Super-Blog Team-Up | The Treasure Island Expanded Universe

One of the best things about hosting the Fourth Chair Army Invasion podcast and now AfterLUNCH is all the great people I've met and get to have cool discussions with. One of those is Chris (aka Charlton Hero) from the Superhero Satellite blog who invited me to participate in this month's Super-Blog Team-Up, a blog crossover project where a bunch of different bloggers all talk about different aspects of the same topic on the same day. 

They do this a few times a year and this time it's about the concept of Expanded Universes. I'm a big fan of the idea. When Star Wars came out in 1977, I immediately started dreaming about sequels and craved more adventures with Luke, Leia, Chewie, and Han. And I was able to get them through Marvel's comics (and Pizzazz magazine), newspaper strips, and novels like Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Brian Daley's Han Solo trilogy, and L Neil Smith's Lando Calrissian series. Those died down after a while, but came back in a big way in the '90s thanks to Dark Horse Comics and Timothy Zahn's hugely successful Heir to the Empire sequels. Suddenly, the Star Wars galaxy was wide open for exploration again. But I didn't stop there. The concept of Expanded Universes got me interested in exploring the comics and novels of other favorite things like Star Trek and Planet of the Apes.

For the Super-Blog Team-Up though, I want to talk about an EU that I've only discovered relatively recently: the surprisingly large number of prequels, sequels, and crossovers related to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. I'm mostly going to talk about English language spin-offs here (or at least ones that have been translated into English), but the novel has inspired stories in various languages, including at least one Russian sequel and a Dutch prequel. 

I feel like I should mention, though it probably goes without saying, that most of these prequels and sequels were created independently of each other. So not only do they not reference each other; most of them will directly contradict. It's not an Expanded Universe in the sense that a central publisher or studio has exclusive rights to manage and curate a cohesive continuity. But that doesn't make it any less exciting to revisit these characters and their adventures as imagined by many, many different artists.

The novel was published in 1883 and almost immediately inspired spin-offs (though the authors of those first works wouldn't have thought of them that way). One of them was by Stevenson himself: a play he wrote with WE Henley called Admiral Guinea. It was published in 1892 and is about a meeting between the eponymous "admiral" and three other characters. Admiral Guinea was once the commander of a slave ship, but has given that up and now calls himself Captain Gaunt. He's remorseful about his past occupation, which complicates his feelings about his daughter's wanting to marry a former pirate. And while all of this is going on, a former crew member of Guinea's shows up to extort money from him. This past companion is a blind beggar named David Pew, whom Treasure Island readers know as Blind Pew, the sightless vagabond who delivers the Black Spot to Billy Bones at the Admiral Benbow Inn.

A couple of decades later, Peter Pan's creator JM Barrie worked Treasure Island characters into the backstory of Captain Hook and his crew. Barrie had published the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up in 1904, but in 1911 he published a novelization of it called Peter and Wendy. In the novel, Barrie adds details, including references to Treasure Island's Captain Flint and Long John Silver. One of the pirates who sets up the plank for the children to walk is named Bill Jukes, whom Hook says served on the Walrus with Flint. And Hook himself claims to be the only man feared by Barbecue, a reference to the sea cook Long John Silver.

Treasure Island got its first full-on spinoff novel in 1924 with Porto Bello Gold, a prequel by AD Howden Smith. I haven't read or seen all of the Treasure Island EU that I'll talk about, but I have read Porto Bello Gold. It's told through a new character named Robert Ormerod, a merchant's son who also happens to be the nephew of the notorious pirate Captain Murray (not a Treasure Island character as far as I remember). Murray forces young Ormerod to join a scheme to liberate a ton of treasure from the Spanish for political purposes and piracy ensues.

The connection to Treasure Island comes from Murray's partner, the infamous Captain Flint. And Flint's crew of course includes Long John Silver, Billy Bones, and Blind Pew. Ben Gunn is also a character, but he works for Murray as a steward whose great goal in life is to escape having to wear a uniform.

It's a great, fast-paced novel about the capture of the treasure that everyone's looking for in Treasure Island as well as the conflicts that need resolving in Stevenson's tale. It puts all the proper pieces in place, but avoids feeling like that's it primary purpose. It's very much a story about Ormerod and his allies (a mountainous frontiersman and the daughter of one of Murray's conspirators) trying to survive the schemes and shenanigans of the cutthroat crew they've been forced to join. The prequel stuff happens in the background, which is great. And it's all spiced up by a brilliantly faithful characterization of Long John Silver who's just as cunning and flattering as Stevenson wrote him. I highly recommend it.

In 1935, HA Calahan wrote a sequel called Back to Treasure Island. I haven't read it, but it's about the recipients of the earlier treasure who (all except Jim Hawkins) have lost their shares in bad investments and want to return to the island to collect the other treasure. Silver finds out and the adventure continues.

The adventure also continues in the 1954 film Return to Treasure Island, which has Tab Hunter and Dawn Addams as contemporary (that is, 1950s) treasure hunters looking for Flint's other treasure. I haven't seen this yet, but don't be surprised if I watch and blog about it soon. It's summer and I'm in the mood.

Also in 1954, producer Joe Kaufman decided to piggyback on the success of Disney's 1950 Treasure Island adaptation with his own sequel. He brought back the Disney film's Byron Haskin to direct and the iconic Robert Newton to play Long John Silver. They filmed in Australia and called it simply Long John Silver, although it was released in the UK as Long John Silver's Return to Treasure Island, creating some confusion with the Tab Hunter film. The plot is about Silver's attempt to rescue Jim (recast with Kit Taylor, instead of Bobby Driscoll from the Disney film) from another pirate who's kidnapped Jim along with a governor's daughter. And if they end up getting that legendary second treasure, then that's good too.

Long John Silver spawned a TV series the following year, The Adventures of Long John Silver, also starring Robert Newton and Kit Taylor. It only lasted one season, but there were 26 episodes.

Everyone's favorite crazy pirate hermit Ben Gunn got his own novel the year after that in 1956 by RF Delderfield. It's called The Adventures of Ben Gunn and describes his career (as told to Jim Hawkins). Which makes it also a prequel to Treasure Island since Gunn talks not just about his becoming a pirate, but also the specific events that led to his being marooned on the island.

A couple of decades later, Leonard Wibberley wrote a Treasure Island sequel in 1972 called Flint's Island. It's about another ship that accidentally stops at the infamous island to repair some storm damage, but then Silver shows up looking for that second treasure again.

In the mid-'80s, the Return to Treasure Island name got another go on a mini-series with Brian Blessed as Long John Silver. The official name was John Silver's Return to Treasure Island and while I call it a mini-series, it was ten episodes long. And they were fairly episodic installments, as opposed to a strong central story that just needed ten parts to tell. It took place a decade after the events of the novel. Jim has just graduated from Oxford and is returning home to the inn where his mother throws him a party with his old adventuring friends, including Ben Gunn. But then Long John Silver shows up, still thinking about that second treasure.

