Venneh

X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back: A random Immonen/Pichelli mini from around the time of Utopia. Pixie finds out who her REAL dad is and there's a lot of stuff going on that I don't understand but it's pretty and fun. Wonder Woman 4: again, you can tell this was a dream project for Rucka and Scott. Love the twists they're giving an origin that's still evergreen, and tbh, I'm fine with just following this part and not getting the present story until it's released. Black Monday Murders 1: Oh, this is gonna be some good shit (tm). Lots of world building, money as magic and power, and just a world of yes. This has my attention. Single Issues: 272TPBs/Collections: 86Digital First Issues: 11

Out, Natsuo Kirino: Liked this the most of her novels that I've read so far, and unfortunately, there's not much more of her in translation. Great story about a group of four women that get drawn together in the aftermath of one of them killing her husband, and the men who incidentally orbit their lives. Again, female centric noir esque fiction, has some amazing lines, and takes some amazing twists and turns. Definitely worth a read if you find it.

Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor: Nnedi's novella, Binti, won the Nebula this year, and I've been looking for her other work. Jim picked up this for me at a bookstore we both like. This is a standalone novel, fantasy with a vague postapocalyptic hint, but it doesn't go out of its way to hammer the postapocalyptic part home. This novel goes hard, featuring systemic rape as violence, eleven year olds choosing female circumcision to avoid shaming their families, and incest/abuse in the first four chapters alone. I thought I was going to need to take this slow after last night, and then I ended up mainlining the entire thing tonight. A great fantasy mythos based out of Sudanese traditions, a good hard look at the systemic violence that's taken place there through the lens of fantasy, and some amazing highs and lows throughout the novel, along with a great character arc and journey for our main character. Definitely going to be looking for more of her stuff now. Books Read: 41

Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson: The Bloggess' second book. Combination of crazy ass stories from her own life, advice on how to handle mental health stuff, and reprints of some of her blog posts. As always, a great, quick, fun read. Which is a much needed antidote after the first four chapters of Who Fears Death included a description of systemic use of rape as racial violence, genocide, and an eleven year old choosing female circumcision to not shame her mother and adoptive father over the shame of her existence as a rape baby. Books Read: 40

Finished: -Persona 3: The Answer: the dungeons were a hell of a thing, but the story/epilogue as it played out was pretty great. Metis and Mitsuru forever. Yukari really got fucked up by protagonist dick in absentia though. -Odin Sphere: Leifthrafair: It's great to finally be able to play this through. Gwendolyn, Oswald, and Velvet were my favorites, and while I could leave the other two stories, Velvet's still did an amazing job of weaving them all together while giving her her own arc. Gorgeous, and really did well by the graphics upgrade. Would love to see them do something like this for P3/P4. -Mass Effect 2: We played through this in about five days, including all the DLC that came with the PS+ version. Super short, but that may be because we played it shortly after P3, which took us the better part of a month and a half playing almost nightly. Was able to come at it pretty well despite not knowing shit, loved all our various companions, and we're super interested in the next installment. Hilariously, we will be paying more for the DLC on that version than we will for the base game. Currently playing: -Overwatch: at about level 90. Still fun, but needs more maps (I swear to Christ if I have to run Dorado one more fucking time), or at least a better randomized server wise for location. Skins are okay and I'm glad we're starting to get more characters. -Bioshock Infinite: Jim started this the other night. I forgot how casually racist this game was. Probably going to be a game we take on in small concentrated doses. -Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch: aka that one time Ghibli teamed up with a video game studio and made a game. Very aimed at kids, we're getting a lot of mechanics thrown at us left and right, and I don't know if they'll come entirely together, but it'll be fun to play in small doses.

