crockpotcauldron | Entries tagged with book review

Alright, here we go! A big old pile of cheap woofs. I have, technically, twelve of em, so that works out to four bucks. Let's see how well I spent it.

First out of the gate is Moonstruck, which is very adorable. Big fluffy lesbian werewolf barista protagonist. I'm not gonna bother giving star ratings to these, so let's just say I found it very enjoyable, but am not passionate about it.

Next, some sort of Marvel Who's Who or Encyclopedia, with the cover ripped off. It ranges from Molecule Man to Owl, but I bought it purely for the one page containing Deadly Nightshade. I just really enjoy having snoopy little insider details like her height (5'4") and strength level (Nightshade has the normal human strength of a woman of her age, height, and guild who engages in moderate regular exercise). There are technically probably no actual werewolves involved in this comic, since Nightshade just makes em, and is not one herself. There's an outside possibility Marvel has some sort of werewolf character whose name starts with something from Mo to Ow, I guess?

I picked up Legend for its talking dogs, which I consider close enough to werewolves to add this to the pile. I mean, it's not like werewolf literature is famous for its accurate depictions of wolf anatomy or psychology in the first place. This one's a bit grim, though! Postapocalyptic and full of murder and weird cat mysticism. This one might not be a keeper. I did like Animal Rites: Beasts of Burden, though.

Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre just barely squeaks in with some Wolfmen. I mean, they're all werewolves, but the plot is mostly about Dracula and a copyright infringement suit. Lots of lawyer shop talk, no woofing. I am not particularly the audience for urban fantasy: courtroom edition.

The Boogieman looks like someone's first indie scribbles. Not particularly good, I'm afraid. Does feature an actual werewolf, at least, though he seems to be set up to be the protagonist's sidekick in future issues. Can't promise I'll read em.

Cat Claw technically features the leg of a werewolf cameo on the last page, so I feel obliged to mention it here, though his actual introduction is in the next issue. He's one of those anthro wolf types, not a flat-faced Wolfman, and he does transform (as I learned from reading the following issues I found online), but he's a mad science whoopsie like Cat Claw, and has no further connections to werewolf mythology.

Speaking of werewolf mythology, I gotta look into Hellboy or something. I have the feeling there's gonna be at least one werewolf involved. Jim Henson's Storyteller series has that feeling too.

Back to werewolves, Jughead: the Hunger seems to be about the entire cast of Archie turning into werewolves in a horrible bloodbath? I have no idea why this comic happened, but it's really gross.

The Astounding Wolf-Man looks cute, and features a fresh werewolf rampaging around, but there isn't much in the copy I got, just a quick origin story. Free comic book day issue, you know how it goes. I'm going to check out the next issue.

Someone at the comic book sale recommended X-Force to me for werewolf content, but warned me about the thick eye-dialect Scottish accent on the werewolf, and the fact that she's a homophobe who swore revenge on her gay ex. I didn't get it, and I don't think I'm gonna give that one a shot.

I did get Rise of Magic: Possesses Megalith, which is a lovingly drawn werewolf punch-em-up involving a group of werewolf demon spirits trying to take over a superhero. Points for originality! I'm gonna read the next one to see how it goes.

3 Devils has the hilarious problem of someone rescuing a Wolfman-looking gentle werewolf from enslavement in a freak show, only to find out he also turns into a full moon rampage werewolf! I've never seen a double werewolf before, but I love this. Totally reading the next one.

I picked up a couple Mad-Dog comics. They have a gimmick where half is a tongue in cheek goofy superhero like early Batman, and the other half is a tortured vigilante with the same name. I checked the Wiki, and it's some sort of confusing matryoshka of references. Anyway, there's some gorgeous Ty Templeton art, and I like both halves of the comic, though they have absolutely nothing to do with each other and are very confusing to read together.

So, out of twelve comics, I only got a couple stinkers, and I'm happy with the majority of them. Good job, past me. I've got an early morning, so I needed to stop reading werewolf comics and go to bed fifteen minutes ago. Ah well! Some things are worth staying up for.