In 1996, there was yet another Return to Treasure Island via a movie starring Stig Eldred (Dick Tracy) as Long John and Dean O'Gorman (Fili in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit movies) as Jim. In this one, the now adult Jim has a fleet of merchant ships that have come under attack by a pirate named Captain Savage. While trying to work through this, Jim falls in love with a woman who turns out to be Silver's daughter. And you better believe that second treasure on the island plays a part.

In 2001, Frank Delaney wrote a sequel called Jim Hawkins and the Curse of Treasure Island under the pseudonym Francis Bryan. It takes place 12 years later and Jim now runs the Admiral Benbow Inn. When a woman shows up with her young son, looking for one of the pirates marooned on Treasure Island, Jim decides to help her even though there are powerful people trying to stop her. 

In 2007, French comics writer and editor David Chauvel commissioned a pirate volume in his Seven series. The concept of the series is that each volume features a team of seven people, all from differnent time periods. Seven Pirates is by Pascal Bertho and Tom McBurnie, and it has grown-up Jim Hawkins as a struggling merchant who puts together six of his former treasure-hunting partners to (you guessed it) return to Treasure Island for the other part of that booty. This one is French language and to my knowledge hasn't yet been translated into English, but it's made the rounds into some other translations and the publisher Dargaud has translated some of their other comics into English, so my hope is that we get an English version soon.

Speaking of French comics translations, Xavier Dorison and Mathieu Lauffray's four-volume graphic novel Long John Silver was published (also by Dargaud) in 2007 and is available in an English translation. I've read this one and it's gorgeous. And it's a great sequel to Treasure Island. Lauffray's artwork is incredibly detailed and immersive. Dorison's plot introduces a fascinating character named Lady Hastings, who is as different from Jim Hawkins as can be. She's delightfully wicked, cunning, and courageous; a worthy foil for Silver and the perfect person to bring him into a new treasure-seeking venture. And Silver himself is as charmingly crafty as ever. Once they set sail, the voyage is filled with politics and scheming. It's the same tactic that Stevenson used in Treasure Island, but to very different results. Treasure Island has its moments of darkness, but this is a scarier version with rougher stakes.

Once the characters arrive in the New World, the adventure becomes a Heart of Darkness-like psychological thriller as the crew heads upriver into the jungle in search of a lost, gold-filled city. Doubts arise in some of them about the wisdom of the venture, so things get tense. And while I always worry about how well these things are going to end, Dorison and Laufray do a nice job with a conclusion that's both epic and emotionally satisfying. They have pirates fighting Aztecs with shades of Lovecraft looming over all of it. The whole thing is a great read on the character of Long John Silver and what drives him. 

In 2008, John Drake wrote a prequel trilogy starting with the novel Flint and Silver. I've read it and loved it, though I haven't yet checked out the other two volumes: Pieces of Eight and Skull and Bones. The only reason is that I listened to Flint and Steel as an audiobook and was waiting for the other two to be adapted that way. But I've since fallen out of love with audiobooks and I'm planning to buy the physical copy of Flint and Steel and then complete the series. 

It's a fantastic book. Even though it's a prequel, like Porto Bello Gold it never just checks boxes and connects dots to get to Treasure Island. Drake has so fleshed out his characters - not only Joe Flint and John Silver, but also Billy Bones, Israel Hands, Silver's wife Selena, and others - that they and their relationships are what I care about. Discovering islands and burying treasure are awesome when they come up, but those are fun additions to the story; not the point of it.

Something that I don't always like in novels is that the plot meanders and there's not a clear resolution by the end. Since it's the first in a trilogy, readers who are adamant about getting a complete story in a single volume may be disappointed and I'm usually disappointed in that, too. But again, it's the characters who are most important in Flint and Silver and I was emotionally satisfied with the way Drake leaves them at the end, even if there are still major plot points to be resolved. It's well-researched both for historical accuracy and consistency with Stevenson's novel, but Drake is a great writer who knows to let that be background to his world and not just dump it all over the reader. I highly recommend Flint and Silver to fans of Treasure Island or just great pirate stories in general. 

Return to Treasure Island was too easy a title to let sit, so in 2010 we got another story with that name, this time a novel by John O'Melveny Woods. This one takes place just three years after Treasure Island and has Jim learning that Long John Silver has been captured and sentenced to hang. Jim decides to rescue his problematic pal, which leads the two of them back to Treasure Island for something called the Pharaoh's Gold. I don't know if that's the notorious "second treasure" mentioned in Stevenson's novel or something all-new, but I'd like to find out. 

In 2011, John Amrhein Jr wrote a book called Treasure Island: The Untold Story. It's not really a prequel or sequel to Treasure Island, so I hesitate to mention it, but it's a cool and unique idea. Amrhein has done a ton of research into actual historical events that he claims inspired Stevenson's story. There's a buried treasure and a map to an unnamed island and even a one-legged sailor. I think I could skip it and still call myself a completist, but it sounds fascinating enough that I'd like to read it anyway.

Not to let that Return to Treasure Island title sit too long, English poet Andrew Motion wrote Silver: Return to Treasure Island in 2012. It takes place 40 years after Treasure Island, so Jim and Long John have long since retired from treasure-hunting. But their kids... I mean, that second treasure is still just sitting there.

I've had some fun pointing out the similarities between titles and plot points in these sequels, but the truth is that I'm eager to read all of them. There are infinite ways to tell stories about the same basic plot, so it doesn't bother me at all that the second treasure is the focus of so many sequels. After all, Stevenson left that detail sitting there just begging for writers to follow up on it. I'm glad that so many have.

One last prequel novel before we get to the TV show: In 2014, David K Bryant wrote Tread Carefully on the Sea. It focuses on Captain Flint and a scheme to kidnap a governor's daughter, but also deals with Long John Silver and how that treasure got on that island.

Of course the big thing that happened in 2014 was the premiere of the TV series Black Sails on the Starz network. I've only seen the first season, but I loved it and need to go back for the rest. The concept is brilliant: It's not just a prequel to Treasure Island with Captain Flint, Long John Silver, and Billy Bones. It also has Stevenson's characters interact with actual, historical pirates like Charles Vane, Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, Woodes Rogers, and Edward "Blackbeard" Teach. And of course Israel Hands, who was not only the real-life second-in-command of Teach, but was also a character in Treasure Island.

It would take a whole series of posts to cover Black Sails the way I want to. And now that I've done this post and reminded myself of all of this extra Treasure Islands material, I'm gonna. So thanks again to Chris and the rest of the Super-Bloggers for letting me join in for this. I've added a bunch of books and movies to my reading and watching lists as a result.