Superman: Kryptonite: Cooke and Sale's take on the original appearance of kryptonite in the Superman canon. Sale does some great art, Cooke does a great story, a fun, quick read. Single Issues: 270TPBs/Collections: 85Digital First Issues: 11

City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer: Technically the first book in the Ambergris trilogy, but the book I came at last. The book itself is a collection of short stories, all purporting to be from the world of Ambergris; from a pamphlet about the King Squid, to correspondence about the case of a mental patient who believes he is a famous writer from Chicago and that Ambergris isn't real, to various in world histories and literary journals. All of these create some amazing world building and some beautiful meta narratives within the book itself. Doesn't make it easy to get through (I've been chewing on this one for about a month now), but if tackled a few short stories at a time, it moves quickly. I still recommend my reading order of Finch, Shriek, City, but if you want proper chronological order, reverse that. The Girl With All the Gifts, MR Carey: This book has been on the to read list for a while now. With the combination of the movie being announced, a Kindle sale, and realizing this was the same Mike Carey who wrote Unwritten and Lucifer, I decided this was next up after finishing KLF on the phone. One of the best books I've read this year. Yes, it's a zombie book, but in a way I've not seen before (fungi and kids!), along with the fact that one of our pov characters is a child who's been infected but has retained her higher brain functions. The first part is great at building dread and horror, the middle part stumbles a bit, but the twists that are delivered once they get to London are great. I don't often wish for sequels, but would love to see one here. Current count: 39 books

Happy birthday Tom!

Woof

Rai 15: Oh. I think I know where War Mother is coming from now. Still eh on Cafu but man when he sticks the splashes he sticks them good. 4001 AD 3: Continues to be fucking gorgeous and has some great goddamn moments. Looking forward to seeing how this resolves. Haunt vol 4: Joe Casey and Nathan Fox take over a Kirkman/McFarlane joint. Couldn't give two flying fucks about the story (the flashback issue was great though), Fox is where it's at art wise though. The Shadow: 1941: Aka that time Denny O'Neil and Mike goddamn Kaluta teamed up on a pulp noir book about Nazis and destroyed your eyeholes from the glory. Real pretty, real fun, and doesn't need to be more than that. Monstress vol 1: Hadn't read issue 6 yet, read it all the way through on the suspicion that it reads better on the trade. It did, and helped the monthly mysteries show up better in the larger arc. Probably gonna stick to the trade on this, or read the singles multiples at a time, as such. Also goddamn Sana Takeda is so fucking good at art. This is also a steal at $10 for almost 200 pages. Get this. Single Issues: 270TPBs/Collections: 84Digital First Issues: 11

East of West 1-10, vols 3-5: J and I woke up this morning, and shortly after us being properly awake, he bought over the trades and the single issues and said it was time for me to read this. Apocalyptic futuretechy Western spinning out of a Civil War alternate history, and has a great plot that slowly gains steam as the issues go on, and complex webs of loyalties that play out in amazing ways over the long term. Also, some damn amazing one liners. Dragotta does some pretty neat stuff. (Can also see this was firmly in Image's Western boom a few years ago.) My only real criticism is can we please fucking have some more development of our six or so female characters in relation to the twelve or so male characters? All I can tell you about one of them is that she is maybe a crow shapeshifter magic user lady. Five Fists of Science: Matt Fraction basically gets to do his version of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with mostly science figures. He's clearly having fun, and it didn't really stick with me much more than that, but it was still a fun read. There's some weird moments with Sanders' colors where I legitimately could not tell what was going on because of the various dark shades playing together in not great ways. Casanova: Acedia 6: Yeah, I've just accepted that to some degree I have no idea what's going on anymore. Will probably work better on the trade? Things appear to be moving again, though. Single Issues: 268 TPBs/Collections: 81Digital First Issues: 11

