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 | Battle Royale and The Last Man on Earth

Battle Royale (2000)



As a fan of the Hunger Games books, I got irritated when the movies came out and snotty people were all, "I liked it better when it was called Battle Royale." Yes, yes, you're very hip. But it did put the movie on my radar, so I'm grateful for that. It's a good film.

I still don't think it's smart to compare Battle Royale and Hunger Games though. The similarities are striking, but superficial. They're both about dystopian futures where kids are forced to battle to the death for public entertainment, but each is trying to do something different. For Battle Royale, it's a brutal and memorable analogy for middle and high school. Instead of being so embarrassed that you could just die... well, you could just die.

But that's as deep as it goes. I like the characters in Battle Royale just fine, but they're all simple archetypes; characters we've seen a billion times in a billion different teen movies. Only this time they're trying to murder each other. I dig Battle Royale, but I was way more invested in Katniss and her choices.

The Last Man on Earth (1964)



Probably my favorite adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, though I should give The Omega Man another try. I still have problems with The Last Man on Earth, though. Vincent Price is great, as usual, but the other actors aren't convincing and the ending - while a fascinating idea - doesn't pay anything off. The movie seems to be a survival tale, but decides at the last minute that it's really a social commentary of some kind. Except that I'm not clear on what comment it's trying to make; certainly nothing that was set up earlier in the story. It's a pretty cool twist; I just wish it was a more powerful one.

Airplane! (1980)



We talked about Police Squad on a recent episode of Dragonfly Ripple and that got me wanting to share Airplane! with David. Finally pulled the trigger on that and it was a big hit. A lot of the jokes are dated cultural references, but for the most part it's timeless, goofy humor that still holds up.

Caddyshack (1980)



Airplane! got me thinking about other '80s comedies that David hasn't seen yet. And since he's a big fan of the original Ghostbusters, I figured some classic Bill Murray (directed by Harold Ramis, no less) was the way to go. And it was joyous. Caddyshack easily has my favorite roles for Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and Ted Knight, and possibly for Rodney Dangerfield, too (though I need to give Back to School another look). That gopher puppet is adorable and the Kenny Loggins theme is second only to "Holiday Road." There are a couple of weird, pointless sidebar scenes to endure, but for the most part it's just one memorable gag after another.

Zorro (1957-61)



Still loving this show. This week some new villains were introduced with a multi-episode plot about stolen treasure that's being used to finance the Eagle's takeover of California. And while Zorro competently overcomes every individual threat, there's the growing sense that he's getting in over his head when it comes to the Eagle's larger organization. The stakes are raising nicely as we head towards the season finale.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-93)



In the last couple of episodes with the younger of the two Young Indianas, the Jones family visits India and China. I quite liked the China episode in which the gang makes an excursion far into the countryside without Indy's dad and Indy comes down with typhoid. Even knowing that he has to make it, I was still impressed with the performances, especially by Ruth de Sosa as Indy's mom. She was convincingly terrified that her son was about to die. And though I grew impatient with her hesitation to try Chinese medicine, I understood every decision she made.

The India episode wasn't as touching, but it did make me realize how effective the educational component of the show is. I mentioned last week that I thought the Jones' discussion of philosophy was over-simplified. The show did the same thing in this episode while talking about world religions. But seeing it repeat that tactic made me realize that it's intentional. Like with the geographical and historical elements, the show gives just enough information to tease my curiosity. I've had to pause every single episode at some point to hop on my phone and research one of the characters. In this case, it was Jiddu Krishnamurthi and the fascinating Theosophy organization that made him famous.

Underground (2016-present)



Nearing the end of the first season and the show's getting rather heart-breaking. Some of my favorite characters aren't going to make it.

And others are making some hard decisions that I'm not on board with. I don't know what it says about me that I'd rather see a woman kill a man than have sex with him to buy his silence (especially when her husband is someone else I like), but I would. I don't like that kind of secret in a marriage that I've grown to admire, so I'm hoping that gets resolved quickly and doesn't sit and fester in order to propel more drama. It was something similar that killed my interest in Downton Abbey.

Totally willing to keep going for now, though. I'm still very invested in the surviving runaways and there's some folks who need some comeuppance that I really want to see.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame



I'm a slow reader, so I won't always have books to talk about each week, but as luck would have it, I finished three of them last week.