And if you'd like to read about the other Expanded Universes the Super-Bloggers are talking about, here's the whole list:

• Super-Hero Satellite: M.A.S.K.: The Road To Revolution
• Between The Pages Blog: Fantastic Forgotten Star Wars Characters
• Comics Comics Comics - The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones
• Comic Reviews By Walt: SBTU - Expanded Universe: Aliens and Predator
• Dave’s Comic Heroes Blog: Logan’s Run Marvel Movie Adaptation
• The Telltale Mind: Archie Andrews - Superstar
• Radulich In Broadcasting: Flash Gordon Universe
• The Source Material Comics Podcast: TMNT/Ghostbusters
• Unspoken Issues: Mad-Dog (Marvel Comics, 1992)
• Bronze Age Babies: Seven Decades of Apes-mania, and We’re Afflicted!
• Echoes from the Satellite - Tales from the Forbidden Zone - The Pacing Place
• Black & White and Bronze Comics - Beast on the Planet of the Apes Review 
• The Daily Rios - Little Shop of Horrors
• Lost N Comics Youtube - Expanding the Medium: Motion/Audio Comics
• Pop Culture Retrorama: The Phantom Universe
• Cavalcade of Awesome - Jumper Universe
• DC In The 80s: The TSR Universe

22 Comics I Read in 2018

I don't have a good way to count individual, single-issue comics that I've read over the year, but I also read a bunch of graphic novels and collections. I mentioned in the overview the other day that Bill Watterson's The Complete Calvin and Hobbes was both the longest book I finished (it's three volumes) and the most liked by other Goodreads users. There's nothing to say about the strip that the world doesn't already know, but I was reminded that Watterson is a brilliant cartoonist who's equally excellent at both humor and warming hearts. Reading the series 23 years later, though, I was struck by his observations about culture and how little has actually changed. Social media has amplified some ugly aspects of human nature, but Calvin and Hobbes is a powerful reminder that our biggest problems have always been there.



I also started Charles Schulz' Peanuts archives with The Complete Peanuts, Vol. 1: 1950-1952. Early Peanuts is so awesome. Charlie Brown isn't yet the loser he'll become; he's just one of a group of kids who enjoy each other while occasionally giving each other a hard time. He's an equal member of the group and often an instigator in teasing and mischief.

Initially, the group is him, Shermie, Violet, and Patty (not Peppermint; the other one whom nobody remembers these days, but recognizes when they see her). And Snoopy is there of course, but he's not clearly identified as Charlie Brown's dog until later. He begins as just sort of a neighborhood dog whom everyone takes responsibility for.

Schroeder, Lucy, and Linus are all introduced in this volume (in that order). They each come into the strip as a precocious infant or toddler and then quickly grow into about the same age as the other characters until Schulz decides he needs another younger character and brings in the next one. It's fun to see baby Linus and Schroeder, but it's even more fun watching baby Lucy. She's a high-spirited handful from the start, but not the crabby fussbudget that she'll eventually grow into. The cartoons are often laugh out loud funny, but always sweet and of course well-drawn.



I read several Marvel Masterworks volumes last year, starting with Atlas Era Jungle Adventure. I got partway through the first volume, remembered that I'd read it before, and my memory was that it doesn't get any better than the first couple of stories. I love jungle adventure and I love female characters, but the Lorna stories are especially sexist. She falls for a horrible chauvinist who disrespects not only her, but explicitly all women at every opportunity. The text specifically calls him her "friend" and pretends that this is a normal, healthy relationship. It's gross. The art's pretty good, but not great enough to carry me through the rest of it.

After that, I dug into the early Marvel superheroes, starting with the first three volumes of The Fantastic Four. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's work on it was as imaginative and exciting as everyone says. It was thrilling to finally read the introductions of Doctor Doom, the Skrull, Puppet Master (and with him Alicia Masters), Impossible Man, the Watcher, and of course the reintroduction of the Sub-Mariner. There's also the first meeting between the Thing and the Hulk, which was super cool.

The constant sidelining of Sue Storm got tiresome, so I still look forward to seeing that change in future volumes. There's a panel in Volume 2 where Reed defends Sue's value to the team by talking about how she keeps up the morale of the male members. Yuck. "Different times" and all that, but it's a huge distraction for me. Volume 2 wraps up with Fantastic Four Annual #1, which is a cool way to close. It's a huge, exciting story in which Sub-Mariner has finally found his lost people and leads them in an invasion of New York City. That battle has some truly exciting moments, even by today's standards.

Then Volume 3 stands out for including the FF's portion of arguably Marvel's first crossover event, though it wasn't heralded that way. It's a sprawling story around the Fantastic Four, the fledgling Avengers, and even the mysterious, new team known as the X-Men as they try to figure out what to do with each other as well as the random destructiveness of the Hulk and Sub-Mariner. And it's quite good.

Speaking of the Hulk, I read the first volume of his adventures, too. Jack Kirby's version is my favorite look for the character and all the art in this collection is a joy. There's one non-Kirby issue, but that was drawn by Steve Ditko, so it's great, too. What's interesting about these stories is seeing Kirby and Stan Lee figuring out how they want to handle the character. He's gray in the first issue, green in the rest, and Bruce Banner's transformations are triggered by everything EXCEPT his emotions. It starts as a nighttime change and by the end of the collection it's something that Banner and the Hulk control with a machine (although an unpredictable one that seems also to have a negative effect). There's also a weird issue or two where the Hulk is mind-controlled by Rick Jones. I'm looking forward to reading other volumes and seeing how long it takes to settle into a status quo for the series. It's all over the place in the beginning, but that's not a complaint.

And finally, for Marvel Masterworks, I finished the first volume of The Avengers. It was a great idea for a series and super fun for the first several issues. The status quo changed constantly with the Hulk's leaving and coming back and leaving again and being chased by the other members and then Captain America shows up... But the series settles into a rut for the last few issues collected here. Once Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil show up, they keep coming back with various other villains as allies. Captain America's angst and declarations of vengeance against Zemo are especially wearisome.

Over on the DC side (though they weren't DC comics at the time), I read a couple of collections featuring the Captain Marvel family of characters: The Shazam Archives and The Shazam Family Archives. Fawcett's Captain Marvel has been a favorite character of mine since watching the Saturday morning live action TV show in the '70s. He's got an awesome costume and I love the concept of a younger person (a teenager in the TV show; a young boy in the comics) turning into a Superman analog by saying a magic word. This was my first time reading his original adventures.

CC Beck's art is lovably simple, but exciting. That's the highlight here. And just the joy of seeing the same villain, Dr Sivana, reappear over and over again in spite of being constantly defeated. He becomes an awesome archenemy just from sheer, relentless repetition.

