Kill All Monsters at Barnes and Noble

The good folks at Barnes & Noble would like for you to know that Kill All Monsters, Volume 1 and other Alterna comics are now available at their stores and website. They weren't for a while, but that's changed. Always good to have another place to buy, so thanks, Barnes & Noble!

Noah (2014)

Noah is my first Darren Aronofsky film. It would’ve been The Wolverine if it had worked out for him to direct that, but it didn’t, which is too bad. As much as I enjoyed the first three quarters of James Mangold’s film, based on Noah, I really want to see what Aronofsky would’ve done with that. It’s not that I’ve intentionally been ignoring the guy, it’s just that none of his films have grabbed me enough on a conceptual level to get me to sit down with one. That changed with Noah.

I expect it’s a lot of people’s first Aronofsky film. It’s based on one of the oldest, most familiar stories in the world and whatever differences folks have about how true it is, everyone knows the basic plot. And based on the $100 million it’s made so far worldwide, they’re also curious to see how Aronofsky’s interpreted it.

That’s what got me into the theater. The story of Noah is a tough one to navigate, even for serious Christians. I had no problem accepting a literal interpretation as a kid, but the older I got, the more I struggled with it. Not just with questions about the logistics of fitting all of those animals into that boat, but also with the theological questions the story raises about the nature of God. I’ve had to wrestle with that stuff, so I was interested in seeing what conclusions Aronofsky came to about it as well.

Everything you need to know about Beasts of Burden in two panels

From Beasts of Burden: Hunters & Gatherers by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson.

Everyone Hates Cephalopods: The Video!

Adventureblog reader Dave Mable made this awesome montage of many of the Everyone Hates Cephalopods images I've posted over the years. And put them with the perfect song. Thanks, Dave!

I haven't posted a lot of cephalopod art here lately, but that's mostly because there are other platforms better suited to that kind of thing. I've got a whole Everyone Hates Cephalopods page on Pinterest, and that theme occasionally creeps up on my Tumblr as well. If you haven't checked out either of those yet, I encourage you to do so, especially the Tumblr. I've been very active on that lately and it's full of awesomeness.

This is my Boomstick (Award)

A million thanks to Italian book blog Tutto Benenella Mia Testa for not only picking me to receive a Boomstick Award, but also saying very nice and encouraging things about me in the process. It couldn't come at a better time, because frankly I've been overwhelmed with work and life since about last Fall and it's been especially tough the last couple of months to balance this blog with everything else. I never intended for sporadic reviews of James Bond novels to be the only content here, but it's worked out that way lately and that makes me sad. TBMT, on the other hand, makes me happy.

I also got another encouraging note recently from a different person - I'll share that tomorrow - so it's been a nice week and I'm going to use that encouragement to motivate me to post more often. Thanks for being patient.

Moonraker by Ian Fleming, Chapters 1-12

For better or worse, Moonraker is a lot different from the first two Bond novels. That's apparent not just from the first few chapters, but also from the way Fleming divides the story into three parts that cover a traditional work week. Part One is called "Monday," Part Two is "Tuesday, Wednesday," and Part Three is "Thursday, Friday."

The plot is more than just following Bond through a typical week, but you can't tell it from the first couple of chapters. Rather than repeating the cold open technique of the first two novels, Fleming begins Moonraker at the Secret Service shooting range where he reveals that Bond is the best shot in the organization. It's a cool, gadgety range with targets that use beams of light to shoot back at the firer, but Fleming is intentionally mundane in his description. This is routine activity for Bond on a Monday morning.

The first chapter continues the theme of routine. The name of the chapter is "Secret Paper-Work" and that pretty accurately describes the level of action. After the range, Bond heads up to the office he shares with the other two Double-O agents and a secretary named Loelia Ponsonby whom Bond insists on calling "Lil." Fleming explains that all of the Double-Os have hit on her at some point, but have also all been shot down.

It's interesting and cool that Fleming fleshes Ponsonby out more in a few paragraphs than he did Solitaire in all of Live and Let Die. I felt like I got to know her well and I like her dedication to her job despite the serious sexism she encounters there. Fleming doesn't pull any punches describing it either and he shows a lot more awareness that it's a problem than he did about racism or ageism in Live and Let Die. "It was true," he writes, "that an appointment in the Secret Service was a form of peonage. If you were a woman there wasn't much of you left for other relationships. It was easier for the men. They had an excuse for fragmentary affairs. For them marriage and children and a home were out of the question if they were to be of any use 'in the field' as it was cosily termed. But, for the women, an affair outside the Service automatically made you a 'security risk' and in the last analysis you had a choice of resignation from the Service and a normal life, or of perpetual concubinage to your King and Country."

Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming, Chapters 11 - 23

I covered the first half of Live and Let Die a couple of weeks ago. Since this post wraps up the novel, I'll be spoiling some things about the ending.

As Bond and Solitaire make their way by train to Florida to see where Mr. Big is bringing his pirate treasure into the country, the couple begins to flirt, but agree not to have sex yet. For one thing, Bond's hand is still bothering him where Tee Hee broke his little finger and the spy doesn't feel like he can work his moves properly one-handed. Beside that, they suspect that Big has people on the train wanting to kill them, so they're not too keen on getting naked and making themselves vulnerable. They also have to get up early, because Bond wants to sneak off the train in Jacksonville instead of riding it all the way to St. Petersburg/Tampa as planned. Lots of excuses.

The couple is obviously into each other though and pretty much promise to do it as soon as they get the chance. Bond is attracted to Solitaire - she's an aggressive kisser and seems to be a strong, confident woman - and she believes he's the strong man she's been waiting for. Sadly, that's not just about helping her escape Big, but I'll have more to say about that in a minute.