The Wind in the Willows is beautifully pastoral.  Its opening chapters read like a series of short stories about the same, recurring characters. Since I was mostly familiar with Disney's very loose adaptation, I was surprised and pleased to find so much of the book's focus on 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 and they're all lovely. As they progress, Badger and Toad enter the tales and the stories start to become more connected, so 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.

Grandville: Mon Amour by Bryan Talbot



An excellent sequel to Talbot's Grandville. Like it's predecessor, it successfully combines mystery and political intrigue with some horror and lots of talking animals. I really enjoyed reading this so soon after finishing The Wind in the Willows, just because of how radically different they are using so many of the same building blocks.

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan Omnibus by Various Creators



I knew that Dark Horse had an ongoing Tarzan series in the '90s, but I'd never read it and incorrectly assumed that it was like most ongoing comics series: more or less telling a continuing story of the adventures of a primary character. This omnibus collects the entire run, but it reads like an anthology of individual mini-series. Every few issues brings not only a change in creative teams, but in overall tone and genre. There's no house style connecting them.

Which can be a strength and it mostly works for the collection. I enjoyed some stories more than others, of course. My favorites were the ones with Tarzan in New York encountering a variety of historical figures and literary monsters. And I especially enjoyed the art of Thomas Yeates in the closing story, even if I wasn't as crazy about that story in which Tarzan travels to the future to fight creatures from Edgar Rice Burrough's The Moon Maid.

Jam of the Week: "You Don't Know" by Scarlett & Black



I recently head this playing in a Taco Bell and it brought back all kinds of memories. It was used in the 1987 Jon Cryer movie Hiding Out and was my second favorite song on that soundtrack (after the kd lang/Roy Orbison team-up on "Crying"). I don't know if you can even call Scarlett & Black a one-hit wonder, because this song wasn't much of a hit, but it holds up for me and I love how Robin Hild belts out the title lyrics towards the end.

14 Really Good Movies from 2016

24. The Finest Hours



A great, suspenseful film that's really two movies in one. Chris Pine's in a rousing, military story about duty and being tenacious, while Casey Affleck's in a survival thriller. Both parts are equally good, even though Pine's half suffers from a weak romantic subplot. But even that is made better by super cute Holliday Grainger who's totally convincing and touching in her concern for Pine.

23. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows



My new favorite TMNT movie, which - okay - is a pretty low bar. Perfectly captures the ridiculous fun of the '90s cartoon series, and almost makes me curious to watch the 2014 movie. Almost.

22. Suicide Squad



There's some extremely sloppy storytelling around a major plot point, which is laughable, because they actually show it twice and neither time could I tell what the heck was going on. But except for that, I had a pretty great time.

I went in with low expectations and ended up enjoying most of the team quite a bit. I especially like Deadshot, Harley, and Diablo, but Killer Croc also gets a nice story arc. I was disappointed by how little Katana matters, but she was still better than Boomerang and Amanda Waller, both of whom are pretty horrible people. Flagg I can totally take or leave.

But it's surprising to me that I like three or four of these characters. Even though it's a movie about villains, there's more heroism and sacrifice going on here than in either of Zack Snyder's Superman movies. Suicide Squad isn't a great movie by any stretch, but it's easily the best of the three DCU movies so far and I'd love to see more with these characters.

21. Risen



After a disappointing experience with The Young Messiah and a more challenging watch of Last Days in the Desert than I expected, I wasn't sure what I was getting into with the third Jesus film of 2016. (Last Days was technically a 2015 film, which is why I haven't listed it with this year's movies, but it didn't come widely available to watch until 2016.)

I quite liked the procedural investigation angle of Risen though and the actors are mostly very good. Fiennes is excellent and I also quite like Stewart Scudamore as Peter. I want more resolution to Fiennes' journey, but I think maybe that's a positive thing. His story captures my imagination.

20. Keanu



I like Key and Peele a lot, especially Keegan-Michael Key, whom I was introduced to in the final season of Parks and Rec and then started noticing everywhere. I didn't know too much about Keanu going in, but hoped that it would be funny and I wasn't disappointed. I laughed a lot. The plot also messes with expectations in some fun and interesting ways, particularly in how it deals with violence, so not only is it funny, but it's smart, too.