Unfortunately, that repetition backfires when it comes to the tone of the collection. The villains' schemes are mostly fun and inventive, but all the stories are the same kind: secret villain has scheme, Billy Batson investigates, uncovers villain, and defeats them as Captain Marvel. They'd be fun read a month at a time, but they were hurt by reading together in a collection like this. I'm curious to get to stories featuring Tawky Tawny and some of the other crazy supporting cast, but hesitant to pick up the next volume. I decided to try some Captain Marvel Jr and Mary Marvel instead, which led me to Shazam Family.

I was initially disappointed to see how heavily skewed Shazam Family, Volume 1 is towards Captain Marvel Jr. I like Mary Marvel much more, but she's only got the one story in the collection. And sadly, there is no Shazam Family Archives, Vol. 2.

But even though it was a much deeper dive into CMJ's early adventures than I wanted, I had a ball with those stories. I even liked them more than the early adventures of Captain Marvel himself. Mac Raboy's realistic art style was way ahead of its time, making CMJ's comics look more like they were created in the '70s than the '40s. And even though the stories rely heavily on two particular, recurring villains (Captain Nazi and Mister Macabre), the plots and settings of those stories vary enough that I never grew bored the way I did with the Captain Marvel volume.

The final collected volume I finished was Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years Omnibus Volume 1. Sadly though,  I couldn't finish it. I expect to struggle through a certain amount of racism in old Tarzan stories, but it is so prevalent in these tales and often coming directly out of Tarzan's mouth, which is not something I'm used to. Marsh's linework is quite good though, so there's some enjoyment to be had just flipping through the drawings.



Finally getting to graphic novels, I started the year with the first two books in Mike Maihack's fun Cleopatra in Space series: Target Practice and The Thief and the Sword. I enjoyed Maihack's webcomic with the same character and premise, but that was a very light adventure and I wasn't confident that the printed version would have the emotional weight I wanted from a graphic novel. It does though. Target Practice is not a collection of the web strips and Maihack knows the difference between the two formats and makes the right changes.

The web comic made sure that there was an action beat or gag on every new installment/page, where the graphic novel is an immersive experience. It gave me the time I wanted to get to know Cleo, her environment, and her friends, and to relate to her predicament. It's still action-packed, super cute, and very funny, but now all of those things are surrounding solid characters.

The Thief and the Sword is a strong follow up. It has all the same charm, plus it expands the universe. I wasn't crazy about the new, thief character, but he's potentially redeemable. My only complaint is that it ends on a cliffhanger. That's not exactly a dislike though, because I'd wanna read the next one anyway.



Koma: The Voice of Chimneys is a short volume about a young chimney sweep who meets a monster. It's building to something bigger, so it was impossible to tell what I'm going to think of the plot, but I like the main character and the art is fantastic. The design of the creature is both spooky and affecting. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.



You know I'm all about the pirates, but while Barracuda, Tome 1: Esclaves is beautifully drawn, I don't like any of the characters and the tone is oppressively dark. I'm not reading any more of this one.



I've always admired Rick Geary's linework, but this is the first book by him that I've read. Most of his stuff falls into the category of True Crime, which isn't a genre I enjoy, but this is full-blown fiction featuring one of my favorite actors as the detective. It's an engaging riddle and though I was a little disappointed with the solution itself, I was thrilled with the way it was revealed. I would love to see Geary create more Louise Brooks Mysteries.



Lovely art. Fun characters. It's a bit densely packed for my taste (and eyesight; small panels) and I don't feel like Delilah is as much a character as an idea for a character, but I quite like Mr Selim (the Turkish lieutenant) and I'll be reading the next volume.



Lovely art depicting deep characters in a romantic setting. But while the characters are varied and complicated, I'm not actually all that interested in most of them. Or maybe it's the absence of a central plot that I'm reacting negatively to. I wonder if subsequent volumes begin to develop a stronger story with character arcs. I'm just not decided on whether I want to find out enough to continue the series.



I've been a fan of Kickliy's work for over a decade and it's been fun and rewarding to watch him grow as a cartoonist and storyteller. Perdy is a very naughty Western with great characters, intriguing mysteries, a bawdy sense of humor, and - most of all - a gorgeous visual style. As "Volume 1" suggests, it's not a complete story, but it's a satisfying read and I can't wait for the next installment.



I read the first volume in single issues and was captivated enough that I just bought the rest of the series in collected volumes when I had a chance at a sale. Terry Moore's drawing is always exceptional and he set up a great mystery in Volume 1 around why a dead woman's body was left half-buried in the woods and why she came back to life. Volume 2 answers most of the mystery in order to reveal a conflict that I imagine the rest of the series will work to resolve. Sadly for me, the conflict isn't as intriguing as the mystery was, so I'm not going to rush into Volume 3.

But Moore's skills in creating rich characters and mood are great enough that I enjoy being in the moment with his stories even when I'm not pulled forward by the plot. I will eventually come back and read more.



Butch Guice's art is always great. He has a grounded, realistic style that's just as convincing when he's depicting mythical creatures as when he's drawing everyday people and objects. He's the perfect artist for this kind of Harryhausen-influenced story. And the events of the story are pretty great. There's a mystical island filled with awesome creatures to run away from.

The characters are fine, but they're fairly standard archetypes and no one stands out as a favorite so far (though the villain shows signs of being more than he seems). It's only the first volume, so I'm hopeful that the characters grow on me as they continue to be challenged by the island and their mission on it. It's a good start and I'll keep reading.



Finally, I'm a big fan of Bryan Talbot's steampunk, talking animal mysteries and the way the characters develop and the situations build on each other. I'm an even bigger fan when he's clearly drawing inspiration from James Bond as he is in this volume. Can't get enough of this series.

10 Novels I Read in 2017

Happy New Year, everyone! Before I get into the last year in movies, I want to talk about some books I read this year. These aren't all from 2017; they're just ones that I read for the first time last year. And they're not the whole list of books I read, either.

According to my Goodreads log, I read 34 books last year. I'd set a goal for myself of 24, so I met that, even when you consider that six of those "books" were short stories. Thirteen were graphic novels or collections of comics (a lot of Tarzan, but also some '70s Batman and Marvel collections). Those totally count, but I'm not talking about them here. I also left off some re-reads (a couple of Burroughs' Tarzan novels) and a couple of books that would need more space to write about than I want to give here (those are Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Zorro: The Complete Pulp Adventures, Volume 1). If you're doing the math, that's a total of 23, but I'm going to talk about the 24th when I talk about one of the ten below, because they're thematically linked.

What's left are ten novels that I read in 2017, listed from least to most favorite.

10. On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers



You know I like pirates, right? I may have mentioned it. And Tim Powers' book was either an inspiration for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie or shared enough common elements with it that Disney paid for the title. Since I was disappointed by that movie, I thought I should read the book and get the original take on Blackbeard's search for the Fountain of Youth. Sadly, this was disappointing, too.

