tobin_elliott's reviews
489 reviews

Blah blah blah, unfilmed X-Files script.

Blah blah blah, reworked movie script.

(oh, and ignore the incorrect cover attached to this by StoryGraph)

But the real news here is, this is just an excellent story. No, you can't really read it with out seeing Duchovney as Mulder and Anderson as Scully, but sweep all that aside and just get dragged into the weirdity of the story, and you'll see.

This is probably the most commercial thing I've read with Ligotti's name on it, and yet his nihilistic stamp is all over it as well.

Loved this. 

...and it really should be a movie.

This one's a 3.5. And I almost want to take off a full star for the terrible title, but I won't.

So, for ideas? This book is just brilliant, and so much fun. The concepts are brain-cracking, and some of the situations are really good. I don't even mind that there's more of an overall concept rather than story. Instead, we're treated with stories that involve the same characters in similar, yet different situations.

However, there's also a point where it does feel like there's far too many smart people sitting in a secret office talking about all these concepts in a bit too much of a corporate/smart nerd speak, or we're treated to clinically written information laying out the particular mind-wiping threat.

And, unfortunately, the last story was far too long and outstayed its welcome. I think this book would have benefitted with a single through-line story.

Having said that though, I flat out loved the concepts, and some of the initial stories were really good.

Personally, I'd love to see what someone like Jonathan Maberry would do with this. 

Meh.

The whole thing with both the Alien and the Predator species coming up with the Bigger! Badder! version is getting really old really fast. Use the creatures you have, and give us a meaningful story, instead of just a bigger fight.

I've lost interest in the Predator series.

Geez. I kinda don't even know where to begin with this one.

Maybe with a signature phrase I think I've read in all three of Bowyer's books that I've read? "Let me hit that whiskey."

Someone else has already said, if you've read any Bowyer, you know what to expect. That's mostly true. You're going to get an awful lot of psychopathic behaviour, and characters who have lost all sense of morality. Bowyer tends to write one of two types of characters...those who kill, or those who will be killed. There's virtually no one in between.

Bowyer writes some really bleak, nihilistic, violent horror. He's Jack Ketchum with absolutely no conscience or morality.

And please do not take any of this as negative statements, none of it is meant that way. Bowyer is a sadistic Hemingway who writes the sparest prose I may have ever read. His killers are dispassionate in the extreme. I don't think anyone else writes like this, and I'm sure I could pick out Bowyer's writing anywhere.

I will say, having read his biography, this one reads very much like an alternative universe Brian Bowyer, as I recognized a lot of the situations from the tales he told of his own life.

This is one mean motherfucker of a book. I don't read a lot of this stuff because, quite honestly, it bothers me. But I do make the exception for Bowyer. 

Maybe I've read too much Moore lately. Maybe it was a mistake to read this right after his run on Miracleman. Maybe I'm just discovering that I'm not as much a Moore fan as I thought I should be.

This wasn't terrible. Not at all. But I didn't find it as earthshakingly good as everyone (including Len Wein, the guy that created the Swamp Thing in the first place) says.

Let me explain...

Way way back in the late 70s, somewhere around late 77 or early 78, we'd just moved to a very small town in the middle of nowhere. I knew no one, and I was bored. I had to wait for my mother who was doing...something...so I walked down to the local variety store, looking for something to grab my attention. I tried the paperback selection on the spinner rack, but there was nothing there that I wanted. I moved to the comic book spinner rack and again, it was slim pickings. However, there was this thicker comic..."The Original Swamp Thing Saga" that caught my eye (mostly due to the gorgeous Bernie Wrightson art). I paid the ungodly amount of fifty cents and went back to where I was waiting for my mother, and I started reading this collection.

...and it blew my fifteen year old mind. 

The art. The story. The actual writing. The art!

I couldn't tell you how long the wait was for my mother, but I can tell you I probably read that book cover to cover at least three times, and enjoyed it more every time. I continued to collect those reprints, that eventually covered the first ten issues and I loved them all.

So, yeah, Moore? He had big shoes to fill. And so did any artist who was brave (or foolish) enough to follow Wrightson.

Moore's big claim to fame was the separation of Alec from the Swamp Thing. Okay. Fine. I can take that, but it felt like it also drained much of the pathos from the story as well. Instead of this tortured man in monstrous form, now we get...a monster who sleeps in a swamp and lets the rain fill in his eye sockets? We get a very confident monster who calmly reattaches his arm and punches someone with it? We get...a basic hero?

Sorry. Yawn.