19. The Jungle Book



Visually spectacular and a lot of fun. The voice actors all do remarkable jobs and Neel Sethi is an adorable Mowgli. It won't replace the 1967 animated version for me though, simply on the strength of those songs and my love for Phil Harris, George Sanders, and Sebastian Cabot's voices. It sure is awesome to hear Christopher Walken sing "I Wanna Be Like You," though, and watching the credits is worthwhile purely to hear Scarlett Johansson's sultry version of "Trust In Me."

The new movie also adds some great character stuff that deepens Mowgli as a character and strengthens the emotional impact of his having to leave the jungle.

18. Kubo and the Two Strings



Easily my favorite Laika movie. I always find Laika films cool and visually stunning, but I'm also used to not quite connecting with them as deeply as I want to. They've never punched me in the heart the way Toy Story 2 or How to Train Your Dragon do, for instance. But Kubo comes closest.

I felt the ending was resolved too easily and wasn't really honest with the characters' emotions, but that's a final stumble in an otherwise wonderful, fantastical adventure. This is a great world with great characters and some chilling villains.

17. Zootopia



A lot of fun and also very timely. But while I like and mostly agree with the overarching message of the film, it's presented in such a pointed way that it overpowers everything else. The analogy that compares animal species to groups of humans doesn't always work and the film has a complicated relationship with stereotypes (denouncing them while simultaneously using them for comedy). That makes me work harder than I want to in separating the useful parts from the parts that are just kind of dumb.

16. The Secret Life of Pets



Different from what the trailer led me to expect. Less vignettes about how pets are funny; more adventure. Some of that's good (I appreciate the structure of a traditional narrative) and some of it's not so great (the character arcs are trite). But above all, it's very, very funny and that's enough.

15. Pee Wee’s Big Holiday



Nothing will ever top Pee Wee's Big Adventure, but Big Holiday is super funny and sweet. Makes me want to rewatch Big Top Pee Wee to see where that one went wrong. I don't remember much about Big Top other than being disappointed. No such problem with Holiday; I'll happily rewatch it. Just probably not over and over again the way I do with Adventure.

14. The Nice Guys



A fun movie with a great cast. If there's anyone I want to see Gosling paired up with as much as Emma Stone, it's Russell Crowe. And I always enjoy Shane Black projects. The only thing keeping it this low on the list is that the villains' motivations and plan are ridiculous.

13. Finding Dory



I rate Finding Nemo in the upper-middle tier of Pixar films, so I knew there was potential for the sequel to be good, but I didn't expect great things. And it's not The Best Pixar Movie Ever, but dang it's a lot more entertaining and touching than I expected. I may have even teared up towards the end.

12. 10 Cloverfield Lane



Not the Cloverfield sequel I'd asked for, but an excellent thriller-with-a-twist nonetheless. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a great, relatable hero and John Goodman does an excellent job keeping her and me on our toes. John Gallagher Jr is also compelling as the third major character and I had a good time trying to decide whether he or Goodman (or both or neither of them) was a villain.

11. The Shallows



I'm warming to these survival films with one person stuck in a location for two hours. And it helps when the location is as gorgeous as this one.

Like in Gravity, the main character gets a backstory that's supposed to enhance her experience, but really isn't that meaningful. That's okay though. Her story is plenty thrilling and ends spectacularly. I had high hopes for this movie and wasn't disappointed.

When Elephants Rule the Earth... [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Manly Wade Wellman won himself a place in Fantasy history as the author of the Silver John stories that first appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction in the 1960s and later in novels. Before that he had a prolific career writing in the SF Pulps beginning in 1931 in the pages of Wonder Stories Quarterly. After that he appeared in practically every SF magazine until the 1950s including John W. Campbell's Astounding. As an SF writer he penned many tales under his own name (such as the Hok the Mighty series for Amazing Stories) as well as under pseudonyms like Gans T. Field (in Weird Tales) and Levi Crow (in Fantasy and SF), as well as under house names like Will Garth.

One of those times he used a nom de plume was when he wrote "Elephant Earth" as Gabriel Barclay for Astonishing Stories, February 1940. I am not sure why he chose to publish this story under a different name since he does not appear in the same issue under his own name, the usual reason for such changes. He did use the same pseudonym for "Hollow of the Moon" (Super Science Stories, May 1940) also edited by Fredrick Pohl, so he may have intended it as a name for Pohl publications alone.