Oh shit, it's been a week! I intended to make this a regular thing, and lost track of it. Time flies when you're not desperately unhappy, I guess. Also haven't felt the urge to make postcards, or anything, really. I'm in a much better place, but also a much less productive place right now. I've been reading and slowly dragging my room into order. Mostly reading. I've made my way through all the non-werewolf comics (I saved the woofs for last).

Highlights:

Phil Foglio! I've got Angel and the Ape, and a couple issues of Myth Adventures, and I really like seeing how his art style and humor has developed over the years. I can see Agatha Heterodyne's face in Angel O'Day, and the early cluttered scenes and heavy inking in the bazaar scenes of Myth Adventures - not to mention the Jägermonsters! I'm not saying I'd obsessively buy everything Phil has ever written, but I do own a bunch of Dragon Magazines purely for What's New With Phil & Dixie, and I always gasp in delight when I find his stuff at the comic book sales.

Astro City! Not my favorite issues - the Blue Knight storyline with the lawyer, and the Roustabout story with the city kid learning Valuable Lessons about how Smallville works - but I actually appreciate them a lot more outside their TPBs, since I'm not spoiled by all the other fantastic stories crammed in with them. (My favorites are Jack-in-the-Box and Steeljack. You'd think I would go for the Furst Family, since I really like the Fantastic Four, but there are too many of them, and they just don't get compelling plotlines or emotional arcs. Kurt Busiek is the master of character studies via AUs and What Ifs, and there's a lot more Astro City to go, so there's still hope for the Fursts, but The Tarnished Angel and Family Album are so damn good.)

I was initially disappointed I only found the last half of Huck, but turns out it is actually waaaaay more tolerable than reading the whole thing - I had forgotten how queasily conservative the beginning actually is. Thanks, Mark Millar. It's got that unpleasant aura of nostalgic wholesomeness that Shazam has to it, where you are in no doubt about the author's worldviews and where someone like you would rate. Once it drags itself past the smug politics (do NOT use real life tragedies to grandstand, you motherfucker) and gets into the action, it is a fairly enjoyable spinoff of those Superman In Russia plotlines. Man, I shouldn't have borrowed the first half from the library.

Anyway, onwards to better comics. Jim Henson's The Storyteller is beautiful and fuckin wild. So much dragon bullshit, it's great. I was already familiar with The Worm of Lambton, but Albina was unexpectedly gay and delightful. Such great art, too.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Brave Chef Brianna and Moonstruck at the sale. Soft urban fantasy leads are such a good take - chefs and baristas and cities full of diverse monsters. Same warm queer vibe as Les Normaux. I have a soft spot for reclaiming monsters.

I enjoyed the Fantastic Four fluff I picked up - a wedding special, a Marvel Age reboot for the kiddos, a Doom origin story, and a grim What If. Also, what seems to be a parody - a FF-like team called Mystery Incorporated. The hothead younger brother has flight and electricity powers - and he's the younger brother of the Thing parallel, who can freely transform into a crater-faced moon-headed super-strong monster. Mr. Fantastic's replacement can turn into a Sandman-like swarm of pink crystals, and has a few intriguing tricks, while Invisible Woman's replacement is way less interesting, just turning into gas clouds while keeping all the limp uselessness of early-continuity Sue Storm. While it's interesting to look at the shaken-up power dynamics and relationships a bit of power-swapping and family-rearranging does, goddamn does the sexism grate my cheese. I hate it when they deliberately reproduce the bad bits of an era while making parodies. Oh man, it's Alan Moore. Well, that explains it.

There was an intriguing Lynda Barry comic that has the feeling of a zine, but I like her actual comics much better than her writing-about-writing-comics book. I didn't like Scott McCloud's try either. Just not a fan of the narrative framing. Ah well, I still like Lynda Barry, and should chase down 1000 Demons again.

I picked up Dragonfly vs Stardust purely because it had two women having a superpowers fight on the cover. There are in fact more women inside, passing the Bechdel Test, but it's still a fairly lukewarm comic. I feel like some people just don't know what makes superheroes interesting besides Cool Powers.