It's very well written in terms of craft. Powers knows how to create captivating characters and give them distinct voices. He's also great at period details and introducing a compelling mystery. Where the book lost me though was halfway through when the story's magical elements fully took over the nautical adventure. At that point, it becomes full-on fantasy and the villains might as well be wearing pointy hats with stars. It was also grating to realize that the one female character is actually nothing but a MacGuffin for the hero to chase after and try to protect. This is the only book on the list that I didn't finish.

9. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad



This was another disappointing book and a couple of things contributed to that. One was that its psychological terror had been hyped beyond its ability to deliver. But the other is that Apocalypse Now (which is a loose adaptation of it) had also raised my expectations about how disturbed I would be. The novel never got there for me.

Nor did it answer any of the questions I had about Kurtz or what went wrong with him. That's probably the point, but I was still looking for some insight that the book doesn't deliver. There's a lot of talking about how strange and wonderful Kurtz is, but I never experienced his profundity for myself or related to Marlow's intoxication with him. There are some great themes in the book, though (I love the warning about how thin and easily cast off the armor of civilization is), and some unforgettable scenes (particularly during the journey upriver and the arrival at Kurtz' camp).

8. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline



I'm not usually one to read a novel before seeing a movie adaptation. Generally, I prefer to see the film first and then enjoy the book afterwards. I tend to like both versions when I do it that way, instead of watching the movie and comparing it to the book.

But I was in the mood for some science fiction at some point last year and Ready Player One is so well spoken of by my friends that I chose it, even though Spielberg's adaptation is about to come out.

I very much liked the plot and the puzzle-solving and of course all the references to '80s pop culture. I didn't as much enjoy the trash-talking and posturing of the socially awkward main character and his friends. In fact, there was a point early on where I considered giving up. But I pushed through and was pleased that the arrogance lessened as the stakes increased, the characters' relationships deepened, and they all had to focus on other things.

If you want more detailed thoughts on the book, I highly recommend Nerd Lunch's discussion of it. I didn't participate in that, but they did an excellent job covering the novel's strengths and weaknesses.

7. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L Frank Baum



I've wanted to read this for years and finally pulled the trigger this holiday season. And I liked it quite a bit.

It's usually a drawback for me when a book's chapters are episodic like they are here, but it works in this. First of all, it's a children's story and easy to imagine Baum sitting in a nursery and telling these tales to a group of eager, young listeners. But also, the individual adventures work together to build towards the completed mythology of Santa as we know him today.

Baum's writing voice is pleasant and I enjoyed spending time in the world he created. It beats Rankin-Bass' version of Santa's origin story, Santa Claus in Coming to Town, in almost every way, though R-B did also adapt this novel and now I'm super curious to see that.

6. A Room with a View by EM Forster



The film version of this book is very solidly an '80s movie, but I always think of it as a '90s film, because it started two of my strongest '90s obsessions: period dramas (especially ones produced by Merchant Ivory) and Helena Bonham Carter.

I love the film version of A Room with a View so much that I have most of it memorized and when I finally read the book last Spring, I was surprised at just how faithful the movie is. It's so faithful that I experienced very powerfully the thing that most Read the Book Before Seeing the Movie people cite as their main reason for preferring that order: It was tough not to imagine the film actors in their roles as I read. Or read the dialogue with anything other than the inflections those actors used.

But there are differences between the two. Some things, the movie does better, like the ending. It's not drastically different, but it does make Lucy's climactic revelation more emotional and exciting. In the book's favor, though, I appreciate the additional insights it provides. For instance, I never picked up on why Lucy chose Schubert instead of Beethoven when playing for Cecil's family. Forster's still subtle about it, but he makes it clearer than the film does. And there's a whole subplot about George's mother that's left out of the film. All in all, it's a lovely book that made me want to revisit the movie as soon as I finished it.

5. The Monk by Matthew Lewis



After I spent Halloween 2016 talking about gothic literature, I've been slowly digging in and reading some. I'm a big fan of Castle of Otranto and have re-read it multiple times, but Mysteries of Udolpho was a slog and put me off the classics for a while. The Monk has renewed my interest. It's lurid and super spooky.

The trick I've learned with early gothic literature is to not grow impatient with the plot, but to immerse myself in the details of the moment. This is especially rewarded in The Monk (with the Bleeding Nun segment being an awesome sidebar to the main narrative, and arguably the best part of the whole novel). I'm also finding it working for me as I try The Mysteries of Udolpho again, though. I hated it on first reading, but am thoroughly enjoying it the second time around.

It was cool reading this alongside The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter by Ambrose Bierce, which I also read in 2017. Both stories go different directions from the same concept. They start with a virtuous monk, then put irresistible temptation in his way to see what happens. But while Lewis' character needs an outside influence to pull him towards sin, Bierce's falls all on his own.

Lewis has the more thrilling story, because it's so racy, but Bierce's (which does go to some ghastly places as well) is the more effective warning. Not just for religious people, but for anyone tempted to justify selfish, prideful activity in the name of trying to "help" someone.

4. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson



This got on my reading list when someone described it as Southern gothic and it does have creepy, gothic elements to it. What I enjoyed most though was the mystery of the Blackwood family and what exactly happened to make them such pariahs in their town.

It's not a difficult mystery to figure out, but getting to the solution is a hauntingly beautiful process as Shirley Jackson slowly reveals not just details about past events, but about the present mental states of the surviving family members. It's a lovely, unsettling book.

3. Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty



This is another one that I picked up because it sounded rather gothic. I was browsing at a book fair and liked the cover with the spooky house. The back cover blurb pulled me in further, talking about a young girl with a cryptic past who lives in the cellar of Biltmore House and is pulled into a mystery of disappearing children.

It's not really all that gothic, but it is a great mystery in a cool setting and with characters I got very fond of. There are supernatural elements, but the novel never crosses into true urban fantasy territory (a genre that's a tough sell for me). The supernatural bits are used sparingly and don't retread territory I've been over in other stories. Beatty is way more interested in the way that Serafina has been isolated her entire life and finally begins to connect with society. I liked that a lot and am looking forward to reading the sequel.

2. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame



My only association with this classic has been through Disney, first through Mr Toad's Wild Ride at Disney World as a kid, and later through their animated adaptation that's packaged with "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad. I finally went back to the source and I'm glad I did. I loved it.

It's a beautifully pastoral book. The opening chapters read like a series of short stories about the same, recurring characters. Since I was mostly familiar with Disney's focus on the irritatingly hyper Mr Toad, I was surprised and pleased to find so much of the book concerned with Mole and Rat. They're pleasant characters who live in a pleasant place and Grahame's wonderful descriptions make me want to live there, too.

I love his prose and especially the observations he makes about human (or animal, I guess) nature. I was completely hooked as soon as I read Mole's thoughts about vacations: "...he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working." Grahame gets me.

