Review: Infinity Watch Vol. 1

Infinity Watch Vol. 1 by Jim Starlin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So continues an infinite round of Infinity storylines that began with Infinity Gauntlet. In what is probably the longest-running title Adam Warlock ever graced, a collage of cosmic deities commands our golden protagonist to give up the Infinity Stones. Sort of. He winds up dispersing them to a group of colleagues uniquely disqualified to hold them. We have the usual gang from Jim Starlin's gallery--Warlock, Gamora, the troll Pip, Moondragon and Drax the Destroyer, plus a jaw-dropping choice to hold the Reality Stone. These stones are not supposed to be used in unison ever again; yet in their first story, all the members of the Watch with the exception of Warlock are captured and used in an inane revenge plot. and this won't be the last time that happens.
I think what this collection suffers from most is the weakness that plagues comics to this day: once a year, during the summer, every storyline gets dropped for four or five months in order to participate in the annual Cosmic Catastrophe that all comics have to tie into. This happens twice, four issues tied into a separate miniseries, which is intended to force you into buying yet another graphic novel collection to know what exactly the F--K is going on!
Even worse, the thing that always happens with a Starlin series continues here, ie, we're forced to endure a rotating roster of artists, inkers, colorists etc. of varying talent, leaving the impression of an inconsistent visual style. Now Angela Medina-Terry Austin-Ian Laughlin are magic; Tom Grindberg-Bob Almond & Laughlin less so. I wanted to love this, but the sum is less than spectacular. 3 out of 5.

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Review: Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World

Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World by Rob Sheffield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Cosmic Odyssey: The Deluxe Edition (Cosmic Odyssey

Cosmic Odyssey: The Deluxe Edition (Cosmic Odyssey by Jim Starlin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Meh.
They have one of these every year. Another overwhelming cosmic force has to learn the error of its ways. On the grand scale of things its passable entertainment, not as memorable as what Starlin would do with the Infinity Gauntlet three years later, or even Batman: A Death in the Family which ran concurrently with Cosmic Odyssey.
The best parts are the small ones; Batman's interactions with Forager, which made his sacrifice all the more painful, and the moral abyss John Stewart tumbles into after his arrogance leads to the destruction of an entire world.
Well, fans always say Thanos and Darkseid are similar-looking villians, and now Starlin has written for both of them.

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Review: Forever Nerdy: Living My Dorky Dreams and Staying Metal

Forever Nerdy: Living My Dorky Dreams and Staying Metal by Brian Posehn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This man cries out for an editor. His book reads like a stand-up routine, all over the place. Maybe this is what a conversation with Brian Posehn would be like--hard to follow with lots of profanity. I wanted to enjoy this more because yeah, I am a nerd too, but somehow it seemed harder to read than it should have. Sometimes there's TMI; I don't need to know every single frikkin' TV show he watched as a child; I don't need to be walked through all every act of sex with his former girlfriends. BUUUT, he owns his mistakes and regrets while he details the road to total nerdity, and comedy.

P.S. I am totally with him on the Star Wars chapter. Skip to page 84-85; he describes exactly how all us Star Wars fans felt about the prequels. I can't repeat it, you have just got to read it for yourself. He does get to his comic career just in time for him to break his back. I am with him entirely on his Nerd Rant on page 249. He's right, all you white male nerds need to calm down, take some Prozac. Women and Diversity is part of this world, boys, including the comic book and gaming ones. OK, I'll recommend it, but it's gonna be work for ya.

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Review: Puerto Rico Strong

Puerto Rico Strong by Hazel Newlevant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My great grandparents were Boricuas, although that’s not how we ever knew them. Our great grandmother was always Abuela. We always knew Abuela, Aunt Poca & Aunt Mary came from Puerto Rico but other than that, not much else. I found out more about the motherland in this anthology collection than anything we ever heard in school, which was just about cero. Told in a variety of styles, Puerto Rico Strong presents a nuanced snapshot of our small island neighbor, one deserving better recognition and support than our government has seen fit to offer.