So. I've been dealing with a bit of depression and shit. Still been reading stuff though. This is my attempt at doing some catch up. Rai 14: Again, Valiant is giving the Rai line a fuller history, and I suspect weaving a way for things to move forward from 4001, especially with these predecessors. Cafu is neat enough, but it'll be good to have Crain back. Divinity II 3: Kind of a filler issue but there's some neat layout stuff that I'm 99% sure is Kindt, but still has a neat effect. Kindt is starting to show some strain here, but I think he's writing five other comics for Valiant too?? Sandman Presents: Petrifax: A hundred page fantasy one shot from back in the day by Mike Carey and art by Steve Leialoha. Fun enough read, was $8 back in August of '11, you'll probably find it in the dollar bin nowadays of you find it. Worth a read through if you do find it cheap. Day Men vol 1: No way of getting around this, this is knock off Vampire the Masquerade that's somehow getting a movie. Idek. It was a fun enough read, a bit overwrought, but it had Brian Stelfreeze on art, so that was fun. Unity vol 4: Jim picked this up for free at... I forget where. Combination of a blast from the past story/WW1 flashback and an attempt to bring a new member onto the team (Faith, filling out some of the backstory that I'd missed). Again, the writing around it is all solid enough, but I'm WAY more interested in the Faith bits of this, especially with them trying to bring her onto the team (it goes about as well as you'd think). Lazarus 22: Start of a new arc. I had to ask Jim just now what other I'd read that week than this, Pretty Deadly 10, and The Spire 8. I'd completely forgotten that I'd read this. That says a lot. Pretty Deadly 10: Arc wrap up. Maybe I'll have a better sense of what happened here on the trade, but all I can tell you is that it felt like a magical girl western towards the end there, which was certainly a thing. Fucking gorgeous work by Emma and Jordie tho. The Spire 8: Credit where credit is due: I talked with Si about this at ECCC and floated my theory for the ending, and he said I wasn't entirely right and wouldn't be expecting it. He was right. This deserves the goddamn Eisner, and I don't think they were able to get it all out before voting deadlines, but Christ I hope they get it. Best mini that's come out so far this year (if a bit fucking delayed and then some). Wonder Woman 2: Picked this up on a whim, because I wanted to see how Rucka was doing being back on Diana, and how Scott was doing on her admitted dream project. Scott is gorgeous as ever, and Rucka's clearly setting threads for further down the line in the dovetailing story, but still works very well as a first issue origin story. Will probably pick it up when it's collected, if nothing else to be able to avoid all the fuckdamn ads interrupting the flow. The Fix 3-4: Contnues the trend of darky hilarious with some deep serious stuff. Interested to see how some of this stuff is going to play out down the line. Lieber is also great at setting up the visual jokes from panel to panel and page to page. A+ work. 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank 2: Again, love some of the visual storytelling we're getting with the art and layout, especially where Paige goes info diving at the police station. Can't wait to see how this escalates even further with these kids who are smart but occasionally real dumb like kids are, and how far in over their heads they are. Also really like the way they do the intro to each issue as a different 80s kid thing. The Wicked and the Divine 21: God the Aja cover on this is fucking gorgeous. The crazy ass fight scene that Wilson and McKelvie have clearly been itching to do for a while, and more stuff moving towards the arc conclusion. Great moments, looking forward to seeing how the team rips out our hearts next issue, they're overdue. Jade Street Protection Services 1: Combination of a magical girl show meets Breakfast Club with a dab of Bitch Planet. It's got my attention, let's see if they can make it follow through. Bitch Planet 8: I've just accepted that like Casanova, this series shows up precisely when it means to. We get the deepening of the main plots that we've been looking for (FINALLY), and a good look at some of the realities of the place. Back matter is as interesting as always, the ad on the back is always a good touch, and there's some real neat stuff that Val DeLandro does in call back both to comics classics and earlier in the series itself (look at that first page real close). Continues to be a goddamn master work, if released incredibly unpredictably. Insexts 6: Real interesting to come into directly after Bitch Planet let me tell you. Marguerite is spitting venom for twenty pages and goddamn, there is some amazing stuff here. Ariela is clearly having lots of fun with the art she gets to do here too, especially the extremes she regularly gets to go to with only a few panels between them. Seriously, when the trade comes out, get this. Single Issues: 257TPBs/Collections: 77Digital First Issues: 11

And if Takei is really concerned about there not being new gay characters, may I remind him Fueller is directing the new TV series? There'll be a new glbt character or three there for sure, and movies following that crew are likely to follow.

KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money, John Higgs: Recommended by a friend when I asked for some reading to expand my nonfiction repertoire. Weaves together the narrative of the KLF, the discourse of pop music, discordianism, a bit of Alan Moore, and the idea of magic to create a real compelling narrative thread, basically looking at framing contexts. I went into this knowing almost nothing about the KLF, and in reading, found out that I did actually know them from their Doctor Who novelty hit, which further ups the weird coincidences that Higgs examines. The man also writes with the typical British dry wit, which ups the book significantly. Give it a read, it's going to be percolating in my head the next few days I suspect.

Real World, Natsuo Kirino: Four teenage girls are drawn by circumstance into the aftermath of one of the girls' next door neighbors being murdered. The ensuing novel is compelling, incredibly well written, and an interesting account of all four of the girls' reactions to the murder, and the murderer himself, along with a situation that just gets worse and worse because all of our protagonists are teenagers, and make their decisions accordingly. Again, it's great to see Kirino tackling the point of views of all of her female characters, and to dive into a murderer's mind like she does. The novel is pretty short (each pov character gets a chapter, with three of them getting an additional chapter), but I've been racing through it the last few nights. I read something somewhere recently that whether or not you like an author in translation has a lot to do with the skill of the translator. I think that's the case with Kirino, as this is a different translator than Grotesque, and I liked it a lot better. (It also has almost 200% less reliance on prostitute stereotypes!) Going to try to find Out, her other novel that's been translated, and see how I like it.

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time With the Sons of North Korea's Elite, Suki Kim: Found remaindered on my latest trip to Unabridged. A journalist essentially goes undercover at a university based in Pyongnang for six months in 2011, right before Kim Jong-Il dies, and teaches English to the sons of North Korea's elite (as all other universities have been shut down during this time). The resulting account is a neat look into some of the more elite lives of North Korea, such as they are, and at these boys being exposed to the world outside their own. Their lives are admittedly super restricted though, so I wonder how much of this is actually the boys connecting, and how much of an effort they may have been putting on for her. Kim doesn't make it overly about her, thank god, but the times when she gets close are super cringeworthy. I wonder how all the missionaries she was working with (the university was staffed entirely by missionaries) felt when all this came out. Worth a read if you find it cheap.

https://igg.me/at/6WZ8iV--fTg What the title says. I lost my job at the end of May. I've come close on a few jobs but just haven't been able to get a job. I need help making July's rent. More details at the link. If you guys can help at all, that would be great. Thank you so much.

Shriek: An Afterword, Jeff VanderMeer: Second in the Ambergris series, and the second one I've read. Honestly, wondering how the hell I've not heard of VanderMeer until the boy. This is an autobiography framed as a dialogue between brother and sister (the former leaves notes on the latter's manuscript) also framed as the history of the city as it changes, and getting to see all the links to the other book, and the expansion of things that are only touched on briefly in Finch is just... Holy fucking shit. Likely starting the first book in the series tonight.

Finished Persona 3 FES (or at least the Journey section of it) on Wednesday. Holy shit, if you had asked me my first two playthroughs, I couldn't have told you why people were so into this. But now that I've finished the main playthrough, I get it, I absolutely get it. Once the story is done setting things up and finally gets into its paces, it's great stuff. I still like P4's overall story and mechanics better, but if they can wed that to P3's ability to fuse more Personas and max out more Social Links, I think we'll have the perfect Persona. (Maybe for P5. God that's looking fucking gorgeous.) Tartarus and its ability to murder you in random fights even playing on the normal setting is the fucking worst, though. And apparently there are Vita exclusive remakes (P3P and P4: Golden) that improve on these even further so guess who might be finding a cheap Vita. (YOU CAN SOCIAL LINK THE DOG) Currently playing: -Persona 3: The Answer: The epilogue dungeon crawl. I already like Metis lots. Jim will likely be handling some of the dungeon crawls, as the difficulty automatically goes up to high in this mode (fuck you, game). -Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir: Altus remastered and remade Odin Sphere. You can actually run it without it freezing and stalling in the middle of a boss battle now! Finished Gwendolyn's run, and starting the new chapter (Oswald? I think? TBH I forget). I only got about this far the first time I tried playing it on the PS2, so I'm looking forward to going in blind from here. It's even more gorgeous on the PS4, and I'm severely tempted to try and reverse engineer the recipes we make to level up/heal. -Overwatch: Yup. On PS4. Just finding my feet with characters I like (so far: Lucio, Mei, Zarya) doing well in matches against AI, we'll see how I hold up in battles against actual humans.