There are stories about hospitality and homesickness and curiosity and traveling and worship. They're all lovely. As they progress, Badger and Toad also enter the tales and the stories start to become more connected, so that there's a strong narrative pushing through by the end. That's the part that Disney latched onto, and it is entertaining, but it's not the best part to me. The earlier, quieter chapters are the ones that are going to stick with me for a long, long time.

1. Hope and Red by Jon Skovron



If you're looking for great book recommendations, I highly recommend following author Kelly Sedinger on Goodreads. His reviews have added several books to my reading list, including my favorite book I read in 2017. I hope to get to the others this year.

Jon Skovron is primarily known as a YA fantasy author, but with Hope and Red he breaks free from the restrictions of YA. That means that there’s sex and cursing, but unlike some other authors who’ve made the same transition, the adult elements in Hope and Red never feel gratuitous. The sex is hot, but emotionally real. And the language is the natural result of the story's being set in a seaside slum with its own particular slang. (I always get nervous when fantasy books include a glossary, because it’s always annoying to me to stop reading and go look up a word just to understand dialogue. But Skovron’s glossary is there for flavor, not homework. The slang in his world is largely based on ours and even when it’s unfamiliar, I’m still able to figure out meaning from context).

What Skovron absolutely brings over from YA is fast-paced adventure and compelling characters with strong, emotional cores. Hope and Red are the names of the leads and even though they don’t meet until deep into the book, their individual stories are equally fascinating. I never found myself wishing that Skovron would wrap one part up and move on to the other. By the time they met, I knew them both well and was eager to see how they would affect each other's lives.

What makes the whole thing especially palatable for me is that it’s set in a fantasy world of oceans and islands. This is the pirate fantasy that I wanted from On Stranger Tides. Hope begins her life living in a remote island village, but when something horrible happens to the rest of the community, she’s rescued and sent to live first with an even more remote group of warrior monks and then aboard a merchant ship. For his part, Red grows up in the aforementioned slums and spends some time as a pirate. You might expect them to meet from Red’s group attacking Hope’s, but Skovron has something else in mind. Which describes my whole experience with the novel. Skovron consistently twists and swerves around expectations and completely hooked me into wanting to know what’s going to happen next.

That's something that he does with the ending of the novel, too. He picks a great place to put a break in the Empire of Storms series, but it is a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next volume. I can't wait to read it. Not just because I have to find out what happens next, but because I really really want to spend more time with these people.

7 Days in May | Revisiting 2016 favorites and '80s unfavorites

Jane Got a Gun (2015)



Spent some time this week revisiting some of my favorite movies from 2016. Some of them were new to David and Diane, but all of them I wanted another look it.

I was especially eager to watch Jane Got a Gun again. I loved it last year, but lukewarm reviews by other folks made me wonder if I just wasn't in a really good mood when I watched it the first time. The answer is: nope! It's great.

I love how it unfolds in three different time periods with everything leading to a big showdown between Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor. Joel Edgerton helps Portman, but where most movies would have had him take over and become the hero, Jane lets Portman hold onto that role. She is awesome and the movie is awesome. Glad I put it in my Top 5 last year.

The Legend of Tarzan (2016)



Liked it even better the second time. Alexander Skarsgård is an excellent Tarzan; probably the best ever, though we'll need to finish Greystoked before I can make that claim. Legend isn't a faithful adaptation of a Burroughs novel and it even changes some basic elements of Tarzan lore, but each change is considered and smart and exactly what's needed to keep the legend fresh and alive.

My only complaint is that the CG animals could be more convincing, but I'm thrilled with the story and the characters.

Star Trek Beyond (2016)



My favorite Kelvin Star Trek movie. That's not saying anything in comparison to Into Darkness, but I'm a big fan of the 2009 reboot and this is better. These are the characters - not growing into the people that I know and love - but already as I know and love them. Plus Jaylah. Plus everyone is 300% more kickass than they were in the original series. (And that's not because the original series wasn't kickass. It totally was. But not everyone got to do it back then and they certainly didn't get to do it directed by Justin Lin.)

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)



After watching this again and loving it just as much, I realized that it's directed by the same guy who's directing Thor: Ragnarok. Which makes me 1000x more excited for that movie than I already was. Taika Waititi knows how to make stuff funny, but also full of heart. If I ever meet him, I'm going to have someone take a selfie of us.

The Island (1980)



This has been on my list for so long. Michael Caine in a horror/thriller about modern-day pirates who dress as Golden Age pirates? And written by Peter Benchley? Yes, please.

It starts well enough with some scary and gruesome boat attacks. Caine plays a reporter named Blair Maynard who wants to investigate the disappearances, but he gets stuck with his kid for the weekend and has to take the boy along. Maynard's a pretty lousy dad, but Caine plays him with charm and it's clear that he loves his son Justin, even if he doesn't really know what to do with him. The movie is pretty good while it's about the pair of them traveling around the Caribbean and trying to bond. In a cruel twist of fate, it's not until the pirates show up that the movie sucks.

I can see how this could be a fun adventure novel, but putting them on screen makes it impossible to take the pirates seriously as a threat. They're bloodthirsty and dangerous, but also unbelievable and goofy. How their civilization has been able to survive all of these centuries is never seriously addressed, so they come off as deadly historical reenactors. It's as silly as it sounds.

Also silly is the drama around Justin's joining the pirate gang. There's a great story to be told about a kid who deserts the already shaky relationship he has with his father to do some horrible things with a bunch of new friends. How far can a child go before a parent gives up hope of bringing them back? Unfortunately, this isn't that story. Justin's transformation from normal kid to Lord of the Flies is way too quick and the movie doesn't really care whether we believe it or not.

Yellowbeard (1983)



The '80s were full of pirate movies that didn't work as well as they should have. I'm sure I'll get back around to some more of them later, but Yellowbeard showed up on my TiVo, so I gave it another look.

I was so disappointed back in the day. You take most of Monty Python and put them in a movie with Cheech & Chong and most of the cast of Young Frankenstein. I don't care what the movie's about, that's got to be hilarious. Making it about pirates is bonus. But Yellowbeard isn't as funny as its individual parts promise. And when I first saw it years ago, the letdown was unrecoverable. I hated it.

Watching it again, I laughed quite a bit. As Stacia says at She Blogged By Night, "Yellowbeard is a complete disaster, but it’s a funny disaster." She has a great analysis of what went wrong (and what went right) and links to still further information from Yellowbeard's director, so I highly recommend checking out her review. I'll probably never watch it again, but I'm glad to have it redeemed at least a little in my memory.