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Review: Miss O'Dell: My Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and the Women They Loved

Miss O'Dell: My Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and the Women They Loved by Chris O'Dell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book immensely, apart from the fact that it was another story of an insider. Chris O’Dell was a trusted and loved assistant and tour manager to some of the biggest acts of the rock era like The Rolling Stones, CSN&Y & Queen. If you look on the back of the Stone’s Exile on Main Street, you’ll see her in the lower left corner; people know her as the ‘mystery lady’ here. It was also her luck to often be in the middle of the Beatles’ love squabbles between George & Pattie & Eric Clapton. George & Maureen Starkey & Ringo, a jealous Clapton & Pattie, not to mention an early, heart-breaking affair with Leon Russell. My personal favorite quotation from the book? “Clapton is God? Well Eric Clapton was no god to me. He was a royal pain in the ass”.

I need to regress for a moment. I like the imagery she uses of a trapdoor hidden in the floor when you as a drug user think you’ve hit rock bottom. And no, there’s another trapdoor under that one, and another…I sympathize with her struggle to beat drugs, and I’m glad she overcame her addiction, but I don’t see what was so enthralling about sticking a needle in your arm. It had to be the addiction talking. I’ve been ding that all my life, literally, sticking myself with needles to take my insulin, though that only involves a subcutaneous injection. I have always had to put up with doctors doing blood draws. I hate needles. Just the idea of sticking one in my veins makes me cringe. Forgive me for saying so…actually, don’t bother. I don’t see the attraction of shooting up. That’s one notch I’ll never need, thank you.

Where was I? Well, here’s a woman who can justly claim to have had four songs written about her. Here we go…Leon Russell penned two of them, “Pisces Apple Lady” and “Hummingbird” during their brief affair in 1969. I knew George Harrison’s song “Miss O’Dell” as the B-side of his hit “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth”. And then there’s Joni Mitchell’s “Coyote”, written on Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour, when O’Dell was cheating with Sam Shepherd, after which he cheated on her with Joni Mitchell. Yeah. I had fun with this book. Dig in.

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Review: Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles

Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This October we lost anther icon of the 1960’s. Geoff Emerick first participated in the Beatles’ sessions as a fresh-faced 16-year-old kid assisting at EMI Studios. EMI in those days lent itself to parody; the engineers still wore mad scientist lab coats, the janitors went about in standard-issue brown coveralls. Starting with the Revolver sessions when he took over, at the tender age of 18 as the Fab Four’s chief studio engineer, he was frequently asked to do the impossible, which he did, generally by bending the rules at EMI beyond all excess.
The story of how he and George Martin sewed together two disparate parts to make ‘Strawberry Fields Forever” reminds me of how Walt Disney sold his animators on Snow White in 1937, how he got them so excited about making the film that they didn’t realize he was asking the impossible. Its surprising how many times George Harrison had a hard time nailing a solo, leading Paul to step up, which must have been especially egregious when Paul nailed a blistering solo on ‘Taxman”, one of George’s own songs.
As Emerick relates in his book, the Beatles tended toward self-absorption while they were recording, often giving little regard for other people’s feelings. Often they would also demonstrate a singular lack of appreciation for the technical wizardry that Emerick and other people would pull off with the limited resources then at hand. I took great delight in the frequent Britishisms that popped up in the narrative— “taking the piss”, “sod it” and so on, as well as Emerick’s rapport with his assistant Richard Lush.
Everything would come to a head during The White Album sessions, wherein the Four would show up late, jam for hours—or days-before a proper track was laid. If John Lennon felt Let It Be was the shittiest shit ever laid down on record, apparently he forgot the tensions of recording The White Album. The rancor between Beatles and the constant rehearsals of songs, over and over, pushed Emerick to quit right n the middle of the sessions. This book captures the mood of the making of their classic discs; the chapter on The White Album was as painful to read as it must have been for the author to work through.
Alternately the Abbey Road sessions yielded moments of joy punctuated by those odd moments that could’ve only happened in the ‘60’s—i.e., when Yoko arrived at the sessions, in bed [thought o be truthful, there really was a good reason for that] Too bad she snuck into George’s bag of crisps. The recording of that triple guitar solo for “The End” was a thing of magic. Don’t miss the true story of how Abbey Road got its name, it’s not to be missed [hint: it’s another Ringo-ism]. Emerick would work his magic on many albums to come, including Paul’s Band On the Run. This was an enjoyable roller-coaster ride by an insider on the hidden tricks behind the greatest music of the rock era. God bless, Mr. Emerick. We salute you.

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