No matter the by-line, "Elephant Earth" is an unusual and charming tale. It follows a man named Lillard who has been put into suspended animation, waking to find the human race destroyed by a mysterious plague, though a handful of humans may have escaped to Venus. The elephants, in Man's absence, have developed language and civilization. The elephants take Lillard to their leader so that he can decide what to do with him. Three factions vie for the last man on earth. The Medicals want to dissect him. The Mechanicals want to use him for delicate work that the elephants find impossible to do. And the last group, containing the Lillard's sole friend, Aarump, are space scientists who want to use him as a test pilot. While the chief of the elephants is deliberating on these choices, the scientists sneak him away and send him into space. Lillard lands on Venus, feeling even more lonely when he hears a female, human voice...

Wellman has great fun with this story, doing a good job of reversing the roles between man and animal. He allows us to see just how cruel humanity is in its attitudes towards beasts of burden. The majority of elephants have no concern for what Lillard wants any more than we would have for what a dog or a horse desires. Rod Serling captured this same disregard almost 30 years later in the film The Planet of the Apes (1968). Wellman has a few good chuckles like the Apes films, like when the elephants discover that the humans they admire most from ancient books, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Robinson Crusoe, are all fictional characters.

And we could leave Wellman there easily enough, but circumstances would arise that Manly would get a second chance at his elephant story. In 1951, Wellman, along with other Pulpsters like Eando Binder (Earl and Otto Binder) had moved to writing comics as the Pulps began to fade. Wellman wrote for the DC comic Strange Adventures. In issue #11 (August 1951) Wellman produced "The Reign of the Elephants" (drawn by Jim Mooney and Frank Giacoia). This tale appeared alongside Pulp old-timer Edmond Hamilton's "Chris KL-99", loosely based on his Captain Future character, a character Wellman had written as well in the pages of Startling Stories. It must have felt like old times. But I digress.

This time around the elephant tale begins the same but very quickly changes. The elephants have no desire to dissect the man, now named Clay Parks. (He is given a thought translator to make conversation easier than in the Pulp story.) When invaders come from the stars, it is up to Parks to show the elephants the art of war. Clay meets one of the invaders and sees she is a beautiful woman, not a human fled from earth but a product of parallel evolution. The invaders try to sway the last man on earth to betray his planet but he uses the thought transmitter to set a trap. Once the invaders are in the elephants' control, it is easier to sue for peace. The story ends with Parks and Lylla, the beautiful space girl, in love, and men and elephants working together.

In the second version of the tale we get to see Wellman rework his original idea, going for more action. The thought translator could have been just a cheat but he is a pro and makes it the key to the story's resolution. The original story strikes me as a more powerful tale, while the comic elephants are more passive and less convincing. In "Elephant Earth," Wellman extrapolates things like elephant architecture and their mental outlook, which lacks the concept of luck. Ultimately this could be a matter of medium. A constraint of the comic book storytelling is that things must be shown while in a story the more esoteric stuff is limited only by the length of the tale. All that aside, it is intriguing to see how an author plays with the same idea in two different ways. And there are few authors more able and fascinating than Manly Wade Wellman.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Daily Panel | Only You

From The True Story of Smokey Bear. 

Daily Panel | Bremen Town

From Karl Kerschl's adaptation of "The Bremen Town Musicians" in the Fairy Tale Comics anthology.

Daily Panel | Three Bears

From Graham Annable's adaptation of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" in the Fairy Tale Comics anthology.

Rebecca and Molly Cunningham hate cephalopods

Tarzan 101 | Tarzan and the Lion Man

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Burroughs gained quite a bit of experience working with Hollywood during the production of the earliest Tarzan films, so he put that to good use in Tarzan and the Lion Man. The title character is a movie character played by marathon champion Stanley Obroski, who's come to Africa to shoot a movie with director Tom Orman, actress Naomi Madison, and Madison's stunt double Rhonda Terry.

The film expedition is based on the events surrounding the production of real-life safari film Trader Horn, an ill-fated shoot in which actors (including the female lead) and crew contracted malaria and two crewmen were killed by wild animals. In Lion Man, Tarzan is mostly a passive observer to the crew's plight until the two women are captured by English-speaking gorillas. He trails them to the gorillas' home and uncovers a Moreau-like scientist who's conducting genetic experiments on animals in order to prove Darwin right.