I will say that I did enjoy Moore's take on at least one of the predictably silly villains DC is famous for. The Floronic Man was slightly less silly. But when Moore took on Jack Kirby's The Demon—that I can see Moore totally loving because he gets to write his dialogue in rhyme—it just felt...chaotic. It didn't do much for me. Add to that a kid who's constantly spelling things out, and I just kept thinking...yep, here goes Moore, becoming all Moorey as usual. 

And, side note: did the original Wein/Wrightson series not have its share of silly villains? Sure it did. But somehow, Len and Bernie made it work. It was entertaining, instead of being dark for dark's sake.

Like I said, it's probably me burning out on the curmudgeon that everyone seems to adore, but overall, I found his incarnation of the Swamp Thing to be far less relevatory than the original Wein/Wrightson version.

And it didn't help that I really disliked the Bissette/Totleben artwork, with the preponderance of heavy parallel line shading that seemed to obscure more than delineate, and characters' faces that seemed to change from panel to panel with no consistency. As well, the colouring—which should have helped clairify the muddy artwork—seemed to muddy it up even more.

Overall, I can see how, in the mid-80s this might have felt groundbreaking, but to me, it just changed the entire shape of Swamp Thing, and ruined it for me.

DNF, so no rating.

I will state right up front that this is absolutely a well-written and well-paced book, and I can see it's building to something. Honestly, in this case, it's not the book, it's me. Maybe I didn't clue in that it was angled more to teens, I don't know. But for whatever reason, it's just not my type of book.

So, no slagging whatsoever. The right audience for this will adore it.

I had a feeling this one would be a polarizing read for many, and I do kind of get a kick out of the ones who say "I'm done" because there's nothing new happening...when Butcher took a chance, burned his entire series to the ground, and then reset it with this one.

Is this the best book of the series? Well, no. That (so far) is the book before this one, CHANGES. And I will admit to being irritated with some aspects of this (especially Molly's multiple Star Trek characters on the Enterprise bridge...it just went on far too long). But, at the same time, some of the supporting characters really punched it up this time around. I expected it to be Murphy, but instead, it was Mort, Butters, and especially Molly. 

I expected the tone to change with this installment, and I was nervous of the change, but for the most part, Butcher pulled it off. It's going to be interesting to see how the next book goes.

This has got to be the definitive graphic novel adaptation of Stoker's most famous work. Bess's linework here is absolutely stunning, and his adaptation of the work—with minor variations from the original—is incredible.

Bess takes care with every single character, choosing perfect faces for each, while also subverting what we're used to. I will say, I love that he chose to make Renfield look exactly like Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones (in the back of the book, you can see he flirted with both Mick Jagger and Richards, before settling on Richards).

And finally, the 15-page back up of the original opening of the novel, later published as a short story, "Dracula's Guest" is lovely bonus.

I cannot recommend these adaptations enough (his Frankenstein was also very well done), and I'm very much looking forward to his version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Well, wasn't this a nasty little tale? 

This was my first taste of Stred's writing, and it won't be my last. This is a horrible little tale that starts out deceptively calm, before Stred puts the pedal down and hits the reader with unrelenting horror.

It's gross, it's gory, it's profane, it's perverted...exactly what it needs to be for the story being told. 

And that's the thing...Stred, I think, hit the exact right balance here. It's a fine line in horror stories, telling a story and delivering exactly enough horror, enough off-putting scenes without going too far, without stepping over that fine line into excessive, gratuitous violence or gore. Stred walks that line here.

The included story, "Claustrum" is a bit less successful, only because, I think, there's an entire history being packed into the 20 short pages for that story. It didn't feel like it hit with exactly the same emotional punch of the main story, but it's still absolutely a good read.

I enjoyed my time in Stred's hellish world. I'll be back for another ride.

Very much as he did with Sandman, Gaiman steps into the ring and sidelines the title character, instead showing the new gods' influence on others around them. 

Interesting to see a casually tossed off Moore line of dialogue turned into a full story, but overall, the feeling I got from this is that Gaiman didn't really know how to do anything with the MiracleMess Moore left behind, so set his sights on avoiding it completely.

At least at the start. There's apparently an entire planned out story...

Then, of course, decades later, we got the much-publicized and highly-touted return of Gaiman and Buckingham to Marvel...and then the much-publicized and ongoing Crash of Gaiman...

...so, once again, the book is in limbo.

At this point, Marvel needs to bring in another really good author/artist team who are capable of hitting deadlines and staying out of trouble, and let them re-Moore this entire thing one more time.

MiracleMan is a very good character with a rich history. Too good to be sidelined by mortal failings.