Finch, Jeff VanderMeer: Bless the boy for turning me on to Jeff VanderMeer in general. What would've already been a great detective noir novel and some beautiful turns of phrase gets elevated and turned even weirder by a fantasy setting that heavily features mushroom people and fungal infections. Like, think the Vimes novels in the Discworld series with a heavy dose of body horror. My first in the Ambergris series but apparently this might be the last major book in the series? Either way, I've got the other two books here, and given that one of them is heavily referenced in this one, I'm really looking forward to seeing where this series goes next. The Makioka Sisters, Junichiro Tanizaki: Found this remaindered at Unabridged. Tanizaki is apparently one of the major writers of the modern Japanese movement, after the one who tried to lead a coup and then committed seppuku. It might be the translation, but I had to force myself to power read through this, as I wanted to start Shriek (next book in the Ambergris series, the boy bought it to my place for the weekend), and I was determined to get this book over with. It's a combination of an upper class declining family drama and little vignettes, and very much feels like a dude trying to write how women feel but utterly failing at it. It's worth the $5 I paid for it, but not much more than that.

Pretty much exactly that - balancing a dungeon crawl with normal life :p

So, Spider-Man Persona.

The Lovely Horrible Stuff: Read this right before I went to Eddie Campbell's talk at CAKE this weekend. Neat comic, like the things he did stylistically and talking about nonfiction stuff, both on an economic and personal level. Worth a read if you find it. Not Love But Delicious Foods (and I'm pretty sure there's more words in this title but I forgot them): Early semi autobiographical food porn from Fumie Yoshinaga. She's still finding her feet here, but the food porn is pretty great. The autobiographical element is pretty take it or leave it. ingle Issues: 243TPBs/Collections: 75Digital First Issues: 101

Lullaby for a Lost World, Aliette de Bodard: One of those Tor novellas that's actually way more like a short story (14 pages total), worth the $.99 I paid for it. A story about a girl sacrificed to hold the power of a house, and also a unicorn. You'll see. Nicely tinged fantasy horror. The Seventh Bride, T. Kingfisher: One of Ursula Vernon's pennames. A great fairy tale about women relying on each other, a girl relying on her own inner strength and cunning to beat a nasty sorceror, and occasionally the wisdom of hedgehogs and she bears. Practical and dry witted and great, it's $3 on Kindle, and worth every penny. Been posting excerpts from it recently too.

American Virgin vol 1: Comic I read in college that was Cloonan before I knew who she was. Interesting setup, goes right to the heart of some shitty Christian tropes, and has some real interesting stuff set up story wise. Cloonan is clearly still finding her style here, but it's still pretty good. Weird back matter that was meant to be a parody but still kinda came off ehhhh. WicDiv 20: Setup/breather issue before the next big fight issue, and fills in some backstory holes nicely. Kind of feel sorry for McKelvie this issue, as there's a lot of fire this issue. Wilson again does crazy shit color wise, just for fun. Four Kids Walk Into a Bank 1: By the same team that did We Can Never Go Back Home. Leads in with a bunch of kids playing D+D, and slowly morphs into the kids getting over their heads as one of their dads may or may not be involved in a bank robbery. Seems like it'll go interesting places, I'll wait for the trade. The Complete Pistol Whip: All of the Pistol Whip comics Kindt and Hall did (includes Mephisto and the Empty Box, the Yellow Menace, and I forget what the second story was called). I'd read Empty Box and Yellow Menace before, so was way more interested in that second story. Absolutely gorgeous art by Kindt, and good twists by Hall. Worth a read if you find it cheap. Single Issues: 243TPBs/Collections: 73Digital First Issues: 101