Bond stays very friendly with Solitaire, but it's worth pointing out that he still doesn't seem to entirely trust her. He asks her lots of questions about Big's organization, but he never offers her any information or confides in her about his mission. Like I mentioned in the first half of the novel, Bond's relationship with Solitaire is absolutely not a repeat of what he went through with Vesper. He's having a fun time getting to know Solitaire and seems at ease around her, but he's not letting her in. That's important to the long-term arc of Bond's character throughout the series. He got burned badly in Casino Royale and though Fleming isn't explicit about saying it, Bond's not letting that happen again in Live and Let Die.

Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming, Chapters 1 - 10

As I mentioned in my intro to this project, I'm a slow reader. I'd like to have a Bond post up each week though, so I'm going to write about however much of the books I've read in the last seven days. Hopefully, that'll also help control the length of some of these posts, because I do tend to ramble.

Before Casino Royale was even published, Ian Fleming had completed his second Bond novel. Inspired in part by the train ride that Fleming and his wife took from New York to Florida before heading to Jamaica where he wrote the book, Live and Let Die has Bond making the same trip as he investigates a criminal named Mr. Big.

Like Casino Royale, Live and Let Die begins with a cold open as Bond arrives in New York City to collaborate with the CIA and FBI, then flashes back to the briefings that sent him there. Bond has mostly recovered from the events of Casino Royale, but still carries emotional scars. How much damage he took from Vesper's betrayal remains to be seen, but at the very least he's passionately bent on taking down SMERSH, the Soviet organization behind most of the troubles in Casino Royale. M knows this, so when a possible SMERSH agent is identified in the United States, M gives Bond the job of verifying the intelligence and - if necessary - eliminating the threat.

The connection between Mr. Big and SMERSH is circumstantial. The British have reason to believe that SMERSH is financed partially by a horde of pirate loot that once belonged to Captain Morgan, and Big has been caught handling some of that treasure. On paper, part of Bond's job is making sure that Big is actually involved with the Soviets, but that fact is mostly taken for granted. Bond is after Big from the get-go.

The Monuments Men and the importance of art

My first reaction to The Monuments Men was how sad it is when art about the importance of art largely fails to communicate the importance of art. That’s what I tweeted right after I saw it, but I’d like to unpack that complaint a little more.

The Monuments Men spends a lot of time telling its viewers that art is important. George Clooney’s character assures the people around him (multiple times) that art is what the Allies are really defending against the Nazis. Art, he claims, is the memories of a civilization. An entire generation can be wiped out, but the culture will endure as long as its artifacts do.

His character arc is to discover just how much he thinks this is true. As his team lands in Europe he cautions them to be careful, saying that no piece of art is worth their lives. By the end of the film, he’s changed his mind about that. In a hammy scene, he debriefs FDR who pointedly asks if the mission was worth the loss of life. Clooney’s character proudly declares that yes it was. He’s clearly taken a journey in the film. The trouble is that I didn’t get to take it with him.

Climax!: "Casino Royale" (1954)

Ian Fleming always intended for Bond to get out of the books and onto the screen. In fact, the US edition of Casino Royale had only been out several months when it was adapted for TV by the hour-long, suspense anthology series, Climax. “Casino Royale” was the show’s third episode following an adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye and the Bayard Veiller play The Thirteenth Chair (which had already been made into three different movies, one of which was directed by Tod Browning and co-starred Bela Lugosi).

The show was kind of a big deal. Though the few, remaining prints are black-and-white, the series was actually broadcast in color, which was rare in 1954. It was also hosted by film star William Lundigan (Dodge City, The Sea Hawk). But Fleming would come to regret the hastiness with which he accepted the Climax deal and it’s not hard to see why. The show famously changed James Bond into an American CIA agent named “Card Sense” Jimmy Bond, and while that was the most obvious and horrific alteration, it wasn’t the only one.

The Le Chiffre job is still an international operation coordinated by Britain, but Her Majesty’s Secret Service is represented by Clarence Leiter (replacing the novel’s American Felix), who says he works for Station S (the MI-6 branch in the novel that comes up with the mission). Clarence bankrolls Bond’s initial gambling stake and even debriefs him on the mission, a la M. Bond himself is clueless about the case when he arrives at the casino and at first assumes that he’s supposed to assassinate Le Chiffre.

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

When people talk about how they came to know James Bond, the story I most often hear is that they were introduced to the movies by an older relative. When I was a kid in the pre-cable, pre-home video ‘70s, that meant catching the old movies as they aired on network TV. I remember those commercials well and my being intrigued about the suave hero who’d been around long enough to be played by multiple actors and whose adventures had awesome titles like Thunderball and Live and Let Die. The Bond films were family viewing for a lot of folks and it didn’t matter that they were only available sporadically and in whatever order the network chose to show them. There was no way to marathon the entire series in those days, but no one cared. They fell in love with Bond anyway.

I didn’t get to know Bond that way though. My folks were pretty strict about what we watched and the sexual nature of Bond’s exploits kept him off our TV. It wasn’t until I was 16 and able to drive myself to the movie theater that I saw my first Bond film. But long before then, I was able to enjoy his adventures in a different format.

For whatever reason, my folks never policed my books. If I could find it in the library, they were okay with my reading it. So while I was unable to satisfy my curiosity about the Bond films, the world of Ian Fleming’s novels were completely open to me and that’s how I met the superspy. And since I was a compulsive nerd about continuity even then, I had to start with the first book, Casino Royale. It blew me away.