High Road to China (1983)



Another one that I wanted to like back in the day better than I did. It suffered by getting compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's a comparison that the marketing of the movie asked for, but it's not the best way of approaching the film. I haven't done an exhaustive history of it, but I have no doubt that it was greenlit thanks to Raiders' success. High Road had been in development since the late '70s though, so it's conception was inspired by neither Indiana Jones nor '30s movie serials. High Road is an homage to a later genre: mid-century war/adventure movies.

It's telling that it was originally going to be directed by John Huston and was ultimately directed by Brian Hutton, because it has way more in common with The African Queen and Kelly's Heroes than The Adventures of Smilin' Jack. I still don't completely love High Road to China, because I never really care about whether Selleck and Armstrong get together, but I do appreciate it as a globe-trotting adventure with a war movie finale.

Argoman, the Fantastic Superman (1967)



Went to see Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live and this was the movie. I'm probably breaking some kind of social contract by telling you, because it was billed as a Secret Surprise Film. (There were two shows - an early and a late - and because of schedules, Diane went to the early one - which was Eegah - and I went to the late. David went to both.) Joel Hodgson was there to MC and he said that he wanted the second film to be a secret because he feels the show works best when the audience doesn't know anything about the movie. I'm only telling you, because the chances are really, really tiny of someone reading this who also has tickets to an upcoming late show of the tour. If I've spoiled it for you, I'm sorry. You're in for a great show, though.

It's hard to judge Argoman the Fantastic Superman in The Incredible Paris Incident on its own merits outside of the experience of the show that I saw it in, but I think it's safe to say that it's awful. It's a late '60s Italian film inspired by James Bond and Adam West's Batman. Mostly Bond, if Bond was the millionaire playboy secret-identity of a superhero. (Unlike Batman, Argoman the Fantastic Superman actually has powers. They're not defined very well, but telekinesis is part of it. And also unlike '60s Batman, it took me a long time to decide if Argoman was a good guy or a bad guy. That's probably the Bond influence again.) Calling it "camp" implies some intentionality that I'm not sure was there, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt. If you like horrible Italian cinema from the '60s, it's bonkers enough to make it worth tracking down - whether or not you have wisecracking robots to watch it with.

Windjammer (1937)



It's a decent idea. A lawyer finagles his way onto a yacht to serve a subpoena to a well-protected tycoon who's leaving the country on a race across the Pacific. The execution is miserable though, with the lawyer's seeming super ineffectual and the tycoon's being infuriatingly entitled in a way that I think is supposed to seem whimsically charming. Maybe. I had a hard time telling what kind of tone the movie's going for.

Complicating things is the tycoon's equally entitled daughter who hates the lawyer for obvious reasons until she suddenly doesn't and we enter romantic comedy territory. I think maybe the whole movie is supposed to be a romantic comedy? That would explain why it doesn't really care about how horrible the woman's dad is. Anyway, I'm sorry I watched it.

Johnny Angel (1945)



A case study on why genres are important. I've got a few wishlist searches on my TiVo, so sometimes I record things and I don't really remember why. I bet I grabbed this one because it's about a sea captain investigating the death of his sea captain father and there's gold involved. But that's all I knew about it, so going in I was expecting some kind of adventure story. Which means that I got impatient with how slowly and moodily the story was unfolding.

When that happens, I usually stop the movie for a minute and do some research. Learning that Johnny Angel is a film noir (that just so happens to be about a sea captain and some gold in New Orleans) made all the difference in the world. I started it up again, confident that I could enjoy it for what it was. Expectations are weird.

It's pretty good. None of the cast is especially remarkable except Hoagy Carmichael as a really cool cabbie, but the mystery is good and the movie is awesomely atmospheric. I like how the mystery unfolds, too, with some pleasant (if not especially shocking) twists.

Black Bart (1948)



Between this and Frontier Gal, I'm pretty much done with Yvonne De Carlo Westerns. Or at least with seeking out Westerns specifically because she was in them. She may be Lily Munster - and she's certainly gorgeous - but man does she play some miserable characters. Black Bart isn't focused on rape the way that Frontier Gal was, but it's still about a supposedly strong-willed woman who bends to a man's wishes simply because he's the man.

In this case, the man is a stagecoach robber named Black Bart. He's kind of a Zorro character except that he deserves to be an outlaw. In fact, his master plan for robbing stagecoaches really puts him in the supervillain category. And yet I think we're supposed to find it tragic when he gets what's coming to him. I don't know. If he's supposed to be charming and likable, then the movie makes a huge miscalculation, because he's a boring weasel. I'm glad to see him fall and only sorry that he drags De Carlo into it. I guess it doesn't actually end too badly for her, but that's only because the movie completely forgets about her at some point and never comes back to her again.

Fort Apache (1948)



Got interested in watching John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy" as a trilogy. I've seen Fort Apache before and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, but I have no memory of Rio Grande. Or maybe I've seen it, but I'm getting it confused with the million other Westerns named after rivers. Anyway, I've certainly never watched the three movies close together enough to understand why people consider them a trilogy, so I'm gonna work on that.

Fort Apache is good, if frustrating. It's frustrating in the same way that Mutiny on the Bounty is. I don't have patience for rigid, narrow-minded characters who have authority over more level-headed people. The fear of that scenario playing out in real life is a big reason that I'd never fit well into a military organization. But Fonda is great at the role and the script gives him some humanizing moments in addition to the maddeningly bull-headed ones. I end up feeling bad for the guy, which is remarkable considering how much I dislike him.

Shirley Temple sure is a joy, though, as Fonda's daughter. And I like John Agar more in this than I usually do. John Wayne is typically watchable, too. So as this kind of military drama goes, Fort Apache is the best I've seen.

The Bribe (1949)



Finally, I checked off another Vincent Price noir movie with The Bribe. Robert Taylor plays a government agent investigating a ring of airplane engine smugglers (?!) and Price is the (not really a spoiler, because it's Vincent Price) mastermind behind the operation. Ava Gardner and her husband (John Hodiak) are suspects, but Taylor gets too close to Gardner and his loyalties are compromised. Charles Laughton is Price's front man in the operation; mostly there to give voice to Taylor's conundrum by reminding everyone of the stakes as often as possible.

Taylor is never a compelling lead. He even makes Ivanhoe boring, for goodness sake. I don't know that I've ever seen Ava Gardner in anything else, so I don't want to judge her too harshly for The Bribe. She's dull too, but that might be Taylor's rubbing off on her. Vincent Price is great, but he's barely in the thing, which leaves Laughton to do all the hard work. His character is purely there for exposition (and I guess a red herring, if you're super gullible), but he does fantastic things with it.

Kudos also to directors Robert Leonard and Vincente Minnelli for giving a mediocre story tons of style. The final showdown between Taylor and Price is unforgettable and there's a good reason that The Bribe was one of the movies edited into Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

Song of the Week: "Goodbye" by Echosmith

I love the guitar in this and the chorus is amazing and hilarious: "When you finally find yourself... tell him I said, 'Goodbye.'"