The novel ends with an epilogue in which Tarzan visits Hollywood and learns that - in its own way - it's just as vicious as the jungle. This last part was suggested to Burroughs by an editor at Modern Screen who wanted to publish a humorous piece about Tarzan and the film industry. Burroughs wrote it, but never submitted it to the magazine.

Thanks partly to Tarzan's being confused with actor Stanley Obroski in Lion Man, Griffin's supplemental chapter is on "Tarzan's Appearance." There's a thumbnail gallery of artists' interpretations (by J. Allen St. John, Frank Frazetta, Robert Abbett, Thomas Yeates, Boris Vallejo, N.C. Wyeth, George Wilson, Robert Stanley, and Neal Adams) and Griffin discusses how Burroughs intentionally left Tarzan's description vague. He also talks a little about Tarzan's costume and reveals that the origin of the over-the-shoulder strap in some depictions of Tarzan was from the early films from a time when men could be arrested for being topless at the beach.

10 Honorable Mention Films from 2012

20. The Five-Year Engagement



I lost patience toward the middle when it took some really stupid decision-making to prolong the engagement to five years, but even when it stretched credibility, the movie never stopped being funny or having Jason Segel in it. It wins points for both of those things.

19. John Carter



Nowhere near the mess that lots of people claim it was; just not as spectacular as it should have been for the talent involved. It's a fun, scifi escape with a couple of legitimately great moments; we just all hoped for so much more.

18. The Amazing Spider-Man



"Expectations" are a recurring theme on my honorable mentions list this year. I didn't have high ones for The Amazing Spider-Man and like most people, I questioned the fundamental existence of the project. It was made for purely cynical, We Have to Do This or Lose the License reasons.

But though it contains some highly unnecessary rehashing of the Sam Raimi material, it also found some new things to do with its tone and the central relationships. It's worthwhile for Peter and Gwen alone.

17. ParaNorman



I love the theme in ParaNorman about being your own person and not letting other people define you. Also: the animation is amazing. I wasn't totally in love with the character designs though, and since that's what I was looking at for most of the film, that's what keeps it out of my Top 10.

16. The Hunger Games



I'm disappointed that this isn't in my Top 10 for the year, either. I totally thought it would be, but during the second viewing I found myself getting bored. I kept myself entertained by focusing on Jennifer Lawrence's wonderful performance, which communicated very well the horror of Katniss' situation. Without her internal monologue though, it was hard to get what I wanted from her moral struggle over how to act in the arena.

Still looking forward to Catching Fire, but I'm more detachedly curious about it than wildly enthusiastic like I was for this one.

15. Underworld: Awakening



In a year that brought a disappointing entry in the Resident Evil movies, I'm thrilled that we got a worthy film in my other favorite horror/scifi adventure series starring a woman. Awakening pretty much punts and launches a Bold New Direction for Underworld, but it's a good direction with some likable, new characters and I enjoyed it very much.

14. 21 Jump Street



I want to say that this is so much better than a movie based on an all-but-forgotten TV show has the right to be, but even though that's true, it's not really fair to suggest that that's all 21 Jump Street has going for it. It's just a very funny movie, period. That it gets a small part of that humor from pointing out and making fun of its sordid roots is just frosting for the cake. I'd probably rate it higher if not for the skeevy romance between Jonah Hill's character and a high school student.

13. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted



Listen: After the horrible piece of derivative crap that Madagascar 2 was, I'm as surprised as anyone to find Madagascar 3 on this list. In fact, I didn't want to see it at all when it was announced. It wasn't until it got a 79% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes that I had to see what the heck was going on with this thing. To my surprise, it was hilarious and - more importantly - original. It also pretty much wrapped up the saga with a nice bow on top, so I don't expect to be interested in a Madagascar 4, but never say never.

12. Haywire



No, Gina Carano is not a great actress. And the plot of Haywire is nothing new. But the movie makes up for both of those things with heart and authenticity. I wrote a full review of it, so I'll point you there for more thoughts, but it really was one of my favorite movie experiences of the year.

11. Moonrise Kingdom



This was my first Wes Anderson film since Rushmore, which I never quite forgave for stealing Bill Murray away from movies like Groundhog Day and The Man Who Knew Too Little. Seeing Moonrise Kingdom makes me want to find out what I've been missing. It's a small movie, but a lovely one, and makes great use of its setting and awesome cast.