Cat Claw, meanwhile, is hilarious. It's like if Spider-Man got his powers the usual way, and had his constant classes-vs-heroism struggle, and his rogues gallery, but also ripped his costume so his dick showed every few pages. There's no sex and very little sexy posing - mostly she just bolts into a fight half naked or gets a strap ripped off her inadequate little swimsuit costume. In a way, the willingness to go tits-out makes the fanservice easier to tolerate - she is simply half naked and kicking men in the face, and there's no coy smugness about how much objectification the creative team can sneak in. The fishnet stockings are lovingly contoured, but I'm just not sure what to make of this comic - are you supposed to jerk off to it? It's just not sexy. It would be like trying to jerk off to a Spider-Man comic where the plot continues as normal, but every now and then Spidey's costume rides low enough to show his pubes, or his roommate Harry strips naked and wanders past to brush his teeth and nobody ever acts like that's weird.

The last notable story is Solar: Man of the Atom, a Valiant superhero I've never heard of, but who has a hilarious cover featuring him in full costume trying to explain himself to his angry wife, while a pissy-faced supervillain sits tied up by their Christmas tree. What a cover. I have a small collection of comics I bring out every Christmas, and this is gonna be one of them.

Well, it's late and that was nowhere near as brief as I thought it was gonna be, but I had fun chattering about comics. I have many opinions! And the nice thing about Dreamwidth is, it's so quiet that nobody's gonna jump up my ass with 2,000 of their friends because I talked shit about Their Faves. There are many things I don't miss about Tumblr. I say, having opened Tumblr twenty minutes ago. Anyway, goodnight!

The cover has a holographic silver title and five purple wolves on it, so I figured I was in for a good time.

Friends, I was in for a mediocre time.

This book is a paranormal romance, so there's a little bit of werewolves and a lot of fucking. Sometimes both - one time they're going for third base while driving, and they run over a werewolf. Anyway, our protagonist, Dr. Elise Hanover, is a (secret werewolf) scientist trying to cure lycanthropy. Her love interest is formerly her college boyfriend, and currently FBI Agent Nic Franklin, here to investigate some woofs. Not a bad setup! Not only do they have some sexual tension and angst, but they also have great believable chemistry from having already dated and fucked. Much more satisfying than insta-lust. I gotta say, this is one of the few romance novels I've read where the protagonist seems genuinely attracted to her love interest. She's not just on fire with generic horniness and desperate to be touched, she's drooling over the way his chest hair curls around his nipples and wistfully remembering how she used to jerk him off. It's refreshing to see a protagonist express attraction to a man's body, and not just ye olde hard glistening abs. The actual sex scenes, though... "One deep thrust and I was no longer a virgin. The werewolf thing was going to be a little harder to get rid of." Ouch.

On the paranormal romance angle, this story is several books into a series, and you can tell. The previous protagonists are hanging around all coupled up and lovey dovey, taking up way too much page space with their cameos and rivalries and drama. And you can kinda tell the author was not prepared to write Dr. Woof as a protagonist - she forces a sudden character change from her "ice queen" personality in previous books to a warmer, funnier, more emotionally volatile persona, because judging from the ex-protagonists hanging around, that's the perspective Lori Handeland is comfortable writing from. The leader of the organization is also experiencing the same abrupt character changes as he gets more pagetime and relationships. It was pretty awkward.

How about the paranormal half of paranormal romance? Unfortunately, the werewolf science is just not much good. I can respect the virus angle... but you gotta actually say science words besides making up a cover story "studying a new strain of rabies in the wolf population" and saying "I had invented a serum that eased a werewolf's craving for human blood on the night of a full moon. As well as a counteragent that eradicated the virus if the victim was injected before their first change." For starters, these werewolves are a magic-science hybrid - they live forever, and they are indisputably Evil because they have a demon spirit of rage inside them or some shit. Not sure why the secret monster hunting organization bothered having the scientist come up with science to cure magical demon bloodlust, really. You would think they'd have a witch on staff for that. The serums and counteragents and shit are basically written as potions anyway. Anyway, the whole werewolf science thing wound up being a wash - she gets a magic wolf talisman that helps her transform effortlessly, and after having a soul-melding near-death experience she suddenly comes to terms with being a werewolf and develops the magical ability to de-woof any werewolf (virus and demon and everything). This was absolutely not what I signed up for with a werewolf scientist protagonist.

