s still no one better at it. We’re side-by-side with Parker as he eludes the law and fellow criminals to get what he’s after. In anyone else’s hands this would be dry, by the numbers stuff. But this guy’s the master and he makes Parker’s every move suspenseful, engrossing and darkly humorous.

Spare descriptions and curt characterizations stay well out of the way of the action as Parker reacts to one unforeseen calamity after another. If you enjoy Westlake’s Dortmunder novels, these books are their evil cousins.

 

 

HOLLYWOOD CROWS

by Joseph Wambaugh

 

Speaking of genre masters who created their own genre, here’s another fun cop thriller from former LAPD harness bull Joe Wambaugh. This one’s a sequel to his own Hollywood Station and features a cast of characters who handle the tweakers, conmen, dips, trannies and ripoff artists who haunt the streets of Hollyweird preying on unwary tourists.

The main plot involves a hot blonde anxious to get free of her Lebanese strip-joint owner husband. But that just serves as a spine for Wambaugh’s decidedly non-PC, salty and laugh-out-loud funny exchanges between his gang of cops. The outrageous, playful and imaginative uses of slang pours out of these characters with perfect timing and nuance. My favorites are his two surfer cops who speak in streams of puns, pop references and profanity. This is cop humor and can be rough but it’s always honest and funny.

It’s a world Wambaugh knows from his own experience and he obviously has not moved far from. The events are very current in the book and its set against an LAPD still under oversight from the federal government following the Rodney King debacle and scandals in the Rampart Division. The author’s sympathies are with the cops and their daily struggles with restrictive and conflicting edicts from Washington that all serve to frustrate their efforts to combat crime. The cops in this story are fatalistic and resigned to being constantly suspect in a decade-long proctological exam of their entire department by faraway wonks who know nothing of what a street cop faces.

Wambaugh is equally adept at making the lives of creeps and losers seem real. He makes these parasites believable if not entirely sympathetic and the humor grows from their frustrated dreams of the Big Score and the Quick Buck.

Brisk, funny and compulsively readable. Again, a master of the form at work.

 

 

SURFACE WITH DARING

by Douglas Reeman

 

This author writes the very popular Bolitho novels of Napoleonic naval action under the name Alexander Kent.

This book is one of his many one-off novels of the British Navy during WWII.

In this one we meet a serious submarine officer sent on a mission to commandeer a French submarine cruiser in the days just before the opening of hostilities in the Pacific.

If you’ve never heard of a submarine cruiser, well, neither have I. But the French navy commissioned a few of these monster submerisibles in the 1930s. They featured a two gun turret on the deck much like a surface vessel and even a water-tight hangar containing a recon plane! These subs had sick bays and full mess halls and gave the impression of being on a destroyer rather than a submarine.

Our hero and his stalwart crew go into action against the Japanese in a forlorn attempt to stall the taking of Singapore. Solid action from a navy vet and lots of details of submarine life in a period little written about in WWII adventures. The cast is well-realized and each has their own ongoing story to breathe life into them.

There’s an involving romance story of the “doomed” variety that serves to ratchet up the suspense rather than quell it.

Reeman knows his stuff and makes this world come alive without weighing the reader down with ephemera. He also made me so darned curious about the French SCs that I spent an afternoon looking them up on the net.

If you like war action told with panache and verisimilitude, then give this author a try.

 

THE COMPLETE LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE Volume 1

1924-1927

by Harold Gray

 

This one is another labor of love by my buddy Dean Mullaney. That ol’ comic book hippie has put endless hours into collecting a strip that this flint-hearted conservative thinks is a real American classic.

If all you know of Annie is that stupid song then you know nothing! This is an epic to rival Homer and a story that inspires, thrills and breaks your heart. Gray was a genius who worked in a style unique to himself and spoke to a nation in pain with a message of a brighter future made possible only through determination and hard work.

Annie, Sandy, Daddy Warbucks and others are introduced in this massive, definitive volume meticulously compiled and restored from the original art where available and file stats where they weren’t.

Dean provides an informative essay placing Annie is perspective and comics historian Jeet Heer gives us an exhaustive background on Gray and the creation of the strip.

My very highest recommendation.

Well, this fanboy anyway.

Marvel will be releasing a collection of Bill Everett’s 50s Sub-Mariner comics done in the Atlas period. Art and stories by Everett and covers by him as well as Maneely and Heath! Mean-as-a-snake Prince Namor sending fleets of godless commies to doom in the deep. THOSE were the days, friends.

 I’ve lusted after these stories for ages and now they will be mine! MINE MINE!

And yours too should you order!

 

Hey, folks - your friendly neighborhood webmaster her to plug a couple of things for Chuck.  First, as he mentioned on his message board - which you should totally be checking out - he points us to an interview done over at Famous Monsters.

Second, make sure to look for Chuck this year at Wizard World in Chicago!  He’ll be parked in artist’s alley when he isn’t roaming the aisles, looking for combat.  (Or back issues of combat, come to that.)  Drop by.  Say hello.

Coming up in Booster Gold #11 and 12, a two-part epic from Chuck, Dan, and Norm!  You can read all about it here at Comic Book Resources!

In the coming months I have three issues of the Simpsons coming out in a row!

First up is Simpsons Comics #142. The Frycooks of the Carribbean. A tale of revenge and betrayal as forgotten figure from the past returns to scupper Captain McCallister’s business plans!

In Simpsons Comics #143 we find out whether Homer is Duff Enuff as the formula of his favorite beer is altered. Homer joins Barney, Duffman and Surly (last survivor of the Seven Little Duffs) on a quest for the secret recipe of Adolph Duff.

Simpsons Comics #144 is a very special issue in which comics legend Dan Spiegle illustrates a war story as recalled by Granpa Simpson. Yep, Ragin’ Abe Simpson and the Fighting Hellfish battle from the shores of Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in a tale called War is Smelly.

Previews are up today for the first issue - shipping this week - of Dean Koontz’s FRANKENSTEIN, published by the Dabel Bros. Newsarama or CBR has those pages for ya!

BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #7

Metamorpho is in deep trouble in deep space!

ON SALE NOW!

12 page lead story written by me with art by John Delaney.

Bart and Milhouse present a Krustyburger Giveaway Comic. Meet the Krusty Kids! American Fry! Johnny Buns! Patty Crisp and Onion Jack!