7 Days in May | Hailee Steinfeld vs the Mummy

The Mummy (2017)



Disappointing. Or it would have been had the extremely negative reviews not lowered my expectations. But still disappointing compared to the hopes I had for the Tom Cruise-starring launch of a Universal Monsters movie series. I have no problems with old dudes in action movies, but the script clearly thinks he's at least 20 years younger than he is. And contradictory to Universal's claims, it's not actually scary. It's an adventure story that has more in common with the 1999 Mummy than the 1932 one.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing and I had a good enough time with it. It's not the strong start to the Dark Universe (hate that name) that I wanted, but it's a harmless, mostly engaging summer flick.

The Edge of Seventeen (2016)



The mix between drama and comedy leans more heavily towards drama than the charming and funny trailer led me to believe, but it's still really, really good. And funny. But also heart-breaking and uplifting and completely relatable. Anyone who knows what it's like to hold the simultaneous views that you are the center of the universe, but also completely worthless will appreciate what Nadine's (Hailee Steinfeld) going through.

Resident Evil (2002)



And people say there are no good video game movies.

Seriously, I don't know why this has a bad reputation. It's a simple, clear plot complicated by some cool obstacles and nice twists. And Milla Jovovich is awesome in it.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)



I'm going to have to change my "I don't like zombie movies" stance, because the exception list is getting long. This one's even more straight-up zombie movie than the first Resident Evil and in spite of that, I like it even better. Alice (Jovovich) is in full-on butt-kick mode, there are a bunch of fun, new (and yes, cliché, but still fun) characters, and again: clear, simple plot with plenty of action to keep it moving.

Mannequin (1987)



I've been catching up on some episodes of the Cult Film Club podcast that I have bookmarked and Mannequin was next on the list. I loved this movie back in the day and saw it multiple times in the theater. It's goofy and never explains the rules of whatever fantasy or magic is going on in it, but it's also super funny and oddly sweet. Andrew McCarthy was never high on my list of favorite Brat Packers (those spots are all saved for Breakfast Club alumni), but I always liked him in roles like this and Pretty in Pink where he just gets to be pleasantly sincere. That hasn't changed.

I think I remember some culture shock about James Spader's performance when I originally saw this, because I love him as Pretty in Pink's handsome and powerful Steff and didn't like that he was so greasy and snivelling in Mannequin. But years later, after seeing him in many other things, I love what he's doing in Mannequin and that he went with a different spin on what could have been the exact same role.

The rest of the cast is great, too; especially Meshach Taylor and GW Bailey.

Rambo: First Blood, Part II (1985)



David and I watched First Blood back in January and it's just taken us this long to get to the sequel. It's not as good as First Blood, but it's still an effective commentary on the US' emotions around the Vietnam War and has some great action sequences. It's starting to get into over the top territory (tee hee), but it's still somewhat grounded and not full-on Rambo III, which I'll likely never watch again.

Ben-Hur (1959)



This Spring we watched the 2016 version and it wasn't great, but was better than expected and made Diane want to check out the '59 version. I couldn't talk her into the 1925 silent version that I like better, but I wanted to rewatch Heston, too, so we finally did that.

My dad always referred to this as the Star Wars of his generation and I can see why. It's a cool story and an amazing spectacle. I can imagine going back to the theater over and over just to rewatch the chariot race alone. And that's exactly what people did in 1959.

It's taken me a few years to understand the whole "Tale of the Christ" sub-title, because Jesus Christ only makes a couple of cameos (though they're prominent and significant). But the whole movie really is about how Christ's teachings about love and vengeance end up affecting the main character. It's wisdom that needs remembering, so I was happy to revisit it.

Three Godfathers (1936)



I think I added this to my list last Christmas, because someone described it as a Western version of the Three Magi story. Which I guess it is, but only symbolically in that it's about three men who make sacrifices for the benefit of an infant at Christmastime. But in this case they're three outlaws in various stages of hard-heartedness. I really liked Lewis Stone's character, who's the first to cave when it comes to taking in the baby, but I had a tough time buying the journey of Chester Morris' character. He's the most wicked of the bunch, so his change should be the most effective, but he doesn't sell it to me. Curious if the 1948 John Ford/John Wayne remake handles that better.

The Plainsman (1936)



Ever since watching The Young Riders for Hellbent for Letterbox, I've been interested in movies about Bills both Wild and Buffalo. This one's got both, starring Gary Cooper as Wild Bill Hickok and James Ellison (I Walked With a Zombie) as Buffalo Bill Cody. Jean Arthur pretty much steals the movie as Calamity Jane, though.

It's a fun movie that condenses a lot of history into a manageable narrative (and tells you up front that that's what it's doing). Not super essential, but it makes a nice sequel to The Young Riders.

The Mask of Zorro (1998)



As I'm closing in on the end of Disney's Zorro series, I figured to close out on the rest of the Zorro movies I've been meaning to watch, too. I've seen Mask several times and in spite of never being able to buy Anthony Hopkins as Diego, I love it. He may not be remotely Spanish, but Hopkins is charming and it's cool how he becomes the new Bernardo to Antonio Banderas' new Zorro. Banderas is an awesome swashbuckler and I like that Mask is a sequel to the original stories while also giving us the origin story that we've never really gotten before. Catherine Zeta Jones is perfect in it, too.

Zorro's Fighting Legion (1939)



I'm going to have to come back and try this again after putting some distance between myself and the other Zorro films. It's probably a decent enough serial, but it doesn't feel at all like Zorro to me. Reed Hadley is playing Don Diego and does some fencing (unlike the Son of Zorro serial from eight years later), but he's got a flat, American accent and - worse - the eponymous legion to share time and spotlight with. I'll think I'll eventually be able to enjoy it as a Western, but it ain't Zorro and I decided not to finish it.

River of Death (1989)



Speaking of not finishing things, I had high hopes for a movie about Michael Dudikoff (American Ninja) traveling a jungle river to search for a lost city and fight some Nazis played by Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasance. But holy crap this was boring. Dudikoff is passionless and the movie does zero work to build any relationship between his character and the girl he's supposed to be risking his life to rescue. I own it (it came in a box with the awesome Brenda Starr), so I may give it another shot one day, but it'll be a while, if ever.

On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers



Very well written in terms of craft. Powers knows how to create captivating characters and give them distinct voices. He's also great at period details and introducing a compelling mystery.

Where the book lost me was halfway through when the magic fully took over from the nautical adventure. It becomes full-on fantasy and the villains might as well be wearing pointy hats with stars. Also, the one female character is nothing but a MacGuffin for the hero to chase after and try to protect. I didn't finish this, either.

Jam of the Week: "How Far I'll Go" by Auli'i Cravalho

I may relate to Moana a bit too much. No one knows how deep it goes.