This book is another entry in the Sterile Werewolves category, incidentally. For no particular reason - they're just like "werewolves can't breed." Didn't even throw out an excuse about chromosomes. Our protagonist, Dr. Woof, is the very first born werewolf, because her pregnant mom got bitten in the stomach and went into early labor. Lycanthropy via amniotic fluid is a new one - or did the werewolf bite the placenta? No idea, it's very vague. Dr. Woof grew up perfectly human and non-evil, until falling in love in college apparently changed her body chemistry enough to turn her into a werewolf. See what I mean about the science being extremely dodgy? Anyway, I've come up with a more plausible reason why werewolves don't breed - in this book, every time a werewolf touches a werewolf, they get a strong static shock zap of "hey, that's a werewolf." I'd say there are no puppies because nobody wants to get zapped.

The really frustrating part of this book for me was the worldbuilding - so many good ideas, and absolutely no follow-through! The book says werewolves prefer to live in packs... and every werewolf in the book is alone, with no pack structure or social life. The book says real wolves and werewolves don't get along... and real wolves are never relevant to the plot. The book says werewolves and crows work together... but never shows a werewolf interacting with a crow. The book drops tantalizing hints about familiar spirits that turn human when you are a wolf... but goes into no detail. It feels like this book intended to be a way cooler werewolf book, but never dishes out more than a soundbyte of werewolf lore. There's a big dramatic reveal when Dr. Woof transforms in front of Agent Hottie and runs away, and then... they just has a conversation later when she's human, to the tune of "eh, you're still cool even if you are furry some amount of the time." He does not look her in the eyes while she is a wolf and acknowledge her humanity or his affection, or how cool werewolves are. He doesn't throw sticks for her while she's a wolf, or buy a fleacomb. I feel like if you're dating a werewolf, you gotta sign on for the whole package, you know?

Ah well. It was a good way to pass the time, and I had some entertaining conversations with my friends. Those five purple wolves never showed up and hung out with each other. A lot of things never showed up in this book. Three stars, I guess?

DOGFUCKERY ALERT

Fair warning.

So, here's the plot: a shallow party girl gets turned into a dog by an angry drunk homeless guy with uncontrollable magical powers. Her friends and family reject her as a mad dog despite her best efforts, and though the homeless guy feeds her in exchange for helping him panhandle, she ultimately finds a place with the other people who were cursed to become dogs, and decides life is better as a dog.

Here's how the book fell apart for me. First of all, the explicit first person dog sex scene. She narrowly avoids fucking a real dog, and winds up fucking both of her fellow cursed dog people.

Anyway, the second reason (as if I needed one) the book didn't work for me was that Burgess was trying to write the sort of character who could end the book happy to be a dog, and wound up with a protagonist who honestly sounds suicidally depressed, and I'm very concerned for her. She dreads the future, can't maintain stable relationships, and is constantly self-medicating with a haze of hedonism. Not only are those not doggy character traits, I feel like a happy ending would involve antidepressants, not her stated intent of forgetting her past, living fast, and dying young as a homeless dog. That's just suicide with a little dogfucking along the way. This is basically "and then Gregor Samsa decided being a giant bug was okay, mostly because being human was so monumentally shitty in the first place, and they all lived happily for a short time." You can't really cheer for that, you know? The book was a bizarre mix of existential horror, blithe hedonism, and comedy.

As far as werewolves go, I know she's a dog, but work with me here, the werewolf genre is very small and very bad. I could see this as part of the werewolf tradition of turning people you're mad at into wolves - St. Patrick and/or St. Natalis angrily turned hecklers into wolves in Ossory, it's been done at weddings as a punishment or revenge, and of course there's always Circe.